Diablo IV

[Crispy]

- chat randomly opens, making you unable to use any abilities

 

[mediocrepoet]

- chat randomly opens, making you unable to use any abilities

222411111111Q344211QQQQQQ11

 

[KIss My Ass]

Had a weird bug where I couldn't attack or use any skills. Logging out and back in fixed it.

 

[DeepOcean]

Just a question, can you die on the first 10hs? That would already make it leaps ahead of 99% of ARPGs. I always burn out of tedium by that point. Do you actually need to play good like evading shit, use movement skills or is t like most ARPGs where you can be replaced by a bot once you have a build?

 

[Skinwalker]

Is it shit?

 

[KIss My Ass]

Just a question, can you die on the first 10hs? That would already make it leaps ahead of 99% of ARPGs. I always burn out of tedium by that point. Do you actually need to play good like evading shit, use movement skills or is t like most ARPGs where you can be replaced by a bot once you have a build?

It can be pretty challenging on World Tier II. I've died a few times, typically to elites and bosses. Evasion is a big part of the game.

 

[Perkel]

- lots of fights are terrible for melee

More like all ranged classes are to easy to play. Played with barb until nightmare (tier 3) and it was fair all along. There were some sticky situations but those were mostly me jumping inside of huge pack of mobs without thinking. In D4 i am yet to die from something I don't understand or some weird combo damage spike. Even if I jumped into middle of elite pack it wasn't one shot but mostly combination of CC and few heavy hitting attacks.

Just a question, can you die on the first 10hs? That would already make it leaps ahead of 99% of ARPGs. I always burn out of tedium by that point. Do you actually need to play good like evading shit, use movement skills or is t like most ARPGs where you can be replaced by a bot once you have a build?

Yes. If you play on Veteran with barb. You constantly have to move and control crowd with your attacks and movement. It was hardest campaign since Grim Dawn Veteran mode (though I didn't like veteran in that game)

 

[Yosharian]

Just a question, can you die on the first 10hs? That would already make it leaps ahead of 99% of ARPGs. I always burn out of tedium by that point. Do you actually need to play good like evading shit, use movement skills or is t like most ARPGs where you can be replaced by a bot once you have a build?

If you play Druid then yeah

 

[Saravan]

Amazing. It was enough for Blizzoid to move the atmosphere and color palette back towards the direction of D1/D2 to sucker idiots into paying 90 $ (!) for this D3.5 MTX-hell garbage.

To name just a few things, itemisation is still uninspiring stat sticks where everything scales off weapon with zero weight to different weapon types etc. Simplistic skill tree and consolised UI, I think they even stated that the game is better when played with a console. No trading, all uniques are account bound. Very little variation in dungeons and monsters. Lackluster end-game content that is eerily similar to greater rifts design. And the worst offender of them all, level scaling.

D2 is over 20 years old, with a shit game in between to take lessons from. The standard here should be a massive improvement upon D2, not just 'slightly better' than D3.

 

[Aemar]

Diablo 4 = Diablo 3 + Path of Exile + WoW

This is not the game most people have been waiting for since Diablo 2. Who the fuck needs, for example, 1000 side quests in a Diablo game? Level scaling? Gtfo with this piece of overpriced garbage.

 

[Saravan]

Diablo 4 = Diablo 3 + Path of Exile + WoW

This is not the game most people have been waiting for since Diablo 2. Who the fuck needs, for example, 1000 side quests in a Diablo game? Level scaling? Gtfo with this piece of overpriced garbage.

I realize that at this point the larger playerbase has fundamentally changed, therefore the game design as well. Still, it is hard to accept.

 

[Aemar]

The main problem lies with the company itself. The first two games were made by professional nerds, while the latest iterations have been created by soyjacks.

 

[Rahdulan]

while the latest iterations have been created by soyjacks.

It would probably be more accurate to say 3 and 4 were made by devs who know nothing beyond WoW expansions. I'm not even sure where to place Starcraft 2 in such a company.

 

[Naraya]

How is the game doing? Knowing modern GAMERS, it sells like chocolate chip hot cakes?

 

[Tyrr]

How is the game doing? Knowing modern GAMERS, it sells like chocolate chip hot cakes?

full price game + season pass & micro transactions
level-scaling
forced multiplayer
endless grind 'endgame'
ugly character models
mediocre, unfinished story

So yes. Blizzard drones will love it.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Diablo 4 = Diablo 3 + Path of Exile + WoW

This is not the game most people have been waiting for since Diablo 2. Who the fuck needs, for example, 1000 side quests in a Diablo game? Level scaling? Gtfo with this piece of overpriced garbage.

Is actually D3+FFX+Lost Ark

 

[Perkel]

Very little variation in dungeons and monsters. Lackluster end-game content that is eerily similar to greater rifts design. And the worst offender of them all, level scaling.

I mean, end game content is completely different to D3. D3 end game was just rifts which is pretty much POE map system but with different coat of paint and you can't choose what you will face. D4 end game content looks like D3 adventure mode but scaled up imho something i really liked about D3 rework in 2.0 as I hated campaign. You can do side quests, hell tides, three of whisper quests, do dungeons, do some group events with other players, world bosses from time to time and if you want PVP as there are some areas that enable pvp with set of rules to follow.

D4 "base game" has pretty much most expansive end game content from all arpgs. Obviously it can't match end game content of say POE with it's 10 years of expansions but for a base game there is something to do.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Apparently, the mount speed in this game is governed by the distance of the cursor from the mount model - more distance, more speed. You move faster left and right, than up and down, for obvious reasons.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

, for obvious reasons

Well at least they did that like the classics.

 

[Perkel]

Some early end game content thoughts. This is from Tier 3 difficulty. IDK if something new shows up on T4. With T3 you get world bosses and hell tides that were not present on T2. If you finish campaign once you can skip it with new character and go straight to end game with new one starting from lvl1.

- It is interesting that after campaign ends actually world acknowledges that. It is weird that you can see that in arpg and not in most of big RPGs. Basically campaign is evil encroaching on sanctuary from 0 to 100 while after campaign you have outright 100, people comment on state of the world etc.
- This naturally leads to some different additional quests that were not available in campaign. There aren't many of them but they exist.
- "Hell Tide" is pretty neat idea. Basically region of world is taken over by hell tide and whole region changes from default to sort of hell version of it (but not totally hell), rain changed to blood, instead of plants, boxes or carins you get pillars of souls etc. basically elements of hell. Monsters change there from default monsters to hell demons. As you kill them they drop some resource. Then you can find chests there that require X amount of resource that give you rewards. Hell tide lasts for 60 minutes until it moves to other region. The gameplay feels like some league mechanic in POE but the neatness of it comes from the fact that this hell encroaching also affects towns. So once that happens you can see people defending themselves, people talking about hell tide etc. So it is not just cheap pallet swap like POE. Chests are marked with what is mostly likely in them
- Three of Whispers quests are more like achievement based ones. So you do stuff which gives you points toward goal but they are restricted to specific region. So sometimes it is kill X something, sometimes light 4 pillars in different parts of map, sometimes kill demon etc. Once you finish task you go back to tree for reward. You get to pick 1 of 3 boxes containing different choices of equipment.
- Event quests are there from start of game so they are not really end game but they never end so they are as viable in end game as they were at start of game. They vary a lot from refugees defense, stopping summoning etc. You do it and if you do certain tasks in it well you get better reward.
- Sidequesting can be really varied. From just find me a thing in place X, to banish demon from child in ritual. Some are one off some have whole chains of quests attached to them where some character will offer you few quests following some sort of mini story. They are one off though so hardly can be called end game system but hey I am in end game and there is truck load of them still so... Definitely there are way to many of them to finish in campaign everything and like I said before new quests pop up after you finish campaign.
- Boosting dungeons. You find those items that allow you to transform some dungeon into nightmare version of it. Each much like POE map system has attached benefits and maluses to it. So in one you have 50% more gold but all enemies use poison in other one something else etc. Tried once but this pretty much feels like rolling maps in POE.
- World bosses. Did it once with like 16 people but I didn't really like it. Too many people at once and enemy attacks were too telegraphed. There are multiple ones in game so maybe this one just sucked. I also did it on nightmare not on highest tier so maybe they are easy there, hard to tell.
- Just fucking around on map. I mean there is not much to say. If you like endless mode or something just walk around map and fuck things up as you go, loot will be worse than in events or other avenues but you will still progress.
- Finishing exploration. Map is huge and when you finish campaign there will be plenty to explore around. There are like dozens of strongholds to free each having it's own theme (like those), finding some shitty statues for bonuses etc.

Oftentimes you combine some at the same time. Like doing hell tide in region with Tree of whispers region and firing up some group event.

Overall I like it. Much like I said before it is D3 adventure mode on steroids and I liked adventure mode, for a base game there is plenty to do and reasons to smash.

 

[Perkel]

Game has weird scaling.

- Game has upscaling. Meaning monster scale to you from below not from above. So with your lvl 15 guy you can walk into lvl 30 stronghold and be killed in seconds but you won't find monsters below your level in old locations. Thing is that most of the world is scaled to around lvl 30 so above that you have effectively scaling down and up but by that time you are kitted with aspects which negate mostly scaling.
- This scaling shenanigans goes to lvl 50 in T2 upon reaching it, it doesn't scale above that but you either don't receive much XP which forces you to do quest for T3 world where depending on your kit you will be suffering on just getting by at start.
- On T3 there seems to be scaling but from what I play i barely feel it. I was struggling at start but after few gear upgrades I am doing even better now than on end of T2.

Story wise it is pretty well explained. As you start game plot starts and evil starts to grow and as you go forces of evil get stronger and stronger as plot moves on. Thought it naturally feels a bit wrong if you fight exact same mobs without any new models etc.

Overall I don't like it. At around lvl 40 I was really struggling making progress and got to point where mobs really punished me. Normally in such situation I would just do lower end content and reorganize but here you effectively can't do that. Weirdly it punishes the most casuals as those are the ones without skill to put 2+2 and make their build X times better so for them probably it is worse and worse as it goes.

 

[Reinhardt]

Basically campaign is evil encroaching on sanctuary from 0 to 100 while after campaign you have outright 100

are you playing as diablo or what?

 

[copebot]

The game kind of expects you to put together a real build to the point to which you overcome the scaling. This isn't really like D3 in which you could do anything until max level, at which point you really had to get a set together. I built a scuffed traps/twisted blade build on my rogue just because it was what I had the pieces for and it worked pretty well on T2. I didn't finish the campaign on SC as rogue until I got to level 50 though, and it involved a fair number of detours to get traits to round out my build. For a while I was also using caltrops but no death trap just because I had gear that really benefitted from stacking a ton of traps on the ground all at once. I'm now trying out a shadow clone build because I got a sacred unique that buffs it. The way the stats work, it's a little tough to just swap to an entirely different build without an entirely different gear set. I could not swap to a ranged build without being crappy for a while just because of how many affixes there are.

Survivability seems to be pretty high overall UNLESS you get stunned. There are also some boss abilities that just chunk you. However, because you are kind of forced to take some defensive effects because some slots do not permit offensive traits, it's not really possible to make a fully squishy glass cannon build.

The other thing is that the scaling slows to a crawl in T3 and you pile on paragon points from reputation and levels that help you to way outscale it. It's hard to get gear that actually does anything, and once you find a piece it's harder to get the right affixes than it is to just shift the legendary power to it.

 

[Zlaja]

Basically campaign is evil encroaching on sanctuary from 0 to 100 while after campaign you have outright 100

are you playing as diablo or what?

Yeah, are we the baddies?

 

[Saravan]

Very little variation in dungeons and monsters. Lackluster end-game content that is eerily similar to greater rifts design. And the worst offender of them all, level scaling.

I mean, end game content is completely different to D3. D3 end game was just rifts which is pretty much POE map system but with different coat of paint and you can't choose what you will face. D4 end game content looks like D3 adventure mode but scaled up imho something i really liked about D3 rework in 2.0 as I hated campaign. You can do side quests, hell tides, three of whisper quests, do dungeons, do some group events with other players, world bosses from time to time and if you want PVP as there are some areas that enable pvp with set of rules to follow.

D4 "base game" has pretty much most expansive end game content from all arpgs. Obviously it can't match end game content of say POE with it's 10 years of expansions but for a base game there is something to do.

Side quests mostly consist of fetch quests as far as I have seen (but I could be wrong). There are many dungeons but there are very few variations of them. World bosses provide no challenge, I assume like everything else in the game to cater to the widest casual group. Things like hell tide is a neat idea, but it's all drowned by some exceptionally bad game design - chiefly the itemisation and the level scaling.