Diablo 4 Is A Bad Diablo Game (And Here's Why)

Diablo 4 wasn't designed for players. Diablo 4 was designed for the shareholders.

The biggest mistake Blizzard ever made in relation to D3, was firing the entire team that created D1 & D2. They then brought in people that worked on WoW, and it was clear they didn't understand, nor respect the lore of the game. We now have devs that don't even play the game... sad.

Tempering and enchanting is like taking your car to a mechanic for an oil change and they not only dont change your oil, but also steal your catalytic converter and one of your tires. Then they tell you that you can pay them again if you want to give it another shot.

diablo 1 was in fact a horror game. A game about isolation, the devil, hell, and horrific monsters. They were making a Gothic Horror ARPG.

At it's core, the issue with D4 is no different than any other modern MMO game. They they half-ass a community oriented design because they just want to sell you cosmetics to show off, that's it. They have no idea what makes a game "massively multiplayer".

Diablo died with Blizzard North, Blizzard Irvine destroyed it, thanks to Jay Wilson, and they never recovered.

Gear sets arent gone they just sell them in the cosmetic shop with no passives LOL

I think what went wrong is quite obvious they simply got greedy. Trying to appeal to a wider audience is a terrible idea. When a game is made for everyone it ends up being for no one. If you don’t know who your original fan base is and don’t respect them you start to steer the game in an entirely different direction leaving people feeling abandoned just so you can try to pick up a new fan base. I like D2 and D3 but they are so different upsetting people was almost inevitable. This led D4 to have no chance of pleasing people the community is badly divided on what they want and the devs have absolutely no idea what to do about it.

If i may add my complaints as i don't hear these mentioned. (1) Sidequests. there are over 200 of them. I propose a nightmare side quest system and a sidequest codex. (2) Enemies. They have little sense of purpose or permanence. Mostly standing still in a mob cluster until you encounter them. Too often appearing out of nowhere. Can't kite them enough with their "chain" system, they run back to their post. An enemy should be able to follow you across the entire map. World bosses and bosses in general should roam the world instead of sitting in one arena. I want to see convoys of demons marching long distance towards a target. Too many enemies, too short lived. Clearing mobs feels more like dashing through quantum geometry than facing demons. I don't like all the enemies appearing and disappearing all the time. I want to feel like the demons are permanent entities. A beastiary would be good too. Another codex to complete. They have good examples ingame already: The Butcher. Penitent Knights having a campfire. Walking in on demons killing civilians. More of this.

I do not understand how the continue to get it wrong. Diablo 2 had a couple main loot related things that set it apart : 1. Rares are technically the absolute best items in the game, but GOOD EFFING LUCK getting a roll that is one of those greatest in the game. 2. There were multiple currencies that ended up being required for multiple uses, as well as the ability to trade those currencies to other players, IE, You can just collect 40 perfect gems to trade for a mid rune so someone doing endgame crafting can craft or use those gems to craft yourself, you can trade mid runes for mid gear or save up runes to combine to higher runes, or use those runes to make runeword gear pieces. Not to mention socketed "base" items also holding tradable value for runes and other legendaries.

I appreciated your good narration, effort, and overall good points. But I'll be honest, we are all overthinking this. Diablo 4 sucks because it's made by a disjointed collection of corporate employees who have near no ownership of the product as a whole and thus create only soulless, disjointed, self-contradicting products modeled by machines that focus on what keeps people addicted versus what's actually a good game. Name me one good game out right now that wasn't made by a bunch of nerds in a basement or a garage or at least a developer that started that way. There is no need to dissect these games. Imagine making a pizza with 30 people and your job is only to gather the tomatoes before someone makes the sauce. But then there is another person that cuts the tomatoes, a different person that starts making the sauce. A different person seasons the sauce. A different person taste tests the sauce, but bases it on a survey they ran for what people like in their sauce rather than the merit of their own taste buds. You get the point. You're gonna get a shit pizza.

It really seems like Blizzard doesn't understand what made their games good in general, not just Diablo.

I was never fond of when level scaling came about. You really don't feel like you're getting stronger, unless you're constantly figuring out a game breaking build every 10 minutes before legendaries. After legendaries, I've been slaughtering everything, especially since I took higher risk, higher reward, and jumped into hell tides right away. Once I got a few good drops, and maxed my resistances, I was smearing everything in side, especially nightmare dungeons a bit above my level

"Keeping the experience fresh" Ah yes nothing exudes freshness like your 16 millionth pindle run 😅

I could write paragraphs of how shallow they make the environment, characters, and quests feel. If you've played the games then you know already. What I rarely see people talk about though, is how gutted player interaction has become. In Diablo Two, you could join up and basically pioneer the world together. You could fight each other, talk to each other, and even trade items with each other. You'd take down enemies you maybe couldn't handle alone, and you'd be rewarded with progression. In modern Diablo, you can emote to the other fellow who is just a passerby in your world. You may team up with them for random events and take down enemies together, but there's no meaningful impact on the game if you choose to play alone or with others. The other players are there with you in the experience, as you would want them to be; however, the interaction with them doesn't feel any different than the simple engagements you'd have with NPCs/virtual-companions staggered throughout the generic landscapes. You may believe that developers eliminate this shallow interaction when it comes to team-based multiplayer games like: Shooter 3 and Battle Royal 2024. Under the surface pretense of working together, you and every player are still just marketable products. Every match starts with a set-up phase or lobby, where you emote to each other and see the skins everyone is sporting. Shortly after, you have only the attention to engage with the hectic game play of life or death scenarios. You're either going to successfully complete the objective or lose. You get angry at your teammates when you lose, and they feel obligated to buy better equipment or boosts to mitigate the feeling of loss. You get excited together when you win, and further reinforce the idea that the advantages you paid for are working and necessary for you to have fun. That's modern gaming in a nutshell. I'm baffled that the big corps are jealous of successful titles from smaller studios. Not everyone wants to be engaged in the exhausting dark loops of modern live service titles, which seek all of the player's time and money for the sake of competitively progressing against everyone they meet or know. I used to enjoy talking about new games when I was younger, but now there is little to say about the modern experiences that are diluted of all but their marketability.

the irony in you mentioning Torchlight is that Runic Games was composed of ex-Blizzard North employees including David Brevik, literally the creator of Diablo himself and you can tell especially as Torchlight 1 is literally Diablo 1 with a reskin and fishing

Curious about thoughts surrounding monetization, as I think Activision-Blizzard's thirst for micro transactions has negatively impacted D4 almost as much as many of the (very valid) points brought up in this video...from the limited visual diversity inherent to the loot drops to the original spacing of shop keepers (ostensibly to give players a reason to show off bought cosmetics), it eats at the soul of a franchise while ALSO lacking the free-to-play benefits PoE offers

Gaming companies really need to get better at recognizing their limits and stop trying to follow this exhausting and unsustainable trend of exponential growth. By trying to reach wider and wider audiences, every franchise that gamers beloved is slowly being destroyed piece by piece.

The lack of a light radius kills the vibe in 3 and 4 as well. The dark edges of the field of view were imperative to the feel of the first 2 games. They tapped into the fear of the unknown with that kind of design and Blizzard has never replicated that feeling

I have returned to play d4 in season 4 and its just a fun fast grind and loot fest from 1 to 100 and i agree to everything you said. I still find d2 (remaster) so so so much better, gloomy, dark and isolated…and to be honest…i still prefer it in my heart!!!