- Joined
- Sep 14, 2021
I tried really hard to like D4 but now that the novelty has worn off, I'm really struggling to convince myself to keep playing it. I got to 50+ and I'm almost done with the story, but damn if this isn't the ultimate videogame incarnation of gray sludge.
- for some insane reason they went back to D3's incredibly cursed gameplay design, but made it even more restrictive and less varied (despite the presence of a skill tree, lol). basic skills are mandatory and still as painfully uninteresting as they were in D3. 95% of class builds boil down to popping the same cooldown combo and dumping your entire resource orb at once, then twiddling your thumbs with your shitty basic skill until your damage comes back. 10 years of testing has undeniably shown that this is not a good replacement for mana potions.
- the game design uses so many obligatory design memes that it ends up noticeably less than the sum of its parts. why do we need an open world? they did nothing interesting with it. it's almost entirely empty space with a handful of mobs and endlessly repeating scripted events sparsely scattered about. they did the typical Ubisoft thing and filled every map with a stupid amount of busywork to complete everything. running around for 10 minutes to click a statue that gives me +2 stat is drudgery, why do I have to do it over 100 times to complete the game? and the map geography itself is insane, it's all kooky twists and pathways and corners and shit that lead into open areas that are too big for the slightly-too-zoomed-in camera. mounts are supposed to solve this, but the claustrophobic pathways make mount controls a mess on mouse/keyboard. and besides, you don't get them until you've already been through most of the game.
- side quests. why? does anybody actually enjoy hiking across the zone to kill 10 wolves? oh boy, I got 420 XP and a box with some herbs. I knew this was gonna be good when I got the first side quest in Kyovashad to go use an emote at some NPCs, and watched a dozen other dudes file in with me and do the exact same thing while the NPCs completely ignored us. peak MMO shit. absolutely amazing.
- I don't think anybody expected the story to be good, but the story quests are painfully disrespectful of your time. not only that, your progression is per-character so you have to redo the whole mess any time you want to reroll? I'd like to play something besides sorcerer but at this point, I might as well just uninstall the game because I'll definitely run out of juice before I catch another character up through those awful story quests. D2, D3, and Path of Exile all use the story as a progression mechanic rather than it being a completely separate activity, so in those games, you never have to hang up your current progress to run halfway across the game world and go waste your time on something unrelated. it's incredible to me that they failed to learn this lesson.
- the power curve feels so maddeningly flat. everything scales so close to your character that it never feels like you're getting ahead and it only gets worse as you level. you get a cool new legendary affix or piece of gear only to find that in a few levels, everything has already caught up to your power jump.
- the most frustrating thing about all of this is that D3 already tried most of these things and failed. they have the case study and they ignored it. D3 tried to have a more intrusive story and ended up adding a mode to skip it completely. D3 tried to have a formulaic ability system with builders and spenders and cooldowns and they ended up adding an endgame that completely destroys it. D3 tried to have a loot system with a ton of RNG and affixes and they ended up redesigning the entire loot system to get around it. D3 failed so bad they had to turn out the lead designer and get somebody else to rescue the project.
I think D4's main problem is that Blizzard devs think WoW is good, because it's popular. so any time they make a new game, they have this problem where they crib mechanics from WoW, on the assumption that it will appeal to a broad audience. but the impression I constantly get from the WoW community is that not even those guys enjoy playing it anymore. WoW players are some of the most miserable motherfuckers I've ever shared a screen with. so I really wonder who these mechanics are for, in the end. things like side quests, story quests, open world time wasting, etc. are things people mainly just put up with because they're expected. and that's mainly what Diablo 4 feels like to me: expected. the passion, innovation, and soul are all absent and replaced by things that are just expected to be there. maybe later on they'll figure out how to patch the fun in, but right now, I think the best thing you can say about D4 is that it is, at the most basic level, functional. it is certainly one of the games of all time.
- for some insane reason they went back to D3's incredibly cursed gameplay design, but made it even more restrictive and less varied (despite the presence of a skill tree, lol). basic skills are mandatory and still as painfully uninteresting as they were in D3. 95% of class builds boil down to popping the same cooldown combo and dumping your entire resource orb at once, then twiddling your thumbs with your shitty basic skill until your damage comes back. 10 years of testing has undeniably shown that this is not a good replacement for mana potions.
- the game design uses so many obligatory design memes that it ends up noticeably less than the sum of its parts. why do we need an open world? they did nothing interesting with it. it's almost entirely empty space with a handful of mobs and endlessly repeating scripted events sparsely scattered about. they did the typical Ubisoft thing and filled every map with a stupid amount of busywork to complete everything. running around for 10 minutes to click a statue that gives me +2 stat is drudgery, why do I have to do it over 100 times to complete the game? and the map geography itself is insane, it's all kooky twists and pathways and corners and shit that lead into open areas that are too big for the slightly-too-zoomed-in camera. mounts are supposed to solve this, but the claustrophobic pathways make mount controls a mess on mouse/keyboard. and besides, you don't get them until you've already been through most of the game.
- side quests. why? does anybody actually enjoy hiking across the zone to kill 10 wolves? oh boy, I got 420 XP and a box with some herbs. I knew this was gonna be good when I got the first side quest in Kyovashad to go use an emote at some NPCs, and watched a dozen other dudes file in with me and do the exact same thing while the NPCs completely ignored us. peak MMO shit. absolutely amazing.
- I don't think anybody expected the story to be good, but the story quests are painfully disrespectful of your time. not only that, your progression is per-character so you have to redo the whole mess any time you want to reroll? I'd like to play something besides sorcerer but at this point, I might as well just uninstall the game because I'll definitely run out of juice before I catch another character up through those awful story quests. D2, D3, and Path of Exile all use the story as a progression mechanic rather than it being a completely separate activity, so in those games, you never have to hang up your current progress to run halfway across the game world and go waste your time on something unrelated. it's incredible to me that they failed to learn this lesson.
- the power curve feels so maddeningly flat. everything scales so close to your character that it never feels like you're getting ahead and it only gets worse as you level. you get a cool new legendary affix or piece of gear only to find that in a few levels, everything has already caught up to your power jump.
- the most frustrating thing about all of this is that D3 already tried most of these things and failed. they have the case study and they ignored it. D3 tried to have a more intrusive story and ended up adding a mode to skip it completely. D3 tried to have a formulaic ability system with builders and spenders and cooldowns and they ended up adding an endgame that completely destroys it. D3 tried to have a loot system with a ton of RNG and affixes and they ended up redesigning the entire loot system to get around it. D3 failed so bad they had to turn out the lead designer and get somebody else to rescue the project.
I think D4's main problem is that Blizzard devs think WoW is good, because it's popular. so any time they make a new game, they have this problem where they crib mechanics from WoW, on the assumption that it will appeal to a broad audience. but the impression I constantly get from the WoW community is that not even those guys enjoy playing it anymore. WoW players are some of the most miserable motherfuckers I've ever shared a screen with. so I really wonder who these mechanics are for, in the end. things like side quests, story quests, open world time wasting, etc. are things people mainly just put up with because they're expected. and that's mainly what Diablo 4 feels like to me: expected. the passion, innovation, and soul are all absent and replaced by things that are just expected to be there. maybe later on they'll figure out how to patch the fun in, but right now, I think the best thing you can say about D4 is that it is, at the most basic level, functional. it is certainly one of the games of all time.
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