That’s all I had to read to know you’re absolutely correct and give your post a heart. But I did read the entire thing as well.
If it makes you feel any better, I am using Gorilla skills exclusively and I cast the Gorilla Ultimate all the time. Idc if it’s said to be weaker, it’s actually WAY stronger than both my Druid and Barb, no matter what I try and do with them. So, if I’m weaker than every other Spiritborn, so what? I’m actually still stronger than anything else, and I’m still having fun with the class MY way.
Yup. Here is the actual game loop, and it’s done this way to accommodate bad players, which are the vast majority (so from a selling stand point it’s actually better to do things this way… sadly):
- Make a build/ability VERY obviously the best choice by making the damage output about 200,000% better than anything else. (yes, I did the math… two-hundred thousand percent better)
- Wait until a well known streamer grabs a hold of that extremely low hanging fruit and makes “his/her” build with it.
- Let all the followers copy the build and smash with it, because it’s so overturned that they can’t fail at using it. 90% of them will likely do far worse than said streamer they follow, but that’s okay because the build is still that much better than anything else.
- Players leave the game happy and fulfilled, because they never had the brain power to do anything for themselves to begin with, they just wanted the “shinny shinny” and they got it, so “happy happy”
This is honestly why the game is the way it is. If you had many, competing top end builds that were about 5-10% apart from one another in damage output, the vast majority of players would actually do pretty terribly with that build when they compare themselves to good gamers. So, in other words… when they are using a build that SHOULD be doing 10% better than their Guildy/friend that’s playing his/her own build, they’re actually so bad at gaming that they are doing about 30% worse instead… and that doesn’t leave any of these people feeling good.
Again… why cater to them? Because they are the majority and this is not a company that puts out games for gamers, they put out games for your average GenZ player (players that have copy/pasted builds their entire lives… they can’t do anything else).
Correct. I explain exactly why above.
Yes, and no. I personally agree with you 100%. But, sadly Blizzard as a company, which is only out to make the most money, is NEVER going to agree with you… and I again point you to the above (and below) formula:
Streamer builds → Follower Copies → Good enough → Happy → Blizzard makes money.
Don’t sleep on Titan Quest 2, either.
Some developers still have respect for the genre–Blizzard ain’t one of them; in case d3, and now, season 6 of this nonsense doesn’t prove that.
*Take my like.
Titan Quest 2 looks like it wont be any serious contender to D4 or POE1/2. I like the graphics though.
This is the case with every game ever. It’s simple numbers. Something is always more optimal than something else.
The illusion of choice was much worse in d4 release due to lack of skills and aspects and uniques.
Today there are overall more builds and therefore more variety than before. You just visually notice the meta builds more.
Gamers like to play OP things. Nothing new.
What else would you expect, from a game that resets every three months?
Maybe!
Never know anymore. People said Black myth and bg3 were gonna be mid too.
Not really much to compete with, tbh. D4 only “competes” in its own mind. There is a reason they are hesitant to release review opportunities, a la Steam.
POE will have the same problem
Its not really copying builds, it’s just common sense. Uniques pretty much tell you what and how to build. I never looked at a video and i was doing the evade/eagle build while leveling, than at 60 i got that unique staff and i was like, oh that seems OP for my current build. There we go… Let’s not pretend the youtubers are magically coming up with meta build, the devs who designed the items are.
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What is with all your general assumtions? I never look at guides, I dont need them. The game is not that difficult to look at skills, try the ones you like. Combine the damage you find most effective, try new things when a new mechanic reveals itself, modify your strategy to suit the gear and/or modify your gear to suit your skills.
Maybe some people look at builds or copy people but I dont think the majority do.
As someone who knows all the meta builds but still enjoy building my own builds I find it increasingly difficult to build anything that is remotely as efficient as the meta builds that double dip into max resource, overpower + shield etc. Those builds have way more scaling vectors.
I also find myself increasingly caring less and less about the game for this reason, and this season I went full on spirit born + quill cuz I don’t care anymore. Is it fun, meh, but it’s the only way.
I tried a poison build but the quill build do 1114 x the damage - 111400% more damage.
This is a gigantic game design problem that is rooted in shoddy math…
All the devs in charge of hero balance should all be looking for new jobs. This is how bad this had played out in just a week.
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This happen to all the game, the dev already the build is going to be “Volatile” this season in the recent camp fire chat. They were reserve about whether Pit 150 is appropriate level as the hardest content in the game. It looks like this Pit level is overtuned after they fix the bugs in SB next season.
What I don’t understand is why not just make every reasonable build viable? Players will still come back for the Seasonal cycles. It’s not like players are like “oh man, I can’t wait to play ___ build next season, after it’ll surely get buffed!”
Just make everything viable always, the players won’t leave.
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I know this is crazy…but its only been said 5000000x; people act like it isn’t real:
Blizzard doesn’t care about the game, the genre, or the players.
They wanted money for their juicy IP. They got it and you cant refund.
Why would they do more than the bare minimum for no reason?
This is the actual reason, “why”.
Lol…this game doesn’t have builds. Not really. There are always, maybe 2-3 viable options. Anyone who chooses a wheelchair is stupid. I’m sorry, but going off meta in this game is not going to make it fun. You want crazy builds, go play Last Epoch or POE. This is cookie-cutter game and always will be.
You go back to earlier diablo games and you COULD play them without the “builds” they weren’t easy but it was possible to complete all content …
I doubt very highly I could use the same logic now where is used what i liked to just try it out as even with the OP builds that were parsed out on a computer I am sure to be THE BEST set up can be hard to play …
Hell the lag issues are horrible so intentionally making your character weaker won;t work
I played a druid in season 4 that I just made it up as I went along and tried to NOT min max abilites and stayed as a bear built ., at 20th I got tired if all the deaths due to lack of healing and lack of damage
I am not sure how a build that can’t do t4 (with simplicity) is going to max out its glyphs.
No you couldn’t. I played hundreds of hours of D2, and there are only a few viable builds. There was a reason every sorc was blizz orb…it was the best build (in the old days). Everyone played the same 2-3 options because math does not lie. Meta is simply what is best - objectively. That may make people mad who want to frustrate themselves but I don’t roll like that. There is no real way to theorycraft this game. Its far to simplistic. The amount of skills are limited and unless you mix/match certain uniques/skills you are left with the “build and spend” framework that I can’t stand.
More to the point, Diablo was never about “builds” which seems to be lost on people. It was about an experience. For the pure ARPG player other games do it FAR better. That will continue to be the case. POE2 is coming and I’m very optimistic about what that will have to offer. So far it looks interesting and far more accessable to new players. The SOK season of POE1 was amazing. We had a ****ing town! Blizz can’t even come up with a cool seasonal idea other than “big walking guy with some monsters.”
My expectations of this game are pretty much I play for a week or so. Then quit. There just isn’t enough fresh content or interesting gameplay to keep me interested. I’ve already cleared T3, I may do T4 but who knows. I did it for the story and the experience, not because I expect anything interesting in the gameplay or build arena. For that, I have other games. Perhaps folks should try other games and stop giving blizzard their money. They clearly are not going to do what people want.
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you can do glyphs on lower levels of the pit to level them.
It is what I am doing atm …
At tier 50 I get 3 to 4 points to spend and at 45 I get 4 consistantly …
THERE is little reason to do it the hard way and challenge yourself in a way
You’re acting like this wasn’t a thing before Vessel of Hatred (it absolutely was, going all the way back to launch) and it wasn’t a thing in previous Diablo games.
Diablo 2, 3 and 4 are all filled with people who follow meta builds to the letter. People go to sites like maxroll, they look up the best build for the class they want to play and then they follow that build to the letter. Maybe, maybe they deviate slightly if they don’t like one or two skills, but that’s it.
Why do you think there were so many complaints at the launch of Diablo 4 that there were so few builds available? It wasn’t because you couldn’t craft your own build and just have fun, because you absolutely could. It was because players were looking at these sites which only had 2-3 builds for each class on them and were getting upset that there weren’t more options.