I am a huge fan of diablo and the world of the sanctuary. After playing the beta, I am left a little worried for the game and seeing the story unfold would be the only reason I would purchase this game.
I loved the screenplay, the mood, and the delivery of events. I always absolutely do in any Diablo game, but the quality of it in D4 is top for sure. I am excited to see more.
My main concern in trying to see this as a game and not a visual novel is with two things:
1) Dungeon: They are really boring. I don’t know how else to put it. It’s monotonous, bosses are re-used, overall uninspiring. I wish Blizzard would have done something creative about it considering they are going to be the center of the main endgame content cycle. I can’t see myself grinding dungeons in endgame for more than a week if they aren’t going to be much different than what we experienced in the beta. I personally think Diablo 4 dungeon could use inspiration from how Lost Ark does their story dungeons. Each has unique designs that really stand out, unique bosses, and mechanics. I think that if Diablo 4 isn’t going to have procedurally generated dungeons, it could have random events and missions within each dungeon where completing a certain amount will open up the final boss room, and the loot drop after killing the boss. I think that could help the dungeons feel less grindy and boring.
2) Renown system: There is no clear information yet as to what bonuses from renown system are account-wide and which are not. On top of that there are going to be seasonal characters that likely won’t see account-wide bonuses from the renown system. It’s going to feel massively daunting to complete the renown system for every new character every season. Please don’t make players go through pure exploration content more than once. I would love to complete it once and be done with it.
I went into beta thinking that I was going to end up pre-ordering it, but I’m now less hyped for it than I was before I played beta.
If there’s a delay to the launch to address player feedback, I welcome it. I love the Diablo franchise and I want it to succeed.