With infuriating difficulty, “It totally killed my drive to even do the content”
Diablo 4’s brand-new endgame content, billed as a challenge that almost no one can complete, is living up to the hype – but not in a way that players appear to enjoy.
Back in November, well-known Diablo streamer Wudijo revealed that he’d gotten an early look at the Abattoir of Zir endgame event, which has now arrived in Diablo 4 with the latest update, at BlizzCon 2023. He previously stated that “nobody is supposed to finish” the mode’s final tier. You’ll need to have completed every aspect of the Season Journey to even gain access to it, and once inside, you’ll only have ten minutes to clear enough enemies to summon and defeat the final boss. After completing one tier, you’ll progress to the next, all the way up to tier 25, with each new tier increasing the strength of the monsters you fight.
As you progress through the mode, you will be able to upgrade the one-of-a-kind Tears of Blood Glyph, which Blizzard describes as “essential” to making meaningful progress. However, the glyph requires “significantly” more experience to upgrade than a standard Diablo 4 Paragon glyph, so reaching the level 50 cap appears to be a significant challenge.
That challenge appears to be putting players off to the point where some are saying they won’t bother with the Abattoir. Streamer Raxxanterax is said to have told viewers that it will take “an average of 325 hours” to max the glyph, a time investment that one Reddit user described as “absolutely insane” in comparison to the time it takes to level an entire character to 100, especially since the glyph will be removed in eight weeks.
Another player expressed similar sentiments, saying, “That goal is completely out of reach, and it totally killed my drive to even do the content.” Another said that the “the mindless grind of a single glyph” is so boring that it doesn’t even appeal to most hardcore players. A lack of depth in the system, other than a “hamster wheel” approach to progression, is discouraging players.
That appears to be the crux of the problem. As one player puts https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/18bnkdi/tldr_abbatoir/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 it, the Abattoir isn’t actually difficult, as some may have hoped based on Wudijo’s comments; it’s just a long grind where final bosses can one-shot you if you’re not careful, effectively ending even strong runs. The luck of the draw appears to be a significant aspect of progressing through the early tiers, with some suggesting it’s a ‘one-shot or be one-shot’ system.
In many cases, that isn’t satisfying, but you can see how it could have arisen. Much community sentiment revolved around the fact that playtime is a significant metric for Blizzard around the time that Diablo 4 Season 1 nerfed many fan-favorite aspects of the game. The Diablo team’s recent turnaround has been widely praised by the community, but it’s easy to see why the developers would be looking for ‘hardcore’, time-consuming endgame content to keep those engagement numbers high. There’s a good chance that aspects of the Abattoir will be fine-tuned in the coming weeks, especially given Blizzard’s openness about the game, but it’s an unfortunate misstep.