I guess in the sense that D3 (with the expansion) was 100% laser-focused on the part that it did well - combat. You go to greater rift, kill monsters (which is fun, thanks to its good combatfeel), spend 10 seconds sharding gear or putting it in the stash tab, and repeat. Zero friction, zero bloat, etc. It was obviously "the casual Diablo2like", but that designed worked! Release version of Diablo 4 in contrast was, frankly, anti-fun, be it running to nightmare dungeons, dungeon objectives that are annoying to complete ("kill all 300 enemies spread across a large area and if you miss one, gotta go back to hunt them"), many builds not really working until you get to endgame, or whatever. The "MMO" aspects were also harmful: other players running around felt stupid.

So yeah, I guess it did become more like D3 in terms of being less anti-fun. The new skill system could also be said to be an evolution of D3 runes, and I would argue that the runes actually were pretty good, it's just that they didn't have support from the underlying mechanics (like skill tags), while D4 does.

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>>738539393
Finished the base game last night. Story is kino. Just unlocked Torment 4 and about to start VoH.

>>738541471
But the differences include:
>Superior atmosphere
>Inoffensive, at times even good, campaign, compared to the offensive one in D3 (well, the expansion one was ok)
>Much better bosses
>Instead of entire progression being about the same challenges with bigger stats, there are forms of pinnacle content
>Buildcrafting is more than just picking legendaries and sets that give 10000% bonuses to skills: certainly, powergaming builds usually feature synergistic uniques and that's every game, but in D4 you actually can just pick a skill you like and boost the associated skill tags, pick +skill gear, etc, etc, and make it "work"
>As a corollary to the previous points, progression is much more granular: instead of sudden 10000% jumps in power when getting a set bonus, or only ever gaining something useful during a levelup when a rune you want to use unlocks, you actually feel like you're progressing
>Now that nightmare dungeons etc. are no longer anti-fun and points of friction have been removed, the endgame is more fun and varied than just running greater rifts
>Itemization is far superior: instead of being able to get your BiS legendaries within two hours of season start and from then on it being just about hunting for better rolls, there is a hunt for "big items" with multiple greater affixes, powerful corruptions, etc
>As a corollary to the previous point, with Horadric cube you can actually craft items, so it's not pure RNG
>Also, you don't reach endgame with BiS legendaries in 1-2 hours

It's still "the casual Diablo2like", but I feel the current version actually fills that niche well, allowing its good parts (like combat) to actually matter. Prior to that I played mostly Last Epoch, I even played in a few D3 seasons, but now I think I'm adding D4 to my rotation.

>>738539393
>Friend loses interest and i drop it like a sack of shit since i was really only playing as background noise to shoot the shit with lifelong friend
You're the same faggots who say the story sucks while skipping all the cutscenes. Why not go to a bar with him if you just want to shoot the shit, you dumb fuck.

>>738541965
>Inoffensive, at times even good, campaign, compared to the offensive one in D3 (well, the expansion one was ok)
Diablo 3s campaign mogs Diablo 1 and 2s.

It's worse because they moved d3 maintenance devs onto d4. There's a new activity talent for pit called orb goblins.
The retarded d3 dev implementing it did not know d4 pit (d3 rifts) don't drop orbs and implemented it anyways. It's also tuned to be fucking useless.

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>the expansion just added a cube to re-roll items and a table to tell you which of the seven already existing activities you should run in what order for an extra helmet drop
>people paid 40$ to 100$ for this then sat down the following week and watched all that PoE2 is getting for free at the end of the month
>they then make threads on reddit saying shit like they are glad they aren't getting a lot of content like PoE2
bro these stupid fucking drones are so cooked its fucking WILD the shit they say

>>738541981
You just saw someone say one thing, created a person inside your head saying a different thing and got mad at op thinking they were that person you made up. Get the fuck off twitter dude you are cooked.

>>738542040
I cant pick my favourite part...cain being killed by a butterfly? lord of lies being the worst liar ever seen? the greatest general of hell telling you all his moves in advance?

I played the campaign and enjoyed it but idk what I'm doing in the endgame. Numbers go up but I just feel like I'm only grinding to kill the same things faster but it never really feels fast. Had the same problem in Destiny. Why do I care about higher numbers when the game always feels the same? My build is pretty much done and upgrades aren't noticeable.

>>738542967
>>738542040
In terms of structure and pacing D3 is "fine" I guess, and there's a couple of cool setpieces (war in heaven, say). Expansion campaign is more solid. But yeah, it's offensively stupid. A recent example that I came across, one that I was too stupid to notice myself prior, is Obi-Wan Kenobi "hiding" Luke on Darth Vader's home planet, giving him to Vader's stepfather to care of, and failing to even give Luke a false identity. That's absolutely fugging retarded... but I don't feel offended watching The New Hope knowing this. Not all stupidity is created equal, and D3 is clearly of the offensive variety.

>Warlock makes Necromancer completely redundant
Yep thats a modern blizzard class balance experience alright.

>>738539393
Everyone is either in the torment difficulties or playing through the expansion idiot.
No one is questing through the fractured peaks and playing through the base story. Everyone has already earned those rewards.
You never had to commit to builds, refuning points in D4 has always cost low amounts of gold, it's about finding a play style you like or an unique item and building your character around that.
Potion upgrades are tied to items now, if you're spamming potions your build is wrong and you need to invest in toughness or move down a world tier.

>>738542304
All these runes and mechanics are simply too complicated for Diablo 4 players. When they say they’re glad they didn’t get any of it, I believe them.

>>738542304
still vastly better then PoooEp2 thougheverbiet, however

>>738542967
Are those your opinions, or the opinions of a Youtuber? I've seen so many people regurgiate those exact same criticisms, word for word. Have you even played Diablo 3?

>>738543375
Oh look, another NPC regurgitating some autistic Youtubers opinions

>>738542163
I have that and it works fine? Those warplan skills add progression orbs to the Pits and they do in fact work.

>>738543675
This pretty much. Imagine being too retarded to understand this.

>>738543939
>retarded shit is universally disliked
who woulda guessed? what if I also told you the RMAH was total cancer because blizzard balanced the droprates around it for maximum profit?

>>738543939
>>738544035
>we have progressed to the point of people unironically defending D3's story
Good lord in Heaven

>>738544163
anon the rmah was in d3 for less than a year, the game got like 40 seasons

>>738544163
Have you actually played Diablo 3? Or are those the opinions of a Youtuber
>>738544201
My view of Diablo 3 isn't tainted by Diablo 3s bad launch since I played it for the first time last month, which I'm 100% sure is the reason why people shit on Diablo 3s story. Diablo 3 mogs Diablo 2.

>>738544265
nobody has played the campaign either since they added adventure mode

>>738539393
That's because D3 was actually good after ROS but its reputation was too tarnished at that point for it to matter. That's why the more they make it like D3, the more broader public likes it.

>>738544304
Have you actually played diablo 1 or 2? if you only just played 3 I doubt you did, zoomzoom.

>>738539393
I already see fags complaining about war plans because it makes them play modes that don't want to play while they're trying to target farm instead of accepting that if they want to target farm they're going to have to do it outside of war plans. There's also retards complaining that they can't brute force level up war plan levels by just farming the specific activity over and over. I admit getting 1 boss lair xp for doing a boss lair is kinda shitty but there's people who want full boss lair xp for it which defeats the point of war plans.

Even if D4 is meant to be a casual ARPG the player base is really pushing it to brain dead levels of retardation and blizzard keeps bending the knee to them.

>>738544392
Yes. I marathoned all the games last month, so I don't have le nostalgia to cloud my judgement. Diablo 3 mogs Diablo 1 and 2 imo, and I think those games are 10/10 tier. I genuinely don't understand how people can say Diablo 3s story from Act 3 onwards is bad. It's kino

>>738539393
Why are there so many of these fucking games
There is
>poe1
>poe2
>diablo3
>diablo4
>last epoch

All of these are 80% the same fucking thing and they all expect you to pump 12312313 hours into them.
I dont get how people have time for these fucking games and why there needs to be so many "diablo 2 but worse really" games.
Why cant we get something fucking unique and improved? Even shit like GrimDawn/Torchlight/Titan Quest is just "diablo 2 but worse really" without the retarded endgame grind the others have.
We can get all kinds of different racing games that feel completely different (forza,gt,burnout,nfs,motorstorm) but we cant get ARPGs that are not just Diablo 2 but worse?

>>738544304
I played D3 on and off like 10 fucking years. I beat orignal Inferno on my Monk, and was a top 100 on GR leaderboards for several seasons.
I can safely say, that D3's story was fucking dogshit lol. That one anon was right too; the Lord of Lies used the World's most Obvious Lie to try and trick us and Hell's Greatest General spent all of Act III explicitly telling us what his plans were over a 2 hour Teams Call.

>>738539393
cool that's all I wanted

>>738544661
Ok, but what about the Adria twist, or the Act 3 seige setpiece, or Diablo rampaging through heaven? All that is moot because "a butterfly kills Cain ; -;" or Azmodan taunts you like an autist?

>>738544643
>act 3 onwards
>it gets good 60% in!
bruv

What else am I going to play? PoE1 with ridiculous investment requirements? PoE2 which is unfinished?

>>738544858
>adria twist
adria is dumb retconned shit to begin with...

>>738544858
Adria twist was completely retarded and mostly just added even more unnecessary backstory to the D1 Warrior/D2 Wanderer (why did he just HAVE to be the Bastard Son of Leoric?). It did make finally killing her in RoS feel great though, I will admit.
Act III Siege shit is kinda ruined by Azmodan screeching ARROGANT NEPHALEM every 30 seconds and Act IV is kinda ruined by Diablo Transitioning.

Like overall, I did actually enjoy D3 quite a bit, but god damn the story got so much wrong lol.

I don't hate it but it feels like they threw the baby out with the bathwater with a lot of the changes they made. I saw that PoE2 has a mostly positive and was wondering what happened recently and if they ever fixed the dogshit loot changes. The cash shop shit is as egregious as ever, the only saving grace with PoE2 apparently being you can sell shit for real money. Feels like Blizzard was just too early with Diablo 3 in retrospect.

>>738545070
How? She's literally introduced as a shady NPC in Diablo 1. Everyone is skeptical of her and she makes camp on the edge of town.
>>738545129
The Adria twist was kino

>>738544937
this is my problem with arpgs right now. i KNOW poe1 is better than d3/4 but i want to spend like 100 hours in one, not 1000+. even the "good" arpgs eventually boil down to repeatedly aoe instant clears to get new gear to make said clears 1% faster

>>738545161
>shady NPC everyone is skeptical of turns out to be evil
>a kino twist
you were surprised about the belial reveal too huh

>>738544126
No one said it doesn't work, retard. They're saying it's an unnecessary feature (it is, progress is automatic in d4), and the clueless d3 dev implemented something unnecessary. The orbs also give jack shit towards progress and are undertuned.
Any designer worth their salt would have made that talent +progress to killing the goblin, or even just elites instead of tacking an unnecessary system on.

>>738545308
No, I forsaw the Belial reveal. and it's not like the game is trying to hide it. You did not forsee the Adria twist regarding Leah being concieved to be a host for Diablo. If you claim you did you're full of shit. And again, Adria is introduced as a shady character. No one was surprised she betrayed you. It was how she did which was kino.

I started playing D3 again and the difference in tone and monster design is really funny. D3's atmosphere feels like Hot Topic in comparison to 4. The constant logs on new monsters also takes away a lot of the mystery, especially when they're just described in a way you can just see that with your eyes, almost exactly like how YIIK was written.

>>738545431
honestly it was so forgettable I cant even remember the details of adria

my most vivid d3 story moment is being in the sewers thinking "please tell me there's some additional twist because the lord of lies is being fucking retarded"

>D4 spent most of it's game introducing the New Horadrim, which is a rag-tag group of diverse misfits led by the one important D3 NPC who wasn't Tyreal
>By the time LoH is over, Tyreal is back but literally everyone else is dead
So like, is there gonna be another D4 expansion? Because where would you even go from there?

>>738545881
>everyone else is dead
who exactly? bunch of random people introduced just so they can be killed later? guess what, they can introduce new characters to kill off. its not that hard

>>738545881
It kind of felt like they left it open intentionally in-case they decide to go with D5 instead, ending on a hopeful note felt really out of place and I thought it was a fakeout but I guess not. As for Tyrael I was honestly happy to see him again, Lorath was beginning to frustrate me with his constant bad decisions. He is at least effective and a better companion.

>calls it a skinner box
>complains about skinner box element removal
we get it you got filtered in t1.

Paladin looks fun as fuck. Which classes are the most enjoyable?

Should I buy this?

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can someone actually tell me what's better or worse about the new expansion compared to launch? i wanted to run through the campaign again before the new stuff

>>738544858
Kinda yeah!

A lot of stories have stupid shit (let's start with the Iliad: the Achaeans *obviously* can't logistically sustain a siege operation for a decade - Greeks in the classical period can barely sustain operations lasting a few weeks in their back yard... Athens is the least bad but when they try to attack Syracuse it predictably goes horribly; Homeros knows Bronze age people used war chariots but doesn't have a fucking clue of their tactical role, etc) but these don't detract from the work. Why? Any reasons I might give (the plot would still work if the Achaeans had been at it for just weeks, "battle taxi" isn't inherently stupid because that's what dismounted knights, mounted archers, dragoons and even contemporary mechanized infantry essentially are, etc) probably aren't the exact reasons, but Iliad works despite the stupid shit.

Why doesn't Diablo 3? Well, it doesn't. But again, I can try to gesture towards the reason. A butterfly killing Deckard Cain feels stupid because he is presented as a likeable mentor figure (and people coming from D2 of course know him from there), but the death takes place in a cutscene *in which you are present* and could kill the butterfly before she has time to twitch but are robbed of agency for reasons, because the butterfly hasn't demonstrated competency that would "earn" her the kill, because Cain has already been through much worse (and the world seemingly operates under the sort of logic in which named characters are more difficult to kill, it's not like the fragility of human existence is a theme), because there was no foreshadowing, because the story doesn't really respect his death after the fact, and because there is no thematic payoff. In other words, it feels like it's there solely for shock value (as it probably is), and it's CHEAP.

>>738546830
It’s practically the same game. They’ve added another skill modifier to choose from, but apart from that, it’s basically the same.

>>738539393
the best thing about diablo 3 was its offline, couch coop and controlls with a controller...
they basically copied all of d3 (even down to the individual skills and set bonus like stuff) except the stuff that actually made it very cool and good to play

>>738544858
>>738546909
Contrast that to, say, Donan's death in Diablo 4: he's also a mentor figure of sorts, and his death also happens in a cutscene when you are present, but the parallels end here. D4 generally takes a more """realistic""" (not really, but that's how I would describe the aesthetic) gritty aesthetic in which death for humans in fact is always right around the corner, the end of the Horadric order with the old guard passing away is an established theme in the story, Donan is presented as a tragic figure (losing his son and everything) and you never would have guessed a good end for him - if anything, he died a hero's death which prior to the events of the story didn't seem to be in the cards, right before the soulstone he forged was used to trap Mephisto - and it takes place during the moment of greatest crisis in the story just before the triumph, and Lorath and Neyrelle take his death with appropriate gravitas.

These probably are fake reasons with actual reasons as to why it feels so particularly offensive being inscrutable workings of the brain in which everything affects everything and that cannot truly be put into words. But Diablo 3 story is stupid in an offensive way. That's just how it is.

>>738547054
imagine unironically paying attention to the story in diablo 3 or, god forbid, 4.

>>738547054
D4 gave rathma the deckard treatment and I immediately lost any interest in the story

>>738546709
just pick whatever you like the aesthetics of.

>>738546709
>>738546779
If you enjoy ARPGs then you'll like Diablo 4
I'm not sure how buying it works now but I got VoH+Base game as a bundle for about 40 goycoins, if you're unsure then wait for LoH+Base game (I think LoH is included in the base game now) bundle to go on sale
I think the gameplay is good and feels great, there's a real weight behind the player attacks but my 2 biggest issues with the game are
>monetization is insane, "micro"transactions are like 50 goycoins or more
>damaging effects are not nearly as easily visible as they are in D3

Diablo story peaks in 4 yho dragged out a bit.

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>>738539393
diablo 3 was a really fun game and a relic of times when blizzard was an actual game company instead of a woke performative husk of one and i'll die on this hill forever

>>738547865
>game full of girlbosses and girlbaddies
>not wokeslop

d3 bad
d4 bad

>>738546930
>>738546830
off the top of my head after restarting and playing for a bit
>horse at level 1 instead of end game
>respeccing doesnt cost gold anymore
>a few more talent nodes
>cant get gear you cant equip
>leveling is much faster
>legendaries drop much more often
>legendary powers aren't locked to completing certain dungeons
dunno how long a lot of this has been in game but i only played at launch

>>738547987
are you talking about diablo 3? most of the characters were men. i guess tyrone was a black angel but he was honestly a cool character and this was before it was performative and forced to include random black guys in everything

>>738548297
horse as always available from the start after completing a starting story quest.

>>738548453
are you sure? i couldve sworn it was locked until near endgame at launch. maybe it was something else but there was a really basic mechanic that was locked until like the second to last area

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I hate myself for feeling tempted to buy the WoW T2 skins pack. I've been fighting the urge to buy them for 4 days.

>>738548681
>dyeable wow tier sets in diablo before wow

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I hopped on for a bit using gamepass ($1).

>pick druid
>using that lightning build off icy veins
>pretty straightforward dopamine device where you shut your brain off and just press a single button
This must be really awesome to play if you're really stoned or really fucking retarded. Just get off work and spend 5 hours wasting time accomplishing absolutely nothing with your life.

I got bored and haven't opened it since. I'm not getting the DLC so what else is there? going into a dungeon? There's no story.

>>738541471
D3 combat is solid, but it was better before it became grift focused. D3 endgame is either 1-shotting the whole screen, or it's building up mob density while micromanaging buff timers and CDs. Both are fun, but I preferred it when I was doing stuff like kiting melees, dodging projectiles, using CC abilities, etc. in vanilla and early RoS before the massive powercreep turned all non-grift combat into a joke.

>>738539393
Yep it's basically D3-2 now except :
-It's optimized like shit and runs at 15 fps on my machine (D3 runs fine)
-skills still don't get launched sometimes even though you can see the key doing its "pressed" animation on the hud
-attacking in melee works like 50% of the time, the other 50% you have to hold shift to force stand and stop your character from circling his target like a retard
-wasd movement is still clunky after being there for like 3 seasons, still feels like something they copied hastily from poe2 just to say they have it too
-they changed how items work for the 5th time now, even the affixes and legendaries have changed so all your legacy characters are completely unusable... again... The character I made 10 years ago in D3? Still functional

So yeah more like D3-0.5

>>738549704
Aren't greater rift runs around 3 minutes the optimum for farm? Since that is the core activity you spend most of your time doing, not pushing or farming keys in T17, I think that more or less struck the right balance for combat pacing.

>>738539393
>So if its just Diablo 3 again whats the point?
This was already obvious if you've played the open beta for 15 minutes.

>>738544647
ARPGs are like fighting games : they have evolved so far from the base concept they're supposed to represent that they've started appealing to a very specific kind of players, and all new games are designed to appeal to this specific niche, to gather just enough attention from the player base to get their game sold and played for 2 months until the next game/season drops somewhere else

>>738539393
It is taking an awfully long time for people to accept that Blizzard are has-beens.

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>>738539393
I bought it off the humble bundle thing. I might play it one year. it doesn't really look that engaging.

>>738544647
There's borderlands and destiny, I havent played those but the genre is pretty stagnant and unlikely to change.

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>>738547865
>diablo 4 was a really fun game and a relic of times when blizzard was an actual game company instead of a woke performative husk of one and i'll die on this hill forever
t. tasteless gen a faggot from 14 years in the future.

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>>738548298
>woke was good when I liked it

>>738550935
>woke is what I dislike
many such cases

>>738539393
i did some lk runs today. rng dropped me 2 ber runes within 10 minutes lmao

I just hit 70 the other day and I'm honestly not sure what to be doing, I'm trying to get an apocalypse build warlock going I saw online but it needs various uniques and aspects and runes I don't have and I don't even know how to start working towards getting any of this stuff. I unlocked the first tier of torment but I'm too weak to actually clear anything reasonably on there so I went back down to the prior difficulty

>>738553837
the uniques and runes come later in torment, you just need to focus on war plans and as you get paragon points + aspects it will be easy to clear torment

>>738547865
diablo 3 was already pozzed as fuck since the company went downhill so many years ago you dumb zoomer

Play Path of Exile or Path of Exile 2. Actually wait for PoE2 0.5 update end of May.

>>738553837
Have you unlocked the Cube? Because that goes a long ways to getting more Legendaries/Uniques once you start learning how to use it.

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>>738539393
>have gaybox
>see that its on goypass
>199,4 GBs
What the actual fuck am I witnessing? I never played Diabololo game so I went with Diablo 3 since it was 25gigs instead.

>>738557801
its only that big if you go with HD models
its like 80GB for the game and all expansions if you ignore it

>>738557858
Unlike with other games you cant check components/stuff for download,it only has 200gigs download option for this game like what the fuck. Im just going to play D3 then.

>>738544647
>Why are there so many of these fucking games
Couldn't you say this about literally any genre?
>Why do CRPGs exist after BG2?
>Why do sandbox games exist after GTA IV?
>Why do FPS games exist after Doom 2?

I like having multiple options available, as does everyone else.
However, I do agree that the ARPG genre has really shit the bed.
An ARPG game that had a CRPG-style campaign/game-loop. Something like BG3 or WotR with ARPG combat and systems would be so welcoming.
There are almost no 'RPG' elements in these games; it always just turns into "reach a certain level where you start one-shotting 500 mobs at a time and get incremental gear increases, then continue doing that for 1000 hours tyvm!'.
It is an extremely spastic genre, and PoE has ruined it by flaunting that "Diablo 2 TRVE successor" bullshit.

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I'm still mad they butchered Monk and stitched it back into the amalgam that is Spiritborn.
Class itself is fine I guess, I just hate the aztec aesthetic, it makes no sense for a martial arts class
At least the tummy is pure sex appeal