having to keep using default attacks and no "mana" potion really feels like im playing a game made by people who've never made an ARPG before

I wish Blizzard would watch this. You have nailed it. The look and feel and combat are great, but so many things are half baked and get very annoying over time.

Using fyodor as a target dummy is absolutely brilliant. I hope someone with some authority on the D4 team catches wind of this.

Much of what you communicate here is true however the major issue is that I have not had an upgraded sword (1250) for my rogue twisting blade build since level 70 and I'm currently at 97. Additionally, virtually all of the rest of my gear is not been upgraded either. The biggest issue in this game is there is no high-level gear, I am unable to tackle anything above a level 50 nightmare Signet dungeon. There is a major lack in player ability to feel powerful and accomplish high-level goals due to lack of gear and power nerfs.

Regarding player highlight, it only works when you have one large character that is blocking you from view, like a large elite or boss. It needs to be tweaked that when too many enemies and too many damage numbers appears to also activate and needs to stay activated for a period of time (preferably variable) after all the obfuscation is gone to allow your eyes to be able to keep focus on your character.

I do agree that these are real reasons why D4 is bad, but theres also a million other reasons

I think you have some great points. For a beginner like me though, I evaluate things in a more intuitive way like if it feels good or look good, if I can kill a boss before it kill me or how often I get mobbed. Only on my 2nd playthrough as a rogue do I start to consider things like skill points allocation efficiency etc but I think those are probably only suface skin of the onion...And I imagine based on which class one starts with one can have drastic different experience. For example, I 1st play as Druid, had no idea how it works, and 1/3 way through just find it kind of boring to use and switch to Barbarian which is a lot more fun to figure out. But yes, they could make information & stats easier to grasp that would be great.

Always enjoy watching your feedback / critique videos for a game. Not many people take the time to really think about the issues and express them well. Really hope the D4 devs take something like this into consideration more than the incoherent thoughts on reddit.

Lesse... - Ability to resize the UI "scaling" so its not taking 1/5 of the bottom of my screen would be nice. Also ability to move it from Center, far left or far right. - Have a "Compendium" book that's basically a F1 HELP feature. Book will go into details on how resistances work, Lucky hit Chance explanations, show the distance of Close enemies vs far, etc. Basically its a handbook for players to understand the full detailed mechanics of the game. - Fix the stash... I cant believe that for a game that primarily is a equipment hoarding game, you have very limited Stash inventory. - Fix the rerolling affix. Everyone knows its bugged and not "Random" it makes equipment crafting a waste of time. - Give players for options for higher end content. Grinding dungeons over and over and over again is boring. Add Major City seiges during helltides where players have to defend the city against demons trying to overtake it! - World bosses loot drop is pretty trash. Make uniques have a very high chance of dropping. - Do something about the 10,563,264,251 gems that are in my bank. Completely useless at high end. Maybe use them as a currency of sorts?

Great video. I agree about the damage numbers just blocking everything from visibility I love the damage threshold idea or being able to turn off certain damage numbers (Burning damage from firebolt enchant as an example). One thing I want is to be able to format the damage numbers that do come on screen. Instead of say 7,500,000 it comes up as 7.5M. Another thing I'd want is an option to take your character stats window (the one that has all your crit chance, crit damage etc) and have it as a pop out window that we can put on the side of the screen and be resizable. Mount's are completely useless when your character a lot of the time runs at 150% or higher. Also please give us a way to plan out our paragon in game I don't know like highlight certain nodes.

Great video! Btw you can move the skill bar from the bottom middle to the bottom left corner 😄 it’s in the settings menu somewhere.. maybe graphics or accessibility?

i think you nailed it with your review and comments. Everything is TOO punishing. Respec, Testing, then shadow surprise nurfs that breaks your build or viable and having to start over. A lot of time and money wasted. They should have a option to transform into 3 pre set Paragon and Skill setting. You pay for those 3 boards/skill tree but takes few seconds like TP to change.

Another thing I never hear anyone mention, but has been driving me crazy is the the Legendary Aspect system and how it kills any joy I get from finding new loot. If you find stronger gear but it doesn't have the Aspect you need for your build you have the option of ignoring the gear in favor of maintaining your build, or you can extract the power and imprint it on your new gear. But this costs you gold and resources, and you can't re-extract an imprinted power. So you could very well imprint it, and then find a better piece of gear two dungeons later. So the other option is to ignore all gear upgrades for that piece for the rest of the game until you get a duplicate of the power with max roll. Once again this kills the joy of getting loot drops.

This video is spot on. A lot of us Diablo veterans and those of us who put in unreasonable amounts of time overlook how easy it is for new players to be mislead by how information is presented in D4. Even though its a sequel, the devs need to approach it like it's the first game of its kind and oeep that mindset when implementing how information is relayed to the players.

Few things I would love to see with regard to inventory management 1. Larger inventory in general, maybe double what we can hold now so after every dungeon you don’t need to go back to town right away, 2. Let me favorite an item so I don’t accidentally get rid of it and can easily identify the item as something I need to keep, 3. When I hit sort inventory I wish I had to option to have it sorted where all ancestral are one after another and then all sacred and then everything else. Or at least make the sacred and ancestral gear more identifiable in the inventory. Theres probably a few more but just a few qol changes that would be nice.

Love the idea of pervert as target dummy. Very creative solution. On the other hand, they could just do what other games have done, and provide a section in the UI where you can go through your skills, and see how their actual hit damage changes in real-time when swapping gear/points/etc. I would suggest though, that they don't actually want player choice. They want players to be able to choose between acceptable playstyles they've decided on ahead of time, and that is the definition of the illusion of choice.

Zup, this is the best video I’ve seen explaining absolutely everything on point. I made the mistake of focusing on “attack power”, I’m lvl 83 and still have a weak necro class. Don’t fully understand the stats and fallow what Maxroll suggested as a great build for the Necromancer. Thanks for the video, makes me feel I am not alone, as a casual player, been frustrated with the game, that I like a lot. I’m trying to understand, even take notes. Lol. Keep those videos coming bro. Shalom!

Great video. I love all your suggestions and really enjoyed the constructive manner you went about it rather than just jumping on the “drama farming” which there is way too much of these days. I am absolutely having a blast with Diablo 4 but would love it if all of your suggestions got implemented. Hopefully this vid gets shared everywhere as the right way to critique a very new game that I know will only get better in time because of content creators like yourself. Liked and subscribed.

How about a battle log we can parse or use to see what kind of damage we receive or how our damage was computed?

Paragon loadouts for build changes would be the absolute best. I tend to hold of on a build change until I have all the alternate items ready to go, but the hassle of having to save and reset my paragons then path through again is not my idea of fun.

Next-level content, per usual. It just oozes detail and clarity.

The stats can be very confusing, I recently found out that my frost sorceress wasn't benefiting from damage to slowed and I had it on several pieces of gear. I figured, chill slows enemies so that should allow me to benefit from damage to slowed. Nope, damage to slow only benefits from skills that apply the actual debuff named slow.

There's a point at which you feel like the devs never played their own game.

From a player prespective, you are absolutely correct. But since Blizzard is a company, they cannot throw all the good ideas at once and risk maximum profit. You'll see they give us droplets of QoL updates, and now they've announced they want to release annual expansions, no point of the game anymore until the next big update.

this is the best review on d4 i've seen! amazing video! i would like to mention the storage and inventory system is also a big design flaw. limiting players' ability to try other builds, not to mention other characters. as an old school diablo fan. i dont mind leveling a new character from scratch. but u have to at least let me. with the limited storage and basically non-existing sorting system. it is impossible to have more than 2 active characters. a lot of ppl open dummy characters to use their inventory as banks. i feel like blizzard try to "innovate" arpg. they forget about synergy required between different system in the game.

great video my man

Love seeing the passion about Diablo you have. So good seeing you express yourself and enjoying it.

I'm not your subscriber, i haven't watched any of your videos nor i knew about your channel. I just randomly clicked on this video. I have to say i found a gem. Many youtubers complain about this game but no one has explained why it is bad, as clear as you.

D4 is a stellar example of MVP. Game design by committee and shareholders. I'm pretty jack of it and despite getting more or less my "moneys worth" out of it in time invested before uninstall, am still pissed off and feel like I was deliberately lied to. Hacktivision Bullshit has no excuse for releasing barely complete games. I paid to beta test their game. Woulda been cool with that if they were honest about it. I had to pay for a fucking battlepass for that to become completely clear. Fuck that noise. If anyone, at this point, still believes that their top priority was "making the game more fun for players" I have a bridge to sell you.

Well researched and presented state of Diablo IV. As a casual player the only real stat I understood is how much disk space I freed up by uninstalling the game

Great video! --Rant I'm just tired of games that don't think about things like this video points out. Seems like many games these days focus on the wrong things and always miss the mark. I don't have away to describe what I want, it's a "I know it when I see it" kind of thing for me right now. This video is the "I know it" part. This video has the ethos that I wish more game developers would have. I wish game developers would realise "don't focus on making a cash grab, focus on a good game as that will bring the money". Bad/Hot take: Wouldn't it be wild if game studios brought a bunch of "gamers" in early on development kind of like wireframe time of game to test mechanics. Games don't seem to be made by actual gamers.

Hmmm, dont know if i agree with all your take here. Im playing every character offered in D4 and the only time my character makes a diference with attack power is when i of course raise "attack power". Certainly doesnt mean that the rest of what you brought up doesnt play a factor but as a casual player i would much rather have a "D4 for Dummies" approach to this game rather than trying to mathematically decipher what other factors does x, y, and z. None the less, very informative video but i highly doubt the Devs will bother to view or even listen at this point.

Enjoying the Diablo content brother, and it's been nice to see you genuinely enjoying gaming again. I know tarky was taking it's toll. Keep it up.

Solid video, I like your style. Single dad here that has been number one diablo since 1. ❤ I feel this currently trying to solo Uber lil and getting so close, you think you know what you’re doing but something is missing still. Appreciate this. Finally got my first 100 today and still in it.

I'm an rpg fan, not aRPg, I got a D4 with an Xbox that I bought because of Starfield. I played D1 and D2 once upon a time and I liked them, but I was never a fan. When I started D4 I had no idea about seasons, I thought you just beat the game and that's it. That's how I played it, and I still play it. Campaign + season, and I'm satisfied. I like the story, the graphics, I make my own build, I wear cool gear, I don't bother with statistics. I know this play style of mine terrifies die-hard D4 players, but I've tried but it's tiring and boring, nigtmare dungeons and helltides farms. To me, this is the biggest problem with the game, when it goes beyond the campaign into a pure aRPG, it boils down to just repetitive farming. But I play the game and I'm satisfied, I'll play it until Starfield comes out.

YOU DID IT !! You've put in words everything I am personnaly complaining about the game / gameplay / experience and shared by a LOT of us, giving to all we think a lot more visibility ! I'd just add some UI/UX improvement for gamepad users, for better readability and smoother experience in the several interfaces the game provides, which are often a pain to handle (like in the inventory, when both the gears in your bag and the corresponding equiped one are highlighted, sometimes leading to imprinting/upgrading/selling/destroying the wrong item, for instance...) I hope those issues will reach them and will eventualy be addressed and improved ! Thank you !

Great video with great points. I had a lot of issues understanding how damage works. I know certain stats multiply when other stats increase, but no way I'm doing that math. Ended up having a really good defensive setup for AOE, but my single target is not the best. Wish we didn't have to choose between single target or AOE. Like single target is only needed for boss fights, but you have to clear everything else to get that far.

I strongly agree with enabling people to easily swap between builds. It would be cool if you could save a build, similar to how you can save an outfit at the wardrobe. This will give you a lots more to do end game. I can easily see myself wanting 3 to 4 different builds, for which I need different skills, paragons and gear. I can imagine having a normal all round build, a boss killer, and a PvP build at least. Regarding damage numbers, I'd much rather see some number in the UI that shows total damage done in the last 5 seconds. Otherwise it would be too hard to compare builds with different attack speeds, or single target vs AoE.

13:25 - The mount and camera issues... First GTA top-down camera was zooming out the faster you were moving. R* solved this issue in 1997. Camera in Project Zomboid moves towards the direction you are driving and the game allows you to zoom out manually. I cannot wait for the devs to explain how hard game development is and make a bunch of excuses. This is pure incompetence. Also whatever topic you touch on is pure gold. Every video you make is so well made I watch them even if I don't care at all about Diablo VI.

For me the top 3 things i'd like to see fixed are 1.Paragon board changing +cost 2.Loot +item power scaling. 3. More Bosses with Boss specific loot.

I'm not in the "D4 bad" camp, but I would say "D4 frustrating". There are just a thousand QoL features great and small that the game needs to be less annoying. I think most of this will be fixed with time, but it shouldn't have launched like this.

Hate to be that guy but would love to see you do some POE content. So many of its content creators dont even attempt to be as thorough as you on a game thats 1000x less complex. Youd be a godsend to that community. GG once again dude.

BEST CONSTRUCTIVE VIDEO FOR DIABLO 4 I HAVE SEEN TO DATE. THANK YOU SIR FOR BEING SENSIBLE AND UTILIZING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS. YOU KNOW INSTEAD OF JUST CRYING AND WHINING ABOUT SOMETHING THEY DONT UNDERSTAND AND SIMPLY DONT TRY TO

Wow... I think you nailed the technical arguments for why I'm not having fun. I'm a sorcerer at level 42, and I'm stuck at the Act III boss. I'm just not strong enough despite using the "best" gear I could find, grinding side content, finding some altars of Lilith, and using a levelling build I found online. I just never feel powerful. No gear I pick up seems to change that, and no stat points seem to have any effect, because the enemies get stronger with me as I level. I even had a hard time figuring out the other stuff - like levelling up your potions, which my friend had to show me. I just don't think anything in the game is explained to you, and that includes the core combat, status effects, and so on. I don't need a lecture, but I need to know where I'm going wrong. Because I don't quit a boss when I die once, but if after 10 deaths I'm no closer to winning, and I cannot tell why, then I am going to quit - and I did quit this game, twice (level 33 and level 42). It's not fun when you cannot tell what is going on. For context: I'm a Diablo III veteran and I took all 7 classes through the campaign and into the end game and did some light end-gaming up to Torment II. I cannot for the life of me figure out why I "suck" at Diablo IV. I have died more times in Diablo IV in the ~20-25 hours I put in, than in the ~200 hours I put into Diablo III. Almost nothing I read in any guide seems to help, and the game just feels like a slog. It just feels like too much work to be good at Diablo IV, which every reviewer ever keeps saying is "casual friendly". I want to punch everyone who says it's "too easy" or "casual friendly" because this is one of the most pointlessly convoluted and therefore hard games I have ever played. It's like it was made to please the hardcore audience first and foremost and the "casual player" (me) was an after-thought.

Always appreciate your perspective. The D4 community needs more constructive and based takes like this.

Right on the spot. As a UI Designer, I agree 100% with your criticism! I actually watched this on my TV, but made sure to come over and leave a comment, because you rarely find constructive criticism that is more than "hurr moar monster density" or " durr moar barb buffs". Apart from the UI and convoluted stats, there's another "obvious" point that affects the experience and motivation to play D4 -> Shop. Yeah, selling transmogs is actually damaging to the game. How you look like was previously the "reward" of being good at the game, now not only you can buy badass looks with money, but most of the cool stuff is locked behind an extra paywall. Currently, a level 1 character can look more badass than a level 100 that has spend hours grinding the game. This is by design, bad design that gives you blue balls and an easy, paid solution to feel accomplished. It also destroys the need to play the game, because you can buy the reward, aka the look, without the need to work for it.

I agree 100%. All games, especially RPGs, need to be completely crystal clear on their rules/systems. TTRPGs are, because they have books you need to get in order to play. Video games used to be more transparent, but now we live in a world were wikis and build guides are a whole business that's glommed onto the game-making business. I like Baldur's Gate 3, but a major problem I have with it is how in character creation, you cannot look ahead and see what you'll get as you level up. You can in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. I am familiar with D&D 5e, but they changed a lot (especially the Monk class!) so none of my 5e books are accurate in BG3.

I think the fundamental problem with D4 is motivation, theres no reason at all to create a character and go out and grind, the whole purpose of an RPG is progression, and D4 killed every sense of it with level scaling mobs and items. Why would I go explore the huge map if I right where I start I can repeat the same dungeon till level 100, literally, and it wouldnt be much worse than the best way to grind to max level either. Wheres the motive to level up and get stronger to move to the next area? A huge beautiful map and I almost dont need to step out of town to get to max level. With level scaling, all monsters lose personality, all regions lose reason to exist, all items become boring since the next one you find will be higher level and thus better... I know they did it so all content stays relevant no matter what, but in the end, who does overworld anyway? Its purely cosmetic, no reason at all to explore the map.

The biggest issue IMHO is that Blizzard don't know what their game is supposed to be, who it's supposed to be for and what they were actually trying to create. They want everyone to be happy and that just don't work. They want a game that works for people that barely play and people that live their whole life inside the game. Balancing for that is impossible. After the last video where the two level designers played we know that the level designers aren't gamers, they don't understand or care what makes a good dungeon. I agree with most of the things you said in the video but there are sooo many other things.

Regarding visibility: I came to D4 from D3 with 1000s of hours playtime. I'm one of those players that loved D3 from the day it was released and only skipped two seasons since release. I knew from the start that any help to increase visibility would be sorely needed with all the effects, numbers, item labels and mobs on screen, which is why I turned the "always highlight" feature in the accessibility tab on before even making my first character. It still isn't good enough but it certainly helps. If you can stand the fact that your character always has a green shine to it, you should give it a go and see if it does anything for you. While you're at it, take a look at the other accessibility features that help with visibility, like reducing screen effects, camera shake etc. Regarding all your other issues, I fully agree. I don't even get why refunding skills should cost anything. That's what made changing builds in D3 so much fun. You just hit the reset all button, respec and go try it out. If it sucks you just TP back to town and respec again, until you find a build that works and is fun. The complexity of item affixes, stats and their effect on your build as well as lack of communication or rather bad communication in the case of attack power were already a thing in D3 but at least your damage number would change dynamically with all the buffs you had active. You couldn't really keep track of it because the value would sometimes change for only a few frames but it was a thing. Aiming for certain item affixes was a lot easier in D3 since there weren't that many different roll combinations you could get and the only "advanced" priorities were elemental and skill damage. Meaning the average player could simply aim for crit chance, crit damage, attack speed and flat damage+. If you wanted to really min max you also had to consider elemental damage and skill damage but even if you didn't, you could build an extremely powerful character that was fun to play at the highest difficulty. All in all D4 is a great successor to D3 with faaaaaaar more things to change and do. They learned from many of their mistakes in D3 but they massively increased the affix complexity, skill system and paragon system (I'm still overwhelmed by it. So many choices and if I get something wrong and only later realise I have to spend tons of gold to fix my mistake, WHY?!) but in many cases tried to stick to the simplicity of D3. Their level of communication to the player is nearly identical to D3 while D4 is about twice or even three times as complex. That simply doesn't work, at least not for players new to the franchise or even returning players that are more casual players. Which represent, as you said, the vast majority of the D4 player base. For players like me it wasn't too much of a challenge, because we are used to D3s shenanigans and we were the ones coming up with the new meta build for the season that then was copied by thousands but that isn't a good thing. I don't want to be in that situation and I don't want the game to be in that situation. Sure, there will always be a group of players that will figure out the absolute min/maxed perfect build that is another step above everything else but there should also be a way for the more casual players to just build a char that is powerful and fun to play with a few easy stats, like in D3. Like, in lower lvls, just go for main stat and flat damage and then in the late game also pay attention to crit chance and crit damage and you're good. It's not the right way to describe it but something like a lowest common denominator. A "do this and your char will be strong" basic bitch build that is strong enough to play on medium or hard and have fun but if you want to play torment and fight uber bosses you need to spend the time and figure out a proper build with the right affixes. Anyways, I'm starting to rant and ramble. In summary, I agree. D4 needs more work but they already have a decently fun foundation.

@1:08 are the choices what microtransactions to pay for?

I haven't seen an ARPG do well if its itemization wasn't rewarding. There are examples of ARPGs that don't have much for endgame systems though: D2 and D3 argueably had just as much endgame content as D4 in release. D2 had rewarding itemization its whole life and did well. D3 did not do as well until Loot 2.0. The problem is that their fix for D3 was to release more Legendaries until they gave up on that idea. Why would they do the same thing in D4 and expect it to be different?

Man i been saying the same thing on the d4 fourms. The game systems are designed not to allow you to experiment with new builds and it kills the enjoyment and replayability. I felt locked in and pushed for trying my own builds. But the comments i get on the forum are like stop crying, how many times a day do you respec, bruh i have billions of gold why you crying. It destroyed all the fun and freedom. This is the best thing d3 did you had freedom you coule try out new builds you got excited when items dropped that weren't for your build in d3. Not in d4 i felt forced to follow meta builds and all the extra garbage of have to respec re paragon re roll re imprint just made me lose all interest in trying new builds.

I'm going to echo what a lot of people have already said: D4 is a beta in its current form. What's more the devs obviously don't play their own game. I watch these videos because I still play D4 and love theory crafting. The game has a really good foundation and I need something SIMPLE to scratch my ARPG itch - but POE2 looks like everything D4 should be and more. This is the 2nd video today that's offered ways to improve the game; maybe we'll see it in Season 29.😁

It’s wild that a lot of problems are macro design choices. The game is bad because they design it that way.

You have thought about D4's game mechanics 10 Times more than anyone on Activision Blizzard ' s devs team. Weird times we live in, When consumers know far more about the products than the pro who made it. Thé vidéo game industry is one example of many .

Once again Veritas is on point. What's the point of experimentation without testing? What's the point of testing without data? This is exactly what Diablo needs to survive.

Really a joy to hear your thoughts that you've clearly considered at length presented in such a clear and concise manner. Keep up the good work! :)

Personally, I like the camera distance, but more options should be there. Also, the minimap should be much more zoomed out

Blizzard might as well lie and say diablo 4 was the first game they ever created as an excuse because there's literally no valid reason behind what they did with the game. It's truly sad.

While I'm not playing this game I always like a thorough breakdown of a game from Veritas. His points are well researched and explained with clarity, and it seems to me, he tries to be as objective as possible even when he loves the title he is talking about.

I'm glad you go through the issues then give some actual solutions rather than just bitching endlessly about things. I have stopped playing the game for a ton of reasons but lots of the reasons are in this video.

The cost of builds and going broke trying a new build hit home. Also build presets and paragon boards is definitely needed.

They need to upgrade their mission statement...and keep the mechanics simple, improve QOL, add a public in game board to group like poe and D2R, change the battlepass from intentionally screwing more $$ out of us when we paid alot for the game.

Best D4 video of season one. Well said. Here’s hoping the devs can internalize and resolve some of these issues in less than the two years it took to make D3 enjoyable.

By the way one thing that I disable in roughly every single game, if not all by this point, is the damage number and other pop-up text. In practice 98%+ of the time are telling you something you already know can see from your stats, game effects, UI, your/enemy life bar, and in practice just drown your screen with that constant useless "information". On top of making it harder rather than easier to play, it actually detracts from immersion as you feel more like scrolling through a Bloomberg terminal than looking at graphics of a video game.

pausing after 28 seconds to post this: Out of all YTers to chime into different discussion in topics they are knowledgeable about, you are always the most welcome to me. Long, detailed accounts and opinions not short clickbaity hitpieces. Thats a very good style to chime in with :D

D3 has the right stick dodge roll that is absent in D4, it also has a proper inventory sorting UI; both on console version but boggles the mind why they didn't build up off that with D4

Excellent points made in this video. I agree that the abundance of graphical display of damage values obscures the fight mechanics and this is a poor way to inform the player. Letting the user toggle the numerical displays off or on on would be a quick way to see what enemies are doing in a fight. But you ask, how do I tell how much damage I have done during a fight? Fight damage values can be accumulated during a fight and when the player toggles graphical damage value display back on, the program then shows a pop up menu which displays: Maximum damage Average damage Number of kills Etc. These metrics allow the player to know when they are improving their build. Other metrics such as critical hits, etc could be popped up. Because now few of us can do the video recording and visual analysis needed to do a fight autopsy. Side benefit of suppressing graphical damage values: graphical display load is reduced. I mean, damn!, all those fonts and colors are a drain! Current player damage reporting is poor and obscures fight mechanics. Provide damage summary fights after and then players can determine if their build is improved. My two cents anyway…

I agree with your points. Technically, all your suggestions are valid thoughts on how to make the game better. However, there is a difference between making Diablo IV technically polished and making it into a great game. The final ingredient here is a reason for a player to log on! When I log on to D4, I do it to kill off some moments of my spare time...but there is no carrot stick, no drive for me to progress. The story line of D4 is so boring, so tedious, so poorly delivered that I was in agony waiting for that drudgery to go away. With the best graphics of the four games to push it along, instead of being the drive to improve and build your character, the story is the worst part of any of the four Diablo installments (D3's story was subpar, but I never wanted to bleed from my own eyeballs while trudging through it). Then, at long last, the agony was over. Donut (read: Donnan) had died the death of a tourist (you know, after not bothering to bring any armor or weapons with him and poking at demon-clad pillars during his lunch break). The other utterly pointless, irritating npcs went off screen somewhere to my thorough delight, allowing me to forget their names instantly. I killed Lillith against my actual better judgement, not because I wanted to but because the game made do me so just so that I could finally play the Diablo 4. And I did for a time. I played around with some paragon grinding, some builds...yet, eventually, I asked myself a series of questions, three of which I present to you here: 1) Why did I need to spend all those hours being tormented through that mindless clicker fest of a "story", if it had no bearing on the game itself? 2) What the heck is the point of me here, in this D4 world? 3) Why should I give a rat's rump about those helltides, if they, unfailingly, just go away by themselves? And I had no answer to any. Then I logged off.

18:52 I enjoy these moments because they give our choices on affix combinations more weight Imagine if in hc mode they didn't allow us to use the shared resources

"You can literally see the confusion on my face" *exact same face as normal* I'll take your word for it, I'd be confused too in that situation.

They say it's bad because it's bad, not because they are bad or because they don't understand how they are bad... the game is bad. The itemization is terrible because it's terrible, not because people don't understand it. Larian set out to make a good game for people to enjoy. Blizzard set out to make an app that could facilitate long term revenue stream from battlepass nonsense. Results are obvious.

great content, agree on all points and always appreciate these in depth videos

this video is a slam dunk piece of feedback, amazing job. 😊

thanks for analyzing what is normally an unlooked at area of the game. Personally I just noped out of d4 after trying one of the open beta's, and thats saying something as I am a huge diablo fan since D1. My reasoning was simply the game is less than the sum of its parts. To me it felt like the various elements of D4 detracted from each other, the story / cinematic elements like waiting for a janky NPC to do his thing or a beautiful looking world that is sparsely populated served more to break my gameplay flow (one of the most important aspects of an ARPG) than to be an enjoyable story, the MMO elements like auto level scaling to your level crushes the enjoyment of your own power creep and progression, the ARPG elements take the first "M" off "MMO" so that MMO elements are more or less pointless and so on... The conclusion I came to was D4 is fundamentally flawed and it would take a very radical shift is design philosophy to correct, something I do not see modern Blizz doing

I’m on console & my default setting for that bottom of the screen info like your skill bar, life, etc is all over on the far left I find it strange seeing people with it in the middle does no one know it can be moved???

I liked the video, but i would argue that a even more core reason is how the game calculates damage, by putting it in to buckets, their last attempt at balance was nerfing vuln damage, where this nerfed the overall damage sure, it failed to do what they intended to do, they wanted to lower the focus on vuln damage, and that goal failed completely, it only gives players who knows how to game works less damage, and people that don't know how it works even less damage then that. Also how stash tabs are implemented, and don't get me started on resistances .... There is fundamental issues in the game before players even start playing, As someone who has loved diablo since diablo 1, i can't get myself to play diablo 4 and it kinda breaks my heart. Also i hate renown grind, if they wanted us to do it at least make it work like a exp bar you level as you just play and have fun doing whatever you want.

I enjoyed your "You don not understand D4" video, and this one is excellent as well. Everything you touched on are clearly things they should focus on. I have a theory that upgrading gear was added late in development. Without upgrading, normal items can't be above the threshold at 625 item power, and sacred gear can't be above the threshold at 725 item power. That seems like intended design, and we would just be looking at ancestral gear while in T4. There are some weird interactions with upgrading that doesn't feel intended. Affix values that reroll when upgrading past item power breakpoints. The value that the item sells for increases so the cost to enchant it increases. And numerical aspects that scale with item power getting stronger with upgrades. Not really an important thing, and a quick "fix" could be to just increase stats by 10% each upgrade, but not increase item power by 5. Hopefully they just merge upgrading and enchanting into an overhauled system inspired by Last Epoch's amazing crafting system. Aspects feel like the weakest system though. If they could separate them from gear and either put them into the skill tree or it's own independant system, it would free up a lot of design space to fix itemization. Uniques would no longer compete with aspects, you could find better items and just use them without worrying about aspects and they could even add set items or whatever they wanted with the freed up design space.

👍, d4 devs should be made to watch this, great job at setting out & explaining most of the problems we face. This game was built originally to be played scrolled out lot more than we can do at release, No one will convince me otherwise. Players have suggested large parts of the development / building of D4 was outsourced to multiple companies, the way parts of the game mesh together make it hard to not agree. It just doesnt feel like a game that was built from the ground up, its like a patchwork quilt .

Personally i'm really missing something like a loadout menu. Where I can save a build, with its perk points and items.

i will love some sort of "Damage Report" after any battle, that details what did what damage like: frozen damage done, physical damage, damage taken, etc.

I started my Hack and Slay carrer with Diablo 1 back in the days. Played it a lot and loved it. I played a lot of Diablo 2, hundred upon hundred of hours Diablo 3 and Diablo 2:R. But Diablo 4 managed to bore me to death after only a few hours of playing. I played in the Beta until I reached levlel 20 (and the last few levels I was already quite bored). The server slam I used to play another char and I reached lvl 12 IIRC. The combat system is great and combat itself felt good. I liked the art style of the game and the voice actors did a great job. But everything else I just disliked. Because of the scaling you never felt more powerful with level 15 than with level 1 (just compare this to D2, where you couldn't even run for a longer time at low levels...) The game was huge - but totally empty, it just felt bloated. The world itself felt just bloated and boring, I had 0 interest to explore anything - and why should I, there was not a single soft gate that kept me from just going forward. Try to go in Level 7 e.g. in Diabo 1. Or go to the River of Flame with an underleveld Char. In Diablo 4 the scaling made you feel exactly as strong on Level 1, as on Level 20, in the starting zone as well as in a zone way later. The story started interesting (the poisoning in the village), but fell of a cliff immediatly after and I can't remember most of it anylonger. Lilith I knew from the sin war book trilogy, and then the story was something about me and a youg girl (no idea how she was called) going after the girls mother and dispelling one seal aftter the other. All seals where put up but immensly powerful beings (Lilith, Horadrim, I remember them at least...) - and all it took was a young girl to take those down in 5 seconds. Yeah, very interesting. I played Diablo 1 30 years ago but I still remember Grisworld, Wirt, Adria, the Butcher... Luckily I got to play the Beta and the server slam and I realized I did not have to buy Diablo 4. And what I have heard from the new patches, the news season, Diablo 4 is not getting better but is getting worse and worse. IMO Diablo 4 will continue to exist of course, and there will always be some players. But I do not really see much of a chance for Diablo 4 to get anything of a playerbase like Diablo 2 had. Hell, even Diablo 3 will be played by more players I guess. Diablo 4 will possibly be totally obsolete when PoE 2 comes out next year.

Good content, I still enjoy playing this game alot, although its very evident that there are big things left to desire and fix. Created a clan a month or so before launch, me and a friend, with the focus on recruiting veteran and very active players. It became clear to me, that the vast majority of these players, whilst loving the game for sure, the end-game persists of reaching 100, then completing T100, followed by deafeting Lilith and that is basically it. So S1 starts and in our clan, the very 1st level 100 season 1, gets there within 2 days, that is just way too easy.. He completed lvl100, t100 and lilith on both softcore and hardcore within 1 week, then he said he was done for the season, nothing left. Our clan was buzzing, must've been 70+ ppl in different voice chat channel on our discord, I havnt seen a single one in weeks. I like the way our clan played out and even now, I see good potential for the future. Although its sad to see that there still are alot of players, running around, still a bunch in towns and stuff, but its impossible to get a group going, I can imagine many play this solo, because without my clan it'd be impossible to have this much group play as I have, but now I'm lucky if I end up in a 3player party.. Now i use other discord to lfg or it just wont happen, I really look forward to season 2, because I know 90% of the ppl i played with, will be back, but I dread the fact that it will be for 2 weeks and back to this, hard to stay positive, when there are easy fixes to this but there's 0 LFG features in game, no clan play what-do-ever, how hard could is possibly be to allow a clan to kill world bosses and legion together? I dont mind the 4p party size but atleast allow party raids or whatever. This game is beautiful and plays great for the most part, but too damn much left to desire.

Thankyou for beta testing our $70 game for us - Blizzard

The player highlighting only works on bosses for me, where i usually don't need it

Wow, fantastic video! I agree with so much of this, I hope the devs see this and take notice, but unfortunately they don't appear to listed to players.

At least now we know why many things in the game work (or don’t) the way they do, based on Blizzard’s latest video fiasco. I wonder how many more of their developers, level designers, coders, artists, programmers don’t actually play their f-ing game.

They should add a test dummy in towns that you can bash on to see your damage numbers.

you explained perfectly everything ive been questioning about the game I really hope they see and really take in every point you've made. thank you

Finally a good video about the real problems of the game. I get annoyed with how many criticisms are just "my build is no longer OP" and "it's not PoE." Unfortunately I think a lot of these problems are shared by many ARPG dungeon crawlers. Most people don't notice because those games aren't AAA. Too often these games obfuscate relatively simple systems behind a wide array of stats and ability trees. And many of the options are non-viable, giving the feeling of illusion of choice and being forced into meta builds. I've actually worked as a physicist so I'm used to obtuse, overly crunchy math. But the moment I saw the tree in PoE, I was out. I don't have that much time to invest in something so overly obtuse that should be reduced to it's actual level of complexity. It's not that I can't do it; it's that there's not enough incentive for me to do it. It's needlessly bloated and gives people who invest a lot of time in it a false sense of superiority. I miss the days when these games were about a speedy RPG experience with a lot of variety. Now they're all about flow charts and meta. I shouldn't need to dig through stats and abilities to such a large degree for what is supposed to be a faster, almost arcade, experience. Just let me play!

What a great video! Your well thought out and present commentary is hardly a rant. I was nodding and saying 'absolutely' throughout. Thank you. This a truly well done 😊

An absolutely fantastic video V, full of great ideas and constructive criticism. I hope the Devs may see this video just like one of the Devs liked your tweet a while back. As always an amazing job, keep it up man.

While communication may be an issue in the game, it is far from the most important one. The reason I say this, is mainly because even if the ingame communication issues were "solved", and information was perfectly presented to the player, the game would still be bad, mainly due to the content itself (dungeons mainly), as well as progression systems (skills, aspects and paragon board). Itemization itself needs work, and is intertwined with these issues with its poor affix design. These need to be fixed asap.

Really well put video as usual Veritas, agree with all your points and ideas.

2:10 "Money" is at the heart of everything we do at Activison Blizzard, is more of an accurate statement. They so wanted to make this pay to win just like Immortal.

They also need to change the unique system my friend played a Druid up to level 80 and didn’t get that one specific unique peace of gear for the wolf storm build, Uniques and of course Uber unique are just pointless to think about it sucks it’s centered around rng and can’t really perfect some builds without them, it would be nice if they implemented new ways to earn, The Unique’s by saving up certain shards/points from completing certain weekly quests and bounties that include pvp bounties, like they do in destiny with Xur, they can have a special sells man that sells uniques with guaranteed new rotation each week with good stats for each class, also I believe pvp needs some rebalancing maybe level doesn’t matter and maybe their are just good players level 50 who can mop the floor with someone whose level 100, but me personally it shouldn’t happen in my opinion because they need to grind like others did to level 100, make it where they can only do damage within level range by 5 to 15 levels, or just find a way to create separate phases with level brackets, but if you 20-90 level’s above someone you won’t see them in pvp you’ll only see people whose in range of your level but I think it’s to many 1 shot pvp builds…although elden ring is a different game with slow dlc updates, at least they they tried to balance it by having brackets it’s just not shown in game…..

I never felt like playing to paragon levels because the game was so deeply underwhelming. I love that even content creators trying to deep-dive basically couldn’t because the stats were a mess to understand. GG blizzard, time to pack it up

Great video. Well thought out and articulated. I hope the Devs at Blizzard watch this.

Right on. Thanks for sharing.