While there’s been some news trickling in from IGN (as the primary source) for Lord of Hatred, it’s mostly been about the world and story. Neither really looked compelling to me at this stage because I want to see more details on the changes to the various systems, especially the end game. I did see something for fishing and was pretty disappointed since there are other games that have a minigame for fishing that I think do a reasonable job. But I’m hoping that this sample does not portend to be what’s expected for the expansion.
Just based on one video for what they’re calling “the first 12 minutes of the campaign”, my initial impression is that I intend to skip as much dialog as possible and as quickly as possible. You’re on some boat going towards Skovos (I believe) and holy hell there’s way too much chatter. I made the mistake in Vessel of Hatred of trying to actually pay attention to the dialog and it was utterly draining. I had run out of patience at some point and just wanted to get to the end where I was horribly disappointed by a shitty boss fight and lackluster ending. I will probably watch the cutscenes themselves as the cinematics generally are top notch. But I don’t want to listen to a single line of in game dialog.
On top of that, Blizzard released some “shorts” that weren’t animated for Diablo 4 and the writing was excruciatingly painful. I think one story involved Nyrelle and it was masturbatory in the amount of worthless dialog and lack of a point. I was insanely mad as I trudged through that verbal set of diarrhea trying to figure out what the fuck the writer was trying to say. My main thought was that some asshole got paid to write that shit (and probably made a lot more than me for my poor novel!) So at least story-wise, I am NOT hopeful at all.
The game play itself looks lackluster still. The “first 12 minutes of the campaign” took us through with a Paladin, since that class has already been released. Paladin had been heavily nerfed in the current season and the difficulty was no more than hard here. But there was a single boss fight and a mini boss fight. Neither looked spectacular and I thought that you’re just trying to get through all this lameness and there’s nothing really interesting so far.
Another video showed more of the open world with the warlock in the new region. The actual home base looks cool but the new zone looked like just more Helltide or Whisper crap. I don’t know how much has changed nor if the new areas will have anything noticeable that can differentiate itself from the existing zones. There was an article trying to argue that the current world is lackluster because there’s no real reason to explore. And I have to agree. The so-called War Plans do not appear to change this situation but rather force you into a focused flow. But it does make the outdoor exploration aspect feel like a waste.
Now, if I’m being really down it’s because the stuff I care about are the changes to the core systems, the Talismans, the Horadric Cube and end game. There’s been only small hints of what’s to come with each as well as introducing at least one new Torment level (they mentioned 11 more actually but referring to the equivalent of what exist in comparison to The Pit). The current season apparently increases the Torment level behind the scenes with the blood modifications and people describe it as a possible test before the expansion. However, I see it being irrelevant as a test just because a ton of things will end up changing regardless.
First, let me address my later thoughts about the changes to the skill tree. I said that the alterations in general look to be a good thing. However, the amount of choices to modify skills through the little additional nodes still come off as bland. The skill tree to me really looks more like Diablo 3’s rune system with some scaling being applied in allowing players to put more points into a skill but using a 2-4 points or so for “customization” with the rune-like modifiers. I don’t think it’s a bad start to something that needs to happen but my main complaint is that the number of skills will just be 6 at the end of the day (unless you use some aspect that changes this) with 3 points per skill for flavor and the rest going into the skill itself. And that doesn’t really sound as exciting nor progressive as I had hoped (and I’m judging this based on the Warlock sample). There’s still a great deal of depth that’s missing especially when the bulk of the points are going to end up on a skill with a maximum level.
That still leaves gear and the passives to flesh out scaling. I’m really hoping that we’ll see the return of a 2nd tempering since that part got gutted in s11 (I think). I did think that have a deterministic tempering made gearing better overall but we still have a huge amount of waste for tempering recipes. Aspects and Masterworking still play a role in this but Masterworking doesn’t feel as impactful compared to S11. It’s still better than the two previous versions but I don’t think they really know what to do with Masterworking. Aspects currently are fine in terms of how they’re applied but I still think the game suffers from Aspect bloat. S11 solved the issue partly with Sanctification and Transfiguration from the Horadric Cube we should see a version of Sanctification. However, we do not know how that part is implemented just yet (which is what I mean by not knowing how the new systems will work)
Also, I’ve been highly critical of the whole Paragon system in the past because I felt the board setup was overly complicated and made little sense to me. Since passives supposedly are being moved into the Paragon board, I’m guessing that’s how we’ll see the other portion of scaling. But we don’t know how much will get modified from the current board. I think the whole thing would need to go away and be redone because it’s just a giant mess to me that is a UI/UX nightmare.
I did mention seeing a small amount of fishing in one of the screenshots. Disappointed to say that it’s just going to end up becoming part of the emote wheel. I think you’ll be able to access various areas to invoke fishing but that’s going to be irritating depending on how wandering monsters may affect this piece. But I mentioned that other games managed a far better version. Like I was playing this Whiteout Survival game. They actually had a fairly reasonable fishing minigame built in where you would throw a hook and maneuver the hook from side to side with your finger in trying to avoid fish as you plunged deeper and deeper into the water. The deeper your throw went, the higher quality the fish/rewards. It wasn’t a difficult thing either but still required a minor amount of skill while providing decent rewards. Of course, it was designed for mobile and worked well if not better than a lot of games that have some sort of fishing aspect. But given the low standards in Diablo 4, I don’t expect much more than a cast since it’s connected to the emote wheel.
Also, surprisingly, we have not heard a word about Season 13. I assume for all intents and purposes that Season 13 should launch alongside the Lord of Hatred release. For the Vessel of Hatred launch, we had a preview of Season 6. It wasn’t a vast season but I think it did well to compliment the variety of new content for the release. The thing I’ve noticed though is that there’s been more core changes and less season related content. Season 7 to me probably had the most content unique to a season I’ve experienced thus far. The fact that the new War Plans are revolving around existing content make me believe that the season will probably integrate that part along with the Horadric Cube somehow. So I don’t think we’ll see heavy borrowed powers nor the “green Helltide” type of zones. I imagine the flavor to be something in between S10 and S11 in terms of the mechanics because I think the developers are going to be spending more time trying to get the new systems ready.
In addition, I think it’s just been too long of a wait. I think S12 looked awful in terms of what was given. I didn’t end up playing it just because I wanted to avoid being burnt out for S13 and the expansion. From what I saw, the whole Butcher theme just looked bad. I read that the relentless Butcher part was to test part of the new War Plans modifiers. But I mentioned previously that it looked like something that would either be super annoying or buggy. I think I was right in both cases. But the general thing to me was that there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for the season and too much dead time since the announcement. So most of my excitement has died down. Outside of a streamer or two, I really don’t know anyone excited to try the new expansion. More people were thrilled with the D2R Warlock DLC than LoH. But I really think the people working on D4 at the moment just have no clue what to do. This whole bipolar direction is upsetting where the minute you think they’re going in the right direction, they overthink the problem and refactor everything to the point where it’s almost self sabotage. But that’s part of where I’m getting really tired of this game and Blizzard in that I don’t see any progress. It’s not even catch up at this stage. Heck, I wouldn’t mind if they just straight out copy successful features from other games and don’t bother doing their own take on them. But i really hope for their sake that they knock it out of the park because my patience is at an end.
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