Hardware: i7-8700K, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (yes I know the 8700K cannot feed the 4090, it’s a temporary setup until I can get an 7800X3D in april). Playing via Lutris on Archlinux.
Installation:
Was easy via lutris:diablo-iv-blizzard-battlenet, I just had to manually install the Lutris runner lutris-GE-proton-4.91 first, or I’d get “No GPU found” error when trying to launch the game.
Beta impressions so far:
The good things:
- Art (audio/visual) is good.
- Spells are good, in terms of how they feel and their effects and all.
- Story is good, I was interested in it and to see how it proceeds.
The bad things:
- Unlike in D2, in D4 the camera is way too low over the ground, making everything feel very cramped. This will actually be the reason for now why I won’t be purchasing the game.
- I kept getting annoying messages about what random other players (perhaps from my friends list?) were doing. This broke immersion and felt like “social” being forced into my face.
- I went out of my way a bit to collect some extra coins before going to the first town in the prologue, but there the NPC shop didn’t offer anything that would constitute an upgrade over my current items. All items were actually worse. This was disappointing, as in D2 you could always get some kind of upgrade from town NPCs.
Also the “tHiS stORe reFrEshEs in 10:00 min” timer felt very annoying too. Again in D2 shopping was much better. - I don’t like the question mark thing. Make quests like in D2, this feels really pointless. Where is the challenge? Why even have them?
- Maps seem a bit simple. Make them more open like in D2.
- This “item score” thing is a bad new habit. You should get rid of it asap as it is just cringe and makes you look stupid, sorry no nicer way to say it :/.
- Last but not least, I heard/read that D4 will have “dailies”? Ie quests that force you to log in every day to not miss out. I don’t know if this is true or not, but if it is than this will be another reason to not purchase the game, as I want to play a game and not being told by Blizzard how to arrange my spare time as if it was a second job - except that I’m paying Blizzard instead of the other way round. That’d be very bad style, so I really hope there are no such “you must login every day!” disgusting things, that some other games have.
Disclaimer:
As you may have noticed I mainly compare it to D2. That is because I have only played D3 at a friend’s place for about 10 minutes until I found it so bad and cringe that I never touched it again. So I cannot say much about comparison D3 <-> D4 unfortunately.
Conclusion: Currently I will not be purchasing the game.
However, if the camera gets fixed and there are dailies are not a thing so I can play the game in my own pace without getting “punished” for it, I’ll buy the game.