Diablo 4 is available now for Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5 and PC, and it’s been a big hit for Blizzard Entertainment, with nearly $700 million in revenue within five days. While it’s received strong critical acclaim from various publications, that doesn’t mean it’s flawless. More players are starting to discover major issues which affect the overall experience in various ways.
The development team is working to fix some issues in the upcoming seasons, but in the meantime, let’s look at some of the things that Diablo 4 players currently dislike about the experience.
No Map Overlay
The one quality-of-life feature aggravating in its absence is the map overlay, where you can toggle a transparent version of the current area over your gameplay. Instead, you have to hit the Map button and obscure your gameplay, putting you at risk of mobs or, even worse, stopping and starting ad nauseam to get your bearings. Whatever the reason might be for not implementing it (aside from slowing down the gameplay), its absence is just frustrating.
Elite Monster Density in Dungeons
Blizzard changed Elite Monster density in Dungeons, effectively standardizing them across the board to ensure that no one Dungeon is better to farm than others. Of course, it doesn’t do much to ease the pain of leveling, especially as one gets deeper into the end game. What kinds of changes it will make in the future regarding this remains to be seen. For now, though, don’t expect them to provide a viable means to power level.
Helltide Farming
I wanted to like Helltide Farming, but farming for Aberrant Cinders is a pain. The events have a timer, and when finished, you must wait before another becomes available. There don’t seem to be enough monsters, and the currency you want – Forgotten Souls for upgrading Legendaries and re-rolling stats – doesn’t drop from the chests opened with Aberrant Cinders. It could certainly do with some refinements and unique mechanics to make it worth the trouble.
Respec Costs
With all the controversy from Blizzard about respec costs and how they’d be expensive, but not prohibitively so, but also still high, it’s most annoying when you’re looking to re-roll an end-game character. Not only do you have to spend Gold on gear, imprinting Aspects, enchanting, and upgrading, but you also need tons of Gold to reset your Skill Tree and Paragon Board. It’s better to make a new character if you can deal with all the other grinds that come with it.
No Full Reset for Paragon Board
To add to the annoyance, unlike the Skill Tree, you can’t fully reset the Paragon Board. Instead, you must refund the cost of each node individually. Not only does this take time, but due to having more nodes, the sheer cost for doing so can get insane based on your character’s level.
PvP “Matchmaking”
The Fields of Hatred can be an interesting break from the usual loot grind, especially with the added twist of players betraying each other for rewards. However, the “matchmaking,” such as it is, could use some tuning. What’s the point of going into PvP as a level 50-plus character if you’re going to get wrecked by a level 70 player much more kitted out? It’s a tough problem to solve, given how PvP in looters usually works, but perhaps making a playlist for those who want to match against those closer to their level would help.
Nightmare Dungeon Rewards
Nightmare Dungeons take longer to complete than your average Dungeon – which is fine if the rewards match the effort and time. Unfortunately, they currently don’t, as you can get the same XP and loot from a regular Dungeon, which takes less time to clear and doesn’t have risks like limited revives or harder-hitting monsters. Blizzard will address this before Season 1 by buffing the XP earned from Nightmare Dungeons, so that’s a good step.
Purpose of Nightmare Dungeons
However, the main point of a Nightmare Dungeon is to level your Glyphs. Even if the XP increases, there must be other reasons (like better loot, more chances for higher tier loot like Ancestral gear and so on) to keep running them once your Glyphs are leveled. With the option to directly teleport to a Nightmare Dungeon when using a Sigil coming before or by Season 1, another incentive to chain farm them would be nice.
Treasure Goblins
Loot Goblins in any looter game usually means a reason to be excited, but not in Diablo 4. Not only are they rarer for some players, but the quality of the loot they give just seems underwhelming. Even the gold amount almost makes it not worth chasing them around. If you get lucky and run into three Treasure Goblins at once, it’s more for novelty than any hope of good loot.
Tree of Whispers Rewards
The Tree of Whispers is essentially your Bounty system, as you complete specific activities, obtain Grim Favors, return to the Tree and receive rewards. Needless to say, its rewards could be better, whether it’s providing Renown in the regions you’re completing the activities (helping to lessen the Renown grind), better quality items or even some crafting materials. It would also be nice to have a greater variety of rewards, instead of choosing one of three caches and hoping for the best.
Resistances
If you’ve played any other action RPG looter, whether Grim Dawn, Last Epoch or Path of Exile, you’d think resistances become essential as you progress. Not so in Diablo 4, because they’re not working as intended, essentially making them a junk stat when trying to grind for the ideal set-up. Blizzard is working to improve them as your World Tiers increase, but how much remains to be seen.
Useless Stats
How about those stats, huh? Why do you need reduced damage from distant enemies when you could go with overall damage reduction? Why go for anything else that isn’t cooldown reduction, increased vulnerable damage and critical hit damage? The fact that Resistances are borked and other options range from “meh” to borderline useless makes itemization feel that much more boring.
Itemization
It’s been said before, but many of the items in Diablo 4 just don’t have the “oomph” of other action RPG looters. There’s nothing to make you go nuts, like getting a Mirror or a Headhunter (nowadays, a Mageblood) in Path of Exile. Even the most well-rolled items are fine, inspiring a modicum of enthusiasm if nothing else. Some better chase items or unique stats to target would go a long way to making the loot feel more exciting.
Gem Inventory
When you’re slowly getting kitted out in the end game, you could afford to leave behind a few Rare or Legendary items, in favor of space. Gems are a completely different issue and have to be picked up. The fact that there’s no separate inventory or tab for them is pretty odd. Fortunately, Blizzard is aware of the issue and will be moving Gems to the materials tab…by Season 2 this Fall. So it’s going to be a while.
The Renown Grind
At first, completing various side activities like side Dungeons, Strongholds and so on looks like fun, especially as you earn new bonuses. However, past the first two tiers per region, it feels repetitive and grindy. Though the rewards are shared across all characters, having to regrind all of this again in seasons sounds like a pain. Thankfully, Blizzard is somewhat addressing that, as your Renown gained from clearing the map will carry over into future seasons.
Limited Stash Tabs
It’s bad enough that your inventory feels limited with Gems taking up space, but your Stash only offers so much reprieve. You start with one tab and can purchase up to three more. However, as anyone who’s played an action RPG looter will tell you, that’s not enough, especially if you’re trying out more than one build per class. There’s no way to buy more, even with real money, so it’s a question of waiting and watching for the developer to add more.
Single-Class Cosmetic Outfits
When buying a premium cosmetic outfit in Path of Exile, you’ll find that it fits all the classes, increasing and decreasing in size and shape to accommodate each. In a way, it’s like buying seven outfits in one, but not in Diablo 4. Each is applicable for one class only. Considering that one can cost $18, it’s just way less value for money than something like PoE.
Enemy CC
Even when playing through World Tier 2, enemy crowd-control effects feel more than a little strong. By the time you’re progressing through the end-game and subsequent World Tiers, running Topaz gems is mandatory to reduce damage taken when impaired, due to the amount of enemy CC you’ll be dealing with. It would make sense to tone things down if only to provide chances for other Gems to shine, but there’s no word on that.
No Loadouts
Diablo 4 doesn’t have that, and given how expensive respec costs and whatnot are, it might be even harder to implement. Even if you have all those resources, switching between loadouts, and continuously resetting everything could quickly bankrupt you.
Pins
The pinning system sounds good in theory, especially when pinning an Aspect and navigating to the Dungeon from the Codex of Power. In practice, it can sometimes be wildly inaccurate, choosing the much longer route for an objective nearby. It’s annoying, and the lack of a map overlay only exacerbates the issue.
Horseback Travel
The game takes so long to give you a horse, and using it can be very frustrating. Jumping over gaps is very finicky, and it feels like there’s too much in the world to hinder your movement, like barricades. Furthermore, when off the horse, its cooldown feels way too long for no good reason, to say nothing of waiting for the cooldown on its dashes.