In what feels like an inevitable move to combat an avalanche of criticism over the new Diablo 4 season, Blizzard has dropped an emergency patch that alleviates all the frustrations at the cost of undoing the entire point of it.
The Season of Death Awakening has the usual stuff you’d expect from a Diablo 4 season, including a new boss and new mini activities that reward buckets of loot. But it also introduced a controversial change to the most powerful items in the game: Mythic Uniques.
Instead of having a handful of these Mythic Uniques available to drop from the toughest bosses, Blizzard decided to expand the definition to include any upgraded normal Unique. On paper, it seemed like a way to broaden Mythic Uniques into a category of items rather than a select few that might not even work for your character build.
The problem was that you’d almost never see Mythic Uniques because the drop rates were abysmally low, and even when you did it wouldn’t always be an upgrade. Fishing for one or two specific items in a pool of a hundred is a lot to ask in a game that has historically required much less time to gather perfect items compared to other action RPGs.
Blizzard seemingly predicted that this would be a problem before the season went live—although I think that should’ve been the first red flag that maybe this was a bad idea altogether—and allowed you to craft your own Mythic Unique with a new seasonal currency. But the problems continued: Despite the recipe saying you could “upgrade” a Unique, the resulting item would be random but of the same type (confusing everyone), and you could only equip one crafted Mythic Unique. Diablo 4 has three ways to make Mythic Uniques and all of them counted as crafted, meaning there was no real reason to keep grinding the seasonal activities once you had one equipped.
For the past few weeks, all of this drove Diablo 4 players mad. Blizzard increased the Mythic drop rates earlier this week, which was a welcome change, but it wasn’t enough to reduce the grind it would take to find a Mythic you actually wanted. Many players were begging Blizzard to just drop the crafted Mythic limit and let everyone have fun.
On Thursday, Blizzard caved and did just that.
Patch 3.1.1a is Blizzard throwing in the towel on Season 14. Mythic drop rates? Considerably buffed. The crafted Mythic limit? Gone. Players are already reporting that Mythic Uniques are pouring out of the new seasonal boss, and are celebrating the fact that you can just make your own and use them all at once.
“Seasons are where we experiment with new ideas and push Diablo 4 in new directions,” live service design director Dan Tanguay wrote in a forum post. “Not every idea lands exactly as intended, but we’ll continue listening to your feedback, addressing what’s not working, and applying those lessons to future seasonal updates.”
Blizzard has also said that another patch will come in the near future that will increase the drop rates from other sources too and that it’ll consider bringing back the crafted limit only for Mythics made in the Horadric Cube in the next season.
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