Who has preordered the game, who has played it in beta, what do you think so far?
I’ve preordered the regular version of the game (the perks for the more expensive versions are just some cosmetics and 4 days early start, not worth it to me). I played the closed beta last weekend and really enjoyed the Sorceress class. This weekend I tried the Druid, which I thought was prop but was disappointed. I am playing a Necromancer now, and while it’s really fun it also seems overpowered. Everything dies very quickly and I barely take damage. I assume they have some balancing issues to work out.
Anyway, I’m curious what the rest of the community thinks of it.
I have not been able to play it yet. I downloaded it and tried to play it but the wait was too long so I cancelled.
One minor annoyance is the wait screen blares the game music and no way to turn it off. If I have to wait I’d like to watch a video or movie or something to pass the time but instead it is trumpeting its splash screen music.
Minor nitpick and has nothing to do with gameplay but it did bug me.
One of my friends who attends blizzcon said they loved the early demos and was raring to play. As a consequence, I pre-ordered a copy for each of us with some of my ill-gotten loot (blizz cash from selling metric tons of gold via tokens) and downloaded. Sadly, during the pre-release was not able to get in at all in times of under and hour, and my play time is too limited most nights to wait.
And of course, the new WoW content is live, so I’m doing it right now instead.
My friend has managed to play and says it’s wonderful, everything they want in Diablo… but to remember it’s a true Beta. Stuff breaks ALL the time, enemies go through walls, quests lock up, gets kicked off or the game freezes, etc.
So I’m confident I’ll be happy, but I’ll proooobably just wait until the release version launches.
@Galactus posted the following in another thread. I think it is important to include in this thread too (this may change in time so consider that if you are reading this in the future):
Just alt-tab away from the client, it doesn’t make noise if it’s in the background. (At least not on my machine, running Windows 11.)
That music is pretty annoying after a while, yeah. Last weekend the wait was up to 90 minutes. I just did something else for a while.
Oh, one really annoying big right now is that you can’t skip cutscenes. You are supposed to hit Esc to skip, but it does nothing. (It’s a bug, it’s beta after all.) The story is nice but the third time watching the same 10+ minute video, it’s like the wait screen again. Especially when they’re back-to-back.
I finally had a chance to get in. I chose the Barbarian to start just cuz I assume it is the most straightforward class to play while I get my bearings.
But how do I change weapons? The game seems to have decided a sword is good. But maybe I want to use my warhammer.
Granted I am all of 15 minutes into the game but seems weird I can’t sort this out in the first minute.
Obviously I am missing something.
Also, can I zoom out more? The view seems a lot closer than the Diablo 2 I am used to.
I think the barb just uses the weapon that aligns to the skill, but I’m not super confident in that. Rogues sort of have the same thing with a bow + melee weapons equipped at the same time.
I think that the Barbarian has a special ability where you can wield up to 4 different weapons at once, and based on what skill you use they attack with the appropriate weapon. So you can have, say, a mace, hand axe, great sword, and giant hammer. A “quick bludgeon” skill will swing the mace, while a “strong slashing” skill will swing the great sword.
I haven’t actually played the class because it didn’t seem that interesting, so I don’t know how it actually works in practice.
As far as changing what you equip, you either right-click from your inventory or click and drag an item to the slot on your equip window. That’s how the other classes work at least.
No, and that bugged me too. It seems both too close, and I can’t zoom in enough to see my character well. But after playing a while I get used to it. You can’t affect enemies much off-screen and vice versa, so eventually it doesn’t bother me. The mini map in the corner helps me see the area outside of my field of view which helps too.
@Whack-a-Mole here is an article on Barbarians (because again, I haven’t played the class and was just repeating what I’d learned from old class preview videos):
To swap weapons as a Barbarian in Diablo 4, you need only to use the skills themselves. The game will automatically switch to the necessary weapon when activating a skill. As such, if you cast Double Swing, it will strike enemies with your dual-wielded weapons. Then, if you follow-up with Hammer of the Ancients, it will automatically use your two-handed bludgeoning weapon.
It goes into more detail on how to swap what weapons for which skills, and then for the “Expertise” system that gets more in-depth into taking advantage of different weapon types.
I did not get to play a whole lot of the free weekend. I only got one character to level 14 (so far).
But, I gotta say it looks to be a pretty great game. It definitely has that Diablo feeling that made it so famous. If you liked Diablo 2 I think you will probably like this one.
I have some quibbles but I think this will be worth a purchase. I had a lot of fun with it.
(NOTE: The devs intentionally upped the drop rate of good items for the beta test. They wanted to see how combos worked and some other things. In the final game it will be harder to come by good items.)
You had to hold esc for a second or two for it to work, there is a little circle that fills up. I played Necro and Sorcerer and had a blast, but apparently those are the two best classes. Druids and Barbarians kinda sucked from what I heard.
I saw something (sorry, no cite) that the Devs responded that the Barbarian was supposed to start out a little underpowered but came into its own later where it is probably better. This happens around level 20-25 which was the cap for the beta so the Barb seemed underwhelming.
Devs said this is entirely by design and working as intended.
I played a Barbarian over the free weekend and it seemed to work fine enough. I was usually able to overcome whatever I was faced with (except one time). Anecdotal though and I didn’t try the other classes. YMMV
yeah, I think they’re gonna nerf the small army that the necro has the only time I died was in the cleansing pilgrimage and I would have finished it but for some reason, there was some game-crushing lag starting Monday morning and I hit a wall when I hit the first boss and it didn’t help that I didn’t understand the book of the dead upgrading system and accidentally sacrificed my skeleton crew so I restarted …
also, it didn’t help I went the wrong way and reset the lvl and had to redo it and another time it put me in a too far checkpoint …one thing id like to see is if we’re gonna use potions again why can’t we set it up where it automatically uses them when ya need it? and the option of just equipping the better weapon or armor when you find it which I admit works until you find a weaker piece that has a specific stat buff you want
but so far it did fix a pacing problem in (my opinion )of 3 there are enough mobs to fight to lvl up from point a to b but there wasn’t so much that you get into fighting the outside stuff and not bother doing the story until you have to to go on but the getting in the cave was taking away too long for me …and I like how you can continue when you get killed . as long as the checkpoint system doesn’t screw ya
I want it but I think ill get the X1 version tho because for some reason my HDs full and it said my GPU wasn’t supported
Necromancer probably needs some nerfs but I’m not sure if it will be to the minions. I found the skeletons to be great when running through most content, in fact they would sometimes kill weaker enemies before I barely had a chance to attack them. But against tougher bosses they just melted, I ended up sacrificing all of mine and used Blood skills which put out a lot of damage (a LOT) and kept healing me, and they did equally well against groups of weak enemies and bosses. Too well I’m sure. Where the Sorcerer and Druid I played would take some time clearing areas, my Necromancer would one-shot whole groups at a time while self-healing.
It was like playing a super-vampire. I enjoyed the gameplay and will do it again at release even if the justified nerfs come in the meantime just because it was so fun. And I’ll probably ditch the skeleton army quicker. It was like a safety blanket I was reluctant to part with, but once I finally tried it I actually liked the class more without his “posse”.
yeah ill probably have 12 half-finished games as I try this and that …
I do like tho they’ve kept the spirit of the original upgrade system intact where if you want a "pixie magic user whos strong as an ox " you can have it
I didn’t have a lot of time to play either weekend. I was only able to get my rogue up to level 20. Also, played a little barbarian and druid.
I had a lot of fun. I was not able to get past the boss at the end of the campaign, Lilith’s Lament, or something like that. I had more success when I respeced from range rogue to poison melee, but still no joy. I seemed to be running around the room and dodging crap on the floor more than I was able to get any damage in. On that note, do you think the bosses need a little health reduction? With all the running, kiting, and dodging, the fights seem to be unnecessarily long. Of course, it could just be me. I’m a filthy casual. I try to find skills that compliment each other, but don’t always use math when choosing which skill or gear upgrade is best.
