Same here. Note that I have a huge library of games (between Steam, GOG, Uplay, Epic, and so on) and the vast majority were free or on a major discount. I have Xbox Game Pass which lets me play more games than I ever would have time for, many of them new releases. It takes a lot for me to spend anywhere near that much money on a single game. But Diablo 4 just looked too good, and I knew a bunch of people also preordering that I could play with, so I decided to make this the rare exception where I actually spend a lot of money on a game. I can’t think of the last time I did so. I’m sure it has been a few years at least.
It -is- $90 if you buy some of the premium options, so you probably didn’t read wrong.
And as stated upthread, expect years before any sort of steep discounts.
As for the $70… I paid it without blinking because I used WoW to pay for it. With 10 million in gold, $350 in Blizz cash, and another $150 in blizz tokens, I don’t need to pay real money to buy their stuff anymore. I -may- need to get a life and stop the compulsive gold grinding though…
I’ve spent a few hours on it, am lvl 18 Necro. The game is awesome and has exceeded my expectations. It kept all the best aspects of D3 and has expertly walked the line between the extreme commitment of D2 and the drop-based builds of D3. Builds are extremely customizable in D4. Yeah I’m sure there will be min/maxers soon enough, but I’ve been playing totally blind/guideless and am having fun. Repsec is super cheap (at least through this point). I’m using minions, curses and corpse explosions all at once and not feeling like I’m gimping myself anymore.
Have had zero issues with queues or getting in from the first minute it opened, definitely not a D3 situation.
My only complaint right now is that the camera is zoomed in too close and it seems to be stuck there. Feels even closer than D3 which felt too close too. Other than that its awesome.
Yes and yes. I started yesterday. It has been a blast. It’s basically the same as what I played in beta, except now I can move outside of the starting area. There is so much to explore and do in the world that it’s almost overwhelming.
I also love the gameplay. They really nailed the balance between simple controls and complex customization. What I can do at any given time is somewhat narrow, but there are so many paths you can take with each class that you can really tweak and make it your own.
You’re not the only one to complain about that (I think I did upthread during the beta). I really wish we could zoom further out but I am betting Blizzard did this to make sure performance was good for everyone.
You get used to it…still…
I, too, have had zero problems. Well, I did experience one teeny bug but so minor not worth mentioning.
I will say I have found the multiplayer, such as it is, not bad at all. I am strictly a solo player but there have been places where other players can dive in and help in a fight. No need to form a squad or anything. They are just passing by and jump in and help. Loot is distinct to each player so no one steals your stuff. In some fights it has been nice to see someone help out. Then, everyone goes on their merry way. No chat either where people insult your mother.
Surprisingly not bad.
Edit to add: To be clear, the places where other people can join a fight are distinct and marked on the map (orange circles). If you see someone enter a dungeon and you enter right behind them you will not see them. You are the only person there (unless you explicitly teamed up with others). So, there are no mobs of people running around a dungeon with you (thankfully).
The zoom is dynamic. There are times when you absolutely need to zoom out more, and when you do the game does it automatically. Certain boss fights will do it, and in particular I remember in beta fighting the world boss, you zoom about probably twice as much as normal, to the point where you look like a mouse next to a lion. I think it’s a pretty cool design choice, because it makes the big fights really feel epic.
But I agree that it feels confining. I keep finding myself wanting to zoom out more, and I can’t. Until I forget about it and it stops bothering me. As you said, you get used to it.
Here is the world boss fight from beta, notice how when the boss comes out, the game automatically zooms out about double so that you can see everything.
Are we sure that loot in a group fight is individual? I swear a dude picked up a bunch of stuff from one of the orange circles but maybe I am wrong.
Yes I’m happy with my purchase and am glad I ponied up for the Deluxe or whatever it is. I know I’d be doing the first battle pass at least so I get to enjoy early access this weekend.
For anyone wondering I’m playing on PC but exclusively on a controller from my couch. Controller works fantastic but they seem to have dropped one critical feature from D2R and that is that if you hold the left trigger it gave you a second set of buttons. I can’t understand why on earth they didn’t implement that in D4 because it definitely gimps you relative to KM because you can have way more skills hotkeyed with Km than you can on controller in D4 and it’s definitely a noticeable gimp for me.
The zoom is probably comparable to D3 but the vertical dimension is just too close. There are maybe 3-3.5 body lengths of viability up and down compared to 6-7 on left and right. I’m guessing they did this so folks would want to pay for the cosmetics? I dunno.
I am not 100% sure but as an experiment I once sat back and watched everyone else collect loot before I did anything and there was still loot left for me (despite seeing some other players walk right over it).
Maybe some is shared and the fast ones get it and some is just for you? Maybe there is one good item only the first person gets? Maybe it is based on how much damage you did rather than standing on the sidelines? I really have no clue. I just know I did get something no matter what others did.
Test it and let us know what you find (easy to do and really not losing out on too much if you get nothing).
As an aside, I checked the microtransaction shop just to see it (I will not pay for that stuff ever). Holy cow are things expensive! I wouldn’t spend $0.50 but they want $8 for the cheapest stuff and it goes up from there.
I am really glad the shop is not pushed. It is there but I have not seen anything that tries to get me there. I can’t understand people paying for that shit. I doubt I’d ever realize if someone next to me in town was wearing the Cape of Ultimate Bling. My character looks cool enough as is.
I do know other than gold and materials you have to actually click to pick stuff up so just walking over it isn’t enough. I’m still in Act 1 so there aren’t a ton of people in the group circles so I’ll have to check when I get a crowded one.
Now that people brought up the zoom issue, it was on my mind, and I noticed that as I left a town it zoomed out slightly. I stepped back in and it zoomed again. Note that this isn’t just adjusting the current zoom, it’s adjusting the maximum zoom.
It’s so subtle most of the time that I don’t even register it.
It reminds me of another game series I played that did something similar… Resident Evil. (The original games.) Different rooms would position you in a certain static way, intentionally, to increase suspense. It was part of the horror theme, to take a bit of control out of the player’s hands. I wonder if Blizzard is trying to do something similar.
I understand if RPGs are not your thing. But I spent at least 500 hours on Diablo 3 before I got tired of it. I know that because the PC version tracked playtime. By my calculation, that’s 14 cents per hour for entertainment.
What I really, really don’t like about this round is they are forcing Playstation players to sign up for Playstation Plus, so in addition to the $90 we spent for early access we have up sign up for this $20/month service we won’t have time to use. It’s outrageous.
I had so much time to play games before I had a small child. I know I won’t get as much playtime with Diablo 4 but even with all the expense I’ll still probably get a better bang for my buck than virtually any other kind of entertainment. And meaningfully, this is something fun I can do with Spouse Weasel. We were on the fence about paying extra for early access, but we’ve been under so much stress lately I said, “Do it. We need fun in our lives as soon as possible.”
And it’s been great. The interface for couch co-op is an improvement on Diablo 3. You can now assign points and do buy/sell/salvage at the same time, so I no longer have to wait for my slow min/max husband to process all his crap before I can enter my menu. (We couldn’t have more different play styles. I’m very much a “let’s try this and see how it goes” without prior planning. He in contrast can spend hours trying to work out a build.)
I also started a solo campaign with a Barbarian and holy shit is it fun. You can essentially equip two two-handed weapons and two one-handed weapons for dual wielding and if you balance out your skills that means you can use four different weapons! I’m a total melee geek so this is heaven to me. I am enjoying my co-op Druid but not as much as the Barbarian. I’m going for a frenzy/dual wield style build. The skill tree design is actually rather elegant. You can tell a lot of thought went into the design.
Maybe. It’s not completely out of the question, and the $70 version doesn’t even start for another couple days, right?
As far as value for hours played, for comparison, the last game I played was Raft for which I spent $14.24, and logged 553 hours. My sense of game value is extremely warped.
ETA correct price and hours now that I’m on my computer.
Admittedly, one problem with that formula is that there’s no guarantee you will like the game. There’s plenty of games I did spend money on that I didn’t end up liking or playing much. It’s always a gamble.
For something I was on the fence about I would wait and see the reviews and wait for the game developers to fix the balance problems and bugs and whatever else inevitably comes up.
But we knew based on previous games, we were gonna buy this game and play the hell out of it.
No joke. As I neared the end of my Raft days I picked up several other survival games on sales to play next: Green Hell, Stranded Deep, Windbound, Planet Crafter, and I already had The Forest from before I played Raft. None of them have yet caught my fancy, though Green Hell seems the most promising. And Windbound is 3rd person only, not first person, which makes it significantly less interesting to me.
Not sure how I feel about diablo’s third person perspective, plus I have formed a strong preference for using an xbox controller. I read upthread that it is supported well, but you end up gimping yourself with the lack of buttons.
And finally, checking my steam wish list right now, $70 could buy me:
$30 God of War
$24 Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
$16 Red Dead Redemption 2
I would not spend $70 on those three games, but instead am holding out for better sales. (And apparently I’m not that interested in RDR2 because $16 should be cheap enough for me to buy, but I’m feeling meh about taking care of a horse.) I don’t know if Diablo will be better than all three combined.
On the other hand, I played thousands of hours worth of DDO over the span of 5 years – multiple hours per day for like 300+ days per year – so diablo very well could be worth more. Almost too much more, for that matter, if you know what I mean.
Diablo 4 will always be there for you to buy later. I mean you look at Diablo 3 and it was consistently supported for ten years. You could buy Diablo 4 five years from now and still get your money’s worth.
