- The biggest mistake Blizzard did is cater towards HIGH EXPECTATIONS of progress within the game
Also before going further a disclaimer - that is NOT what casuals wanted either (in fact casuals don’t give a damn what happens at pit 50, they care what happens at regular level 50 in the game, AND - trivialization does not help with that)
But regardless - if they nerf the strong stuff (like a heavy nerf), make it clear that “noone is expected to beat more than pit lvl100”
Then buff the weaker stuff to keep things more/closer in line (and keep most things within the margain of 5x-10x performance discrepancy), we wouldn’t have had this problem of all the toxicity we got lately, would we ?
In fact I think what they should’ve straight-up just done is nerf the heck out of every strong build that goes over pit lvl 80 (or at least fix the broken things like Bash and perma-CDR shields)
THEN, find a different way to make monsters harder at the higher end (other than increasing and scaling HP all the time), and start adding-in some late-game “surprises” in the game (akin to Butcher but these would be more pit-only type and be different on impact - every single time behave or do or have something different on them, as much as possible)
That way people can feel like they aren’t doing the same over and over, be glad when they finally beat something that felt hard for a change (in other ways than having dozens of billions of HP), AND there will be some potential/room for improvement of late-game mechanics on the long term
BUT, instead of that what we got is - “clean up your plate” and now people (that were obviously fed-up with all the “compelled to eat” meals to begin with) voiced their opinions on the matter and got more toxic as a result
Who’d have thought - increasing the bar and elongating the “grind” (and increasing the expectations for progress) for no particular real reason would’ve brought the negative energy to the surface for everyone to see ?
Like, the whole damn thing (the endless repetitive treadmill) was badly/wrongly envisioned to begin with, I’m not surprised (not surprised at least one bit)
Talked about this - probably endlessly now, we don’t need “more of the same”, we need game to become harder earlier, with more surprises, and then “willingly” give us an “excuse” (i.e. justification) not to push all the way (who takes the earlier route who takes the later is up to them, noone is expected to beat EVERYTHING in the game)
And in order to achieve that - also includes individualization of each run and gameplay, make every individual drop matter/differ more (instead what we’re given is everyone has the access to same books, same drops, same loot, e.t.c.), FIND A WAY TO INDIVIDUALIZE the game and REDUCE EXPECTATIONS of the distance to go for
Add more surprises (as opposed to equalizing the “playfield”) in the game