Posting this here, rather than in the “feedback and suggestions” area, because that place seems to be used for very specific and focused feedback. These are mostly just general impressions.
I played this game for the first time last night, for one hour. For context of where I’m coming from: I know nothing about this game, the history and plans, or where it is at in development. I simply heard someone say there’s this ARGP that just added some big update, so I figured I might as well check it out while I wait for D4. Probably worth mentioning that I love the Diablo games, but usually bounce off other ARPGs because they ultimately just don’t deliver. (Just like, my opinion man, don’t crucify me.)
Anyways, since we only get one chance to have and share our first impressions, I thought I’d throw this out there, on the 0.0001% chance that anyone will care about any of it. If not, I’ll get over it. I’m only here because right there in the main menu, it asks me to share my feedback in the forums.
The most important bit of feedback is that while I would definitely say it was a net positive (I enjoyed more about the game than I disliked, for sure) I’m currently poised right on top of the fence as to whether I would want to play more or not. Clearly it’s a good game, but with limited time and a lot of competition, it needs to bridge that gap from “good” to “great” in time for the formal release (whenever that is) for this to be a slam dunk.
Beyond that, here’s a pretty random list of things that I stood out to me for whatever reason. Not prioritized or comprehensive or anything like that, so sorry for the rambling, but I don’t want to spend more time writing it up than I did playing it (even though the developers do deserve more well articulated and well reasoned feedback!)
I played “online” but solo (yes, I see the inevitable “why do you play solo in online” thread, I’ll get to that in a minute). I don’t know if (in solo) I was effectively locally hosting or if I was on a remote server, but either way there was no noticeable latency or issues, it was all very smooth and fine. The only odd thing was that it seemed to take a REALLY long time to establish the initial connection, but after that, it was fine. (Also, it was annoying to have to log out and in again to change characters.)
Player Characters
The quality and visual design of the player characters is… acceptable. They look interesting enough, and quite fine given the scale at which they will be viewed in game. But please, where’s the gender and customization options? Give me at least one or the other, at a minimum. Yes, I know characters are a lot of work, and more options = more work. But come on, it’s 2023. The current selection of options is, quite simply, below expectations. (Side note, I do see that you have an “appearance” tab and that you can presumably customize the look of your equipment, at least - that’s something!)
Player Classes
I don’t mean to be offensive, but, snore. Wake me up when you add something new. Sure, have your boring vanilla options for the unimaginative dullards that get excited about playing a Paladin or something, but for those of us that have been playing these games for decades, can we please have something a little more unique? It gets a little bit more interesting when I look at the subclasses, but still, out of 15 options or whatever there is, I’m still struggling to find more than 1 or 2 that sound exciting or fresh even on paper. I would love to see at least 1 base class and a few more subclasses that offer something beyond the usual fare.
Story, Quests, NPCs
Story, is there even any? Maybe not, and maybe that’s ok, for games that are focused more on repetitive grinding than linear story progression. All I saw in my session was a few NPCs with names, looks, VO (what little there was) and (at the briefest glance) dialogue options that were so bland and uninspired that I literally just ignored them all and walked past them. I only really interacted with the vendor, because he actually offered me something of interest.
If you do have a story (or progression is gated by story quests) then make me care about it, if you want me to look at it. Either elevate the characters, story, presentation etc. to the point where it is actually interesting enough to want to interact with it, or force the issue and stick me in cutscenes or something (as much as I hate that) just to force me to pay attention when I must. Otherwise, I’m just going to blow past these jokers until I hit some kind of wall that forces me to hunt around for a way to progress.
Skills and Abilities
This one is a mixed bag. The good, bad, and in between:
Good: from what little I saw of the skills and abilities (I started playing as “Primalist”), everything seems pretty cool and interesting. I am excited to unlock the skills, and they sound fun. I want to explore the extra abilities and skill trees and all that. While it’s too early to tell, I get the feeling that there will be more than enough options and that you can create a character to suit your preferences and play style.
Bad: execution of skills is very underwhelming. Nothing “feels” powerful or impactful. The skills are, objectively, very effective; the damage output and utility is all fine and good. But they feel “meh”. Obviously a lot of this is polish and it will hopefully come in time, but without extra attention to sounds, animations, effects, screen shake, etc., the actual gameplay experience is going to feel very flat.
In Between: I am on the fence with (what I have seen of) the skill system overall. On the one hand, it’s very basic (a few core abilities and a set of passives in some kind of skill tree). On the other hand, because we’re presented with base class + 3x subclasses at once, it feels a bit overwhelming and unfocused early on. Feels like it needs more thought as to how these things are presented, unlocked, or tutorialized. It’s too early for me to judge how deep and flexibile this will be in the end, in terms of the characters you can craft with it.
Inventory and Loot
I like inventory tetris, so the inventory design is fine for me. I like that (at the very start at least) you’ve used some restraint and there aren’t too many drops, so what you do get feels more interesting (rather than having a rain of useless items that you can’t pick up or use). I like that you can see an item’s properties without picking it up. I found it a bit hard to determine item quality - I can see that there is some coloring to help out, but it’s a bit too muted and indistinct (it doesn’t have to be a disco, but it wouldn’t hurt to emphasize it a bit more). Too early for me to judge this much, item art was fine, didn’t see anything too exciting in terms of item types and stuff, but again, too early to tell.
The one major annoyance: only having one set of equipment. Even D2 had a secondary equipment tab (eventually); don’t force me to manually and laboriously switch out gear if I wanted to (for example) go for sword/shield to a 2-hander, when we could just have another item tab and a hotkey to swap.
Controls
Everything feels pretty fine and fluid, with the exception of the LMB issue. The default control scheme isn’t totally intuitive, but it’s good enough, given that everything is labelled with the relevant key. I can see that everything can be remapped, and there’s controller support, so it looks like everything is pretty good here!
Enemies
I am putting this section in here because I guess there are enemies in the game, but I can’t say I remember anything particularly good or bad about them. Or much of anything at all. I guess I didn’t see any particularly noteworthy enemy characters, abilities or behaviors - neither good nor bad. The few times I paid any attention to the nameplates, I was pleased to note that the enemies had been reasonably well named and all that, so there’s at least some flavor there. Either I need to pay more attention, or the enemies are just “ok”.
Environment
I don’t really know if this is all bespoke handcrafted levels, or some/all are randomly generated? I did re-play the start with some other classes, and everything looked the same, but maybe that changes later. The environments look good and have some level of interactivity, so that’s nice. I didn’t see any instances of the layouts making any real difference in combat so far. If there is no randomization, as we know, it will significantly decrease replayability, but since I don’t even know what the go is yet with all that, I will reserve judgement.
General Presentation
Overall the level of quality of the art, music, UI etc. feels pretty good! Not absolutely stellar in any department, but certainly not super lacking anywhere. As first mentioned, it does feel like we need to go from “good” to “great” in some cases, but it’s on the way. Design of the UI is generally attractive and intuitive enough. It feels like the baseline of everything going in is good, but there’s some polish and refinement that still needs to be done.
Design Features
OK, this was the thing that impressed me the most, and makes me so much more confident in the design team, and the direction for this game. Seeing player-favoring features like being able to resurrect a dead HC character in softcore, or play “solo account found” so you can share items with your own solo characters, makes me believe that the designers understand what players need and want, and/or are listening to their feedback. Obviously giving players literally what they ask for isn’t always the best solution, but in cases like these, where the benefits outweigh the downsides, it’s great to see some quality of life stuff that we’ve all been wanting for years.
Random Annoyances
Just a few small things that bothered me.
- The first thing I wanted to do is turn off MY OWN NAME on the UI. This is just so bad for so many reasons. Dude, especially when I’m playing solo, I don’t need you to tell me my own name, and I certainly don’t want it to display my account name rather than my character name (which bizarrely, I can’t find anywhere in the interface - the character name). I can’t find any hotkey or option to disable this name. Even when turning off the HUD/UI (not that I could play like that anyway) leaves this annoying and pointless option persistently on the screen. I almost rage quit right then and there, because this was so dumb.
- Hello, 1996 called and said WTF, why can’t I both attack and move with left click? Come on, man. The bizarre omission of this basic feature made basic combat feel unnecessarily clunky.
- I can’t seem to ESCAPE out of some menus and panels. This feels somewhat inconsistent and arbitrary, and it’s SUPER annoying to have to (sometimes) close something with the mouse button, rather than just hammering ESC to back out. It’s just an unnecessary point of friction.
So that’s all I can think of for my random first impressions. It’s a lot of superficial stuff, I can’t offer any deep insight based on just an hour of play, but again, first impressions matter.
Obviously it looks like I’m dumping on the game but that’s not the case, like I said at the start, it was an overall net positive, and ultimately a lot of the stuff I complained about here are things that don’t matter in the long term, if the gameplay is there - it’s just a matter of retaining players long enough to learn if that is the case or not.
