Diablo

I'm playing on PS4, so the feedback might be entirely different for people playing on PC or XBox.

My First impressions:

1. It's not a revolutionary new version. Feels like Diablo 3 with some slightly better graphics and new world to explore and more MMORPG features.

2. I'm not sure what I think of the skill tree so far. Feels like it's easy (especially early on in the game) to create sub-optimal builds but with penalties for re-doing it. That feels constraining.

3. It's buggy. While playing my character often gets stuck between objects slightly off map. Sometimes using an ability of some kind can free me up and get be just moved enough to be unstuck, sometimes I have to teleport back to town to get unstuck. I've had the game completely hang/crash on the big map overview multiple times now. This game suffers from a lot of network connectivity issues, even when connected to wired gigabit internet - I think they are having some server issues - maybe it's just launch-week issues.

4. Some user interface mechanics that were easy in Diable 3 are now much harder than they should be. Just getting to my player profile, for example, is super painful and tedious.

5. UI inconsistency - they need to straighten this out. For example, when comparing items in inventory with your equipped items, sometimes the comparison pops up with your equipped on the left and the prospect item on the right, sometimes it's the new item on the left and your equipped on the right. I need to rely on them being in the same order- preferably equipped on the left and prospect on the right. I've found numerous examples of UI inconsistency, but this is the first one that comes to mind.

So far it has been great. If you ignore all the angry folks about micros, the game itself is actually golden.

Compared to the mass majority of games that have released, this one has hands down been the smoothest so far.

In early access, I was able to finish the campaign with little issues. The most I ran into was on launch day where there was like a 20m queue.

The micros are non-intrusive, even though they are very highly overpriced($20 is not worth a set of cosmetic gear and some emojis). The gear in-game is super sick anyway, so really no need to buy anything extra. You can also get premium content from Whispering tree drops which I don't think any other game out right now really allows for that.

Lastly, the end game content can definitely use some work. It's fun, I have 2 maxed characters already, but it feels a bit empty. I think bringing rifts back would be awesome. I think being able to change the world tier before doing the capstone dungeons would also be awesome. Sucks getting gear 10 lvls below you in T3.

End of my tedtalks, hope this was what you were looking for :)

game's good. I love the graphics, the ambience, the music, most of the characters, the voiceovers. side quests are straight-up my favorite new addition, sadly I did 95% already. so much for no-lifeing the crap out of the game heh.

the foundation is there, but some (actually, a lot of) changes/additions are needed for sure.

1 the endgame feels pretty hollow as it stands. we need more distinct dungeon layouts, better mob variety, more bosses, more sidequests, more events.

2 itemization is poor. there aren't many uniques, and most of them are garbage. I'd honestly welcome gear sets back in some form, as long as they aren't stupidly OP like they were in d3

3 renown needs to carry over to season. it's a grind of ungodly proportions. I'd very much rather never do it again. if Lilith statues can carry over, why not renown rewards too?

4 fuck having to rediscover the map not just between realms/seasons, but between ALTS. what purpose does it serve? to annoy players?

5 the lag gets absolutely unbearable, especially when transitioning between zones. ik it's a server-side issue, but honestly I'd rather they implement some narrow corridors with pass-through animations to hide the lag.

6 the campaign ends with nothing. I honestly didn't enjoy it that much, there's barely a coherent story and no satisfying resolution to speak of. I REALLY don't want to wait for expansions, because waiting for like 2 years to get any sort of continuation is just depressing.

7 world scaling is brutal. I hope they come up with a way to make it less so. it really doesn't feel fun to go between struggling 90% and wrecking shit 10% of the time.

8 the skill trees are disappointing. if we factor d3's runes combined with legendary/set affixes, to what we have in d4, d4 just looks sad. build variety suffers from it. the trees need to be expanded, by like three times each.

9 zero visual progression. all the skills look dull and feel weak. I play ice shard sorc, and gameplay looks the exact same at lvl 65 as it did at lvl 20. d3 at least had runes that changed your skills in amusing ways. blizzard promised that the skills would visually evolve, but from my experience I just don't notice any of it. I'm also conflicted on gear transmogs that break the old "higher lvl/tier = cooler-looking" formula. on the one hand it's much better for customization, on the other it's kinda dumb that a lvl100 char doesn't really have any way to look par for the massive playtime difference between them and a 50 lvl char.

10 global chat, raids, group finder. where?

11 PvP is fun but stupidly unbalanced. which is mostly fine, but I wish they at least grouped players by level. 10 lvl diff is already absolutely massive, but it's a helluvalot more fair than having my ass camped by a 98 lvl assassin. right now, there's little to no point in playing PvP until you get to lvl 100 and can become the bully yourself.

12 I've encountered some annoying, immersion-breaking bugs like random dialog lines playing for no reason. just yesterday, I had Nyrelle scream at me about getting her arm cut off in the middle of a post-campaign event. lol

13 I'll admit it: I did buy a couple skins from the shop. with this in mind, I know it'll sound stupid and I'll defy be claimed a dumbass, but I wish the prices were lower. $25 for a skin that doesn't have any special effects is wild. ideally, the pricing should be similar to that of Heroes of the Storm pre-2.0. I will probably still keep buying the skins I really like, but still. I'm just a weirdo who enjoys playing doll and mix-matching free transmogs with cash shop gear lol

14 too few classes, even for release. d3 managed to cover pretty much all the classic fantasy classes right on release (like at least barb could wield a shield, so technically you could have a "knight" of sorts before the crusader came out). d4 is direly missing a flashy support class like monk and an actual archer/bowman (no, rogue doesn't count: the long-range skills are boring and frankly suck). the blood knight rumors make me hopeful for the paladin-esque fantasy soonish, but I doubt that's gonna happen until at least s2.

15 I personally want pets back. make them less immersion-breaking, just give me a basic dog/cat/bat/what have you so I can pet it. also make it collect gold.

16 why tf are those shard things you pick up in PvP not auto-pickup? probably a brainfart on blizz's side.

17 cow/unicorn/greed level, whatever. just add some fun side-activity.

18 the lore is there and it's pretty extensive, but why did they do away with the cool books/scripts that we had in d3? like, I really enjoyed killing a mob for the first time and hearing Cain tell me about that mob. there were much more things like that in d3.

19 give me a way to quickly do dungeons back to back like rifts in d3. it takes ages to port to town, scrap trash, and then port to another town and yeehaw for 3 minutes to finally get to the next dungeon.

20 give me an offline mode. in some form. god, make it a separate realm/world entirely if you want to prevent cheating. I just want to play rubberband-free wherever I am.

I think the foundation is pretty solid, with some reservations. I'm enjoying my time with it (just as I did with D3), but I'm not planning Diablo to be my Next Big Online Game. I still have FF14 for that.

Blizzard seems to want D4 to be an MMO existing alongside WoW, maybe a bit lighter. I don't really know how I feel about that, I've never really played Diablo with people, never really wanted to engage with endgame, I just play through the story and fuck around when I feel like it.

I tend to be pretty critical of games that demand all of my time (hence why I love FF14 and bounced off WoW), and I hope D4 doesn't expect me to play every day once I have a character at max level.

The vibe/aesthetic is pretty good, definitely getting back to the D1/2 feel, Lilith as a present and multifaceted antagonist is a welcome change to the others, where Diablo just hangs out in Hell until you show up. I don't personally like the endless snowfields as your intro to the game, but I mostly just find them kind boring. I was really missing the dark forests of D1-3 Act 1 or the deserts of D2/3 Act 2.

I also find the pacing pretty weird, but this is a natural progression of the more MMO structure. I was doing sidequests as I fucked around the Fractured Peaks, then figured I should probably get through Act 1, at level 25. I like that the world scales to your level, but always feels kinda weird when I feel like they didn't intend you to do too many sidequests before getting to the MSQ.

Finally, I don't like that mounts are locked until Act 4. Act 1 makes sense, but it's kinda a slog to keep going back and forth on foot when I see stables in all the major settlements.

But yeah, I like the game, it's good to play when I wanna be brain-dead for a few hours, which is pretty much the draw of Diabloclones.

Overall I'm pretty content with Diablo 4. I just hit world tier 4, my level is mid-60s. There are some small QOL i'd like, but I genuinely like the direction the game is going.

I do miss a few things from the older franchises:

• I want some form of an improved/modern D2 LOD style mercenaries
• I want some form of an improved/modern rune words system
• I want some form of an improved/modern jewel system.

At the moment I don't have a PC, hope they developed a Mac version, but seems impossible.

I figure it is a good game for the folks who tend to engage with an ARPG long enough to beat the campaign and then move on. For the folks who play them as a hobby... it isn't long before the wheels start to fall off.

I talked about some of my feelings the other day in rambly 20 min video form. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcxkkNAcXqg

I like it a lot overall and feel like it is unique when compared to path of exile and last epoch. I like the MMO feel as the world seems more expansive and less constrained.

My biggest gripe is that leveling in the 60s is a complete slog. May be the slowest leveling arpg I have played. I get a lot less excited about this with the seasons, as it will literally mean starting over every season and redoing the grind. Makes me question its repeat availability.