Introduction

When Diablo 4 launched, it felt like a dream come true for fans of the franchise. The dark atmosphere, smooth combat, and finally, the opportunity to visit Sanctuary in the open world format. The return to the roots, plenty of activities, and new classes. I was ready to dive in, but in the end it led to disappointment.

After multiple seasons, countless hours, and far too many disappointing updates, I’ve lost my excitement. Diablo 4 has a lot of potential to be great and engaging, but the developers keep failing to capture the feeling of what made this franchise so special. The core issues run mostly in the endgame and aggressive monetization. Unfortunately, Blizzard doesn’t do much to change that, and they only keep enforcing this strategy, especially with the recent seasonal content.

All that makes me wonder: Why am I still playing this game? Let’s break down why Diablo 4, in its current state, just isn’t worth my time anymore.

The Root of the Problem

In any ARPG, the Endgame is what keeps players invested long after the story’s completion. This applies to Path of Exile, Titan Quest, Wolcen, Last Epoch, or Diablo. All these games have something to offer to the players who want to spend more hours and push the character to the limit. Endgame is where the real challenge begins. Where the game encourages players to move forward, discover something new and reach new heights with meaningful rewards.

Playing the Endgame in D4 is a repetitive chore without an engaging progression. You’re cycling through the same activities: Pits, Helltides, Infernal Hordes, Nightmare Dungeons, World Bosses, Seasonal event or Ubers. The problem isn’t just repetition; it’s that none of these systems evolve over time or offer meaningful variety. They don’t scale in a way that feels rewarding or fun. Pits offer the same rewards no matter how high you go, except for the glyphs. Infernal Hordes have only one arena with the same modifiers and bosses. No unique rewards either. The only reason people have to play this is for resources. Nightmare dungeons? They are mostly for general farming. Helltides have just one summonable boss which now drops barely anything useful.

D4 also has PVP areas which are now long forgotten. There is no new content, no themes tied to this feature, no new rewards nor any new PVP events. And I also had high hopes for Dark Citadel. It’s basically a dungeon for up to 4-players, not even a raid, which is divided to 3 wings and has a new hub-zone. Pretty decent for a few runs, but it quickly becomes stale. I just wish we had more dungeons like this and not for 4-players but like 8 or even 12. The game can easily hold that number of players in one area, like it is now in World Boss zones.

What could have been a dynamic endgame loop becomes a checklist of tasks that quickly lose their appeal. Of course, nobody forces you to farm these activities, but without them, you are basically stuck in one place. And the variety of these activities and what’s happing there is extremely lacking.

Slow Development and no Major Improvements

While Blizzard keeps adding new features and fixing bugs, the Core of the game remains the same straight from the release. In D4, For many seasons, players have been waiting for basic features like Teleport to player, leaderboards or Armory which should have been available from day one. The development of Diablo 4 is surely going slowly and with too little impact. There is barely any new content that could last for at least a week or two.

Blizzard has vast experience in game development, and much had already been done before—for example, in Diablo 3. But for some reason, the company lost its grip and started making games not for the players, but for the success managers and investors. Take a look for example at Overwatch 1.5.

It might be hard to believe, but Diablo 3, despite its controversial launch, eventually became a fantastic ARPG. Over time, Blizzard refined the systems, added Greater Rifts, introduced set dungeons, and, most importantly, engaged seasonal themes. Second half, starting from Season 14, as I remember, brought many unique modifiers or powerful buffs, encouraging players to experiment with builds and different classes, especially in 4-man GRs. 4^Th cube slot, Ethereals, Soul Shards, Sanctified items, Altar of Rites and more. And all this structure made sense. You had clear goals, rewards, and a solid reason to come back and do something different. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fun and refreshing.

Now, we have Diablo 4. Seasons are advertised as major events but offer little more than minor mechanic changes that barely affect the gameplay. For example, Second season introduced Vampiric powers, Third season – Construct powers with dungeons, 4^th season – just some quality-of-life changes, like updated Helltides and Crafting with tempering, 5^th season – one new arena called Infernal Hordes, 6^th season – Annoying Realmwalker with one dungeon, 7^th season – Witchcraft powers, and 8t^h Season – Boss powers. As you can see, most seasonal mechanics feel surface-level, rarely shaking up the meta or encouraging players to try something new. Moreover, most of these seasons are designed for a solo experience. There’s no compelling reason to team up, no community-driven objectives, and no systems that reward cooperation. The progression and leveling have been artificially stretched, plus there is barely any new content, and I highly doubt that the upcoming seasons would change that.

Business Model

But what really bothers me is the monetization in this game. It is getting worse for the players, but not Blizzard. In earlier versions of Diablo 4, the Battle Pass was a fair deal. You could earn a substantial amount back while playing the game and receiving all the rewards if you purchased Premium. Everything was included – armor, emotes, titles, emblems, portals, and graves. Now I see only half of it. The formula has changed with the Reliquaries and special Tokens, which don’t accumulate after you reach the cap. And the amount of received platinum has been significantly reduced. The new system basically pushes players to spend more money just to keep progressing and playing for a reason. For those who don’t want to pay, the rewards deplete fast. And on top of that, other optional cosmetics are class-exclusive and price tags still remain high.

For me, basically, once I run out of my Platinum, it’s over. I’m not willing to spend 10 or more dollars every 2 to 3 months for the content that I don’t enjoy doing. I’d rather spend that amount on some VPS service, online courses, or any other game on discount. The way I see it, Diablo 4 is turning into an expensive live-service game that prioritizes short-term profits over long-term player trust.

Performance Issues

Aside from questionable decisions regarding content and monetization, I can also address performance issues. For years, Diablo 4 has been suffering from stutters, memory leaks, or frame drops even on high-end rigs. It’s bearable but there is always a risk of encountering a lag, frame drops or even freezes. Because of this, I’ll never play Hardcore.

To be honest, it is the only game that made me purchase more RAM, and sometimes it’s still not enough. This game can easily climb past 16 GB and cause crashes. Of course, I’m not talking about everyone, but it’s not an individual problem. Even Path of Exile 2 seems better optimized in general, except for the CPU problem, which causes some computers to freeze entirely, and the developers themselves don’t rush to fix this problem.

For D4, every patch tends to fix one problem and accidentally cause another. There are many bugs and issues that remain undocumented for a long time and even Public Test Realms don’t help much. Blizzard, at least I believe so, knows how to make videogames, but polishing this game, working on feedback and implementing new content are not in the priorities right now.

Balancing Issues and Trading

On top of that, Diablo 4’s in‑game economy has been flooded with duped gold and items. Genuine players hardly can trade anything for an adequate price and most have to rely on 3^rd party websites or Discord Servers. Even several hotfixes later, the listings can go beyond millions of gold.

And all prices across the board keep going up instead of denominating. The cost to repair and upgrade gear has also become a frustration. Enchanting a nearly perfect legendary requires millions of gold per roll, and on top of that, the stats rarely proc to what you really need for the build. But, overall, these masterworking, tempering, runes, and enchanting definitely made a positive change. It just needs more balancing. More builds come into play thanks to this, like Death Trap Rogue, Lightning Spear Sorcerer or let’s say Blood Wave Necromancer. All of them feel unique, but if you don’t like a certain playstyle and rather prefer to make your own build, then expect to hit the wall on Torment IV.

Usually, creating your own build leads to poor results. It’s like that even after you research your paragon nodes and find desired aspects. And yes, this problem also exists in Diablo 3 because you can’t just equip Blackthorne for example and blast high Difficulty levels. But the scale is different here. We are talking the levels of MMORPG. D4 should offer more variety in every aspect, but in the end, you will usually see everyone playing one class-specific build.

In Conclusion

So, there you have it. Diablo 4 had all the makings of a legendary ARPG, but right now, it’s falling short. Taken together, duping, unhealthy economy, optimization and bugs, aggressive monetization, delayed support, and lack of content, it hurts to play Diablo 4 in its current state. Instead of solving issues, Blizzard is trying to cut corners and do minimal effort for a maximum profit. And they don’t take risks anymore to introduce something really new.

I’m not even sure if they listen and test the game before rolling new updates. The endgame doesn’t inspire. The seasonal content doesn’t evolve. The monetization is another nail in the coffin. Until the developers change the course, there is no reason to keep playing for now. Diablo 4 needs more than small updates and new skins. I’m not giving up hope though – maybe future updates will turn things around. For now, I’m taking a break.

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