Diablo, the OG Franchise for the ARPG genre. The switch from turn-based to the ARPG game we got was fundamental in design. Many have since gone down that path, but few are behemoths, and I would venture to say it’s only the Diablo Franchise and Path of Exile that are the pillars of this genre that other games try to mimic. Seasonal content was the basis for Diablo IV in the open world, but is it what players need to stay hooked for the long term? Here are my thoughts on the Seasonal Grind.
So, what keeps us playing?
- Build Diversity
- Leveling
- Power Creep
- Finding new items
- Beating the game
Leveling
This one is easy. We want to get high levels to beat the game, find new items, and allow some diversity in our characters. However, it stops once we either beat the game or it no longer becomes relevant, such as getting higher paragon levels. I enjoyed the level 100 cap that was initially introduced in Diablo 4. That character was complete, the paragon was done, and I could move to the next one. I understood the desire for some “alt” easiness, but didn’t that come from items obtained? The new system is a major downgrade from the level to 100 system. I felt the last season before the change was the best leveling experience I’ve had in a long time.
Beating the Game
I would venture into Diablo 2, the goal was a Guardian, or Matriarch/Patriarch. After that, it would be min/maxing a character, also known as the power creep. In both Diablo 3 (current) and Diablo 4 (current) they removed the need to do the campaign, as just leveling as fast as you can is the only goal, and then power creep. So are we beating the game or just spending the whole time in these games to power creep with no real goal other than that. Seems rather dull to me.
I purchased Path of Exile 2, which I then enjoyed doing the normal and nightmare versions of Acts 1 through 3. It was easy and really took me back to Diablo 2. It was frankly quite enjoyable, with leveling more to continue my character’s growth and power creep fully optional. I also did the new season of Last Epoch with not one, but 2 characters. The storyline wasn’t my favorite, but I enjoyed it the second time around as I felt more comfortable in what I was doing. The end game of both is excellent in my opinion, if you want to stick around and level to max level.
I would love a normal, nightmare, hell version of Diablo 4. Bring in points you can only earn by doing that. Let the endgame begin around 60-70. I would also bring back leveling to 100.
Finding new items
Diablo is still king of adjustments to items and play styles with items. We all rejoiced for a second about runewords then it was, “oh, this is all of it”? Really? One of the greatest ideas for a game ever on itemization, and to not just mimic it was short-sighted.
The game feels like a grind to more power creep to me. Kill, rinse, repeat. Nothing changes, and most enemies feel the same regardless of finding new items as we gain levels and paragon levels. In Diablo 2, we had charger zombies, exploding dolls, archers that hit like a truck when enchanted, to name a few monsters. Who else was annoyed by mummies continual raising of corpses in the Tombs or other areas of Act 2? I was saddened when Oblivion Knights couldn’t Iron Maiden anymore. It was easy to work around, just meant you had to take your time.
Power Creep
Level and hit T1, T2, etc. It is all for negligible gains in power that equate to killing higher-level enemies with maybe a smidge more drop chance. This appeals to some, but most of the players, I feel they do not care about hitting the highest Tier. Players often hit a wall and think, “Whelp! That was fun. Next season”, a week into the season. Why would I buy a battle pass for a week’s worth of non-new content, just some new tweaks, and maybe killing faster?
Build Diversity
If I cast a spell and I fire an arrow, and they do the same thing with a different look, is it build diversity? Nope. If all the classes boil down to having a different look, but playing them works in the exact same way, mindless and pressing 3 or 4 buttons, and just mowing everything down with no forethought, do most players really stick around? Probably not.
I’m going to say the build diversity in Diablo 2 is why, 25+ years later, the game is still being played. People are playing that, not Diablo IV. That is part of your player base you aren’t even acknowledging. If people have been playing the same game for 25 years (Blizzard, you have 2 of them in WOW and Diablo 2), and Diablo 4 is struggling, the build diversity in Diablo 2, along with itemization and leveling, are off the charts compared to Diablo IV.
I can play nearly every class in a different way and have a goal when I start the game: Get a character to kill Baal on Hell difficulty. If I were a new player and only played the campaign, the game would be fun enough for me to start a new character; that is a solid benchmark of success. I could go on, but if a game is fun enough to start an alt after normal, you have a good game. Diablo 3 initially had this. Some of the best times in D3 are doing the campaign using crappy equipment because I can.
How to fix Diablo 4, and not just add Seasonal Content
The following are all my own observations, wish list, and desires. I was on board with Diablo 4. I felt the developers were listening, but since then, I think they’ve resorted to their old ways of not listening. Maybe Diablo 4 is making money hand over fist in the Seasons, and they don’t need to do squat. I highly doubt that, though. The market for ARPGs is getting more crowded each year.
- Remove this level scaling. I cannot stand this as a player. I really like how both Last Epoch and Path of Exile 2 do not have it. Why must the endgame be the only part of the game that is challenging for a player? It sets unrealistic expectations.
- Do minor revamp of the campaign and bring us a Normal, Nightmare, and Hell mode.
- Bring in a “map system” akin to POE 2 or Last Epoch. Both of those felt great. Honestly, I’d do what I call dungeon runs in my Adventurers of Combat & Quest RPG system. 3 maps/nodes before a boss map. You choose a bonus to apply on the boss at the end of each. You could even add a timer that you get a % increase, so players can work towards faster clearings of areas, so their effectiveness on the map is rewarded.
- Bring in build diversity. I want to sink large amounts of points into a specific skill, we are talking 10 or 20 here, not 5. I want my skills to feel like they aren’t like the next class, and you open build diversity by doing what D2 did: exponential gains the more points so you focus on a select set of skills. This all goes to the next part:
- Build monster diversity by lowering monster density and making killing them matter. A group of Demon Archers can slay the best on a Pit Run in Diablo 2 any day of the week. Bring back resistance and immunities. Make me have to think to play. How will I get around this pack of monsters I might encounter, or do I just go to a different dungeon or run for it? Souls!!! Nope, S&E, next game! I want that kind of danger when I’m up in levels and playing the game in Nightmare and Hell difficulties.
That’s my thoughts on the current state of the game. Feel free to chip in via the comments.
~Vang
I know they’d have to change drop rates but, one thing I really wish d4 did was remove the class specific drops. I want to be able to get a super rare drop for a diff class, where I can either trade it or decide to jump into that other class to get to use the item. It just makes items drops more exciting to me
I disagree with every point you made. I don’t think D4 is perfect, but I prefer the evolution of the systems from D2.
You’re playing the wrong game.
You sound like you just want a D2 clone and there are plenty of those out there.
The majority of people playing prefer the power fantasy style of Diablo and don’t want to get stuck playing the campaign over and over through slow parts you are forced to sit and wait on.
They need to chill on nerfing to draw out play time, though.
They REALLY need to focus off buffing weak builds and creating new ones instead.
One item can be a game changer in a build.
I very much like items altering the mechanics of a move, rather than that +(×) to _ skill bullshit of D2 that gets REALLY OLD REALLY FAST.
Minimal power creeping can stay in history.
I like the rush of getting that item that changes everything and being able to see the difference in power.
I don’t have time to item farm as a second job for 1%.
Don’t write like your thoughts represent the community.
If they listened to you, they’d F up the game entirely.
Enjoy POE2 😉 🙂
I hate that they completely ignore eternal characters and just cater to seasonal characters. Grind, repeat, grind, repeat. Most of my friends are casual players. They aren’t going to start a new player from scratch every 3 months and have to re-unlock the same way points over and over again. But the characters I’ve spent time building get nerfed over and over a again in the eternal realm and I hate having to respec them over and over because the game randomly changes every three months. I have loved Diablo for decades, but I’m on the verge of walking away until they fix things so it stops taking like such a repetitive grind.
The 300 paragon level and being limited to only 5 boards for glyphs is annoying. Also miss the tier unlocking dungeons and enemies having levels after level 200p you can pretty much one-shot everything I liked keeping them 30 levels higher than me to keep me focused.
This person mentioning the 1-100 level grind being the best immediately told me they’re completely disconnected. A 90+ hour leveling progression was terrible and lost most of the community. Also tons of people agree re-leveling every season is garbage. The endgame is the only thing that matters and is already effectively an infinite grind given the extreme stacked RNG guaranteeing you’ll never get a ‘perfect’ item. Leveling is just an annoyance they force on everyone to arbitrarily inflate the playtime.
Also there is a lot of build diversity. Yeah there’s a ton of shit builds that bliz refuses to buff but there’s still diversity. Sure bliz doesn’t listen, they never do. Terrible opinions like this article are probably a big reason why they don’t listen.
This^^^
Yes.
@Xander,
Please name me one D2 clone? I’m really waiting, because I haven’t found it. Take a look over at the Single Player Forum here and see what players are able to do with Diablo 2 that has yet to ever be replicated. When you find it please let me and everyone else know. Take a look at the Random Tournament a ran for years, you can’t replicate that in any other game. Or for that matter nearly all the tournaments ran at the SPF.
You said they need to chill at nerfing to draw out play time, what does that mean to you? Unlimited power so getting paragon 300 is easy as pie? I’m honestly lost on play time, what is the purpose of a seasonal game? Is it to play for the ~3 months or is it to play for a couple weeks until you are bored of the character you leveled up, explain to me how you go about seasons.
I never said remove item altering items as that is a great feature but focusing on one or two skills would allow good solid power gains as well, exactly what you want and have it gain more effectiveness per point later on. 1-5 normal gain, 6-10 gain x2, 11-15 gain x3, 16-20 gain x4, 21+ gain x6 etc.
@ Joe and EB, I like both of those, and there is minimal reason to play a non-seasonal character as they go to the abyss.
@Bryway, I wish you could just pick what you wanted from boards. Originally I thought they were randomly generated with skills and you could get really cool ones, but they were preset which also was a bummer.
@Mike I’m unsure what want? Leveling is a chore, so why even play? If the only part of the game matters is the endgame, then why not just be a hub game. You pop in at max level and go grind some shiny new items and rinse and repeat slowly gaining power.
I’m even more confused about the contradictory nature of this:
“The endgame is the only thing that matters and is already effectively an infinite grind given the extreme stacked RNG guaranteeing you’ll never get a ‘perfect’ item. Leveling is just an annoyance they force on everyone to arbitrarily inflate the playtime.”
So, grinding to get an item you’ll never find isn’t arbitrarily there to inflate the playtime as well?
What do you want to do then and what amount of playtime do you want to be able to walk away in a season, for a class, for the game?
You said I was out of touch with leveling:
People regularly would take a character to 1-100 withing 70-80 hours, yet it takes nearly 250 to 300 to get Paragon 300. If I’m only playing on one character a season, which majority of players do, then I could feasibly do it in a quarter of the time and then if I feel the need to start a new character my second can still be completed faster than finishing Paragon 300 grind. Most the people I played with stopped playing after the change grinding to 300 was an account feature, not a character feature. It really does change the thought process on how we view when it is character vs account based.
@all
At the end of the day, everyone has commitments other than D4, There is a portion that wants the old school Normal-Nightmare-Hell that would play because of that and finish a character. I feel minimal need to hit 60 and grind until I feel the time vs reward carrot ends, it certainly ends before paragon 300.
Regardless changes are coming. Sounds like massive changes based on the recent Blizzard post at the end of the day, the game is flailing and not meeting expectations.