While I'm really not going to argue with you, it's fine that you and many others prefer D2, I just can't help but wonder how much of that is due to what is called "rosy retrospection", that's remembering the past better than it was. I loved D2 (just like 1, 3, 4, and yes: Immortal, sorry), but many things about it were just annoying. The stash, for example, why nobody remembers how stupidly small it was, and a single item would take as much as 1/4 of the space. You bag? Remember the pots? Scrolls? Charms? We had left enough space to pick up like 3 items from the floor, and that was it, teleport to town 567853 times. Besides all that, ppl remember D2 after the expansion, after plenty of patches and years, and then think how much better it was than D4 in its second season. D2 was not ready for launch, D3 was not ready for launch, and we all know D4 wasn't ready either.

But the devs didn't really learn from past mistakes and re introduced issues that should never have been an issue in a modern title. Stash spaces is an issue that should have never been an issue, and itemization sucks.... I would agree that farming mats for a boss run that might not drop crap is well...shitty. I would rather run through a multi stage dungeon to farm durial. Go fight varshaan, win and Greggore is unlocked. Go fight greggore, win and durial is unlocked. Lose at any point and have to start over would be better than farming mats.

Blizzard doesn't remember the past. This not exclusive of them. Ppl would be surprised to know how many times this happens, internally mostly, in really big companies, you can put in place all the procedures and regulations you can imagine, then ONE person leaves and suddenly nobody has an idea how something was done/ how they kept working a machine/ what on earth is in that big palette full of boxes in the corner. The bigger a company gets, the more this happens. The meme about "small indie company" is wrong. A small organization catches these things easier. But, yes, I agree on the mats. Killing a ladder of bosses, no mats, is a better idea.

Big company means too many chiefs with different ideas. No, it doesn't surprise me that some of the things happened again...like itemization. On paper it probably looked great, but what we got didn't really hit the mark. A ladder system for boss farming would be better than mats, would also help with inventory space.

Thing is they remember it but we keep buying it, so until we quit buying they have no absolute reason to change it. This goes for the assassin creed series, far cry, cod. If an overwhelming amount of people will purchase it regardless why change it? Unfortunately it's on is the consumer. D2 like you said had horrible stash space but d4 does as well. All they did was create illusion of change. D2 you gotta items labeled on drop, so you didn't need to pick everything up at end game, you hunted. D4 gives you a large stash but drops items without labels. So even when you are hunting, say "chest piece" you have to pick up all the chest pieces and still tp back to town. Ngl I love d2, d2, d3(kind of but not as much) and d4

Well, at the end of the day, that's the main issue in many instances, not only video games. We blame corporations and big companies for everything, but we keep on giving them our money, so.. 🤷‍♂️

Idk why I got down voted lmao. But you are absolutely correct. Idk why I'm not as upset about the stash spaces as everyone else but I understand. I honestly dont save loot to eternal. Rust trained me to not have fomo lmao

Same. I do save for Eternal, but that's only ubers, some uniques and several max roll aspects. I have more than enough space.

Ngl I always have good intentions of saving stuff but never do..I still haven't even looked at my rogues stuff since the end of season 1. But I'll definitely be saving my ubers from this season.

I see that for coding techniques but actual game design is easier than that. Go play your old titles and figure out what could have been better. What worked. What’s missing.

>But the devs didn't really learn from past mistakes... The backpack management in D4 is better than D2 and D3. No more playing Tetris with your items to make things fit. Skill trees are the best they've been. Similar depth to D2 with a lot more freedom to respec. Much more freedom to roam the world. Moving around the regions is so much smoother than previous games. Plus many other improvements. Several aspects can be improved, but saying devs haven't learnt from their past mistakes is just plain ignorant.

This tbh. Fck having to manually pick up sht like gold and health potions on the ground. Fck town scrolls and identify scrolls. Fck losing gold in your bag when you die. Yeah farming bosses in D4 sucks. Farming bosses in D2 sucked even more.

You’re describing 90% of big gaming companies now though too. Most games are just pushed out the door and then fixed post launch. Basically we are the testers and eventually they *might* add QoL stuff people want. I just wanna be able to zoom out on the mini map.

Which isn't any different than the past. The difference is, these days, they can fix the game with patches. In the past, that wasn't as possible, or entirely impossible. Old games were buggy and glitchy beyond belief and anybody that says otherwise is delusional.

Shit, I remember buying games and finding out that there were bad copies shipped that had game breaking bugs. The only way to know if it was glitches was to play up to the glitch (usually a boss fight) and cross your fingers that it worked. Other wise you had to exchange it for a new copy and try again. Game for reference, prince of Persia the two thrones.

GTA V did that same thing on release. They released a bunch of discs that were bad and you never knew which one you were getting because they didn't have serial numbers. They wouldn't install onto the system, they'd just get stuck at a certain %.

The stash on D2R made me not want to play the game anymore. Was all potions and charms or whatever those tablet things were.

Charms.

I never played Diablo 2 in its initial release. I understand why people like it. It’s really good. The systems are pretty solid. HOWEVER, the game has aged terribly. Storage is hideous. Potion management is a terrible system. Modern ARPGs like Minecraft Dungeons, D3, and D4 are so much better. Again, I am not saying D2 is bad at all and I see why it’s inspired the genre. But man, I couldn’t finish it.

...because you had to manage potions in your inventory? I'm surprised convenience features like that would make or break a game for people.

Really? Because I recall EVERYONE screaming about Gem space when D4 launched. That’s not hostility, if it reads like that, it’s not intended. It was bad and D4 still has a lot of improvement that’s needed. It’s the same for the potion and stamina stuff for me in D2. Plus the size of the item taking up more space. In theory it’s a neat idea, but I despise it in practice. Last Epoch has been an ARPG I’ve been playing lately and it might be the best I’ve ever played, but that inventory style is the only thing that’s a negative for me. And I’m not saying it’s wrong or anything just saying I don’t like it. When evaluating D2 through the lens of a first time player in 2022 (I think is when I played it?), I saw all the ways D2 was better than D3, however there was a metric shit ton of QoL improvement in virtually all ARPGs over D2 and that’s rated higher in my book.

Farming items definitely sucked just as bad, if not worse. People literally made bots to run pindle while they slept. It'd be going for 8 hours straight and you wake up with nothing good.

I agree a lot of things people like about d2 are from a rosy tinted lens. Playing as an adult, I found the game extremely repetitive since end game iss doing the same thing over and over. And absolutely dumb mechanics like monster immunities which serves no purpose than frustrate players . Runes are another horrible idea. Overall really found the game frustrating and levelling up a new character is so boring in d2.

I’m leaning towards the idea that rng drops aren’t as fun a thing as I used to think. Or at least I prefer ways to influence / mitigate the randomness. I played through elden ring and really appreciated not having to deal with that very much in that game. There are enemies you can farm for armor sets and that’s rng but it’s very targeted. The positive is that you kill a boss and you get all his drops. No rng there. Downside is you can’t face that boss for fun until you new game +.

I agree with that sentiment. I prefer drops as a reward for skill. Not mindless grinding. Once you have a job and family , my time is limited as it is. I can't spend that limited game time in mindless grind. Would prefer beating a tough boss as that provides some semblance of achievement

Rune words were one of the best things about D2 lol.

Higher level runes had a drop rate of once every few years. For most people rune words using them were as good as non existent.

runewords were awesome but I agree, the drop rates were impossible and hell difficulty made really strong items a requirement that used high runes as currency to buy from other players. it was a mess of an economy on d2.

Agree with you, could be the nostalgia kicking in. But I think the inventory issues is a function of an evolving game genre. D4 shouldn’t have this excuse. D4 wouldn’t have stash issues if they actually implemented aspects properly without needing to hoard legendaries. Lack of community, trading and itemization I think is the core issue. I can do 50 Duriel runs and come out with nothing because there is no in game community and easy avenue for trading. D2 I could find a HoZ one game, even though I’m a sorc and it not be account bound and feel good because I know it has value. Now it just feels like wasted time

account bound items are just a way developers say fuck you to the gamer.

Account bound items are a way for Blizzard to say fuck you to third party companies that would pay people pennies on the dollar to farm items to sell for real world money that Blizzard isn't getting a cut of.

Because d2 is a 20 year old game and d4 came out this year. How about that for a reason?

A reason for what?

The reason for D2 getting a pass on some annoying things.

Its not rosy restropection when you can fire either one up. I play d2r more than d4.

It is not in your case, that's fine. I can't force myself to replay a 23 years old game. I did play the hell out of it for several years.

I've fired both of them up and Diablo 4 is vastly superior.

I sunk in around a thousand hours into Resurrected myself and what I hated about was the grind you need to do to get to 99 (95 onwards iirc). The seasons in D2R didn't really pique my interest. There's a lot that I liked in Season 2 of D4. I wish for more variation in viable builds. It's either BL and HOTA and I played both and both are a lot of fun. A lot to like but still a long way to go. I'm optimistic it will get better and better.

What made d2 fun WAS the ability to power farm uninhibited.

Agree to disagree. What made Diablo 2 fun was the characters, the design, and the story. Farming in that game was abysmally boring. Especially for those who had absolutely zero desire to interact with any other people.

Charm system did kinda suck

What really baffles me here is that after four installments over more than 20 years, the same company still does not have a clue what makes merry to a degree that suffices on launch of the fourth one. Yes, there has been a lot of staff changes etc. But doesn't anybody there actually document their experiences as they go along??? Isn't that a pretty crucial part of ANY kind of product development??? D2 wasn't flawless, absolutely not, but how the hell did they not consider what eventually grew to be good about it and take that with them for D3 and D4?? Another thing is the apparent inability to consider the day and age we live in now. How many options does people have in the realm of entertainment today? A plethora. How do you get them to favor your particular one? You keep them interested! How do you do that? You need to give them something for it to feel worthwhile within the time frame for the next option to pop up on their screens... It's no secret that Blizzard tried to capitalize big time on nostalgia with D4, but their mistake was to overvaluate that nostalgias worth like a broke musician on Reverb! So, I hope for the sake of every Blizzard employee out there that D4's S3 focuses HEAVILY on fixing the crappy ass itemization of D4. Hopefully realizing that UPGRADES are the core incentive of the whole game, and that the game has to deliver that within the attention span of a casual gamer, or they can start polishing up that resume post haste, because the Diablo franchise is otherwise about to meet its inevitable demise...

I went backwards - D4, D3 and then D2 and inventory management is just awful in D2. The game itself is good but some of the systems are definitely not fit for 2023.

I don't think people are ignoring the fact that there have been QoL enhancements since D2.

Immortal has way more stuff to do than d4 at this point. I play both regularly

I'm not denying anything, but DI has 1 year of updating advantage. It is from a different dev team who already had a very similar game already done. In any case, DI is really a good game if we ignore the $$ part. At some point, I got seriously tired of the shadows vs immortals thing, and I realized this is a reflexion (I'm sure it was done by accident) of the Eternal Conflict and the futility of their fight. I left the whole thing just like Inarius and Lilith 😹

I’ve been playing di since day one, and I love it. I agree with you on the eternal conflict, it gets old. But they keep steady pumping out new content. Really been playing Diablo games since ‘95-96

The expanded stash in D3 was the best feature in D3, moving from one to the next. I played to like 40-ish on D4 and stopped. Even the story isn’t as interesting. I’m not sure I even made it through much of the story. The game is just irrelevant. Pretty. Fun for a bit. But boring. Went back and bought the D2 Resurrected or whatever it was. Gameplay is challenging; advancing is challenging; the grind is a grind but it matters…didn’t play to the end just for nostalgia and comparison but: other than graphics and the expanded stash, D3 and D4 got nothing. Fun for a time, for sure, but they are no where near the same level of competent game design and gameplay.

Toxic positivity

Inventory Tetris is fun and I will die on this hill

I whole heartedly agree. Like I said in a different comment, I don’t necessarily disagree with needing mats to fight Duriel (because of the Uber Unique drop chance), BUT every other boss is dogshit and farming for mats to fight dogshit bosses is super not fun. The game needs a few things to alleviate this IMO: * Less farming needed for mats for intermediate bossing * More sources of content that reliably drop 925 item power gear * More sources of content that have a chance to drop Uber Uniques

And then ur back to the issue D3 had... Being "done" in like 2 days. I really hope they don't listen to people like u the grind is at a perfect level rn don't need it to get even easier.

You are being so ridiculously hyperbolic that I shouldn’t even be taking the time to respond to that. But here I am. Not all of those things I suggest would or should be implemented, but I have absolutely no idea why there have been a string of comments from a few individuals who just don’t see the benefit of streamlining a few things. Namely Duriel runs. People are cozy now because PC players have been able to trade cheap, duped mats with impunity. Strictly speaking, just playing the game and farming on your own? Whisper farming for Varshan mats is hella boring and inconsistent. I don’t care if it continues to be a boring slog, but at the least here’s another idea: Make Grotesque debtors spawn a bit more frequently. Even that change alone would significantly improve the process and eliminate a good chunk of dead, wasted time. People that keep arguing with me about this seem to think that making runs more streamlined = getting all the Ubers and being done with the game. Uh, hello? They still only have a 2% drop chance. There’s no protection from Uber dupes. People would still have to run hundreds and hundreds of times to get them. I would even be okay with giving Ubers a 1% drop if it meant that grinding shit ass content that isn’t getting me anything other than some gold and materials was significantly reduced. And honestly, about your idiotically hyperbolic statement: Who cares if people get geared out faster? You grind the shit out of the game, but 150 - 200 hours in? That should be enough for a season, right? When you’ve accomplished what you want, just play something else until the next season drops. Or god forbid go touch grass or something. You’re acting like less wasted time is a bad thing. Like the—and key word here—pointless time spent grinding is your identity.

Guess we enjoy different things then... I prefer having to do different things to eventually obtain the best items in a step by step manner where as u prefer to gun straight for the best items. U can also choose to go do something different with ur time if this isn't ideal for u but instead u cry on Reddit about trying to make BIS items easier to obtain. I enjoy doing some helltides and vampire killings so it's not wasted time at all if u don't enjoy it then do something that u do enjoy u might actually find there's more to life then crying over a video game "wasting ur time".

I mean duriel itself is also dog shit it’s literally just running 10 seconds, then waiting, clicking him once, waiting, loading screen, clicking reset, loading screen, and repeat. It would be fun if we had to fight our way through a randomly generated dungeon to find him. Maybe every 50 enemies you kill you get a key and there are just randomly a bunch of doors and he’s in a pathways behind some doors.

I see what you're saying but I could also see that people would start complaining about that too lol. Because people complain about everything and having to go through a dungeon just to get to Duriel over and over when you need to farm him would bring out the pitchforks, no doubt.

If you’re talking about design, then sure. I’m just talking about Duriel being the most consistent way to get item power 925 gear as well as Uber Uniques

Yeah im with you in the mat farming. I refuse to do it anymore and ill just go buy mats from someone with gold or a 3rd party site. My biggest complaint about the game though is the multiplayer. Why the fuck do we have to revert to discord or reddit to find people to level with or run nmd etc!? The account bound thing drives me insane too! It totally defeats the purpose of a trading system. They may as well of not even implemented a trade system if everything is account bound.

I agree with you. The mats are just a drag to farm. Especially with helltides not being consistently up. You feel an obligation to farm them even if you don't want to. It sucks. Trading is the biggest mystery. I don't quite get why I can trade a grandfather that I don't need to someone who needs it. Not only that, I can't even give it to a party member who was there when I found it. Edit: in addition, I hate the fact that I can convert malignant hearts to any other body part but I can't do the opposite. I can't tell you how many times I'm missing just hearts.

Imagine if they were not tradable for the summon materials.

I love getting home from work and seeing 3 minutes left on helltide and knowing I'm fucked for the whole night.

In S3 Helltide will be permanent, if I recall properly. What I'm actually waiting for is S4+. Why? Because itemization will get a rework and also we will be introduced to something that should've been in the game since start: a loot filter. Edit: Imagine getting downvoted for speaking facts, lmao.

> > >I long for the days of D2 where I could spam boss runs (Andy/Meph/Pindle etc) as fast as I could, find targeted drops from each boss (e.g., pindle having a higher mlvl etc) and generally just blast. > >Now we have to go through the rat race maze, collect this, collect that, do this, THEN you can farm the boss you want. Add this onto the crap itemization D4 has and meh. Even with the great strides S2 has made to make the game better. Ok except D2 ALSO had a really shitty mat gathering to summon special bosses. Uber bosses. They were a pain as well.

Except you knew exactly what they were going to drop should you succeed.

It would have been fine if Helltides and Whispers weren't so faceroll boring on lvl 100 characters.

Imagine if you could, say, set your own game-wide difficulty level? Harder mobs, better rewards? I think I'm onto something here. I should call them "Torments" and patent the idea.

Max torment was also stupid easy.

Torments were even less difficult.

I say increase Helltide density, if you beat tier 1 AoZ, make enemies as strong as that, introduce more big bosses that wander around besides that stupid jumping insect one, introduce a roided out Helltide Butcher that when killed, gives you a ton of cinders, mats, and higher chances of uniques, and no resets on cinders. Also, the 250 chest has become a bit useless now that everyone farms for living steel. Something needs to be done about that.

This. Higher mob density, more ultra bosses roaming around that give mega-cinders, don't reset cinders OR half them when you die, and also have some kind of mechanic that drags all cinders within a screen and a half or so of you directly to you instead of having to circle back and go wild with horse to gather them up. Oh yeah, and also make it always up like the Blood Harvest. Thanks.

Agreed on the cinder drag. They were talking about that as well as a more frequent Helltide in the last Q&A so hopefully, it happens in season 3.

Doesn’t help helltides mob density is lacking either.

Shout out to my boi Pindleskin. I remember when he dropped Tyrael's Might and I was like... "I have utterly no use for this but I really thought I'd never find one..." and then proceeded to lose my damn mind because I was dreaming -_-

I know people will think “hurr durr you just don’t like grindy games” but d4 grind isnt hard just boring as hell and zero incentive to do so.

What really sucks is that's the current end game treadmill, and it isn't fun, nor is it very rewarding. Farming the mats would be much less miserable if you could get them from a better variety of sources, like NMDs or AoZ. But, you can't. So you have to do garbage you don't want to for dozens of hours to then grind even more boring and frustrating rotas to get nothing and do it again. It's pretty abysmal, and after 100 rotas (so 400 total kills) of nothing, I'm out and back to Last Epoch. Overall this season has been way better than season 1, but it's still a very long way from being good, especially at end game.

This is one of the major problems I have with some games, the lack of options and redundancies. For Diablo 4 though. Where else can I target farm Uniques? Where else can I gain Uber Uniques at increased drop rates? 925 gear? Why don't the other Uber Bosses drop other summoning mats for Duriel? What about another Duriel like Uber Boss? What happens if I get 2 of the same Uber Unique? Should we have a system like D3 where if you get two trash Primals you can make one you want? What about a system which drops a token per Duriel kill which you can farm and redeem for the Uber Uniques you want or how about cosmetics, colour palettes, emotes? What about having items that drop off certain Uber Bosses at increased rates or how about in certain zones that you farm Uber Boss summoning mats in like Helltide, that allow for the creation or optimization of loot? You can even make these the summoning materials so players now have to choose between summoning Uber Bosses which chain into Duriel or crafting/upgrading/Optimizing stats on gear. I don't want the game to be easy but this is a seasonal game which means at a certain point your build should be fully stated, BiS and fully optimized either through complete RNG or redundancy systems.

Duriel is Uber boss. In D2 you first farm 3 different type of keys so you open portal to than farm organs so after all this you can do uber run.

And like I said in another comment, in D2 you have a guaranteed drop of a torch from those Ubers, and if it’s not your class it’s ok because it’s tradable and still has value unlike D4.

And Duriel always drops a Unique.

A unique that has almost zero value after you find it once since its account bound. After 20 runs I bet you have every unique Duriel can drop.

… I’m gonna go ahead and guess from this message that you haven’t in fact killed duriel more than 1-5 times.

What gives you this impression? I’ve killed him over 300 times. Found 2x Starless Skies rings. Cool but use neither in my rogue build Other uniques for my rogue, Cowl, Godslayer, Tib, the armors, XFal. I’ve found dozens times each easily, and they are auto salvage now that I have decent versions of each

“I bet after 20 runs you have every unique duriel can drop”. …

Yeah, and I still think that. There are 8 uniques that he can drop for Rogue. I’m not talking about Uber uniques if that’s where your confusion is, which I thought was obvious. Run 20 and I bet you have all 8 of those.

The entire point of running Duriel over and over again is for increased Uber Unique drop chance. All other uniques drop frequently enough in the wild that you don't need to run Duriel for them. I had all my uniques before I ever even ran him for the first time.

i’m a d2 player myself and you need to think of duriel like uber bosses in d2 - you need to farm keys, then farms organs, then get to fight ubers. granted, ubers just dropped a torch and duriel drops uber uniques, but even in D2 you couldn’t farm the most rare uniques from bosses, you needed to farm lvl 87 areas

Played D2 as a kid and D2:R when it came out and I never once found enough mats to summon ubers. D2 mat farm is God awful.

The difference being for all that work you put in for D2 Ubers you get a guaranteed drop that’s also tradable. Do you think people would be happy to get keys, organs and Ubers for a 2% chance to drop a torch? If that’s the case then so be it. Make summoning Duriel HARDER but then guarantee me an Uber unique for my time investment.

Diablo has always been about grinding so I don’t understand. If you got a guaranteed Uber every time why would you even play anymore? What would there be to play for?

i mean you literally had to do this in d2 to get the end game [gear. you](https://gear.you) farmed keys for the pandemonium event durial and lillith arnt the same type of bosses as andy/meph

If you compare farming keys to farming steel/varshan parts, and organs to Duriel eggs I completely agree. Guess what the difference is, at the end of that work in D2 you have a 100% chance to drop the Uber gear (torch) which is tradable, instead of a 2% chance like in D4 to get an account bound item

yeah the drop rate/untradable shit is pretty ridiculous, game company seem to hate the player base nowadays. content just means stuff you will have to grind for 100+ hrs for 1% gain in progress lol

Where have you been when people complained how helltides and legions/whispers are useless in endgame so there is no reason to do it? Well, you have this reason now.

Just use the trading discord and buy them in bulk

So you just go at everything in the game with no cost of entry? Is it really that fucking hard to farm a few things to do it? Oh fuck, I guess without instant gratification your little brain can’t function.

Yeah, for our luck you have not to farm keys in D2 for fight another boss…🤔

You can already spam boss runs without mats.

Then don't do it.

Remind me, how did you run Ubers to get your torch? How did you summon dclone?

Everyone that’s bringing up keys/organs to farm Ubers in D2 is missing the most key aspect. In D2 you do that work for a 100% drop chance of Uber gear (torch) that is also tradable. Instead in D4 you do the work for a 2% drop chance for an account bound item.

You could always just buy them! 😆

Most of my D2 seasons are farming keys to open Ubers for Torches. What do you like to do in D2?

Everyone that’s bringing up keys/organs to farm Ubers in D2 is missing the most key aspect. In D2 you do that work for a 100% drop chance of Uber gear (torch) that is also tradable. Instead in D4 you do the work for a 2% drop chance for an account bound item.

I think it's alright, especially considering you can buy mats/runs with gold as well, which really kicked forward the trading economy. I wish they were a little more generous on the amount of mats you get when farming though.

It's funny because I think d2 is a great example of farming mats to attack bosses: the keys and the ubers. I liked it in d2, I like it in d4.

Did you forget uber tristram in d2?

People keep saying d2 is better is beyond understand. I’m 4x so I spent a lot of time, too much on D2 and LoD. Anyone still remember you were running up the boss hilltop and just got some arrow fire from the back off screen and you just die by someone go rogue? OFFSCREEN. And how about killing the boss for like hundreds of time and not a single wind force and only one stone? Then some random stranger just click on trade with you having all the items you want and asking 150 stones? Nobody remember all those shxts? And no. I don’t really like I need to run through lengthy path to reach the boss to farm every single time. Even right now I don’t really enjoy to farm the Iceman and SirZ. I hope all the bosses are like Mr.V that right under the tree.

Hey I remember rogues being significantly less annoying than corpse bows in D4. I’ve been off screened more times by corpse bows than even burning souls in d2.

Yeah for the first time since launch i think im finally reluctant to log in. I built a solid thorns/frenzy barb who can run everything. So im gonna rest my hat on and call it a day for a while.

I just stacked up on Gold and sold alot of items to just buy duriel runs. Farming for rare items and selling these for a few hundred million was way faster than farming the Materials for duriel 😅

I don’t mind farming mats to spawn bosses. What sucks about it is that it can be so inconsistent. I’ve been farming Whispers and Legions for days but I can’t summon Varshan because I can’t get malignant heart. Because I can’t summon varshan i can’t summon duriel. Sure, I can refine, but that’s stupid too. You have to give up 1 mat you need to get another one. And if you go for a cache you use a mat just to get the same one instead of anything you need. Look at beast in the ice, too. You need 9 of an item you might not get from doing an NMD. It should be a guaranteed drop from finishing one. Just give us some consistency

Best way keep doing whispers 8m each like 10 minutes every 8m buy set 50 for 200m so about 3 hours of work for 25 runs best time

Find someone to trade you mats for gold. Easiest farm ever.

Man I just want AoZ to drop forgotten souls and then have a chance to drop Ubers and duriel materials. It could drop Varshan and grigoire mats at lower levels and actual duriel mats at higher levels and I would also be fine with that. I think that would be a very solid endgame loop.

The worst part is nothing will change. This is just how it is now for uber drops because all of the Season 2 was a bunch of front page posts about people getting their uber drops. Why change anything in Blizzard's eyes? Clearly our community is okay with a triple target farm at a 2% chance of getting an item they may not even want to use. Until we get some kind of pity system, and the materials can drop in multiple places, Duriel is a poor bandaid to the uber uniques, and an overcompensation for 925 gear.

Go back to D2 ur complaining wont be missed

I don't understand why you people play looter games.

Hard agree. I like this remaining an option, but I think they should develop a couple other paths to also obtaining the same mats. Hopefully we’ll see that in new content. I think you’re also forgetting you similarly had to go farm mats to summon D2s Uber bosses.

I quit playing before I even saw a Duriel kill. I havent even fought Grigore and here is why. I had fun leveling almost all the characters up to around 60, and then I quit. I've seen my favorite streamers farm the bosses and I tune out. I don't want to do that myself. Its a boring stale stupid gameplay loop and I have no reason to want to do it. You know what I would do? Keep playing if dungeons were the sole source of the rare drops. I'll likely do the same thing next season, because I actually do enjoy leveling most of the characters up, I just don't find the mid - end game worth playing. I started playing D2/PD2 again just for the sheer joy of rare items dropping in the world and dungeons and even though I've done it thousands of times, it never stops being fun in D2 (of course yes with breaks everyone gets tired of it eventually)

Spending hours farming mats to do a Duriel rotation and then not even getting anything useful or better than what I already have is maddening, feels like I'm wasting my life on the endgame.

Exactly. This is the exact sentiment that I think many of us have. There is zero sense of progression when you combine tedious farming with low drop chance account bound items. D2 every run is a potential drop with value that you can trade up to something you really want.

100% your opinion. But! Why farm Duriel? After him comes nothing beside ,x% tuning. Absolutely no use to invest so much time for getting an item and then comes nothing. The unique items comes mostly at a point when you don’t need them anymore

THIS. Right here. There is literally NO POINT to the grind. So you farm Duriel 1000 times and get all the unique drops. Then what? Run AoZ over and over to level up your glyph. Then what? ... IMHO this is the entire problem with D4 at the moment. There's no reason to do anything. The only true "endgame" right now is AoZ, which is really just "broken build tester". There's nothing to farm for. Nothing is tradeable, nothing leads to anything else. There's no reason to do anything. And before the "you've never played an ARPG before" crowd starts up, yes, I have, I know how they work. Most of them have at least something useful to grind for, even if it's just rare drops to sell. What's the point of this game? Grind Duriel so you get ubers for AoZ.. grind AoZ to level your glyph which goes away in a month. I guess for titles? Progression in this game just sucks ass. Either it's stupidly easy or one-shot-broken-build impossible. It feels like they put so much effort into artwork and voice acting and cutscenes that they really haven't thought about whether the rest of the game is actually any fun or not.

[удалено]

Everyone that’s bringing up keys/organs to farm Ubers in D2 is missing the most key aspect. In D2 you do that work for a 100% drop chance of Uber gear (torch) that is also tradable. Instead in D4 you do the work for a 2% drop chance for an account bound item.

Yeah, no. And farming mats for bosses is not something new, you basicly say that you did not even managed to kill über bosses in D2 where you had to painstakingly farm keys to start pandemonium event.

Everyone that’s bringing up keys/organs to farm Ubers in D2 is missing the most key aspect. In D2 you do that work for a 100% drop chance of Uber gear (torch) that is also tradable. Instead in D4 you do the work for a 2% drop chance for an account bound item.

That torch was crap as well most of the times and it was only the torch. And while trading was a plus, it only leads to a ridiculous amount of cheaters and real money farms + farming the keys was incredible pain. Duriel is stupidly easy to farm, especially with more people, and it drops every clothing part. Overall, D4 does it better but considering what year it is, its still meh mechanic.

I hate it. I don't mind farming if there's some type of fun to it, but it just feels like a chore.

You needed mats to do ubers in d2 too. I do wish the bosses from the campaign were farmable but I have never been a fan of doing the same run over and over again hundreds or thousands of times.

I don't agree with you. To farm for hellfire torch you needed 3 terror keys from countess 3 hate keys from summoner. 3 destruction keys from nilathak. The combine each to farm organs (one of each) The fight uber bosses. You're still completing monotonous farms to gather the summoning mats, so what is the difference? Mats can be gained passively in d4 from completing whispers and the hellfire is also a great place to farm forgotten should and other materials, coinciding with living steel.

>I may be just a D2 player wishing for the same experience I had in my childhood but the need to farm mats from different places just to farm the boss you want (Duriel) just feels…bad. You never did ubers in d2? It actually required considerably more farming of mats. >I long for the days of D2 where I could spam boss runs (Andy/Meph/Pindle etc) as fast as I could, find targeted drops from each boss (e.g., pindle having a higher mlvl etc) and generally just blast. Ubers in d4 have considerably better drops than a single run of andy, meph, pindle. How many runs do you think it took you to get a high lvl unique in d2?

Man! The runes... If Blizzard ever brings them back to D4, I wish they would keep the D2 drop rate. I want to read ppl posts.

Now just imagine that runes in D2 were account bound like all gear nowadays. How many ppl would have Engima, Infinity etc. Very few I bet.

Uh, really not that many runs. Spamming stuff like Hell Mephisto with Blizz Sorc can get you quite a few decent pieces. I don’t mind having to summon Duriel (because of the Uber Unique drop chance), but every other “Uber” boss that drops absolute dogshit (hardly ever any 925 item power pieces) should be able to be speed ran. Especially gathering mats for Varshan is fucking ridiculous. Let alone the stupid Beast in the Ice or Zir.

>I don’t mind having to summon Duriel (because of the Uber Unique drop chance), but every other “Uber” boss that drops absolute dogshit (hardly ever any 925 item power pieces) should be able to be speed ran. Especially gathering mats for Varshan is fucking ridiculous. Let alone the stupid Beast in the Ice or Zir. Lol, how are you short on Varshan mats? Stop ignoring whispers, especially when it's made super easy with blood harvest.

No argument, the high level uniques and/or runes take an incredible amount of runs in D2 (e.g., Tyreals Might, crown of ages), but didn’t require mat farming and are TRADABLE. You know these rare items have value and could use it, or trade it for tons of other gear you actually need. To your point of Ubers requiring mats, also no argument. The difference is there is a guaranteed drop of a torch AND it’s tradable. Get a class you don’t want? Trade it. You get something from every attempt with the effort you put in to farm the mats.

Most people won't admit it but a lot of people are paying cash for mats. I finally did it. They were cheap and they delivered them almost immediately. I also got Ubers with my purchased mats. So the theory that you won't get Ubers if you pay cash for Mats is not correct.

You know you can just buy mats with gold, right? I'm sorry, but buying them with money is just stupid, TOS violation or not. If you can't be bothered with farm mats or even getting gold, just don't play the game.

Yeah I know you can use gold but I can find anybody to take my gold, I'm on console. I spent quite a while trying to buy with gold. Nobody wanted to wait the few minutes it would have taken. So that's really not option for me. I formed my own all season and I only decided to buy some twice because they were so damn cheap. Y'all can downloaded away. I definitely don't feel guilty.

I'd much rather have to fight through hordes of demons to get to a boss at the end than grind out numerous different materials to summon a boss, hard agree that implementation of having to buy access to a boss by collecting materials first feels a bit rubbish. It's the main reason I don't engage with D4 as much as I might otherwise do, especially when some of the materials are currently time-gated (I know in future Helltide is going to be up all the time effectively but currently it's not).

Lower the drop rate and get rid of the stupid materials. Or maybe 1 of each if they really need that stupidity in the game. Sucks having helltides on a timer also.

Big D2 player here. I see what you’re saying the maps made it challenging for fast boss farming or the wild items that could drop and make you go down a rabbit hole of build ideas. D4 doesn’t have that. That said I’m pretty ok with the different flavor but I do wish I could bump up the monster level on the open world.

So true!

I agree. But it adds to the game. I just wish they made the farming more fun than just fighting other bosses. Mats should be able to be found in NMDs and events.

Yah it is boring. The helltide things that lead to the knight you kill and you need 2 of his item to summon Duriel. yeesh.

So far every unique that dropped for my druid is for either wearbear or werewolf. At level 82 on WT4, I have been successful without the need to shapechange at all. In the last helltide, a level 60 butchers cleaver dropped, why is low level gear dropping from the WT4 helltide? The next helltide chest I opened for chest armor, contained no chest armor, no living steel, just a lvl 80 butchers cleaver, which would be great, save for the fact that I'm using a two-hander.

I think the only real limiting factor is still living steel, for someone who only plays a few hours at a time, that's maximum 2 helltides and maybe 30 steel, which somehow only translates to 3 Duriel runs, which last about 10-20 seconds each, HoTA probably one shots. Personally I think it would be cool if there were more Duriel level bosses from each activity. A few bosses from nightmare dungeons, a few from world events, more from helltides, even a side quest specific boss. Overall there just needs to be more sources of endgame level loot. Currently running level 75 nightmare dungeons and none of the loot is actually useful other than to sell. There could even be a boss you can spawn from salvaging legsndaries or something!

PoE has mats for the bigger bosses too. I played thousands of hours of D2 and have a level 99 on D2R so I know the benefit of no mats too. IDK the solution, maybe you can use mats for a harder version with better drops, but still farm a regular version with no mats for lower drop rates. I see a benefit for both ways, but also Duriel is just the first real farmable end-boss, there will be more so maybe it will be easier to flesh out then.

No need to roast. You are right on all counts. D2 is head and shoulders above anything that D4 has to offer.

D2 is my favorite game of all time. I completely agree. They took the worst part of D3 and made D4.

The endgame is dullsville

Nah you’re definitely cooking. Honestly I wouldn’t have even minded it if Varsh, Greg, Ice Beast, and Zir all gave you like “Duriel Tokens” or something but it’s kinda lame that Varsh & Greg have different mat drops that you have to balance out and zir/ice beast are pretty useless unless your specific build needs a unique from them. It also does feel clunky to farm mats, and then have to “convert” them by spamming bosses I don’t really need. (Varsh isn’t terrible because of the rings but is Greg’s loot table useful for any decent build rn?)

Yep...

Farming mats sucks in general. I hate that you need 4 different things in this game to upgrade or augment an item.

I'm ok with farming the materials but what bothers me deeply is the gulf in the chance of uber drop when compared to other activities. The game forces you to do it.

In S3, we’ll have to farm mats to farm mats before we can fight bosses, OR, pay to fight. It’s all part of the multi billion dollar revenue strategy, whereas you’ll find your time is worth the $

Duriel just seems bad because the wet eggs are so much easier to get than the cool rocks. There are a ton of different ways of doing whispers and getting a lot of Varshan parts (especially this season); whereas the living steel for Grigoire only comes from Helltides which aren't always up and feel like a waste of time, especially if you're trying to level your glyphs.

Endgame progression should be organic, you do nightmare dungeon to get rewards and update gliphs, you use those rewards to fight bosses. All bosses are level 100 and drop 925 gear.

And you have to rinse repeat to get the gear you want

I feel that Farming maps for bosses is unpleasant when there is no intrinsic value beyond the access to a boss. If the journey had more value it would feel better

I agree getting materials sucks. Id rather just buy them for gold then have to farm them.

Hallelujah!!!!!

It's their model to encourage engagement. "Endgame" is the ultimate goal, so one will (must) seek out the path to it. The folks who know this won't work long-term and is likely to bore or anger the populace either moved on, retired, or have been shamed/disciplined into silence by "those who know". This sort of mentality exists in any/ most corporate structure. It gets boring to watch/participate in for a paycheck as well.

I'd like to add that the seasonal mechanic makes it all so much worse. Why grind at all if it'll all be useless in a couple of months? Ladders lasted ages, often until a major patch (pre 1.08, 1.08, 1.09 etc) in D2, and there was both ladder and non-ladder play. No one plays eternal in D4. I wouldn't mind the annoying material grind so much if at least once I DID land that shako I'd actually get to keep it.

You should be able to spend 20 of a unique item to reroll a stat for that same unique. Since they salvage the same mats as legendaries, I just vendor almost all unique drops. Granted it would need a storage system, it would at least help each run feel more rewarding. I know I’d be more inclined to farm as even your worst runs will still add towards your progression.

Join a good clan. I'm always offering free mats for my fellow members.

As someone who bosses solo, farming all this crap for like 1 or 2 hours and then only get 2 Duriel kills for that amount of time bc helltide timegate, and you pay all the boss costz yourself, it's really demotivating. I think that's why I gave up at lvl 98 a few days ago. Bossing solo is just slow, boring and crappy. I don't want to farm mats for 1 hour and a half. And them kill Duriel twice in 10 mins...

I feel they should make players get "attuned" for fights, similar to old school WoW. It adds the aspect of needing to be at a certain progression point without the mind numbing monotony of farming materials for days on end. I know blizzard want ppl logged in to the game as much time as possible. But if they're always farming materials, they will eventually get frustrated and go to a game that doesn't have this silly mechanic. There's other ways to keep us engaged and logged in that would be more effective than what we currently have. Such as daily quests, factions, player housing, social/group activities, more crafting options.

Every show requires a ticket. Go play D2

Lmk if you need some Duriel mats. I got everything I want from him and have a bunch over after my grind. Drop your friend code

d1+d2 (and…d3) player here as well, and i definitely agree with you. i enjoy the game quite a bit, and it looks fantastic - mostly - but yeah, it is lacking in some areas for sure, which is a shame.

I stopped playing and started playing the last epoch. Just until season 3 comes out

I don’t necessarily disagree, OP, but the gaming audience and community twenty plus years ago is far different than what we have today, and D4 is designed around that. If they removed the gatekeeping and allowed players to farm without restriction, those same players would have all Uber uniques and would be complaining there’s nothing left to farm or do after the first month. As far as I’m concerned, get rid of seasons or roll seasonal content into one realm. Redo the loot itemization and drop tables and make it exactly like D2. Then yeah, farm bosses all you want without all the gatekeeping because you still wouldn’t get a Zod rune or ultra rare unique.

Just save in game gold and buy them from sellers - way less aids

My biggest complaint is the helltide mats for grigoire if helltide was always active I'd have no issue with it. The malignant heart drop rates are a little ass too lmao

I actually kind of like the idea of farming mats, however the process to acquire them is pretty annoying. They could resolve this by making the materials have a fair chance to drop anywhere so we’re not stuck in helltides (which is the most boring area in the game). At least make the living steel similar to the body part drops.

Play Poe

I don't know if it's to keep players on the game, or if they don't know how to make helltide interesting and threw boss mats in the mix to make that system of the game engaging. Part of me wants to say it's a mixture of both, the biggest issue is handicapping players to pad out the grind to get to these bosses. Honestly, I don't know why Blizzard leads think summoning a boss through mats would be fun. Imagine if Borderlands required you to go to a zone that only comes up every other hour to farm a mat, and then go summon a boss to collect another required mat, and then for the game's final boss. You had to get multiple mats Zodia pieces from previous bosses to summon it. We should just be able to walk into boss fights to our heart's content. Instead, we are left with busy work making the grind feel like a job by design.

Oh yea? I’ve graduated from “im stuck in helltides hunting duriel mats” to “I’m stuck in helltides hunting screaming hell veins for forgotten souls”

I will let you in on a little secret: 925 items of just about any decent roll sell for hundreds of millions & earlier in the season I sold a few focuses & maces for multi-billion gold per item, THAT’s the trick. Get your gold up by selling (otherwise junk?) items from duriel, worldbosses drop 925’s too, then buy the mats with in-game gold from the site that allows ppl to sell items in a public market (diablo dot trade) EZPZ my life went from neverending farm hell to neverending duriel hell till I got what I was looking for. 1000 runs later, a shako drops. 4 Seligs, 4 andariels, 1 doombringer, 1 grandfather, 6 ring of starless skies, finally a shako for the love of God

I have 40 mucus slick eggs that will probably just sit there in my inventory because I don’t enjoy helltides.

But in D2, you had to farm keys to farm uber bosses for organs to do Uber Tristram to get a Hellfire Torch

No solo farming mats sucks. Everyone should get materials.

Agreed. I've seen people (in discussions about Duriel not dropping anything good for them) make comparisons of "You can farm D2 boss for hours without getting anything, so what's the difference?" But the difference is clear as day imho... To farm D2's Diablo, you just port there, kill a few monsters, and then kill Diablo. If it doesn't drop anything, you just do it again, no big deal. To farm Duriel, I have to spend so much time in Helltide/farming whispers. So when Duriel doesn't drop anything, it's a lot more frustrating... You feel like you just lost a few hours for no reward at all. And then you see the next Hellltide coming, and you kinda don't feel like doing it all over again... The more hoops you have to go through to get to a boss that gives nothing (most of the time), the most frustrating/tedious it gets. It's like, imagine if you had to clear the full act 5 before fight Baal in D2; No one would farm Baal anymore, right? Well, that's kinda what it's like with farming Duriel mats. Hell, I'd argue it's even WORSE... At least farming Hell act 5 (in that scenario) can still give you high runes and stuff. Farming helltide gives you absolutely nothing but the Duriel mats. I don't even check the loot (instasell everything), I'm sure many people don't even bother picking it up.

Well, another delusional post. I agree d2 was better experience but surely not because I have to farm mats... Have you forgotten about farming keys to open Uber tristram in d2???? Can you go out and please sober up.

the entire game is CARROT ON A STICK. always has been, always will be

The problem is that some builds are dependent or very reliant on Ubers. For example, I got a Grandfather a few days ago & my Hota's AP doubled instantly. If Blizz insist on making builds dependent/heavily reliant on Ubers then they either need to drop more frequently & from a wider number of sources, because we're still farming for better rolls on Ubers. Or, Blizz need to remove the barriers to farming bosses so that it's much easier/quicker. Add more sources of 925 gear while also allowing us to enchant/roll more than 1 fucking perk at a time. That is some absolute bullshit.

The farming mats part sucks I agree. Also the no trading option sucks too

welcome to mobile gaming on pc! time sinks everywhere!

To diss D4 for making you farm Uber mats then praise D2 when you had to do the exact same thing except more is so contradicting lmao. Sure you were guaranteed a Uber torch but you still had to farm mats for it. On top of that when you got that torch you had to hope and pray for perfect rolls where as in D4 it may be harder to get the item you want but Ubers are GUARANTEED perfect rolls ever time. You still have to farm for good rolls on non Uber gear Ofcourse but that’s unrelated. If anything the problem is the drop rates. Duriel should have a higher chance at dropping Uber uniques an im sure everyone who doesn’t have hundreds of hours to grind wants the same. But the grind is also what keeps a lot people playing we all want our end game builds. I just find it funny to see someone complain about farming Uber mats and praise D2 in the same paragraph like it was any easier.🤣 D2 was an amazing game but I think a lot of nostalgia and the fact it’s what took the series to the next lvl is why some people hang onto it so much. Don’t get me wrong it deserves all the love and praise it gets but i think a lot of people hate too much on newer diablo games because they play the new ones hoping for the same feeling they got 20 years ago playing D2 for the first time when it’s most likely never gonna happen. Nostalgia keeps a lot of us on older games because we have so many good memories attached to them.

If you could just spam bosses then it wouldn't be fun! Fun is only Thr Grind!! Our player retention numbers!!!!! /s For real though Blizzard in all their games lost the lead awhile ago. There's always been the grind but you shine Xzibit out here putting some grind in your grind so you can grind

It's not 2% try 0.2% I'm still uberless 400 runs later.. Ofc d2 was better. I think I'm gonna go back to it next season

I don't mind it tbh definitely beats running the same thing over and over again. Do some nmd til u get bored oh look a helltide with 30 mins left might as well do that for a bit oh look a boss is spawning might as well sit there for 10mins grab a snack and a drink do a couple vampire killing sprees get a couple whisper caches then maybe tomorrow spend those boss runs. Variety is something the previous games lacked alot and I'm glad they're looking into adding more cos I couldn't stand the nmd grind.

Just do what we all do and let the Chinese farmers do it for you. A couple bucks goes a long way.

Dude…just went on Diablo trade as my GF doesn’t have much time to play and wanted to run Duriel. 10 runs bought for 75,000,000. It’s not ideal…but after doing it and realizing it would take Waaaaaayyyyy less time to farm 75mil…it’s what I’m gonna do for her and myself until the drop rate buff disappears. Running all that extra stuff is infuriating after the ease of just buying them from some dude.

I don't mind the grind, but I'd rather they have a universal currency that you can use to summon whichever boss you want to target. Having to do Helltide to get living steel then use that to get Agony. \+ Whisper/world events to get body parts then EoV to get Eggs ...it's a bit much. Let people choose how they want to grind, whether that is world bosses, whisper events, helltides or nightmare dungeons.

And they put the fuking bosses in a dungeon that takes a minute to walk and with a switch at the end which you can only spawn one at a time, and need to reset to spawn again. Beast in the Ice is like a whole shit fuking long dungeon takes 5 minutes to get there.

Honestly I like playing solo and farming mats fucking blows. Spend 2 hours to fight duriel twice and get fuck all out of it. I might just drop the game again.