The recent invitation to the community through the official Diablo 4 Twitter account to “Show us the way you slay” has seen a huge community response, essentially revealing a fractured player base with several supporters and critics. One segment of the community is sharing their present-day builds very happily, while the others are very much upset about the state of the game and think that many have resorted to check out some of the past Diablo titles.
A couple of demonic emojis were added to the tweet by Diablo as it proceeded to produce hundreds of responses ranging from elaborate build-sc shots to vexatious complaints about everything concerning the clash between the classes. What emerged from the myriad of comments was very much the view of a community straddling Mechanics and class performances this season.
Several players jokingly started sharing builds. Saito_Oraha14 said, “Necro Soul Rift Build. Alter the Balance Chaos Power is AWESOME!” with some excitement for his Necro setup. Another one shared his Barbarian build, talking about how he had just started a Necro as a backup, 1Martindale. This pattern of many players prepared to shoulder two or more build options to pick from seems to indicate a heavy tendency in forming scams and hedging bets against possible issues in the balance.
The view kind of changed here when Draygoon said to 1Martindale, who had just shared a build, “Man, I am really disappointed with Barb this season. The PTR made it seem like it would do really well. Not sure what happened, but fml is it bad.” This was a sentiment shared by quite a few players when discussing their Barbarian experiences, seemingly referring to some in-balance issues that weren’t quite visible whilst the public test realms were still active and ongoing.
Even crazier is the number of players admitting that they aren’t playing Diablo 4 right now. Roadkill86 almost explicitly stating, “I went back to Diablo 3, so much more fun…” and DarthASavage1 affirming they are “still playing diablo 3.” This trend of going back to the older titles of the franchise might be a sign that Diablo 4 currently struggles with player retention in season.
Far more telling was the statement from Vital_JM; “Am I wrong to say I enjoy Diablo immortal way more then Diablo 4 and Diablo 3 was much more enjoyable then 4 … personally and I was actually hyped for Diablo 4 as well unfortunately,” really hitting home there in the sense that he had so much excitement for Diablo 4’s release but has found Diablo Immortal and Diablo 3 far more enjoyable.
The Blizzard devs tried to engage some of the players by commenting briefly but with a lot of flavor on some of the builds shared (“A cyclone of carnage” and “Quick. Precise. Lethal.”), but the way they responded felt so disconnected from the bigger concerns gnawing at the hearts of many in the thread.
Some with an axe to grind got in with ztomniscient7 declaring, “the ugly hairless blocks on the back of werebear form,” and then with a puzzled “How many more years are you going to let this bug continue to exist?” Apparently, this points to some form of visional bug being an issue since day one.
The conversation further revealed what the players want to look into in the next updates, as SecondSon24 shared hope for a Monk class, whereas sagetheblack put in an inquiry, “When is paladin coming out I will completely max a build then.” Such requests for specific classes indicate that what players are looking forward to is new content rather than just a solution for existing systems.
The wild thing here is how the community, if it is split down the middle. Some players like Azmonde keep replying with “Same it’s so fun” to build shares while others like Spanksalot pop in with that equally famous ugly reply “People actually still playing this rubbish?” Watching this unfold in real-time is actually rather fascinating.
The timing of this dialogue is especially worth noting, considering that several players made mention of the patch soon to be dropped. 1Martindale mentioned that they were “hoping the patch that’s rolls out tomorrow fixes the Chaos power that it used it most of the builds.” This indicates that they know about the incoming changes but still doubt it will help the core problems.
Even those who can’t get into the season at present are taking part in this talk. User rbury2 stated, “Not played this season due to being in hospital recovering from surgery,” showing that this community goes beyond just the active players and extends to those who follow along regardless of any other circumstance.
The sheer number of build screenshots shared in response unquestionably demonstrates that there IS an engaged community still playing Diablo 4, yet the concomitant complaints about class balance, bugs, and comparison to past titles paints a decidedly complex picture. Players aren’t merely mindless hating; they consistently detail what is not working while engaging in the game’s systems.
With the season rolling forward accompanied by new patches, it will be interesting to see if PlayStation can really fix the community concerns or if the split on the player base continues growing. For now, the conversation around Diablo 4 is just as chaotic as the demonic fights within the game with players passionately disagreeing on both sides about the present state of this latest chapter of Sanctuary, including those on Xbox.
