Why do they lock all the good items behind multiplayer raids? So you will be forced to play MMO Diablo gameplay.
Why do they allow busted builds like Spiritborn to run amok while sitting back and not fixing anything? So you will have to buy the expansion to have fun like them.
Why do cosmetics cost $30+ in the Shop instead of being free in-game items? Because they think you will show off your shiny new skin to other players which will make them want to buy it too.
You’re not playing a video game, you are part of a social network marketing scheme.
Sadly we live in a day an age where it is not okay to just make a reasonable profit, you have to make all the money. And then using patented social psychology schemes to trick people into paying for something that 15-20 years ago would have been a free in game reward.
A person soloing most endgame content is only getting 25% of the gg drops people playing in groups are getting. This is an entirely new dynamic in the diablo franchise, and a very very bad direction. It needs to be remedied by next season. It should be the number one priority for the devs.
No one mf’d for items in groups. You competed for drops, so that would be stupid. Efficient item hunting is done solo unless you’re multiboxing, but that’s p2w. Even if you get all the drops in an 8 man party in D2, it still wouldn’t come remotely close to the 75% gg drop increase you get for simply participating in a 4 man group here. It needs to be fixed.
There’s quests in the game that you can only complete by doing a raid. There’s also powerful scrolls, incense, elixirs, the best gear in the game and a cosmetic mount.
Blizzard even started to do stealth nerfs to push this type of gameplay, by slowing artificially the basic progression.
This is a list of some stealth nerf Blizzard have done:
Stealth nerf to the infernal horde gold chest, without writing anything in the patch notes, Blizzard reduce the quantity of gold you can get of chest, which isn’t the big problem, they nerfed the quantity of gold per aether you get and the influence of the Torment level on the gold you get, so now aether and Torment level only infuence the reward for 1-3 millions, seems the max is around 15 millions on T4 with 1000 aether, when with T1 you can get 5-6 millions with 500 aether.
2)This second stealth nerf is the one causing all the complaining about the lack of basic materials like rawhide and iron chunks, Blizzard stealth nerfed the quantity of materials you get from scrapping gear from the blacksmith, to only 1 of type of resources for gear from blue to legendary, unique give 3 materials.
Funny thing the automatic scrapping of blue/yellow introduced in season 6 for torment difficulty, isn’t affected by this stealth nerf, so every activity or chest which drop blue/yellow gear in past, now will give normal quantity of materials from this items, except for the pit which still drop the blue/yellow gear.
3)And the last stealth nerf seems a player found a nerf in the conversion aether/obducite of the mats chest in infernal horde, from the last hotfix seems players need nearly the double aethers to reach the same reward of before the hotfix.
All this things are shifting the main objective of an arpg, which is farming gear, to a new main objective farming materials, which is a staple of mmo gameplay.
This is what happens when we live in a material world (Madonna) lol, No really and it’s only going to get worse until it all breaks down and basic survival becomes the new way.
I don’t want to be around when that happens.
It’s good that they slow progression. After months of giving in. Finally. Only a person with a burned-out brain by years of playing D3 (this corrupted, evil, twisted version of a Diablo game) might not be happy with that.
For an mmorpg yes because the main point is farming materials to get good gear, but diablo 4 should be an arpg like a Diablo so the main point is farming gear and at max key to farming more gear.
Blizzard don’t need to slow the basic progression, need to slow the endgame.
But the problem is diablo 4 lack of a good endgame and good itemization, so Blizzard clumsly try to hide this with stealth nerfs slowing the basic progression and make the game more similar to a mmorpg.
But it’s useless because when players will reach the endgame they will blast trought it and in this way Blizzard is only helping Gold sellers and Dupers.
The problem is D4 does not have the content to run it like an MMO. It’s way smaller so we wind up getting bored running the same thing ad nauseam. And yet getting the same results.
Boredom and frustration leads to unhappy gamers.
The fact is diablo 4 not have the content to run even like a Diablo, an arpg.
So this stealth nerfs to basic materials and gold are the only way to Blizzard to keep some players players.
The better solution is to give to diablo 4 a good endgame and itemization, but months are passed and Blizzard have not found a solution, so probably is impossble, so they started to stealth nerfs basic materials/gold.
The scrolls for tempering you can get in hordes, I have about 40 just from infernal hordes. Elixirs and incense are almost all only better then the other ones if you are in a party… and that’s the point. Solo players who don’t want to do party play (me) don’t benefit from these consumables (except the move speed one, but move speed is capped at 200% which is easily reachable without it).
So the only actual claim is it offers the best gear in the game… this is just untrue, there is no gear exclusive to the citadel and I would put money on grinding other end game content is probably better.
So yes it offers cosmetics, but I couldn’t give a monkey’s about that as its no advantage ingame.
The only incentive to do the Dark Citadel is cosmetics and even then the drop rate is so abysmally low most people would get bored of it before getting a full set.
Ancestral items are better to farm in helltides or Infernal Hordes and temper scrolls drop like candy from infernal hordes.
The Dark Citadel is in a good place right now. If you want to farm it you will be rewarded with cosmetics. If you don’t want to do it then you aren’t missing out on any player power.
