I have no words for Blizzard. They became true experts in making frustrating content. It took them many years to improve D3 rifts to be fair and not frustrating. First they fixed annoying and one-shotting affixes and monsters in greater rifts. Then they have changed algoritm for greater rift maps so the backtracking and narrow alleys could be finally eliminated. Then they fixed number of shrines, its density, reduced its power and added amulet which doubles shrine duration, so the influence of shrine RNG was minimized. In the meantime they have increased drop rate and ways to farm of GR keys. It was a lot of effort, but it made the game much better (apart from raining loot everywhere).
And after a YEARS of experience what do we get in Diablo 4? We get many one-shots, especially in AoZ, but also in ND, vaults and that unfortunate uber Lilith… We get backtracking and narrow alleys in vaults and ND. We get tons of summoning materials if we want to farm bosses. Now we get event full of shrines. If i only could keep some boots and amulets with shrine buff duration… But i couldn’t, because my stash is always full. So now, after almost 2 months of farming, my items are not even close to get fair score in gauntlet. Not mentioning, that almost noone even looks at items with shrine buff duration affix. I played Last Epoch recently and i logged to Diablo just to check the gauntlet. After i have realized that gauntlet is so frustrating, after realizing that i have to browse all this yellow items after every vault, that i have to see all of this loading screens, that i have to walk for 20 seconds to get to vendors in opposite sides of town, that i have to open all thess doors and do annoying shit in dungeons instead of killing mobs, that i have to do 400 times 4 easy vaults go get possibility to get unique stone from Malphas - i just want to vomit.
Also they could add a map of gauntlet, so we could plan everything before starting gauntlet. Instead we have to take a pen and paper, get inside the event, walk through whole map, write down where all bosses, keys and shrines are and then go back to make another attempt. IN FREAKIN’ HACK N’ SLASH GAME. Of course if we want to get score close to those sweaty streamers and no life players, we should analyze previous footage of gauntlet because they shown its layout before event started!
If i could make a refund, i would do it immediately. But since i am stuck with $90 game, i still have 1% of hope that devs will add anything that is not frustrating. I didn’t expect anything special after last few months. But at least i was hoping to play it for one evening, but that didn’t happen. Itemization changes in season 4 could make a difference. Could… if they were competent to do it. But they are not. Because i can’t imagine comptetent hack n’ slash game dev who believes that adding content in the middle of the season is any good idea.
Edit: There is one more thing - they’ve put an elite with waller affix in the central, narrow junction of the map. Amazing experience.