Thread by @NeverSinkDev

Finished #DiabloIV beta (act1 content) on a sorceress here are some of my impressions.

I'll try to stay as objective and unbiased as possible.

1/n

Technical things/bugs:

There were some network difficulties regarding disconnects with long queue times, but I believe those are beta-state of the game.

I hope these will not occur on the actual release.

Other than that I did not enounter any bugs.
No complains here!

2/n

Graphics:

Graphically Diablo is very engaging. I found the visuals great, the overall atmosphere was dark and reminded me more of D1/D2 and POE rather than D3.

The ingame cutscenes are a bit meh, but the actual gameplay looks crisp with great looking characters and armours

3/n

Audio:

I found the music and sound and spell effects very atmospheric.

The quest and NPC dialogue was a bit hit and miss though. Many of them felt forced and unnatural and the voice acting on quest NPCs was subpar at best.

4/n

OK let's get into the big one:

Gameplay. The gameplay of Diablo 4 is very different from D3/D2. At least during the beta.

The best comparison I can bring is likely a mix out of Diablo 3 and Lost Ark, with some Guild Wars being sprinkled in.

5/n

The game swaps between a spacious overworld, with fairly low monster density, where at times world events occur and you can participate (together with random players, similar to how GW2 does it) and dungeons that remind me a lot of the D3 instance design.

6/n

Some of the 'dungeons' feel nearly 1:1 from their map generation compared to Diablo 3.

Dungeons are pretty monster packed and there's some rares and a boss at the end.

I didn't find them particularly good or bad. If you've done a dungeon in D3 you know what to expect.

7/n

The overworld activities though felt pretty lackluster to me. There was a lot of running around, not enough waypoints, no mount unlocked yet and the lack of monster density damage the whole experience.

I did not find the world events engaging. Rewarding yes. But boring.

8/n

It should be noted that this is a beta of the early campaign and that mounts and more and high level events will likely shift experience.

Still, I'd describe the open world experience to be 'Lost Ark' like. You may like it or not, personally it wasn't my favorite part

9/n

The campaign was OK so far. Characters were decent. The act 1 boss fight was fine. I was engaged-ish with the plot.

I found early dialogues/scenes a bit too dragged out. The first 30-40 hour of the game was definitely the weakest point. Too much talking. Little fighting.

10/n

A special note should be given to the boss-fights. I found most 'unique/act' bosses to be a bit too spongy. The fights were not challenging at all and just lasted very long.

I think they should pose higher threats, but have ~30-40% less life.

11/n

The character customization felt good though. There were sufficient spell combos to test out and while the 'modifications' on those spells were fairly limited, the 'unique' items all provided some interesting balanced (not D3 style) mods that affected my skill choices.

12/n

For instance I found a unique focus that made my ice shards pierce enemies (while throwing more shards through passives per pierce) or found doubling the number of hydras.

For campaign standards, those were quite nice! Though, it depends how endgame will play out.

13/n

I did like the 'upgrading' option on items! This way you could keep using a low level unique!

Rare items felt fairly boring though: like the D3 'damage up/defense' up items and the stats were mostly not too interesting.

Then again. Might change in the endgame.

14/n

Gold seems to have a lot more use cases and there are some light crafting mechanics as well. Nothing too exceptional though.

All of these mechanics tie together into the combat of Diablo 4 - which is good (spongy bosses aside).

15/n

Skill options felt fun and the combat in general was quite decent. Overall the combat feel and flow felt quite good and bursty.

I tried out a bunch of different skills and enjoyed frozen orb, chain lightnings, ice shards, fireballs and hydras.

These all had their uses!

16/n

The combat flow itself focused a bit about mobility, cooldown skill usage and resource management.

It felt good overall, but I felt a bit too much resource starved on the sorceress.

The combat itself feels very very similar to D3 combat, but with a darker atmosphere

17/n

Difficulty:

Overall too easy. I played on the 'veteran' difficulty. Never ran out of options and never died.

Combined with the spongy bosses, this did damage the experience a bit boring at certain times.

18/n

So how does it compare to PoE you might ask?

Well - I don't think it does at all.

Right now Diablo IV feels a lot more like Lost Ark than PoE. The open world and the progression, reputation systems, open world and a more 'classic' crafting approach..

19/n

I can absolutely imagine playing Diablo IV, but I can also imagine that D4 and PoE(2) will mostly appeal to different player groups.

I can well imagine that D4 is a better clan and world experience and likely will be more interesting to MMO players.

20/n

Personally I did enjoy the experience, but I'd likely enjoy it even more if the whole open world thing, side quests, reputations etc. and world events would be cut in favour of better dungeons and a stronger itemization.

21/n

I think Diablo IV's might end up having the problem that it's not what D2/D3/ARPG fanbase is not expecting.

It might be a good game, but it's very very different in terms of pacing.

In the end the game will likely live/fail by the quality of it's endgame.

22/n

I plan to try out the other classes tomorrow and I'll add more thoughts tomorrow!

I'd also like to point out that I WANT diablo 4 to succeed. I think it's healthy for the market/competition/innovation to have to have multiple good ARPGs with solid endgames.

Fin. For now.

23/n