It’s been a rough couple of years for Blizzard Entertainment, going from one of the premier studios in the world to one mired in controversy, scandals, lawsuits, and destroying years’ worth of goodwill with their fans. Diablo 4 has been viewed as the hopeful return to grace for the company — the next single player game in one of the most beloved franchises. Having played the beta, I’m left not so happy about it and what’s coming at release. Diablo 4, at least from the beta, shows what AAA games have become, for better and worse.
Evil Diablo
Right from the start, Diablo 4 removes much of the color and more cartoony vibes of Diablo 3 in favor of the darker greys and browns of the older games. While this may be polarizing, I honestly started to like it, as it lends Diablo 4 more of a horror movie atmosphere compared to other entries. This can be seen with the more stylized cutscenes that look straight out of an Evil Dead or Hellraiser in terms of tone, with Lilith (our new big bad) chewing through the scenery.
There’s a new evil on the loose, and it’s going to be up to us, and maybe some friends, to stop her plans for sanctuary. While the beta doesn’t have all the classes in it, it does feature a kind of homecoming for the Diablo 2 archetypes. However, if you’re thinking that this plays like D2, or even D3 for that matter, there are a number of major differences here.
Blood Trees
With each Diablo game, the developers have been pruning and pruning the skill trees available to each class, and Diablo 4 has the most barebones out of all the games, and other ARPGs. Like before, each class has their own skill tree, but the trees themselves are broken down into groups of skills. Each group represents a different set of abilities — defensive, offensive, energy generator, etc. Within each grouping, there are also passive general abilities as well. The interesting aspect of the skills is that every equipable skill has three passives — one that enhances the properties of said skill, and then two that change the overall ability in some way. Of those two, however, only one can be active at a time — forcing you to decide how you want to augment that skill. Near the end of the trees, you’ll get access to the class’s ultimate grouping, in which only one skill can be active, and the final section is an “ultimate passive” which unlocks around level 30.
While the choices are interesting, it also means that you really can’t start putting together a build until you hit the final unlock tier to try and synergize active and passive skills together, but you are free to respec at any time by spending gold. Personally, I liked the skill modifiers introduced in Diablo 3 better, as each one could completely change the utility and use of a skill, and you are still limited to one energy generator and six active skills. One thing I do like is that every class gets special upgrades and perks after hitting level 15 which does provide a secondary progression and build focus for each class.
And what you’ll be using said skills on is the redesigned world, and how you’re no longer alone in it, whether you like it or not.
A Dead Live Service World
Much has been talked about regarding Diablo Immortal: from its obvious pay-to-win trappings to creating a mmo-lite environment for the Diablo brand. With Diablo 4, the MMO side has been expanded all the way. Unlike Diablo 3, you literally cannot play the game offline, even if you just want to play in single player mode. This can present some problems, such as lag costing me a hardcore character during the beta. What this means for the gameplay is that in and outside of the various towns, you can wander into other players.
The Skill trees have been greatly reduced in depth, and the same could be said for the rest of the experience. Image Source: Guided News
There are far more side quests and mini-events in the field, which nearby players can team up and do. The world itself will scale to your level, and all gear drops are instanced to you. The game feels far more inspired by MMO design, and perhaps even more by mobile games. This reduction in complexity extends to the acquisition of Diablo 4 items, where players find themselves navigating through services and features locked behind leveling gates, such as upgrading gear and applying affixes. The emphasis on upgrading gear and the necessity to enhance health potions underscore the game’s shift towards a live service model.
The whole thing gives off a live service vibe, where the developers want you to play this daily. At this point, I’m wondering if there will be daily and weekly quests to do in the retail version. The major event that can be run in the beta were “world battles” where you and everyone on at the time can fight a kind of raid boss, but I’ve already spoken at length about my hatred of being forced to log into games at specific times.
A Lackluster Roller Coaster
I wasn’t really going to buy Diablo 4 after all the problems and bad PR came out about Blizzard, and having spent two days in the beta, now I’m really not interested in the game. Where indie ARPGs have been trying to make pushes forward for the ARPG genre — Grim Dawn‘s extensive character creator and build diversity, Path of Exile‘s skill tree, or Warhammer 40K Inquisitor Martyr’s variety of gear, this game feels so sterile to me. The game space outside of dungeons is larger, to accommodate more players wandering around, but it also means there’s more dead space (no pun intended) to run through. There are now collectibles to find that add up to permanent bonuses for the entire world, and a greater emphasis on the differences of the various difficulty tiers in terms of what they unlock, changes to the enemies, and the gear rarities available to them.
It seems like all the interesting decision-making surrounding different builds and skill modifiers have been backloaded to the items themselves. Legendaries now have unique buffs for each class that can be removed and affixed to another item if it meets its requirements. It wasn’t possible to see it, but I can imagine that end-game builds are going to be entirely determined by getting set pieces and the ultimate tier that unlocks in the harder-difficulty worlds. My problem is that the rest of the game and loot chasing simply aren’t interesting with what’s there. The classes’ unique aspects are interesting, but like Diablo 3, I see this as all window dressing for chasing set pieces and the build-defining buffs. This raises another question, given Blizzard going all-in on the live service model, what is there going to be to keep someone engaged? Will this turn into a WOW-lite, or a $69.99 USD version of Diablo Immortal? For anyone wondering about monetization in the game, there were no elements that I could see, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be any for the live version.
Ultimately for me, what’s old in Diablo 4 isn’t enough to keep me interested, and what’s new is just driving me away. I can tell you that outside of an unusual circumstance, I’m not going to be there day one fighting demons and collecting shiny loot for the first time in a long while.
As always, things are subject to change, and we’ll have to see how/if the retail version of the game will be different.
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