Diablo 4 was a bad game at launch, it suffered some pretty deadly games that no ARPG wants to have. Bad build variety, unbalanced character classes, poor itemization, empty endgame, moo-features that didn't work. It suffered so many things that D4-bad was a meme for a long time.
Even through 12 seasons of content and a full expansion pack, the meme stuck to D4 like a sickness because through many developer changes the game just couldn't figure out a way to correct itself and offer things that ARPG players actually wanted. It was a casual game in a genre that generally was played by sweaty no-lifers who thrive on min-maxing every aspect of a game. To it's credit though D4 did have some good ideas throughout the seasonal content, sadly many times they would take steps forward and make improvements to the game only to take two steps back for the next update leaving people frustrated.
Now Diablo 4 has had it's second expansion with the Lord of Hatred bringing sweeping changes to every class in the game, plus adding two new ones, a massive end-game overhaul, complete reworks to gear and character progression, plus an all new and rather deep (but still beginner friendly) crafting system.
And with all these changes Diablo 4 isn't bad anymore, it's good, decent, alright. Still incredibly casual friendly which I think is what Blizzard ultimately wants because they value player numbers over player happiness, however the changes are enough to allow those people who like deep systems and a grind to get a decent level of enjoyment out of it. You wont put 500 hours into a season like you can with Path of Exile, but for a week or two, or a even an hour or so after work, Diablo 4 hits the mark.
The changes to classes make building a functional character easier, now all skills are available based on level not on investment of lower level points to access better skills as was the case before. Now every skill point does SOMETHING to a skill, either leveling the skill directly or investing into modifying the skill in some fashion. For example a sorcerer's Blizzard can be upgraded to hit a bigger area, or always cast on top of the character so you become a walking storm, or you can change the skill from ice to something else entire by making it a burst of lightning instead. And every skill in the same does this, Fireball has an upgrade to make it an Ice ball instead. These changes lead into the item changes which get rid of a ton of useless and stupid affixes from their potential pool.
Items used to feature things like "Deal more damage on Tuesdays" which nobody ever used. Those are all gone now and instead items have multipliers to damage types, for example "10x cold damage" or "150%x to damage over time". Which explains why someone might turn their fireball into an iceball because if you are stacking frost damage and frost effects being able to turn an otherwise unusable skill in Fireball into something you can use just increases your potential build options. Now apply this over every class and you'll understand that build diversity has been vastly improved because all these combinations now work.
The item rework has also eliminated the meta for the most part. Online guide websites like Maxroll or Mobalytics are famous for having crafted builds by the best guide makers and streamers around, and through those builds they develop tier lists and meta form from that because everyone wants to play the most broken thing available. This time however there doesn't really seem to be a wrong answer for a character build. So long as you are thinking about synergy and putting skills that make sense together into your build, then you're going to be strong enough to do all the content. It's pretty great.
The endgame now focuses on something called Warplans, this is effectively a playlist of activities that you'll pick up in town. You're given a bunch of choices and you pick 2-5 of them to go and do. Once your activities are picked you can teleport right to the activity, complete it, then port to the next on the list, repeat until done. For every playlist you finish you then turn those in for a good pile of rewards at the end, repeat that and that's the endgame. However each activity also has a talent tree now, as you do these activities you'll get points to invest into that activity's talent tree which all do things to enhance the experience and the rewards from doing it. For example Nightmare Dungeons can be upgrades to spawn Lair super bosses randomly, which allow you to kill super bosses for super loot without needing to have keys and materials for them. Or maybe you invest into treasure golbins so your dungeons have loot goblins all over the place all the time. Every activity has a bunch of enhancements to pick from and you get up to 7 points for each activity.
They've found a way to add depth and progression to all the endgame activities without ruining the casual quickplay experience D4 sort of tried to appeal to. It's no where remotely close to being the best ARPG on the market, but it is no longer a "bad" game either, in fact.....D4 Good.
Even through 12 seasons of content and a full expansion pack, the meme stuck to D4 like a sickness because through many developer changes the game just couldn't figure out a way to correct itself and offer things that ARPG players actually wanted. It was a casual game in a genre that generally was played by sweaty no-lifers who thrive on min-maxing every aspect of a game. To it's credit though D4 did have some good ideas throughout the seasonal content, sadly many times they would take steps forward and make improvements to the game only to take two steps back for the next update leaving people frustrated.
Now Diablo 4 has had it's second expansion with the Lord of Hatred bringing sweeping changes to every class in the game, plus adding two new ones, a massive end-game overhaul, complete reworks to gear and character progression, plus an all new and rather deep (but still beginner friendly) crafting system.
And with all these changes Diablo 4 isn't bad anymore, it's good, decent, alright. Still incredibly casual friendly which I think is what Blizzard ultimately wants because they value player numbers over player happiness, however the changes are enough to allow those people who like deep systems and a grind to get a decent level of enjoyment out of it. You wont put 500 hours into a season like you can with Path of Exile, but for a week or two, or a even an hour or so after work, Diablo 4 hits the mark.
The changes to classes make building a functional character easier, now all skills are available based on level not on investment of lower level points to access better skills as was the case before. Now every skill point does SOMETHING to a skill, either leveling the skill directly or investing into modifying the skill in some fashion. For example a sorcerer's Blizzard can be upgraded to hit a bigger area, or always cast on top of the character so you become a walking storm, or you can change the skill from ice to something else entire by making it a burst of lightning instead. And every skill in the same does this, Fireball has an upgrade to make it an Ice ball instead. These changes lead into the item changes which get rid of a ton of useless and stupid affixes from their potential pool.
Items used to feature things like "Deal more damage on Tuesdays" which nobody ever used. Those are all gone now and instead items have multipliers to damage types, for example "10x cold damage" or "150%x to damage over time". Which explains why someone might turn their fireball into an iceball because if you are stacking frost damage and frost effects being able to turn an otherwise unusable skill in Fireball into something you can use just increases your potential build options. Now apply this over every class and you'll understand that build diversity has been vastly improved because all these combinations now work.
The item rework has also eliminated the meta for the most part. Online guide websites like Maxroll or Mobalytics are famous for having crafted builds by the best guide makers and streamers around, and through those builds they develop tier lists and meta form from that because everyone wants to play the most broken thing available. This time however there doesn't really seem to be a wrong answer for a character build. So long as you are thinking about synergy and putting skills that make sense together into your build, then you're going to be strong enough to do all the content. It's pretty great.
The endgame now focuses on something called Warplans, this is effectively a playlist of activities that you'll pick up in town. You're given a bunch of choices and you pick 2-5 of them to go and do. Once your activities are picked you can teleport right to the activity, complete it, then port to the next on the list, repeat until done. For every playlist you finish you then turn those in for a good pile of rewards at the end, repeat that and that's the endgame. However each activity also has a talent tree now, as you do these activities you'll get points to invest into that activity's talent tree which all do things to enhance the experience and the rewards from doing it. For example Nightmare Dungeons can be upgrades to spawn Lair super bosses randomly, which allow you to kill super bosses for super loot without needing to have keys and materials for them. Or maybe you invest into treasure golbins so your dungeons have loot goblins all over the place all the time. Every activity has a bunch of enhancements to pick from and you get up to 7 points for each activity.
They've found a way to add depth and progression to all the endgame activities without ruining the casual quickplay experience D4 sort of tried to appeal to. It's no where remotely close to being the best ARPG on the market, but it is no longer a "bad" game either, in fact.....D4 Good.
