Diablo 4 Beta Feedback

PC General Discussion
1

Here’s the good and bad of my experience in the beta. Broken things down into categories.

Shared World

  • Just to be blunt - the shared world is all negatives, no positives, at least outside of town.
  • Seeing an event on your map, working your way there, arriving only to find someone else just finished it creates an absolutely garbage experience.
  • Running through a region and finding no enemies because someone else you ‘share the world’ with is like two steps ahead of you and respawns haven’t kicked in yet was terrible.
  • In terms of pure feel, it really hurts the Diablo feeling. I want my Diablo world to feel bleak and threatening. I want it to feel desolate and hostile. Having other players who aren’t in my party appear in my game outside of town just makes it feel like any MMO, not the dark, hostile Diablo world I hope for.
  • It increases lag, although I do acknowledge this is likely a simple result of this being a stress test, but it was definitely noticeable. Entering and exiting town frequently resulted in rubberbanding/being unable to actually leave town and enemies often jerked around the environment.
  • This is a bit forward-looking, but I have some fear that this is going to make it very frustrating to do world quests - having to search for enemies because other people have cleared them for you is bad enough in an mmo, but it may end up being game breaking for a diablo-style loot action rpg.
    The one caveat I will say is I did not have the chance to do the world boss, but I expect world bosses will be a fun addition to the game.
    Co-Op Gameplay
  • I leveled two separate characters - one in a party of two and one in a party of three. Both were really fun. This game is very satisfying to play with friends. Working as a party, playing and chatting, and just exploring and letting each other know when you find cool stuff… all great.
  • One thing I noticed was that the enemy health jump between party of 2 and party of 3 felt off. The jump from solo to 2 felt about right, but it felt like enemies scaled a bit much from 2 to 3. There were a few bosses in dungeons we fought that reached ‘this isn’t hard but its getting tiresome’ level of time investment to kill.
  • The lack of social features such as ‘forming your party’ or ‘chatting with your friends’ while in the game menus felt pretty bad. It’s possible I missed a hotkey somewhere, but I couldn’t find any way to communicate with others in-game during the menu before logging into my character or form a party before entering the game.
  • World events with a party were a ton of fun. Absolute blast splitting the work in the overworld events.
    Atmosphere/Visuals
  • Once you get away from other players, the game’s atmosphere is perfect so far. As long as no other players are around, it feels bleak and dark and threatening. Particularly in the dungeons. They felt superbly themed.
  • Some of the special abilities felt a little underwhelming visually. While skills like Caltrop and Lightning Spear felt great, some of the spells I expected to have a big impact like Chain Lightning, Blizzard, Meteor, and Poison Trap kind of felt pretty bland visually speaking.
  • Completing a stronghold and having it just immediately transform into a shared space felt really jarring and broke my sense of engagement with the game. I finish this epic battle without anyone helping me… then I turn around and there’re like 5 high level players just idling there afk right where it was happening was just really really stupid.
    One possible idea would be to keep it as an ‘isolated’ space until you left the area, then have it populate with NPCs and other players the next time you return.
    Story
  • While the story isn’t bad so far, it feels a bit intrusive. There were way too many cutscenes for what I expect in a Diablo game. It felt like when I was following the story I spent more time in cutscenes than killing monsters, and that wasn’t super great for this type of game.
  • The Main Story’s instanced events seemed a bit too long to not have any waypoints or checkpoints in the middle. Previous diablo games have always given the opportunity to take a break from the main story’s dungeon events via waypoints, and it allowed people to do only part of a story event if they only had a short play session.
  • Some npc dialogue seems to be unskippable. This is bad. No dialogue should ever be unskippable. I shouldn’t get locked into a 2 minute conversation because I tried to update my potion.
  • One glitch we noticed was that occasionally when doing story events in a party, one person would just not load the cutscene. They’d just get a blank screen while the rest of us were watching cutscenes. This happened multiple times over the course of our play sessions. They were able to skip the cutscene to get playing again, but missed out on the event other people were watching.
  • This game will 100% need something akin to D3’s Adventure Mode for seasonal play. Nobody is going to want to do this long and dialogue/cutscene heavy a story for an action game 3-5 times every few months. Nobody. Literally nobody.
  • A ‘Disable all cutscenes’ menu option would be really appreciated for subsequent playthroughs.
    Emotes
  • The emote wheel was frustrating to use on PC. It’d be nice to also have the ability to type the emotes into chat. /cheer or /wave or whatever.
  • Additionally, please don’t make us emote for quests in this type of action rpg. Asking a Necromancer or a Rogue to ‘cheer up the troops’ felt so out of place. It’s not an engaging quest mechanic and it just feels wrong in this style of game.
    Combat/Loot
  • The combat felt pretty satisfying and the difficulty curve for the opening areas was pretty well handled.
  • Controls were responsive except lag.
  • The one major issue we ran into was that, particularly in the snowy area, the mouse cursor often blended into the background and occasionally just flat out disappeared. I occasionally found myself unsure where I was casting because I flat out could not find my cursor. Checked with a few of my friends and they’d noticed the same concern.
  • Droprate felt pretty good for low levels, but I definitely hope that as you progress more loot starts to drop overall.
  • Gambling legendary rate felt great in my tests. Hopefully this wasn’t inflated for beta.
    Assorted
  • The UIs felt a little bit… excessive, especially considering we’re only seeing the basic ones. Additionally, some of the menus - particularly the talent trees - felt a bit inefficient.
  • Too much unnecessary white space that really doesn’t serve any purpose except to force us to scroll.
  • Some of the fonts felt a bit weird, although nothing I can’t tolerate.
  • I have some concerns about travel time. Particularly in two areas - first is travel time spent within the cities. The town layouts seem pretty awkward for the purpose of minimizing amount of time wasted wandering around a town instead of killing enemies with the gambler being far away from the extraction npc and the blacksmith and stash being far away from each other, etc.
    The second area I’m concerned about is a bit more hypothetical - I fear that endgame is going to feel really awkward because of how long the travel time can be from waypoint to dungeon when you’re doing nightmare dungeons - which may lead to boredom.
  • Dungeon layouts need some work - particularly with the goal of reducing backtracking and time spent not engaging in combat.
  • Cellars suck. They need far more variety than they have now, they shouldn’t be just a long delay before killing a single pack of monsters in a generic room that looks like every other generic room. Even in D3 cellars were better - some had little quests, some had vendors, some had rare packs, some had cursed chests, etc.
  • Shrines don’t last long enough.

Oh, forgot to mention: Respec costs suck. Let us play around with our skills. Please remove that before launch. We shouldn’t be penalized for wanting to try something or for getting an item that revolutionizes our build.

31 Likes
2

I would really like it if the cursor was high contrast to the background. I keep losing track of it during fights.

cross platform multiplayer could use some polish. It took my friends and I an hour to find each other and get in a party together.

I won’t repeat about the dungeons, as everyone has said that already.

5 Likes
3

Yes. They need some cursor customization so we can pick one that’s better for us individually to track. I certainly ran into that issue, as did my wife.

Hope they fix up the cross-platform multiplayer a bit, that sounds frustrating.

3 Likes
4

It was at first. One of our players was able to make it work better by linking his xbox account and his battle net account, but this made him lose a level 99 hardcore D2R character and all of his game history.

5

50 min que → error 316703 after 2 min ->103 min que low tier company

1 Like
6

Its a stress test. Queues and errors are 100% expected. Report them so they have more data… but do not act as though the stress test is indicative of the final product.

8

have been logged out because the servers are so bad about 6 times and have not even played for 4 hours yet, every time i have to wait 30min+ que. Fix the damn servers. it is worse then the previous beta release.

love the druid class.

9

Hello, FIRST OF ALL GREAT JOB SO FAR!!!

Glitch/error ? : I noticed in the first showing of your character while sleeping in the snow, after the horse dies and he finds shelter (for the necromancer) that his shield is equipped (during this still cut-scene) and clipping his left arm and shoulder (nearest to the camera),

So you’d expect the shield to already be equipped But then while your character first enters the scene (just as he exits the cave) --awake and active, just before you start playing, it shows the shield become equipped as if it wasn’t before.

Primary issue: 1.) the shield is dramatically clipping.
2.) If the shield wasn’t already equipped Then Why equip the shield? (I assume the the shield in the cut-scene shouldn’t be equipped at all and that is why it is clipping the character while sleeping)

On the mage the chatting with people is not able to be skipped --like the necromancers.

On the necromancer’s drinking scene the character after moving kinda glitches about as if the floor under him is changing.

The same scene on same character the gesture by the lady to drink is not timed properly with the words about one second.

The same scene the Necromancer’s drink in hand seems poorly aligned.

(I hope this is taken with the intent I mean by it which is not to nit-pick but to increase the games quality by providing the feedback a common user would see and think, for the devs to solidify this already amazing game.)

10

Random comments of mine:

  • The game could use the ability to zoom out a bit more (I’d say 20-25%)
  • Quest tracking could use some improvements as well - such as tracking multiple quests at once. Doesn’t need to be many, but 3-4 over just 1 would be welcome.
  • Some UI/mechanics could be described better. Codex of power, for example, has no description of what it does. Are the power passive? DO they need to be activated?
  • Transmogging is a bit clunky in its implementation (at least compared to WoW)
  • So far (level 17), I have no idea how to change the default Town Portal location, if it’s even possible
  • Teleport stones at the end of longer dungeons - as they were in D3 - would be a nice addition. If I do a dungeon on the way to a quest area, it sucks to either run through the whole place, or porting out and then backtracking.
  • Cinematic mode (or how to call it) for every single discussion (even two-line) with a quest NPC seems overdone
  • (melee) left mouse is sticking to movement a bit too much, rather than attacking enemies - exact opposite to D3 that takes a while to be used. Can this be adjusted (possibly in settings rather than globally) without decoupling movement and attack from LMB?
  • Auto pick-up of gems and quest items is missing
  • I, for one, like the change to healing potions - over D3 globes that would get consumed on a distance if you were at 99% health, especially if you happened to have large pickup radius.
4 Likes
11

Quite sure it was said somewhere that they upped legendary rate for the beta

1 Like
12

i really dislike the gear stats. the +1 ranks to abilities and just what looks like a bunch of low number jumble on it all in different orders on each item. it could be very confusing to a new player and at the same time a step backwards for someone like me thats been around since d1. (side info: i disliked d1 and 2 but loved d3)

i feel like there was so many people complaining about d3 and how d2 was better that they really tried to give d4 a d2 look and feel. but for players like myself who loved d3 and thought that it was 1000x more advanced in graphics and smoothness and movement we feel like d4 is a step backwards.

with that being said, d4 is still in beta and we are not maxed level yet with all of our abilities. so time will tell. but i really wish they would change the stats on gear because it really looks like something from the early 2000s before gaming got good.

1 Like
13

I’d prefer the zoom remain where i set it when starting a chat with a person. the zoom, auto zooms out and it doesn’t give that personal connection whit whom i’m currently talking.

i also noticed that during chat with a person i cannot zoom, it is a force zoom out and stay out. not sure why but im confident reason are there, but’d prefer different.

Thx again devs games looks great and is else going great.

14

the 4 health potion limit needs to go… period…

3 Likes
15

You get additional potion charges in the game, so by end game you’ll probably have ~9. Maybe more, depending on whether statues can also give it and whether there are any quest rewards that have it.

17

I just ran a dungeon, and had to pick up 3 bloodstones for a ritual. I found the 3 bloodstones before I found the boss area, so I was having trouble, as I could only carry one bloodstone at a time. This feature has to go. It already sucks to go and unlock the boss area, but it majorly sucks to go pick up the unlock items one at a time. It was boring game design to backtrack in an empty dungeon, but I would also hate to see new monsters respawn, just so that my backtracking didn’t feel lonesome. If you want us to pick up items for unlocking boss event, don’t limit us on carrying capacity, that is the worst mechanic ever, when we can carry a million items in inventory.

4 potion charges sure sucks in the beginning. I’d much rather have the D2 mechanic with as many potions as I want, to use at my own leasure. Some bosses are just so difficult, that 4 charges aren’t enough, when they don’t drop enough health globes for you to manage the fight. And seeing as many bosses run a good bit faster than us, it’s just tedious fights, as it’s possible to struggle even a simple kite. I’ve tried that with Den Mother and The butcher so far, impossible to outrun and very difficult to kite(atleast with druid at low lvl). I guess this also falls into the perspective that at some bosses, you NEED to be a ranged class, or have ranged abilities, because you can’t tank the massive damage spikes the bosses throw out. I tried Den Mother 3-4 times, switching my abilities untill I found the right setup with earth shield to block damage while I engaged. I did try the wolf heal, but those 20% healing felt like nothing and I was shredded almost instantly. It doesn’t feel that awesome, if the cool tanky classes can’t tank the damage or evade it like in D2.
In extension of this, it feels SO bad, that I can only gather Spirit on a druid from basic attacks. Again on the heavy hitting and tanky bosses, I use stormstrike, but really it goes for any melee ability. It’s tough to go in melee, because you take a lot of damage, but you can’t use the core abilities without gathering spirit from the basic abilities. I tried a few builds, also using the wind and rock spells, but they gain so little spirit, that I have to run for ages and throw a single spell to gain enough to do a core damage spell. The fun was just not really there. Could we atleast have a slow regen? Or better, give me a mana potion like in D2, as to control my abilities as I want. I hate this resource generate/spend combined with cooldowns. Don’t give me cooldowns, give me larger mana costs.

As many others have pointed out, having other players in my area fighting mobs is very annoying, if I didn’t ask for it. If I want that experience I’d go back to MMO’s.

It’s nice to find items with +skills, so I can try out spells without using skillpoints, thank you for that, that feels like D2 on that point. Especially, since some are available before I can get them by skills.

Druid pets feel lackluster at start, I know I haven’t unlocked much in the druid section yet, but still, almost not worth spending points on. Wolves can do a bit of tanking, which is slightly useful.

I found the leave dungeon icon on the map after clearing the dungeon, but it was only because I actively looked for it, and know many others haven’t found it. You might want to drop a hint or make it more clear that it exists. But I’ve tried after leaving the dungeon, that I’m stuck loading into the overworld. I’ve actually been loading for many minutes while writing this post, I guess atleast 20 minutes… I had to kill D4 with Alt+F4 and went back to the queue. Only 3 mins thankfully.

2 Likes
18

so just finished my final play of diablo 4 beta and i would give it a 6/10 it has ALOT of problems to fix before the june release which i suspect will be pushed back to either a fall or winter release or early 2024 release… theres just no way there even close to having this game done on time. graphically its one of the best looking games graphically ever. love the storyline… unforunently diablo 4 is on the elden ring kick with most major bosses having 3-5 mechanics and the whole dodgey dodge thing going on, (i hate elden ring with a passion) given the class i was playing which was the barbarian, he was so underwillming to play… he was much weaker then the other classes. the skill tree set is god aweful, the whole 4 health potion limit has to go… the other games you could have as many as your inventory could hold… other than that besides the dc’s and the client crashes. i say it leaves players a bit disappointed with what the beta brought… only 1 act… d3 had all the acts available when beta came out. so thats worrysome… so if anyone else is playing… or has play… let me know what you think so far…

19

When wearing two rings, it seems to be locked on your ‘best’ ring both for comparison and equipping a new ring from your inventory. Player must first unequip the ring they’re likely to be changing to compare them. This is purely my experience, I may just be missing something.

I enjoy the other player characters being in the world, but can also agree with a few other commenters who have said they see it as a potential issue game-wise and experience-wise. Are ‘invite only’ or ‘friends only’ worlds/servers available?

I have noticed on walled corners the edge may ‘stick out’ creating an invisible wall. This has only happened to me in ‘dungeon’ type areas, not the overworld.

Lastly, Player followers/summons seem to be a bit… energetic… if the PC is standing still in some locations, usually near a wall or other objects.

I am enjoying the game very much overall, and am very excited to play the full version on release!

21

I can get used to a lot of the changes but a gripe I have is one that came from D3… Dye should be easily removable and new gear should only have a rare chance of dropping with dye already applied. I do like dyes quite a bit, but in early game, my character ends up looking quite strange with mismatching dyes on new gear. This became less of an issue in D3 as you progress through the story, but in early game it is a bit jarring to have yellow gloves, blue pants, red shirt and green boots…

Removing dye in the wardrobe may be possible, but seems convoluted…Are you only able to remove it if you have already salvaged the look of that gear? A tooltip would be useful to better explain how to add dye or remove dye from gear. Why can’t I just go into my wardrobe and remove dye on my clothes?

Minimap and TAB map are nice, but a little more contrast in the colors would be appreciated. Particularly in towns I find that I need to keep one eye on the map and one eye on where I’m walking since I am quite colorblind. I end up running into walls often. I will likely get used to it though if it isn’t changed. The main town in the beta feels too big and too cramped to easily navigate.

22

I’ll add to the list for feedback. These are most of my negatives.

  • The game guides you to EVERYTHING. This is basically blind guy with guide dog simulator. Map pins feature tells you the fastest path to walk. Map quest pins tell you exactly where to go to find the NPC or quest objective. Dungeons are tunnels and never are an “open” design. There is literally zero ADVENTURE in this ARPG. No vague quests of “Go to the oasis and seek out this person” where you need to explore a zone to find something. The map doesn’t tell you where to go, it shows you. And pins will walk you there. And then more pins will show you were to turn it in. And who to go to next. Etc. It’s too much guidance and zero adventure.
  • The entire UI is straight out of mobile and console games. Nothing about this game says it optimzied for PC (read: keyboard + mouse). The map take up the whole screen and is not transparent to show combat or movement happening while it is up. Every menu (like the social menu) takes up the ENTIRE screen. Why??? Right clicking a friend in the social menu brings up a submenu that also takes up the entire screen. Why??? Honestly the D3 UI was lightyears better than D4. And chats??? Chats don’t hover over any menus (map, skill tree, social menu, etc.). The character selection screen??? D2 had a better character selection screen. At least in D2 (and D3) you could chat while in the character selection screen. You could create parties. The D4 character selection screen is literally a mobile game screen. No chat available. Can’t make a party. No menus are accessible. It is literally click your character and click play. WTF is that. The D3 character selection was WAAAAY better. You could access all menus and chat and join parties.
    Also, why the hell is the chat box on the right side of the screen lul. Can’t even move it.
  • More about the map: it’s not useful in towns. The colors are so washed out you can barely see where there are corridors and exits and stairs, etc. At least for the minimap in Act I.
  • The CONSTANT small petty crappy rewards. Killed 1000 creeps? BANNER, SIGIL, TITLE, BLAH BLAH UNLOCKED! You completed a regular event? Super title unlocked. Everything gives you these constant rewards. It feels like I’m watching my girlfriend learn a new language on Duolingo. After every lesson–“you earned 100xp”, “you earned an extra life”, “you earned the title of master”, and on and on it goes. Tons of these little rewards for stuff that takes zero effort. If you want titles to mean something, make the hard to get like feats of strength in D3. They should be something you have to seek out and accomplish something for, not just by walking through a zone and kill some creeps and BOOM you earned a reward. "You picked up the chalice from the table."100xp and quest notification. “You placed the chalice in front of the boss door.” 450 xp and quest notification. It feels SUPER mobile gamey.

For the love of GOD devs if any of you see this, do something for PC gamers. Make the UI/UX better for keyboard and mouse users. Diablo is a franchise built on dedication, blood, sweat, and tears of PC keyboard+mouse players. Don’t optimize everything for controllers. We need some love too.

  • Drop rates are way too high. Yes, I know drop rates are increased for the beta. But they need to be like D2 level. I don’t wan a full inventory of yellows after 5 minutes of play. Even worse when they are all good yellows. I don’t want 2-3 legendaries per hour unless I’m playing in the end game near max level and doing speed farming. Getting new gear should feel special. It should feel good. With drop rates as they are, it doesn’t feel like I earned anything or I got lucky. It just feels like tons of loot drops.
23

I did not know where to put feedback so I am dropping it here. Seems weird to have an open beta with no feedback, especially when you are a company that its own playerbase calls tone-deaf again and again.

What, you all dont have feedback buttons?

  1. Theme park. Thing is following the theme park platform of other games. This was seen as a major weakness of wow and its clones I feel that Diablo at least makes its quests feel immersive.
  2. Always online, whatever.
  3. The themepark goes right into builts. Meta this meta that. Don’t play a fury barb and expect to do anything agains that annoying girls mother because you need ranged, soak, or mobility. I can easily crush the fight by respeccing, which kinda takes the RPG feel out of it, tbh. breaks immersion and flow.

Really, I felt it was a solid game - it just betrays what I thought it would be and is not my cup of tea. I was not going to buy it, but I was impressed with the story and world, and then I hit the meta curve, and decided not to pursue it again.

I dont think it is terrible, just not my jam at all. Esport junkies will throve pumpin nubez on twitch though. gg bliz.