f13.net

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I wish I could zoom out about 10-20% more.

That's my only complaint. They fuckin nailed it.

It was laggy as fuck when i played, but the fact they got away from armor sets determining your entire build makes this an insta buy.

interesting choice doing away with overlay map, very capcom style designer > player. I think I approve.

classes don't really vibe with me personally. I miss zon, monk and crusader a lot when barb doesn't seem that fun.

there's something about these skill tree designs that i do not like. early game feels really really bad. spenders feel like they are in an awkward position. 6 skills max because controllers? consoles? mobile phones? feels bad when the game gives out +1 to hella skill items and you can't even slot all the CD's wont matter lategame but...

feels like the D3 philosophy where nothing matters but items, the skills themselves are just things to be modified by the right items. i don't think this worked well for D3 but i also thought D3 was dogshit so its not like i played it for most of the 10 yrs it existed.

the game wants to be more like D1, it is more like D1 but I'm fairly certain that can't last and it will become sanic speed full clear builds the game eventually.

Barb skills:
Basic > Frenzy and LS are fun. The other two feel bad. Bash always feels bad. Why can't they make Bash feel less bad?
Core > This is where it all falls apart. You can build for Upheaval in the early game because its not bad or you can.... idk. WW can be ok. I'm not sure why HOTA and double swing even bother existing. Feel terrible. Bleed cleave is meh af.
Defensive > who cares, they provide util, its not sexy.
Brawling > Kick is fun to use, great design. I wish Cry was a spender not a CD slotted here, they could have used a cool bleed or stun skill here instead. or something to enable walking arsenal? idk. Charge feels great. They really nailed Kick and Charge. Leap is leap. nothing new works as advertised, seems kinda meh. No suck in leap node sadge.
Weapon Master > Death Blow is big damage fun but only works if its 1-shotting imo otherwise its trash, which probably means its not a great skill. Feels satisfying to use correctly, def worth a try and hopefully items that make it work will exist. No Fury spending Death Blow is a build I'd def try to force. Rupture is the least good feeling skill in the kit. Jesus wept. Takes about 6 seconds too long to do its thing and its thing is trash. I can't imagine a world where this is a good way to increase TTK. Steel Grasp is better than how i remember D3's Scorpion pull. Using chains is still cool even in 2023. Thumbs up for Grasp.
Ults > I'm not sure how much I even like the concept of ultimates. Like I know Mobas were probably massive huge when they started developing this but....  Ults are one of several places where D4 is trying to co-opt Lost Ark tech and making a really shitty version of it. Remember when everything Blizz stole from other games they improved? We were so young and happy back then....   Just give me an ultimate is ready ui thing and a hotkey that you press to ultimate you idiots.

ok ok Barb Ults, CotA is familiar and does what it does. There's an item that gives you mini CotA shadow clone proc chance off certain skills which feels way coooler than this "ultimate". WotB will be good when you can make the perfect ultimate berzerking build for something close to if not hitting 100% Zerk uptime in combat. I question if having an ult + capstone designed for eachother is good design? Seems pretty limiting. But that's clearly what WotB and Unconstrained are.

I'd love for someone who took rogue to 25 to tell me which rogue skills are fun to use. Sorc seems way too easy and way too boring to both build and play and Barb just felt like I was fighting against my class a lot sooooo yeah.

tl;dr the game isn't bad but newbie level Barb might be pretty bad? early levels FEEL great (look and sound) but early character doesn't feel that great but who cares? i distrust the items >>>>>>>> skills/levels rpg design. like this is better than D3 if we've done away with every build is just the build for XYZ set bonus? That's really not aiming high though. i'm going to buy and play if/because everyone is buying and playing because its fun to do things with others but I'd currently put $$$ on my time in lost ark will have more OH WOW moments and cool things I can accomplish with my abilities than this for sure.

Sorc was a lot of fun. Going to Barb next was...not. Didn't try Rogue. I'm excited for Necro next weekend, and if I get that to 25 I might futz around with Rogue or Druid.

The lack of overlay map is my biggest complaint, I think. Six skill max sucks too.

I miss the witch doctor. I loved that goofy bastard.

This was fine. It kind of ran like shit, but the improved visuals and sound design were nice. The rogue was a little dull at the start and I just got it for the last day, so I didn't get too far. Skills were kind of low key and boring.

Still, interesting enough to not lament my purchase.

Based on the first act and 25 levels, it's hard to make any judgements about a game in a genre that revolves so much around endgame builds and loot. The only thing I can say for sure is that I found it fun, which is more than I can say for a lot of other arpgs (like PoE).

I thought Sorc was pretty fun, Barb thorn build felt the most OP (obviously way too early and low level to make a difference), and Rogue seemed almost the most gear dependent for making fun playstyles. Might have been nice to have more skill slots, especially since +skill gear gives you access to the skill even if you haven't put any points into it.

I have no idea what, if anything, is tweaked specifically for the beta weekends. Legendaries seemed to flow like rain, especially with the gambler equivalent NPC which seemed to give them every 3 or 4 items.

You can judge the gameplay, the game was FUN to play. Unlike POE, which every time I read about I think "wow, this sounds right up my alley, let's give it a shot" then I play for an hour and it feels horrible and I quit until I forget all about it again. Fun gameplay kept me playing indefensible shit game Marvel Heroes much longer than I should have.

I'm gonna dip my toe in this weekend. Waiting for the Druid.

I played the Diablo 4 early access beta this weekend  (not to be confused with the open beta next weekend, or the pre-launch preview access or whatever the hell they're calling it a few days before full launch).

It's ... not bad?  Much better than D3 anyway.  They seem to have successfully picked some of the best parts from each of the three prior versions and blended them quite well.  And without the abomination of the D3 auction house. The first couple hours felt quite a bit like the first hours of D1.  I had fun.  Not $100 worth of fun yet though, unless you count the priceless value of a weekend spent playing together with the Countess.    :grin:

The main story is at least better than the usual Metzen stuff. And less melodramatic for the most part, though it does still force-walk your character through some choices you might not want to make.  In fact, there are no RP choices at all.  It's not an RP game any more than D1 or D3 ever was. As far as the story goes, you're a passenger, not the driver.  Sit back and enjoy the ride or get off the train.  Or, like one of my favorite bumper stickers says: get in, sit down, shut up, and hang on!   :why_so_serious:  If you're looking for an open world full of interesting NPC's which react to you based on choices you make and you can write your own story (something Diablo has NEVER been) this is definitely not the game you're looking for.

Respec isn't free but didn't cost much, at least up to the level max of 25 in the beta.  It's still very much a theorycrafter's game but with no long term consequences.  If you want a system that forces you to live-or-die by decisions you have to make before you have a clue what the impact will be, and if you make a wrong one you're fucked in the late game, and insist everyone else live by those same rules, then this is not the game for you.

There were no equipment sets, and apparently won't be at launch, though they are supposed to come out later.  Gear matters a LOT, and one drop could completely redefine your options, even including free skill points in skills you didn't have and couldn't possibly get yet otherwise.  So if you get an awesome drop you can change your build to incorporate it and get a huge boost in effectiveness as well as a chance to try something out you might not have considered before.  The loot Skinner box mechanism is alive and well.  We all got a lot of legendary drops. I got 17, mostly from level 15 on. Too many probably, though there is speculation that was turned up specifically for the beta to give more chances to see and test things in the limited time frame. Everything in your stash is shared between all of your characters, and the level restrictions are very relaxed so you can easily overgear your lower level alts if you so wish.  And get use out of that perfect drop you got for a class you weren't playing. There's not a whole lot of variety in avatar or gear appearance. Sure, there's a few different sets you can mix and match, and a few tints you can color them to, but they mostly seemed kind of samey to me.

Multiplayer-wise, grouping was painless and easy enough to get together from different places in the world. As far as server clusters or shards or whatever I'm sure there were many thousands of people playing but I never saw more than a dozen or so at a time, yet I was always able to seamlessly group up with my friends any time I wanted. I'm not exactly sure how it handles level disparities in group combats or dungeons as we were never more than 2 levels apart.  We were all also playing at the same difficulty level.  Built-in voice chat with group members was trouble-free, we didn't try it with anyone else.  Running into other players both in and out of town was not a horribad unfun experience.  Mostly ignorable actually except sometimes it was nice to be helped out in a difficult event or combat out in the world.  I never did see anyone not in my group in a dungeon instance. I did get to rez some stranger I found outside the entrance to a dungeon. He didn't say anything. Sharing a bedroom (containing your stash, wardrobe, and, yes, a bed you can't use) in town with everyone on the sever was a bit bizzare - it wasn't instanced at all. There might be 5 other people there in your room rummaging in your stash box at the same time you are.  I never had any issues with griefing or the like, if someone kills what you're fighting you both get your own loot. In fact it seems like if anyone killed anything anywhere near you it dropped loot for you.

Public events are fun little diversions.  There is some more level matching magic going on there as it seems anyone of any level can participate or even solo any event, as far as I could see.  Everything I saw in the world was level appropriate to me.  Even going back to the starting area, everything was my level.  I never did try to go way far from whatever area I was in to see if it would get harder the farther I went.  Game difficulty seems to be the mechanism for tuning the difficulty to your preference, with better loot being the reward for increased difficulty as with D3.

The world seems fairly large and competently built. But definitely more Action gamey than RP gamey.  It's Diablo, not Skyrim or Witcher or even WoW.  I don't think there was any procedural content at all, which is nice up front but may mean things get a bit stale after a few times through.  I didn't notice any obvious copy/paste dungeon designs, though lots of places seemed vaguely similar to each other, or very reminiscent of D3 dungeons so possibly they are procedural.  I only went through one more than once, and it was definitely laid out in the same general pattern though I couldn't tell if the details of the passages between the primary locations differed or not.

I really like the little "cellar" locations they have scattered around the map, and some of the smaller dungeons.  The bigger dungeons in the Main Quest Line kind of dragged a bit.  Maybe that's just me though.

I skipped every cutscene or bit of dialogue that I possibly could. I can’t even pretend to care about the story of these games anymore, just point me at the loot piñatas.

Same here Vel, and I would love a "Skip all skippable content" option to save my poor Esc key.

I don't even remember--were there cutscenes in Diablo II?

One per act, if I remember right. They were still novel at the time so they were kind of cool, and Blizzard had really good production values for their cutscenes.

Shoving the soulstone into your head at the end of the original Diablo is pretty much the only story bit in the series I remember.

I remember the music and I remember the voices mostly beyond the loot pinatas.

I remember the bit at the end of D2 where the old guy gives the soulstone to Not Tyrael.

I remember my brother and I would do terrible Deckard Cain impressions, saying "Stay a while and listen!" or "Horadric Horadric Horadric... Horadric Horadric."

Is Covetous Shen in IV?

Not that I've seen.

i get so mad the moment i have to click on a dialogue option to initiate quest dialogue

This is a "play it for years" game, I can put up with the story once. Once.

Hopefully we don't have to replay it every league/season.

There's a Livestream on Youtube right now where the Devs have announced that they're opening up the servers on May 12-14 to everybody to see how they will handle the massive server load they're expecting on opening day.

They announced you only play the story once and can skip it on all future characters.

Open Beta May 12 - 14: https://diablo4.blizzard.com/en-us/server-slam

This is assuming anyone can even log on and play. I'll be shocked if that happens.

At least some better be able to log in otherwise they'll need to delay the launch.

Ahhh...FRESH MEAT!

That Ashava fight was a bitch.

Other than several of the best abilities being nerfed to hell, it being a level 25 Boss and player level is capped at 20, raid size is capped at 12 and the most I ever saw was 11, Legendaries are super rare and you really didn't get much time to farm them, and you get a ridiculously and arbitrarily short 15 minutes to kill him, what's the problem?  :why_so_serious:

I came out 1 of 4.  On the one we won, we had 5 minutes to spare and I even died less than 10 times!  But hey, I got a (yes, one) Legendary (which is completely useless), and a butt demonic hedgehog thingy  spiky mount that I can't use until live and will probably never use then either!

I died way more than 10 but we got in my first attempt, luckily I had plenty of extra weapons in my inventory and my build spawned corpses to summon free dps.

Once you learn the fight and aren't stuck with 4 necros in the group who all have their minions out (which promptly die 10 seconds into the fight), it's too hard at all. The last time I did beat him I managed to get through only dying once (due to carelessness).

Also we did managed to get some f13ers together for this a couple times this weekend which was nice.

If you build to spawn corpses your minions can be refreshed easily. At least they can be doing dps while I spent most of the fight running around.

I missed the world boss this weekend; didn't have nearly as much free time available as I did during the previous betas. Sucks to miss a cosmetic, but I was never going to go for 100% completion anyway.

I managed to get the cosmetic, but I wouldn't have really cared much if I had missed out on it. Once you decide you need every cosmetic item in the game, you're pretty much committing yourself to buying every premium battlepass and every cosmetic microtransaction sold separate from the battlepasses.

Well, I died 24 times on my first attempt, but I later realized I had forgotten to set my difficulty level back to T1 so that one was at T2, and during the very first spawn of this beta so folks were even worse equipped and more clueless than later spawns.  Also I suck at trying to move and pop corpses.  The last one I did quite well by completely ignoring the corpses and sticking to Bone Shards(?), and Bone Spear.

In 2 years this will be a great game.  :why_so_serious:

Lots of QOL tweeks that would help.

At lvl 41 finishing the final boss fight wrapping up Act 2 and getting one, read, one, loot drop that was 16 levels lower with a negative 100 gear score was :ye_gods:

Dynamic scaling is annoying me.  I feel like GW2 pulled it off much better.

The real question is, why are you in Act 2 at level 41? Not all leveling content needs to scale equally, the game begins at endgame and no one is ever going to play story a second time.

If they can apply dynamic scaling to the mobs in that quest i think they could manage to scale the loot as well. If they cared to.

Open world, side quests, helping friends, exploring, xp boosts, group xp boost. Thats how i ended up in that boat.

I dropped out of Diablo about ten levels into D1 and the unironic assertion that the main game can be bad because it’s just what you grind through to get to the “real” game reminded me why.   :why_so_serious:

I am rubber banding like a motherfucker, it wasn't this bad in beta.

I'm going to hang my head in shame, I'm a level 43 necromancer and only just started act 2.  I'm just enjoying running all the dungeons, completing side quests etc, instead of smashing through the story for once.

I am trying to mix in the story with exploring and getting the statues of lilith done. Wanted to wait till I got a mount to really do the statue chasing, but the boost to stats is too good to pass up and killing everything along the way with a cheap elixir for the xp boost is fun

I'm having fun with it, although I dislike level scaling and the skill trees seem kind of lame.

I don't think I've found any statues of lilith besides the very first one.

https://mapgenie.io/diablo-4/maps/sanctuary

filter out everything except the statues and go wild.

It's not so much that the story is "bad" (though I wouldn't know, because I skipped all the cutscenes and dialog), it's that a lot of content and progression is gated behind it. No mount until Act 4, can't move on to WT3 until you finish Act 6, etc. The "main game" in an ARPG is to kill mobs and get better loot. In my opinion, long story quests with lots of walking, dialog, walking, cutscenes, etc. gets in the way of the fun. I want to be killing monsters or tinkering with my gear, nothing else in between.

My biggest complaint about Path of Exile lately has been that every 3 months you have to replay the story for each new league. The best selling point about Diablo 4 is that you don't; you beat the story once, and then don't have to play it again on your alt(s). You can, I guess, but it's entirely optional.

Anyone who's running around doing side content prior to completing the story is kind of doing it wrong, particularly if you intend to play endgame. You're going to need to do all that stuff anyway, so why not do it when it's worth actual loot? Dungeons in particular are a HUGE trap while leveling up, as they're one of the primary endgame focuses (both via Sigils and the Tree). Act 4 and Act 6 are both fairly quick, with only Act 5 being kind of long; it's really best to just power through it, clear the Capstone and move on to WT3.

Given that Sam's flex there was that he's only ever put 10 minutes in with any Diablo game, and it was the first and roughest one that came 26 years ago, I'm going to assume that he's not actually interested in learning about Diablo IV.

I liked the story...

I prefer the story to Diablo 3, but holy fuck, do they not understand mob density and the fact that the game is about killing shit, not wandering through exposition, cut scenes and no fucking mobs. All they had to do is look at Diablo 2 and why it was so fun - mobs everywhere throughout the story. I can barely remember the key NPC names or the storyline after a session, it's that underwhelming. I can remember the key players in Diablo 3's shithouse storyline, but don't ask me what the hell the story is in Diablo 4. Better story, but badly told.

I haven't played PoE for a bit, but I think I want to go back and play it for a bit as a comparison.

Can't really disagree with anything you said, but it all fits under the "have end game in mind" which I don't - at least not right now. Maybe once I get bored and refocus, but I figure take the time now to enjoy just wandering about. As long as you are enjoying the game, YMMV...

Speaking of story, there is a surprising lack of Diablo in this Diablo game. As far as I can tell he doesn't even get a name drop.

No, he does.

(https://i.imgur.com/pemnE4q.jpg)

(https://i.imgur.com/ISTlfUz.png)

The broader point is that endgame is just wandering about and having fun; you're going to be doing the same stuff, but getting actual rewards that matter.

Al'Diabolocks was the phone game one right?[

Just call him Al from now on.

Chevy Chase is Diablo, confirmed.

(https://img.apmcdn.org/fcc2391a90e8a8824e3fc7d025ffeda106c40dac/uncropped/3edd96-20160106-paul-simon.jpg)

Trying to figure out what I did wrong here.

I finished a malignant tunnel and there are two tumors: Wrathful and Devious. I have neither invoker for them. I then hearth back and craft the random invoker and actually craft the low-ish drop rate Wrathful invoker. I pick it up and head back to the tunnel. I click the Wrathful tumor and it says I don't have the required item. Sure enough, the Wrathful malignant invoker I made is not in my inventory.

Is this a bug or some mechanic I don't understand?

Never happened to me, but I've only managed to make and use a Wrathful invoker once so I don't have a ton of experience. I had made it well before the dungeon though.

A Diablo 4 player's journal.

I'd burned out on Diablo in D3, and ARPGs really aren't my cup of tea to start with, but friends and family convinced me to give D4 a shot and I did so for sentimental reasons mostly. Pre-pre-season/early access was a blast. But they horribly overnerfed almost everything the day before release but even then I was able to engineer my own build which was fun and sufficient to get me through the end with a feeling of satisfaction.

Release and the official pre-season was a lot of fun, except they continued trying to nerf the fun out of it.  Also there were some seriously glaring omissions and QOL issues that became painfully evident.  And then a week before Season 1 released they basically broke the game. 

Season 1 sucked. The neverending stream of nerfs and "balance fixes" since pre-release had leached all the fun out of the game. A couple of trivial improvements to minor QOL issues were way too little too late.  The Season 1 special mechanics were intriguing at first but rapidly became dull and tedious.  The nerfing continued until mid-season, at least.  The whole game was dull and repetitive. All the thrills and excitement and fun was gone and it was just a mind-numbing grind.  Redoing the renown slog was one of the worst gaming experiences I've had in years and I quit before completing it. I have no clue what happened from then to the end of the season, I bailed with a bad taste in my mouth and no intention of ever going back.

Season 2. I wasn't interested in playing season 2.  I wasn't interested in ever playing any Diablo ever again.  I finally got dragged back in, kicking and screaming, by friends and family and some really glowing reports from reviewers and youtubers I'd found whose impressions of the previous history closely matched mine, so I tentatively decided to give it a try a couple weeks late.  And I've been having a blast.  Everyone is overpowered now, especially my class, and it's still fun because you can still quite easily find all the challenge you can handle and more.  They've made some major QOL fixes, though they still balk at a couple that are REALLY needed, like inventory space for alts and saving skill tree and paragon templates.  But it's fun. You start off feeling pretty strong and as you get better you feel stronger and stronger.  And stronger and stronger.  And stronger and stronger.  It's a grind/progression/treadmill but it doesn't FEEL like one because the dopamine hits from feeling stronger keep on coming at a steady pace.  The season mechanics are fun and mostly integrate with your class mechanics to supercharge them, rather than feeling like awkwardly bolted-on afterthoughts that don't really fit.  The newly added post-60 content is (mostly) fun and challenging, though it can be a grind to get the parts to access the highest tiers.  Blood Harvests are even better than Helltides were. Sadly, Helltides are less rewarding/fun than they used to be but are now required to get the mats needed to fine-tune your gear.  Open world bosses are kind of a joke now, so could use a little buffing, but with a feather touch which Blizzard seems to lack. But overall, I'm level 88 now, and may even make it all the way to 100 which is unheard of for me.

Side notes:
  It is completely soloable and fun. Playing with one to three others is even more fun.  Playing with more than three others is annoying as you can't all be in the same group and there is no way keep two groups in the same instance all the time even.
  Their post-box monetization scheme is insane.  I have not spent a penny on any of the season stuff and felt zero inclination to do so.  I haven't even used the "free" season booster I got with my initial deluxe  package. And the prices for the appearance-only vanity outfits are ridiculous.  $25 bucks to dress your character different, and it's barely an inch tall on your monitor????  You can buy whole games for that on a sale.
  I had great fun with my minion Necro in pre-release until they nerfed the hell out of it.
  For pre-season I switched to Scorcerer. I was mostly using meta builds that got nerfed every week, only to be replaced by an even more powerful version. It was never a top-tier class but it was fun and serviceable though the joke was if you wanted to play a ranged caster in D4 you should have been a (Bone Spear) Necro as they buffed them back up again. Sorc just got nerf after nerf after nerf.
  I tried a Rogue in Season 1 as that is usually my favorite class.  But I didn't like it at all. I'm not sure how much of that is because of Season 1 sucking or because I prefer ranged dps over melee dps and no ranged dps builds are fun in D4.  But I'm having a blast with my melee dps sorc so I don't know.  I did switch back to Sorc but the renown grind and dull grind killed me before I got very far at all.
  I've stuck with Sorc for Season 2 and feel like a god. LOL