I rolled a seasonal sorcerer focused on chain lightning and ball lightning. Been starting the farm in world tier III and having a blast for the most part. The game is still a mess and the loop is threadbare at best. Despite all that, I'm having a bit more fun than I was with Path.
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Every character getting a free dodge roll in D4 feels a lot better for dodging attacks, especially since you can get items to add additional rolls. The timer is still a bit too strict and I would like a way to lower it. As it stands any boot that doesn't supply at least one additional roll is worthless.
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That being said it feels like mob pack size in D4 is severely reduced from D3, and especially compared to Path. I feel this this is in part due to the addition of non elite sponge enemies with slow telegraphed attacks that you have to dodge. When D4 does start to fill the screen, their attacks are harder to see.
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Post campaign D4 does not let you enter hell again, which I feel is a severe misstep for a Diablo game. Helltides, a World Tier III and IV event that transforms a region into a hell like zone, isn't the same.
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As much as I did not enjoy D4's story, especially compared to D3 and D2, it is worlds better than Path's story. It's only something you care about once, and D4 not fucking around and just giving you an option to straight up skip the campaign on any additional character you create is the correct move.
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That being said something about the advertising regarding this particular transmog (I fucking hate that word) makes me annoyed. There's no choices made in the game, you can't side with Lilith and change the narrative in any meaningful way, but you can spend $5-10 to "show support"
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In regards to the seasonal story in D4, it's about as well produced as a side quest chain. Which makes sense, the story is only going to be available during the season, you don't want to gate significant post campaign story in something a large majority of your player base will never see, but it doesn't paint a good picture for their promise of seasonal stories if this is what they're leading with.
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Especially since D4's ending was a huge nothingburger to set up the expansion.
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I fucking Loved D3. I'll even cop that I had no real significant issues with the in game RMT trade system the game had pre expansion. Secondary markets are a thing that no live game service company can squash, and pretending like they don't exist has always rubbed me the wrong way in live service games. I know the reason D3's RMT system sucked was because it was on the slippery slope to Pay to Earn style games, but I felt that if any company could have figured out where the line was, it would have been blizzard.
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I don't understand why D4 shipped with significantly less variety of content compared to D3. I don't understand why lessons learned in balance, seasons, event structures etc were thrown out for D4. I don't understand why a giant company like blizzard can't learn and build off its previous works. (Okay I can understand why, games are hard, game needed another year of tuning but also needed to come out asap for financial reasons, the team that worked on D3 is largely absent from D4, capitalism ruins art etc etc)
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Finally, nearly 20+ years of running live service games, I don't understand why Blizzard thought a giant patch of nerfs would go over well. If this is where they wanted things to be, they should have shipped it like this back in june and did their build up patch after. You think the company would have better communication standards than this. Throwing the devs on a live "Fireside chat" (Please retire this saying) stream after they've been awake 72 hours straight to ship an update that everybody is upset at is just throwing them to the wolves.
I'm still enjoying my time with the game despite all that though. There's something only Diablo can provide in the ARPG space. But at times, I see the D3 icon in my battle.net launcher and I think "Maybe I should play a finished game."
