Diablo 4 is the best DIABLO game but i've now lost interest in the franchise

As suspected, tempering is a key to elevating most skills from soso to pretty fun, and a handful from great to fucking ridiculous.

Currently doofing about with a supersized frost nova, iceheart brais and ice shard enchantment. Some very cool chain reactions.

Bone spirit necro is dormant at level 80 or so. Boring as hell, effective as hell.

My understanding of why they added tempering was to rid rare items that drop of extraneous mods but provide the means to roll those "secondary" affixes onto said items to fill out character needs like resistances, life regen, various proc effects etc. But then they put e.g. 300% added damage into the mix and it broke everything so greater affixes are completely overshadowed by ridiculously overpowered tempered mods which you may or may not get due to rng. Cue a huge outcry of rage over bricking god drop items.

I swear to god the D4 team could have hired someone from the D2 or even from the D3 team as a consultant and avoided two thirds of the issues with their game to date.

e: they had a lot of wins with this patch (even with the comments above the new loot system is still WAY better than before) I just get really triggered by devs walking into really predictable pitfalls. I've already started seeing the same old discussions on trading/rmt/ah etc etc in diablo 4 communities after they opened tradeora's box. You can look back 12 years ago in D3 forums and predict exactly what is going to happen and be discussed (or you could if they didn't delete them all lol).

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ladish wrote:

My understanding of why they added tempering was to rid rare items that drop of extraneous mods but provide the means to roll those "secondary" affixes onto said items to fill out character needs like resistances, life regen, various proc effects etc. But then they put e.g. 300% added damage into the mix and it broke everything so greater affixes are completely overshadowed by ridiculously overpowered tempered mods which you may or may not get due to rng. Cue a huge outcry of rage over bricking god drop items.

I swear to god the D4 team could have hired someone from the D2 or even from the D3 team as a consultant and avoided two thirds of the issues with their game to date.

e: they had a lot of wins with this patch (even with the comments above the new loot system is still WAY better than before) I just get really triggered by devs walking into really predictable pitfalls. I've already started seeing the same old discussions on trading/rmt/ah etc etc in diablo 4 communities after they opened tradeora's box. You can look back 12 years ago in D3 forums and predict exactly what is going to happen and be discussed (or you could if they didn't delete them all lol).

+1, thats exactly why tempering exists. there are people fine with how tempering is in the game but i'm on the "we should be able to reset tempering" team.

tempering should not be the vaal orb of d4. vaal orbs equivalent should be introduced to d4 but we shouldlnt feel like its so crucial that we "must" vaal everything.

i would say tempering should simply be an expected part of the crafting process.

people would feel free to temper more items as a result and there would be more resource sinks that would exist as a result.

D4 player numbers on Steam are going up 3 weeks after Season 4 launch. Kinda insane.

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zakalwe55 wrote:

D4 player numbers on Steam are going up 3 weeks after Season 4 launch. Kinda insane.

the devs finally humbled themselves and gave in to player demands.

its funny how that works. if only they listened to the no lifers at the very start.

but no, they were happy listening to the feedback of the dad gamers who were fine with mediocrity.

i went from d4 bad and wanting to sell off my blizz account to now eagerly wanting to get the new expansion.

Treasure bags are rarely awesome but damn if I don't get an MTG-lite thrill crwcking them open.

And free mtxes? Thank you.

I get that it's all about drawing people to look at the cash shop but free is free. It's hardly a huge resistance to grab the goodies and click "character select" rather than "continue shopping" when you were never shopping to begin with.

Sad to say not even tempering can make a pbaoe teleport/crackling energy build work beyond mob clearing but that's okay. It's still fun for when I get tired of being serious about it all. :)

Taking another break for stuff but damn, I could just keep going. I was talking quests with a friend who has just gotten his mount in the campaign and realised...i havent even finished them all. 90% done. A few chunky chains not even started. Whoops.

--

I am mostly avoiding VoH news but I will watch the trailer later. I have a lot of quiet confidence it won't suck given how far the game has come this past year.

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exsea wrote:

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zakalwe55 wrote:

D4 player numbers on Steam are going up 3 weeks after Season 4 launch. Kinda insane.

the devs finally humbled themselves and gave in to player demands.

its funny how that works. if only they listened to the no lifers at the very start.

but no, they were happy listening to the feedback of the dad gamers who were fine with mediocrity.

i went from d4 bad and wanting to sell off my blizz account to now eagerly wanting to get the new expansion.

That's... not what happened.

The no-lifers are not the ones playing D4 in these numbers. Sure the Pit pushing is somewhat competitive, but its by no means what's keeping the vast majority interested.

The combat is great, the barrier for entry is low. The crafting isn't difficult to understand and is powerful with tempering and masterworking. Helltides are fun and the mob density (and adjusting the difficulty), is spot on. Multiplayer feels good, and party play even more so.

I've personally re-rolled a few characters, something I wouldn't have done in PoE traditionally. The skip campaign is unbelievably useful and such QoL.

Anyways the steam numbers and player numbers are up because of how great and entertaining it is for average gamers. Season 4 is a remarkable success. Having retention and engagement go up from not only last season, but increase from season launch? That's unheard of. PoE has never achieved that in its entire history.

The Fall Expansion is the easiest pre-order of my life.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

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exsea wrote:

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zakalwe55 wrote:

D4 player numbers on Steam are going up 3 weeks after Season 4 launch. Kinda insane.

the devs finally humbled themselves and gave in to player demands.

its funny how that works. if only they listened to the no lifers at the very start.

but no, they were happy listening to the feedback of the dad gamers who were fine with mediocrity.

i went from d4 bad and wanting to sell off my blizz account to now eagerly wanting to get the new expansion.

That's... not what happened.

The no-lifers are not the ones playing D4 in these numbers. Sure the Pit pushing is somewhat competitive, but its by no means what's keeping the vast majority interested.

The combat is great, the barrier for entry is low. The crafting isn't difficult to understand and is powerful with tempering and masterworking. Helltides are fun and the mob density (and adjusting the difficulty), is spot on. Multiplayer feels good, and party play even more so.

I've personally re-rolled a few characters, something I wouldn't have done in PoE traditionally. The skip campaign is unbelievably useful and such QoL.

Anyways the steam numbers and player numbers are up because of how great and entertaining it is for average gamers. Season 4 is a remarkable success. Having retention and engagement go up from not only last season, but increase from season launch? That's unheard of. PoE has never achieved that in its entire history.

The Fall Expansion is the easiest pre-order of my life.

all the things you mentioned are the result of blizz listening to no lifer feedback.

on release d4 was decent but as an ARPG it lacked endgame.

no lifers complained about the itemization and even made the "damage on tuesdays" meme a thing. masterworking and tempering were a direct result of the devs addressing this complaint.

helltide is more fun now but especially with a way to increase the difficulty/drops. especially with the way we could build meters to make more mobs appear. i wonder whose feedback contributed to this?

no lifers. helltide feels significantly more fun compared to before.

remember how nightmare dungeons used to be? we had to ride our horses and manually TRAVEL to each dungeon.

who bitched about this? no lifers. what do we have now? insta teleporting to NMDs.

remember how the game started with vendors being placed in "in game logical" locations? now they're bunched up more closer together so that players dont have to travel all around town for whatever they need. also did you notice in sometimes we now have multiple chest locations?

who bitched about this issue? no lifers. now being in town doing "chores" uses much lesser time.

what about the horse being able to sprint in town? the devs themselves preferred to slow down the game so that players would appreciate the amount of detail their art/design team put into the game environment and wanted players to enjoy them.

thats also thanks to no lifer bitching.

all these changes and perhaps others, all combined led to S4 "reviving" diablo 4 for its rebirth. its significant enough that people like myself that was on the D4 bad team am now on the "new expansion? blizz take my money" team.

saying that's what not happened is willfully "forgetting" that that's what exactly happened.

i was one of the no lifers that gave 1001 suggestions/support other no lifers. what we got in return was the dad gamers telling us to touch grass, the game is fine etc. getting ridiculed etc.

funny how you're discounting all this.

if you're looking at steam numbers. you can actually see data that shows the impact of season 4, which is the season where they actually changed the game based on no lifer feedback.

before may 24, the numbers were stagnant and low and now the numbers are high.

it is high because the game is actually fun now. why is it fun? why are the things the way they are now?

everything good in S4 aligns with most of no lifer feedback that they intentionally refused to budge for almost 1 year before finally giving in.

interestingly i see the same behaviour in poe forums/subreddit in particular to the nolifer vs gamer dad interaction.

but instead of nolifer vs gamer dad, its "casuals" vs "gud gamers/0.001%ers"

there are a lot of feedback given to GGG that some forummers here simply say "its fine".

for example in game clock and auto opening of portal at the end of vaal side areas. i remember reading how some forummers were so negative and could casually brush off those feedback "the games fine".

the game is fine is good but whats wrong if we can make it better?

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Treasure bags are rarely awesome but damn if I don't get an MTG-lite thrill crwcking them open.

And free mtxes? Thank you.

I get that it's all about drawing people to look at the cash shop but free is free. It's hardly a huge resistance to grab the goodies and click "character select" rather than "continue shopping" when you were never shopping to begin with.

Sad to say not even tempering can make a pbaoe teleport/crackling energy build work beyond mob clearing but that's okay. It's still fun for when I get tired of being serious about it all. :)

Taking another break for stuff but damn, I could just keep going. I was talking quests with a friend who has just gotten his mount in the campaign and realised...i havent even finished them all. 90% done. A few chunky chains not even started. Whoops.

--

I am mostly avoiding VoH news but I will watch the trailer later. I have a lot of quiet confidence it won't suck given how far the game has come this past year.

theyre also trying to hype the game as much as possible for the new expansion coming in oct.

fuck, i went from wanting to sell off my blizz account for dirt cheap to insta buying their expansion on preorder.

the quests... one reason why i dont want to do them is i cant blaze thru em. some quests allow you to skip/speed thru dialogue while some are unskippable which can infuriate me as i could be in the middle of a helltide and my adrenalines all pumped up to kill more stuff but now i m forced to listen to dialogue for a good 10-20 seconds?

as for the treasure bags. damn i love em. extra loot is always fun

also, protip: save up all the 925 power bags, and get a level 1-55 character to open them. the result are gear thats at max power (925) but with a level 55 level requirement.

you can also this on whisper caches (but on level 55 characters specifically).

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ladish wrote:

My understanding of why they added tempering was to rid rare items that drop of extraneous mods but provide the means to roll those "secondary" affixes onto said items to fill out character needs like resistances, life regen, various proc effects etc. But then they put e.g. 300% added damage into the mix and it broke everything so greater affixes are completely overshadowed by ridiculously overpowered tempered mods which you may or may not get due to rng. Cue a huge outcry of rage over bricking god drop items.

I swear to god the D4 team could have hired someone from the D2 or even from the D3 team as a consultant and avoided two thirds of the issues with their game to date.

e: they had a lot of wins with this patch (even with the comments above the new loot system is still WAY better than before) I just get really triggered by devs walking into really predictable pitfalls. I've already started seeing the same old discussions on trading/rmt/ah etc etc in diablo 4 communities after they opened tradeora's box. You can look back 12 years ago in D3 forums and predict exactly what is going to happen and be discussed (or you could if they didn't delete them all lol).

with the tempering i think its fine, i just think people need to change how theyre viewing it.



if they didnt have tempering and the items had 5 mods people would drop an item with 3 good mods, 2 bad ones and say ok, its rng loot that item had 3 out of 5 mods its a mid to decent item.

but if you change it and say ok itll roll the first 3 mods on the drop and then u get way more agency in the process and get to heavily influence the last 2 mod rolls, suddenly its "omg they bricked my perfect item how dare there be rng here i need to be able to reroll these mods endlessly so that any 3 mod item is now a perfect item that just requires bashing the reroll button enough times, its an outrage!!!! how dare they!!!"


and i just feel like its a strictly better system with more player agency than dropping 5 mod items, but people who would have been ok with a 5 mod rng item drop system are now losing their shit and demanding more control even though the system is actually giving them way more control than they had before?


its one of those examples with arpg players where theres a vocal chunk of the community who cant just accept that they dont have the best items, and the more you do for them in terms of getting them closer and giving them more power to get them they dont get more happy, they just get even more upset and demand more and more and more.

this is what happened to D3 and it ended with the game basically not having an item system, its like every bit had 3 stats from a ridiculously tight mod pool and every time you leave town you come back with a full invent of legos 3 minutes later and now great, weve got a game that has a shelf life of days on season start. thats where it ends, every step you take in that direction the demands to go even further increase, if you start giving in to them its like the next demand is even more weighted than the last, you think oh ill bend on this people will be more happy, no, no they wont, they never are, you give in and give them more and they only get even more unhappy and have even bigger demands.







i think the way to look at it is that you dont have a perfect item till youve rolled the last 2 stats and masterworked it. a 3 mod item drop is a good start and easy to come by, way too easy to be a guarantee from that point in that everything else is always perfectible.