I was a late-bloomer when it came to Diablo IV. I waited for Microsoft to buy Blizzard-Activision and put the game on Game Pass before I ever played it, aside from maybe a beta weekend or something. And when I did it was….fine, I guess? But it didn’t really hook me like I hoped it would.
I keep going back every new season and I even pre-ordered the new expansion, Vessel of Hatred. Last night I finished running through that storyline, which I actually enjoyed more than the base game campaign (which left so light an impression on me that I couldn’t really tell you what happened except we killed Lillith) and now the game opens up and… I think I’m done.
But I still keep THINKING I should like this more, and most of that is probably based on very fond memories of many long hours playing Diablo and Diablo 2. Still it has taken me a long time to kind of untangle my thoughts and decide why I don’t vibe with it, and here’s what I’ve come up with.
The lesser reason is that the moment-to-moment gameplay isn’t very interesting. It feels like a ton of sizzle with not a lot of steak. Yeah at first it’s fun to just wreck huge clumps of baddies but, at least when playing solo so you’re not having to coordinate with anyone, it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of thought or skill in it. Heck a lot of the time you can’t even SEE your character in all the chaos. Yes, there’s thought and skill that goes into putting together your build, for sure, but once you get that where you like it, you just kind of go through the same rotation over and over, with the only real decision on when to fire off an evade or an ultimate.
That’s pretty true of a lot of MMOs but honestly a lot of MMOs have pretty boring combat when playing solo which is why I generally don’t stick with them for very long, either. Maybe I just have never gotten to the ‘good parts’ of Diablo IV to get to the really interesting boss fights and stuff and I kind of feel like I should at least try to get there, but then there’s the Big Reason to discuss.
The Big Reason I have an issue with D4 is the Season system. A season starts, you roll a new character, and you play that character until the season ends. Then your character (and I always get very attached to my RP characters) goes to the Eternal Realm to languish. Another season starts, tempting you with all kind of shiny goodies to earn, but you need a new character for the new season so you’re starting all over again. As a CASUAL player this drives me nuts because I never feel like I make any progress.
Basically playing Diablo IV feels to me like playing the Beta of a new MMO where characters are wiped after every beta phase, and the game is NEVER going to launch. If I was a dedicated player and wound up finishing each season and maybe maxing out a few characters, this might not feel so bad, but I never get that far. I just don’t play enough (so to be clear, this is a ME problem, not an issue with the game). The only reason I’ve finished the Vessel of Hatred campaign is because I’ve been sick as a dog and laying on the couch needing something mindless to play and D4 was perfect for that.
I guess I just wish there was a way to carry over your characters, or some perks or benefits, from season to season. Or some kind of track in the Eternal Realms that made it seem worthwhile to play there. SOMETHING persistent to hang on to. But as it is, playing Diablo IV for me is like starting a bunch of projects and then having them taken away from me before I can ever finish any of them, and that is super unsatisfying.
I think you have come to the realization that the ARPG Seasonal thing is just not for you, and probably never will be. What drives me in these games is that I love the loot chase. I love grinding and gearing and getting powerful so that I can rip through maps in seconds. Then when that gets stale, I fade away knowing that the next time a season launches in one of these games I get to do it all over again. For me, the most enjoyable aspect of any MMORPG is the launch, the gearing, the leveling, and reaching endgame. Then I often fade away until the next major content drop before playing again.
However, that gear treadmill is going to feel like tedium to a lot of players. There was a version of me that used to exist that would try and convince players to see things through my eyes, but I have now come to realize that what is fun in my brain is not going to be fun in everyone’s brain. You can probably see a familiar pattern evolving whenever I am talking about an MMORPG or ARPG where I go through this honeymoon period until I reach a point where I feel geared and powerful… usually have a bit of a victory lap wrecking content, and then move on to the next shiny thing.
I think honestly I would probably enjoy MMORPGs in general more if there were some of them following this seasonal model. I had a blast playing Pandaria Remix, which was essentially turning an MMORPG into a four-month seasonal ARPG, with heavily accelerated leveling and acquisition of stuff. However, to your point, it would be cool if you could take your existing character in the season. Diablo III had this where you could “rebirth” a character setting it back to level 1, but you were playing the same character as before.
Yeah I think I just prefer a system like Fallout 76 where you have a “Season Level” which is separate from your “Character Level” and you can earn goodies for your character during that season, but you don’t need a new character.
I just think I need either the persistence or I need a “The End” screen. Having neither the ongoing satisfaction of seeing my character continue on forever, or the dopamine hit of being told “You’re done, you finished, congrats!” just leaves me feeling antsy.
It seems like many games are getting into “seasons”. Once Human has it (though you can keep some stuff between seasons), I think First Descendant has it (maybe not…I put that one on the shelf for a while), and I just saw that ARPGMMO Fractured was ditching their box price, going F2P, and was switching to a seasons model. They said that “In a nutshell, we’ve decided to get away from creating ‘filler’ content in favor of ‘big’ content that will introduce solid end-game loops,” Dynamight’s Jacopo Gallelli says. “What this means in practice are Seasons and Dungeons…”. I guess that means Gallelli things DLC is “filler” content? Sheesh
I am with Pete on this one: I want goals I can reach, and I want to build on what I did before. Restarting games, and being asked to do the exact same content over and over is, as they say, the definition of insanity (to me, but like Bel said, everyone has different wants and needs).
Of course, I couldn’t even make it through DIV: The Base Game XD
This is one of several reasons I haven’t bought Diablo IV yet. I play a lot of ARPGs and spent hundreds of hours in D3, but I never really got into the seasonal thing. Like you, I get attached to my characters and want to stick with them. In D3 any new content was for the whole game, so seasons were basically just there if you wanted the experience of starting from scratch. In D4, so much development effort gets put into new content that’s only available in seasons that it feels like there’s almost no point to playing if you don’t do seasons, and it just turns me off.
Y’know I actually have D3 and never really gave it much of a chance after an initial burst of playing when it first came out. Maybe I should go back and give that another try… thanks for putting that idea in my head!!