Alright so to start things off, i have been playing Diablo 2 and 3 as well as some of the other games in this genre to an extent where i absolutely don’t count as a casual gamer anymore and with those experiences i went into D4 today.
There’s a bunch of stuff that i don’t understand about the game design choices made.
The difficulty is… weak.
I went in with the second option right away and i have been dissapointed a lot with how easy the game is even against boss monsters so clearly it’s designed to be played by casuals. Nothing wrong with that but it’s important for everyone to have fun in the game and i simply feel underwhelmed a lot and i can’t change it until i finished the campaign in Kyovashad??? I have no idea why that has to be like that, it’s boring me to death when i mostly one shot my enemies and take close to no dmg even from rare mobs.
What’s with the multiplayer force?
I want to slay demons and monsters and when playing the campaign for the first time, at least for me, the immersion and world building is important so i want to experience it solo or with a friend that i invite into my world. Why am i forced to have like 5 randoms slay even the most mundane monster in front of me? Let me play solo when i want to play solo and join the server when i want to join. I can deactivate cross play, let me deactivate other players fully too please i beg you.
Balancing seems way off
I’ve only played Mage so far so i don’t know about other classes but there’s virtually no reason for me to invest points into anything but the basic spells? The other speels feel way too weak in comparison.
Now a point that isn’t really that important but i wanted to address it anyway
The MMORPG elements feel weird
For example: what do i need a 2 part Title for? And why do i have like 100 possible titles at level 15 already. Getting titles for absolutely NO reason feels so empty and unearned that i would be ashamed to actually use one of them, idk.
Like others in this forum have said already: Blizzard should have provided enough server capacity based on the sales they had. In 5 hours ‘‘in game’’, i waited 2 hours in total today with 3 disconnects so i got off well compared to some other but it is not acceptable that you basically pay the devs to playtest the game and then get disconnected so hard because someone wanted to save some money on servers. I can already see the same problem occuring next weekend for the open beta AND for release week.
Aside from that i couldn’t actually find many bugs so far and the performance is rather stable at around 200fps max settings at 1440p but i am using a 6900xt and 5800x with a fairly big OC so my experience can probably not compare to the average joe.
EDIT: Oh and i’m missing the money counter a lot. Doesn’t change the amount i get but like every number in a game, i like to see it go up.
I will put in my feedback here as well since I like the format here:
Progress:
I like the slow approach on getting loot at the start - you don’t get showered with it so most things you find feel valuable.
sometimes it is hard to track down if an item is better or not - like what’s the benefit of 20 more armor? is it much? I always have to check the damage mitigation in the stat details to see the effect.
World:
The world is really immersive and the atmosphere is fantastic - the music, the weather effects, the graphics, the sceneries and dungeons, it all blends in so well and is a true piece of art
the enemy density feels good - it’s not that you get showered with groups every 10 meters, it’s nice to have some spaces for scenery. The mix of enemies is well balanced as well - you have a mix of melee and ranged monsters, which adds a little strategic note to it.
~ sometimes I feel overwhelmed with the sheer ammount of space, a zone has - like sometimes I think “oh my, I have to explore all of this, this takes weeks!” - which may be a good thing in the end.
World Events:
The world events offer quite some variety in design and the anticipation of what to get out of it when doing it is quite rewarding as a new player.
Dungeons:
The dungeons are huge and the atmosphere is really great - the enemies blend in very well and the transitions of the thematic zones (like from castle to crypt) is really great.
I want to see every corner of a dungeon - sometimes I take the main path to the boss too long and have to backtrack like 3 minutes to explore a missing pocket, where sometimes even a boss-door-related event awaits - this is not so a problem with circle-based dungeon layouts, but with spiraling ones even more - I have found no shortcuts back to the entrance area - beside the teleport out of the dungon via clicking the stairs icon on the minimap.
Bosses:
Even on veteran the bosses can be really hard (for me), especially with lower equipment - it feels very rewarding to finally defeat them after wiping 6 times and creates a tension since you only can repair your damaged equipment in town
I like the different stages of the bosses - the start quite moderate in mechanics and turn into a nightmare in the last boss stage, which intensifies the fight and makes it feel more rewarding after beating it.
it feels a bit odd how to get the boss-loot of dungeons - sometimes you do not even get a yellow item - no chests, just done and leave, the boss room stays empty and dormant, no secret door with a reward room or such.
Skills:
The way of tailoring your skill-sets into a form you like is a really great system and gives the feeling of a very deep customisation to play how you like to. It feels more advanced and thought-out than it’s predecessor.
Ressources:
It is nice to now be able to collect some open world ressources like herbs or ores - I can’t say anything about crafting yet though.
~ After defeating bosses and some events, I get currency, where I don’t even know what to do with it or where to spend it - this will get better later, but feels a bit like getting showered with something, I don’t even need at the moment.
Servers:
The server issues are frustrating - especially if you get an early access just to wait in queue or don’t even get into it. This is not the first game you released, you should have known that there will be -a lot- of people trying to play the next big game of blizzard. Why couldn’t that have been sorted out in advance? Especially for customers who payed you money in advance.
I’ve now reached the end of the Beta and i couldn’t say that the skill system is deep or thought out though. Granted i only played one class but the mage felt really empty. In D3 i had multiple choices for every skill. Here it’s just take it or leave it.
Obviously the Paragon stuff wasn’t available for testing and that may be better than what it was in D3 but the Skill System in D3 was deeper than whatever this abomination tries to be.
For sure, mobs feel very weak, I wish on veteran mode mobs would hit at least twice as hard. I had only two encounters with bosses where I felt some challenge, otherwise it was way too easy
Classes needs more balance. Sorcerer is an absolute easy mode, barbarian is completely opposite, bosses are challenging, some even very challenging I played both barb and sorc to lvl 25 and the difference is something like normal mode for sorc and torment 1 for barb.
This is a part of Rahsna’s beta feedback collection project This is part XII: Levelling
The visual of levelling feels good. It is not shiny like Diablo III, but it still has the AoE damage effect that makes levelling up feel powerful. Gaining a level always felt powerful because of the wave which killed any monster nearby
The beginning of levelling felt really good, where every choice mattered. As I got closer to level 25, I felt less and less powerful, which was a frustrating feeling. I kept selling and salvaging items with only +2-25 improvements to the items, simply because the affixes of the items I had equipped, sounded more powerful.
This was especially true for legendary items.
I found barb easier to kill things compared to sorc just i only found 2 legos on barb and was very squishy for a melee, however +10% def should cover it.
Levelling