At 50% is it worth it yet?

[500KG]

Game was memed on pretty hard, hated D3. Loved D2 but that was back in 00's.
Is this game worth it at 50% off? I never usually buy mixed review games.

[Jillas]

Originally posted by Dr.Acula:

Is it actually an MMO or is it a single player experience where you have to be online and occasionally see some characters that might as well just be npcs walk through the open world?

It's actually an MMO, the same way like Ubisoft's "The Crew" was. Both games does allow you to limit encounters with other players to minimum, giving you a feel of playing single player game, but it's a false feeling.

There's world bosses that cannot be killed by solo players* and you also have PVP zones where you can be killed by other players without any warning, not to mention Blood Harvest, it's a special altar where 3+ players have to deposit a special resource (in S2 it was Blood Lures, in S3 it uses Elemental Cores and it's called Tech Harvest, in S4 it will be require hearts and it will be called Accursed Ritual), the reason why you will have to interact with other players is that you will have a hard time filling it alone, because as solo you will have enough resource to spawn enemies maybe 1 or 2 times at best, but with help of other players you can keep on farming these altars almost infinite amount of time, and it's actually a very popular activity in Diablo 4, because it's the fastest way to raise your character level!

For that same reason you will be farming endgame bosses as part of a 4-player group, because that allows you to kill a boss 4 times instead of one, because each of 4 players will have to bring enough materials to spawn boss at least once, thus saving your time on farming summoning materials.

My point is that any MMO(RPG) game can offer you a single player experience if you just stick to doing NPC quests, but they still called MMO for a reason.

*World Boss can be actually killed by a solo player, but not until you have an endgame-character that uses broken build that allows insane amount of damage, which might get nerfed with the next update.

[Expirium]

Buying this game means support evil corporations ..
Thiis isn't about being a game anymore.. they actively research things to keep you addicted to gambling and other elements. Blacktivision is pure cancer and the game gets boring after a few hours. Repetitive trash is what this game amounts to.

[MattMaxfr]

Originally posted by Jillas ⁧⁧🐰:

Originally posted by Dr.Acula:

Is it actually an MMO or is it a single player experience where you have to be online and occasionally see some characters that might as well just be npcs walk through the open world?

It's actually an MMO, the same way like Ubisoft's "The Crew" was. Both games does allow you to limit encounters with other players to minimum, giving you a feel of playing single player game, but it's a false feeling.

There's world bosses that cannot be killed by solo players* and you also have PVP zones where you can be killed by other players without any warning, not to mention Blood Harvest, it's a special altar where 3+ players have to deposit a special resource (in S2 it was Blood Lures, in S3 it uses Elemental Cores and it's called Tech Harvest, in S4 it will be require hearts and it will be called Accursed Ritual), the reason why you will have to interact with other players is that you will have a hard time filling it alone, because as solo you will have enough resource to spawn enemies maybe 1 or 2 times at best, but with help of other players you can keep on farming these altars almost infinite amount of time, and it's actually a very popular activity in Diablo 4, because it's the fastest way to raise your character level!

For that same reason you will be farming endgame bosses as part of a 4-player group, because that allows you to kill a boss 4 times instead of one, because each of 4 players will have to bring enough materials to spawn boss at least once, thus saving your time on farming summoning materials.

My point is that any MMO(RPG) game can offer you a single player experience if you just stick to doing NPC quests, but they still called MMO for a reason.

*World Boss can be actually killed by a solo player, but not until you have an endgame-character that uses broken build that allows insane amount of damage, which might get nerfed with the next update.

I tend to vastly disagree on all which is said here. The World bosses are anecdotic and they are a joke or an excuse to say they did something to look like a MMO (or is it the PvP?). In Tech Harvest absolutely nothing requires several players. In fact, 99% of the time is spent alone in Dungeons, killing over and over the same mobs in the hope to be able to loot something useful. When I got disconnected against Duriel 2 days ago and lost it all, I really wonder what positive this stupid permanent connection brougt me, against the obvious negatives...
The only thing I can agree with is that it was advertised from the beginning, so I should not have bought, even at 50%.

Oh and about the "group" farming of Duriel (because all the other bosses do not loot any interesting stuff for those who did not trigger the invokation), it takes approximately the same time to build a group than to farm the stuff to do it alone. So I'd rather pretenting I am playing instead of chatting with sometimes unpleasant persons for hours, before being able to kill a ridiculously simple boss.

[Jillas]

Originally posted by MattMaxfr:

I tend to vastly disagree on all which is said here. The World bosses are anecdotic and they are a joke or an excuse to say they did something to look like a MMO (or is it the PvP?). In Tech Harvest absolutely nothing requires several players. In fact, 99% of the time is spent alone in Dungeons, killing over and over the same mobs in the hope to be able to loot something useful. When I got disconnected against Duriel 2 days ago and lost it all, I really wonder what positive this stupid permanent connection brougt me, against the obvious negatives...
The only thing I can agree with is that it was advertised from the beginning, so I should not have bought, even at 50%.

Oh and about the "group" farming of Duriel (because all the other bosses do not loot any interesting stuff for those who did not trigger the invokation), it takes approximately the same time to build a group than to farm the stuff to do it alone. So I'd rather pretenting I am playing instead of chatting with sometimes unpleasant persons for hours, before being able to kill a ridiculously simple boss.

I agree that current implementation of World Bosses is a joke, but it's a live service game and it can be changed just with a simple hotfix, like they changed Lilith making her from easiest boss in the game to the hardest boss in the game (they added blood boils that shoots homing projectiles that one-shot player and they did that change not with start of the new season, but in a regular weekly patch).

Tech harvest doesn't require several players but S2 and S4 implementation does require you to fill 50 blood lures each to spawn the enemies (and farming 150 blood lures alone is pretty slow), and you most players stay farming for 3+ cycles and if you need 150 blood lures for 1 cycle, to do it 3 times you would need 450 blood lures and that's why you need other players, it doesn't have to be people from your group, just a random players that have 50+ blood lures, thus helping each other to farm EXP faster.

About group farming of Duriel there's no chatting besides:
1: +3 Duriel Rota
2: Me for Duriel
1: *sends you invite to his party*
That's how much you need to chat with unpleasant randoms to assemble a Duriel/Malphas party

additionally you can copy-paste into party chat that: after we kill Duriel 3-4 times in a row, then we go to town for 5 minutes to sell the loot.

That's all.

Also you forgot that Echo of Malphas requires 1-4 players to go to 4 different parts of the dungeon to bring 4 keys to open the door to the boss (and you actually need Malphas not Duriel if you want to farm 2 unique runes for your pet, because Duriel doesn't drop them), and if you will be going for Malphas alone, you will have to clear all 4 corridors by yourself, just to get a one chance to kill Malphas... And Malphas is actually a very dangerous boss, not like Duriel!

[Dr.Acula]

Originally posted by Jillas ⁧⁧🐰:

Originally posted by Dr.Acula:

Is it actually an MMO or is it a single player experience where you have to be online and occasionally see some characters that might as well just be npcs walk through the open world?

It's actually an MMO, the same way like Ubisoft's "The Crew" was. Both games does allow you to limit encounters with other players to minimum, giving you a feel of playing single player game, but it's a false feeling.

There's world bosses that cannot be killed by solo players* and you also have PVP zones where you can be killed by other players without any warning, not to mention Blood Harvest, it's a special altar where 3+ players have to deposit a special resource (in S2 it was Blood Lures, in S3 it uses Elemental Cores and it's called Tech Harvest, in S4 it will be require hearts and it will be called Accursed Ritual), the reason why you will have to interact with other players is that you will have a hard time filling it alone, because as solo you will have enough resource to spawn enemies maybe 1 or 2 times at best, but with help of other players you can keep on farming these altars almost infinite amount of time, and it's actually a very popular activity in Diablo 4, because it's the fastest way to raise your character level!

For that same reason you will be farming endgame bosses as part of a 4-player group, because that allows you to kill a boss 4 times instead of one, because each of 4 players will have to bring enough materials to spawn boss at least once, thus saving your time on farming summoning materials.

My point is that any MMO(RPG) game can offer you a single player experience if you just stick to doing NPC quests, but they still called MMO for a reason.

*World Boss can be actually killed by a solo player, but not until you have an endgame-character that uses broken build that allows insane amount of damage, which might get nerfed with the next update.

Your statements on the world bosses making it an MMO are actually wrong because the game itself already proves that at least one of the world bosses is not actually a group content boss as you're fighting it one on one during the story campaign where it has exactly the same mechanics but has less health and deal less damage.

Even the other two world bosses technically do not require a group to be defeated when you look at their mechanics. They just have a ton of health requiring enough damage to defeat them within the 15 minute timeframe. If you have enough damage you can kill them on your own. So they are in fact not group content. They are single player content with bloated stats.

The rest of the game also is not designed with player interaction in mind. You may encounter them in the world but there's really nothing there that would even require interacting with them. This can also be seen when you look at the chat which 99% of the time I've played was quiet.

There literally is no gameplay reason why D4 requires you to always be online.

The only reasons I see are related to the monetization. You're supposed to buy cosmetics and battle passes and other players are supposed to see that and buy the stuff as well.

[Davina Adora]

D4 is definitely worth it (especially half-off).. Standard edition is fine.

[Jillas]

Originally posted by Dr.Acula:

Even the other two world bosses technically do not require a group to be defeated when you look at their mechanics. They just have a ton of health requiring enough damage to defeat them within the 15 minute timeframe. If you have enough damage you can kill them on your own. So they are in fact not group content. They are single player content with bloated stats.

There literally is no gameplay reason why D4 requires you to always be online.

1. That can be also applied to any raid boss from classic MMOs such as WoW, Lineage 2, WildStar, Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, etc. If their bosses didn't had bloated stats, everyone would be able to kill them solo, instead of having the need to assemble a 40-person hunting parties... just to be able to kill it after 5 months since it was introduced https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Qp2pAWGTY&t=110s
Personally I'm not even sure what is worse having a bloated boss from a single player campaign that you can kill solo (making it more like a joke), or being frustrated when 40 high-end players can't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ kill a stupid boss... Personally I'll take a joke boss that can be done quick & fast over a diehard boss that would just waste everyone's time...

2. I never said that D4 couldn't been made as single player game with slight adjustments, I just pointed it out that devs insisted on making it multiplayer game, where you'll be forced to see other players and you'll even have to kill/hunt them or else you won't be able to complete a seasonal journey, because every season has at least 1 task to kill another player in PVP zone, and that wouldn't be possible to do in single player game. It wasn't needed, but because it was implemented, it did makes it a MMO, the fact that you can invite a random player to your party in open world, that alone makes it MMO. (I was invited into parties in D4 more times, than I ever was invited into parties when I was playing ESO or any other MMORPG)

And personally I'm glad that D4 isn't a single player game with always-online requirement like D3 was, because I dislike online-only modes in games if its only purpose is to act as DRM, in case of D4 I can justify being forced to deal with online-only BS, that I cannot play when I have no internet access, because the game actually has some MMO elements, with D3 the game doesn't have such excuse at all.

[Dr.Acula]

Originally posted by Jillas ⁧⁧🐰:

Originally posted by Dr.Acula:

Even the other two world bosses technically do not require a group to be defeated when you look at their mechanics. They just have a ton of health requiring enough damage to defeat them within the 15 minute timeframe. If you have enough damage you can kill them on your own. So they are in fact not group content. They are single player content with bloated stats.

There literally is no gameplay reason why D4 requires you to always be online.

1. That can be also applied to any raid boss from classic MMOs such as WoW, Lineage 2, WildStar, Elder Scrolls Online, Guild Wars 2, etc. I

This is factually wrong. Even the first bosses in World of Warcraft raids required actions that were not covered by a single class/player.

To give you an example:
The very first boss in Molton Core is Lucifron which is a boss that casts magical debuffs as well as curses. Out of the available classes only two were able to remove magic. Two other classes could remove curses. The other classes didn't really have either of those abilities so they would be hit with lots of damage and had to deal with increased resource costs for their abilities.

In addition the boss has two additional "guards" with him who are able to cast mind control on random players. If you are alone and you get mind controlled => game over.

The whole boss and class design in World of Warcraft in the endgame is designed around group play and this can be seen with specific role requirements in groups and raids. The same goes for games like WildStar, ESO, Guild Wars 2 and so on.

A healer in World of Warcraft (classic) is very bad at dealing damage or soaking damage. They can mostly just heal. A tank is great at soaking damage but can't heal itself and has terrible dps. A damage dealer either can't heal at all or sucks at it and will usually go down after being hit once by a boss. They can only dish out damage. That is the basic principle of role based class designs in MMOs. Bosses and general dungeon combat is designed around that concept of group play.

You claiming "Diablo 4 is basically the same" just shows that you have no idea what you're even talking about in terms of mechanics and gameplay design.

The gameplay mechanics of Diablo (and that includes Diablo 4 as well) are primarily designed around single player. This is visible in EVERY aspect of the game. You can play the game in groups but that just increases the health of the enemies. There are no roles in the game. Everyone can do everything (dish out damage, soak incoming damage and heal).

[Nine]

Originally posted by 500KG:

Game was memed on pretty hard, hated D3. Loved D2 but that was back in 00's.
Is this game worth it at 50% off? I never usually buy mixed review games.

If you loved d2 then why aren't you playing project diablo 2?