Diablo IV (PC/PS5/XSX/PS4) - June 6, 2023

[Andalusian girls]

you're not sorry

[Gokulo]

Btw if you want another option to get the early access code, but kinda cheaty, just pre order a physical copy with payment at pick up, the store should email you the beta code. You can then just cancel or not pick up the order

[Julian]

Btw if you want another option to get the early access code, but kinda cheaty, just pre order a physical copy with payment at pick up, the store should email you the beta code. You can then just cancel or not pick up the order

For PC? Or can I preorder PS5 and get a PC code or something? I'd totally try this lol.

Was looking at the game on battlenet, and saw the battle pass shit, on top of the game being $70 instead of $60, man, super hard pill to swallow, even though $70 is np for me.

edit: looks like all platforms have betas so probably not... think I might just try and hit up kfc this week lol

[Gokulo]

PC has no physical edition I think, but you can pre order a PlayStation version and when you're redeeming the code you pick which platform you want to play the beta on.

[Julian]

Apparently you can...

Spoiler: show

order KFC and schedule it for later, get the code, then cancel the order

I'm a baddie

[Qalbert]

I constantly do this on xbox, if you preorder with a card you don't get charged til ~14 days before launch

[Cail]

im having fun so far...been knocked off the server twice so far, with 2hr queues

both queue times took about an hour though

[Melena]

I've been kicked once, then did a 3hr afk while dealing with lunch and some work bullshit and came back and I'm still in lol.

[Cail]

3 kicks so far.

taking a break now

[Gokulo]

I only got kicked out two time so I managed to hit level 20 on a ranged rogue.

I'll say this is pretty fun, more than I expected. The atmosphere and locations have been pretty great, although some dungeons felt kinda long (and if you get d/c in one you get kicked out :/).

I did however feel that UI was kind of a mess. Annoying font colors, overall weird fonts here and there, opening certain menus made the game stutter... Sometimes it feels like parts of the UI were designed by different people and only mashed up at the end. Hoping this will get some polish before release, as I'd say it stands out from their usual UI quality.

[Prothescar]

I'd expect the gameplay itself to be good. What's going to really sell it for me is endgame which we won't see til release. If we're just going to see endless rifts again w/ a smattering of world bosses in between then that'd be a problem. Hopefully they've got something more robust this time.

[Gokulo]

Looking at the map and from what they said up until now, part of end game at first might just be exploring the world and doing quests/dungeons/whatever at higher World Tiers to max renown etc. I mean the map looks and feels massive.
Then there's the Nightmare dungeons, which are supposed to be harder version of standard dungeons. I'll say, while running the dungeons is usually nothing special or engaging, the bosses at 15+ were not push overs, so hard more might be challenging at least. But we'll see, who knows what power creep will happen at max level.

[Weltall]

The endgame will be woven in and evolve over time, via seasons, is my guess.

[Shenrien]

Man I hope there is an adventure mode right out the gate once you complete the campaign, doing this shit on alts is gonna fucking be like dragging my ball sack through a field of glass. Whatever the end game brings I hope they are going to incorporate getting herbs and ores and shit during it as well because I can already see the crafting and potion system being a whole lot of bullshit to keep up with.

Game feels slow, feels really lacking not having huge swarms of monster density even in the dungeons. The campaign in the past traditionally has never had this until later parts of the game and only in key areas; places we likely wont see for a while. Monster behavior for bosses is bullshit and honestly unfun, having something be able to do massive spike damage to you without so much as having a telegraph or a tell that its about to happen is really annoying and only makes situations more dangerous by nature that it's unfair. My experience with this being Lv.14 taking on a trio of Lv.15/16 succubus that would teleport around, become invulnerable during random parts and would blast massive cones and dive bomb the PC without so much as a warning or wind up animation. The only telepgrah in the encounter were explosions and spinny lightning beams, everything else instant on use while dodging missiles like its a touhou bullet hell-- that part would have likely been ignored if I was at level or over leveled and had proper equipment.

Gear feels good, there is a nice pool of stats that all look fun. I'm sure it being beta we wont see All {offensive}/{defensive} skills +1 in this early level on release and its just there to show what is possibly available. No smart loot so its possible to get gear with INT on it as a barb, that's kind of shitty but whatever. I'm sure it'll be patched in as an easy win quality of life change at some point in this games life cycle.

I'm not sold with my near 10hrs, I hope at higher levels things will be more fluid and responsive but right now things feel rather rigid and stiff playing a little bit of all three but putting most of my time into Barbarian. This is a game where more is better when trying to sell what it can do and I'm not sure stopping at lv.25 with only one high level stronghold is going to be enough for most when it comes to the networking stress test free weekend coming up. Maybe the other classes not available this weekend but available then will be more engaging.

[Mertron]

Looking at the map and from what they said up until now, part of end game at first might just be exploring the world and doing quests/dungeons/whatever at higher World Tiers to max renown etc. I mean the map looks and feels massive.
Then there's the Nightmare dungeons, which are supposed to be harder version of standard dungeons. I'll say, while running the dungeons is usually nothing special or engaging, the bosses at 15+ were not push overs, so hard more might be challenging at least. But we'll see, who knows what power creep will happen at max level.

this sounds a lot like the quest system and rift system in 3

[Mertron]

anyway the real diablo endgame is killing the same mobs over and over again hoping for a miracle drop

[Mertron]

(i like diablo games btw, just sayin)

[Prothescar]

anyway the real diablo endgame is killing the same mobs over and over again hoping for a miracle drop

Diablo needs to change with the times. Bigger and better games have come out in the 23 years since Diablo 2, and Diablo 3 was a joke. Seasonal engagement is going to be the most important part of their business model what with the fact that they're selling season passes. There need to be incremental gatekeepers (i.e. the endgame boss ladder in PoE), engaging reasons to continue to replay maps on higher difficulties (not the bounty system), etc.; with any luck they've got plans for all of this. A beta where we can only get to half the level cap isn't going to tell us that though. Have to wait and see.


What is playable now is a solid foundation. But plenty of games these days launch with "a solid foundation" without anything on top to make it worth sticking with.

[Julian]

I was hovering over stats and it looks like INT gives crit rate...?????

Overall I'm not sold either. I set my graphics to low and it still made my computer cry somehow, and shit stuttered like hell. I mean, my machine is a bit old, but it aint that old (GTX 1080, Ryzen 7 1800X, basically rather high end stuff from 2016-2017).

I played rogue and went with bow. The first two skills I got didn't feel great. Caltrops felt super satisfying though - you jump backwards after setting the very large caltrops down. Constant loading screens when teleporting around what's supposed to be a big open world map was annoying.

I dunno. I had fun playing today (though got kicked off twice), prob wont reach lv25 in this beta as I wont be able to play the next two days... oh well. It's hard to get a good feel for the game with what we're seeing, but, I think I had enough fun to justify buying it for $70 at launch... Maybe? Will see how the next beta goes. Hopefully have more time to play next weekend.

edit: Oh, the rewards are for hitting lv20... hmm, maybe I can reach that Monday morning...

edit2: Oh, also, other thing that annoyed me. Is there no way to force single player? I mean it's neat and all stumbling upon random people while out and about (and getting xp for their kills!), but, when I'm playing and multitasking, I need escape pause to actually pause the game.

[Melena]

I haven't really had any performance issues, and I got everything cranked to the max. I've had a bit of stutter in towns, but that's been it outside of my second DC.

I've killed a few bosses so far, and I haven't seen anything that wasn't a telegraphed move that did massive damage. My only death so far was me being dumb.