But wouldn’t that make the power progression very boring and stagnating?
I’m also contradicting myself a bit tbf anyway. I’m saying that I want the focus of the game to not be gear, but I’m also suggesting to make people get the best gear way easier than now.
I don’t think so. There is also lvling. Make lvling slower as well, so the sense of progression after the first week isn’t all depending on gear.
Dealing double dmg is also a huge upgrade. Only reason it doesnt feel that way in modern Diablo, is that the difficulty scaling goes up by the same 100 times as the gear does.
Like, if I can clear an endgame dungeon in 20 minutes (assuming I can also survive and all that) early on in endgame, and by grinding a bunch of gear I can do it in 10 minutes, or 5 minutes. That is still a huge power difference as I see it. But also not a 100 times power jump.
Tbh, Uber Lilith is not a bad example here (if we ignore the oneshot nonsense). She comes in a single difficulty. Maybe it takes 10 minutes to kill her, and some high skill play, with “bad gear”. And 2 minutes with awesome gear, allowing you to play less skillfully too.
But it didnt require 100 or 200 Uber Lilith Tiers, like what is happening with NMDs and Pit.
Having an new kind of Uber Lilith as the end boss of each season, who is doable to kill early on in endgame, with some persistence, and who can then be speed farmed later on, if you get a ton of gear (and sure, you can have leaderboards for kill speeds), seems fine with me.
you mean you dont like arpgs
There are monster grinds, and then there are monster grinds.
Fighting monsters that actually fights back, where you need to adapt, play tactically etc.
Sure, let me grind away.
Diablo 4 monsters, that darkens the sky, I mean screen, for a second before they die to massive AoE…
Sure, let me sleep away.
That seems to be what’s been happening since launch
Yeah, I think the game could evolve in several cool ways I’d personally like, rather than resting on its laurels so much. Diablo gameplay has stagnated for me. I can only take so many random mobs spawning every 2 seconds.
Thankfully, someone in this forum convinced me 2 or 3 months ago to try BG3 and I haven’t looked back. Unfortunately, I think that thread or related posts got deleted so wasn’t able to give proper thanks… not sure who it was.
After I finish BG3 I will have more time to play D4, but D4’s gameplay is just too shallow for me to be a strong draw so it has to wait a little. Sadly, there are other games on the horizon that may make my D4 break a little longer
I would argue that Blizzard doesn’t know what fun is, and seems to have a problem adding it, while all they seem to be doing is trying to lightly lessen the garbage they do have in the game, without eliminating it completely.
Diablo 4 is fun. No doubt about it. But only fun for the first 10 hours of installing the game.
Well, I’d like it, if the game was made exactly for the opposite case: Have people make breaks for D4, not make people feel like they need a break from D4. There is no harm, if a season is played through by someone in 2-3 weeks. It’s a video game. Why can’t Blizz just take the W of people returning every season and playing a little bit. They are shooting for the stars of very long and high retention, but hitting the birds in the process metaphorically.
except that is what they aim for. thats the seasonal model. in fact they have said in many dev streams it is ok to take a break. thats how the season model works. play a few weeks, complete season journey, then play something else, return the following season. you are just sassy about ubers. ubers are not needed, your fomo is the problem, not the game
That’s not what I said. I haven’t even farmed them long. I’m only annoyed that I got to level 100, cleared loom, and duriel, but there is no satisfactory ending in the game for people, who don’t care about that stuff. There is no dramatic climax, if that makes sense.
If very season is just gonna be about farming gear, and oneshotting content, where the mechanics don’t matter, what draw is there for someone, who doesn’t care about the competitive aspect or about the gear grind in itself?
Blizzard’s strategy for a long time has been to glue players into a working world and employment cycles.
In Diablo 2, I simply played the world and the game and then eventually got to the bosses.
In Diablo 4, we have these “modern” occupational therapies that feel like work and therefore don’t let us enjoy and play these games anymore.
I don’t think like in D2, take Portal and play the map, get to the next one, keep playing and just have fun doing what I want to do with the character and maybe drop something here and there that my twinks could use.
Nowadays, I’m constantly being directed towards precise goals, filling bars and earning from to points and I don’t play the world anymore, I grind it out. My items are hardly any fun and they’re pretty restrictive for my level and me, but you don’t really want to twinkle because everything is kind of a one-way street anyway and the differences and class depth of the past have become a progress highway so that everything can compete with each other…
No, that’s a rather bad development in games and it turns me off.
Yeah, exactly on the spot, thanks. I didn’t play any Diablo game other than D4, so I don’t know what you mean with D2
perhaps you dont understand arpg’s? the loot hunt and gear grind is the game.
I can’t even :D, yep, the “chores” are a problem, but getting less problematic (with time) at least
Good post from OP and I share the feeling. I find trying out things fun.
My solution for adding fun: make switching builds easier
A build should consist of two things:
Paragon is one big roadblock for switching builds and should be removed. An armoury would make it even faster to change builds. In the ideal situation you can change builds in 5 minutes time.
Who says that every Diablo needs to follow the same pattern though? Blizzard invented it themselves, and why wouldn’t they wanna consider at least further innovating it? My suggestions also don’t even interfere with the core gameplay. It only really adds stuff
Completely agreed.
This is generally why I dont think item crafting is a good idea in these games.
Too goal-oriented, too much of a shopping list of stuff to do. “Gather 100 crafting materials so I can upgrade item” etc. It is something that becomes expected, slowly filling a bar toward a guaranteed reward.
When your item progression is purely random drops, with no guarantees, a game avoids that sense of just going through a list of things to gather, things to do.
And this is certainly not just a Diablo 4 problem. Same for PoE, Last Epoch etc. with heavy crafting focus.
It is the difference between “maybe get lucky and find an Oculus” vs. “collect 5 resplendent sparks” or “collect 500 masterworking material”.
I mean, this is exactly what a lot of people wish for/complain about in Diablo 4 (and 3).
That they want guaranteed paths to rewards. Like with the guaranteed ubers through those sparks. And then Blizzard gives them what they want.
But personally, I think it is what makes the experience worse. That guarantee to get something if you just gather X something, is what makes it a chore. It reveals the grind too much.
We forget about the journey, because of the hyper focus on the destination; “499 materials to go”, “498 materials to go”, “497 materials to go”. That cant happen if the reward is not guaranteed.
Same. Got my ubers I wanted in season 2 then just messed around in season 3. Getting an uber is a nice dopamine hit but not necessary to be powerful and have fun.
Spread the seasonal content out would be a big win.
Have the story get more and more involved as you go through it, such that you can’t complete the season story line without completing the seasonal journey first.
Make it so that certain quest lines unlock after reaching level X, or unlocking Tier Y of the seasonal journey.
But make it obvious that this is happening, so that we can track our progress towards the next part.
However, don’t restrict the seasonal power by gating it behind those steps, just let the story be something we can do for fun that rewards us with cosmetics, or account-wide unlocks of seasonal stuff so that we don’t have to grind it on all characters.
Make it so that the final seasonal boss can only be engaged at level 100, and have a cinematic after that’s done.
This would keep so many more people in the game until 100, and if the seasonal story was long and provided a lot of exp, could literally be the alternative way to level up, so that your main game doesn’t actually start until 100, so that it takes much longer for you to get bored.