D3 wasn’t good at launch, the hate was pretty justified. It’s not bad now, but it’s not amazing either. There’s hardly any build diversity amongst the classes, only one or two builds per class are viable at the top end, and the paragon system just encourages mindless, endless farming for infinite minimal rewards with no interesting feedback. “Oh boy, another paragon level. Time to get another +5 dex/str/int!”

D3 sucked hard when it came out compared to D2, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, basically every major competitor had more engaging systems and better progression hooks.

Vanilla D3 was “complete the same campaign 4 times with marginally better loot each time”, and even then you had people doing “Inferno suicide runs” to break pots in the hope of there being a good item in them, because it was inpossible to farm the mobs. They did too much damage.

Builds in vanilla D3 were just “which skill has the highest % multiplier, I’ll only use that skill and nothing else because it’s useless to use a subpar skill”. There was no reason to use anything else.

“Legendary” items were so incredibly boring in their execution. Echoing Fury was BIS because it increased your AS.

Don’t even get me started on the Auction House being used as a money laundering scheme for some players. It’s existence meant they had to introduce artificial scarcity to good items to make trading feel impactful. They completely reworked drops after its abandonment.

What D3 DID have going for it was the legacy of D2, well telegraphed combat, good art direction, good animations. It feels smooth to play, for the most part. There’s not many one shots unless they’re telegraphed quite heavily.

Either way, it’s just not an amazing game. D4 being shit doesn’t make D3 a better game, it just makes D3 look better in comparison.