Beta signup Diablo 4

[Zoibert the Bear]

Is Lilith just Sylavanas?

[davesurfer]

I am saying I want more of it in that post.

Why is More any more of a legitimate request than Less? You want a game like Immortal it sounds like, I uninstalled it in a week, but I think D4 got the sweet spot.

[KrayZ33]

The dagger stats and affixes work for rogues even though they are not "active", right?
The Barbarian classspecial is kinda meh, considering the fact that they only have 1 weapon more. Better than nothing of course.
But oh well, berserking seems fun.

Do we have to "sacrifice" a slot for the ultimate, or is that a special slot that unlocks, so we get builder/spender+4 skills +ultimate?

I'm still having issues with the amount of skillslots and thus the "lack" of possible builds from that (and items with +skills for skills you don't use are not usuable)

[prwraith]

As long as people have fun, being iconic/memorable is irrelevant.

I suppose, but thankfully it probably won't be repeated if it's just kinda fun for a brief moment. But we'll see on the full release, maybe it won't be quite so abysmal

[Coldkil]

I mean they did have an actual beta with people who would be able to offer constructive criticism. This, like most "Beta weekends" is indeed a demo for marketing purposes. Mind you I did report a few bugs but I would not be surprised if less than one in a thousand people did.

I did aswell. But i really cannot tell if the game is good or not - i liked what i've seen so far but it didn't feel "really good" as it was mostly baseline stuff with no interesting choices involved.

It was basically a standard starting experience of any arpg. Competently done, nice to play but didn't leave me anything to say i'm impressed. Art style and general vibes were really good tho. Combat was good too, but also D3 was and it didn't feel that much improved, more a fine tuning of that.

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As long as people have fun, being iconic/memorable is irrelevant.

I'm more "worried" about the long term plans. That's what's going to make the difference. Minute-to-minute gameplay is fine so far.

Or stuff like the account wide renown thing - do i have to redo it for every season or it's a one and done thing? It's all this kind "not relevant now but people will find about later" stuff.

[Fencers]

Why is More any more of a legitimate request than Less? You want a game like Immortal it sounds like, I uninstalled it in a week, but I think D4 got the sweet spot.

That dude didn't want less, he wanted something against the design. The design is inclusive of the open world and social cooperation. Less open world and social cooperation is counter to the design, more is in line with the design.

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I'm more "worried" about the long term plans. That's what's going to make the difference. Minute-to-minute gameplay is fine so far.

Sure, but you also don't have to be married to a game. We don't really know how seasons will work either. Or if they are resets to the same degree and manner as the ladder of D2 or D3. They might set a new template for seasons.

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I suppose, but thankfully it probably won't be repeated if it's just kinda fun for a brief moment. But we'll see on the full release, maybe it won't be quite so abysmal

People don't have to play one game for their lifetime. People don't.

[infinitemeridian]

Is there any way to toggle a map overlay? I don't see that as an option.

[xmirrors]

There is no map overlay. It's an oversight I hope is addressed, but I wouldn't expect one by launch.

[infinitemeridian]

There is no map overlay. It's an oversight I hope is addressed, but I wouldn't expect one by launch.

How can having no map overlay for a game that's been in development for 5 years be an oversight? Shameful.

[Gaidax]

OK, so I am mostly done with this phase of beta.

Here's what I think.

First of all the good:

1) Visuals and Sound:

Easily the best looking and feeling ARPG by a mile. Out of combat you have many atmospheric locales and the open world part suddenly allows for existence of settlements and manned outposts outside the main town. The Act 1 map as a whole is huge and seamless (it is instanced by areas, but you almost don't feel it... well more on that later). Cutscenes use game engine and are pretty good as well.

Combat looks great and sounds great, all the crunchiness and explosions and squelching as expected. There is a great detail in how enemies die, based on what actually killed them - whether it's burning, shattering, decapitations and so on. Overall, very satisfactory meat grinder. I do have a complaint about some spells being a bit too tame - lightning spells needs more oompf for sure and Fireball when hard cast is lame really. On the other hand - Hydras with Fireball Enchant - chef's kiss, your whole screen lights up.

2) Sorceress:

You can feel the power there, sure as I said some spells look lame, but some are pretty awesome. You get Frost Orb from almost get go and it feels good (although now it's just a core spell, so don't expect D2 glory days). But soon enough you get to level 15 and get "Enchantments" which is Sorc class specific mechanic and that's where fun starts.

You practically get to "combine" your active spells with passive benefit of another otherwise-active spell. At first you can only apply one such effect, but you get one more at level 30 (not in beta). The easiest example - Fireball enchantment, passively makes all things you kill explode in a Fireball for 50% damage all around it and it works with everything you do and even off itself - even with summons like Hydra, this produces hilarious explosion chains not unlike what you'd see Necro do. And all skills can be slotted as Enchantment this way to give some sort of unexpected side effect to all your spells or even just circumstantial effects like spending X mana casts enchantment spell for free (spend 100 mana for free Chain Lightning or 300 mana for extra Hydra) or simply things like Blizzard appearing and following you every X seconds.

This class feels VERY good. I thought I was going to go Necro, but now it seems sorc all the way, unless Necro really impresses me.

3) Events, Gambling and Aspects:

I combined it for a reason - events give you a special currency you use for Gheed style gambling. Gambling odds for legendaries are VERY generous and completing one 2 min event is enough to give you one gambled piece on average. This further pays out with Aspect system, where you can "disenchant" a legendary item to pull its special property and then put on some other piece you have that may have better stats. Overall it's a very nice system in my eyes that allows you to salvage otherwise poor rolled legendaries or even outdated ones for future use.


Now the not so good:

1) Holy rubber-banding batman and other instance vies:

World being fully instanced and always connected leads to various latency related artifacts like rubber banding, invisible walls and other similar "joys of life". I REALLY hope it's so prevalent because it's only beta and probably very limited capacity vs a huge amount of players. At times it's a real cancer, frankly and if this shit gonna be live - there will be many unhappy players.

2) Dungeons are just bad:

Frankly, they couldn't have made any worse dungeons and got away with it. Not only dungeons are very basic, they aren't even procedurally generated (or at least not all of it) AND on top of it each of them has this very annoying stage of looking for some sort of key or multiple keys to unlock the door to next area of a dungeon. This results in a lot of tedious running around empty areas you already cleared. You have 23 dungeons in Act 1, but the bosses there are shared, so it's like 6-7 bosses or so in reality total.

It's really a bare minimum job here. They look good, but that's it.

3) Story:

Yeah, the more invested players don't really give a damn, but lets be real - many play the title just to see the next chapter of Diablo story and little more than that. Keeping spoilers at minimum - the first 10 minutes are awesome sauce and then it's just... gone. Yes, there is a main quest you follow, it's not like there is none - but it pales in comparison to those first 10 minutes and what's worse the story sort of feels like Diablo 3 remake. You literally have Leah 2.0 and with a similar circumstance to boot.

Then you just slog through random stuff until you get to Act 1 ending and it was okay, if only because of big lore names and some reveal, but just that. It definitely wasn't a Tyrael moment in D3 or Act 1 outro in D3 for that matter. It just felt kind of ehhh, Lilith did manage to hold this train wreck together, but only by a cheap play on feels.

[prwraith]

People don't have to play one game for their lifetime. People don't.

You have such an odd interpretation of what I'm saying and then you take that odd interpretation and make this wild leap.

Do you see where I said people play one game for their lifetime?
Did you see where I implied that, suggested it, or hinted at it?

No.

Let me dumb this down.

This game is ok, not good, because not good, I do not think others will make a similar game. Which I think is good, because I would like good games to be made, not ok games.

[NoiseTank13]

I didn't feel the game pulled me in at all, felt like Diablo 3 on release.

Then again, the third world hellhole of Kyovoshad didn't help.

Got to 25 on a Rogue at least.

I'd wait for a price drop which should be when all the adjustments will be in.

[Tojara]

I never had issues with dungeons at all. I'll have issues with dungeons at max level however when asked to find objectives to bring back to a main hub for the 50th time though. Unless that aspect is changed, people will probably only do the most efficient dungeons at max level and ignore the rest. I'd expect more from them than D4 in this regard though. In D2 you only farmed bosses or efficient areas to farm, and in PoE you literally chuck some maps into the fucking garbage bin because you have to be a serial killer to chain run some of the map layouts in that game.

I don't think I have an issue with bosses repeating themselves in random dungeons though, and I think I saw enough variance in the dungeons to make it okay. If you look closely enough in PoE or D3, the variance in a lot of the maps/areas is either fixed, or very slightly different in regards to layout. D2 had some variance for sure, but there were lots of static locations too, and some areas with very incremental differences. The good thing about the bosses is I think most of them are well designed with multi layered abilities that change depending on health thresholds. Act bosses were pretty okay in D3, but the rift guardians usually just had one ability which is lame. Aside from Uber bosses or bosses in the aspirational tier in PoE, very few map bosses actually stand out at all, and the ones that do are a few that appear at the end of an act.

I hope the bosses are themed to the Act that they appear in. If it's a pool of bosses for each Act I think that fairly good design. If it's just those ~6 reoccurring ones from Act 1, I'd be pretty disappointed.

The only issues I had with performance were literally in the town, or on the border of zone sections. The chance of a couple second freeze was moderate when entering the town or exiting the town, but other than that the game performed silky smooth to me.

I thought the story was okay, at least if you're talking about the big characters. It doesn't have to be revolutionary, but I'll withhold judgment on the newly introduced characters until the story is complete. Hard to like new characters that are introduced outside of cinematics or from past games right from the get go. Tyrael's reveal in D3 was one of the best moments in all of Diablo though... but also happens in the same game that allowed Deckard Cain to die to a demonic butterfly.

Something rather humorous I noticed of all my friends (we all play ARPGs) is that their impression of the game closely aligned with the class they first played (for the most part). Pretty much everybody I know who played Barbarian had a more negative impression than anybody who picked the other two classes to try first. Pretty much everybody I know who played Sorceress first loved the game. Part of this is because of how their class level 15 mechanic works versus the other two, and the fact that Barbarians don't even have access to theirs in this beta.

[chiddie]

Yep 4k with HDR.

Been playing a barrage Rogue today prefer it to the Sorc, it will be my first choice on launch if I don't like Necro next week.

Does 4K drops performances so much? Meh. Not that I care atm but meh.

I played a Barrage rogue all the weekend (8-9 hours total, level 19,5, thanks god progress is saved for next weekend else I would never make it to 20 in time) but it felt quite horrible to me until I picked Shadow Imbuement at level 18. When I hit 20 I will try to switch to melee to see if it’s better.

[Coldkil]

Sure, but you also don't have to be married to a game. We don't really know how seasons will work either. Or if they are resets to the same degree and manner as the ladder of D2 or D3. They might set a new template for seasons.

Yeah that's exactly what i want to know. I'm going to play it at least for the campaign and then i'll see. Really i have not much to say now because in the end i didn't really see much about the game.

[Iliena]

Does 4K drops performances so much? Meh. Not that I care atm but meh.

With DLSS on I was getting 135-140 FPS, without it was dipping under 100 at times, I couldn't visually notice any difference with it set to quality.

I also ran with Shadow Imbuement it really upped the DPS and Dark Shroud for the increased run speed and damage reduction.

[Nymrohd]

My main issue with the story right now is Neyrelle or whatever she is called. Can we just for once not have teenagers who are more skilled, more intelligent and braver than every adult in the room? I guess it is a marketing thing?

[Makabreska]

My main issue with the story right now is Neyrelle or whatever she is called. Can we just for once not have teenagers who are more skilled, more intelligent and braver than every adult in the room? I guess it is a marketing thing?

Weird impression, really. Never for a second I thought about her like that. She was following her mother on a Horadrim adventures, so of course she knows more about them and guides us. And we, contrary to her, are a monster-killing specialists, which was evident when we ordered her to stay behind while we went forward.

[Tojara]

Weird impression, really. Never for a second I thought about her like that. She was following her mother on a Horadrim adventures, so of course she knows more about them and guides us. And we, contrary to her, are a monster-killing specialists, which was evident when we ordered her to stay behind while we went forward.

I sort of got the same about that character. There's simply no way people are going to gravitate towards a new character in the first act of the game given that she's just newly introduced. For now I'll just be neutral until she gives me reason to think otherwise. Nothing she really did was out of context of the character, at least how it was presented.

Given the field that her mother was in, and that she was trying to locate said mother, I think it was less about bravery and more about wanting to find a loved one.

Story seems fine for now. No giant reveals like Tyrael in D3 yet, but that's fine. Act 1 was sort of sullied for me with how they treated poor Deckard Cain.

[Makabreska]

Story seems fine for now. No giant reveals like Tyrael in D3 yet, but that's fine. Act 1 was sort of sullied for me with how they treated poor Deckard Cain.

Inarius just chilling in that main Act I hub was a kinda WTF moment for me. When did he get released from Hells?