Diablo 4 - Beta Review

Diablo IV will sell like crazy, but I was not impressed with the Beta. This went from a will buy to will skip for at least a year. Blizzard still can't balance melee classes and I expect connectivity will be reminiscent of D3 at launch based on what we saw. It was buggy, combat is too slow (combination of CDs & animations), stun locks are infuriating, the skill tree UI is awful, the removal of portals at the end of dungeons is a stunningly bad design move, and the world while huge - is empty with small enemy pack sizes. All combined, you end up spending a lot of time running around not doing anything interesting. It feels like they mostly just imported in the classes and skills from D2 and added superficial skill customization options. For me, Last Epoch & PoE are still the most interesting games in the genre.
 
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No offline SP option means no buy in my book. It's that simple.(n)

I'm sure the millions of buyers who don't care will buy the game and love it as usual.
 
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greywolf00 said:
Diablo IV will sell like crazy, but I was not impressed with the Beta. This went from a will buy to will skip for at least a year. Blizzard still can't balance melee classes and I expect connectivity will be reminiscent of D3 at launch based on what we saw. It was buggy, combat is too slow (combination of CDs & animations), stun locks are infuriating, the skill tree UI is awful, the removal of portals at the end of dungeons is a stunningly bad design move, and the world while huge - is empty with small enemy pack sizes. All combined, you end up spending a lot of time running around not doing anything interesting. It feels like they mostly just imported in the classes and skills from D2 and added superficial skill customization options. For me, Last Epoch & PoE are still the most interesting games in the genre.
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To me, the world seems about the same as any other similar action-RPG. I've played PoE, and that wasn't more interesting to me. If you mean that you're fighting groups instead of one constant stream of enemies, I don't have an issue with that and probably prefer it tbh.

I had some technical issues with the Beta on Saturday, but I think it's because they were making changes to it while I was playing. It was a lot smoother yesterday, and the only issue I had is the uneven difficulty where it's too easy most of the time. That's par for the course with this genre though.
 
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I enjoyed playing sorcereress and necromancer.
I found some bugs, frequent frame drops and occasional 3-4 second game freezes. I hope those will be fixed for launch.
I never had any disconnects and had queues only the first day of the beta.
I wonder how will they implement seasons. Since the game focuses on doing many activities on one character which will be boring to repeat each season. Maybe they will introduce some kind of adventure mode.
 
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JDR13 said:
To me, the world seems about the same as any other similar action-RPG. I've played PoE, and that wasn't more interesting to me. If you mean that you're fighting groups instead of one constant stream of enemies, I don't have an issue with that and probably prefer it tbh.

I had some technical issues with the Beta on Saturday, but I think it's because they were making changes to it while I was playing. It was a lot smoother yesterday, and the only issue I had is the uneven difficulty where it's too easy most of the time. That's par for the course with this genre though.
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Network stability was definitely better yesterday than Saturday. It was so bad Saturday I stopped playing eventually. Interesting for me is more the theory/build crafting. Diablo is definitely limited compared to other options these days. I grew to enjoy the XP bonus in D3 from constantly stringing groups together, but I get that wasn't everyone's cup of tea. I think PoE does a better job with group/enemy density than Diablo IV's beta. The groups just felt too small and too spaced out outside of the ghoul packs.
 
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greywolf00 said:
It was buggy, combat is too slow (combination of CDs & animations), stun locks are infuriating, the skill tree UI is awful, the removal of portals at the end of dungeons is a stunningly bad design move, and the world while huge - is empty with small enemy pack sizes. All combined, you end up spending a lot of time running around not doing anything interesting. It feels like they mostly just imported in the classes and skills from D2 and added superficial skill customization options.
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I am not a hack'n'slash connoisseur but I think the combat was rather too quick than slow. I also don't find the constant smashing enemies into submission interesting. There should be moments to suck in the atmosphere and do something else too. Btw, did you notice that you can teleport to the town pretty much from everywhere?
 
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largh said:
I am not a hack'n'slash connoisseur but I think the combat was rather too quick than slow. I also don't find the constant smashing enemies into submission interesting. There should be moments to suck in the atmosphere and do something else too. Btw, did you notice that you can teleport to the town pretty much from everywhere?
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Yes that's a common feature. But, at least inn the beta, you could only portal back to the main city unless I missed something.
This works fine for PoE since the main city of the act is a hub for basically all the quests, but it's painful in D4 since the quest turn ins are spread out across minor cities. So you have to portal to the city - load screen - run to waypoint - load screen - to get to the desired location. It beats running around, but it's not great. It has been ages since I played WoW, but if memory serves you could set an Inn as your home and return to that specific place to cut down on this exact behavior.
 
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Hack n' Slash is something of an RPG-lite subcategory by my reckoning. It's fine for a while but historically entries in that genre become fairly monotonous and boring, for me, after a while. I'll probably pick it up on the inevitable GOTY edition discount, maybe after DLCs are included. Here's hoping there will be added eventually a punchy-monk type for variety.
 
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greywolf00 said:
Network stability was definitely better yesterday than Saturday. It was so bad Saturday I stopped playing eventually. Interesting for me is more the theory/build crafting. Diablo is definitely limited compared to other options these days. I grew to enjoy the XP bonus in D3 from constantly stringing groups together, but I get that wasn't everyone's cup of tea. I think PoE does a better job with group/enemy density than Diablo IV's beta. The groups just felt too small and too spaced out outside of the ghoul packs.
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Yeah, but we're comparing a Beta to games that have been released and polished for years. It's undoubtedly going to be quite different a year or two from now.
 
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I couldn't get it to run on PC via Battle.net so I had to check it out on the Xbox. So, I have to agree with those thinking it might be fun later after all the kinks get worked out.
 
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Interesting to read opinions from people who have been playing games from this genre the recently. Our opinions and experiences clearly differ (I wrote my impressions here in case someone missed it) because we approach the game with different expectations (full-time action vs atmospheric wandering). Blizzard will never be able to satisfy everyone. Interesting to see where they'll settle. Buffing melee builds sounds like one thing they should fix even though I found the game too easy using a melee build. If I'll buy this game one day, I'll make sure to pick the class people think is hardest to play :p
 
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i've watched few minutes of gameplay, that guy had to decide between 3 options for his bow rogue : shoot in line, spread shot and some other area. Nice skill mutators, blizz put a lot of effort.
I was already quite depressed by mmo elements but now that i've seen how dumbed, watered, silly it is i think i will just pretend it was never released :)
 
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What gives me some hope is that the game had a relatively low view count even when it was just released. Couldn't even beat Minecraft, only got about half the numbers of the remake of RE4.
And numbers dropped very quickly after the first two days.
It shows that Blizzard apparently really has lost a ton of goodwill and that word of mouth hasn't exactly been great on the actual game, either.

I don't think this will be the same kind of "automatic megasuccess" that D3 was.
Still a success, of course.
 
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They Live said:
i've watched few minutes of gameplay, that guy had to decide between 3 options for his bow rogue : shoot in line, spread shot and some other area. Nice skill mutators, blizz put a lot of effort. I was already quite depressed by mmo elements but now that i've seen how dumbed, watered, silly it is i think i will just pretend it was never released :)
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That's a reason why I cannot play bow builds in many RPGs with multi-shot skills. Somehow magic seems to fit the lore but where do all those arrows come from? When did this genre develop to such a chaotic mess seemingly designed for people with zero attention span? I have not followed D3 nor PoE at all as I was never interested in these games. Something about D4 art design and atmosphere sparked my interest.
 
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largh said:
That's a reason why I cannot play bow builds in many RPGs with multi-shot skills. Somehow magic seems to fit the lore but where do all those arrows come from? When did this genre develop to such a chaotic mess seemingly designed for people with zero attention span? I have not followed D3 nor PoE at all as I was never interested in these games. Something about D4 art design and atmosphere sparked my interest.
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it has more to do with lacking skill customization than bow skills, i bet other trees are similar and quite shallow
 
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