So a few things have happened since I started up my new character in the brand new season of Diablo 4 and well, not all of them are good.
I am finding certain things out for the first time and many of them are likely for the best.
one of the good things is that season 9 brings bout an entirely new storyline called "Sins of the Horadrim" and that is always fun to have a story to follow along with destinations on the map and new characters and dungeons - even though I believe the dungeons are procedurally generated and therefore different every time you use them.
I like that part and I also like that your new character, which you must use, you cannot play the new content with an old, already established character in your saves, but whatever aspects of the map you have already opened by playing those other characters, is already open on this new map. This is great because traveling around on foot or even on horseback, is a rather boring and arduous process for anyone that has already completed the game. If you are new, it will likely be exciting for you to discover all these new areas but for people that have been doing it a while this is irritating enough that I would probably leave the game.
One thing that is kind of a letdown but I should have seen coming is that your "stash", the chest where your other characters all share storage, is NOT shared with this new character.
I had prepared for this before release date and filled up the chest with items I thought my new character would find useful only to discover there is nothing in the chest at all... lol
At first this annoyed me but I am actually kind of glad it is that way. We can't have the elite players immediately kitting themselves out with the best gear in the game now can we? I suppose it is going to be a bit annoying to have to go and kill all those bosses again but I am using a completely different kind of character this time around so that everything can seem new and fresh rather than me just racing to get the same gear on a new toon that is going to end up doing exactly the same thing.
What I just said isn't entirely true. I went with a rogue again because I like rogue classes just generally speaking. I am taking a very different path with this rogue though as I am using the bows and am going for single target damage whereas with my past rogue I went for AOE (area of effect) where I am striking everyone at once. I want to see if this tactic makes handling bosses easier but I am only at level 12 out of 60 at this point so we are far from the point of being able to determine if this will be the case or not.
One thing that I noticed right away is something that I believe almost all Diablo players that did more than one character have also noticed right away: My character is exceptionally slow.
After playing with my level 60 rogue that has nearly maxed paramount level and going to a level 1 rogue character I feel like an actual slug that has been dropped into pancake syrup. I laugh sometimes but for the most part this one aspect makes it feel like an entirely different game, or like I am playing Path of Exile 2 again where everyone is exceptionally slow.
I was so fast with my other character that I almost never bothered to use the horse option, now? I can't get on that horse fast enough. Walking is just agony at the moment because I am accustomed to whizzing around the board and easily evading enemy attacks. Now I actually have to use the dodge button, which is probably a good thing.
So far the experience of going from hero to zero has been a pleasant one because things I formerly would have just walked right past or held down a single AOE button and decimated everything in the room now requires some level of tactics and even retreat in order to avoid dying.
It's fun again, even though at this moment I have to really laugh at my damage output of single digits when my auxiliary damage on my main was doing close to million DPS. It seems so far away but I have also noticed that I am once again excited about items dropping, which is something I haven't felt in Diablo since the last season.
I suppose these seasons do serve a very real purpose and that is to give us that dopamine rush of seeing an orange item drop after a random kill so even if I don't end up loving wherever this story is going, I'm going to at least really like that.
I played for about 2 hours last night and when I went to bed I was still thinking about it afterwards. It's a strange thing Diablo games isn't it? There really isn't that much complexity to the gameplay but it is just so addictive. My prior MMO addiction and the fact that I do not allow myself to play MMO's anymore is probably part of the reason why I enjoy this game so much. For someone that doesn't have this addiction D4 would probably be considered "mid" at best.