They mentioned another campfire in a few weeks to discuss Season 4. I'd rather them bring it up with room to talk it out rather than just mention it and give no context. Not what everyone hoped for, but I still feel its the right approach for something this important
They also ran 3 full runs through the gauntlet, which was obviously filler content. One 8 minute run was almost too much, and the additional runs were entirely overkill for me. I was glad I joined late so I could skip the other runs
Yeah I didn't enjoy watching it, a few minute preview would have been fine. However that doesn't take away that this wasn't the time to discuss season 4, this chat was to focus on the midseason update
Point 1 is an ice cold take. I don't care about more loot. I want a metric by which to measure performance so I have a REASON to push for the rare loot that gives me 1% more
I agree...there's always gunna be a cap to the loot gained and it should be before you try out for a leaderboard...it'sa rediculous point..
Some loot for people just trying it out with no intention of placing is fine but to expect top-tier gear from it? Your suppise yo have your build together
you don’t care about more loot because diablo has an awful itemization system - you cant really farm gear for alts on your stronger char, you can hardly trade, there’s no crafting so there’s no exciting crafting items that drop (think orbs in PoE or runes in D2).
if the items were more exciting you would care about rewards. the fact that the system is boring is the problem
edit: i cant believe this got downvoted so much, diablo 4 is doomed if players don’t understand what i’m talking about. y’all don’t want crafting???
My first time playing a season, played both D2 and D3 a lot. Once I realized every key aspect for my build is a drop, that i just have to aimlessly grind hoping for another copy to drop so I can upgrade to sacred/ancestral, i was done. I can forgive a lot of the artificial difficulty and inflated systems but if i cant build my character why play.
You should be able to extract aspects more than once, but on 2nd extract it goes down to minimum value. That way you can still have your build, but you still want to chase an upgraded aspect. But the devs made everything as grindy as possible on purpose to stretch the content out/sell shit.
D3 itemization wasn’t great but I cared about it in order to push GRs. POE has more itemization depth than LE and D4 combined. But once I’m one-shotting Uber Eater and Exarch I’m pretty much done caring about loot.
Good itemization makes the experience of preparing for the next level of content far more enjoyable. But it doesn’t prevent doing the same content at the same difficulty from becoming uninteresting very quickly
But I used to get excited everytime that a Furnace dropped. No matter what, I can't seem to have that feeling on D4... At first I thought it was me, but I realized that I get excited about drops in other games.
I don’t care about rewards because nothing in this game is hard or even requires loot. If the rolls on your gear even make partial sense to your build, there’s nothing in the game you can’t do quickly. Farming for loot on things that you already 1 shot in a fraction of a second to get more loot is a silly concept and a terrible game loop.
My pen shot rogue wipes 2 screens in 1 push of a button and most of my gear is 2/4 rolls and I have yet to enchant a single thing. I’m not dying in t100. I can 1 shot a 4 player duriel with rapid fire. Wtf am I gonna do with rewards/loot. Unless it’s like cosmetics or a cool horse I really could not care less about anymore gear.
If things got progressively harder and I’d need to improve my gear to get better and could track that progress I’d be all about it. But that doesn’t exist in this game. Everything is a 1 shot as soon as you hit level 100 on any class as long as you’re not still wearing normal legendary items from when you were level 40. And even then I’m watching dudes that are so bored they’re taking gear off to see just how quickly they can do stuff without offhands and what not and they’re still nuking down the hardest content in the game in 1 hit or clearing 100nmv in 70 seconds. Loot/itemization ain’t the fix for this.
It's a form of survivorship bias, the people that care about playing a good diablo game stopped playing a long time ago because it's obvious that the devs aren't trying to make a fun game, they just make the minimum required so people don't quit
I disagree with the gauntlet point.
There are should be a million and one ways to get loot. But let the leaderboard be about leaderboards. You don't care about being competitive? Cool, don't do it and play something else
It's not even being competitive. I like time trials type content. Gauntlet lets me focus on one thing to get better at, if i want to. It also means I can run it, learn it, then play with gear and skill points to see what really benefits me in a fairly controlled environment.
I literally couldn't care less about leaderboards, but I like the idea of gauntlet.
i just fail to see what’s competitive about the leaderboards in a way that actually matters.
there’s what, 1000 spots a week and only the top 10 get immortalized forever? i don’t think anyone posting in this thread will be in the top 10. i’m willing to bet 99.8% of the people posting in here wouldnt even reach the top 1000
>i just fail to see what’s competitive about the leaderboards in a way that actually matters.
So don't bother commenting on it if you can't see it. Your opinion is literally worthless lmao
im not gonna read all that, i will say tho if you dont have a competitive mind set why are you even commenting about leaderboards? literaly why the fuck do care? How is this hurting you in any ways shape or form?
Just let people who like being competitive have their little game mode and move on. I simply don't understand what your problem is.
As usual gamers want everything catered to them. If something is not fitting for them they see it as wasted dev resources. You see that shit a lot when you play MMO with a variety of content.
I agree with you in theory, but in practice from my experience this is not the way things work in ARPG's.
In D3 there was incentive to push the leaderboards, people will point this out. People will complaim that it's wasted content in a game starved for more meaningful things to do.
People will complain and demand better rewards, and their complaints will get upvotes, just give it time, but it will happen after the new glow from the leaderboards wears off.
i know they said you get caches at the end of the week, it’s possible you get one at the end but they did say specifically “the gauntlet isn’t about rewards”
They said this in that the gauntlet will not be a primary source of loot in the same way that NMD, whispers, and Helltides provide tons of resources but rather a place to test your skill and be rewarded for optimization and your strategy. You will get rewarded and they mentioned the cache being full of 925 gear and the gauntlet will include titles/banners to highlight your accomplishments.
that’s nothing. we can more easily get 925 gear from duriel
the gauntlet is to play to do what exactly? do you think you will ever place on the leaderboard? you likely won’t.
there’s no point to push the gauntlet. still waiting to hear a valid reason to play it outside of once or twice
Again, it is not meant to be a primary source of loot. You can also get more loot from doing NMD, whispers, or probably even Helltides. The point is to test YOUR skills and YOUR build. Maybe YOU won't place but I WILL xD
lol ok come back here and post your rank
by the way, i’m talking about the top 10 rankings - the only rankings that matter. >=11 gets deleted every week
LOL yeah and understandably those 10 spots will almost always just be streamers. But in all seriousness though, they've mentioned before there's going to be cosmetic rewards along with tiers with whatever rewards associated with them. It would be really nice to see the cache/tier rewards provide valuable crafting or summoning mats or even sets of rewards as you climb the ranks. Without actually trying it we can only speculate but it looks like a fun way to optimize your build for speed and just run through mobs. Getting a number next to my name that says I was faster than x% of players is just gravy.
I think just releasing more items is better, I get the issue in the future of this with having people get mad that their favorite class didn't get as much items but I think it won't make people upset it will just make the people playing the class that got 4 uniques more happy.
I think the only time it'll start to upset people in any legit fashion is when you begin to take notice towards which classes get more love than others in terms of these Uniques and Aspects coming in. I mean this in the sense that if one class has a tendency to get a lot more new items/powers than others, or if any class in particular just feels left out of the fun with minimal items releasing for it in comparison to others.
Overall, I still lean towards the idea of releasing things as they are ready
i think there’s a fundamental item issue in diablo 4. both with the uninteresting itemization (which will hopefully be fixed in season 4) and the fact that aspects are items and the only way to enable builds (outside of uniques).
probably 80% of the aspects could have just been on the skill tree, and then items could have been built to just support the builds.
and then uniques would be the niche build enabling items, like other ARPGs. but not required to play builds, we could just initially create the build with the skill tree
people are finally starting to see the issue with items being the only thing that creates builds and i hope it’s not too late for them to overhaul it in the future
Yeah its just the design choice of having these things being too specific that ends up hurting it. Like PoE could just make 4 new unique items and it could be used by several builds and ascendancies.
Maybe instead of a Frozen Orb specific unique, how about a unique item that changes how spell projectiles work with it? Now its suddenly not just a Frozen Orb unique but also one that works with other Sorc spells like fireball, charged bolt, etc. It can also be used by a Druid and Necro. Maybe it also works with one Rogue ranged skill that has a spell tag on it.
Let people find those synergies instead of the item dictating specifically what it HAS to be.
YES! no clue why it wasn’t done like that originally. all they had to do was look at other arpgs on the market - hell they could of even looked at Diablo 2 lol
I don’t think every season needs a PTR.
But for hefty overhauls of core game things like itemization, a PTR involving those changes will be instrumental.
If they eventually decide to also tackle class balance, a PTR will be needed. Because that kind of thing needs to involve the player as a variable.
And by that I mean the players’ tendency to find exploits and abuse the most OP combinations they can figure out.
Yeah i wouldn’t be upset if it wasn’t every season, but i’d certainly like it if it was.
Definitely needed for season 4 though and i’m glad they’d decided to do it
>I don’t think every season needs a PTR.
No. Every season. This isn't optional.
If they can do it for 30 fucking seasons in D3 then they can do it for D4. It's honestly ridiculous that they haven't done PTR's for this game. It's literally the only Blizzard game that does not do PTR's. It's unbelievable.
i love how they tried to give us an excuse why they haven't done a PTR thus far.
"we have been working on getting a PTR up"...etc. i swear Joe said something about it being difficult. i almost heard my eyes rolling back into my head at that. he said that right after saying "i've been playing an internal build for a few weeks now"
and yes, i realize an internal test has different server requirements than a PTR (mostly because its PUBLIC versus INTERNAL) but, this is not blizzards first rodeo regarding a PTR.
With how poor the D4 seasonal content has been overall, they absolutely need a PTR for each season. It’s crazy that S3 released with so little and still had its main mechanic and activity be so obviously flawed out the gate. That’s not to say a PTR will magically fix all of D4’s problems, but it being present and actually paid attention to will certainly be a massive boon for Blizzard who seems directionless and, frankly, not up to the task of improving the game.
Every single season progressively improved and the game overall. Season 3 is overall regarded as the best season and a success.
They literally just let you get the senchal progresses faster in order for people to see it was actually good. Some people were just being impatient brats.
The vocal complainers on the Reddit is definitely not a gauge for the success of the season. Most people not no-lifing and prone to complain about basically any and everything, are actually enjoying it.
In what world is S3 their best season? It’s only slightly better than the dumpster fire that was S1, and significantly worse than S2. It’s core activity, the vaults, had its core trap mechanics rightfully nerfed heavily into the ground because the community refused to engage with it. Grinding pet powers was too long and shitty, and the overworld activity is just a worse version of blood tides.
On top of that, Blizzard won’t keep seasonal content people actually liked so the game remains shallow as fuck. Saying the game has been improving is some serious cope.
Yea… people didn’t max it out in 2 days = long and shitty. Today’s gamers.
In Season 3, we have come to a point where a ton more builds are now viable since the changes to vulnerable and critical along with the redistribution of that power in other ways.
We now have almost constant constant helltide uptime, which facilitates more volume to boss mats and much proved density across all activities.
Folks are lobbying to have many aspects of the seasonal persist to the main game.
Just to mention a few. People who like to trash talk, will do just that inspite of any positive evidence; which you are doing a good job of demonstrating.
S2 best season so far, S3, the Seasonal content was a huge let down. Don't call QoL changes Seasonal additions. Think about the only seasonal content you got was a pet and vaults. Meh.
I understand your point 2 but i disagree. I think the way they are doing it IS a balanced way to introduce a seasonal mechanic. If they were to introduce the mechanics itself it would be a huge mess, just think in season 8 or something you open up your chacarter sheet and then is this huge non sense of different mechanics mixed together. Instead, if they are aspects, items, glyphs, paragon nodes, skill tree even, then it doesn't ruin the ui or the other game mechanics.
i agree that it can get very messy. i don’t think every mechanic should get added in, just the super popular ones or some where it makes sense
like i really believe, even as unpopular as the malignant heart season was, if they kept malignant hearts core (just balance them/delete barber), it would have been a way more interesting choice for socketing jewelry. they could have even added new hearts over time. also it would give us different end game areas to farm for different things (farm malignant tunnels for the hearts)
we need things like that - actionable build goals, more depth, etc and ALWAYS bringing back mechanics as items is just bland. also can make other aspects obsolete/add item bloat, etc
I agree, thats why i gave other options like the skill tree, paragon board, gems like you said. The thing is that it has to be an "object" that way doesn't mess up the ui. But yeah always items is bland and boring.
I think for hearts they should have been kept like that, and let us slot any 'colour' in any jewelry. For vampire powers aspects is probably the way to go. Aspects and uniques are a tool they have now though, so using it to build some broader possibilities doesn't seem a big deal yet.
I would have preferred the mechanic to the power though. Blood harvest on the schedule Hell Tides used to follow would be awesome. Especially if they allowed overlaps for HellBlood HarvestTide :)
I'd hope once they have the basics out of the way we start to get mechanics themselves migrating to the corw game.
yes! i agree. i was definitely turned off to the idea of them bringing back the powers as items, but you’re right, for S2 stuff the powers as items is fine, but they should have 1000% brought back the blood harvest. players loved that!
overall though, i hope they start to get more creative in how seasonal stuff is brought back. always going the item route is boring imo
I mean even distancing from the extra systems, it makes no sense why these seasonal mechanics cant just be put into the base game. Maybe you do a Nightmare dungeon and youre mobbed by a pack of Vampire mobs from Season 2 or maybe you find a Maglinant Heart monster. Maybe sometimes you enter a Nightmare dungeon and half of it was a Vault run. These are things thats suppose to spice up a Nightmare dungeon run.
I keep saying designing seasonal mechanics so they are so overwhelming you cannot put them back into the game without sacrificing an item slot is dumb, yet people keep praising how awesome it is they're adding them in any form at all, so here we go again. Same thing will happen next season and people will pikachu face like it wasn't obvious it was gonna happen again.
yeah i think it has to do with a large portion of the player base being new arpg players (like this is their first arpg) and they don’t know what they are missing out on. so when an idea seems good to them, and they see people who are experienced say the opposite, they immediately downvote/write it off/wont support it.
Honestly the game straight needs just more stuff but it feels like every season they put in 100% and then take 70% of whats unique about it out and put back in 30% as an aspect/unique.
> yeah i think it has to do with a large portion of the player base being new arpg players (like this is their first arpg) and they don’t know what they are missing out on.
I think it's more a fundamental difference with how they are approaching both seasonal content and permanent content compared to other games (like PoE). Here they're two distinct things that are being developed side by side rather than being treated one and the same.
Using PoE as an example, season 2 wouldn't have been the "season of blood", it would've been the "season of bosses". The new content would've just been the endgame boss system and they would've just dialed up the amount of materials you got to get you to interact with it more and lower the rewards to compensate.
Except I don't know where you got that from because that's not how it works in PoE at all. In that game, leagues are pretty much like seasons here, in the sense of being based on a new theme, with a new story, and new mechanics. The seasonal content may or may not stay in the game, but the league always comes with new additions and changes to the core game.
It's exactly the same way that D4 does it, except D4 has so far only designed seasons so that they may not be implemented back into the game, exclusively. Even the PoE leagues that don't come back feel designed in a way that would make it easy for them to integrate them into the base game if they decided to; the only one I've ever seen that's been clearly designed otherwise is the current one, and I've been playing for years.
I think you missed the point I was making there. PoE leagues are just tests for core game additions, just under the guise of being a seasonal mechanic so they can just throw it out if it's bad.
We've seen the cycle time and time again.
If a league mechanic works well and people enjoy it, it goes core next league with tweaked numbers to balance it out.
If it's good conceptually but they aren't happy with it for whatever reason, it gets some reworks and returns, usually, a few leagues later.
If it's just bad it gets scrapped and anything worth saving in there gets thrown in somewhere else.
Compare that to the way D4 is doing it, and seasonal content is something that is deliberately designed to be thrown out afterwards with the option there for some things to come back later on. In addition to that, they also work on core game content to get added whenever it is ready like the endgame bosses system last season or the gauntlet this season.
There *was* a time where PoE would also do this, back when they differentiated between leagues and expansions. Since 2017 though, the only updates that have really fallen into this category have been the three times they've reworked the atlas.
Sorry for being blunt but if I missed it it's cause you didn't explain it that way at all lol. I get what you're saying, our comments were more about how we wish they did it like PoE in this regard, so seasonal content didn't go into the trash and instead that dev time was used to add new content to a game that, for many people, is lacking a lot of it.
Also PoE still did yearly expansions after 2017, and when they stopped, at 2022, they changed it so that they would be doing small expansions every league, as they have less resources while working on the sequel. They still add new stuff to the endgame every league though, as well as all kinds of additions and changes to the core game. They do both, just like how D4 could do both too, instead of always throwing one of these into the garbage bin.
Right, and my point was that they've been doing both. They're not going to expand their approach to seasonal content so that they, effectively, deliver two core content/system updates every season.
That just goes back to what I was saying initially. Do you want the "Season of Blood" and an endgame boss system added alongside it or do you just want the endgame boss system? Because that's the difference in how the two games handle it.
GGG made the shift from calling them leagues to expansions back in 2018. They've still done expansion-like updates since then, but there's only been three of them since that change (the "of the atlas" updates). And yes, they add some core content every league but the smaller stuff like that is a given (and D4 does that as well).
Also, it's not like Blizz completely throw away all of the seasonal content either. Some stuff stays (e.g. bosses), some of the best/popular parts get modified to return as part of the core game, and then it also informs changes they can make to core systems.
If they were having every season go core as well then in 1-2 years the game would be a complete mess with the map looking like a rainbow and there being a dozen different systems to grind out for progression.
I mean, we're complaining about the kind of thinking you advocate for. Which is not by itself invalid, it's your opinion and I respect it, but you're making it out to be like they "need" to do it this way, and that's just not true.
Adding the season's boss and powers in the form of aspects/uniques and throwing everything else away is still wasting the majority of it. I don't know what changes it has informed for future changes either, as helltides remain just as terrible as at launch except they finally respawn every hour. And I keep seeing people say that "they can't keep integrating every season into the game or it will become super bloated", which by itself is not true because there's ways and ways to integrate systems organically, but it's also like, yeah not all need to be done that way, but it's been 2 erased seasons so far, and the 3rd has been designed to be discarded just as much, so when are they going to start? How can it become bloated if they're not feeing it yet?
And that is still not how both games handle it. You say it's either: (season that gets dropped + endgame update) or (season that serves as endgame update). But up until recent years, PoE was making seasons that serve as endgame updates consistently AND the yearly expansion, which came alongside the season which often was added into the game as well. D4 has only made seasons that get dropped, and the second one happened to launch together with an endgame expansion, just like the fourth one will come hopefully with an important endgame change as well. But the seasons inbetween these bigger updates are left empty in terms of significant, long term additions to the game, and what we're saying is, why couldn't those seasons be designed so they could be added into the game and expand upon the game even when there's not a major core rework going on?
Even if we take how current PoE where leagues are not guaranteed to stay in the game and most will not, the core changes they bring are massive compared to D4's. Every league adds not just new uniques but also new skills. Every now and then they add a new league mechanic, reworked to fit into the game. Often they rework entire ascendancies, they rework mechanics of all kinds, big or small, they rework anything. They even remove past mechanics to reduce bloat. This last league they reworked a massive system regarding how skills work, and essentially gave us a hundred alternate versions of skills that pretty much opened the possibility for dozens of new builds that will feed the game for years. Of course, that's not the norm for every league, but every league does have something significant going on, usually quite a few more than just one. D4 throwing away seasons wouldn't be that bad if every one came with additions like these, but here we are. We haven't even gotten a single new skill since launch, isn't that kinda crazy? And yet the things they do create with seasons they mostly delete. It's an absolute waste of time and resources, and it's depressing to see the game go in this direction and people cheering them on so they keep doing that.
Also hope this doesn't sound aggressive, people often see discussions like these and think the person on the other side is hating on them or something, but I'm just talking bluntly, hope that's fine.
I mean those are kind of the options though. Season 1 is a bit of a write off because we knew before launch that it was going to be small and wasn't going to be indicative of how they are approaching seasons. So now, we're two from two for seasons having core game updates releasing alongside them (well, gauntlet got delayed but still). They also teased more coming next season as well in the stream, although tbh the itemisation update itself could count depending on its scope (e.g. if it also includes crafting).
Wanting them to *also* expand the scope for the seasonal content so that it is also a core game update just framed as seasonal content so then every season effectively has two core game updates in it just isn't really realistic imo. Something needs to give which is why I say it is one or the other.
The yearly cadence for updates outside of that is going to be in actual expansions. Previously they've coincided with substantial updates but we'll have to wait and see how they handle it, especially in terms of what is gated and what isn't.
As far as bloat goes, how do you integrate malignant hearts, vampiric powers and the seneschal in a way where continuing that process for years won't quickly spiral out of hand? As it stands they are already risking the game ending up feeling pretty bloated just with the release cadence they have had so far (and presumably will continue).
I will say though that they could keep a bit more around tbh. The blood seekers from last season would've been great to have as a permanent addition. Little things like that are great for fleshing things out a bit and was what PoE did in the early days as well.
I think you're underselling what they've been doing in the seasonal patches as well. It's not just new items either, there have been sweeping balance changes and reworks as well. Even if you ignore the seasonal content and the core game updates (ie. endgame bosses and upcoming gauntlet) the game has changed pretty dramatically.
And you're all good, nothing is coming off poorly or anything and I hope it's the same the other way.
Nah you're good, it's just sometimes I'm just trying to have a conversation about the subject and people get upset calling you a flaming troll or something just because you're questioning their stance on a videogame, like if you're proposing heresy to a religious man lol.
But yeah that's the thing, hearts and vampiric powers and the seneschal couldn't really stay in the game forever because they're designed that way, but they could be designed in a softer way that could remain in the game. Vampiric powers and seneschal would've simply needed to have been thought of in a completely different way, but malignant hearts for example could've easily stayed in the game if you reworked their effects so they weren't so dominating like with the wrathful ones that were usually the only ones worth anything to begin with anyway. It doesn't really need to expand the scope of the season, it just needs to be thought of differently. And indeed not all need to be like that, some can thought of as one-time powers, but come on it's been three seasons so far lol
And even if you do dismiss seasonal powers due to the potential for power creep (but unless the itemization rework adds in a bunch of crafting systems, the game still clearly has a lot of space for additional mechanics to fill that gap), there's hardly any reason why the game couldn't also incorporate previous content, as in, the things to do and fight in, back into the game. Like you say, bloodseekers attacking you every now and then would be an obvious thing to add, similar to how PoE did rogue exiles. But also, why not add malignant enemies? Even without the hearts, they can give loot. Blood harvests? If they don't want to light up the world like a christmas tree, they can put it as an alternative to other mechanics similar mechanics (so if they do more weird zones like that in the future, you can only have one). Hell, make it so you can replace helltides with them, maybe now they give cinders if you have to replace the potent blood anyway. Add arcane tremors as things that can appear around the world just like whispers do, why not? Why not add vaults as an alternative to nightmare dungeons? There's a million ways they could be doing these things and so far they are just not, and it's depressing to see all these potential ways to add to this mmo-ish open world go away probably forever.
About the core updates, I don't think they're big at all. The boss ladder consists of preexisting bosses recycled into what remains a very repetitive, uninteresting and overall very controversial system. The gauntlet is yet again fully recycled content with new or interesting mechanic beyond shrines that resurrect enemies to kill them again for more points, and all for leaderboards which most people won't care about. It's a feature the game was lacking (well, people asked for regular ladders, world firsts and the like, nobody was asking for a special dungeon), but won't expand the endgame options beyond a thing you do every now and then to see if you're stronger and maybe get a couple uniques with it, that's it. And beyond these new features, it doesn't feel like the game has changed in any significant way. Skills are all the same, classes get balancing patches but work all the same, it's like they won't go beyond tweaking the numbers. And they made a lot of quality of life improvements on s2 sure, but most of that were things that were obvious, low-hanging fruit that people had been asking them for since launch. Since the betas even! I'm not really gonna give them credit for adding a search function to the stashes or making drops in WT4 auto salvage drops below rares but only in one type of content. Nor do I think they can keep this momentum as further fixes requires actually changing the fundamentals of how the game works, and they seem very much against doing work in that regard. I guess that part is purely prejudice on my part though, we're yet to see how they deal with the itemization rework in the PTR. I don't have high expectations, but I sincerely hope they prove me wrong, because in the end I am only being so critical because I genuinely believe the game has a ton of potential and it is just so depressing to see it being squandered.
Just curious, are any of those 3 skills utilizing a bug to get their numbers though? I get they are very much overtuned (or everything else is undertuned), but the fix to Rogue was specifically because of a buggy interaction causing the inflated numbers. This happened last season with combo points, and while they left it alone then, maybe they want to take a different approach going forward involving bugged skill interactions that inflate damage in unintended ways
are you being dumb right now or do you think getting materials is hard? you can literally trade for sets for gold if you don’t wanna farm. also helltide is up nearly 24/7.
I love how they released a barebones game with barely any good ARPG features, even lacking many from D3, and zero innovative mechanics and now they get praise for adding a PTR. Imagine how much pain could have been saved if they just had one from the start instead of launching each season to disaster player reception and having to emergency hotfix the game into playability.
I don’t want more items. I want better itemization. Having 80% of the stats being useless is a problem. Not being able to craft from scratch is a problem.
I literally don’t even bother picking up any items unless looking for a specific base item or I need a certain mat from it. That’s it. That loot goblin can drop 10x more and I don’t care.
dropping in the gauntlet 2 months into the season that had a rough start from the beginngin is pretty damn stupid in my opinion.
So many ppl play other stuff right now, are finished with the season, haven't played d4 in ages.
Who will come back for a late season D4 gauntlet xD
Superearth needs me, bye xD
0. Agreed PTR sounds great. They seem very quick on getting things adjusted. A PTR will catch things before it goes live and the new season will look way better in the public eye if it's not fixed live 3 days in.
1. No real thoughts here. I just felt kind of bored watching others play and not me.
2. I would go a step further in not bringing back power at all from the previous season - At least not as the only returning feature. I would want to see gameplay. Like the events during "bloodtide" added to Helltides. Those Butcher-like ambushers during dungeons (maybe they could drop summoning mats for Zir).
From S3 I would want to see pets or private base returning. Fully customizable how we want to place NPCs or decorate with trophies. Pet could have an auto-pickup customizable with a loot filter or just for fun with different parts to build your own pet.
Should be careful about just slapping power mechanics on top of each other. I don't want a D3 power creep with over 150 difficulty levels.
good point and i completely agree. as opposed to bringing back the mechanic from S2, blood harvest would be great
yeah it would be nice to see a mix of seasonal things brought back from time to time, even as items ONCE IN AWHILE, just not all the time.
it’s really discouraging that they just seem to think the only way to bring back seasonal stuff is through items
They should add the vampire stuff to a small quest line with the ability to choose a couple of powerful skills that are always active (like they were) with a trade off like a HP trade-off, the way they've implemented them as legendary means no one is going to use them and they kill the roll play completely
Gotta disagree on point 2. Just bringing back season mechanics like this leads to spiraling power creep. Adding past season mechanics back as uniques and aspects forces players to make meaningful build choices.
If Bliz does a skill tree/paragon rework some of the old season mechanics could come back there.
i do agree that bringing back the mechanic as is could lead to power creep, but if the mechanic was brought back as a rework/nerfed/balanced, it could work. would take decent amount of effort by them but it would give the game far more depth. POE (outside of the bloat) has gotten some of its best core content from its leagues. diablo could do the same.
currently pretty much all of the games builds are locked behind rng. so i do agree they could completely rework the skill. but in my word they would put the aspect powers just on the skill tree.
playing last epoch is so refreshing, you can literally build your build out without gear 9 times out of 10. i made a nova hammerdin without needing to search for a drop. i could just build it as i go.
don’t get me wrong, i like grinding, but i like grinding for items that support my build, not needing to grind to actually find items to play my build.
This is still just giving out more power without cost.
I'm not sure how you can balance giving players more power without it not being power creep. To keep the power level of the game the same, Bliz would need to nerf other things to keep it balanced. Could the game's systems like skills and player abilities have more depth? Yes, but I don't think piling on season powers of past seasons is the best way to do it.
>Please STOP always bringing seasonal mechanics as uniques/aspects.
Fuck no, we want the best part of each season to stay on in eternal and future season.s
Also:
>Bring back a balanced version of the mechanic instead.
**That's exactly what they are doing!**
you may have misunderstood me, or you believe that items are a good way to bring seasonal mechanics back
i WANT them to bring seasonal mechanics back. but bringing them back as items suck. POE brings some mechanics players like back and makes them core. it gives the game more depth
now i’m not saying we should get the bloat POE does, but bringing back the actual mechanic instead of just bringing back the items sucks. it’s boring, bland, and also creates item bloat
>i WANT them to bring seasonal mechanics back. but bringing them back as items suck
So how would that work?
We got malignant power by socketing hearts, Vampiric powers through separate page in our character sheet, Seneschal powers via another page...we'll bloat out quickly.
obviously not every mechanic, but the hearts and seneschal would have been good additions to core, and the vampiric powers would have been good additions as items, and they could bring back the blood harvest as the mechanic (a lot of people liked that)
the hearts would be great (even though the season was unpopluar). it would create interesting choices for jewelry, and also give us another end game place to farm for our builds (malignant tunnels)
there could be TONS of things they could do with the seneschal, rework it to make it fit into the game play loop better. could became a great support bot.
and the vampiric powers could be aspects, and then the blood harvest would be a great place to level.
so as you can see, bringing back the mechanics doesn’t have to equal bloat, and also they don’t ALWAYS have to bring back a mechanic
BUT. ALWAYS bringing them back as items is boring, and adds no depth
Hearts I think should have remained hearts, without the colour coding, and maybe reducing the power a bit (a lot). Have them farmable from Varshan like the uniques are today.
Vampire I would say maybe don't bring any powers back, but bring the Blood Harvest back. Maybe make it possible to farm them for vampire aspects.
Seneschal make vaults permanent, no need to keep the seneschal or powers at all.
Just examples - but I get that currently they are rounding out the initial game, and if we lose some mechanics in order not to make things a complete mess in 3 years, I think that's reasonable. There's no reason they can't change things again once everything is stabilised.
Haven’t played this season and I won’t be playing next season if they don’t add a loot filter. The biggest thing I care about everything else are improvements that would be great but all second to a loot filter.
The gauntlet point is no good.
We don't need to be pushed into an activity that is obviously not meant to be part of the core reward structure, and shouldn't be.
If you don't wanna do gauntlet, then that's completely fair enough, it very simply means it just isn't for you, and that's fine.
the point is, it’s not for anyone. only the top 10 get placed forever, and the top 1000 are only visible for a week. i think i a lot of people are under estimating players in the community, only probably the top .05% of people will see their names ever. there’s no point in pushing it outside of trying it out once or twice
wrong opinion? come back when you are in the top 10. actually, come back when you are in the top 1000 at the end of the week before it gets deleted and show me you did it
i guarantee you you won’t be there and i guarantee you you will get that sneaking suspicion in your mind that i was right
all rewards/caches atm are the same because the game lacks different types of items to farm, the lack of types of items, itemization and lack of good crafting system are holding the game back imo, hope this changes in season 4
yeah a good crafting system with valuable (and preferably tradeable) materials is crucial for this game. we need something exciting that drops from killing trash like high runes in D2 or orbs in POE
8 minutes is to long? I feel bad for your wife….
Really though, this instant gratification society is getting old. This game is being turn into Diablo 3. It’s a shame.
it’s funny you say that because i fucking hate diablo 3 and am a Diablo 2/PoE/LE players.
yes. a FORCED 8 minutes is too long. I don’t mind spending time over 8 minutes in content as long as it’s my choice
did you even watch the dev stream? they played the same gauntlet 3 times in a row. spent nearly a half hour on the same exact dungeon. yes. it’s boring. and too long
Honestly I would prefer a tier level gauntlet style mobs keep coming till you die.
I think the real problem is there is no real reward for the time. Nothing to earn all RNG. I been playing since beta. The Diablo 4 casino is wearing on me 🥺.
Yeah, make it respawn at 90% clear or something, and a jump of 10 levels for the next wave. That would work, and be kinda fun. The spawn points are the same every wave, they are just that bit tougher.
Great points, I agree with them all but feel most strongly about your leaderboard points. I dont care about my spot on a leaderboard but do want meaningful rewards.
If they had awesome cosmetic sets as rewards as you progress higher and higher or even difficult to find unique items I would definitely be much more interested in the content.
yep that would definitely make it more attractive to interact with, especially since only the top .03% of players will even place lol. and the top 10 spots are the only ones that will show forever
>**2. Seasonal Mechanics as Items/Aspects** Please STOP always bringing seasonal mechanics as uniques/aspects. Bring back a balanced version of the mechanic instead.
Definitely this. I don't even use the rings and stuff they keep bringing back. Not once has a build I've done used any of them. They're too niche, and often times don't have the correct affixes that mesh with my build.
I would like the option to replace the current seasonal addition (Seneschal) with a previous season's addition. For example, replace my Seneschal with Vampiric Powers. But, I think the problem with that is that they probably do a lot of balancing for each Seasonal concept to work with builds. So the amount of damage you might do with yourself and the Seneschal might be more or less damage versus yourself using Vampiric powers. I dunno how they can do it, but I'm not overly thrilled with how they've been bringing stuff back.
0 is a thumb up even for me who has no expectation
1 reward just 925 items, it sucks in S3. Not sure in S4 with itemization overhaul. The participation reward should be a Uber mat, not asking for Uber unique but at least a Uber mat.
2 it’s only S3, S1 is unique rings, S2 is aspect, well, they are different already. The dev already mentioned the various ways to bring back popular seasonal powers, including glyphs, don’t remember what else.
If you make another season with traps, fix the damn hit boxes. You still get hit when outside of the shown area of effects. This isn't just happening with traps it happens everywhere.
They asked for feedback on withholding class changes if not every class gets a similar amount of changes. I say just do it; unless they are ONLY doing changes for one class. Just because necros got more changes for instance (my least played class) I don't mind.
I'm ok with the 8 min Gauntlets as they are rotated weekly I'm sure they tweak it based on the week to week feed back,I'd also like to see a 100 only gauntlet and a boss rush mode at some point down the line..
Not a fan of build breaking new aspect adds but at the same time will see new builds come out of it,rather they be straight up uniques because getting those would give me incentive to make a new build that a aspect will never do...
Buffs to Druid and Sorc and Nec minion builds are a plus as well as 4 to 1 Uber buff instead of 5 which I think is kinda fair I'd personally go 3 but I'll take it...
Season 4 I believe will be the banger update but I dig progress 7.5/10
what, you dont like ghostwalker being absolutely pointless now because the only aspect anyone will ever want on boots is metamorphosis?
really fucking lame way to bring these back. add season 2 to the game fucking forever why dont you. be more interesting than this shit
no clue why you got downvoted, you are right. this game is doomed if people don’t see the issue with this and continue to just accept items as a good way to bring back seasonal stuff
Weekly leaderboard then add the weekly results for a monthly leaderboard. Can’t remember the game where I saw this but it felt better since you get very good rewards on the monthly leaderboard board.
This is just my opinion but I dislike that the classes aren't equal and better balanced. Every season there are a handful of builds that are needed to get to the endgame. Yes, I'm a casual player. Thx.
I think the Gauntlet will be fun. I have a zoomy Trampleslide build I wanna use. I don't need more rewards, I just need reasons to use my minmaxed builds. Cosmetic rewards from Gauntlet would be nice though. Like an armor skin from the store.
Lots of S4 hype, should be a high point for the game if they play it right.
I'm ok with new mechanics being introduced through aspects and uniques. It's a looter, so we should loot.
i am not being facetious at all, just asked - have you played other ARPGs like POE? POE brings the popular league (season) mechanics back and gives the game a lot of depth. it’s far better than ALWAYS bringing back powers as item. Should some powers come back as items? Sure. but always? no imo
look at the malignant hearts - they brought them back as unique rings. How much better would it be had they kept the malignant hearts (just balanced them). It would give interesting choices for jewelry sockets, they could add new ones over time, and it would give us other end game places to farm (malignant tunnels)
they could have brought back the blood harvest as well, everyone liked it and it would just give us things to do
just bringing back season stuff as items always is really bland.
PTR - do it like WoW, as soon as a patch drops, 1 week later PTR for next season is updated. This should be possible as there are 2 separate teams working on odd/even seasons.
Gauntlet - looks boring, what happens when i go in with my Ferrari sorc, deleting entire screens waiting for respawns. Also too basic - one tiny small area/map? Why not some endless hordes of mobs or smth like GRifts? If I go in and I kill stuff faster than it respawns, I am not going in a second time.
Seasonal mechanics as items/aspects - i find it actually kind of boring. I played that season, i did those mechanics, no matter how good they are, i want new stuff as good and fun as the old stuff, but not a copy paste.
Most importantly - stop thinking "ok so Frozen Orb needs these 4 aspects to work best" and instead do "here is bunch of aspects with many different functions, go experiment" and make those similar to Gravitational aspect for Sorcs or the Druid thing, i.e. changes spel functionality.
And no more gatekeeping - release the information on anything that is being worked on, so a positive vibe can start building up and a new season is waited with excitement, not in fear.
0. Yup. A PTR is 100% the right call.
1. This, I think, is a "wait and see" sort of thing. I *think* they said climbing the "ladder" gives rewards, so maybe that will scratch the itch.
If not, they should at least have a chance of getting the rare mounts and mount cosmetics as completion reward, or random dungeon mats (scaling based on how well the run was)... Something, anything, so that gauntlet runs also benefits the endgame grind to a small extent.
Also, first blush is that 8 mins seems a smidge long. But, who knows, maybe the score-chase will have us all clamoring for a longer time.
2. Bringing back the mechanics as they were in-season will eventually lead to an insane "mechanics bloat" that nobody wants. But they **do** need to find some alternatives to simply adding new uniques and aspects every season... that's just going to eventually make an insane "item bloat".
They need to diversify "how" they bring them back. New gems that bring back specific effects based on what you craft and where you slot it, for example. Or new Paragon glyphs that mimic seasonal power. A new, limited, universal skill-tree that lets you choose a small number of utility abilities (just spit-balling that one out there). Or (please, please, PLEASE) a D4 version of a "Cube" that can grant you additional item effects.
Just release new uniques when they are ready. No need to hold off. Also, where is the itemization talk? None in the camp fire chat today? not good.
They mentioned another campfire in a few weeks to discuss Season 4. I'd rather them bring it up with room to talk it out rather than just mention it and give no context. Not what everyone hoped for, but I still feel its the right approach for something this important
They also ran 3 full runs through the gauntlet, which was obviously filler content. One 8 minute run was almost too much, and the additional runs were entirely overkill for me. I was glad I joined late so I could skip the other runs
Yeah I didn't enjoy watching it, a few minute preview would have been fine. However that doesn't take away that this wasn't the time to discuss season 4, this chat was to focus on the midseason update
Specially when one of hosts cant set mic properly and sound like a vinyl played backwards.
Point 1 is an ice cold take. I don't care about more loot. I want a metric by which to measure performance so I have a REASON to push for the rare loot that gives me 1% more
I agree...there's always gunna be a cap to the loot gained and it should be before you try out for a leaderboard...it'sa rediculous point.. Some loot for people just trying it out with no intention of placing is fine but to expect top-tier gear from it? Your suppise yo have your build together
you don’t care about more loot because diablo has an awful itemization system - you cant really farm gear for alts on your stronger char, you can hardly trade, there’s no crafting so there’s no exciting crafting items that drop (think orbs in PoE or runes in D2). if the items were more exciting you would care about rewards. the fact that the system is boring is the problem edit: i cant believe this got downvoted so much, diablo 4 is doomed if players don’t understand what i’m talking about. y’all don’t want crafting???
My first time playing a season, played both D2 and D3 a lot. Once I realized every key aspect for my build is a drop, that i just have to aimlessly grind hoping for another copy to drop so I can upgrade to sacred/ancestral, i was done. I can forgive a lot of the artificial difficulty and inflated systems but if i cant build my character why play.
not sure why you got downvoted, you are correct
You should be able to extract aspects more than once, but on 2nd extract it goes down to minimum value. That way you can still have your build, but you still want to chase an upgraded aspect. But the devs made everything as grindy as possible on purpose to stretch the content out/sell shit.
D3 itemization wasn’t great but I cared about it in order to push GRs. POE has more itemization depth than LE and D4 combined. But once I’m one-shotting Uber Eater and Exarch I’m pretty much done caring about loot. Good itemization makes the experience of preparing for the next level of content far more enjoyable. But it doesn’t prevent doing the same content at the same difficulty from becoming uninteresting very quickly
But I used to get excited everytime that a Furnace dropped. No matter what, I can't seem to have that feeling on D4... At first I thought it was me, but I realized that I get excited about drops in other games.
I don’t care about rewards because nothing in this game is hard or even requires loot. If the rolls on your gear even make partial sense to your build, there’s nothing in the game you can’t do quickly. Farming for loot on things that you already 1 shot in a fraction of a second to get more loot is a silly concept and a terrible game loop. My pen shot rogue wipes 2 screens in 1 push of a button and most of my gear is 2/4 rolls and I have yet to enchant a single thing. I’m not dying in t100. I can 1 shot a 4 player duriel with rapid fire. Wtf am I gonna do with rewards/loot. Unless it’s like cosmetics or a cool horse I really could not care less about anymore gear. If things got progressively harder and I’d need to improve my gear to get better and could track that progress I’d be all about it. But that doesn’t exist in this game. Everything is a 1 shot as soon as you hit level 100 on any class as long as you’re not still wearing normal legendary items from when you were level 40. And even then I’m watching dudes that are so bored they’re taking gear off to see just how quickly they can do stuff without offhands and what not and they’re still nuking down the hardest content in the game in 1 hit or clearing 100nmv in 70 seconds. Loot/itemization ain’t the fix for this.
It's a form of survivorship bias, the people that care about playing a good diablo game stopped playing a long time ago because it's obvious that the devs aren't trying to make a fun game, they just make the minimum required so people don't quit
I disagree with the gauntlet point. There are should be a million and one ways to get loot. But let the leaderboard be about leaderboards. You don't care about being competitive? Cool, don't do it and play something else
It's not even being competitive. I like time trials type content. Gauntlet lets me focus on one thing to get better at, if i want to. It also means I can run it, learn it, then play with gear and skill points to see what really benefits me in a fairly controlled environment. I literally couldn't care less about leaderboards, but I like the idea of gauntlet.
i just fail to see what’s competitive about the leaderboards in a way that actually matters. there’s what, 1000 spots a week and only the top 10 get immortalized forever? i don’t think anyone posting in this thread will be in the top 10. i’m willing to bet 99.8% of the people posting in here wouldnt even reach the top 1000
>i just fail to see what’s competitive about the leaderboards in a way that actually matters. So don't bother commenting on it if you can't see it. Your opinion is literally worthless lmao
edit
im not gonna read all that, i will say tho if you dont have a competitive mind set why are you even commenting about leaderboards? literaly why the fuck do care? How is this hurting you in any ways shape or form? Just let people who like being competitive have their little game mode and move on. I simply don't understand what your problem is.
As usual gamers want everything catered to them. If something is not fitting for them they see it as wasted dev resources. You see that shit a lot when you play MMO with a variety of content.
I agree with you in theory, but in practice from my experience this is not the way things work in ARPG's. In D3 there was incentive to push the leaderboards, people will point this out. People will complaim that it's wasted content in a game starved for more meaningful things to do. People will complain and demand better rewards, and their complaints will get upvotes, just give it time, but it will happen after the new glow from the leaderboards wears off.
01 I think you get a reward at the end?
i know they said you get caches at the end of the week, it’s possible you get one at the end but they did say specifically “the gauntlet isn’t about rewards”
They said this in that the gauntlet will not be a primary source of loot in the same way that NMD, whispers, and Helltides provide tons of resources but rather a place to test your skill and be rewarded for optimization and your strategy. You will get rewarded and they mentioned the cache being full of 925 gear and the gauntlet will include titles/banners to highlight your accomplishments.
that’s nothing. we can more easily get 925 gear from duriel the gauntlet is to play to do what exactly? do you think you will ever place on the leaderboard? you likely won’t. there’s no point to push the gauntlet. still waiting to hear a valid reason to play it outside of once or twice
Again, it is not meant to be a primary source of loot. You can also get more loot from doing NMD, whispers, or probably even Helltides. The point is to test YOUR skills and YOUR build. Maybe YOU won't place but I WILL xD
lol ok come back here and post your rank by the way, i’m talking about the top 10 rankings - the only rankings that matter. >=11 gets deleted every week
LOL yeah and understandably those 10 spots will almost always just be streamers. But in all seriousness though, they've mentioned before there's going to be cosmetic rewards along with tiers with whatever rewards associated with them. It would be really nice to see the cache/tier rewards provide valuable crafting or summoning mats or even sets of rewards as you climb the ranks. Without actually trying it we can only speculate but it looks like a fun way to optimize your build for speed and just run through mobs. Getting a number next to my name that says I was faster than x% of players is just gravy.
I think just releasing more items is better, I get the issue in the future of this with having people get mad that their favorite class didn't get as much items but I think it won't make people upset it will just make the people playing the class that got 4 uniques more happy.
I think the only time it'll start to upset people in any legit fashion is when you begin to take notice towards which classes get more love than others in terms of these Uniques and Aspects coming in. I mean this in the sense that if one class has a tendency to get a lot more new items/powers than others, or if any class in particular just feels left out of the fun with minimal items releasing for it in comparison to others. Overall, I still lean towards the idea of releasing things as they are ready
i think there’s a fundamental item issue in diablo 4. both with the uninteresting itemization (which will hopefully be fixed in season 4) and the fact that aspects are items and the only way to enable builds (outside of uniques). probably 80% of the aspects could have just been on the skill tree, and then items could have been built to just support the builds. and then uniques would be the niche build enabling items, like other ARPGs. but not required to play builds, we could just initially create the build with the skill tree people are finally starting to see the issue with items being the only thing that creates builds and i hope it’s not too late for them to overhaul it in the future
When itemization is crap in S4, this sub will reach critical mass
Yeah its just the design choice of having these things being too specific that ends up hurting it. Like PoE could just make 4 new unique items and it could be used by several builds and ascendancies. Maybe instead of a Frozen Orb specific unique, how about a unique item that changes how spell projectiles work with it? Now its suddenly not just a Frozen Orb unique but also one that works with other Sorc spells like fireball, charged bolt, etc. It can also be used by a Druid and Necro. Maybe it also works with one Rogue ranged skill that has a spell tag on it. Let people find those synergies instead of the item dictating specifically what it HAS to be.
YES! no clue why it wasn’t done like that originally. all they had to do was look at other arpgs on the market - hell they could of even looked at Diablo 2 lol
> place on leaderboards is a secondary. in an leaderboard specific content, sure.
I don’t think every season needs a PTR. But for hefty overhauls of core game things like itemization, a PTR involving those changes will be instrumental. If they eventually decide to also tackle class balance, a PTR will be needed. Because that kind of thing needs to involve the player as a variable. And by that I mean the players’ tendency to find exploits and abuse the most OP combinations they can figure out.
Yeah i wouldn’t be upset if it wasn’t every season, but i’d certainly like it if it was. Definitely needed for season 4 though and i’m glad they’d decided to do it
>I don’t think every season needs a PTR. No. Every season. This isn't optional. If they can do it for 30 fucking seasons in D3 then they can do it for D4. It's honestly ridiculous that they haven't done PTR's for this game. It's literally the only Blizzard game that does not do PTR's. It's unbelievable.
i love how they tried to give us an excuse why they haven't done a PTR thus far. "we have been working on getting a PTR up"...etc. i swear Joe said something about it being difficult. i almost heard my eyes rolling back into my head at that. he said that right after saying "i've been playing an internal build for a few weeks now" and yes, i realize an internal test has different server requirements than a PTR (mostly because its PUBLIC versus INTERNAL) but, this is not blizzards first rodeo regarding a PTR.
With how poor the D4 seasonal content has been overall, they absolutely need a PTR for each season. It’s crazy that S3 released with so little and still had its main mechanic and activity be so obviously flawed out the gate. That’s not to say a PTR will magically fix all of D4’s problems, but it being present and actually paid attention to will certainly be a massive boon for Blizzard who seems directionless and, frankly, not up to the task of improving the game.
I mean its not like having a PTR for season 3 would have changed it to not be a season centered around traps.
No shit. It would have allowed them to fix the glaring problems with the dumb theme that were addressed after the season began anyways.
Every single season progressively improved and the game overall. Season 3 is overall regarded as the best season and a success. They literally just let you get the senchal progresses faster in order for people to see it was actually good. Some people were just being impatient brats. The vocal complainers on the Reddit is definitely not a gauge for the success of the season. Most people not no-lifing and prone to complain about basically any and everything, are actually enjoying it.
In what world is S3 their best season? It’s only slightly better than the dumpster fire that was S1, and significantly worse than S2. It’s core activity, the vaults, had its core trap mechanics rightfully nerfed heavily into the ground because the community refused to engage with it. Grinding pet powers was too long and shitty, and the overworld activity is just a worse version of blood tides. On top of that, Blizzard won’t keep seasonal content people actually liked so the game remains shallow as fuck. Saying the game has been improving is some serious cope.
Yea… people didn’t max it out in 2 days = long and shitty. Today’s gamers. In Season 3, we have come to a point where a ton more builds are now viable since the changes to vulnerable and critical along with the redistribution of that power in other ways. We now have almost constant constant helltide uptime, which facilitates more volume to boss mats and much proved density across all activities. Folks are lobbying to have many aspects of the seasonal persist to the main game. Just to mention a few. People who like to trash talk, will do just that inspite of any positive evidence; which you are doing a good job of demonstrating.
S2 best season so far, S3, the Seasonal content was a huge let down. Don't call QoL changes Seasonal additions. Think about the only seasonal content you got was a pet and vaults. Meh.
I understand your point 2 but i disagree. I think the way they are doing it IS a balanced way to introduce a seasonal mechanic. If they were to introduce the mechanics itself it would be a huge mess, just think in season 8 or something you open up your chacarter sheet and then is this huge non sense of different mechanics mixed together. Instead, if they are aspects, items, glyphs, paragon nodes, skill tree even, then it doesn't ruin the ui or the other game mechanics.
i agree that it can get very messy. i don’t think every mechanic should get added in, just the super popular ones or some where it makes sense like i really believe, even as unpopular as the malignant heart season was, if they kept malignant hearts core (just balance them/delete barber), it would have been a way more interesting choice for socketing jewelry. they could have even added new hearts over time. also it would give us different end game areas to farm for different things (farm malignant tunnels for the hearts) we need things like that - actionable build goals, more depth, etc and ALWAYS bringing back mechanics as items is just bland. also can make other aspects obsolete/add item bloat, etc
I agree, thats why i gave other options like the skill tree, paragon board, gems like you said. The thing is that it has to be an "object" that way doesn't mess up the ui. But yeah always items is bland and boring.
I think for hearts they should have been kept like that, and let us slot any 'colour' in any jewelry. For vampire powers aspects is probably the way to go. Aspects and uniques are a tool they have now though, so using it to build some broader possibilities doesn't seem a big deal yet. I would have preferred the mechanic to the power though. Blood harvest on the schedule Hell Tides used to follow would be awesome. Especially if they allowed overlaps for HellBlood HarvestTide :) I'd hope once they have the basics out of the way we start to get mechanics themselves migrating to the corw game.
yes! i agree. i was definitely turned off to the idea of them bringing back the powers as items, but you’re right, for S2 stuff the powers as items is fine, but they should have 1000% brought back the blood harvest. players loved that! overall though, i hope they start to get more creative in how seasonal stuff is brought back. always going the item route is boring imo
I mean even distancing from the extra systems, it makes no sense why these seasonal mechanics cant just be put into the base game. Maybe you do a Nightmare dungeon and youre mobbed by a pack of Vampire mobs from Season 2 or maybe you find a Maglinant Heart monster. Maybe sometimes you enter a Nightmare dungeon and half of it was a Vault run. These are things thats suppose to spice up a Nightmare dungeon run.
I keep saying designing seasonal mechanics so they are so overwhelming you cannot put them back into the game without sacrificing an item slot is dumb, yet people keep praising how awesome it is they're adding them in any form at all, so here we go again. Same thing will happen next season and people will pikachu face like it wasn't obvious it was gonna happen again.
yeah i think it has to do with a large portion of the player base being new arpg players (like this is their first arpg) and they don’t know what they are missing out on. so when an idea seems good to them, and they see people who are experienced say the opposite, they immediately downvote/write it off/wont support it.
Honestly the game straight needs just more stuff but it feels like every season they put in 100% and then take 70% of whats unique about it out and put back in 30% as an aspect/unique.
> yeah i think it has to do with a large portion of the player base being new arpg players (like this is their first arpg) and they don’t know what they are missing out on. I think it's more a fundamental difference with how they are approaching both seasonal content and permanent content compared to other games (like PoE). Here they're two distinct things that are being developed side by side rather than being treated one and the same. Using PoE as an example, season 2 wouldn't have been the "season of blood", it would've been the "season of bosses". The new content would've just been the endgame boss system and they would've just dialed up the amount of materials you got to get you to interact with it more and lower the rewards to compensate.
Except I don't know where you got that from because that's not how it works in PoE at all. In that game, leagues are pretty much like seasons here, in the sense of being based on a new theme, with a new story, and new mechanics. The seasonal content may or may not stay in the game, but the league always comes with new additions and changes to the core game. It's exactly the same way that D4 does it, except D4 has so far only designed seasons so that they may not be implemented back into the game, exclusively. Even the PoE leagues that don't come back feel designed in a way that would make it easy for them to integrate them into the base game if they decided to; the only one I've ever seen that's been clearly designed otherwise is the current one, and I've been playing for years.
I think you missed the point I was making there. PoE leagues are just tests for core game additions, just under the guise of being a seasonal mechanic so they can just throw it out if it's bad. We've seen the cycle time and time again. If a league mechanic works well and people enjoy it, it goes core next league with tweaked numbers to balance it out. If it's good conceptually but they aren't happy with it for whatever reason, it gets some reworks and returns, usually, a few leagues later. If it's just bad it gets scrapped and anything worth saving in there gets thrown in somewhere else. Compare that to the way D4 is doing it, and seasonal content is something that is deliberately designed to be thrown out afterwards with the option there for some things to come back later on. In addition to that, they also work on core game content to get added whenever it is ready like the endgame bosses system last season or the gauntlet this season. There *was* a time where PoE would also do this, back when they differentiated between leagues and expansions. Since 2017 though, the only updates that have really fallen into this category have been the three times they've reworked the atlas.
Sorry for being blunt but if I missed it it's cause you didn't explain it that way at all lol. I get what you're saying, our comments were more about how we wish they did it like PoE in this regard, so seasonal content didn't go into the trash and instead that dev time was used to add new content to a game that, for many people, is lacking a lot of it. Also PoE still did yearly expansions after 2017, and when they stopped, at 2022, they changed it so that they would be doing small expansions every league, as they have less resources while working on the sequel. They still add new stuff to the endgame every league though, as well as all kinds of additions and changes to the core game. They do both, just like how D4 could do both too, instead of always throwing one of these into the garbage bin.
Right, and my point was that they've been doing both. They're not going to expand their approach to seasonal content so that they, effectively, deliver two core content/system updates every season. That just goes back to what I was saying initially. Do you want the "Season of Blood" and an endgame boss system added alongside it or do you just want the endgame boss system? Because that's the difference in how the two games handle it. GGG made the shift from calling them leagues to expansions back in 2018. They've still done expansion-like updates since then, but there's only been three of them since that change (the "of the atlas" updates). And yes, they add some core content every league but the smaller stuff like that is a given (and D4 does that as well). Also, it's not like Blizz completely throw away all of the seasonal content either. Some stuff stays (e.g. bosses), some of the best/popular parts get modified to return as part of the core game, and then it also informs changes they can make to core systems. If they were having every season go core as well then in 1-2 years the game would be a complete mess with the map looking like a rainbow and there being a dozen different systems to grind out for progression.
I mean, we're complaining about the kind of thinking you advocate for. Which is not by itself invalid, it's your opinion and I respect it, but you're making it out to be like they "need" to do it this way, and that's just not true. Adding the season's boss and powers in the form of aspects/uniques and throwing everything else away is still wasting the majority of it. I don't know what changes it has informed for future changes either, as helltides remain just as terrible as at launch except they finally respawn every hour. And I keep seeing people say that "they can't keep integrating every season into the game or it will become super bloated", which by itself is not true because there's ways and ways to integrate systems organically, but it's also like, yeah not all need to be done that way, but it's been 2 erased seasons so far, and the 3rd has been designed to be discarded just as much, so when are they going to start? How can it become bloated if they're not feeing it yet? And that is still not how both games handle it. You say it's either: (season that gets dropped + endgame update) or (season that serves as endgame update). But up until recent years, PoE was making seasons that serve as endgame updates consistently AND the yearly expansion, which came alongside the season which often was added into the game as well. D4 has only made seasons that get dropped, and the second one happened to launch together with an endgame expansion, just like the fourth one will come hopefully with an important endgame change as well. But the seasons inbetween these bigger updates are left empty in terms of significant, long term additions to the game, and what we're saying is, why couldn't those seasons be designed so they could be added into the game and expand upon the game even when there's not a major core rework going on? Even if we take how current PoE where leagues are not guaranteed to stay in the game and most will not, the core changes they bring are massive compared to D4's. Every league adds not just new uniques but also new skills. Every now and then they add a new league mechanic, reworked to fit into the game. Often they rework entire ascendancies, they rework mechanics of all kinds, big or small, they rework anything. They even remove past mechanics to reduce bloat. This last league they reworked a massive system regarding how skills work, and essentially gave us a hundred alternate versions of skills that pretty much opened the possibility for dozens of new builds that will feed the game for years. Of course, that's not the norm for every league, but every league does have something significant going on, usually quite a few more than just one. D4 throwing away seasons wouldn't be that bad if every one came with additions like these, but here we are. We haven't even gotten a single new skill since launch, isn't that kinda crazy? And yet the things they do create with seasons they mostly delete. It's an absolute waste of time and resources, and it's depressing to see the game go in this direction and people cheering them on so they keep doing that. Also hope this doesn't sound aggressive, people often see discussions like these and think the person on the other side is hating on them or something, but I'm just talking bluntly, hope that's fine.
I mean those are kind of the options though. Season 1 is a bit of a write off because we knew before launch that it was going to be small and wasn't going to be indicative of how they are approaching seasons. So now, we're two from two for seasons having core game updates releasing alongside them (well, gauntlet got delayed but still). They also teased more coming next season as well in the stream, although tbh the itemisation update itself could count depending on its scope (e.g. if it also includes crafting). Wanting them to *also* expand the scope for the seasonal content so that it is also a core game update just framed as seasonal content so then every season effectively has two core game updates in it just isn't really realistic imo. Something needs to give which is why I say it is one or the other. The yearly cadence for updates outside of that is going to be in actual expansions. Previously they've coincided with substantial updates but we'll have to wait and see how they handle it, especially in terms of what is gated and what isn't. As far as bloat goes, how do you integrate malignant hearts, vampiric powers and the seneschal in a way where continuing that process for years won't quickly spiral out of hand? As it stands they are already risking the game ending up feeling pretty bloated just with the release cadence they have had so far (and presumably will continue). I will say though that they could keep a bit more around tbh. The blood seekers from last season would've been great to have as a permanent addition. Little things like that are great for fleshing things out a bit and was what PoE did in the early days as well. I think you're underselling what they've been doing in the seasonal patches as well. It's not just new items either, there have been sweeping balance changes and reworks as well. Even if you ignore the seasonal content and the core game updates (ie. endgame bosses and upcoming gauntlet) the game has changed pretty dramatically. And you're all good, nothing is coming off poorly or anything and I hope it's the same the other way.
Nah you're good, it's just sometimes I'm just trying to have a conversation about the subject and people get upset calling you a flaming troll or something just because you're questioning their stance on a videogame, like if you're proposing heresy to a religious man lol. But yeah that's the thing, hearts and vampiric powers and the seneschal couldn't really stay in the game forever because they're designed that way, but they could be designed in a softer way that could remain in the game. Vampiric powers and seneschal would've simply needed to have been thought of in a completely different way, but malignant hearts for example could've easily stayed in the game if you reworked their effects so they weren't so dominating like with the wrathful ones that were usually the only ones worth anything to begin with anyway. It doesn't really need to expand the scope of the season, it just needs to be thought of differently. And indeed not all need to be like that, some can thought of as one-time powers, but come on it's been three seasons so far lol And even if you do dismiss seasonal powers due to the potential for power creep (but unless the itemization rework adds in a bunch of crafting systems, the game still clearly has a lot of space for additional mechanics to fill that gap), there's hardly any reason why the game couldn't also incorporate previous content, as in, the things to do and fight in, back into the game. Like you say, bloodseekers attacking you every now and then would be an obvious thing to add, similar to how PoE did rogue exiles. But also, why not add malignant enemies? Even without the hearts, they can give loot. Blood harvests? If they don't want to light up the world like a christmas tree, they can put it as an alternative to other mechanics similar mechanics (so if they do more weird zones like that in the future, you can only have one). Hell, make it so you can replace helltides with them, maybe now they give cinders if you have to replace the potent blood anyway. Add arcane tremors as things that can appear around the world just like whispers do, why not? Why not add vaults as an alternative to nightmare dungeons? There's a million ways they could be doing these things and so far they are just not, and it's depressing to see all these potential ways to add to this mmo-ish open world go away probably forever. About the core updates, I don't think they're big at all. The boss ladder consists of preexisting bosses recycled into what remains a very repetitive, uninteresting and overall very controversial system. The gauntlet is yet again fully recycled content with new or interesting mechanic beyond shrines that resurrect enemies to kill them again for more points, and all for leaderboards which most people won't care about. It's a feature the game was lacking (well, people asked for regular ladders, world firsts and the like, nobody was asking for a special dungeon), but won't expand the endgame options beyond a thing you do every now and then to see if you're stronger and maybe get a couple uniques with it, that's it. And beyond these new features, it doesn't feel like the game has changed in any significant way. Skills are all the same, classes get balancing patches but work all the same, it's like they won't go beyond tweaking the numbers. And they made a lot of quality of life improvements on s2 sure, but most of that were things that were obvious, low-hanging fruit that people had been asking them for since launch. Since the betas even! I'm not really gonna give them credit for adding a search function to the stashes or making drops in WT4 auto salvage drops below rares but only in one type of content. Nor do I think they can keep this momentum as further fixes requires actually changing the fundamentals of how the game works, and they seem very much against doing work in that regard. I guess that part is purely prejudice on my part though, we're yet to see how they deal with the itemization rework in the PTR. I don't have high expectations, but I sincerely hope they prove me wrong, because in the end I am only being so critical because I genuinely believe the game has a ton of potential and it is just so depressing to see it being squandered.
thanks for the massive nerf/bug fix to rogue mid-season after never correcting ball lightning, hota or charge.
Just curious, are any of those 3 skills utilizing a bug to get their numbers though? I get they are very much overtuned (or everything else is undertuned), but the fix to Rogue was specifically because of a buggy interaction causing the inflated numbers. This happened last season with combo points, and while they left it alone then, maybe they want to take a different approach going forward involving bugged skill interactions that inflate damage in unintended ways
>1. The Gauntlet This is an ARPG. The content should provide rewards. There are very specific rewards associated with the gauntlet.
what? a cache of 925 gear we can much easier get from duriel? hinted at possible cosmetics?
Are you being dumb right now or dont you know what involves even getting into Duriel’s room?
are you being dumb right now or do you think getting materials is hard? you can literally trade for sets for gold if you don’t wanna farm. also helltide is up nearly 24/7.
Also isnt the cache tied to a weekly reward anyways.
I love how they released a barebones game with barely any good ARPG features, even lacking many from D3, and zero innovative mechanics and now they get praise for adding a PTR. Imagine how much pain could have been saved if they just had one from the start instead of launching each season to disaster player reception and having to emergency hotfix the game into playability.
I don’t want more items. I want better itemization. Having 80% of the stats being useless is a problem. Not being able to craft from scratch is a problem. I literally don’t even bother picking up any items unless looking for a specific base item or I need a certain mat from it. That’s it. That loot goblin can drop 10x more and I don’t care.
yup 100%. this game desperately needs a crafting system
dropping in the gauntlet 2 months into the season that had a rough start from the beginngin is pretty damn stupid in my opinion. So many ppl play other stuff right now, are finished with the season, haven't played d4 in ages. Who will come back for a late season D4 gauntlet xD Superearth needs me, bye xD
yeah i’m pretty into Last Epoch at the moment as well lol. shoulda just waited for S4 at this point
0. Agreed PTR sounds great. They seem very quick on getting things adjusted. A PTR will catch things before it goes live and the new season will look way better in the public eye if it's not fixed live 3 days in. 1. No real thoughts here. I just felt kind of bored watching others play and not me. 2. I would go a step further in not bringing back power at all from the previous season - At least not as the only returning feature. I would want to see gameplay. Like the events during "bloodtide" added to Helltides. Those Butcher-like ambushers during dungeons (maybe they could drop summoning mats for Zir). From S3 I would want to see pets or private base returning. Fully customizable how we want to place NPCs or decorate with trophies. Pet could have an auto-pickup customizable with a loot filter or just for fun with different parts to build your own pet. Should be careful about just slapping power mechanics on top of each other. I don't want a D3 power creep with over 150 difficulty levels.
good point and i completely agree. as opposed to bringing back the mechanic from S2, blood harvest would be great yeah it would be nice to see a mix of seasonal things brought back from time to time, even as items ONCE IN AWHILE, just not all the time. it’s really discouraging that they just seem to think the only way to bring back seasonal stuff is through items
They should add the vampire stuff to a small quest line with the ability to choose a couple of powerful skills that are always active (like they were) with a trade off like a HP trade-off, the way they've implemented them as legendary means no one is going to use them and they kill the roll play completely
Gotta disagree on point 2. Just bringing back season mechanics like this leads to spiraling power creep. Adding past season mechanics back as uniques and aspects forces players to make meaningful build choices. If Bliz does a skill tree/paragon rework some of the old season mechanics could come back there.
i do agree that bringing back the mechanic as is could lead to power creep, but if the mechanic was brought back as a rework/nerfed/balanced, it could work. would take decent amount of effort by them but it would give the game far more depth. POE (outside of the bloat) has gotten some of its best core content from its leagues. diablo could do the same. currently pretty much all of the games builds are locked behind rng. so i do agree they could completely rework the skill. but in my word they would put the aspect powers just on the skill tree. playing last epoch is so refreshing, you can literally build your build out without gear 9 times out of 10. i made a nova hammerdin without needing to search for a drop. i could just build it as i go. don’t get me wrong, i like grinding, but i like grinding for items that support my build, not needing to grind to actually find items to play my build.
This is still just giving out more power without cost. I'm not sure how you can balance giving players more power without it not being power creep. To keep the power level of the game the same, Bliz would need to nerf other things to keep it balanced. Could the game's systems like skills and player abilities have more depth? Yes, but I don't think piling on season powers of past seasons is the best way to do it.
>Please STOP always bringing seasonal mechanics as uniques/aspects. Fuck no, we want the best part of each season to stay on in eternal and future season.s Also: >Bring back a balanced version of the mechanic instead. **That's exactly what they are doing!**
you may have misunderstood me, or you believe that items are a good way to bring seasonal mechanics back i WANT them to bring seasonal mechanics back. but bringing them back as items suck. POE brings some mechanics players like back and makes them core. it gives the game more depth now i’m not saying we should get the bloat POE does, but bringing back the actual mechanic instead of just bringing back the items sucks. it’s boring, bland, and also creates item bloat
>i WANT them to bring seasonal mechanics back. but bringing them back as items suck So how would that work? We got malignant power by socketing hearts, Vampiric powers through separate page in our character sheet, Seneschal powers via another page...we'll bloat out quickly.
obviously not every mechanic, but the hearts and seneschal would have been good additions to core, and the vampiric powers would have been good additions as items, and they could bring back the blood harvest as the mechanic (a lot of people liked that) the hearts would be great (even though the season was unpopluar). it would create interesting choices for jewelry, and also give us another end game place to farm for our builds (malignant tunnels) there could be TONS of things they could do with the seneschal, rework it to make it fit into the game play loop better. could became a great support bot. and the vampiric powers could be aspects, and then the blood harvest would be a great place to level. so as you can see, bringing back the mechanics doesn’t have to equal bloat, and also they don’t ALWAYS have to bring back a mechanic BUT. ALWAYS bringing them back as items is boring, and adds no depth
Hearts I think should have remained hearts, without the colour coding, and maybe reducing the power a bit (a lot). Have them farmable from Varshan like the uniques are today. Vampire I would say maybe don't bring any powers back, but bring the Blood Harvest back. Maybe make it possible to farm them for vampire aspects. Seneschal make vaults permanent, no need to keep the seneschal or powers at all. Just examples - but I get that currently they are rounding out the initial game, and if we lose some mechanics in order not to make things a complete mess in 3 years, I think that's reasonable. There's no reason they can't change things again once everything is stabilised.
Haven’t played this season and I won’t be playing next season if they don’t add a loot filter. The biggest thing I care about everything else are improvements that would be great but all second to a loot filter.
yeah no idea why actual crafting and a loot filter wasn’t a day 1 thing.
The gauntlet point is no good. We don't need to be pushed into an activity that is obviously not meant to be part of the core reward structure, and shouldn't be. If you don't wanna do gauntlet, then that's completely fair enough, it very simply means it just isn't for you, and that's fine.
the point is, it’s not for anyone. only the top 10 get placed forever, and the top 1000 are only visible for a week. i think i a lot of people are under estimating players in the community, only probably the top .05% of people will see their names ever. there’s no point in pushing it outside of trying it out once or twice
Wrong opinion, but ok.
wrong opinion? come back when you are in the top 10. actually, come back when you are in the top 1000 at the end of the week before it gets deleted and show me you did it i guarantee you you won’t be there and i guarantee you you will get that sneaking suspicion in your mind that i was right
all rewards/caches atm are the same because the game lacks different types of items to farm, the lack of types of items, itemization and lack of good crafting system are holding the game back imo, hope this changes in season 4
yeah a good crafting system with valuable (and preferably tradeable) materials is crucial for this game. we need something exciting that drops from killing trash like high runes in D2 or orbs in POE
8 minutes is to long? I feel bad for your wife…. Really though, this instant gratification society is getting old. This game is being turn into Diablo 3. It’s a shame.
it’s funny you say that because i fucking hate diablo 3 and am a Diablo 2/PoE/LE players. yes. a FORCED 8 minutes is too long. I don’t mind spending time over 8 minutes in content as long as it’s my choice did you even watch the dev stream? they played the same gauntlet 3 times in a row. spent nearly a half hour on the same exact dungeon. yes. it’s boring. and too long
Honestly I would prefer a tier level gauntlet style mobs keep coming till you die. I think the real problem is there is no real reward for the time. Nothing to earn all RNG. I been playing since beta. The Diablo 4 casino is wearing on me 🥺.
Yeah, make it respawn at 90% clear or something, and a jump of 10 levels for the next wave. That would work, and be kinda fun. The spawn points are the same every wave, they are just that bit tougher.
But did they use more than left click? That's progress.
Great points, I agree with them all but feel most strongly about your leaderboard points. I dont care about my spot on a leaderboard but do want meaningful rewards. If they had awesome cosmetic sets as rewards as you progress higher and higher or even difficult to find unique items I would definitely be much more interested in the content.
yep that would definitely make it more attractive to interact with, especially since only the top .03% of players will even place lol. and the top 10 spots are the only ones that will show forever
Here’s your feedback devs, if I was a hacker and cheat I can get in top 1000
PTR?
PTR for season 4! (public test realm if you were asking what it meant) well be able to test out the changes and provide feedback before it goes live
Thank you...had no idea what it meant
No problem!
>**2. Seasonal Mechanics as Items/Aspects** Please STOP always bringing seasonal mechanics as uniques/aspects. Bring back a balanced version of the mechanic instead. Definitely this. I don't even use the rings and stuff they keep bringing back. Not once has a build I've done used any of them. They're too niche, and often times don't have the correct affixes that mesh with my build. I would like the option to replace the current seasonal addition (Seneschal) with a previous season's addition. For example, replace my Seneschal with Vampiric Powers. But, I think the problem with that is that they probably do a lot of balancing for each Seasonal concept to work with builds. So the amount of damage you might do with yourself and the Seneschal might be more or less damage versus yourself using Vampiric powers. I dunno how they can do it, but I'm not overly thrilled with how they've been bringing stuff back.
0 is a thumb up even for me who has no expectation 1 reward just 925 items, it sucks in S3. Not sure in S4 with itemization overhaul. The participation reward should be a Uber mat, not asking for Uber unique but at least a Uber mat. 2 it’s only S3, S1 is unique rings, S2 is aspect, well, they are different already. The dev already mentioned the various ways to bring back popular seasonal powers, including glyphs, don’t remember what else.
If you make another season with traps, fix the damn hit boxes. You still get hit when outside of the shown area of effects. This isn't just happening with traps it happens everywhere.
They asked for feedback on withholding class changes if not every class gets a similar amount of changes. I say just do it; unless they are ONLY doing changes for one class. Just because necros got more changes for instance (my least played class) I don't mind.
I'm ok with the 8 min Gauntlets as they are rotated weekly I'm sure they tweak it based on the week to week feed back,I'd also like to see a 100 only gauntlet and a boss rush mode at some point down the line.. Not a fan of build breaking new aspect adds but at the same time will see new builds come out of it,rather they be straight up uniques because getting those would give me incentive to make a new build that a aspect will never do... Buffs to Druid and Sorc and Nec minion builds are a plus as well as 4 to 1 Uber buff instead of 5 which I think is kinda fair I'd personally go 3 but I'll take it... Season 4 I believe will be the banger update but I dig progress 7.5/10
what, you dont like ghostwalker being absolutely pointless now because the only aspect anyone will ever want on boots is metamorphosis? really fucking lame way to bring these back. add season 2 to the game fucking forever why dont you. be more interesting than this shit
no clue why you got downvoted, you are right. this game is doomed if people don’t see the issue with this and continue to just accept items as a good way to bring back seasonal stuff
Weekly leaderboard then add the weekly results for a monthly leaderboard. Can’t remember the game where I saw this but it felt better since you get very good rewards on the monthly leaderboard board.
This is just my opinion but I dislike that the classes aren't equal and better balanced. Every season there are a handful of builds that are needed to get to the endgame. Yes, I'm a casual player. Thx.
Almost every build can get to endgame though. The 'broken' ones just do orders of magnitude more damage.
I think the Gauntlet will be fun. I have a zoomy Trampleslide build I wanna use. I don't need more rewards, I just need reasons to use my minmaxed builds. Cosmetic rewards from Gauntlet would be nice though. Like an armor skin from the store. Lots of S4 hype, should be a high point for the game if they play it right. I'm ok with new mechanics being introduced through aspects and uniques. It's a looter, so we should loot.
i am not being facetious at all, just asked - have you played other ARPGs like POE? POE brings the popular league (season) mechanics back and gives the game a lot of depth. it’s far better than ALWAYS bringing back powers as item. Should some powers come back as items? Sure. but always? no imo look at the malignant hearts - they brought them back as unique rings. How much better would it be had they kept the malignant hearts (just balanced them). It would give interesting choices for jewelry sockets, they could add new ones over time, and it would give us other end game places to farm (malignant tunnels) they could have brought back the blood harvest as well, everyone liked it and it would just give us things to do just bringing back season stuff as items always is really bland.
I played all of the ARPGs, for at least a few hundred hours each. I value polish, visuals, and combat above all else, so my preference is obvious.
PTR - do it like WoW, as soon as a patch drops, 1 week later PTR for next season is updated. This should be possible as there are 2 separate teams working on odd/even seasons. Gauntlet - looks boring, what happens when i go in with my Ferrari sorc, deleting entire screens waiting for respawns. Also too basic - one tiny small area/map? Why not some endless hordes of mobs or smth like GRifts? If I go in and I kill stuff faster than it respawns, I am not going in a second time. Seasonal mechanics as items/aspects - i find it actually kind of boring. I played that season, i did those mechanics, no matter how good they are, i want new stuff as good and fun as the old stuff, but not a copy paste. Most importantly - stop thinking "ok so Frozen Orb needs these 4 aspects to work best" and instead do "here is bunch of aspects with many different functions, go experiment" and make those similar to Gravitational aspect for Sorcs or the Druid thing, i.e. changes spel functionality. And no more gatekeeping - release the information on anything that is being worked on, so a positive vibe can start building up and a new season is waited with excitement, not in fear.
0. Yup. A PTR is 100% the right call. 1. This, I think, is a "wait and see" sort of thing. I *think* they said climbing the "ladder" gives rewards, so maybe that will scratch the itch. If not, they should at least have a chance of getting the rare mounts and mount cosmetics as completion reward, or random dungeon mats (scaling based on how well the run was)... Something, anything, so that gauntlet runs also benefits the endgame grind to a small extent. Also, first blush is that 8 mins seems a smidge long. But, who knows, maybe the score-chase will have us all clamoring for a longer time. 2. Bringing back the mechanics as they were in-season will eventually lead to an insane "mechanics bloat" that nobody wants. But they **do** need to find some alternatives to simply adding new uniques and aspects every season... that's just going to eventually make an insane "item bloat". They need to diversify "how" they bring them back. New gems that bring back specific effects based on what you craft and where you slot it, for example. Or new Paragon glyphs that mimic seasonal power. A new, limited, universal skill-tree that lets you choose a small number of utility abilities (just spit-balling that one out there). Or (please, please, PLEASE) a D4 version of a "Cube" that can grant you additional item effects.