The gameplay loop

  • Do a bunch of vampire stuff so you can get Varshan stuff. This is actually fun. The designers of this are competent.
  • Fight Varshan. This is ok when you are weak. Later it is fun like watching paint dry or doing boring D3 Ubers. At least put Varshan at the end of a NM dungeon. Like make the mats create a NM just like the ice crack, but like higher level than 35. That is only OK in T3. In T4 it needs to be at your character max solo NM or something. Or you can just set the difficulty. Make it harder and make the drops better. The current state of this is pathetic.
  • Farm the gatcha hellscape of helltides. This is not fun at all. It needs to reset hourly like bloodtide. The stupid deleting of the pink crystals needs to stop. Why do that? Nothing about that is fun.
  • Now go one shot some lightning boss because that is so satisfying. Receive weak loot from it and maybe some rock.
  • Now do this all over again for Drivel, the main boss but you need 2 rocks and 2 Varshan eggs so exponentially repeat all that boring stuff and some fun vampire stuff. Why do I have to pay him for a fight? I already paid Blizzard hundreds of dollars for D4, thousands for all the other games, just let me go fight him at the end of a long and special T100 NM dungeon. That is a proper enjoyable mechanic. Gatcha crap is not.
  • Level up glyphs in NM dungeons, but start from scratch if you are stupid enough to make another character.

I have just described a terrible mobile gatcha game. The only difference is the art here is AAA. The actual game world is AAA. The actual combat play and graphics is AAA. The cutscenes are AAA. The optional cosmetic items are AAA and I assume the ones I do not like appeal to someone else. The campaign is decent but even today D2 sets a higher standard. The side quests are too boring to complete. I just don’t care about some of the drivel written by people with obvious contempt for the game and players. The core game loop is complete gatcha nonsense.

I hope this gets fixed like D3 got fixed. I hope the gatcha gets completely eradicated. I hope it ceases being a boring game made for streamers who make money doing all the boring stuff in the game. I hope it gets fixed so that I can pay for the game and experience ALL the loot without having to work for the game for 2 months 24/7.

Maybe make a version of the game for solo players that just want to kill stuff and rapidly experience all of the game and occasionally play with real life friends. Make a streamer version where they can suffer all the gatcha crap they are begging for where it takes weeks of 24/7 boring farming to get miniscule upgrades but they are “producing content” and earning a living playing boring games.

Go find the person that made The Butcher and put them in charge of the game. They did a fantastic job.

Otherwise my money goes somewhere else. Why should I pay for a game where “I will know someone who got to see an uber drop but I will certainly never get one myself”. Or a game demanding I work for it as a full time job? I would rather play something fun like Elden Ring or Shadow of War or Shadow of Mordor or Mass Effect or Factorio or apparently Baldur’s Gate 3. You have to earn my money. Right now you are promising you will someday.

You need to rise above the current level where you are exactly like a vehicle stealership. It is not good company, in fact it is justly reviled.

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Wait did you just describe D2, 3 or 4? Because there’s a lot of similarities you just described. Farm bosses, get loot, use said loot on tougher bosses, rinse repeat. Now blood harvests are new, but the rest of what you describe is pretty identical. Some of this applies to PoE as well.

Crazy how ARPGs work that way.

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I don’t really think “the loop” needs to get eradicated, it’s new content which is nice when your game is lacking a lot of post-game, and target farming for uniques needed to make builds is really nice. This loop isn’t really anything new, Diablo 2 and 3 both had “farm tokens to get into the exclusive boss” loops.

I think though, it is just too imbalanced to have basically the best chance at getting every 925 / unique / uber so hyper focused. I liked the sandboxy loot hunt of the older games where you had varying chances of getting nice stuff from playing the game however you wanted, which was nice. That was fun.

We just went from ubers being for something like getting your Annihilus or Hellfire into getting basically every unique, which might be too much. They just took it too far in giving Duriel all of the nice toys while the rest of the game is basically a zero zone for ubers and a patchy place to get 925s and things.

I don’t really think it’s the boss loops that are the problem, it’s kind of the lack of alternatives. More end game modes, higher difficulty levels with better drop rates, new events, new items that come from other sources and content that have more comparable chances of getting good stuff just kind of need to balance it out I think.

Honestly you can see the entitlement seeping out, OP could have summed it up by: “i dont have a shako and deserve one. I shouldnt have to do anything it should be given to me for logging in”

You can clearly see the difference between the D3 players vs all others.

Aarpgs is a repetitive loop. D4 already has more of an end game than D2 or D3 but it does need a lot more uniques to chase.

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Agreed, we need some tweaks. D2 worked for its time, as did D3, and I personally enjoyed both games, but I don’t necessarily want a remake of either of those games in D4. Was hoping for a bit more innovation out of the team then what we currently have, not exactly sure what, but I can say this wasn’t it.

I can say I don’t miss the Baal Runs out of D2 (or the damn stamina bar), and I don’t miss the infinite paragon out of D3 for sure. I don’t mind the end game in D4, but it still feels a little lacking, as if we learned nothing in the 25+ years of ARPG’s and we’re just repeating the formula because it works. I still love the killing and looting, I was just hoping for a little more ya know?

Well i mean more is in time. Theyve done a good job adding new content now it is about not making everything irrelevant of obtainable in 5 min of gameplay.

They do need balance some of the game the D3 walking simulator isnt a fun aspect of the game. Once you hit lv 60 y0u just roflstomp everything 20+ levels

There is no real progression, its just take 3-4 hours to get to 60 capstone and walk the rest of the game.

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I’m not going to lie. Your post is very confusing to me. I see lots of conflicting points.

so clearly you dont like arpg’s. thats cool

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Your loop could use some work. Skipping the basic leveling stuff its
Farm tree quests for mats & vorshan
Farm helltides for steel & FSs
Kill bosses, do NM dungeons, shards
Kill Duriel

Between that make an alt or two. Find a build you actually LIKE playing. Get good at it. Practice for AoZ. When that comes out – new loops!

@Lazyoaf

Really read what I wrote and pay attention to what is going on in the game.

In D3, greater rifts were challenging. If the one you are on is not you go higher. Do you get that? Challenging.

Have you ever died to Drivel? I only die there when I am 60 or whatever on a new character I am leveling. So twice. I don’t have an accurate count but well over 200 runs now and 2 ubers to show for it.

How long does it take to kill Drivel? 1 shot with a barb, one burn down with a sorcerer, a whole 15 seconds with a necro cuz he buries and hides from getting pwnd straight up. After that there is the tragic D4: Item Inspector, where you spend 1 or 2 hours sifting through your full stash and a town full of dropped items to see if you can find the one upgrade that possibly dropped.

None of this is the case in D3 which had challenge. D2 had challenge. D1 had challenge.

Entitled? Yes, I am entitled to get good value for my money. Parts of this game are good. But the parts where you grind for a few hits at the Drivel slot machine, which is stupidly low odds rigged? You are out of your mind if you think this is OK. I recommend you fly out to Las Vegas immediately, they have some games they think you will really enjoy.

They really were not. D3 had uncapped paragon so even those who couldnt actually do it wil skill could cheese 150 after 6 - 7 hours into the season.

When I was around 60 as well.

D1 and D2 had challenging aspects. D3 was never a challenge after inferno was removed.

How is 2% stupidly low. They basically took lottery items and made them uncommon. Aarpgs have always been a grind. D4 dispite lacking in uniques actually has a loot hunt unlike D3 where everything is spoon fed with the first few hours each season.

Im sorry but D2 was a much better game because of RNG the same way D4 is better than D3.

The loop is ok, but the price of 18 mats to get the 2 mats needed for Duriel is a little steep. Living steel is in a somewhat OK place, but the 4 parts for varshan is where I seem to get stuck and I do the vampire events and whisper caches like crazy.

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reminds me of the

  1. teleport to waypoint
  2. kill all monsters while popping the seals
  3. kill diablo
  4. check loot, be disappointed, repeat

just like d2

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Yeah the reintroduction of RNG in diablo has been a breath of fresh air. They need to keep adding uniques tho.

We are not communicating. Let’s imagine that Drivel was a boss at the end of a NM dungeon and you can just go there any time and fight him. 2% would be fine. The boss is challenging on whatever NM level you choose. You get rewards for the challenge.

But he is not. He is behind hours of doing not NM stuff. In fact he is gated by how much time are you willing to spend doing mindless drivel in helltide and fun stuff in bloodtide. The challenge is not difficult game play. The challenge is specifically how much stupid low quality garbage can you stomach doing. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then even more over and over again.

You are the rat in Skinner’s cage. You can google up the Skinner Rats. Try to become aware of your surroundings. It will serve you well in real life as well.

I hour of helltide should net you enough steel to get 4 full rotations. If it was in nm or they removed summoning mats they would need to significantly reduce drop rates to something like 0.05%. People do uber D because it can be very rewarding and you get 925 loot.

You’ve just described aarpgs. Admittedly they are not for everyone.

Steel is in a good place, the mats needed for Varshan are best gathered from farming whispers during the vampire events plus others in the world. If you are running only one character that’s an hours work to get the mats needed there as well.

Best you can do is alternate multiple characters per event to maximize your farming time. You can knock out the whispers in the vampire events in 10-15 minutes per character (including time to swap and port around collecting whispers caches.)

As a solo player the most runs you are getting per hour on Duriel is 2 when you split the time between all the events you have to farm, plus do the actual boss rotation itself with all the porting and resetting. If you got lucky with mats and extra whispers you could stretch to 3 per hour, but that requires the start to be aligned.

I ran out of Varshan mats myself and have been grinding this loop ever since. Solo player as well, groups have a massive advantage. Maybe I will have to start asking around in chat once I stockpile a couple dozen or so runs with of mats.

Chosing to kill uber D solo verse a rota is a choice completely in your control. I will farm mats solo but I would never do Uber D solo it just isnt efficient.