Ares42

@sethmode: I feel like if they just stopped allowing you to pick up all the trash items it solves like 90% of the issue. You could still have them as objects in the world that you can move etc, but there's no real point to picking them up. It's one of the limitations I've put on myself when playing Bethesda games to make them more enjoyable. Only loot enemies and chests, and only pick up items I actually need. I started doing the same in this game, but also liberally using the highlight feature to not miss useful/important items, and it's cut down my time spent on inventory management drastically.

Kinda funny, there's been a fair bit of talk about how this game sets new standards for RPGs, but I just came to the realization that most of my issues with the game stems from the fact that it doesn't meet my expectations for story-driven RPGs after having played Witcher 3 (and to some degree Mass Effect). It's obviously not fair to say that the game is bad because it's not as good as Witcher 3, but I hadn't really realized how much of a cloud that game has put over my enjoyment of other similar games.

Hadn't touched the game in early access and have now put about 10 hours into the full release. First thing that comes to mind is that I hate the fact that it's a silent protagonist. I understand why they did it, but it just sucks so much life out of the conversations. Which leads me into my second gripe, which is that the game is very much stuck in the early 2000 era of pacing, plot and exposition. It's giving me major Fallout 3 flashbacks. Also not a huge fan of the in conversation dice rolls, and as I predicted, most of the cast is just not my cup of tea. The only character I've enjoyed so far is Gale.

After about eight hours or so I ended up restarting the game because the character I wanted to play just didn't work with the cast or the general vibe of the campaign. So now I'm back to playing the bog standard goody two-shoes help everyone hero character.

I'm sure a lot of people will love it, as it's a very "open" game as far as doing what you want, problem solving and playing into multiple different traditional archetypes, but so far I'm feeling the "indie-ness" and fairly uninspired writing dragging my excitement down. In 10 hours the most exciting thing that's happened was a room filled with traps that blew up my entire party.

The game looks really great and I'm looking forward to trying it, but watching parts of the stream I was reminded how I just don't like the kinda characters cRPG enthusiasts and developers seem to love. I remember struggling badly to get into DA:Inq because of it, and even when I played Horizon Forbidden West it was putting me off. It's kinda hard to describe, but there's this tendency for super sincere while also very "extra" characters. I'm down for ridiculousness and I'm down for "down to earth" characters, but this middleground where you're supposed to take it seriously but the characters are largely acting like they're in a TV drama just becomes too cringey for me. And yeah, the general horniness isn't really helping either.

This is pretty much what I was talking about with my early impressions as well. There's just this overall theme of "someone who actually knows what players enjoy about these games would not design it this way".

The mount controls is probably one of the best examples. Having momentum on the horse, where your mount has to physically turn, feels incredibly clunky and goes against everything a snappy arpg is about. And the speed control on PC is something that shouldn't have gone through the first set of intial testing.

Another example is the whole issue with having to travel to nigthmare dungeons. It makes sense for the game to have dungeons spread across the map that players can discover as they explore the game, but when you're at the point of doing nightmare dungeons there's no added value of having to travel to them every single time. And you're activating random dungeons all across the map, so it's a LOT of trudging. Anyone that's somewhat familiar with how arpg endgame works would instantly recognize that using a sigil should either instantly teleport you into the dungeon, or at least open a portal to the dungeon.

Then there's obvious stuff like the world event beacons, which will only pop up if you are in the open world as they intially appear. So you can literally log in to the game when there's 25 minutes to the next world boss spawn, and you will have no indication that it's happening. How did it even get implemented like that in the first place ?

I feel like I could go on and on, since I haven't even touched on the more fundamental stuff like skills, loot, open world and level scaling. I will say though, that after having put more time into the game there are some things that are really well done.

Firstly, I feel like this is the first Diablo game that has a full plan for your entire journey through the game. The other games are very much "here's an introduction, now go do whatever I guess", while this has a path of building your skill set and doing the campaign, then a first introduction to loot optimization and endgame activities which gets you close to 70, and then nightmare dungeons, glyph leveling and paragon boards as you transition into the final grind to 100, which is a natural end point where your character will be like 98% optimized.

I also think this is the best potion system I've seen in an arpg. While it is quite similar to PoE, that system sometimes suffered from not being able to recharge between fights (due to kill requirements), but there has been extremely few cases in D4 where I got into a fight without the vast majority of potions available. I don't think I've ever played an arpg where I've been this encouraged to use my healing and not worry about future encounters.

@atheistpreacher: When they put D3 on console (and kinda standardized controls for arpg on controller) they made it so you're constantly auto-targetting the closest enemy in the direction you're pointing, and it's pretty much stayed that way since. So you're always gonna target something useful with your spells. You just can't put in the center of a blob, or on a more important enemy in the back. One of the nice things about this system though is that you can't really whiff abilities, and it makes hold casting far easier.

Playing this game reminds me a LOT of playing Destiny when it first came out. It has this overhanging feeling of the developer not quite understanding the game they're making. The gameplay is still engaging, and the systems and features aren't broken or anything, but so many minor details are just "off". I've been struggling with nailing down what exactly the problem is since my first couple of hours with the game, and after completing the campaign I still can't really put it into words. It's just like a complete lack of cohesive direction.

The most damning thing though is that I'm sitting here, looking at the map, and I'm thinking "Do I even want to keep playing ?". There's a lot of things I could do, but are any of them actually engaging ? My character has already been fairly set in stone for the last 20+ hours, and gear has so far been very uninteresting. Even the "major build pieces" I've gotten never felt like a significant difference. My Ubiworld lizardbrain isn't getting intrigued by the open-world "collectathon" aspect either. I dunno... game's weird man... I kinda just wish it was a more focused experience than it is.

Also, talking about the skill system, it's literally the D3 system with a worse UI and less options. I thought you even had less skill options, but going back and comparing it became super obvious that it's the same exact thing with only 2 runes per skill and far less interesting passive skills.

Constantly. I would say I could divide my game collection into two piles, one that's the games I buy, play and never touch again, and another which are games I consistently come back to every 3-5 years. And that second pile is starting to get fairly big. After jumping out of WoW Classic last summer (which is sorta this kinda thing as well) I've gone on a rager through my library and replayed something like 15+ of my favorite classics (like Arkham series, Skyrim/Fallout and several AC games.) Many of them for the fourth of fifth time.

I'm certainly an outlier though, and I did it quite a bit less the last decade when I was very much on the "play every new game" wagon. But even then I would replay games I really loved the first time around a couple of years later.

Don't want the genre to die, but people need to stop calling games souls-likes and just call them Action-RPGs again. Yes, the Souls series re-invented the genre, but at their core they are still simply Action-RPGs. Naming genres after games is just dumb and makes no sense in the long run.

I have a strong feeling that the perpetual delays are due to MS not allowing the game to release before it's in a pretty good shape. Bethesda would've shipped it on the original date last fall and just fixed it later as always. They didn't delay any of their last three titles that released in rough shapes, so why would they suddenly delay a game an entire year ? MS however just won't accept broken games on release after the whole Halo debacle.