Just wanted to list some things I found the game could improve on prior to release or maybe in the first six months after release.
Note: I am NOT a billion hour Diablo player. I didn’t even play D1. I beat D2 a handful of times and played a few hundred hours of D3. I’m not a 3 month player, but I likely also will not be a 3 year player. I’d consider myself somewhere in between, so this feedback should be taken with that in mind.
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Sprinting out of combat
While a full on stamina bar and stamina potions may not be suitable for a game in this day and age, I do miss being able to sprint and manage a resource that was present in D2. I had hoped this would make a return in some form. Therefore, my suggestion for a compromise is to let us sprint infinitely after using Dodge when out of combat. I can see why a stamina bar wouldn’t be included. This would then beg the question of “where is the stamina shrine” but do a majority of players really want a shrine that has no combat benefits? I do appreciate shrines giving a speed boost, but having no instant access to something like that in cities or areas you wish to quickly traverse without mounting up feels pretty bad. I think stamina pots would also just add clutter but maybe an elixir that allows for a massive speed boost would be nice. I just want to be able to zoom around town at a whim. -
Overlay Map
Just adding another voice to this topic. It’s been done to death already, we know it, you know it, doesn’t need to be expanded upon. Just give us a transparent map overlay please. -
Character Progression
I would like for stats to be more meaningful. D3 made them one dimensional and it made builds entirely reliant on gearing, which really takes away the interesting part of building a character in multiple ways.
I want to be able to dump points into specific areas on a class that may or may not be their ‘primary’ stat. I want to jack up my dodge stat, make my spells specifically more deadly, hit really hard, regardless of my gear options at the time. It may seem redundant with Paragon points sort of being the replacement for that, but Paragon alongside dedicated stat investment would make for a much more robust system of leveling up. Levels should mean more than just a skill point and a new unlock. -
Zoom functionality
Camera feels a little too close at times, so maybe the ability to bring it further out from the default would be great for a lot of players. Doesn’t need to be MMO levels, like what you see when you fight the world boss. Just a bit of zoom out is good enough for many people I imagine. -
Meta
This is half directed at the community but I feel it’s important to remind anyone reading this. There will always be a Meta. No matter how much you try to fight it, there will always be something that outperforms everything else. Maybe the next best thing is only a couple of percentage points behind, or even a fraction of a percentage. However, you cannot achieve perfect balance and the fight to do so is futile. The focus should be on making the variety feel fun and making sure there’s as little outliers as possible, and that people aren’t fully pigeonholed into getting THIS SET. There will always be that guy running the worst build because they like it, and they will complain about how their build sucks. Some builds will just suck, and that’s just a result of having choices. -
Sets and Runewords
Sets suck. They take up a bunch of gear slots for mandatory pieces because god forbid you try to run without the bonuses they give you. I personally don’t like them, but if the decision is to bring them back please limit them to 2 or 3 pieces. Full 5-piece sets do not feel good to play with. Period. It’s more interesting to mix and match smaller set bonuses that proc off eachother than have a set take up 80% of your gear slots and power up only one skill.
As for Runewords, I hope the devs solve their conundrum of how to implement them. I think, as others have stated, locking you to a single piece of Runeword gear would solve some of the issues D2 had. However, D2’s biggest problem with Runes was the fact that some of them were just straight up disgustingly powerful and everyone ran the same ones. Just don’t make Enigma again and I think it’ll be fine.
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Movement
I saw some folks asking for WASD movement and I find myself wanting this as well. I think ARPGs feel better with a sort of ‘twinstick’ control scheme. However, I prefer M&K over a controller, as I have rheumatoid arthritis and the sticks actually cause it to flare up a little. If nothing else, I’d love it as an accessibility feature of sorts. -
Last one. Skellingtons.
It’s been talked about a lot but the appearance of them just feels too much like a refusal to go back to D2 style completely, even though it’s what many of us want. This is understandable, as accessibility is important and what many people may not want to admit is that there are people who didn’t like how skellies in D2 looked because they were hard to discern from regular enemies. So clearly there needs to be something to their appearance that makes them easily discernable for everyone.
I don’t mind a faint blue glow, but the way it is right now is a little too cartooney for what this game should be. If they had a little blue flame in their ribcage, that would look cool. Think of the blue flame the D2 Necro conjures up when you choose him in character select. Just slap that in their chest and make them look more like a generic skelly. I think that would look immensely cool and fit with the aesthetic the game wants to go for.
On top of that, give us a toggle in the options for their glow. If it’s designed as an accessibility feature, let us toggle it on/off like the rest please.
That’s about it. I think the game is just okay right now, but could definitely be improved on and hopefully QoL changes can make it into the game prior to release. Still not sure if I’m going to buy it, but in its current state I think it’s a coinflip. I don’t feel like I NEED to get this game, the way some other titles have made me feel in the past. I love Diablo and the aesthetic this and D2 presents, but it’s not really pulling me in the way I had hoped. Still, I think the devs have done pretty well thus far. I can FEEL what the intentions are. I can feel the desire to move away from what D3 was. The effort and soul put into this are noticeable.
Thanks for reading.