diablo

Great Story, Meh Endgame

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Good Morning, Folks. At this point, I have completed the Diablo IV Storyline and am slowly grinding up paragon levels. I have unlocked Torment 1 and can reasonably farm that without much issue. Note that it is without any real semblance of a build because legendaries in general have felt really sparse and hard to acquire. I don’t necessarily love that, but it was a decision to dial back the look, and at least for me, it feels like they just spread the same amount of butter across a lot more toast. My Thorns Paladin feels reasonable and not completely broken, and a lot of the power that it lost I think, is in the form of the missing passives. I honestly feel sort of meh about Diablo IV as a whole right now. I thought this expansion and patch were going to usher in a new great age for the game, and it certainly shook up a lot of things… but I can’t necessarily say that the moment-to-moment gameplay in the endgame is better. I don’t hate it, but I also don’t necessarily love it either and feel like Path of Exile 1/2 and Last Epoch are doing a much better version of this genre across the board.

I had to cherry-pick a screenshot for talking about the story that does not give much of anything away, because I do really feel like this is worth experiencing for the story alone. I did not like the story for Vessel of Hatred, and it very much felt like a letdown in every single way. Lord of Hatred, however, is really freaking good, and there are way more interesting interactions with famous people from the Diablo franchise than we have had to date. There were actual moments here in this game that made me feel things… I actually had to choke back tears at one point. That is pretty rare for an ARPG story, and I felt like the game earned its story beats more than we have at any point since the launch of D4. Sure, I hated the whole Akarat as Jesus nonsense, but in truth, you don’t really spend that much time having to interact with that narrative. What was way more interesting was the manner in which we reintroduced Lilith and also dealt with some of the challenges around Rathma as the child of Lilith and directly connected back to our character. It is really good stuff and expands the general lore of Diablo in some interesting ways.

Skovos is also a really great new area to add to the game. I had some doubts about it as I was going through the content, but watching it open up a bit as I entered the endgame, I really do think there is some interesting stuff going on here. The legion event, for example, in Skovos is this whole pirate-attack-themed thing, and it is so much more interesting than the baseline legion events. Similarly, the Helltide areas feel really good on Skovos, but the only negative of all of this… is that essentially this one location sunsets the need to go to any other location. It has effectively shrunk the world down to only ever needing to exist in this one area. The hub of Temis literally has access to all of the things that forced you to go to other cities, and also serves as the only place you can access the Horadric Cube. So essentially, Skovos is now the game in its totality, in a way that did not occur with Vessel of Hatred and Nahantu.

Gear feels extremely hard to get in a way that I have never quite experienced since the launch of Diablo IV, and I am not sure I am a fan of it. Blasters who are grinding this game ten plus hours per day are finding plenty of gear, but I do worry about the folks who are only playing for a few hours at a time. I have exactly ONE ancestral item, and it dropped from the Obol vendor as a white item that I then upgraded into a Mythic via the cube. I am sure this will change as I go up in Torment tiers, but I also sort of need the gear to be able to go up in difficulty. I feel like I am being artificially gated by just not finding any legendary drops that are usable. I am wearing a bunch of stuff, but it does not necessarily equate to anything resembling a build right now. I am mostly being carried hard by the power of the baseline thorns build, instead of actually feeling like I have synergy with any of my gear. I liked loot raining down from the skies, and it is a bit of a bummer to be playing in extreme poverty league.

The other thing that is annoying me a bit right now is the reintroduction of Capstone dungeons. These feel like they are a complete waste of time. Essentially, in an ARPG, anything that does not reward good experience or loot is not worth doing, and these feel like an artificial barrier that is placed in our way to keep us from progressing. They are not hard to do, mind you, but they take about three times as long as I feel like they should. These essentially gate your seasonal ranks, which themselves gate your ability to progress up into torment levels. So instead of just needing to run a T1 Pit in order to unlock Torment rank 1, you now also have to do a dungeon that will not reward much loot, and also takes about 10-15 minutes to run, since there are three distinct phases to it. I am not sure what the design goal was with reintroducing capstone dungeons, because they don’t feel challenging… they just feel like a waste of my time.

Another thing that has been a bit of a disappointment is the Warplan system. These are what I would term “aggressively fine”. Sure, it is best practice to never do any activity without a Warplan sending you there, but they don’t really feel like they meaningfully improve the baseline content. A Nightmare Dungeon is always going to be a Nightmare Dungeon, and the Pit is always going to be the Pit… and while you are stapling some extra rewards on them via the Warplan, it doesn’t really feel transformative at all. Maybe I have not seen enough of the trees yet that unlock as you do the content, but most of the options feel like they are just going to give you more chances at loot. There is also no methodology for banning specific content. For example, I kind of hate the Kurast Undercity and never want to do it… and there is no way for me to say “never show me this content, and make the other content more frequent”. My options are to avoid the content in the warplans, and if I cannot… reroll the entire thing. Even if they gave us the ability to reroll specific nodes on the Warplan tree, it would be better than what we have currently.

I think the reality is that Diablo IV is never going to be “my” game, not at least in the way that Diablo III once was. I am entirely too Path of Exile aligned at this point to really ever be satisfied with the limited set of things that the Diablo franchise is now providing. I think there are going to be some players who will enjoy the slowed-down progression systems because it gives them a longer tail before they reach the point of feeling wildly overpowered. For me, however, I want to play Diablo IV as a fun weekend or two and not as a primary game, and as such, artificially gating content that we already had access to previously and throttling the gearing just feels like a turn in the wrong direction for me personally. That game isn’t bad, and I enjoyed the story quite a bit… but I will also never play that story again because it is the least efficient way to do a seasonal character. I am not sure how long I will be playing Diablo IV, but I doubt I will finish out the seasonal journey before I am back to either Last Epoch or Path of Exile.

Diablo Disconnects

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Good Morning, Folks. Monday at 6:30 pm my time, Diablo IV Lord of Hatred launched, and it has been a bit of a mess. I think things have mostly stabilized, but for the first evening, I was getting disconnected when trying to start story quests. What made this so infuriating is that Diablo 4 has no checkpointing system when it comes to story content and dungeons. This means if you get disconnected anywhere during the content, you have to start over from the very beginning. Worse than that, there is this whole problem of your character being stranded in the world and having to keep attempting to log back in. This was not just an “overloaded servers” issue, because Tuesday morning, I woke up about 3 am and could not get back to sleep, and decided to go ahead and get up and play some Diablo 4. At 4 am, I got disconnected from a quest dungeon and experienced the same behavior as during peak times. They have since dropped a few hotfix patches, and things seem to mostly be stable now.

My original plan was to play a Warlock and lean heavily on Command Fallen, which, at least on paper, sounded similar to my beloved Summon Raging Spirits from Path of Exile. In practice, however, this ability feels NOTHING like a minion ability, and is instead mostly a targeted attack that just happens to send an explosive minion at the target. This feels super freaking awkward and nothing like the spammy SRS gameplay style where you are running around and flooding the map with temporary minions. This, combined with the disconnects, made me rage quit out on the warlock for the time being and roll a Paladin instead, since I already know that I enjoy that playstyle. At some point, I will revisit the Warlock and probably do some sort of hellfire caster build. I was pretty happy with the name Beldemona and shocked that I had never used that before for one of my “evil” caster characters.

At the current moment, I am level 37 and slowly chipping my way through the story content. I played a bit Tuesday morning and then again after maybe 7 pm last night. I have no clue where I am in the totality of the story, but so far, it is pretty solid. I hate the whole Akarat as Jesus simulacrum thing, but the story surrounding the Amazons and even the engagement with Lilith so far have been pretty great. It feels like a massive improvement over the Nahantu storyline from the first expansion. They did, however, kind of do Neyrelle dirty, and I am annoyed about that. The layout of the zones in Skovos is way more focused on the story content than I would have come to expect. I am not sure how these zones are going to feel after completing the story when you are dealing with evergreen open-world content. Then again, Nahantu kind of suffered from the same problem, and I never spent much time returning to those zones.

I am not entirely certain how I feel about the “no passives” build structure that went in with Lord of Hatred. At least with my Thorns Paladin, you spend a lot of time leveling as something else and then swapping a bunch of things over at 36 when you unlock some of the specific paths on the tree. It just feels like we are leaning way more heavily on gearing, but then again, since you can choose to craft whatever temper you need, instead of randomly rolling these, it might all shake out in the end. I’ve not really gotten any useful legendaries yet, and I am not sure what level those really begin to factor into the drop pool. I did spend a bit of grinding in Helltide when I got frustrated with the disconnects on Monday night, and the rewards, at least at low levels, felt pretty crummy. I was mostly getting blues from opening loot boxes, and I would have expected almost entirely yellow or better. I am looking forward to finishing the campaign so that I can see what endgame loot starts to look like.

Being brutally honest, I am not really certain if I like this version of Diablo IV better than the last version I played when the Paladin was introduced. It is different, and I will have to see what it feels like once I conquer the storyline demon. I never play through the story with repeat seasonal characters. My inner murder hobo is way too strong, and I mostly grind out the levels in Helltide or do whispers. I am really looking forward to seeing what War Plans introduces to the game, but I figure all of that unlocks the moment you finish the story. I don’t REALLY play ARPGs for the story, even though I occasionally enjoy it as I do in Path of Exile 1/2. Currently, it feels like I am taking my medicine and just biding my time for the story content to be finished. Lord of Hatred is better than the base game and the first expansion, but it is still not as good as something like Diablo III was storyline-wise. I don’t love all of the ambiguity of the morality in this game. I prefer to smash demons and angels and not have to care about who is betraying me in the process.

In other news, it is Evil Lemon time, aka when I am hooked up to a portable chemotherapy pump that is slowly poisoning me. The worst part of chemotherapy is realizing that I have 10 days where I feel various versions of crap, and then 4 days at the very end where I have to cram two weeks of necessary activities into before prepping for the next round. I am on the downward slide, and remembering this morning how much food hurts. Essentially, early on in the cycle, it hurts to chew anything and swallow anything, which is often why I shift over to a mostly liquid diet for a few days until the worst of that passes. I know I will be at my weakest this coming Saturday and Sunday, and it helps that the flow of this process is predictable. The cold reaction was instant and much worse than round two, which was in itself worse than round one. Luckily, it is not exhibiting in neuropathy, really, but mostly just pain because the skin has peeled off my fingertips. I am regularly applying lotion in an attempt to help with the healing, but it is bad enough that my phone rarely recognizes my thumbprint for unlocks.

Anyways, hoping to maybe wrap the story tonight in Diablo IV and see what the endgame has in store for me.

AggroChat #561 – Seeking Humans

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Featuring: Ace, Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen

Hey Folks! This week we started off with some discussion about ITER-8 a Tower Defense game that has a bit of a different spin.  From there Tam talks about The August Before and how it is essentially the reverse of Packing.  We reprise our Pokopia topic from last week and talk about how Tam’s kid is probably in for a sad revelation as she desperately hunts for the missing humans.  Bel figured out what is missing from Last Epoch and we talk a bit about the importance of a seasonal journey of some sort in forever games.  Tam realizes that he has solved Star Trek Online and how it is way less fun for him now.  Finally we talk a bit about Path of Exile and specifically Kodra’s journey into winging a build by trying to figure out which skills work with Holy Strike.

Topics Discussed

  • ITER-8
  • The August Before
  • Pokopia
  • Last Epoch
    • Importance of a Seasonal Journey
  • Tam Solves Star Trek Online
  • Path of Exile
    • Kodra winging Holy Strike

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Demonology for Fun and Profit

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Good Morning Folks. I have to be blazingly honest here… I did not have it on my punch card that we would be getting an expansion for Diablo II this year. However, we got exactly that as part of the Diablo anniversary celebration, and it was a shadow drop, meaning I have already played a bit of the brand new class in Diablo II, the Warlock. I have to say it is pretty freaking awesome, at least in the early levels, it feels wildly overpowered. Granted, you can only really have one minion so far, but I am sure that changes over time. You summon up your demon goat buddy, and he proceeds to lay waste to everything around you, while you bop things over the head with your floating weapon. I think the floating weapon thing is honestly a really nice touch because it differentiates this class from other classes that start out feeling like they are shittier versions of the Barbarian… looking at you, Druid.

What is wild about this is that the Warlock class is coming to three games in the Diablo franchise. It’s a bit of a bummer that Diablo III is left out of the love here… but I feel like probably it and Diablo 1 both got dropped for the same reason, they do not have a shiny new client built with modern development technology. We already have the Warlock in Diablo II, but it is coming to Diablo IV at the end of April and to Diablo Immortal in June. Not that I give much of a shit about Diablo Immortal, but I will probably be playing whatever season coincides with the April 28th start date of the Warlock drop in Diablo IV. I will always be down for more Minion gameplay coming to games. So far, at least it feels pretty solid, and it has actually made me want to play some more Diablo II Resurrected. Generally speaking, D2R gameplay is way too slow for my tastes these days, but it might be fun to do at least a full playthrough on the Warlock.

In other news, we got a new Lunar New Year event in Destiny Rising, so maybe it is not entirely out to pasture fully. I lack the cultural significance of all of the stuff that coincides with Lunar New Year events, but they often are big deals in Japanese and Chinese games, and so far, that seems to be the case here as well. Essentailly the normal Frontline events are being replaced with new encounters with the red and gold fireworks themes. Doing these earns points towards the larger event that is going on, and will ultimately also earn you pulls for the reworked version of Ikora. I played three rounds or so of Frontlines yesterday and had a reasonably good time doing it. This is mostly a pretty chill activity and is exclusive to Jiangshit Metro, aka Space China. Is it massive and new and exciting? Not really. However it is something and I have to give them credit for it.

Yesterday evening, we got a new State of Play event from Sony, and probably the biggest news for me personally was the upcoming release of Death Stranding 2 for the PC. Sure, I have a PS5 and could have played this game at any point I wanted to, but I greatly prefer playing open-world games with a mouse and keyboard whenever possible. The PC release of the first game dropped during the height of covid lockdown, and it was extremely poignant as we were all adjusting to a new way of life, much in the same way as the characters in the game were. I’ve never been a massive Kojima fan, but I did really enjoy the quirky lore of the world in this series and look forward to seeing more of it. I may have also developed a crush on Fragile, and am interested in seeing more of how things progress in this world. Troy Baker’s character in this series is also completely batshit crazy, and I am interested in seeing just how over the top he is in this version.

Next up, we have a really freaking cool-looking Castlevania game from some of the folks behind Dead Cells. Not that I necessarily have much to say about this, other than the fact that I will be playing it when it drops. At least based on the trailer, I would guess this is more in line with Castlevania 1 and 3, and not a more role-playing game experience like 2 and Symphony of the Night. I tend to prefer the Castlevania RPG games where you level up and collect gear and such, but it does not mean that I don’t appreciate the more standard platformer style games. It might be a bit more modern platformer than I would like, but we will have to see how it plays. Games like Silksong tend to require a level of manual dexterity that I no longer have with a controller.

We also got more gameplay of Control Resonant, and while I still mourn the fact that we are not playing as Jesse… I love this weird shared universe and will be here on day one regardless. I am really looking forward to just how kooky the world is going to be, given that we are apparently playing with gravity and surfaces. It seems like the corruption of the Oldest House has spilled out into the real world, and I guess New York is suffering as a result. I love the visuals, so this should be a heck of a lot of fun.

Lastly, we got another video update on Tokon Fighting Souls, and while I am not as big a fighting game player as I once was, this game looks like a lot of fun. I am all on board with playing Magik in a fighting game. I am super pumped that Steve Blum is doing the voice for Wolverine as well. I hope that means he will be doing the voice of Wolverine in the game that Insomniac has been working on as well. Anyways, it should be a lot of fun, and will likely look beautiful in blazing 4k on the 65-inch television that I picked up not too long ago. At some point, I really need to hang up a curtain rod so I can put up some blackout curtains over the awkward round window in the livingroom.

There was honestly a bunch of other interesting stuff announced yesterday, so if you have the time it might be worth watching it in the background while doing other things. Either that or, at a minimum, hitting the PlayStation YouTube channel to see if there are any trailers that stand out to you. After showings like this, it really hits home just how far Microsoft is falling behind in this race. They conceded the PlayStation 4 generation, and as a result, lost the generation when everyone shifted to digital purchases. It is going to be nigh impossible to claw their way back from this, especially when Sony keeps dropping banger exclusives left and right. I will probably never be a console-first player, but I doubt I buy another Microsoft console because I have barely used my Xbox. Going forward, I will probably have a Sony console, a Nintendo console, and then my PC for everything else.

Anyways. Was there anything you were super pumped for in the State of Play? Have you been playing the Warlock in Diablo II Resurrected? Drop me a line below.