Diablo is cancer tbh. Mindless grinding, zero skill. The only challenge is creating a nice build but that requires grinding and anyone can copy it from a YouTuber and learn to use it in a few minutes.
Many genres can be called trash for different reasons, lol. I hate rhytm\reaction games, from dancing and playing instruments to fromsoft titles. It’s just I’m not build to enjoy them. But I love Diablo and would try to explain why.
Besides art direction of old Bliz and Matt Uleman’s OST, I like these series for… them being a task in optimization. Some games like building and management simulators are straightforward about it, but there it only shows in the endgame of diabloids. You are to think of theoretical ways of bettering your build, but also inventing the best way to farm X things in the least time possible to make it. I haven’t topped the ladder too many times for looking up others’ builds and copying them steals half of enjoyment from experimenting with it. It touches the same buttons in me as rewriting code for better performance does, and the only downside is me, a meatbag, executing it line by line, that you called mindless for a reason. I just reiterate through my idea before I see the predicted outcome.
That sort of enjoyment also surfaces in other games, like old shooters and RPGs, where I find ways to abuse the system and benefit from it. It’s a casual version of what speedrunners are into. Finding the best\fastest way to do X, but only for you to test and observe.
God of War, Dark Souls, Elden, The Witcher… All of these games have a system to optimiza your character without the need to grind for hours non-stop. Armored Core will also have a complex build system for the mechas.
The problem with Diablo for me is that it is just that, just building a character that hits hard. If you have a good build, everything is waaay too easy unless you are going into dungeons 20 levels above yours. And even then, it doesn’t feel rewarding because killing the enemies isn’t hard, it just takes too long. Like, it was taking me 10 seconds to kill a basic minion, and even that felt better than going into a dungeon and obliterating everything.
Maybe I could enjoy building a character if I didn’t need to spend hours and hours grinding to level up and to get the right items with the right affixes. The grinding is just a torture, I feel I’m wasting my time.
