User-Interface
Probably my biggest concern is just how rigid the UI is in general. While I’d prefer to be able to move aspects of it anywhere, I would certainly be fine with UI scales like in WoW, or the ability to shift aspects of it to preset locations (I realize you can shift it to the left on the beta).
The UI also doesn’t display enough information in regards to debuffs. Knowing how long you’re frozen or stunned is pretty vital information, and AFAIK, there’s no information that displays when you’re in this state.
Biggest thing of all UI related is lack of a proper overlay. It’s basically a staple of all ARPGs (including all Diablo games) and it’s just jarring to tab to a fully revealed map. It’s not make or break, but it was certainly the biggest aspect of the UI that I noticed almost immediately.
Dungeons
Some of this is hearsay from people who have closed beta, but as I understand it, the dungeons still are objective based at the end game. While I think this is fine while leveling, some of the layouts don’t really lend themselves to being fun long term if there’s a lot of back tracking. If the dungeon is cleverly made to where you’re more or less killing monsters the entire time, it’s actually fine. If you however have to back track multiple times to bring keys, or stationary objects that’s when a rub starts to exist.
It’s fine the first few times, but in a game that asks you to farm areas potentially hundreds of times, you’re only going cause people to get burned out with excessive backtracking as the core loop of the game as stated is just (kill monsters, get loot). Excessive walking (over world is fine) in a dungeon just doesn’t feel good. If players miss stuff or aren’t optimal in routes that’s a different complain, but if you’re being optimal and still have to backtrack through nothing, this is a problem.
Again, this is from what I heard. I have no experience in end game dungeons, but if they’re the same as the leveling dungeons with more density, loot and affixes that in my eyes will get old pretty quickly. If true it’s sort of a shame because the sound and visuals in these dungeons is great, as most players will devolve into farming the most efficient dungeons. Very similar to how people approach farming in D2, fishing for rifts in D3, or even games like PoE where you have like 100 maps but people only do them once aside from like 6.
Gems
They take up too much space in the inventory. Have a separate tab for these, and any currency you plan to add in the future (like runes). If doing overworld content or dungeon content resorts in doing town trips after short sessions every single time, it will be more about inventory management than just killing monsters. Removing things like gems from the equation would help alleviate this immensely.
Overworld
Not many issues here aside from some of the overworld quests. The quests where you just run over things are absolutely fine. The ones where you have to individually pick up items with clicks on the ground up to 15-30 times are sort of obnoxious though. It’s small but either have these items auto-pickup as well, or at least allow them to be picked up in bunches. (For example if you’re picking up ghoul hearts and 5 are on the ground, why can’t it just be 1 click to pick up 5, instead of 5 individual clicks). Seems easy to do, and considering how friendly and QoL the game is in many aspects, I doubt this would be an issue.
Seasonal
While obviously in the future and these issues might already be sorted out internally just some feedback for seasonal stuff in general (at least core stuff). In most games, I’m not a collector at all. However, I don’t mind collecting things once (statues of Lilith for example). I find it fun to explore the world once and if I have to hunt down and collect like 125 of these things, that’s fine. I feel however that some of these elements should carry over from season to season, as to not make the game so checklist oriented. Asking players to collect the statues once for the bonuses is absolutely fine, but having to go through and collect these every single season for 2-3 hours would get pretty old.
Ultimate abilities
Personally I think you should just add an additional skill slot for this one. Abilities on a 40-70 second CD (or longer, aside from like a CD) don’t really feel great. Again, this is based on the beta, but I feel like these abilities are either rarely going to be taken, or just have to be taken. Forcing you to take one, but having it’s own dedicated spot would probably be best for overall balance. I don’t know, but super long damage CDs in ARPGs in general just don’t feel good to press at all.
Overall
At it’s core I think the game is pretty solid, despite the above criticisms. I have no idea what drops are suppose to be like on Beta compared to live, nor do I have any idea how the paragon boards will impact skill choice decision.
Balance is whatever and without unique items, every power and the paragon board available it’s just hard to give an accurate critique. I will say for those that are complaining about beta balance to just chill out a bit. If any of you played D2 or any other ARPG, it’s clear that some classes just start out really strong relative to others (and D4 looks to be no different). There’s a reason why people gravitate towards Sorc in D2 for every season, or strong league starters in PoE for example.
The MMO aspects are fine, and I think a lot of people are giving it way too much hate. While the OW bosses time schedule are a bit annoying, as long as it’s something that’s not beneficial to do every single time they come up it should be more than fine. As it stands it looks like the rewards are increased for the first kill of the week. If it remains like that, I’m sure people can find a time that suits them.
Despite the queue length being long, I rarely saw people in the world at all save the occasional strong hold or event in the world (85-90% of my playtime was literally by myself). Shared world sure, but it certainly felt desolate to me and I think it strikes the right balance.
Game scaling up is of no issue to me TBH. The alternative is that the game doesn’t have open world aspects at all, and that some areas are just never used beyond the campaign. Granted, a system could be in place to where everything upon hitting max level is just max level, much akin to how Hell difficulty in D2 works. I doubt Blizzard is going to remake the game based on scaling issues.
That said the scaling felt fine to me. Sure I wasn’t completely overpowering mobs because they scale with me, but your talent point selections, legendary items and large increases from the mastery things that classes unlock certainly made me feel more powerful from the 20-25 range, as opposed to the level 10-20 range. I’d guess that a lot of people who were having problems played Barbarian, which doesn’t have access to that mastery as it requires you to go to a restricted area. Rogue/Sorc on the other hand has access to these, and boy do they give you a giant power spike.
Overall games core is good. I doubt all these criticisms I have with the game will be changed prior to the games release, but hopefully in time they do. If I had any wish I’d just hope the UI related stuff for PC gets a bit of love because the menus and static positions of things could use some fixing.