D4 Feedback for Xezzaxath

People on the forums can ignore this post. I just created it for a specific purpose.

UI

  • PC players have not been given enough attention. The game is too optimized for console. Inventory space is too small. Text of items is too large. PC players being given shunned in UI design is a common theme in my next points. Aside from D3 graphics, it had a good UI and I hope D4 can swing in that direction.
  • Menus are too big. The social menu takes up the entire screen. Right clicking on a friend in the social menu brings up a full screen submenu. Why not just have a normal looking small right-click submenu when right clicking?
  • Chats do not float or overlay on top of menus. You can’t see chats while the skill tree is open, the social menu is open, the map is open. Not only can you not see chats while in the character selection screen, but you can’t chat in that screen at all. You can’t join parties from that screen or open menus like achievements. The character selection screen should be much more like D3. Can chat with people, can join parties and stay in parties while switching characters. This WoW-type character selection screen with nothing to do except choose a character and login is really not enjoyable. Even in D2 you could chat in the character selection screen. It just feels like a mobile game character selection screen.
  • Can we have the ability to move the chat box to the left side of the screen? Left-side chat is standard in almost all Blizzard games.
  • The map is not good and its design is straight out of console games. It feels like GTA or something. The map takes up the entire screen. It has no transparency so you can’t see what is happening while you’re moving and fighting while quickly opening and closing the map. The map pins make the game feel too dumbed down showing you where to walk. Please don’t treat D4 as a console game first and PC game second. The franchise was built on the sweat and tears of PC gamers. Don’t leave us behind now.

Game Design

  • Please make trading very robust. People loved the auction house in D3 (not just the real money AH but also just the gold AH). Trading is something that gets people very involved in the game and especially with the new itemization introduced in D4 and limited stash space, selling items (both gear and other “currency” like sigils or aspects) would be very fun. I really hope we can at least trade sigils.
  • The game is way too guided. Quest markers show you exactly where to go—down the pixel—to find the quest NPC or the objective. Map pins tell you the fastest way to get there. Dungeons are very linear and feel sort of like walking through tunnels; there are no open spaces. There is just no exploring in this “adventure” game. It doesn’t feel adventurous. Having vague quests like in D2 where you had to “find the Flayer Dungeon” or D3 quests like “search the oasis for X”. That gave the game a real sense of exploration and adventure. Many people are tired of being guided to literally everything we do. It feels like blind guy with guide dog simulator. There is just no feeling of exploration or adventure when we’re guided in everything we do.
  • Dungeon objectives are not fun. Gatekeeping the bosses behind these objectives is not fun. Dungeons should be more similar to maps in PoE where the objectives of the dungeon should be optional, like completing seasonal content/NPCs that appear in maps in PoE. These required objectives are huge time-wasters. Run to the left side and bring the object back. Run to the right side and bring the object back. Oh and by the way, you can only carry one object at a time. And it takes you 5 seconds to pick each up one up and turn them. This is just not a fun design.
  • The dungeons system is disappointing. Personally I enjoy maps in PoE and find rifts in D3 to be… okay. But the idea of being able to have a flow and a sort of base feels good in both games. I go into the map/rift/dungeon from my base, come out of it right to my base, and sort through my gear and whatever. There is a flow to it. I don’t like that we will have to physically run to each dungeon to do it. Yes, I know. “But we’ll have mounts!” Well, I still don’t like having to run to the dungeons. The pacing of D4 is slow enough as it is, which is fine. I’m not complaining about the pacing of the game. But running is slow and the world is quite big.
  • I fear that dungeons will feel stale and get old real fast. On the one hand, rifts in D3 were randomized which felt nice. They were big open spaces and you didn’t have to do any “objectives” in them. Maps in PoE were not really randomized and so yes, you ran the same maps over and over. That is similar to dungeons in D4–you’ll run the same dungeons over and over. But running maps in PoE is fast and usually quite open and for some reason to me, and this may be specific to me, the maps just didn’t feel stale. Maybe because the monsters inside them were randomized. Maybe because of the events and stuff inside you could do (the seasonal stuff) kept each map feeling different and fresh. I just worry that the dungeons in D4 will feel the same each time you run them, even with the sigils.
  • Bounties generally aren’t fun. If I want to run dungeon after dungeon after dungeon, I’d like to be able to. Bounties are fine to get crafting mats and stuff, like it was done in D3. But I didn’t see any info on how to get sigils for nightmare dungeons. I don’t want sigils to have to come from bounties, so you’d have to run 1 bounty for each nightmare dungeon you run. That would be horrendous. Sigils should drop from all creeps like maps do in PoE, so you can get sigils while running dungeons. I really like that maps in PoE drop from creeps because you can get them quite fast. A reward system for sigils, like you only get a sigil after completing a dungeon or a bounty or some other thing is bad. In essence, rift keys in D3. They only dropped from GR bosses and by completing regular rifts. That was a badly designed system because you had to get them as rewards. Getting them from drops feels much more exciting, like finding a new piece of gear. Locking things behind objectives/rewards really hurts the excitement of acquiring them and the pacing of the game.
  • Last but not least, please leave in place the respeccing cost. It makes decisions feel more impactful, gives characters some “character,” and gives the game significantly more replayability.
  • Class sub-skill trees like ascendancies in PoE can be a very fun addition to the game that can give characters even more breadth in build choice. It is something to look into.

Summary

  • UI feels too much like a mobile game and is fine for console but is not optimized for PC. Please fix chats and character selection screen.
  • Trading is fun. Let’s have as much as possible.
  • Game is too guided all around. Doesn’t feel very “adventurous.”
  • Required dungeon objectives is extremely exremely not fun. Can they be optional instead?
  • Please let sigils drop from all creeps in the game and not be locked behind a bounty/objective/reward system. Also let them be tradeable (if they will be like PoE maps where they are for specific dungeons and have different modifiers/affixes.
  • Running to places sucks and will not be fun for grinding dungeons.
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looks like devs can go ahead and ignore it too.

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The grass is greener on the other side.

They want ours.