Good Morning Friends. There is a concept among my inner circle of friends called “Bel Luck” where I am known for having an unnatural amount of luck when it comes to succeeding against the random number generators built within games. My personal theory is that I just play an excessive amount of one game at a time and as a result am just more likely to see better drops. My friends however will swear that it is something other than that. For the most part, I don’t believe them… but I have been party to a long line of exceedingly rare drops over the years. In Guild Wars 2 for example I pulled a Permanent Auction House from one of the random Black Lion Chest keys while leveling my Necromancer and have pulled four Ascended chests from Tequatl. In World of Warcraft, I pulled not one but two Spectral Tiger mounts from the card game and won the roll the one time the mount from Attumen dropped in OG Karazhan.
Last night in Honkai Star Rail… I got something so seemingly rare that I am maybe starting to believe them. I had a good deal of currency saved up waiting on the Silver Wolf banner to start, and while I did not get one night before last when the banner opened… I had gathered up enough 10 pull worth last night from doing various activities and raiding the limited purchases from the currency shop. When I saw Gold behind Pom-Pom I went through a rollercoaster of emotions… first being extremely happy hoping that I got Silver Wolf. Then being sad when I saw the banner image for Bronya instead… then happy again when immediately after clicking off Bronya I saw the banner image for Silver Wolf. The cherry on the top is that I pulled a four-star Light Cone at the same time so essentially 3 rare pulls in the same ten pull. I feel like I have spent down my luck for a while, but that said… I also managed to pick up the 5 Star from the last banner.
I am not necessarily playing the to the maximum right now in Honkai Star Rail because my brain is being dumb and seemingly hung up on Diablo IV. I am at least playing a little bit each night and have made it a bit into the new story content. Essentially where I left off last night this new character Screwllum was asking me to run a Simulated Universe. I knew this would take a bit and my brain was not necessarily in the mood to go through a thirty-minute-long Simulated Universe so I logged in for the evening. My goal is to pop in an do a few of these today given that I need to hit the weekly cap of progress there anyway. This is sort of where I struggle with Genshin or Star Rail, is that if I am not playing it as my primary game… and a new content pack is released… I am just not playing enough to catch up fully and feel like I am floundering a bit.
I legitimately thought that I would be winding down my time in Diablo IV. I am still not entirely certain I am enjoying myself but also seem to be hung up on it. This seems to be a case of “the heart wants what the heart wants” even though I am not sure if it is wise. Essentially I am doing some of the busy work that involves running around and doing various things. I am slowly working my way towards an eventual respec to Whirlwind. I stayed away from that ability because it seemed bugged… but also even after several rounds of nerfs seems to be strong. Upheaval is something that I enjoyed in testing but seems to not really be viable at the moment. I struggle to kill/survive anything in higher world tiers so there is no way I am going to complete the capstone dungeon in my current state. I think as my last attempt at making this game feel good, I am prepping to respec by unlocking the aspects that I need.
Last night I finished up the overwhelming mission of collecting all of the Altars of Lilith spread throughout the five regions of the game. Each region has around 35 of these altars so I spent a lot of time checking a map on my second monitor and attempting to guess where that location related to on the in-game map and putting a pin there. From what I understand, after having done this on my main character… I will never have to get another Altar of Lilith on my alternate characters. My hope is that this progress will carry forward into seasons… because this is part of my hang-up with what a new seasonal experience will look like. There is no way I can see collecting all of these altars every three months. Doing it once was painful enough.
I’ve also launched the beginnings of a Diablo IV Tools section for the website under my Game Tools menu. Right now I am collecting resources that I am using as I stumble across them. I have a few build sites that I regularly reference, a nicely interactive and searchable game map, and then the numbered lists of altars that I followed while collecting the statues over the last few days. As more tools come available I will be adding them to the list, and as I stabilize my builds I will probably start doing what I do with Path of Exile and use this section as a way to catalog what I am playing. I am legitimately not sure if anyone actually uses these pages, but for me, they serve as an external bookmark system for the resources that I regularly consume.
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Good Morning Friends! Yesterday I reached the point of realization that I am just not enjoying Diablo IV. On one level this should not shock me… given how much I have talked about this game not being the game I was wanting it to be. However yesterday over lunch I was playing for a bit and it hit me that I was really not enjoying myself. I think so long as I had the clear objective of “finishing the campaign” I was able to find some joy in the experience. Now that I am turned loose in the world post paragon… and realizing I have a fairly scuffed build that I am uncertain how to fix other than grinding for legendaries or respeccing to whirlwind… I am just not certain the struggle is worth it. I am not necessarily saying I am “done” with Diablo IV, but I am saying that I sincerely doubt I will make it super far running the grinding and gearing treadmill with this game because the moment-to-moment gameplay just doesn’t feel great to me.
I’ve said this in my own fifteen-minute-long video complaining about Diablo IV, but the core problem I have with this game is the way that the world scales as compared to how your power scales. Yesterday Action RPG released a video essentially underlining the same points. Diablo is a game about feeling powerful and smashing demons to jangly chords, and while after the second act, the jangly chords come into play… the cost of entry of the feeling powerful bit seems like it is a bit much. Every level I put on in this game makes the game feel worse until I get a drop… which patches over the problem until I ding again. There is just something about the moment-to-moment gameplay that feels off and maybe it is that the cooldowns are longer than I would expect or that the resource generation isn’t high enough… or that the resource spenders don’t deal enough damage. Whatever the case… I just can’t seem to get to a point where the game feels good.
I still have a lot of maps to see out there, and a ton of dungeons to complete in order to unlock the patterns contained within them. I’ve also not really made a concerted effort to go after the Lilith Statues, so in theory that is probably what I am going to be devoting my time to in the coming weeks as I continue to poke at this game’s carcass. There is a whole lot of map that I have not uncovered, especially in the last few acts of the game where I focused entirely on the yellow quests. Additionally, the Tree of Whispers is not an awful way to progress, and I’ve done a bit of that though really do not enjoy the short timers on all of those missions. I did not realize that your progress expired because I had completed 8 grim favors before logging out when the servers went to shit last night, and logging in this morning all of that progress is gone.
I will say that I had more fun than I would have expected watching the World’s First Hardcore race and I got to see several of the streamers that I follow hit level 100 over the last several days. I find it pretty awesome that a team of Path of Exile streamers ultimately got the first four spots on the unofficial Hardcore Leaderboard. Carn was technically the first to level 100, but Zizarin, Steelmage, and Nugiyen followed a few hours after. Then several hours after that I watched Raxxanterax who is probably the D3 player that I have consumed the most content from hit 100, and a few hours after that seeing Wudijo become the first SSF Hardcore 100 player. I normally do not watch streamers and largely consume content from them when it makes its way over to YouTube, but this time around I was curious how the race was going given that I am familiar with a lot of these people from other ARPGs.
Other than Diablo IV, I spent some time last night screwing around in Last Epoch. I am still working on my wannabe squirrel build and attempting to get the stupid helm to drop. I’ve also contemplated respeccing my Necromancer over to a necrotic/life leech build that I saw yesterday but I do not know how much work that would end up being to relevel my skills after the swaps. The current state of Endgame in Last Epoch feels a little lacking. I feel like I need an overarching goal that I am working towards to disguise the fact that I am grinding. Since there is no real targeted way of farming the exact items that I need, I find it hard to stay focused. In Diablo III, sure I farmed the same greater rifts over and over but often times there were goals that I was working towards like pushing up my GR level higher or leveling Legendary gems. Those took the focus away from the repetitive behavior. In Path of Exile I am doing maps to gain Sulphite and then doing Delve while hunting for City or Boss nodes. The hunt gives me focus and takes me out of the mindset that I am repeating the same loop over and over.
Speaking of Path of Exile… I need to spend some more time in that game soon. I know with Exilecon in July will represent the launch of a new league and I need at least ONE MORE challenge in order to get the pitiful little 19 challenge totem pole. There are three that seem like they are the most likely to finish up so I guess over the coming weeks I will spend some time working on knocking one or more of these out. After that, I am not sure what my focus is going to be. I had hopes that Diablo IV would coalesce into something that I wanted to be playing on the regular but unfortunately, that is not really the case. To be truthful… I didn’t really enjoy Diablo III until the first expansion dropped and changed a number of systems, so maybe there is hope on the horizon. Talking with a few friends, I seem to not be the only one for which the game is losing its mirth. Even then though… I might try leveling something else and see if it is more my speed.
Anyways I hope you are having a great week, and if you are playing Diablo IV that it is giving you what you want from it.
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Good Morning Friends! Last night I stayed up a bit later than normal because I was winding down the last few bits of the Diablo IV campaign. I started Thursday evening when the game launched into early access, played quite a bit Friday, Saturday, and Sunday ultimately wrapping up around 11 pm last night. I would love to be able to tell you how many hours I played, but the absence of a /played command or any other sort of player stats prevents me from doing this. That is a microcosm for Diablo 4 as a whole… some aspects of the game are deeply thought out and others seem curiously missing… like the seeming purposeful decision not to have a map overlay. I think this game is going to be a lot of different experiences for a lot of different types of players. If you are the type of player that traditionally expects to play through the campaign of a Diablo game and then bounce… this might be the best Diablo you have ever experienced. If you are more of a Diablo/ARPG hobbyist you will be presented with a cavalcade of choices that might lead you to believe that this game was not designed with you in mind.
I think ultimately for me, Diablo IV is a mixed bag of both brilliance and abject stupidity. For me, a Diablo game is a power fantasy about getting strong, leveling up, and then laying waste to the hordes of hell. In order for that to work, the moment-to-moment combat has to feel amazing and allow you to indulge in the power fantasy of firing off big attacks regularly in order to make the entire screen explode. Combat vacillates between feeling completely brilliant… and feeling plodding and painful and this is largely dependent upon if your abilities are off cooldown and if you have the resources to spend them. Given that the game has not yet officially launched and we already have a significant round of nerfs to slow down that experience… I feel like the game Blizzard had in mind is not the game I wanted to play. We will see if this changes as I begin the gear for the endgame, but the campaign while better than at any stage during testing… was still largely a frustrating mess.
As I have said before I followed a guide for this play through because ultimately I was wanting to give Diablo IV the best possible chance to grab me. Of all of the “spenders” I had played with during testing, the one that I found I enjoyed the most was Upheaval which is a big frontal cone attack. This involves a bit of kiting around but largely that style of gameplay does not bother me. So I ended up following the Upheaval Barbarian Leveling Guide from Maxroll, and for the most part, I think it did as good of a job as possible for easing my leveling experience. At this point, I could respec and try something else and really the cost of just over 94k gold to refund 52 talent points… seems fine given that I am sitting at 1.1 million gold while spending most of the game salvaging everything. I purposefully stayed away from Whirlwind because it clearly seemed bugged… and it was one of the abilities that ate the hardest nerf in the pre-launch patch proving that to be a wise thing to stay away from it.
My path through the game was a bit uneven. For the first three acts of Diablo IV, I spent my time plodding along and completing almost all of the side quests. Then as I reached the end of Act III… I decided that I really wanted a mount which is awarded to you at the beginning of Act IV. From that point forward I pretty much rushed through the game only focusing on the main story arc, because the leveling process had overstayed its welcome. Admittedly this is coming from someone who is used to doing the entire Diablo III leveling process in about 2 hours and the entire Path of Exile leveling process in about 5 hours. The endgame is the beginning of the game to me, and I figured there was plenty of time to start picking away at the rest of the side quests after having completed the story. Truth is… finishing all the sidequests is essentially mandatory for an endgame build as there are ten talent points hidden in the renown system that you are going to need.
As far as the story goes… this is without a doubt the best Diablo story to date and quite possibly the best ARPG story as well. That is admittedly not saying a lot given that most ARPGs only have just enough story to keep the wheels from falling off in transit. Would I consider this one of the best story games when judged against all of the great story games I have played? No… absolutely not. It is a serviceable story, but it is also a Blizzard story, and that comes with all of the baggage attached to that statement. It is a story about big forces moving against the player and plot twists that you can see miles away. However, it is still a fun epic romp through some really large set pieces that serve as an excuse to set up some big fun battles. The only real complaint that I have is that much of the denouement of each conflict plays out in the form of a cutscene that you watch through Blood-O-Vision 3000… as you touch Lilith’s Pedals. Diablo has always been known for its cool cutscenes and this is no different, but they also serve as the key method in which the larger plot moves forward which may or may not be your personal taste.
Most of the boss encounters are legitimately good. There is enough room to scale them up in order to create something akin to the Uber bosses from Path of Exile. On lower difficulties, they serve to feel just challenging enough to not fall over immediately as the bosses in Diablo III did. There are a few fights that felt needlessly tanky… but I chock that up to the general lack of balance, the game seems to have. I feel like Diablo IV is a case in point of why you don’t get rid of Q&A employees as Activision Blizzard has had a habit of doing over the last half dozen years. I think Diablo IV could be a great game given enough time and focus to balance the game into something that actually feels fun all of the time… rather than feeling fun under exactly the right conditions.
I’ve now officially entered the endgame of Diablo IV, but can’t really talk much about it yet. I unlocked the Tree of Whispers which gives you access to the Whispers of the Dead system. From what I understand a zone is marked by the tree and you are sent there to reclaim “the debt that is owed” I won’t go into that in any more detail as it could provide some spoilers. Essentially it is a bounty system that involves you going and doing specific activities in a given zone in order to collect Grim Favors. Grim Favors are then turned in for rewards from the tree that I believe give you access to legendaries and nightmare dungeon glyphs. Nightmare Dungeons are effectively mythic plus from World of Warcraft and the glyph is somewhat like a map in Path of Exile and will set the affixes being applied to the dungeon. I legitimately have only played long enough after the campaign to unlock the dialog box explaining this system and then took a screenshot of the area of the map it was being applied to this morning. I am sure later this week I will have a more cogent set of thoughts about this system.
If you want bonus points… you can listen to me ramble for twenty minutes about the live service dystopia we find ourselves in, and some of my fears about what a battle pass system will mean for this game. Of note… this was recorded before I started focus firing the campaign and doesn’t really reflect much on the game itself other than my general concerns. There are times I feel like recording one of these videos and I did so yesterday morning. Basically, my thesis is that a given player only has time to play one live service game at a time, and as a result, EVERY live service game is ultimately competing with every other one.
I think ultimately my stance is the same as it has been for a while. I think Diablo IV is a great game for the players who will play through the campaign once, and then move on with their lives… maybe to revisit much much later but won’t be mainlining the game. Was it the game I had hoped it would be? No… not in the least. Does that make it any less of a good game? No not really. I think Diablo IV is a very solid game that is just fun enough to get you past some of the major frustrations. I think the first map sucks ass and they would have been far better starting the player in the second map… Scosglen. Scosglen feels and more importantly, SOUNDS like a Diablo game. Diablo is a game about killing demons to jangly chords… and Diablo music finally starts to kick in during Act II.
If I had any bit of advice for new players approaching this game… it would be to do NOTHING but yellow quests aka the main questline… until you reach the beginning of Act IV and complete the quest “Donan’s Favor” and then from that point forward you can return to screwing around and doing side quests at your leisure. Mounts make a massive difference in improving the quality of life of this game and in truth Blizzard fashion… you are robbed of that experience until you are almost done with the campaign. Knowing what I know now… I would essentially rush to the point of having a mount and then return to a leisurely leveling pace. However for all characters from this point forward… I probably won’t actually do the campaign given that unlocking the mount once unlocks it for all of your characters.
I know that I am a very specific edge case when it comes to Diablo players. I liked Diablo III and felt like it got a lot of things right. Diablo IV feels like an overcorrection in attempting to erase the legacy of Diablo III from memory… while at the same time reconning some of the story elements to essentially make that game more or less not exist. As a result, Diablo IV is a direct sequel to Diablo II, in both stories… and the plodding feel of combat. If you loved Diablo II… and have played it recently and still can affirm that it is your ideal Diablo game… then Diablo IV is probably going to be a gift from the heavens planted at your feet. If you liked Diablo III… this game is going to feel like an uncoordinated mess at times. If you are a big fan of Path of Exile… this is going to feel like a bit of a slog compared to how relatively fast moving through that game can feel. Still, I don’t think Diablo IV is a bad game… and pending Blizzard gives the game some TLC over the next few years it might even become a great game.
I figure I will spend some time exploring the end game, but also am more than likely to happily jump on the next game that comes along which catches my attention. This is probably blasphemy… but I think Diablo Immortal was actually a more mechanically enjoyable game than Diablo IV. Too bad they chose evil and went full-on into microtransaction hell with that one because it is more the direct sequel to Diablo III that I really wanted.
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Good Morning Friends! Yesterday was the launch of Diablo IV and I did in fact play the game as the servers came up. There was a bit of weirdness with battle.net as things launched but it had resolved itself within the first fifteen minutes. After that for the most part it felt like logging in and playing any game that had been active for months. I feel like whatever work Blizzard did ahead of the launch was deeply beneficial to the stability of the servers, because while we have yet to see what a difference the “standard copy” players make on the 6th… for the most part every was solid. In fact, I would say that the game itself performed far better than I had experienced in any of the closed or public testing phases that I had participated in. The entire game just felt snappier than I remember from the last public test and I am not sure if this was engine optimization on the side of Blizzard or the fact that Nvidia released brand-new drivers for the game launch. Whatever the case it felt pretty great, which I guess is making me question some of my early opinions of the game.
I made a Barbarian, and effectively the same one I have made a half dozen times in various testing phases which allowed me to breeze through the character creation boss. As far as a skill set I decided to give Maxroll a shot and follow their Upheaval guide since of all of the fury spenders that one felt the best to me in previous phases. Now I am uncertain which is the case, but either Blizzard significantly buffed the Barbarian to make it feel better at the early stages of the game… or the entire game has been nerfed a bit. Whereas before combat felt sluggish and plodding… it now feels snappy and fluid. I gotta say… I don’t hate this game. It still isn’t really an ARPG in my book… at least not one in the traditional sense but for an Isometric MMORPG it feels pretty solid. Maybe I have just had enough time to get over my initial disappointment, or maybe it is the fact that I have largely finished with the current Path of Exile League and have mentally put that game to bed for a while. Whatever the case I had quite a bit of fun last night. Not so much fun that I did not have a pause mid-evening to go out and play with the outdoor cats.
When I say… something significant has changed what I mean is that I am level 15 and have mainlined the story through the first zone and have not taken a single death yet. This is very much NOT the case in previous testing phases. Barbarians had to basically spam potions to survive the early phases of combat and it feels like I have barely had to pay attention to my health other than during boss fights. Someone from the team had announced that this was pretty much the same build as the most recent stress test, but I do not believe them at all. It does make me want to fire up a Necromancer to see what the state of minions looks like and determine if that is also fixed. Whatever the case… my opinion of Diablo IV as a whole would be massively different had I experienced THIS build in any of my testing phases. I’m not sure what last-minute balance changes were made but they certainly feel significant.
The cash shop is now available in the game, and it is in fact a cash shop. Some of the cosmetics are pretty good looking, like this crusader-esc outfit for the Barbarian. However, most of the cosmetics are kinda fugly. Like maybe I am just not as big of an equestrian person, but it feels like a lot of effort went into the horses in this game and they are all sorta awful looking. I am hoping there will be mounts OTHER than horses… because really… I almost NEVER ride a horse in an MMO. Give me a big bear mount or something like that, and you might pry some money from my hands. Maybe it is a side effect of growing up around horses my entire life… but they are sorta boring. Essentially there is a single outfit for the Necromancer and a single outfit for the Barbarian that I consider worthy of a purchase, but the rest of the dross is kinda “mid” at best. Essentially the conversion rate of Platnium to dollars is $1 to 100, so the big fancy cosmetic armor packages are $24.
All I really did last night was make a beeline through the story bits that I have seen multiple times for this first zone. I’ve not even unlocked most of the map, so in theory tonight I will be spending my time branching out and exploring things… and now I feel like I have the motivation to actually complete all the dungeons to get the imprint unlocks. Mostly I wanted to finish up the story while I was still relatively low level in case they had not resolved the problem of leveling up and making you feel weaker. So far that has not really been the case, which I am hoping means that is the side effect of more balance changes. I am sure I will be focused on this game for most of the weekend and will likely give you a more formal review on Monday.
I created a Clan last night if any of the usual suspects want a home. However, I am rapidly realizing how long I have been away from Blizzard games and how pretty much everyone has a new guild family that they play with. I will admit it was a little weird to see that <House Stalwart> had been created and that I had nothing to do with it. Granted I have been “Not-The-Guild-Leader” of the guild that I founded far longer than I was actually the leader, and it has always been in great hands with Kylana. I figure <GREY> will be pretty small in Diablo IV given that I am not sure if any of the AggroChat regulars intend to play the game. That said if you need a chill home feel free to apply in the game or hit me up while I am playing for an invite. I left it public so folks could sign up while I was offline.
I’m still not entirely sure what I think of Diablo IV. I think better of it now after having played this latest version… but it is still not necessarily what I was hoping it would be. I think this is going to be a great game for most of the players who decide to pick it up because the vast majority of Diablo players as a whole… get in… play through the campaign once or twice… and then uninstall the game feeling satisfied maybe to revisit it at some point in the future when they get the itch. I do wonder what the endgame and seasonal cadence is going to look like going forward. I’m not entirely certain this is going to be a game for the players who have adapted to the ways of Last Epoch and Path of Exile. In fact, I think there are probably going to be some players who were waiting around to see what Diablo IV was… before finally committing to those games. I do have to give Blizzard credit for starting to change my opinion though with some last-minute tweaks and balance changes… and an incredibly stable launch night.
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