Diablo 4’s first season is only a few days old, but some of the game’s admittedly more casual players are already “done” with it.
Season of the Malignant added a new quest line, a battle pass, and some new items called Malignant Hearts that offer further build customization on July 20. But for the most part, the seasonal gameplay loop requires starting a new character from scratch and leveling through content that players already experienced on their first character at launch.
The discussion about season one went to Reddit, where one poster said they and their wife have “just kinda stopped playing” after just a couple of days in the new season.
“I’m not bitter or angry, I’m just bored,” said the original poster of the thread. “Season one didn’t add anything that interesting, essentially some new types of gems and… we put it down the day before yesterday and last night kinda went ‘I think I’m done with it.’ I’m idly wondering how many casual gamers will be making the same choice this week and next. I’d hoped we’d play it longer but… I’m just not feeling it anymore.”
And according to the replies, this player is not alone in their sentiment.
“I did the same thing,” the top reply in the thread said. “Season one launched, made a new character. 20 mins in went ‘meh.’ Went back to the old character, 10 mins passed and ‘meh.’ Felt like I was wasting time instead of enjoying a grind.”
One of the main components of the seasonal questline is to complete chapters of quests. But the quests are just a checklist that task the player with doing things like completing a dungeon or progressing through baseline character leveling in general.
“I’m a step above casual and have played all Diablo games quite a bit,” another reply said. “Stopped playing a few weeks before season one with the thought that it would be exciting and I’d be right stuck back in. Made a new character, got to level 30 I think and I’m just bored AF. The seasonal grind is just busy work and not at all engaging. Will probably shelve it for now until they figure out how to make seasons actually worth playing. Yawn.”
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That same user said the only reason they continue to play Diablo 4 is because they spent $80 on the game and “want to like it,” saying “the only fun part about it was being in Discord with some buddies, but we could have literally been playing any other game and probably had more fun.”
Undoubtedly contributing to the season one malaise is the controversial 1.1 patch, which nerfed basically everything in the game, making players less powerful overall. In a dev stream last week, Blizzard acknowledged the patch, saying it never wants to release one like it ever again.
For now, the developer needs to hope that the damage done by the patch and season one’s lackluster launch is not irreparable.
