• Diablo 4 currently has a user score of 2.6 on Metacritic thanks to a patch that has made players weaker overall.
• Blizzard has made affixes in the game less effective in a bid to get players to try something else.
• Unfortunately, this push went poorly and now players are calling for the patch to be reverted.

Diablo 4 has been out for roughly a month and while it’s an enjoyable action role playing game, you wouldn’t know it by looking at Metacritic today.

The game’s user score is hitting lows of 2.6 following the release of patch 1.1.0a for all platforms earlier this week which has been criticised by many content creators and players.

The patch introduces bug fixes and changes for the first season of Diablo 4, Season of the Malignant but it also nerfed a number of affixes (additional qualities and attributes an item has) that make the game harder.

Critical Strike damage, cooldown reduction, Vulnerable damage and other damage enhancements that are at the core of being able to stand a chance against the armies of Hell have all been nerfed.

“Many Affixes are too efficient and are outshining alternatives. We’re looking to refine the outliers, improve the number of meaningful choices on competitive slots, and increase the overall flexibility of items. We know these changes will reduce the total amount of possible power a character can possess, so we’ll be monitoring how these changes affect players’ ability to conquer expected milestones throughout the Season,” Blizzard wrote in a note on these changes.

This justification is weak for a number of reasons chief among is that – outliers are going to pop up in any game. Players, especially those in the end-game, are going to gravitate toward the most effective tools available to them. The fact that vulnerable, critical strike damage and cool-down reduction have become important is because they allow players to improve their damage output which is necessary at higher world tiers. Players use these tools because the game wordlessly recommends they do through the difficulty.

During my first playthrough of the game I learned quickly that the Vulnerable status effect was an important tool I needed to focus on, a tool every class has available to it no less. For Blizzard to go ahead and kneecap this affix suggests it doesn’t fully grasp why players were using it, to begin with.

The result is a game that feels tougher, requires additional time investment and potentially a rethink of a character’s build after hundreds of hours of playtime.

The review bombing then is understandable.

As many have pointed out, these changes make the game feel worse overall and those who are coming back for the start of the new season today are likely going to feel a whole lot weaker than they did when they finished the main campaign.

Blizzard is scheduled to host a Campfire Chat on Friday so perhaps it will address the distaste being experienced by the community.

With players calling for the patch to be reverted however, we don’t think much else is going to satisfy them.