I have been playing the D2R open beta on Xbox One S and I loved it, including pretty much all of the quality of life changes. But a beta wouldn’t be a beta without some feedback, so below is a short categorized list of feedback.
Functionality (on a bigger scale)
It’s a shame that it is missing a core functionality of the game; the original lobby system.
Would love keyboard and mouse support, just like the controller support on PC.
Is text chat coming to console? Otherwise voice-chat would be even better.
Love the graphics but I can’t zoom in to view them properly on console.
Functionality (on a smaller scale)
Waddling around to get a specific item is annoying, right analog stick to scroll through items could maybe be a solution.
Picking up an item next to a portal is almost impossible, see item above for solution.
Walking on stairs is very difficult for both me as a player but also monsters. It feels as if the stairs are twice as narrow as they look, very hard to walk smoothly up or down.
Would like to be able to apply all skills/stat points at once.
Would like to be able to move the map around.
The colors/contrast of some entrances and exits are hard to see on the map.
Hold to populate belt function; It would make more sense to me if we could populate the belt based on a potion in any slot in a specific column, instead of just the bottom one.
Hold to populate belt function; It seems weird to me that it picks random pots. Why not let it pick potions from left-right or top-bottom just like what happens when you buy potions?
A quality of life suggestion for the belt system would be to be able to configure which pots go where. Always have HP in column 1, mana in 2,3,4 for example.
Deckard Cain does not identify items that are in the Horadric Cube.
I can not open Horadric Cube when at vendors.
User interface
I don’t get the double bars for monster names/HP. One has just the name on top and the others has the HP also. Settings to configure the position of these and with/without HP would be great.
When in longer menus (like Gameplay) i feel like the right analog stick could be perfect to use for scrolling. Having to ‘push’ through the different options to scroll feels weird.
I believe all 6 screens (like character, inventory, party) would be better if they were just like in the original D2. It’s covering the whole screen now, which feels unnecessary and clunky. Split ‘em in half and the horizontal bar to cycle through screens can stay (up top).
Performance
Overall it was a very good and smooth experience. I had a bit of rubberbanding and got kicked out only once.
I was able to match with only one person during the open beta. The only way I could play with others was via friends list.
Sometimes loading screens could take a minute.
With a lot of loading screens (waypoint) the background music lagged (kept repeating itself).
Lobbys are essential. I will not be buying the game without them for a console. Second to that we really need cross platform play enabled. XBOX/ PC/ PS5. I was able to play my PS5 characters on my PC and vice versa. It makes no sense why i cannot play with a buddy on the PC if I’m on the ps5 when my toon could be switched to the PC anyway. The console players will have a fraction of the community to play with and it just won’t be worth buying.
I think a good solution for potions is to let the person specify which potion type belongs to which belt column. And whenever a potion is purchased, picked up or when the inventory is sorted, potions go into the corresponding belt slots.
This kind of solution would make console so much better.
The danger to allowing for different types of potions in the same column is that you can’t use muscle memory anymore when using potions - you have to look at the tiny icons all the time. As some one who has poor vision in right eye, that would be very bad for me. I’d rather just memorize which buttons select which potion type and rely on muscle memory.
So what I meant was that it seems weird to me that I have to place a potion in the bottom slot of a column, and then I can populate the slots above that. It would like to be able just to put a potion in a random slot (bottom, middle, top) and populate the empty slots. Maybe I wasn’t clear on that.
As to your solution to specifiy potion columns, that’s on my list also:
A quality of life suggestion for the belt system would be to be able to configure which pots go where. Always have HP in column 1, mana in 2,3,4 for example.
Yeah, I agree - I don’t understand this design decision at all. It should just be a one-and-done button press. The sort inventory button is already there - it can just double up and do the potions too. It makes way too much sense that I don’t know why this was not done in the first place. Nobody wants to fiddle with potions one at a time for each belt column 10000x over the next few years.
To get around the UI, I was actually not using the bottom potion intentionally just to make refilling the belt faster. But that also means that I’m denying myself access to the 4 bottom potions in the belt just to make my UI experience better, which is beyond silly.
This seems like a pretty easy thing to be addressed - I mean the code for it already exists in a different form - but I suspect it won’t get patched in just because. The purists have pushed the designers into making a lot of bad QoL decisions that I don’t think the majority of people actually agree with, especially the console audience. If it were up to me, I would have just done away with the belts altogether and used LB and RB for potions and gutted stamina mechanics entirely, but that’s just me I don’t want to micro-manage this stuff using a controller.
I 100% agree lobbies are a must fix before launch for consoles…it was one of the main things I missed from the windows 95 days. Also I couldn’t figure out how to feed my merc pots without opening up to the merc page and having an option for the inventory to be half screen so you can put stuff in cube or throw it on the ground
This is being asked for in general. Basically they just need to copy the everliving hell out of PoE’s controller setup (but with the addition of a force stand still bind!) and call it a day. It works and there’s no shame in copying it.
I totally agree with everything said in this topic, and also after returning to D2 from playing D3 on console, just wated to share some of my thoughts:
do we really need to have so limited space in inventory? In D3 you could have 60 pieces of equipment no matter the size. When I played with two of my friends whe have to teleport to the city way to often.
also inventory management in D3 on console was much better - stuff separated between types, analising stuff and selling them using controller is better in D3 in my opinion.
do we really need stamina in D2? I hated this mechanic on pc several years ago, I hate it even more now.
I think we should be able to change skill points whenever we like for a fee or something, not just once with Akara.
Potions on belt shoud be assigned by type to slots and automatically refilled when picked or bought just like mentioned in previous posts. It’s real pain it the *** to put them manually with the controller.
ADD THE LOBBIES!!!
ADD CHAT!!!
ADD KEYBOARD AND MOUSE!!!
WE NEED THESE FOR CONSOLE THEY ARE ESSEnTIAL. DO NOT DESTROY D2R FOR CONSOLE BLIZZARD. OR ELSE THE REFUNDS WILL CONTINUE
I agree, I think it can be a lot bigger. The purists will hate this one though. You know they will be as loud as they can.
We don’t need it. Even David Brevik, the creator of Diablo, has said it was a mistake and that if he had the chance, he would remove it. He has said many times that it’s a pointless feature. These interviews with Brevik should honestly have given the devs all the blessings they needed to remove it, but it’s still there.
Again, purists are extremely loud on this topic and for some reason they got their way so far. On console, managing potions feels absolutely terrible, and adding stamina potions to the mix is super tedious with a controller.
What makes stamina worse is that it’s only relevant in Act 1. By Act 2 of Normal, you have a lot more points in Vitality that stamina is less of an issue. I just don’t see a reason for a mechanic to exist just to punish low-level characters only for it not to matter for most of the game afterwards. Just remove it.
There is a way to do this already - you can farm for Tokens of Absolution and get as many respecs as you want. Don’t worry about this - you’ll be farming bosses to get unique and set items anyway, and you won’t need to specifically farm these bosses to farm for respecs until you’ve exhausted the first 3 respecs anyway. 3 respecs until you get to Hell should be enough, and then you can farm for as many as you want afterwards.
Yes, this is probably my #1 complaint on console personally because I don’t play multi-player. I really just want to specify potion types for each belt column on my character, and whenever I buy a potion, pick-up a potion or sort my inventory, I want the game to sort it all automatically so I don’t have to micro-manage this. It really does feel like crap to do on controller considering how repetitive it is.
Again, the purists will almost certainly try to block this.
Yeah, the console feedback feature was so bad… they provided an obscure link that is really difficult to write down/type on your phone correctly. You couldn’t actually click it to go to your console’s browser or anything to provide the feedback like that either. Seemed like a really shoddy implementation for console feedback to be honest.
I actually installed the PC version to get access to the feedback feature. How dumb is that? Ugh.
They may remove it after some time has passed, but remember, in order to do so they also have to modify all random affix pools in order to take any stamina related affixes out as well. That will take time to do and may actually require item budget rebalancing as well since those affixes were considered part of the item budget.
I don’t want to micro-manage this stuff using a controller.