Bounties are an irrelevant nuisance btw - only Act 1 necessary for the ring, and 1 of each for season journey completion. D3 “Bounties is endgame” era is roughly where D4 is currently stuck.
…going by the baseline understanding of ‘endgame’ & incorporating OP’s emphasis on “season”. In terms of “pain for gain” and/or “must interact”, several of the permanent ones on the list (setting aside even the transient season themes) are more individually consequential than anything D4 has, outside of Pit. Meaning, if you think Rifts/Pit are mind-numbing endgame, then D3 gives you more “must do” endgame outside of Rifts/Pits. And it’s worth repeating: Rifts are way more interesting than Pits.
The Altar of Rites alone represents more thoughtful/meaningful “endgame” than probably all D4 season themes combined so far.
Adjacent/overlapping is interesting item mechanics that aren’t purely damage multipliers (yes, this includes sets):
Sets (like em or hate em)
Chasable XP items (e.g. Leoric’s Signet, Hellfire ring, Leoric’s Crown) - now obsolete if you can boost yourself
Pickup radius/ gold drop/ armor interactions
Merc equipment + Emanating items
Gem-farming items (Broken Crown, which emanates, and ancient Puzzle Ring)
Bovine Bardiche (replacing Staff of Herding… except not really )
(probably twice this many)
Weird category to include, but not irrelevant:
Pet builds that function without breaking the game every few months.
It seems new content is only shipped with expansions, so we have to wait a new one to have more content, that I hope will not be just a class and some events… at least we will have some new map region to explore, that’s something interesting. Though we had a 2.0 version with new torment difficulties and improved paragon boards, and now an armory, that is included in the base game, so we can hope a 3.0 one day that will bring something new.
Only fight in the game where the mechanics actually matter, can’t just stand in her face like all the other bosses, and that’s only because of the forced stages they couldn’t balance her right either
Early on I would argue the end game was farming PLs. Once botters and all that kicked in, really it became what is the point unless you want a 10k PL account for non-season.
Farming PL and seeing how high I could go was really what kept me going on seasons.
The other thing D3 did well was make some seasons where your power was just so over the top you could maybe get to 150 GRs. Considering that gems etc gave power and you needed to be around that area to get your gems to 150, that was sort of an end game the first 5 or so seasons before it became easy to do 150s on most classes.
The leaderboards, blizzard did do go a good job with removing players with extremely high paragon that were obviously botting. They seem to do the bans once every 2 weeks. So we will see this Friday.
What other ways do people cheat the leaderboards besides botting paragon?
for sure with ea season blizz should be improving QoL like how they added armory for the game this season. doing obvious things like adding a preview of the accelerated battle pass emote, etc!
bring back past accelerated battle pass emotes to shop!
The crutch that d3 had was paragon farming. It buffered all the power creep that game had. You saw what happened when they limited paragon to p800 so leaderboards could be more fair for a season. You were basically done with season the same day you started if you didn’t care for leaderboards.
You seem genuinely surprised. Seasons will always be the same recycled mechanics, and if they do make a legit improvement it will break the game someplace else. One step forward, two giant leaps backwards.
Its been 2 years now, and according to the loudest defenders, all of this is the player’s fault. Not sure how or why, Ive seen plenty of players (including myself) asking repeatedly for some meaningful gameplay, some actual challenge, a real endgame, and not a loot piñata with every kill, but according to the shills its our fault.
As long as blizz gets a pass from its most ardent knights, it will continue to churn out this mess
imo there should be less patches
for example now i want to make a good rogue build for clearing high pits, but i’m waiting for midseason patch to see which will be the best
right now rain of arrows and death trap are the best ones but who knows after midseason patch
that was just an example, anyway i often find myself waiting for next season/midseason patch/new event
i want to play without having to wait everytime for buffs/nerfs
I need ones that don’t spam up the screen with spell fodder. I’m not into the whole standing in the middle of a stadium and fantasizing that everyone is cheering.
Most of them are dorky gimmick garbage, and if I can’t find a build that plays nice, it’s moving on.
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