Good Morning Folks. I will give you some fair warning… this is going to be a bit of a bummer of a topic especially if you are a big fan of Diablo or more specifically Diablo IV. If so you might want to give this topic a hard pass. I consume a lot of gaming content, and in doing so I notice certain trends. I’ve been thinking about this topic since the beginning of Season 3, and I am not sure what shape it will take. For years there have been what I could only term “Blizzard Content Creators” or folks who are very dedicated to that company or dedicated to one particular gaming franchise within their portfolio. Diablo had one of the strongest communities of dedicated content creators for years. For example up until season 29… rain or shine… every single week Raxxanterax released a guide video on how to complete that week’s challenge dungeon (650 of them in fact… 1 each week for EU and one for NA).
The thing is… one by one the dedicated content creators have been giving up on Diablo, or at least deciding that they cannot continue to function by ONLY creating content for that game. Affliction League was the first time that Raxxanterax did some dedicated coverage of Path of Exile, and similarly, he has gone extremely hardcore on Last Epoch with its launch. Diablo Immortal and later Diablo IV were the games that really put Darth Microtransaction on the map… and he’s made the decision that he had to stop focusing on that game and instead pivoted to other titles. He is maybe one of the most savvy YouTubers I have seen and it is very clear that he is following the trends and the metrics… and Diablo 4 seems to be tanking in relevancy. The popularity of the game peaked in June 2023 and then has largely tanked since. When the game launched everyone that I had on my large Battle.net friends list was playing it… and by the time season one rolled around it was just my cousin that was consistently logged in.
Rhykker has been one of the most corporate message focused YouTubers when it comes to Diablo. I had stopped subscribing to his channel at one point because it always felt like he was following the company line on pretty much everything. Even his content has reached a point where it is mostly negative about Diablo IV and with the launch of Last Epoch I saw him releasing guide content for that game. While he has always covered lots of general ARPG news, this is probably the first time I can recall him making dedicated guide videos for a game that was not some sort of alpha/beta preview coverage. It feels like the creators that used to make up the core of Diablo… have largely given up on the game. The first season was bad… season two gave everyone a bit of hope… but season three and the poor reception of the heavily delayed gauntlet have caused interest to plummet into the sub-basement.
Of all of the above though… the one that shocked me the most was this video from Wudijo. Up until this point he has been quite possibly the most dedicated content creator for Diablo IV. He was the first solo hardcore player to hit level 100 at the launch of the game and has been entirely devoted to the game through all of the ups and downs. For him, it seemed like Last Epoch was the tipping point, and seeing how well a game from a much smaller team with a smaller budget was providing a much better gaming experience. In the above video, he outlines that he is going to be stepping away from Diablo IV and making content not only for Last Epoch but also diving back into Path of Exile and eventually Path of Exile II. I get that the average couch gamer does not give a shit about these content creators… but it certainly feels like a good number of folks who made their entire career focused on Diablo are now abandoning the franchise.
I feel like at least part of this is because Blizzard has become complacent. They spent two decades not really needing to properly compete with anyone in a number of niches. Diablo was the archetypal ARPG, World of Warcraft the genre-defining MMORPG, and Starcraft the game that largely spawned e-sports. In every single one of these verticals… the games stagnated allowing Last Epoch and Path of Exile to take the spotlight away from Diablo, Final Fantasy XIV to cause a mass migration away from World of Warcraft… and Starcraft to have limited relevancy in the modern e-sports landscape dominated by DOTA2, League of Legends, and Valorant. It feels like Blizzard is a company that long ago began feeding off its own hype cycle and now just isn’t creating games that are that great anymore. To be fair… World of Warcraft has seen a similar drain of formerly dedicated content creators over the last few years.
Diablo will always have a special place in my heart, and there is no theme that “means” ARPG more than the Tristram theme. However, I am just not sure Blizzard is going to pull out of this spiral. Last Epoch for years has been a game with an amazing core but one that needed a lot of polish and window dressing… and more than anything just more content. Diablo IV however is a game with a flawed core… that is going to need to have almost a top-down rework of several systems to bring it in line with what the players are expecting. It is a game that looks gorgeous… but is made up of duct tape and paper mache once you punch through that lovely facade. I am just not sure that Blizzard is the sort of company that is willing to commit to an “A Realm Reborn” or “No Mans Sky” level of reinvention to make the game what it needs to be. So yeah… in writing this I have wound up bumming myself out.
I hope your week is going well and if you have made it to this point in the post… sorry for being a downer.
Hey Friends! Right now there is a bit of strife happening in the fledgling Diablo IV community over the concept of what is going to happen with the upcoming start of Season 1, and the Battle Pass associated with it. This morning I thought I would take a moment because I honestly had no clue that the concept of a season in ARPG terms… or even that ARPG was a specific genre… was foreign to some gamers. This is me showing my ignorance as being a long-term member of this sub-genre community. Over the years you will have noticed that I play a lot of ARPGs and play an awful lot of seasons, so I thought I would take a bit this morning and talk through some of the terminology.
ARPG as a Genre
First, let’s start off with defining “ARPG” as it is referred to by the “in group” that plays them as a hobby unto itself. It is admittedly a bad genre title, but it is one that was pinned onto Diablo as being one of the first real-time Action RolePlaying Games, and the name just sort of stuck. Over the years Action RPG has been pinned to a lot of games from Dark Souls to Devil May Cry… to even the Fallout Series… and to be honest, they are not wrong to do so. When I say ARPG however I more specifically mean the lineage of Diablo and the subgroup of largely isometric viewpoint hack-and-slash loot chase games that involve some degree of randomly generated content and a bunch of repetition in chase of building the perfect character. I guess it might be easier if I just rattle off some of the games in this genre to help define it.
Chronicon
Diablo Series
Dungeon Seige Series
Fate Series
Grim Dawn
Last Epoch
The now-defunct Marvel Heroes game
Path of Exile
Titan Quest
Torchlight Series
Undecember
Victor Vran
Wolcen
This is by no means a complete list but represents a broad swath of the type of games included in the ARPG genre. I view “Looter Shooter” as a divergent genre that started with Borderlands and continued on into Destiny, Anthem, Division, and Outriders. When this genre broke apart from the pack of Isometric games, it picked up its own traditions and design ideas that carry forward from that point. Now I have questioned before whether or not Diablo IV should even be considered an ARPG by the definition of this genre or not. I personally think it aligns more closely with an MMORPG which is a definition for another day.
What is a Season?
In a core ARPG, especially one with multiplayer play… there is this concept of a periodic reset of progress. Generally speaking, there is some sort of transition of characters from the previous period moving to the more standard or as D4 calls it… “Eternal” realm, and then a new realm spinning up that is only for brand new characters. This construct goes by many names depending on the game you are playing.
Diablo 2 – Ladders
Diablo 3 – Seasons
Diablo Immortal – Seasons
Diablo 4 – Seasons
Grim Dawn – Seasons but they are community-led only
Last Epoch – Cycles but won’t be in-game until the 1.0 release
Path of Exile – Leagues or Challenge Leagues if you look at old posts
Torchlight Infinite – Seasons
Undecember – Seasons
The idea is to have a fresh start that puts everyone on even footing. There are often race events surrounding these “seasons” and specific content that can only be obtained by starting from scratch. How this actually works varies wildly by game. In Diablo 3 you had a series of challenges that you completed in order to get rewards. The first four gave you a full set of gear, and the last six unlocked a cosmetic of some sort and another stash tab (up to a certain point). In Path of Exile, there are extremely detailed mechanics that only take place during a season some of which may or may not actually make it into the “standard” game as they refer to it. Right now in the “Crucible League,” the mechanic involves putting talent trees on your weapons which unlocks the ability to create some truly bizarre builds.
The information we have currently surrounding seasons and Diablo IV is a bit hazy. We know there will be some sort of seasonal journey similar to that of Diablo III, where you have micro objectives that add up to rewards with bigger rewards from completing a bunch of meta achievements. We also know there will be a battle pass system, that unlocks rewards as you gain experience by completing these objectives and probably from just grinding the world as well. There is some sort of season-exclusive story arc that will only be available during that given season. We now also know that none of this will be available on the “Eternal” realm, aka the realm that everyone has been playing on since the launch. Like other ARPG seasons, you will need to create a brand new character to experience any of this and only seasonal characters will progress your season’s journey.
Seasons have a Fixed Duration
Another important concept that you should understand is that seasons… or whatever a game calls it have an expiration date associated with them. Generally speaking, these tend to last three to four months, with the best having four seasons during a year. This gives you just enough time to build up a character… get bored of that character… have some time off from the game, and then get excited again when the next season happens. Path of Exile does this probably better than anyone else currently and they really hype up the launch of a new league with trailers, dedicated cosmetics, and an official race that is often commentated like an e-sports event. While I have never really been one to watch e-sports in the past… I have to admit that I do find myself drawn to the league races. I even participated a little bit in one of the ExileCon qualifier races just to get the achievement for getting to level 10 during a race.
Why Play a Season?
I am honestly not entirely certain if I am the best person to explain this, given that I am so bought into this concept that I never spend any time playing my non-seasonal characters, and effectively when the season is over they either rot or are deleted. I guess I could talk a bit about why I personally enjoy seasons. One of the funniest times for me is the launch of a new game, the hype cycle leading up to it… and the hardcore focus of grinding up a new character. There is a reason why I have played almost every MMORPG that came down the pipe over the years… and then petered out slowly as the rush of excitement around the game died down. I love the excitement surrounding something that is shiny and new, and how it brings all sorts of folks out of the woodwork. Honestly, the best part of the Diablo IV launch for me… is seeing folks showing up in my Battle.net friends list that I had not talked to for years.
An ARPG season is this entire process in a microcosm. For Diablo III, seasons would always begin around 7 pm on a Friday night. So on that Friday night I would get together with Ace and often times Byx as we leveled brand new characters. There was always a crush of excitement around getting back together after being apart for three or more months. Diablo III seasons were almost the perfect example because generally speaking we got good enough at the game to be largely finished by Monday. So we had this really focused gaming weekend, and then plenty of time to chill and do other things… and then be excited about the start of the next season. Path of Exile leagues are a considerably less social experience, but still, I have had a lot of fun talking through build ideas with Ash, Thalen, or Ace throughout the season and slowly ticking off achievements as I completed maps or knocked out challenges for cosmetics.
I also love the almost manic levels of content in the community and the excitement that surrounds the launch of a new season. I am using the season as a generic term, but Path of Exile leagues are specifically so focused on the experience of playing through the league, digging down and finding out critical information about the new mechanics, and coming up with the most efficient methods of play. In Diablo III, it was admittedly a much smaller community but there was still a lot of excitement centered around the completion of the season’s journey and figuring out the best new builds taking into account all of the changes that were made.
Probably the best aspect of the reset is that it puts everyone on the same footing. No matter how much you played the previous season… it is all washed away and everyone starts back at level 1. So that allows someone to sit out a few seasons and then return at the launch of a brand new season without feeling like they have to play “catch up”. This is the problem I have with Destiny seasons, in that they keep moving the bar forward in gear level making it seem like to return… I would need to dedicate a large amount of time to catch up to the same gear level as everyone else starting the season. In an ARPG you can just show up and know you are going to be on equal footing with all of your friends.
The Drama Surrounding Resets
Right now we find ourselves in a gulf between those who are dedicated ARPG players and understand the constructs of that genre, and those who are playing Diablo IV without ever being part of that community in the past. We’ve had this same disconnect among the AggroChat folks because once upon a time I said that Tam wasn’t really an “ARPG Player” when he absolutely felt he was. He had played through every Diablo when it came out to completion… which sure is a thing, but is also different from being engaged with the particular community and customs surrounding the seasons. Right now there are a lot of folks who have experienced seasons as a construct in other genres and are freaking out slightly that they will have to throw away the hard-fought progress that they have made on their current crop of Eternal characters in order to experience anything associated with the first Diablo IV Season.
I can’t say that they are wrong honestly. One of my core complaints about Diablo IV is the fact that it is way too grindy to be reasonably played in a seasonal model. Normally speaking in a seasonal ARPG, it takes around a week to reach the end game… and then you are spending the rest of the season completing achievements. In Diablo IV I am roughly 100 hours into the game and still have not reached the “true” endgame. That seems like one heck of a long commitment for folks to make every three months. Maybe Diablo IV given that it is more MMORPG than ARPG… needs to be the one that breaks this mold and introduces seasonal content that is available to non-seasonal characters. I have a feeling that the way the game is currently… season one might kill whatever momentum Diablo IV has. I am deeply uncertain if I will participate in the season because I am honestly not sure if I enjoyed the game enough to go all in for it. There is also supposed to be the start of a new Path of Exile league around the same time, and I am way more into that game.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again. I think Diablo IV is a great game for the type of player that wants to get in… and play through the story and then move on to another game. I feel like this game is not designed for the way that ARPG core players tend to play these games. The core gameplay loop is just not as interesting as some of the other options. With the upcoming release of Path of Exile II… which is really just a new client for the game and a whole new campaign… I think that will end up capturing all of the Core ARPG players for the long term. I think Diablo IV will probably be better for Path of Exile… than POE was for D4. There were a lot of players waiting around for the next coming of the Diablo franchise, and are now already filling the internet with grumpy think pieces about how it just doesn’t quite live up to their expectations. I would be one of those players as well.
I personally think a lot of things are going to have to change in the way that Diablo IV works in order for it to succeed in the traditional ARPG seasonal model. Firstly they need to greatly speed up the process of leveling, and speed up the renown gain process if they are in fact going to require that to be done each season. Additionally, they need to add new mechanics into each season in order to flesh out the end game, because right now… nightmare dungeons as the primary end game activity are not amazing. They also need to spend some time improving the feel of the various classes because everyone effectively is funneled into playing exactly the same spec. There are only one or two viable options for the end game in a given class. Diablo IV as a whole has way less build diversity than literally any other ARPG with a seasonal model. I just can’t see the game in its current state… existing in the normal seasonal model.
So maybe that means that seasons will need to change for Diablo IV. Maybe there will be enough pushback from gamers that are used to different seasonal models to make this happen. I foresee that the first few seasons will be a bit on the rocky side. I do not think that the team that is working on Diablo IV necessarily grasps all of these nuances. They built a game that is not necessarily how ARPG players actually play ARPGs. I get that they were attempting to expand the base… but I am not sure if the way in which they did so will be successful in the long run. Right now I am looking forward to ExileCon and more information about Path of Exile II, and way less about the first Diablo IV season.
However, since there seems to be a disconnect between those in the know and those who have never engaged in a Seasonal ARPG… I thought I would take some time this morning and talk about that divide and hopefully fill in some information.
Good Morning Friends! I finished up the campaign in Diablo IV on June 4th and have now had roughly a week of time poking around in the “end-game”. This morning I thought I would talk about that experience and how it mostly feels like “more of the same”. As of this morning, I am about half of the way through level 59, and at level 60 I thought I would take a stab at the next Keystone Dungeon to unlock the final World Tier. During my time at end-game, I have done a pretty wide variety of activities, but I can’t say that I have “ground” any of them terribly hard. Honestly, nothing about the experience so far has made me want to grind them. What I have been doing instead is casually picking away at the three end-game activities while working on my zone renown and collecting all of the Altars of Lilith.
Tree of Whispers
The first end-game activity that you will unlock is the Tree of Whispers, and you gain access to this immediately upon completing the campaign. This is somewhat akin to the Bounty system from Diablo III, and it will highlight various objectives on your map in graduated shades of pink to red. Essentially pink activities reward you a single Grim Favor, mauve activities reward you three Grim Favors and maroon activities reward you five Grim Favors. When you have collected ten of these you can go back to the Tree of Whispers to cash in for a box of loot. These boxes are for a specific gear slot and have the chance to drop glyphs for your paragon board and Nightmare Dungeon sigils. There is a chance at a Legendary item but it seems pretty low as I have opened several boxes and gotten nothing. When you reach the break point for Sacred and Ancestral gear, those don’t appear to be guaranteed as I have opened a box containing nothing but vanilla rares.
I feel like this is not exactly a great activity. It is busy work that you can do… but also seems to take an exceptionally long time for you to gather up rewards. Running normal dungeons feel way more rewarding than poking around the map and completing Grim Favors. The shortest route to one of these loot boxes is to complete two of the flagged dungeons, so I guess if just consider Grim Favors and the eventual loot box that they reward as a bonus, then it isn’t so bad. I feel like this system needs to have the threshold for getting a loot box lowered to 5, either that or have every box guarantee at least one legendary or unique. Basically, the system as it stands doesn’t exactly feel as rewarding as the time it takes to complete.
The next activity that unlocks is Helltide zones, which you gain access to upon unlocking World Tier III. These appear on a cycle of being on for an hour and then off for another hour, and will flag two contiguous regions on the map as containing the Helltide. Essentially this replaces the majority of the spawns in the zone with demons and causes a number of chests to spawn scattered throughout the region. Killing these demons causes Aberrant Cinders to drop, and then you collect these to unlock the various Tortured Gift chests. If you die while in a Helltide zone, you will lose half of the Cinders that you are carrying at that moment, so there is a certain measure of risk to reward for farming these areas. They have much higher mob density than you can normally find in the zones. The chest reward thresholds are as follows:
Armor and Ring Chests – 75 Cinders
Amulet, One-Handed, and Off-Handed Chests – 125 Cinders
Two-Handed Weapon Chests – 150 Cinders
Mystery Chests – 175 Cinders
The Mystery Chest rewards 1-5 Legendary/Unique items and several of the zone-specific crafting materials needed for upgrading gear. All in all, this is probably the end-game activity that feels the most rewarding. While you are in the zone it also feels like there is a higher-than-average chance of getting good gear drops in general independent of the chests themselves. My key complaint with this activity and honestly ALL of the “on-timer” activities is that it feels like they don’t happen often enough. I feel like there is never a point where a Helltide zone should not be active. Similarly, I feel like World Bosses should be spawning constantly to the point of being able to have a boss train. The World Boss scene in Guild Wars 2 only works because there is constantly a boss either active or just about to go active which allows people to zip around the map chasing the train. Helltide events should be a constant activity that you can pop in and farm at will.
Nightmare Dungeons
While doing bounties for the Tree of Whispers, there is a chance that you can get a Nightmare Dungeon Sigil to drop. This will unlock access to a nightmare version of a normal dungeon, that has specific affixes applied to it. These remind me of Mythic Plus keys from World of Warcraft, but in reality, they are also not dissimilar to Maps from Path of Exile. Generally speaking, you have positive effects marked in Green and negative effects marked in Grey which change the difficulty of the encounters. At the end of a Nightmare Dungeon, you seem to be guaranteed at least one Legendary or Unique item, which Uniques having a higher-than-average drop rate. The catch is you are given a fixed number of revives for the dungeon, and each time a player revives themselves it takes one of those away from the group. However, if a player revives a character, it won’t strike against that total.
The Path of Exile player in me is annoyed that Diablo IV has no real crafting system to speak of and that I cannot do anything to “re-roll” a bad sigil. The other aspect that annoys the heck out of me is the fact that when you consume one of these… it doesn’t just teleport you to the dungeon. It only flags the dungeon as a “Nightmare Dungeon” and you still have to run there on your own. Those quibbles aside, this is a pretty great activity and it feels fairly rewarding. Experience grinders are largely ignoring Nightmare Dungeons, but in truth, for a more casual player, they feel like a good use of your time. They are also required for leveling up your Paragon Glyphs, which makes that system feel a bit like the Legendary Gems from Diablo III. The only challenge with this system is it takes a bit for you to get enough drops to be able to sustain running the dungeons. I also really wish that they would simplify this system with something akin to the Nephalim Rift device so you could launch directly into them without having to screw with trying to find the damned dungeon on the map.
More of the Same
I recorded another one of my dumb videos, this time attempting to coalesce my feelings about the endgame into a twenty-minute video. I think one of my core problems with the end game that exists currently, is that it does not feel sufficiently different from the leveling game. You are essentially doing most of the same activities that you were doing before be it running dungeons or completing bounties. The only “new” activity is the Helltide zones, which again are just a retread of the zones you have already visited. If Helltide had actually been… going to hell and exploring a whole new map then it wouldn’t feel quite so rehashed. Essentially I guess what I am saying is… finishing the campaign doesn’t really feel like it is a significant milestone other than the fact that you get to skip the campaign on your alts.
The Atlas of Worlds in Path of Exile feels significantly different from the campaign even though it is effectively a retread of the maps you had already seen to that point. The expansion content like Delve and Heist absolutely feels like unique end-game experiences as well, but I would not expect Diablo IV to have anything that rich at launch. The Monoliths in Last Epoch similarly feels like a very unique end-game destination even though again… it is recycling the same content that you have seen over and over again. Even in Diablo III after the Reaper of Souls update, the Nephalim Rift and Greater Rift systems felt like a specific end-game destination that had an enjoyable flow to it. Right now with Diablo IV, I don’t feel like there is a clear “virtuous cycle” that clearly outlines how you should be spending your time. It feels like it is supposed to be empowering that we can “do anything we want” but that is pending that you want to do “more of the same”.
I am sure over time that Diablo IV will be worked and reworked into something that is much more enjoyable than its current state. I think part of my disappointment is that Diablo Immortal was a much more fleshed-out game at launch than Diablo IV is currently. There were a number of enjoyable activities that you could complete that set up a cycle of activities that all felt somewhat unique and allowed you to incrementally move different systems forward. I guess I expected more. There were lessons that could be taken away from Diablo Immortal that would have blended nicely with this game, because quite honestly… other than the egregious monetization… it was a damned solid experience. Admittedly those money-grubbing traits ruined the game for me, but there could have been some good design patterns to take away from that game that would have improved Diablo IV.
I am still playing the game as for the moment I am enjoying myself more than the annoyance… but the annoyance is starting to add up. I really want to see what the next world-tier break feels like, so I will likely be continuing to poke at this until I hit 70… or until some other shiny object takes my attention. Tomorrow I am contemplating doing a “how I would fix Diablo IV” type post.
Diablo IV Login Screen showing my level 24 Barbarian
Good Morning Friends! This weekend I spent quite a bit of time playing the beta for Diablo IV and have some thoughts about my experience. I honestly was not sure if I would be playing the game, but I had a friend gift me a copy unexpectedly so it would have been rude to not play after that. I love ARPGs and over the years Diablo 3 Seasons have been something that I almost set my calendar by. More recently I have gotten extremely engaged in Path of Exile Leagues and spent copious amounts of time playing Grim Dawn, Wolcen, and more recently Last Epoch. Back in the day, I spent a truly excessive amount of time playing Titans Quest, Fate, Torchlight, and the assorted Dungeon Siege games.
Diablo III Rift showing a Loot Explosion
Suffice it to say I am an aficionado of the genre or more specifically the kill-fast-get-big-prizes style of gameplay that comes with the modern ARPG. I like grinding out content for big prizes and tend to play either ranged classes that can do screen-wide explosions or tanky classes that are effectively invulnerable as the multitudes break themselves on my body. I like turning off my brain and just becoming one with the controls and greatly enjoy the mechanical loop of gameplay that I can find in many modern ARPGs. Last night for example I spent the entire evening leveling a Necromancer in Last Epoch while listening to an Audiobook, and I was honestly in heaven. I am trotting out my resume if only to let you understand what sort of engagement with these games I enjoy, and that I am very familiar with the genre.
Diablo IV Barbarian in the tundra with a flaming sword
I have to be honest… at this point, I am not sure if I like Diablo IV. It is at the very least not the game I was expecting it to be. If you stripped off the branding of this game and presented it to me from another publisher with a slightly altered setting and I am not sure if I would have described it as “like Diablo”. The core gameplay loop that I enjoy so much in a Diablo-style game, isn’t really the core gameplay loop of this game. It instead is a game with much more deliberate slow-paced combat and a world that is much more dangerous than I have come to expect from even Path of Exile. Everything about the game feels much more akin to an Isometric MMORPG that you more commonly find on a mobile platform than what I have come to expect from a PC ARPG. So for me at least it is way less of a contemporary of Path of Exile, Diablo II, Diablo III, and Torchlight and more a challenge-focused version of Lost Ark. I am almost certain at some point during its development process someone uttered the phrase “the Dark Souls of ARPGs” even though it lacks the traditional soulslike trappings apart from “don’t get hit”.
The First Boss fight – X’Fal, the Scarred Baron
Diablo IV feels like it has doubled down on the “bossing” style of gameplay from Path of Exile. Every boss has 4 sections of their health bar, and whittling down a quarter will produce some sort of intermission mechanic or phase shift. This has more or less been true with all of the dungeon bosses I have fought as well. They feel a lot like fighting a Legendary mob in Guild Wars 2, so read… super tanky bag of hitpoints that will take you quite a while to whittle through while avoiding a number of other mechanics. Bossing in general in an ARPG is probably my least favorite part of the game, and I gave up on progressing past the Searing Exarch in Path of Exile because I simply did not really enjoy building for that sort of mechanic. So far all of the bosses in Diablo IV seem to be punitive towards a melee playstyle because my brief amount of time spent playing a ranged rogue saw me breezing through them whereas I had to play much more carefully on the Barbarian.
The conquering of Stronghold Malnok
Dungeon delving however is just a small part of the gameplay in Diablo IV, and you are going to spend a much larger amount of time roaming around the open world. Here you will stumble across events that are spawning constantly in an almost Guild Wars 2 style, where you and any players sharing your map can work together to complete them. So far all of the events I have tried can be completed solo, but simply go much faster with a host of randoms. The coolest of these however is the Strongholds which are one-time completed events that will open up new areas to the players. Malnok for example required me to defeat a number of Goatmen shamen that were channeling into a boss in the center of the map. After killing all of these it shifted into a big boss fight, and upon completing it the area turned into a town. This reminds me quite a bit of the area in Witcher 3 where after defeating all of the monsters in a town, the locals come back and set up shop again. It feels cool, but also a bit like any modern Assassin’s Creed or Farcry game with similar zone control mechanics.
A story mission in Diablo IV
One of the places where Diablo IV excels is in its storytelling. Traditionally the bar for storytelling in the ARPG is something you might be at risk of tripping over. While they often have amazing world-building and lore… they often have a pretty hamfisted narrative that is the bare minimum to keep the game from completely falling apart. Diablo IV is a great story game, and some of the side quests honestly are better than the main story. Once again I am going to pull out the Witcher 3 as a reference because a number of the side quests remind me of just how detailed that game got with its off-the-beaten-path narrative. I feel for a lot of people that this is going to be one of those games that they play through all of the stories once and then feel satisfied and walk away never to touch it again. That is going to be a completely reasonable way to approach this game honestly.
Combat on the Barbarian showing a Legendary Drop
I think my core problem with the game in its current state is the moment-to-moment gameplay loop doesn’t feel amazing. The time to kill in combat feels sluggish and not exactly what I have come to expect from the ARPG genre. Sure a Diablo III Demon Hunter feels awful for the first ten levels or so… but those are over in maybe ten minutes. With Diablo IV I was three or four hours into the game and it still felt like I was fighting while mired in quicksand. Admittedly most of my experience comes from playing the Barbarian but if you don’t nail that class… the most straightforward of Diablo archetypes… I have concerns. Playing as a ranged Rogue felt a little bit more snappy, and I’ve heard tales that the Sorceror is extremely overpowered… so then that raises a whole other line of concerns around class balance. What I expected was honestly something that played and felt a bit more like Diablo Immortal, since there is deep parity between the systems of that game and this game… and quite frankly I would probably rather spend my time playing Diablo Immortal were it not for the egregious monetization strategies. I think it is probably a better game across the board.
All of the Legendary Drops I have Seen So Far
The itemization is also lacking at least in what I have come to expect. Magic and Rare items aka Blues and Yellows are effectively what you would expect from any other game. Where things get weird is Legendary Drops. Generally speaking both Legendaries and Uniques from other games are “curated” rolls that are capable of dropping with very specific parameters making them almost always useful for specific builds. Legendaries in this game however are randomly generated items that just have a single legendary trait on the item. So that means it is entirely possible for you to get a Legendary trait on an item that does not make any sense and is generally useless otherwise. Roll curation is a big part of what made legendaries so special in the first place because getting one meant you knew exactly what you were getting ahead of time. A lot of the chase of item drops is a search for specific cornerstone pieces that you need for your build. Screwing with this mechanic is going to at least in part cheapen the search for those build-defining items.
Extracting Imprints from Legendary Items and the Codex of Power
Now one cool aspect of the crafting system is that you can extract any legendary trait from an item, and then imprint it upon another item. So for example, if you have a yellow item that is perfectly rolled but is missing the legendary trait, you can effectively upscale that item into a legendary by adding the trait. The process is destructive and rather cost prohibitive at least with the sorts of money we are able to get in the beta so far. The problem is this is a somewhat flawed process because they also have another system in the game called the Codex of Power. This effectively allows you to collect legendary imprints that are permanent recipes that you can create as many times as you like. What would have been a much better system is that eating a legendary added it to your Codex of Power instead of how it works now and producing a one-time-use item that will ultimately clog your inventory. The codex of power would have been akin to cubing an item in Diablo III and would have added a whole pokemon aspect to trying to find all of the patterns out in the world and add them to your codex. For now, you unlock the Codex through running dungeons and it is a different set of “Legendaries” than the ones you consume and turn into imprints.
Completing an Event by killing monsters to spill blood into a pillar
Throughout the weekend I spent some time threading my comments over on Gamepad.club. In doing so I was reminded by friends of a simple truth. While I might not terribly enjoy the game at the moment, I also did not really love Diablo III at launch either. It was only the significant changes brought on by the Reaper of Souls expansion at the “Loot 2.0” mindset that led me to love that game. Similarly, the Destiny 2 that launched looks very little like the game that exists today. This is sort of the way of the live services game, that it morphs and changes over time to hone in on the types of gameplay that the players want. So while I may not love Diablo IV at this very moment, it does not mean that there is not a Diablo IV in the future that I will not deeply enjoy to the point of setting my calendar around its schedule.
Highly Detailed Dungeon Environment
What I currently see is a game that I think a lot of people are going to play through once and then walk away from. However, it is very clear that Blizzard wants long-tailed transactional income from this game in the form of battle passes and cosmetics. What I do not see is a game that is going to really appeal in large part to the “Core ARPG” demographic that competes in Diablo II: Resurrection Ladders, Diablo III Seasons, and Path of Exile Leagues. The game instead seems to be tailored more to the sensibilities of the MMORPG game player and feels very much akin to the sorts of interactions you might have with a World of Warcraft. If I adjust my expectations to that sort of a game, then Diablo IV honestly holds up pretty well. I would probably rather play this than I would World of Warcraft at that point. However, in that space, I think Guild Wars 2 is doing a far better job of a lot of the things that this game is trying to do with its Strongholds and Zone events.
Lilith from one of the early cinematics
I have to be honest, the game was a little disappointing for me because I was ultimately expecting it to be something that it is not. What I was hoping for was a happy medium between Diablo III and Path of Exile with a glossy coat of paint. What I got instead is something more akin to a darker version of Lost Ark and the mobile isometric MMORPGs. In truth, I already have my happy medium between Diablo III and Path of Exile and it is called Last Epoch… but just because Diablo IV is not what I was expecting does not mean it is a bad game. I highly suggest you judge for yourself and next weekend you will be able to. While this weekend was only for those who had purchased the game, next weekend is as I understand it open to anyone with a Battle.net account. The next period begins on March 24th at 9 am PDT and will conclude on March 27th at 12 pm PDT. If it is anything like this week, you will be able to preload the game roughly a day ahead of time.
Screenshot from Quin69’s stream hitting a 108-minute login queue
I will say if you do plan on participating next weekend… maybe don’t take any time off from work. This is good advice in general, to never take off time specifically for a game launch because it will most likely only end in heartbreak. I was off on Friday already, so I did the dumb thing and tried to play when the servers opened. However, there was a period of time on Twitch where the entire Diablo IV section looked like the above shot of various streamers stuck waiting in extremely long queues. While the servers stabilized by Saturday, I would expect them to be bleeding again when the next phase opens up. This first phase was only for folks who have purchased the game, the next one will open the floodgates and let anyone play. If you are interested in this game, I would highly suggest giving it a test drive before you make the purchase. It likely does not match your expectations.
Did you spend time this weekend playing the Diablo IV Beta? What were your thoughts? Am I being weird for not really being all that into it? Drop me a line below.
