D4 Flop - My honest review

Lol... I payed a "hundo bucks" for this piece of sh*te, I could've had more stash tabs in POE cries in the corner.

In all seriousness though, I think most people that like both worlds like me have wished for D4 to be more like POE rather than Diablo 3s disabled cousin.

I have unlocked world tier IV with my level 62 sorc, finished the campaign and got 3 renowns maxed out, collected all the altars, I've tried all the events, did most of the nightmare dungeons... and I don't see the point to return to this game like... ever... unless they make some major changes.

Auto-scaling is broken, just like many others have highlighted including Zizaran. I have personally not reached max level, but apparently, if you want to respec at level 100, IE. switch builds/skills you really got to have equipment for it ready, otherwise good luck with yellows. But that's a problem in any ARPG. If I compare it to POE, you can't really switch builds at level 90 with basic items you find in your stash and hope to clear Ubers or something, but even still, it is massively more fun to do so because POE has the BEST itemization in any ARPG.

Progression is a flat curve, no power fantasy here, not even after 50 with a current meta build. Yes you feel more powerful than before thanks to the paragon system which unlocks at 50, but not as much as you would think. And if you are not playing a meta build and not getting the drops you need, you're boned.

Leveling feels awful. Oh praise POE for having such good leveling progression, It could be even better if after playing through the campaign for the 4578th time I could choose not to and do maps from level 1 ah but I guess I will keep dreaming. Even still, I would rather level in POE all day, than level in D4 again. The pain, felt like an absolute chore, especially so when the same skeleton mob that I killed at level 1 fairly efficiently, is now a threat and problem at level, say, 37. Because I had 0 luck with drops, killing this mob now takes longer thanks to level scaling, oh how fun. Maybe better items would make it feel less tedious?

Itemization in D4 sucks ass, did you know that you can get a stat on gear, that increases the drop rate of potions by x %? That has got to be the most useless stat that I have ever seen. In the entirety of my gameplay time which is about 60+ hours. I have never ever needed an increased potion drop rate. But ah ok, maybe future builds will use this as a sort of gimmick. Like a set for chugging potions or something... I got no idea, and at this point, I'm just thinking out loud. The items overall are just a set of basic stats and the legendary passive do mostly squat to really make any meaningful impact on your build. So in the end, you must absolutely combine everything in the game, skills, passives, paragon tree and equipment and min max the f out of it to even have a viable build. Fun times.

The Renown system is a chore. The map is large and I don't mind, but during the gameplay you do a lot more running than killing, which sucks. It drains time from my precious life I could be wasting trying to drop Mirror of Kalandra <3.

4 stash tabs ?!?!?!.... really? no stash tab search function?.. facepalm..

Monetization is bad. Game pass, battle pass, pass here, pass there, none shall pass without a pass for the pass you hear! Let's hope it's just cosmetics... Even still, they are overpriced in a game that you have to buy for 70 dolans.

So to my surprise and I'm sure to many others, Diablo 4 is not better than Diablo 2 or better than POE, it is just a worse Diablo 3. HA! In my wildest dreams, I did not expect that! At the very least I was expecting some improvement and not the other way around. I was not expecting it to be the "POE" killer, oh no no no.. not possible with the current state of Blizzard.

I'm a casual POE enjoyer, I got around 2K hours in POE and I still feel like a newbie, but I love the game, despite some flaws, nothing is perfect. But holy sh*t is Diablo 4 imperfect.

Its a game for casual Andys and I don't really mind, we will see what Blizzard makes of it in the future. And to not completely sh*t all over this sh*tshow of a game. The sound, graphics, cinematics are great! I'd give those a solid 8/10 for a game such as this.

Overall I'd rate the game a 4.5/10. All of the bad stuff just doesn't make it fun to play at all. All the grind feels so pointless at the moment, so you reach level 100, and then what? Do all the stuff you've been doing since level 50 again and again? At least in POE we have TONS of endgame.

"

maulerond wrote:

So to my surprise and I'm sure to many others, Diablo 4 is not better than Diablo 2 or better than POE, it is just a worse Diablo 3. HA! In my wildest dreams, I did not expect that!

I'm surprised anyone expected anything different. Their last good game was overwatch 1 and what have they done since then? DIII maintenance mode, OW2, Diablo Immortal, shuttered HoTS...allegedly Dragonflight is good? Idk, I have no hope for any Blizzard game until they make something truly good again. To your itemization point they said months ago they would be aiming for a depth of system = to halfway between D2 and D3. Dunno where it landed but their target wasn't even right. So yeah, it was hopeless for me from the start.

"

maulerond wrote:

Progression is a flat curve, no power fantasy here, not even after 50 with a current meta build. Yes you feel more powerful than before thanks to the paragon system which unlocks at 50, but not as much as you would think. And if you are not playing a meta build and not getting the drops you need, you're boned.

old school mmos from 1.5 decades ago were just like that

unfortunately my party invites were rejected twice, which felt less like an mmo and more like d3 :(

Oh there's a power fantasy alright -- you just need to work a little harder for it. Which is a funny thing to have to say to players of the infamously workmanlike PoE but there you go. It's a good power fantasy too -- I was getting wrecked, so I updated my gear and optimised my legendaries with effective synergy (eg one that grants barrier, another that gives me 50% more damage when I have a barrier). Suddenly my minionless meleemancer was outputting much more damage per hit. Slight numerical changes can make a big difference even without intricate tweaking. I am not a big fan of enemy scaling but I see its merits in terms of encouraging non-linear play and multiplayer. I think DIV did it right, given it's never not wrong for solo players ie most Exiles. Great for a friend group where not everyone has the same timr to play.

As for invites, I got sick of getting them while I was talking to npcs so I am permanently "busy" now. Getting invited to party by "God" was pretty funny though. :)

Oh, and you want to talk about power fantasy? My characters all look like itter badasses for *far* less than it would cost to make them look half as cool in PoE. And no, I haven't even looked at the mtx store. ^_^

Refund requested. It's a flat, boring, buggy mess. Think I'm done with ARPG genre for a while, no one is doing it right. Maybe LE but that is a buggy mess, too.

My friend bought it. Refunded it less than a day later, haha.

"

Johny_Snow wrote:

My friend bought it. Refunded it less than a day later, haha.

Good decision. It's not worth the current price. Maybe when on sale in one year when it got patches that makes it hopefully better in some aspects.

Biggest problem is auto level scaling. Normally you scale with level ups and items.
This means in case you have no good items you can at least outpace/keep up with the content to some extent to make it easier. You have more choices imo how to improve.

But in D4 you can only outpace/keep up content if you get better items or spec a big passive. That's it. Means if you get unlucky with weapons and aspects, leveling will be progressively bigger slog the more players level up.

Also it does not help that in D4, the same as in D3, all skill damage is 100% weapon damage. Even a fireball or your pets do 0 damage if you have a bad weapon.
Does not help that you can give each skill +ranks. Does not really improve dmg that much in comparison to better weapons.

IMO every magic skill and minion skill should not be 100% weapon damage and weapon based skill should have some added flat base damage that increases with levels.
So in both cases you can opt in to max skill levels in case no good weapons.

"

gandhar0 wrote:

Also it does not help that in D4, the same as in D3, all skill damage is 100% weapon damage. Even a fireball or your pets do 0 damage if you have a bad weapon.
Does not help that you can give each skill +ranks. Does not really improve dmg that much in comparison to better weapons.

IMO every magic skill and minion skill should not be 100% weapon damage and weapon based skill should have some added flat base damage that increases with levels.
So in both cases you can opt in to max skill levels in case no good weapons.

When D3 was being promoted pre-release, that particular mechanic was what ultimately caused me to turn my back on the Diablo franchise. It was just so... I'll say counter-intuitive... That I couldn't overlook it to play the newest Diablo game.

Fortunately, at that very same time, Path of Exile was just appearing on the gaming horizon, and provided me with a much-needed alternative. =^[.]^=

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Oh, and you want to talk about power fantasy? My characters all look like itter badasses for *far* less than it would cost to make them look half as cool in PoE. And no, I haven't even looked at the mtx store. ^_^

Yeah that is a known criticism for poe and it is true a huge part of item art is seriously outdated. That is why with POE 2 update, all item art will get reworked to modern standards.

"

Reinhart wrote:

"

鬼殺し wrote:

Oh, and you want to talk about power fantasy? My characters all look like itter badasses for *far* less than it would cost to make them look half as cool in PoE. And no, I haven't even looked at the mtx store. ^_^

Yeah that is a known criticism for poe and it is true a huge part of item art is seriously outdated. That is why with POE 2 update, all item art will get reworked to modern standards.

I honestly don't believe it will but I am glad you do.