I no lifed the D4 beta, weird to feel LE is the more competent ARPG

General
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Not enough! The level of char evolvment and design is stagnate in the Diablo franchise. No matter if I play D2, D3 or D4 I read “bone Spear” and say “Yeah well piercing projectile with splinters blablabla!”. Diablo isn’t deviated enough and isn’t evolving enough to be outstanding. D4 is fun yeah and I look forward to play it but I’m not overhyped for the things that will come because it’s the same old mess again. Rogue “feels” kind of new but then again it’s a bit bland as well.

All the mods that came from legys should’ve been in the tree and skillable to start with and there should be new and intresting stuff added to the game and not only the good old “Well this worked in D2 let’s use it again!” bs over and over and over again.

Most skills are boring yes. The game will shine or fail once paragon is explored and when paragon mixes up the rather stale base game skills.

Uhm closed Beta over 1 mill players and they worked out the problems rather fast. Open beta even more players and they worked out the problems rather fast. When the release comes and I have 1 DC the first day I play I’ll be happy and praise Blizz for a good game release lol.

That’s a good part to quote and to hear you oppinion because. Even with the evident shortcomings of D4 it’s still fun and I look forward to play it and to dive into the endgame.

You find this kind of players everywhere. In D4 and here right in this forum for this game as well… so what? :smiley:

What classes? So far right now there are op builds for almost all classes (Points finger at Druid “HAHA!”) to delete bosses in seconds or have 5k sustained dmg on the worldboss so what classes are we talking about? Most likely Necro and Sorc because Necro is tupid OP and everyone cries a river about the Sorc who is the only toon that works even if you have no brain.

Like… always?

Well yeah Blizz needs to work on it yes. IF D4 ends up with the numbers D3 pulls of every now and then at season starts D4 will be anything but dead… at least on planet earth.

Outside of worldbosses I never see that many players to beginn with and even when I see them they are only 5% more xp bots and that’s it.
Then again killing players at worldbosses uses Bone Prison seems to be a new sport in D4 and people are suprised that this is griefing because at least they think it’s fun ^^.

D4 has a long way to go and the performance and the servers need to get better. outside of this the whole atmosphere and the basic gamplay is something I like and I’ll play it in June and won’t be mad about the state of the game unless the endgame is crap or they try to sneak in some p2w MTX crap.

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Neither is any game in the genre by that metric then 'cause a fireball is a fireball is a fireball… What do you want a Bone Spear to be? Not a Spear made of Bone? If a player casts Bone Spear and gets a rain of fluffy kittens there would be a monumental amount of bitching on the internet (even more than there normally is).

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There’s a video of Kripparian that explain it quite well. D4 as absolutely no regard to melee.

Melee will have most of the time lower DPS uptime and more trouble against enemy and boss mechanics, this is innate to the playstyle. Even the monster AI makes melee experience miserable.

Even PoE that melee there is not great, has some considerations, with attack area, attack speed and fortify you can somehow make successful characters in the melee scene (with infinitely more effort than other archetypes though)

In LE melee is mostly allright, needs some love, but most fights are a non-issue being melee, the only one really stacked against melee (and rogue specifically because they decided to destroy two defensive layers for that fight because reasons), is Julra and her spinning beam.

Supposedly melee should have a mix of better defenses/sustain/mobility/DPS (not everything, just a few of those) to make up for that. Also bosses should not have many anti-melee mechanics. This is not happening in D4. All characters DPS is in the same range, and you need to dodge mechanics a lot in melee, so huge L for melee in D4. Sorceress is actually more resilient than barb, is quite hilarious, we will se how it turns out in true endgame…

Seems is not the case, enemies gain some kind of DR much like in LE as you level up. Most of the legendary powers don’t scale too much your damage, saving a few honorable exceptions, that will probably get nerfed. We don’t know how parangon and endgame gear will affect this, however.

I had a very good experience and sure it will get more polished. Outside some zones pushing you back until they load, which is far from game-breaking, and two disconnect instances, the game runs flawlessly, just as an offline game.

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That’s not the numbers he meant. He meant player numbers not damage numbers.

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  1. The skill trees are Dragon Age Inquisition-tier. They should be instead called skill twigs. I don’t think I need to explain why that’s a bad thing.
  2. The skills are ridiculously imbalanced. Sorcerer should be renamed “hydra caster”, necromancer might as well “corpse exploder”, Druid could be “that one class Blizzard has hated ever since D2”
  3. It’s a live service with MMO-features which are detrimental to the gameplay in various ways: lagging due to others is not fun, having neutered spell effects (to the point it’s difficult to see some of them, and those that can be seen look worse than a mobile game’s) is unforgivable, stumbling upon an event that has just been completed by someone else is not fun, collectibles such as communication towers- I mean, sanctums of Lilith belongs in Far Cry, and having to be online at certain time for world bosses (hopefully they won’t be all colossal HP sponges with a boring pattern like the beta one) is one of the dumbest choices they could’ve possibly made.
  4. Itemization seems promising, but the affixes are less intuitive than PoE’s.
  5. The paragon board looks like PoE’s gem passive, even with radius and all, only they changed it into a mahjong-like board. Not subtle, and potentially boring given the screenshots featuring what looks like the same symbol over and over (+1 stat I guess, or +% to X damage/def/res/&c.). This might not be a bad thing per se and the paragon system might fix some balancing issues and bring more variety to the table, but it looks janky as hell - on the fence on this one.
  6. The game changed direction and staff many times during its development. Again I don’t think I need to explain why this is bad.
  7. The interface is horrible and only reinforces the “mobile game” feeling.
  8. Lackluster physics. You’d think dropping a meteor on a puny ghoul wound have a different effect than stabbing it with a dagger. It does not.

That being said, just because I don’t like a lot of things about what I’ve seen, it doesn’t mean I’m berating the game for the sake of it. I really want to like it. Unfortunately the previews and betas are far from promising. There are positive things of course:

  1. Unlike spells, the scenery is absolutely gorgeous. It’s grim, it’s dark, it’s detailed and has cool touches such as footprints in the snow.
  2. The writing has never been Diablo’s (or any hack-n-slash game’s) forte, but it’s an established IP, so of course there some curiosity about the story.
  3. Visual character customization is fantastic, the cinematics featuring your character are a nice touch, and the “vantage point” are very scenic.
  4. The crafting systems seem to have potential.

So yeah, I’ll say it again because it bears repeating: I want to like D4. I just particularly don’t at the time being, and I’m liking LE significantly more. I will be playing D4’s campaign and likely rush through seasons as well, but barring very dramatic changes I doubt it’ll become my “main” hack-n-slash. I’ll mostly play LE. Yes, playing two games at once is possible, and sometimes even better than sticking to one as it avoids burnout and makes you appreciate the games more because both are bound to have strengths and weaknesses.

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The first beta I had about a 16 minute queue and dc about 40 mins and had another 35 min queue

Second beta actually launched about 10 or so mins prior to the launch time and had no queue at all for me, I was actually logged in on a new Druid 5 mins before official launch time and was absolutely shocked. I also played for maybe 11 hours continuous without a d/c nor did I d/c the entire weekend. passive buff from being in Australia and servers being much less populated

Yeah see I dont have this issue rather the opposite, ive played LE for 2k hours and owned it for 3 years, played all the skills (except Black Hole, never casted it once) if LE was new to me then I would be torn

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I strongly recommend that you not get your hopes up about paragon being a game changer.

Personally, what I want Bone Spear to be is “Replaced with something new and interesting”. It was lame in D2, it was lame in D3, and it’s lame in D4 too. I don’t know why somebody decided that Bone Spear, apropos of nothing, is the Necro’s Fireball, but I wish they had tapped some people who had new ideas instead of “HEY! REMEMBER BONE SPEAR?”

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It’s not only about seeing or having to interact with other players. I simply don’t want to be forced into an always-online service environment in order to play a game just for myself.

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A different approach to it. There are many ways to make it diferent. A bone spear is conjured to wield it as a weapon. The Bone spear rises from a dead corpse and impales the vctim and so on and so forth.
Even with fireball you can change up the pace a bit like having multiple ones and spread or chain projectiles or make it like an artilery kind of skill or have multiple mini fireballs that seek out mobs on their own.
A Bone Spear mustn’t always be a piercing projectile and a fireball mustn’t be a firery projectile that explodes on impact. The above examples took me seconds to come up with while writing. Yes they are most likely examples of other skills that are there since the dawn of the fantasy genre but it would mix stuff up.

melees have this the main issue is the “Unsoppable” buff because CC chains are like hell in Diablo winkwink. I never had struggels to keep my toons afloat outside of heavy CC because you can make them work. Is it fun while leveling? Hell no! Is it fun in the endgame when you facetank everything and dish out a lot of dmg? A tad bit more.

That was shown already with some graphs. in short if you level up your stats are worth less and the enemys stats are worth more. You don’t level up untill lvl 50 so to speak. BUUUUTTTT I like the benefit behind the system because I was able to play my toon while a friend wasn’t home when the Beta started but as soon as he locked in I was able to join his game and play with him because of the zone scaling. On top of this I can help out a friend who starts a month late and who isn’t into the story and sightseeing and just want’s to be done with it.

I had one DC and problems to form a party again after relogging and sometimes rubberbanding from hell. outside of this everything was very smooth.

Oh please no trillions of dmg :smiley:

Thx for the more detailed writeup. Those are all fair points to make. At the end of the day it all comes down to taste and hopium :smiley: . I still hope the paragon tree and later uniques/legys make up for the basic non inspirered skilltree what is the bare minimum.

70 quid makes the game even harder to like but I got a gift card as a gift so it was only 20 quid for me.

i have a bit of hope but at the end of the day I’m an optimist with experience :smiley:

That’s fair but why have a D4 discussion then outside of “No offline mode suxx! Won’t buy because of this!”? I wish I had the option to form worldboss groups and never see another player in the zone or world and only play with my friends but sadly this isn’t happening. Always online is just no problem anymore because even here in germany what is a third world continent when it comes to internetavailability people can be always online the whole day. As soon as I start my PC I’m always online, when I watch TV I’m always online and when I play games I’m always online.

I always had a hard time understanding what made this a nogo for people like their most priced posession is datavolume and if they are online in a game for 10 minutes they are about to get some some kind of OTD or whatever. I can’t tell and understand only a part of why are people mad about online games beeing online ^^. No offence I just don’t get it because I play group and mmo games 99% of the time.

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You are sugar-coating the thing a bit too much IMO. The system is quite bland.

The skills have two variations, so you have skill flavour A, and skill flavour B, (and only one version for Ultimates) then each skill may have a few legendaries that work on top of it. Maybe you could go two core skills and some things like that, and that’s about it for skills.

Yes, each class has its own twist, but doesn’t add too much into the skill system, maybe the Sorc enchanting, that’s about it.

We will see with the parangon system, but seems to me the game overall’s simplicity is much higher than D3, and that’s saying something.

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That’s so nice of you to say! noone in the past 2 decades said I suger-coated something :smiley: . I get what you mean and YES you are right and D4 should’ve been an evolvement compared to D2 or D3 but we get the same old stuff to make franchise purists happy that would buy a brick as long as someone writes Diablo on it.

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Heh, you’re welcome.

Well, Blizzard did take Diablo 4 into a new take of the genre, basically being an MMO and a open world game just as much as an ARPG.

I’m all in into evolving the general formula of ARPG games, just happens that mixing in trendy things doesn’t work out well (IMO). But what we can really expect of a Blizzard that only has the name in common with the original creators of Diablo, Starcraft…

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Sacred 1 & 2 were open world & they were in the early-mid 2000s.

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So were Dungeon Siege 1 and 2. But, most developers have really stuck to the linear-zone playstyle.

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Why does each game have to out-do the XYZ offering from other games? Blizzard has made no effort to hide their shift towards more casual gaming audience. Not everyone wants spreadsheet levels of complexity just to play their games. Many people (and I would wager my entire yearly salary that it’s the overwhelming majority) simply want to play a game as entertainment, and a distraction from the complexities of their real lives. There are more than enough games out there that fit the Math Major requirement for play, if that’s your jig.

Why does the .01% try hard gamer population feel they need to hijack every game, and demand annoying levels of complexity?

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So, what’s your point? Am I not allowed to have an opinion that doesn’t fit your narrative? If you’re okay with playing an always-online service game, more power to you, but that doesn’t mean I have to fall in line with your opinion just because…reasons I guess.

“No offence” - pointless set phrase, it doesn’t make an offensive statement less offensive - , it doesn’t sound like you’re interested in trying to understand the reasoning but either convince others of your perspective or make fun of it. So, I don’t see a reason to continue answering to your posts. Besides, I’m not mad about whatever you think I am.

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I’m glad that in one of the most affluent countries in Europe that you have good Internet. That is not the case everywhere, last time we were on holiday in Devon in the UK we struggled to get 2 meg and it would frequently drop out during peak hours. Mobile signal was also non-existent so I couldn’t even go down to the other end of the garden and tether my laptop to my phone.

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I’ve had to pass on D4. My graphics card on desktop won’t run it and it will be expensive to get one that will. Not worth it given current card is still working well. It was transferred to this desktop when I got it 6 months ago. Lappy will play but the graphics have their moments. I will stick to this game for now.

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You are but take a look at the blizz forums for example. People who knew since 2019 that D4 will be an always online game as a service game and they demand that D4 should get an offline mode.

Yeah but sometimes people feel offended if you don’t have the intention to offend anyone if through a language barrier or just by directly get to the point. But you jump to conclusions very fast so we better move different ways.

lol we don’t :smiley: . last time i checked we were on the 26th place in a worldwide test when it came to Internet availability. So yeah seems like I stand corrected. having bad internet or bad server placements and gamebreaking high pings is a reason to have an offline mode sure. While writing that nonsense you quoted I was very likely still stuck mentaly in the Blizz forum post ^^.

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Not a direct reply, but I fully plan on playing this on PS5, its bullshit I am required to subscribe to ps+ to play D4 on console. I dont console game online, yet I have to pay a $60 tax to see people run around town and do poorly during group world boss events :confused: Either that or spend $350 on a gfx card that can perform as well as my playstation.

PoE does not require ps+, on pc its always online as many of you know. LE gives us the option of offline play. Just Bliz being Bliz.