It’s just boring AF. There’s no fun in the game, everything that might be fun is locked behind cooldowns and CDR just got smacked (thanks devs), loot is yawn and there’s no diversity in builds, doesn’t matter what class you are playing its the same ol same ol - you pick a meta build and can literally just faceroll the keyboard and win everything - pick an off-meta build and it becomes an even worse boring slog
No wonder they limited the beta to <25 - after that, all the fun is bled out of the game and it’s a pale generic flop. Total bait and switch.
One dude ran a pretty diverse study - and his NMD runs averaged 57% time in combat, whereas 43% of his time was spent doing objectives or running between objectives. Add to this the CDR nerfs, and the fact that that actual time in combat was nerfed, and it just is going to feel boring to a majority of people.
I agree the game could be more exciting and fun, but maybe try just not picking a meta build and playing YOUR way through the game and thinking a bit as you go. If it doesn’t work out oh well do it again.
Yeah the dungeons are stupidly large for the number of mobs - halve the dungeon size and triple the mob density and we might be getting somewhere, and ffs boost elites, half the time you don’t even know they were elite they die like trash and the only reason you know they were different is because they drop something shiny
Where’s the mob AI? Where are the mob packs from other games who mind-f*** you by having tanky trash up front blocking your attacks and movement while range rains down hell on you? Currently they just run in like mindless lemmings, don’t dodge anything or try anything special and just die like utter useless trash. wtf?
It takes a very large admission of guilt from those that thought up the boring/non-fun concept. And that’s unlikely to happen. They’ll keep trying to correct this thing that has fundamental problems with shiny bandaids for at least the next year.
Let me pose this question…
If current NMD’s had a counterpart added to the game, where the rewards were equal…a rotation of say 20 random maps with bits and pieces that could change. Where the objectives were: “Kill enemies to fill this bar” then a boss spawns “Kill the boss” – Do you think the vast majority would ever slog through an NMD again?
The game is a not fun due to a thousand small issues just adding up. Obviously there are big issues too, but the sum total just sucks. I mained a Sorc so I even have a more negative view.
I think a lot is from it homogeneous design. Everything feels the same… things scale to you, same affixes start to finish, dungeons might look different but are the same, item and affixes are a mess. Basically the design just take very little risk, its boring. It quantity over quality. Also lets be honest, I saw the stream where Joe is referring to their mission statement/north star. They failed on all fronts in my opinion, and Im pretty sure they omitted “business case” part of the mission. Its corporation and the c-suite cares about the ROI, year to year growth and how they can bleed money from everyone. Im sure the mission statement they showed is real, but its 100% at odds with c-suite needs.
That “hidden” business case is projected onto every design decision in this game. Its not about fun, its how little can I give you to keep playing as long as possible. Everyone yells how dumb the devs are, they certainly aren’t. The balance of slowing you down and accepting the scraps lowers the need to produce better content. Its win for them, they get you buying stuff with the least amount of effort. The last patch was them seeing how far they can push it. They will pull back, throw us a few bones to lower the anger level. They will pour over the analytics and hit us again if their OKRs arent going to get hit. Its business, and it sucks.
worst part, at least for me, is there is basically no point to anything.
as in:
why am i leveling up / gearing up? what for?
being lvl100? uber lilith?
being lvl100 doesn’t change anything, you’ll still do the exact same thing you did before, mabye the arbitrary number next to your NMDs is higher but thats hardly motivating.
uber lilith has basically no rewards tied to it, so why do it? as it is now it’s a one and down deal, and basically only a thing you do to be able to say you’ve done it.
then there is the huge amount of time you basically just walk from a to b without engaging with anything, time spent waiting on cooldowns, or time sitting in an event waiting for it to spawn its 3 enemies, while the timer ticks down so you can move on.
Im not Disagreeing with the OP or any of this, There is alot missing from this game. I cant quite place my finger on it, but we basically did the same thing In D2, Hitting lvl 85 wasnt much difference between 100, 5 points into a stat. We still did the same thing, Went and ran 1 of 4 bosses, But with the exact same map, Farmed keys for DAYS to get a special charm that could be good or bad.
Ill get flamed for this but we did it for something tangable and tradable, the economy is what sets D2 from D4. Its what keeps D2 going. D2 would have been dead Many years ago if they ever made BOA items.
I think the combat is fine in D4, I dont mind the playstyle at all. I usually find a build that uses Short CD’s I Wont use Ultimates just because of the CD.
Just bought the game last week finally started playing a couple days ago and damn I’m playing the Arc Lash wiz and it feels like my old Roland Crusader, never saw that coming. But the tedium of the game has already set in for me, level 30+ and so many things are badly designed frankly the entire aspect/codex set up is stupid to me it should be straightforward but no let’s just make it more complicated so people think we did a good job. Oh and in a future patch just put the damn old D3 town square for us running in and out of my stash etc is just ridiculous. I sincerely hope once I finish the season things improve, but if S2 asks us to do this again I’m not sure I’ll play had more than enough of that in D3 which is so much fun right now I might just jump in and take my Beautiful Rasha wiz for a romp.
Not giving up but really these devs have a lot of work to do to keep people interested.
It’s made for dad gamers who only have 2 hours per week to play. In that sense Diablo 4 is incredibly exciting and packed with content. There is a reason why they keep bragging about how many people still haven’t finished the campaign.
They created a Piano game, based on cooldowns, like any mmo; and missed, that A-RPG are no-cooldown games, which push you into the FLOW, were you melt through millions from enemy without thinking.
People come from Complete games, playing Diablo 4 and comparing to Diablo 2.
Diablo 2 people around you doing meaningful stuff 24/7. aka baal runs. good for xp, meaningful. Seeing other people be amazing or struggle.
Diablo 4 needs more Gathering the Legions but longer and more meaningful ones.
Diablo 2 has runewords, cow level, sets, pvp system (better), etc.
Diablo 4 is missing these.
A lot of games these days, modern games, especially sequels.
They like to not give everything a previous sequel gave, and spread it out.
Sets, soon. (2nd expansion)
Runewords soon. (3rd expansion)
Cow level soon. (after 3rd expansion)
(4th expansion)
(DLC)
Mine as well just go Diablo 2. Since Diablo 4 complete is soon.
Previous sequels perform better when the sequel, Diablo4, holds back things, because $$$$
Runewords, Sets, Cow level, these are expected in Diablo 4 day 1 to a modern gamer.
Good activities playing with others like Baal runs, key farms, stuff like that, its expected to a modern gamer.
Especially when this is Diablo 4, 4th in the sequel. 11 years after Diablo 3, plenty of time to put in the work and ensure all of this is there.
Im a dad lol and I don’t want to waste 2 hours on this game anymore. Game isnt for dads thats not the issue. Its just like they messed up D3 at the start by designing the whole game around the auction house. D4 they designed the game around MTX and bad mmorpg practices