Thoughts on the Diablo IV seasonal model

When Diablo IV first launched I was pretty excited. I bought it right away, tore through the campaign relatively quickly, did a little bit of postgame stuff, and then put it down. I got about 40 hours out of it (doing a lot of side stuff during my run) and put it down, satisfied.

When they announced the Season of the Malignant season starting I was tempted to jump back in but Seasons in Diablo III have just been about cosmetic stuff and leaderboards, neither of which really appeal to me. Diablo IV promised some expanded questlines and other stuff, but I didn't really know how significant it would be.

Recently I've been looking for a game to play on my treadmill (I love the fact that Diablo IV has an Xbox One version and the saves are shared between the Series and One) and I decided to dip my toe in and see what the season was about, starting a druid, which I played in the beta but not the main game.

Being able to skip the campaign was nice, though in the seasonal realm you don't get the universal bonuses you earn on the eternal realm, which is kind of annoying. I dove into the new questline and...it's at the level of a complex side quest but without the bells and whistles of CG and other stuff that the main campaign had. There are a few minor mechanical tweaks that are sort of interesting, like being able to resurrect certain enemies to kill them again and "cage their hearts" to use like gems, but nothing game changing. Still it's an excuse to play more and see a little more story, and while I have zero interest in the battle pass I do kind of like having an excuse to get back to the game, especially because it's the perfect game to play on my treadmill.

Blizzard has said they are going to do 3 seasons and an expansion every year, and assuming that they give lengthy quests during the seasons and the expansions are a decent value for money, I'm on board with the idea. If I can get 50 hours out of Diablo IV per year that's perfect for me. Of course I know there are much more hardcore players who want to spend hundreds of hours per year and I hope that they find the seasonal rewards enticing (though they seem pretty underwhelming if you don't buy a premium pass). But for me this is a decent offering.

I feel like Diablo IV has not made a very big splash despite being a huge franchise. Part of that is just how much stuff has come out this year and part of it is that there hasn't been much controversy, unlike with Diablo III, but part of it is how safe the game played everything. It was in most ways the Diablo game Diablo fans wanted, with a dark tone, no stupid auction house shenanigans, a fair amount of endgame content at launch, and not a lot of bugs. On the other hand the always online thing is a bummer, and there's nothing spectacular about the game. It's just...more Diablo. It doesn't even has as much funky or weird equipment as Diablo III did, though some of that may come with expansions or in time.

If I didn't like to play games on my treadmill I'm not sure if I'd want to play more of this relatively thin content, but Diablo can make time just kind of melt away, which is what I want when exercising, so I'm going to level up my druid and look forward to the next season in about a month. If this were season pass content I would be kind of annoyed at how thin it is but for free it's just enough to keep me engaged and maybe buy the expansion when that hits, which is, I guess, the point (beyond selling battlepasses, which is the REAL point.)

I'd never played a Diablo season before and didn't really plan to ever do so, but I decided to jump in for a little while on this first one since I had paid for the $90 version and gotten a "free" battle pass upgrade token thing to use.

But boy is there ever nothing in that battle pass I actually care about at all. I mean, maybe the mount stuff at the very end? I've decided I'll probably keep that token for a future season that will maybe have something I actually want.

More to the point, I just didn't find anything about the season that fun. I had already played the game a bunch at launch (maxed a Druid at 100, got a Sorcerer to tier 4, Rogue and Necro to tier 3, and a Barb to level 40 or so), and so the first problem was that I had already done all this before. The seasonal content is so thin that it adds virtually nothing... all you get it some slightly fancier gems to slot into your jewelry, and that's it (and those will disappear once the season ends!).

The other thing that happened is that as of patch 1.1.0a, the transitions to the higher world tiers have become a lot rougher. It used to be that for tier 3, once you reached level 50 the difficulty evened out and monsters matched your character level from there on out. Now it doesn't "even out" until level 60, and at that point you're looking to enter tier 4, where the same thing happens until level 80. Maybe they wanted to add more of a sense of progression, but to me it just leaves me feeling underpowered and the game itself less fun than when I first played it. I don't play games like this for the challenge, I play them to have something to do while listening to a podcast or second-screening something else. It makes me wish for D3's granular difficulty settings.

I mean, that 1.1.0a patch was pretty darned controversial. It got lambasted by practically everyone. Anecdotally, it feels like a lot of people dropped the game at that point. The dark pattern with accidentally buying the battle pass also didn't help.

I dunno, there's a chance I'll still play a bit more of this first season while I'm between games, but mostly it feels like the same grind I already did, but less fun. Generally speaking, it'll take more than this for Blizzard to entice me into seasons.

@atheistpreacher: I think if I had maxed out the classes I was interested in then the season would be much less appealing. The seasonal quests just give me something new to do while grinding up a new character, but alone they would not be enough.

I agree that the battle pass is...not appealing. In general I think the battle pass model sucks. I give you money and then I have to do in game stuff to get what I paid for? Wonderful. I have never purchased a battle pass.

The 1.1.0a patch got attacked in a couple articles, sure, but people always complain about patches and while this was a bad one it seems to have blown over quickly. That's nothing compared to Diablo III's auction house, which was covered for a long time, or Overwatch 2's various woes.

I just think Diablo IV is no longer a large part of the mainstream gaming conversation, despite having sold well and doing stuff. Then again you could say the same about Street Fighter VI, which is still getting a ton of coverage in fighting game circles but only gets mentioned in the mainstream when a new character drops.

Maybe it's just the volume of games this year. Even Tears of the Kingdom faded from the front pages relatively quickly.

i paid for the premium edition that coupled a battlepass with early access.

i don't regret it, because i had that Diablo Fever and was in-between games.

that said, having cashed in my pre-purchased battlepass on this first season (this is the first battlepass i've ever participated in, and kinda approached it as an intellectual exercise and/or audition)- i now fully understand what it is, and i've opted out.

i'm not usually one looking for the video game equivalent of a fidget spinner (or perhaps more charitably- the 'podcast game'). but something about this Diablo isn't scratching the same itch post-Reaper of Souls D3 bounties were.

i'd be game for a D4 equivalent of a Reaper of Souls- but if the marching orders are 'more frequently, less' i think i'm content to say 'so long, for now.'

@mellotronrules: I believe the plan is for 3 seasons and 1 paid expansion per year (at least as of now.) The paid expansion would be the Reaper of Souls style thing, though obviously I do not know if it will live up to that quality level of how much it will cost.

I played a lot of Diablo 3 and D4 pretty much came and went for me. Notable difference is of course, that I had a reliable co-op buddy to chew through three and Reaper of Souls with, so maybe I’d still be dabbling with four if that was the case. Now it’s just a game I played a bunch during my vacation and then forgot about.

I guess that was more about Diablo 4 itself than seasonal content, but oh well.