Ive had a great season so far. I’m impressed with the changes, and the overall rallying cry to get players back into the game. But I am equally disappointed at the state of this game. Its been almost a whole year, and I thought we’d be much further along than we are. It feels like we spent a year waiting on Blizz to pad out the shallow game design instead of moving the game world forward with new adventures, endgame challenges, and story for the seasonal content. Weve gotten nothing to that effect.
As for season 4s gameplay and build diversity: the game as a whole is designed around the playerbase’s ability to engage with the content. It takes Blizzard an ungodly amount of time to address problems in this game. But because a small handful of broken builds get to cheese their way into the endgame, there is a false impression of a healthy endgame which is not the case.
Remember that D4 was intended as play your way. Yeah that doesn’t ring true. They gutted the leveling experience to push everyone into the endgame, and once you get there your options shrink down to nothing, both in terms of classes and builds. And to what end? So we can push grifts which we all agreed we were happy to get AWAY from. It is an absolute bummer to open up a skill tree and realize that the decisions have been made for you. The leveling experience which allows for dynamic gameplay and build choices has been reduced to 10 hours of helltide farming. After that, its onward to the endgame… which is just not interesting largely because there isn’t much to do that you havent already done while leveling for the past 12 months.
As for the lack of build diversity, the only saving grace for these huge class disparities and build limitations is that there is no real engaging endgame. But what little content there is? You better open up maxroll, because a normal player just wanting to explore class fantasies WILL NOT stumble on a viable build to do what little there is to do in game. Which is hilarious considering this game was intended for “casuals”, yet the whole playerbase has to run the same 3 builds that some sweats designed and published on third party websites. If they fixed the broken stuff, they could then tune the base experience for all to be more equitable.
Im in the camp that while I enjoy D4 for what it is this season, it is fundamentally broken and unimpressive for what it could be and doesnt even live up to what it says it is.
Season 4 was a resounding success. But it’s bitter sweet because year 1 and the overall state of this game is still a defeat.