With this weekends open beta weekend coming to a close, I thought I would continue my impressions (from the early access weekend) of what the public was allowed to test (the entirety of Act I aka what will be the starter edition trial for D4). Compared to D3’s beta (and the content that was available where the original game only provided the campaign since adventure mode only came with Reaper of Souls), D4’s Act I will offer a lot more things to partake of (and for the really casual player, will be a fun enough trial experience to get a feel for what the early game offers; the key ones being the environmental visuals and game play combat). I didn’t complete all of the Renown objectives for the Fractured Peaks region that we had access to, but it was still a lot things to do (yes, some of it is repetitive like finding the Altar’s of Lilith).
I primarily played Sorc, Necro, and Rogue (in that specific order in terms of time spent) since it was clear that Barb and Druid would require a bit more time to get the gear to open up their play (and given the limited time, I wanted to spend it on the classes that felt great from the start).
Yes, the drop rates of legendaries (from drops and the Murmuring Obol vendor) were increased for these betas which made it possible to find the legendary aspects that enabled you to put together builds. Note: the legendary drop sound and light beam are still very satisfying dopamine feeders (the production value again is really high).
As I mentioned in my early access writeup, the Occultist NPC (unlocked at level 20) with the imprinting system is something that felt great. I was constantly burning through gold since just extracting these lower level legendaries aspects can run 15K per. Rare drops also have value as salvage material or vendoring for gold (to feed the system of item upgrading, crafting gems, and extracting/imprinting aspects). Mind you, this game play loop is based on being capped at level 25 (and very far away from the end game parts of the game where other systems will likely also open up).
I finally got the aspect that allows for two hydras and also the above where Flame Shield acts as a crowd control. It’s the anti-ranged mage though, but it’s a relative fast low level farming build (below).
My necromancer was mainly a skeleton army (which likely will not scale at higher levels; it didn’t for the world boss but our group managed to clear it). But this is what the game gave me (in terms of legendary aspects) so I went with it. And again, for fast clearing the dungeons for farming at this low level, it did the job (below).
I didn’t really gear my rogue so I had no actual build running except for whatever I got as drops (so I mainly played to level to 25). The mobility of the class makes it really engaging to play though.
Overall, these two short weekends does provide some insight of where the game is at. With a June launch date, every system is pretty much set in stone already (it’s too late to make major changes especially when considering the lead time required for build certification for console). We weren’t able to use mounts for this short beta (since they wanted us to see the game world on foot). The server shard layering also has some issues in various spots (there are some areas where you clearly micro stutter during the transition). But they nailed the seamless single player transition for story quests, strong hold events, and other smaller events that take place in the open world (for players screaming for a single player mode, they could actually do it with this tech – but their objective is to have some of these random encounters).
The biggest concern many rightfully have are the end game systems (the NDA beta leaks not withstanding) given what happened with D3 (which had a somewhat polished Act I that served as its beta test while the game at released, had a lackluster end game with the original overtuned Inferno difficulty).
Myself, as someone who really grew with this entire genre and then the Diablo franchise, this version of the game didn’t really hit any of those nostalgia buttons. I’ve mentioned numerous times on this blog in recent years that the ARPG genre no longer appealed to me. This D4 beta didn’t really reignite that feeling either. It was fun (for what was offered) where I spent enough time completing the Fractured Peaks Renown and running events and dungeons so that I could try out the imprinting system. But I also realize that in a full release, my tolerance (as a casual) for that grind is going to drop off quickly (it’s something I am no longer into).
IMHO, D4 will be a commercial success (regardless of how I feel about it) since it will reach a wide demographic (the fact that there are D2 and PoE hardcores saying that D4 doesn’t look to have as complex/deep system, is exactly the design objective; it was never meant to be a modern version of D2). There are valid complaints about the game but even that, I am no longer interested in partaking of like the way I did in D3 (that was a different time when I really did care about the franchise).
I acknowledged before that this passion I once had for the Diablo universe, disappeared back in 2015. The scrapping of the 2nd expansion and the multiyear delays with D4, really took a hammer to that loyalty. Over the years, I stopped keeping tabs on the franchise (not even bothering with D2R either) including D4 up until the beta weekends. This was the first time in 7.5 years that I logged into my Battle.net account. So that is a win for Blizzard in just getting someone like myself re-engaged after such a hiatus.
However, the game isn’t an auto-sell (that type of loyalty also vanished after 2015) and while the beta was again fun, Act I was also not to a level of “here, take my money as I don’t care about my prior stance regarding not becoming a patron of Blizzard Entertainment games again”. And to be fair, there aren’t much games now that are keeping my attention (not helped by my disdain for how the gaming industry conducts business in general). As I wrote back in December, I am not sure if I’ll even be playing any games by the end of this year (that feeling hasn’t changed since I wrote that editorial).
