These are just my personal thoughts and opinions. But, I have tried to be as balanced and fair as possible and [kindly] consider some aspects, such as login queues and disconnect errors, as symptoms of an early access Beta (please prove me right on this Blizzard).
Having got one character (Barbarian) to level 25 (and several hours beyond) and a second character (Sorceress) to level 15, I felt that I had given the Beta sufficient time to give feedback. My friend had also levelled a Rogue to 25 and a Barbarian to 15 and given some opinions too.
In some aspects, I was pleasantly surprised. In others, a little miffed and, in some instances, worried. In summary:
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Graphically, I felt the game looked great. The aesthetics, especially for dungeons, are a testament to the time and effort taken to develop them. Similarly, with sound effects and ambience. The look, feel, and the sound was just undeniably good. (Ensure you have the 85GB download if your computer can support it).
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Likewise, the gameplay, for the most part, is very smooth. The combat feels very seamless, and other than some issues entering new zones with rubber banding and weird forcefields stopping you going forward for a while (which I am putting down to Beta bugs, hopefully), it was overall a good experience. (I canât wait to get mounts, though, with the size of the world).
Thought: Pre-mount, it does feel like quite a bit of open space to cover. Something to possibly think about.
- The open-world aspect was not enjoyable and somewhat immersion-breaking for both me and my friend. In town, this wasnât so much of a factor. In the wild, it was. It wouldnât be a deal breaker, but it didnât feel âDiabloââŚ
Suggestion: Have a setting that allows private instances for you and your party (other than maybe world boss areas?) so players can have the best of both worlds, depending on preference.
- Items [quality of] and drop numbers feel poor. I was barely looking at the details for upgrades, and I felt flooded with âyellowâ items making them feel like a dime-a-dozen and not at all ârareâ. No, I do not want a clone of D2, but I did appreciate D2 itemisation much more than any other Diablo game thus far. The excitement of finding a good rare from their much lower drop rate added interest. Equally, for uniques, for example, the rush of that gold titled Shako dropping on the floor hasnât been matched in any other Diablo game.
Suggestion: Magic[Blue] items need more prevalence at early levels. Rare[Yellow] should feel like strong and significant upgrades to your blues but crucially feel like actual rare finds. And, uniques need - IMO - to have more golden-coloured text, not brown. They should feel special and give excitement. The glowing beam from D3 did add a special element, maybe emulating something similar. But it has felt that the same âLegendary powerâ could exist on multiple items and that devalues/cheapens the idea of unique items, I feel.
- I did not like Legendary [Unique] power extraction. Diablo Immortal vibes? It should be the exception, not the rule. See the above point on items; it felt it cheapened the uniqueness of items. This one really worries me, and, of some parallels, the game gave me to Diablo Immortal (and that is a bad thing); this one was one of the worst.
Suggestion: If they want the mechanic, letâs give it some worth and not just have a power you can extract and add back on to another item. Letâs treat them similarly to D2 runes:
White base item has 4 sockets
4 Extracted Legendary Powers
Combine certain ones, in certain ways to create special, powerful items. In the wrong order, you can still have something, but maybe less powerful and âcoolâ.
- Melee characters probably need a D3 similar passive base damage reduction. Melee ( as in so many ARPGs, Iâm looking at you, PoE) felt shafted for many fights. I am aware that on gear, there are specific stats for +% Damage Reduction, but it didnât seem good enough, and Iâm worried itâll only feel worse at higher levels when enemies do more damage.
Suggestion: Give each class a âgrey textâ additional stat on magic items+. These could be +% Damage Reduction or +% Global Damage Increase which is on top of any similar stats on items. Casters could have better resource regen as âgrey textâ for example. For melees, this gives you the option to accept youâll take [current levels] of damage, but youâll output slightly more to compensate, or you can reduce damage taken by say 10-40% passively but only output at the [current levels] of base damage. Gives the player some freedom to balance their own playstyle to how they like it.
In summary, I feel like Diablo 4 has some potential to be a great game. Iâm interested to see what itâs like in the late game. I hope that PvP will be good and feel like a rewarding end-game mechanic alongside other end-game PvE mechanics they plan to have. There is work, I feel, to do on the areas Iâve highlighted and likely others I havenât. And, please, please, please. Scale login and auth platforms (and any others required) for release, learn from the Beta(s) and give us a AAA game release worthy of the AAA status.