Diablo IV

[Zlaja]

Who actually thought they would add another world tier for free?

Well, what I didn't expect was for the new cosmetics that you get from the battle pass to look the same on all classes. Fucking gay!

 

[KIss My Ass]

Who actually thought they would add another world tier for free?

Well, what I didn't expect was for the new cosmetics that you get from the battle pass to look the same on all classes. Fucking gay!

Best be a lot of female armor then. I want nothing covering up my arse and teets. Male characters will just have to live with it.

Also the in-game shop is there for exclusive character cosmetics. I recommend checking it out.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The Blorp Bloop has affected Sanctuary, and now you must fight the Dorgolons to collect the missing Twerbles and restore the Yigyams.

Spoiler

 

[KIss My Ass]

Also lol @ asking for world tier 5 already when the game is only a month old. There is probably less that 1% of the playerbase that has reached lvl 100.

 

[Modron]

But surely some people have no lifed it to the tune of hundreds of hours already?

 

[KIss My Ass]

I have hundreds of hours in it and I'm only lvl 66. And I've only made ONE character so far. Pretty ridiculous. Tbf I slacked off pretty hard on the game over my 4 day weekend and didn't play much. I probably could have been lvl 70 by now if I took advantage of the holiday weekend.

 

[Arbiter]

Is Blizzard planning to address the horrible level scaling?

 

[KIss My Ass]

Is Blizzard planning to address the horrible level scaling?

The level scaling being a problem has been proven to be a big nothingburger. 100% myth. It's only annoying at lower levels when you don't know what you're doing. The game gives you all the tools you need to overcome the scaling and kick ass.

Don't get me wrong the game has problems but level scaling ain't one of them.

 

[Reinhardt]

"BUT WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THIS NEW WAVE OF CORRUPTION?!"
varshan the consumed?

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Is Blizzard planning to address the horrible level scaling?

The level scaling being a problem has been proven to be a big nothingburger. 100% myth. It's only annoying at lower levels when you don't know what you're doing. The game gives you all the tools you need to overcome the scaling and kick ass.

Don't get me wrong the game has problems but level scaling ain't one of them.

You're 100% correct on this.

Don't get me wrong, I think there should be zones or mechanics with static levels that would allow a player to farm items and levels if they're struggling. Maybe early-game maps or instances. It's really dumb that maps are only introduced once you've completed the game and the level-scaling reeks of lazy game design overall. There are a myriad of reasons that you might be behind the curve-- shitty drops, experimental build that doesn't work out, etc.

But the level scaling being a huge problem is largely overblown. Especially by streamers/influencers I.E. professional crybabies who used XP farming exploits to rocket themselves to maxlevel with no regard for paragon XP or attaining gear that a normal player would acquire throughout a normal playthrough. People who are bad at the game also want to blame level-scaling for eating shit but this isn't Oblivion where you can become useless in combat due to spending 10 levels bartering. Your build is bad or your gear is bad if you can't take down things your own level.

I'd go as far as to say that the level scaling can even be satisfying in D4 when you've broken the power curve, and the you're suddenly 1-shotting bosses your own level after spending time taking down maps that are 10-15 level higher than you are. Putting rubber to the road and having methods to demonstrate the strength of your build and gear is what ARPGs are all about- layers of build optimization- and annihilating level-scaled monsters effortlessly that online criers are whining about is part of that appeal. God bless D4 level scaling, in fact.

 

[Zeriel]

I'm having a harder and harder time playing this lol. I keep telling myself "ight I'm starting this beast up and doing some grinding" and I log in, and then I just sit at the character screen for hours while I browse codex. Maybe I should go back to that Aliens game.

Did I not fucking call it? Like clockwork. Once people get to endgame they realize there is no game. It's just a hollow edifice put out to make a quarterly profit.

All ARPGs and MMOs are like that.

News at 11.

Nah, they really aren't. I'm really tired of this apologism. Diablo 4 is massively lacking by this measure; Diablo 3 was much better on release, to say nothing of games like Path of Exile. Yeah, sure, it's a new game, it will get better over time, but that really shouldn't be an excuse for having a basic end-game that lasts longer than 30-50 hours when you're in the realm of selling through 600m in profits in the first week. That's the big leagues. It's like saying it's fine for Ford to release a car where the brakes don't work because the next edition of the car will have them. You're getting graded on the competition, not what your mother thinks about you.

Additionally, from a financial perspective this is also playing with fire. It's much easier to maintain interest in a game (and hence financial viability when we are talking a "live service game") from the get-go than to try and claw it back over time once people have already decided your game has a reputation as an empty shell. Many publishers just give up after a few months if the initial backlash is too severe, even if the game itself is a technical, spreadsheet-level success. Just look at Anthem. All that talk of we are in it for the long haul, we'll fix it, then they cut line and parachuted out at the exec level once it became clear it wasn't going to be a quick turn around. The amount of effort to make a flawed game good enough to please the audience post-launch is not 1.5x more than making it good originally, it's more like 5-10x, because you are fighting against the decisions and perception people have already committed to.

I agree on almost all of your points, I am not defending Diablo, but in my experience all of the ARPGs have the same problems once you clear the campaign and get to max lvl and then the loot hunt treadmill starts. Its pointless tbh.

Maybe I'm alone but I think they jumped the gun in increasing XP for Nightmare dungeons. I keep bringing up D2, mostly because I think outside of not having rollable maps I think it's the height of the genre, but you were most likely not getting to max level in D2.

The race to max level is definitely a common thing in MMOs, and the game would need much better itemization to support that after hitting level 100, but I was surprised to see getting L100 was an expectation for so many people in the first place.

Eh, while it does speed up the grind, the problem is the grind is pointless. You essentially reach most of your max gear as soon as you hit W4, and you are gaining those paragon stats to... do what? All nightmare dungeons are basically easy unless you are doing ones 50 levels above you and get one shot, and in that case you're not getting one shot by an intentional mechanic like lasers in D3 you can dodge, just boring, dumb stats.

I know a lot of people hate D3 here, but even Inferno was better than this. There was a meaningful progression there. You were getting one shot because your gear wasn't up to snuff, and each act in Inferno represented a further milestone in your progress. Each act had higher tier gear, etc. Here there's... nothing. None of that. Killing Uber Lilith, killing a monster of my same level outside of a nightmare dungeon, killing one in a level 150 nightmare dungeon, it's all the same. They all drop the same gear, and are all outside of Uber Lilith's one shot mechanics basically the same fight/thing.

It's blatantly obvious they ran out of time and polished up an alpha product as much as they could and threw it out. I do think the structure of this game's development hurt it more in this regard, though. Greater Rifts had lots of designed levels to draw on to reuse. Every dungeon & area in D4 on the other hand is... for whatever reason... very generic. There's nothing memorable, nothing that calls back to the campaign, just an endlessly repeating series of corridors that all look the same interspersed with THROW 2 LEVERS, BRING 3 BLOODSTONES, okay your numbers increased by 1%, do it again.

I should say here I AM the target audience of this kind of game. I actually find grinding fun, in the main. When I spend a year or so without an autistic grinder/semi-mmo-style game I get the itch to play one. But there needs to be something. Some sort of subtle change. Your skills get more aoe. You proc lightning storms. You get multiple projectiles. Whatever. Different evolutions in gameplay as you grind. This game honestly reminds me of mobile games with auto battlers in that sense, it's very basic and has pretty graphics and high production values, but there's nothing behind the facade. If the kind of person who enjoys autistically grinding finds your game pointless and dumb, you have a problem.

 

[Zeriel]

Watching the season 1 announcement stream on quin's channel

truevials: you can figure it out for yourself how the season is going to be when they talked about the season mechanic for 3 mins and battle pass 27 mins and going!

(new blood knight class for Diablo Immortal)

season details: https://diablo4.blizzard.com/en-us/season

Yeah, that's not nearly enough to fix the game for me at this point. Guess I'm going to have to wait a year for the first expansion or something to see if they have the capability to fix this or are in "it's fine" mode.

 

[Yosharian]

Yikes this doesn't seem like a very interesting addition to the game...

And still no gem tab which seems to be the most in-demand feature?

Oh dear Blizzard, oh dear

 

[Zeriel]

Yikes this doesn't seem like a very interesting addition to the game...

And still no gem tab which seems to be the most in-demand feature?

Oh dear Blizzard, oh dear

The worst part is them implying seasons are one-offs and aren't having the features added to the base game afterward. Maybe that's just them waiting and seeing what they want to add, but if nothing changes in the base game until the expansions, the game is abandoned until that point for me.

 

[Yosharian]

I guess it's a lot to expect the same level of quality as POE's best season mechanics, in the first season of D4, but I guess I expected something more than this..

I don't play a lot of POE but I played during that season where they added the machine spawns in random places throughout the game where you activated it and it sprouted mechanical nodes and you had to kill spawning monsters...whatever I'm not describing it well but POE players know the one I'm talking about, it really made the game more fun to have those dotted around the game world

 

[Zlaja]

And still no gem tab which seems to be the most in-demand feature?

They talked about moving gems to 'resources', so they no longer take up space. No idea when this will be implemented, tho.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The real problem with the gems is they are 95% not even worth picking up.

POE's best season mechanics

Yes but also the bloat, man. The bloat. PoE has like seventeen different endgames to grind, and AFAIK none of them ever caught on like the Siege of the Atlas. Sometimes I wish they ditched the older stuff and cleaned house a bit.

 

[Zeriel]

I guess it's a lot to expect the same level of quality as POE's best season mechanics, in the first season of D4, but I guess I expected something more than this..

I don't play a lot of POE but I played during that season where they added the machine spawns in random places throughout the game where you activated it and it sprouted mechanical nodes and you had to kill spawning monsters...whatever I'm not describing it well but POE players know the one I'm talking about, it really made the game more fun to have those dotted around the game world

Like I said, it's a factor of them not delivering enough in the core product. Expectations are high because Blizzard has to pull something out of the hat to maintain the game's appeal; expectations would be lower if people were already satisfied.

The real problem with the gems is they are 95% not even worth picking up.

POE's best season mechanics

Yes but also the bloat, man. The bloat. PoE has like seventeen different endgames to grind, and AFAIK none of them ever caught on like the Siege of the Atlas. Sometimes I wish they ditched the older stuff and cleaned house a bit.

The issue is mainly UI/itemization than feature bloat, to be fair. It's the huge variety of currencies and junk that fills up your inventory that seems to be there mainly to make you buy their currency tabs. I wouldn't say different enemies/encounters popping up is bloat in of itself, but the different currency systems and random UI elements for stuff that doesn't really matter that much is the core of the feeling of bloat.

 

[Yosharian]

Yeah good points for sure

 

[abija]

Like I said, it's a factor of them not delivering enough in the core product. Expectations are high because Blizzard has to pull something out of the hat to maintain the game's appeal; expectations would be lower if people were already satisfied.

They did deliver enough endgame content though. Nightmare dungeons and a uber boss as ultimate goal are plenty. More than other diablos (or poe 3-4 years in).
Issue is, as repeatable content, nightmare dungeons SUCK. There was a lot of work spent there that failed to deliver and not sure how fast they can change them.

 

[Saravan]

When your standards are this low, no wonder you are satisfied with consuming garbage.

 

[Zeriel]

Like I said, it's a factor of them not delivering enough in the core product. Expectations are high because Blizzard has to pull something out of the hat to maintain the game's appeal; expectations would be lower if people were already satisfied.

They did deliver enough endgame content though. Nightmare dungeons and a uber boss as ultimate goal are plenty. More than other diablos (or poe 3-4 years in).
Issue is, as repeatable content, nightmare dungeons SUCK. There was a lot of work spent there that failed to deliver and not sure how fast they can change them.

Uber boss is not really equivelant to Diablo 3 pandamonium bosses or the equivelant in D2. It's just a hard-hitting boss that you already fought with a horse cosmetic. A pandamonium/real uber boss would drop new legendaries/uniques/etc. By the measure of what Uber Lilith is, D3 had way more, because each act boss on Inferno was the same deal, if you weren't top-geared it could one or two shot you.

And the nightmare dungeons are just normal leveling dungeons with higher stats, so... D3 on launch also has it beat here, since almost every dungeon/area in D3 is more designed and unique than D4's generic copy-pasted dungeons. This is an inherent part of D4's open world design so I won't fault it too heavily here, but in a comparison it makes the endgame very boring to play through.

 

[Saravan]

Like I said, it's a factor of them not delivering enough in the core product. Expectations are high because Blizzard has to pull something out of the hat to maintain the game's appeal; expectations would be lower if people were already satisfied.

They did deliver enough endgame content though. Nightmare dungeons and a uber boss as ultimate goal are plenty. More than other diablos (or poe 3-4 years in).
Issue is, as repeatable content, nightmare dungeons SUCK. There was a lot of work spent there that failed to deliver and not sure how fast they can change them.

Uber boss is not really equivelant to Diablo 3 pandamonium bosses or the equivelant in D2. It's just a hard-hitting boss that you already fought with a horse cosmetic. A pandamonium/real uber boss would drop new legendaries/uniques/etc. By the measure of what Uber Lilith is, D3 had way more, because each act boss on Inferno was the same deal, if you weren't top-geared it could one or two shot you.

And the nightmare dungeons are just normal leveling dungeons with higher stats, so... D3 on launch also has it beat here, since almost every dungeon/area in D3 is more designed and unique than D4's generic copy-pasted dungeons. This is an inherent part of D4's open world design so I won't fault it too heavily here, but in a comparison it makes the endgame very boring to play through.

The comparison is retarded anyways. D3 is over 10 years old and PoE was a garage indy team pre-2018 acquisition and had a fraction of Blizzards budget.

Season 1 content is a complete joke as well that is gonna be completed within a week unless the hearts/6 uniques really change the way builds work. Even then no real endgame is expanded beside 1 boss.

 

[Angthoron]

"BUT WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THIS NEW WAVE OF CORRUPTION?!"
varshan the consumed?

Yeah I was about to post that too.

I suppose their secrets are the 7 new legendary aspects and the 6 uniques.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

So for the season i have to create a new char? Didnt really follow the season mechanics posts