OT (kind of): Diablo IV and the SPF - quo vadis?

I managed to get into the beta with only about a minute of wait time.

As to feedback on it, I'll come back later. Only played a bit in the beginning up to Kyovashad and then stopped there.
 
Can't lie. I'm enjoying the beta and will definitely be playing this summer. I really like all the events, side quests and mini-dungeons. I have mixed feelings about seeing other players milling about town or roaming the wilderness. It messes with the atmosphere IMO. My biggest criticism, at this stage, is that sometimes there is so much crap going on at once that I completely lose track of where I am and what I should be targeting.

So far I've capped a Wizard (always been my default class) and a Necromancer (holy crap, they are overpowered). Had a blast with both! Tomorrow I hope to have just as much fun with a Druid.

Much as I love D2, I didn't go into this beta expecting a game that would magically take us back to that era ("you can never go home again,"etc) and I think that helped temper my expectations.

We even had/have our own SPF clan in D3 - anyone up for this for D4? Do you even plan on playing D4?

Yes, please, somebody get on that! I like playing with other people but not bnet randos. :D
 
Can't lie. I'm enjoying the beta and will definitely be playing this summer. I really like all the events, side quests and mini-dungeons. I have mixed feelings about seeing other players milling about town or roaming the wilderness. It messes with the atmosphere IMO. My biggest criticism, at this stage, is that sometimes there is so much crap going on at once that I completely lose track of where I am and what I should be targeting.

So far I've capped a Wizard (always been my default class) and a Necromancer (holy crap, they are overpowered). Had a blast with both! Tomorrow I hope to have just as much fun with a Druid.

Much as I love D2, I didn't go into this beta expecting a game that would magically take us back to that era ("you can never go home again,"etc) and I think that helped temper my expectations.



Yes, please, somebody get on that! I like playing with other people but not bnet randos. :D
Already on it.

I was thinking about starting something along with Mr. @Noodle ... something along the lines of "The Old Farts Club" or "The 2003
Era" Clan. Just a group of old forumers playing together, open all of the old timers, Pals, , Staff and regular members.

As far as rando's we don't know wanting to join, we bring it up to a vote between us.
 
Can't lie. I'm enjoying the beta and will definitely be playing this summer. I really like all the events, side quests and mini-dungeons. I have mixed feelings about seeing other players milling about town or roaming the wilderness. It messes with the atmosphere IMO. My biggest criticism, at this stage, is that sometimes there is so much crap going on at once that I completely lose track of where I am and what I should be targeting.
I think that graphic tiles of the mini-dungeons are somewhat too repetitive. But I like them in general.

And yeah, there is so much going on in a battle... I lost track of my cursor numerous times and this couldn't land a Rabies blow because I wasn't targeting anything 😅 really annoying, although I have turned off every on-screen numbers I could. Combat misses the finesse of D2 IMO.

Also I am completely lost about the keywords vulnerable, overpower, injured, stunned, lucky hit, critical strike, poisoned, retching (ok, I made that one up) etc. I don't think those are explained properly in game. Also, what exactly are crowd controlled enemies? Slowed ones? Stunned ones? Poisoned ones? Frozen ones? It really is hard to keep track of all that.

So far I've capped a Wizard (always been my default class) and a Necromancer (holy crap, they are overpowered). Had a blast with both! Tomorrow I hope to have just as much fun with a Druid.
Well, you will find Druids to be underpowered in general. At least Werebear and Werewolf are. Landslide Druid is supposed to be strong with the right legendäres, but I have to respect to try it out. I had to play around 10 hours just to reach level 25.

So game progress is rather slow and most of the time, I am not even able to kill a treasure goblin on my own at higher levels...

EDIT: Just started a sorceress...man, is it ridiculous how much stronger she is than my Druid :ROFLMAO: there needs to be some balancing for the final release, I guess...
 
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Well, you will find Druids to be underpowered in general.
Indeed! I reached level 15 and decided I'd had enough. Barbs and Druids definitely need some early-game TLC from the devs. Sorcs/Necros stand head and shoulders above the other classes.
 
I played to level 10 with a Druid then got bored of some endless search following Lilith and some woman and gave up.

I got put off the first time I saw a unique monster with a stupid mod like waller or mortar. I mean why? What is the idea here? The Fallen have a magical cement mixer with +3 to bricklaying? Or they have invented modern weaponry? Torment level bosses will have machine guns and bazookas? D2 had no need of these gimmicks.

I like the skill tree concept, this is quite cool. I miss getting stat points I can spend myself. Finding a great weapon that you don't have enough strength for is part of the game. You then get the decision do I increase Strenght for more damage, or settle for lower damage and more life? As far as I can see you can always equip anything.

I miss sockets and the ability to increase my MF in the early game to improve my gear. It all feels a bit like you are at the mercy of the RNG with no way to influence your chances.
 
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Indeed! I reached level 15 and decided I'd had enough. Barbs and Druids definitely need some early-game TLC from the devs. Sorcs/Necros stand head and shoulders above the other classes.
I did respect to storm strike /landslide though with the legendary ability that using a storm skill grants crit damage for earth skills and using earth skills grants crit chance for storm skills...yeah, that build is more viable, but from what I've seen, Necromancers are still much stronger than I am...

@maxicek: If I wasn't such a sucker for achievements, I probably wouldn't bother so much with D4. I miss the same things you mention.
Plus, I don't like shared stashes and gold and shared bonuses from Lilith Altars for all characters. The same with paragon levels. I like to keep my characters separated.

But I do find the skill tree intriguing.
 
I quite enjoyed most of it. As maxiek pointed out I really miss stat point, having to decide to pump a stat to be able to wear something is exactly the decision making that I find it lacks.
The extend to which Uniques changes how spells behave, I am not sure that I like. I feel they are designing themselves into a corner with that decision. And I would much rather that more power and decision making was giving to the skill tree (eg. do I spend these x amount of points, so I can get an Avatar that mimics my cores spell every 5 second?).
Of course uniques items can and should be gameplay altering sometimes, but I just felt from the brief beta, that it was too much.

But who am I kidding, I am gonna play it either way.
 
I saw a unique monster with a stupid mod like waller or mortar
Design like this (and the map generation to name one of many others) point too much towards duplication (of d3) rather than the innovation I was craving

I saw those walls pop up while watching a streamer and had to do a double take of whether i was watching d3 or d4!
 
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I played to level 10 with a Druid then got bored of some endless search following Lilith and some woman and gave up.
Yes. I think it took me an hour to do that underground blue part.
 
So, after the beta weekend, my thoughts echo most of what was said by different youtubers about D4:

PROS
- I like the graphics and atmosphere
- skill tree matters more than in D3
- achievements - I am such a sucker for achievements...I wish D2R had them on PC...

CONS
- dungeon layout and quests are annoying
- dungeon tiles are repetitive and uninnovative
- can't skip certain conversations in side quests and you have to wait till the voice over ends
- skill tree doesn't matter as much as in D2
- endless running and running...especially in quest places. For example, once you start the quest where you follow Lilith down the dungeon, if you interrupt your gameplay and start the game later again, you have to run from the last WP (which is quite some distance) to that dungeon again. Open world should allow for more free movement, but guess what? I think I had more freedom running around in D2 than in D4, simply because there are such narrow passages where you have to squeeze through in order to get from A to B, even in the open world, but especially in dungeons. Due to those annoying "destroy 3 thingys to open door" quests you have to fully explore and clear most dungeons and quest dungeons. And I say this annoys me as a single pass tournament enthusiast...
- shared progress for all heroes: gold, Altar of Lilith, Paragon - this is just not to my liking. On the other hand, with soooo many Altar of Lilith, it would also be annoying to have to hunt for every single one again and again. My solution would be to drastically reduce the number of shrines, buff the effect, but make it for the current character only.
- itemization I: man do I still get confused by those decimal fraction numbers of mods. Does it REALLY have to be that? 6.3 over 6.2% damage to overpowered enemies?
- itemization II: speaking of damage types - there are far too many special case damage types for my taste: critical hit, more damage against crowd controlled, stunned, frozen, ... monsters, overpower, +damage to basic attacks, and some more I almost certainly forgot. Some will like this, but I think it gets far too much
- itemization III: Aside from the legendary powers, most items are pretty D3y...so blue items are worthless. In D2, there were at least some blue items that could be best in slot, but rares are always better than blues in D4. Why have blue items at all then? Or white items? Just for salvaging/selling them?
- itemization IV: why is my Druid not allowed to use crossbrows? Why can't my Rogue use Scythes? It doesn't make any sense from a realistic point of view and narrows down build variety.
- forced MMO experience. I am allowed to disable cross-platfrom playing, but not multiplaying? Makes me a sad panda.
- online only
- characters are uninnovative and rebrands from D2 and D3
- combat is too much like D3 - into the fray and click click click click away! You can't even see the cursor, so just keep on clicking!!! You could do that in D2, but you could also fight more strategic.
- some boss mods are just...meh. Walling? Laser beams? ... oh my, someone did want to reuse those coding lines from D3, did they?
- boss fights: I know most ARPGS nowadays handle it that way, but I don't like to be in a cage fight with bosses where you can only end the fight, if one of you dies...and then you have to start all over again. PMH/Poison was a fantastic way in D2 to stop bosses from regenarating if you died and had to reenter the fight or if you had to return to town.
- scaling levels of monsters: When I leveled up, I actually got weaker quite often until I found better gear, because - guess what? Items and item damage do still matter more than skills!

MIXED FEELINGS
- itemization IV: one the one hand, there are some interesting legendary affixes that open up entirely new builds. On the other hand, you can strip them from the item and put them on any item you want. This is great if you like crafting, but imagine if you could just put Schaefer's Hammer's abilities on any other item...yeah, right? I don't like it that much.


That is just from the top of my head, and man is that a big con list. Writing this down really helped me to figure out, that my feeling of being 50:50 torn on whether to buy this game or not was just based on a Diablo-nostalgia and my wish for D4 to be great. I think, D4 is simply catering to a different audience than me, and that is ok. I don't say it is a bad game, but just not a game I would enjoy as much as other games.

So I will probably not buy the game or only later once there is a discount. I realized I still have to finish the story lines of Grim Dawn, Titan Quest, Sacred 2, Nox and Children of Morta...that should be pretty enough ARPGS for the next 20 years :)
 
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