Good Morning Folks! Since I did not do my normal weekend recap post yesterday, I figured this morning I would start out with a bit of a progress post on Diablo IV Season Seven. I have to admit… I am starting to run out of steam. I had a pretty great first week, but now I am reaching the point where I am not really as driven to keep moving forward. Minions Necromancer seems to have stalled out at Torment III, and I am struggling to push it up to something that feels halfway decent at Torment IV. I could of course swap to Blood Wave of one of the more powerful builds with zero minions… but I have been stubborn. Like I said last week… a Necromancer without Minions is basically just a shitty Mage.
Really the core problem that I am dealing with is not being able to get the drops that I need to progress the build. I am kitted out in full Ancestral gear, and honestly well rolled items at that… but the challenge that I am having is that I cannot get the Ancestral Uniques that I need for the build. I’ve got copies of the normal mode versions, and in theory I should probably try rearranging my gear in a way so that I could equip them and give that a shot to see how it feels. Largely across the board Ancestral drops feel like they are way less common than they were last league, and this feels bad. More than that it does not feel like I am having much success target farming the items. In theory Ace and I were talking about doing another round of boss summons this evening, and if I get lucky that would solve my problems.
I’ve completed the Battle Pass and unlocked all of this seasons cosmetics. I generally pay for the cheap version of the battle pass without any acceleration, because generally speaking the seasonal cosmetics are pretty freaking great. I am not entirely certain what I think about this armor set, but the weird raptor-horse thingy is pretty sweet. One thing that annoys me about the Battle Pass, is that since the cats are only available through the expansion… the seasonal tracks never seem to include any cosmetics for them. This is the problem with splitting features between expansion and core versions of the game, and seems like a bad design overall.
Where I am stalled out however is on the Season Journey. I’ve reached the final step called Destroyer, and every single objective requires Torment IV to complete. Since I cannot reliably run much of anything on Torment IV, that means I am pretty much hard locked. Then the final steps will require me to do copious farming while sitting on T4, and luck into a few edge cases like having two legendary shrines appear in a single Roothold. Maybe I am feeling a little more charitable to the streamers that I felt abandoned this season too soon, because honestly… I was just a bit slower reaching the point they must have on day one or two. I am not sure what is wrong with the season, but something feels off now that I am out of the super fun leveling phase.
I did however take down Lilith so that was a positive step forward. Last season I got hard carried by Ace on this fight, and this season I was able to one-shot it. This means I have my resplendent spark, so that if I can ever complete the seasons journey… I will be able to craft a mythic unique. Part of me is wondering if I should have gone with Spiritborn. Truth be told the core problem that I have with Diablo IV is how spammy it feels. Maybe I am just too used to one or two button builds in Path of Exile, but it is highly annoying that I need to spam six abilities every time they are off cool-down. I could always use the numlock trick, but that feels cheesy. Especially after getting used to the more combo based system of Path of Exile II… Diablo IV spammy combat feels odd.
I admit… I am not 100% certain how much longer I am going to keep poking at this. I should at least try a respec to something else before giving up the ghost. I am not sure what happened, but in the last two days the fun levels have diminished significantly. It was great so long as I felt like I was regularly knocking out objectives, but once I stalled out… it made me start to evaluate the type of combat that I was actually doing.
The post Season Seven Steam Subsiding appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Folks! This morning I am going to spend some time talking about something weird happening with Diablo IV right now. Season Seven aka the Season of Witchcraft is without a doubt peak Diablo IV. This is the best seasonal mechanic we have ever had and the game has more content than it has ever had in the past. Additionally the mechanical state of the game is better than we have seen previously and there are way more classes that have viable play patterns as a result. However… folks seem to be abandoning Diablo IV in droves, and this is has not been illustrated more clearly by the lack of streamers diving into the game. Previously a new Diablo IV season would see most of the Path of Exile streamers come back if for no reason other than to meme on the game for a day or two before returning to their core demographic.
What we are seeing instead is folks who used to be part of the core stalwart group of Diablo IV streamers… abandoning the game. Darth Microtransaction effectively made his brand on the back of first Diablo Immortal and then later Diablo IV. I went through his broadcast records and could not find any sign that he actually streamed even a moment of Diablo IV Season Seven. Raxxanterax was the definitive “Diablo III” guy for me and has been a regular source of information about Diablo IV since the launch of the game, and he streamed two days… looked annoyed while doing it, and then as of yesterday was back in Path of Exile II. This is translating to the game as well, because I am not sure I have fought a single world boss yet with a full party. Additionally during peak prime time gaming hours, I am one of the few people on my Battle.net friends list actually playing the game.
I think at least on some level… the expansion release broke a lot of people. It was not a great story, but worse than that… it felt like an incomplete story. Diablo games have traditionally been about killing a big bad at the end. The core Diablo IV story is about chasing Lilith and then ultimately killing her. Vessel of Hatred seemed like it was going to be an expansion about chasing Mephisto and then ultimately killing him… but instead we just took down his literal lapdog. The story arc of the expansion felt like something we might expect as a free incremental story patch in an MMORPG, not something that is boxed paid DLC. I think there were a lot of folks holding out hope that the DLC was going to change the trajectory of Diablo IV, and it didn’t really do that… causing them to check out. It is impossible to get numbers for this game, since the Steam version launched so late that it represents a fairly insignificant slice of the total player pie.
I am still having fun, but I also know that once I tick off the checkboxes of the seasons journey and finish out the battle pass that I will probably fade away as well. What I will fade back into… I have no clue honestly. Raxx showed recently that you can power level a character in just a bit more than two hours, so given the level of playtime streamers have… it is probably not shocking that they have all cycled through the game. Sure there are folks who have almost exclusively built their brand on the game like Rob that are still grinding away…. but within the week I figure most folks will have cycled back to something else. The Witchtide is fun as heck, but it seems like it is not quite enough to actually keep at least the public side of the player base engaged for very long.
I moved into chapter five aka slayer on my Seasons Journey last night, and I have been stockpiling my boss summon materials so that Ace and I can get together this weekend and run a bunch of bosses in a row. This mostly just makes it so that the loot goes further, since each of us gets our own copy of the loot. I’ve swapped out all but two of my slots for Ancestral gear, and it seems like maybe Ancestral Legendaries are dropping much less often in Torment 1 than they did during the expansion launch. I don’t have all of the items that I ultimately need, but I am still ripping through content pretty easily. I finally got all of the glyphs and now just need to work on leveling them. I’ve also got a few Infernal Hordes keys that I hope to run with Ace as well to see what sort of loot and levels we can get from that event.
Raxx released his usual State of the Game, and even he admits that the season mechanic is probably the best one yet. However he still sounds really unsatisfied with the state of the game. His big complaint is that at least compared to other ARPGs right now, Diablo IV does not have much replayability. I would probably agree with that and once you have ground your way through to Torment 4, completed the season journey, hit level 100, and finished the battle pass… there isn’t much reason to keep playing. There is nothing in the game that is so chase as to serve as that thing that keeps you spinning the randomizer for weeks on end hoping that maybe just maybe you will see it. All of that said… I am okay with that. I have Path of Exile, Path of Exile II, and Last Epoch that serve to scratch that itch for me. Diablo IV will probably always be a fun and chill romp of a game because the “Exile” games at least are deeply punitive when it comes to grouping with your friends.
Diablo III was a game that I played every three months with my friend Ace for a weekend, and then was more than happy to bounce until the next season start. It was this super fun if short event that we participated in that brought me a lot of joy. I’ve never been able to find that same level of super chill but focused gameplay in Path of Exile or the sequel Path of Exile II. We’ve been able to get to that point with Last Epoch, but even it feels a bit too punitive at times. Diablo IV however, has reached the point where we both have a focused but fun interaction during the season, and then group up to do a bunch of fun content together helping the other one get through the seasonal accomplishments before fading away and playing something else. As such I am perfectly okay if this is a short term game for me, and honestly appreciate the fact that it is because I know I can slot it in easily each time a new season comes out.
Quite honestly I appreciate the brevity. By next weekend I will be finished with Season Seven and be perfectly fine bouncing to do something else. I know that I have the next Path of Exile season 3.26 somewhere around the corner, and Last Epoch Cycle 2 in April. I also want to pop back into Guild Wars 2 and catch up on the expansion content since I have yet to engage with the second content drop from Janthir Wilds. I think I might mentally be ready to spend some time in an MMORPG again after copious grinding between Settlers League, Necro Settlers, and the launch of Path of Exile II early access. That is not to say that I am entirely done with Path of Exile II either. I do really enjoy that character and have a heck of a lot of fun mapping on it now. It just seems like ARPGs are going through the same false dichotomy that MMORPGs did years ago… with the concept of the “one true game” and that everyone feels the need to pick only one and focus on it entirely.
While I deep dive through the rabbit hole on pretty much every game that I devote time to… I also play a bunch of different games. This works for me, and quite honestly means that there is always something interesting right around the corner. It feels bad that Season Seven is getting panned so heavily, and I am concerned that the Diablo IV team is going to take the wrong lesson from that. If you have been on the fence about jumping into the Season of Witchcraft I suggest that you give it a shot. Like I said at the top of this post, it legitimately is peak Diablo IV and is pretty much the best that the game has ever been. I think the challenge is… that “best” is not what many players and streamers are looking for.
The post The Season Seven Paradox appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Hey Folks! It is that time again when we pull together our list of favorite games from 2024. In theory, we each get three primary choices and an almost unlimited number of honorable mentions… which causes us to divide the show into two packed episodes. In this case, we have 36 games on the list divided into two shows of roughly 18 games.
Good Morning Folks! It has taken a while for Diablo IV to reach the point of feeling amazing, but it truly is there. I should take a step back… it feels amazing if you are playing the new class Spiritborn. My Barbarian that I power leveled through Whispers Caches feels like complete ass comparatively. It is slower and clunkier, and mobs just don’t die anywhere near as fast as they should. Diablo IV feels amazing because Blizzard has done the thing that they do time and time again… release a wildly overpowered class. They did this in World of Warcraft with both the Deathknight and Demon Hunter, where playing literally anything else during that patch cycle felt awful compared to the new hotness. I was a Warrior tank in Wrath of the Lich King and eventually switched over to Deathknight just because it felt so much better and honestly had more tools to play with. I did this again during Legion where I started out on tried and true Warrior but eventually swapped to Demon Hunter tanking because it just felt so much better.
Maxroll just updated their Endgame Tier list and had to create a new ranking called “S+” to isolate how much different the good Spiritborn builds are as compared to the other available builds in the game. There are Spiritborn builds right now capable of doing legitimate quadrillions of damage. Even when you drop down to “S” rank, there are two Necromancer builds and one Warrior build… and at least in the case of the Warrior build I know it is mostly exploiting a bugged mechanic to be able to place that high. Essentially if you are playing Diablo IV and not playing the shiny new hotness… you are playing a different game than I am playing. The game I am playing feels amazing… the clunky mess when I drop down to playing my Dual Swing Twisters Barbarian… does not feel amazing. I lack the unique required to swap over to the broken Mighty Throw build so I cannot judge how that feels.
It is reaching the point where some of the player base is demanding nerfs… and I get it honestly. Were I playing the wrong class during this patch I would probably feel the same. However, the gameplay that Spiritborn has should be the benchmark for how the rest of the game should feel. This is an ARPG… a game about blasting your way through thousands of demons while chasing loot. The game I am playing is what Diablo IV should have been from the very start. These games are entirely centered around the joy of building up a character to the point where they can crush everything in seconds. That is the end goal of every good build regardless of which ARPG you happen to be playing. Season Six feels amazing… and I fear that as a result, Season Seven is going to feel awful. It is going to be the hangover we are left with after the bender this season has been.
Blizzard is stuck in this position where they cannot really nerf the Spiritborn because it is this class that they have defended time and time again to the players. It is the new hotness and the entire reason for buying the expansion for many. What I fear for next season is that they are going to hammer down the nail that is sticking up, when instead they really should be buffing all of the other classes to where they feel as good as Spiritborn does currently. Even the gaming pundits that have called for more challenging content, seem to be having a blast on the Spiritborn and zipping through things at record speed. The truth is… ARPGs are a power fantasy and if you cannot get powerful… it is not fun. If I cannot clear the highest level content quickly… then I am playing a bad build.
There have been a lot of really fun and broken builds that have arisen during the course of Diablo IV’s short history and all of them have been beat back down into submission. I question when Blizzard is going to realize that this is the game that the player base actually wants. There would not be this constant chase for the most bugged and aggressively rewarding build if it were not so damned fun to play in that way. The Spiritborn family of builds is just the latest in a long line of “god builds” that have come along and captured the attention of the player base. What feels worse though is the fact that in order to have fun playing this game you have to play one of like three or four builds any given season. I would love to see them buffing the underperforming builds so that they are within the range of the highest-performing builds. As it stands currently, half of the classes in the game do not have a high-performing build.
Blizzard has created a scenario that is much like it is in other more hardcore ARPGs like Path of Exile, where if you are not following a guide strictly… you are playing the game incorrectly. Sure you can limp through the campaign on pretty much anything, in either game… but you will never be able to reach the heights of farming efficiency if you are not playing whatever broken mechanic is in vogue that season. I suffered through this for a bit when I switched over to my Quill Volley build that I am playing now, where a SINGLE talent point… made the difference between struggling to run T3 content to being able to dominate T4 content. What I really want is for the same feel of playing a current well-built Spiritborn build to trickle out into all of the content in the game and all of the classes and builds. I prefer playing Upheaval Barbarian because I like the mechanics of firing a bit of sweeping attack in front of me and nuking the entire screen… but that build has not been terribly viable ever. So instead playing what I wanted to play is needlessly tedious to get through when I could just play the “IWIN” build of the season.
I am still winding down from this season. I finished out the reputation in Nahantu, am about halfway through the last level of the seasonal reputation grind, and then have to do all of the remaining Tenets of Akarat. I feel pressure to get all of this done so that I don’t have to deal with it in a future season when I am playing a less fun character. I’ve been thinking a lot about how bad Season Seven is going to feel when Blizzard inevitably does what they always seem to do and nerf the fun out of the game. Diablo IV has had a few shining moments when it was really fun to play… this season, season two… but inevitably they keep trying to bring the game into line with some vision that they have for what the experience is supposed to be. I hope I am wrong. I hope we see a line of massive buffs to bring the other classes in line with the power levels of Spiritborn… but I don’t think that will happen.
Anyways if you have ever played Diablo IV in the past, you might want to pop in and give Spiritborn a spin before it is nerfed into oblivion. It is one of those magic moments when everything is just right, and I am afraid will be a fond memory we talk about around the campfire in the future as the “good ole days”.
The post Fears for Next Season appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
