I don't care about PoE. I played it like 10 minutes about 7 or 8 years ago and thought it was just another poor man's Diablo, which it is. The skill tree THING, whatever you want to call it, is the most embarassing thing I've ever seen.
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Diablo IV
- Thread starter Wulfric Pinewood
- Start date
Clockwork Knight
Arcane
The same thing applies to the game according to that logic
ArchAngel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2015
- Messages
- 20,070
It does not matter what you care about if we are talking in general here. D3 screwed it and made once most popular aRPG brand (by far) into something a random people beat with their completely new aRPG. Sorry but that is failure anyway you turn it.
This is same shit that D&D made with 4e that then turned Pathfinder into most popular PnP system in the world.
Jfc this game is hittin all the right dopamine receptors in combination with the vodka energy drinks and beer oof! My pyro sorceress is getting ever more powerful and her clothes are getting ever more skimpier and my cock is getting ever more harderer
UglyBastard
Arcane
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2014
- Messages
- 821
Right now I'm playing The Hell 2 (recently got finished @ v1.25, dev is moving on to TH3).
It has really great features like a huge stash, loads of new items and item types, new systems like perks and traits, new quests etc.
If you complained about modern aRPGs being too casual, it might be just for you, because the difficulty is brutal. You will hit roadblocks all the time and have to grind them out.
I have a lvl 40 archer with decent gear and I'm abusing the systems as best as I can and I'm still getting oneshot in Hell.
For me it is fun despite being grindy and unforgiving, so it might be for you (be warned though). The quality of the new content on the other hand is excellent and it is abundant.
My cat disconnected my internet. That was not the fault of the game. They are going ape shit atm.
It is much better than 3. That is my opinion so far.
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 15,878
Been playing since release non stop. Yet to finish it. Thoughts so far:
- Really long main campaign.
- Writing is much improved over D3 but it is still way to over exposing for it's own good. Kind of curse of modern american writing for burgers.
- Playing as Barbarian lvl 43 right now
- Everything Lilith concerning and main plot is interesting. Everything else outside of main characters of plot like side quest (but still withing main quest) is boring. Like there is whole detachement to main quest where you are supposed to do some voodoo rituals because apparently you need to couter trauma to fix soulstone...
- Gameplay is great. Progression is lacking. After lvl 30-32 I barely feel like there is anything happening with my build. Sure there are some dungeons I can unlock new powers but they don't really fit my build.
- Found like 6 legendaries total on my own 1 of which is mandatory one you get i think. Loot wise it is not poe. You barely get any loot.
- Base item stats are pretty boring so far. Sure with higher level they get greater rolls but they seem to be really constrained by amount of what it can be on them.
- Legendary powers much like in D3 are fun and skill changing.
- Started as Hammer of Ancients barb but now due to one legendary i do mix of whirwilnd, upheavel and leap with calling ancients sometimes. Had one fun unique which would reset cooldown on leap everytime i kicked which works well with this build.
- I think best part of game is just random sidequesting rather than following story. Yeah main story is interesting but you do so much non interesting shit in it, it gets pretty boring at times.
- Due to main story being so long at times it feels like i am playing some RPG instead of ARPG. Especially with amount of stuff you need to do between major points in story. Just without C&C. Honestly with that amount of stuff they could just add C&C and make out of it proper RPG just action heavy.
- Sometimes it feels like devs made way better overworld but camera hides everything important with it's view. At times you get those points of interest where you can change camera view and you can see how world looks without top down camera and oftentimes it does look great.
- Too much walking in main story. You basically walk everywhere every 5 minutes.
- Too long dungeons. It feels like I am walking huge corridors at times with 0 design behind them. Sure it is ARPG but game doesn't lack content, they could cut them in half and it would be better for game.
- IF you ever wondered what Diablo world would look like if someone wanted to give it a lot of presentation this is answer for this question. For better and worse.
- Upscaling of monsters is annoying but not gamebreaking. There are places on map with much higher level though so you can walk into LVL30 zone with your lvl5 barb. Most of that goes away when you reach around lvl 40 which is about where higher level zones end.
That's all from me for now. Going back to play game.
It has great opening hours. But it seems that in middle of it, it bogs down by narrative which isn't new for ARPGs as this is where usually game transforms from experimentation with build toward completing build but lacking items.
- Really long main campaign.
- Writing is much improved over D3 but it is still way to over exposing for it's own good. Kind of curse of modern american writing for burgers.
- Playing as Barbarian lvl 43 right now
- Everything Lilith concerning and main plot is interesting. Everything else outside of main characters of plot like side quest (but still withing main quest) is boring. Like there is whole detachement to main quest where you are supposed to do some voodoo rituals because apparently you need to couter trauma to fix soulstone...
- Gameplay is great. Progression is lacking. After lvl 30-32 I barely feel like there is anything happening with my build. Sure there are some dungeons I can unlock new powers but they don't really fit my build.
- Found like 6 legendaries total on my own 1 of which is mandatory one you get i think. Loot wise it is not poe. You barely get any loot.
- Base item stats are pretty boring so far. Sure with higher level they get greater rolls but they seem to be really constrained by amount of what it can be on them.
- Legendary powers much like in D3 are fun and skill changing.
- Started as Hammer of Ancients barb but now due to one legendary i do mix of whirwilnd, upheavel and leap with calling ancients sometimes. Had one fun unique which would reset cooldown on leap everytime i kicked which works well with this build.
- I think best part of game is just random sidequesting rather than following story. Yeah main story is interesting but you do so much non interesting shit in it, it gets pretty boring at times.
- Due to main story being so long at times it feels like i am playing some RPG instead of ARPG. Especially with amount of stuff you need to do between major points in story. Just without C&C. Honestly with that amount of stuff they could just add C&C and make out of it proper RPG just action heavy.
- Sometimes it feels like devs made way better overworld but camera hides everything important with it's view. At times you get those points of interest where you can change camera view and you can see how world looks without top down camera and oftentimes it does look great.
- Too much walking in main story. You basically walk everywhere every 5 minutes.
- Too long dungeons. It feels like I am walking huge corridors at times with 0 design behind them. Sure it is ARPG but game doesn't lack content, they could cut them in half and it would be better for game.
- IF you ever wondered what Diablo world would look like if someone wanted to give it a lot of presentation this is answer for this question. For better and worse.
- Upscaling of monsters is annoying but not gamebreaking. There are places on map with much higher level though so you can walk into LVL30 zone with your lvl5 barb. Most of that goes away when you reach around lvl 40 which is about where higher level zones end.
That's all from me for now. Going back to play game.
It has great opening hours. But it seems that in middle of it, it bogs down by narrative which isn't new for ARPGs as this is where usually game transforms from experimentation with build toward completing build but lacking items.
It's hard for me to judge the level scaling. I feel like I'm still ripping through most monsters same as before but bigger guys with buffs and all that shit are appearing a bit more frequently and are making it a tougher fight. I tear through regular mobs like nothing most of the time.
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 15,878
Finished campaign. Turn out I was like 2-3 hours away from it. Actually ending made story much better than I thought it would. Much like I said about it being stealthy kind of RPG it felt lacking that player wasn't given a choice in the end.
TLDR: Overall ? I think it is safe to say it is proper D2 sequel not abortion D3 was. It has it's own strengths as well as weaknesses but overall I think it is worthy sequel. At least when it comes to campaign and gameplay up to this point. End game and so on is yet to be seen but it's not that hard to beat D2 which didn't really have any endgame other than boss kills.
In detail:
Story and theme of the game:
Definitely they realized whole D1 theme here. While the first village and outskirts don't show that later on you can see clearly guts everywhere. This theme doesn't just touch environment but story itself. At one point in story you can see how characters talk while dude is eaten by demon wolves while he is alive piece by piece. It's dark and gritty as fans always wanted. Rivers of blood etc. Some places easily beat POEs Lunaris temple.
Theme aside story is interesting. Unlike 95% of other ARPGs story he is centerpiece, overshadowing whole game. It's clear that devs wanted to tell story first make game second. Narrative is more similar to other narrative driven games with frequent dialogs, scenes than something like hack and slash arpg where story is just bow to gameplay suit. Lilith as a character is really great. You always know that there is reason to everything she does and her motives from player view are not clear even as game ends.
I don't want to spoil much but use of another character (demon wolf for those who played) was pretty great and throws curveball at player questioning further your motives. Supporting characters are great as well aside from one shitty brat i hated whole game. Story is great but journey itself isn't without issues. Plenty of times I was wandering some table in middle of nowhere for mostly no reason because clearly someone wanted to pad story too much. Clearly if they would cut down a bit fat it would be better story.
My gripe with story and journey is that it has this disease of modern burger writing where everything has to be explained and people just can't shut up or they feel like they were written by someone writing comic panel rather than proper prose. ("cause i'm hungry")
Another part I liked about it was the bleakness. Hard to say something about it without spoiling much but I really liked the world and it's realization. In previous games I always had this feeling that santuary was pretty horrible place filled with diamonds in sea of shit and here it is how I imagined it. Definitely liked that part.
Overall as I finished game I could say something about what I experienced and probably will remember it for a while. Shoutout to Blizz cinematics guys, there is one cinematic in game that reminds me blizzard of old that gave shit about their craft.
Gameplay:
A lot has been said from people trying beta and all I can say is that up until end of game everything is pretty much same as beta. Only thing I noticed is that around lvl 40 you kind of lack ability to progress with character and your points mostly go toward small stuff that don't make much difference on tree. I'm yet to unlock paragon tree so there is that as well.
When it comes to questing etc. Imho this is the best way arpg can be. I never liked random generated end game maps of POE or other variations of it, because much like everything proc gen it gets boring really fast. D4 on other hand provides shitload of sidequests that are simple in design but give you enough reasons to smash. I mostly finished first area fully but barely touched rest as I was focusing on story. I spent like 35 hours playing till ending and it could easily go into 100-150 if I would decide to finish all side quests and even then much like any other arpg you can just repeat content on higher def.
As for looting experience I am kind of split. On one hand every rare actually matters as even if you don't use them you either sell them or destroy them for parts but on other hand base stats of items are pretty boring. Clearly issue with how their base combat works as there aren't that many stats to play with. Loot also in general drops toward your character but occasionally you can find loot for other characters.
Now when it comes to base gameplay, the raw feeling you get from combat it is great. Legendaries and uniques are their own thing. After fall of D3 on release they came up with something amazing in Loot2.0 update which instantly made D3 playable and this kind of item power is back in D4. Much like in D3 those power modify how skills work. So if you have something like leap legendary power might cause earthquake after you land, or reset it's cooldown if you do X, or cause ancient % chance to do this again on some other enemy. List goes on. It's great system and it is great here as well. Interesting idea D4 brings is that some dungeons have reward in form of aspect you can enchant your weapon with which are those item powers. So if you need some power to rise your build you can find dungeon that has that power and get it instead of waiting till RNG god gives you reward. Obviously only basic powers can be achieved like that and usually when you do it this way you get worst rolls so even if you have best power you want there is still a chance for you to find item with better roll (and those sometimes can double that power power).
Open world side of the game is also something I can't really decide if it is bad or good. On one hand I like the vastness and the idea that there is plenty of things to smash but on other hand you need to get there and sometimes you just wish you played on D2 and game was linear instead as you never run waiting to get somewhere. Weirdly horse is something you get very late in story for some unknown reason. Imho only time will tell as end game grind will test it. With Diablo 3 adventure mode it was clear they had something interesting and D4 is full realization of that idea and it seems to be good at least for now.
Much like in beta with barb i struggled whole campaign playing on veteran. Died few times too which is a lot considering my arpg history. So definitely game for barb is pretty hard. Don't know about other classes but I heard they got nerfed hard since beta and in beta only barb was hard to play. Definitely a plus for me. Rarely these days you get arpg with some kind of difficulty you can enjoy other than one click fasts and move up yawning. By the end of the game my build was pretty tanky and I had issues with DPS but overall I liked my playtrough.
Presentation:
Easily top tier arpg. duh. Worse looking than Diablo 2 Resurrected though which is something I didn't expect. In terms of just pure presentation not just technology D4 has here an edge simply because of panning camera that can show full glory (or horror) of environment from time to time. Music was typical modern gaming music. I don't really remember much of it aside from theme in one random boss battle in hell. It's "professional" - the best take i can give it. It works when it needs to work and gives omph to scenes in needs to give omph but it is not D2 tier music. Much more ambient and raw with very little interesting melodic arrangements that you can remember. Definitely best parts of game when it comes to presentation are character designs and environment. It's a kind of art I expect D3 to have but it didn't deliver but not only D4 delivered theme graphically but excelled above it. Plenty of dark ruined temples with guts lying around in high resolution glory that make sense instead of being just "artist put it here duh"
Score without endgame:
/
It doesn't smash you completely like D2 when it was released but it is solid piece of arpg. Depending on end game this score might go down or up. But i feel it will probably stay at same score.
TLDR: Overall ? I think it is safe to say it is proper D2 sequel not abortion D3 was. It has it's own strengths as well as weaknesses but overall I think it is worthy sequel. At least when it comes to campaign and gameplay up to this point. End game and so on is yet to be seen but it's not that hard to beat D2 which didn't really have any endgame other than boss kills.
In detail:
Story and theme of the game:
Definitely they realized whole D1 theme here. While the first village and outskirts don't show that later on you can see clearly guts everywhere. This theme doesn't just touch environment but story itself. At one point in story you can see how characters talk while dude is eaten by demon wolves while he is alive piece by piece. It's dark and gritty as fans always wanted. Rivers of blood etc. Some places easily beat POEs Lunaris temple.
Theme aside story is interesting. Unlike 95% of other ARPGs story he is centerpiece, overshadowing whole game. It's clear that devs wanted to tell story first make game second. Narrative is more similar to other narrative driven games with frequent dialogs, scenes than something like hack and slash arpg where story is just bow to gameplay suit. Lilith as a character is really great. You always know that there is reason to everything she does and her motives from player view are not clear even as game ends.
I don't want to spoil much but use of another character (demon wolf for those who played) was pretty great and throws curveball at player questioning further your motives. Supporting characters are great as well aside from one shitty brat i hated whole game. Story is great but journey itself isn't without issues. Plenty of times I was wandering some table in middle of nowhere for mostly no reason because clearly someone wanted to pad story too much. Clearly if they would cut down a bit fat it would be better story.
My gripe with story and journey is that it has this disease of modern burger writing where everything has to be explained and people just can't shut up or they feel like they were written by someone writing comic panel rather than proper prose. ("cause i'm hungry")
Another part I liked about it was the bleakness. Hard to say something about it without spoiling much but I really liked the world and it's realization. In previous games I always had this feeling that santuary was pretty horrible place filled with diamonds in sea of shit and here it is how I imagined it. Definitely liked that part.
Overall as I finished game I could say something about what I experienced and probably will remember it for a while. Shoutout to Blizz cinematics guys, there is one cinematic in game that reminds me blizzard of old that gave shit about their craft.
Gameplay:
A lot has been said from people trying beta and all I can say is that up until end of game everything is pretty much same as beta. Only thing I noticed is that around lvl 40 you kind of lack ability to progress with character and your points mostly go toward small stuff that don't make much difference on tree. I'm yet to unlock paragon tree so there is that as well.
When it comes to questing etc. Imho this is the best way arpg can be. I never liked random generated end game maps of POE or other variations of it, because much like everything proc gen it gets boring really fast. D4 on other hand provides shitload of sidequests that are simple in design but give you enough reasons to smash. I mostly finished first area fully but barely touched rest as I was focusing on story. I spent like 35 hours playing till ending and it could easily go into 100-150 if I would decide to finish all side quests and even then much like any other arpg you can just repeat content on higher def.
As for looting experience I am kind of split. On one hand every rare actually matters as even if you don't use them you either sell them or destroy them for parts but on other hand base stats of items are pretty boring. Clearly issue with how their base combat works as there aren't that many stats to play with. Loot also in general drops toward your character but occasionally you can find loot for other characters.
Now when it comes to base gameplay, the raw feeling you get from combat it is great. Legendaries and uniques are their own thing. After fall of D3 on release they came up with something amazing in Loot2.0 update which instantly made D3 playable and this kind of item power is back in D4. Much like in D3 those power modify how skills work. So if you have something like leap legendary power might cause earthquake after you land, or reset it's cooldown if you do X, or cause ancient % chance to do this again on some other enemy. List goes on. It's great system and it is great here as well. Interesting idea D4 brings is that some dungeons have reward in form of aspect you can enchant your weapon with which are those item powers. So if you need some power to rise your build you can find dungeon that has that power and get it instead of waiting till RNG god gives you reward. Obviously only basic powers can be achieved like that and usually when you do it this way you get worst rolls so even if you have best power you want there is still a chance for you to find item with better roll (and those sometimes can double that power power).
Open world side of the game is also something I can't really decide if it is bad or good. On one hand I like the vastness and the idea that there is plenty of things to smash but on other hand you need to get there and sometimes you just wish you played on D2 and game was linear instead as you never run waiting to get somewhere. Weirdly horse is something you get very late in story for some unknown reason. Imho only time will tell as end game grind will test it. With Diablo 3 adventure mode it was clear they had something interesting and D4 is full realization of that idea and it seems to be good at least for now.
Much like in beta with barb i struggled whole campaign playing on veteran. Died few times too which is a lot considering my arpg history. So definitely game for barb is pretty hard. Don't know about other classes but I heard they got nerfed hard since beta and in beta only barb was hard to play. Definitely a plus for me. Rarely these days you get arpg with some kind of difficulty you can enjoy other than one click fasts and move up yawning. By the end of the game my build was pretty tanky and I had issues with DPS but overall I liked my playtrough.
Presentation:
Easily top tier arpg. duh. Worse looking than Diablo 2 Resurrected though which is something I didn't expect. In terms of just pure presentation not just technology D4 has here an edge simply because of panning camera that can show full glory (or horror) of environment from time to time. Music was typical modern gaming music. I don't really remember much of it aside from theme in one random boss battle in hell. It's "professional" - the best take i can give it. It works when it needs to work and gives omph to scenes in needs to give omph but it is not D2 tier music. Much more ambient and raw with very little interesting melodic arrangements that you can remember. Definitely best parts of game when it comes to presentation are character designs and environment. It's a kind of art I expect D3 to have but it didn't deliver but not only D4 delivered theme graphically but excelled above it. Plenty of dark ruined temples with guts lying around in high resolution glory that make sense instead of being just "artist put it here duh"
Score without endgame:
/It doesn't smash you completely like D2 when it was released but it is solid piece of arpg. Depending on end game this score might go down or up. But i feel it will probably stay at same score.
Last edited:
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 15,878
It doesn't actually show full ending nor parts before it which are also important. Overall I liked ending. Whole last part of game is definitely highlight of game (aside for one dream part and shadow battle). As for fight itself I don't know what people expected. Lilith wasn't some powerful monster and in story you can see that, moreover due to one story thing she was even fighting handicapped. Most important better fights happen as you journey. Her being pretty weak also kind of fits theme of story and game.
Keep in mind this forum is populated by PoE fangirls. A question about it even appears in registration. Diablo will never get a fair shake here. I will continue my D4 adventures as soon as I nurse my hangover.
Perkel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2014
- Messages
- 15,878
Well alternative is that you are swimming in worthless gear ala POE and pretty much any other ARPG. In D4 you pick up pretty much anything as at minimum you can get some gold for it and gold in D4 is really scarce as everything is expensive. Like I am lvl 48 right now and to enchant one time it costs me like 250k vs my 600k in bank. You can destroy them for parts which gives you rare materials for moving legendary power from item to item. And naturally you seek for best rare mods combination for your build.
Mu issue with rare is that mods available are pretty meh. Ton of increase damage while X with whom I have issue with. Aside from those rest of mods are fine.
ArchAngel
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2015
- Messages
- 20,070
I have been watching Cohh play and story wise this is full of boring pointless quests and random shit to make main quests last longer.
World is also not very interesting, this is way worse than PoE story. Only presentation and voice acting is better.
Combat is also very samey, D2 acts have way different combat that this shit. Cohh fights all enemy completely same.
Open world is same shit like Skyrim, large as a sea, deep as a puddle.
They went some quasi full blown rpg route but could not even bother implementing some story differences based on class you play, forget about any kind of C&C, even in sidequests.
This is not worth an AAA price and people that paid for early access should lose access to their bank accounts and their money should be sent to Ukraine for war effort (or Russia if you prefer that)
World is also not very interesting, this is way worse than PoE story. Only presentation and voice acting is better.
Combat is also very samey, D2 acts have way different combat that this shit. Cohh fights all enemy completely same.
Open world is same shit like Skyrim, large as a sea, deep as a puddle.
They went some quasi full blown rpg route but could not even bother implementing some story differences based on class you play, forget about any kind of C&C, even in sidequests.
This is not worth an AAA price and people that paid for early access should lose access to their bank accounts and their money should be sent to Ukraine for war effort (or Russia if you prefer that)
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