The first thing to say is that I’ve been happy with what I’ve seen and I’m excited to play much more, although there are many things that should be improved for a satisfactory end-game experience.
After having extensively tested the beta, I wanted to point out some points that I liked and others that I did not like so much, I have to say that everything I will expose is from my point of view about what could be improved in the future in the game.
First I wanted to start with the points that I have liked in what I have seen so far in the beta:
1. Graphics: the current style is visually spectacular, it’s a joy that the cartoon style of Diablo 3 has been put aside and it has become a more real and dark look. As far as the dungeons, open areas, towns, enemies, and characters look, it all looks pretty good.
2. Skill Tree: I have to say here that there are some things I like and some things I don’t like, but I’ll only talk about the positive, it’s nice to have a skill tree again in Diablo 4 where you can invest your points. level in making different and customizable constructions and having to think about where we invest each point, making each decision we make important.
3. Gameplay: this is a great point, since for me the way we move around Sanctuary is incredible, the fights against the enemies and the bosses, the use of the skills, everything is very well taken care of and is quite satisfactory For me this aspect seems very important and its finish is excellent and very well cared for.
4. The open world: well, I have to say that being able travel across Sanctuary wherever and whenever you want, finding different places to explore, different side quests, finding small towns is something very nice too, getting lost Sanctuary is definitely a great choice and very incredible experience.
5. Itemization: I also see light and shadow here, but again I’ll talk about the positive. There is some improvement with respect to Diablo 3, the rare items now have an important value, since a legendary power can be imbued with it, so if you find a rare item with perfect stats and you put the perfect legendary power for your construction you will have a great item, the variety of stats on the rare items is also another big plus, not counting the available mods that can be made to the items in-game.
These are some of the aspects that from my point of view I have liked the most, there are some more that I have also found good, such as the return to a darker and bloodier setting also accompanied by an acceptable soundtrack that is equally in keeping with the style dark and bloody game.
Now I would like to talk about the aspects of the game that in my opinion I have liked the least and that I think are very important to work on for a better gaming experience, since I consider them quite important to be able to enjoy the game for a long time.
1. Dungeons, basements or caves: For me here is one of the big problems I see currently, all the basements in the game are the same, a stair that goes down to the small first room and from there a small corridor to a larger room where there are 4/5 enemies and that’s all. Is it really normal that all the basements of the houses or of the caves that there are for Sanctuary are the same? It’s absolutely boring going into the basements, you waste more time on the loading screen than the time you spend or what you see inside the basement, it’s like everyone in Sanctuary has hired the same builder. Is it possible to do more variety of basement content as well as much more diversity of basement style?
The same goes for the dungeons, at first they seemed great to me, but when I did two dungeons I thought oh I think I went into the same dungeon as before, but it didn’t, they are just all totally the same, at the beginning of the dungeons they are very diversity of rooms and corridors all linked, but there comes a point where as always you arrive at a central door that of course cannot be opened and there is a corridor to the left and another to the right where the activators to open the central door are, well Well, that is the same mechanism for the 23 dungeons in the beta and not only that, but that type of dungeons that you find in story mode are totally the same, closed central door and two corridors on each side where you can activate the opening mechanism . Like the basements this is an important point, I completed 18 dungeons in a 3 day beta and I got totally bored with the dungeons and I didn’t want to do them all and we are talking about a 3 day beta in one act. I want this topic to be touched on in depth by the devs.
2. Skills: as I mentioned before, the skill tree seemed like a step forward with respect to Diablo 3, but I didn’t like the way the builds must be builts due to the resource limitations that we will always have , in part it may be that in the future with more advanced constructions, with more skill points available, paragon and better equipment that will be different, but from what we have seen until now practically the builds consist of a basic resource generating ability that is practically the most used, since we will always be low on resources, another main ability, which will spend our resource, which is the one that we are going to maximize to be able to use whenever we can and the one that will be our greatest source of damage to the enemies, the rest will always be the same, a secondary damage skill to the main one that will have cooldown, another defensive skill with cooldown, another movement skill with cooldown and the ultimate skill with, of course, cooldown. What I want to get at is that we are forced to have this type of construction because it is impossible (at least for the moment) to have two, for example two massive damage abilities that spend resources because we will hardly be able to use them, since we will always be without resources, practically almost We are always using the basic one and then the main damage one and then playing with the cooldown of the other skills.
3. Lore and Npcs: For a lot of people the lore of an arpg is not important, you just want to kill and get the best loot. For me both things are equally important, I understand that this is a beta, but, although I’m liking the story and how it’s told, I’m missing something that tells us how it links to Diablo 3, what has happened in those years, what has happened with Tyrael, with the world, the nephalem… I think blizzard knows that the story of diablo 3 is a big failure, but I would like to see how they link it up and fix it. What I lack, at least in the beta, is more lore content, in the form of pedestals, with a book, scrolls where they tell us the history of the different sanctuary sites, of the past, of old or new characters, about hell it would make the immersion in the game even more amazing but it’s not like that you go through a lot of places we don’t know with huge libraries and nothing no explanation no audiobooks, nothing to me it’s a huge flaw something that has always characterized the saga since Diablo 1.
The npcs, here I also have to say that I am very disappointed, they are incredibly uninteresting and very disappointing, having super recognizable npcs with great stories, with many things to tell you depending on when you talked to them about how it happened in Diablo 1 and Diablo 2, to have diablo 3 style npcs, zero interesting where for each conversation option we have with an npc (which are usually a maximum of two or three) it gives you answers of one or two sentences, where it doesn’t tell you anything interesting or It tells you nothing that calls your attention about the situation of Sanctuary, neither about its history nor about anything that is relevant, where are npcs like the Farham, Ogden, Elzix, Drognan and many others?
Anyway, now the npc have first and last names, but for the story they tell, the lore they have or the depth they give you depending on the town you are in, they could return to called villager #1, villager #2 and villager #3 with a phrase that had diablo 3.
4. Loot and itemization: As I said before, I really liked the rare items because they can be useful again, but what are the white and magical items for? I mean, if today the white items are only good for the first 10 minutes of the game, why not remove them?
The way I see it I would love to see those diablo 2 base items again that were hard to find with perfect or very good stats, but if you found them they could be the base on which to build something new, for a greater diversity I would like that the white items could come out with higher statistics with which they can be used in the future in some type of modification.I also wanted to comment on the magic items, they said that, as in Diablo 2, they would again have low stats, but much more powerful than the rare items, so they could be useful, but from what I’ve seen they don’t work. not at all, nor do they mean anything with respect to a rare item with low stats, I don’t think having two stats, no matter how high they are, can beat the worst rare items you find since they have much more variety of stats, in Diablo 2 there were magical items that could be almost impossible to find, but if you found them they could be the most valuable in the whole game, that’s what makes diablo 2 wonderful in this sense, being able to find and have white, magical or rare items that They are very difficult to find in the game but at the same time the most valuable thing you can have, even more than the most expensive of the runewords.
Could you here do the same and let the rng of the game give you a magical, rare or white item that is incredibly hard to see but might be the best thing you’ve ever found? Hopefully they don’t leave out the magical, rare and white items, I would like them to be an important part of the game as well as the legendary items, uniques and sets.
5. Soundtrack: I wanted to make a small mention about the game soundtrack, in general terms I said that I like it and it’s acceptable but many times it’s very linear, that is, there are times when it doesn’t tell you anything and it’s too ambient, it doesn’t have moments of rise that make an impact or that you have areas with “iconic” music to call it that, yes, it is very difficult to beat the soundtrack of Diablo 1 & 2 but I would like it to have a little more force at certain moments of the game so that be a great soundtrack.
In conclusion, I have a mixture of positive and negative feelings, in general terms I am happy with what I have seen so far and I want to think that they are on the right track, but the negative points that I have mentioned are very important to me and I would love to see them work on them. points mentioned before, of course this is just my point of view from what I’ve seen so far, I just want the game to go further and continue to grow in a positive way, that’s why I decided to make this thread about my feedback from the beta.
