First of all, let me just say that I’m super impressed with what I’ve seen so far.
Super happy with:
- Graphics design philosophy/tone/esthetics/quality
- Lore/story
- Dialogue/voice acting etc.
- General technical quality and performance
- Combat
- Game world
Queues
Please make sure you avoid queues on launch! This weekend (and next) should give you all the data you need to avoid it.
Loot
Loot drop frequency was good. A full haul after 15-30 minutes is good as it forces you to take small breaks at reasonable intervals.
The loot design seems to be a step in the right direction from both D1 and D2, but it may be a little bit too conservative and doesn’t seem to be a revolution yet. I hope you are holding back for launch here and that you are getting ready to “blow our minds”. If not, you should study Magic the Gathering’s philosophy of rotating/evolving the metagame etc.
For a weekend beta like this, the legendary drop rate felt appropriate in order to get to actually test a “full build” in such a short time. I do expect the legendary rate to be dialed back a little but I’m hoping that the loot pool will also be significantly expanded with more legendary items, making all skills viable build options, if so, it will take a lot of time to farm a build if the legendary drop rate is significantly reduced.
The Lizveth legendary frequency felt very good though! Limited currency but high frequency is a great approach! I only wish she would print level-appropriate gear.
Level scaling
The hybrid level scaling model seems very appropriate and fairly well implemented in the beta. Even though it doesn’t feel great that the enemies are keeping up with your advancements, it was well balanced and keeping strongholds locked is a very good call!
I wonder though if the level 35 boss that spawns in the exact same place on a regular interval is an experiment designed to test how far players are willing to go? This turned out to be the only reliable source of level 25+ gear in the beta and so there was a long lineup of people just waiting for him to spawn. Since this gear rolled with stats you couldn’t obtain reliably elsewhere, and since the roll ranges were also much better, this meant that all other content was immediately rendered pointless if you were looking for the best rolls. Ideally there should be many such sources and they should be hard to beat reliably (world bosses and high level strongholds etc.). Minmaxers will always farm the places that give the best rewards, even if it kills the entire game (well demonstrated here and in D2 - Lower Kurast farming etc.).
Repec price
Respec price adds nothing of value to the game. Full respec should never take more than 1-2 hours to execute. If it does, the punishment is too harsh for making bad choises and testing your build hypothesis/testing that new item that dropped and you never knew existed. Finding something that surprises you and which inspires you to make a new build is one of the best experiences in a loot game. Making the process itself punishing removes that enjoyment entirely.
Multiplayer
In general, PvE multiplayer feels rewarding and very enjoyable. The Diablo games have always been miles ahead of other games in this space. I still think grouping with strangers should be incentivized more though.
The current loot design and drop frequency requires a group to be very synchronized to avoid frequent pauses waiting for other players to go through loot. This was semi-annoying, even with a group of close friends. It would probably be terrible with random people taking language problems, lack of voice comms and very different skill levels into account etc.
Network performance
Our usual group spans accross the US and Europe. We did not experience significant lag issues/rubberbanding etc. and in general the “netcode” and associated network design seems very solid. It was perceived much better than the experience in Diablo 3, but we would expect nothing less as the pace is slower.
Level design
It has been said many, many times already, but let me echo the message: Backtracking kills enjoyment. Mission objectives must be diverse. Hopefully this is an artefact of a limited beta scope and that you are holding back for the full release. If not, it is critical that this is fixed ASAP.
Procedurally generated dungeons
When tile sets have this much personality and the tiles are entire rooms, then the familiarity doesn’t get broken by adding procedurally generated dungeons - Random sequences of Sydney Opera houses, Golden Gate bridges, pyramids and Big Ben’s gets boring after you have seen it five times. I really hope the full endgame tileset allows you to do more to create uniqueness.
Loading
The game looks and feels fantastic in general. There is obviously a lot of data being moved around. The game has been “marketed” as a fully immersive open world with no loading (granted, in the overworld, which is probably correct). In this context it feels really bad when you have to experience two loading screens just to enter a cellar or similar, especially when the loading takes longer than completing the content. BTW this is on a high-end rig (4090, 32GB ram, gen. 4 NVMe etc.). Improvements and optimizations in content streaming would be appreciated.
Exploits
I haven’t found any item duping exploits yet. It didn’t take long to find that you could modify the level requirements of your gear and I believe that was not as intended as it would allow you to gear up a level 1 character with full level 27 gear etc. I’ve submitted a bug report on it. Considering how easy it was to find this exploit, I don’t think you have had the product properly tested for exploits yet. If this is representative to the securiy testing, then I expect we will have lots of fun and game breaking exploits popping up short after launch, especially since this is a PvP game also (this nearly destroyed The Division, so be warned).