Decrease grinds. I want to play the fucken game not do chores. I drop games nowadays as soon as I have to grind. Grinds aren’t fun, they are methods of artificially increasing playtime and engagement. That doesn’t mean hand everything out, it means make the things you do for stuff varied. I didn’t think this would be so hard but over the last 20 years grinds have gotten worse not better. We should be doing away with them in favor of engaging mechanics. Instead everything is more or less the same game with different flavor texts and models. But they all have grinds.
Yeah I played for 2 hours this season, saw that I have to unlock every waypoint and do a lot of the side quests and fortresses and whatnot. On top of having to get back to certain levels so I could actually start playing the game on T3… I kinda just noped outta there
I don’t feel like games are designed for the average player anymore. They expect everyone to no-life that shit and be happy. Nah.
I find grinds aren’t too bad.
But the grind itself has to be fun. Diablo has a gameplay problem that makes the game much less fun, and in turn, their grind sucks.
A grind is a lapse in content. A grind is a hamster wheel in place of interesting mechanics. To grind is to toil, all in the name of throwing it away next season to start it again. If I’m purchasing entertainment, I expect to be entertained and not simply convinced I am entertained. It is not a problem that it is possible to do in a game, that much is fine if you wish. It is a problem when the developers expect you to grind hours to achieve something. It equates to nothing but a long days work at the long day factory.
Example: AC6: Fires of Rubicon allows you to purchase mech pieces in a shop for credits. These credits are handed out at mission end. You can grind “The Wall” mission in under a minute to recieve a hefty sum. Or you can just play through the story again. Thats fine within the context of the game and I can choose to grind if I want.
Diablo on the other hand expects us to literally restart every 3-4 months and do everything all over again (except the campaign itself). Which in itself is alright cause the “Immortal Realm” exists. But that effectively turns each season into a massive grind. So if you want to participate, you have no choice but to grind. Its just a little upsetting I bought a grinder and not a game.
Isnt this the end they did on D3 and it made it just a flood of huge numbers and nothing was fun, nothing was this one drop can break the game for your build. If everything gets you there, getting there isnt a challenge. I mean I like ARPGs and I like when they have those moments like can I make it thru this fight. This dosent sound like that. But it also sounds like they are not dealing with the grind issue, that I thought a lot of their players were complaining of. And the grind here was for leveling not for gear (if I understand correctly).
I think the D3 model is fun. I was actually disappointed at how different D4 is, once I got through the storyline. I do agree that the grind is too great. I basically stopped playing after I finished the storyline. I tried a couple of different builds after increasing the world tier, ran out of gold and got stuck with a build I didn’t enjoy, and quit logging on. It’s worth noting that I’m just a casual player who would create a new character each season in D3, get to GR100ish, and then get bored and stop until the next season.
Well if you could fix it what would you wanna see? I figure you are the demo they are trying to get a hold of for the longest, the hardcore players some times can be whales, but the mtx on the everyday nerds brings in the good seasonal money. I think that the grind shouldnt be there at all, yeah the leveling should slow but the rates I saw were wow levels of grind for no real gains, sure you could place a node or two but I didnt see those being build defining (yet?), I play for the gear, sets or what ever, when I can finally spec out that uber break the fricken game build and then maybe farm up some gold for trading.
The MMO side of this game kinda makes tainting the world areas hard but they could offer dungeons that go odd places or something like candy on the map that you see once or twice in 8 hours. But for real, what would you like to see?
I’ll believe it when I see it. I liked pre-season, launch stuff. I didn’t like the balance patch or S1.
I’ll come back to Diablo after about a year when they stop fucking around and actually have a fun game.
Hopefully that will be enough time for them to stop the kneejerk nerfs and milking players for every penny.
