Diablo 4 fans who were eagerly waiting for the Season 1 of the game to drop have turned against Blizzard after the studio ended up slaughtering the game’s core mechanics and progression system in the latest post-season update. The update, which went live on 18 July, made some drastic changes to how Diablo 4’s item system works as well as the general gameplay.
In short, Blizzard made everything in Diablo 4 harder, the grind to level up longer, nerfed damage numbers across the majority of the game and as a result, the gameplay loop is tedious and tiring. Not to mention that fans claim the game’s Season 1 content looks boring and shallow with few gameplay additions to force a full playthrough of the game again.
READ MORE – Diablo 4 Hit 10 Million Players During Its Launch Month
Of course, the big issue here is that if you want to play Diablo 4 Season 1 – Season of the Malignant, you need to create an entirely new character. This isn’t anything new in the series. However, usually, seasonal content is a quick trip through the game and reaching level 100 takes a few days or weeks.
In Diablo 4, Blizzard has increased the time it takes to level up now while also nerfing Helltide. This means that once you finish the campaign, the grind to level 100 will be even longer than before. In fact, it may take you three times the amount of time.
Players are also quite upset over the general nerf of current classes. Many of them claim that going back into the game after the latest massive update, their stats have been drastically altered and many of them are forced to build a whole new character due to these changes.
A lot of attention was put into the Season 1 Battle Pass
Don’t forget that “building a new character” is a costly feature which takes millions of gold to respec your build into something new. All of this results in a longer timesink for the game and players simply don’t want to do it.
By the look of things, there’s nothing positive about the current state of Diablo 4 and the Reddit community is a clear example of this. Each post over the past two days is negative with tens of thousands of comments and upvotes related to Diablo 4’s current state.
One post by YourLostBrainCell explains it clearly:
And with the cracks starting to show in the end game, people feeling like we’re playing a paid Beta, you decide now is the time to drop a patch that shits on every build. What better way to push everyone over the edge than to nerf everything. Damage? NERF
Defense? NERF Cooldown? NERF XP? NERF Power Leveling? NERF Helltide? NERF Sure, some builds needed to be fixed, but you didn’t have to completely gut entire classes while you were at it. But the nerfs are not even the point of this post. I don’t even care about them. I’ll adapt and overcome, I’m not afraid of a challenge. But this patch made me really think, why play season 1 at all? You didn’t address a single one of the NUMEROUS valid complaints about this game.
We also can’t forget that the game has some real issues. Gems are still a problem, some characters have very few builds to play, there are bugs in certain stats, inventory space issues and more. None of these were fixed in the latest update. Instead, Blizzard added a new boss, a boring Season 1 mechanic, loads of in-game purchases (of course) and nerfed everything to dirt.
Over on Metacritic, Diablo 4 has been review bombed by players. Many of the reviews relate to the end-game content and recent Season 1 changes. With all of this going on, Blizzard claims the studio will address fan feedback. There’s been no update since.
