I hope everyone enjoyed Diablo IV over the two weekends of Beta. After 40+ hours and clearing all of the content possible in the Beta, I wanted to discuss how I felt, bugs, issues, the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Codex:
I’m not sure if this was intended by Blizzard but this issue I ran into doesn’t make any sense to me in regards to the Codex and how you unlock it for ALTs. Keep in mind when you hover over the Occultist in Kyovashad it states the Codex can be unlock by acquiring one of the Aspects from a Dungeon or by reaching level 25. If you made an Alt, and as long as you haven’t completed a dungeon that has an available Aspect to unlock, you could unlock your Codex. However, if you had completed ALL of the dungeons on your main or 1st character, this means you had already obtained all of the Aspects from the available dungeons, you couldn’t unlock the Codex until level 25. The Codex should just be unlocked for all ALT characters OR you have to be level 25 to unlock it on all ALT characters. It doesn’t makes sense that person A couldn’t unlock them until level 25 because they completed all of the dungeons but player B could unlock all of the ones they had acquired because they were able to do at least 1 dungeon that still had an Aspect available to unlock.
Transmog:
Please make one of the two following changes to the Transmog system:
A. If you find a new transmog it gets added to your wardrobe
B. If you either DE or Extract the Aspect it gets added to your wardrobe
*you shouldn’t get punished and not get the transmog just because you want to extract the Aspect
Bugs:
The 3 most consistent bugs that I ran into while playing Diablo IV were as follows:
A.) Unable to open chest, click on events to start them, loot items on the ground. You just wouldn’t be able to click on them. Logging out to the character menu sometimes fixes this and other times did not. Obviously during high queue times you just moved on as it wasn’t worth re-waiting in queue.
B.) Getting stuck in place in place in Dungeons. This occurred way to often in my opinion. This would be a major issue in Hardcore play as well. Whether it was one mob or several, you’d get stuck and not be able to use any of your abilities. The mobs would still hit you. This caused several deaths, but because I was playing SC it was just more of a hinderance than anything.
C.) In Co-Op the 2nd players screen would shake constantly. The 2nd player would also run into several instances were they wouldn’t be able to interact with anything and would have to leave the Co-Op party and rejoin.
The Good:
The overall experience within the Diablo IV world. I wanted to keep playing, keep slaying demons, and continue the story. I think this is a great start to the overall feel and aesthetic of Diablo IV. The player movement on controller felt very good. The story so far has been enticing and I can’t wait to delve deeper into the lore.
The Bad:
The repetitive dungeon designs. Yes, I know people have already mention this but it is really bad. It felt as if I just ran the same dungeon over and over and over. And even though some of the aesthetics where different in the dungeons, they didn’t feel different. They didn’t feel randomly created either. Even if the ‘box, key, statue’ whatever was moved, the dungeon itself felt very static. Even if this isn’t the case, perception is reality.
*Now, this could change when we start running the dungeons with different modifiers, at least the fights will feel different.
The Ugly:
Loot. I’m putting this under the ugly for this very specific reason. Legendary items should feel legendary. They don’t. Though they make your character much better with correct Aspects on them, I think the work legendary and the orange color needs to change.
*what I’d change to fix this: make the Blue items (grey or green if you don’t plan on having sets), make the Yellow items (blue), and make the Orange items (yellow). Get rid of the Orange Legendary Items all together. In this way your Yellows though powerful, don’t feel as if they are your best items. Super Unique items (GOLD) should fill slots that feel the most powerful. Runewords can be like a unique color or in a unique font to distinguish them from other items (i put this in because if blizzard doesn’t add runewords in the future, shame on you)
The UI on console looks terrible. Please give us the PC UI that is more akin to what a Diablo UI should look like and is centered on our screen.
The FONT! Diablo has a very specific font for it’s universe (Exocet). Let’s get this updated. Plus, why are there sever different fonts through all of the game? This looks trashy and very unprofessional from a AAA studio. Make of the font Exocet!!! ALL OF IT!!!
Skill Tree: It’s terrible to use and see on console. There are several of your fans that created skill tree calculators that look 100% better and are much clearer and would make more sense for console users.
Anyways, can’t wait to play in June and look forward to see what changes are made before launch.