Thank you Blizzard for allowing me to participate in the Open Beta weekend event. I am passion about the franchise. I am highly critical and carry strong opinions. Being able to participate in the open beta is quite a privilege.
If I had to sum up my point of view after getting to 25 on Wiz and jumping around in-game it would be that the game is poorly designed in many areas to the point that it needs to be redesigned and requires another 2 to 3 years of work. Some might not be willing but I would be willing to wait another 2 to 3 years for a much better quality product. Even if 90% of the bugs were fixed, lag was removed, and queue times eliminated, it would not be worth $70 US. The design flaws is what makes it not worth $70.
Short versions of my critiques:
- the game is in a pre-Alpha state not fit for public consumption with the amount of bugs, breakages, and design flaws.
- the server and network infrastructure needs beefing up dramatically
- the loot design is all over the place… it is spread way too thin to the point of being bland and uninspiring.
- map design (player map when pressing M) is a horrible and washed out beige
- quest design is terrible (running, running, more running and teleporting interspersed)
- some quests may be broken (ex: grizzly’s axe)
- way too many interrupts for an ARPG (you can’t take more than 8 steps without encountering a cut scene and the ESC key does not skip it)
- dungeon design is terrible (11 football fields worth of length along narrow corridors and no way to teleport back to the entrance to speak with the NPC)
- Teleporting back to town causes lag spikes due to loading so many players who are standing at the waypoint and blocking the portals.
- lag/rubberbanding when moving between outdoor zones
- game code is bloated and inefficient (22+ GB of ram usage on a 32GB system, after several restarts of the game)
- graphics/rending code is bloated and inefficient even when turning down the settings (I know because I keep track of the temps on my card… yes I’m an old school overclocker so keeping an eye on temps is a habit)
- the UI is terribly designed around consoles… I’m on a PC with a fancy programmable keyboard (
https://www.amazon.com/RIPJAWS-KM780-MX-Mechanical-Keyboard/dp/B015YE7HBQ?th=1)… I do not need or want an e-mote wheel - the character inventory screen is excessively large because of console UI design… someone might have had some tablet and phone ideas which were incorporated into the UI design… very bad idea to homogenize the UI
- skill tree design is terrible… please don’t try to Game of Thrones blood pathing intro. the skill tree… Please don’t do it. the UX team might need new leadership
- the passive/active skill design is yet another annoyance.
- skill respec needs to be redone… a lag spike will have one spending tons of gold on erroneous clicks just to undo those clicks by spending more gold.
- crafting system needs major refinement… salvaging is a gamble and tier upgrades are bland/uninteresting because the loot system is bad so both need work
Overall game design:
Who ever came up with the idea of turning the game into an interactive story was brilliant and quite foolish at the same time. One can’t go more than 8 steps without encountering a cut scene. Diablo is suppose to be an ARPG with emphasis on the action. There are so many cut scenes to the point that it would be better to just listen to “Dead Set” narrate the Sin War instead of playing the game. Its 8 years later and Dead Set is just that good of a story narrator (Sanctuary Sunday Talk: The Sin War - YouTube). I understand that someone had a product vision that was ARPG + deep engaging story interaction. However, those are two diverging paths. If you mix hot and cold water it ends up cool to luke-warm. No one likes luke-warm water to drink or luke-warm herbal tea or coffee. This is a great example of pick one but no both. When one couples all of the interrupts from the cut scenes and then all of the running around it ends up getting boring real fast. You guys need to take lessons from D2/LoD, D2R, and D3. Stay away from WoW MMO and Witcher 3 style cut scene and extended dream sequence structures/designs. Stay away from the WoW MMO crafting/professions designs/structures. Say no to constantly stopping to pick flowers and harvest ore from nodes.
Character Customization:
If you guys are going to include the ability to chose African features then you really need to do a much better job of it. There is only 1 braids in a bun or dreads in a bun option, which is terrible. Let me help you out with that. Google “african american cornrows hairstyles” and “african american cornrows hairstyles for men”. Pick 5 for the men and 5 for the women. Also, you need to offer way more African facial features to pick from. Nose, cheeks, lips have way more variations. It doesn’t have to be another 75 options but more than just 2. You want immersion and you are charging a premium then you need to do better. There are no Asian looking options available.
Touchy subject (forum mods please do not get all in your feelings… this is about feedback and I’m making it plain):
Subjects concerning masculinity, femininity, gender fluidity and LGBTQ+ are very touchy. I am 100% in favor of inclusion and letting people do their own thing. Doing your own thing means having the ability to not engage where it is not required. However, give players a means of opting out of LGBTQ+ and gender fluidity. Do it before the player gets to the character customization screens. Just like you guys make the player pick the difficulty and the amount of hand-holding they are subjected to at the very beginning, do the same with the gender fluidity. Some will want to make a gender mixed character and that is fine. Others have no desire to engage that. Don’t give players yet another point of contention and a reason to reject the product because of their real world politics. If memory serves me well, the D3 china game client had excessive blood/gore removed because it was culturally offensive. Treat gender fluidity the same as that, but with an opt-out feature.
Where to take lessons from:
- hotkey layout assignment from D2R. I have the following mapped: F1-F4, 1-0, Tab, Space Bar, ALT, CTRL, SHIFT, Q, W, E, F, G, C, Z, L, V, B, R, T, and a few more. This allows me to use the spells for my char (Necro) and control the UI (without macros). 6 spells and 2 passive procs are insufficient. Its ok for boomerang console controllers but terrible for PC keyboard. Also, consoles can use USB keyboards and mice. A cheap $10 keyboard and a $7 mouse is sufficient.
- D3 narrated lore books are the way to go when introducing lore to the player. An improvement would be an option to disable them from dropping so one can skip the lore.
- D3 Skills/runes or the D2 skill structure system is way better then what you guys built. Its annoying, distracting, and a pain to find stuff. If you are going to go very complex and I’m sure the paragon system will be quite complex, then you need to take notes/ideas from PoE, Grim dawn, and maybe Wolcen.
- The design where the player is constantly moving in and out of cut scenes incurs an overhead with very little benefit. Design the game away from this. It chews up RAM without real benefit.
- Some players like D2 style free for all loot and unrestricted trading others like limited trading with personal loot. Use a check box in settings, where checked = only joins where personal loot is enforced. When it is checked and one attempts to join a free fall game give the player a notice informing them why they can’t join the game without the user changing the setting. Also keep a status symbol in the UI indicating the type of loot rules. I suspect that separate game modes would be required to satisfy the unchecked trade and the restricted trade camps. This is what is required to for softcore and hardcore game rules. A check box at character creation should be enough to allow the player to decide what they want to do.
- The character needs more inventory space and way more shared storage. There is no way in hell I’m giving you guys additional real currency for storage space when the game is $70 US as the base game. I doubt I would give you additional money if the game cost $20 US either. Don’t try to pull a PoE unless the game is fully free to play like PoE.
- Way too many cooldowns. D2 teleport is the way to go. The cooldown on teleport in D3 and D4 is waaayyyyy tooooo loooonnnngggg. The evade button is common console game design. It might have a different name but it serves the same function as D4 evade. No fellas. Please just don’t do it. Make the mobility skills good and ditch the evade button.
- Please do better with the armor designs. They look awful like D3 Witch Doctor awful. All of the characters look like hobos or someone with a cheap hippie-made halloween costume that looks awful. If I’m going to be buying MTX don’t give me negative encouragement.
- Please remove the extra queues. A login queue and then an enter the realm queue. Please don’t do that.
- loading screens when portaling and using way points is bad in addition to all the other interrupts that I’ve mention above.
- we need a map ping to communicate location to party members
- the D3 right-click on player portrait menu is way better than D4 social system
- there needs to be a means of indicating where party members are without scrolling around maps… even WoW has this ability why is D4 so far behind in 2023?
- is there even a kick player feature in the social system?
What is good about the game? The combat is fluid. It is uninspiring but fluid. Every time a shield dropped or I entered into a town and saw the guards, I wanted to roll a Paladin… but Big Dogg there are no paladins in D4. Uh fellas you know you eff’d up right?