Howdy. A little back story about me, I’m a long time Diablo Andy with 50 million hours - no, no one cares. Let’s get into the meat of this pie.
Itemization
The most important part of the game for me is without a doubt the itemization, how items work, the stats on them, and how they interect with your build. The items seem to be very bland and mundane. With only having 4 modifiers available on an item, it’s very rare to find an actual “good” item for your build. Especially since there are so many filler stats, or just flat out bad stats, I was not excited or hyped at any point in the game when I got an item drop. The Super Rare (orange items) were only useful to suck the aspect off and then slap it onto another item which was better rolled.
There are +# to X Skill or Y Skills, which are probably going to be the best modifiers on gear, along with + Core and + Basic damage, which are already rolling up to 35-40%. Depending on your build you will want different ones, for example a Frozen Orb will want to stack as much Core Skill damage rather than Basic Skill, as most of your damage will be coming from FOrb, using basics only for mana regen.
It feels like a very watered down and bland system. It did not seem to have any impact at all whenever I put on a new piece of gear, even when it was 40-60 item levels higher. The only thing I noticed at all was when upgrading a weapon, as weapons seem to be the most powerful part of your character by far.
Gear seems to exist as a very simple stat stick that doesn’t really do anything for your character at this point. They are only there to apply Imprints to. Whether or not this will be the same at the end game is yet to be seen, however from the people I’ve talked to about the CBT, it’s pretty much the same, barring only the best of the best drops like Sacred or w/e they’re called items.
Skill Tree
The second most important part of the game. The skill tree in this game isn’t really a skill tree, it’s just a “choose your path” tree, since at level 50 you’re going to have 63 skill points which is just about filling out the entire tree. There is no real choice in builds either, or in which skill passives to take. There is the “well duh I’m going to use that” skill, and then the other one. Most of which have such an incredibly small effect on your actual characters gameplay it’s almost entirely negligible.
When building my Rogue, I was either “Range” or “Melee.” When building for Ranged, it was either “Forceful Shot” or “Seeking (??) Shot.” Not much choice at all, there are only 2 options for your filler spam skill. The “Core” options were “Piercing Shot” or “Rapid Fire” - Barrage is pretty much useless in every aspect, and the only real use for it was to apply Vulnerability to a pack of mobs. The damage of Piercing Shot is unparralleled, especially when you have the Fork modifier from the Imprint. I found every trap to be pretty much useless, only using Poison Trap for the stun.
Caltrops / Dash were non-negotiable requirements for mobility. The Imbuements were meh, the only one I found to be of real use was Shadow Imbuement for the Explosions and the single target trigger. All of the ultimates were terrible, while Shadow Clone is basically just a 60% damage buff for 15 seconds - being the most useful…
It really feels incredibly shallow and fake. Even in Diablo 3 you could choose like 5 skills, and then there were 4-7 Runes to modify them with. It’s sad to think that the joke of a game which was Diablo 3 was better in this regard, but here we are. It’s very unfortunate to see.
Given the above, the build diversity seems to be extremenly narrow and pre defined. You have your class, and then you have 2 to 3 builds for that class which can work functionally. Either a melee Rogue, or a Ranged Rogue. The differing factors between the two class build types are extremely small and don’t really change the way you play much.
I played all three classes to 20+ and finished 98% of the beta content, the balance not only between the classes themselves, but within the class itself has massive disparity. Perhaps it’s because we only have a handful of the Imprints available, but why in gods name would I ever play anything else other than Hydra? It’s absurdly powerful and it’s not even close. Barbarian has like 2 useful skills, Upheaval and Death Blow. Frenzy and Leaping Strike are the only really useful basics, unless you’re wanting to stack Fortify for that amazingly powerful 10% damage reduction buff using Bash… but I can just use Frenzy and get a free 24% damage reduction for having 3 stacks of Frenzy up.
NOTE
We did not have access to the paragon board at all, but from what I have heard/read/seen of it, 90% of it is just “generic stat boost” with a few class specific modifiers, and then a couple Legendary Runes that you can slot in for another minor effect, it is definitely nothing game changing at all, just small modifications. You can find it if you just google for it, it’s NDA so I won’t link it.
Dungeons
Dungeons were fun the first handful of times, but after seeing them once, you’ve seen them all once it seems. The only dungeon that seems to be unique in any way was the one on the very north east, where you go down a ladder and kill bloody lumps. However there was no boss there which was really odd and there was no loot…
In most dungeons you just run around a sparsely populated series of rooms looking for the “Key” to open the door. It’s very boring to do, especially considering the amount of backtracking and the lack of monsters in the dungeon. Sorry but I do not want to play a walking simulator in my dungeon, I want to blast mobs and crush skulls.
There is an extreme lack of diversity in dungeons, there seems to be only like 4 or 5 different varieties, the only thing that’s really different is the tileset, even the layout seems to be pretty much identical among them.
There should be ways to make the dungeon more challenging and rewarding, rather than having to “search for key” it should be like “search for the poison to put into the bosses tea” and that will weaken them and make them easier to kill, but if you opt to instead “confront the boss while they are empowered” you get bonus loot and a renown boost or something, maybe extra Veiled Crystals or crafting mats.
Seeing as how dungeons are supposedly one of the few end game activities, having been burnt out on them in a matter of 3 days is extremely concerning to me.
World Scaling
Another huge issue I took issue with. I can see from a certain perspective how it could be good. You can just find the most efficient area to farm and grind there until level 100. Which is also a bad thing, as why would you go anywhere else when you can just go to the most optimal place and stay there forever? It ruins a lot of the game in a way that is hard to describe. It’s not enjoyable to me to always be at the same level as everything around me. When I was level 4 I would kill mobs pretty much just as fast as when I was level 14, or 24. The only difference were the numbers which appeared on the screen. Going to a low level zone and having the mobs be the same level as you just feels wrong on a fundamental level. I know that you can do the first 3 acts in any order, but it still feels very lazy and uninspired to design. I don’t know why they don’t just balance the game properly.
Click to Move
Do I even need to explain this? Let people left click to move, interact, and loot. I will sacrifice one of my precious keybinds, it’s that important for me. (However, I’d rather not have to do that).
Ultimate Keybind
Having to drop an ability for this seemed completely crazy to me. On my rogue it was either drop Caltrops or drop Shadow Imbuement. Do I drop the most important defensive button in my build, or do I drop Shadow Imbuement and lose a huge portion of my clear for one measly cooldown? I ended up doing neither and jus didn’t use the ultimate. I believe that the game would be much more enjoyable with a dedicated hotkey and slot on the ui for it. – Example – i.redd. it/pcg9s6o7iloa1.png ← remove the space between “dd.” and “it/”
World Boss
Fun idea, poorly executed. I don’t have any issues with the mechanics of world bosses or how they play out, but the way they work overall as a whole. Why in gods name do they have a timer on how long you can kill them? It seems completely insane to me. God forbid you only get put into a zone with 4-5 people in it, you’re not killing the boss. I don’t know how level scaling works with level 7’s showing up, but I watched a few streamers who had this happen and they didn’t kill the boss, either because of people are just bad, or due to the scaling causing the level 7 not to be OP like they normally are.
The biggest issue I have with them is that they’re just on a boring timer… like, what the hell is this… People have jobs, people work nights, people have families. I do not want to have to set a clock for “World boss spawn” and be online when it’s up.
Players should be able to spawn the boss whenever they want, maybe with like a 1 hour cooldown or something. Possilby reduce the loot you get by a bit when you kill it each subsequent time. Maybe have certain items in certain dungeons that you take the the alchemist and combine with some materials and a veiled crystal, then you take this item to another dungeon and it summons a Gate Keeper from the abyss which holds a Key Fragment that is locking the demon in hell, and when you combine all X key fragments you can take it to the main hub and activate it in the city, which announces that a boss is being summoned to be destroyed before Big Bad Evil Guy has a chance to harness its power and deploy it on their own accord.
It seems infinitely more interesting and fun compared to “Come back at 4 am.” Give the players some agency, make the world feel more alive, give players more incentive to pursue content that benefits them and those around them.
What is also odd is that you can only invite 4 people to your party. Why can’t you make 12 man raids for these? Seems very wild to me that you just get plopped into a random group of 8 other people.
Overall, I got enjoyment from the beta. I will play the next one, and see how the Necro and Druid are. I just want this game to be good. It seems very odd to me that such a huge dev team from such a massive company would create something so minute and bland. I do not want Diablo 3: 2. I want Diablo 4. I want it to be the best that it can be and I want to be able to enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed Diablo 2 - well, I don’t think I will be skipping school to go to my friends basement and LAN our PC’s together to farm Baal runs - but you know what I mean.
I want to speak fondly of Diablo 4 and be excited to get home from work and play it a bit. I want to be able to talk to friends about it, talk about the sick gear we got, or how we got this weird jank build to be really strong or what have you. It just feels so shallow to me. Just wanted to drop off a more refined review of my experience with the beta so far.
Oh yeah also, where the hell are the shields? Why can’t I use a shield? Why are the only for Necro? That doesn’t make sense lol
As of now, I do not feel that this game is worth it at all. The only classes which are enjoyable are Sorc and Rogue. Necro is ok. Druid and Barb are just awful in every way. The game has too many enormous issues which I can honestly say with great confidence will not be fixed.
How disconnected and out of touch are the people who made this game to not have a minimap overlay in the game? I mean, this is just one of many huge red flags. The constant churn of the team working on the game, the huge misdirection in every system, it’s just a disaster. 4.5-5 out of 10 at best.
Anyway, I think that’s all the major things that have been bothering me. Hopefully the formatting was ok and it wasn’t too “ranty” at times, I tried to be succinct when I could. Y use lot word when few word do trick. Peace.