Hello all and Blizzard employees hopefully!
I wanted to share my thoughts as someone who has played all the Diablo games for countless hours and loves the Franchise through the ups, downs and countless years of waiting.
This is only my opinion and may differ from the majority
I will focus on things that should be changed rather than on what I liked because there is a lot to enjoy here, so lets go in no particular order:
- Ashava (World Boss Encounter)
- A very fun and unique combat encounter that Diablo has never seen before
- Clans/Groups need to be able to party up with all 12 of each other to experience the fight. Currently you are limited to inviting 3 other people and praying that a bunch of random lvl 12’s don’t show up to see the new boss and cause you to now fail the encounter. Unfortunately you cannot trust people not to purposely try to ruin other players fun as their source of enjoyment. I can see in the distant future where people will park lvl 5’s in that area just to log in and fill a spot of the encounter to “Troll”.
- Only allow people within 5 levels of the Boss to be in the area during the encounter.
- Knowing when/where the Boss encounter will be and the time it will spawn is not clear in-game. I should not have to look at 3rd party websites to find out this information.
- FOMO and conflict with Real life schedule. Why am I forced to log in at specific times on specific days to enjoy this encounter. Not everyone works a 8-4 Monday-Friday job and you’re punishing me for not be able to make an exact time of the day. Instead, set the encounters to only give each character look 1x per week and put them inside a Dungeon that allows me to form a group and head into (Similar to a WOW Raid) or have the Boss just free roam a certain area all the time.
- Talent Tree / Skill Bar
- It would be nice to have more options to choose on a spell rather than one forced node and then two splitting options. I like how you cannot select both and must choose one or the other but why can’t there be 3, 4, 5 choices per spell? This would add so much more depth and difference between characters and playthroughs. D3 had multiple choices per spell and we get 2?
- It did not feel worth it to put more than one point into the Basic skills when the only modifier was like 3 more damage.
- Give us more spell slots/bindings. Your Left and Right click are always going to be your Basic and Core skill. So now I have 4 options to choose from, but lets get real anyone who is going to play this game half decently will be forced to choose a Mobility skill, a Defensive Skill, Your ultimate skill, so really you have 1 skill left to choose whether you need more Dps, Mobility or Defense. This feels very limiting and assuming once fully leveled I will be able to choose/max more skills, it would be nice to have them on my bar rather than having to swap them in or out based on the Boss I am about to fight. Example: Barb Whirlwind was great for the open world/dungeons but garbage for bosses, let me have a different single target skill on my bars as well. Breaking up the game play to assign skills off and on breaks up the flow and immersion. (Think Witcher 3 before the Quick cast buttons were added).
- Bag Space/Inventory
- Gems should not take up space in your inventory. Put them in a different slot like consumables or in the Materials tab. The space is so limited already it should not be taken up by these sorts of materials; you put potions outside of the inventory slot, do the same with gems.
- Gems/Rings/Amulets/Consumables and anything smaller should not be the same size as other items. Why is a ruby the same size as a 2 Handed Club? I’m rich!
- Give us more Inventory slots, another 1-2 rows or a way to sell from our bags for convenience. After completing 1 Dungeon, I would have to return to town, sell, walk forever again to the next Dungeon, rinse and repeat. I can only imagine how annoying this will be once end-game Dungeon grinding starts.
- The Butcher (Random Spawn)
- Thank you for this Beautiful Easter Egg
- His damage needs to be toned down though. As someone playing alone, he must have killed me 7x throughout my play through. As a low mobility Barb I could not escape him and could not even come close to tanking him as he would 2-3 spank me into oblivion. I managed to kill him 2x but only because once I had a conduit shrine and the second he bugged out and stopped attacking me. The only reasonable way to beat him is in a group, if he is targeting you, you run around like a mindless chicken while other people DPS. His damage/Life should be tuned to the size of the party. Thank god I was not playing on Hardcorce! It would be insanely miserable rolling the dice if you will die or not, based on nothing you did wrong, every time you enter a dungeon.
- Dungeons
- The tiles or lay outs need to be randomized, once you have seen the 5-ish different ones, it becomes very repetitive. Diablo 1 and 2 and 3 all had randomized Dungeons/Rifts, we can do it again!
- Mini bosses at the end and being re-used. I am completely fine with this as long as it is random, and the same 10 bosses won’t show up throughout the entire game. If every “Act” has the recycled bosses per Dungeon that is fine as it will be mixed up by the player going to different zones.
- Map and Mini Map
- We need an over-lay map, 100%!
- While in a Dungeon and bringing up the Map I found it very unclear as to where I was or other party members on the map.
- Exit dungeon. It took me probably 15 hours of play time to realize I could press “E” and click exit Dungeon. Before that I was teleporting back to town and running all the way back. Please have something clickable at the end of the dungeon after the boss or something clearer on the screen/mini map area.
- Chat window
- We need more customizable options. I don’t want to see my achievements and other random things inside the window. I found it very hard to start conversations with people in the Local or Trade windows as must people are being flooded by Achievements, Guild messages, “X” encounter whatever elite, etc.
- NPC Dialogue
- I hate how every time you talk with a NPC the camera zooms in, they finish talking, camera zooms out. Especially when you’re trying to speak to a NPC that has multiple dialogues, it just ruins the experience. Allow us to remove this, take it away or stay zoomed in until I’m done selecting that NPC.
- Camera Distance
- At times the camera feels too close
- Zooming out all the way is not very far and I could use more distance personally
- Zooming in all the way should go right to the character so I can see all the fine details of their armor and weapons without having to go to the Character tab. Especially since there will be paid cosmetics, make me want to purchase them!
- Loot comparison
- I think this system needs some more fine tuning. It often just suggests the higher Item Level gear. At the start that is fine, this axe does 20 more damage, no brainer! I found I had to really slow down and compare things myself for Rings/Amulets as it was not clear which is better as their affixes really decide.
- Shrines
- I did not enjoy how you can not tell whether a Shrine/Chest is cursed. There should be a small “tell” or even obvious color difference to indicate this information to the player. Imagine playing hardcore, running towards Protective Shrine with 10% life and it being cursed; well now you’re dead for nothing you did wrong or could have changed.
- Buff/Debuff Indicators
- There should be clear Debuff icons on the bottom right with a duration of how much longer is left. Many a time while Frozen or Knocked down with no cooldowns I was spamming my Health potion, screaming at the screen to get up or unfreeze not knowing how long it would last.
Conclusion:
- I had a great time playing this game but I am concerned about the longevity once the excitement and nostalgia wears off.
- I feel like the game has a great Base but did not really show us anything that was super new, inspiring or would make me feel like yes, they really nailed this game, I am going to play it for the next 20+ years.
- The game reminds me a little to much of Diablo 3 with a better art style currently. D3 introduced much more fluid combat that can be very addicting but I hope we avoid larger numbers for higher rifts again as the end-game.
- D4 has a lot of potential but I think currently with what I have seen it is really sitting on the fence. If it stays relatively the same, you will play and enjoy the campaign, play a season or 2 and then never touch it again. The other option is Blizzard rather than providing us a full amazing game right away, provides a good base and works from that each season to create something very special.
Let me know if you agree or disagree, at the end of the day I just want D4 to be amazing.
See you all in Sanctuary 