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It only gets crazy in World Tier 4, at level 100 with all the endgame stuff going full blast.
You can at the very least enjoy the campaign without any kind of meta gaming or following build guides. Post campaign/level 50+, the game eases you into its endgame systems as builds and items become more important.
You can definitely max out a seasonal character with playing about 1/2 an hour weekdays and 2-6 weekends. I play about that per week, and my season 4 Necro is level 100, and I've done everything aside from kill uber lilith. I wasn't starting from scratch, though I had run through the campaign and collected all the account-wide upgrades beforehand.
This is nowhere near like destiny 2 or path of exile.
Just skip all side content (if you don't care for story/lore), if you choose to do all side content you'll hit 100-125 hrs for story/world building stuff. Story you only ever do once, side quests you can ignore forever if you wish.
Chapter 1-4 on seasonal, probably takes about 12-24 hours total, depending on class, drops and how much you are rushing. 2nd time around, i.e. next season you'll know short cuts to make it take less time.
Slayer and Champion probably take you another 12-24 hours of play time, again depending on luck and what events are up, when you are on.
Destroyer will likely take another 24 hours on top of that; if you choose to not get carried and you choose to grind up some gear/fine tune your build to drop the 'Uber" versions of various end game bosses, it may take substantially longer (like around 100+ hours total play time).
Clearing those 7 stages, completes the entire season.
Pits you'll be in a forever grind, they start to get hard round 40 (should hit this around 48-72 hours played on a char) and start to become somewhat ridiculous around 75+ (definite grind around 50-60), depending on who you ask hardcore pits is either 100+ or 120+ idk since I not got that far.
Guantlet/Class leader boards, weekly thing, you won't place in top 10K let alone top 1K without serious grinding, have a go and see where you land.
Not putting hrs played here since you can place in top 50K pretty easy early in the week (reset day), keeping the spot, lot more work, if you choose to get competitive about it.
Overall, yeah I think its pretty casual. Not D3 casual, but casual enough. It helps if you pick one of the easier classes to play/gear, a few classes you have to get technical earlier because they sort of made them a bit unfun to play without deep dives into game mechs.
Based on your play time, I'd guess you might clear Champion in 4-6 weeks time frame. Destroyer might be a crap shoot for your first go at a complete season clear. You should nail it for sure 2nd season.
Chapter 1-4 is considered normal/easy, everyone should clear this (all casuals should consider this a basic clear of the season), Slayer, Champion and Destroyer are increasingly closer to "grind" or "maybe a little difficult" (casuals should consider these "ranks" as game plus mode). I think it was viewed that way in D3, since you got nice gear sets from chapters 1-4 or w/e they called it in that game, I forget now, its been so long.
Once you know what you are doing, later seasons will take less and less time to get to the same points. First time round will be slow mostly because you'll be learning a lot.
It never used to be like this during the Diablo 1 and 2 days.
The ONLY way you get any kind of recognition in this community is if you have a 2 foot long BBC.
The community here is actually pretty nice. If you are looking for someone to level you then yes you probably won't get a response as leveling is easy. I see people helping often with bosses, pits and even advice when people ask for help in chat. Join a clan if you want a more social experience.
Filling up the battle pass is also pretty fast.
The only thing that you prolly will never do is defeat uber lilith or any other uber bosses. Maybe some day in eternal. Also ignore uber boss levels, they're basically level 200 bosses, compared to the pit.
Game gets harder when you're fighting lvl 125+ enemies.
Sort of... But, that depends on what version of The Shaper you're talking about. Tormented Lillith, which is the end-game pinnacle boss to conquer, is both a gear and build check as well as something of a "skill" check when it comes down to navigating the mechanics of the fight. Shaper is/was more of a "don't stand in the lava" and "biig beam is bad" sort of thing. When certain mechanics hit you in the Lillith fight, you get a huge debuff that stacks... meaning you can get one-shot easily as those stacks ramp up the damage you can take.
D4 can be a casual game. It can also be played a bit more "hardcore" when focusing on pushing levels of The Pit and doing the Tormented versions of some of the bosses. (ie: Upleveled versions.) But, a casual player, depending on their build and how much they have worked on their gear, can defeat those.
On what to expect:
Character classes have a wider variety of valid builds than any previous game in the series. Though, there are certainly "S" Tier builds. When choosing a Class to play, all of them have good general builds and even passable "build your own build" potential, though knowing the mechanics is key. So, don't worry too much about what class you play at first. If you want a recommendation, due to ease of leveling, then I'd say Barbarian is the easiest, followed by Necromancer, then Sorcerer/Rogue, then Druid in order of efficiency. Though, there is currently a Season buff that enables very rapid leveling in all respects. Play what you want.
The Campaign has to be completed once by a new player. Then, you can elect to skip it in any subsequent playthroughs.
As a new player running through the Campaign, it's important to note that you are doing this in an "open world" setting and you're not railroaded into linear play. You can, and most definitely should, take breaks from pursuing the Campaign story and do sidequests, explore, hunt for gear, level up, hunt for gear, find needed Legendary affixes to put on gear items, etc.
However, you will want to progress through the World Tier difficulty levels to get to World Tier 4, which is the highest Tier and where all the best loot is. You can push that hard and do that pretty quickly or just take your time - Your choice. Just follow the campaign and take breaks to do other things that interest you, if you want.
The open-world is like an ARPG MMO, with players running around doing the same things you'd be doing. Dugeons are instanced and your Campaign content will be, as well. But, there's a large range of group activities, mostly beating up monsters..., to be had in the open world. In lower World Tiers, at this point in the Season, you'll see slightly fewer players. In World Tier IV, it's much more populated.
Eternal Realm - This is like PoE's "Standard" realm. It's the game, but without the Seasonal content. All Seasonal characters and their stuffs get transferred to Eternal after the Season is over.
Seasonal - This is where it's at... Well, for people that don't mind that kind of play. Some players just don't want to play Seasonal for some reason. That's OK. But, for those who do, D4 is like D3 or PoE in that regard. Though, PoE's monetization relies on Leagues being a heck of a lot more full-featured than D4's.
Battlepass - There are two versions. One is free, the other costs money. The "pay" battlepass only gets access to a few more vanity items/skins. There's no functional, pay2win, rewards. (There may be some social animations, but that's about it.)
For the playtime you're suggesting, I think you would get enough good progression feedback to result in a good gameplay experience. That's provided you ask questions or read relevant info online if you get stuck or need to work on optimizing your character, though.
If you were a player interested in speeding through content to hit the "end game" and blast it... I'd have to say that this is not PoE and that a player looking for really deep and difficult end-game gameplay isn't quite going to find it, yet. There is enough there to give them something to do, especially if they want to optimize some builds and level up multiple characters to explore their flavor of gameplay, though. But, D4 does not have the deep end-game and variety of things to focus on that Path of Exile does. Then again, neither does any other current ARPG, so... :)
PS: Take a look online for intro vids and guides for new players. Maxroll.gg, Icy-Veins, Mobalytics, and D4builds have a lot of builds, but only Maxroll/Icy-veins are vetted and deemed suitable for average gamers. I can knowledgeably recommend all of Maxroll's "S Tier" leveling builds - They're good and easy to work with.
Edit-Add: There's a little over a month left in the Season. I think you could still start in Seasonal play and have a good time with your intended play hours - There's little impact at all for a player going through the Campaign for the first time. And, getting the character you're playing in Seasonal moved to Eternal won't have much of an impact on you. I'd encourage you to still start in Seasonal play, just because that's where most of the other players will be.
Until you hit pit 80 plus pits, then it becomes a grindfest for only the sweatiest of sweats.