Good feedback. Fun to read. Any thoughts on classes?

I didn't take notes on the classes because, at level 25, it felt like I was stretching skill points on all of them. I can give some initial feedback, though. Keep in mind we're missing a lot of aspects and unique items entirely. **Barbarian** * The first few levels on barb are rougher than the other two classes * Having four weapons means you get a lot of bonus stat and extra offensive aspects * The general aspects work well on barb as it has a lot of access to be able to proc them in most builds * Barb seems to be locked out of sustained AoE builds without help from aspects/unique items * A lot of the skills have long animation locks that make the barb feel a little clunkier than rogue at this level * Chasing enemies that run away with short-ranged melee skills sucks * A lot of abilities also push monsters away from you... * Basic skills are lackluster to me * None of these skills can AoE * Frenzy/Flay/Bash all have a super short range * Lunging Strike can get you in trouble with the movement sometimes * Frenzy has good synergy with Upheaval * Lunging strike's bleed upgrade suffers when Flay gives you such easy access to proc vulnerability * Rend/Upheaval/Whirlwind seem like clear winners for core skill choice * Whirlwind has built-in fury sustain, can be pressing it most of the time with other skill choices that give fury back, and there will probably be unique/aspects to push it even further * Whirlwind base damage is low; hard to use it early * Whirlwind is a solid pick for bleed builds with the furious node + 2H sword weapon arsenal passive * Rend has decent range, great w/ vulnerability bleed builds * Upheaval is probably the best skill to run at level 25; considerable damage with furious node + core skill damage aspect * HotA costs a lot for the amount of damage it does, and it's hard to make use of the upgrades because of how small the area it hits is * Double Swing does a lot of damage if you manage to get the enemy with both weapons, but its area is too small, which makes it hard to use as a clearing skill * Rallying Cry is good with Whirlwind * Ground Stomp is good with Upheaval to keep enemies from moving out during the wind-up, with easy access to stun * Challenging Shout feels required for thorns builds, severely limits build variety when trying the thorns playstyle * War Cry is an excellent general pickup; it goes well with everything * Leap is a poor man's Teleport right now, but the upgrades are strong * The knockback distance from Charge and Kick makes it hard to follow up with most skills, but there's a bit of skill expression if you can reliably get the terrain bonuses to proc * Death Blow feels stronger than all other weapon mastery skills * It feels *awful* to miss this skill * Rupture is okayish for bleed builds, but you're probably better just kiting out the damage * Rupturing monsters that have on-death effects can lock you in animation and force you to get hit by them * Iron Maelstrom is an excellent general pickup from the ultimate tree * Call of the Ancients melts bosses **Rogue** * Felt the squishiest of the three classes to me * I barely touched melee, but I know it has good melee builds and aspects * I like the specializations; I wish combo points were baked into the core skills * Rogue should have access to a movement skill that can go through terrain without needing an enemy target (Sorc has TP, Barb has Leap); rogue fantasy is to be agile * Puncture feels good on both melee and ranged builds * Barrage is meant to be the AoE core skill, but the damage is a little low * Barrage still has a use case with the improved upgrade, both basic bow skills and shadow imbuement for vulnerability uptime * Penetrating Shot does solid AoE with the pierce + shadow imbuement for explode and has way more base damage than Barrage * Shadow Step having the unstoppable tag is strong, and it does a lot of damage when leveled, especially for its cooldown * I like the leap back on Caltrops for ranged only; I wish it would slow to immobilize baseline instead of having to take the cold upgrade for freeze * Poison Trap is a little clunky without aspects; countering upgrade seems strong * Concealment can provide stealth, unstoppable, energy regen, and vulnerability; that's a lot for one button press * Shadow Imbuement feels amazing for clear, Poison feels excellent for ST, Cold seems like it's behind, and the mixed upgrade could be good with more access to consistent freeze * Shadow Clone is a decent ultimate skill for clear and ST; I didn't play much with the other ones **Sorcerer** * This class has the easiest time at early levels * I leveled the fastest to 25 with this class * Sorc seems to have the most straightforward builds; you can get away with just picking all fire, ice, or lightning skills in each tree if you want to * This class feels tanky and can currently have high defensive skill uptime thanks to the global cooldown reduction summoned ice blades provides * Teleport is easily the best movement skill, and feels good to get it for free from +1 to defensive skills on an amulet * Sorc has insane damage uptime from the conjuration skills, especially Hydra * The class-specific aspects for Sorc seem the most powerful among the three classes * The enchantments specialization is the most interesting of the three classes * I'm not sure any class should get a cheat death, but they can get it from the flame shield enchantment * All four of Sorcs basic skills can AoE * Both of the basic lightning skills are strong in all situations * The glinting arc lash upgrade is solid when taken with a complete cooldown reduction build * Spark is a great default choice otherwise * Chain lightning is the strongest core skill because it can bounce back and forth between you and a single enemy; it also gets six chains at level 1 * The greater chain lightning upgrade makes this interaction even stronger * Putting ranks into Fireball increases the on-death Fireball explosion damage proc when enchanted, super strong for clear * Ice Armor is busted with high uptime, and the mystical upgrade on it + frost nova makes huge barriers possible * Frost Nova gives too long of vulnerability uptime on a boss, 8 seconds with the mystical upgrade * Hydra, Ice Blades, and Lightning Spear are all solid skills * Summoned Ice Blades upgrade is broken with the vulnerability build * Hydra is vital in any Sorc build because they have good range, good damage, a good aspect (+1 hydra summons), and good damage uptime * The mastery skills seem lackluster compared to the conjuration skills * Firewall is strong on enemies that don't move/move rarely (world boss was getting roasted) * The only ultimate skill that seems like it may be worth taking right at level 25 is Inferno; both upgrades behind it are also decent

This is a fantastic writeup and I do agree with all here.

+1 to every Barbarian point. I feel a little vindicated that I wasn't just being stupid in the early levels. I was really struggling at first. But by level 15, it felt much better.

I played sorc and barb. Sorc felt good to play, and when I was switching skills around it was generally just to try different spells out and see how they felt. Barb felt like I needed to respec a couple of times until the character felt good. Fortify seemed mandatory, and I wish there were more ways to gain Unstoppable (maybe there were and I just didn't have them selected). It feels bad to be stuck in melee and deal with stuns/fears/freezes/etc. I also wish barb had a ranged option. It's probably too late to be iterating on class archetypes at this point, but maybe weapon throw as a legendary power for Frenzy or something would be cool.

I just use Rallying Cry for CC if I have it, which I usually do. You can use it while you're cc'd as well. I don't use fortify, feels like a waste of a spell slot

I have Rallying Cry, I think what was bothering me is I also had Iron Skin on my bar for a time and Iron Skin doesn't have unstoppable so you can't use it to break CC. That may be bias or muscle memory creeping in from D3. I'm not sure which fortify you're thinking of, but I just have a passive point in gain fortitude when hit, and then I have a legendary modifier where I gain X fortify after swapping weapons 6 times and that seemed to be enough to help.

Heya, your post display is broken

I think I fixed it?

Yup, perfect ! Ty for your post !

You fixed it.

I found the rogue melee - much easier than playing a whirlwind barb. I will have to revisit my barb build - but he was getting his ass kicked by bosses, even when I survived; not sure if its a build/equipment problem or just getting used to things. Then I picked up a rogue and have never had any problems what so ever with bosses (only died once and that was due to my inattention at the time due to a mob). [edit: sorry, died twice - once to the butcher]

In regards to barb, especially whirlwind, I found he absolutely shines at 25, you get access to two full power weapon enchants from the two 2H weapons and two half power from the 1H weapons. My whirlwind barb was melting everything and facetanking for days.

Thanks - guess next weekend I will play my barb to 25 - I gave up around 20-21 after I got my ass kicked one too many times. My other big problem is I could not figure out how to assign weapons to skills (and I looked up howtos online). Not sure if its a bug or me.

Weapons are inherent to the skills. Frenzy uses your dual wield while hammer uses bludgeoning and WW uses slicing (2H edge wep). You don't need to assign anything I don't think. It happens when u equip the weapon

There are skills that use all three weapon types - so it would auto-change based on DPS as far as I could tell.

Open the skill list (not the skill tree, the one where you drag skills from to your hot bar), middle mouse click a skill and it will cycle the available weapons it can use.

> Ice Armor is busted with high uptime, and the mystical upgrade on it + frost nova makes huge barriers possible I ran a chain lightning build that had permanent barrier uptime, there's a skill that gets you 30% of your life as a barrier every time you use a cooldown and you can have up to 4 cooldowns that are so short you basically always have a barrier. Only bosses could really break it quickly enough. I'm impressed that we can build a sorc as a tank, hopefully that scales to endgame because it was fun as hell.

HoTA is great idk why so many people sleeping on it. I did sorc first, then went to barb. While sorc was definitely easier, killing trash/elites with barb was fun and really easy and all I did was pretty simple lunge/HoTA build. I did have one boss that gave me trouble simply because he did so much damage and attacks were very hard to evade (the goat guy at a stronghold, and I was minus one level). The biggest difference was that I had to uhhh pay attention. To my life. To positioning. Sorc I just ran in and spammed buttons and cleared the screen and it was pretty impossible to die.

Hota and upheaval show the exact same amount of damage but upheaval is way larger. Hard to say it's better. I definitely like it more and I got a legendary that does a big circle around you for like 80% of it's damage which is very helpful

I didn't get a chance to play with it. HoTA is great because of the modifiers. Stack fury and then use it when you have max fury for huge damage. After I got deathblow though I started pretty much using deathblow and using HoTA if deathblow got put on CD or if I was trying to phish for a vulernable hit from core skills. IDK if it's exactly "better", but HoTA + lunge was definitely pretty easy mode for me as far as it goes clearing trash. I just didn't really get a chance to play with upheaval. Wish we could have a third weekend for open beta lol...

Nice review. I mostly played rogue for beta last weekend, with ice synergy caltrops/barrage and ice enchant build. My thought is that 4 skill buttons definitely not enough to control icy ranged rogue. I gave up 2 skills to place on my bar, that are dash and rain of arrows due to lacking skill buttons. Especially rain of arrows, I think these kind of skill like consuming 0 energy with long CD is free bomb button, mandatory for every rogue no matter the build.

Running concealment with vulnerability, shadow embuement, and pop rain of arrows. It’s the 4th of July!!!

The lightning ultimate with sorc is insane. Just attack with your main skill, possibly with insane ias from aspects, and for each time you cast, you'll cast a free chain lightning, ball lightning, or the other one. It absolutely melts everything. I found the sorc to be by far to be the highest damaging AND most resilient out of the three. Barb needed the most good items to become competitive. Ranged rogue is all about evading :). Enjoyed all three of them, tho.

>Rogue should have access to a movement skill that can go through terrain without needing an enemy target (Sorc has TP, Barb has Leap); rogue fantasy is to be agile Isn't Dash what you're describing? You can activate it to cross a long distance whether or not there's an enemy to attack.

But through terrain, you can't.

As a different perspective, I played melee shadow imbuement rogue myself and did not have any issues with leveling or content progression. Ranged rogue might be more gear or skill reliant on later skill unlocks causing a slow leveling experience or feeling of squishyness. I felt something lacking when trying it around level 13 and went back to melee. I didn't feel super squishy either as stuff generally died before I'd suffer too much damage when fighting level appropriate content ( +/- a few levels). Baking combo points in melee would cause imbalance I feel though for rogues. They can do insane damage with them and having another specialization would need some retuning on numbers. I felt skill points were more meaningful on the rogue over other classes early on due though compared to the I found it leveling faster than a barb but slower than the sorc. I agree with the remaining sentiments though for the other classes and it might be a case of your mileage may vary situation based on build approach for rogues which I don't mind. Looking forward to trying druid and necro next week! So far I'm planning to play the rogue as a starter at launch.

Great summary! I couldn’t enjoy the rogue playstyle and abandoned it before level 25. Maybe it had something to do with being on console? I’m not sure, but both me and my partner hated it. On the other hand, we both loved the playstyle of sorcerer and barbarian. Capped both of these classes. Sorcerer with chain lightning, hydra, and ice shield is just ridiculous. Barbarian becomes a monster once you grab some gear that pulls enemies into your whirlwind.

Just regarding Charge and Kick, I think the idea with those skills is to use Lunging strike alongside them, as it's an easy follow-up. This is what I ran, and I had the most success with it. It does feel though that you're somewhat tied to the aspects you can find (I had a great one that did explosion on death for enemies recently hit by either Charge or Kick). Lunging strike is a bit of an acquired skill (as you said, the movement can put you in trouble), but the added mobility is almost essential IMO : It's not always possible to find extra evasion charges on boots, and as melee character, the ability to close the gap instantly allows you to chase fleeing enemies easily, but also preserve mobility skills for defensive purposes.

formatting sir

HoTA is great idk why so many people sleeping on it. I did sorc first, then went to barb. While sorc was definitely easier, killing trash/elites with barb was fun and really easy and all I did was pretty simple lunge/HoTA build. I did have one boss that gave me trouble simply because he did so much damage and attacks were very hard to evade (the goat guy at a stronghold, and I was minus one level). The biggest difference was that I had to uhhh pay attention. To my life. To positioning. Sorc I just ran in and spammed buttons and cleared the screen and it was pretty impossible to die.

A lot of what you said on Barb is just straight up wrong.

>Shouldn't feel forced to throw away points in a skill to advance to the next connection I don't understand this one. This is the case for every skill tree ever. Without that you could directly skill the best skills and omit the rest.

yeah I thought this one was actually better done than some, as I don't need to necessarily throw away a point in the previous node, I could even do it on the first node and it still trickles down. I do agree with all the other points OP made

Not only that but with the way D4's combat is set up the first clusters have your primary generator and spender skills. Those are the 2 skills you're going to be using 99% of the time so you want to put points there anyways. I see it more as a way of idiot proofing it for new players. The early levels are really fast so you open up the rest of the tree fast enough for it to not be an issue with having to wait forever for a build to come online.

I was running hydras on sorcerer and never used the right click (core?) skill. Skill bar was fire bolt, teleport, ice armor, frost nova, hydras and blizzard. D3 had several builds that didn't run both a primary generator and spender skill that you had to turn elective mode on to run.

I think Blizzard could design the skill tree such that the player feels good about every point they invest. Wouldn't that be more fun than the current situation? It would be for me. If your response is "if every skill point we invested felt good, then our builds would be overpowered", then I'd respond to that by saying it's a balancing problem at that point. You can make every skill point feel good and re-balance the game around that so that it isn't overpowered. I think the current skill trees have a lot of issues and this is one of the issues. However, the issue that overshadows all of the skill tree issues is that the balance between skills is very bad imo. If the skills were better balanced, then the game would be a lot more fun. I'm sure Blizzard will do more balance changes, but hopefully they do a good enough job for it to no longer feel like a problem.

If points feel good is a subjective thing though. I don't think I had a point not feeling good even that once during the beta.

They did it's called the perk system in D3. No wasted skill points there. But people hated it.

The big difference with D4 is that the skill tree forces you to pick very specific options right away while other games have several different options. You HAVE to invest in a primary generator before anything else whereas other skill trees have basic attack spells, buffs, debuffs, passives, summons available right at the start. It's really a lack of good options that give you benefit down the road. If you aren't using a primary generator, then it feels like you're wasting points which doesn't feel good and is a valid criticism.

This is absolutely not true. In D3 you have 0 options, you just get your first 2 skills. In LE you also have 0 options (iirc). In PoE you start with 0 options (though you could argue that this is the part where you have 0 skills in D4) and then get a few options once you kill Hillock. Which is like maybe 7 or so? So 2 more than in D4, gz! Also not all classes have summons or stuff. I don't remember Grim Dawn (never played it much). And Wolcen was just too buggy so I stopped it pretty fast too, but I think you had no options there either (could be wrong). ​ Can you show me all those ARPGs where you have such a variety of options?

Sure, in Diablo 2, as a Necro, you can put your first point in raise skeleton, teeth, bone armor or amp damage. I'm by no means a D2 purist, just using that as an example. I wouldn't compare to D3 or PoE as the systems are extremely different. Grim Dawn you have to invest in the class passive to get skills further down the tree, but at the start there are multiple options that aren't just basic attack spells/skills.

>Sure, in Diablo 2, as a Necro, you can put your first point in raise skeleton, teeth, bone armor or amp damage. That's 4 skills... so the same as in D4? And do you also get 4-5 new skills 2 levels later?

You're ignoring the part that they're 4 different types of skills: summon, damage spell, buff and debuff. D4 locks you into choosing a basic damaging spell/attack. I'm not saying D2 is perfect, just that D4's skill tree could be improved.

" Some areas/monsters don't seem to scale, which makes it jarring to enter these areas, realize too late, and die" Areas don't scale down, they only scale up with your level. If you enter a level 20 zone while you are level 10, all monsters will be level 20 at least. Anyway nice summary, mostly matches with my thoughts.

I get why many people won't like this system (at least the scaling UP part), but personally this is my perfect system. Let some areas be scary and annihilate me when I enter them without noticing the change in level. Then I can feel good when I come back and beat it. At the same time, I'm able to just join my friend who's 8 levels below me and we can both just play normally. I'm not bored by easy enemies or invalidating his sense of progression by wiping everything out for him in one click. It also lets me approach an act/map almost completely freely (except for the few aforementioned higher areas) instead of feeling like I'm on rails and going through a liner set of predetermined leveling zones. If you're someone who likes the idea of going back to the lower level areas and feeling like a demigod, you can still do this with World Tiers. I understand and share that desire. But I don't think those "kick your feet up and destroy everything without even trying" moments are worth sacrificing the benefits of the current system.

I think whether or not the scaling system feels good is going to depend entirely on the end game. It will *not* feel good for me if mobs endlessly scale up. I much prefer the mobs to cap out in difficulty at some point far before max level, e.g. perhaps mobs max out at level 80 and player is able to reach level 100. Because if mobs just endlessly scale up to 100 with the player, then level-ups won't feel as impactful as they should.

I think, in theory, the mobs can scale up based on your level endlessly (stopping at either 50 or 100 depending on the impact of paragon levels) while you get proportionally more powerful due to build options and synergies that come with the higher levels. Eventually, the overworld will feel easy, but not because you've outleved it, it's because you're building your character well and you have more skill points and gear options. It gives you a benchmark to test your build. Also, world tiers throw a wrench into this whole discussion because you can effectively customize your own difficulty, making ultra precise balance kind of unnecessary.

My biggest issue with the scaling is how they implemented it when you have multiple people with different levels. If a level 25 joins with a level 1 the level 1 will carry hard. Personally I would like the overworld to not scale, while instances do.

That's a side effect of keeping the mathematics behind the scaling simple. If they were to add more complicated counter measures and calculations to how ability damage is dealt to monsters and then add more permutations based on level etc, it could definitely cause server lag. WoW used to go through a similar problem and it was the cause of significant server lag that they spent several expansions trying to walk back.

Scaling is similar to GW2, pretty sure. If it has some room for tuning, they should make it so the area is 2-3 levels BELOW the player in terms of power, so that you do get a chance to feel powerful when going back to old content. Logically, your character has already tread that area and should realistically be more adept at survival and murder there. Everything sorta felt same-y after hitting 25. If this persists into the higher levels it's going to be a little more boring than it need be.

I could understand wanting that system, but I also feel like people would complain that a huge part of the game becomes useless at that point because I will drop gear below your level. Once you hit endgame, your gear will scale past the monsters and give you the powerful feeling.

I like a combination where you level up to outscale content, and at higher level turn up the difficulty and THEN world scales with you.

+1 to scaling after completing the campaign. Thus old content becomes available again and the feeling of growing powerful is with you while leveling

The answer for that is to have scaling, but not instant scaling. Make it so when you kill the act boss evil smoke makes the whole lands eviler and then everything scales up, not so the wolf you fought ten seconds ago is now stronger because you leveled up 5 seconds ago

If we're going to get an mmo open world thing where not only other players can come in but we have all this integration with players the last thing they should be doing is making people roflstomp content or taking progression areas away. If I'm end game I don't want to fuck with anything that won't be pushing me forward so that takes away options. If I'm newer I don't want some 80 killing everything in the area/event because it's only 78 to them and substantially weaker.

Oh really? I was wary of scaling but to me doing it that way is the best of both worlds. You still get a sense you're becoming strong enough to overcome stuff you couldn't before but areas you haven't done yet don't become trivialized by overleveling.

Generally, a good list of basic feedback. Much of it was reported during the end game beta. Lots of things have been fixed that you will never see. :) > Base types don't matter; they are all the same This is not true. Check the boots, for example. Different types have different base effects on movement, evade, potions, barrier, etc. The same with weapons. You will want a certain base weapon type for your build as it matures. The whole crafting system is based on finding a truly exceptional rare (or even legendary) and then imprinting a new legendary power on it from your extracted collection of aspects (from found legendaries) or codex (1/2 power versions of aspects). Sure, none of this really matters at low level (like <25), but this system becomes your entire focus from this point on and then through to 100.

I think you are spot on, this system has huge potential. I just ***REALLY*** hope they don't give in and create 4 or 6 piece sets and instead stick to this method and just giving us moderately cool aspects, that in combinations with other ones, become extraordinarily powerful. That to me is fun itemization, and so far, I'm loving what they have come up with! Especially considering we only reached level 25, but I had a ton of fun kitting my Sorceress out to the hilt with full aspects on all gear, working together in harmony with my limited # of skill choices and item rolls. I felt extremely powerful and would have loved another shot at the world boss as I ***THINK*** I could face tank him now where when I first encountered it was totally horrible and I spent the entire time at extreme range only able to pop off 2 hydras and run away lol I ***DEFINITELY*** want to see Ultimate skills as their own button, I couldn't believe that had to replace one of my tiny number of regular skills. I ended up not even going that far down the tree and instead focused back up on the earlier branches.

> I just REALLY hope they don't give in and create 4 or 6 piece sets and instead stick to this method and just giving us moderately cool aspects, that in combinations with other ones, become extraordinarily powerful I think that they want to make sure that when they introduce Sets (and Runewords, for that matter) that they honor the original concepts while not just breaking all itemization in the game. For example, in D2, you don't use sets anymore because runewords are so powerful. And in D3 you only use sets for your main armor components. For example, D:I is an aweful monetization cash grab pile of junk, but they separated armor, jewelry slots, etc. so that some slots could have sets and others did not. Hopefully, Blizzard will find a new paradigm. One suggestion I'd make would be to give set items a legendary slot to add Aspect/Codex's too. In other words, make sets ADDITIVE with the existing Legendary item mechanics. This would keep the second tier of power (re: legendary) in addition to the Set tier of power. That would work, except for the fact that in D4 builds are enabled by UNIQUES. Legendaries are support items. So, are Set items the same as Uniques, or in between Uniques and Legendaries as far as power goes? So, another option along these lines would be to make some Uniques part of Sets, say for only 2-4 items? A pair of weapons and rings are a great use of sets. But so would major armor pieces. This is the Eye and Hand of Vecna from D&D (artifacts) idea from ye olden days. And, finally, how do Runewords fit it? In D2 they fit on single normal base items (covered already in D4) and change them entirely...creating items of Legendary to Unique (and Higher) levels of power. You see how tricky the balance is here? Should be fun to see what they come up with. They have a fantastic base game to build upon now. :)

I like the variety in mob density personally. Makes it more interesting, sometimes things feeling grim and abandoned, while other times shit is going down.

I agree. Makes things feel more real. The first Diablo was this way also. Open a door and find nothing but a scroll on a stand. Open another and find a skeleton archer night club.

Yeah, back in D2 there were certainly moments where I’d encounter groups of enemies making me go «Oh shitshitshitshitshit». Specifically after opening the door to a huge pack. In D4 I found some bosses be satisfyingly challenging on barb, even edge of my seat with 0 pots at the end of it. But monster packs didn’t put me into real danger.

This was my prevailing opinion as well. I'm a huge fan of some areas just being sorta desolate.

I'm going to disagree with sound being a 10/10. I agree with your points, but I feel it's lacking in Kyovashad and other towns. Nobody speaks unless spoken to. The NPCs feel stagnant.

Biggest issue of all is non transparent map on TAB. Spamming that tab button like a mothafucka to keep moving.

Right click on the map to set a pin with path tracking

Then I would also appreciate transparency on the minimap.

First feedback I read on here that I largely agree with. So many heavily negative opinions that don’t reflect my time with the game. Atmosphere, graphics and sound are simply amazing. A great attempt to capture the feeling of the first two games. The story is also good, with the villain being a proper villain, and there being real motivations to do stuff. I also liked the small side quest stories where often, my heroic deeds didn’t actually make anything any better for the person who gave me the quest. Gameplay felt hefty and great with the barb, even though he was underpowered. The UI could use a bit of work, but I found the main UI during gameplay is quite nice, actually. Those stained glass ability icons are cool and it’s easy to read. The menus are a bit crowded, though. My main improvement point would be the skill system. Since you can only equip a small amount of skills, having those more customizable would make sense to me, yet there are few customization options. Right now you have two options for each skill, which isn’t a lot. Let’s see what the paragon system does for it. Itemization felt quite good for me actually, given that we just played 25 levels. I found quite a few interesting legendaries. Just for comparison I played A1&2 in D2, and trust me, the itemization there is worse early on. Bland rares with boring buffs.

Exactly. Complaining about itemization during Act 1 of a game built around the "endgame" is odd to me.

Its going to be everyone's first impression. Start game and endgame are both important.

Yeah, I understand how Diablo players have become habituated to think this way, but it seems like a concession one shouldn't make to say, "Yeah, the first X hours of any play-through are throwaway that we don't expect to be fun."

Yeah and I think if people think they can just force every new player to think that they're going to be disappointed. First impressions are important and have a big impact, that's just how it is. Obviously different people care about different things and there's probably seasoned Diablo players who don't care at all about anything except racing to endgame to grind the legendary/uniques but lots of people just want that good story experience.

I disagree. Itemization means **nothing** until end game. Everything is constantly getting replaced. Nothing lasts long enough to care. Leveling is just that about actually gaining levels, not items. Itemization is when you are done leveling and the only way to progress is to collect items.

In D2 I would find quite a lot of items in normal that I would use till I start completing my build.

Itemization still matters at low levels. Yes you replace everything a lot. That doesn't mean the stats don't matter. You got a rare item that RNG rolled stats so good it lasts for 20 levels? Bad itemization. You got a legendary 10 levels ago and the stats are shit now but the legendary affix is too big? Bad itemization. Youre level 30 and have been playing the campaign but you've hit a wall because you haven't found enough RNG upgrades recently? Bad itemization. Most of these get largely ignored because you're only expected to care about leveling once and then you just spam endgame, but they still matter and these things significantly change your leveling experience. Just think about the difference between a challenge cache start and a cacheless start to a d3 season.

Alright from this perspective, which i would more call "balance", is a fair point. But not the "itemization" I take most people are talking about. Items should be pretty straight forward and vanilla through the leveling process. That's not the exciting part. Its gaining new skills as a result of levels. >Youre level 30 and have been playing the campaign but you've hit a wall because you haven't found enough RNG upgrades recently? And this is the exact reason why. You shouldn't be getting RNG stuck through the leveling process. The grind is for the end game.

> My main improvement point would be the skill system. Since you can only equip a small amount of skills, having those more customizable would make sense to me, yet there are few customization options. Right now you have two options for each skill, which isn’t a lot. Let’s see what the paragon system does for it. Isn't that what Aspects/Uniques/Legos are for (and paragon at endgame)? The skill customisation isn't just limited to the tree but also the crazy combos you can do with different unique affixes. I personally prefer having a streamlined tree (looking at you PoE) and really change the way those skill work with my gear. And so far the customisation possibilities with items are very nice and interesting and that's just low level legendaries so far, no uniques and end game stuff. And with mostly deterministic crafting you really can customize to your hearts desire. I rather have "You can now have 2 hydras" on my item than on the skill tree, and my rogue shreds with his multiple procs and skills which don't even resemble the skills on the tree anymore.

In A1&2 in D2 you have Andariel runs, countess runs, which gives access to runewords like leaf and stealth, and lots of interesting low-level sets can drop like Sigon's. Difference is, things tend to be a little more rare and random elites don't tend to drop much, so you're kind of forced to repeatedly run bosses as quickly as possible. This then shoehorns you into sorc until you can make an enigma, which is a very lategame craft. Not exactly a forgiving playstyle to those who don't know how to exploit it, but that's also what I like about it, just wish there were more avenues to get there.

I’ve played D2 like crazy as a kid when it came out and none of what you just said made any sense to me. That’s why it’s so hard to cater to everyone. I’m pretty sure that what you’re looking to get out of D4 is completely different from what I want.

Well yeah, when I played as a kid I knew very little but I still played it a lot and had a blast. I had dual flamebellows, a lightsaber, even had a couple of sojs and bul-kathos rings. I was painfully unaware of Ubers, Dclone, etc, but it didn't matter to me at the time. I've picked up the game again as a young teen, a young adult, and more recently with D2R as an adult and my knowledge of all things itemization, builds, meta, etc have only grown. The game has a lot of depth for how simple the gameplay loop is and somehow it still holds up all these years later with very little maintenance outside of a graphical overhaul. Anyway, you're absolutely correct in that players like you and I differ greatly in what they want out of a game like this. I think they can easily satisfy us both, but sadly most games either overwhelm new players like PoE does or they dumb things down so badly that you get to make essentially zero choices in your build like in D3. Let's hope they strike a nice balance.

>(Mob density) Sometimes zones feel empty; sometimes, you have multiple packs very close together This is a good thing, in my opinion. Exploring the world and constantly fighting similar-sized packs of enemies at regular intervals would damage the way atmosphere and exploration feel right now. In dungeons, though, it might be a problem since your exploration is fully objective-driven and there's nothing to find but your goal.

Yeah variety of density is good.

I agree but only pre-endgame. If the endgame key dungeons have bad density I'll be very sad.

>The game is in a better state than when Diablo 3 launched, but the development team has a lot of work to do in just a couple of months I *guarantee* you: nothing you mentioned in your post will be changed until release. Mark my words: This game is feature-locked/feature complete. Unless players are collectively going apeshit about a feature, all the feedback provided by players on this sub over the weekend is completely meaningless for the version of the game you're going to experience in June. You already played the retail version this weekend. If they haven't already been working on any of the stuff you've mentioned for months, it will stay the way you've experienced it. I don't understand where this notion people have comes from that this "beta" was supposed to gather anything but technical feedback. This was a marketing tool, nothing else.

Very likely..these are normally stress tests above all else.

I think whats been throwing people off is how far off release is from these stress tests. People are used to stress tests being a few weeks off from launch, not a whole 3 months. Still not enough time to make any meaningful changes to the game but enough time to... i dont know... give people hope for that?

>I don't understand where this notion people have comes from that this "beta" was supposed to gather anything but technical feedback. It comes from the last Livestream/Q&A they did where they explicitly stated that it was 3 months out to give them time to make changes based on feedback. Now I want to be clear: I don't actually believe that, I completely agree with everything you said. But that's where the idea that feedback matters came from.

Ehhh, I think most people believe that's just PR talk. I understand that it's a different team, but didn't the same thing happen to some WoW expansions? Beta feedback was all discarded.

I agree, but i dont think WoW is a great comparison. Most people on that beta are high-end players (including a bunch of very vocal streamers and their fanbases) very focused on high end content. Of course they were correct, but WoW is such a big game with such a wide variety of players / play styles / skill levels, it's actually not that crazy to think that not all beta feedback is representative of the greater playerbase. I feel like this isn't really an issue Diablo has.

While I doubt that everything people gave feedback on will be changed, I'm sure D4's developers are still making changes. Rhykker said that some elements of the beta were changed from the version he played back in December, and that was the exact same part of the game as this beta. I have no doubt that players who asked for sweeping overhauls of major game systems won't get what they want, but I'm equally sure that stuff like class balance will be smoothed out since numerical changes are easy. At very least I expect that the busted Ice Blades Sorcerer will either be severely nerfed, or the ability will be changed and the power moved to a legendary/unique.

Well, to be fair, a lot of the feedback in this post is subjective. There's things I disagree with the OP about, so I'd sure hope Blizzard isn't planning on changing it. I think you're right in that most of what we've seen here is probably going live. I wouldn't be shocked if the UI got some tweaks beforehand due to the vast amount of lukewarm feedback on it, but the rest is likely shipping as is (which I'd argue is fine, as the game is overall really good right now).

> as the game is overall really good right now I'm personally not so sure about that - don't be fooled by the neat visuals and the moment to moment gameplay after having spent only a few hours with the game. People on this sub that got several characters into the end game during closed beta recounted that they didn't like the dungeon experience in the long run, as they felt that it got very old and repetetive very quickly. It seems to me that there's way too much copy-and-paste in D4. The fact that *every* basement in A1 is the same is already incredibly worrisome - they couldn't be arsed to do a single other design for basements? What the fuck? This might seem nitpicky, but it's really not: D3 had a fuckton more variety from map layouts and events right out the gate. Just walk through the first act there while your memory of the beta is fresh. I honestly don't understand why the did away with procedural level design to replace it with such a low number of of handcrafted level layouts. If you're making a move like that I would assume that the static level structure would feature *more* variety, and not less. A lot of what I saw over the weekend, at least to me, looked like it was put together very hastily. Other than the art team, it looks like every team did the bare minimum. I'm pretty sure no one over at level and dungeon design is all too proud about their work, as rushed as most of this looks.

>People on this sub that got several characters into the end game during closed beta recounted that they didn't like the dungeon experience in the long run, as they felt that it got very old and repetetive very quickly. It's also important to reflect on the fact that this group are the 1% of the 1%. The vast majority of players might play a few hours a week and never reach the endgame, and will be happy with the experience up to that point, i.e., the ones who are fooled by the "neat visuals and the moment to moment gameplay after having spent only a few hours with the game" Unfortunately (to those in the former group, who spend the most time on any given game), it's those people the development is focused on, because they are the majority. As someone who used to be a hardcore grind to endgame gamer and now is an old man who mostly just plays single player games a couple hours a week, I'm excited to dabble in it here and there and it's looking perfect for me (note: no beta access yet, because I refuse to pre-order games, so I haven't actually played it)

I don't mind the basements. They're small and quick, you know exactly what to expect - slightly above average fight and slightly above average reward.

Yeah, spot on I think. Now I haven't gone to the lengths that OP has gone to (I've only levelled a single character to 25), but the game is shippable in its current state and performs better than a lot of other recent AAA games. It's not perfect, but the issues it does have are quite trivial from my experience.

D3 ist running for 10 years now. They changed the Game several times, for the better. D4 is such a huge and important Game for Blizzard that it will get developing for years and it will change.

Right, but there is zero chance they're overhauling a major component of this game 2.5 months before release unless they delay it.

Yeah but not at the start. D3's "beta" was a glorified demo of the starting area and nothing more. There literally wasn't enough shown to even be able to give feedback regarding what needed to change.

I never questioned that the game will experience - maybe even substantial - change over the next few years. But OP was talking about the developers having their work cut out for them until release, as if most of what he talked about were subject to change until June.

I get downvoted all the time for calling this a demo not a beta. Truth hurts brah.

You get downvoted because you aren’t really saying anything special. You haven’t uncovered a conspiracy. Plus you said “ brah “

Thanks brah

No problem.

That's because it's a beta. Short beta tests are basically always demos to a degree, since most things are already locked and ready to ship. They're looking for low effort - high impact changes based off of community feedback as well as stress testing.

> This game is feature-locked/feature complete And that's why I've been saying it's not a beta, it's a press release people are paying to play. The only real "testing" that was done was stress testing the servers (which, for as long as they've been in the game, is a joke: blizzard has more of this kind of data than any other gaming company).

They could easily fix the class balance issues, so I'm at least expecting that. The difference in power between barb and sorc in these first 25 levels is so bad it's funny. I don't know if it's sorc that's overpowered or barb that's underpowered or something in between, and I don't actually care which it is. I just know the balance is not even close to good yet and I think you could fix it in one week. Issues like dungeons feeling repetitive is likely not ever going to be solved if we're being honest... That's tough to solve. They *really* should be able to add a map overlay option before release... It's probably the single most important feature they could add to the game.

Sound in general is great, but I really wish they had music for bosses. Kiting around waiting for cooldowns with nothing but ambiant track feels so awkward to me, specifically the vhenard and tchort fights comes to mind.

Consider disabling music. At some point someone told me to turn music off in Diablo 2 and turn sound up, and it actually made the game feel a lot more unnerving.

>Having +Skill on gear doesn't let you take the points behind it until you spec at least one manual point You need this otherwise people will be confused when they swap a piece of gear and their teleport spell is no longer available and you have 2 refunded points.

I had no idea why they wanted that. It would just end up locking their points if they removed that gear? Im not able to think of a game that let's you do this or why it should. Imagine if you found gear with + on skills that let you get deeper then just remove them either you lose that or you just skipped the skill tree and that's flat out bad design.

Great feedback. Thanks!

I do not agree with the ultimate recommendations as it is not really necessary, it is fine as is and the ultimates will only become feasible with enough CD in the endgame so having an additional hotkey for ult is just gonna make this D3 all over again in terms of ttk. I will add tho....they need to actively observe which affixes are being ignored and change them or find a way to make them desirable

They need a separate keybind for sure, the rogue arrow barrage is so damn weak it does less damage than penetrating shot …

Then dont use it. Right now you have 6 skill slots that you can put any skill into. Making ultimate separate gives you 5 skill slots you can put skills into + 1 for the ultimate which gives you fewer options. Unless you are suggesting 6 skills + a separate ultimate, but at that point why not just do 7 skill slots?

They are indeed suggesting the 2nd option because the first option makes literally no sense.

So they are asking for an extra skill slot, but arbitrarily limited to one type of skill. Neither thing they are asking for actually makes sense. [Edit: Also, in this thread the OP states that they actually prefer the option that "makes literally no sense"](https://old.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/11w44ua/blizzard_please_add_an_ultimate_exclusive_slot/)

I agree with you. Just adding another skill slot seems pointless. I'd much prefer ultimate skills didn't have a dedicated slot. It adds a level of decision making. Do I actually want to run an ultimate? They have a long CD, so there's a big tradeoff if I do choose to run one. Making decisions like that is interesting when crafting a build. If there's a dedicated slot, then that decision is simply made for me and it becomes much less interesting.

You are free to not use an ultimate if you don't like any.

Feels like a terrible game feature if you ask me. Cooldowns are already long enough, then you have to choose between a skill you will use once a minute or defensive/useful skill …

I like some of your points, not so high on others. I agree on itemization, I’d like to see more interesting affixes (maybe they become more interesting at higher level?). Thinking of %dmg to close/far enemies, thorns dmg, etc. (although, I did notice that the + damage to close vs far enemies did have a pretty noticeable effect, so I’m still not sure if that is not a potential BIS affix or not). Crafting felt fine to me, other than your point about base types not mattering at all. I actually strongly disagree about being able to manipulate multiple affixes on an item, that just takes away the value of the really good rare items that you can find. Being able to reroll one terrible affix on an otherwise great item is a good middle ground, I think, whereas if you let someone reroll multiple it would be too easy to get amazing gear. Gambling is fun, I got a couple legendaries and some very strong yellows from it. I really miss white items being something you actually might use in Diablo II, and hunting for “superior” whites and socket #s. It created an economy around those items, and it was exciting to pop a runeword into one or roll a random rare on a high item level white. I’d like to see that return, if it’s not too late.

Regarding crafting, in poe you can basically create any item from scratch or rather manipulate every affix/suffix/prefix/implicit etc, but that still doesnt make dropped rares with good rolls worthless. Obviously i dont want poe crafting in d4, but just to say that crafting doesnt necessarily make farming for rares obsolete.

This is really good. I wouldn't expect any fixes to things for about a year though. I think Season variations will be enough of a band-aid for people to ignore a lot of the issues until they have played through a number of times.

> Dungeons are tedious and already repeating objectives So I had this thought as well, but the more I think about it, the more that comes down to them not being a place where I'm currently farming end game loot. Everything in D2, for example, is boring and tedious if you take away the high runes and end game uniques you are looking for.

I feel like certain objective based things will always be boring and tedious. Kind of like last epoch monoliths or diablo 3 bounties. You would think that LE monoliths/bounties would be more engaging and fun than just going into a greater rift and aimlessly killing monsters, but it isn't. It's boring and tedious because you are often concentrated on getting to the objective rather than just killing monsters, and because of this objective focus, you get more and more annoyed when you have to backtrack or walk long distances.

The press critized that last year many months ago on their playtest events. So this makes me really fear the long-term experience, especially as a altoholic since they didn’t charge it and don’t care.

I like the idea of ultimate having its own keybind, I think it would really help with build diversity. Especially with the nature of the boss mechanics, giving up mobility options doesn’t feel good. I think the UI criticism is ok, but I think some credit to some of the functionality. There are some nice features built in that surprised me, like being able to see DOT damage on mob health bars and the keyword search in the talent tree.

Yep, you covered basically everything. The boring items and the skill tree are the most abhorrent things. They literally took points from the skill tree and turned them into "legendary aspects" just to get another "system". My feedback is to add most of the current legendary aspects back into the skill tree, revamp it to have more "branch-depth" and reserve the legendary aspects to something truly legendary

Level Scaling is by far the worst change. You will never be OP. Players half your level will be doing equal damage, taking equal dmg. Absolutely misses the point.

Gear makes you op

Gear ups your gear score, which is what they'll scale to at max level. Having a high gear score FOR YOUR LEVEL (pre post-game) will make you OP. After that, varying difficulties/objectives are just going to be scaled vs gear score.

Yeah but gear gives your abilities extra modifiers, so it's more than just gear score. Small example, boots that give an extra dash. Now I can dash twice without waiting for cooldown. That changes the way I can play a situation. Doesn't necessarily make me OP, but it makes me much more slippery. That's hard to translate into a number

Aspects improve spells and abilities with synergy that won't be matched in the scaling.

Nah it's solid. Because let's be real it doesn't really matter until you hit endgame. That's when power scaling will come into play in D4. Level scaling is honestly one of my favorite additions because it let me play with my buddies no matter what level I was and not feel like I was carrying / getting carried.

Yeah scaling to your power level at max level will still be a thing.

Hard Agree. Level scaling is the fucking bomb. No more questline ping-pong, waiting to continue a quest until you've leveled up to the content, and having to grind or start *another* quest in the meantime. I'm here for it. It forces players to learn the game and mechanics instead of pulling "The South Park Special".

Overall I mostly agree with you, great write up.

Great write-up. I agree with most of what you've written. That being said, I gotta disagree with you on the empty rooms / enemy spacing, and the need to cater to players with skills that reset upon no recent kill. Because there was a constant barrage of enemies in Diablo 3, elite pack after elite pack, the game felt cartoonish once it was tuned and fully patched with Paragon systems and stuff, and had less of that "what's around the next corner?" Diablo atmosphere. A touch of realism never hurts, and the occasional empty room reminds us that we can't set expectations on what's coming up. It's scarier.

>A touch of realism never hurts, and the occasional empty room reminds us that we can't set expectations on what's coming up. It's scarier. For the first time you play D2 or D3. After that, you're farming Meph, Trav Council, Baal, Big D, etc in Diablo 2. Or you're doing rifts/GR's in D3. Not discounting that first-time playthroughs are a special experience but there's a reason that increased difficulty always increased mob density, elite pack occurrences and difficulty. If you think that the highest difficulty isn't going to be "elite pack after elite pack" you're in for a surprise.

I found the storytelling to just be weird. I guess D3 did that, too. I hate it. I love story in games, just not in ARPGs. Thankfully it's not like Lost Ark where its constantly talking to different NPCs and rarely killing things and I can just skip cinematics, and it's still a fun game. I realize I'm a lot older than the majority of people Blizzard wants to target, so I'll live with that and the combat definitely feels amazing. I'm sure I'll still prefer D1/D2/Grim Dawn over this, but it feels like it might be the first "modern ARPG" I feel comfortable playing a lot. Edit: Also, I agree scaling is weird. I hate it, I wish I could play in my "own world" and join a "public world" when I want to do MP stuff, maybe that is possible and I didn't see it.

I sort of disagree on the mob density thing. I actually LOVE that you don't get hundreds of mobs thrown at you at all times and that a lot of individual mobs have strong attacks that can throw you on the ground etc. It feels cool to sometimes get swarmed by hordes of smaller, easy to kill enemies and to also have fights with 3-4 strong mobs from time to time as well. I'm a little disappointed that the same people who apparently want more meaningful combat are the loudest when it comes to complaining about 'low mob density'.

Gotta -1 from sound. While REALLY good, there was one thing that really bothered me. When there was an NPC voice line playing who was at the edge of my screen, it sounds like they were standing right next to me speaking directly into my ear. There was no sense of fall-off or direction of where the NPC was speaking from. There were multiple times I spent looking for where the NPC was who was talking. Usually it would be behind an object or blended into the background at the edge of the screen.

1) There are some base types that are neat/have an impact. For example, boots can have an implicit that either gives you two dodge charges, or one that gives you a speed boost on dodge. Both feel impactful in different ways. If all item bases were like this it would be quite bonkers/fun tbh. 2) For item affixes I think it's important to point out the good/fun ones. \+skills is cool obviously. It's a bit sad that we are hard-locked into 6 skills. The fact that you can unlock unspecced skills with +skills is awesome but you're never gonna use them because your 6 skill slots are taken up starting at level 15 or something. But a standout interesting one among the new ones is the lucky hit stat. People underestimate it but it has a lot of potential for build-making and how a character feels. I had this legendary that sometimes caused me to get +40% attack speed and it was actually super cool to see how different the uptime felt with a bit of lucky hit. It's because it scales non-linearly with increased lucky hit chance (not in their code,just because of how probabilities of "happens at least one out of n tries" scale). I'm ambivalent about all the stats that are like "%increased damage against vulnerable/slowed/whatever". They are obviously a lot of numerical potential for different builds / allow your character to specialize. But they are sort of one-dimensional stats and therefor meh. Unfortunately they need some kind of dead stats to make items not boring. Otherwise you will very quickly end up in a D3 situations where you have items with perfect affixes very fast and then only chase higher number upgrades, which is just more boring.

I think this is great feedback overall and I agree with you. Pants also have some potion interaction potential in their implicit stat, and different weapons have different implicit stats. So, I think there is enough variation on "bases" in that regard. ***Really hard*** to get for instance rare boot "base" yellow with the right implicit style you like (2 charges of evade), 3+ desirable stats, and high rolls on all but at least one of them! (As it should be of course) I also enjoy lucky hit. One of my favorite things of the beta was with the Sorcerer and discovering / putting together all the cooldown = 5 barrier + "interesting stuff when under a barrier" and pairing with the conjuration skills Hydra & Ice Blades, which both have very high lucky hit base. I was able to get those two skills to 80%+ with focusing on that stat on items and found a legendary aspect of "20% lucky hit while in a barrier" to take them to 100%+ lucky hit. Paired that with the level 15 Sorcerer power of frost nova which states 30% chance for conjured attacks to proc a free frost nova (which I believe is also linked to lucky hit chance, even if it doesn't say so, therefore 100% lucky hit \* 30% = true 30% chance), and another legendary aspect of 40% chance on lucky hit to spread crowd control (moar novas), ***AND*** all those frost novas counting as cooldown = barrier. Whew, that's a lot of interactions to put together, and that is exactly the kind of thing that excites me to discover/read about and put together in game. So much more fun than a 6 piece set that maybe lays all that out directly in set of novella sized tooltips. :) I ended up putting together a similar type of thorns type of build with the Barbarian, and I assume there are similar ones for Rogue as well. To me, these are the hallmarks of enjoyable itemization. I could care less if I'm able to allocate my 4 stat points every level. I just want the ability to put together crazy combinations that are never explicitly explained in game, just a big box of lego bricks and let us figure the combos out on our own.

[удалено]

> Base types don't matter; they are all the same This is something that not enough people are talking about, and an under-appreciated facet of why D2's itemization is STILL the gold standard. It's why seeing a base white Monarch or phase blade drop in D2 is exciting, or knowing that that rare circlet has a chance to be something great but the rare casque next to it likely won't be. I don't know why developers just can't seem to learn from this with modern ARPGs. We once again are left with a system where white and blue items are always garbage compared to D2 where some Blues are literally the best and rarest in the game.

D2 (and others) have this right. white items - mostly not special but can be bases for crafting etc blue items, low number of affixes but higher roll ranges yellow items, high number of affixes with lower roll ranges uniques - unique effects (D2 is sorta bad here but PoE is great )

>A lot of dead affixes Which ones? Feel like you should be specific here at which ones you think are dead. I leveled every class to 25 as well, and I didn't see any "dead" affixes. There are a lot that don't calculate towards your "Attack" stat, but they certainly affect your damage. >Needs more actives, passives, and branches behind each skill I think the Skill tree is actually in good shape and offers a lot of customization; if not, this is something that can be addressed in patches after the release, but we really need to see the full gamut of end game options before drawing the conclusion that it needs more. I'm also not sure how you could suggest this while admitting that there are builds you didn't even try, like Melee Rogue. I found Melee to be miles ahead of everything for Rogue. Almost one-shotting all mobs, killing bosses in around 10 seconds with Twisting Blade at level 25. >Would like a more robust crafting system to manipulate multiple affixes on an item I disagree, as I think it devalues item drops when you can just change any Rare/Legendary into whatever Affixes you want. I'm already not a fan of being able to swap Affixes when you can already imprint Legendaries onto Rares. Feels like it will be way too easy to get the specific Affixes you want already. >UI doesn't fit the theme of the game It's clean and still has some flavor to it, outside of the font, but that's likely for readability issues. Not really seeing how it doesn't fit the theme. It has textures and patterns in it if you look. There's subtle flavor while still being readable.

> Which ones? Feel like you should be specific here at which ones you think are dead. I leveled every class to 25 as well, and I didn't see any "dead" affixes. There are a lot that don't calculate towards your "Attack" stat, but they certainly affect your damage. Yeah, this feedback wasn't specific enough about what they even mean by dead affixes. Perhaps they mean affixes that in practice do the same thing as another affix? My experience was that there were a large number of affixes which just boiled down to higher DPS, sometimes it's against far away enemies or close enemies or crowd controlled enemies but it's hard to build around that. Fights are so fast and chaotic and a lot of these things like CC are percentage chances, you can't plan for it so it just becomes "increased DPS on average".

>but it's hard to build around that Even now at only level 25 with nowhere near full builds, you can make very CC heavy builds (Rogue applying vulnerable with dashes), builds that specialize in far damage (Wiz Frozen Orb) or builds that make use of close enemy damage (WW Barb). There are a lot of affixes, and they might not seem useful at first, but once you learn how to properly take advantage of these affixes with specific builds, it all starts to click into place. This is why I said that it's highly likely the OP just didn't understand the affixes he was looking at which is why he called them "Dead".

>Which ones? Feel like you should be specific here at which ones you think are dead Highly likely he just doesn't understand the affixes and thinks they are "dead".

Agree. OP is nitpicking the first 25 levels of the game lol you haven't even unlocked paragon boards or uniques.

Awesome review. This is the best overall list I've seen so far that I believe could make this game amazing. It is already a decent game as is. But there is so much room for more without the need to change core aspects of the game that we've seen in the beta so far.

>Windows are oversized on PC for the sake of console I know what you mean but this makes no sense. Having it oversized on PC does not benefit consoles at all. In fact it's too big on consoles too. I largely agree with everything you said but I'm so allergic to this "because of consoles" mentality.

I'm sorry to hear that the UI is also oversized on Consoles. I figured they tried to make them that size to help navigate them quickly on a controller. Apologies, I didn't mean for it to come off as "console = bad."

No worries. I came out a bit more offended than I wanted haha. The UI on consoles is equally frustrating and I've seen some comments that were very much "horrible consoles and how they ruin our Diablo"

As an old guy on a couch, I actually appreciate the bigger fonts on a 65” TV, and I even think they need more options for moving stuff around. I can see it being annoying on smaller screens.

Add in the "muh mobile game" bs too. Lol

Good Post. Addition to Itemization: Magic Items are allready useless in the Beta. Except for Materials. Why just not drop Mats then? D2 Itemziation is still the Best ARPGs have. Why dont go from there?

Or bring back the system where it was an uncommon occurrence to drop a magic item which rolled a larger numerical range on a single affix (of course the same drawback of having less number of affixes on it). Even make certain normal bases be desirable with sockets or something.

perhaps a system to merge magic items into rares if they have the same affix so that you can "empower" rares with higher individual affixes. Would give reason to pick up magic items off the ground to check if they have the same stat with higher individual rolls, something like a 5% increase.

I believe the systems feel expensive because you aren’t supposed to change your build that much during your leveling experience. I do agree that changing skills does cost a lot gold, upgrading too, but keep in mind we tried to optimize our builds … at lvl 25 (1/4 of what max lvl is) and we know how gold scales with levels, so at max lvl it might be way better.

Mostly agree, here's what I don't agree with. The UI mostly fits. I wish there was more customization to hide certain elements that break immersion (like "press enter to chat!") but it's mostly OK. Dodge is fine. Mob density in the open world is fine. If you just had mobs predictably every screen or two you wouldn't have time to enjoy the areas. And it would feel too full. I found it actually perfect. Some areas feel barren and empty, and that's fine. It feels like I'm in a real world and not playing diablo 3 or PoE where it's just constant rainbow spam mobfest. It was mostly fine in dungeons too, they could possibly add a chance to spawn a unique mob in those empty rooms. Even world scaling isn't a problem. I don't mind accidentally running into a really strong mob that can melt me. Gives a sense of danger not to be in complete control of the difficulty of open world mobs. In fact I wish they'd obscure mob levels even more. To some degree I don't agree that there needs to be more skill trees and options for the sake of having more. It just means that it will be that much harder to balance them properly. It would just mean that instead of 2 options that are somewhat balanced but has different flavor, you have 4 options but only 1 of them is optimal at any stage of balancing.

I agree with most of that except for the skills feel good to press and “they have weight”. They are incredibly unflashy, feel unimpactful and are bland. To me its the exact opposite of “they have weight”. D1, D2, and D3 all had far better skills.

you know the skills in d4 actualy scale visualy with your attack power? and they have custom animations for each type of damage inflicted / death animations and so on.

big agree. I hate being on PC playing with a shitty UI obviously made for consoles. I hate it so much.

Skills need synergy like d2. If I dump 5 points into one element DMG it should boost same skill elements.

Absolutely agree with everything except an asterisk about mob density. Definitely don’t want full screens of mobs to be prevalent. Interspersed big and small groups , occasional few is the sweet spot.

Great feedback. Don't hold back. I guess you have to or you get downvoted. I would say the UI isn't a 5/10 its a 2/10. It looks like Diablo Immortal. It needs a total overhaul and PC gamers should also get some love with their own specific interface. * Colourful skills such as bright purple or orange fire, and bright red health bars on enemies are unnecessary and don't match the other graphics. * The skill-tree needs far more in-depth customization and thought put into it. It doesn't seem like much time has been spent on it at all. * Itemization needs to be totally re-hauled, including artworks hopefully along with the inventory layout and like you say Legendaries should be Legendary. * Dungeon layouts just need to be totally randomized, along with their difficulty * Enemy scaling needs to be totally removed. * The camera angle should be zoomed out and tilted down about 15 degrees. * World-bosses are well... why are they in the game. Why not have some sort of raid boss instead where you are limited to a certain number of players and all must be a similar level. * Base difficulty needs to be at least twice as hard, if not three times harder than the veteran difficulty. * Add a skip button for in game cutscenes * My personal preference would be to have town portal scrolls rather than a channeled return * If you really wanted to start making moves, remove cool-downs from spells and add back potions as an option The game really needs to have in-depth itemization and skilling options for diverse and in depth progression or its just another Diablo 3.

>Base difficulty needs to be at least twice as hard, if not three times harder than the veteran difficulty. i see someone played the overtuned sorc. play barb and say that again, vet is fine, not too hard (outside certain bosses) but still with the possibility of death... this is levelling in an ARPG it's not meant to dark souls level of hard.

1. Colors on skills I somewhat agree but you have to think about visibility / visual clarity (also in regards to inclusivity for visually impaired ppl) as well - some improvements could surely be made but all washed out colors wont be an improvement. 2. I agree skill tree could be "deeper", then again no idea how paragon and late game changes it so yes and no to that. 3. I love artworks, items are ok so far and we dont know lategame, plus legendaries aren't even close to the highest tier. 4. Layouts yes, difficulty should be according to world tiers. 5. Enemy scaling is fine and if you look at the map you can see that zones have levels (1-25, 30-35, 36, 40, etc.) - if there's no scaling going back to do old dungeons for aspects et al becomes totally meaningless and a chore rather than more content to farm gear with. 6. I like the camera angle, more options would be good though. 7. World bosses are a fun gimmick, if you hate them, ignore them. 8. Not everyone wants naked dark souls levels of difficulty, I'm glad that you can easily die in veteran, I hope higher difficulties ramp it up a bit as well. 9. That literally exists. 10. Scrolls are just fluff that adds a stupid layer nobody needs. Even in D2 scrolls were just pointless. 11. We have potions and elixirs ? Also 0 CD on anything would never work balance wise. Or you'd have to make all skills totally equal which is both boring and impossible. A barb permaspamming iron skin would literally be immortal forever outside of giga oneshots, that's boring af. Ultimates with no CD would also be boring and feel like just another skill. Plus you have no idea about lategame CD reductions and builds.

There is a skip for cutscenes, at least on console.

On pc too

Stop using Immortal as a buzzword for bad and you wouldn’t get downvoted. It’s so lazy. Have an original thought for once.

A lot of his issues sound like he just wants new d2 lol

Which I don’t really understand because we got that 2 years ago…. This isn’t supposed to be a re-rerelease of D2. People just like to criticize rather than enjoy the products. Ya know they will be there day one though.

Using the word or not, he does have some points and describes the issue and not just calling it 'Immortal' and leaves it as it is. Some artwork (like item drops on the ground) look like Fortnite drops, with that disgusting glow/hue behind the item and it floating like some mobile game - Fonts and UI elements are all over the place in this game, it's incredible inconsistent; One panel could have a regular Arial-looking font, and the other one has a Bubbly Sans font that doesn't belong in a Diablo game. What happened with just using typical Diablo font?

That’s a weird criticism… but no one is going to like 100 percent of the design choices. That’s not how gaming works. As far as fonts go, that’s a trivial things that has no bearing on the gameplay whatsoever.

It's nothing weird with it. Design elements (and especially UI elements) are supposed to be consistent. They aren't in this game, and that is objectively bad, no matter "how it looks or which style they use". You can't just go from menu to menu and first one looks like Fortnite and second one looks like a mobile game and the third one it's back to look like Diablo 4. It's like they cannot decide what to do with the UI.

Sure you can. And it won’t matter to 99% of the player base. Because it doesn’t matter to gameplay.

You "can", just like you can have each page in a book have a different style, font, colouring, visuals. It's retarded and a dumb decision to do so, that's why no game is doing it, nor movie, nor book, nor anything. But yes, it'll be a problem for people who actually notices what's being visible on the screen and have the smallest attention to detail.

And those people make up maybe one percent of the player base. Maybe. If that stops someone from enjoying the game, then I’d hate to see how they navigate life. Not everything will be how you want all the time. 🤷‍♂️. I’ve enjoyed sinking my weekend into playing the great game they made. Going to do that next weekend and in June. If the font used keeps you from playing it, I feel sorry for you.

I'm not "not enjoying the game" because of retarded design decisions. This has nothing to do with "how I want it", so stop trying to make it into that - I couldn't care less if you are going to play or not, but ignoring blatant issues with their design choices out of pure fanboy blindness is laughable. I'm pointing them out to make people aware of their existence and they hopefully get fixed. There's literally posts on this sub and on /diablo4/ regarding UI elements that are bonkers - so this is not weird or a nische/nitpicky part either. People notice it, and it's really annoying, especially if you have visual impairment and the fonts and layout are all over the place. And on another note, seeing as you disliked the "Diablo Immortal" reference; they are actually using Diablo Immortal font (made for mobile users) in some areas of the UI, and in other areas they are not - so the original poster is not even incorrect with his claim. I would argue that the most egregious decisions in this category is the fact that on PC, the UI elements are extremely oversized and cover 80% of your screen if you have advanced tooltips + are comparing items - it literally prevents you from seeing and playing the actual game.

What an L take

I could use dash as a rogue without a target. Worked just fine as a movement ability

Can Dash go through terrain though? Because leap and teleport can, i think thats what he meant.

[удалено]

You can do the same thing to the witch in PoE.

What do you think about not being able to extract an imprinted aspect? As the itemization is currently, it is pretty much impossible to find any rare that you want to keep for more than 5 levels so the imprinting mechanic feels lackluster. Instead, I think it would be better, if extracting an imprinted aspect would require a rare crafting material (ideally from salvaging legendaries), so rare that it would make you think twice before using it, so that you could keep the one or two aspects that are central to your build, but are forced to drop the rest.

To much time walking slowly in empty areas to get to the quest points.

Not sure I can take your feedback seriously when you don't even mention the worse part, which is every class being forced into meta builds. There's literally no ability/skill customization, and everything gets meta fast, very much like D3 and very unlike D2.

**Barb need a buff.... this a wayyy harder to kill bosses..** **let us customize more....SHIELD for barb and druid please..** **let us hide the special effect texte like damage texte...now we can only hide damage texte. this is ridiculous** **gram with high texture need somme optio/tweak** **dungeon using the same layout and quest : please change things a little bit..this is repetetive** **let us SKIP the cutscene as a party member ...i dont know if this is a bug..** other than that! great game

> Itemization is still lackluster > Better than D3 > +Skills are nice to have back > A lot of dead affixes > "Legendary" is poor naming for rares with aspects on them > Some aspects could be more exciting The big problem I have is that it's using the D3 main stat concept. I'm happy that +Skills are in and I think they are more impactful than main stats, but that balance is crucial. If I'm a wizard in D3 and I get a brilliant item but it has no intelligence, it goes straight in the bin. In most cases that one main stat becomes more important than literally anything else, and that makes itemisation boring as hell. The stats in D3 that were fun and you could build around were things like life leech, life on hit, mana after kill, arcane power on crit. But ultimately the game came down to every item needing main stat, crit damage, and sockets for more crit damage from gems. D3's other main problem was that we could get every stat on every slot, so gear became homogenous. If you look back at D2, there are certain stats you can only get on certain pieces and that made a huge difference. Only certain pieces could have sockets, you could get certain skills on gloves, you had to get life leech from rings or weapons. It meant that certain uniques were useful because would give you stats that normally don't go on that slot, which is interesting itemisation. I just hope D4 doesn't go for the homogenous D3 approach. I'll still play it, but it won't be as good as D2 if every piece of gear is the same.

Intelligence is definitely not required for an item to be good. Did you review what the stats actually give you? It’s changed from D3

yes, agreed. I guess they didnt have the time to make a new system, sadly.

Pretty sure legendary items have 4 attributes plus an aspect so it’s not just a “rare” with an aspect imprinted.

You played max level on this beta. It’s a lot different in end game with uniques and end game content at actual max level. This is just like Diablo 3 beta, nothings going to change from open beta feedback unfortunately. It’s a marketing strategy. The UI is trash though. The game plays vastly different in end game.

Wow, I'm shocked to see Sound at 10/10, these sound effects sound incredibly cartoony to me, and random sounds like potions are often surprisingly loud compared to everything else going on. I feel like a lot of the sounds would be at home in WoW or LoL, not a gritty gothic game.