After watching the latest campfire chat, I checked the Blizzard forums, and wow, the frustration among players is palpable. For me, this feels like a turning point for Diablo IV—and not in a good way. Blizzard says they want T4 to be aspirational, but all I see are changes that cater to elite players. They’re making The Pit even harder, which is laughable because most players I know and play with hate it with a passion, hate is a strong word, but that’s how I hear it being describe. It’s a grindy nightmare where you’re funneled into stale, repetitive gameplay just to level glyphs. And let’s be honest, the same repetitive cookie cutter meta builds are killing the creativity and fun.
The lack of innovation in Season 8 is another slap in the face. Bosses? Really? We’ve seen that before. Blizzard had the opportunity to do something fresh, like they did with Witchtides or Season of the Infernal Hordes, but instead, they gave us another season of similar recycled content. The comparison to POE2 is spot on—Season 8 feels like a cookie-cutter version of POE2. But here’s the thing: Diablo IV’s casual players liked D4 because it wasn’t POE2. Now, Blizzard is trying to be something it’s not, and in the process going to create divide and alienate its casual playerbase.
The class imbalance isn’t helping either. Some classes—like Sorcerer and Spiritborn—are working twice as hard to keep up in Season 7, while others dominate cough cough Necro / *Barb. Blizzard says they’re targeting casuals, but their actions suggest otherwise. They seem to be listening to elite gamers who play 10 hours a day, leaving the rest of us behind. Some of us have jobs and enjoy the idea of logging in after a long day of work for 1 or 2 hours to experience the power fantasy of T4.
We’ve been tolerant of the bugs and the recycled content up until now, but this is a breaking point. If Blizzard keeps this up, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a 30–40% decline or drop in casual players. You lost me at making T4 more of an elite gamers playground or world tier. Making it slower and harder won’t solve the complaints making the endgame more interesting… When the elite streamers ask for more endgame content, they want stuff to do, fresh content, not just making this harder… This is just a fake challenge.
T4 should have always been a challenge. That’s the issue. When the new T4 was launched, it should have always been a struggle. Everything (save Journey in S7) was available in T1.
I don’t give af about streamers. When I play other games, the hardest difficulty is hard.
Now, loot acquisition is another topic entirely, but I certainly welcome the difficulty increase. I do wish difficulty increases also included things like better monster AI and increased powers of elite packs, but we’re starting. Bosses in S8 are getting additional powers. Hopefully that trickles down to elites.
Clearly we define “casual” and “elite” differently… I’ve yet to clear Pit 70 with any build I want to play. (Sorc blizzard as an example), I can with a meta, or spending hours researching to tweak the power of the season… Not all experiences in this game are the same.
(reality check, I don’t care about the changes. I play for FUN and I am my competition. There is no awards for this game, not even a cookie)
Each to their own. We all have different experiences and opinions, I don’t think mine are invalid. I hated playing my favourite class this season Sorc… It was a long grind. I don’t have the energy to do it again. Im sure the necros, druids and barbs had fun this season. But it was tough, I couldn’t even complete the season 7 seasonal challenge in term because the sorc was too weak to kill enough hellborne in time. So yeah, if you try and see things from my perspective. It’s a little disheartening and demotivating to know that next season it’s going to be even worse. So yeah guys, enjoy next season. Im not at all excited and even considering playing. Most of my mates already quit or going to quit, I like the party playstyle and discord calls. But yeah, maybe it’s time to find another game.
As a REAL casual, reaching T4 was never a goal, just like getting to para 300. You just have to accept (with more than 2 braincells it’s not hard), if you’re a casual, your goals are have to be lower. You can’t be entitled to everything if you are a casual. Just don’t be an entitled, spoiled adultchild in general.
Depends on your definition of casual, as some people mean different things with it.
Plays for fun, ignores the community, doesn’t read up on the patch notes, stays rather oblivious to what’s going on with the game, if it’s fun they play it, regardless of time spent per day/week.
OR
Doesn’t have a lot of time to play daily/weekly. Their time is limited and they want to make the most out of it when playing a video game, this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re efficient or not, but they go at their own pace for enjoyment.
Now I call people that don’t have a lot of time to spend in the game on a daily/weekly basis, but are actively engaged in the community, or keep up to date on the game, ‘engaged casuals’. They seek out information and communication with their peers.
I consider myself to be part of this group. I don’t have 12 hours a day to play the game, but obviously I’m very active in the community, and I voice my opinion on what I’ve played. I try not to make speculations about a new patch when we get the patch notes, or freak out over changes until I’ve personally tried them. I take a more skeptical and methodical approach. I like asking questions and testing things.
But there is off meta and there is dog water builds like pure frozen orb and rabies let’s say. It’s your decision to play builds that don’t work. You play CL, fireball etc and you walk into t4
My definition of casual stops there. For me it is not hours to play or engagement with the community. It is simply wanting to have fun, brain dump from work and more “brain dead enjoyment”… (example; past two night I played with my wife as a SB… I know nothing about the skills (well almost nothing), in eternal (I know for some that is a bad word); just changing skills to see what they do; not concerned about anything but fun)
However, I would enjoy joining you on a few runs to learn the many things you have learned I’m still trying to figure out.
Yes, I know it is me many times as with D4 there are many things I have difficulty adapting to, not because I don’t understand it; but because it is not logical for my way of thinking.
That’s fair, we’re just establishing a baseline is all. As I said people have different definitions for ‘casual’. It’s best to start out with your definition when arguing a point over a specific term that can be used multiple ways.
I think more people think about D4 this way than you know lol. There are a lot of design decisions that don’t make any logical sense to me when it comes to the changes they’ve made for D4. Apparently it makes sense to the devs though.
I agree with you here, I also agree with Shivera in that T4 should’ve always been a challenge but based on your specifications of what a challenge is. Now they did say mobs would become more ‘aggressive’ the higher the torment tier went. This was back in the campfire before VoH launched.
So they are actually more challenging, but when you’re using a build that just one-shots them anyway, you never see this challenge. It’s only more apparent when you’re struggling.
Timestamp start 41:12 PTR 2.2.0 Campfire Chat Mar 2025:
Colin: “…from a philosophy standpoint we really want like whatever the hardest torment tier is in this case torment 4 to be aspirational and to us that means 10% um that means u know if you are Johnny Bad azz you know you need to be in the top 10% of players to actually get there…”
Insane statement. Tried to copy it word for word…yikes. This is definitely a departure away from casuals in a massive massive way so it looks like they want to compete with other ARPGS that are harder. Moving away from casuals and toward more hardcore. Another 180 degree turn for the team and a very questionable one. Why aim for 10% in torment 4? Its crazy. Has to be a better option like aiming for 50% and having other hard content.