Here follows my Diablo 4 Beta feedback.
-Couple quick disclaimers just to give context, basically:
-I’ve played all prior Diablo’s with varying enjoyment levels (1- I liked but didn’t keep me going, 2-I loved, but mostly in singleplayer and LAN, 3-Mixed, really, Still play through a season every year or two, but find it mostly boring and not very involved)
-I only played during the open beta
-In that time I played the following: lvl25 Necromancer (big army, curse, bones) lvl15 druid (werebear & wolves), lvl 10-ish sorcerer (lightning focus, played exclusively co-op with a friend), and a lvl25 sorcerer (fire & ice combo)
-These are my OPINIONS and OBSERVATIONS from my time playing the beta. YOU, the reader, don’t need to agree, or disagree, or even have an opinion at all. I’m quite simply trying to provide more data in hopes that this game is as good as it possibly can be.
Alright, that’s out of the way, let’s get to it. So I basically wrote down notes the entire time I was playing. I’m going to TRY to organize them at least a bit, but I suspect that no matter what I do, this will mostly be a hard to read jumble of notes that someone wrote down while playing.
All things character:
-A toggle option during creator for whether or not markings appear on the face would be nice
-something in the character’s left hand in the menu needs to be in their left hand in game. YES, it’s minor, but my necro carrying their “weapons” backwards drove me mildly nuts the entire time
-More body styles would be nice across the board. I’ve seen the vitriolic debates elsewhere, I don’t want to repeat them here, just give players more choices. Problem solved.
-The CONSTANT heavy breathing/coughing/throat-clearing the character does is very annoying. Maybe a toggle option for that as well (there’s probably someone out there that LOVES it)
Core to the experience… Stuff
-THE LAAAAAAAAAG. Holy crow, it’s a bit nuts. Maybe if the game didn’t CONSTANTLY have to check in with daddy actiblizz at the home office every time we enter a new area, this wouldn’t be so bad, but throughout the beta, the lag was a constant problem. Area transitions, teleporting, any time another player wandered on-screen, god help you if you thought you were going to use the blacksmith at peak times, etc.
-On a similar note: ACTUAL single player. I understand that some players will just love running into “xXx-cAtMUrdEReR999-xXx” and their pack of rowdy mates whenever they round a corner… But some players WON’T. Just add an ACTUAL single player option. Job done.
-It is SO GREAT to see skills actually MATTER again! Building a character from the ground up and making synergistic decisions that lead into each other is great. It feels MUCH better than just “Go get to max level, then poodle around until the items that actually define your character drop”
-Inventory item sizes need fixing. Gems, armor, weapons, jewelry, boxes of goodies, all the same size.
-The dungeon system is silly. Doing a dungeon as a necro unlocked… A random item attachment skill for a rogue? What? I’m PLAYING a necro over here, WTF do I need with this random skill for a completely different class? That’s a little tongue-in-cheek; I can SEE the point and the fun to be had here, but make it some sort of optional mechanic, something like not even SEEING those dungeons unless the player goes and gets the “Item of Other Classes” or whatever. OTHERWISE it just feels like a waste of time. “Welp, here I am, trying to get all the levels and abilities I can for my barbarian, aaaaaand… All I can see on the map is dungeon after dungeon for every OTHER CLASS but MINE. Grr.”
-Can’t salvage an item because it’s for a different class? Or too high a level? Makes no sense.
-I LOVED that “evade” was made into a base mechanic, rather than having to make sure to get a mobility skill of some sort…
-… Riiiiight up until enemies started very pointedly doing the souls-like thing. “Ok, I’m going to start up an attack, here it comes, you better get out of the way because I’m going to one-shot kill you if it touches you!” Don’t get me wrong, I can see where the appeal is, and the other games have had tough monsters that you NEEDED to not be getting hit by as well, it just feels shallow and low-effort when the MAJORITY of encounters turn into that. And it’s not like there’s any OTHER way to deal with those situations. The monster forecasts it’s attack right at your feet, you either use this ONE MOVE that’s the same for all characters, or you get to eat respawn rigatoni (OR stunlock salami, situation dependent). It just doesn’t feel right. I come to Diablo for DIABLO. Not Dark Souls. Maybe tone it down a little, or at least add ways to make it function differently through gear and/or skills. Distance it covers, charges, recharge speed, how it looks, leaving a trail of some sort, adding to combat somehow, etc.
Fiddly Side Stuff, In No Particular Order
-Narrative dissonance: So Inarius has been living on Sanctuary fooorrrr… What? Centuries? Since Sanctuary was made? Don’t you think that it might, just MAYBE, have come up at least once in ANY of the other Diablo games about epic, literally WORLD ENDING STRUGGLES between angels and demons, … That there was a friggin’ angel just hanging out here all this time? The ENTIRE time? Mentioned at least ONCE? Even in passing? I’m sorry, very sarcastic, I know, But this makes no sense whatsoever.
-Need to put some serious thought into hitboxes and camera zoom levels. It’s a PARTICULAR problem with that world boss thing, Ashava, and that’s the example I’ll use, but the camera and hitboxes are a problem throughout. This Ashava thing is SO BIG that the player cannot see more than 1/2 of it at any given time because the camera is so close, which is kind of fine, really makes the big thing SEEM big. But then it starts attacking and it’s attacks are SO BIG and SO STRONG that it kills you when you can’t even see it on your screen yet. Couldn’t have even “evaded”, because you couldn’t even see that it was winding up an attack. What? What’s the player even supposed to DO about that? And then ADD to that the fact that fully 1/2 the time the attacks seem to extend just a bit BEYOND where they say they’re going, so you die when you thought you were safe. And add to ALL of that the utterly bonkers lag. Precision timing required+Unseen attack queues+inaccurate attack projections+lag. Mightn’t there be a problem there?
-So many cutscenes. And then absolutely nothing for dozens upon dozens of hours. I know that they are skip-able, and thank Tyrael for THAT, but this seems like a problem from trying to go all “oPeN WoRld”; you wind up having to front-load whacking great PILES of narrative, because shortly after that, you’re going to shove your players out the door and tell them to come back in 50 hours when they’re done sorting this pile of gravel by size. Ridiculous.
That’s all I’ve got (that I remember right now/wrote down, anyway). I’ll try to add EDIT tags if I remember anything else and come add it.
Again, I’m really not looking to influence anyone else’s overall opinions about Diablo 4, so much so, that I’m not even going to spell out MY overall opinion. I offer up my little opinions and observations in hopes of a solid Diablo game.
Here’s hoping!
Cheers all!
EDITED: changed example username to something without reference to a gender characteristic. Heaven FORBID someone saw that and realized that _____s exist! PS If you take it down again, tell me WHY, this time.