After multiple betas and playing all of the classes, here is my feedback. I’m writing this because I want to see the best possible version of D4 at launch or in the near future after it. I am not a game developer, but I’ve been gaming my whole life, have thousands of hours in D2, thousands of hours in PoE and have played basically every ARPG out there after falling in love with Diablo 1 originally.
First impressions:
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They nailed the atmosphere + look and feel. Visuals and sound is near perfect. Game is dark!
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Combat feels great. Aside small performance issues like stuttering and area transitions, combat and movement felt butter smooth, responsive and tight. Attacks had weight to them and everything was telegraphed well.
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Open world works surprisingly well, I think they made a good balance between traditional solo experience and living world. I’m still unsure about timed events (Helltide and World Bosses), but as long as they don’t gate you out of progression it could be fine.
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Story is well written and the world felt very Diablo. I’m honestly invested in the story already.
Dungeons:
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My favorite dungeon was Immortal Emanation. Objective was to destroy 5 “shrines”, layout was circular with no backtracking.
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Dungeons are a bit repetitive with the requirements for opening the boss room and almost identical layouts. Running Den of Evil 20 times in a row isn’t my idea of a fun Saturday afternoon.
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Dungeon objectives that require a lot of backtracking, such as ”kill all monsters” or ”find two keys”, can feel like work instead of play.
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My solution would be to change the current requirements to optional, similar to how the world events work. You get a bonus for doing something extra. Maybe the boss is easier or it drops more loot? It would be up to the player if they prefer faster clear times or better loot at slower pace.
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I would also like to see them increase the number of dungeon layouts, maybe more circular and open areas instead of cross or tunnel like layouts.
Area Scaling:
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Area scaling in it’s current form doesn’t really allow the player to feel progression. If enemies are as difficult at lvl 1 as they are at lvl 25, has the player actually become any stronger?
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I think the biggest benefits of area scaling are multiplayer events and keeping all content viable for end game. What if they used area scaling only in some, not all scenarios?
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- Area scaling is ON in world events, world bosses and other instances where different level players are working together.
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- Area scaling is OFF in lower World Tiers when playing through the campaign to make the player feel more powerful when revisiting previous areas. This has the benefit of allowing overleveling if a player wishes to do so or a faster progression of side quests.
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- Area scaling is ON in higher World Tiers to make all content viable in end game.
Itemization:
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I would love to talk longer about itemization, but it would all be speculation at this point. Let’s just say that Blizzard has all the data they need to make finding items feel great. Diablo 2 is universally loved for its itemization. In D2 normal items are viable because of rune words, magic items for their high +skill rolls, rares have the potential to be BiS if you get lucky. Affixes are simple to understand, but deep. Have a fire build? Fire damage or +skills are probably good for your build. Maybe some crit and attack speed? Do you like to run Chaos Sanctuary? + Damage to demons could speed your runs!
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In D4 rares felt like crafting bases for Legendaries, and Legendaries mandatory part of the skill tree. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the legendary affixes were part of skill trees originally, and at some point the team decided the skill tree would have been “too complicated” so they split it to legendaries, skill tree and paragon board. Conditional affixes like “close enemies or distant enemies” are abstract and hard to build around.
Gameplay:
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World Tier 2 could use some low level uniques. Why leave the fun build enabling stuff for end game? I believe this would keep players in seasons longer, not shorter, as they try different classes and builds.
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Elixirs. I love the idea of elixirs to compliment your build or fill out some missing resistances, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to have XP boosts in them. It’s just “another thing you have to micro manage” to keep playing optimally. I know most players probably don’t mind, but XP consumables are a trick from a bag I’d like to keep closed.
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Skill level cap and skill synergies. I love what they did with class mechanics and skill trees! But with only 7 points on the main skill, you end up having multiple skills with similar power levels (which decreases build variety). Increasing the skill level cap from 5 to X or adding D2 style skill synergies would fix this. You could spread out the points or focus on your main skill, more options for players. I’m glad they have +skill items again!
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Necromancer minions are so bright and colorful. I understand why, but please give us an option to choose between cartoon and diablo looking skeletons. I want my minions to look just like enemy skeletons, with dark and muted colors.
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Current skill selection is a great start, but there is room for improvement. Hopefully there will be new skills added to existing classes in future and new passive nodes to alter them. More traps for Assassin anyone?
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Necromancer, Rogue and Sorc felt too strong. Druid and Barb where more in line what I would expect from Veteran tier.
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No grace period makes hardcore unplayable
Early game resource management:
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Druid especially felt difficult to manage spirit. I could use two core skills from full spirit, then I’m out of juice. Passive regeneration was non-existent. It’s really hard to get a feel of the different skills when you can only use them two times. But maybe I’m just used to D2 mana potions?
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With 1 skill point you could get 3 extra spirit to raise the mana pool from 100 to 103. Tornado costs 39 spirit. Feels like a poor investment compared to what else you can get with a skill point? To be fair, you could also get 30% reduction to spirit cost with four skill points, which felt totally acceptable and helped massively.
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After investing few passive points and finding legendaries with resource generation, I respecced to Storm Strike and Pulverize (Shockwave + Mangled aspects) and the druid felt fine. But I got lucky with the legendaries.
User Interface:
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UI changes. I would love to see a more classic version of UI, perhaps with a font better suited for Diablo, but still preserving readability. I would be happy with the title font used for item names (on tooltips) being used for all text you see on the open world: Items on the ground, enemy names, damage numbers. I don’t mind a narrower font in tooltips, chat box and other UI elements that aren’t visible all the time. Maybe give us some options in the settings to choose from?
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More skill slots. 4 + 2 is a bit restrictive for some builds, adding couple more would help a lot and promote build variety and player choice.
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Option to zoom out camera further away. A simple slider in settings should do the trick.
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Overlay map. This is just how I’m used to playing these games, it’s a lot safer than having to open the full map and not seeing what’s happening on screen.
Thank you for reading.
With some tweaking and updates I’m excited to see the future of Diablo when D4 launches.