Hello fellow travellers.
I have spent countless hours in classic Diablo 2.
I pre ordered Diablo III and maxed out my characters on both pc and console despite the gamers hate.
Even since then I returned to D2 many times over.
The point of stating this is to mark the fact I love Diablo - and all other aRPG’s (in fact I’ve spent just as much time in them as in this, probably more - I wont say the titles - just assume all of them - I mean it - roughly 15+ title series spanned across pc, gamecube, playstations).
I pre ordered this “alpha” - wouldn’t call it beta - just to have more play time to try things out. And oh boy I did!
Just quick point to make - I did not experience almost any bugs - I wouldn’t call performance or technical issues bugs.
From visual side it looks gorgeous, very well done. It feels like classic diablo, just looks very nice.
Some nuGamers out there say it’s unplayable old trash and it’s all nostalgia. I like that old feeling, I don’t need any new features, I am here for D2 not D3 / mobile.
In general apart from issues I’m about to list this game is great and it quite faithful upgrade.
Ok, so what are the issues and what made me refund it? Yes I did refund it because the issues are quite catastrophic.
First off, I thought about it for a while and I came to conclusion that best case scenario for that unbearable lag and fps drops or stable very low fps dependless on graphic settings or configuration is the fact that Blizz runs all data processing on servers to avoid data mining and piracy threats. That’s at least what I am hoping for in the beta - if they will keep the need of being online to play in retail that’s a total game breaker. What an absolutely awful shameful experience that was. Absolutely disastrous. Who with a clear mind would ever allow this to happen? ACTION RPG - the clue is in the name - I miraculously died first time when I had lvl 18 - I was extremely careful from start - I knew to expect lags and fps just tells his own story - but lag teleporting you to your death can spoil any adventure. Ok lags can be fixed, maybe we will be even allowed to play offline, how nice.
Second issue is the fps, I have read somewhere its some sort of multiplication of the original and it’s locked to something like 30fps, not gonna lie, did not checked it, cannot be bothered. The confirmation might be the fact that whenever game actually jumps to higher (even 70+) fps it seems to speed up gameplay and characters. Anyway playing at 30 fps in action rpg with all those mechanics and reflex related stuff is an utter nightmare. Blizz clearly thought it’s gonna be great since D2 runs at like 25fps, an upgrade. The thing is with new resolution, new graphic and 3d that is nowhere close enough. Eye strain is absolutely horrible, unbearable. When you play at 800x600 at 25fps in sprites it feels normal, not here. Very, very bad game breaking experience.
Third are the camera - I know it runs on top of original diablo 2 and you can swap it any time but again it feels crap - camera is not chained up to main character - it’s welded on. You feel every single frame of character animation on the edges of the screen and amount of camera shake is ridiculous. You are a billion dolar company for the love of god - add some smoothing… I am not a programmer but even basic knowledge on the matter tells me you can fix that by adding delay to camera move - just tiny or attach camera to a point that follows player on smoothed out path.
Fourth is the random map/dungeon system - You have been messing with it - haven’t you? I spent thousands of hours in Your Diablos and this is not how it used to work - explain to me how I always find what I’m looking for on the map after exploring the whole map??? I mean there is script to it for sure. I used to randomly come across tombs or pathways I’m looking for and in time I just knew the way map could shape and it felt good. Sometimes you found it in 30s sometimes you were looking for it for a while. Here in resurrected version I keep finding stuff I need on the map after exploring the map - sometimes several times - it appears after you exhaust all other points of interest. Feels really really bad and punishing. It proper upsets me. I doubted myself many times over this but it just cannot be random fault on my side - simple lack of luck. Something tells me it’s designed to prolong the game.
Fifth is lack of hope, I own Warcraft 3 reforged and in fact I refunded it, then months later I bough it again and played it with mods. Well not anymore. You don’t really look after it - do you? It feels abandoned - just the basic support and updates to give you excuse to not call it dead. I fear that’s what will happen here. I hope not - I wish not. But experience tells different.
To sum it up the game looks great, atmosphere is the same but we cannot feel it because of terrible performance - if Blizz fixes performance issues completely I would play it even with other things I don’t like about it.
To beta testers:
This is my statement - if you are bothered tell me if you experience and/or dislike any of the stuff I pointed out or something else - it’s a feedback on bugs not congratulations letter. We don’t need to speak about stuff we like here, there is nothing new, there is no need for it and things that are in the game and work well we all like - otherwise we wouldn’t be here.
Farewell