Hey,
Long time Diablo enjoyer here. Starting with Diablo 1 when I was a kid, into thousands of hours into Diablo 2 as a teenager, and then hundreds of hours into Diablo 3 after that.
This is some really early feedback, I have a sorc in world tier 3, and an alt necromancer. I also have a legendary tuning stone on the sorc and have completed the initial season questline. I’m aware that some of my feedback may change as I progress further into the game. But first impressions are extremely important, especially in the action RPG genre.
TLDR:
- Seasonal mechanic progression in this case should be account wide.
- Senescahl Construct doesn’t yet feel gameplay changing in an interesting way.
- Glad to see the same formula from season 2 overworld seasonal content taken forward into season 3, It was good.
- Would like to see Helltide have as much mob density as the overworld vampire seasonal events had in season 2, it doesn’t feel fun when most of your time is running around trying to find mobs or events (I have not yet checked this in season 3, it may have already been addressed)
More Details
To put it simply, I think that having the seasonal progression mechanic account wide would bring only benefits to the player experience. Part of the joy of Diablo is trying out all kinds of different builds, and for someone with a limited time to play due to IRL responsibilities, It feels like I’m being punished for playing alts.
Seneschal Construct
I know I’m really early into the season, but compared to season 2 this mechanic just simply doesn’t feel as fun so far. And as I mentioned earlier, first impressions are extremely important in an action RPG and can make or break player retention.
As for why it feels less fun, I think it hasn’t made any noticeable changes at all to my gameplay so far. Yes I’ve played around with different bot setups, but I just set them and forget about it. The season 2 mechanic enabled builds that weren’t possible immediately, and it also made changes that you could feel working all of the time in your combat.
Vaults;
I’ve tried these a bit, not enough to give a conclusive review on, but my initial impressions are not great. I think for me personally first of all the concept isn’t that appealing, the traps feel kind of frustrating rather than engaging.
I also think from an overall design perspective, it feels like the traps interupt my gameplay rather than add to it, much of the fantasy of an action RPG is becoming powerful and blasting through hordes of enemies and the vaults to me feel like less fun versions of nightmare dungeons.
I appreciate the effort into going for something different, but this one hasn’t really struck a chord with me. There’s also the aspect that it heavily favors classes with more mobility, you can teleport to avoid traps for example, and in terms of pure time efficiency to acquire loot, if you can dash past everything quickly you can reach the rewards chest faster.
New Boss
The new boss was cool, I haven’t fought the uber version yet ofcourse, but I liked the visual design of the boss itself and the environment, and I thought the attacks were well telegraphed.
Overall I think Diablo 4 is moving in a good direction, but I think the lack of impact felt from the season mechanic is going to lead to much less player retention.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, I hope it is helpful 