I’m obviously going to have more nitpicks/negatives things to say here (because I want them fixed) but if it’s not mentioned here, assume that it’s very good and is of the quality that I expect from a Blizzard title.
Good:
Potion system is possibly the best thing about D4. It’s not the most innovating thing ever but everything that I’ve enjoyed about D4’s combat is related to this.
Some item bonuses weren’t overpowering but game-changing enough to not want to replace them with “upgrades.” I like making choices like this.
NPC dialogue VO was on point and the amount of random gossip throughout the area was fantastic! Way more world building than D2 or D3 had.
In-game cinematics (with the dynamic camera) were super well done! I love the intro with the horse, wheelbarrow!
Love the crazy, twisted, gory, corrupt world that’s being presented.
Disappointing:
I like that the action skills are colour-coded when they’re imbued with a damage type but, overall, I’d rather the ability icons be grayscale (like they were in D1 and D2).
Champion packs and uniques are barely noticeable compared to any of the Diablo games. I don’t notice them until I realize they can’t be killed in 2 shots. They used to have a blue/gold aura around them (with coloured nametags).
The in-game cinematics related to Nereille (sp?) and her mother desperately needed to have a dynamic camera.
There’s no buttons on the HUD to click on to get access to the character/inventory screen with the mouse. There’s 2 keys (“I” and “C”) to access it via the keyboard but nothing for the mouse.
The emotes wheel is nice and all but why remove the (classic) emotes from the numPad? The wheel adds extra steps! There isn’t even the option to map emotes to the numPad.
You can zoom with the mouse-wheel but you can’t zoom with the (classic) “Z” key.
The light radius emitting from the player finally makes a return in D4 but it’s missing the line-of-sight logic.
Overworld doesn’t look like it’ll have enough longevity for multiple playthroughs considering that it’s 100% static. Even D3 had SOMETHING in the middle to make it somewhat randomized… and then they fixed it in RoS. No idea why that was thrown away for D4. I don’t think the MMO part of it is worth it.
Some objectives on quests (including main quest) got repetitive fast. Taking a mcguffin to a shrine, read text, to take the same mcguffin to another shrine and repeat 3-4 times should probably be cut by half.
I like the idea of having doors to encourage players to explore more of the dungeons before progressing but I feel as though the best way to do that is if I don’t discover rooms through walls. Don’t force me to explore, entice me! I used to clear every floor in both D1 and D2… I would love to do that in D4 but, with the large radius at which I discover the dungeon layout and the poor variations of chunks of dungeons, I’m not really enticed.
||EDIT||: I’m aware that, in the plethora of players who grind the endgame for loot, I’m a minority but I don’t like meta progression. Knowing that I’m unlocking skill points and potions account-wide is disheartening for me because I’d rather start a new character from scratch rather than have a boosted level 1 character that can no longer experience the game from a fresh perspective. I’m not 100% sure this is the case in D4 and maybe there’s bad wording but there are notifications in-game that tell me that I’m unlocking things “on my realm” (whatever that means) and I don’t like how I’m interpreting it. D3 had meta progression and it was awful (for me). Can’t stash items in hardcore because the next character can start with better items. Paragon levels carry over, etc, etc. The best part of D1 and D2 was being able to re-experience the game with fully randomized dungeons and loot.
Bad:
Dungeon layouts… not atmosphere, or theme, or presentation… LAYOUT. They’re D3 bad! I know Blizzard refuses to go back to the tile-based random layouts but the least they could do is make sure that those giant chunks don’t look like they’re being repeated over and over when you open the map. Maybe Blizzard doesn’t have enough chunk variants for each dungeon theme.
Bosses or anything for that matter, for any reason, should never, ever, EVER 1-shot kill players. I wrote some basic logic down bellow but the idea for “tough monsters to get gud” is to make the players use the potion system… and make them RUN OUT of potions.
Yeah, really agree about this. One of the best surprises for me in the beta.
However, the refills drop way way too frequently outside of boss fights.
Well, if severely undergeared, oneshots might happen of course. But in a balanced power scenario, indeed, it never should happen.
Oneshotting, both ways!, is meaningless gameplay.
Yeah, definitely agreed. Should have had more randomness within the overworld. Heck, even stuff like what Grim Dawn does to make things feel a bit more random through barrier placements and what not.
Doubt. Some of us like a challenge that can be overcome by adapting, learning. Also, if you dont have team wipe mechanics you can still have a decent game, but you rarely have a panic situation where the team scrambles to fulfill their roles, other than slowly being whittled down by a boss based purely on poor positioning.
Sorry, but the latter approach gets boring fast. At least have divers bosses, some with one shot ability, others the bullet sponges that you like
i do notice this too. sometimes i dont even notice if i’m fighting an elite unless the fight is already over and theres some good loot that dropped and i’m thinking “was that an elite”? or in the middle of the fight i am looking at name plates to see if it says elite. its not obvious like say a color coded name plate but i guess thats a me problem.
this i will mostly agree with. bring me to 1 health so i understand i need to watch out for that attack and at least give me a split second to heal up and see if i can redeem myself. but… i played enough games to know that there are instant kill mechanics in many games so i wont bother complaining about it.
My argument to this is that panic situations would be from lack of potions (or waiting for the potions to regen your life fast enough) or just being overwhelmed by the amount of AoEs to dodge…
So you’d still want to overcome and adapt the various bosses/mechanics. It really comes down to how much potions we’ll have access to and how many will drop during a fight. Something Blizzard desperately needs to be aware of and balance.
Wipe mechanic is there, it just doesn’t need to be immediate.
Being 1-shot isn’t a challenge for me; it merely makes me redo the fight… or, in a lot of cases, reroll a new character. I will say that, even when I’m being 1-shot, D4 didn’t make me feel like I was cheated on unlike a ton of games. I could (and will most likely have no choice) live with it but I still think it’s fundamentally bad.
That’s fair. I bring it up hoping that Blizzard can see how they can leverage their health potion system and basically fix a common problem with most games. They managed to turn the concept of “spamming potions” in D1 and D2 into something a lot more interesting for D3 and D4… so why not go a step further?
Why not diversify? That’s a great way to turn the general player base’s ire towards the alchemist and Blizzard’s handling of potion system. Have you ever played FF14 or Lost Ark?
Why narrow the experience down?
Having the panic set in because you have no margin for error once or twice in a long fight because the conditions for the wipe mechanic is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it is a tier of mechanic we havent seen yet, and one that I found most exciting, personally.
1-shot are indeed challenging, you have to be knowledgeable and accurate which leaves most players feeling accomplished and thus fostering a good relationship with the title.
I felt like they had a more noticeable health bars and they had icons underneath the bar showing what special attributes they had. It seemed fairly obvious to me after playing a bit and figuring out what to look for.
The bright auras and nametags from Diablo 3 were one of things that people felt made the game too colorful and cartoony.
If people can do chaos runs, baal runs, tomb runs, rifts and greater rifts… the dungeons will be fine. It’s literally the same gameplay loop, just with an open world where you go to the dungeons.
I guess since the monsters scale with you you can run whatever you want, but yeah, i think they will probably be fine… and there are 4 more regions we havent seen with monster families we have yet to experience… so theres that too
I have and I don’t think they’re very good. In fact, it’s the instant-death mechanics that make them much worse than they could be. I mean, there not very good for many OTHER reasons but, still, this isn’t a “plus.”
I’m not sure why you claim that not being insta-gibbed by a monster’s ability “narrows the experience down.” If anything, immediately dying to a single attack interrupts any engagement you might’ve had.
They have a gameplay mechanic working. It’s right there! Bring the health of the player to 1 HP and those that no longer have potions will practically have the exact same experience as anyone who gets one-shot. The DIFFERENCE is the perceived notion that the player always had a chance beyond “don’t get hit.”
Having no more health potions and barely any life left thinking “I can make it!” only to fail right after is WAY MORE interesting that just being instant-dead “because boss lolz.”
