Since we’ve only seen a tiny portion of the new map this is just pure speculation, but almost shockingly to me it seems the expansion offers nothing new expect the new map, and class. And of course the story, which we gona play once, and never again.
It seems the fundamental gameplay loop is untouched. We going to play nightmare dungeons for glyph xp, than pit for upgrade mats, helltide’s for leveling, and mats. This is what we’ve been doing the whole time.
I know, we did not see the full map, but my god please dont make me do another year of helltide’s. Please… At this point i kinda hate helltide’s, it is a chore. I do it for efficient leveling, and boss mats.
Yeah and we going to get mercenary’s, and if i remember correctly the spirit realm thingy, but thats not a whole lot of stuff for a full expansion…
Or i just missed the plethora of new stuff they announced…
Speak for yourself mate, most may not be true RPG fans and only play the story to get access to endgame content. Some of us on the other hand ARE true RPG fans and never,skip the story dispite the expectations to do so. I can say with all certainty that out of the 6 characters i currently have on my profile i will be playing the expansion story on every sigle one of them as well as every future seasonal character i create.
What would you like to be doing. You don’t have to level in helltides. You choose to. You can level in dungeons. You can even at a certain point level in pits.
My concern isnt map size or activity. Mine is that blizzard is so unoriginal. They basically made D3 2.0. D3 gets boring fast and now they are doing the same thing. Why buy the new expansion? Just play d3. Thats basically what there saying. The changing of the levels and the failure of the pit, is why this is happening. The pit is just Gr runs with resources instead of levels for gems. Thats why its boring. They are just recycling and not being inovated than want to slap a big price tag on old S**t
I have been very vocal about wanting D4 to mirror D3 and build upon it. I was very sceptical how much inspiration they had taken from D2 and have been continually pleased at how fast they are pivoting away from that and going all in on D3 feel.
The Pit is now almost identical to greater rifts from D3. The glyphs upgrade like gems and they have added a catch up mechanic so you can do high pitt and get many levels to glyphs (not just 3).
The classes themselves are also starting to feel more D3 like, with resources becoming inconsequential at end game and being more about rotations, procs and power fantasy (remember when WW barb couldn’t WW lol).
Campfire chat and PTR just shows this entire wall of text to be BS. But to be honest, I wish they had kept it the same. Not a fan of D3 style tiers nor turning glyph XP into RNG. We have enough RNG in this game.
I’m seriously starting to think of going POE after all this. S4 and S5 put the game in the right state. Doing ANOTHER base game change which is just a D3 revamp has me questioning the competency of this dev team.
The one that springs to mind specifically was chase items like mythic uniques. I think the exact phrase was “players should not expect to see them” or words to that effect. They referenced how drops were back in D2 being super super rare and “chase items” being good for the game… me and my friends immediately thought “great streamer only drops to balance the game around, no thanks” (having hard content drop better items is fine, gating access to that content by time instead of skill is not ok - like the grind to gather boss mats before season 5).
I remember talking to my friends after every early podcast/campfire while the game was in Dev and we talked about how big of a mistake it was for them to base D4 on D2 over D3 (which we saw/see as an evolution of the genre)… remember their idea was for players to have to redo gathering all the altars of lilith, redo the campaign, redo reknown every season instead of allowing access to adventure mode - that is D2 mentality and I am glad they pivoted away from it.
So instead we get D4’s lackluster itemization & or skills? Personally I’m hoping at some point they delete the Rogue and give us back the Amazon or Demon Hunter
Yes this is the scapegoat they use. The fake news to cover their own failure.
See while d2 had some very rare items it also had a bazillion stuff in between. Gems, runes, jewels, charms, Socket items, crafting, sets and so on.
D4 used like 5%of the d2 system and when it failed they blamed d2 and not the fact they left 95% of the great stuff out.
There have not been Altars or renown on d2. Those are useless times ink systems. Don’t make yourself redicilous by claiming that is d2 inspired… Those are mobile game and MMO tropes.
D4’s lackluster itemization & or skills? 
Personally I’m hoping at some point they delete the Rogue and give us back the Amazon or Demon Hunter 