The above exemplifies why I wasn’t very confident from the get go about Diablo IV (reminder: the game was gifted to me so that I could try and give it an objective look; something I tried to do over the first few weeks).
Like the designers who worked initially on Diablo III, most of the ones who worked on Diablo IV don’t understand ARPG design and what aspects make the overall game play fun and engaging. Players need to understand Blizzard Entertainment as a whole, does not have these sort of designers (and that has been the case since Blizzard North and most of the people associated with it, left the company). Additionally, most everything is marketing to sell as much product as possible (quality of product is secondary; bonus if the game is actually decent and fun). Bottom line is they got the money, and can provide as much lip service as possible (because they realize the majority of their player base is a captive audience where only a small percentage will walk away from playing).
The overall nerf bat also exposes how months of NDA end game beta testing data, amounted to nothing meaningful to the developers (it seems that it takes actually live streaming/VOD game play to get them to understand what that data actually means). It took a month of live service play for them to come up with the balance in 1.1. Basically, resistances were broken at launch so players stacked armor (so they took the nerf bat to armor). Vulnerable damage was also too good so that also got whacked (you would think the data from the NDA end game beta would’ve shown the actual breakdown of what was being used).
Basically, anything that made the game actually fun, has ended up getting nerfed into oblivion. What’s worst is they failed to learn from past mistakes (like extremely limited stash space) by failing to build on the important quality of life stuff that was finally introduced into Diablo III. Yes, it took 10 years of iteration to get there, but why not then take the most valuable ones, and make that a priority from the start? (this is a rhetorical question BTW). Some of the changes in this patch also exemplifies (once again) that they don’t really play the game (I mean that isn’t surprising since the average designer is going to want to stay away from their own work to do/play something completely different in their free time because who wants to constantly be surrounded by their work).
This patch was unsurprising to me (heading into the first season). Helltides were basically the only thing I ended up enjoying once I got into the mid level 70’s (once I got some key upgrades and aspects to round out my build where I could actually manage well in WT4); that got nerfed into oblivion (regardless of whether or not the new drop rates were bugged, the designer mindset was clear when they increased the mystery chest to require 250 cinders instead of the previous 175). All their decisions are showing is how out of touch they are with what the average player finds at least remotely fun and engaging to play (and that was already not the best IMHO). While I played the first month more like the way I used to play these type of games, I was still looking at the game from a casual potato angle (the changes made aren’t casual potato friendly; it just makes more of the game a constant slog).
I said it before; the game was not ready for release (sort of like D3 at its launch though D4’s end game was just slightly better, but is also clearly half-baked). With D4, this is also coming from a team who made a big deal about the live service angle; but they are showing by this patch that they are incapable of delivering updates that the average player will at least find enjoyable. Something as simple as a mount they cannot even get right (the jankiness of it), nor at least trying to make it a little bit better (and they are insistent on putting a lot of obstacles in the way to force players off of them). My solution to this was to stop using the mount and just run on foot the old fashion way. Basically, the designers are fairly clueless about how to create these organic tension points in the game (which is for them to solve) where their design decisions results in frustrating game play. If the grind isn’t fun or enjoyable, most folks aren’t going to stick around.
To be fair (as I noted in my prior D4 postings), I found parts of the game enjoyable while leveling (Act VI was clearly well done). But most everything as it relates to the end game has been average (much better than D3 launch end game for sure, but that isn’t saying much when D3 Inferno was pretty bad). Over the past week, I’ve only played around 5 hours (once I got my 4th used glyph to 15, I stopped running Nightmare dungeons) and .75% through level 88. Yes, I could continue to run them to level up the other glyphs or to get the ones at 15 to 21. But I just find that entire game play loop unfun.
As I also wrote previously, getting this chance to play the live service version of D4 has NOT reignited my interest/passion in the Diablo franchise or ARPG’s in general. Previously with D3, I wrote a lot (to ad nauseum levels) because I wanted to see the deficiencies addressed because I really did love the franchise back then. But I eventually realized that Blizzard is okay with mediocre and that wasting that amount of time was not good for me (and so I just stepped away from everything Blizzard back in November 2015 and didn’t play any of their live games until D4). Similarly, I’ve felt zero attachment to D4. This patch does little to make me want to play the game any further (that includes season 1 which I was originally planning to give a whirl just to see how the seasonal mechanic works) because why bother playing something that isn’t enjoyable? This isn’t about sticking it to Blizzard since they don’t care; it’s booked revenue (and in my case, if it wasn’t gifted, I wouldn’t have been playing it for the past month and a half).
I do plan on seeing how much worse off my sorc feels with this update (I’m just basing this off of reading the patch notes and seeing how armor got nerfed; I for one was stacking armor for survivability) before I make my final decision on giving season 1 a try.
UPDATE: I lost nearly 700 armor off my sorc (I was previously close to 7k armor) which is important considering how shitty damage reduction is for the class (given how resistances are bugged, thus making the resistances from intelligence a non-starter in terms of defense). My damage reduction for open world Helltides was still sufficient from a survivability aspect (except I had to be more careful with poison and those mobs that shoot out fire turrets), but other players who were built more glass cannon, kept on dying during some of the events (I rarely saw that prior to this patch).
The drop off in damage wasn’t completely noticeable except that it doesn’t feel as “crisp” as before. I guess this was the “plus” for not being anywhere close to a min/max optimized build since in my case, I knew I had gaps in how everything synergized together. As for the Helltide cinders; it took nearly the full hour (including chain running events) to get 250 cinders (even mob density felt thinner in the usual parts I normally went to); prior to this patch, I could easily get twice that amount. I stopped playing after it was completed since Helltides were pretty the only thing I found remotely satisfying (and it wasn’t any more).
With this existing tuning, Helltides aren’t worth wasting time on once you’ve got enough Forgotten Souls (they state they are looking into this as a bug, but I believe it was actually intentional because as stated above, the increased amount for cinder turn in for the mystery chests is the tell, and they let this go live – unless they did zero internal play testing at all). The joke is really on the customer base who are beta testing this live service game for the company.
