D4 had over 1 million closed beta access players, with multi-millions expected this weekend. Wow.

And once D3 really leaned into that loadout action game mode it was pretty enjoyable as a brain off kill shit experience with the right people ie RL friends who have far more important shit to fill brains with than PoE-style excrutiae.

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Barbarian was extremely fun. Possibly my second fave to melee rogue, who was in hindsight much better than I thought at the time. But between dual sword barb and werebear Druid I do see now that yep, the disparity between horde clearing and dealing with multistage bosses in fairly small areas continues to haunt the genre. I suspect with launch I will just note which dungeons require a boss killer and deal with them accordingly. I was surprised to find some don't even have a boss, which is kind of awesome.

Also "dungeon" is an odd term with DIV. In any other game it'd be "instance" since a dungeon in DIV is any large space created for the purpose of dungeon-style play. An abandoned outpost or a secluded portion of the woods can be a dungeon here, as readily as catacombs or cathedrals. The GW vibes are off the charts for me.

Heck at one point a quest created an instanced version of the main town -- extremely familiar mechanic to GW players!

Anyway that was a blast. Far from flawless and definitely some frustration at 2am against a certain giant lycanthrope but overall it has earned its spot in my short list of anticipated games for the year.

Ah yes that Den Mother was hardly maternal.

I do think we need to give this dungeon system, and localized Helltides a more comprehensive look before a final verdict can be made. I think this small snapshot didn't or won't do the endgame justice or give credit for what we will see in June.

For me, I think there is little doubt that I will be rolling Sorc to start. Necro did interest me, but I would prefer to play Zoomancer if I did, and I'm afraid minions won't scale great into the endgame, and get killed too easily.

Melee Rogue was super fun, but admittedly required a bit more attention and button maintenance. I think that's more of a re-roll for me. Unfortunately Barb & Druid need so much gear to feel good, and after hearing the loot was more than tripled for the beta, this concerns me.

Re the writing, since that doofus keeps going on about how bad it is:

My partner's PC is next to the tv so she often side watches or listens to whatever I am playing. Usually there is a line or two that will make her groan or just look at me like, dude, you are a writer and this isn't making you cringe? Well, sometimes it does but most times I accept bad writing as a cost of entry to fun gameplay.

With DIV she just ignored the core plot writing (none of it is amazing) but when I would get side quests or find a note telling me about where I was, she would laugh a bit and say something like, "this fucking world is fucked". Neither of us found the writing or acting distractingly bad, which meant we were free to actually enjoy it. The subtle threats and the grim surrenders. The gentle twists of the knife when you find out what happened to those who came before you. The sheer lack of heroism in The Wanderer's demeanour.

It is good writing. I will never not love early PoE writing but in terms of consistently building the tone and feel of an area, I don't think I have seen a better attempt in an ARPG than Fractured Peaks as a fairly obvious Carpathian Mountains analogue.

I just adore that one note in Maulwood about the thief and the wargs. No overt threat. No heavyhanded writing. Just a simple three words following a rising series of implications. "Think about that."

Necromancer felt unfinished tbh. Only 2 curses? Only 2 melee skills? Didn't feel good.

Sorcerer is the way to go if you want to breeze through early game. Blizzard's version of Arc is insane.

Thorns Barbarian doesn't even need to move around to get the job done.

Druid is plenty of fun with investment. The class I enjoyed the most for sure. Feels like the best one to fool around with early on.

Rogue crossbow + dagger is probably the most fun gameplay-wise and even has proper support, unlike melee Necromancer. Caltrops should really be jump in the direction you are facing tbh. During the beta it felt random.

Actually I destroyed Den Mother with Rogue pretty easily. Energized blades is perhaps the easiest way to get vulnerability. Rapid Shot's single target damage is insane (plus its Shadow...what is it called, infusion, which causes enemies to explode and helps with clear). And Caltrops add even more damage vulnerability plus slow on top.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Ah yes that Den Mother was hardly maternal.

I do think we need to give this dungeon system, and localized Helltides a more comprehensive look before a final verdict can be made. I think this small snapshot didn't or won't do the endgame justice or give credit for what we will see in June.

For me, I think there is little doubt that I will be rolling Sorc to start. Necro did interest me, but I would prefer to play Zoomancer if I did, and I'm afraid minions won't scale great into the endgame, and get killed too easily.

Melee Rogue was super fun, but admittedly required a bit more attention and button maintenance. I think that's more of a re-roll for me. Unfortunately Barb & Druid need so much gear to feel good, and after hearing the loot was more than tripled for the beta, this concerns me.

Sorc is great - hydras make short work of bosses/elites and the fireball enchantment that causes things to explode when they die blows up trash packs. I wonder if that enchantment was bugged since I assumed you had to kill something with fireball to trigger it but just kill one mob with anything and starts a chain reaction that blows up everything.

The helltides were a bit meh in closed beta since the drops/xp seemed a bit undertuned but absolutely essential for crafting since mining & herbing in them was the only way to get mats for the craft to replace a property on an item. Seemed like a forced way for the open world to stay relevant in endgame.

"

RandallPOE wrote:

The helltides were a bit meh in closed beta since the drops/xp seemed a bit undertuned but absolutely essential for crafting since mining & herbing in them was the only way to get mats for the craft to replace a property on an item. Seemed like a forced way for the open world to stay relevant in endgame.

That's interesting considering how well the terror zones in D2R were recieved. Giving players an additional rotating area, that provides endgame loot and experience, in random ways, seems better than specific area targeting for many hours.

The helltide specific currencies don't bother me either really, PoE and other arpgs do similar things with boss or content specific crafting drops. It's certainly not an original loop, but its an effective one.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

The helltide specific currencies don't bother me either really, PoE and other arpgs do similar things with boss or content specific crafting drops. It's certainly not an original loop, but its an effective one.

Sure, I'd prefer it if they just dropped off the elites or bosses there though, the visual effect on the zone made the ore & herb nodes really difficult to spot.

Had a thought. I know, I know. Just go with it...

So shrines are fuckoff powerful this time. Like, boss killing stuff. And we occasionally 'pray' at altars of Lilith. And we were about 10 seconds away from becoming either her food or her fucking champion I reckon.

AND the game is clearly setting up the question of Angels as "arses" is Lilith as The Necessary Evil...?

So what if, in a spectacular moment of self-awareness well beyond any Diablo so far but I think not beyond this one, the reason shrines are so strong now is to guarantee we will use them...and Lilith is behind that?

Maybe this has already been discussed and dissected -- I am purely in my own bubble of conjecture here. Normal Diablo games wouldn't have put me in a mood apt to wonder if a gameplay change might have an actual narrative explanation but this one kinda does.

Anyway shrines are crazystrong now, praise the Mother.

Those open beta stats are interesting.

2.6 million accounts hit level 20.

61 million hours played -- so if every single participant had played non-stop, that'd be 884k people. Realistically, probably closer to 4 million participants.

And one dude almost soloed the world boss.