This post is just to voice my opinion about the beta. It goes without saying that these are personal preferences and should be considered entirely subjective. That being said I will try to refrain from suggesting implementations that could affect other players’ experiences (thus making these implementations less likely).
I will use a structure that I think is easy to select through, for those who do not want to read the whole thing.
- PRESENTATION
—The Good—
In terms of aesthetics Diablo 4 is shaping up to be a gorgeous game. I enjoyed the general art direction, the color palette, the attention to graphical details.
Even if we got to play in a single location (I did not venture beyond the Fractured Peaks), the biomes were diverse and detailed enough to really give the impression that I was exploring a new world, while still suggesting real life cultural and historical connotations. From a visual standpoint my favorite location was the monastery themed dungeon which seems to be a melange between Eastern Orthodox Christian churches and Oriental Buddhist temples.
The monsters are also unique enough ranging from the more dull spiders to the actually interesting infested corpses and werewolves to the awesome vampires (both the new ones wielding swords as well as the updated version from Diablo 2).
On top of this I noticed that the skill buttons have the cathedral painted glass look which I thought was really nice.
—The Bad—
I generally do not like the UI. It scales poorly, some of the windows (like the map) are too large and there is not enough customization available. In fact this is my main complaint and suggestion for change: PLEASE ADD MORE TOGGLE OPTIONS FOR THE HUD ELEMENTS.
The fact that you cannot disable all pop-up text over monsters, other players’ name tags and health bars and that hideous chat is seriously marring what is otherwise a great and immersive experience. Like I said, I know this is personal preference and that some people find these elements useful but a toggle for them would make everyone happy with little effort.
It terms of customization options I really hate that gender politics or excessive modesty made it’s way into the game. Whatever it is, I don’t like it. I am all for diversity, in it’s true form. Let everyone decide who they want to be. If I wanted to be a busty young sorceress it should be as easy as being a 3 m tower of muscles (which is in the game). Yet somehow, the laws of nature in Sanctuary do not permit large breasts and excessively feminine faces.
I do like that all the jewelry and tattoo options extend to every character, as it allows for a lot of cultural fantasy.
- STORY
—The Good—
I do not have much to add here as I only played up to meeting our Horadrim friend in order to avoid spoilers. I would like to leave as much as possible for the release so I can get the full experience all at once.
That being said, what I did see looks good to me. The premise seems solid enough and the voice acting is good (as long as you are not too bothered or too serious about Slavic accents).
- GAMEPLAY
—The Good—
I really enjoyed playing as the Sorcerer. The class has a good combination of new and old iconic skills and mixing and matching them together is fun.
Even if I skipped the story there were still plenty of interesting activities to do that kept me engaged. Also what we saw really got me hungry to experience gameplay at higher levels when skills and items really start to synergize together.
Contrary to what I mostly saw on the forum up to this point, I really liked the dungeons. They look awesome and are for me personally a step up from the rifts in D3 and farm zones in D2.
I particularly enjoyed the class systems that activate at level 15. The passive effect from spells was really interesting and got me experimenting with different builds.
—The I’m Not Sure Yet—
I feel we did not get enough information about the itemization. Some of what we saw is heading in the right directing while other choices are questionable.
I don’t like that sets and especially runewords will not be in the base game. I tend to lean towards the D2 itemization while despising the D3 one, so the lack of the above mentioned makes me feel there will be at least some D3 based solutions for this topic.
However I do appreciate that now all classes can drop all item types instead of being pigeonholed into class and stat specific, so at least there’s that.
—The Bad—
Two words: Class balance. I left this for last because it has already been discussed, but I still felt the need to point it out.
It’s not that one class is OP (as when you reach level 20 things start to even out for the Sorcerer) it’s that the other two are weak, especially the barb. The class fantasy for them is that they are war masters with notable endurance and combat skill, yet they feel like little sissies fearing a slap from a beefed-up-goat-with-a-sword. What happens when they meet Diablo?