Boss immunity phases have GOT TO GO. The bosses are too buggy and there’s too much screen clutter for immunity phases to be anything but a frustration point.
Itemization and progression. Itemization is eh, it’s OKAY but GAs should probably drop a little more frequently (15% more often).
As for progression, Pits for leveling Glyphs needs to be fixed. People are soft locked out of leveling Glyphs after a certain point because T4’s difficulty spike (which carries over to Pits 55+) is too much of a gap for most builds to do adequately. That’s also another frustration point…and honestly, it’s pretty bad design too, lol.
Just make Glyphs level up off an XP system instead. This chance crap was never a good idea for progression.
Documentation is still not ideal. For example, Andy’s Visage still has an internal cooldown and the item description doesn’t tell you. Unless you know, how are you supposed to know? Another example is the CIR rune. The Description says YOU become exhausted, not that the rune goes on cooldown for 3 seconds. It’s bad, flowery language that muddles things - and worse yet, it’s not even accurate.
That last point goes well beyond a frustration point as it’s outright unprofessional. Basically, if you need people to have a complied community resource open to understand what something actually does…it’s poorly done documentation and it needs to be redone.
I’d give the new direction of S9 (not the seasonal content but the changes to the game) a 8/10. It’s a good foundation but there’s a few weird things going on with the old looter shooter system of loot piñata not meshing with the newer, “slower” approach being taken.
Clean up the conflicting visions so there’s proper cohesion and I think D4 will be fine.
This is probably going to be a controversial take, but I’ll ask anyway. What if they reduced the total amount of Glyph levels per glyph to, let’s say 50? This would also be assuming classes were far more balanced mind you. I’m just taking a different approach, as people seem to be more fixated on the number they can improve when it comes to glyphs and the fact they can’t reasonably level it, rather than accepting the fact that this is the pinnacle their build can reach, and as such they can’t get the rewards associated with conquering higher Pits.
Again I know, controversial, just throwing out a different perspective is all.
It would work but it would probably piss a lot of people off for no real reason.
Just make Glyphs work off of XP instead of chance. Problem solved since people can hover at pit levels 55-65 and still make progress, even if it’s not a lot of progress.
Other solutions are just going to be intrusive which imo is a nono.
That’s fair, again, just throwing it out there. Now, what if they reduced the glyph cap to 50, but it kept the same amount of power you could get by taking it to 100 now?
That would be better - but at that point you’re basically talking about stat squishing and Blizzard doesn’t have a great track record stat squishing. Feels like more work for no payoff compared to just making Glyphs work off of XP instead of chances.
My general opinion on large corporations doing nuanced work is K.I.S.S because you never know when something silly and dumb is going to happen during the process of change. The more simple the transition and processes are, the less likely something is to go bad. Small teams can get more complex and creative but big teams? That’s a nightmare to coordinate unless everyone there is experienced.
Well I’m also thinking it from the perspective that T4 is essentially the peak of the game, aside from Pits obviously. So if we keep the glyphs more in line with the cap of T4 (in regards to difficulty of the Pit), it would make sense to have the glyphs cap out earlier, at least to me. I know it probably sounds weird in general.
I think the bigger issue now is people feel hindered because they can’t level their glyphs beyond that level due to the ‘chance’ to level them up when you complete a Pit tier that is more in line with your glyph level, and eventually it just stops completely to where you can’t upgrade it. Sadly I don’t see them reintroducing glyph exp back (I could be wrong), so I’m trying to go with other alternatives.
I agree with you though, they have a bad track record of stat squishing.
It doesn’t sound weird. I just don’t have faith that Blizzard would do it well. If I was heading the team I’d steer as far away from big changes like that simply because I wouldn’t be confident my team could handle the work, or rather, that someone won’t come in later as a new hire and screw it up.
Agreed. I think the other problem is the coding of the game itself. As the current team only inherited the code, they didn’t make it. I can only imagine how many times they’ve probably argued ‘we’d have an easier time wiping the code and making it from scratch than trying to add things in and fixing all these bugs’. I’ve brought this up before, but how does a patch completely wipe out 1 affix from appearing on a unique?
Oh 100% the code for the game is a mess, they have tech debt issues that are probably impossible to fix now. It’s why we have such limited stash space and why duping seems to be a thing every 2nd season.
Glyph xp could be something we can earn every time we get xp at a reduced rate. That would mean we “passively” level up our glyphs (either every or we could select one at a time).
If someone wants to level up them fast, they could go for pits like now, but for those who dislike pits, they could get their levels too, but again, at a slower rate.
I’m all for more options, don’t get me wrong. I’ve advocated for different methods of leveling glyphs since the beginning. Anything to allow us multiple ways to level them up. I’m just throwing in alternatives, as I don’t see Blizzard going this route anymore, that was all. Believe me I’ve argued for glyph changes for a while.
The issue is that some people want to have open-ended progression so they can see how far they can push their build, while others want to 100% complete everything in every season and get upset if there’s a carrot they can’t reach. A lot of the content in the game caters to the open-ended crowd, like glyph levels, pit tiers and extremely rare items (even if none of those is truly open-ended). If an easily reachable cap is put on progression, then those players will complain that the game is too easy and they don’t have anything to chase after.
I just came back from a six day vacation where I was unable to play (Yarmouth Maine Claim Festival) but all of my main glyph’s are at 100. Before each season I do some research and select what is going to be a strong class. This season there were two clear choices.
I also research what quasi-professional players are doing with their builds. This season I identified three players and my own build is an integration of those three builds. Not a cut-and-paste as my build is different from any of them separately but represents my own choices on recombining those builds to reflect my gear acquisition to date and my own play style.
If you select a weak build than it is your own fault for having difficulty with the game especially with regards to glyph leveling. I am not advocating cutting and pasting but if you refuse to study what other people are doing than your are against learning.
If some of you spent half the time you waste analyzing things you don’t like about the game and instead apply that time to becoming a better player and simply accept the game for what it is and adapt to the game you might have more fun…
Yes 100% this, there is no win-win situation here. Even if glyphs could be leveled to 100 using Experience, the other problem of ‘I can’t reach Pit 100, or Pit 150’ comes into play. If your build can’t reach Pit 100, let’s say it hits 60-70 and just falls short. Even being able to max out your glyphs from that point wouldn’t help you reach Pit 100.
I’m not saying the current system is good mind you, but it makes sense when you factor in you can’t get these rewards if you just can’t complete the content. That’s how I see it. I don’t see it as the game is hindering me from leveling the glyphs, I see it as, I can’t level them because I can’t complete the content in order to level them.
If I can’t get into Torment 1, I won’t be able to farm Ancestral Gear. To me it’s the same principle when applied to leveling glyphs. Again, not saying it’s good, or it doesn’t need to be changed, it’s just how I see it.
That’s part of the problem. Not everyone is going to open a community website to see exactly what stuff does. They’re going to trust that Blizzard is giving them good, reliable information.
And that’s why documentation is vital. My example for the CIR rune is perfect for this. It says you become exhausted, not that the rune goes on cooldown. Why even mention the PC and why even use the term exhausted?
I shouldn’t have to google search what exhaustion is, find out it’s not even a thing and they meant “the rune has a cooldown”.
I agree with this. They also mentioned it during one of the campfires, but your average player isn’t watching those, and it’s literally never explained in the game under any tooltip, so you have to go googling it. Now D4 isn’t as bad as PoE 1/2 in that regards, but it is pretty bad about certain things like this.
At best they may have incorporated it into a ‘tooltip’ on a loading screen, but those are all but useless.
Part of the problem is that pit bosses are just bullet sponges. Even if they can’t kill you their health/resistances are so overtuned that a lot of builds just can’t kill them in time.
In Last Epoch, they mitigate bosses with shield, sometimes they got their shield up, then you must destroy their shield again before getting their HP. It’s more elegant, as you know you still damage them, even if it’s their shield. Moreover I think with lighting stuff, you can damage more quickly the shields, as a good arpg should be.