I managed more progress on my Companion Druid in moving to T10. But I noticed a pattern where the grind no longer is fun and getting decent drops becomes painful. I know they added a loot filter but it doesn’t change the fact that most drops still are pretty mediocre overall and disappointing on average. That said, I want to provide more feedback on various issues I’ve encountered since I started exploring more crafting recipes and trying the new Loot Filter.
I stated before that the biggest problem in Diablo 4 (and in a lot of Blizzard games) is this awful codependency on RNG as a form of content. I think the expansion has continued to double down on this aspect to give the illusion of long term progress rather than solving meaningful progression. In the past, I have referred to RNG progress as akin to BozoSort where you just create an exponential problem for players who want to see gradual, meaningful and time well spent progress as they move through the game. But let me point out some of the worst culprits in the game:
- Altered affixes on Uniques – This is one of the worst complaints on the reddit forums. Already, it’s tough to find a decent Ancestral item with any GA on it. To add insult to injury, Uniques lost their previous affixes and now simply have any value, making them almost like a shitty version of an old Aspect.
- Continuing non-determinism on crafting – Despite introducing a crafting system with the ability to better target affixes, you still remain on the proverbial hamster wheel trying to nail the affix you need. Outside of wasting your mats and time, there’s absolutely no point in this activity. It’s no more fun than how Enchanting works currently except the sillier back and forth system you must deal with. And if you fuck up and eat all your mats up, you’re just SoL.
- Transfiguration as a shitty version of Sanctification – Despite all the warnings the player base gave on Sanctification and the fact that they even changed Sanctification to remove the idea of bricking, you still can brick an item. Maybe the worst part will become amulets because of the idea of a chase for a good legendary Aspect power that you can add. Some believed that this was too OP during S11 but I think you had enough wiggle room where it was good enough. Now, with the extreme variance and worse drops with more RNG mixed in to the affixes and quality, you’ll be lucky to see a decent Transfiguration to really get excited about.
- Reroll Unique Power – I originally believed this would be the re-introduction of Chaos Armor. Instead, it just rerolls the values on a unique. It’s an absolutely worthless craft. Even doing something such as reroll a unique power on an item with a similar base would have been better than the lameness here.
- Losing GAs when you craft – This one infuriates me. They made it so GAs are much harder to find. If that’s the case, why can’t you be allowed to reroll it? There’s just mind boggling levels of stupidity and asshole-ness involved here.
Now, I suppose part of the deal is to use the new Loot Filtering system so that you get less bad stuff and focus more on the good stuff. I gave it a try and maybe it’s me but I found the filtering system to be mostly trash. The rules don’t make sense. Like I don’t know how you can hide just shit items or only permit ancestrals except uniques or something along those lines. And when I did enable the rules, nothing worked. Like WTF. So if this system is meant for el casual, then someone needs to take a lesson on UI/UX design badly here.
But these things make my progression really unfun. I feel like when I do get a good item, there’s not much of an impact just because I’m so burnt out by the repetitive content as well as being bashed over the head by unending turds of bad loot that nothing really excites me when I find something. And I still think that the physical act of picking up loot is god awful. I don’t know what it is but they give you such a small space to be able to pick up something.
What I really think they should have done is not have a loot filter at all. Instead, they needed a customizable loot vacuum. At this stage, I think having the Pet act as a loot grabbing tool won’t work because these bozos fucked up on not having your pet pick up crafting materials. There’s so many other existing systems that handle inventory and loot management better that it’s mind boggling just how archaic Diablo 4 is by comparison. Like Lost Ark is probably one of the best loot management systems where it just gets vacuumed up and you can see those items going into your bags on the side during a Chaos Rift. And for all the garbage that drops on the ground, why can’t they simply add a scroll bar to allow users to go down more rows in their inventory slots? Why are Blizzard so fucking adamant about giving players limited inventory slots when other games with far better and more meaningful loot hand these out more freely?
Someone suggested that the Horadric Cube should’ve been part of ones inventory. Considering everyone carried one in Diablo 2, I’m surprised that this piece of crap is sitting around in town. It should’ve been giving the functions of the blacksmith, jeweler and Occultist on top of the other powers introduced in this expansion. I mean, they have the slot for it. Why was this overlooked? Even if the actual inventory inside of the character sheet didn’t expand, the added Horadric Cube could’ve functioned as a secondary inventory space for anything.
Talisman
So now that I’ve played around with the charms/seals system a little more and learned about the Mythic seals in existence, I have some opinions on how things were implemented here. I think the charm set system is okay in how they brought in interesting effects as well as added two affixes per charm. Some of these effects are actually cool like the Bear for druid or scenarios where a skill gains the minor upgrades. The Unique slot is lame in that you can only use one at a time unless you have a specific Mythic seal that permits three (but no set items). One of the major chase items is the RoRG-like Mythic seal but I found out you can’t use it for Uniques and its purpose is to enable two sets (in most cases).
My main issue with this system is that you’re really limited in the number of charms enabled by your seal. I heard at least one streamer mention that Diablo 2 could’ve easily solved the Charm system by simply adding a separate tab for charm management. Diablo 4 did this to a degree but there’s almost no creativity in how one can use the various charms that drop. At some point, rares and blues become worthless so I don’t get why they were introduced into the game. I would have preferred a smaller tab that simply enabled everything that was inside. Then a set could become active with a separate interface like the one presented. But you could’ve done more with charms than what was given and even make lower rarities more useful.
Also, I’m disappointed that aspects also could not be imprinted on charms. That would solve some issues where item slots compete against each other. Even if you only had a single unique enabled, there should be ways to get Aspects imprinted on charms as well. Then only having the unique slot would make the situation special for those types while Aspects would get more slots to use. Because in truth, the Talisman idea is just a version of Kanai’s Cube but much more limited. There’s certainly potential here for growth but it’s very mediocre in my eyes at this stage compared to what it ought to be.
T9 – T10
I feel that the jump between T9 to T10 is massive. With a reasonably geared character, you just feel far squishier and require a higher amount of damage. At the same time, getting the gear to make that jump is really tough because of the various qualifiers like Ancestrals, GAs on the right affixes, Mythics, etc. all which are hidden behind RNG. I know there are unethical builds that become enabled because of bugs but that just shows how ridiculous the systems work behind the scenes. Most of it is some bad math error. I really wish they didn’t make bosses just HP sponges with higher damage that force you to see some shitty phase. Other games handle difficulty levels in a far better and more creative fashion. For instance, HC to me should be decreasing the quality of loot one finds rather than doubling down on stupid on death effects and high levels of untested damage that cause a frustrating permanent death. Or perhaps higher levels of difficulty would add the shitty effects that so-called dad gamers hate and allow the hardcore players more bragging rights for conquering without the compromise of loot and experiencing the end game while preventing characters created in easier modes from moving between difficulties.
But I think everyone in the community groaned at the prospect of multiple Torments because they generally would be used as meaningless gates without any real satisfaction besides the tiny percentage who enjoy measuring their toothpick, needle dicks. At any rate for myself, I see myself hitting around T9 where the game feels reasonably smooth and not horribly antagonizing. I don’t like trick builds because they’re inevitably going to be nerfed. I’d really prefer if there were more meaningful and deterministic ways to progress rather than relying mostly on RNG.
War Plans
When you start leveling your War Plans, the progress generally feels decent. My main problem with War Plans is that no matter what, you end up feeling burnt out. Part of the problem is that the number of activities you can choose are very limited. Worse yet, you don’t have that much agency in how you setup your War Plan. Most of it is still predetermined by our good old boring friend Mr. RNG. And these activities mostly have no evolved much over the course of the game. Once you hit a certain point where progress slows to a snail’s pace, War Plans feels like a wretched chore because you’re pretty much relegated into these limited activities. One activity really isn’t even on the War Plans which is Whispers, despite having an activity tree attached.
Then there are the activity trees. The modifiers are generally pretty decent but their depth is minor. If the developers were afraid of dad gamers being too stupid to understand how these modifiers work, then they really must think poorly of their audience because these trees are less complicated than a one year old’s Duplo set with a single piece. I heavily dislike that there’s exclusion such as Chaos Rifts and Duriel’s Maggots not being simultaneous choices. Why not? I think a person should be able to cross pollinate as much content into these things as they desire. Otherwise, even with these modifiers, the actual number of times you encounter them are infrequent enough where the content they’re meant to support ends up still feeling stale.
So here’s what I think needs to happen for War Plans to improve:
- Account wide progress. This pretty much seems like a given at this stage. I don’t know how much work will be involved but if more nodes and ways to customize these activity trees increases, then the developers need to make the progress account wide for a season.
- The ability to spec into as many nodes as possible. There’s no real good reason why the choices on the activities are mutually exclusive.
- Get rid of the random nature of what a War Plan is. Let the player actually plot out what they want to play in the order they want.
- If you REALLY insist on having an RNG based War Plan, add a separate bonus spree. Or make it so that the choices having additional modifiers that are a one time thing similar to Dungeons’ affixes.
- Increase the number of activities. We need normal Whispers (not just Hellfire Caches), Legion events, repeatable Strongholds, World Bosses to be added to these activities. I feel that these things have taken a back seat to the main activities except possibly World Bosses. And if Whispers have activity trees, why not add them into the selection in the first place?
- Get rid of Torments and put all difficulty scaling into War Plans’ activity trees. Then add more nodes with the ability to scale risks/rewards at the node level. Like if say you have a lair boss type of node, side upgrades like the skill tree where you can modify the boss’ difficulty with things like double bosses, two other equivalent bosses, +2 monster power, etc. that can increase. Maybe even small bits like percentage to health and damage or lowered resist. These aren’t difficult concepts to implement. Give complete agency to players.
- Bring back more season content and corresponding rewards through War Plans. Like give us the Realm Walker with the Seething Hordes or whatever they were called or those S3 trap dungeons to unlock the Construct. And while you’re at it, bring back Chaos Armor via Chaos Portals.
- This clearly should be the interface and mechanism for building out a specialized type of game play that works for any build. They said that these War Plans should function like a playlist. Well, the playlist shouldn’t be random. The playlist should have a goal. Like I want to improve my glyphs so give me all Pit runs. Or I want to farm Mythics. Let me use War Plans to set up a mechanism to help me progress towards my goals. If I’m done with leveling glyphs because I hit a wall, have War Plans show me a path to improve other parts of my journey like more ancestral gear or crafting materials. This should be the thesis of what a War Plan entails.
Leveling Alts
I know there’s a technique to use multiple Whisper Caches to get an alt to max level quickly. At this time, I won’t use it just because I enjoy exploring the game. Also, there’s a few key pieces missing like unlocking Strongholds for waypoints or missing out on Tempers, etc. But I will say that the initial 10-15 levels are really painful in this game. I mean you should have more Aspects, Tempers, etc. in leveling an alt for the season, but it’s a weird experience because you can dump your skill points into lower parts of the tree because those parts are level locked. Like when I did my companion druid, I was actually dumping all my points into Lightning Storm.
I’m not sure if I’m really a fan of the leveling experience because what you want to be is not where you start. I feel one of the frustrations with the game for people who are not as experienced in this genre is not understanding how a build comes together. They did some work to make it so key pieces that were build enabling are now the key upgrades for a skill (e.g. Alpha Wolves) rather than being a pure Aspect. Even then I wish they get rid of the idea of having this twig-like entity in the way it’s structured. Instead, I wish you could rotate this thing around and lock in pieces earlier. For instance, if I want to use Wolves early on, why should I have basic skills?
I am glad that you no longer are forced to take a basic skill or certain things on the tree. But they need to get rid of the level requirements because it feels weird being forced to wait until you get to the thing you want to play and doing this massive context switch. The RNG based loot system simply does not lend itself well to the structure of leveling. This part is especially true during the campaign.
Along with that, I can’t emphasize enough how much I hated the campaign. It’s just too long. I was watching Mathil1 and he pretty much hit the nail on the head after completing the campaign: it’s just drawn out. I describe the situation as the story gets too much emphasis and I think because it’s long and wears people out, those who don’t understand where Diablo 4’s actual strength lies end up missing out because they don’t stay for the long term grind. They’re just making it too much into a theme park like a Disneyland ride or too much WoW influence. The story is convoluted and not compelling. I miss the old days where you just got 4 cut scenes between the major acts and you appreciated that effort. The writing feels to gratuitous rather than adding to the game. I believe I’m not the only gamer who shares this sentiment. Because of that sentiment, I refuse leveling using the campaign mode. It’s just drivel.
I have to talk about leveling through the Diablo 4 campaign is vs Path of Exile’s 10 acts. The main difference is that you constantly feel like you’re progressing in Path of Exile through the campaign. It does feel stale after a while but it’s more because it’s setup in a linear manner. Diablo 4 has nothing but unending, horrible, drooling dialogs that make you want to immerse yourself in a tub of acid to get the wretchedness out of your head. Even if you fast forward as much as possible, there’s still stuff that is forced upon you. I really hope that in the future, if there’s more expansions they just either cut down on the story/campaign or let people purely opt out. I don’t honestly give a fuck how much time and money you wasted on this part, I will do what I can to skip everything because there’s nothing fun about it.
Where I’m At
Honestly, I think I’m done with my Companion Druid. The gear and Paragon grind at this stage just isn’t worth it. The little additions you can get don’t feel impactful and I don’t get excited by the gear I find. To get the real upgrades I need, I have to continue to grind mindlessly and hope that I don’t want to jump off a cliff from going insane from the banality of the current system. Instead, I’ll probably level more alts just because I want to experience other builds before they get nerfed into the ground. There’s a few I want to try still because of how the charm systems operate as well as the various updates. So that alone is worth doing. But I think trying to push into higher torments is an exercise in futility in the current setup. The developers call it aspirational content; I call it a waste of time.
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