KitGuru Games: Blizzard, please stop making your game worse

Yesterday, Diablo 4's big balance patch arrived ahead of the game's first season. If you were hoping for a rebalance to make the game more fun, then you are going to be disappointed, as all Blizzard appears to have done is increase the need to grind and slow players down quite dramatically. 

I thoroughly enjoyed Diablo IV during its first month. The game has a lot to offer between its dungeons, world events and fantastic campaign. However, players have been pointing out issues in the endgame content for weeks and it seems that Blizzard can't just get out of its own way and let the players have their fun.

Classes like the Sorcerer are so weak that players are forced to use up most of their skill bar on defensive abilities. A number of builds for classes in the game are practically unplayable at World Tier 4 without the right gear and due to drop rate shenanigans, it can take quite a bit of grinding to find that item you really need to bring a build together. In some cases, that item might only be obtainable in World Tier 4.

Instead of improving the damage and defensive output of abilities and items players aren't using, they've instead chosen to nerf the ones players are using. If the hope here is that it will push players to try other things, then it is absolutely the wrong way to go about it. Taking the fun out of strong builds isn't suddenly going to make weak ones more attractive, especially amongst the dedicated players providing the most vocal feedback.

Blizzard has also made some very questionable changes to World Tiers with this patch. While before, players with good builds were comfortably getting into World Tier 4 at around level 60 to 65, there is now a level requirement in place, forcing you to tough it out on World Tier 3 until Level 70. The problem with this is that World Tier 3 becomes trivially easy very quickly. At level 66 with my Twisted Blades Rogue, I was able to do Tier 20 nightmare dungeons solo without having to ever spam my potions.

Nobody wants to grind World Tier 3 for longer than they have to, as we all know the really good stuff in Diablo is hiding in World Tier 4. The more interesting Nightmare Dungeon mechanics, harder enemies, and better loot, it is all there and for whatever reason, Blizzard doesn't want you to get to it until you've done an arbitrary amount of grinding, no matter if you're prepared to take on the challenge.

Helltides, one of the best ways to grind for better gear in the endgame, have been nerfed. Cinders, the currency needed to open up chests, now drop far less frequently. I ran a Helltide earlier this week and was easily able to farm enough Cinders to open up a few chests in around 30 minutes. Last night after the patch, I tried to run a Helltide and found that most enemies were no longer dropping Cinders. While before, doing a world event would probably net you around 50 to 60 Cinders, doing that now would only drop around 30. To make matters worse, the cost to open chests has also increased.

Another example of Blizzard purposefully slowing the game down can be found in the Dungeon Leave ability. Before, you could teleport out of a dungeon in three seconds, but now, it has been increased to five seconds. Now I'm not exactly sitting there with a stopwatch when I'm playing Diablo, but this just feels like another change that nobody asked for.

In fact, it looks like Blizzard didn't really make anybody happy with this most recent round of changes. The Diablo and Diablo IV subreddits are filled with criticisms of the new patch. Players are lamenting the lack of rewards/incentives, the costs of making changes to items at the Occultist, as well as the costs of item repairs, as well as the class-wide nerfs that have been put in place.

This isn't just something impacting the hardcore players either. Casual players who don't keep up with patch note updates are going to be wildly confused when their perfectly fine build that worked 24 hours ago is suddenly made of glass.

Some of these issues might be easier to accept if Blizzard would acknowledge some of the bigger feature requests players currently have. What we have here, is a Diablo game designed to be more ‘social', with the idea being that players run into each other and group up more often. If the goal is to foster a multiplayer community, then why on earth is there no Looking for Group or matchmaking system for Nightmare Dungeons in the game? And if that is impossible for whatever reason, then why can't we at least have in-game chat channels to ask nearby players if they want to group?

All this patch appears to have done is sour the player base ahead of the season start, with many already posting comments on the Diablo and Diablo 4 subreddits about dropping the game to play something else, like Baldur's Gate 3 or going back to Path of Exile for their next season. Up to this point, while there were some complaints with the game, players were still generally positive but this patch appears to have been a tipping point.

Blizzard itself may have already recognised this, as they are planning a Diablo 4 dev stream for later this week. Hopefully, they come to that stream armed with something resembling a plan of action.

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KitGuru Says: Have you played much Diablo since yesterday's balance patch? What do you think of the changes? 

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