So after the Beta I said the aspect system needed to just save your highest aspect when salvaged. Low and behold, one year later …to quote Rhykker, “It is a huge win for D4.” I am glad you finally changed this.
PTR feedback:
(The people I play with are not blasters, not the 1 percent, nor have any desire to be the best. We are high end casuals who have a life outside of gaming. We play as long as a game is fun and you have a feeling of progression. We may or may not buy the battle pass or cosmetics. It just depends on how relevant it is)
Biggest issues with D4 seen in the PTR:
Pros:
— you no longer need to look through 1000s of yellow items, hours hours and hours trying to see which item is best.
—Aspects are saved now.
—Uber Unique items can be found by casuals with enough grinding.
—Pickup radius feels way better.
—Town and venders locations are way better.
—Helltide density is better but only gets really good in certain locations or when your threat level gets high. It drops though after killing a few groups.
—The PIT is a really nice addition and way more fun then NM dungeons since the monster packs are closer together and you do not have to stop to pick up items.
Thoughts on unwanted items:
—You start at lvl 100, with 100,000,000 gold and 1000 crystals and tons of other mats.
—Every time you made a new hero you could add to the total of resources. I made 20 to start with 2 B gold and 20k crystals So I could test to see if the drops economy worked.
—PTR had double legendary drop rate.
*After playing maybe 40 hours picking up every item other than yellows (because they are useless after lvl 100 and fill up your inventory really fast if you do. This means WASTED time in town every run to mark them all and then sell or salvage. VERY NOT FUN) and making one minion necro with decent gear finishing PIT lvl 73 and one Fire Bolt sorc with good gear worked to 12/12, I ended the PTR with about 500 million gold left and 500 crystals.
—So the way the game is currently, while we no longer have to look at yellow items, the system for getting gold and crystals is not working. I saw a top streamer saying the solution is to just trade people uber mats for gold from third party sites. Maybe the Top players will want to do this. But, if the expectation is that every person who wants to enjoy the game need to buy gold, the casual players will be turned off. Also, how are people supposed to get crystals. It cost 150 crystals to imprint 1 aspect on a 2 handed weapon!!!. So are people supposed to stop playing, go farm 150 yellow items. Return and salvage them before they can play again? I mean plenty of yellows drop over time but who wants to STOP PLAYING just to go to town to sell?
If it was up to me after a player hits level 80 to 90 there should be no reason for any items to drop other than legendaries in the new system. I promise, if instead of dropping a yellow item you just dropped a 35000 gold pile and 1 to 5 crystals that auto pick up and give a bigger gold drop sound It would feel so much better. It could be a function that works like instead of dropping the item, you just drop the gold it would be worth and auto salvage the item dropping the mats, AND giving the transmog for the item as well. People could keep moving and playing this way and spend much less time porting to town. This could even be a setting for “auto salvage” you choose at the blacksmith after reaching WT 4.
Thoughts on Gold:
People loved doing the goblin rifts to get mats. D4 has no such thing. Maybe if a Tree of Whispers had a daily quest location reward. But, my point is that people love seeing piles of gold drop. Even little ones but when you run over to pick up a gold pile of 1563 gold and need 500 000 gold for a 30 percent chance to masterwork 1 time, getting excited over 1563 gold is silly.
Annoyances:
—The most annoying thing in might be having a chest open while you are fighting and there are 5 yellow items and other loot mixed in and you are forced to pick up items you don’t want… then while getting hit try to drop the yellow items to have room to pick up you legendary items…
—the resist, armor, and damage reduction system is terrible. I had max res, 26k armor. 13 000 life, damage reduction aspects, and 30 percent damage reduction Gollum and was one shot constantly on pit level 50 or higher. I am sure if someone knew everything about how it worked they could glitch a way to stay alive but the casual players look are “max resist,” armor maxed, and assume if they die instantly the system sucks. If you want people to enjoy the game then find a way to be transparent. No casual player want to be one shot killed and with all the effects on the screen there is way to many times that you cant avoid getting hit. OR you have some other player who has skill effect blocking your visibility. You need a better system other than ONE shot kill a monster or be killed. I would be happier like how poison works. You have a second to drink a potion to recover and if too many mistakes happen then you run out of potions and die. If you get stunned or frozen then you die but only because you cant use a potion… THEN just have stun effects from monsters be the slower, and easily noticeable like the long backswing cleave animation. I know some people might disagree. But they are often top end players who dont understand or care about the casual gamer experience. They have hard core mode though. IT is where they should be if they are so amazing at never dying. The other people that say, “oh one shot mechanics are fine,” are the same people who seek out the most OP builds.
—So again, If I was Blizz I would make the game easier as a whole so the casual gamers have a better experience. This would make soft core less of a challenge, but this would make hardcore a bit easier too since you are removing the anti death potions and skills. Then the community would shift more to a balance between the hard and soft core communities where right now I imagine over 95 percent of people are all soft core.
Cons:
— items below legendary are useless by WT 4 or shortly after.
—not enough gold drops.
—not enough crystal drop.
—unique items are way too weak now compared to a legendary. They are supposed to be a legendary item is a Unique skill on it that has the ability to change a build. BUT what the developers don’t realize is that with LOCKED attributes and not NO tempering, unless the unique aspect is game changing then these are all garbage. I saw a comparison with a great rolled Legendary vs the Uber unique Grandfather and the uber unique is far less powerful. So, as it is now. Uber Uniques no longer have much desire to find. My suggestion is to add on a 5th stat spot making use all have a main or all stat roll and 1 temper spot. After season 4 you could adjust but as of now unique items are dead.
—monster damage scaling and resistance and damage reduction system is off.
—Tempering system is really bad. Either you need to let people temper and unlimited number of times. OR, have a bad luck protection where you at least get one shot at 1 you need. OR, have a once per day drop like on the first World Boss kill that lest you rest an item for tempers.
***EXAMPLE: My friend after the whole PTR finally found one item that was fantastic!! He was so excited. So happy. Really feeling like all the work was paying off. Then he went to Temper his mandatory skill for ice orbs. HE ROLLED EVERY TIME AND GOT ICE SHARDS!.. EVERY TIME. So he took the item to the vender super pissed off and hating the game. Salvaged his item and logged out hating the PTR. You 100 percent need to fix this. You need a protection from people NEVER GETTING WHAT THEY WANT!!!
*My idea for item rerolling or tempering would be this. You can CHOOSE the stat you want to roll but at a much higher cost. So basically if I want to gamble I just reroll but if I pay 10 times the cost then I can put on the stat I want. If people dont like this system or ANY system you have as being too easy then take those mechanic out on HARDCORE mode and they can play there. Game pass is going to bring in tons of new players to D4 and if you run them off just to make the super gamers happy, i think that would be a huge mistake.
There are other issues but this is getting long enough and I am sure other people will provide feedback on those. Hopefully these thoughts leads to a better game for us who love Diablo. On a side note. People’s experiences are theirs. Not everyone sees the same things. As an example of this: when playing on a controlled vs a mouse and keyboard, the time it takes to cast skill or move, or AIM a firewall makes gameplay totally different. Something one person says is easy may not be for the next guy. Your computer speed might give you a different experience as well.
Good Luck,
Hope season 4 can address these issues.