Diablo 4 [XO, XBSX|S, PC, PS4, PS5, XGP]

[homerdog]

No, I got it way later when there was at least one expansion included in the game. Played it on Xbox One. It was probably one of the easiest games I've ever played and my friends kept egging me on to play it, telling me the next act was going to be better than the one I was in. I was a crusader, I think, looking at the classes. I just pressed one button to spam the flail and didn't even bother dodging attacks from the bosses. I picked the highest difficultly it would let me pick from the start. The harder options only unlocked once you'd beat the game or something. Really terrible design. Game dropped legendary items for me every five seconds. I didn't plan builds or anything. I just grabbed whatever the new item and kept spamming that flail for hours and hours until the game was over. Did some of that rift stuff for a while, but it seemed like you'd get through a lift level super easy, then the next one would be impossible, so you'd grind for items, and then the rift that was impossible would then be easy, but then the following rift would be impossible. Just keep repeating that to infinity. I don't remember how many hours it took me to beat my first play through of the game, plus the expansion, but I had zero interest in playing another character because the experience was so mind numbing boring.

Act 1 super boring and easy -> my friends "Well wait until act 2"
repeat until final act
Final act super boring and easy -> my friends "Wait until you play the expansion"
Expansion super boring and easy -> my friends "Wait until you start rifting"
Rifting super easy or impossible -> my friends "Well you picked the wrong class. Wait until you try class x"
Delete game

I used to have a video of me fighting me beating I think Diablo as a boss, just standing right on top of him pressing one button until he died on my first attempt. My friends said it wasn't possible and then I sent them the video to which they just said, "Well the expansion is harder".

If the game had just allowed me to pick a higher difficulty, maybe it would have been fun, but either the game difficulty was super easy, or the classes I was playing was outright broken, or the item drops were broken. In any case, the game was terribly balanced, and that made it probably the worst overrated game I've purchased and played besides The Division 2.

I don't even remember much about the pre level 70 experience, since the vast majority of my time was spent on level 70 after I'd beaten the campaign. For me the campaign was basically a tutorial. I really enjoyed mapping out a build and finding all the loot to make it happen, and then seeing it work and being able to crush rifts that used to be impossible. And having higher difficulties give better loot creates a good type of snowball effect. It was some of the most fun I've ever had gaming.

This was all on PC btw. I've no idea what the console versions are like. I've read that it's pretty good but I can't see how this game could be played without a mouse. You have to click on the place where you want to deploy certain skills/spells, so I don't understand how this works without a cursor.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

D3 was insanely easy. You had to play several times to unlock slightly challenging modes IIRC. I think they changed this in a patch making Inferno (?) mode available earlier on, but as far as dungeon crawlers go it was a snore-fest to begin with. And ultimately it ended up a twin-stick shooter in my opinion.

 

[iroboto]

I mean, to be fair, it got harder when I hit about Torment 3. You really needed to know what you were doing to finish Torment 15. Which I finally managed to do 2 years ago

 

[Scott_Arm]

I mean, to be fair, it got harder when I hit about Torment 3. You really needed to know what you were doing to finish Torment 15. Which I finally managed to do 2 years ago

The problem is the number of hours you have to put in to unlock the harder difficulties to actually make it fun. Locking difficulty levels is maybe the dumbest decision decision I've ever encountered.

 

[homerdog]

I mean, to be fair, it got harder when I hit about Torment 3. You really needed to know what you were doing to finish Torment 15. Which I finally managed to do 2 years ago

Well yea it's basically as hard as your character is powerful. Even if you can master T15, the rift difficulty scales to infinity as far as I know. Most of the fun I had was trying to tame the rift. Which is obviously impossible but still I had a blast with it.

I guess on a first playthrough getting to level 70 it's pretty easy. But I bet that would account for <5% of my playtime. I would probably not recommend the game to someone who just wants to play through the campaign once.

 

[homerdog]

The problem is the number of hours you have to put in to unlock the harder difficulties to actually make it fun. Locking difficulty levels is maybe the dumbest decision decision I've ever encountered.

This I completely agree with. Increasing the difficulty increases the loot quality so it's a shame they don't let you do that on a first playthrough even if you could easily handle it.

 

[Scott_Arm]

This I completely agree with. Increasing the difficulty increases the loot quality so it's a shame they don't let you do that on a first playthrough even if you could easily handle it.

I'm going to guess it took me like 25 hours to beat the base game plus expansion? Something like that. That is a VERY long waste of time. I know some people want to grind games for hundreds or thousands of hours, but I'm very much in the anti "wait until the game gets fun crowd". One of my friends made a comment like, "The real game doesn't start until the endgame. People just don't want to put the work in." I mean, of course they don't. It's not supposed to be work. It's supposed to be a game. I'd say in 99.9% of cases you should be having fun within 30 minutes of playing and the fun should increase as you get more familier with the game, up to a point where it gets repetitive and the fun declines. 25 hours is probably a full week of my free time. A week of my life I won't get back.

 

[homerdog]

I'm going to guess it took me like 25 hours to beat the base game plus expansion? Something like that. That is a VERY long waste of time. I know some people want to grind games for hundreds or thousands of hours, but I'm very much in the anti "wait until the game gets fun crowd". One of my friends made a comment like, "The real game doesn't start until the endgame. People just don't want to put the work in." I mean, of course they don't. It's not supposed to be work. It's supposed to be a game. I'd say in 99.9% of cases you should be having fun within 30 minutes of playing and the fun should increase as you get more familier with the game, up to a point where it gets repetitive and the fun declines. 25 hours is probably a full week of my free time. A week of my life I won't get back.

I hear you. I found the early game to be fun, and the late game to be even more fun. But I was not massively OP as it seems you were. On my very first playthrough I didn't even play on the highest difficulty that was available to me. Also I was mostly playing with friends.

The only parts of the game that ever felt like work for me were starting new characters and completing the campaign and reaching max level. But since I already knew the game at that point, these playthroughs only took a few hours which I spent learning the new class. And since the classes can have very different playstyles, this didn't entirely feel like wasted time. But it was crappy that until I hit level 70 I was acquiring useless <lvl70 loot.

 

[iroboto]

I'm going to guess it took me like 25 hours to beat the base game plus expansion? Something like that. That is a VERY long waste of time. I know some people want to grind games for hundreds or thousands of hours, but I'm very much in the anti "wait until the game gets fun crowd". One of my friends made a comment like, "The real game doesn't start until the endgame. People just don't want to put the work in." I mean, of course they don't. It's not supposed to be work. It's supposed to be a game. I'd say in 99.9% of cases you should be having fun within 30 minutes of playing and the fun should increase as you get more familier with the game, up to a point where it gets repetitive and the fun declines. 25 hours is probably a full week of my free time. A week of my life I won't get back.

I did feel this way about Diablo for a long time. But I was able to power through D3 from normal to T15 in less than a month with the seasonal sets and a good build.

When you are trying to figure out Diablo that learning process is long. But once it’s figured out, it’s quite fast to blast through the content. You only need to complete the campaign once. Afterwards you can do adventure mode and skip to the parts of the campaign that you need special tools etc to obtain.

And then straight to ripping through hell lol.

 

[homerdog]

I did feel this way about Diablo for a long time. But I was able to power through D3 from normal to T15 in less than a month with the seasonal sets and a good build.

When you are trying to figure out Diablo that learning process is long. But once it’s figured out, it’s quite fast to blast through the content. You only need to complete the campaign once. Afterwards you can do adventure mode and skip to the parts of the campaign that you need special tools etc to obtain.

And then straight to ripping through hell lol.

As I recall you have to complete the campaign with each new character. Am I mistaken or did this change at some point? That would be my main complaint, especially if you've already completed the campaign with a character of that class. At the very least, if you've already beaten the campaign with a Witch Doctor you shouldn't have to do it again if you want to make another Witch Doctor. That is actually a straight up chore given you can change your skills freely at any time. Wouldn't be a problem if they allowed you to save preset builds with all the gear and skills for a particular build. Then there would be no need to create multiple characters of the same class. But I don't think that is possible.

 

[iroboto]

As I recall you have to complete the campaign with each new character. Am I mistaken or did this change at some point? That would be my main complaint, especially if you've already completed the campaign with a character of that class. At the very least, if you've already beaten the campaign with a Witch Doctor you shouldn't have to do it again if you want to make another Witch Doctor. That is actually a straight up chore given you can change your skills freely at any time. Wouldn't be a problem if they allowed you to save preset builds with all the gear and skills for a particular build. Then there would be no need to create multiple characters of the same class. But I don't think that is possible.

1 campaign run through per account! They introduced adventure mode maybe around the expansion or just before.

Many people do runs for many different modes of ladder. But seasonal runs are quite awesome. And some of the seasonal characters will get to T15, others will struggle around T13/T14. Really depends on the gear for that season. A lot of fun!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

No, I got it way later when there was at least one expansion included in the game. Played it on Xbox One. It was probably one of the easiest games I've ever played and my friends kept egging me on to play it, telling me the next act was going to be better than the one I was in. I was a crusader, I think, looking at the classes. I just pressed one button to spam the flail and didn't even bother dodging attacks from the bosses. I picked the highest difficultly it would let me pick from the start. The harder options only unlocked once you'd beat the game or something. Really terrible design. Game dropped legendary items for me every five seconds. I didn't plan builds or anything. I just grabbed whatever the new item and kept spamming that flail for hours and hours until the game was over. Did some of that rift stuff for a while, but it seemed like you'd get through a lift level super easy, then the next one would be impossible, so you'd grind for items, and then the rift that was impossible would then be easy, but then the following rift would be impossible. Just keep repeating that to infinity. I don't remember how many hours it took me to beat my first play through of the game, plus the expansion, but I had zero interest in playing another character because the experience was so mind numbing boring.

Act 1 super boring and easy -> my friends "Well wait until act 2"
repeat until final act
Final act super boring and easy -> my friends "Wait until you play the expansion"
Expansion super boring and easy -> my friends "Wait until you start rifting"
Rifting super easy or impossible -> my friends "Well you picked the wrong class. Wait until you try class x"
Delete game

I used to have a video of me fighting me beating I think Diablo as a boss, just standing right on top of him pressing one button until he died on my first attempt. My friends said it wasn't possible and then I sent them the video to which they just said, "Well the expansion is harder".

If the game had just allowed me to pick a higher difficulty, maybe it would have been fun, but either the game difficulty was super easy, or the classes I was playing was outright broken, or the item drops were broken. In any case, the game was terribly balanced, and that made it probably the worst overrated game I've purchased and played besides The Division 2.

Too bad you didn't play it at launch. It was quite a bit more difficult then. So difficult that people complained and so Blizzard nerfed all the difficulties to make them super easy when they removed the cash shop and released the console version. Of course, even at launch it wasn't as difficult as D2 was. So, shrug. I have no idea why people were complaining about the difficulty so much.

Then they eventually released torment and rifts to try to make it more difficult but even then it was still easier than D3 at launch. For a while I'd come back for each new season, blow through all of the content in a few days because it was so easy and then stop playing and go back to playing D2.

D3 was basically the worst of the decent action RPGs available when it launched.

No clue how D4 will be WRT to difficulty and challenge.

Regards,
SB

 

[Malo]

D3 has only been about Season Greater Rift pushing and bounty farming for resources for years now. It's all about trying different builds on different classes to get as high Greater Rift has possible. There's really not other reason to play it.

 

[iroboto]

D3 has only been about Season Greater Rift pushing and bounty farming for resources for years now. It's all about trying different builds on different classes to get as high Greater Rift has possible. There's really not other reason to play it.

Pretty much, just trying new builds and new classes etc. Just having fun blowing stuff up. I enjoyed my time, and have considered many times returning after I completed GR on T15. But, I wanted to do more than just click. It was supposed to be Elden Ring, but I got tied up. Hopefully I can return to that.

 

[homerdog]

All this looks great to me except having to pay (potentially a lot) for respecs. At least it's not real money as far as I know.

The new Paragon system looks way more fleshed out and impactful than the old one. Some of those Legendary tiles could really compliment or maybe even define certain builds. The D3 system was incredibly basic.

Also the Renown thing benefitting all characters on your account is very nice. This is actually how Paragon worked in D3. I guess Paragon is going to be character specific now?

 

[iroboto]

Of the little I played before servers killed my connection and possibly my character: it’s incredible. This is Diablo. Damn.

 

[Remij]

Played a solid 2 hours just now, and I'm in heaven. Loving it so much. Runs pretty great on PC as well.. though there are some bugs and little issues here and there. One thing that bugs me is when you initiate a conversation and the camera moves over a bit while the NPC is talking.. and then snaps back to your character to select a dialog option, and then does the same thing again... like damn.. just either not move the camera at all, or have it slowly move back and forth.

Maybe that's just an ultra-wide monitor issue?

Also, another issue I have is some of the animations are lower rate at times. I really wish in this day in age with unlocked framerates they'd properly interpolate all that stuff so that it's not so jarring when running at extremely high framerates... because boy can this game run extremely high lol.

Other little issues are certain things like graphical glitches where a character will disappear just before a camera cut during some of the cutscenes.. Nothing major really in the context of this game.. but I DO hope they spend some good time polishing this stuff up for launch and thereafter.

As for the game itself.. yea this is pure Diablo through and through, and I love it. Still haven't really played enough to form and definitive opinions around all the systems, but I'm loving what I'm playing so far.

 

[iroboto]

Played a solid 2 hours just now, and I'm in heaven. Loving it so much. Runs pretty great on PC as well.. though there are some bugs and little issues here and there. One thing that bugs me is when you initiate a conversation and the camera moves over a bit while the NPC is talking.. and then snaps back to your character to select a dialog option, and then does the same thing again... like damn.. just either not move the camera at all, or have it slowly move back and forth.

Maybe that's just an ultra-wide monitor issue?

Also, another issue I have is some of the animations are lower rate at times. I really wish in this day in age with unlocked framerates they'd properly interpolate all that stuff so that it's not so jarring when running at extremely high framerates... because boy can this game run extremely high lol.

Other little issues are certain things like graphical glitches where a character will disappear just before a camera cut during some of the cutscenes.. Nothing major really in the context of this game.. but I DO hope they spend some good time polishing this stuff up for launch and thereafter.

As for the game itself.. yea this is pure Diablo through and through, and I love it. Still haven't really played enough to form and definitive opinions around all the systems, but I'm loving what I'm playing so far.

Getting lots of stutter and slow down, and snap backs and invisible walls. I will try upgrading graphics drivers, or I don’t know if it’s a MP sync issue. But yea, outside of that it’s great. I’m reading a complete memory hog, so this 8GB 3070 not looking good. It’s eating 17GB from a 4090 by some reports I’ve read lol

Playing solo is definitely a smoother experience, but it’s far from polished in terms of cinematics. I am also in heaven!

My sorc is 22 my barb is 10

 

[Remij]

Getting lots of stutter and slow down, and snap backs and invisible walls. I will try upgrading graphics drivers, or I don’t know if it’s a MP sync issue. But yea, outside of that it’s great. I’m reading a complete memory hog, so this 8GB 3070 not looking good. It’s eating 17GB from a 4090 by some reports I’ve read lol

Playing solo is definitely a smoother experience, but it’s far from polished in terms of cinematics. I am also in heaven!

My sorc is 22 my barb is 10

Yea, if you don't have a ton of VRAM or use appropriate settings for your GPU, then the game will eat up all your VRAM and thrash storage causing stutters. I run at 3840x1600 and maxed out the resolution slider to 200% and the game alloted all 24GB to the game, but yea t was using around 17GB for me too as far as I could tell.

Quite honestly.. the game for me is running pretty damn amazingly. I'm not having any massive stutters. There's tiny little hitches every so often while traversing the overworld.. but they're essentially just one off frames. I have experienced one or two longer hitches though specifically when doing a dash with the barbarian. Honestly, I think the dash animation is kinda messed up and needs to be adjusted. It does look like it stutters at times, but the frametimes are perfectly smooth on my end.. so I think it's something to do with the camera/character animation. (maybe could be a sync issue as you mentioned)

I'm not getting any snap backs or invisible walls though. That seems like network issues which will be affecting us all differently at the moment. I'm lvl 22 as well.

Like I've said before though, my biggest issues so far as far as presentation is concerned is some slight graphical glitches and I really don't like how some cutscenes are seemingly 30fps capped. Game can be running at 300fps... then drops to 30fps for an ingame cutscene... It's not all of them.. just certain ones.. and it's annoying.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Getting lots of stutter and slow down, and snap backs and invisible walls.

A lot of that is server issues. It's much worse than it was with D3 open BETA.

I think it's because this is basically an MMORPG without the "M"assive part. So an MORPG I guess (Multiplayer Oline RPG). Even the monsters respawning on top of you because they are on a respawn timer.

So, yeah, server issues on their end are definitely impacting the player experience. Rubber banding, what I call time dialation where you slow down then speed up then slow down then speed up due to data packets being delayed then arriving all in a rush, etc.

Some monsters are triggered by a player entering the area. So, if you are sitting there and someone enters the area, that action can cause monsters to spawn on top of you. However, unlike something like FFXIV or Guild Wars 2, where monsters are either a static level for the zone you are in (FFXIV) or scaled to your character level and zone (Guild Wars 2 and FFXIV world events), D4 will spawn them based on the level of the person that spawned it. So, while I was level 14 a person came by that was level 26 and poof level 26 mobs on top of me and I died pretty quickly.

Bad shared world design that. At least in Guild Wars 2, it would appear to be level 26 to the person that spawn it and it would appear to be level 14 to me and the relevant level for anyone else that was there, assuming you were in a zone where mobs can spawn at that level.

Also, since everything everywhere scales to your level, it never feels like your character is actually progressing other than looking at numbers on your character sheet or looking at the items you get. So, you can't go back to your starting area and just have a short power fantasy by showing all those monsters how you've grown in power because those exact same monsters are generally now more difficult to kill than when you first entered that area. Ugh.

Other than that, relatively positive feelings about it. It's better than D3, not as good as D2. It's kind of like a more simplistic, slower and easier version of Path of Exile. Not a bad thing as POE can be overwhelming for first time players.

Also, now that I have a new GPU and can game at 120 Hz, there's absolutely no way I can go back to 60 Hz unless the game just flat out won't run at 120 Hz in which case maybe I just don't play it.

Regards,
SB