Diablo 4 at launch was stuck between worlds, no doubt in part to the revolving door of designers involved. Parts of the game suggested a slower, more measured pace (a far cry from the frantic lootsplosion rift sprints that came define Diablo 3's final form), but other parts seemed tuned with an entirely different speed in mind. This is how you get the sluggish experience curve, but I think nothing demonstrates the problem quite like Nightmare Dungeons. They were clearly something you were meant to do a whole bunch of times back to back (essentially D3's rifts), but you had to manually ride your (much slower then) horse to it each time -- two gears that wanted to move at different speeds but got stuck. Friction is fine in a game, if we get something back in return, but the process of riding out to each dungeon was a great case of worthless friction -- if you were doing nightmare dungeons, there was nothing worth stopping for out in the overworld.
So they had to pick a lane -- build a game that maintains friction but makes it rewarding; or burn all friction to the ground. The latter is much easier to do in hurry, so I'm not surprised by the decision. It's resulted in a Diablo 3-style game that is less frustrating, more cohesive, and dare I say better than it was at launch, but I also find it completely uninteresting. I liked Reaper of Souls but I've already played it, and given that Diablo 4's narrative was about the folly of just doing the same thing over and over again, it's disappointing to see the game now following its predecessor down the path of absolutely zero resistance.
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