Start with the TL;DR!
OK… I can do that
- The classes feel too similar in their play patterns/skill loadouts.
- Scaling areas are removing my feeling of progression
- The look of everything is fantastic
- The storyline and cinematics are wonderful and I’m very intrigued to experience the campaign.
- “Item Power” is an over-simplification that I cannot get behind. Items should have pros and cons that work better or worse for what you’re doing and what your build can take advantage of. I also don’t want all of my damage based on how powerful my weapon is. There should be more to it than that.
- The crafting options have me very intrigued. I like the idea of being able to create/upgrade/customize items to the extent that this seems to promise.
- 10 characters slots would be a major issue for me if it isn’t just the beta number.
- The stash seems very expandable but I wasn’t able to gauge how much. I’ll take as much stash as you’ll give me.
- The dungeons were feeling very similar and basic. “Get the thing to open the thing and fight the thing” already was getting old after a weekend.
- The characters and equipment look amazing, the character creation isn’t very deep but is a huge step up in the series and I loved what I was able to create.
- The camera makes me feel claustrophobic. I keep scrolling down on the mouse wheel to make sure I’m zoomed all the way out.
- The boss battles (end of dungeon battles when you get locked into the room) seemed to be a bit too long and be a bit too difficult compared to the other enemies in the same dungeon.
- Binding weapons to skills and auto-swapping worked flawlessly.
- Not every skill needs to have a cooldown or be temporary
Classes/Skills
I played three classes up to level 18 or higher (Barbarian, Rogue and Sorcerer). Starting with the Barbarian, I loved how the combat felt. It was smooth and I really felt the impact of the strikes. I played Rogue next and focused on ranged attacks. Then I played Sorcerer and tried to focus on Cold elemental attacks. When it came down to it, I was basically doing the same sequence of skills/buttons for every class. Each class has a dodge that works exactly the same with no consideration for your Dexterity or anything else (I did see there are some skills you can use to affect the cooldown and items to add another dodge). My feeling is that each class is following this strict template of skills that you have to jam into a fixed number of buttons and it just turns into doing the same pattern over and over no matter what class or build you make. Increasing the number of skill slots, adjusting how the dodge works per class (cooldown/distance/speed/method) and reducing/eliminating cooldowns with resource costs would be a great start in differentiating the gameplay and how the classes/builds feel.
Scaling Areas to Character Level
I don’t like going into an area I was able to defeat at level 1 and have it be just as difficult if not more so 20 levels later. It completely takes away any feeling of progression you get through experience. The only progression you actually notice is through items. Leveling can actually just make the game harder and harder if you make poor choices in your skills or don’t find the right items until you aren’t able to progress or even effectively farm. I think scaling is great for the final difficulty and end-game levels. I think it is terrible when playing through the game. Finding some adjustment here so that Flayers don’t turn into damage sponges when you level up would be great. Maybe they need to have a maximum level they can get to in early areas. Maybe certain enemies should have maximum HP or damage on their skills outside of the hardest difficulty. I see that strongholds have a minimum level so this would align with that philosophy but in the opposite direction. Having tough enemies that look weak breaks my immersion into the world and makes it feel artificial.
The look of everything is fantastic
I feel completely immersed in the world. The dungeons look great with the depth. I never had any problem seeing what I needed to see even though visibility could have been an issue with this angle in this deep of an environment.
Storyline
I’m completely immersed in the storyline. I rushed through a bit for the beta and didn’t take my time reading everything but I plan to and I’m very interested in how this turns out.
Item Power/Attack Power/Armor
A few points here.
- Firstly, I don’t need you to oversimplify items for me. I’m capable of looking at the properties of an item and my character sheet and decide which item provides my build the most advantage.
- Secondly, having every skill’s damage based off of your weapon’s damage puts way too much focus on that item. Sure, if I’m a Barbarian, it should matter how effective my Axe is when I Whirlwind. It should also matter how strong I am, how practiced I am in the skill and other enchantments I have boosting my abilities. Most of this is true however the scale of which one is more impactful feels too far in favor of the weapon. If we take this same example and apply it to a Sorcerer, it makes even less sense in my opinion. Your Focus/Wand/Staff should have an effect but shouldn’t be the dominant effect on your damage.
- Thirdly, Armor having one stat as to how it protects you is an oversimplification that just completely removes any pros-and-cons approach. Should we really just be saying “Is this number higher than the other number?” every time we look at an item? I wasn’t even looking at the item by the end, I just look at the number and whether it is green or red. Sad times. As a quick add-on to this point, I’d love care more about what the base armor type is. A certain base type should have properties and limitations of its own. A Leather Tunic without any sort of magical properties having a higher Armor value than a sturdier base armor just breaks my immersion.
Crafting seems very intriguing
I like how the team has addressed the issue of either not finding the gear you need for a particular build or finding gear that would be great if you could just tweak it. I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface and it is exciting.
Boss Battles
The build I initially went with (Frenzy/Whirlwind) was fun and let me handle crowds very well. When I reached bosses, they were very difficult and required me to play almost perfectly to
10 Character Slots
I hope this was just a beta number but if this is a deep game, I would want to level up several different builds and be able to keep them around. Two builds per class is extremely low. I would love to see that be 4-5 slots per class. If hardcore doesn’t have its own limit, that would also be a problem and there should be twice as many. If some sort of ladder season comes out that is separate, we would need slots for that too. I imagine the answer that will be shouted at me is “RESPEC!!”. I don’t see that as a solution for this problem. When I play an RPG, I want to play that role, immerse myself in the fantasy of it, play through the entire game while making the choices for that character. It isn’t just a pile of numbers to me, I invested in that character and I like the build I made. I like respecs being available for correcting build mistakes, not something to be used for strategy or re-using character slots. The bottom line is that when I run out of character slots, I’d stop playing rather than delete a character I invested in. If 10 is the final number, it affects how much replayability the game has.
Expandable Stash
I saw that I could buy another stash tab for 100k gold. This seems great. Since we seem to only have a shared stash, as we create new characters we will want to store more items and also I love finding items that inspire me to build another character just to use it.
Dungeons feel similar/basic
This could be a result of the beta content (I hope so) but most of the dungeons I entered felt basically the same. Get the key(s) and fight the end boss. There were some where you needed to get a bunch of essence which was a nice change of pace. Just wanting more change of pace there.
Look of Characters/Character Creation/Equipment
Loved the character creation! All the characters look amazing, the equipment looks amazing. The wardrobe is really cool!
Camera
Even when I wasn’t playing a ranged class, I found myself constantly scrolling down in hopes that I could see a bit more of the world around me. When you go up a hill or stairs it is even worse because you cannot see anything but the stairs taking up the whole side of the screen. Just let it zoom out more so I don’t feel so closed in please.
Boss Battles
- Too long - We don’t need to go on for several minutes/stages for every boss
- Too similar - It seemed like there was always a need to cram in a way to pop health potions out and minions. It just felt like the same screen spam every boss I faced. Different is good.
- Seemed to scale differently than the normal enemies in the dungeon - With the amount I played the same dungeons at different levels, I noticed a huge difference in the bosses scaling difficulty as opposed to the other enemies in the dungeon. At higher levels, after breezing through the enemies in a dungeon the boss would be extremely tanky in comparison. I think you shouldn’t get a spike in difficulty at the boss. It should be a challenge but it should never go from a breeze to extreme challenge in the same dungeon.
Binding weapon loadouts to skills
Loved how you could use different skills that required different weapon loadouts seamlessly. Going Frenzy into Whirlwind was a breeze and felt really good.
Cooldowns and Temporary Skills
Managing cooldowns is absolutely the worst thing about the gameplay and it isn’t even close. Instead of looking at one resource and deciding how to spend it on your skills, I have to look at 4, 5, 6, 7… even 8 different places on the screen to see what I can actually do. I found myself trying to count in my head to see if I could teleport or dodge again yet. This is a horrible way to play and completely breaks the immersion and any creative gameplay you may want to try. Also, skills where you put up armor or a shield or enchant something should last a while. I don’t want to put up a flame shield just for it to burn out in a few seconds and have to put it up again (after the cooldown of course). There should be skills that just get turned on and left on (maybe it reserves a portion of your resource until you turn it off). In my opinion, cooldowns are a way to express how difficult it is to cast a spell. If I’m a Sorcerer that wants to summon a Blizzard down on my enemies, it should be difficult and devastating. The cost should be high, the time it takes to cast should be high and the effect should be incredible. I don’t think that casting one should just give you a cooldown on casting another of those but you can do anything else you want, you aren’t actually drained or focused on casting it. Makes no sense to me and completely takes me out of the experience. I become a robot that just pushes the button that isn’t on cooldown and it isn’t fun.
Final Thoughts
I really want to immerse myself, choose a class and play a role throughout the game and have it feel like I’m in that role. The numbers, the items, the scaling, the gameplay and skills should all be building towards supporting that immersive fantasy. I believe that’s the place you can make the largest improvements. Now, these are just my opinions and I am only one kind of player/customer for this game. I’ve loved Diablo since the first one was released and I’m sure I’ll play this one and enjoy it enough. My feedback is aimed at helping the development team create an AMAZING game for the ages that gives my type of player the experience they are looking for. Please be kind to me with your critiques of my points.
Some technical feedback:
- I died to lag a few times. I learned to recognize when the enemies were running in place and to get out of there as soon as possible.
- The queueing was less than ideal. My primary complaint is that you don’t get any sort of priority if your game crashes or disconnects. Issues like that are compounded greatly when you also have to queue for 30-45 minutes after they happen. If there is a way to keep a persons’ place in line in those cases, it would be ideal. For example, I queued for 30 minutes, the game crashed in the middle of the opening cinematic when I alt-tabbed to type in Discord and then I had to queue for 40 more minutes… ouch.