PTR is a bummer

PTR Feedback
1

I’m not sure if the devs care about individual context but I’ll add it here in case. I’m a longtime Diablo fan. Played a few thousand hours of D2, a few thousand hours of D3, a few hundred hours of D2R, and now somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 hours of D4. Aside from the progression of a corpse explosion Necro in D2 (my favorite playstyle mixed with skellys), my favorite part of all Diablo content is when it becomes turn-your-brain-off-and-blast content.

I only really played D2 at the start of LoD and the most fun I had was playing a mostly geared character mowing down cows or doing Baal runs. Diablo 3 was alright in the beginning but I truly fell in love with the game once RoS dropped. The game felt great to play and while you could push GR150 I never bothered going there (except for the Altar season when Tal Rasha Sorc was wild). Diablo 4 came out and I got to level 100 and it was “Ok.” Season 1 was a slog. Then Season 2 came out and it was so much fun to blast again. Season 3 was a bummer. After that I’ve enjoyed the seasons. Had fun with the expansion, and despite popular opinion, loved Season 7. I’ve had so much fun with Season of the Witchcraft I got to level 300 on Hardcore. And prior to this PTR I was going back onto Softcore to go to Pit 150.

But, man, this PTR just sucks. I don’t mind that the borrowed power is similar to S2/S7, but unlocking it and leveling it up isn’t fun. The actual seasonal event is pretty slow and unrewarding. Killing the same few bosses endlessly is not as fun as doing Green Helltides. I don’t mind there being “aspirational” content for folks to chase. And I think there should be some cool rewards behind getting there. But that content should be something beyond the normal ebb and flow of your design. By that I mean, making the Seasonal Journey part of anything to do with the aspirational content is bad. Making it so glyphs max out after pit 100 but now getting to pit 100 is “aspirational” is bad. In my mind, aspirational content should be awesome content that gives awesome rewards, but maybe it should be cosmetic. Or aspirational content could be content that the player can modify beyond the Torment levels. Making the Torment levels aspirational isn’t my favorite design idea.

The new boss mechanics have some seriously obnoxious mechanics but the most egregious is forced phases. If your build can blow up a boss don’t make me fight the fight in four phases to prolong the experience. It sucks. This is not the game to make us suffer through boss mechanics. If I want to be challenged I will not be playing any Diablo games; there are far better games out there for that fix. I’m here to kill waves of monsters and feel powerful. I’m indifferent to slowing down leveling; I don’t really see the point since the game literally doesn’t start until you’re level 60 (this isn’t like PoE or WoW where you can get meaningful items or have an exciting time with progression while you level). But it doesn’t matter to me if I spend 3 hours getting to 60 or 8 hours. At least for one character, I will not be playing a bunch of classes if it’s slower to level up, I’ll just go play something else. But, man, fighting a boss in T4 with a fully decked out eternal character is not fun right now. I’ll never bother with it. Hell, if the game goes live in this state I’ll finish the journey and disappear ASAP.

This isn’t even considering the fact that my favorite class, Necromancer, has the most sideways development. It’s like the class is misunderstood by the D4 team. Two of the new unique items added are entirely useless. The Mortacux and the new sword, Sanquivor, Blade of Zir - heck, you even claim the new weapon is for minion builds, which it isn’t, but it’s somehow not a Scythe? The weapon with implicit summoning damage? And why use Zir if the weapon isn’t blood themed since Necro’s have an entire blood archetype? Ultimately, both of them serve no purpose and cannot be used in any competent build. Corpse explosion is awful. Shadowblight is useless. Why even have thorns as an option if it isn’t ever going to be made relevant? My minion Necro on the PTR with excellent gear cannot burst down a boss in T4. If that is your design principle going forward in D4 I’ll adjust but won’t have fun with it. My least favorite part of the true endgame of PoE2 is fighting the same bosses and having to pay attention to their mechanics forever. What I love about D4 is just bonking the boss and it exploding into loot. It was nice that Diablo was giving me that fantasy and the other games were around for when I wanted more challenge.

You cannot make everyone happy. So, ultimately, you should just pick a direction and go that way. If you want D4 to be slower, keep it slow. If you envision people fighting a boss for a few minutes every time they summon them in T4, don’t ever make it easy again. Stop this back and forth. It’s a bummer to get excited and expect the game to keep moving in one direction only for it to do a 180. And I won’t sit here and pretend I’ll stop playing D4 if this PTR is the direction of the game even though I prefer the pace of S7. I’ll hop on every season, complete the seasonal journey, and move on. I’ll use whatever meta build is top, and won’t bother playing what I want. That being said, I’ll stay away from the cosmetic shop because the game will be a chore and I won’t care what I look like. Godspeed to any eternal players out there, if Blizzard is going to balance around these borrowed powers you’ll never have a good time again.

TLDR: I’m fine if this is the direction you want Diablo 4 to go in, but please stop dangling my preferred style (S7) in front of me so I can check out and never expect it again.

5 Likes
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As another player of minions I completely agree.

The only things Id add is that levelling with the slowdown has caused erratic minions, slow to engage but then working to every edge of the screen, often with no way to focus them, because we’re now burning through corpses to heal and try to resummon them only for them to often ignore the closest mob and repeat the mad dash to screen edge.

The big mistake is in endgame being forcefully slowed down to compensate for fast finishes of the season, while Blizzard overlook that those fast finishes are because all of the endgame activities are flawed. If flaws were ironed out, endgame would be more enjoyable and we wouldnt finish the season, wed continue playing, just like we did in Diablo, Diablo2 and Diablo3.

Some of these are glaring issues that arent just going unnoticed but sometimes presented in a dishonest manner.

“Aspirational content” is a flat out misdirect and utterly inappropriate use of the word. Content is not aspirational if it has increased reward, in this case the words should be expectational content, because its not an unjust expectation that after paying for the game players should expect parity of reward with others paying the same for the game. especially so when theyre capable players that simply chose the wrong class. Too many players have stopped playing because of the huge gulf between builds because they expected more after seeing D3 balanced much tighter after Vicarious(Albany) took on the job.

As mentioned above, flip flopping, none of us want to play a game whose direction does a complete 180 in design principle every 3 months, for christs sake suck it up, pick a direction and say goodbye to half the playerbase, at least then you have happy players.

Back loaded power, far too much of our power is being backloaded off of the class onto Aspects, paragon, glyphs, flasks and seasonal powers. Youre mimic the systems of D3 yet not once did D3 force nerfs, they balanced to power while thee current unwillingness to allow increased player power makes this a wholly predictable error. Despite what idiots claim, power creep isnt bad, its extremely good for balance if managed, and if the game had creep and balance, back loading wouldnt be glaring but in its current state, certain classes really suffer for the design choice of so many end game boosts to power.

What D4 needs most of all right now is a season of correction, no seasonal event, simply pick a design direction to stick to and then take the time to fix some of the glaring class design problems, bring balance to builds within classes, and make adjustments to the problems with endgame activities that are staring you in the face, like on-rails layouts, the woeful imbalance in Hordes round bonuses, the absurd health pools of bosses compared to mobs in the pit and tidy up the public events that are cursed with terribly slow spawn rates.

But I expect none of the above will get done for fear of losing a season pass sale and the few still playing will be left tearing at each other throats. Why? because decisions are made at the top and lets all face the truth, Diablos top is experrienced in the art of killing franchises.

4 Likes
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The season is just boring. If the season goes live like this it will be hands down the worst season in D4 history.

The accompanying base game patch may or may not be a success, opinions are mixed. Personally, I think they will make some adjustments. Notice, however, that almost all the discourse has been about the base game patch and almost none about the season’s event and mechanics.

That’s because it’s not fun. It’s boring, it’s unrewarding. It’s a literal chore. It’s very similar to Legion, except somehow worse. It wouldn’t be any good as a limited time event and it certainly can’t sustain a season.

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A main necro thorns player here.

Thorns are pretty fun… But after a massive number of bugs on season7, they are just useless (many multipliers and passives just not scales they damage)… If thorns still buged on season8… Maybe Ill abandon this game. Why Ill play a (a)rpg if i cant play how I want?