Went pretty optimistic into the Beta cause the game is named Diablo afterall but oh well. I don´t even know where to start cause of how inherently flawed i think most of the games systems are, and since you apparently can´t say something is bad without delivering a critic master thesis, will this be exactly what you get, so lets get right into it i guess.
I´ll do a little Switcheroo and start with the Cons first:
General Core Gameplay / Skills / Skilltrees:
It just doesnt feels like i can play the game the way i want to play, but rather how Blizz wants me to play the game, starting with the ressource generator system taken somewhat straight from D3 for example, which just isn´t fun cause it always boils down to a poor and unsatisfying catalyst for better abilities that remind you that you shouldn´t have too much fun between your blizzard trademarked and mandated no-fun time endorphine spike calculated experience. A in its design inherently flawed system.
Which leads me to another Example:
The 6 Skill System, or rather the samey structure of the skills/gameplay which is Blizzards way of telling you how you are supposed to play and have Fun™.Heres a Ressource Generator, heres a Core Skill, heres a Defensive Skill, heres a Support Skill, heres a way to Expensive Skill, heres a Ultimate, gee thanks Blizzard its just like my favourite Moba, thanks for teaching me what ENGAGING GAMPEPLAY™ is. A in its design inherently flawed system.
Which leads me to the Skill Tree itself:
They just don´t feel thought-out. Kinda messy, kinda meaningless. Upgrading a skill gives you like what? +1 Damage? Some do a little more i´ll admit, but it just feels meaningless and weak. Another Thing: The whole “nodes/branches” that are there, it just seems very half a**ed it´s the only way i can really describe it. The options are sparse, one node is always mandatory before you can even make your hard choice between two other questionable choices and thats it, some you can only spec once, some can be specced trice. Some are straight up worthless like the Sorc +3 to Mana for example. You catch my drift here i hope. A in its design inherently flawed system.
Going on to: Cooldowns:
Just no, and i really don´t get it cause your game is probably halfway designed by Focus Groups and QA Testers, cause i´d really like to know the quota of people who told you “watching a timer run down truly is my favourite past time” pun intended.
A in its design inherently flawed system.
Closing Thoughts on that before we move on:
I get that you always one way or the other dictate how players should play the game cause afterall, you design it / have to make it, but there are simply obtrusive and unobtrusive ways to do it, and the way you did it, was to make plenty in its design inherently obtrusive and flawed systems, id say.
Anyway, on we go to Items / Itemization:
Every Skill scales off Weapon Damage, big yikes, nonsensical, ironically convoluted, nuff said, but at the same time there is insane affixe bloat, stuff like “Damage to Enemies in Melee/non-Melee Range” “Increased Damage against Elites” “x% core skill Damage” etc. Not to mention all the "Vulnerable, Hurt, Immobilized, whatever stuff which kinda brings me back to the awful skill/node system which is mostly comprised of this, cause thats how you think Builds should be for that ENGAGING GAMEPLAY, like, in one way you wanna simplify the game by having every skill scale of Weapon Damage or the green plus Arrow and then you have all this overly convoluted stuff to make “builds”, which the ui frankly doesn´t always properly explain, but more on that later. A in its design inherently flawed system.
One more thing about that, lets take “Vulnerable” in particular here, are you telling me this is engaging item/skill building when things are something like "well, that skill applies vulnerable which does 20% more damage but only if you have a barrier which then lets this other skill do like additional 3% more damage for every enemy close by that gives another 1% damage etc.
That´s maybe just my opinion here, but i find it incredibly bloaty and unfun to make a build if thats how you want it to be.
Are blue items even in the Game? I don´t remember frankly.
Which leads me proper to the items itself:
Making your builds foremost through items instead of skills is a in its design inherently flawed system. One of the many things you shouldn´t have copied from d3. Items should make your build better, not straight up be its very reason to exist in the first place.
Also little fun side note: Theres a Legendary Effect that says something along the lines of “If you stand still for X% seconds you deal X% more damage”. Things like that are just contradictory game design to me cause on one hand you implement a dodge mechanic into the game and then you tell people to stand still? Really? Just one of the many things i feel aren´t really thought out gameplay wise. Too many cooks i guess.
But let´s talk about the aformentioned UI:
Short note: Yes the Skills do tell you its Affix/Effect purpose down below but only if it applies, but if it doesnt apply, i really didn´t know or found where to look to know what some mean sometimes. Correct me if im wrong here.
Now really: The UI:
Its cheap, it looks cheap, Mobile Game cheap. Very in-your-face big even. Modern Triple-A Game bloaty like desinged and inherently flawed just like most of your competitors new products by how overt and cumbersome they are.
The Font Predicament:
Nothing screams dark and brooding like Arial and its diabolical sans serif bretheren. A in its design inherently flawed Font for a self-proclaimed “Atmospheric” Game.
About the Open World / Dungeons / MMO Stuff:
Struggling with the same problem most open worlds have, triteness, repeating stuff, meaningless filler for padding game time aka ubisoft objectives more or less. The Dungeons can be described verbatim, a tiresome task repetition, plenty of backtracking. Another thing: It seems as tho you decided Waypoints should only be in towns, instead of, you know, outside in the wild, so we get plenty of useless hubs that basically do the same just so you have an outlet for your blue check mark mmo drivel. A inherently poor designed game world if you ask me.
The World gave me no sense of saying “hey im worth to be explored”
And while we are at it: Fetch quests should only belong in Hardcore playthroughs for that extra edge of pain and suffering.
Also gathering Herbs. I rather don´t.
"Multi"player:
I don´t straight up hate on Multiplayer features but i just don´t see its point here, at least in d3 you could seamlessly continue your journey with strangers on the same mission, but with d4, theres nothing, i see some strangers in the town minding there own business or rarely out in the open just rushing by and fading into nothingness as quick as they came, but thanks for the lag, like whats even the point here, its wild how much better a silly system like the d2 game lobby was and works in bringing people together than this “MMO EXPERIENCE”. It truly is a in its design inherently flawed system. Just like the Level scaling.
The World and Lore / Quests:
Not a big lore guy but let me just say, i don´t feel like i´ve been thrown into a world i am familiar with, make of that what you will. A design, i guess.
The Cutscenes
Just wanna say i don´t think you did yourself a favor here really by making the cinematics proper ingame just for the sake of the player seeing his character model, made with a rather lackluster character creator to begin with. Intentionally flawed made i guess.
Plus the top down ingame cutscenes are A tedious and B the Npc seem to go through a incoherent range of animations for some reason.
Technical pet peeves:
Having to scroll Itempages, or Itempages having a small but unpleasent fade effect.
The Camera is uncomfortably close. Period. Why not give a simple option to zoom out?
Another thing is the on screen menace of what my buttons do, i don´t need to be constantly reminded that my town portal is on T or how i get to the skill tree, why not give a simple hide option?
Something else: You can only show 1 Quest Objective as active at a Time, and honestly, i´d rather have non since the quests are menial anyway, but if you insist to have mission objectives in my face at all time, might as well show them all.
Also no quick transparent map Overlay to see where you need to go is a glaring inherently flawed design choice. Instead we get a worthless minimap which can´t even show you the roads in its main city properly?.
The Statpage is very bad for multiple reasons. Not to mention the Herbs i have to face before i can see my stats.
And Bugs:
I had some, like right off the bat my game started with zero voice sounds, which i thought playing the first hours just weren´t implemented in this beta, shortly followed by the skip dialouge buttons not working anymore. A suffering combination. Also sometimes icons inside the ui would just disappear. The Model in the transmog menu sometimes doesnt properly switch. Some heavy rubberbanding when entering new zones. General Lag when entering Zones / Towns. The druids passive raven was non existent for me. Flaws you hopefully fix for the people who will pay for your game.
My very own Question Mark Quest:
Why has the Ooblong or whatever that currency is called a max limit of how much you can have? Inherently flawed? Not sure what the reasoning here was.
Also the Bar on top of the start menu that says play. I ponder.
Very personal Opinions:
I just missed the Tetris Inventory, i understand why you want it gone, its clunky, its un-controller friendly, its soulful, its charming, all the kind of things you don´t want Diablo 4 to be, i get it when someone is breathing down your neck to make this game Xbox Series X One X ready, but i´ll just wanna say that i missed it, and what it entails. Because it just makes the items feel even less relevant, everything is the same, same size, same feel, just numbers, numbers go up, numbers go down, nothing has weight, nothing has gravitas, no sense of finding something of discernable value, i´ll transmog it all away anyway, gone, like tears in the microtransaction cash rain…
Things i didn´t properly touch on:
Like Classes for example: Only played two, Druid was a dissapointment. Sorc was alright. Most skills felt meh. Saw some Necros with vile lookin d3 skellies. Spooky. Made me wanna main Uninstall Wizard.
Server Issues: The one thing i won´t fault blizz for cause thats the whole point of the beta in my eyes, a server stress test. Also i didn´t have much issues, longest wait was 20 mins, a few server throw outs, otherwise alright. The ingame Performance was a somewhat bigger issue. Are blizzards servers a in its design inherently flawed system? well, some launch players will probably not have the best time i´d wager.
Closing Statement aka my Pros
Frankly i didn´t do a switcheroo in naming my cons first because, if i really think about what i like about d4, its frankly only the name. Diablo. My wish that a well made game in this franchise could still be made.
“But what about the Graphics” i hear you all scream: They´re alright, visual fidelity is alright, some stuff that the artists made is nice, some still feels very blizzard look-ish to me. I find it kinda mushy compared to how concise i consider d2r´s art design. But thats also a very personal opinion fair enough.
Pros, actually, there is the Dodge, something i do kinda like, or would atleast, if it weren´t for the Cooldown again. I don´t remember the last time i played a game that told me that frequently how “not ready yet” i am for its very gameplay mechanics. If something like a active Dodge mechanic even belongs in a top down arpg is a whole ´nother question tho, and i´m not the one to assess, if its a flaw, or just part of blizzards inherent game design for d4.
Well, what can i say
Beyond being full of inherently flawed game systems in my perspective, if i had to describe d4, it would be foremost Bland. Bland and uncreative, there´s just nothing that sticks out as creative ideas here, only somehow worse iterations of the old. Some QoL Improvments sure, i don´t need most but if some like them, hey who am i to say no.
So, do my 70 bucks make a dent in the Billions Blizzard will make with D4, absolutley not, but does it bring me some sinful pleasure to get this off my chest for some strangers to read on the internet, you better believe.
tl;dr Inherently flawed
*Edit Numero Uno: For everyone saying i don´t provide any solutions, i disagree, i think they are plenty of times easily discernable from my points, also, what am i supposed to do here if i disagree with core game design choices? Write for every point another 10k long Essay about game design, thats just silly, some things just can´t be solved with a simple 1 Sentence solution, although i even tried to provide some down the thread
*Edit Numero Due: I think it´s kinda funny that some people call me a bully, when i didn´t with a single syllable insult anyone from buying nor playing the game on launch, yet have there been plenty of petty remarks aimed at me, such is life i guess
