S3 Review: PSA, There's some problems in Houston

Everyman-1258 · February 10, 2024, 8:43pm

D4, Devs,

You know I love you right? But c’mon? What is this?

Just gotta say it…

First and foremost, for any PC players reading this, if you haven’t gone into your D4 file directory and deleted the ‘dstorage.dll’ file, for your sanity and game boot up speed, please delete that file now. For me, after patching to this newest season, it took 5/6 unsuccessful boot ups to load the game before it did not crash on the 1/6 attempts just to get through the load screen. That is every time I attempt to load the game with the file in place. This file is for the windows 11 feature ‘direct storage’, which is not currently supported by the game and functioning incorrectly as unnecessarily being apart of the live build and will cause you headaches if it malfunctions due to an normal update. It should not be apart of the current build and removed from what is considered a live service build as it has no function in the proper programming of the software and game other then to prevent you from loading the game smoothly and properly. Ironically enough, that is the purpose of the direct storage dll file. When the technology is implemented into the game, it is supposed to decrease the game’s boot up speeds incredibly if you have a SSD installed on your Windows 11 PC. However, it does not work and is not supposed to be a live feature in the game. It is instead causing the game to function incorrectly and crash or prevent you from playing altogether. Please delete this file from the active build Blizzard devs! (I may only be a programming student, but the reason you go to school to learn C, C++, Assembly language is for the math they do not teach you in Boot camps. After learning Python, Java, and now C/Assembly stuff, ya’ll, I just feel like I someone should have to point out to you guys that this is not good coding, even if it’s me. Why do we seem to continue to have this problem with D4?)

Also, it feels like you did 1 week of work to prepare for this season. It feels like a quick mix of the worst of season1, the best of season 2, and it made an awkward Frankenstien’s monster that is no where near as fun as Season 2. Please have Season 4 be better.

Here’s my pro con breakdown.

Pro: The premise for the story is unique and adds followers to the game in an innovative way.
Pro: Having the Seneschal system can provide a minor boost to the character.
Pro: Killing demons and monsters can be done faster.
Pro: Gold drop rate is significantly higher
Pro: The builds of Legendary affixes throughout the player’s options feel like they are changing as tuning is being done well for the most part.

Con: Story is too short and unfulfilling. The ending is anti-climatic and feels very unrewarding just like season 1. Avoiding obstacles in vaults sounds like a cool premise that should fit well within the game in general but it doesn’t feel like it is implemented well. It’s the same 4 vaults over and over in greater rift style increasing difficulty. Very grindy. Very boring. Very easy to skip over as not worthwhile after being forced to grind through it only to upgrade the Seneschal.
Con: The Seneschal is under developed in terms of capabilities and over developing in terms of turning it into even the most basic worthwhile companion. I need it to sac and break down loot on the ground (like blues, whites, and yellows that aren’t what I am looking for with my build) and pick up gold and resources (like gems and mats and all). Basically, I don’t need a build helper so much as I need a loot helper. I need the Seneschal to be pet that is a loot filter. I think that would be more creative and that’s the only real follower I need in the game. I don’t need something that requires hours to farm the necessary parts to improve it, only to see a moderate boost in gameplay by attacking enemies.
Con: You took the best parts of Season 2 and used them where it didn’t need to be but it’s not so bad. Can you please put the Season of Blood Blood Harvest mechanics into the Helltides instead of just on Season based vault Favor Quests. That concept is cool, however, I think it would work better in Helltides.
Con: Helltide chests seemed bugged to death. Drops are ok but I can farm for a while and not get the Lootmaster acheivement even if I hit 12-14 chests in the same area without zoning? The chests do respawn, which is cool, but the despawned chests should’t subtract from that total for that achievement and that’s the one way as I understand it, that that quest could be bugged maybe? Also, I got 2, only 2 living steel from a steel chest. Good on you for making it not 300 now and putting it on the map! That’s awesome. But Shouldn’t I always get 5 from a living steel chest even at 275? Still think these should be 250 and Mysteries Chests should be 200. I did manage to get a Blue rose from a Hell tide for my sorc but that’s the best unique I have ever gotten from a hell tide. It’s still too rare for nice uniques to drop from chest if I get any with the hours invested routinely in hell tides.
Con: I see on occasion the nice armors in the shop. They are way too expensive and clearly that’s a cash cow you are not willing to stop beating like a 5 dollar street walker for your money. I wish I could afford to buy some of those really over priced digital goods that are only cosmetic but too bad the world is mostly filled with really poor people these days. Stop shilling out to the 1% of gamers for your cashcow and lets have real content in season Blizzard execs and above!
Con: The Lunar event was the worst special event yet. Not only do I feel ripped off and lied to about the free cosmetics, lack of variety, options, and hiding the best behind the paywall, the entire event felt like a lie. There was no xp bonus unless you had the shrine for 30 seconds but the shrines weren’t on the maps where their favor markers were so this made everyone hunt for them and there weren’t even enough of the sigils and in those special vaults to really maximize the duration of the xp buff. We were lied to about the cosmetics, and we were lied to about the xp buff and through false advertising of the season. Feels like no one cares at Blizzard about anything but the cash shop and getting people to buy platinum this season.
Con: Loot still feels worthless for anything but scrap and that’s ok, that’s part of the game. However, if we have an easy way to scrap without constantly slowing down, reading everything, doing research with the internet and build tools and slowing down for 15-30 minutes to review, trash, and respec our builds for every 10 we play in the game. In this way, it feels overly complicated and it slows you down from spending time enjoying the gameplay. I just want to hunt for the pieces I need and trash the rest without slowing down so dramatically and hurting my eyes spending all the time to review all the gear that drops when 9.5/10 is all crap.
Con: No challenge dungeons? Oh well I guess. Wasn’t really excited for them to begin with but might work out well instead. Who knows because they got delayed and there’s no eta in sight and can’t even try em. Doesn’t look good.

With that said, at least you didn’t nerf HoTa as much as you made it very clear you were gonna. Shame you nerfed the only viable S class Sorc build into a B tier build. You spent all this work on the Sorc to resurrect that class with the resistance and paragon rework only to make the only viable endgame build worthless. Great job there. For that matter, why is the Rogue still the worst class after all this time? Seriously, the Rogue needs to be reworked next and there’s no excuse for that class not having a solid very high movement/attack speed and very high critical hit chance/damage/overpower related build. I seriously miss the vampire powers and feeling like Bliz was listening to us. At least Season 3 is more unique than season 1. It’s just definitely not what Season 2 was. That felt like it had a lot of imagination, work, and effort put into designing and this feels like you reused the same models for 5 new enemies, made five new maps, and designed a sub par follower system in half a day and called it quits in development for Season 3 after cannibalizing a few small details from season 2. Kinda like a bad anime resampling the same clips.

Season 0 review: 7/10
Season 1 review: 5/10
Season 2 review: 8/10
This season so far: 6/10

Iggi-11818 · February 10, 2024, 9:08pm

TL;DR

Pros:

Seasonal Story & Pet aren’t horrible
Killing enemies is faster
Gold drops like candy
Legendary Aspects feel better

Cons

Seasonal Story is short & pet is underwhelming
We need something like Blood Harvests from S2 again
Helltide chests are bugged
Lunar event was bad
Loot still feels worthless

Less is more my friend, your first, um… paragraph we’ll call it, was very lengthy and overall didn’t add much constructive criticism aside from complaining. It did offer some help for people that may be experiencing the same issue you were, but beyond the little tech help of your paragraph there just isn’t much here.

Your pros are very short 1 sentence bullet points which is perfect, but your cons are just run on sentences with little meat to them beyond the first statement. I understand you have grievances we all do, but if you saw a similar post like this one, would you honestly read the whole thing? Just something to think about.

HazzMatt1987-1201 · February 10, 2024, 9:32pm

Wow,

Thanks a lot for this! I’ve reinstalled the game and updated everything i could and it had no effect on the game pausing and crashing on the loading screen. It’s too bad blizzard cant fix this and we need to figure out what to delete from their files to make their game work.

Apache222-1831 · February 10, 2024, 9:38pm

You always want to keep your paragraphs to six or so sentences, tops. Pros/cons are good to include, but more so at the end. It’s not a meat and potatoes part of a feature. Most people really don’t care about storage stuff? Not sure why most of your review was about that. A good review format is:

Paragraph intro
Gameplay overview
Graphics / sound
Technical stuff
Multiplayer
Endgame
Overall

Phatty-1821 · February 10, 2024, 9:43pm

Formatting and grammar police aside lol.

Well hopefully blizzard reads it through and through.

Theres a lot to digest in it.

Synergy-2575 · February 10, 2024, 10:37pm

Uh, this season is better than all others in every way other than that the vampire theme was cool and it had some OP skills. Rewards are better with this season, no doubt about it. You were scammed if you listened to the people spreading early misinformation about this season when they haden’t even reached endgame.

Apache222-1831 · February 10, 2024, 11:04pm

Lack of information and misinformation really torpedoed the season. No one knew what the theme was, then everyone freaked out over robots and traps. A good chunk of people never stuck around for the emergency update the first Friday. No one really knew what was going on. Then the Lunar event popped up. They did a good job previewing it, but no one really pays attention to what they say in the video and a lot of people didn’t bother to learn how to take advantage of the amazing XP boosts.

Rod then goes on the Official Xbox Podcast and reveals The Gauntlet is coming out earlier than people expected (Feb 13th). Everyone gets super excited. Then it’s delayed TBD. That leaves a giant gap in seasonal coverage. What will fill this ocean of emptiness? Uber drops outside of Duriel’s Lair! How excited should we be? Tune in Tuesday and find out.

Phatty-1821 · February 10, 2024, 11:47pm

What misinformation?

I think what torpedoes the season was it’s initial release state.

When you botch it so badly you gotta patch the hell out of it to get people to stay/play…well…that’s not misinformation or lack thereof.

This team knows they are on a short leash, tolerance for ongoing quality problems is at an all time low for D4. Each bad release, bug /exploit not fixed is potentially a last straw scenario for D4.

This boss mat deletion thing? That’s going to send people packing too. And I’m talking about legit players.

Urza-1177 · February 11, 2024, 12:08am

That entire post and you give it 6/10???

You meant -6/10???

Everyman-1258 · February 11, 2024, 10:43am

Wow. Glad to have responses everyone. Thanks for the interaction. I’ll keep it going.

Let’s keep the focus on the game and not my lengthy comments or bad formatting please. I’m not writing a scholarly APA or MLA format thesis or paper. I only want a good conversation about the game that is quality. Leave my poor formatting aside please. That could be productive if they do actually listen to our feedback instead of just pretending they listen to our feedback.

That said, I will add that I have been avoiding listening to influencers and content creators this season as I have tried to form my own perspective about the game. Then I made this post and checked out what other people are saying after to come back now to make this comment. I don’t agree with every one else’s comments but a lot make sense and we do agree on many things while just not everything.

The number one thing that makes sense to explain all this is the fact that Microsoft canned most of the devs for d4 and blizzard so basically, no one had time to develop quality content for this season because Microsoft, the original Monopoly jerks in the American digital business space, treat their employees like garbage to make their execs billions at their employees, and our, expense. This is what has created poor design and product implementation overall.

No, it’s not the government’s fault that a lot of industry was propped up by low interest rates in response to covid like some people are saying. It’s predatory capitalist business executives at Microsoft who don’t care about their people or quality products and only care about the bottom line. Sorry Rhyker! The economy is much larger then a short term response by employers due to temporary market fluctuations. The industry is built on decades of economic precedence long before covid. That’s US capitalism. Where we all live and exist and work as consumers for the 1% profiteers. Go AmEruCa! In this case, that’s Microsoft. Players and employees suffer at their greedy whims to make the company and the most highest execs more profit. Which reminds me, I have friends who moved to the west coast years ago to work for Blizzard and I haven’t heard from them in a while. I feel the need to check in to make sure they aren’t casualties in this catastrophe! No it’s not government lending and fiscal policies that lead to Microsoft deciding to lay off game developers en masse while raking in millions in bonus’ for it. It’s not the government’s fault if Microsoft develops a bad game or implements bad gaming systems and designs while controlling blizzard and players get upset because bad products are on the shelf with poorly designed systems. Devs are brutalized in the gaming industry to push product before it’s ready for the corporate overlords to rake in bundles of cash while the devs barely scrape by. Don’t worry about my grammer and typos, worry about the devs and the future of the game because d4 does not have very many devs left remaining after the past few months of catastrophic layoffs.

There’s a lot of good to D4 that I don’t have the time to verbalize and communicate effectively on an internet forum in an easy to digest manner for everyone. There’s just so much bad too. It’s a very frustrating time to be a fan of the series and the game.

I still love Diablo 4, the series, and have love for Blizzard even though they, and the game, are being abused by Microsoft execs at the moment. I believe there is better times to come for the game. I really do. I believe once Microsoft fully invests in the production of original content that is not just cut and paste recycled material, the game will improve. I believe there is quality, original material that can come from thought and planning and design when you support your game developers and treat them with respect. We just did not get it this season due to an insane amount of layoffs that Microsoft did and people refuse to blame them for despite that they chose to shoot themselves in the foot and make the game, and the player experience, suffer for it. No, it’s not the government’s fault that they cut interest rates, Microsoft and Blizzard borrowed more to then hire a bunch of devs during covid only to lay them off now. That’s Microsoft’s doing and no one else. They did that because they took advantage of the market at the expense of workers and gamers along.

I can still grind when I am bored for an hour or two with my HotA barb. I can still enjoy smashing a few demons after playing the season quests. it did seem like a good story but it felt like development stopped short after that and designing one good boss fight. So yeah, 6/10. I know, that whole post that took me 1o mins to spit out with my fingers through a keyboard. I sound harsh like I want to give it a -6/10 but I just seem mean. I am really good and seeming brutal because I am strong like bull. I’m a big softie at heart.

D4 could be much better but maybe next season it will have the support it needs from devs who are in place by the controlling parent that is Microsoft. Still a little mindless fun slaying demons in sanctuary right now. Not the best game play experience and it my opinion, it has been worse. I do have high hopes for the game because I’m an old time original Diablo gamer and I don’t play many games at this geriatric millennial stage in my life.

d4 devs/blizzard/microsoft, please do simple things like have more chests at the end of vaults if you have over a hundred stacks of wardings leftover. Have more chests where you can pay 25, 50, 100 wardings for additional loot. Why not pay extra pearls for 2oo warding stacks giving you 5% bonus damage each? That’s like adding the damage bonus of 4 grandfathers or so! That’s fun to slaughter menacing demons with! Let’s up the reward/drop rate for the higher costs players put in and reward them!

let’s fix the expensive gold costs everywhere in game instead of just turning up gold drops like raining candy from the heavens to spark dopamine in our brains and try to hook us on the drug that is the game. let’s not leave this un addressed after what will be 5 seasons time in game while we, the players, remain addicts like we want that angel dust death breathe from d3 with the Chappelle show meme. let’s have reasonable repair/reroll/purchase rates in shops instead of just inflating the gold economy and blaming the us government like they owe us money.

let’s do a better job of communicating with people what the season will be in advance and how rewards for events work instead of making players and devs feel exploited and lied to or manipulated for corporate profits and the in game microtransactions please.

Urza-1177 · February 11, 2024, 12:07pm