Diablo 4 Beta Review: A Disappointing Experience

I’m disappointed about D4. Graphics are great, story might be fine, but gameplay and class designs are too poor. It feels exactly as D3: no challenge (died only once when went to the boss of 25lvl zone when I was only 15), packs of mobs explode with just 1 click, spells are boring (1st ability doesn’t deal any damage for any class except necro; ultimates have huge CD and 90% of time they just waste a slot on the bar, which is another reason to complain about; mana pool is too low and there is now way to increase it somehow, abilities that give +3 to it are a joke).

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Mature comment. We care so trying to help by providing feedback. This is why beta exist in a first place.

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As of beta druid testing, the class sucks overall, It’s so sad. I’m not sure if it’s the dmg being too low or the costs being to high or a mix of both compared to the other classes but it actually feels bad.

You are not trying to help because D4 its finally Diablo. If u dont like it you are just a guy who played Diablo 3 thinking how good it was.

Go back to D3 with saturated colors, brainless fast paced combat system and all the sh*t that comes around.

Goooooooodbye.

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How you know what I like? I am paying customer who appreciate the opportunity to participate in beta and thus feeling obliged to share a feedback. If you like current status of game, good for you.

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Io ho partecipato alla Close Beta per un mese di fila, non vedo l’ora che esca, mi piace un casino. Poi aver giocato 3 giorni non dà di certo l’idea dell’immensità del gioco. Un grande gioco, complimenti alla Blizzard.

In general i do like the game…the theme and overall feel…for me Diablo 3 was a big disapointment and not what i expected…but i did play it for a extended amound of time…

What disapointed me in D3 is way better in D4…the skill tree looks wonky and the balance between classes is way off…but i have no doubt that will be fixed…

So the biggest crybabies will get what they want in the end…

For the rest its taste…player x wants a shallow story and cartoonish gameplay/graphics…the other a bit more ralism and immersion through richer story lines and more excessive dialogue…

No one gamer will be completely happy with it…so swallow some and play or go back to D3 or whatnot.

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Putting in my 2 cents.

My son and I had a good time learning the game, and I saw this beta weekend as a good distraction for some good father and son (family) bonding time. I think diablo 4 is not for the hardcore ARPG gamer, who is more concerned with new concepts and experiences; but more for the casual ARPG gamer, who just wants a past-time with friends, family, and/or virtual strangers.

If I had one wish, is an off-line option, for my friends in third world countries who have spotty internet; which is unlikely. But, can’t really blame blizzard for not providing it, we have the cheaters who used bots and hacks back in the early years of diablo 2 to blame for that.

Stay if you find enough goodness in the game, look for an alternative if the inadequacy gets to you. I hope to meet new virtual friends, around the world, when the game launches!!!

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I started feeling a little bored around level 10-12. However I kept playing as another user said 15 minutes quickly turned into an hour. I am disappointed there is no Paladin class. The Barbarian was kind of a miss for me. The weapon animations seemed very repetitive. I didn’t like the options on the skill tree, some of it could be unfamiliarity. I agree the NPC conversations drag on. I started skipping almost right away. Even the cutscenes which you cannot skip without skipping the whole thing. I understand the world design and color palate, but it just seems to be missing something. I also had really bad rubber banding at times. I have very fast internet and a more than adequate PC. Not sure what was causing it. I will give it another shot if they have another Beta, but as is I will be passing. I feel like if I bought it I would be forcing myself to play to finish it, not because i was enjoying myself.

Really, really enjoyed the game. Weekend was too short to test all classes.
Barbarian, rogue and sorcerer. I enjoyed them all, but best and pretty op was sorcerer. You just run and kill them all :slightly_smiling_face:
Well, it was just beta test. Im sure these classes get balancing bfore release.

Story was good,but questvideos/ conversation should be skipped, if wanted. Esc works some times. Hope they fix this thing. At least if you watch/read one time, next char should be skipped it.

Fov. Little bit more further. Just a little bit, please.

Bags. More spece, please. Or make own bag for herbs, rocks, leather, gem etc. Like ESO.

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Oh well, what a disappointment!

47 years old here play diablo from the first installation, play most of this type of games, POE, Last epoch etc…

This is not Diablo 4 mostly diablo 3.2 this was what we wanted from diablo 3 not NOW !!!

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS???

You didn’t even bother to make new skills…
The graphic is not that great comapred to the latest games , sure the game or the graphics are not next gen, as usual blizzard try to get money from players delivering the minimum necessary…
This company is not trustable anymore…

The combat is boring, map and dungeon borin and lifeless, the game itself make my eyes sore , everything is too small .

Overall i give this 5/10

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Disappointed, however, its act 1 only. Not showcasing endgame concerns me however.

I dont feel its a bad game, its just this IP is sort of puttering about, not really trying. Gameplay, the classes, the combat, the enemies, all felt old/stale. But it was all just act 1 levelling.

Its like Diablo IP has fallen off but they still make do and still make an enjoyable game. Maybe whats in store for endgame changes this all. No one is going to care about act1 a week after launch anyway.

I feel like this was made in haste in a relatively short period of time for some reason. In some senses it felt lesser than D3, like D3 had so much more destructible stuff in the world and interactable stuff, I didnt recall anything like that in D4 and just a few selectable items to break here and there. Like its lacking several layers of depth to the world from what D3 had. Same with skills, and combat.

Perhaps its all tied to endgame and they will bedazzle us when they go into more details soon. Perhaps its just a slightly modified rift system.

Ill get my $70 for sure but im not impressed with what I saw.

In 2.5 months Blizzard will not be able to adapt anything of such dimensions.
Because the changes in the mechanics is a complete conversion of the entire game.
To do this, D4 would have to be in development again for certainly over a year, to then adapt the entire concept.
You can’t do that in a month, at least not if you want the whole game to be a total mess afterwards.

With D4, Blizz has taken a new path.
D4 can no longer be directly compared to the old Diablo games, because D4 is no longer a pure aRPG.
The genre has been shifted to another sub-genre of RPGs.
A mixture of 70% aRPG with 30% MMORPG/online RPG something like that.
This makes the game something completely different and it then needs appropriate adjustments to make such a concept work.

D4 is a very coherent game and requires the player to limit himself to a few classes, as is usual in an MMORPG. This definitely has traction and brings you very close to your character. It doesn’t seem so arbitrary and binding anymore.
The throttled pace is very important If it gets faster, it will only get weaker and weaker.
I would even say, throttle the pace again by 20% and be careful not to speed it up further, because otherwise the value and immersion will keep decreasing.

But there are other problem areas… Besides scaling, class resources that make everything the same, weak skill tree that again just mixes everything, the seasons that ruin my way, also too much items that always disturb the flow of the game, if you constantly match everything, for example, or the dungeons look too much like a stage and not really integrated into the game world.
In D2 there was a hawk cave or the frost river in the glacier caves and it seemed integrated, not like extra set up for a reaction test, where the mobs are specially made to demand maximum concentration from the player and to throw in more and more effects to simulate skill.

But D4 is very effective in the first place.
If I take Lost Ark, you have much less immersion than in D4. Diablo 4 makes everything very gripping, brings the player very close to the game. It feels very good and binding, also because it’s much slower, not so overloaded and heavy, at least with the barbarian it was excellent this traction of the game.
The lighter it gets and faster, the weaker the feeling was…

Hello,

I’m not sure if I understood well what you meant about

Bags. More spece, please. Or make own bag for herbs, rocks, leather, gem etc. Like ESO.

given herbs, rocks, leather (ok for gems, I do agree) aren’t stored in the general inventory tab as are regular items (for weapons & armor pieces) aren’t even stored in a secundary character’s inventory tab (we have a quest specific one, which is cool given it gives us the opportunity to read some data about it, if we wish to ; and another for keys and elixirs, and maybe other stuff used at higher level?), but stored in the side-list as it was introduced in Diablo 3 which are not bound to the character but to the account itself.

So far I only had to TP once (or twice) per dungeon due to picking everything in the biggest ones. I didn,t experienced the Diablo II bloated inventory experience (where we had to manage cube space & tons of useful/needed charms added by D2:LoD expansion).

Ah ok. Didnt check that thing enough then. My inventory was full different caches (herbs, salvage, etc). Maybe 1 endless cache would be better for people, who like to farm everything.

A mixture of 70% aRPG with 30% MMORPG/online RPG something like that.

Diablo III was already 100% online, I don’t know yet if it’s just each Act’s capital cities or any/most cities that are MMORPG-like with really plenty users allowed per city, but to my feeling, I see open world areas just as non-passworded 8-players*² games while dungeon like personal/group limited instances (1 to 4 players AFAIK).

  • note *² : or maybe some areas are limited to 8 players, such as the one where some of us could fight Ashava the Pestilent the first World Boss, while others may be limited to a slightly higher value ?

But there are other problem areas… Besides scaling, class resources that make everything the same, weak skill tree that again just mixes everything, the seasons that ruin my way, also too much items that always disturb the flow of the game, if you constantly match everything, for example, or the dungeons look too much like a stage and not really integrated into the game world.

AFAIK, Diablo I & II had only one resource common to every class (mana), it’s just Diablo III that offered class-depend resource. I don’t know yet if Diablo IV future classes will all use mana, but at least during my sorceress play time I didn’t had to drink plenty mana potions as I would have to do in Diablo II for a comparable efficiency feeling.
I guess that Diablo IV being a cross-platform game forces some design constraints/choices.
I don’t really see scaling as a bad thing, given it also bring several good points (no requirement of Baal run’s, you can play everywhere to get experience/or probably later on raise your parangon & get adapted drop everywhere), and on a second point of view, it also allows you grouping with friends without that the area is too hard for one or ridiculously too easy for the other. I really enjoyed being able doing Malnok stronghold at level 25 (& seeing the enemies at level 27) with an ally whom was level 17 or so (according to him enemies where 1 level ahead of his own level), without the scaling system we probably should have disbanded for that fight. By the way, I really hope that once game is released there will be cross-platform voice chat functionnality because during this beta neither in-game voice chat nor via the Battle.net client where functionning (he was on console, and I’m using a PC). Otherwise, we’ll be forced to use third-party voice chat as we just did during beta.

In D2 there was a hawk cave or the frost river in the glacier caves and it seemed integrated, not like extra set up for a reaction test, where the mobs are specially made to demand maximum concentration from the player and to throw in more and more effects to simulate skill.

I see your point, but maybe they’ve limited the beta size by using common assets and anyway we’ve just had access to Act I after all… however I did had different dungeon visuals, for example the Bear tribe’s quest-line dungeon matched the expected visuals, a bit like for your D2:LoD’s example.

To err is human, to purr is feline
(by LordByron-1788’s spirit)

The worst thing apart from D4 MELEE being the worst gaming experience i ever had is the npc’s convo’s where your character spins while talking. And it’s worse when your barbarian looks like he’s pooping his pants. Other than that the games awesome. Sorc is really good, just right i say. Rogues are waaaay to quick but damage is fine. Apparently druid werewolf is low damage and looks like a mob too much, but rest of druid is good. Necromancer apparently is waaaay op and skeletons look like they are trying to balance on crack.

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Ah ok. Didnt check that thing enough then. My inventory was full different caches (herbs, salvage, etc). Maybe 1 endless cache would be better for people, who like to farm everything.

Oh that’s the “issue” you had… well just like Diablo III’s reward caches you get from Nephalem rifts, you just have to open them & then grab the dropped items / resources depending the type of cache you got.

By the way, once I had full inventory where completing the dungeon, & so instead of getting the cache dropped to the ground, & having to manage my inventory to avoid losing the reward, I’ve found it in a new & temporary Chest tab in the main city, I just had to transfer the cache to my character’s inventory (which cause the emptied chest tab disappearing), & then open the cache as usual & grab the rewards. Kudos to the devs for this elegant way of handling reward received while inventory is full.

You’ll find your herbs, leathers, rocks, etc. in our character’s side menu with all the other resources that are common to the other caracters bound to your Battle.net account (which is similar to Diablo III), and in the case of second currency reward (Obols probably), just make sure your currently owned value isn’t too close to it’s limit before opening the cache, especially if you’re still in a dungeon, otherwise it will be dropped on the ground & you won’t be able to pick it up before spending enough of it (which means teleporting, buying stuff from vendors having the same role as Diablo III’s Kadala with her shards currency), & then going back to the dungeon to finally be allowed to grab the remaining currency.

Loved this beta, was a lot of fun.

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Gamers are the most entitled bunch of whining babies in the world lol. The game was great. It was fun to play, but some people will never be happy! They have grand ideas of what THEY expect and what THEY want and when They don’t get it they stomp their feet and throw their toys out of the stroller. Grow up and stop Being such an entitled little cretin. I’m glad I didn’t read more than two sentences of that ranting drivel

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