I have serious concerns about the game’s replay value.
The overworld map is empty, repetitive and bland.
It has no RNG in it’s layout like D3 had. Now you’d think a handcrafted, unique overworld should have much more detail. But instead it feels like a very poorly randomly generated map.
Now I know we start in snowy mountains which makes sense to be
bland and empty but lord… look at the snow area in D3. Still one of my least favorite zones but so much more props, fortresses in the overworld, buildings, ravaged caravans.
And this was all randomly generated mind you.
D3 had dozens and dozens of unique zones at launch. If you skipped dungeons you’d be in a new environment every few minutes, at least in the first Act. I enjoyed going through the starting zones on new characters, it always felt just distinctively different to keep it interesting. I’m not even referring to how many more encounters and zones were added post launch. But even at launch, D3 had so, so, so much more variety in it’s overworld and dungeons.
In D4 I’ve explored the entire fractured peaks, which is pretty much 20% of the entire overworld. And it ALL feels the same from zone to zone; give or take some more trees and grass here or more mud or snow there. Empty. Wasteland.
With no random generation.
So every new character I make has identical map layout and except some dungeon layouts that always use the same linear, grid based, first year of college, rng system that make them boring af.
I have absolutely zero interest in ever going through the area again on even a second character.
And to top it all off, the dungeons are 90% the same identical ‘wine cellar’ or ‘slimey cave’ and there is a serious lack of skill customization compared to D3. D3 had five customizations for every single skill.
Now we have two, yeah you can expand on it with itemization later but it’s not the same.