Braden wrote on Jul 6, 2023, 20:15:
Meh. I got my Barbarian to Level 50 and progress suddenly seemed to slow down and become more of a XP grind.
If you moved into World Tier 3, leveling actually speeds up at 50 from what you were likely doing from 40-49.
Braden wrote on Jul 6, 2023, 20:15:
I think I've also lost much of my initial enthusiasm as well.....but at least I managed to unlock my mount! I'll mostly be playing it in brief stints going forward. Maybe I've just finally reached the end of my liking for ARPGs after all these years.
I don't think it's that at all. I think it's just that, aside from the combat and the thrill of Diablo's casino loot style, it's not a very good game.
I was super excited for the game, and was looking forward to it from the time I played it at Blizzcon years ago now. The combat felt great (and is pretty much what you see now), it had a good feel to it, and if the rest around it was just Diablo then it was all going to be good.
But that's not really what they did. The combat is Diablo but everything else is their version of Path of Exile or Lost Ark, neither of which I liked. The classes are kind of same-y, with the same builder/spender style of play, so choosing one is mostly just picking an aesthetic and what legendaries you're more comfortable with. They made the game a persistent open online world, but didn't really do anything with it. There's nothing to really find aside from collecting statues in a game full of collecting things; there's no real reason to just explore the map other than to unlock each part for reputation as fast as you can.
The online portions of the game have no purpose and aren't designed for the MMO-ish world they stuffed them into; none of the open multiplayer group events feel better for having other people doing them. Legion events are a chaotic spamfest, world bosses are a chaotic spamfest, regular events turn into a spamfest when other people are there...if they even bother to help, and not just loot the chest when you're done doing them alone, which feels awful as well. Classes aren't designed for being thrown into playing together either, with half of them requiring something that needs you to stay in one place and the other half of the classes being decked out with knockbacks. The classes are mostly just updated copies of what they were in past games, which doesn't always translate well into this newer open world style. It's baffling how they just rehashed old things and threw them into a new kind of gameplay without any real thought as to what that meant. I leveled every character to 50+, except for the Druid because it's the ugliest, most awkward character model in any game I can think of, and it breaks down to things like Bone Necro being really similar to Ice Mage, Druid is a lot like Barbarian, melee Rogue is a lot like Frenzy/Bleed Barbarian, ranged Rogue is a lot like Sorcerer with a mix of things like Shadow Imbuement basically being Fireball Enchantment, and so on. They all feel kind of alike, or share gameplay elements that do.
And there's systems upon systems upon systems, just like they did to World of Warcraft in most recent years. You don't need different kinds of loot and currency and talent points at every step of progression, and then more new tiers of loot that makes 99% of what you find just shit your eyes glaze over trying to assess...until you progress to the next world tier, and now there's ancestral gear and so on. Legendaries are exciting right up until they start dropping like candy and it's all about whether the roll on it is garbage or not, so that you can trash it to save the aspect so you can enchant it into something decent...if you can get a decent sacred/ancestral yellow to drop worth enchanting, and on and on and on. And now with the seasons they're adding yet another currency and system onto it.
I kind of went off on a rant for a game that I absolutely hate being so negative about, but there are so many fundamental problems with the game that I can't see it ever becoming something I'd ever want to play into the future. Besides all those systems, having your character build be so wrapped up in random loot that your character either works or doesn't based on what drops you have just absolutely kills any desire to start a new character and replay through the game...but that's what they want you to do, probably every season. I'll give Season 1 a shot, but I already don't want to start over at all.
It's ok to not want to deal with the grind, because the game is almost all grind. It's a game designed to funnel people into an endgame that has no real point or purpose other than being a grind, and each tier of advancement makes the one before it feel like you only endured it so you could start the next. The only goal is to keep playing, and you've already started doing the things that comprise the 50+ endgame before you've even finished leveling to that point. I did the level 70 capstone at level 63, and I felt like I beat the game and haven't played since...I have no desire to grind to 100 just to fight a harder boss for no reason other than to say I did it.