D4 Closed/Open Beta Thoughts\Concerns

Prefacing this post, I’ll just say that I’m not Kripparrian, Rhykker, Bloodshedd or any of these other streamers playing Diablo for a living who are probably way more knowledgeable about ARPGs than I am. With that being said, these beta thoughts/impressions are from my own perspective as someone who’s 31 year old male, been a gamer for decades in various genres and played Diablo 3 quite a bit. Now a days I’d consider myself a casual enjoyer of games and have put my hardcore days behind me. I feel players feedback should be valued no matter your skill level. Here we go.

GENERAL IMPRESSIONS
I grew up playing the old Gauntlet games and so when I learned about Diablo, I first got into it in Diablo 3 and was hooked!

Given the obligatory “this is a beta” clause when it comes to reviews, I do believe that D4 will be a good game with some further polish. There were a lot of things that felt great and some other things that felt pretty lackluster if I’m being honest. I’ll touch up more on that later in this post.

Also I’ll get this out of the way now, but I don’t like any of the playable classes. This is coming someone who played Monk and Crusader in D3 :smiling_face_with_tear:

THE GOOD

  • The graphics are amazing, way better than I thought they’d be. The Twitch/YouTube streams don’t do it justice at all. Only nitpick is that I wish there was RTX available.

  • Gameplay felt smooth and responsive.

  • Others might not like this but I love the open world aspect. You can go anywhere you want and and every zone matters.

  • Bosses seem challenging and that’s a good thing. The worst thing in a world is a boss you can just AFK on like D3 rift bosses.

  • Gold and potions felt meaningful again.

THE BAD

  • The UI was dreadful. When trying to compare items I couldn’t properly understand what’s changing at all. This wasn’t an issue in D3. I also hated how you couldn’t tab back to the general world map when in a dungeon.

  • Playing melee wasn’t enjoyable. I went into D4 thinking I would want to play melee since that’s what I usually play in most games. Unfortunately, I found the most fun playing a ranged Necro and Rogue which shouldn’t happen. The game isn’t melee friendly at all.

  • Skills/abilities feel lackluster. When I was going through the trees in each class, there were just so many options that didn’t feel good or worth taking which sucks. Every time you get a skill point, you should feel excited but I never did. Even once I had enough points to unlock a new ability, the new abilities were…meh. Maybe the Paragon boards will alleviate this, but again, we have no idea and so I’m just going off what we have.

  • Mob density was too low in beta. There were times I could walk around for minutes at a time without encountering a single monster. Even in dungeons, they didn’t feel like anything was in them. More shrines, more mobs, more chests please. More surprises like butcher than just appear out of nowhere.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Blizzard needs to get a holy class in the game asap. I’m really shocked that the necro made it in considering they were just the last DLC class in D3.

I think with the right adjustments D4 will be a good game to play in the long run, but then again I’m also a player who enjoys direction. Logging into the end game at level 50/100, just running around doing random stuff instead of just rifts all the time will be something to get used to.

Lastly, take a second look at skills. I really miss the Rune system where I could customize skills with the different elements. I want skills to feel more exciting to use. Things like decrepify and + 3% to overpower damage ain’t doing it for me.

Again…these are experiences based on playing one act on softcore at level 25. The game could take a complete 180 at max level, who knows.

4 Likes

I’m making this post in hopes the developers are interested in learning and updating the game from its current status.

• There are many good additions to this i want to point out first
Ravens- this is a clear improvement on the D2 version of the skill.
Poison Creeper- like ravens, having an active ability in addition to a passive makes the skill worth having it on the limited space of the hotkey bar.

• Character Customization in a fantasy Game
Body types- if your going to have customizable body types then dont force us to choose types based on the class.
Skin/hair Colors- this is a fanatsy game why cant i have more tints for skin
Hair gravity physics- they exsist but there are no long hair options to see the physics in action

• Class Tier from level 1 to 25
So im guessing the intention of the class design is to assign roles to each classes, much like the monk is a Support/Buff class and Witch Doctor is a Debuff Class in d3. This was an early mistake in developement of that game and i really dont want to see the same mistakes happening over and over. it makes me think the creators of this game didnt bother playing the previous games.

Sorc- S tier - mostly a clone of d3 Wizard, i really hate how frozen orb travels to fast and the majority of the damage is the explsion at the end.
Necro- A tier - this is the kind of gameplay that should be avaible to all classes at teh lower levels. its hard to commit to finish leveling the class if playing it is not fun.
Rogue- B tier - has potential a little tweeking and the class could be super fun, other classes need more movement abilites to shorten travel in dungeons. not sure why this class has multiple evade/dash/roll animations and the other have just a single hop animation
Barb- C tier - dependant on equipment, need more movement options perhaps at the cost of health or armor class, but right now its painful to navigate the game whether in a dungeon or out on the field
Druid- D tier - i spent the most time on this class. it was my favorite in D2 and im gonna be spending the majority of my energy explaining why i find this class so frustrating.
I leveled 2 classes to 25 the Sorc on the first weekend and the Druid on the secound. So yes i spent the extra money of $100 American US Dollars to try the game early. And im contemplating requesting a refund. im not upset that this game is in the condition its in for a Beta, no im upset how little has changed sense the first announcements and game play demos 4 years ago. And as the game nears its launch window im affraid of there not being any effort after launch to change things. Warcraft 3 Remake went directly into maintainance mode. That kinda thing is not exceptable for a new title after asking for so much money. especially considering how streamline and smooth diablo immortal launch was comparitively.

Sorc play time to level 25 was 4.5 hours
Druid play time to level 25 was over 8 hours of constant play

• Game UI- i think mud is the theme here. everything is meserable to navigate threw and trying to find the right menu screen is arduous if not nearly impossible. i do not like having to constanty go through the alphabet to find the right letter to review my progress. there is plenty of room at the bottom of the screen for a icon that creates a dropdown menu for the most import pages. again did the creators play the other versions of the game?

• Talent Trees
Forced Talent Selection- give me a weapon with a useful skill on it from the start. i dont want to be forced to choose a basic skill that offers NO synergy to my later skills. basic skill that build your resource are useless if you cant catch the monsters to build your resource making it mandatory to build resource for multiple classes if poor design. resources should come regenerate at all times. its fine for some classes like Sorc to have Faster Resource regen that is why they had the “Warmth” skill. having said that let move on to passive talent selections like warmth

• Not Enough Buttons on hotbar, where is the hold shift(left trigger)
d2 had 2 buttons with mouse wheel going up to 9, in D2R using a contorller is optimal for switching between skills holding left trigger and having even more options. in d3 skills were limited on the hotbar as well and its always bothered me i cant use my favorite skill or a fun skill because its not the most optimal. Pets skills should be passive UNLESS you want to use their unique activation. meaning the activation should be useful and fun and if not then the pets are at least there for flavor, roleplay, preferance

• graphics and reused/unused assets
then you have brand new models for nearly every monster creature but then reused models from D2R for others. seems like if the is taking place timeline wise right after D2 you could have saved a lot of time and resources using the models from D2R.

• bad animations/ no dance animation
i mentioned the reused evade animation on all the classes except rogue. not sure why each class doesnt have a different animation. so the druid has a basic abilities that have multiple animations to mix up the monotony forward swing/ back swing. while the basic abilities of the Sorc repeat the same single animation over and over making the skill look ridiculous and cheap. Diablo Immortal reused models from d3 but added new skins and rig animations to each class making them feel brand new yet familiar. the character in the game struggle to interact with the enviroment and their own skills. basic skills should not override the activation of core skills. defensive skills should have priority over most skills and movement should have the most priority. and what i mean is priority skills should interupt less important skills.

• bad voice recording
there are serveral emotes on each playable character that sound like a completely different person talking.

• dungeon design
better people then me have already shown everyone the repeatitive dungeon routes and how the dungeon keys and backtracking is horrible design. where is the find this moster and kill it, where is kill this many to make a boss spawn, where is the kill only this type of monster. D3 had great examples in dungeon design via the Class armor Set Dungeon each requiring unique was of defeating it.

• Pylons
the spark pylon is terriblely inferior to the d3 conduit pylon. No one wants to lose control of their character and skills (they pain stakingly choose) to take control of an electric spark with 1 ability on the the hotkey bar. though the knife throwing pylon is similar to the old conduit pylon its still inferior as teh daggers require you to aim and the conduit just hits all enemies in addition to the player chossen skills.

1 Like

I am completely triggered there is no paladin and it’s making me second guess purchasing entirely.

This is obv really minor, but it bugged me that you don’t see ravens flying around you, aside from when they swoop in to make an attack during combat. Necros can clutter the entire screen with a horde of neon glowstick skeletons and bone-hulks but a few ravens are just too much I guess.

I would say that this beta was not for us. If blizzard does right by the community they will spend a lot of time tuning the classes, which may change how the classes themselves play and feel on release. The balance is so poor right now that it feels like there is only 2-3 classes in the game.

Some of the most fun I ever had was when the Crusader came out in Reaper of Souls. Amazing animations and skills that were just fun to use.