Hi, Blizzard
After 15+ hours in beta I want to give my feedback. I’m a casual player who doesn’t have time to put in hundreds of hours into the game but still. Unfortunately I’m not even disappointed, I’m discouraged by D4 so far. First of things I enjoy:
- Charakter creation in general. More options regarding hair/eye colors and body build types for different characters would be welcome still (why can’t I create skinny Barb and “fat” Sorcerer)?
- Dialogues, music and sounds in general
- The fact that the open world is actually alive (there are plants and animals)
- General open world concept
- Cinematics
- General climate of the game darker, more realistic less fary tale like (better than D3 worse than D2/D2R), should be even more darker and far more sinister and tense.
- Monsters armor instead of massive hp pool and huge attacks although I have to wait and see how it feels in the endgame
Now things I don’t like
- A) Gameplay: - Now I’m not a game dev but the gameplay feels “heavy” and clunky. I thought it was an input lag or my mouse but I saw many people complaining.
- Different skills/different animations “act” differently in a bad way. Some feel smooth but most of them not. I click to perform an attack and there’s a huge delay but when I walk, the same kind of attack seems “faster”. Is it an animation cancellation or what? Even walking and turning seems slow and heavy. By the time I want to perform another attack or walk away it’s too late. When I want to perform multiple attacks it’s even worse. Animations seem to overlap one another and the delay is even bigger so the attacks are not smooth and transitions are not fast enough. Now some of those problems are mitigated when I’m walking as I said but performing multiple attacks when I’m walking is impossible because of how the animations work.
- Teleport mechanic seem to work quite well on the other hand which is worrying cuz’ it seems that all of the things I mentioned have been done on purpose and that’s unacceptable.
- “Phantom” hits. For some reason (maybe because of problems I 've just mentioned but I don’t know) I got hit multiple times long after the enemy attack/animation ended or I thought I avoided it
B. - Dodge does not work properly. Ir’s too laggy/slow (as mentioned above) even directing where to dodge seem to slow and the radius is too little
- Game systems: - why did you put 5 or 6 different systems into the game? Each one of those systems (crafting, potions, upgrading gear, renown system etc.) is basic yet is separate from one another. It is impossible to know which system is impotent.
- And worst of all the skill tree. Why can I only unlock one skill from the branch cuz if I choose different one from the same branch in locks “space” for the other skills? Why there is so little choice within the skill to customize it? Only two choices for the final upgrade within the particular skill? Why there are no entire pages for the particular skill to customize it? And even tough it’s beta I quickly found out, thanks to more experienced players which skills are meaningful and which I can disregard and I myself equipped “green arrow” rear gear most of the time cuz’ most stats didn’t really matter.
- Some skills are why more powerful than other so even within basic skill tree that we have we can already tell what is worth taking and what’s not
- Why there are so many different systems for a different classes? And you don’t even explain it properly. i.eg. which is more important in case of Rogue combo system on my basic skill (tree diamonds) or the other system? How am I supose to know this? And thanks to problems witch gameplay and blurry visions I could’t even tell how it works during combat
- Skill tree should be main and the most complex system giving the most meaningfull options for builds etc. and it’s not
- Why there are only two slots for enchantment for Sorcerer and no further, deeper customization within that system
You don’t explain how the systems works in general. I didn’t know for example that if I extract legendary power from an item and put into rear item (Making it legendary) I can’t extract it again. So I lose it if it happens early in the game. I didn’t know I could exit the dungeon.
- All those different system were overwhelming. I felt lost despite playing D3 thousands of hours and some D1 and D2 back in the day.
- Dungeons: I’ve done about 6 of them and maps are very basic (although you need to bactrack often which is bad) and worst of all I encountered the same boss twice even tough I did only about 6 dungeons! Other thing about it is I played Rogue and almost non of the dungeons benefited me (only two of them were for Rogue specific codex powers)
- Feel repetitive already
- dungeons should be completely randomized
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Itemization: - I actually like the drop rate of legendary items unfortunately most of them were useless for my build. How is that ok even for a RNG based game. And again most of the stats on gear were meaningless (green arrows were king)
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Quests. Main quests were quite intriguing but side quests were very basic.
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MMO part: - Emoticons and side quest that I’m forced to do (cheering on soldiers)? Hated it.
- The fact that the world scales with me on the one hand but on the other when there’s a world event and other players are taking part ( i.eg. I’m level 20 and other player is level 10), level 10 player destroys everything. Basically stealing my kills and my fun and I feel “less power” all that for 5% xp bonus, ridiculous. I experienced that on multiple occasions and in general I stumbled on other players way to often in the open world.
- Moreover there is a blance issue where even on similar level Sorcerer is more powerfull so during world event they are dominating
- Multiple times and noticed open world event I walked towards it and it was already ending I was “late” so to speak and there was no way I’d wait for it to reset.
- UI Very unintuitive: I didn’t even know how to access skills and inventory tab cuz’ it does not say. Very mobile like everything what you need is and icon in the same time there is a legend for things you don’t need like skill key binding in a main screen (1.2.3.4 underneath the skills).
- When you chose a skill it does not say what key it will bind to so I had to change it multi0ple times.
- I didn’t have a clue how to access certain features in general i.eg. Codex
- General: - Lack of identity (D4 is between aRPG and MMO) - hate it.
- No offline option and focus on parties - hate it I’m a solo player and it should be balanced (solo players should be compensated or rewarded in a way that party players are not).
- I don’t know what item I will need and what can I trade so to me (again solo player) trading system is pointless in a current form
- Renown system is not needed in generał and why I had to “start over” in every region?
- Why gear does not impact the way you walk (heavier gear = slower walk)
- Why the look of the gear and animations does not reflect enough what kind of gear you have equipped and use? When you have two handed “huge” weapon you should be able to see it and feel it when you’re attacking.
- Why you took so little from D2 and so much from D3 and Immortal?
- D4 should be easy to understand and began and hard to master. Right now it’s the opposite. It’s unintuitive when it comes to system and unfriendly when it comes to gameplay
- it feels like you focused on console players in terms of controls which is bad
- no sense of adventure, especially in the open world
- hard to say which monsters are elites
- graphics/textures seems blurry especially during combat on 1080p so it’s hard to see and react properly
- World Tier II is too easy despite all those problems within the gameplay
- Probably a beta bug but I didn’t get notification about World Boss spawning on Saturday (the very first event, the only one I had time to take part in)
- So far it seems you’ve created the game for everybody aside from Diablo players. It should be the other way around where you create something for Diablo player and than try to use modern possibilities to make it easier for other people to enter. Besides It’s accessible via Tier I difficulty and it’s still unintuitive with all the problems it has so as I said it’s in between and it’s not good
For everybody on the forum. Feel free to comment/add to the thread.