Diablo 4 / IV / IIII / Fore / Cope / Seethe

Byr said:

That's nice but there's literally zero incentive to do it. Pits don't reward better gear or anything, you don't get more XP from going to WT3 or 4 earlier as xp buffs cap at a 10 level difference. There's no incentive for the player to not take the safe, easy reward which of course players always do and constitutes the entire experience of Diablo 4. There's an utter and complete lack of risk vs reward in the game.

You also got the levels wrong for the WT3 capstone. You do it at 35 because that's when Sacred gear unlocks. It's also easy as fuck to do with tempers outscaling everything in early game.

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I just said when I do it. You said you wanted to game to push back. The game definitely pushes back.

Byr said:

If you have to grind for 50 hours before the game even pretends to fight back, wtf did you waste 50 hours on? You going to waste 50 hours on something that can't/doesn't fight back because way down at the other end of the road it will? You just have to sit there with a thumb up your ass while you plow through a game that lets you 1 shot everything without any sense of progression along the way. It's like facing a baby in a boxing match. Hey some day it will grow up and be able to punch back but you just have wait for years until it does.

Let's put it this way. What is the structural difference right now between Diablo 4 for the first 20 hours or so and a game where every mob has 1 hp and adds a 0 to the end of your damage every 5-10 levels? You get to feel 'powerful' and hit the feels seeing a big number float about their head but it doesn't matter because everything only has 1 hp anyway. That is somehow a satisfactory experience for you.

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You should’ve stopped at your first sentence. You just imaginationed an entire post And you’re angry about what exactly?

I have 200 hours into the game total. I started towards the end of Season 3.

My season 4 progression was leveling a Druid, farming gear, getting to 40+ Pits, and hating life at the bottom of the meta. So then I leveled a Necro but didn’t love the play style (although I will say farming gear for Necro was the easiest of all 3 classes by a LONG shot). Then I leveled a Barb and loved it, so started the gear farm, hit Pit 110, and realized the grind was too monotonous for me. And bricking 2 and 3 dots feels super punishing.

So, prob ~100 hours across 3 characters this season. Ironically, leveling them got me a spark and my first Uber unique.

Wildly low RNG is the worst part about this game. Leveling is really fun though.

Byr said:

I mean good for you I guess?

I played around 50 hours this league in hardcore, started as a Barb and leveled to 100. I grinded to 60 pits and killed normal bosses without ever worrying about gear, 1 shotting everything along the way. Nothing even pretended to fight back. I then grinded some gear because I wanted to do uber bosses. I grinded way too much because uber duriel didn't put up much of a fight. I ran him a bunch and farmed my shako. Then I did lillith and went to 100 pits not because there was a reason to but just because it's all there is in the game. It was overall a pretty pathetic experience with leveling and gear farming being the worst parts because of how brain dead it was, no reason to do it against high level mobs so you fight mobs that don't stand a chance instead ... like boxing against a baby.

Oh, I leveled a rogue in there too and it was some of the worst gaming I've ever done. You literally stand still while you shoot a basic attack which somehow scales to 1 shot everything too and seeks out enemies so you never need to move or do anything. Just stand still and hold down right click all the way to your Legendary Marksman temper for Crit Damage. It really showed me the depths of just how bad Diablo 4 is. It actively had a build where you didn't need to move or aim a skill to 1 shot a screen worth of enemies. To farm the best gear in the game in an optimal way, you could use a simple mouse macro and not have to worry in a mode where you can only die once. That's how dumbed down D4 is.

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Get a diary dude.

I can’t remember the last time I got 50 hours out of a game, much less 200.

Byr said:

If the only thing a game needs to do to keep you playing is let you 1 shot everything and not challenge you at any point, this definitely seems like a you problem. You clearly don't have high standards not to mention any standards at all.

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The “stuff to do” ceiling for Diablo is too low, and I’ve hit it, but you’re also being an autistic faggot.

Daidraco said:

I imagine they literally sat around in a circle jerk and talked about the expansion and said "Lets do something new and different!" and this bastardization of a Shaman or Witch Doctor is the best the came up with. These are people that can copy game concepts, and piece together small ideas - but it should surprise no one that their creative originality is in the fucking dumpster.


I watched it on Asmongold's channel when I was at the office. He pointed out shit that I didnt even notice, and.. yea.. It looks fucking incredible. Just that Witch/Necro they showed has several levels of strategy involved, and you dont even realize it when you're looking at the culmination of all of them together. Just a lot of depth, and I dont think thats going to be the regular Diablo audience by a long shot. If there is one thing we can give a golf clap to Diablo 4 for, its that their marketing team spent so fucking much money that even old people bought Diablo 4. So we can sure as fuck expect at least some of those people to be interested in POE 2.

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We're at a place where many major companies in Media and entertainment have a serious disconnect from their audiences. They are staffed with ideologues and activists, steeped in of-the-day social movements, and think that they are making content for groups with outsized voices magnified by social media and funded by organizations with overriding agendas of various sorts. Also, these are huge organizations themselves, profit-driven with multiple layers of middle and upper management who focus on the stock price and have watched the mobile space deliver outsized profits for little work to corporate structures grown unwieldy through years of M&A to keep shareholders happy.

In this intersection of creative bankruptcy, social justice activism, toxic virtue signaling, and hyper-predatory capitalism, someone figured out that if you strip out as much of the junk getting in the way of fun, people will play the game.

The most refreshing thing about the patch? No nerfs. This shows that there is real commitment to giving the players fun. Now, is it perfect? Hell no. Lots of people are complaining that there are things within the game that need to be addressed: Sorcs need this, Barbs are favored, Druids still need this, Rogues still need, XXX goes on and on but what that tells me is this: What was 6 weeks ago a dead game is now again alive.
Is Spirit Shaman Jaguar Warrior what people want? No Probably not. (Paladin/Sword and Board was reportedly the number one submitted question for every Dev Chat thing. Still not announced as coming.) Edit: They have steadily made the Heavens into neutral/bad guys over the years, in D4 the "Church" uses blood magic and burns people at the stake in a world full of actual demons. too Patriarchal/Western/Stale/Pale, I guess.

Are there still a number of fixes that need to go into the game? Hell yes, which and the number depending on who you ask. But what this shows is real engagement, the like that the game hasn't had in probably a year.

<Ron Paul It's happening.gif>

Argarth said:

^^ Granted, I'm having fun playing my Sorc and Druid (the two in most need of help by all accounts, Druid in particular). However, there's no getting away from the fact that class balance is still completely in the dumpster. The mid season patch doesn't address this at all, and is mostly just a few nice things drowned in a bunch of WTF minor dial twiddling.

It's not hard to find clear evidence/testing by people that understand the math, and how damage scaling works (AND how to explain it). Seems like some serious class/skill tree/paragon board reworks will be needed. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any evidence that Blizz is even remotely interested in doing anything, or even admitting there's a real problem.

So yeah, gameplay is fun, but I think I'm nearing the end for this season. Or I could just roll a Barb... nah, don't think I will =)

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"Class balance is completely in the dumpster"=there's a variance of about 30 levels at the highest end of the Pit between the lowest performing class/builds (Druid) and the highest performing class (currently Sorc with the immortal flameshield/fire bolt build but Barb and Necro have easier paths to second and third). All of the classes are able to do well in NMD and in the Open World/Helltides farming/Blood Maiden.

That won't stop the laments, though, which seemingly will always be with us: "Sorcerer is RUINED" cries the title of the RageGamingVideos: Diablo 4 - Sorcerer is Dead - New HUGE Patch Changes Breakdown - New Worst Class in Game! brings a tear to my eye thinking about EQ:

FYI, this was my firs time playing Sorc in retail but I died less playing Sorc than on my Barb or Necro; I have two Sorcs, rather than respec my Fire Sorc I just made another for the Blizzard/Frozen Orb Sorc. Once I committed to the Frozen Orb build, QoL was 1000% better.

I think I will work on pushing Pit for a while, and then tweak out the other two classes for their builds before the season ends. I still have some Paragon points to get from completing all the regions.