Maybe it was different for D2, but I found the random class loot to be a huge issue in D3 since it seemed designed to force players into using the auction house. Once the auction house was used you could easily get gear far surpassing what you would find naturally, which turned all loot collecting into a number crunch for getting ingame currency. Even if you only share to your other characters it makes those runs easier in a game that was already very easy at start, which doesn't help when figuring out that class's limits. D2 had a much higher baseline difficulty than D3, so getting high end gear from your other characters might have made a lot more sense there.
I ended up getting a free copy of the game as a promotion, and so far (6hrs in) its better than I was expecting. Almost all of the major issues I had with Diablo 3 have been fixed. I haven't seen an item auction house and all the items I pick up are for my class instead of for a random one. There seems to be less gear dropped overall, so each pickup is more impactful and inventory management is easier. The 1st playthrough of the game lets you start on difficulty 2, instead of being forced on difficulty 1. Its still a bit easy, but no where near the game journalist mode that D3 forced you into. I've been playing D4 on PC with a controller and it works well, I much prefer it over the keyboard/mouse controls. I found it baffling when D3 didn't allow that. The art style and plot seem to have a much more serious tone, which I think fits much better than D3's attempt at being wacky/cartoony.
So far the game looks great visually, lots of interesting details and it fits the atmosphere well, going with a less saturated color pallet and has slower atmospheric music which works for the starting winter villages and the lingering demon threat. I'm don't know how well this will carry over into lategame, as things will need to ramp up. The game also has a lot more focus on the open world, which is filled with side quests and small dungeons. Occasionally a mini-boss will spawn in an area and multiple players can all join up to fight it, I guess this is the justify the always online requirement.
Aspects of the gameplay seem to be simplified a bit. Each skill has a choice between 2 effects, and the differences and modifiers aren't nearly as large as before. For the necromancer, the skeleton spawns are on a different skill tree than your abilities, so you end up leveling up both evenly instead of picking one. I suspect that a well planned build will not be nearly as gamebreaking, and players will end up with a lot more viable builds but with each option feeling similar. Items are a bit simpler, with 3 max upgrades per item, no need to use identification scrolls, potions limited to max of 4 in your toolbelt, can teleport back to base without a scroll, all items using 1 inventory slot.
Is the game woke? So far I've only seen 1 minor instance, in the character select screen they show you the female characters when you pick a class instead of the male ones. That and picking between body type A and B. Ingame ~90% of the characters are white, which makes sense for a setting that I assume is based on medieval north europe (99% is more accurate, but 90% is close enough) and character morality doesn't seem to have any connection to skin color or gender. I haven't seen any mentions of anything related to woke ideology anywhere with the characters or plot. Maybe it changes later on, but so far I see no issues. Rather, I think the game design is largely influenced by various market trends, mainly the open world and 'cinematic gameplay' from other AAA games and the dark fantasy themes from game of thrones, with monetization being mainly through trying to see cosmetics.
The obsession with safety is incredibly ironic since in a stagnant society the average person's value drops to zero. If a large number of people were to disappear, would we lose out on any major technological advances, innovative new products, great works of art, wonders of construction, or anything else that would improve your life? In a healthy society that is making real progress the answer is yes, so you have reason to personally care about the well-being of strangers. In a stagnant society you wouldn't miss out on any advancements by them disappearing, and would likely be better off as limited resources are split between fewer people. As society stagnates most people should have no reason to care for the safety of strangers, and they have little reason to care for their own safety as they wouldn't miss out on a great future advancements. Why is it then that the opposite happens, where safety is being pushed to an absurd degree when most people have no reason to care about it?
I played through a full game of humankind (10h) and I think its only around 3 out of 10 on the woke scale, and isn't nearly as bad as civilization 5 or 6. For example, the cultures you pick throughout the game are almost all historically relevant, as opposed to the random irrelevant african and native cultures that make up the majority of leaders in civ 5+6. The combining cultures aspect seems to be purely for gameplay reasons, as switching cultures each age lets you change/adapt gameplans instead of being locked in at start. Aside from the splash screen, you can only really notice anything woke if you are actively looking for it.
The game has you make a decision every few turns that slightly adjusts your cultural alignment, and for the most part these seemed to be very well balanced for the first half of the game, with tradition vs progress and nationalism vs globalism appearing to be equally viable, and there are bonuses for remaining neutral as well. After you get to the renaissance time period the progressive alignment starts to become overpowered, and a few of the cultural decisions you have to make have a clear pro scientism slant. Nationalism still seems to be viable lategame. Pollution and global warming are also brought up as lategame mechanics, but I didn't see them actually affect much.
The leader portraits, units, and most units looked like they were designed to be as neutral as possible, and I didn't see any woke race/gender stuff being pushed there.
The narrator will commonly make sarcastic quips about the decisions you make, but it seems to take shots at every possible ideology.
One anti-sjw game mechanic that I found amusing is that atheism is treated as its own religion.
Overall the game seems like a much better option for this genre than civ, but the pro-scientism in the lategame might be slightly annoying.
The main appeal but also the largest issue with the 4X genre is that it is based on a progressive utopian ideal, where every aspect of the society you control is always moving forward and improving. Every cultural change provides new bonuses over the last, each new technology researched only has upsides, every new population increases your production, etc. In the early game when you are building up all of the essentials this system works out very well, and it makes sense that these would have only upsides that allow for rapid expansion. After the early game this system usually falls apart, mainly because the exponential expansion has to significantly slow down when meeting other player's borders. Instead of expanding directly the player has to expand through other systems, which ends up with the player managing more and more systems for continuously shrinking payoffs. It doesn't help that all the other players also slow down at the same time, so there are no new diplomatic developments. Players usually get bored at this stage, and either spam end turn to try to quickly finish the game or start a new one.
I think that the 4X genre could greatly improve if there was some way to prevent this issue. If all of the players were not limited to only moving forward, then the game could keep the quickly changing nature present in the early game without resorting to complexity bloat. Diplomacy could drastically change as different player's empires would rise and fall. Decision making could become more interesting if cultural and technological changes had a mix of positive and negative impacts. Building up a great empire would be a more satisfying accomplishment if it wasn't just an inevitability, Figuring out how to manage a dying empire would bring new challenges to the player. The main issues are figuring out how to get the player to want to manage a declining empire, and in determining if or how the game would continue after a decline. Maybe an empire could be reformed after a decline, which the player would take control of, and a new period of growth could start with some influences from the previous empire's iteration. A player might have his empire rise and fall multiple times, but would need a reason to try to have each iteration succeed.