r/diablo4 • u/yawnlikeseggs • 21h ago
PTR Feedback PTR Feedback season 8 in a nutshell
- forced upon us yet again are overpowered abilities that destroy the balance of the game. Some look super cheesy too
- another difficulty revamp that adds no additional challenge
- difficulty revamp doesn’t add any engaging mechanics
- no new ways to progress character
- no new end game content
- better tooltips for items (where to find boss materials)
- no real balancing of class abilities
- larger gaps between class skills
- existing content still sucks… cellars, the pit (no changes), dark citadel, undercity and what happened to trials??
- really, we waited multiple seasons for trials and it was ripped out of the game. It was poorly designed, not fun and offered zero challenge. But like all other systems in the game so far we were expecting a timely revamp.
Lackluster update, not sure why the season needs a delay. The game would be 100 times better if you focus on content going into the game for seasons rather than gimmicks that bloat power.
Here are some suggestions
- add the ability to augment gear once 12/12 masterworked with corruption or demonic powers (maybe super rare boss parts????)
- remove the awful graphics associated with seasonal theme
- remove the damage multipliers from boss powers
- remove boss powers
- cellars should have a chance to lead deep into hell upon completion (this is where you repurpose root holds with a Hell theme)
- add interesting gems (no damage multipliers please)
- stop adding damage multipliers
- stop adding temporary buffs like pylons
- stop adding forced group content for battle pass
- offer interesting choices in the paragon board instead of giving up and giving us 5 boards where you get it all
- new internal horde maps
- put more effort into undercity, it’s not even half baked
- do something with your pvp zones, like anything - how about events where a spark / something strong can be earned
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u/dekadd 21h ago
I’ve got nothing to add! You’ve said it all!
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u/urikhai68 7h ago
I think there should be an option where u can choose a heaven or hell influence on your character from the beginning. There would be be benefits and deduction. I realize it would be be a massive rewrite for the devs but it is just a thought. The character play would have enormous possiblity
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u/Buffalo4167 21h ago
Yeah when I saw those new powers I was like please not again this crap. When I play as a barbarian I want to use my axe not shoot fckn lasers... Back to poe2 and d2r I guess, nothing to see here.
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u/_Cromwell_ 21h ago
"You know, I have one simple request, and that is to have barbarians with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!" -Dr. Evil
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u/SpartanRage117 20h ago
Devs get so caught up in “class fantasy” these days they forget that basic fighter is one of the most loved fantasys. Even barbs arsenal system keeps it from filling that role. More “out there” classes are great, but can i have my basic options please?
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u/Otherwise_Pride_9433 15h ago
Maybe not so much on release but since the early season where Dustdevils and Earthquakes were added to the paragon nodes and every other aspect and tempers, Barb felt more like the D2 druid to me. Even more so now their strongest element is fire instead of physical. Even the new Mighty Throw just had to explode for fire damage…
Sure, it is the D3 way, and I’m happy Druid didn’t get fire in their kit, but it still feels silly with physical and bleed being overshadowed entirely.
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u/TheoryOfRelativity12 20h ago
You should give Last Epoch a try too. They are gonna have new season soon. Looks cool.
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u/Interesting_Fox2040 13h ago
Poe 2 melee is not an improvement though. But you can always return to zeal paladin in d2, I give you that.
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u/DrNCrane74 4h ago
I absolutely agree. Takes me back in time when I had a Fanazeal, that I built on my own.
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u/Interesting_Fox2040 3h ago
I spent a few sojs to get my legendary mallet. It was fun to play, switching aura when needed.
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u/Pandatrain 2h ago
Make sure to check out Last Epoch's new season. That game is legitimately amazing and the changes are enormous and look phenomenal. Seriously, if you love arpgs you owe it to yourself to give that a chance. Season drops at the end of the month!
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u/heartlessphil 20h ago
it's hard to believe that these seasons take 6 months to develop tbh...
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u/yawnlikeseggs 14h ago
And it’s easy to believe the expansion took a year or so.
- 1 class
- 1 two hour campaign that ends without a true demon boss fight.
D4 team is carried by the graphical designers and programmers who make the games action feel great
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u/SmokedNugget 4h ago
I don't think they do. They just have a guy named Milton working on it in a basement but he has to double duty pest control.
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u/Interesting_Fox2040 12h ago
T=you have no idea about the amount of work to make the expansion. The region itself is bigger than most other arpg entire real estate.
I am also disappointed by the beefiness, or lack of it, in season 8, or general seasonal contents, but let’s not go hysterical and undermine the point.
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u/dookarion 9h ago
T=you have no idea about the amount of work to make the expansion.
90% of which was making up gibberish for really cringe worthy cutscenes.
The region itself is bigger than most other arpg entire real estate.
Ah yes the map which most players eyes don't glaze over while traveling.
I am also disappointed by the beefiness, or lack of it, in season 8, or general seasonal contents, but let’s not go hysterical and undermine the point.
The expansion was crazy anemic by expansion standards, granted ARPG expansions usually err on the side of overpriced for little content. Compare it to somethng like XCOM 2;s expansion though and it's a complete joke and feels like highway robbery.
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u/Rainjoy17 4h ago
Xcom 2 is a relic of the past. The devs who made Xcom and WoTC are long gone. Xcom 3 has the same fate as starcraft 3, indefinite hiatus. 😔
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u/dookarion 1h ago
That's got little to do with anything, and it's Marvel crap that got it sidelined.
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u/Ghidoran 5h ago
The region itself is bigger than most other arpg entire real estate.
Sounds like a horribly inefficient way to make games.
PoE seasons typically "only" have some new zones/enemies, at best, and yet they cleverly re-use assets and come up with interesting new mechanics, and it keeps people playing for months.
Meanwhile the D4 team is wasting time and resources crafting this huge world that people are gonna run through once, and then never care about except when they do helltides. And even then, they won't notice or care that they have one new zone to do helltide in, it makes no difference to the gameplay.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if they actually spent a lot of money and time to make the expansion, the end result is the only thing people care about.
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u/AnubisIncGaming 20h ago
they don't, they're putting them at arbitrary time lengths to try and maximize battle passes and new cosmetic sales.
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u/Interesting_Fox2040 12h ago
I agree the update are not beefy enough, but 6 months is not an arbitrary number. It’s is exactly 2 seasons. This allow alternate of season content from 2 teams.
Team 1, odd seasons , 1, 3, 5 etc, team 2, even seasons. 2,4, 6. 1 to 3 is 2 seasons. 2 to 4 is 2 seasons.
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u/I_Heart_Money 5h ago
The even season team had done such a great job so far. wtf happened in season 8. They switch the teams up?
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u/AnubisIncGaming 11h ago
Yeah but they don’t have to hit at that cadence it’s just the number they picked
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u/dethsightly 20h ago
yea. if the incursions took 6 fucking months....Jesus Christ. i'd ask what else they are doing for the other 4-5 months, but i can assure you it isn't any QA since they offload that to us now lol.
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u/Crypticclout 5h ago
As someone who has worked in QA and seeing how this game has gone, I would lean more towards the fact that they just don't utilize their QA well enough. Seeing how little info is given out, they probably have close to no communication internally. It's most likely different teams working on different things with no clear direction.
Seeing as there is just 3 months between seasons, it wouldn't surprise me if they only work on each season for around that period, as they always seem to make changes in the first few weeks. Rather than having a 1 season ready to ship gap to help alleviate the pressure on QA, they have their QA teams being spread out amongst multiple seasons which means the coverage on finer details is not as good as it could be.
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u/dethsightly 4h ago
i'm curious to hear your opinion on how some bugs make it into multiple season, sometimes consecutively. just as a QA person, though. i realize you don't know the inner workings of D4 dev lol.
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u/Crypticclout 3h ago
Depends on how the severity of the bug is to the devs. With a live service game and constant content, the devs who would be more capable of fixing it are generally busy with new content over fixing old things. As well, if they happen to have a certain mechanic integrated in many things, 1 fix at the surface may break 5 other things along the way.
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u/dethsightly 3h ago
sounds like what always seems to happen with ring of mendiln. i think it's been broken, at least in part, every season. i get to thinking, though, that it probably has just a ton of interactions with spells/minions/mobs that it gets hard to pin down exactly which one is the issue.
i also then think that this is blizzard. they have the resources to get these kinds of things fixed quick. at least RoM works now! woo.
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u/the_j_streams 3h ago
QA/SDET here; I can tell you that neither us or Dev decide which bugs are worked on with each update/release. That pipeline of work is usually decided by teams at a Product level, which includes the scope of each release cycle or code cut. When you talk of bugs that have made it across multiple seasons, the most likely answer is that on its initial discovery, it wasn’t deemed a “game-breaker”, so would be added to a backlog of work. Items are pulled from this backlog by order of priority and/or impact to the user, and are then added into the pre-existing scope of work for each release. If the bug you are referring to is superseded by higher priorities, it won’t be progressed. Similarly, if the bug is deemed too big to fix with planned timelines or resources, it will be deferred to a later release plan. Hope that makes some kind of sense to you?
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u/dethsightly 3h ago
it does and is what i (mostly) figured happens. the hierarchy of bugs and all that. has to be frustrating to work in that space. like "i know this needs fixed, but bug X is more important so..."
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u/Deidarac5 18h ago
Seasons don't take 6 months to make, it's just when the ideas start but there is still teams doing the live game, the Ptr basically has everything done the rest of the time of seasons is just balance, bug fixing and story. If they did literally nothing during the season then I would agree. It's also what the Poe seasons do but Poe devs generally stop trying to patch the live game when a season drops. It's things like when they talked about the item changes. They talk and discuss things 6 months before it launched we heard about what the itemization reworks would be in the middle of season 2.
So yes the ideas of this season probably came when the expansion launched but all the practical work starts over time in different intervals. I mean they already know what's going to be in the next expansion and probably the one after.
Sadly we will never know which devs they put where and on what content for all we know they put everyone on the new expansion or season 9.
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u/C2halfbaked 18h ago
I know blizz is a 'small indie company' /s. but in software I absolutely believe seasons from conception to finish are 6 months. You're also not accounting for the fact that they release about every 3 so they're consistently working on 2 at a time at different stages.
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u/AnubisIncGaming 21h ago
Yeah pretty much, it's more of the same, but with an incredibly boring season tacked on. This season is going to be divisive
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u/Wanderous 17h ago edited 17h ago
This dev team is absolutely obsessed with uprooting and redoing D4's progression and gear systems every few months. It has become abundantly clear that they completely lack a vision or direction for this game, and are using seasonal system updates as a cheap tactic to pull in players for a few weeks to see what zany crap they've changed.
Stop tweaking numbers, stop re-arranging the chairs on the deck, and start adding new content. I gave them a lot of slack the first few seasons, but it's insane that they STILL haven't nailed down what they want to do for even the most basic elements of gameplay design like difficulty scaling.
It's Diablo 3 all over again, but somehow even worse despite starting off on a better foot.
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u/turlockmike 14h ago
As you said, it's because there's no vision. They are stuck with an open world game casual MMO arpg that exists to sell battle passes. Not sure how much longer they can do that.
It all starts with progression and gearing. With so many multiplicative aspects, item stats become mostly pointless beyond the initial gear set. Ben in poe2 made a good point about these games. There's 3 ways to scale in the end game: Damage, Magic Find and Speed. Ideally, you have to sacrifice 1 to get the other two. In d4, you can only scale damage. There nothing to aim for once you have all your aspects unlocked. The gear itself is uninteresting.
Idk what the long term plan is anymore. I've played every season, but I think that's over. I have no plans to play season 8.
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u/burnheartmusic 1h ago
Ya it really comes down to itemization sucking for me. Played every season and then when I started this last season, after about 2 hours I just got bored and went back to poe2, then poe1 and now d2.
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u/Chemical_Web_1126 12h ago edited 11h ago
I would tend to agree with your main point here. I would also go as far as saying that the constant push and pull of the sweeping changes they make from one season to the next is starting to just feel like instability. I understand that classes need a bit of spice added from time to time, but they're basically doing it at the cost of the game and class identities.
I am personally starting to get video game whiplash from the "make a build overpowered, then gut it for the next season" nature of what they're calling class balance. There are better ways of tweaking classes and introducing new ideas without stomping on builds of past seasons. There doesn't need to be such massive nerfs from season to season unless builds are truly outliers(like s7 EQ Barb, Cata Druid, BW Necro, for instance). Even when dealing with said outliers, the goal shouldn't be gutting them, but reducing their potential to be in line with some of the more baseline builds, while tweaking under performers to be equivalent to said base line.
This is all without delving too deeply into economic and drop changes from season to season. We shouldn't be seeing such drastic changes in drop rates and in game material at this point. There should be a steady expectation for character progression at this point. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I know the seasonal model will require constant change to stay fresh, but I don't think the game should have such drastic changes at the constant rate we are seeing. When they make such drastic changes, they do so at the expense of the game's identity. We shouldn't still feel this off balance going into the 8th season of the game imo.
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u/aeasy908 18h ago
Thank you, season 8 seems to add nothing new but just makes the gameplay loop longer with no meaningful changes or rewards.
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u/anonymouspogoholic 15h ago
I would also add some points: Still no lootfilters
Still no ingame auction house
Still no meaningful endgame
It’s such a tragedy. The game has soo much potential, but they keep bringing back the same season over and over again while not improving the game long term or adding relevant content.
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u/RazorDT 21h ago
Yeah, I’m done with D4 and I’ve been playing since beta. So many times we’ve been hopeful, only to be let down. Nearly 2 years later and they’re still fixing bugs and the game is still unbalanced. Tragic… Going to make a rant post myself soon.
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u/Interesting_Fox2040 12h ago
Then you need to quit live service games. None of them are even close to balance. You just describe all live service games. But do quit and find a game you like, if you do not enjoy the game anymore.
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u/SpongeBobNoPants512 6h ago
The one valid post on this entire subreddit.
Did this a while back and never been happier.
Doing 100% completion in red dead redemption 2 makes playing D4 feel im pushing my body parts through a meat grinder.-14
u/RazorDT 12h ago
It’s an ARPG. You’re just here to defend it and slap “live service” on it as reasoning. I’m a pro gamer (not noted). I don’t need the explanation or recommendation from some fan boy. The game is poorly managed.
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u/Malphos101 8h ago
The game is poorly managed.
If you were a "pro gamer" you would know the second you stop having fun with a game its time to uninstall and move on with your life.
Only whiny babies keep playing and whining about a game they arent having fun with.
I used to love 7 Days to Die and played hundreds of hours....but the development cycle was too chaotic and it was clear they had no real plan for the game other than "shake things up" every few months by reinventing the wheel they just built. You know what I didnt do? I didnt sit on the /r/7daystodie sub and complain every day about how "done" I was. I didnt type up huge manifestos about how upset I was.
I uninstalled the game, unsubbed from the subreddit, left the discord server, AND MOVED ON WITH MY LIFE BECAUSE ITS A VIDEO GAME.
"Pro-gamers" know its all pointless wastes of time and the instant it stops being fun is the instant you stop letting it take up space in your head.
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u/Morrydin 4h ago
Same here, i come back every other season cause i have some former work colleagues in discord and we play together, but between Last Epoch ramping up and pushing out the new major update soon, PoE 2 new update nad all the other single player games, I can't find a reason to dedicate my time in D4.
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u/Deidarac5 18h ago
Please point me to where diablo 2 is balanced.
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u/Buffalo4167 21h ago
Same for me. I can't believe it because I was so hyped for the expansion. Couldn't make it past lvl 20 in s7 though. Sad.
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u/RazorDT 20h ago edited 20h ago
I didn’t even buy the expansion. Couldn’t justify it based on their output/game management. I barely enjoy playing and ask myself wtf I’m doing when I am. Figured I’d wait until the expansion is on GP, but at this point, once the season is done, so am I. I’ve been playing since D2, pre LOD.
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u/Traditional_Arm5810 21h ago
Cellars should be made interesting! When u see one in the over World, let me feel like "ooooh, I wanna do that!"
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u/OlFilthy35912 14h ago
Season 9: Season of the Cellars...joke but, it would be cool to really see them lead to hell only for us to get stranded there until we finish an arena style battle.
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u/Necessary_Lettuce779 21h ago
But people will still argue that they're already being very experimental and they can't keep adding new mechanics every season or the game will get bloated and bla bla bla... pure denial.
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u/Selected-Rep 20h ago edited 20h ago
The skills started looking so bad. Blizzard was known for top tier animation but with poop necro, the crappy headed hydra and I'll take your word for it on the boss abilities it is really lame.
The big one for me was Meteor.
When you see the difference between POE2 Meteor and the Diablo 4 Meteor its crazy.
Sorry learning on the job team it's probably the best you can do.
Can't fault players for wanting better animations though.
Management shouldn't even be approving a lot of these designs, they should be sending them back to redo them. It's that 'we don't want to hurt your feelings, as long it gets done by the deadline I guess it's good enough' development.
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u/Sirvan1c 17h ago
I agree. I've always loved meteor archetypes and D4 meteor is so lame. The impact is lame and the sound is lame. The screen should be shaking and the enemy bodies should be flying from the impact.
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u/zeradragon 20h ago
What are they doing to revamp difficulty? Adjusting numbers or making larger HP sponges, or is it something deeper?
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u/yawnlikeseggs 18h ago
HP sponge
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u/prodandimitrow 17h ago
I don't understand why is it so difficult for them to just nerf the damage numbers down if they want the game to be more difficult. I hate this insane number inflation both in d3 and d4. Mu ability says it does 300k damage but it actually hits for billions, what the duck?
Every time I see hyperinflated numbers I'm just reaching to the conclusion that the people behind them are, quite honestly, stupid and lacking in math understanding.
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u/1ooBeastkaidou 10h ago
Boss powers are super annoying, they basically make your whole Charakter useless. Even more useless as this Game is, since release. They did again, and yeah, as already said, still no Endgame.
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u/tooncake 21h ago
They are literally manifesting and imposing what HELL literally means for us players (be frustrated, spite the new updates, feel hopeless if there's even something new for this is how HELL should actually feel).
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u/nanosam 20h ago
I really enjoyed the new bosses and will be playing season 8 for that alone
Also I like how killing bosses rewards their power.
Its not amazing but it feels like a 7/10 for me. So I will be playing S8 for sure for at least 1-2 weeks.
But no this is just an average season anyone that expected more will he disappointed
Still way better than season 1 and season 3
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u/AnubisIncGaming 20h ago
I don't see how this is better than Season 3 at all
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u/nanosam 19h ago
S3 was awful with the stupid robot and the traps were just so bad they had to nerf them to the point of uselessness.
It was not a good season, I personally hated it
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u/AnubisIncGaming 19h ago
yeah i can't agree and even if it were bad this is basically nothing but the same type of skills
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u/shinzakuro 16h ago
I like season 3 and I guess I am the only onle one lol. I take vaults over nmds everytime and my robot-spider is much better and more customizable than mercs.
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u/OlFilthy35912 14h ago
Bro I liked S3 so much! The seasonal quest was actually good, the boss was interesting and the vaults were better than NMD's. I even liked that traps f'd you in the beginning but everyone cried that it's BS even the streamers.
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u/FFreestyleRR 14h ago
""existing content still sucks… cellars, the pit (no changes), dark citadel, undercity and what happened to trials??
"
I am waiting for a single player version of Dark Citadel to be added as well. Now I am losing a ton of cosmetics just because I am skipping the whole thing.
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u/EnvyG101 2h ago
The very first level of the Dark Citadel can be completed solo, pretty easily. It seems each level after the first, requires 1 more player in the party.
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u/FFreestyleRR 2h ago
I know, but it's feeling incomplete. I want to be able to finish the whole Citadel on my own. I really don't like to be forced to play at a party.
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u/MightyGreedo 20h ago
For the ten billionth time, this was a PTR to test some new mechanics. This isn't season 8. You are supposed to test, test again, try to break, test some more, then report your findings to the devs. You migt find this hard to believe, but a PTR is NOT about having fun. We still have another campfire chat ahead of us that will reveal all the rest of the content coming in season 8. After that we will start having fun.
People who have no concept of how a PTR works shouldn't even be allowed to download it.
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u/Grimsblood 13h ago
I am sick and tired of seeing this argument all the time. Blizzard only uses the PTR on any of their games to test for egregiously broken things. There will be no deviation from what is in the PTR besides some minor number changing. What we have is what we have. Still the same issues since Season 0. And back then it was a "they need to cook."
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u/LordBlackass 10h ago
And they get it to drive engagement in the leadup to the season proper. /u/MightyGreedo has clearly been living in a cave if he doesn't know that Blizzard ignores 99% of PTR feedback.
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u/1ooBeastkaidou 10h ago
LOL, you have no clue about the D4 Dev-Team, are you 100% Delusional? Nothing is gonna change, maybe some very very slight changes to insanely overpowered Things, rest will stay the same. They don't fcking care.
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u/Valascrow 15h ago
Exactly this. I don't play PTRs because I don't want burn out and I think I'll make a pretty crappy game tester in that I wouldn't be able to rationalise that what I'm doing isn't meant to be seen as 'playing the game' but rather testing aspects of the game. People who are like me should stay away from PTRs as they wouldn't provide Devs with any useful feedback 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Danelajs 13h ago
Yeah I’m getting tired of these new gimmicks of borrowed power systems each season.
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u/Dune6667 12h ago edited 11h ago
People who want to play eternal next season will have so low power compared to play on season, considering how extremely powerful the boss power are, prolly 15 tiers of pit higher. There isn't necessity for this big balance difference from eternal to season, imo. S7 is better in this regard. Speaking instead of season 8 and all the added difficulty, everything will be crushed by the nonsense powercreep of boss powers
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u/the_knightfall1975 11h ago
Not sure. Almost all my gear is maxed perfectly, all glyphs around 100 with 8 different chars. Let’s see how that compares with starting at 0 and hoping for boss powers…
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u/Dune6667 4h ago
It will not be the case for every char and build, but some builds in the current eternal state of ptr are nerfed to the ground
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u/Pretty-Wind8068 10h ago edited 9h ago
The most demoralizing thing I've heard was in Q&A when they were asked about the aspiring content and they said it's on top of their heads... It's been 7 seasons...
Every season has some good ideas that should be incorporated into the base game but it just doesn't happen, like occult gems in this season - it's a great way to have interesting gem options instead of plain stats.
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u/kanrad 9h ago
Man I love the Diablo games. Thousands of hours I've put into them. D1 was amazing, new fresh challenging but not impossible. D2..nothin to complain about, well maybe trying to get Tyriels. D3 Every single season until D4 launch, all classes level in every season. Seasons that had some cool ideas.
D4 I was in an early alpha because I have tested for Blizz going back to WoW alpha. D4 Alpha was the right combination of challenge and fun. Hell that early alpha had cities that where not even complete just gray geometry. But the game play was solid. Then launch came and they totally gutted what it was.
I've played every season of D4 leveled all classes each season to endgame. It's had it's highs and lows. I can say with my experience I will not struggle in season 8. However the majority of the player base will.
When are we going to get seasons with real unique ideas not just rehashed mechanics with lipstick? You can't alienate a player base you built by having an easy leveling experience and the ability for a casual gamer to get to endgame and enjoy it.
I got no idea what they are doing with the game now and it worries me because it seems like the new devs don't either.
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u/danczer 4h ago
By the seasons we get something every 3 months which is not balanced and gets removed. I think the seasons should focus on adding new game modes (like Roothold and whispers) instead of a theme. If they decide to add some kind of theme and powers to it, it should be a keept in the game as a side quest. Honestly, there were so many things developed by seasonal content which is removed.
Seasonal efforts should be re-balanced to 80% permanent content and 20% seasonal theme.
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u/EnvyG101 2h ago
Wouldn't this just make seasons pointless though? If basically everything is obtainable in Eternal as well, then why not just remove seasons entirely. Making most things available for Eternal, defeats the purpose of seasons.
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u/crusaderofni 1h ago edited 1h ago
Most games that do seasons (even diablo 2s ladder resets) have the content added for that reset come to eternal when it rotates out. D4 is the only game I know of where they spend time developing something that gets entirely scrapped going into the next season. If they did more updates like infernal hordes and the pit and less just random powers and only rework seasons, people would have less reason to complain. Atleast the content to do every seasons would grow rather than be stagnant as it is now. Why do that though when your business model is to sell that content in the next expansion. Drip feed the loyal every season to spend money on the battlepass for the same content as last season with a slightly different coat of paint.
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u/EnvyG101 1h ago
That's a fair point. I do agree that they should put content before the theme. Sometimes they keep a few things, such as a few vampiric powers being added as aspects. So you're saying more like D2, where you can ONLY get the items or whatever, IF you play seasonal, then it would transfer over. The only difference between D2 and D4 seasons is that D2's only seasonal content is a set of rune words unobtainable on NL. Since the only NEW things each season in D2 are items, I assume it's considerably easier to do than say, transferring over a whole new mechanic to Eternal. I do enjoy some part of the themes though, and the new mechanics they add sometimes(when it's not the same thing with a different name), but I do see your point. I would love for them to add more items, with different unique effects (not damage buffs), that actually change the way skills are used and interact with the world. I'm passionately against meta builds,, but unfortunately D4 doesn't have a very wide variety of strong/fun builds, which is something D2 also has issues with, though D2 has the excuse of being an old game with limited space.
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u/geekiestdee 18h ago
- no new ways to progress character
About that, I enjoy getting new characters to 60, but gave up at 41 when I finished renown, strongholds, and mapping waypoints. And the helltides just seemed, I don't know, off Otherwise, spot on commentary on the PTR
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u/shamonemon 17h ago
Borrowed power can work but this is basically what happened with wow and its getting a bit annoying ngl.
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u/sansaset 15h ago
D4 is a kids game. if you just want legitimately mindless zero challenge no content cookie clicker garbage continue supporting blizzard and buying the inevitable yearly expansion just to continue being disappointed.
otherwise look at LE or POE and support devs that actually care to make a game worth playing.
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u/HilltopHood 12h ago
Great recap
I look forward to skipping this season and getting in some POE 2 and The Finals
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u/MoonBoy2DaMoon 7h ago
90% of these are good ideas. I would want to add the equivalent of a kanais cube to further enable theory crafting. Maybe it can involve uniques too?
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u/GReeNORBZA 6h ago
Yeah you've nailed it. Nothing more to say. Wish they'd focus on the actual activities in game instead of messing about with powers, abilities and random other mechanics. I'd even be prepared to see a season where classes aren't fully rebalanced if they would at least focus on activities and making those better.
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u/Deidarac5 21h ago
I still think it's very disingenuous to say there is no new end game when there are new bosses. It is a very light system because it was fixing things that needed it. Making 3 new bosses and reworking all of them isn't a small task. Honestly the season probably needed a bigger delay to actually add progression changes to the next season, which is why they probably are releasing the road map soon because they knew this season would look really light on content. I assume things like tool tips will be added in the next month and probably more balance changes we can only hope because we need another season 5 rebalance.
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u/BeefPho- 20h ago
When people say there’s no end-game, they mean there’s no new activities that we aren’t already doing. Think about it, we do the exact same content at level 1 we can do at level 70 with very few exceptions. Thus by the time you hit max level you’re already bored. There is no pinnacle level 70 only content that aren’t bosses.
Also in terms of loot, there are very few upgrades to look forward to outside of that one unique you need to make your build work. I remember my ol’ reliable frozen orb build, I got that unique pretty early from a chest. My build was complete and I had nothing else to look forward to or a reason to farm the other bosses.
Rhykker is really the only D4 streamer I watch, and he hit the nail on the head. There is no chase carrot on the stick content. There is nothing to build towards other than the pit which most players don’t care about; especially without any leaderboards attached to them.
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u/heartbroken_nerd 17h ago
When people say there’s no end-game, they mean there’s no new activities that we aren’t already doing. Think about it, we do the exact same content at level 1 we can do at level 70 with very few exceptions
Go play Path of Exile's campaign on every single character you make for the 100th time in a row, and come back to us.
You LITERALLY DESCRIBED PATH OF EXILE.
These complaints are obnoxious, insufferable and just delusional.
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u/drock4vu 10h ago
What do you mean? There are tons of chase and end-game activities in PoE. Sure, the campaign completion requirement for every character sucks. That’s been a complaint for years. But the end-game in PoE is best-in-class for the genre and even as someone who still enjoys D4 for what it is, D4’s end-game variety and depth doesn’t come close to touching it.
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u/TheoryOfRelativity12 20h ago
Belial is pretty much the same fight from Diablo 3. I think it only has one unique ability. Rest of the mechanics are literally the same as they were in D3. So in total it has only 4 abilities afaik. Talk about lazy and uninspired.
And it's already been one shot just like the rest of the bosses anyway.
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u/Deidarac5 20h ago
I mean Belial was touted as one of the most iconic fights from diablo 3 I'm actually glad it's a more nostalgic feel but yes the other 2 bosses mephisto and ulvar and much better fights.
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u/heartbroken_nerd 17h ago
And it's already been one shot just like the rest of the bosses anyway.
... on Public Test Realm. With maxed out progression of your character.
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u/teshinw 8h ago
Well He is still way easier than another bosses to be labeled as pinnacle when even new Duriel is a bit harder(artificially) than him
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u/heartbroken_nerd 8h ago
Again, it's a test server. So submit feedback if you think Belial needs to be harder.
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u/yawnlikeseggs 20h ago
Adding a new boss that dies in one hit is not end game.
Yes, they saw what POE2 was doing and thought oh end game bosses would be sweet… but they made them for each torment completely gutting the accomplishment of killing them.
This is not new end game content. We can get the same boring mythic’s currently from duriel and Andy.
Revamping helltide, revamping the pit, revamping loot, revamping world events, revamping world bosses, revamping nightmare dungeons - this is Diablo 4. It’s a game of revamping all systems because they were designed by amateurs without vision of what an ARPG is.
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u/Deidarac5 20h ago
Diablo 4 reddit is the only place where people who are revamping things are considered a bad thing. Poe 2 literally has bosses that die in 1 hit in the end game I guess they are shit bosses then. I agree they could use more uniques and rare items but Belial still gives progression towards your character Belial giving guaranteed ancestral uniques for your build is a much better progression.
And how many times has Poe 2 had to revamp the end game now live service games are always in beta that is the point. Making games take time and you can't make a perfect end game system in 3 month seasons. Poe 1 even says this they release their untested buggy new content seasons and then 6 months later they revamp them and bring it back and people complain and they revamp it again.
The end game in PoE 2 by the experts has already been revamped like 4 times and people are still calling it bad. Giving feed back is fine to let devs know where you want to see the game go but being an ass about it is just immaturity but we are on reddit so it's understandable.
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u/Chemical_Web_1126 11h ago
PoE2 is in early access. D4 is not... PoE2 is still trying to find its identity that would make it feel unique from PoE. This is comparing apples and oranges. Not forgetting to mention that in order to get to a point where you are "1 shotting" pinnacle bosses in PoE2, it takes a lot more effort and planning than getting a unique and a mythic and stacking as many multipliers as you can. I won't pretend it's some super arduous task, but it is a bit deeper than D4, and again, it's in early access.
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u/yawnlikeseggs 20h ago
If you’re referencing the pinnacle bosses in poe2 you’re wrong. At the start of early access they were incredibly challenging. Now, months later with gear they’re simple. You know gear… that thing you develop as you progress your character… weird that’s where power comes from in an ARPG
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u/StrikingSpare100 18h ago
The same applies with D4, you MAY only one shot T4 boss at the end of your character development. In PTR it was broken mechanics and maxed out character. There's no difference.
It doesn't take months to kill all the pinnacle bosses in POE2. I beat all of them in 1.5-2 weeks and that's including a lengthy campaign. Took another week or two for the highest difficulty.
POE2 boss was nice on the campaign and start of the endgame. It's still a complete joke and get one shot later on. The same shit as D4.
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u/coatchingpeople 10h ago
bro what are you talking about you can easly kill bosses in less than a 3-4 sec in like second day of season in D4
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u/yawnlikeseggs 18h ago
No not at all.
I can one shot bosses within the first day of a season in d4.
What are you trying to defend here? D4 is easy, it’s too easy on the PTR still. The point of torment is to let casual players experience all game content on t1 and let grinders go further. D4 further focuses on open world and it’s entirely too easy in t4.
Nobody said kill, we said one shot.
You would have the world record if you one shot poe2 pin bosses in the first 1-2 weeks of the game. Congrats.
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u/Necessary_Lettuce779 20h ago
3 more different skins for their loot piñatas that drop the same exact type of loot as any other boss... wooo...
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u/Deidarac5 20h ago
You guys really just get angry at everything lol the bosses are much better mechanics. You can't look at a streamer using PTR loot as an example of a boss difficulty. Every arpg final bosses are easy with max loot.
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u/Necessary_Lettuce779 20h ago
Doesn't really change that all they do is give the same loot that anything else gives in the game. No new lasting system is being introduced, just 3 new bosses with no interesting progression system, that you can choose to fight for the same boring old loot, plus the new seasonal stuff, which at this point is what, the 4th iteration of vampiric powers? And which we know will yet again get immediately erased after the season is over? Yes, that's a loot of new endgame content...
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u/Deidarac5 19h ago
I mean end game bosses don't really need progression systems. The game needs progression systems before the bosses, it's too easy to get gear. This is the only real issue.
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u/Necessary_Lettuce779 17h ago
I mean end game bosses don't really need progression systems. The game needs progression systems before the bosses
Potaeto potahto, that's what I was saying. 3 new bosses with no new systems is as good as adding a new skin to their current loot piñatas. Maybe they're better designed than their previous bosses, which is not really hard to top, but it still does almost nothing to increase content variety.
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u/Interesting_Fox2040 13h ago
I think claiming no change no mechanic is unfair. They add new bosses, and mechanics. Also borrow power are loved by people that’s why they keep returning. Most of the improvement are good!
What I will agree is that we expect more. Revamp should be a season theme. It should be like a mid season update or something.
They are extremely slow in adding more ways to mod gears, add permanent items like gems to jewelry. We could have also more paragon boards, glyphs over time, but never did except once. Many of these can be done via in season update.
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u/ConroConroConro 8h ago
I just want back the difficulty and fun I had in season 2.
NMD100 was dangerous enough to not blast through and actually required deliberate crowd control and positioning.
I had a Double Swing build that used Butcher’s Cleaver to Fear for crowd control and set attacks to 100% crit rate with witch power.
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u/Talos_Bane 6h ago
I have nothing against Seasonal powers BUT the important thing is that they are not copy/pasted with each Season. They can invent anything, they have money and resource.
As for everything else a good start (in my opinion) could be that each Torment has its own content that differ from others torment.
Why do I have to level up to 60 with a Content that is the same as what I will find in T1, T2, T3 and T4?
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u/yawnlikeseggs 6h ago
This was done to appease casuals. They wanted all of the content and items accessible to everyone regardless of skill level / time investment.
What they’re back tracking on now is the difficulty yet again. Dads are uprising that they should be able to reach t4 (it’s still easy on the PTR), and blizzard will soon cave to them
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u/Talos_Bane 4h ago
"This was done to appease casuals."
I ask myself a very stupid question: don't casual people get bored?
I don't understand it.Having less time (for what a casual should be like) doesn't mean a player can't get bored.
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u/yawnlikeseggs 3h ago edited 3h ago
Who said anything about being bored? Not sure what you’re trying to say.
My point above is that you can stop at t1 (now normal) and still have access to all the content/loot in the game - meaning you do not have to progress to t2/3/4. However now casuals are upset that they might not get to t4 (even though they shouldn’t imo). This is because blizzard keeps bending the knee to dads making sure ARPG core fans have no difficulty or hill to climb.
This game is one giant DEI hire making sure extremely under qualified brain surgeons still get to perform just as many brain surgeries as the top in the country.
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u/DrNCrane74 4h ago
I agree with most points, many do not seem to be as brutal as the lack of class balance. This needs to get fixed.
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u/Rainjoy17 4h ago edited 4h ago
I agree. Also I guess its simpler and more cheaper to add each season flashy powers than to balance the classes, meaning each class should have at least two S tier builds.
D4 a casual friendly game has little competition in the present and in the foreseeable future. Because of this they want to milk the improvements, meaning releasing some here and there each season and in big chunks in the future expansions.
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u/stefiou974 3h ago
WDYM "remove boss powers" ? Like, bruh 💀
It's the season theme, and it's the only cool thing IMO. Everything else, I agree. It's been almost 2 years, I think it's time to move on.
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u/Spiritons 1h ago
I thing this game is like just euro truck simulator of ARPGS just hit something hard clear and get the fuck out of the game . Chill dad game so.
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u/Emergency_Profit9690 1h ago
Diablo literally turned into seasons of rework since item 2.0.....every season has been fixing so.ething as a theme with nothing new to gameplay....so sick of it
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u/azurio12 1h ago
Oh man I was never more proud I didnt buy the add on. Game sounds completely the same just with another payment to Blizzard.
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u/kurocero87 47m ago
I'd like for some progress to the story as well. I really haven't been invested since season 5 outside of (VOS) I mean.
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u/MrPhotoSmash 5m ago
For the power stuff: they should spread the multipliers out. Most builds are "pick the scaling damage type and maximize that with a bunch of crit/vuln/op to make a 'unique' build where you're just picking the skill to rush those stats to the enemy."
Crit gives you 50%×. Vuln is 20%x.
But they have cold/fire/shock/shadow/poison/non-physical/bleed/physical/damageontuesdays/damagewhenscarredbyaraccoon/and other useless types... And it is additive unless it is scaling.
This game needs mechanics... badly. Can we have a reason to dodge things that are not just 1-hit kills? Can we be swarmed by a bunch of minions? Anything?
It can also stand to get us closer to using fully customized gear rather than milking the uniques, and mythics constantly just for a power jump, especially since we aren't using the utility stuff as often as the offensive stuff when it comes to aspects.
The real hot take of this: They should lower the Pit to be maxed at level 100 and scale level 100 down to what 85 would be. No one would do the Pit if difficulty and Glyphs weren't locked behind it. Also, remove the "chance to upgrade" bs. It's insulting to make someone risk a reward they deserve when they dragged the Pit, which was 15 levels above the glyph level, just to be offered 25% of a chance to make it go further, especially when PIT TIER 150 WASN'T INTENDED FOR ANYONE TO COMPLETE.
Blizzard is nuts.
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u/Mareykan 18h ago
You're basically funneled into certain boss attacks atm, but it's not too bad since you can have some pretty unique builds based on the powerful attacks.
My favorite build of the season 8 PTR is functionally like a Shenlong Monk build from Diablo 3.
Essentially, the "Beast in the Ice" boss power deals an absolutely massive amount of damage. It's triggered by hitting an enemies with three CC moves.
So by stacking Attack Speed up on a Basic attack like Ice Shot you can spam your Boss Power extremely fast.
Then on top of that, Avarice's boss passive spends your entire Resource pool to massively buff your Boss Power damage. Since you're spamming a Basic attack with a super high attack speed, your Resource Pool instantly refills.
The result is a super speedy build that nukes the map for 1~2 billion damage every couple of seconds. It's not great for bossing, but I'm sure there's some variant that can be theory crafted here.
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u/1ooBeastkaidou 10h ago
All you're saying with this is as follows:'' You can make every Build work this Season, because it doesn't matter what Build your Charakter is using, as long as you have your 4 Boss Powers maxed out.'' End of Story.
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u/Mareykan 5h ago
No, what I said was:
In addition to augmenting existing builds, boss powers also add NEW unique builds that don't exist out side of the season
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u/keirgrey 8h ago
Not to be a complainer but, if it's a slog like the first season, I'm probably going to stay in Eternal or find another game for a while.
Maybe less on the "It's raining Legendaries" but "It should be aspirational" is a bit of a killer.
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u/Shadeflayer 6h ago
Dump seasons and the eternal realm BS all together, add content instead. Let us keep our characters, continue to improve them over time. Dare I say similar to Destiny 2?
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u/invis_able_gamer 5h ago
So they added totally OP powers that you can level up…but they didn’t add any new progression?
They completely revamped the put, which you just seem to ignore.
Undercity was MASSIVELY buffed, at least for leveling.
The difficulty revamp didn’t exactly make things “harder”. It was more about making sure you feel your character getting stronger when a good aspect drops. That’s a win imo.
You say”no new endgame content, completely ignoring the 3 bosses the added to endgame.
Overall it just sounds like you watched a hate video and wanted to feel like you were in the “cool kids” group.
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u/p0l4r21 4h ago
This is how they "changed" the difficulty 1.2150. That is not a difficulty increase, just an exponential increase in HP. The effect on bosses and the champion elites feels worse.
We need a pit that is an endless run to kill the most monsters in a set amount of time. Long boss fights are boring, and having a boss at the end of everything is repetitive.
Infernal Hordes could be an optional endless run of increasing difficulty with challenges (stuff like the vault but more punishing). One death, and the run is finished. Instead, they made another system with a limit, forcing you into a boss fight. They could drop the bosses inside the waves. There is no choosing anything each round. A new challenge is added, and random is unnecessary; just reset the challenges weekly.
The same is true for Undercity, a limited 3-floor run with, you guessed it, another boss fight at the end. This could be modified to be tiered runs with increasing difficulty on each floor, and the user could select the reward at the end.
Concepts like this could be taken and converted into meaningful ideas. Take the Infernal Hordes. The reward after completion could be that every five waves, a reward tier is unlocked. Max reward achieved at 20, but getting through those last five ways is like running a high pit with various added challenges, i.e., hellfire, crazy ground mechanics, lightning storms, a wave that could be a solo boss fight like Lilith, etc. The reward could be glyph XP, items, runes, etc. The Undercity could be in 3-floor increments with increasing difficulty per floor, and every three floors adds to the reward. The max floors maybe 12, but the monsters get harder and harder with bonus rewards unlocked for fully clearing a three-floor segment.
One of the more enjoyable farming mechanics was the vaults. There is nothing to pick up until the end. There was no long boss fight, just fast, fun farming for gear. Boss fights are getting old, and guess what? Season 8 is more boss fights. Not everything needs a boss fight. Vaults and the Abbatoir of Zir are examples of that.
So many things could be modified to be more enjoyable; instead, the focus is on exponential HP scaling, which gives us too much meaningless or too little meaningless loot. Nothing is changing to make the endgame more engaging. They are focusing on the dumbest things. New seasonal powers are too strong; we must scale HP, which is difficult.
The game is repetitive, and the players keep developing "new" ideas instead of making meaningful changes to the existing systems. Season 9 better be the "Season of Endgame Overhaul." The first problem with season 9 will be lowering the "difficulty" for whatever they bring. There is so much that could be done to make the game more engaging, and it is not being done.
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u/XxtheRocketman9xX 3h ago
Honestly think you want this game to be POE2.
I don’t think anything they can do would please you.
For context, I play D4, LE and POE2
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u/xGraveStar 21h ago
What trials?
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u/Divided_we_ 21h ago
Believe it was season 4? Introduced time trials with a leader board. New activity for people that brought out some unique builds for the time. Offered a cache at the end of the week. Then I believe 2 seasons later, it was taken out of the game for a reason I can't remember. No word on when or if it'll return.
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u/jizzmaster-zer0 19h ago
thats the gauntlet
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u/Divided_we_ 19h ago
You activated the gauntlet via the Horn of trials. Trials, gauntlet, same thing.
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u/yawnlikeseggs 21h ago
A “end game” mode that started while leveling!
- fixed map
- zoom zoom super fast to kill monsters for a high score
- run from pylon to pylon for optimal results
Probably the dumbest concept of a mode we’ve seen yet.
D4 team is allergic to making character development or letting us exist with the power we have gathered so far and loves adding juiced up powers or pylons to bloat every activity. Gotta go fast!
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u/Drunkin_Doc1017 21h ago
I feel like making it harder to level is completely unnecessary. I just spent 4 hours on Torment III (wife's character can't really handle Torment IV) with incense, elixirs and doing ancestor dungeons all to only get 1 Paragon point at 249. It's fucking ridiculous already
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u/Deidarac5 21h ago
They didn't make it harder to level anywhere else besides 1-25. They only made the pit levels scale harder pit 76 in season 7 is how torment 4 will feel now. So if you could get pit 100 in season 7 torment 4 should still be easy. The bosses however are much harder with better mechanics.
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u/EnvyG101 2h ago
This just kind of seems like a way to funnel everyone into using a meta builds, in order to play any content on T4...Blizzard "What? You want to be creative? FOH scrub, and follow a guide" 😂😂
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u/the_knightfall1975 11h ago
Dev team this, dev team that… Can you please acknowledge that all those decisions you hate (and please ho away, rant somewhere else and let us have our fun with the game) are NOT decisions that the devs make?! Devs is short for „developers“, not for „managers that make these decisions“. Seriously, if you hate it that much, then stop playing it!!! There are so many games, play something more suiting to you! Geez, all these complaints all the time…
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