• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Diablo IV Beta |Mini OT| READ THE OP

What would you rate Diablo IV

  • 1 (Amazing)

    Votes: 116 37.3%
  • 2

    Votes: 111 35.7%
  • 3

    Votes: 62 19.9%
  • 4

    Votes: 12 3.9%
  • 5 (Dreadful)

    Votes: 10 3.2%

  • Total voters
    311

Hot5pur

Member
People are so critical of this game.
It's a loot driven arpg built on a basic game loop of getting new upgrades.
The novel stuff here will be the mounts and the open world structure.
Kinda like what FROM did with elden Ring. They have been making the same game for ages but get free passes. They add horses and an open world and keep nearly everything else the same, GOTY! It's a good game and all, but no one gave it a hard time for recycling the same old gameplay and just tossing in some new enemies and some horses.
I dunno, I think it's easier to focus on what's good in D4 rather than obsess about the 20 other ways they could have done it.

I would really like a bestiary with high res models and monster description. I really hope there is good lore for this. I watched some recap videos of diablos lore and it's decently deep.
 

Macattk15

Member
People are so critical of this game.
It's a loot driven arpg built on a basic game loop of getting new upgrades.
The novel stuff here will be the mounts and the open world structure.
Kinda like what FROM did with elden Ring. They have been making the same game for ages but get free passes. They add horses and an open world and keep nearly everything else the same, GOTY! It's a good game and all, but no one gave it a hard time for recycling the same old gameplay and just tossing in some new enemies and some horses.
I dunno, I think it's easier to focus on what's good in D4 rather than obsess about the 20 other ways they could have done it.

I would really like a bestiary with high res models and monster description. I really hope there is good lore for this. I watched some recap videos of diablos lore and it's decently deep.

You're kinda minimizing what they did with Elden Ring lol.
 

Hot5pur

Member
You're kinda minimizing what they did with Elden Ring lol.
But really that's what happened. It was well executed and all. But it's the same combat system, same gameplay mechanics in terms of dying, same ass backwards way of telling a story...it is a great game don't get me wrong, just that it didn't innovate in any particularly interesting ways besides going open world, and it gets a ton of praise. I played all FROM games, and I got exactly what I expected.

If FROM is playing it safe by sticking to a tried and true formula, Blizzard is doing the same. Just with horses and an open world, just like Witcher 3 lol
 

Dr. Claus

Banned
People are so critical of this game.
It's a loot driven arpg built on a basic game loop of getting new upgrades.
The novel stuff here will be the mounts and the open world structure.
Kinda like what FROM did with elden Ring. They have been making the same game for ages but get free passes. They add horses and an open world and keep nearly everything else the same, GOTY! It's a good game and all, but no one gave it a hard time for recycling the same old gameplay and just tossing in some new enemies and some horses.
I dunno, I think it's easier to focus on what's good in D4 rather than obsess about the 20 other ways they could have done it.

I would really like a bestiary with high res models and monster description. I really hope there is good lore for this. I watched some recap videos of diablos lore and it's decently deep.
Elden Ring evolved and expanded the gameplay created by Demon/Dark souls.

Diablo IV doesn't do the same for previous games. If anything, it is actively weaker than the previous games.
 

Kacho

Gold Member
You go back to Tristram in the beta and after D3 that place is pretty much a ghost town (literally). Baal takes you there and is all “the Horodrium suck…you suck…everything sucks…especially Lilith please kill her.”

No more blood to squeeze from that rock.

2:42 The wolf has the same laugh as Zoltun Kulle
 
Last edited:
I feel like we're straight up going to fight Mephisto and Baal again in 4. Thank God, Diablo is cool and all but he really can't carry the whole Lord of Hell thing all by himself. There's multiple Prime Evils for a reason.
 
You go back to Tristram in the beta and after D3 that place is pretty much a ghost town (literally). Baal takes you there and is all “the Horodrium suck…you suck…everything sucks…especially Lilith please kill her.”

No more blood to squeeze from that rock.
It would literally not be Diablo unless you went back to Tristram at least once.

Going there in a vision like in this beta amounts to little more than a Tristram cameo but it looks like this whole game is set on the Eastern continent so I think that's all the Tristram we're gonna get in 4.
 

Nydius

Member
The novel stuff here will be the mounts and the open world structure.

Unless the later acts really expand the map, I'm not very impressed with their idea of "open world".

Fractured Peaks is a series of open plains connected by a spider web of linear corridors, many of which lead to dead ends with cellars or strongholds at the end of them. Interspersed between them are the city hubs, which had no real feeling of scale. You've got NPCs who talk about how far it is from one town to the next but you literally walk between them in a minute or so.

I previously mentioned how the open world feels barren because enemies are grouped in clumps that you only run into every 15-30 seconds or so and I fear that is precisely because of the mounts. They made this sprawling, not-quite-true-open-world map because they needed to justify adding mounts. The map we've played so far would be perfectly fine if we had movement speed increase buffs instead of mounts... but, of course, with mounts they have something to sell cosmetics for.

So far my impression is neither of these are "novel" things but rather poorly created, live service trend chasing, designs.
 
Last edited:

Solarstrike

Member
Your ideas are interesting, but it highlights how risk-averse and formulaic D4 is. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a Diablo game for casual mass market appeal, but the originals were not casual games at all.

Unfortunately there’s no satisfaction to be had in winning here. There are big red telegraph indicators on the floor to tell you where you shouldn’t stand, slow moving projectiles that do very little damage, and a constant stream of heal pots even if you fail basic awareness of these mechanics.

D1 and D2 could be brutal. Getting a powerful drop was a big deal because the default was barely scraping by each encounter, if at all. You’d kill stuff hoping for a good drop, or scrounge your pennies and hope for a good random item in the shop. Every new ability or spell massively changed your power curve and gave you a new lease on life.

This is honestly just a turn your brain off ez loot treadmill in its current form.


Console is on board now I think that's a great thing. But then It has to be adaptable to the gamepad (mostly) crowd which does lend credence to the game being a bit easy at times; mindless shoot, loot, and scoot. Another positive note however, Cross-play integration. Games will be far and wide for quite some time. With the massive infusion of interest from the console market soon to arrive, sustainment of interest hopefully equals content aplenty. Would like to see a map editor release.

I'm playing on "Veteran II" tier and the difficulty is just about right, the challenge is there. In leveling up, better loot DOES drop as in the prior games. You can turn Off the hints, prompts, guide markers, etc. in the gameplay menu options. In playing in the "less guided" experience though, the game does hold the players hand a bit too much. Just hit the map tab and there's the destination. It should be old school for anything Veteran and above. Pencil and paper, whereas the player has to make their own map. Maybe a "digital" sketch pad or something where the player brings up his old dusty leatherbound journal/notebook and can draw the map whenever as they play. Placing icons, details and side notes would be a game in itself. :messenger_grinning_smiling:
 

Dev1lXYZ

Member
This made me want to fire up D2 again. That’s a good thing. I played Druid, got to like 12-13 over yesterday and today. It’s a whole lot better than D3 was at launch. The graphics detail is amazing. Having played the series since D1 released on PC back in the day, they nailed the graphics and physics. The skeletons move in a jerky fashion akin to Ray Harryhousen films. A faint glimmer of hope that Blizzard may make a good out the gate product that will make it to the first season patch without me having lost interest. That’s a hard thing to do this year, especially.
 
Damn, I was not expecting that last cutscene with Vigo.

That was a gut punch.

They are telegraphing this story pretty heavily already, and fortunately it's also retconning some of the dumber aspects of D3. There are no good guys in the Eternal Conflict, everyone is differing degrees of bad. The only guy who ended up doing the right thing was Tyrael at the end of 2's expac, when he destroyed the Worldstone and sealed the world of Sanctuary away from both Heaven and Hell. Which was of course retconned in order to make a sequel. I wouldn't have felt badly about it if the story of 3 wasn't so stupid. Let's hope 4 gives us a better story resolution than 3 did.
 
Last edited:
Level 25 sorceress, 25 Rogue - enjoyed both of those, likely will play through both on launch. Tried Necro too and while it seems powerful, I don't enjoy the style as much. Having trouble connecting now, was kicked out and now it brings me to a blank startup screen and when I can log in the game chugs oddly, so I'll try again later.

I explored every area on the map and while sure there are some instanced areas etc, I think it makes me feel like the game is small in the end - you can see the size of each act on the map and they're about the same. I suppose it's about right, but somehow it feels smaller in some way. Still don't like the multiplayer aspect- hate walking into events or having others walk into mine.

Sidequests feel pretty empty - I think they could have halved them and made the remaining higher quality. Cellars seem completely pointless to be in the game.

Was surprised that
there was no Act I final boss of any kind..

Also sad that there is no Paladin.
 
Last edited:
Level 25 sorceress, 25 Rogue - enjoyed both of those, likely will play through both on launch. Tried Necro too and while it seems powerful, I don't enjoy the style as much. Having trouble connecting now, was kicked out and now it brings me to a blank startup screen and when I can log in the game chugs oddly, so I'll try again later.

I explored every area on the map and while sure there are some instanced areas etc, I think it makes me feel like the game is small in the end - you can see the size of each act on the map and they're about the same. I suppose it's about right, but somehow it feels smaller in some way. Still don't like the multiplayer aspect- hate walking into events or having others walk into mine.

Sidequests feel pretty empty - I think they could have halved them and made the remaining higher quality. Cellars seem completely pointless to be in the game.

Was surprised that
there was no Act I final boss of any kind..

Also sad that there is no Paladin.

The dude you fight with the help of Power Armor Mecha Vigo is apparently the final boss of Act I.

Cellars definitely need work. Terrible XP, terrible drops, just an identical room you go in and kill a few mobs. Very disappointing in the starting areas. Maybe though in harder difficulties they will start to shine as a quick encounter with some really hard mobs and a miniboss.

Some of the sidequests are pretty good, but so far they all boil down to go here and kill everything. Well, it's Diablo, go here and kill everything is the whole game I guess.

I like the open world itself, and it's actually a bit nice that the whole overworld is no longer procedurally generated since you can now have fixed events and stuff in certain places. The dungeons are bit disappointing though, there isn't a lot of variety in the procedural generation and they all feel very samey.
 
I hit 25 with my barb and saw the end of Act I, gonna try out Sorc for a bit before the beta ends. So far this is looking great though, very polished gameplay and super fun early on.

Bring on June 6th!
 

Miyazaki’s Slave

Gold Member
Finished up the beta a few hours ago, got through all the classes and overall am looking forward to June 4th!

The beta is 77gb which means it probably includes tons of stuff from the full game that they have locked away; with that being said the items and skill trees have been mined from the data files in the current beta.

Take all this with a grain of salt and it is marked as a spoiler because it is. You don't want to see the unique stuff don't click the link. Personally I was VERY curious to know if any of my old fav weapons from D1-D3 made the cut this time around.

Enjoy and of course ALL of this is subject to change before June (thanks reddit)

 
Last edited:

GenericUser

Member
People are so critical of this game.
It's a loot driven arpg built on a basic game loop of getting new upgrades.
The novel stuff here will be the mounts and the open world structure.
Kinda like what FROM did with elden Ring. They have been making the same game for ages but get free passes. They add horses and an open world and keep nearly everything else the same, GOTY! It's a good game and all, but no one gave it a hard time for recycling the same old gameplay and just tossing in some new enemies and some horses.
I dunno, I think it's easier to focus on what's good in D4 rather than obsess about the 20 other ways they could have done it.

I would really like a bestiary with high res models and monster description. I really hope there is good lore for this. I watched some recap videos of diablos lore and it's decently deep.
People feel special when they praise souls games because they think that makes them super elite hardcore gamers. That's why souls games get so much praise.
 
I was able to play for about 8 hours over the course of 3 days and this just felt like a warm bath especially whilst playing with friends.

Hard to believe that Diablo 3 released 11 years ago because the way I settled into the gameplay loop of Diablo 4 felt like I was playing this game for years.

Despite some rubberbanding and performance issues on the PS5 the game felt done. I praise Blizzard for not changing a lot of the mechanics that made Diablo such a popular franchise.
I still have to see how the endgame will be when this game releases in 9 weeks but I have full confidence in them when I played the beta and was completely captivated by it.

If I do have to nitpick about one thing; The Rogue feels like a half assed version of the Assassin and Demon Hunter. Like a jack of all trades, master of none.
I tried two builds; one as a marksman and one as a CC DPS build and it really felt like my character had an identity crisis.
I am hoping the character truly changes when we can level up to 100 and unlock more skills.
 
The PS5 HDR is completely broken, and I am not sure I entirely enjoy playing on the tv as I sit maybe too far away.
Game is pretty beautiful, but also kind of boring.
We'll see.
 

Nico_D

Member
Not my thing. Started out well enough but pretty quickly turned out to be just more of the same and didn't even play on Sunday anymore.
 

Bitmap Frogs

Mr. Community
Came into the beta thinking i was gonna be a necro or sorc main, came out absolutely loving rogue. Movement and DPS is fantastic.

My only worry is that while rogue has fantabulous agility damage and mobility it doesn’t have natural access to barrier or fortification so it is vulnerable to damage spikes.

That being said, I’m sure you can legendary that problem away.
 

Hot5pur

Member
Unless the later acts really expand the map, I'm not very impressed with their idea of "open world".

Fractured Peaks is a series of open plains connected by a spider web of linear corridors, many of which lead to dead ends with cellars or strongholds at the end of them. Interspersed between them are the city hubs, which had no real feeling of scale. You've got NPCs who talk about how far it is from one town to the next but you literally walk between them in a minute or so.

I previously mentioned how the open world feels barren because enemies are grouped in clumps that you only run into every 15-30 seconds or so and I fear that is precisely because of the mounts. They made this sprawling, not-quite-true-open-world map because they needed to justify adding mounts. The map we've played so far would be perfectly fine if we had movement speed increase buffs instead of mounts... but, of course, with mounts they have something to sell cosmetics for.

So far my impression is neither of these are "novel" things but rather poorly created, live service trend chasing, designs.

I think the point was more that you can approach content in a less linear way and then go back to any area you want and play there. I wonder if later acts will have you moving between zones, even ones you "finished". The endgame definitely will.

The clustering of enemies and scale I think are ok. And the random events are a nice touch. Having a horsie will definitely help. The sense of exploration is so-so as there could be more set pieces and town variety. The strongholds are VERY well done and do give a sense of exploration.

I think people are using Act I to judge the entire game, and that's because it already feels so substantial. The devs said that each area will be made to feel unique including the dungeons, and I imagine as we go through we will see more interesting locations and set pieces. Also more substantial story beats as we fight proper bosses.

Speaking of bosses I hope Diablo is actually in this one. Didn't see him on the achievement list (be wary of spoilers on the hardcore section).

people did notice it has the voice of Zoltan but the sigil on its forehead is Mephisto's
 

Bartski

Gold Member
Wow. Never thought I'll put RE4 aside for this.

Zero issues connecting, 1 min queue time on average the whole weekend, got disconnected once.

Hit lvl 20 with rogue, then 25 with the sorcerer... There is some work left to be done balancing but everything else is a blast.

I haven't played Diablo since high school... See you all in June.
 

Ozzie666

Member
Went in hoping to continue whirlwind barbarian, enjoyed Druid, but ended up loving Rogue. Melee classes felt really unbalanced and slow. 2+ months to go. Hopefully they address gem inventory issues. Other than the first day of the Q, it was a pretty good beta to be honest. I can't believe it's almost here.
 
Looking at the datamining material for Barb.
Leap, Ground Stomp, Shout, HOTA, Leap.

Looks like Ground Stomp (and others) reset Leap, and you can get earthquake for both Leap + Stomp. So Quaking LeapStomp Barb to run around maps is right up my alley.

Veteran difficulty is quite low for Diablo, anyone saying it's too easy should wait to unlock the higher tiers + the Sigils.
 

VenomousCoffee

Gold Member
Played a Barb up to level 20 on Sunday and really enjoyed it. I thought it looked good (loved the atmosphere) and the gameplay felt polished. Seems like it's going to be an excellent Podcast Game. I'm in for day 1.
 
Sorc is great. Powerleveled myself to 17 just so I could throw on some hand me down gear from my Barb and blow things up.

I wasn't really feeling Frozen Orb but Chain Lightning is super fun for the whole family. Once I unlocked the Enchantment slot, I looked at the various skills and noticed you can put Fireball into that slot and it makes enemies explode on death. That was a real riot, lemme tell ya. Corpse Explosion for Sorcs, it's about exactly what you would expect once a pack of enemies start all exploding on each other.

It's so late/early now and I'm tired, I guess I can call it a beta here. This game breaks no ground, does nothing particularly unique, and it's just unbelievably fun. It's the chicken soup of video games.
 

mgcemir85

Neo Member
Came into the beta thinking i was gonna be a necro or sorc main, came out absolutely loving rogue. Movement and DPS is fantastic.
Same here, leveled sorc and bard, kinda didnt like them at all. Tried rogue few hours before bed and 15 mins before work this morning, its amazing. U have to use spells to move from danger and dance around bosses, while others are point and shoot, or in barbs case, just die.
 
Last edited:

JCK75

Member
I really wasn't excited about it even though I was crazy about Diablo 1 and 2.. but man it's everything I wanted it to be.
 

AJUMP23

Parody of actual AJUMP23
I had fun with my sorceress and made it through all of act 1. Really a fun game. I don't know if I will get it though depends on what else I am playing.
 

Kacho

Gold Member
I think I'm used to it. He's popular in the Diablo community and makes a lot of build guides so he's not unknown.
Yeah, I'm familiar with him. I consumed some of his content around the time D2R launched. His voice just triggers me for the reasons Spukc noted above. He's got that annoying vocal fry thing going on too.
 
Watching some of these reviews, people are just really trapped into nostalgia

"ultimately it's a console game, a console game built on top of diablo 3"

Heh

Then ends the review saying "you just want diablo 2 made again"

Yep, that confirms it
 
Last edited:

Luipadre

Member
Im gonna miss this game so much. I intentionally skipped a bunch of content in act 1. Like lots of dungeons, barely did side quests and none of the forts just to save it for the main game and still had a lot of fun. Im between sorc and druid currently. Druid is weak in the beta but i still think its a fun character with a lot of potential
 
Watching some of these reviews, people are just really trapped into nostalgia

"ultimately it's a console game, a console game built on top of diablo 3"

Heh

Then ends the review saying "you just want diablo 2 made again"

Yep, that confirms it
of course people are trapped in nostalgia, this game would not even be made unless it was to take advantage of that. That's what remakes, sequels, etc is all about nowadays.
They could have made a brand new game, but they chose to make Diablo IV, to get the nostalgic people to buy the game.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom