In the lead-up to Diablo 4’s first season back in July, the game received a patch that was universally unpopular. That feels like an understatement—the community revolt was fierce enough to cause an honest-to-Lilith emergency broadcast where the devs stated: “we don’t plan on doing a patch like this ever again”.
Far from repeating the mistakes of the past, it seems the Diablo team are slowly reversing them entirely. As spotted by Gamesradar, a hotfix has increased the experience gain for killing monsters in World Tier 3 by 5%, and 15% in World Tier 4.
This goes some way to fixing the nerfs which had players up in arms—nerfs that crushed XP bonuses for killing higher level monsters (from 25% at three levels or higher to a piddly 15% at around ten levels higher) alongside the World Tier bonuses they’re just now u-turning on.
While this is technically good news, it looks like plenty of players would prefer these missteps were never made in the first place. In a post on the game’s subreddit, players took the hotfix less like a kind gift and more like an overdue admission the devs had messed up. The top-rated comment by user SQRTLURFACE reads: “Classic Blizzard. Reduce XP, then Give XP back, call it a hotfix/patch.”
The problem with this game is its design choices. Over simplified enemies leave much to be desired from previous titles. A world that levels with you means you never feel like you get better. I had to get lucky with a fucken item drop just to make my druid viable. Restarting every season? Only streamers and NEETs have time and desire to do that. This game was a pile of the worst design choices of the last 10 years. They even managed to make an established character (Lilith) bland by trying to make her seem morally grey. Chick has been trying to turn Sanctuary into her own faction for the Eternal Conflict since its inception. If I could I would refund this game, which sucks they already got their money.
The somewhat niche ARPG space is already competitive enough in strong game design with the likes of PoE, Grim Dawn, and Last Epoch for subpar games to make it long term.
I agree with you on some things and disagree in others. Random mobs don’t need to be particularly complex imho. I have skipped D3 but in D2 the most complexity random mobs had were the immunities, which imo is also not good design. The boss battles is where skill and brains and preparation should play a role, and in that regard I think D4 does a good job. The problem is that when playing I felt everything was a slog and enemies were a damage sponge at all times.
Also, seasonal resets were a known quantity and are standard for this kind of game, so I don’t really see the point on complaining about those. PoE also does resets and it’s never been an issue. The forced grind is where the problem lies.
As for Lilith, I didn’t feel she was morally grey. I felt that she was manipulating everything in such a way as to always be or be perceived as the lesser evil, trying to find her way to the top via underhanded means and manipulation, but always purely out of self interest. Definitely a black character, but in a more interesting way than the simple “I am evil so I must destroy”
That said, I have not touched this game since I completed the campaign. The story was decent, but the game was simply not fun, even though I like a lot of the artistic and technical details.
Hopefully it’ll be fun at some point, for now I still consider the money I spent to buy the game strongly in the not well spent category