Blizzard responds to Diablo 4 complaints about its worst season yet

As you might expect, the “avoid traps” concept to last an entire season doesn't work well for Diablo 4 players.

Social media and subreddits are flooded with negativity, but Blizzard said it was taking feedback and, as it usually does, fixing things quickly. There's an exchange between one of the players and the game's Community Development Director Adam Fletcher that I think sums things up pretty well:

Player: “I don't want to solve puzzles, traps, etc. in Diablo. I want good combat, great skills, interesting boss fights, and a fun attempt to gain power. S2 improved on this in many ways. S3 feels like you tried to not become an ARPG and took the worst part of the games Others and make them unique content.

Fletcher: “Thanks for your feedback. We're collecting everyone's thoughts and I know this resonates with a lot of what we've seen. We'll make sure the team is aware of that.”

There are many similar conversations with different members of the Blizzard team acknowledging the fandom, and immediate feedback that this was a huge step back from last season, and easily perhaps Diablo 4's worst season out of the three so far. The way these things are arranged seems to have been developed by the Season 1 team, but even that team was better than this.

The problem is…how do you “fix” a seasonal activity based entirely on traps if the players…hate traps? Right now, the most annoying part about this is the mechanic that means you can't run into traps too many times, for fear of losing the rewards at the end of the run. This leads to battle rooms where you literally hide in a corner because in Diablo 4's hectic combat, trying to move and use your skills means you'll get beaten into the chaos no matter what.

However, you could completely erase the “no-hitting” mechanic and just give people the loot, but even then, you still have vaults designed entirely around multiple trap rooms that are still not fun to deal with at all. So you don't have to dodge them entirely, but you still have boring, empty rooms filled with nothing but traps, or an annoying final fight room (no boss) that's also full of traps that you can't kill, unlike enemies. So you will get hit by them nonstop. Still not fun!

Seneschal's friend has also been the target of complaints, but more importantly, he is too weak to be noticed in combat, and leveling his stones will take a long time. This at least seems like an easier solution where you can just improve it until it's noticeable, and if not, I don't think this is a very good seasonal “player boost” mechanic either compared to the last couple of seasons which felt like you were really retconning your entire build. It's just… something that exists and sometimes does things.

The traps problem will be difficult to fix. The entire season is centered around the mechanic and you can't just…correct the traps. I'm very curious to see how Blizzard tries to turn things around here, but they have to do something fast or everyone will be out of this season in no time.

Follow me On Twitter, Threads, Youtube, And Instagram.

Pick up my science fiction novels Hero Killer series And Earth trilogy.