Yo man! I really loved watching your reaction and hearing some well-thought out counter arguments to my video. You also bring up some great points about balancing the game around hardcore so that those players don't get annihilated by some random demon that's 30 levels higher than them. You clearly love Diablo so keep up the good work! And hey, if you ever want to have me on your stream to talk Diablo and shoot the shit, I'd love to do that.
I think he's talking about FEELING stronger, not objectively being stronger. You're obviously stronger at higher level, but since the enemies scale with you you now have to use all that power to beat the same enemy you could already beat, making you feel like you didn't really get any stronger at all - if anything you now need to use more abilities to beat the same enemy, which makes those abilities feel weak and unimpactful
Since strength is always relative (no one would say that the weakest man is weaker than the strongest bacteria, despite them falling behind or excelling in their respective categories, nor would anyone ever reasonably put the two in a fight. In this case, even though the 'weakest man' may get strength at literally impossible levels, every other man grows at the same rate, making him still the weakest man regardless of his personal growth), it is true that the player does, in fact, remain at the same strength throughout the entire game, at least as far as level scaling is concerned. In other words, it takes exactly as much time to kill a monster who has 100 hp with 10 dps as it does to kill a monster with 10,000 hp with 1,000 dps. And unfortunately for you, the enemies scale with your dps.
This only happens at certain points - when you go into a new world tier, and it's supposed to work that way because you just increased the difficulty. Beyond that, you get into the higher world tier and you'll get progressively stronger as you level, out scaling the enemies. If that's not happening it's either because your gear or skills.
He makes a good point at the end. If developers want you to experience the content, they should make that content the most rewarding aspect of the game. If they want you to quest, it should give the most xp. Instead, they encouraged everyone to spam dungeons. And now, they spam nightmare dungeons. What was the point in making this beautiful open world if they’re not going to incentivize anybody to do things in it?
It's a fig leaf to cover the nakedness of the gameplay due to it being just a shallow loot gambling experience. Same thing bigger numbers with more dopamine. This franchise is basically dead as a creative endeavor.
@@ES-qm5hr all the low iq sheep consumers sucking on it so bad ... amazing ! i commend you for seeing trough this shit ..gamer's are one of the most delusional people ive ever talked to .
I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where the side quest rewards are as bad as D4. Literally every side quest gives you 3 herbs and 1/1000th of your XP bar. Like seriously what was Blizzard thinking.
@@sdotwallace The point you made is a poor one especially considering they expect people to farm renown every season the fact that player power is connected to such a poor system isnt a good thing
I think the main point that Actman is making is very simple and irrefutable: No one should have to waste 30 hours of their life on a game they paid $70 dollars for in order to begin having fun. The quality of the endgame content is inconsequential if no one wants to get through the early game.
@@msrumedia5616The endgame is harder than the early game with being able to have tier 100 nm dungeons It’s probably not that hard with PC Hota shockwave glitch
36:12 the ultimate being it’s own button and having one more skill slot would make the game so much better, this is a super underrated point. I was actually so surprised when I got my ult and realized it wasn’t it’s own button.
Yeah basically every build feels like it Juuuuust needs a single other button. And my first thought originally for the way to change that without completely changing the game entirely is add a specific button entirely for your basic skill cuz u have to have 1 anyways. After hearing the mention of an ultimate skill button from ppl tho I immediately felt like thatd be even better and make even more sense. Some builds (rogue for example) just feel better and more fluid without an ultimate to some degree because of this issue..
I'd also like to add that making your dodges make you uncontrollable would also help since some skills are used solely due to it making you uncontrollable
With the elden ring example you don't have to "sequence break" because caelid its literally touching the starting area. You head east and can accidentally find yourself there. There are also chests that will send you there and not let you warp out. It is not the same as slogging all the way across the map ignoring dozens of engagements and towns and dungeons just to get to a listed higher level zone. One feels natural like you've explored and found high level stuff or was even ambush teleported there like an event and the other is looking at the map for a listed higher level area and traveling there in a boring road trip manner.
Agreed. DM missed the point. In D4 you have to actively try to skip content to get to zones that are too high of level, and its only the case at low levels. In elden you can wind up there purely by accident and that adds a dynamic that D4 sorely lacks. It completely removes that element of risky exploration.
"Why did i have to beat the game for a challenge?" - i highly agree with this. if you say; I have to speed-run the story for difficultly, in a "open world game", it suddenly loses one of those two labels (difficult, or free-world). P.S. Caelid is a Challenge (hard but doable early game) in D4 areas you are not leveled to = instant death.
and the "then play hardcore" comment was dumb as hell if it wasn't a joke. loosing my whole character doesn't make the game better or even harder it just makes getting cc'd to death even more annoying and the on death effects that one hit you from off screen are a thing so these problems would be even worse on hardcore. and it wouldn't be harder it would just be more frustrating and a slog to get through. what the player wants is a difficulty that is hard enough to be a challenging aswell as fair.
It wasnt about the voice acting in diablo 1 it was the fact that each character in the town actually had dialogue about their own opinions of what was happening and from their perspective
@Nightwalk444 the thing is the game should be able to draw you in the first go around right? Otherwise why diablo and not any other number chasing grind?
People really don't understand that back then, the voice acting was actually terrific. Video game voice acting was hardly a thing at all, nobody took it seriously. I really don't think it's that bad, people just love to insult anything that's even remotely dated. I personally think Liliths VA sucks lol
Darkness isn't just seeing some guts on the floor. The grit and gravity felt when he says, "Look what this stone has done to me." It conjures the imagination.
I'm a D4 player atm. I own the deluxe edition. I'm almost 7 weeks into the game. Unfortunatelly for me, to be absolutely honest, the 2 most important things I notice in an ARPG the adrenaline and the satisfaction, they are both way higher with D2R than with D4.
Yeah the game is seriously lacking in dopamine spikes and it's because of "social" aspect of the game. Everything has to be accesable to a party of different levels so they can't level lock many interesting things. Hit level 50, when the grind begins, and you've seen most of what the game has to offer which you have to play with a limited amount of skills to choose from and there are even fewer builds actually viable making this pretty monotonous.
I had the exact same experience as TheActMan. It's not like we "played the game wrong". We just played the game, and it was a cakewalk all the way to Hell, even a slog at times. That's not good. I liked half the story, but there were some side quests I enjoyed more; it gave more of a village feel to do things for specific people whose lives you were given a glimpse of. I didn't really "establish a connection" with the main characters, as much as I did certain side quest givers, all of whom I've now forgotten the names of. Then I went to Nightmare Lilith and had a good fight, but not hard. Now I'm on Hell difficulty, and it seems like I'm just staring at hunting for small incremental item stat boosts. Like MrLlamaSC said, "it's like 1000 paper cuts". So many tiny AND huge things are wrong. - The horse controls, the constant hitching on little corners, and all the patches of ground where it takes baby steps. How was it shipped like this? - The stat pool is bloated, making items extremely difficult to compare, to the point where I sometimes truly have no idea which one is better and I just give up. - Blatant bugs in the resistance calculations, and likely other things that we just haven't found, because it's all too complicated. - Just as an example, why do all the wolves look the same throughout the game, even if they're elite? It's so boring. In D2 they at least changed their colors, usually to match elite affixes or in this particular area they're all blue instead of red, which gave a much better illusion of breadth in enemy designs. - There's no excuse for the item icons to look so bad. Why does every item look brownish and greyish? And there are very few effects and colors on them. I guess the stat pool is so complicated, that they just gave up showing any matching effects/looks on the items. In Diablo 2, the items would have e.g. blue tint if they dealt ice damage and green if they had poison damage, usually both on their inventory icon and the model on the character, so you could distinguish them somewhat by their colors. There are only scraps of that in D4, aside from legendary and up, making 90% of the loot look bland, especially in the first 50 levels of the game. Why? How have they messed up so many designs, when they had such a huge backlog of lessons to study? Since it was a new set of developers, I would expect them to do study up. This is a billion dollar company we're talking about, and everyone playing paid at least $60 for this game. It's weird. Was no QA done? Was it rushed? Some of these faults are so huge, that they will likely not get changed.
yeah DM made a point about how actman took his time levelling, and i can now understand DM's point of view, but if that's the case, the case does a horrible job of teaching or guiding you to play the game in a certain way, probably because its as much assumes you already know how to play it because you play PoE. But i didn't come to play a PoE clone, i came to play diablo
DM’s take was wrong IMO. Its not “your fault” for doing the content in front of you (side quests, strongholds, dungeons etc). Thats the game. If you play the game (rather than ignoring everything and rushing the story) the game breaks by becoming super easy. This is the devs fault not the players. It would be so easy to just unlock tier 3 at level 1. Or level 20. Whatever. Its nonsense. Im playing a second time skipping everything except the campaign. Its better, but honestly still too easy. I haven’t died on a boss yet. It really kills the sense of achievement when you beat everything the first time.
@calebserafy7933 You can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe borderlands had level scaling in it at true vault hunter playthrough and the enemies there didn't just scale to you, but a little past you. Like if you were level 65 then the enemy's could be like 67 or 8 right? Couldn't Diablo do that or am I high?
@@xthekeymakerx1594 That's what usually is the case. Trash mobs should be a minor challenge, but a challenge nonetheless. Then elites and bosses give you those moments where you buckle up and conquer a bigger challenge, and then you go back to the lesser challenge of the trash mobs. In D4, trash mobs either do nothing or are too slow to ever hit you, or they one-shot you. Feels bad.
On the other hand when you can't skip some parts of the game you are quickly getting annoyed by them. It's importnant to understand that you have a choice and can choose things you are enjoying.
@@Lecruidant Hey, I see that you have bought a big game that we have bloated out of proportion with tedious tasks that we shitted all over the map. And you don't have time to finish it, want me to speed it up a bit? Look here, it's a gem that allows you to...
19:40 Yes, you can cross the entire map to find the harder area, but that also means you skipped literally everything in between. In a first playthrough I'd assume most people explore a bunch. They do the quests. They do the dungeons and cellars. They go back for a stronghold or two. This means that they keep levelling the entire way, and during this entire way they'll only meet enemies that are at roughly their level. Whether they're moving forward with their exploration of the zone they found, or going back to get to the stronghold they couldn't do first time around. In WoW, as an example, if I want to go from Undercity to WP, I can pass by the enemies because I grew past them. I am much stronger than I used to be. In D4 I'd have to keep fighting the bats and the hounds every time I pass through because they stay at my level. I never get the sense I progressed past fighting a small bat. In D4 I'd be fighting the monstrous demons of hell on equal footing, much like the warg in the act 1 area if I go back there. I did not get stronger in any meaningful way. Yes, you are right that I could not have fought that demon at lvl5, but where is my progression if I never leave any sort of enemy behind? I never grew past the warg.
Counterpoint, if those places didn't scale with you then you would only have one or two places on the map where you could encounter any meaningful combat. Everything else besides the very last area would be just dead space. The experience of "hey look I slaughter these bats in one hit. I couldn't do that before! Neat!" I think would end up being a pretty empty victory in the long run as you realize that there is literally nothing left for you in this area.
I definitely understand his point of not wanting to have to put 30 hours into the game to start enjoying it, but it’s so strange to me that he got to the first capstone dungeon, admittedly the most fun part to him thus far, and stopped playing right after that.
When I was struggling with my barbarian I almost gave up I felt weak I was on world tier 1 I wasn't having fun but I stuck with it for stronger and when I changed to world tier 2 and went into that first capstone dungeon to unlock world tier 3. I had so much fun seeing my barbarian rib and tear through that dungeon. I'm so glad I didn't give up
he plays lighting storm and companion build lmao. ofc hes not gonna make it. My lvl 43 pulv druid having a blast on helltides almost one shotting any mobs. The problem in d4 is the game is not casual friendly except for the necro class
He stopped at the capstone after realizing besting the campaign was finishing all the content. After that there nothing to do but aimlessly wonder around a world where everything has the same power at all times because scaling
My main takeaway as someone fondly remembering the D2 era, there needs to be moments in the campaign that no matter what you did during your campaign progression, there should be moments that are skill checks. D2 itself often felt trivial up until I faced Andariel and found myself running around terrified of all the god damn poison. Then Act 2 came and intermittently felt some difficulty but overall not that bad....then Duriel comes along and kicks my ass. The act bosses need to be emphasized and made to feel actually epic. There's times were I had no idea I completed an act because it just felt so anti-climactic that I didn't realize I was moving on to a new act. D2 there was just no question because I just had to spend so long surviving and eventually killing some badass boss. There was a certain satisfaction too bringing in new friends and leveling with them and witnessing them experiencing the game knowing what they'd eventually face and seeing their reaction. D4 really just doesn't have any of that. I do enjoy the game, but it lacks the kind of leveling experience unless you make a real effort ignoring all side content and even then it's just not the same.
I'm so glad I didn't buy D4. I knew after the spectacular failures of D3 that I was done with Diablo games. I just play D2R ladder now. Really all they needed to do was make more expansions for D2R😂 They would've made more money and players would like it way better I believe. Or just use the EXACT FRAME WORK from D2 for D4. Just add/ change skills. Maybe add some past lvl 30 skills, idk. All future D games are dead to me tho, they killed it 🤷♂️
@@willistan3562 I know it isn't. I don't judge a game by how much money it brings in tho. I don't care what everyone else likes, I buy what I like. And D2R imo is just so much better. The scaling aspect alone absolutely ruins D4 imo.
@@Hxn1027 its so easy to see which people has friends to play with and which people are shouting at the sky at the gall of making it more coop friendly lmao
D2 had less NPCs which made everybody of them easier to memorize. I wouldnt say D2 NPCs are better then D4, but you have so many in D4 that it makes it difficult to remember them by name. Excluding Vigo, cause hes the biggest chad of them all.
I think if you have to play the game a certain way, that's still an issue. Like if exploring and doing side quest just completely over levels you for the rest of the game that is a problem because you shouldn't expect people to just try to rush to the end of an open world game. To me that's failing to account for a core feature of the genre.
I kinda see your point but I think it gives players choice. It also helps players choose their personal difficulty level. Plus it works that way in like every rpg ever. To use elden ring for example. It’s an extremely difficult game IF you just play through it, but if you max every area and farm your brains out then you can help yourself especially if you know you’re not that skilled or are struggling with the game difficulty.
Yeah absolutely. I was almost in the same position as DM, I rushed the campaign, so near the end I started to be underlevel (lvl36 for Lilith, I died 9 times before killing her lol), and it was challenging, so it was really fun. But only because I rushed it. And even then, it became challenging only with Duriel and after basically. Before that, I didn't felt in danger. So I get his point, if you are forced to rush the campaign and ignore the rest of the game just to be challenged in the campaign, this is a game design problem. And if you don't rush it, you basically have to play like maybe 20-30+ hours of easy and boring gameplay just to start enjoy the game, which is not a good thing either. And this is exactly why I rushed the campaign. I wanted to end it as fast as possible to access the interesting gameplay, the mid/end-game. But it leads to another problem. I was challenged near the end, but because I rushed the campaign as fast as I could, I didn't enjoyed the campaign... For me, it was just a boring task to finish to start enjoy the game most of the time. Maybe it's only me, I'm not gonna talk for everyone, but that's just how I felt the campaign. But I feel like whatever you do, there is a problem. And I'm just talking about the campaign lol...
Counter point is that the side content is always there. You can side quest all the way up in WT4. I'm not say that you should accidently be over powered for the main quest, but it isn't the easiest to prevent. if it was than we wouldn't have so many game with this problem. while D4s scaling could make this less of a problem, WT1&2 stop at lvl 50. I'm not disagreeing, but this is a problem with games in general (even more so with more freedom of where you can go and when).
The scaling is probably the worst element of Diablo 4. It is not that you want to go back and crush this stuff now that you're stronger (if that's your thing cool). It's that constant feeling that everything you do is the same in the game. It's easier to say it's like putting a carrot dangling in front of you that you chase, that you never really catch up with. For more than likely a large number of people, it will make you sleepy or disinterested.
@@KoiKoy56 but what if you want to take your time and play the game explore everywhere, uncover secrets and be in the world? and not be pestered from across the map by the same event, that you HAVE to go through to get somewhere else only to be CC'd by yet ANOTHER bunch of annoying mobs that drag out your ecounter and aren't able to blast through? the game keeps dragging you and forcing you to play it, its way, on its terms, not your own
@@KoiKoy56 level scaling makes every game worse tbh it doesnt make that one shot mob more fun to kill it makes it a slog to get through what should be a oneshot rats milion billion healthbar
@@KoiKoy56 dont get me wrong, but that sounds rather elitist, especially considering ive been using build guides from some very successful and well established youtubers, aaaaand i would say and DM here in the video agreed, you cannot be overlevelled in d4 as the more gear you get the challenge mobs bring increases, as he said of act man finishing lilith at 50, he was way over levelled and made it harder form himself because he made lilith stronger. .....so either you know something they dont, or your dismissing anything that doesnt conform with your opinion as a skill based player issue, or git gud as they say, which seems a bit coujter productive to make other players stay, when its not just us two commenters saying these things, in fact it seems there are less players with your opinion, hence the videos and the discussion. So what is it we are missing then?
@@KoiKoy56 i would love to know what kinds of classes and buikds you are using then that are that strong, they clearly need to be introduce to the meta then, considering how many other class builders there are out there, not doing it properly it seems, of which i can agree building a necro i tested a fair share of builds that dont suit y personal playstyle or are just plain junk
The level scaling is an issue imo. You shouldn’t “over level” Lilith Bc if you’re level 50 when you fight her, she scales up to 50 and should be as difficult. You shouldn’t have to burn through the story and be 10 levels below her to have a challenging fight.
Yeah all the points this guy brings up in counter are “oh you gotta run through the campaign, fight things ten recommended levels higher than you, play for 20+ hours in order to unlock difficulties you feel are challenging” when the whole point is you shouldn’t need to do that, and because the game is semi-linear you’ll never actually fight an opponent you have a hard time beating if you play the game the way it’s supposed to be played
Imho not scaling per se is a problem but the way it was implemented because if it worked properly breezing through the campaign vs being slow should not result in 2 completely different playthroughs. To minimize this problem: * 1st playthrough should be super linear with mobs that doesn't scale at all (to give you power fantasy of beating regular shits more easily with time). * Mid tier mobs scale softly - they should feel stronger than you but still fighting with them should not be a chore. Still power fantasy is a core of a arpg game. * Bosses should scale always to feel stronger than you. No matter how you play bosses should have minimal lvl and scale infinitely so there is no scenario when final boss is a joke. After your 1st playthrough scaling could be stronger to not make your character feel like God and still give you some hardships. But then you have this whole problem of boring character progression and itemization that make this game still boring to play. And all mentioned by Act artificial constraints like 5 main skills and necessity to pick meta ones. There is no theory crafting, no experimentation - without a guide you can see which build is the best. Color coding matching skills doesn't help either. And I agree to this day that even consoles could handle more shortcuts but Blizzard did what? They gave us emoticons and potions as shortcuts for a radial menu...not skills...emotes and potions.... They have tech to give us more choices but nah laziness won be aus hurr durr "balancing"
A major point he's making without stating clearly is he wants the difficulty levels available from the beginning. He doesn't want tier 3 or 4 locked behind 20 to 30 hours of numbingly easy gameplay
Also saying "i beat the campaign at level 31 and lilith was hard" kind of makes you part of the problem, cause that punishes people who WANT to play the campaign, enjoy the world and do sidequests for background story. He just ran rhrough it to start min maxing, which should not be the main thing to do in a fckin RPG !
@@Cr0nk This was exactly my thought. Hes basically agreeing with act man 100% by saying that, which means that the campaign, and the content of the game is not even worth playing, and you should just rush through the campaign to actually enjoy the game. So why even have the other stuff in the game in the first place? None, its pointless.
This video helped me realize, the huge rift there is between RPG and ARPG audiences, they value different things in games, both have 100% valid points of view even in the things that seem diametrically oposed, because of that difference in values, I think the most important thing Act Man says, is in the first seconds of his video, that, he no longer feels like the target audience for Diablo, and he is probably correct, this game's main target audience is ARPG gamers, as someone who belongs firmly in the RPG audience, I play games for the narrative, the RP part, the escapism, worldbuilding, and maybe a bit the challenge, but the grind, absolutely not, also not interested in killing 1000 enemies per second, and viceversa, I'm sure people in the ARPG audience like and play games for the opposite reasons. It's just a little sad that it feels like Diablo is no longer welcoming to the RPG audience, since to get to the good part you have to blast through the story and the RP part.
but there is not even a good endgame in d4 if u compare to d2, there is less build variety, less item options and no reason to play this game for years over and over again like d2. there is a reason that people have been playing this game for ages
@@yeahnahyeahm8496 i mean hell difficulty by late game , and its a hell lot more fun to figure out immunities and overcoming the cahllenge hell monsters impose
Yes, strength is for melee characters, Intelligence is for magic characters. He was using strength as an example. Strength usually gives you more damage, or ability to wear more armor.
He was also a druid, where strength does didly-poop for them, since Willpower is their main stat, and also quite a bit of intelligence and dexterity in the paragon tree.
Example of... what? He just seemed to not understand how the stats work. I'm not sure what the issue is with a stat giving armor when there are 4 stats? Not every stat is key to every class and as DM said you're not supposed to try and max str if you're a druid, you max willpower. By this logic D4 is actually way better than most other RPGs because in most RPGs stats that don't scale with your build or class are just useless.
@@basblobhe's saying that strength doesn't do what strength normally do when you level strength normally you do more dmg and can use heavy weapons. Getting armour from strength is counterintuitive. Regardless of what class he played it has nothing to do with it. It's like if Int would give you more physical armour and not buff your magic. It was pretty clear what he meant imo i don't get the confusion
strenght should give more melee damage PERIOD. even if you play mage and want to wack people with your stick: strenght should help.period. So imagine playing a big buff druid who can shapeshift and... strenght does nothing
Boar is just an extreme example of the lack of scaling "power fantasy", but even just being able to get back to the boss easier because you leveled up doesn't happen really because of the level scaling.
I love how you said "nobody plays a ARPG for the NPCs" when Diablo 1 literally imvented the ARPG genre and had NPCs that are so iconic everyone knows them to this day lol.
i have 10k hours on d2 and dont give a single fuck about any npcs in it, arpgs are just there to dominate demons a decent story and characters are a plus but most people that play them couldnt care less
Your the minority nobody played diablo for the story it was for the gameplay. People who wanted story were playing table top, DnD and other shit. I have no fkn idea where people get this perception that when d1 and d2 were current people were talking about story they were not thats only retroactive 20 years later.
@@maxpowers4436 well i am talking about the NPC's not the story. The NPC's added flavour to the world which helped with immersion. Everyone today knows Deckard Cain. Why? Because he had a interesting voice and he said "Stay awhile and listen." He became so iconic that when he was killed off by a butterfly in D3, people lost their shit lol. You could kill off any NPC in D4 and i would be, like....who? *shrug*
@@maxpowers4436He said confidently,.. having just beat the BUTCHER, while standing in tristrim talking about mephisto. How old are you? You honestly played D1? don't lie to kick it. If Diablo 4 was all diablo 1 had to offer, there wouldn't have been 4 more launches.
All positives and negatives of the game aside and the fact, that your life right now is basically centered around D4, I highly appreciate your neutral and differentiating stance. You explain your takes and generate zero drama even with the points you don't agree with. I think this is highly professional and I like it! Please never lose that.
@@fonsorell0 for example he criticizes act man for being overleveled to fight Lilith but that's because act man played the game like a normal gamer and took his time and actually played a good chunk of the content instead of what diablo fan-boys do where they blast through the campaign as fast as they can and then just grind the same dungeons over and over after that. DM was basicly saying it's act man's fault for not ignoring 3/4 of the content and just blazing through the campaign. It's Act Man's fault for trying to enjoy every part part of the game. DM knows this argument is ridiculous but he also knows people like you either won't notice or won't care. To me it's super lazy and disingenuous.
With your point about taking too long to get through the campaign just keep in mind that if you do the sidequests diligently because you're OCD about your quest log, you will hit level 50 before you finish act 2. I learned that enemies won't level past 50 until you beat the campaign when I was level 46(!) in the middle of act 2 and then ignored all sidequests and blitzed the rest of the campaign and it was a very jarring experience. They designed the world to explore and if you're one of the players who likes to do that you get punished for it in that sense. But I'm definitely not the only person who plays like this (sidequests then main quest). The honest game trailers guy made the same point.
90% of players are not going to rush the campaign and beat it at 31. The game's intended path has you beating it at 50 and starting WT4 at 70. If the game's intended path is too easy, the game is too easy. And if you beat a lvl 50 campaign at lvl 31, that kind of reinforces the idea that it's too easy. Blowing through the campaign would be even more boring for me than just dealing with the piss easy bosses.
Couldnt agree more im with the actman with this subject. I personally dont like blasting thru the campaign just to get to endgame I noticed alot of ppl who disagree with this put an unrealistic amount of time with this game
Agree 100%. The game gives you too many side quests thus allowing you to over level. Its not the players job to understand they are overleveling themselves. We wont know that anyways until its too late BECAUSE of the scaling. We dont know we at 10+ levels too high because we arent seeing it.
I don't quite understand the point here. DM plays this game a heck of a lot longer than most gamers. If the argument is that it's "too easy" then everyone should be able to achieve that instead of the best of the best players. Further more, there already is a hard mode right from the get go. To be honest the difficulty is about one of the things they got right given the way they implemented the system.
This is like complaining you can grind levels in a game so the game is too easy. You might be intended to be at X level for X content, but if you have a functioning brain higher than 75 IQ you can figure out if it's too easy to stop grinding or stop blaming the game for your drool bucket filling too quick.
It's not just about the leadup to the tree of whispers. It's the post-reveal where you go to learn more about it from different NPCs. Imagine if the main chars had a lot of story about it but then when you randomly go around towns you can talk to certain vendors or other NPCs about it and some of them providing different part or their own perspective on it etc. It would help establish it as something really important and big in the world, not just some random thing no one knows about.
yea one big thing i noticed in d4, was just how much more dead the towns felt, i mean there were sprites placed there and an occasional discussion to be overheard, but it felt defeaning compared to even d3 as to feeling like you were in a bustling commercial port, or a paranoia filled hamlet. i gotta go back and play them again just to see
I think that what you're saying is technically true about scaling , there is an actual evolution.... However and this is where i kinda get Actman , that's not how it actually feels for many. When you mix that kind of grind with the scaling , enough people will just feel that they aren't progressing , that they character aren't exactly getting increasingly powerful , and just facing the same level of challenge when repeating zones and foes , or even just feel that it get worse and they're just weaker the more their level up and gear up . Of course it's not true , but it does not matter , the perception of it and how it feels will take priority here . He is , well both of you , are right on CC chains .... it just feels horrendeous . it is something Blizzard had feedback over since all the betas , but they insist on this . It's ridiculous to get stuck between 6-8 elites and die because you are just stunlocked and frozen for many seconds (if your survivability is high) till you die . Nobody enjoys that
My character felt more powerful at every single 5 level increment. The open world just got easier and easier and lost all challenge. The only exception was right after moving up world tiers which speaks for itself.
I felt like I was chasing power and could never get it. It’s an awful experience and I don’t want to play past level 53 I have been putting more hours into Halls of Torment.
Yeah the CC chains are ridiculous. The on death effects are ridiculous. Many of the monsters in D4 are more dangerous dead than alive. And the ones that are alive are only dangerous when they CC you. Its lazy game design.
I think the conversation around difficulty is an example of a thing gamers do where people assume their enjoyment of a game is related to its difficulty when it’s often not, They just have a series of preexisting beliefs that back them into a place where they assume games they like must be hard and games they don’t must be easy. The channel folding ideas talks about it in his video on WoW classic, if you want it explained better.
The solution to the scaling difficulty is actually just super easy: Make it an option whenever you enter the game. Want to play with mates on a couch? turn it on. Want to just play an rpg game without the insanity that is auto scaling enemies? Leave it off.
City of Heroes (and probably other games but this is the one that comes to mind for me) had this solved decades ago: when partying with people higher/lower level than you, you have the option to scale to their level and play the content while receiving your actual level-appropriate rewards. yes, if your 50+3 character scaled down you were still stronger than your low-level friend because you still had (scaled back) bonuses from your max-level build, and if you scaled up as a level 1 to 49 you were still much weaker than most level 49s because you didn't have a full build and set of powers, but you were still able to DO things with people of those levels without sacrificing the feeling of player and enemy power progression every rpg should have. no idea how it continues to elude companies that a lot of people don't like the auto-scaling crap and there are better ways to do it.
i do agree that the level scaling does take away a big part of the fun, i'm a new diablo player that was hoping to get that power fantasy experience my cousins raged about back in the day but was kinda let down. probably my fault though for having false expectations
Yeah. Just play D2R, Grimdawn, or older games like Titan Quest, Sacred, etc. Those are better than D4. Blizzard is just a cesspool of bad games now. The Blizzard we love died before or after the Wrath of the Lich King.
The point about Diablo 1 and talking to each villager wasn't about the quality of the voice acting,. but that you could have the conversations. If this was applied to Diablo IV, they would obviously have high quality voice acting, they wouldn't rely on technology and approaches to voice acting from 26 years ago when Diablo came out. It's about the smaller scale and ability to flesh out quests with more value. It's applying the ideas and approach to a modern game to breathe more life into the world.
The survivability thing is so true, i found myself treating the maps as a helpful tool(they were like mazes) in diablo 2, using doors like a bottleneck to fight mobs.
I had no idea there were lower level limits to content either. By my measure I practically "rushed through" the campaign, but that still had me doing a bunch of side quests, exploring, and dungeons that caught my interest. As a result I was level 50 by the time I hit Lilith, and at no point had I encountered any content that was not scaled up to my level. I could try it now I guess, but I have no desire to sit through the entire campaign again. I'm also with ActMan on the story. The opening is great, the ending is good, and the middle is kind of mid. Some moments are cool, the snakewalk and chatty tree, the drowning box, black friday at Caldeum, character cameos and others, but a lot of it feels somewhere between busywork and a missed opportunity to make more of an impact. Lorath's monologues are an example; in lieu of chapters, the monologues are essentially bookends to sections of the story. They're an opportunity to impress on the player what has happened, or introduce fairly blatant foreshadowing. Instead they're bland platitudes with images panning over unrelated gravestones? Take the first one after the prologue, when Lorath rides out of Kyovashad, we could have had a short cinematic with a black wolf's paw ominously stepping in snow, Lilith walking through a Scosglen forest as demons rise in her footsteps, Neyrelle's mother descending the mine shaft. For the ending one in Hell, throw in a last shot of Inarius' body being swallowed by the Damned, Prava stumbling back into Caldeum, Neyrelle resolving on her path. Part of my issue with the story is Modern Gaming and More is More. In Diablo 1, the entire story is about Leoric, Lazarus and Diablo. In Diablo 2, the entire story is about Diablo, Tyrael, and later Baal. The player is just a faceless janitor coming in after hours to pick up the pieces, and any motivations or impressions he has are those we ascribe to him. Only in the very end is the player relevant to the story, and that sense of being a side character on a stage of immortals is what makes them such compelling gothic/cosmic horror. In Diablo 3, and again in 4, we need to have modern storytelling, the player can only be invested and immersed if he is the hero, the focal point of the story. But since a player character must be a faceless vehicle for plot he can't have a defined personality (shush Geralt), so he becomes a tagalong in a story about a small ensemble of "heroes" where he only performs token interactions, while the ones that should be the main characters of the story, Lilith, Inarius and Mephisto, are reduced to foils. D4 does avoid the gratuitously awful beats of standing around doing nothing while watching Deckard being murdered (Donan doesn't count, we never got to like him), or Azmodan bragging about his genious immunity to face stabbing as we cleverly stab him in the face.
well said. and yea i only ever noticed a few quest that weren't exactly my level, being 2 levels no more, being as someone that uses quest levels to determine what and how i tackle things depending on how i want to go through the game. but yeah i agree the game just ended up feeling like a big blob of meh, with activision waiting at then end pointing me to the shop front with its hand out saying "give me more money now" ugh
Hard agree on the inventory space. I would be happy to see that get a bump in space. I’d even pay gold or obols to get an extra row tbh. Loot system is bearable for me. I understand the game type and if I get bored with the grind, I’m happy to just play another game till something new piques my interest again
Dude, I think his point about the stat increases, such as raising strength, mattered even with sorceresses, because if you wanna wear heavy armor, you have to invest in strength. If want to have a better block rate, or increase your attack rating, you have to have more dexterity. Even if sorcs don’t usually swing mauls, the strength increase meant something. Also wanted to say it’s nice to have a different viewpoint, and your demeanor is appreciated
Well, it's not as cool as being able to put on new gear when you hit a minimum stat, but D4 does have some extra benefits for hitting minimum stats. The rare nodes on the paragon board have secondary bonuses if you have a certain score in a stat (I play barb and have them for str/dex/will but haven't seen one for int). But it gave me incentive to get some "all stats" bonuses on my gear to get some extra will and dex to get those extra bonuses
When's the last time you played D2? The stat spread for almost every build in the entire game is exactly the same and has been for 20 years. Str: enough to wear gear Dex: either 0 or enough for max block Vit: Literally everything else Energy: 0. The only exceptions are full glass cannon amazon who puts a ton in dex and Energy shield sorc who puts all their points in energy instead of Vit. And by endgame between hellfire torch, annihilus, charms, and your gear you usually don't even need points in str or dex, so LITERALLY every stat point goes into Vit. Fully buffed an endgame character can have around 2500HP...which is 5 times the amount of HP that the best healing potion in the game heals. I will give it to you that when you're initially leveling you might put a few points in dex or energy for attack rating/having a bit more mana, but even with crappy starter gear later you want to respec out of that. The damage increase from putting points into str is negligible (gives like 1 damage every few points...and you do literally thousands of damage endgame) and is never the reason you put points in str. Wearing heavier armor is useless, the elite versions of armors have very little difference in maximum defense, and you have to have an absurd amount of defense for it to matter at all, I'm talking like 10000 defense which is really only obtainable by paladin using holy shield. You don't survive by wearing heavy armor you survive by having maxxed resistances, absurd amounts of HP (by putting almost all of your stat points in Vit), % damage reduction, being fast (either run speed or teleport), lifesteal, and most importantly, obliterating the screen before the things on the screen kill you. Source: I've played D2 and then D2R at least 1 season almost every year for the last 17 years, every single class and practically every single build, including the meme melee sorc build that uses enchant on herself and whacks things.
I'd push back on your defense of the scaling mechanic. If you have to ignore all the side content while going through the campaign then it isn't balanced well.
@@crazyguywatchnu in mmos if you kill 1000 wolves you can choose to skip killing kobold quests, if you kill 100 000 spiders you can choose to skip the next zone entirely and go directly to duskwood without touching westfall. In diablo 2 if you wana skip getting the horadric cube... good luck trying to get to act 3. Blizzard didn´t get the memo but even in GW2 wich has both open world and scaling levels for enemies, they do not force you to complete the campaign, because of this exact issue. It would be impossible to make it feel good or challenging for all levels and gears at all points of every character progression. Hence u make it optional that way people who do it in the intended level can have a challenge and those who would breeze trough it can choose to skip it entirely.
In D2R you don't have to use the F keys to swap abilities anymore. You can bind whatever keys you want. So you get a lot more skill flexibility than D4 currently has.
This was the exact reason why I gave up on D3. The fact every skill I had would kill every monster in the game and I didn't have to think about a strategy for immunes or auras made the game so boring for me. My witch was so powerful and it didn't matter what build I had. I dominated everything so quick so easily that I tried to find the WEAKEST build to make the game more fun. And it was STILL to easy. Blizzards "fix" for this? Add 15 more difficulty levels. Wtf?
@@RickieJrwho said that they have to be level one and useless? You can create insanely intricate builds which require pre casting two or three buffs and then actively use 2 or three combat abilities plus teleport. Add to that defensive skills, you have a build with more than 6 useful abilities which you can use at any time without additional cooldowns.
@@RickieJr that depends heavily on your class. a lot of classes will easily max out the skill slots and yeah, a lot of skills are super useful on level 1 and are used heavily. teleport, all the curses, bunch of shouts, telekinesis, golem, holy shield, mind blast, burst of speed, a bunch of summon skills across several classes, static field, corpse explosion ect, all heavily used if not mandatory for their class at level 1.
This honestly made D2R playable for me. I was never able to get around the jankiness of that f skill to right click. I never played it. Then D2R added action bars? I played through all the way to 94 on my sorc. Its actually WILD how that one single thing made the game go from a tedious slog that I couldnt get through act 3 in to instant classic I replay every season!
18:26 the thing is that the campaign doesnt lead you to this location. You only go there if you have a reason to go, where as In elden ring the game tells you to go anywhere you want, because in each zone there are bosses to kill and an area to discover. So because elden ring suggests you to go to khealid but not when to go, the only thing that tells you that you are ready or not is the difficulty. I think the core problem of d4 campaign is that it is too on rails. You have markers which tell you where you have to go, so you have no reason to discover anything, since everything important is highlighted on the map.
I think the argument that Act Man was overlevelled doesn't really make sense. Some people like myself love doing side stuff like quests and exploration and going to every nearby map event that pops up as they do the campaign. So I think that Act Man and myself experienced Lilith as she was designed to be difficulty-wise. People who rush the campaign like DM get to face her at a much higher level because the devs actually wanted to encourage people to do side stuff as they did the campaign so they put an artificial level barrier in for the zones. That's why it gradually goes all around the world map as it progresses! But to imply that Act Man did something wrong by that playstyle doesn't sound right to me. He experienced the game as it was encouraged by the devs to be played. And so his argument that the game doesn't progress in difficulty during the campaign makes perfect sense. Lilith was a weak end-boss for the campaign to finish on. Compare her to facing Diablo in Diablo I & II for the very first time back in the 90's (the ancient times before you watched a youtube video on how to minmax a character before you booted the game). You faced him expecting to die repeatedly. Lilith is just a punching bag with a ton of hp.
I don't even understand why DM actually said like it is Act Man's fault. Lilith in game level is 45 so you are suppose to beat her around this level. And if the fight is easy, it is the design problem of Blizzard but not players.
It is actually non-sense to fight her at around level 36 for challenging issue and DM must have lost his mind if he expects other to do the same thing.
being overleveled is the negative consequence of an open world design. and also the misplaced desire for every area to feel meaningful. either you have a story driven world that's tightly crafted around the narrative (D1) or you have an open world where the story is only one of the options (D4). the first has little replay value but feels more impactful to the player, the 2nb is infinitely replayable but leaves a chore-like feeling afterwards ...
In regards to scaling difficulty - when I watched your mistakes video, you said to do as much side quests as possible and I did - and I overlevelled the campaign, unaware that Lillith was gonna be a few poison jabs to death at me being lv52. I think if people like Actman and I are outscaling the campaign and find ourselves unfulfilled - the team should have addressed that as a potential pitfall that could severely dampen the experience. I didn't even know enemies capped during the campaign and had higher levels because I was doing so much side content that scaled to my level and therefore leveled me exponentially. If the campaign and area would have been lower leveled and quests yielded me experience for that area on first completion , I wouldn't have done 20+ dungeons to overlevel into oblivion. But because of level scaling, I thought I was leveling up normally and didn't even consider that being lv50 is overlevelled
Because what those defending scaling tend to avoid bringing up is that there's no difficulty setting in D4. T1 and T2 cap at 50. T3 caps at like 70. T4 caps at 100. They aren't difficulties in the traditional sense. You can't fight level 100 mobs in T1, T2, or T3 because the levels are tied to tiers, which makes them not difficulties.
Google (frankly, the sources google finds) also say you should fight Lillith at level 45-50, so fighting her at level 31 or something as he did is not gonna be the usual experience.
I love seeing people who disagree that take the time to explain a counter argument, give examples, and also can still see and the other person's perspective and view points. And rather than attack the person who doesn't agree with them with baseless name calling and insults, calmly and politely explains their view points and keeps it to the criteria of the discussion. Unlike a lot of the fans out there when talking to Act Man...
I agree more with Act than DM in this take, though I don’t think D4 is a bad game. D4 is too easy, esp on T2. I don’t think “playing too slow” should be a problem. My play style - and a lot of peoples play style - is too grind side quests to dominate the main story as you progress. I didn’t consume enough D4 YT content to know that this isn’t how Diablo 4 is meant to be played. I was NEVER outscaled in my play through at T2 or T3, and it felt too easy.
I just realized something... It's not that games have gotten worse over time, its the way we play them that has changed. Here is an example : Find all the alters of Lilith with out an interactive guide We play the games with way to much information and it ruins it. It's as simple as that. Just think of no build guides, farming information, Lilith guides.. NOTHING.. That's the way the game was intended to play and the way we used to play games. Guides suck the magic out of every single game.
I never use them. There is a guy I know who literally follows them all step by step to find everything in every game he plays. It seems pointless to me. I want to explore and find things on my own. But I guess some people don't want to play that way. The achievement hunter mindset is real in some folks.
Very true! I noticed this a lot while browsing the discourse on the renown carry-over drama for season 1. People who hate the game have this mindset of "grinding" out renown in one sitting, an extremely "inhumane" way of playing any game. Instead of just progressing through and picking up side quests, alters and strongholds on their journey. They inflict this unenjoyable way of playing on themselves and blame the publishers and developers for it, it's honestly insane to me! 😂
Imagine you tried Diablo 4 though without any guides or anything. You pick your skills, start getting your character set up how you want, then you realize your character sucks. Why is this? You wouldnt know that most skills just SUCK and arent viable to use. You wouldnt know what skills CAN be viable later with proper uniques. Diablo 4 would probably be rated so much worse without info
@@Shanobie fully disagree. You learn and explore, any new understanding is rewarded with a dopamine rush. The game has content, not with guides. Just think playing elden ring with no guides, the amount of content to learn and explore is absolutely insane.
My experience with D4 was that there’s basically nothing left to do after level 70-80 (depending on RNG). I pushed 2 characters to ~lvl 80 and felt like my builds were fully min/maxed and there’s no reason left to play. Each character only has around 3 viable builds (variations, yes but the same core skills in the builds). The legendaries only seem to affect 1 thing, for rouge there’s only 1 aspect for pen shot, barb has maybe 2-3 that directly affect WW. Nothing in the loot feels really build changing, only helps the build FEEL BETTER. So basically my experience is that until endgame, the builds feel very clunky, then by endgame they feel good, but don’t actually change at all throughout the entire game. Perhaps is because the classes I chose (rouge and barb) but that in itself is a problem. I wasn’t a huge fan of D3 but with the gear sets, builds completely changed visually, play style, etc.
I hate that people worry about dumbshit like scaling and difficulty when THIS is what's plaguing this game lol. You pay 70bucks to have an experience that effectively maxes out at level 70 😂. Like scaling can be manipulated and ignored after campaign, difficulty 😮comes from you as a player(build,class,meta,etc)... THE ENDGAME CYCLE WE ARE STUCK WITHHHH and Only the devs can change it.
@@skylerfreeman1173yeah I mean you're mostly right but I will say I very much enjoyed my 1 to 80 experience, and im enjoying my throwaway test hardcore toon at end of season 0, and I'll definitely try a new class w the new stuff for season 1 so even if the game has the groundwork to be so much better than it is rn I'm still happy enough w the experience I got for the price it came at. I still got more time out of it that I enjoyed than most plain story games these days. Even if you say it was only 70 hours or w.r a dollar an hour is a pretty good price tbh lol esp if they genuinely iterate on it and dont do it thru over priced expansions (well see tho ofc)
How many hours did you put in? While there’s a ton of valid points here against the game, at a certain point you’ve got your moneys worth. A night out at the movies is a far less entertaining investment than a 70 dollar game that you get 50+ hours out of. Gaming is too gluttonous. I’ve put 87 hours in on one character and I’m waiting for the 20th to start a new one. I’m satisfied with the gameplay and content. This was always the way Diablo has been. Run rifts, get loot, repeat.
@@skylerfreeman1173People worry about scaling and difficulty because it makes the game very boring, and they quit before they realize any of the other issues. Scaling and difficulty are quite important issues bcuz they make people quit after a few hours instead of 50+.
I actually think that scaling is worse on the other side when you get towards the top end of leveling. If your build finishes getting all of the high synergy picks in your tree you get left with less optimal choices like boosting stats / life / etc but the enemies are all scaling up because you leveled up. In this case you are being punished to continue to level because you have already gotten the large synergy parts of the skill tree that you needed. This sort of thing can happen in any ARPG but normally its not an issue that its less powerful of a node because the mobs aren't getting stronger for you leveling up again. This tends to happen in the last 10-20% of leveling in a number of ARPGS and its just normally not an issue because mobs don't get stronger with your leveling up.
I experienced the same lack of challenge Act Man was talking about in the campaign and I understand your point that beating the campaign at lvl 47 was slow, but there’s not a great way to tell if you haven’t played before. How am I supposed to estimate the challenge of a quest I haven’t played yet? And why am I being punished for exploring other aspects of the game on my way through the main quest. IMO the main quest should end at a lot higher of a level to incentivize people to do other content in between main quest missions.
I mean, people who really play this game/diablo 3 will only play the campaign once like ever. The campaign is easy but it is also the bare minimum difficulty in the game. Go NM 10 higher than your level, capstone early, gear for uber lilith, helltides will also scale above you. It aint perfect but the difficult content exists if you want to chase it. Act Man put 30 hours into a ARPG, that's like quitting school after kindergarten and complaining you haven't been afforded the opportunity to do calculus problems yet. He didn't even try the majority of content the game offers. If you complete the campaign once you can skip it on the next char and level to 50 insanely quickly, that's literally where the game begins. If you don't like that structure than I can't blame you, but that doesn't mean the game is bad. I agree that the game needs some work. Just not in the areas Act Man describes, because he contradicts himself and doesn't seem to grasp the game very well due to lack of effort. If he took the many hours he spent making and editing an 1hr video playing the game or looking into its systems, he'd probably have better time. But why do that when you can drop the edgy diablo bad video that has garnered the attention he was looking for.
@@Lilmikey-dh8cd that's exactly what happened though. if you explored more, the culmination of the story became worse. the guy in the video said it himself, "you did too much side stuff".
@@jgicantfindaname oof, people like you still exist? "30 hours in, that's like quitting school in kindergarten". more like "30 hours in, and i've yet to get to what they are putting their effort into in this game?". if you can play a game for 30 hours, and experience the bare minimum, that's a shit game mate. action rpg or not, 30 hours is not a small amount of time. that's literally a month for the average gamer. or more. regardless of genre, if putting 30 hours into a game, and beating it's entire story, isn't even "starting the game", that's a god awful game. and there isn't much content at all past the campaign. "paragon boards" are just "extremely shit skill tree that is entirely superfluous". "nightmare dungeons" are just "same dungeon, with a .1 change in it". hell tides, and uber lilith, are really the only new content post 50. and even then, 99% of people won't ever get to uber lilith, because the game is designed to waste as much time as possible, in every single aspect of it. if the game begins dozens of hours in, it's a shit game. action rpg or not, that's just garbage design. a game that purposefully wastes as much of your time as it can, in an attempt to get you to keep playing it, is also shit design.
exactly if campaign is meant to be done at around level 50 then that content should be extremely hard if not even impossible to do at lvl 30 so your incentivized to go do other things to get stronger to beat the challenge.
Why anyone cares about a random stranger's opinion of there appearance is beyond me.. Definately not worth the money... Kinda like the price for the base version of this game
I disagree, I only play multiplayer games and for people like me, just seeing other players playing gives me the feeling of slight companionship and there are obviously other situations like legions, world bosses, and hell tide where you get to spend time with other players and more importantly make parties and friends with players that you would otherwise never meet. This includes pvp. I would love to see more social features but the current features aren’t useless they’re a good start.
ngl, when i look at a profile and I see someone with a store skin, my first thought isn't "wow, they're cool, I need to buy a skin too", it's more along the lines of "wow what a dumbass". Like if you're gonna buy a skin, wait for the inevitable sales that will likely happen in the future, but there's really no good justification to spending upwards of $25 on a cosmetic.
the points he brought on this video has been most of the complaints huge part of comunity and testers made a long time ago, even before proper launch....
Just show Blizzard never trying to listen. They just want to make another WoW clone that keep you playing everyday without trying to make a really fun game.
Regarding the level scaling topic, I believe the main problem is not really the level scaling itself, but more that the game is not designed for people that likes to do a bunch of side stuff before completing the main story, for example, I like to complete all side quests on every area in my way to the main campaign locations, the problem with this approach is that you over level everything, but the scaling difficulty is not the same as trying to beat the main campaign alone without doing much dungeons, side quests etc, it's way easier. The problem becomes worse when you realize that enemies scaling is caped to level 50 (veteran) until you beat the game and unlock nightmare mode. So, i beat lilith at level 50 with my 58 warrior and it was too easy, to the point it didn't felt rewarding. so, I get antman point, these issues can be easily fixed though, dont limit scaling by difficulty, but player level and increase the scaling difficulty just a tiny bit more and boom, good to go.
This is my first ever ARPG, i made the mistake of playing the game instead of running through the campaign. I loved exploring and doing dungeons with friends, but what ended up happening is doing the campaign was almost literally AFKing the game. I ran past every enemy I didn't have to fight, stopped looking at gear, and started skipping cutscenes. The game INSTANTLY fell off because I did side quests and became too strong. There's quite literally no challenge in T2 unless i fall asleep in my chair, and I know t3 is where things become super fun but holy shit I cannot stand the story now because everything on the screen is anti-climactic. Overall 1-50 is ultra bad, the combat is fun and that's the entire game, but if you literally explore the game world & do side quests and gear correctly you STILL have to afk through the campaign to get to the difficulty. I don't give a fuck about the story now, i'm just hoping there aren't enemies in front of me as i snore through the campaign. All my steam to go to 100 has turned into doom and gloom. Was loving at first but I feel like they tricked me, I wish we could start on world tier 3.
@@Ti_Fire what don’t you understand? The combat is fun, but it stops being fun because you over level story. Story becomes atrociously easy but you’re required to do it to get to tier 3. The story becomes anti-climactic and boring so you want to skip it before you’re finished. Now you’re tier 3, you get to start enjoying the game but the story has already be experienced in the worst way and you spent a lot of time not even progressing. Momentum is dead, game feels meh.
@@Ti_Fire Combat is only a small part of the game. There are so many more aspects that go into making a game fun other than combat. I had fun with combat in the game, but that was just it. The rest of the game: loot, story, game play choices/design, class design/balance, pretty much sucked.
The problem is that in D4 there is very little incentive to go for the more difficult content or even move on to the next area. Everything levels with you, is fast to kill, and gives near optimal EXP. So it never really feels like taking it slow. And once you are in the level-scaling area everything feels the same, so I understand where he is coming from. The first time this actually happens is at level 50, where things stop scaling with you.
Yeah, when enemies scale with you, every zone does feel similar. There really isn't a feeling of growing stronger during the main story/sidequesting portion. You get new legendary affixes that can change your build or make a skill do a bit more, and you create synergies, but overall there isn't a sense of progression or beating a "hard" enemy. The Butcher and a couple story bosses give a challenge, but none of that exists in the open world. Open world mobs are all trash mobs, including the elites out there. The open world has no sense of progression because the open world mobs all feel the same and don't pose any sort of challenge, or "oh shit" moments. It's a "safe" open world where you'll never die... you only die against Butcher or a couple of the bosses (none of which are part of the open world). I totally get the issues pointed out here. The zones all feel the same (unlike most other ARPGs and MMORPGs). Zones mean something. They don't in D4. There's no challenge in the open world. All mobs are trash mobs (hence why would you even fight them. Just get on your mount and run past them all to get along questing). There really isn't any need to fight in the open world, because regardless of your level, you're never threatened or challenged.
@@John-vm2sq So true, yes even the loot scales with you, and you actually get weaker in existing areas, its insanity. There is really no incentive to every move on.
@@John-vm2sq Mobs only scale with LEVELS, they DO NOT SCALE with PARAGON BOARD or SKILL POINTS which is 90% of the character power (relative to the nominal stat gain u get from leveling). You will eventually face roll open world if you build your character correctly.
@@yt_nh9347 Lol you don't get it. Why would someone push into paragon points if the first 50 hours of playing felt like a slog where the rat from the beginning of the game takes as many hits now at level 50 as when they were level 5? Most people won't "eventually face roll open world" because only the people with the most dedication will even bother to beat the boring ass campaign. Beat the game and then it gets good isn't an argument to lean on my guy.
@@sdotwallace Nobody is saying the game is too hard we're saying its boring because the enemies feel the same the WHOLE GAME. If a rat at level 50 is the same as a demon at level 50 then the stakes couldn't possibly be lower and I couldn't possibly care less about a demon invasion. There needs to be some correlation between enemy design and enemy difficulty. Why should I care about a demon invasion when Mr quill rat is just as strong as a demon?
Bit late on this, but I think the issue of scaling is less the problem, and the bigger issue being the world design that Blizzard went with. Making it open-world with sidequests with a story that was designed, or scaled, for those who don't grind. Using 3 of my friends and me as an example. We all, in 2 separate groups, completed almost all act 1 quests before beating act 1. My friend and I were lvl 34 and 38 before my 3rd groupie, who beat the game, said we should stop doing side quests. He mentioned that we should be around lvl 50 by the end of the story (still a higher lvl than needed). This realization kinda killed my joy, and has made the story since always scaled and not fun. I wanted to organically go through the story and world, doing sidequests and exploration, but this just makes you overleveled. The story and world design are at odds with eachother. I think the sidequests should have been gated until story completion. Or the story missions should have been leveled/scaled differently.
I think the main takeaway concerning difficulty could be solved for hardcore players, and kept intact for casual players by just adding one more difficulty lvl. Let players get tier 3 before beating the campaign, increasing the difficulty during. Then adding a Torment + to broaden the lvl increases throughout the game.
My take on the playing with your friends at lower levels thing: Yes, you *can* play with your friends that are at a lower level than you, but unless you're both in the same world tier already (hence within a specific level range of each other in the first place) you're giving up *any* possibility of gear advancement to do so. If my friend is doing the campaign and I'm in WT4, literally *nothing* that drops is going to do anything for me.
I agree wholeheartedly about the confusion with weapon stats. It takes way too long to read through all weapon attributes and find out if it's even going to benefit your build. Although a much different game, I think Wo Long Fallen Dynasty did a GREAT job at making weapon stats easy to digest - by having a letter grade scale (A - F) that tells you right up front if the weapon/armor will be a good fit for your current build. No re-reading your skill tree boosts, looking at what all your other gear is currently buffing, or having to pull up a comparison overlay for every new item: just a straight-up letter grade based on what your core build is.
Sounds amazing tbh. Warhammer Inquisitor Martyr does the same thing as D4 and honestly it makes me not even want to log on because I know I have 3-4 inventory tabs completely full with what are probably mid-tier items with hundreds of barely noticeable affixes that I'm going to have to take an hour to methodically sort through, compare to current items, and decide what to keep/sell/salvage/store/upgrade/prep before I can get on with my next quest.
reading weapon stats in d4 feels like reading that rambling drunken letter that homer leaves marge back in the day. most of them are ultimately garbage and pointless, and i feel having levelled one toon, if i swap to an alt to do, the stats will be the exact opposite on the new one(melee) that they were on the old one(ranged) like what happened in d3 at the start.
@@BlackXanthas lmao beautifully summarized. I feel the same. I joined two community events last night and both times, necros and sorcerers absolutely dominated the enemies. As a barbarian, I felt useless chipping away at health bars then they’d come in and wipe enemies in one foul swoop.
@@shiddyangler oh don't worry mate, until i looked at guides for my necro i had trouble out dps'sing bosses in the campaign, so i empathise with that feeling, and as an ex d2 barb that just had fun leaping and whirling roflstomping anything in my lan parties of old, i feel ya, the barb feels like it is almost the ONLY melee class in the game, and its treated like the black sheep of the class list, and the class list has a dedicated emo in it! 😂😂🤣
I think your counter to his blacksmith point actually proves his point. If you don't care that all of the blacksmiths are upgrade nodes rather than characters, it shows that the game is not immersing you in its story. That is a flaw, whether it bugs you personally or not. I don't care much either, but the game would be objectively improved if we did have a reason to care about the NPCs. It gives the game character, tone, and extra entertainment value.
@@kouji0031 I don't hold it against him or anything, I actually enjoy D4 far more than Act Man seems to, and I appreciate Darth's content. DM's a sharp guy and I appreciate a lot of his opinions here, I just disagreed with that particular response.
For me, I think the best changes that could dramatically improve the game would be (1) either allow 1-2 more skill slots or have ultimate be its own slot and (2) make rare loot rare again. 98% of the time the loot is just a chore where you pick it up, stew over the convoluted stats, then ultimately salvage it. Only having 5 skills + basic limits the game too much.
im pretty sure d3 only had 6 skills and never felt like how youre describing it. The issue with d4 abilities is that there isnt really much variety. d3 had multiple aspect of 1 ability that would drastically change how it functions in most cases, that isnt present in d4. as for the loot, the itemization just sucks compared to d3. the stats are just convoluted and unimpactful in most cases. Legendary powers are rarely impactful so getting a legendary doesnt even feel all that great
Me and my little brothers have been having a ton of fun with Diablo 4 since the day it released, but one of my biggest issues with the game is only having six skill slots, I constantly feel pigeonholed into only being able to do a tiny section of things and find that most times I can't even use some of the aspects on my legendary gear because I just can't equip enough skills to take advantage of them. Also the fact that legendary gems (NON MONETIZED) Don't exist really holds the endgame back for me, in Diablo 3 legendary gems were how I took my character from average to god tier. The dungeon speed runs with characters that could melt almost anything were exhilarating and gave you something to look forward to even in late end game
I would argue that he didn't take a long time to beat the game, but took a normal amount of time that was sort of how the devs intended. They wanted people to explore side content along the way while progressing the campaign. It's just that they also didn't design good ramp ups in difficulty while progressing (at least imo). I think he's right about level scaling and it seems to be a big part of that. They would do better to remove level scaling on a wide scale for npcs. But maybe let player characters have auto-scale for their levels when grouping with others (for example your character can artificially be raised in levels to match the person your grouping with, but the npc levels stay static). Sort of like City of Heroes used to do
18:45 I think his point was that besides different attacks, you never 'Feel' any stronger no matter what you do. In D2 when you finally leveled up you could actually notice and feel the difference when you get stronger. D4 it always feels the same.
I made it to about level 80 on my druid before I quit. I had a similar issue to what he mentioned... I wanted to make a lightning build by the time I thought I might have enough gear to try it the cost and risk associated with trying it made it not worth it... The legendries are super boring and it feels like its the same 5 over and over. "what's the point" is how I started to feel, so I just stopped will come back in a year or two and check out the game again.
I agree with this, you start out a particular build you enjoy then the drops all go against what your doing so you have to respec, kills the game for me
I think AM's point about the blacksmith is they are all samey regardless of where you are in the world. Not that they have to be part of the main story, but they should have atleast a compelling input regarding the world around them.That we remember them enough to know their name. Not just 'the blacksmith in the city' or something. Same with other NPCs.
I watched act man’s review and he had no idea what he was talking about lol he said you have to unlock the horse every time you make a new character and other untrue things about d4. He just doesn’t seem to understand the game.
@user-sp9po5qi9q Yeah, I know that's why I wasn't sure what Act Man is referring to, other than a seasonal character. If your seasonal has to do the campaign again, I assume the horse quest needs to be redone. But like I said, I don't know if that's going to be true for seasons. You very well could be correct.
I played Elden Ring without ever casting a spell, using a weapon art, or equipping a shield. Swung my big 2 hand weapon, and dodged. That's it. Loved every second. Played a second run through and changed nothing, felt great. There is a path for the simple-minded in Elden Ring and it's just as rewarding as the "complex" path. There should be a similar path for Diablo 4.
they cant.. They cant make abilities extremely simply and easy to use AND make them strong. Most people would run it if that was the case. what youre saying cannot be translated to an arpg in a meaningful way. D4 isnt even complex either.
The other thing about open world games not having any sort of enemy lvl scaling like Elden Ring is that many ppl didn’t play Caelid in the beginning of the game so when they went back later it was too easy for them. So they literally didn’t have the exact experience that Act Man says ppl wouldn’t have if there was lvl scaling. This is one of the very few reviews from him where I’m left scratching my head. It’s like we played two completely different games. I also have no clue what he actually wants from the game cuz he contradicts himself on more than one occasion
If you group the content scales for more players too. So if I'm running my buddy who is 50 through nightmares it tunes it so there are two of us at my level. Makes it a lot more difficult. At least makes dying easier lol
The point he's making is that regardless of when you or I or someone else goes to a open area of the game, the monsters there are level locked. How hard is that to understand?! 🤣👌
Act man I'd a moron...but be is right about most of his points....the Only challenge in d4 is to under level ur self( I fought Elias capstone at 58 with a 61 friend and we got one spotted all the time but still almost beat him) then we came back at 65 and cuz of the levels we had armor and health to live.....and one shot it, what u and DM are saying is" don't fight with gear on and the game will be hard( lose armor and hp) ...again, this is a dumb way to " make the game challenging"
My issue with level scaling is that it breaks my immersion. If I gain more power but aren't able to clap the enemy who I encountered 20 or 30 levels ago it ruins any form of progression. Not to mention if I see a low level character deal similar damage to mine. You feel ripped off by the game game mechanics. It's surely not fun to watch others annihilate content and leave you with nothing to do, but it also makes me excited to get to that point. Now, this whole system might actually work if items were more satisfying.
I wanna talk about 2 things DM mentioned in this vid 1. The story, the cinematic and how they represent it. Yes we experience the story ourself but the point is there are no 'actual cinematic' to make us felt connect to the story except for the 1 in the beginning and the 1 where Inarius faces Lilith and THAT'S IT! I just realize this after I watched Act Man vid. At first I was like "but there's in-game cinematic tho, right" but then I later realize "I paid f*cking 60$ for this game and I can only have 2 beautiful cinematic?? Is that what it should be? Hell, D3, with all of its huge flaws, still has cinematic for every chapter ending and I felt the impact of every chaper. But in D4 I don't even notice what Lilith boss act was in, is it 4? Or 5? I cant even noticed that. 2. The itemization: DM said something like "variety of stats make min-maxing more exciting and meaningful" but I strongly disagree with that, at least for now. Cuz "not every stats are meaningful" DM even make a video about how should you choose what equipment to keep and that's the problem! Half of those stats dont do anything and meaningless for every class. And DM said 'if you have only 4-6 stats on every item, min-maxing will be boring' but in D4 there are only 4-6 more or less stats from overall 20+ stats that are actually matters, eventually make the game have only 4-6 stats for items as DM said and the itemizing in game rn is actually boring
Why? I thought everyone agreed that the game is too easy and that there aren’t any challenges. Therefore, to make it more challenging everyone should strive to always level up before a boss. Idk i just think its funny that Actmans first complaint was difficulty yet video showcasing how many times he died.. if its so easy, one should never die. Contradictions abound.
@@zeldroid5085 I might be misunderstanding his video, but I took what he said to mean he felt that 90% of the game was way too easy and then at the very end and after the main story it started getting hard and that was where he started dying a lot and it was satisfying, but that he didn't think he should've had to wait that long for it to get that way. If that's what he meant I don't see that as a contradiction to his main point.
I'm usually on Act Man's side, but he's off base on a lot of points this go around, and it feels like he didn't really play much of the game. You can't just play the campaign and do no end game and then call the game 'bad'. You basically didn't even play it.
If the game is lacking and you have to put hundreds of hours to get to the good part then from that perspective is it not bad. But yeah he probably should have played more to get a more full view of the game.
basically is pulling a lot of weight there. ok. so what changes after he quit? new gameplay loops... that just have you do world events but the zone is now colored red and meteors come down! and u spam the same dungeons with bad layouts but with even more bad and un-fun mechanics! he totally would have had a completely different game experience had he stuck with it!
@@epsilon1670 i'd agree, but this is an ARPG. They are repetitive, grindy, and have always been about the end-game - which he didn't appear to take any part in. I find that short sighted on his part. If he felt that way about the game getting to say 85-90 and experiencing helltides, NMs, legions and world bosses - then okay. But it feels like if someone played an MMO for 20 hours and then called it 'bad'. Just seems premature and he's usually very thorough. He's allowed his opinion of course, but this one is a head scratcher in my eyes.
@@xWhackoJacko oh it totally agree on him not playing enough I was more just throwing out a counter point just like I'm going to now. Just because it's aRPG why does that mean that half the games has to be a weak experience. The argument that it's always been that way who says it has to be that way? blizzard had a chance to innovate and I think everyone can agree they played it safe Just as a note I like the game sometimes it's fun to looked at the opposite side of the argument.
honestly the d2 mapping was awesome how there was certain zones within zones that where that max level zones with the hell zones recently hell tide should be the only time monsters scale to level and every zone should be a beginning point that's at least 3 levels higher at the point you are supposed to get there and then hell tides scale
To say "he took too long to finish the campaign" as the reason he wasn't having fun or didn't find it difficult feels like everyone has to play the game the exact same way in order to enjoy it. That's not what gaming is about. It's about being able to play the way the player wants to. Why have all the sidequests available if you aren't supposed to do them until you're level 80 so you don't accidentally over level and ruin the game for yourself?
I've played to 95 solo - I'm in a clan but there's rarely people on who can run 50+ nightmares. It's been mostly fun once I figured out my build but If I was able to play with people more often it would be vastly better. I miss making an Act 3 start game in normal and having 7 people join who were at the same progress I was.
Your comment reminds me of how easy it was to chat and play w other players on D2. Much easier to join Baal runs, sneak around the cow level and play quests together. Where here on D4, players just slay enemies here and there and leave. The emotes are kinda cringe tbh, and I’ve never tried to chat random people. Maybe it’s the social stratospheres of today where everyone prefers to play w friends they know, or are anti-social and would rather play alone. (I’m the latter and have played solo most of the time. Now lvl 87. Did play w a friend, but he got bored during the campaign.)
That's why I enjoy playing it on the Xbox lfg is saving this game for me. 300 posts on lfg everytime I look at it. It's quick and easy to play with people
@@HelplessTeno T50's are pretty challenging if you aren't decked out, overleveled or optimized with paragon etc.. or if you aren't paying attention, the hazards and stuff will kill you even if you are level 100 (at least for the squishier classes). It also compounds more when you fight in groups (ie: drifting shade affix in a team of 4).
WARNING SPOILERS: My problem with the story is the beginning sets you up for this sort of unsettling feeling. And you are like, "This seems pretty messed up. I'd like to find out more." Underlying fear of Lilith and then by the end of it I almost want to side with her. Not because the story was successful, but because the story doesn't make it clear as to why we don't want her to win. There's little connection to the events in D3 and there is such a disconnect from where you see these characters that you meet (because the quests are kind of all over the place in the middle. At one point, I mixed them up and went to the wrong one and there was dialogue about a character losing their hand before I even did that quest) that you just kinda forget why you care about them. In D3 at least I cared about the characters. I wanted to see Tyreal succeed, but in D4 everyone is just an asshole and/or the game sends you everywhere and you just kind of lose sight of who/what you are fighting for. What is the point? And don't even get me started as to how a veteran horadrim wanders off in hell gets scratched by a pillar and dies. Not even a pillar with his beloved son on it or anything. Just kinda wanders and then gets wrecked out of nowhere for no reason. The game also makes you feel like you have to make a choice... and then chooses for you. At the end, the characters elaborate on what to do and its this big thing how we HAVE to trap Lilith in a crystal... and I guess it turns out we can just kill her. No biggie. Big dilemma! Mephisto says we have to trap Lilith because she can just catch up to us and take the crystal with him in it... but then the character just teleports away and we just kill Lilith. The END. It was all just unsatisfying to me. Too much didn't make sense and too many different fragmented story pieces. We meet all these seemingly interesting characters but none of their arch reach anywhere that is satisfying. Characters that do experience some kind of growth (like Donan and Vigo) just die shortly after for shock value (although I will say, Vigo's little character arch was actually great Probably the only time I felt something in the story). One character even spends a large portion of the story saying how we should work together and how we can accomplish a lot... and then she sets off on her own in the end. My guess it was suppose to be mysterious, but it all just ended up being annoying.
it's setting the stage i think for a new trilogy with neyrelle being the new wanderer. probably trying to right the garbage they did with leah back in d3. i totally agree with you though, i think they were going for mysterious, but it came across as vague and confused while a smoke machine pumps out fog in the background. they wasted the voice talents of old lorath Ralph Ineson, on silly cut scenes with no actual cut scene just a redfall style static image. i guess with all the talented people leaving the quality animations we are used to are going to be pretty absent moving forward
yep, you said it well. "by three they come" and act 1 of the campaign were just a massive bait to sell the game. the rest of the story was half cooked, just like every other part of the game.
I absolutely 100 percent agree with this guy. After beating the game, forcing myself to continue playing was rough. Haven't played the games in weeks since
On the point of the game being balanced for hardcore, I feel like if you start having to take more and more away from non-hardcore players to accommodate the hardcore play system, then maybe they should be separated. When you balance a game to be fair for The smaller sect of people who like to play the game in a more punishing way, The average player who doesn't play that way ends up receiving a version of that game that is much too safe.
I don't really like the idea off "Skip the whole game , so you can have a challenge" like you mentioned. Regardless of playstyle the game should be more challenging , especially with the leveling system
Play hardcore. The game doesn’t make sense WITHOUT scaling. Everything would be Piss easy at endgame. Hell it already is. My Necro is level 84 and is killing enemies level 100+ no problem. Imagine what I do to enemies at my level. Now imagine if they didn’t scale with me lmfao. They need to add more tiers, which I assume will happen. I hope to see a Diablo 3 system where we abandon levels and instead enemies are just getting 500% health and 100% more damage per tier or something.
Wait the bosses have a set level and only scale up? I didn't know that. I thought they scaled to you in both directions until you got to Tier 3. I think I played like Actman. I was level 50 when I verused Lilith. So I'm guessing you are supposed to play through the campaign first then do the side stuff. I did most side quests first because that's how I usually play RPGs.
A simple resolve to the difficulty concern, would be to give each zone on the map a Tier rating. ranging from 1 -25 and additional Tiers added in DLC. So if your character is only a Tier 2 ranking and you want a challenge, you can go to a Tier 3 or 4 area. Also if you're getting your ass kicked, and you are a Tier 12, you can head over to a Tier 5 area and have a godlike experience. XP would be relevant, meaning it would take longer to gain the XP to level up, but you could still level up in a lower Tier area to give you a chance to go back in a Tier 12 area and be able to compete. It would mean those who can play the game better. can push in a higher Tier area and those with a low skill, can still have fun in a lower Tier area. Plus I feel that there should be a constant random spawning of an enemy that is 3 to 5 levels above you, to give you a random challenge, no matter where you are on the map. Currently the only challenge is an Event. But even those aren't really a challenge.
To be fair, Resurrected does have the "hotbar" style consistent with modern ARPGs and MMOs. They kind of had to add it in because when D2r was retrofitted with tech for controllers you could do that. So in a later patch they let us finally use like 5 skills without having to use the F1-F12 hotkeys or scroll wheel to "toggle" and instead have the keybinds use on press but I still get the points you made here. There are good points on both sides to be sure.
I think that the point of stats being worthless and not having attribute points is a good one. You can have attribute points AND a paragon board for end game progression, for example.
What I think would solve some of the problems with the level scaling would be to maybe set up the regions so they first have the kind of leveling they have now. For example, beginning areas have enemies from levels 1-10, and after that, they scale maybe 5-10 levels below you for the entire game. And harder areas after a point start to scale 2-10 levels above you, to always keep them hard. Also sprinkle in some harder mini-bosses around the map that don't scale and that you have to come back to and defeat later. This will make you feel stronger when you go back to easier areas and keep other areas fun and challenging.
Pretty much. The power experience should be bursty, especially through the first play through. Like you're carving through trash packs until you round a corner and run into an elite pack that makes you have to run away, use a skill they're weak against, or change up your tactics. The level scaling needs to be tweaked into thresholds like you described. In my opinion the items of this game are totally stupid and they should've just copied D2's style of uniques and relatively straight forward stat blocks.
Funnily enough, they actually DID just kind of do this. Will see how it levels out, but they've scaled difficulties in a similar way with the latest patch.
When I played wow, I went back to the starting areas frequently just to chill and get the feeling of dominance over what once was a challenge or almost impossible.. It was fun feeling the progression that way. Sometimes you just wanna stomp and not have to be on edge all the time. When I played D2 when it was first released I loved redoing boss battles once I got stronger to see how strong I'd become and see what loot I could find that I missed due to just playing and not grrinding. I feel that its important to make previous areas reflect on your progrression. sometiimes I just wanna be the Johnwick in D2 that oneshots everything before I go for the matched leveled enemies.
Agreed. In WoW I'd go back to farm mats for my blacksmithing just for the fun of it and make some low level gear I would later pass out to the new characters in eth starting areas. In D2 there were also runes and other drops that made going back worth while or even going back to try and obtain BIS low level gear for the next character you considered making.
If I have to put in 50+ hours before I can have fun the game is trash. ActMan was right, why the hell would I put 50+ hours in D4 when the first 30 sucked ass? Why do I have to play for 50+hours before the game "gets good" Make the damn game fun from the start.
The game needs more loot. The game needs much much more unique loot and builds and different skills to choose from. I honestly don't see why they didn't look at POE for inspiration in this regard.
If they didn't utilize level scaling, this guy's video would be about how "Blizzard built us this huge, interesting world where 90% of it becomes as trivial is a level 1 area in WoW and I am forced to play the same corner of the map after only 30 hours to have any challenge at all."
Also when you are level 1 the world is scaled. You cant just go anywhere. This is kinda why i didnt like Actmans review. He got to 50 and quit, he has no real idea how the game seems to function because he didnt dig deep. At least thats the impression i got. If you make a levle 1 after beating the story and tp to the tree, go out there and fight some of those “scaled” mobs and see how fast you get one shot. He also didnt even spend time in wt3. Like the end game sucks ass but the game as a whole imo is fine, its not super busted, its fixable.
The problem with the level scaling isn't that it makes the future content the same, it's that WHILE getting to that future content EVERYTHING feels the same so by the time you get to that content it'll inevitably end up feeling the same. You only notice you've progressed not because of mechanical feedback but because of the UI telling you you've gotten further while the game plays the same with minor additions.
Love 95% of this it's great, the only point I want to raise is, on the stat issue, I don't think barbarian gets a damage boost from STR, think it's just armor. So building my barbarian seemed strange because I was having to invest into a different stat than one that I thought, after I already had a bunch of gear with str. At the same time I think if str added DMG for Barbar, we would have the 3m crit issue. What I would like to see is a more transparent explanation of how the stats actually work in game. There may have been a single side menu at some interval in the game that was so miniscule I didn't notice. Also, I'm sure you know this and all, but Skyrim doesn't have stats like str or int. It's skill leveling was specked to the function, like "archery", "1-handed" and "speech", so the upgrades you were spending made immediate sense to you because it was transparent.
@@yeahnahyeahm8496 I googled it. And I stand corrected. It does in fact up DMG. Had to Google it cause it won't let you hover over the stats in inventory on console.
His whole point is that it shouldn’t take that long into the game to experience that difficulty if the player wants. The game should naturally increase difficulty as you play. The level scaling until around level 65 makes everything constantly feel the same. I have a level 85 rogue and for the most part my character feels the exact same to play as it did from the start. Level scaling is garbage and the gear is garbage. Not once have I been excited when I found a piece of gear because it’s all boring even the legendaries. I’ve had the same Ancestral gear since around level 68 because I already have best in slot. All gear I pickup now is trash. Where is my carrot to chase from 65 to 100????
That's his whole fucking point. D2 had hard sections in early tiers. You shouldn't have to play the game for 30 hours to finally get a modicum of a challenge. And then when you get to end game NM dungeons aren't even hard, they're just tedious with CC, on death effects and horribly balanced modifiers. Any competent player will have their BiS by level 70 and every NM dungeon will feel the exact same. T Your progression then boils down to XP grinding for paragon points, that's it
@@xX-Logic- neither of those are a solution at all. Play a game mode that is essentially pointless because you can die to disconnects or crashes. Or avoid a Major part of the open world map that the developers spent a fuck load of time creating. You saying to intentionally avoid the game to make the game fun.
Here's an idea. If the developers want players to diversify their activities within the game, they should appropriately reward the diversity. Here is an example of how. Say the "problem" is that players are just spamming the same dungeon over and over and the devs want the players to do other things. Here's the fix. After a player completes a dungeon, something else in the game gets a temporary buff. It could be another dungeon getting a buff. It could be a Helltide getting a buff (it could even be specific chests in the Helltide getting different KINDS of buffs, making the non-mystery chests more interesting). It could be a Whisper getting a buff. It could be a Side Quest in your Quest List getting a buff. It could be multiple of these things at the same time. AND the buffs could be different. One dungeon might have buffed xp reward. Another dungeon might have buffed gold reward. A Whisper might have buffed loot reward. And since multiple buffs are happening across different content and the buffs are temporary, players are making decisions. Do I want the xp boosted dungeon or the loot boosted dungeon? Do I want the gold boosted Helltide or the unique-chance-boosted Whisper? Each bit of content completed then spawns more buffs and more decisions to make while on a timer. Do you see how this is a more interesting gameplay loop? This keeps the players moving around the map doing different content but does it organically by making it more rewarding.
Two different perspectives. One is focused in immersion and a single run experience. The other is focused on progression and the required eternal nature of the game's designs. Two different needs one game is trying to appeal to but ultimately it tips further in one direction and that is the mmo lite. I personally wanted an immersion experience, because I don't like arpgs for the loot or grind.
I can elaborate the Elden Ring analogy: If you play D4 as intended/guided: You never venture to a higher level area, then you get 50+ and there are NO higher level areas and it's all samey If you play Elden Ring as intended/guided: You automatically venture into a hard ass area because the training wheels are so loose, so the world seems dangerous D4 just holds your hand too hard, and when they let go of your hand, everything is the same difficulty: not very hard
Exactly. In DS1 you can literally go to the catacombs off rip by accident. There is no way you're going to the high level areas in D4 by accident at the beginning, especially since you don't even get a horse until several acts are done.
But also souls games want you to feel hunted and pressured on your every step in diablo you sure get the feeling ocasionally but the narrative is mostly that you are the powerfull one.
9:10 some people want a more difficult challenge without the risk of starting from scratch on failure. Most people don’t want to level their char to 100 and risk it dying because if they do they go back to character select
@@zJaMeZz You really have missed the point. NM are only AFTER you beat the campaign. You're not looking at this through the lens of a new player. The opening scene is everything. If I have to spend 70+ hours grinding through an easy campaign in order to find entertainment in a challenge, then the game design is shit. Full stop.
To counter your point at 20:00 you may not be able to go to areas at an early level, but once you hit the level of that area all the areas instantaneously become the same with equal threat. If I go back to caelid, or unlock the haligtree they will now be the hardest areas in the game, and you can still go back to the lake, or the starting area and see your progression with damage. People literally go to the starting bridge so they can test their weapons on the mobs to see where their weapons gage at. The progression of these two are not the same and fundamentally different, the only similarity is there’s some areas you can’t go to straight away because you’ll die but once you finish the campaign you will never encounter this ever again and takes all tension out of the game. And if you’re not using an optimised build eventually the enemies start really dragging as you level up
Yo man! I really loved watching your reaction and hearing some well-thought out counter arguments to my video. You also bring up some great points about balancing the game around hardcore so that those players don't get annihilated by some random demon that's 30 levels higher than them. You clearly love Diablo so keep up the good work! And hey, if you ever want to have me on your stream to talk Diablo and shoot the shit, I'd love to do that.
Class act mannnnnn
❤❤❤❤❤
V nice
W
Do a campfire stream 2.0 🤭😅
I think he's talking about FEELING stronger, not objectively being stronger. You're obviously stronger at higher level, but since the enemies scale with you you now have to use all that power to beat the same enemy you could already beat, making you feel like you didn't really get any stronger at all - if anything you now need to use more abilities to beat the same enemy, which makes those abilities feel weak and unimpactful
Exactly
Since strength is always relative (no one would say that the weakest man is weaker than the strongest bacteria, despite them falling behind or excelling in their respective categories, nor would anyone ever reasonably put the two in a fight. In this case, even though the 'weakest man' may get strength at literally impossible levels, every other man grows at the same rate, making him still the weakest man regardless of his personal growth), it is true that the player does, in fact, remain at the same strength throughout the entire game, at least as far as level scaling is concerned.
In other words, it takes exactly as much time to kill a monster who has 100 hp with 10 dps as it does to kill a monster with 10,000 hp with 1,000 dps. And unfortunately for you, the enemies scale with your dps.
Well put
Because people do not understand secondary skills and the difference between "additive" and "multiplicative" values.
This only happens at certain points - when you go into a new world tier, and it's supposed to work that way because you just increased the difficulty. Beyond that, you get into the higher world tier and you'll get progressively stronger as you level, out scaling the enemies. If that's not happening it's either because your gear or skills.
He makes a good point at the end. If developers want you to experience the content, they should make that content the most rewarding aspect of the game. If they want you to quest, it should give the most xp. Instead, they encouraged everyone to spam dungeons. And now, they spam nightmare dungeons. What was the point in making this beautiful open world if they’re not going to incentivize anybody to do things in it?
It's a fig leaf to cover the nakedness of the gameplay due to it being just a shallow loot gambling experience. Same thing bigger numbers with more dopamine. This franchise is basically dead as a creative endeavor.
@@ES-qm5hr all the low iq sheep consumers sucking on it so bad ... amazing ! i commend you for seeing trough this shit ..gamer's are one of the most delusional people ive ever talked to .
I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where the side quest rewards are as bad as D4. Literally every side quest gives you 3 herbs and 1/1000th of your XP bar. Like seriously what was Blizzard thinking.
It's almost like there isn't helltide or world bosses or whisper events or legions how crazy?
@@sdotwallace The point you made is a poor one especially considering they expect people to farm renown every season
the fact that player power is connected to such a poor system isnt a good thing
I think the main point that Actman is making is very simple and irrefutable: No one should have to waste 30 hours of their life on a game they paid $70 dollars for in order to begin having fun. The quality of the endgame content is inconsequential if no one wants to get through the early game.
Yup
Isn't it the opposite? The endgame is ass
@@msrumedia5616The endgame is harder than the early game with being able to have tier 100 nm dungeons It’s probably not that hard with PC Hota shockwave glitch
Maybe they shouldn’t hire woke lesbians to make a game that mostly men play. Idiots.
@@msrumedia5616yes the endgame is shit. That's why DM justify cut content during 1-50 to make 50-100 feel better ( IE: paragon)
36:12 the ultimate being it’s own button and having one more skill slot would make the game so much better, this is a super underrated point. I was actually so surprised when I got my ult and realized it wasn’t it’s own button.
Yeah basically every build feels like it Juuuuust needs a single other button. And my first thought originally for the way to change that without completely changing the game entirely is add a specific button entirely for your basic skill cuz u have to have 1 anyways. After hearing the mention of an ultimate skill button from ppl tho I immediately felt like thatd be even better and make even more sense. Some builds (rogue for example) just feel better and more fluid without an ultimate to some degree because of this issue..
I opt out of an ult at lvl 52 t3
I'd also like to add that making your dodges make you uncontrollable would also help since some skills are used solely due to it making you uncontrollable
Exactly!!!! They should add combos!!! To the least □ + ○ + ◇ you get the point.
I expected that too , esp how much this game is influenced(tested) by Diablo immortal :D
With the elden ring example you don't have to "sequence break" because caelid its literally touching the starting area. You head east and can accidentally find yourself there. There are also chests that will send you there and not let you warp out. It is not the same as slogging all the way across the map ignoring dozens of engagements and towns and dungeons just to get to a listed higher level zone. One feels natural like you've explored and found high level stuff or was even ambush teleported there like an event and the other is looking at the map for a listed higher level area and traveling there in a boring road trip manner.
1000%
Hell, there is even a chest near the starting area that teleports you there
@@squishyslush1166 Yep.
Yeah, DM missed the point with this one.
Agreed. DM missed the point. In D4 you have to actively try to skip content to get to zones that are too high of level, and its only the case at low levels. In elden you can wind up there purely by accident and that adds a dynamic that D4 sorely lacks. It completely removes that element of risky exploration.
"Why did i have to beat the game for a challenge?" - i highly agree with this. if you say; I have to speed-run the story for difficultly, in a "open world game", it suddenly loses one of those two labels (difficult, or free-world).
P.S. Caelid is a Challenge (hard but doable early game) in D4 areas you are not leveled to = instant death.
and the "then play hardcore" comment was dumb as hell if it wasn't a joke. loosing my whole character doesn't make the game better or even harder it just makes getting cc'd to death even more annoying and the on death effects that one hit you from off screen are a thing so these problems would be even worse on hardcore.
and it wouldn't be harder it would just be more frustrating and a slog to get through.
what the player wants is a difficulty that is hard enough to be a challenging aswell as fair.
I completely agree with you. If the campaign is irrevelant, then why have it? And why the fuck is it that long?
It wasnt about the voice acting in diablo 1 it was the fact that each character in the town actually had dialogue about their own opinions of what was happening and from their perspective
I completely understand this point even though it doesn't affect me since I only care about gameplay.
@Nightwalk444 the thing is the game should be able to draw you in the first go around right? Otherwise why diablo and not any other number chasing grind?
@@BigWheel. Gotta test if the gameplay is better than in other similar games.
People really don't understand that back then, the voice acting was actually terrific. Video game voice acting was hardly a thing at all, nobody took it seriously. I really don't think it's that bad, people just love to insult anything that's even remotely dated.
I personally think Liliths VA sucks lol
Exactly he completely missed the point.
Darkness isn't just seeing some guts on the floor. The grit and gravity felt when he says, "Look what this stone has done to me." It conjures the imagination.
To be fair there are things like that in D4, especially in the sidequests.
I couldn't believe how fucked it was when they killed the priest in the church. That was dark af
I'm a D4 player atm. I own the deluxe edition. I'm almost 7 weeks into the game.
Unfortunatelly for me, to be absolutely honest, the 2 most important things I notice in an ARPG the adrenaline and the satisfaction, they are both way higher with D2R than with D4.
Yeah the game is seriously lacking in dopamine spikes and it's because of "social" aspect of the game. Everything has to be accesable to a party of different levels so they can't level lock many interesting things. Hit level 50, when the grind begins, and you've seen most of what the game has to offer which you have to play with a limited amount of skills to choose from and there are even fewer builds actually viable making this pretty monotonous.
"Oooooohhhh" the deluxe edition,look at you.
@@futilelamp4188 I don't think he's flexing. I think he's just pointing out despite his investment, he's still critical of the game.
I had the exact same experience as TheActMan. It's not like we "played the game wrong". We just played the game, and it was a cakewalk all the way to Hell, even a slog at times. That's not good. I liked half the story, but there were some side quests I enjoyed more; it gave more of a village feel to do things for specific people whose lives you were given a glimpse of. I didn't really "establish a connection" with the main characters, as much as I did certain side quest givers, all of whom I've now forgotten the names of. Then I went to Nightmare Lilith and had a good fight, but not hard. Now I'm on Hell difficulty, and it seems like I'm just staring at hunting for small incremental item stat boosts.
Like MrLlamaSC said, "it's like 1000 paper cuts". So many tiny AND huge things are wrong.
- The horse controls, the constant hitching on little corners, and all the patches of ground where it takes baby steps. How was it shipped like this?
- The stat pool is bloated, making items extremely difficult to compare, to the point where I sometimes truly have no idea which one is better and I just give up.
- Blatant bugs in the resistance calculations, and likely other things that we just haven't found, because it's all too complicated.
- Just as an example, why do all the wolves look the same throughout the game, even if they're elite? It's so boring. In D2 they at least changed their colors, usually to match elite affixes or in this particular area they're all blue instead of red, which gave a much better illusion of breadth in enemy designs.
- There's no excuse for the item icons to look so bad. Why does every item look brownish and greyish? And there are very few effects and colors on them. I guess the stat pool is so complicated, that they just gave up showing any matching effects/looks on the items. In Diablo 2, the items would have e.g. blue tint if they dealt ice damage and green if they had poison damage, usually both on their inventory icon and the model on the character, so you could distinguish them somewhat by their colors. There are only scraps of that in D4, aside from legendary and up, making 90% of the loot look bland, especially in the first 50 levels of the game. Why?
How have they messed up so many designs, when they had such a huge backlog of lessons to study? Since it was a new set of developers, I would expect them to do study up. This is a billion dollar company we're talking about, and everyone playing paid at least $60 for this game. It's weird. Was no QA done? Was it rushed? Some of these faults are so huge, that they will likely not get changed.
yeah DM made a point about how actman took his time levelling, and i can now understand DM's point of view, but if that's the case, the case does a horrible job of teaching or guiding you to play the game in a certain way, probably because its as much assumes you already know how to play it because you play PoE. But i didn't come to play a PoE clone, i came to play diablo
DM’s take was wrong IMO. Its not “your fault” for doing the content in front of you (side quests, strongholds, dungeons etc). Thats the game. If you play the game (rather than ignoring everything and rushing the story) the game breaks by becoming super easy. This is the devs fault not the players. It would be so easy to just unlock tier 3 at level 1. Or level 20. Whatever. Its nonsense. Im playing a second time skipping everything except the campaign. Its better, but honestly still too easy. I haven’t died on a boss yet. It really kills the sense of achievement when you beat everything the first time.
@calebserafy7933 You can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe borderlands had level scaling in it at true vault hunter playthrough and the enemies there didn't just scale to you, but a little past you. Like if you were level 65 then the enemy's could be like 67 or 8 right? Couldn't Diablo do that or am I high?
@@xthekeymakerx1594 That's what usually is the case. Trash mobs should be a minor challenge, but a challenge nonetheless. Then elites and bosses give you those moments where you buckle up and conquer a bigger challenge, and then you go back to the lesser challenge of the trash mobs. In D4, trash mobs either do nothing or are too slow to ever hit you, or they one-shot you. Feels bad.
DM is the only Diablo 4 reactor I watch because his opinion aligns with mine and I’m right
LOL
Same
Hell yea brother
Big true
Brilliant hahahaha
“Skipping the game is the game”. An accurate observation but that’s something a lot of people don’t have fun doing.
On the other hand when you can't skip some parts of the game you are quickly getting annoyed by them. It's importnant to understand that you have a choice and can choose things you are enjoying.
This. He basically is saying Act Man should have just skipped experiencing the game to better "experience" the game. Which is a wild statement
@@Lecruidant Hey, I see that you have bought a big game that we have bloated out of proportion with tedious tasks that we shitted all over the map. And you don't have time to finish it, want me to speed it up a bit? Look here, it's a gem that allows you to...
He also skipped the things he said he wanted in the game and then cried that it wasn’t there.
@@kch6052hence why it's called bad game design...
19:40
Yes, you can cross the entire map to find the harder area, but that also means you skipped literally everything in between.
In a first playthrough I'd assume most people explore a bunch. They do the quests. They do the dungeons and cellars. They go back for a stronghold or two. This means that they keep levelling the entire way, and during this entire way they'll only meet enemies that are at roughly their level. Whether they're moving forward with their exploration of the zone they found, or going back to get to the stronghold they couldn't do first time around.
In WoW, as an example, if I want to go from Undercity to WP, I can pass by the enemies because I grew past them. I am much stronger than I used to be. In D4 I'd have to keep fighting the bats and the hounds every time I pass through because they stay at my level. I never get the sense I progressed past fighting a small bat.
In D4 I'd be fighting the monstrous demons of hell on equal footing, much like the warg in the act 1 area if I go back there. I did not get stronger in any meaningful way. Yes, you are right that I could not have fought that demon at lvl5, but where is my progression if I never leave any sort of enemy behind? I never grew past the warg.
I agree. and wanted to point this out too. you are totally right.
@@sdotwallacewhich is why nightmare dungeons go way past level 100 anyways. Just tagging that on.
@@sdotwallace exactly. Diablo is about gear and building, not just leveling. Casuals will be casuals I guess
You're clearly not playing D4 correctly
Counterpoint, if those places didn't scale with you then you would only have one or two places on the map where you could encounter any meaningful combat. Everything else besides the very last area would be just dead space. The experience of "hey look I slaughter these bats in one hit. I couldn't do that before! Neat!" I think would end up being a pretty empty victory in the long run as you realize that there is literally nothing left for you in this area.
I definitely understand his point of not wanting to have to put 30 hours into the game to start enjoying it, but it’s so strange to me that he got to the first capstone dungeon, admittedly the most fun part to him thus far, and stopped playing right after that.
pretty sure he will be disappointed with what awaits him later.
When I was struggling with my barbarian I almost gave up I felt weak I was on world tier 1 I wasn't having fun but I stuck with it for stronger and when I changed to world tier 2 and went into that first capstone dungeon to unlock world tier 3. I had so much fun seeing my barbarian rib and tear through that dungeon. I'm so glad I didn't give up
he plays lighting storm and companion build lmao. ofc hes not gonna make it. My lvl 43 pulv druid having a blast on helltides almost one shotting any mobs. The problem in d4 is the game is not casual friendly except for the necro class
At that point of the game , you can already see the terrible scaling take place.
He stopped at the capstone after realizing besting the campaign was finishing all the content. After that there nothing to do but aimlessly wonder around a world where everything has the same power at all times because scaling
My main takeaway as someone fondly remembering the D2 era, there needs to be moments in the campaign that no matter what you did during your campaign progression, there should be moments that are skill checks. D2 itself often felt trivial up until I faced Andariel and found myself running around terrified of all the god damn poison. Then Act 2 came and intermittently felt some difficulty but overall not that bad....then Duriel comes along and kicks my ass. The act bosses need to be emphasized and made to feel actually epic. There's times were I had no idea I completed an act because it just felt so anti-climactic that I didn't realize I was moving on to a new act. D2 there was just no question because I just had to spend so long surviving and eventually killing some badass boss. There was a certain satisfaction too bringing in new friends and leveling with them and witnessing them experiencing the game knowing what they'd eventually face and seeing their reaction. D4 really just doesn't have any of that. I do enjoy the game, but it lacks the kind of leveling experience unless you make a real effort ignoring all side content and even then it's just not the same.
Huh, your experience with D2 reminds me of how I felt about the Souls games.
I'm so glad I didn't buy D4.
I knew after the spectacular failures of D3 that I was done with Diablo games. I just play D2R ladder now.
Really all they needed to do was make more expansions for D2R😂
They would've made more money and players would like it way better I believe.
Or just use the EXACT FRAME WORK from D2 for D4. Just add/ change skills. Maybe add some past lvl 30 skills, idk. All future D games are dead to me tho, they killed it 🤷♂️
@@Hxn1027 D4 is in a bad spot ... but cmon bro, you and I both *know* D2R ain't pulling in $1Billion dollars in revenue
@@willistan3562 I know it isn't. I don't judge a game by how much money it brings in tho. I don't care what everyone else likes, I buy what I like. And D2R imo is just so much better.
The scaling aspect alone absolutely ruins D4 imo.
@@Hxn1027 its so easy to see which people has friends to play with and which people are shouting at the sky at the gall of making it more coop friendly lmao
He’s got a point about the NPC. D2 had Charsi the blacksmith.
Each act had memorable characters with your pal Cain following you around.
D2 had less NPCs which made everybody of them easier to memorize. I wouldnt say D2 NPCs are better then D4, but you have so many in D4 that it makes it difficult to remember them by name. Excluding Vigo, cause hes the biggest chad of them all.
I think if you have to play the game a certain way, that's still an issue. Like if exploring and doing side quest just completely over levels you for the rest of the game that is a problem because you shouldn't expect people to just try to rush to the end of an open world game. To me that's failing to account for a core feature of the genre.
nicely worded feedback
I kinda see your point but I think it gives players choice. It also helps players choose their personal difficulty level. Plus it works that way in like every rpg ever. To use elden ring for example. It’s an extremely difficult game IF you just play through it, but if you max every area and farm your brains out then you can help yourself especially if you know you’re not that skilled or are struggling with the game difficulty.
Yeah absolutely. I was almost in the same position as DM, I rushed the campaign, so near the end I started to be underlevel (lvl36 for Lilith, I died 9 times before killing her lol), and it was challenging, so it was really fun. But only because I rushed it. And even then, it became challenging only with Duriel and after basically. Before that, I didn't felt in danger.
So I get his point, if you are forced to rush the campaign and ignore the rest of the game just to be challenged in the campaign, this is a game design problem.
And if you don't rush it, you basically have to play like maybe 20-30+ hours of easy and boring gameplay just to start enjoy the game, which is not a good thing either.
And this is exactly why I rushed the campaign. I wanted to end it as fast as possible to access the interesting gameplay, the mid/end-game. But it leads to another problem.
I was challenged near the end, but because I rushed the campaign as fast as I could, I didn't enjoyed the campaign... For me, it was just a boring task to finish to start enjoy the game most of the time. Maybe it's only me, I'm not gonna talk for everyone, but that's just how I felt the campaign.
But I feel like whatever you do, there is a problem. And I'm just talking about the campaign lol...
100% agree.
Counter point is that the side content is always there. You can side quest all the way up in WT4. I'm not say that you should accidently be over powered for the main quest, but it isn't the easiest to prevent. if it was than we wouldn't have so many game with this problem. while D4s scaling could make this less of a problem, WT1&2 stop at lvl 50. I'm not disagreeing, but this is a problem with games in general (even more so with more freedom of where you can go and when).
The scaling is probably the worst element of Diablo 4. It is not that you want to go back and crush this stuff now that you're stronger (if that's your thing cool). It's that constant feeling that everything you do is the same in the game. It's easier to say it's like putting a carrot dangling in front of you that you chase, that you never really catch up with. For more than likely a large number of people, it will make you sleepy or disinterested.
@@KoiKoy56 but what if you want to take your time and play the game explore everywhere, uncover secrets and be in the world? and not be pestered from across the map by the same event, that you HAVE to go through to get somewhere else only to be CC'd by yet ANOTHER bunch of annoying mobs that drag out your ecounter and aren't able to blast through? the game keeps dragging you and forcing you to play it, its way, on its terms, not your own
@@KoiKoy56 level scaling makes every game worse tbh it doesnt make that one shot mob more fun to kill it makes it a slog to get through what should be a oneshot rats milion billion healthbar
@@KoiKoy56 dont get me wrong, but that sounds rather elitist, especially considering ive been using build guides from some very successful and well established youtubers, aaaaand i would say and DM here in the video agreed, you cannot be overlevelled in d4 as the more gear you get the challenge mobs bring increases, as he said of act man finishing lilith at 50, he was way over levelled and made it harder form himself because he made lilith stronger.
.....so either you know something they dont, or your dismissing anything that doesnt conform with your opinion as a skill based player issue, or git gud as they say, which seems a bit coujter productive to make other players stay, when its not just us two commenters saying these things, in fact it seems there are less players with your opinion, hence the videos and the discussion. So what is it we are missing then?
@@KoiKoy56 i would love to know what kinds of classes and buikds you are using then that are that strong, they clearly need to be introduce to the meta then, considering how many other class builders there are out there, not doing it properly it seems, of which i can agree building a necro i tested a fair share of builds that dont suit y personal playstyle or are just plain junk
@@KoiKoy56 ok but you were also gouped up for some of that as well i take it?
also never said anything about content creators saying that.
The level scaling is an issue imo. You shouldn’t “over level” Lilith Bc if you’re level 50 when you fight her, she scales up to 50 and should be as difficult. You shouldn’t have to burn through the story and be 10 levels below her to have a challenging fight.
Yeah all the points this guy brings up in counter are “oh you gotta run through the campaign, fight things ten recommended levels higher than you, play for 20+ hours in order to unlock difficulties you feel are challenging” when the whole point is you shouldn’t need to do that, and because the game is semi-linear you’ll never actually fight an opponent you have a hard time beating if you play the game the way it’s supposed to be played
Imho not scaling per se is a problem but the way it was implemented because if it worked properly breezing through the campaign vs being slow should not result in 2 completely different playthroughs.
To minimize this problem:
* 1st playthrough should be super linear with mobs that doesn't scale at all (to give you power fantasy of beating regular shits more easily with time).
* Mid tier mobs scale softly - they should feel stronger than you but still fighting with them should not be a chore. Still power fantasy is a core of a arpg game.
* Bosses should scale always to feel stronger than you. No matter how you play bosses should have minimal lvl and scale infinitely so there is no scenario when final boss is a joke.
After your 1st playthrough scaling could be stronger to not make your character feel like God and still give you some hardships.
But then you have this whole problem of boring character progression and itemization that make this game still boring to play. And all mentioned by Act artificial constraints like 5 main skills and necessity to pick meta ones. There is no theory crafting, no experimentation - without a guide you can see which build is the best. Color coding matching skills doesn't help either.
And I agree to this day that even consoles could handle more shortcuts but Blizzard did what? They gave us emoticons and potions as shortcuts for a radial menu...not skills...emotes and potions.... They have tech to give us more choices but nah laziness won be aus hurr durr "balancing"
So later this week, “Asmongold reacts to DM reacting to Act Man.” Gonna be epic content.
Darth ActmanGold
with the gasping face thumbnail.
cringe thumbnails
3 hour video incoming boys
Lmao same I can't wait. DM I felt was a bit nicer with some of the bad takes and I hope Asmon is more brutal with how bad some of his takes were
Asmon already reacted to ActMan's video last night didn't he?
A major point he's making without stating clearly is he wants the difficulty levels available from the beginning. He doesn't want tier 3 or 4 locked behind 20 to 30 hours of numbingly easy gameplay
Yeah and DM saying "just play a hardcore character" doesnt make sense. That doesnt increase the difficulty just the punishment.
Also saying "i beat the campaign at level 31 and lilith was hard" kind of makes you part of the problem, cause that punishes people who WANT to play the campaign, enjoy the world and do sidequests for background story. He just ran rhrough it to start min maxing, which should not be the main thing to do in a fckin RPG !
that would be stupid
@@yeahnahyeahm8496Why?
@@Cr0nk This was exactly my thought. Hes basically agreeing with act man 100% by saying that, which means that the campaign, and the content of the game is not even worth playing, and you should just rush through the campaign to actually enjoy the game. So why even have the other stuff in the game in the first place? None, its pointless.
This video helped me realize, the huge rift there is between RPG and ARPG audiences, they value different things in games, both have 100% valid points of view even in the things that seem diametrically oposed, because of that difference in values, I think the most important thing Act Man says, is in the first seconds of his video, that, he no longer feels like the target audience for Diablo, and he is probably correct, this game's main target audience is ARPG gamers, as someone who belongs firmly in the RPG audience, I play games for the narrative, the RP part, the escapism, worldbuilding, and maybe a bit the challenge, but the grind, absolutely not, also not interested in killing 1000 enemies per second, and viceversa, I'm sure people in the ARPG audience like and play games for the opposite reasons. It's just a little sad that it feels like Diablo is no longer welcoming to the RPG audience, since to get to the good part you have to blast through the story and the RP part.
but there is not even a good endgame in d4 if u compare to d2, there is less build variety, less item options and no reason to play this game for years over and over again like d2. there is a reason that people have been playing this game for ages
a guy with logic in yt comments ill be damned, i didnt have that on my bingo card
@@anewhopedawn6676 d2s endgame is pretty much the same but with less options lol
@@yeahnahyeahm8496 i mean hell difficulty by late game , and its a hell lot more fun to figure out immunities and overcoming the cahllenge hell monsters impose
Yes, strength is for melee characters, Intelligence is for magic characters. He was using strength as an example. Strength usually gives you more damage, or ability to wear more armor.
He was also a druid, where strength does didly-poop for them, since Willpower is their main stat, and also quite a bit of intelligence and dexterity in the paragon tree.
Example of... what? He just seemed to not understand how the stats work. I'm not sure what the issue is with a stat giving armor when there are 4 stats? Not every stat is key to every class and as DM said you're not supposed to try and max str if you're a druid, you max willpower. By this logic D4 is actually way better than most other RPGs because in most RPGs stats that don't scale with your build or class are just useless.
@@basblobhe's saying that strength doesn't do what strength normally do when you level strength normally you do more dmg and can use heavy weapons. Getting armour from strength is counterintuitive. Regardless of what class he played it has nothing to do with it. It's like if Int would give you more physical armour and not buff your magic.
It was pretty clear what he meant imo i don't get the confusion
strenght should give more melee damage PERIOD. even if you play mage and want to wack people with your stick: strenght should help.period.
So imagine playing a big buff druid who can shapeshift and... strenght does nothing
Boar is just an extreme example of the lack of scaling "power fantasy", but even just being able to get back to the boss easier because you leveled up doesn't happen really because of the level scaling.
I love how you said "nobody plays a ARPG for the NPCs" when Diablo 1 literally imvented the ARPG genre and had NPCs that are so iconic everyone knows them to this day lol.
i have 10k hours on d2 and dont give a single fuck about any npcs in it, arpgs are just there to dominate demons a decent story and characters are a plus but most people that play them couldnt care less
Your the minority nobody played diablo for the story it was for the gameplay. People who wanted story were playing table top, DnD and other shit. I have no fkn idea where people get this perception that when d1 and d2 were current people were talking about story they were not thats only retroactive 20 years later.
@@maxpowers4436 well i am talking about the NPC's not the story. The NPC's added flavour to the world which helped with immersion. Everyone today knows Deckard Cain. Why? Because he had a interesting voice and he said "Stay awhile and listen." He became so iconic that when he was killed off by a butterfly in D3, people lost their shit lol.
You could kill off any NPC in D4 and i would be, like....who? *shrug*
@@maxpowers4436He said confidently,.. having just beat the BUTCHER, while standing in tristrim talking about mephisto. How old are you? You honestly played D1? don't lie to kick it.
If Diablo 4 was all diablo 1 had to offer, there wouldn't have been 4 more launches.
All positives and negatives of the game aside and the fact, that your life right now is basically centered around D4, I highly appreciate your neutral and differentiating stance. You explain your takes and generate zero drama even with the points you don't agree with. I think this is highly professional and I like it! Please never lose that.
He was disingenuous as fuck. Making arguments he knows have holes in them but he knows his audience doesn't care.
@@tugboat6940 such as?
@@fonsorell0 for example he criticizes act man for being overleveled to fight Lilith but that's because act man played the game like a normal gamer and took his time and actually played a good chunk of the content instead of what diablo fan-boys do where they blast through the campaign as fast as they can and then just grind the same dungeons over and over after that. DM was basicly saying it's act man's fault for not ignoring 3/4 of the content and just blazing through the campaign. It's Act Man's fault for trying to enjoy every part part of the game. DM knows this argument is ridiculous but he also knows people like you either won't notice or won't care. To me it's super lazy and disingenuous.
Yeah I thought that was weird also.
@tugboat6940 yeah, you're pretty much right
With your point about taking too long to get through the campaign just keep in mind that if you do the sidequests diligently because you're OCD about your quest log, you will hit level 50 before you finish act 2. I learned that enemies won't level past 50 until you beat the campaign when I was level 46(!) in the middle of act 2 and then ignored all sidequests and blitzed the rest of the campaign and it was a very jarring experience.
They designed the world to explore and if you're one of the players who likes to do that you get punished for it in that sense. But I'm definitely not the only person who plays like this (sidequests then main quest). The honest game trailers guy made the same point.
90% of players are not going to rush the campaign and beat it at 31. The game's intended path has you beating it at 50 and starting WT4 at 70. If the game's intended path is too easy, the game is too easy. And if you beat a lvl 50 campaign at lvl 31, that kind of reinforces the idea that it's too easy. Blowing through the campaign would be even more boring for me than just dealing with the piss easy bosses.
Couldnt agree more im with the actman with this subject. I personally dont like blasting thru the campaign just to get to endgame I noticed alot of ppl who disagree with this put an unrealistic amount of time with this game
Agree 100%. The game gives you too many side quests thus allowing you to over level. Its not the players job to understand they are overleveling themselves. We wont know that anyways until its too late BECAUSE of the scaling. We dont know we at 10+ levels too high because we arent seeing it.
I don't quite understand the point here. DM plays this game a heck of a lot longer than most gamers. If the argument is that it's "too easy" then everyone should be able to achieve that instead of the best of the best players. Further more, there already is a hard mode right from the get go. To be honest the difficulty is about one of the things they got right given the way they implemented the system.
This is like complaining you can grind levels in a game so the game is too easy. You might be intended to be at X level for X content, but if you have a functioning brain higher than 75 IQ you can figure out if it's too easy to stop grinding or stop blaming the game for your drool bucket filling too quick.
which arpg do you play that has a hard campaign
It's not just about the leadup to the tree of whispers. It's the post-reveal where you go to learn more about it from different NPCs. Imagine if the main chars had a lot of story about it but then when you randomly go around towns you can talk to certain vendors or other NPCs about it and some of them providing different part or their own perspective on it etc. It would help establish it as something really important and big in the world, not just some random thing no one knows about.
Exactly
What is this Tree of Whispers then? Still no explanation after the game is finished. More just a daily quest npc out of no where.
Nope that sounds like too much role playing in a blizzard arpg.
yea one big thing i noticed in d4, was just how much more dead the towns felt, i mean there were sprites placed there and an occasional discussion to be overheard, but it felt defeaning compared to even d3 as to feeling like you were in a bustling commercial port, or a paranoia filled hamlet. i gotta go back and play them again just to see
I think that what you're saying is technically true about scaling , there is an actual evolution.... However and this is where i kinda get Actman , that's not how it actually feels for many. When you mix that kind of grind with the scaling , enough people will just feel that they aren't progressing , that they character aren't exactly getting increasingly powerful , and just facing the same level of challenge when repeating zones and foes , or even just feel that it get worse and they're just weaker the more their level up and gear up . Of course it's not true , but it does not matter , the perception of it and how it feels will take priority here .
He is , well both of you , are right on CC chains .... it just feels horrendeous . it is something Blizzard had feedback over since all the betas , but they insist on this . It's ridiculous to get stuck between 6-8 elites and die because you are just stunlocked and frozen for many seconds (if your survivability is high) till you die . Nobody enjoys that
For the cc lock they should've given characters Iframes in between stuns so you have time to attack back or dodge or clear out the way
My character felt more powerful at every single 5 level increment. The open world just got easier and easier and lost all challenge. The only exception was right after moving up world tiers which speaks for itself.
I felt like I was chasing power and could never get it. It’s an awful experience and I don’t want to play past level 53
I have been putting more hours into Halls of Torment.
Yeah the CC chains are ridiculous. The on death effects are ridiculous. Many of the monsters in D4 are more dangerous dead than alive. And the ones that are alive are only dangerous when they CC you. Its lazy game design.
I think the conversation around difficulty is an example of a thing gamers do where people assume their enjoyment of a game is related to its difficulty when it’s often not, They just have a series of preexisting beliefs that back them into a place where they assume games they like must be hard and games they don’t must be easy.
The channel folding ideas talks about it in his video on WoW classic, if you want it explained better.
The solution to the scaling difficulty is actually just super easy: Make it an option whenever you enter the game.
Want to play with mates on a couch? turn it on. Want to just play an rpg game without the insanity that is auto scaling enemies? Leave it off.
City of Heroes (and probably other games but this is the one that comes to mind for me) had this solved decades ago: when partying with people higher/lower level than you, you have the option to scale to their level and play the content while receiving your actual level-appropriate rewards. yes, if your 50+3 character scaled down you were still stronger than your low-level friend because you still had (scaled back) bonuses from your max-level build, and if you scaled up as a level 1 to 49 you were still much weaker than most level 49s because you didn't have a full build and set of powers, but you were still able to DO things with people of those levels without sacrificing the feeling of player and enemy power progression every rpg should have. no idea how it continues to elude companies that a lot of people don't like the auto-scaling crap and there are better ways to do it.
I agree with this. Don’t know why this isn’t an option.
i do agree that the level scaling does take away a big part of the fun, i'm a new diablo player that was hoping to get that power fantasy experience my cousins raged about back in the day but was kinda let down. probably my fault though for having false expectations
You can, but it just takes some time and a little luck.
Just play D2R. That's all I'm going to say. The challenge gets harder but the uniques and loot does too. Unlike D4.
Yeah. Just play D2R, Grimdawn, or older games like Titan Quest, Sacred, etc. Those are better than D4. Blizzard is just a cesspool of bad games now. The Blizzard we love died before or after the Wrath of the Lich King.
The point about Diablo 1 and talking to each villager wasn't about the quality of the voice acting,. but that you could have the conversations. If this was applied to Diablo IV, they would obviously have high quality voice acting, they wouldn't rely on technology and approaches to voice acting from 26 years ago when Diablo came out. It's about the smaller scale and ability to flesh out quests with more value. It's applying the ideas and approach to a modern game to breathe more life into the world.
It is applied in D4.. people in citys change their dialog based on your progress in that area
The survivability thing is so true, i found myself treating the maps as a helpful tool(they were like mazes) in diablo 2, using doors like a bottleneck to fight mobs.
Cheeseing the butcher with a bow from behind a bar door.
I had no idea there were lower level limits to content either. By my measure I practically "rushed through" the campaign, but that still had me doing a bunch of side quests, exploring, and dungeons that caught my interest. As a result I was level 50 by the time I hit Lilith, and at no point had I encountered any content that was not scaled up to my level. I could try it now I guess, but I have no desire to sit through the entire campaign again.
I'm also with ActMan on the story. The opening is great, the ending is good, and the middle is kind of mid. Some moments are cool, the snakewalk and chatty tree, the drowning box, black friday at Caldeum, character cameos and others, but a lot of it feels somewhere between busywork and a missed opportunity to make more of an impact.
Lorath's monologues are an example; in lieu of chapters, the monologues are essentially bookends to sections of the story. They're an opportunity to impress on the player what has happened, or introduce fairly blatant foreshadowing. Instead they're bland platitudes with images panning over unrelated gravestones? Take the first one after the prologue, when Lorath rides out of Kyovashad, we could have had a short cinematic with a black wolf's paw ominously stepping in snow, Lilith walking through a Scosglen forest as demons rise in her footsteps, Neyrelle's mother descending the mine shaft. For the ending one in Hell, throw in a last shot of Inarius' body being swallowed by the Damned, Prava stumbling back into Caldeum, Neyrelle resolving on her path.
Part of my issue with the story is Modern Gaming and More is More. In Diablo 1, the entire story is about Leoric, Lazarus and Diablo. In Diablo 2, the entire story is about Diablo, Tyrael, and later Baal. The player is just a faceless janitor coming in after hours to pick up the pieces, and any motivations or impressions he has are those we ascribe to him. Only in the very end is the player relevant to the story, and that sense of being a side character on a stage of immortals is what makes them such compelling gothic/cosmic horror.
In Diablo 3, and again in 4, we need to have modern storytelling, the player can only be invested and immersed if he is the hero, the focal point of the story. But since a player character must be a faceless vehicle for plot he can't have a defined personality (shush Geralt), so he becomes a tagalong in a story about a small ensemble of "heroes" where he only performs token interactions, while the ones that should be the main characters of the story, Lilith, Inarius and Mephisto, are reduced to foils.
D4 does avoid the gratuitously awful beats of standing around doing nothing while watching Deckard being murdered (Donan doesn't count, we never got to like him), or Azmodan bragging about his genious immunity to face stabbing as we cleverly stab him in the face.
well said. and yea i only ever noticed a few quest that weren't exactly my level, being 2 levels no more, being as someone that uses quest levels to determine what and how i tackle things depending on how i want to go through the game. but yeah i agree the game just ended up feeling like a big blob of meh, with activision waiting at then end pointing me to the shop front with its hand out saying "give me more money now" ugh
I actually agree with him, the Loot system is broken on top of inventory management blows leveling feels flat
Hard agree on the inventory space. I would be happy to see that get a bump in space. I’d even pay gold or obols to get an extra row tbh.
Loot system is bearable for me. I understand the game type and if I get bored with the grind, I’m happy to just play another game till something new piques my interest again
It's laughable that anybody would defend this game. It's diablo but without loot or partying? Wtf is this shit.
@@thedirtydizzler brother, quit gatekeeping people’s interests.
@thedirtydizzler it's laughable because you thought you ate. People have been enjoying the game.
lmfao no loot eh?
Dude, I think his point about the stat increases, such as raising strength, mattered even with sorceresses, because if you wanna wear heavy armor, you have to invest in strength. If want to have a better block rate, or increase your attack rating, you have to have more dexterity. Even if sorcs don’t usually swing mauls, the strength increase meant something.
Also wanted to say it’s nice to have a different viewpoint, and your demeanor is appreciated
Well, it's not as cool as being able to put on new gear when you hit a minimum stat, but D4 does have some extra benefits for hitting minimum stats. The rare nodes on the paragon board have secondary bonuses if you have a certain score in a stat (I play barb and have them for str/dex/will but haven't seen one for int). But it gave me incentive to get some "all stats" bonuses on my gear to get some extra will and dex to get those extra bonuses
When's the last time you played D2? The stat spread for almost every build in the entire game is exactly the same and has been for 20 years. Str: enough to wear gear Dex: either 0 or enough for max block Vit: Literally everything else Energy: 0. The only exceptions are full glass cannon amazon who puts a ton in dex and Energy shield sorc who puts all their points in energy instead of Vit. And by endgame between hellfire torch, annihilus, charms, and your gear you usually don't even need points in str or dex, so LITERALLY every stat point goes into Vit. Fully buffed an endgame character can have around 2500HP...which is 5 times the amount of HP that the best healing potion in the game heals.
I will give it to you that when you're initially leveling you might put a few points in dex or energy for attack rating/having a bit more mana, but even with crappy starter gear later you want to respec out of that.
The damage increase from putting points into str is negligible (gives like 1 damage every few points...and you do literally thousands of damage endgame) and is never the reason you put points in str. Wearing heavier armor is useless, the elite versions of armors have very little difference in maximum defense, and you have to have an absurd amount of defense for it to matter at all, I'm talking like 10000 defense which is really only obtainable by paladin using holy shield. You don't survive by wearing heavy armor you survive by having maxxed resistances, absurd amounts of HP (by putting almost all of your stat points in Vit), % damage reduction, being fast (either run speed or teleport), lifesteal, and most importantly, obliterating the screen before the things on the screen kill you.
Source: I've played D2 and then D2R at least 1 season almost every year for the last 17 years, every single class and practically every single build, including the meme melee sorc build that uses enchant on herself and whacks things.
I'd push back on your defense of the scaling mechanic. If you have to ignore all the side content while going through the campaign then it isn't balanced well.
Bingo. He's defending the MMO mindset
@@crazyguywatchnu in mmos if you kill 1000 wolves you can choose to skip killing kobold quests, if you kill 100 000 spiders you can choose to skip the next zone entirely and go directly to duskwood without touching westfall. In diablo 2 if you wana skip getting the horadric cube... good luck trying to get to act 3. Blizzard didn´t get the memo but even in GW2 wich has both open world and scaling levels for enemies, they do not force you to complete the campaign, because of this exact issue. It would be impossible to make it feel good or challenging for all levels and gears at all points of every character progression. Hence u make it optional that way people who do it in the intended level can have a challenge and those who would breeze trough it can choose to skip it entirely.
In D2R you don't have to use the F keys to swap abilities anymore. You can bind whatever keys you want. So you get a lot more skill flexibility than D4 currently has.
This was the exact reason why I gave up on D3. The fact every skill I had would kill every monster in the game and I didn't have to think about a strategy for immunes or auras made the game so boring for me. My witch was so powerful and it didn't matter what build I had. I dominated everything so quick so easily that I tried to find the WEAKEST build to make the game more fun. And it was STILL to easy. Blizzards "fix" for this? Add 15 more difficulty levels. Wtf?
i still prefer the F key system but yeah, it's just what I'm used to
@@RickieJrwho said that they have to be level one and useless? You can create insanely intricate builds which require pre casting two or three buffs and then actively use 2 or three combat abilities plus teleport. Add to that defensive skills, you have a build with more than 6 useful abilities which you can use at any time without additional cooldowns.
@@RickieJr that depends heavily on your class. a lot of classes will easily max out the skill slots and yeah, a lot of skills are super useful on level 1 and are used heavily. teleport, all the curses, bunch of shouts, telekinesis, golem, holy shield, mind blast, burst of speed, a bunch of summon skills across several classes, static field, corpse explosion ect, all heavily used if not mandatory for their class at level 1.
This honestly made D2R playable for me. I was never able to get around the jankiness of that f skill to right click. I never played it. Then D2R added action bars? I played through all the way to 94 on my sorc. Its actually WILD how that one single thing made the game go from a tedious slog that I couldnt get through act 3 in to instant classic I replay every season!
18:26 the thing is that the campaign doesnt lead you to this location. You only go there if you have a reason to go, where as In elden ring the game tells you to go anywhere you want, because in each zone there are bosses to kill and an area to discover. So because elden ring suggests you to go to khealid but not when to go, the only thing that tells you that you are ready or not is the difficulty. I think the core problem of d4 campaign is that it is too on rails. You have markers which tell you where you have to go, so you have no reason to discover anything, since everything important is highlighted on the map.
I think the argument that Act Man was overlevelled doesn't really make sense. Some people like myself love doing side stuff like quests and exploration and going to every nearby map event that pops up as they do the campaign. So I think that Act Man and myself experienced Lilith as she was designed to be difficulty-wise. People who rush the campaign like DM get to face her at a much higher level because the devs actually wanted to encourage people to do side stuff as they did the campaign so they put an artificial level barrier in for the zones. That's why it gradually goes all around the world map as it progresses! But to imply that Act Man did something wrong by that playstyle doesn't sound right to me. He experienced the game as it was encouraged by the devs to be played. And so his argument that the game doesn't progress in difficulty during the campaign makes perfect sense. Lilith was a weak end-boss for the campaign to finish on. Compare her to facing Diablo in Diablo I & II for the very first time back in the 90's (the ancient times before you watched a youtube video on how to minmax a character before you booted the game). You faced him expecting to die repeatedly. Lilith is just a punching bag with a ton of hp.
I don't even understand why DM actually said like it is Act Man's fault. Lilith in game level is 45 so you are suppose to beat her around this level. And if the fight is easy, it is the design problem of Blizzard but not players.
It is actually non-sense to fight her at around level 36 for challenging issue and DM must have lost his mind if he expects other to do the same thing.
being overleveled is the negative consequence of an open world design. and also the misplaced desire for every area to feel meaningful. either you have a story driven world that's tightly crafted around the narrative (D1) or you have an open world where the story is only one of the options (D4). the first has little replay value but feels more impactful to the player, the 2nb is infinitely replayable but leaves a chore-like feeling afterwards ...
In regards to scaling difficulty - when I watched your mistakes video, you said to do as much side quests as possible and I did - and I overlevelled the campaign, unaware that Lillith was gonna be a few poison jabs to death at me being lv52.
I think if people like Actman and I are outscaling the campaign and find ourselves unfulfilled - the team should have addressed that as a potential pitfall that could severely dampen the experience.
I didn't even know enemies capped during the campaign and had higher levels because I was doing so much side content that scaled to my level and therefore leveled me exponentially.
If the campaign and area would have been lower leveled and quests yielded me experience for that area on first completion , I wouldn't have done 20+ dungeons to overlevel into oblivion. But because of level scaling, I thought I was leveling up normally and didn't even consider that being lv50 is overlevelled
Because what those defending scaling tend to avoid bringing up is that there's no difficulty setting in D4. T1 and T2 cap at 50. T3 caps at like 70. T4 caps at 100. They aren't difficulties in the traditional sense. You can't fight level 100 mobs in T1, T2, or T3 because the levels are tied to tiers, which makes them not difficulties.
Google (frankly, the sources google finds) also say you should fight Lillith at level 45-50, so fighting her at level 31 or something as he did is not gonna be the usual experience.
I love seeing people who disagree that take the time to explain a counter argument, give examples, and also can still see and the other person's perspective and view points. And rather than attack the person who doesn't agree with them with baseless name calling and insults, calmly and politely explains their view points and keeps it to the criteria of the discussion.
Unlike a lot of the fans out there when talking to Act Man...
I agree more with Act than DM in this take, though I don’t think D4 is a bad game.
D4 is too easy, esp on T2. I don’t think “playing too slow” should be a problem. My play style - and a lot of peoples play style - is too grind side quests to dominate the main story as you progress. I didn’t consume enough D4 YT content to know that this isn’t how Diablo 4 is meant to be played. I was NEVER outscaled in my play through at T2 or T3, and it felt too easy.
I just realized something... It's not that games have gotten worse over time, its the way we play them that has changed.
Here is an example : Find all the alters of Lilith with out an interactive guide
We play the games with way to much information and it ruins it. It's as simple as that. Just think of no build guides, farming information, Lilith guides.. NOTHING.. That's the way the game was intended to play and the way we used to play games.
Guides suck the magic out of every single game.
Good point!
I never use them. There is a guy I know who literally follows them all step by step to find everything in every game he plays. It seems pointless to me. I want to explore and find things on my own. But I guess some people don't want to play that way. The achievement hunter mindset is real in some folks.
Very true! I noticed this a lot while browsing the discourse on the renown carry-over drama for season 1. People who hate the game have this mindset of "grinding" out renown in one sitting, an extremely "inhumane" way of playing any game. Instead of just progressing through and picking up side quests, alters and strongholds on their journey. They inflict this unenjoyable way of playing on themselves and blame the publishers and developers for it, it's honestly insane to me! 😂
Imagine you tried Diablo 4 though without any guides or anything. You pick your skills, start getting your character set up how you want, then you realize your character sucks. Why is this? You wouldnt know that most skills just SUCK and arent viable to use. You wouldnt know what skills CAN be viable later with proper uniques. Diablo 4 would probably be rated so much worse without info
@@Shanobie fully disagree. You learn and explore, any new understanding is rewarded with a dopamine rush. The game has content, not with guides.
Just think playing elden ring with no guides, the amount of content to learn and explore is absolutely insane.
My experience with D4 was that there’s basically nothing left to do after level 70-80 (depending on RNG). I pushed 2 characters to ~lvl 80 and felt like my builds were fully min/maxed and there’s no reason left to play. Each character only has around 3 viable builds (variations, yes but the same core skills in the builds). The legendaries only seem to affect 1 thing, for rouge there’s only 1 aspect for pen shot, barb has maybe 2-3 that directly affect WW. Nothing in the loot feels really build changing, only helps the build FEEL BETTER. So basically my experience is that until endgame, the builds feel very clunky, then by endgame they feel good, but don’t actually change at all throughout the entire game. Perhaps is because the classes I chose (rouge and barb) but that in itself is a problem. I wasn’t a huge fan of D3 but with the gear sets, builds completely changed visually, play style, etc.
I hate that people worry about dumbshit like scaling and difficulty when THIS is what's plaguing this game lol. You pay 70bucks to have an experience that effectively maxes out at level 70 😂.
Like scaling can be manipulated and ignored after campaign, difficulty 😮comes from you as a player(build,class,meta,etc)... THE ENDGAME CYCLE WE ARE STUCK WITHHHH and Only the devs can change it.
@@skylerfreeman1173yeah I mean you're mostly right but I will say I very much enjoyed my 1 to 80 experience, and im enjoying my throwaway test hardcore toon at end of season 0, and I'll definitely try a new class w the new stuff for season 1 so even if the game has the groundwork to be so much better than it is rn I'm still happy enough w the experience I got for the price it came at. I still got more time out of it that I enjoyed than most plain story games these days. Even if you say it was only 70 hours or w.r a dollar an hour is a pretty good price tbh lol esp if they genuinely iterate on it and dont do it thru over priced expansions (well see tho ofc)
This is why I don't even bother past lvl 50. Waste of time. There's too many other games I can play instead.
How many hours did you put in? While there’s a ton of valid points here against the game, at a certain point you’ve got your moneys worth. A night out at the movies is a far less entertaining investment than a 70 dollar game that you get 50+ hours out of. Gaming is too gluttonous. I’ve put 87 hours in on one character and I’m waiting for the 20th to start a new one. I’m satisfied with the gameplay and content. This was always the way Diablo has been. Run rifts, get loot, repeat.
@@skylerfreeman1173People worry about scaling and difficulty because it makes the game very boring, and they quit before they realize any of the other issues. Scaling and difficulty are quite important issues bcuz they make people quit after a few hours instead of 50+.
I actually think that scaling is worse on the other side when you get towards the top end of leveling. If your build finishes getting all of the high synergy picks in your tree you get left with less optimal choices like boosting stats / life / etc but the enemies are all scaling up because you leveled up. In this case you are being punished to continue to level because you have already gotten the large synergy parts of the skill tree that you needed. This sort of thing can happen in any ARPG but normally its not an issue that its less powerful of a node because the mobs aren't getting stronger for you leveling up again. This tends to happen in the last 10-20% of leveling in a number of ARPGS and its just normally not an issue because mobs don't get stronger with your leveling up.
I experienced the same lack of challenge Act Man was talking about in the campaign and I understand your point that beating the campaign at lvl 47 was slow, but there’s not a great way to tell if you haven’t played before. How am I supposed to estimate the challenge of a quest I haven’t played yet? And why am I being punished for exploring other aspects of the game on my way through the main quest. IMO the main quest should end at a lot higher of a level to incentivize people to do other content in between main quest missions.
I mean, people who really play this game/diablo 3 will only play the campaign once like ever. The campaign is easy but it is also the bare minimum difficulty in the game. Go NM 10 higher than your level, capstone early, gear for uber lilith, helltides will also scale above you. It aint perfect but the difficult content exists if you want to chase it.
Act Man put 30 hours into a ARPG, that's like quitting school after kindergarten and complaining you haven't been afforded the opportunity to do calculus problems yet. He didn't even try the majority of content the game offers. If you complete the campaign once you can skip it on the next char and level to 50 insanely quickly, that's literally where the game begins. If you don't like that structure than I can't blame you, but that doesn't mean the game is bad.
I agree that the game needs some work. Just not in the areas Act Man describes, because he contradicts himself and doesn't seem to grasp the game very well due to lack of effort. If he took the many hours he spent making and editing an 1hr video playing the game or looking into its systems, he'd probably have better time. But why do that when you can drop the edgy diablo bad video that has garnered the attention he was looking for.
@@Lilmikey-dh8cd that's exactly what happened though. if you explored more, the culmination of the story became worse. the guy in the video said it himself, "you did too much side stuff".
@@jgicantfindaname oof, people like you still exist? "30 hours in, that's like quitting school in kindergarten". more like "30 hours in, and i've yet to get to what they are putting their effort into in this game?". if you can play a game for 30 hours, and experience the bare minimum, that's a shit game mate.
action rpg or not, 30 hours is not a small amount of time. that's literally a month for the average gamer. or more. regardless of genre, if putting 30 hours into a game, and beating it's entire story, isn't even "starting the game", that's a god awful game.
and there isn't much content at all past the campaign. "paragon boards" are just "extremely shit skill tree that is entirely superfluous". "nightmare dungeons" are just "same dungeon, with a .1 change in it". hell tides, and uber lilith, are really the only new content post 50. and even then, 99% of people won't ever get to uber lilith, because the game is designed to waste as much time as possible, in every single aspect of it.
if the game begins dozens of hours in, it's a shit game. action rpg or not, that's just garbage design. a game that purposefully wastes as much of your time as it can, in an attempt to get you to keep playing it, is also shit design.
Did you also die a dozen times while saying it was too easy? This was the most bizarre ridiculous video I've ever seen.
exactly if campaign is meant to be done at around level 50 then that content should be extremely hard if not even impossible to do at lvl 30 so your incentivized to go do other things to get stronger to beat the challenge.
The only reason the 'social' aspect exists is so Blizz can make us look at each other, and possibly buy skins out of a need to keep up or fit in.
skins are cringe though because that person actually paid money for it. id feel too embarrassed to show one off.
Why anyone cares about a random stranger's opinion of there appearance is beyond me.. Definately not worth the money... Kinda like the price for the base version of this game
@@stakkadakka3427 they are targeting kids, or more accurately moms credit cards.
I disagree, I only play multiplayer games and for people like me, just seeing other players playing gives me the feeling of slight companionship and there are obviously other situations like legions, world bosses, and hell tide where you get to spend time with other players and more importantly make parties and friends with players that you would otherwise never meet. This includes pvp. I would love to see more social features but the current features aren’t useless they’re a good start.
ngl, when i look at a profile and I see someone with a store skin, my first thought isn't "wow, they're cool, I need to buy a skin too", it's more along the lines of "wow what a dumbass". Like if you're gonna buy a skin, wait for the inevitable sales that will likely happen in the future, but there's really no good justification to spending upwards of $25 on a cosmetic.
the points he brought on this video has been most of the complaints huge part of comunity and testers made a long time ago, even before proper launch....
Just show Blizzard never trying to listen. They just want to make another WoW clone that keep you playing everyday without trying to make a really fun game.
Regarding the level scaling topic, I believe the main problem is not really the level scaling itself, but more that the game is not designed for people that likes to do a bunch of side stuff before completing the main story, for example, I like to complete all side quests on every area in my way to the main campaign locations, the problem with this approach is that you over level everything, but the scaling difficulty is not the same as trying to beat the main campaign alone without doing much dungeons, side quests etc, it's way easier.
The problem becomes worse when you realize that enemies scaling is caped to level 50 (veteran) until you beat the game and unlock nightmare mode. So, i beat lilith at level 50 with my 58 warrior and it was too easy, to the point it didn't felt rewarding.
so, I get antman point, these issues can be easily fixed though, dont limit scaling by difficulty, but player level and increase the scaling difficulty just a tiny bit more and boom, good to go.
This is my first ever ARPG, i made the mistake of playing the game instead of running through the campaign. I loved exploring and doing dungeons with friends, but what ended up happening is doing the campaign was almost literally AFKing the game. I ran past every enemy I didn't have to fight, stopped looking at gear, and started skipping cutscenes. The game INSTANTLY fell off because I did side quests and became too strong. There's quite literally no challenge in T2 unless i fall asleep in my chair, and I know t3 is where things become super fun but holy shit I cannot stand the story now because everything on the screen is anti-climactic.
Overall 1-50 is ultra bad, the combat is fun and that's the entire game, but if you literally explore the game world & do side quests and gear correctly you STILL have to afk through the campaign to get to the difficulty. I don't give a fuck about the story now, i'm just hoping there aren't enemies in front of me as i snore through the campaign. All my steam to go to 100 has turned into doom and gloom. Was loving at first but I feel like they tricked me, I wish we could start on world tier 3.
These kind of posts are so contradictory. The combat was fun, but also it the game sucked?
Doesn’t make sense
@@Ti_Fire what don’t you understand? The combat is fun, but it stops being fun because you over level story. Story becomes atrociously easy but you’re required to do it to get to tier 3. The story becomes anti-climactic and boring so you want to skip it before you’re finished. Now you’re tier 3, you get to start enjoying the game but the story has already be experienced in the worst way and you spent a lot of time not even progressing. Momentum is dead, game feels meh.
@@Ti_Fire Combat is only a small part of the game. There are so many more aspects that go into making a game fun other than combat. I had fun with combat in the game, but that was just it. The rest of the game: loot, story, game play choices/design, class design/balance, pretty much sucked.
The problem is that in D4 there is very little incentive to go for the more difficult content or even move on to the next area. Everything levels with you, is fast to kill, and gives near optimal EXP. So it never really feels like taking it slow. And once you are in the level-scaling area everything feels the same, so I understand where he is coming from. The first time this actually happens is at level 50, where things stop scaling with you.
Yeah, when enemies scale with you, every zone does feel similar. There really isn't a feeling of growing stronger during the main story/sidequesting portion. You get new legendary affixes that can change your build or make a skill do a bit more, and you create synergies, but overall there isn't a sense of progression or beating a "hard" enemy. The Butcher and a couple story bosses give a challenge, but none of that exists in the open world. Open world mobs are all trash mobs, including the elites out there. The open world has no sense of progression because the open world mobs all feel the same and don't pose any sort of challenge, or "oh shit" moments. It's a "safe" open world where you'll never die... you only die against Butcher or a couple of the bosses (none of which are part of the open world).
I totally get the issues pointed out here. The zones all feel the same (unlike most other ARPGs and MMORPGs). Zones mean something. They don't in D4. There's no challenge in the open world. All mobs are trash mobs (hence why would you even fight them. Just get on your mount and run past them all to get along questing). There really isn't any need to fight in the open world, because regardless of your level, you're never threatened or challenged.
@@John-vm2sq So true, yes even the loot scales with you, and you actually get weaker in existing areas, its insanity. There is really no incentive to every move on.
@@John-vm2sq Mobs only scale with LEVELS, they DO NOT SCALE with PARAGON BOARD or SKILL POINTS which is 90% of the character power (relative to the nominal stat gain u get from leveling). You will eventually face roll open world if you build your character correctly.
@@yt_nh9347 Lol you don't get it. Why would someone push into paragon points if the first 50 hours of playing felt like a slog where the rat from the beginning of the game takes as many hits now at level 50 as when they were level 5? Most people won't "eventually face roll open world" because only the people with the most dedication will even bother to beat the boring ass campaign. Beat the game and then it gets good isn't an argument to lean on my guy.
@@sdotwallace Nobody is saying the game is too hard we're saying its boring because the enemies feel the same the WHOLE GAME. If a rat at level 50 is the same as a demon at level 50 then the stakes couldn't possibly be lower and I couldn't possibly care less about a demon invasion. There needs to be some correlation between enemy design and enemy difficulty. Why should I care about a demon invasion when Mr quill rat is just as strong as a demon?
Bit late on this, but I think the issue of scaling is less the problem, and the bigger issue being the world design that Blizzard went with. Making it open-world with sidequests with a story that was designed, or scaled, for those who don't grind.
Using 3 of my friends and me as an example. We all, in 2 separate groups, completed almost all act 1 quests before beating act 1. My friend and I were lvl 34 and 38 before my 3rd groupie, who beat the game, said we should stop doing side quests. He mentioned that we should be around lvl 50 by the end of the story (still a higher lvl than needed). This realization kinda killed my joy, and has made the story since always scaled and not fun.
I wanted to organically go through the story and world, doing sidequests and exploration, but this just makes you overleveled.
The story and world design are at odds with eachother. I think the sidequests should have been gated until story completion. Or the story missions should have been leveled/scaled differently.
I think the main takeaway concerning difficulty could be solved for hardcore players, and kept intact for casual players by just adding one more difficulty lvl. Let players get tier 3 before beating the campaign, increasing the difficulty during. Then adding a Torment + to broaden the lvl increases throughout the game.
My take on the playing with your friends at lower levels thing: Yes, you *can* play with your friends that are at a lower level than you, but unless you're both in the same world tier already (hence within a specific level range of each other in the first place) you're giving up *any* possibility of gear advancement to do so. If my friend is doing the campaign and I'm in WT4, literally *nothing* that drops is going to do anything for me.
Alts…
@@Ti_Fire Why have the scaling then if you're just gonna start a new character to play with your friend. You contributed nothing
I agree wholeheartedly about the confusion with weapon stats. It takes way too long to read through all weapon attributes and find out if it's even going to benefit your build.
Although a much different game, I think Wo Long Fallen Dynasty did a GREAT job at making weapon stats easy to digest - by having a letter grade scale (A - F) that tells you right up front if the weapon/armor will be a good fit for your current build. No re-reading your skill tree boosts, looking at what all your other gear is currently buffing, or having to pull up a comparison overlay for every new item: just a straight-up letter grade based on what your core build is.
Sounds amazing tbh. Warhammer Inquisitor Martyr does the same thing as D4 and honestly it makes me not even want to log on because I know I have 3-4 inventory tabs completely full with what are probably mid-tier items with hundreds of barely noticeable affixes that I'm going to have to take an hour to methodically sort through, compare to current items, and decide what to keep/sell/salvage/store/upgrade/prep before I can get on with my next quest.
@@ZyklonBeast12 yep! If you have to spend over 20% of your time each time you log on just doing inventory management out of necessity, shits broken.
reading weapon stats in d4 feels like reading that rambling drunken letter that homer leaves marge back in the day. most of them are ultimately garbage and pointless, and i feel having levelled one toon, if i swap to an alt to do, the stats will be the exact opposite on the new one(melee) that they were on the old one(ranged) like what happened in d3 at the start.
@@BlackXanthas lmao beautifully summarized. I feel the same. I joined two community events last night and both times, necros and sorcerers absolutely dominated the enemies. As a barbarian, I felt useless chipping away at health bars then they’d come in and wipe enemies in one foul swoop.
@@shiddyangler oh don't worry mate, until i looked at guides for my necro i had trouble out dps'sing bosses in the campaign, so i empathise with that feeling, and as an ex d2 barb that just had fun leaping and whirling roflstomping anything in my lan parties of old, i feel ya, the barb feels like it is almost the ONLY melee class in the game, and its treated like the black sheep of the class list, and the class list has a dedicated emo in it! 😂😂🤣
What I really liked on this was: "If the side-content is that bad theat you never want to do it again, its not a content dude, it is chores."
I think your counter to his blacksmith point actually proves his point. If you don't care that all of the blacksmiths are upgrade nodes rather than characters, it shows that the game is not immersing you in its story. That is a flaw, whether it bugs you personally or not. I don't care much either, but the game would be objectively improved if we did have a reason to care about the NPCs. It gives the game character, tone, and extra entertainment value.
Dm is only arguing for d4 its not surprising as he became big because of if and thats his content. So finding unbias opinion from him wont happen.
@@kouji0031 I don't hold it against him or anything, I actually enjoy D4 far more than Act Man seems to, and I appreciate Darth's content. DM's a sharp guy and I appreciate a lot of his opinions here, I just disagreed with that particular response.
For me, I think the best changes that could dramatically improve the game would be (1) either allow 1-2 more skill slots or have ultimate be its own slot and (2) make rare loot rare again. 98% of the time the loot is just a chore where you pick it up, stew over the convoluted stats, then ultimately salvage it. Only having 5 skills + basic limits the game too much.
this ain't world of warcraft, son. evade is already kinda "extra"
I don't need no mmo bar homie.
Also most affixes on gear can be considered build diversity stats. It takes me all of 20 seconds to clear a full inventory.
@@dancemattdanceifyRight, bc every other ARPG doesn't have more skill slots... including Diablo... how's that copium?
im pretty sure d3 only had 6 skills and never felt like how youre describing it. The issue with d4 abilities is that there isnt really much variety. d3 had multiple aspect of 1 ability that would drastically change how it functions in most cases, that isnt present in d4.
as for the loot, the itemization just sucks compared to d3. the stats are just convoluted and unimpactful in most cases. Legendary powers are rarely impactful so getting a legendary doesnt even feel all that great
Me and my little brothers have been having a ton of fun with Diablo 4 since the day it released, but one of my biggest issues with the game is only having six skill slots, I constantly feel pigeonholed into only being able to do a tiny section of things and find that most times I can't even use some of the aspects on my legendary gear because I just can't equip enough skills to take advantage of them. Also the fact that legendary gems (NON MONETIZED) Don't exist really holds the endgame back for me, in Diablo 3 legendary gems were how I took my character from average to god tier. The dungeon speed runs with characters that could melt almost anything were exhilarating and gave you something to look forward to even in late end game
I would argue that he didn't take a long time to beat the game, but took a normal amount of time that was sort of how the devs intended. They wanted people to explore side content along the way while progressing the campaign. It's just that they also didn't design good ramp ups in difficulty while progressing (at least imo). I think he's right about level scaling and it seems to be a big part of that. They would do better to remove level scaling on a wide scale for npcs. But maybe let player characters have auto-scale for their levels when grouping with others (for example your character can artificially be raised in levels to match the person your grouping with, but the npc levels stay static). Sort of like City of Heroes used to do
18:45 I think his point was that besides different attacks, you never 'Feel' any stronger no matter what you do. In D2 when you finally leveled up you could actually notice and feel the difference when you get stronger. D4 it always feels the same.
I made it to about level 80 on my druid before I quit. I had a similar issue to what he mentioned... I wanted to make a lightning build by the time I thought I might have enough gear to try it the cost and risk associated with trying it made it not worth it... The legendries are super boring and it feels like its the same 5 over and over. "what's the point" is how I started to feel, so I just stopped will come back in a year or two and check out the game again.
if you are going to stop playing then whats the risk in possibly gimping your character
@@Setrik999 hating the game and never coming back to it
I agree with this, you start out a particular build you enjoy then the drops all go against what your doing so you have to respec, kills the game for me
@@Setrik999please take blizzard's knob out of your throat.
I think AM's point about the blacksmith is they are all samey regardless of where you are in the world. Not that they have to be part of the main story, but they should have atleast a compelling input regarding the world around them.That we remember them enough to know their name. Not just 'the blacksmith in the city' or something. Same with other NPCs.
They are just Blizzard's lazy work.
I watched act man’s review and he had no idea what he was talking about lol he said you have to unlock the horse every time you make a new character and other untrue things about d4. He just doesn’t seem to understand the game.
I think Act Man was talking about seasons and doing the horse again but I don't know if that's true.
@@WhatsTheTakeawayit's not true whatsoever 😂
Every new character made after completing the campaign will always retain the ability to have a mount
@user-sp9po5qi9q Yeah, I know that's why I wasn't sure what Act Man is referring to, other than a seasonal character. If your seasonal has to do the campaign again, I assume the horse quest needs to be redone. But like I said, I don't know if that's going to be true for seasons. You very well could be correct.
@@WhatsTheTakeaway Yeah mount access will be passed down between characters on the 18th, it's on the blog post on season 1 update
I played Elden Ring without ever casting a spell, using a weapon art, or equipping a shield. Swung my big 2 hand weapon, and dodged. That's it. Loved every second. Played a second run through and changed nothing, felt great. There is a path for the simple-minded in Elden Ring and it's just as rewarding as the "complex" path.
There should be a similar path for Diablo 4.
I played Elden Ring and found the boss design the worst they've ever made but for people like you abusing ashes it must've been great lmao
@@Freestyle80 i'm not sure you read the comment
they cant.. They cant make abilities extremely simply and easy to use AND make them strong. Most people would run it if that was the case. what youre saying cannot be translated to an arpg in a meaningful way. D4 isnt even complex either.
“Cat needs to come in”
“Cat is now inside”
BEST LINE EVER
The other thing about open world games not having any sort of enemy lvl scaling like Elden Ring is that many ppl didn’t play Caelid in the beginning of the game so when they went back later it was too easy for them. So they literally didn’t have the exact experience that Act Man says ppl wouldn’t have if there was lvl scaling. This is one of the very few reviews from him where I’m left scratching my head. It’s like we played two completely different games. I also have no clue what he actually wants from the game cuz he contradicts himself on more than one occasion
I mean.... You're right.... But I'd say the vast majority of people did.
Sounds like someone trying to get clicks by having a ridiculous 'opinion' (that he likely doesn't actually have) for clout. Sad.
If you group the content scales for more players too. So if I'm running my buddy who is 50 through nightmares it tunes it so there are two of us at my level. Makes it a lot more difficult. At least makes dying easier lol
The point he's making is that regardless of when you or I or someone else goes to a open area of the game, the monsters there are level locked. How hard is that to understand?! 🤣👌
Act man I'd a moron...but be is right about most of his points....the Only challenge in d4 is to under level ur self( I fought Elias capstone at 58 with a 61 friend and we got one spotted all the time but still almost beat him) then we came back at 65 and cuz of the levels we had armor and health to live.....and one shot it, what u and DM are saying is" don't fight with gear on and the game will be hard( lose armor and hp) ...again, this is a dumb way to " make the game challenging"
My issue with level scaling is that it breaks my immersion. If I gain more power but aren't able to clap the enemy who I encountered 20 or 30 levels ago it ruins any form of progression.
Not to mention if I see a low level character deal similar damage to mine. You feel ripped off by the game game mechanics.
It's surely not fun to watch others annihilate content and leave you with nothing to do, but it also makes me excited to get to that point.
Now, this whole system might actually work if items were more satisfying.
I wanna talk about 2 things DM mentioned in this vid
1. The story, the cinematic and how they represent it. Yes we experience the story ourself but the point is there are no 'actual cinematic' to make us felt connect to the story except for the 1 in the beginning and the 1 where Inarius faces Lilith and THAT'S IT! I just realize this after I watched Act Man vid. At first I was like "but there's in-game cinematic tho, right" but then I later realize "I paid f*cking 60$ for this game and I can only have 2 beautiful cinematic?? Is that what it should be? Hell, D3, with all of its huge flaws, still has cinematic for every chapter ending and I felt the impact of every chaper. But in D4 I don't even notice what Lilith boss act was in, is it 4? Or 5? I cant even noticed that.
2. The itemization: DM said something like "variety of stats make min-maxing more exciting and meaningful" but I strongly disagree with that, at least for now. Cuz "not every stats are meaningful" DM even make a video about how should you choose what equipment to keep and that's the problem! Half of those stats dont do anything and meaningless for every class. And DM said 'if you have only 4-6 stats on every item, min-maxing will be boring' but in D4 there are only 4-6 more or less stats from overall 20+ stats that are actually matters, eventually make the game have only 4-6 stats for items as DM said and the itemizing in game rn is actually boring
Agree 100%. I shouldn't be thinking, "I better beat this boss before I level up."
Why? I thought everyone agreed that the game is too easy and that there aren’t any challenges. Therefore, to make it more challenging everyone should strive to always level up before a boss. Idk i just think its funny that Actmans first complaint was difficulty yet video showcasing how many times he died.. if its so easy, one should never die. Contradictions abound.
@@zeldroid5085 I might be misunderstanding his video, but I took what he said to mean he felt that 90% of the game was way too easy and then at the very end and after the main story it started getting hard and that was where he started dying a lot and it was satisfying, but that he didn't think he should've had to wait that long for it to get that way. If that's what he meant I don't see that as a contradiction to his main point.
I'm usually on Act Man's side, but he's off base on a lot of points this go around, and it feels like he didn't really play much of the game. You can't just play the campaign and do no end game and then call the game 'bad'. You basically didn't even play it.
If the game is lacking and you have to put hundreds of hours to get to the good part then from that perspective is it not bad.
But yeah he probably should have played more to get a more full view of the game.
@@troy5370 Comparing endgame of a 6 year old game to a game thats been out for a month doesnt seem like a good comparison
basically is pulling a lot of weight there. ok. so what changes after he quit? new gameplay loops... that just have you do world events but the zone is now colored red and meteors come down! and u spam the same dungeons with bad layouts but with even more bad and un-fun mechanics! he totally would have had a completely different game experience had he stuck with it!
@@epsilon1670 i'd agree, but this is an ARPG. They are repetitive, grindy, and have always been about the end-game - which he didn't appear to take any part in. I find that short sighted on his part.
If he felt that way about the game getting to say 85-90 and experiencing helltides, NMs, legions and world bosses - then okay. But it feels like if someone played an MMO for 20 hours and then called it 'bad'. Just seems premature and he's usually very thorough.
He's allowed his opinion of course, but this one is a head scratcher in my eyes.
@@xWhackoJacko oh it totally agree on him not playing enough I was more just throwing out a counter point just like I'm going to now.
Just because it's aRPG why does that mean that half the games has to be a weak experience. The argument that it's always been that way who says it has to be that way? blizzard had a chance to innovate and I think everyone can agree they played it safe
Just as a note I like the game sometimes it's fun to looked at the opposite side of the argument.
honestly the d2 mapping was awesome how there was certain zones within zones that where that max level zones with the hell zones recently hell tide should be the only time monsters scale to level and every zone should be a beginning point that's at least 3 levels higher at the point you are supposed to get there and then hell tides scale
D2 stands for destiny 2 you have to say Diablo 2
@@Slap7481 Never. Not once.
@@Slap7481 d2 was a horror game on dreamcast released in 1999
To say "he took too long to finish the campaign" as the reason he wasn't having fun or didn't find it difficult feels like everyone has to play the game the exact same way in order to enjoy it. That's not what gaming is about. It's about being able to play the way the player wants to. Why have all the sidequests available if you aren't supposed to do them until you're level 80 so you don't accidentally over level and ruin the game for yourself?
I've played to 95 solo - I'm in a clan but there's rarely people on who can run 50+ nightmares.
It's been mostly fun once I figured out my build but If I was able to play with people more often it would be vastly better.
I miss making an Act 3 start game in normal and having 7 people join who were at the same progress I was.
Your comment reminds me of how easy it was to chat and play w other players on D2. Much easier to join Baal runs, sneak around the cow level and play quests together.
Where here on D4, players just slay enemies here and there and leave. The emotes are kinda cringe tbh, and I’ve never tried to chat random people. Maybe it’s the social stratospheres of today where everyone prefers to play w friends they know, or are anti-social and would rather play alone. (I’m the latter and have played solo most of the time. Now lvl 87. Did play w a friend, but he got bored during the campaign.)
That's why I enjoy playing it on the Xbox lfg is saving this game for me. 300 posts on lfg everytime I look at it. It's quick and easy to play with people
funny how d2 actually feels more online than an "open world online game"
I only play solo but is it really that rare to find people that can run Tier 50+?
@@HelplessTeno T50's are pretty challenging if you aren't decked out, overleveled or optimized with paragon etc.. or if you aren't paying attention, the hazards and stuff will kill you even if you are level 100 (at least for the squishier classes). It also compounds more when you fight in groups (ie: drifting shade affix in a team of 4).
WARNING SPOILERS: My problem with the story is the beginning sets you up for this sort of unsettling feeling. And you are like, "This seems pretty messed up. I'd like to find out more." Underlying fear of Lilith and then by the end of it I almost want to side with her. Not because the story was successful, but because the story doesn't make it clear as to why we don't want her to win. There's little connection to the events in D3 and there is such a disconnect from where you see these characters that you meet (because the quests are kind of all over the place in the middle. At one point, I mixed them up and went to the wrong one and there was dialogue about a character losing their hand before I even did that quest) that you just kinda forget why you care about them. In D3 at least I cared about the characters. I wanted to see Tyreal succeed, but in D4 everyone is just an asshole and/or the game sends you everywhere and you just kind of lose sight of who/what you are fighting for. What is the point? And don't even get me started as to how a veteran horadrim wanders off in hell gets scratched by a pillar and dies. Not even a pillar with his beloved son on it or anything. Just kinda wanders and then gets wrecked out of nowhere for no reason. The game also makes you feel like you have to make a choice... and then chooses for you. At the end, the characters elaborate on what to do and its this big thing how we HAVE to trap Lilith in a crystal... and I guess it turns out we can just kill her. No biggie. Big dilemma! Mephisto says we have to trap Lilith because she can just catch up to us and take the crystal with him in it... but then the character just teleports away and we just kill Lilith. The END. It was all just unsatisfying to me. Too much didn't make sense and too many different fragmented story pieces. We meet all these seemingly interesting characters but none of their arch reach anywhere that is satisfying. Characters that do experience some kind of growth (like Donan and Vigo) just die shortly after for shock value (although I will say, Vigo's little character arch was actually great Probably the only time I felt something in the story). One character even spends a large portion of the story saying how we should work together and how we can accomplish a lot... and then she sets off on her own in the end. My guess it was suppose to be mysterious, but it all just ended up being annoying.
it's setting the stage i think for a new trilogy with neyrelle being the new wanderer. probably trying to right the garbage they did with leah back in d3. i totally agree with you though, i think they were going for mysterious, but it came across as vague and confused while a smoke machine pumps out fog in the background. they wasted the voice talents of old lorath Ralph Ineson, on silly cut scenes with no actual cut scene just a redfall style static image. i guess with all the talented people leaving the quality animations we are used to are going to be pretty absent moving forward
yep, you said it well. "by three they come" and act 1 of the campaign were just a massive bait to sell the game. the rest of the story was half cooked, just like every other part of the game.
thats ur main issue? reallly? was it not the fact that god damn diablo didnt show up in a diablo game???
@@ipraytovodka you mean you didnt see they were gonna try for another triology, from the way they were tellingbthe story from the git go?
My brother in Christ, I agree with most of this, but for the love of Tyreal use paragraph breaks.
I absolutely 100 percent agree with this guy. After beating the game, forcing myself to continue playing was rough. Haven't played the games in weeks since
can't get myself to finish the campaign... the only thing D4 did for me, was getting me super hyped for PoE2!
@@DoubleJayU I'm back on PoE now. I couldn't finish D4. No build felt good because I had to sacrifice something.
On the point of the game being balanced for hardcore, I feel like if you start having to take more and more away from non-hardcore players to accommodate the hardcore play system, then maybe they should be separated. When you balance a game to be fair for The smaller sect of people who like to play the game in a more punishing way, The average player who doesn't play that way ends up receiving a version of that game that is much too safe.
I don't really like the idea off "Skip the whole game , so you can have a challenge" like you mentioned. Regardless of playstyle the game should be more challenging , especially with the leveling system
Play hardcore. The game doesn’t make sense WITHOUT scaling. Everything would be Piss easy at endgame. Hell it already is. My Necro is level 84 and is killing enemies level 100+ no problem. Imagine what I do to enemies at my level. Now imagine if they didn’t scale with me lmfao.
They need to add more tiers, which I assume will happen. I hope to see a Diablo 3 system where we abandon levels and instead enemies are just getting 500% health and 100% more damage per tier or something.
Wait the bosses have a set level and only scale up? I didn't know that. I thought they scaled to you in both directions until you got to Tier 3. I think I played like Actman. I was level 50 when I verused Lilith. So I'm guessing you are supposed to play through the campaign first then do the side stuff. I did most side quests first because that's how I usually play RPGs.
That's very much the normal experience. You level very fast.
A simple resolve to the difficulty concern, would be to give each zone on the map a Tier rating. ranging from 1 -25 and additional Tiers added in DLC. So if your character is only a Tier 2 ranking and you want a challenge, you can go to a Tier 3 or 4 area. Also if you're getting your ass kicked, and you are a Tier 12, you can head over to a Tier 5 area and have a godlike experience. XP would be relevant, meaning it would take longer to gain the XP to level up, but you could still level up in a lower Tier area to give you a chance to go back in a Tier 12 area and be able to compete. It would mean those who can play the game better. can push in a higher Tier area and those with a low skill, can still have fun in a lower Tier area. Plus I feel that there should be a constant random spawning of an enemy that is 3 to 5 levels above you, to give you a random challenge, no matter where you are on the map. Currently the only challenge is an Event. But even those aren't really a challenge.
To be fair, Resurrected does have the "hotbar" style consistent with modern ARPGs and MMOs. They kind of had to add it in because when D2r was retrofitted with tech for controllers you could do that. So in a later patch they let us finally use like 5 skills without having to use the F1-F12 hotkeys or scroll wheel to "toggle" and instead have the keybinds use on press but I still get the points you made here. There are good points on both sides to be sure.
I think that the point of stats being worthless and not having attribute points is a good one. You can have attribute points AND a paragon board for end game progression, for example.
What I think would solve some of the problems with the level scaling would be to maybe set up the regions so they first have the kind of leveling they have now. For example, beginning areas have enemies from levels 1-10, and after that, they scale maybe 5-10 levels below you for the entire game. And harder areas after a point start to scale 2-10 levels above you, to always keep them hard.
Also sprinkle in some harder mini-bosses around the map that don't scale and that you have to come back to and defeat later. This will make you feel stronger when you go back to easier areas and keep other areas fun and challenging.
Pretty much. The power experience should be bursty, especially through the first play through. Like you're carving through trash packs until you round a corner and run into an elite pack that makes you have to run away, use a skill they're weak against, or change up your tactics. The level scaling needs to be tweaked into thresholds like you described. In my opinion the items of this game are totally stupid and they should've just copied D2's style of uniques and relatively straight forward stat blocks.
Funnily enough, they actually DID just kind of do this. Will see how it levels out, but they've scaled difficulties in a similar way with the latest patch.
When I played wow, I went back to the starting areas frequently just to chill and get the feeling of dominance over what once was a challenge or almost impossible.. It was fun feeling the progression that way. Sometimes you just wanna stomp and not have to be on edge all the time. When I played D2 when it was first released I loved redoing boss battles once I got stronger to see how strong I'd become and see what loot I could find that I missed due to just playing and not grrinding. I feel that its important to make previous areas reflect on your progrression. sometiimes I just wanna be the Johnwick in D2 that oneshots everything before I go for the matched leveled enemies.
Agreed. In WoW I'd go back to farm mats for my blacksmithing just for the fun of it and make some low level gear I would later pass out to the new characters in eth starting areas.
In D2 there were also runes and other drops that made going back worth while or even going back to try and obtain BIS low level gear for the next character you considered making.
He’s right. There’s big streamer denialism going on right now about just how much blizzard effed d4
If I have to put in 50+ hours before I can have fun the game is trash. ActMan was right, why the hell would I put 50+ hours in D4 when the first 30 sucked ass? Why do I have to play for 50+hours before the game "gets good" Make the damn game fun from the start.
The game needs more loot. The game needs much much more unique loot and builds and different skills to choose from. I honestly don't see why they didn't look at POE for inspiration in this regard.
Agreed. Also I’m amazed they didn’t take more inspiration from grim dawn. That game does so many things better than Diablo 4 at the moment.
@@funkyseefunkydo9622 Severely underrated game.
If they didn't utilize level scaling, this guy's video would be about how "Blizzard built us this huge, interesting world where 90% of it becomes as trivial is a level 1 area in WoW and I am forced to play the same corner of the map after only 30 hours to have any challenge at all."
Yea sounds about right. Also seems if the game was harder at the same lvl he would complain it’s too hard.
Also when you are level 1 the world is scaled. You cant just go anywhere. This is kinda why i didnt like Actmans review. He got to 50 and quit, he has no real idea how the game seems to function because he didnt dig deep. At least thats the impression i got. If you make a levle 1 after beating the story and tp to the tree, go out there and fight some of those “scaled” mobs and see how fast you get one shot. He also didnt even spend time in wt3. Like the end game sucks ass but the game as a whole imo is fine, its not super busted, its fixable.
Isnt part of the problem that its a huge uninteresting world?
Level scaling is garbage
The problem with the level scaling isn't that it makes the future content the same, it's that WHILE getting to that future content EVERYTHING feels the same so by the time you get to that content it'll inevitably end up feeling the same. You only notice you've progressed not because of mechanical feedback but because of the UI telling you you've gotten further while the game plays the same with minor additions.
Love 95% of this it's great, the only point I want to raise is, on the stat issue, I don't think barbarian gets a damage boost from STR, think it's just armor. So building my barbarian seemed strange because I was having to invest into a different stat than one that I thought, after I already had a bunch of gear with str. At the same time I think if str added DMG for Barbar, we would have the 3m crit issue. What I would like to see is a more transparent explanation of how the stats actually work in game. There may have been a single side menu at some interval in the game that was so miniscule I didn't notice.
Also, I'm sure you know this and all, but Skyrim doesn't have stats like str or int. It's skill leveling was specked to the function, like "archery", "1-handed" and "speech", so the upgrades you were spending made immediate sense to you because it was transparent.
str directly buffs damage on barb, literally go to your inv and hover over str...
@@yeahnahyeahm8496 I googled it. And I stand corrected. It does in fact up DMG. Had to Google it cause it won't let you hover over the stats in inventory on console.
Dude said the game is too easy before playing on world tier 3 and before even trying a nightmare dungeon…
His whole point is that it shouldn’t take that long into the game to experience that difficulty if the player wants. The game should naturally increase difficulty as you play. The level scaling until around level 65 makes everything constantly feel the same. I have a level 85 rogue and for the most part my character feels the exact same to play as it did from the start. Level scaling is garbage and the gear is garbage. Not once have I been excited when I found a piece of gear because it’s all boring even the legendaries. I’ve had the same Ancestral gear since around level 68 because I already have best in slot. All gear I pickup now is trash. Where is my carrot to chase from 65 to 100????
That's his whole fucking point. D2 had hard sections in early tiers. You shouldn't have to play the game for 30 hours to finally get a modicum of a challenge. And then when you get to end game NM dungeons aren't even hard, they're just tedious with CC, on death effects and horribly balanced modifiers. Any competent player will have their BiS by level 70 and every NM dungeon will feel the exact same. T
Your progression then boils down to XP grinding for paragon points, that's it
If he’s looking for a challenge then play hardcore. Or don’t sit there and do a bunch of side quests and wonder why the campaign is easy now.
@@xX-Logic- neither of those are a solution at all. Play a game mode that is essentially pointless because you can die to disconnects or crashes. Or avoid a Major part of the open world map that the developers spent a fuck load of time creating. You saying to intentionally avoid the game to make the game fun.
@@Grimes247 The paragon board is where you get your power from from 65-100. 35 levels X 4 paragon points is 140 points to optimize your build.
So happy this dude has caught some traction. Nice to see good dudes winning
Having a civilized argument with acting male was definitly the right move
My son is winnin. I'm so proud.
Here's an idea. If the developers want players to diversify their activities within the game, they should appropriately reward the diversity. Here is an example of how. Say the "problem" is that players are just spamming the same dungeon over and over and the devs want the players to do other things. Here's the fix. After a player completes a dungeon, something else in the game gets a temporary buff. It could be another dungeon getting a buff. It could be a Helltide getting a buff (it could even be specific chests in the Helltide getting different KINDS of buffs, making the non-mystery chests more interesting). It could be a Whisper getting a buff. It could be a Side Quest in your Quest List getting a buff. It could be multiple of these things at the same time. AND the buffs could be different. One dungeon might have buffed xp reward. Another dungeon might have buffed gold reward. A Whisper might have buffed loot reward. And since multiple buffs are happening across different content and the buffs are temporary, players are making decisions. Do I want the xp boosted dungeon or the loot boosted dungeon? Do I want the gold boosted Helltide or the unique-chance-boosted Whisper? Each bit of content completed then spawns more buffs and more decisions to make while on a timer. Do you see how this is a more interesting gameplay loop? This keeps the players moving around the map doing different content but does it organically by making it more rewarding.
Two different perspectives. One is focused in immersion and a single run experience. The other is focused on progression and the required eternal nature of the game's designs.
Two different needs one game is trying to appeal to but ultimately it tips further in one direction and that is the mmo lite.
I personally wanted an immersion experience, because I don't like arpgs for the loot or grind.
I can elaborate the Elden Ring analogy:
If you play D4 as intended/guided: You never venture to a higher level area, then you get 50+ and there are NO higher level areas and it's all samey
If you play Elden Ring as intended/guided: You automatically venture into a hard ass area because the training wheels are so loose, so the world seems dangerous
D4 just holds your hand too hard, and when they let go of your hand, everything is the same difficulty: not very hard
Exactly. In DS1 you can literally go to the catacombs off rip by accident. There is no way you're going to the high level areas in D4 by accident at the beginning, especially since you don't even get a horse until several acts are done.
But also souls games want you to feel hunted and pressured on your every step in diablo you sure get the feeling ocasionally but the narrative is mostly that you are the powerfull one.
9:10 some people want a more difficult challenge without the risk of starting from scratch on failure. Most people don’t want to level their char to 100 and risk it dying because if they do they go back to character select
yeah that was a stupid take, game is stupid easy, and no i dont want to play hardcore .
@@zJaMeZz You really have missed the point. NM are only AFTER you beat the campaign. You're not looking at this through the lens of a new player. The opening scene is everything. If I have to spend 70+ hours grinding through an easy campaign in order to find entertainment in a challenge, then the game design is shit. Full stop.
@@dirtysilver2841this was my first Diablo game and I thought the campaign was kinda difficult for me
To counter your point at 20:00 you may not be able to go to areas at an early level, but once you hit the level of that area all the areas instantaneously become the same with equal threat. If I go back to caelid, or unlock the haligtree they will now be the hardest areas in the game, and you can still go back to the lake, or the starting area and see your progression with damage. People literally go to the starting bridge so they can test their weapons on the mobs to see where their weapons gage at. The progression of these two are not the same and fundamentally different, the only similarity is there’s some areas you can’t go to straight away because you’ll die but once you finish the campaign you will never encounter this ever again and takes all tension out of the game. And if you’re not using an optimised build eventually the enemies start really dragging as you level up