Season 14 Is Exactly What Diablo 4 Needs

PC General Discussion
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I’ve been reading a lot of the feedback surrounding the Season 14 PTR, and honestly, I feel like I’m playing a different game than some of the people posting about it.

The more I look at the changes, the more convinced I am that this is one of the healthiest directions Diablo 4 has taken in a long time.

A lot of the criticism seems to come from a place of not wanting things to change. Every time Blizzard touches powerful builds, people immediately assume the game is being ruined. We’ve seen this happen before. A build gets nerfed, everyone predicts disaster, and then a few weeks into the season players discover new setups, new interactions, and a new meta forms.

The reality is that Diablo 4 can’t continue indefinitely with every season adding more damage multipliers on top of existing damage multipliers. At some point, the game needs balance passes to keep power creep under control. Otherwise we end up in a situation where only a handful of builds matter and every new season is just bigger numbers for the sake of bigger numbers.

That’s one reason why I actually like the balance changes. Not because my favorite build got buffed or because I enjoy seeing things nerfed, but because the game needs room to grow. If Blizzard never pulls back on outliers, eventually every class ends up chasing the same absurd power levels and build variety suffers even more.

The Mythic Unique changes are another thing people seem way too negative about. For several seasons, endgame itemization has largely revolved around chasing a small number of incredibly powerful items. Once you got them, progression slowed down dramatically. The new system looks like it could create more interesting loot hunts and make a wider range of items worth getting excited about.

And honestly, isn’t that what Diablo is supposed to be about?

Finding loot.

Not checking a guide on day one and knowing exactly which four items you’re going to wear for the next three months.

The Horadric Cube also has a lot more potential than people are giving it credit for. It’s introducing another layer of character customization and long-term progression. Could it use tuning? Sure. That’s literally why we have a PTR. But the foundation looks solid to me.

Then there’s the seasonal content itself, which somehow gets ignored in a lot of these discussions.

Pandemonium Ruptures look fun. The Corrupted Reaper looks fun. Solo Self Found is something players have been asking for since launch. There’s actual new content to engage with instead of just running the same activities with different numbers attached to them.

What I like most about Season 14 is that it feels like Blizzard is trying to improve the game’s systems rather than taking the easy route and simply handing out more power. Not every experiment will be perfect, but I’d rather see the developers take risks and try new ideas than play it safe forever.

It’s a PTR. Things will be adjusted. Numbers will change. Some builds will get buffed. Others will get nerfed.

But looking at the overall direction instead of individual patch notes, I think Season 14 is shaping up to be one of the strongest updates Diablo 4 has received in quite a while.

For the first time in a few seasons, it feels like Blizzard is making changes with the long-term health of the game in mind, and that’s something I can get behind.

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Since Lord of Hatred release, players spend more time in the Cube than slaying monsters.

The more time you are in Temis the more you see other peoples paid skins and get tempted to buy one. Suits love this one trick

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I made a thread asking what people are excited for in season 14 and there was nothing. Blizzard should be implementing things into season that get players excited. I don’t know how good or bad the season will be.

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OP they are going to be all over you it is not advisable to say anything positive on this forum, wait for it. :popcorn:

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Many on this forum want buffs, buffs, buffs. Power, power, power. Speed, speed, speed. Nerf is a bad, bad, bad word.

They once said if they do nerfs they need to give something back, the developers cannot seen to figure out what to do.

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More cube slots is the last thing the game needs. I agree the game needs more “end game” progression. But a slot machine isn’t progression. Grinding mats over and over again till you get lucky isn’t progression.

I actually don’t mind the higher tier of items (the new mythic) or even making them random stats. They just need to be obtainable with usable stats without having to play cube slots all day.

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This and making more specs abilities viable in the game. And easier to move between them without finding entire new sets of gear becasue the spec u thought was good turns out to be terrible. Take rogue, basically apart from a bugged op build, everyone plays poison. Shadow hasnt been touched.

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They had an entire expansion to overhaul this and the result was they actually added multipliers and they did so in such as way that they dominate the affix slots they occupy.

One of the problems people have is they aren’t targeting outliers, these are mostly global changes. The relative build power didn’t change much in the PTR. The top mostly stayed the top, it just had less power than previous.

With the changes being made it’s less about the items and more about the item affixes. The item itself is just an aspect now.

That’s the number one criticism on the system. People feel the game is less about finding loot and more about rolling loot.

They aren’t doing either of those things…they’re trying to sell expansions. Nothing is moving towards an era of balance or diversity, it is, however, moving towards needing the expansion to provide the kind of progress the majority of players aspire towards.

I think you should start reading the patch notes.

You didn’t bring up one thing about the season. Not a single one. There are the seasonal mechanisms and then there is the accompanying patch that comes at the same time that includes permanent changes such as ones affecting class balance or itemization. You, like almost everyone else, is only talking about the permanent changes.

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Unfortunately, a lot of these sort of situations didn’t get proper attention in the expansion. Shadow still has the same problem it always has had.

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Changes are awful. Nerfed things that dint need it like dance of knives on rogue. Nerfing and buffing the same thing like ae grom for warlock. Overnerfed things into oblivion like perdition. Iconic mythics are just mostly all trash. How does going from autoinclude to complete trash fix anything? Uniques are just legends now with different fixed aspects. The RNG is off the charts. AT least go 2 fixed and 2 random affix. Bugs are out of control. S13 was left in a broken state. Reusing bad content. Cube is getting too much focus. I could go on from 50 more things and I did in a seperate thread.

Streamers are soundling alarm. Forums sounding alarm. I dont sound alarm just to jump on bandwagon or get post count up. I do it and others to get changes before it goes live. We do care about the game or we wouldnt be here.

We dont mind things changing for better. WE dont like 180 degree turns off a cliff.

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OP, you shouldn’t have posted that here…
:rofl: :joy: :sweat_smile:

All hell will break loose upon you…
:fire: :smiling_face_with_horns: :fire:

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Naw. You only get dogpiled when you say bad things about the game. You hear the sound of leash chains rustling and the dogs come runnin.

Arf Arf Arf!!!

Australian man turns into a mean dog!!!

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It already broke lose, and it’s only just starting.

Woe to those who say any kind of good thing about Diablo 4 right about now.

Let the negative narrative continue…………………………….

LOL

Before the season even starts… :rofl:

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The big L regarding S14 is reducing Uniques under gamble filter, everything else I’d be fine with

That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a big one

All Uniques dropped should have a chance to be useful, not a “bad RNG”, yes we’re aware that with the new skill tree system there needs to be some sub/variations of Uniques but that doesn’t mean that the devs should “abandon ship” and throw the problem onto the players deal with it

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I wish we could expect more from them but at this point we’ve come to know what to expect. We should be able to ask them to do better. The feeling of abandonment is not unique to this situation. We have felt it plenty of times before on plenty of issues.

Daddy Wasn’t There Austin Powers Gold Member

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Completely agreed. Most of the nerfs make sense. The game is beyond easy. Changing mythics and uniques is terrible. I want to kill demons to find amazing loot. I don’t want to sit in front of a slot machine with a terrible UI for most of my playtime.

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Ya this mythic unique thing is probably not gonna be as fun as they think it’s going to be.

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They have already tried this multiple times. Why are you acting like the game has gone unchecked for 13 seasons and they are finally reeling it in?

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It was never their intention to balance-out the game, it was an afterthought

That’s not that important at this point though, the problem is they try to replace lack of substance with excesses of RNG

Which has also been the case quite a few times before

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Do you really need to post this in every thread over and over and over? We get it.

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