Greasing up the grind.
In the lead-up to Diablo 4’s first season back in July, the game received a patch that was universally unpopular. That feels like an understatement—the community revolt was fierce enough to cause an honest-to-Lilith emergency broadcast where the devs stated: “we don’t plan on doing a patch like this ever again”.
Far from repeating the mistakes of the past, it seems the Diablo team are slowly reversing them entirely. As spotted by Gamesradar, a hotfix has increased the experience gain for killing monsters in World Tier 3 by 5%, and 15% in World Tier 4.
This goes some way to fixing the nerfs which had players up in arms—nerfs that crushed XP bonuses for killing higher level monsters (from 25% at three levels or higher to a piddly 15% at around ten levels higher) alongside the World Tier bonuses they’re just now u-turning on.
While this is technically good news, it looks like plenty of players would prefer these missteps were never made in the first place. In a post on the game’s subreddit, players took the hotfix less like a kind gift and more like an overdue admission the devs had messed up. The top-rated comment by user SQRTLURFACE reads: “Classic Blizzard. Reduce XP, then Give XP back, call it a hotfix/patch.”
I’m not exactly surprised players aren’t feeling the goodwill. That initial patch took a sledgehammer to the community’s faith in the game, nerfing classes across the board (including the already-struggling Sorcerer) while making the endgame grind a whole lot slower. The most spiteful-feeling tweak was an extra 2 seconds added to dungeon-teleports, which felt like a petty twist of the knife at the time. I’m still not exactly sure how that change improved the gameplay experience.
That’s not to say there hasn’t been a genuine effort to improve the game, but there’s certainly been a whole lot of muddling to get there. Diablo 4’s obnoxious level of crowd control was toned down earlier this month, loot filters are on their way eventu-later, and August saw tweaks to enemy density. Whether it’s all too little, too late, it remains to be seen.
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