I am done with Diablo 4

I am done with Diablo 4. Current version is not fun any more. Just finished season’s story. Next task would have been renown grind which I just did couple weeks ago and doing same quests I just did in previous renown grind. You have to do renown grind to have any change to survive on world tier 3.

I played on world tier 2. It was quite fun until last few days. Endured it because I wanted to see the season’s story. Now that it is done I don’t see any reasons to log in. Game just isn’t fun any more. Before last couple days I understood why I died and what I should have done to survive. Some times reason was I was under leveled for the content. Now I am on correct level for content but I feel I am under leveled for some of the fights. Game just throws stuff that is almost impossible to survive. I don’t record my game play. I can’t watch why I died. At one point I am fighting the mob and everything looks fine. Next moment I am dead.

I understand challenge. But what Diablo 4 gives now is cheap deaths. I am playing on world tier 2 and have level 48 character. Whole screen shouldn’t be full of enemies and different effects and powerful enemies shooting from off screen. One time I died after I cleared dungeon. I got notification of dungeon completion. Right after that tons of enemies attacked and couple seconds later I was dead. I thought I could relax but no. It wasn’t over.

Blizzard offers increase of mob density as solution to game’s problems. It is one of the problems. Game becomes impossible when there are too many enemies with crowd control powers. You are in crowd control all the time and high density mobs kill you in seconds. That is not fun. Blizzard want to see more variety in builds but make changes that only certain kind of builds or classes can survive. I don’t want to study which skills and gear I need to be able to survive. I just want to log in and have fun. Not to constantly die for reasons I don’t understand.

Game has problems even when you are not dying. Inventory management is huge issue. You need to constantly get back to town to empty inventory. It just breaks the game play when you have to go to town during dungeon, event or quest and check what you want to keep and what to salvage or sell and what you can keep in stash. Blizzard’s solution is to add one more tab to stash. You still need to stop what you are doing. You can have more items in stash but it doesn’t solve the main issue. Season 1 made this worse because there are more items in inventory now. Having gems as materials doesn’t help this issue. I have this issue with my main. I stopped picking gems with it but still had to teleport to town constantly.

Horses. Almost everyone hates horses in Diablo 4. You spend lot of time on horse. You try to avoid mobs when you ride your horse. But there are places where you can’t avoid mobs. You have to fight mobs before you can continue and horses have cooldowns. You can’t continue to ride right after you have killed enemies. You have to run during the cooldown which make it harder to avoid mobs. Do you think increasing mob density will help with this issue? Most of the portals were locked at the start the the season. So you need to ride you horse to open them.

I feel like I am fighting against distractions more than doing interesting content. Tree of Whispers quests, legion events and helltides are fun. But to be good enough for them I need to do renown grind again and going to those I need to fight trash mobs. Increase of mob density in helltides could make those really annoying if they go too far.

Diablo 4 was fun until season 1’s update. Early season was reasonable fun but they have changed something since then which has made the game not fun to play. Don’t tell me to try different class. I play twisting blades rogue this season. It should be best at the moment but I think necromancer is better. I might try it next season if I come back. Probably won’t get back if renown grind is still a thing when season starts. I understand doing it once but not doing it every season.

Two weeks in Sanctuary - Thoughts of Diablo 4 after playing the story mode

Little bit background. I am not even casual gamer. My familiarity to genre is limited to playing previous Diablo games. I played World of Warcraft to level cap before the first expansion and then stopped soon after expansion was released. I wasn’t sure if I would like Diablo enough to pay full price. I had Diablo 3 which I had not finished. First week in Sanctuary was with it. Then on second I played story mode of Diablo 4. Played both with barbarian and started with easiest difficulty. I was at level 51 when I finished the story. I farmed renown to claim all three rewards before world tier 3 on four regions.

It was bit of a culture shock to start Diablo 4 day after finishing Diablo 3. I died twice in Diablo 3 after setting difficulty to hard. I don’t remember using even one health potion during playthrough. Those deaths occurred in same place before I realized what I need to avoid. Diablo 4 was more difficult and fun. Difficulty wasn’t only thing causing culture shock. Diablo 4’s story is masterpiece compared to Diablo 3. In Diablo 3 antagonists are evil just for sake of being evil.

In Diablo 4 characters have reasonable motives. There were points when I wanted the player character to do what Lilith wanted. That felt better option than what player character did. Ending left me feeling did we actually do the right thing. After Diablo 3 I was clad it was over. I had enough of antagonists being plain evil. Really looking forward to expansion to expand the story. It ended with not a real cliffhanger but small set up for next chapter or act like Diablo’s want to call them.

Diablo 4 could be great game with some game play fine tuning. My main issue was that enemies attacked when npcs or something on environment started to talk and talking could start middle of fight. I wanted the lore but this prevented me from getting it. Difficulty varied too much. This is open world game and you can enter zone your character is underleveled. This happened to me few time. Even in story mode. I had to take break from the story and level my character to survive a boss fight. Everything scales up but won’t scale down. I think there were UI updates which started to show which is lowest level you should be on area. Don’t remember seeing those first time with that boss. When I got back to it I saw I was many levels too low first time.

Game has two memorable boss fights “Price of Knowledge” and “Anguish Incarnate” those were only boss fight in story where I died. I was under leveled when I got to Price and in Anguish my character didn’t have correct skills for boss fights. After I tuned character better suited for boss fights I didn’t have problems with them after that. That was the point where I should have changed to world tier 2. I don’t think these fights were memorable only because I died in them. Those were only fights I remember where I couldn’t go to boss and just spam attacks. There might have been one other but I am not so sure about that one. It was part of sixth act which was boss fight after a boss fight.

I hope Diablo 4 will get more boss fights like Price and Anguish and more variety to events. Events started to feel like work because there wasn’t enough variety and you have to do them to get gambling currency. You need gambling to get the good gear in lower world tier. I tried strongholds and dungeons once both but found out I was underleveled for bosses. Open world with other players is nice most of the times. There are some problems. I died once when someone else started side quest where I was and there was explosion. On the other hand you can get easy gambling currency if you come to event someone else has started.

I enjoyed these two weeks in Sanctuary. Will be spending more time there in the future. I don’t try to hit level 100 or start to farm gear. Next goal is to do not completed side quests, find missing Altars of Lilith and clear rest of the map using world tier 2. Maybe unlock world tier 3 soon. There is about month to season 1. Want to do those before it because it will give best starting point for season 1. I expect more quality of life updates to come to make the game better by then.