First off, I did say recently that Diablo IV would be a hard pass given the unresolved nature of Activision Blizzard (the Microsoft acquisition and Blizzard Entertainment leadership where in that context, the entirety of Activision Blizzard AND Blizzard Entertainment c-suite needs an overhaul). But that hard pass was in the context of the live release (not purchasing the game). Given that there were other methods to gain early access to the beta (like that KFC promo; I gave away the sandwich), I decided to give it an objective look.
Like Diablo III’s beta test (which was the entirety of the Act I story that was also released as the free starter edition trial), we’re essentially playing a preview of what will be the starter edition of Diablo IV (which is also Act I). So I played what exists from this perspective.
The Friday launch issues was not surprising (the stress test aspect to me was going to be part of it); like most early on, I spent more time in queue than in-game (disconnecting over 5 times and spending on average, at least 70 minutes queued up each time). While annoying (especially when getting booted in a dungeon and losing your entire clear progress), I still managed to get to level 18 on my sorceress before calling it an evening. Saturday was a different story; no queues and disconnects where it was really easy to hit the maximum level (25) for the beta.
With that said, what exists is both polished and unpolished. The cutscenes are top notched productions. The game play and combat itself feels impactful. If this game weren’t called Diablo IV, what exists would be a decent ARPG that needs various loose ends fixed. But the reality is that it is the 4th in the franchise, and if both Lilith and Inarius weren’t featured the way they were, I’d be hard pressed to find much thematic connection to the iconic aspects of the Diablo universe. D2 and D3 had a lot of connections to the first; Diablo I’s Tristram (with Deckard Cain) and the Cathedral for example. In Diablo II, we eventually quested through a burning Tristram in order to rescue Deckard Cain. In Diablo III, our initial hub was New Tristram where we eventually quested through the old Tristram ruins in order to get to the Cathedral. This sort of deep connection was missing early on for the most part in Diablo IV’s Act I main story except for a small part where we travel through a red portal (and see a very small part of Tristram burning; if the wolf [in sheeps clothing] did not mention it was Tristram though, we would not have known this though). UPDATE: yes, I realized there is Lorath Nahr from Reaper of Souls Act V (who serves as the new narrator of sorts), but it initially did not ring a bell for me.
Diablo IV has the hallmarks of what the first Diablo created (i.e. the isometric camera, the UI with the health and mana orbs), but there are other nuances (besides the above) that are missing like even the iconic music cues. I still remember the grief that happened when it came to the New Tristram BGM (since people were trying to compare it to the very iconic Tristram theme in the original Diablo). But when you listen to that now, you can hear the homage to the original (D3’s music was a lot more symphonic compared to Diablo and Diablo II, but still found ways in some of the tracks to telegraph those iconic signature melodies). Yes, we’re starting D4 in a different part of the world of Sanctuary, but it’s this lack of thematic connection to a familiar place early on, that made the game feel like it wasn’t taking part in the universe of the first three titles. I know there are other zones which build on the past lore (and maybe will provide more grounding in that regards), but for the introductory prologue and initial act, it could’ve been any generic ARPG.
The visuals are hit and miss for me. I initially played on high but since people were experiencing memory leak issues, I switched to medium. The graphics itself were still great looking (for whatever reason, it doesn’t translate that way in videos). Yes, it has the darker vibe a lot of folks were wishing for with D3. However, that dark look of the zone ended up looking bland after awhile. Yes, there was The Butcher (he was a random spawn in one of the early dungeons where he promptly slammed my sorceress into oblivion at around level 12), and I then encountered it on my rogue in the Rimescar Cavern dungeon when I was level 19 where I actually was able to whittle it down while using the dungeon layout to run around while pulling mobs, where the kill happened when all the mobs exploded from one of my skills and took it out in the process). Yes, this was one of those rare thematic connections to the prior games (and it was nice to see). As for calls to nerf him (due to hardcore), I say nah. The fact it can be a random spawn in any dungeon, means you need to play accordingly in hardcore.
Digressing, the character models are alright (the faces and hairstyles could be better but I’m chalking a lot of this preference up to years of Korean MMO character models) but since they will be covered up by its armor for the most part and also zoomed out, it’s not a big deal. On a related note, I am not a fan of the sorceress’ movement animations (D3 nailed it by comparison).
With that said, the open world area of Act I is huge, but it feels huge just for the sake of being huge. They did get the verticality navigation aspect right though (where you utilize your evade skill to climb up/down, slide down a hill, traverse a rope, etc) where it’s not a slow going process (like Lost Ark where you use your “G” action key and have to wait for a slow animation). As for a transparent mini map overlay (or lack of one), that seems like a huge oversight (the mini map at the top right corner is not a replacement). The skill tree page also needs some refinement as are other parts of the UI (like the achievement parts looks really terrible). Seeing more granular details should not have to take multiple clicks. The action wheel (E) is nice (obviously a console design) where you can customize it (and also add keybinds to it; so it will serve like a hidden additional action bar). But this also needs to be highlighted early on since many had no idea there is a “leave dungeon” action on it, and some players were walking all the way back to the main entrance to leave (forgetting you can also teleport or town portal out as well). But if people didn’t know this, it’s not their fault; it’s poor telegraphing by the UI designers. The prologue early on should simply point out the feature as a simple tutorial.
Blizzard seems to be keeping with the 6 total skills on the hot bar where IMHO, they should add a slot specific for your “ultimate” skill (since the skill tree has an actual class of skills for that now). I get the notion of limited choice, but allocating a slot for skills with minute long CD’s doesn’t seem worth it at this juncture. Given these long cooldowns, I simply did not allocate points to that part and just focused on the tree up until that node (versus sacrificing a slot for something with too long a cooldown). However, that could change as one hits end game (where there will likely be more properties like higher amounts of cooldown reduction for example).
The entire itemization and skill system in D4 does pay homage to D2, but it is not at that level of complexity (that is not Blizzard’s objective with D4; like D3, the objective is low barrier to entry in terms of demographic). As someone who falls in the casual potato demographic, D4’s early game fits the bill. You aren’t hardlocked into those skills (re-specs cost gold). For me, the items I got were effectively stat sticks and not memorable which is ok for early game. D3’s “loot 2.0” added a lot of interesting legendaries (some examples being Thunderfury, Serpent Sparker, Shard of Hate, etc) which became really memorable for that version. But then again, D3’s initial itemization and loot, were pretty bad by comparison. I’m not sure how D4’s will pan out since we have no idea what end game content will be like, and how the entire itemization system expands with the Paragon system. I think the imprinting system is great though (where you can extract the legendary properties, and then imprint them on another piece of gear) because you can imprint that onto rares (which drop in abundance, and effectively turn them into legendaries). In D3, rares were effectively salvage fodder for materials. In D4, you have to pay attention to rare drops to see what properties are on them since they may be worthy for imprinting.
Basically, a casual like myself got item drops (from mobs or the Murmuring Obols vendor) and I was able to put together an unoptimized farming build that could still clear out content (my sorceress ended up being this weird melee chill/freeze hydra damage dealer; the melee part was due to the legendary property where your damage would increase by 32% if you stood still) having some recovery (utilizing life on kill and some life regen) and have fun doing it. Following is a clear of Rimescar Cavern to complete a side quest.
Dungeon designs need some work; the layouts and environments may have differed, but they were all variations of the same mechanic where you had to head to furthest reaches of each part of the dungeon to retrieve an item to place on a pedestal that opens the door to the boss room. One dungeon, you had to kill every single monster (and I didn’t know that until it finally put up a counter so I had to backtrack through the dungeon to kill the ones I missed). Act I alone has over 20 dungeons with these same mechanics. It’s honestly annoying after several runs of these (and if end game dungeons are based on upgrading these existing dungeons with this nightmare sigil system; akin to PoE’s map modifier system, you’ll be running these same dungeons just at a more higher level of difficulty). As far as mob and boss types being mostly the same, I attribute that to both Act I and possibly cut/paste for the beta (release may have more variability. Similarly, cellars were mostly all the same room designs with variations on a mechanic to complete them. One thing that did surprise me is these dungeons weren’t procedurally generated (since private instances like this are essentially the only place to create random layouts since Torchlight Frontiers tried to do this with the shared world, and it just made the open world locations feel lacking).
The pros and cons of the level scaling in the game are a known. With mob levels increasing along with your character, you get replayable content. However, until you start getting Paragon bonuses and other things that can increase your relative power (to extend the differential between your character and monsters hit point/damage), your gear upgrades mostly feel meaningless (I think there needs to be a buffer so players do get that dopamine fix when leveling and getting gear upgrades – that is an important aspect of any ARPG).
Blizzard IMHO did a decent job with balancing the solo aspects of the game, with the multiplayer aspect both in town hubs and the open world (they chose to go with a very MMO-lite design which IMHO, was the correct decision because there has been no successful MMO-ARPG’s that has been able to match the longevity of your standard co-op ARPG). Torchlight Frontiers initially tried, and they had to walk it back to where the limited shared world version (what was renamed to Torchlight III) just never gained traction once it launched. Lost Ark is mostly MMO (it just happens to use an isometric camera and ARPG style movement).
But digressing back to D4’s MMO-lite design, that transition (of shared experience to a nearly solo one and back to a shared experience) is fairly transparent (though early on, I did see stuttering and some characters running into what seemed like an invisible barrier since there are these seamless transition points where players are placed on specific server shard instances; I’ve seen other characters disappear as we’re both running out of a town hub for example). This layered system is similarly used for event areas and the world boss spawn (you effectively transition from an open world instance to another instance for that spawn). So if you portal out of the area, you cannot simply rejoin (each world boss instance is limited to 12 total players). I believe they borrowed this design from later iterations of World of Warcraft (which they use for load balancing the game world).
And speaking of the world boss spawn (Ashava), it was fun but it also needs work since the two that I tried, we weren’t able to clear it since there was a decent amount of non-level 25’s participating (you lose valuable DPS). So there needs to be either level restrictions or better yet, giving lower level participants a temporary boost to their stats (a base equalization) so that they can experience and actually contribute to the objective.
Class wise, sorceress and rogue were really fun. Most of my time was on sorc, so I only leveled my rogue to 20. I’m going to try druid first and then necro this coming open beta weekend. Barbarian just didn’t jive for me so I stopped at level 5 just before entering Kyovashad.
As someone who stopped playing D3 back in 2015 (and any Blizzard game in general since), one would think my assessment of this D4 beta would be mostly negative. My assessment of Blizzard Entertainment the company is negative. However, I’m assessing the game as designed by a development team that has changed over time (and does not have a lot of the designers from D3). Again, I am evaluating this based on this being what will become the trial starter edition of D4 where the objective is to give a potential player a taste of what the game is about.
As an ARPG, it has the basic hooks (for most players, it looks visually stunning, the combat is fun, the story is good enough, and the search for loot early on kept you playing). For Diablo franchise veterans looking for a lot of thematic and iconic references, Act I doesn’t have a lot of that (I’m actually wondering if there will be an actual Diablo monster that needs to be taken down as part of the campaign). My initial impression is still more on the positive side though (out of a scale of 1-10, I give this beta a 7).
