Worst aRPG in history

[Drusus-1643]

This is the best rant, you hit every point excellently. Hoping Blizzard starts to address these problems before season 1, but I find that unlikely because the entire dev team are console players

[Azael-11239]

Worst part, they’ll see this, laugh, and continue to ignore us.

[Offline-11131]

You’re absolutely right. Runes were fun as hell and gave you a reason to keep grinding, too. Enemies weren’t mechanically intensive, but in 2023, they really ought to be. Joe Shely and Joseph Piepiora have basically wiped their holes with the franchise and learned nothing from the garbage heap that Diablo 3 and (i dont even want to say it) Diablo Immortal were. If your game consists of “just keep grinding dungeons to max level to get better gear”, you’ve essentially made a slot machine with good graphics, and to the blizz fanboys riding the “Go make your own game” copium train? its a 70 dollar game that hasn’t delivered anything but “kill mobs, get gear”. I’m holding out hoping Season 1 is going to bring everything to the table that is missing (End-game ANYTHING, loot variety, build changing uniques/sets, challenging scenarios, interactive questing that isn’t a click-to-skip fest, definitely raids, and dungeons that actually have mechanics).

Also, on the topic of pvp? Why is it in the game?? Why isn’t it regulated by some sort of buff or gear to actually make it more than a gimmick? Sure, it makes sense that a higher level character isn’t easy for lower level characters to kill, but to just pop in at max level and completely own the zone makes it seem pretty pointless. The learning curve and skill factor just make it seem like it was an afterthought (again).

I will admit that graphically, its beautiful. It plays well and feels good to mow down enemies. The environments are nice to traverse (except for where mounts are involved, that’s also clunky as hell). It has so much potential to be something great. Mindlessly grinding 85-100 repeating dungeons is not a good time, and for a (minimum of) 70 dollars for the game, this absolutely is the worst ARPG to date. Bar none. I’d even say Anthem was more fun than this.

[TripSin-1727]

I wouldn’t even say the art is that good.

Compared to the absolute travesty that was Diablo 3, sure, it looks so much better.

But I find all the characters, enemies, skills, and their respective animations to be wholly underwhelming.

[Nirvana-12299]

Let’s be fair… it’s not the worst ARPG in history… Wolcen was pretty bad…

On the other hand, it is by far the worst ARPG to cost so much…

[Kampfkater-2902]

@Heartstopper-11246

If the mob is too close you can’t hit it with ranged attacks.

WoW Classic Hunter vibes

[ChrisPvp1982-1868]

@omnyohd-2135

let’s start with the only thing Diablo 4 did well: it looks really good. The artistic director, and his team, did a phenomenal work.

Aside from that every single game mechanic, or other aspect of the game is a miss. The game is so bad in it core, I wouldn’t let half of the poor choices Blizzard made slide. These kind of mystakes are not acceptable, even for a first game, from an indi company.
Blizzard is the father of aRPG genre and is the biggest behemoth in video game industry. Blizzard is the fallen king of aRPG, now in the boots of the challenger. And I can’t believe this is what we get.

Blizzard clearly spent every ressource they had in marketing. No care, no thinking and no money went in the developement of the game.
Everything in the game so far, was already existing in the Diablo/aRPG genre. It is ok, no need to reinvent the wheel. But it is low effort.
And every game mechanic is weaker than the game it originated from.

-Whispers are bounties.

-NMD are horrible rifts, I can’t put it on the same level as Grifts.

-Skill tree is a scuffed hybridation of D2 and D3. D2 was more rigid, but you had spell synergies, offering you more customization.
D3 was straight forward. No skill points, no tree. Every spell had multiple iterations and it offers infinitly more customization than d4

-The open world is, hands down, the worst open world I’ve seen in history. First of all: you can’t have an open world in any aRPG unless you transform it into a reflex game. That is what New World do, with it hybridation. It is and MMO with aRPG elements. Diablo 4 is an aRPG with “MMO” elements.
If you give the opportunity to group people in open world content, it will instantly trivialize the encounter into a loot pinata. There is NO work around it.
It is what it is.

-In 2023 you offer a game with no crafting. In D3, even if it wasn’t fun at all. White and blue items still had utility. Due to crafting, even in end-game.
You had to farm inventories of whites and blues to have their reagents for crafts. In diablo 4, white and blue tier of items are just useless pixels with only one purpose: visual noize.

-Uber Lilith is so overtune. It is something that have nothing to do with anything else in the game, gameplay wise. It feels like 2 tiers of difficulty and one entire powering up mechanic, is missing from the game, before we have to tackle her.

-Mounts are the worst “innovation” in the game. So far the open world is Diablo 3 adventure. You just put really large empty, dull, zones in between activities.
And you force unecessary long, painful, horse rides.
First of all: why are barricades a thing. If you have an open world to provide us with a mount. Why whould you put barricades all around the map, forcing us to dismount?
Second: Mounts just exacerbate one of the worst thing in the game: PATHING. Characters and mob pathing are the worst I have witness since, I don’t know,
early 2000. It is clear the only reason we can not sprint with our mount in town, is because you have the worst pathing in history. Characters and mounts
get tangled in every single map corner, every single branch on the floor, every rock, and the smallest details. You can be in the open world, click upwards, if there is a small branch on your path, your character will freeze, facing invisible walls. The pathing isn’t smart enough to make my character take A SINGLE step aside any obstacle. If I’m on a bridge, 2m from the exit and click to the right of the bridge, my character will try to make one with the bridge walls.
This leads to very fun interractions with mobs. If the density is too high, it makes mob useless. They will bump into each other with no room to move, because of pathing. Multiple times I had mob, running around me like crazy, Benny Hill fashion. And the reason why is obvious: The pathing is so bad, sometimes a mob, in your melee range, won’t find any correct path to get to you, so he will run around you trying to reach you. That’s hillarious.

Now I discuss the uninspired and useless mechanics of this game, let’s talk about the real problems: Level scaling and loot. Level scaling is the laziest game design choice. You have no thinking to put in zone design and mob scaling, because everything will scale to the player “powerlevel”. It only makes 3 people in the world happy. The 3 guys who want to play with their lowest level friend, still hitting mobs of their level. It is idiotic. The people you try to please, won’t play the game more than 40 hours, not even finishing the campaign. In every aRPG, you can play with your low level friend. If these people can’t take 2 or 3 hours to play with their friends, because the content won’t be relevant to them, it’s their problem, poor friends.
People are already only playing 70s. High level characters are asking for XP boosts form low level characters, because they will kill faster than them.

Loot. Oh boy. I need to address few things firsts. I do not care about the “m’member” old heads. They think Diablo 4 is going back to the “old school arpg”. No it is not. Here is some history for you: Diablo is the franchise who gave birth to aRPGs. They were taking a different path from the old school RPG. It was the first free roaming game, rpg were mostly turn by turn, FAST PACED rpg with a gaming loop designed around REPLAYABILITY and PROCEDURAL GENERATION.
It is a dynamic RPG LITE, stripping most of the rpg elements out. Like lore. To focus on two things, slaying huge quantity of monster and procedural loot.
In David Brevik words, living god, creator of Diablo, aRPG genre and shooter looters genre: “I wasn’t a lore guy. I was more about loot and slaying monsters.”
Diablo invented loot explosions, diablo was the first game to shower you in loot, diablo invented high density monsters, diablo invented powercreep, diablo introduced freaking MAGIC FIND in video game landscape.
You “m’member berries” claiming diablo was a slow pace aRPG, not throwing loot at you, are just wet socks rewritting history. I advice you to do a single countess run in D2 or D2r. Diablo 4 Tier 90+ plays and feels like a chests or pots run.

So HOW in the seven hell, you, Blizzard, can make such a painful loot loop. Doing T90+ NMD I was mostly looting ilevel from 600 to 750. Why?
There is no target farming. No nothing. If you want to farm, the only option you have is to run like a headless chicken, slaying monsters, without any thoughts.
You made sure to kill every fun possible, you can’t even target farm uniques from scuff Kadala.
Here is the only two mechanics at work considering loot: Your loot table with expends with your character level. You have higher chances to drop sacred and ancestral items in NMD. And that is IT.
You are not rewarded with better loot facing “end-game” content. NMD affixes aren’t weighted, you have no reason to run hard affixes. I can already tell you right now, what the meta will be: People will run the easiest content available, the fastest way possible. Because it’s the only thing you have to do. Farm a lot of items to have a chance of an upgrade. So everyone will be running low t10 with walkspeed builds. And from time to time, they will push to get their name on the ladder.

Now let’s talk about NMD. They are just tedious, painful and unfun. It is the first time I actually feel physical pain, playing a video game.
The amount of CC in the game is out the roof. I had no trouble with it, playing whilwind or hota barb with 100% unstoppable uptime. But I would not want to play anything aside a 100% unstoppable uptime build. That’s what you do. In a game with almost no build diversity. You will force people to the same builds just with the sheer amount of CC.
Every mobs naturaly have a CC form. From charges, to sweap, to impales or corpse explosion. You name it. If you add NMD affixes on top of that. I regulary come by pack of
monsters with 6 forms of CC. 6. Almost every pack in the game can stunlock you for ever.

Now, most of your affixes aren’t working at all.

Let’s start with Suppressor Aura. It is an aura I should not have felt at all. What this aura does: It prevent any oncoming damage from outside the bubble.
Being a 100% melee build. This aura should be nothing to me. Yet it was the most annoying. For some reason, this aura makes every monsters in it more tanky.
Playing a whirlwind build, the game clip the damage of whilwind from it cast position. Meaning, for some reasons, if you cast whirlwind outside of a suppressor aura, you will deal NO DAMAGE. Good job, you are officially doing RANGE damage as a whirlwind barbarian.
You have affixes like “volcanic”. Let read it together. Volcanic affix: “While in combat, gouts of flame periodically erupt near players”. Now let me pitch you how it works ingame: It have 100% uptime procs in and out of combat, as soon as you step into the dungeon. Gouts of flame erupts from YOUR character, not monsters. Lmao, I don’t even know how people let so much things slide with Blizzard.
Ressource burn affix is a no go for every build using ressource.
Cold enchanted is a no go for every build without 100% unstoppable.
Fire enchanted, past T80 is a no go for every melee build. You can’t go near this monsters. I had 3 fire enchanted elites, stacked, going near them was enough to kill my 95% damage reduction character.
I don’t even need to talk about stormbane or lighning storm affixes. Just their name alone will struck fear and PTSD to everyone who step in T80+. Kudo to the bubble of lightning storm, it can proc off map limits.
And in general, every single affix in NMD is not difficult, or fun, just painful. It goes against the gaming loop, and the gameplay of aRPGs. Because on top of that, every mobs have some corpse explosion interaction. Causing mini bumps and damage, also being CCs.
Between Fire enchanted, Death pulse, Stormbane’s wrath and all the corpse explosions. If I’m in a NMD with spiders of drown zombies, here is the gameplay as a whirlwind barbarian: You go to melee, have your whirlwind proc, every mob are pulled toward you, you kill them dodging death pulses, now you have to dodge the corpse explosions, somehow the corpse explosion make death pulse reproc, now you have 20 spiders on you, they all get instant os by your whirlwind, and you have yet another pool of aoe to dodge. In the end I was one shotting mobs in one go standing waiting for 4 to 5 second for everything to “explode”. Then I can proceed with the rest of my dungeons. Everything is downtime, waiting for aoe to spawn, dodging a rock… Lmao.

And there is a huge bias with difficulty. A lost of people do not understand what an aRPG is. It is not a genre that attract a lot of people. Arpg aren’t difficult, and you bypass the difficulty by gearing up. That’s it. The only way an aRPG will survive, is with a good gaming loop. If your gaming loop is slaying random mobs in a painful way, then the game is doom. I and aRPG enjoyers can play the same game for decades without upgrades.
Contrary to what happen on screen in an aRPG. They are almost a relaxing game. With a zen flow to it. I can play most of my aRPG one handed. Wich lead to my
next point. You totally miss the vision of aRPG. Nowaday, modern aRPG are more about passive damage and chain reactions. You do one action, that action triggers some damage and what not. Or you have passive damages, like auras or minions. Even if I tend to be more of an active gameplay enjoyer. I can’t be blind to the fact that I have read numerous posts on forums like PoE or Torchlight. Disable people or some of us having carpal tunnel syndrome. They were delighted to have a great game to play with the lowest imputs possible. These builds have a reason to be in video game, they are fun and enjoyable. There is no righteous fire, there is no spellchain or spellcascade. There is noting close to something like D2 fist of heaven.

In the end, we all are here on our free time. Sitting on our posterior, in chair, moving our foreharm. There is no difficulty to it. Sure people can spend time and invest in improving their skill. But there still won’t be any effort or difficulty. If you want to invest yourself in a challenge, I strongly advice developing a real life skill. Difficulty is an illusion. The difficulty in an aRPG IS to align the planets, and loot the prefect affixes with godrolls. GG items.
This is the first time in diablo franchise, I have access to “endgame”, last difficulty tier on day 2. Maybe I improved, but I don’t think so.

I could write another 2000 lines about QoL. But to be short. There is none. It contributes a lot to the feeling of pain, playing diablo 4. It is on parwith 1980 video games. This game is austere in every way possible. It can’t compete with pong at the moment.

At last. What is up with the bluepill? In 30 years technology only did one thing: reducing the cost of producing a game. It is cheaper than ever to create a video game, and you can now sell it to millions of people, when back then, a game had 10 000 players audiance. But Blizzard spent all of his budget in two things: Marketing and the Cash shop. Cash shop is accessible from the loggin screen. It is also receiving the most attention from Blizzard. With new skins release daily. Now if my game come out, and there is already a cash shop with daily release of skins. It better be 10/10 perfect game, polished to the last line of code, without a bug. Guess what. It isn’t.
In it state diablo 4 have not, and had not, the luxury to waste any ressource on ANYTHING aside developping the game.

Now the marketing. Oh, boy. If you spent any money on the game, you wouldn’t have to push it so hard onto people. There was more budget in Megan Fox brest make-up than in diablo 4. Major stars from all around the world. Kpop, hollywood and whatnot. You also put every single streamer with more than 300 viewers on your payroll. That is insanity. There is not a single media out there free to speak about your game. You paid them all. Why do you waste so much money to control what is said about your game, when you would have only good reviews if you used this money to make the game…

Preach

Ignore all the white knight kids

[ThirtySilver-11621]

Yet, here you are.

I cannot remember the last time I wrote a book after not liking something so much lol

[Hypertrophy-3111]

@BlackMind-11792

That is a very untrue statement in todays world of technology and streamers. They also released two betas and a server slam

and those Betas and Server slam only showed a small portion of the game. Not enough to realise its major flaws. Blizz knew what they were doing.

[omnyohd-2135]

@ThirtySilver-11621

Yet, here you are.

I cannot remember the last time I wrote a book after not liking something so much lol

You should try it. I see many benefits. I’ll read you.

[Heartstopper-11246]

That was honestly what it reminded me of when it happened.

[Cimmerian-1437]

@omnyohd-2135

let’s start with the only thing Diablo 4 did well: it looks really good. The artistic director, and his team, did a phenomenal work.

With this I agree… it’s a beautiful game.

@omnyohd-2135

Aside from that every single game mechanic, or other aspect of the game is a miss. bla bla bla

There are so many aspects of the game that I love, I don’t know where to start. The side quests! Let’s start there. I listen to each mission brief, look at the npc in close up, and have enjoyed most of the missions as the side quest story unfolded. I especially liked the Backwater quests.
The “endgame loop” of farming Nightmare Dungeons to level up your sigils. Nightmare Dungeons so far have been engaging, and far more interesting than your average PoE map. Admittedly, I have not progressed into high levels yet, as I have spent most of my game time the last couple of weeks leveling each toon, and exploring the great wide open. The Lilith shrine hunt was my favourite part of this, somewhat disappointed to know that soon they will be revealed account wide, and I won’t be able to level in this hunt again. I got my Druid from 1 to 38ish just running around and grabbing shrines.

There is really only one mechanic I don’t really like the current iteration of. World Bosses/Strongholds/Legion events. We should have the choice upon entering the arena to do it in group or solo. Just a simple pop-up window, check your choice, and enter.

@omnyohd-2135

Blizzard clearly spent every resource they had in marketing. No care, no thinking and no money went in the development of the game.
Everything in the game so far, was already existing in the Diablo/aRPG genre. It is ok, no need to reinvent the wheel. But it is low effort.
And every game mechanic is weaker than the game it originated from.

-Whispers are bounties.

But, way more fun, way more diversified, and usually take far less time.

@omnyohd-2135

-NMD are horrible rifts, I can’t put it on the same level as Grifts.

I quite like Nightmare Dungeons. I am the target market.

@omnyohd-2135

-Skill tree is a scuffed hybridization of D2 and D3. D2 was more rigid, but you had spell synergies, offering you more customization.
D3 was straight forward. No skill points, no tree. Every spell had multiple iterations and it offers infinitely more customization than d4.

I played Diablo, the first one, when it came out. Loved it. Played it for days at a time. Diablo II came out. I hated a LOT of things about it, but played through the story just to follow the lore. So, I really can’t speak much to this one, except to say I bought and tried D2R, and still hated it.

I really liked D3, and played it right up until I got hooked on PoE.

There is a LOT I love about PoE. The map system is not one of them. NMDs are way more fun.

@omnyohd-2135

-The open world is, hands down, the worst open world I’ve seen in history. First of all: you can’t have an open world in any aRPG unless you transform it into a reflex game. That is what New World did, with it hybridization. It is and MMO with aRPG elements. Diablo 4 is an aRPG with “MMO” elements.

I’ve tried a few MMOs… not my thing. D4 has some in it, and those are the mechanics I like the least. The open world however, is AWESOME! I think it really adds to the immersion of the game that you need to travel to dungeons, you need to explore the world for character progression, and you need to stop a while and listen to get the lore.

@omnyohd-2135

If you give the opportunity to group people in open world content, it will instantly trivialize the encounter into a loot pinata. There is NO work around it.
It is what it is.

-In 2023 you offer a game with no crafting. In D3, even if it wasn’t fun at all. White and blue items still had utility. Due to crafting, even in end-game.
You had to farm inventories of whites and blues to have their reagents for crafts. In diablo 4, white and blue tier of items are just useless pixels with only one purpose: visual noize.

Fair point. Not one that I particularly care one way or another about. But fair point.

@omnyohd-2135

-Uber Lilith is so overtuned. It is something that has nothing to do with anything else in the game, gameplay wise. It feels like 2 tiers of difficulty and one entire powering up mechanic, is missing from the game, before we have to tackle her.

Haven’t made it to her yet, so can’t speak to this.

@omnyohd-2135

-Mounts are the worst “innovation” in the game. So far the open world is Diablo 3 adventure. You just put really large empty, dull, zones in between activities.
And you force unnecessary long, painful, horse rides.

Can you show us where on the doll the horse hurt you?

@omnyohd-2135

First of all: why are barricades a thing? If you have an open world to provide us with a mount, why would you put barricades all around the map, forcing us to dismount?
Second: Mounts just exacerbate one of the worst things in the game: PATHING. Characters and mob pathing are the worst I have witnessed since, I don’t know, early 2000. It is clear the only reason we can not sprint with our mount in town, is because you have the worst pathing in history. Characters and mounts get tangled in every single map corner, every single branch on the floor, every rock, and the smallest details. You can be in the open world, click upwards, if there is a small branch on your path, your character will freeze, facing invisible walls. The pathing isn’t smart enough to make my character take A SINGLE step around any obstacle. If I’m on a bridge, 2m from the exit and click to the right of the bridge, my character will try to make out with the bridge walls.
This leads to very fun interactions with mobs. If the density is too high, it makes mobs useless. They will bump into each other with no room to move, because of pathing. Multiple times I had mobs running around me like crazy, Benny Hill fashion. And the reason why is obvious: The pathing is so bad, sometimes a mob, in your melee range, won’t find any correct path to get to you, so he will run around you trying to reach you. That’s hilarious.

Hilarious indeed. Enjoy the small pleasures, my friend. If everything was perfect, these things wouldn’t be there to amuse you.

@omnyohd-2135

Now that I have discussed the uninspired and useless mechanics of this game, let’s talk about the real problems: Level scaling and loot. Level scaling is the laziest game design choice. You have no thinking to put in zone design and mob scaling, because everything will scale to the player’s “powerlevel”. It only makes 4 people in the world happy. The 3 guys who want to play with their lowest level friend, still hitting mobs of their level, and this Cimmerian guy. It is idiotic. The people you try to please, won’t play the game more than 40 hours, not even finishing the campaign.

And yet, here you are, having put in hundreds of hours in a couple of weeks, to denigrate every.single.problem.you found.

@omnyohd-2135

In every aRPG, you can play with your low level friend. If these people can’t take 2 or 3 hours to play with their friends, because the content won’t be relevant to them, it’s their problem, poor friends.
People are already only playing 70s. High level characters are asking for XP boosts from low level characters, because they will kill faster than them.

Absolutely not at all, in my experience. I have been asked to join parties, several times, and each time it has been with roughly equivalent level players.

@omnyohd-2135

Loot. Oh boy. I need to address a few things first. I do not care about the “m’member” old heads. They think Diablo 4 is going back to the “old school arpg”. No it is not. Here is some history for you: Diablo is the franchise which gave birth to aRPGs. They were taking a different path from the old school RPG. It was the first free roaming game, rpg were mostly turn by turn, FAST PACED rpg with a gaming loop designed around REPLAYABILITY and PROCEDURAL GENERATION.
It is a dynamic RPG LITE, stripping most of the rpg elements out. Like lore. To focus on two things, slaying huge quantity of monster and procedural loot.
In David Brevik words, living god, creator of Diablo, aRPG genre and shooter looters genre: “I wasn’t a lore guy. I was more about loot and slaying monsters.”
Diablo invented loot explosions, diablo was the first game to shower you in loot, diablo invented high density monsters, diablo invented powercreep, diablo introduced freaking MAGIC FIND in video game landscape.
You “m’member berries” claiming diablo was a slow pace aRPG, not throwing loot at you, are just wet socks rewriting history. I advice you to do a single countess run in D2 or D2r. Diablo 4 Tier 90+ plays and feels like a chests or pots run.

Most of the above is applicable to Diablo II. Diablo itself, the 1996 one, is the one I have always wanted a successor to. D4 is it. I am not, nor have ever been, a Diablo II fan. This is the disconnect between us.

@omnyohd-2135

So HOW in the seven hell, you, Blizzard, can make such a painful loot loop. Doing T90+ NMD I was mostly looting ilevel from 600 to 750. Why?
There is no target farming. No nothing. If you want to farm, the only option you have is to run like a headless chicken, slaying monsters, without any thoughts.
You made sure to kill every fun possible, you can’t even target farm uniques from scuff Kadala.

Target farming. Now that is UNfun. I hope this is never implemented.

@omnyohd-2135

Here is the only two mechanics at work considering loot: Your loot table with expends with your character level. You have higher chances to drop sacred and ancestral items in NMD. And that is IT.

As it should be.

@omnyohd-2135

You are not rewarded with better loot facing “end-game” content. NMD affixes aren’t weighted, you have no reason to run hard affixes. I can already tell you right now, what the meta will be: People will run the easiest content available, the fastest way possible. Because it’s the only thing you have to do. Farm a lot of items to have a chance of an upgrade. So everyone will be running low t10 with walkspeed builds. And from time to time, they will push to get their name on the ladder.

And this is a prtoblem, why?

@omnyohd-2135

Now let’s talk about NMD. They are just tedious, painful and unfun. It is the first time I actually feel physical pain, playing a video game.

So quickly you have forgotten the horse. It has not forgotten you.

@omnyohd-2135

The amount of CC in the game is through the ceiling. I had no trouble with it, playing whirlwind or hota barb with 100% unstoppable uptime. But I would not want to play anything aside a 100% unstoppable uptime build. That’s what you do. In a game with almost no build diversity. You will force people to the same builds just with the sheer amount of CC.
Every mob naturally has a CC form. From charges, to sweep, to impales or corpse explosion. You name it. If you add NMD affixes on top of that… I regularly come by packs of monsters with 6 forms of CC. 6. Almost every pack in the game can stunlock you for ever.
Now, most of your aspects aren’t working at all.

Forever is a mighty long time, Ponyboy.

@omnyohd-2135

Let’s start with Suppressor Aura. It is an aura I should not have felt at all. What this aura does: It prevents any incoming damage from outside the bubble.
Being a 100% melee build, this aura should be nothing to me. Yet it was the most annoying. For some reason, this aura makes every monster in it more tanky.
Playing a whirlwind build, the game clips the damage of whirlwind from its cast position. Meaning, for some reason, if you cast whirlwind outside of a suppressor aura, you will deal NO DAMAGE. Good job, you are officially doing RANGE damage as a whirlwind barbarian.
You have affixes like “volcanic”. Let read it together. Volcanic affix: “While in combat, gouts of flame periodically erupt near players”. Now let me pitch you how it works ingame: It has 100% uptime procs in and out of combat, as soon as you step into the dungeon. Gouts of flame erupts from YOUR character, not monsters. Lmao, I don’t even know how people let so much things slide with Blizzard.
Resource burn affix is a no go for every build using resource.
Cold enchanted is a no go for every build without 100% unstoppable.
Fire enchanted, past T80 is a no go for every melee build. You can’t go near this monsters. I had 3 fire enchanted elites, stacked, going near them was enough to kill my 95% damage reduction character.
I don’t even need to talk about stormbane or lightning storm affixes. Just their name alone will strike fear and PTSD into everyone who steps into T80+. Kudos to the bubble of lightning storm, it can proc off map limits.
And in general, every single affix in NMD is not difficult, or fun, just painful. It goes against the gaming loop, and the gameplay of aRPGs. Because on top of that, every mob has some corpse explosion interaction. Causing mini bumps and damage, also being CCs.
Between Fire enchanted, Death pulse, Stormbane’s wrath and all the corpse explosions. If I’m in a NMD with spiders or drowned zombies, here is the gameplay as a whirlwind barbarian: You go to melee, have your whirlwind proc, every mob is pulled toward you, you kill them dodging death pulses, now you have to dodge the corpse explosions, somehow the corpse explosion make death pulse reproc, now you have 20 spiders on you, they all get instant os by your whirlwind, and you have yet another pool of aoe to dodge. In the end I was one shotting mobs in one go standing waiting for 4 to 5 second for everything to “explode”. Then I can proceed with the rest of my dungeons. Everything is downtime, waiting for aoe to spawn, dodging a rock… Lmao.

And there is a huge bias with difficulty. A lot of people do not understand what an aRPG is. It is not a genre that attracts a lot of people. Arpgs aren’t difficult, and you bypass the difficulty by gearing up. That’s it. The only way an aRPG will survive, is with a good gaming loop. If your gaming loop is slaying random mobs in a painful way, then the game is doomed. I and aRPG enjoyers can play the same game for decades without upgrades.
Contrary to what happen on screen in an aRPG. They are almost a relaxing game. With a zen flow to it. I can play most of my aRPG one handed. Wich lead to my
next point. You totally miss the vision of aRPG. Nowaday, modern aRPG are more about passive damage and chain reactions. You do one action, that action triggers some damage and what not. Or you have passive damages, like auras or minions. Even if I tend to be more of an active gameplay enjoyer. I can’t be blind to the fact that I have read numerous posts on forums like PoE or Torchlight. Disable people or some of us having carpal tunnel syndrome. They were delighted to have a great game to play with the lowest imputs possible. These builds have a reason to be in video game, they are fun and enjoyable. There is no righteous fire, there is no spellchain or spellcascade. There is noting close to something like D2 fist of heaven.

In the end, we all are here on our free time. Sitting on our posterior, in chair, moving our foreharm. There is no difficulty to it. Sure people can spend time and invest in improving their skill. But there still won’t be any effort or difficulty. If you want to invest yourself in a challenge, I strongly advice developing a real life skill. Difficulty is an illusion. The difficulty in an aRPG IS to align the planets, and loot the prefect affixes with godrolls. GG items.
This is the first time in diablo franchise, I have access to “endgame”, last difficulty tier on day 2. Maybe I improved, but I don’t think so.

I could write another 2000 lines about QoL. But to be short. There is none. It contributes a lot to the feeling of pain, playing diablo 4. It is on parwith 1980 video games. This game is austere in every way possible. It can’t compete with pong at the moment.

At last. What is up with the bluepill? In 30 years technology only did one thing: reducing the cost of producing a game. It is cheaper than ever to create a video game, and you can now sell it to millions of people, when back then, a game had 10 000 players audiance. But Blizzard spent all of his budget in two things: Marketing and the Cash shop. Cash shop is accessible from the loggin screen. It is also receiving the most attention from Blizzard. With new skins release daily. Now if my game come out, and there is already a cash shop with daily release of skins. It better be 10/10 perfect game, polished to the last line of code, without a bug. Guess what. It isn’t.
In it state diablo 4 have not, and had not, the luxury to waste any ressource on ANYTHING aside developping the game.

Now the marketing. Oh, boy. If you spent any money on the game, you wouldn’t have to push it so hard onto people. There was more budget in Megan Fox brest make-up than in diablo 4. Major stars from all around the world. Kpop, hollywood and whatnot. You also put every single streamer with more than 300 viewers on your payroll. That is insanity. There is not a single media out there free to speak about your game. You paid them all. Why do you waste so much money to control what is said about your game, when you would have only good reviews if you used this money to make the game…

The rest of that is your opinion and experience, and seems quite legit. Thanks for sharing.

[PALINGMAN-2929]

@omnyohd-2135

Now let’s talk about NMD. They are just tedious, painful and unfun. It is the first time I actually feel physical pain, playing a video game.

Stop. Put the damn game down. Stop playing it. Get a life.

[omnyohd-2135]

@Cimmerian-1437

Can you show us where on the doll the horse hurt you?

I don’t know, how big is the doll? This freaking hosre did me everywhere. Ahah.

@Cimmerian-1437

Forever is a mighty long time, Ponyboy.

True, you’ll be stunlock 25 to 30 seconds before dying. So I guess it is not forever. It last as long as you have hit points.

@PALINGMAN-2929

Stop. Put the damn game down. Stop playing it. Get a life.

I did all of that, before posting. Ty for your care.

[Tazzy-1831]

Go. Play. Another. Game.

[omnyohd-2135]

What.Is.The.Point.Of.Your.comment?

That’s what I did. I gave the game a fair try, leveling 1 class to 100, other to 25.

I still can post a thread about the game after that.

[Tazzy-1831]

I didn’t even read all you wrote when I wrote that comment I just thought it was another whiny forum crybaby.

But then I actually did read your whole post and agree with you quite a bit actually. But I was too lazy to delete my original comment lol

[Oxymoron-21342]

On god! I am so happy someone took the time to carefully explain what most of us have been thinking.Thank you for this statement.

[Mythos-1489]

It’s pretty bad. I think wolcen would be more enjoyable. I still think d3 at launch holds the crown though.

[Mystix-1551]

@DirtyMick-1630

I just dont like how everything revolves around status effects. Maybe its just a druid thing, but everything seems to be tied to some form of CC. All the damage increases or crit bonuses are all “if the enemy has x status on them”. Its a lazy way to force you to use your abilities in certain orders.

I’m pretty sure every class is this way.

Not only does it force you to use abilities in a certain order, but it also pigeon holes EVERY build to essentially be the same. Not only do we have the generator/spender combo, but you are forced into particular stats on the gear no matter what. Even worse, we can’t even see all the possible rolls for the gear, and rerolling a stat in this game is nearly impossible given the extreme gold price.