Your overall point seems to be that despite the wide acclaim on launch & yourself / your peer group's historic enthusiasm for blizzard games, you came to the conclusion it wasn't worth engaging with the game via word-of-mouth. What is there to argue about that? The reasons you shared generally don't ring true to me, but I'm not the arbiter of your collective impressions. At the start of this comment chain I tried to elucidate genuine reasons to dislike it - either reasons that haven't been already addressed for a significant part of the game's lifecycle, and aren't ones where D4 is simply guilty by association with blizzard or another of their games. I think the reasons you've given generally fall into these categories.

• on initial dev/community response, I agree specifically vulnerable damage didn't take long to be revealed as overpowered & that cheapened the launch meta. The first dev stream primarily served to address that issue. I'd agree it was significant enough an issue to warrant addressing quickly, but I'd disagree that the response was outside the scope of general expectation for post-launch corrections to the meta of an ARPG. Here I think you're mistaking the acknowledgement of any fault with the game as going into "damage control" mode, likely due to the issue being played up by commentators. I acknowledge they went into that mode later - following the S1 mid-season patch.

• on sticking with bad design, or the intention behind it, it's hard to respond about the examples you've given because the fact both minions & dungeons have been reworked exemplifies that isn't true. Minions received small updates in S2, buffs & further reworks in S4. Many of the more annoying dungeon affixes were removed for S2 - lightning storm affix was also removed for S4. You could certainly argue that they were intentional parts of the design during the development stage, but that dev time was straight up sacrificed to improve it, so it's clear to me they aren't staunch about really any part of the design. Indeed following the codex reworks, running a normal dungeon is no longer necessary at any stage of the game (except for the sorc lvl15 quest). You can still get aspects that way if you want, but you can also get them all from salvaging gear over time. It's optional content, and additionally there are many small tweaks over the seasons I'd describe as "surprises" - minor things like new animations for normal mobs in particular locations, spider elites creeping down from the roof of a cave, and other small touches that cumulatively make dungeons more interesting / less repetitive. These are mostly not mentioned in patch notes and as such have been almost completely ignored by commentators.

• on monetisation, as someone that has had multiple battle passes, they aren't worth it. There's simply very little motivation to buy them or any of the individual paid cosmetics in the game, because they aren't meaningfully better than the free cosmetics. My toons don't wear my paid cosmetics - it's literally more interesting to go without transmog. The free cosmetics are good enough & that way there's at least variety in what's displayed on the loading screens. When you refer to monetisation as a problem with this game, my question in response is - acknowledging the state of live service game monetisation is generally predatory - how could it be less so in D4? Isn't an entirely optional system that doesn't involve fomo about as good a place as you could expect the monetisation to be in?

There are 2 exceptions in my mind regarding generally anti-consumer stuff (the isolated incidents I referred to earlier). That is 1. additional DRM that was in place during the early access period for purchasers of the collector's edition, and 2. the dark pattern implementation causing unintentional activation of S1 battle pass tokens for that same group. These are both things I disagree strongly with on principle, and if anyone dropped the game because of them - I'd agree with them. Indeed when my buddy ran into DRM roadblocks during early access, I promptly refunded my collector's edition and purchased the standard one upon launch instead.

Now in regards to yours/your friends initial impressions, I think it's worth considering the impact of external factors such as Blizzard's reputation, and the general launch state of the litany of games released post-covid delays during 2022-23, both of which I think served to negatively impact interest at launch. IIRC it was their first major non-WoW release following the revelation of issues that culminated in the DFEH lawsuit, and the resulting major changes in company structure. I actually think D4's launch state is pretty admirable overall in light of those issues, but could certainly understand if Blizzard fans were trepidatious about continuing to support them at the time. Against a backdrop of failed major launches, it'd at least make a lot of sense to wait for post-launch independent feedback.

And likewise if they had held off until that S1 midseason patch where everything was nerfed to shit and people logged in to find their builds suddenly needed extensive reworking, I'd agree with anyone dropping interest in the aftermath of that. I did too, temporarily.

Lastly, keep in mind that they had Megan Fox advertising the game in Superbowl ads. I don't think it's the case that D4's launch state was bad and caused a noteworthy player exodus. I think that ARPG's simply aren't that mass-marketable, and that advertising reached a lot of people that otherwise wouldn't pay D4 any mind, and that group just aren't generally interested in that kind of game. And so once they reconciled how it was advertised vs what it is, they stopped playing. From my perspective, that isn't meaningful in terms of analysing whether it's a good game.