It’s really sad that Blizzard has no idea what makes D2 a great game, especially considering they just released D2R so we can relive the glory for ourselves. D4 on release was nowhere close to D2, it was more like a toddler trying to make an MMO.
In D2, you can feel your character become more powerful with levels alone. In fact, gearing basically doesn’t matter for most of normal difficulty, it’s almost entirely level focused. D4 scales content to your players level, meaning every level you gained made you weaker. No shit people didn’t want to go for a long XP grind, who wants to continually grind to do less damage?
Weirdly enough the D4 skill tree is even worse than the one (I know not really a tree) in D3. The first abilities almost don’t matter and are just “filler” for your resource regen or cooldowns and the main abilities are just a handful, most of them kinda meh and with barely any progression & variety behind them.
As for D2R I wish they would’ve gone a bit farther with it, like an item filter feels like a must have with how much it spams loot onto your screen to the point where it does not display everything. This can cause you to literally not see something like a high rune on the ground because of some trash items taking up the tooltip space. Or things like the vanity system from D3 and D4 (minus the micro transactions).
Whatever… They lost touch with their base in favor of a new one that they can milk. Their profits and shareholders will love it though. I’m done with them.
I agree that an item-filter would have been a nice addition, but with Blizzard you have to take a hardline #NoChanges approach. Otherwise you’ll get something like the WC3 remaster, or every Classic WoW expansion. They did add a few small additions after the remaster was released, like Helltides and some new Runewords, but they’re all thankfully ignorable if you want to.
They adjusted the level scaling for S3, with different thresholds depending on the world tier you’re in. As you approach the monster level cap for a given world tier, the scaling slows down so that it’s outpaced by the player level.
I agree it shouldn’t have scaled 1:1 all the way to max level on launch, but people are super quick to forget how well D4 was generally received on launch. It was literally used as a counterexample to games that launched badly, “it was more like a toddler trying to make an MMO” seems like a dishonest characterisation to me. What complaints do you have that aren’t long since resolved?
I mean, releasing one of the worst ARPGs of all time isn’t exactly a triumphant launch. I think D4 is fine now that it’s effectively become a sequel to D3, which is why I tried to use the past-tense as much as I could, but D4 was only received well by casuals. Every ARPG fan I know and every content creator I watched played it for like 2 days, realized there were deep systemic issues, and dipped.
That’s just not consistent with the reality that Diablo 4 was released to wide acclaim. Wolcen was far worse than D4 in almost every area. I think you just got farmed for engagement, because contrarianism is trendy.
Everyone I know that played at launch when I asked if it was worth getting told me no, even more so after the first few patches
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_IV#Reception
There wasn’t really any discontent online about the base game mechanics until there was discontent about the live service content for S1 a couple of months later.
I might be ignoring nonsense complaints like about barb nerfs despite barb being consistently the most powerful class by a significant margin to this day, simply due to having more slots for more affixes & legendary powers
people were literally criticising the game so much on all the Diablo-related r/'s that i had to unsub from each one. like, yeah, it got good ratings, but if anything, that only served to further incense the ones displeased.
there was a lot of stupid, toxic bs, for sure, but there were also players dipping out before the first season even began – myself included. like, this is just me, obviously, but D4 at launch was straight up the most let down i’ve ever been by a game.
for brevity’s sake, i gotta say that season 4 made me wanna give D4 another shot. & you know, it’s fun now, but there are still elements to it that make me want to scream & that’s not gonna change, because it’s all a part of their vision for the core experience of the game.
Ya, that’s a subreddit for an online game tho - being a circlejerk of negativity is like its primary function, even for breakout hits like Helldivers or The Finals. It’s part of why I left reddit completely, and why “someone online said it’s bad” doesn’t pass the sniff test for legitimate criticism for me. As an ARPG enthusiast, I went in with the expectation that it was neither POE nor Diablo Immortal; that I’d play it alongside other ARPG’s cyclically; that it’d be made or broken by the quality of the seasonal content & meta.
I understand it fell short of others’ expectations, but I think that’s primarily an issue with the expectations. That I’d rather play D4 right now over PoE or Last Epoch doesn’t mean that those aren’t great games, they just don’t have that fresh content right now and that’s ok, despite that you can easily find equivalent negative discourse about it. And if D4 S5 sucks, the inverse will also be true.
I just want a game without the time pressure of seasons. I want to play games in my own pace. It’s hard to maintain an attachment to the character when the character “expires” once the season ends.
I haven’t played D4, so I’m not sure how seasons are implemented in that game, but this was a problem in D3. Once the season ends there’s little reason to continue playing with the character.
It’s even worse in D4
Say it with me: Nothing that Activision Blizzard ever makes will be ever good again.
They sold out at least a decade ago and they have produced nothing but skinner box bullshit since. It’s all 100% trash and I expect zero from them.
I, for one, was never a fan of the grind. I played Diablo 2 online for years because the people and interactions made doing the same old runs more fun and exciting. These days it almost seems like games are intentionally made worse because success is measured in units sold and not cult followings or individual experience.
Unfeasible… For whom? Certainly it isn’t the players’ ability to have fun.
I got into the mood of some ARPG goodness with all the Path of Exile 2 news. Diablo 2 really was the only viable one for me. Even PoE 1 isn’t right for me either. It feels too claustrophobic.
Maybe try Last Epoch or No Rest for the Wicked? They aren’t perfect and nothing will ever be Diablo 2, but I feel like they’re decent.
