Season 8 ended earlier this week in Diablo 4, making way for Season 9: Sins of the Horadrim. Season 8 felt rushed, stumbled out of the gate due to strange bugs and missing features, and had the misfortune of being the one to introduce the much-hated Reliquary battle pass system to the game.
By most accounts, it felt like everyone – Blizzard most of all – wanted to get through it as quickly as possible, while trying to shift everyone’s attention to Season 9. By the time the Season 9 PTR (Public Test Realm) wrapped up, you could tell that most players just weren’t as excited about the then-upcoming season as Blizzard expected them to be.
Season 9: Sins of the Horadrim is not a complete misfire. It brings a few things worth getting excited about – some of them even affect the core game outside of the Seasonal Realm. But it’s just so anemic and derivative, and that’s exactly what Diablo 4’s most dedicated (and vocal) players have been complaining about pretty much since the whole idea of seasons started.
There’s an unmissable ‘this is the new normal’ feel to Diablo 4 that Blizzard has been communicating through the game’s roadmap, and through the seasons themselves, most of which effectively rely on re-working the same power-acquisition mechanics from the previous one, tackling one other part of the game that needed work and calling it a day.
Even Reliquaries, which entirely changed how battle passes work within the game, are clearly here to stay. All the player complaints about their lower value compared to the old system, and how, ironically, much less engaged they cause players to be, were ignored.
So here we are, not even 24 hours after the launch of a new season, and it feels like the core complaints are being voiced once again. Because it’s immediately visible, even before you’ve spent any real time with the game, the Reliquary system has caught falk from fans and players on Reddit for, well, being the exact same one most players said they didn’t like in Season 8.
It’s too early for the larger problems with Season 9’s gameplay to become apparent. Builds take time to settle, and the new endgame activities are designed to be played for hours before they can offer the sort of rewards players come to them for.
That said, the drop rate of Arcana, the third (and most powerful) component of crafting Horadric Spells in the new season, appears to be broken. A number of players who’ve been playing practically since the season went live only managed to acquire two or three. You can see that being adjusted quickly, but it’s strange to see something so integral to the core mechanic of the new season being broken in that way.
Something else that seems to be broken for players is the seasonal questline, with many complaining about getting stuck at Wisdom’s Chosen, unable to proceed. Even old ghosts like stuttering at the start of a new season – an issue players genuinely believed had been fixed – has somehow returned with Season 9 to ruin the early hours for them.
Blizzard has seemingly gotten back into the habit of stepping on rakes; making changes nobody asked for, which most agree shouldn’t have been made. In one of the most bizarre changes – which haven’t been communicated ahead of launch – the font of the in-game text chat has been… increased. There’s no way to change the font size, so everyone is suddenly stuck with much larger text in the chat window. You can alter the text size across the entirety of the game, but that would also mean messing with item texts and so many other elements of the UI that it’s not worth it.
This all really feels like we’re re-living the arc of Diablo 4’s worst days from last year. Core seasonal mechanics are broken on day one, unexplained changes that just appear and mess with everyone’s game, and even noted community creators explaining their disdain in great detail as they proclaim having no desire to even play this season.
Though Blizzard hasn’t responded directly to any of the major complaints, it does appear that the developer is, at least, aware of the negative sentiments surrounding the game right now. Community director, Adam Fletcher, who’s been notably absent from recent developer livestreams, popped up briefly to say that he’s working on “big plans” behind the scenes.
“Just know, that your warcries of wanting more change aren’t going unnoticed,” Fletcher wrote on Twitter. “The team has been cooking on some of the biggest changes that really hit home on things people have been asking for and more. We will share more as we get closer.”
As is often the case, we’re going to see some things changed over the coming weeks, with the mid-season patch tackling others. It’s hard to get excited about much of that, however, as we know that none of it will be enough to alter the general direction of the live service. For that, we just have to hope that whatever Fletcher and the team are cooking will be big and meaningful enough to make an impact.
