To me, ARPGs have only ever made sense as a single player experience. But there are a bunch of mechanics in this game that either force multiplayer (open world events) or heavily encourage it. (Party loot buffs, season quests that require a party, and the keys/boss summoning materials.)
I’ve been working my way up the torment tiers and I’ve only even been remotely challenged once I hit T4. Before that most bosses that didn’t force an immunity phase just straight up died before they did anything. T4 bosses were still relatively fast for what I’d expect from an endgame boss, but did last long enough that I had to do a few mechanics for some of them.
Then I was looking to get my season journey quests done, so I decided to try the one to do lair bosses in a party since I figured I was going to be doing them anyway for a bit while I farmed for certain drops.
My god what was that? On T4, I’d go in, people would summon the boss, put down ground AoEs, and as soon as it spawned it instantly died and then another was summoned. Basically the only delay in the entire process was waiting for the summon and death animations. So much loot would drop that I stopped picking up anything that wasn’t an ancestral unique, so not only was the screen filled with 4 players’ worth of particle effects, it was also filled with runs and runs worth of item icons on the ground.
Through this whole thing, not one person spoke or even emoted once. Why would they need to? There’s no need to strategize or coordinate anything. I don’t even think I really needed to contribute damage.
There are some co-op games where you’re not really playing with people, just next to them. This was somehow worse than that. Multiplayer actively makes the game worse. It makes it not even a game. Plus it hurts my eyes. I’m probably never doing a party boss run again, but I can’t avoid this absurd mess if I want to do headhunts, helltides, etc.
I don’t know whether the game was intended like that at first, but it’s clear that, with the cash shop being a thing, they wanted to shove microtransactions to our face as often as possible.
Having other players in town with us, or during activities, serve that purpose too. You get to see (or they get to show) their shiny wings and other paid cosmetic. I hate that, but some people like it.
Local or group play has always been a staple of ARPG. Solo has always been possible, but usually, group play with similar minded and skilled players would almost always end up being easier/faster.
Fast forward to D4 S7 : Headhunts zones, since day 1 in the season, are full of meta builds using players. This means full of one shotting bosses spammable AoE attacks. It’s unfun, and an eyesore indeed. Too bad that we cannot opt out of this forced random players presence in maps.
Multiplayer was a perfect element to add to aRPGs and Diablo 2 was finest example. The best example I can share is when you had a group of 5-7 players who either had new characters or the start of a season. Having to work together as a group to get through all acts. Some of the best memories I have of playing multiplayer came from this experience with D2. I remember one in particular where the same 7 players started Act 1 Normal all the way to Act 5 Hell. Something that will never again happen with D4.
I think this all ended with D3, while there was a party system, the idea of a party working together as a single group was dead. I see now in the Pits the same behavior I saw in D3 Rifts where players treated it as an individual race against other players, the objective was to get as far ahead of everyone else ignoring most mobs of creatures. Just the other day we had 4 in a Pit level 100, we could have completed as a group. But 1 in particular ran off and did nothing, another was too weak. Ended up with a waste of time Pit run.
Just because you don’t like to play with friends doesn’t mean others don’t. I play with my brother and about 6 or 7 friends in regular groups. Last season solo we could do Pit 145’s but in a group, playing together, we could finish a Pit 150. Fell Maven…
Hardcore Solo players are the worst cry-babies who think the world revolves around them. Who do you think you are telling people how they have to play the game?
Don’t worry OP. You are not remotely alone. They have a study that tells them that a little over 80% of their player base plays solo.
As to why they still insist on trying to group people together is beyond me. When the Dark Citadel came out I tried it and it wasn’t bad at all but I just don’t come to Diablo to normally play with others.
I don’t mind Dark Citadel since only mogs are locked behind it.
I wasn’t too keen on them introducing several Season Journey steps that required grouping but I easily got around those too and finished it.
This dev team is pretty out of touch with the players so I would probably expect more of the same down the road.
Would you not be happier if they put more design thought into the multiplayer? Like surely if you already like playing this nonsense with friends it would be better if you were playing actual gameplay right?
Like I have some chill out games to play and chat with friends, but they’re still just difficult enough to require some basic amount of attention and engaging with the gameplay. It doesn’t seem like this game has any of that.
The #1 problem with multiplayer in this is that the MMO player sharding and the automatic loading between “zones” without an instanced loading screen prevents the game from being able to handle super fast zoomer builds that you have in other ARPGs, including d3… They need to let us just invite people into our games only with a player cap.
None of the d4 builds are even remotely fun compared to even d3 builds but my favorite builds are super fast zoomer builds which isn’t even possible. Pre-nerf evade eagle was the most fun I’ve had in d4.
Yeah. I would love to have an ARPG where there was content with genuine teamwork. I used to love WoW, but that’s a game that was primarily designed to be played in groups. The problem is ARPGs for the most part are built around the game being playable single player so when you group up a bunch of people all that design isn’t necessarily going to gel well. It can be fun to zip around blowing stuff up on your own, once you add 3 more people doing the same thing it just gets incomprehensible. And it’s hard to have content that requires teamwork when there aren’t any real roles. Everyone does the same things just in slightly different ways so it’s hard to design a boss that can be done alone that then suddenly needs teamwork in a group.
What is nonsense is your arrogant contempt for people who like to play the game in a different way than you. If you don’t like the game than you should find a game you do like. That is what a smart person would do. Yet here you are spewing your bile…
The game really should be designed around playing solo or with a small group. Pretty much like how dungeons work now. A giant overworld with a dozen players per instance isn’t really needed.
Bro honestly that will never happen because most players nowadays have to leave mid game due to real life stuff or can just play 1-2 hours a day so the progression between 7 players will always be diferent from each other because they play at diferent times.
Thats why MMORPGs are dead and no one plays them, except the unemployed that can play 12 hours straight and eat at the computer.
And that is a lifestyle that i dont want to experience again
Blizzard tried to follow the multiplayer open world trend like Ubisoft game. MTX also one of the factor as the purpose of cosmetic is to show off your costume to other players in the Open world.
The only reason to join a group is to get the broken group drop bonuses.
The game is overall worse when you group up.
There’s no synergy between classes and the game has become everyone one shot exploding the screen, so adding more people doesn’t accomplish anything; it only makes you feel less useful, individually.
Regardless, they’re going to shove it down your throat via the seasonal objectives to meet their internal “group play” metric for their yearly employee performance reviews. They need any low-hanging fruit they can get for this game, and that’s about as low-hanging as it gets.
