Blizzard Likely To Get Things Right With Diablo IV

Diablo IV's hype level is off the charts. We've seen over 1 million players confirmed for Early Access alone which is quite wild to think about as this is just a fraction of the hardcore players who already bought the game or paid for the codes. Since the Early Access on March 15, there has been plenty of Diablo IV updates, including an interview with the game's director on class balance, dungeon design, waiting cues, and much more. These updates gave a better idea of what to expect in the March 24 Open Beta, including all the fixes. 

With the Early Access and Open Beta launches, Blizzard has probably achieved what they wanted; to test the servers so that they can better prepare for the game's final release. According to General Manager for Diablo IV, Rod Ferguson, several major fixes have addressed the long queue times and server instabilities over the past weekend. Additionally, it was a smart strategy for them to get ready for the Open Beta and the full release, both of which would attract a much larger audience.

 

So that any issues found now will be a lot smoother a launch; during the final Early Access, waiting cues were almost gone, and stability was much better compared to Friday night when it all started. So, any issues arising from the Open Beta launch are expected to be fixed soon. Of course, the good news here is that Blizzard doesn't want these cues either, and ideally, on launch day. Obviously, Blizzard's plan for the players is just to log in straightaway and play.

Among the many new features from the Early Access, particularly Butcher Encounters, which were really interesting and were one of the highlights of the Beta. While everyone would like to see more of them, Blizzard is already on board with adding more of these Encounters in Diablo IV. According to Joe Shelley, Game Director of Diablo IV, one of the new inclusions that can be fun is changing the player's goal at any moment. The Treasure Goblin does that by snatching the loot you need and running away with it. You are likely to opt into the extra Danger to get it, as the Butcher ambushes you and creates a situation where you are likely to run into other dangers and be under pressure. So, we can expect the kind of gameplay to change the player's experience on the go.

Blizzard is likely to add more features like this in the future as well, and of course, they did clarify that there is a minimum level restriction for the spawn. However, they did not specifically mention it and a few other conditions. This is probably meant to be a very random and very unexpected encounter. Even though I'm not sure about this, I did love the encounters and was lucky enough to get it a handful of times over the first weekend. It was a blast for sure but also a bit scary at first when I was under-equipped for it clearly.

It's like the first time you are almost guaranteed to die because of how unexpected it is and how early it can be in your progression. Meanwhile, it's a lot more satisfying when you get to revenge a bit later once you get a build going and get some better gears. Having more randomness like this in the game can help a ton, especially if it ends up being as rewarding as the Butcher or the loot goblins. It also allowed me to test my builds better during these unexpected encounters.

On the other hand, Dungeon design has been a bit of a mixed bag for many players. My colleague also talked about it in her Diablo IV Early Access Preview showing concerns that they are a bit the same after you've played the game for a while. Especially considering a large amount of backtracking required to collect keys and complete other comparable objectives in order to open the monster door. As the game was built to be played in this fashion, it would appear that a significant portion of that will most likely be carried over into the final game.

 

According to Joe Shelley, certainly, there are cases within the dungeons where we had to grab keys, and then we had to go somewhere else in cases where we were going to get the key and ran back through an area where enemies showed up upon refresh. They designed this, so players can avoid running through an empty dungeon. Even though the Open Beta did not always operate in this manner. Often when I would finish exploring a dungeon, only to find out that I needed to go back and get a number of keys or some of those artifacts to open up doors, forcing me to race through rooms I had already explored and finished exploring.

Furthermore, Joe Shelley also explained that there are well over 100 dungeons in the full game, but in the Open Beta, we saw only a fraction of it, about 20 percent of the overworld. Blizzard clearly wants players to have a consistent experience when it comes to dungeons. Thus their design decisions are made with certain properties that were consistent according to that place in the overworld. So I would not keep any hope that anything will be changed in this regard during the launch since there's not enough time to make such a drastic change. So those expecting a change in dungeon design will have to wait for an expansion to come or may never see it.

Though Blizzard might address this via the endgame mechanics, such as the nightmare dungeon modes in which we are going to be using Sigils as modifiers to modify them dramatically. Though players who already played the Betas that included the endgame content have already expressed concerns that they were insufficient, these modifiers appeared much more superficial. According to a Diablo veteran on Reddit who played through the end game Beta, most of these involved percentage changes to the damage you dealt or received, stat increases or decreases, and monster attacks applying different debuffs such as slow reduce dodge chance or something exploding upon death. None of these are going to change the experience in any significant way except by adding a layer of difficulty or not on top. Even if there are changes, you'll still have to grab the keys carry pedestals, or kill all enemies in a dungeon before you're able to proceed.

There have been a few interesting quick fixes that could, in theory, work, such as, for example, the Pedestals that you need to return back at the boss door. Also, the quick fix allowed us to carry multiple of them simultaneously. If we run into one object and then find another one before we can drop the original one, we don't have to backtrack back to it, just like grabbing them all and bringing them back to the boss door. This sounds like a good theory, though I don't know why it didn't work for me or many others. Though Blizzard might have an explanation for it, it may be too heavy to carry. They can actually spice things up here. Why not make that object attract a lot of like enemies from around the dungeon and have us swarmed by them so that we don't have a lonely walk back to the main objective. I would definitely love to get that, as it's an even more excellent way to farm monsters and get more loot and XP.

The 'kill all monsters' issue in the dungeon has been among the most annoying. Because there were always one or two groups left in some corner, even after a thorough play. A quick fix suggested here is to get a kill percentage of monster objectives instead, like a progress bar. Since this feature is already in the game, it will dramatically reduce the risk of backtracking or searching for one or two remaining monsters. Blizzard might have different mechanics for this, but this needs to look at before it quickly grows tiring for the players. In any case, we can expect more balanced changes.

 

Many changes are coming to the classes, including buffs and possible nerfs. During the interview, Joe Shelly mentioned that things like The Barbarians Hammer of the Ancients feel slightly underpowered, while Frost Sorcerers are pretty strong. Arc Lash for the Sorcerer is a little weak right now too. So we can expect these to change in the future. In the Betas, Sorcerer felt like head Runner when it came to mob clearing potential and even the boss fights in general. However, the Rogue wasn't too far off either. It's nice that Blizzard finally shows some love to Barbarians, as this was one of the classes I leveled up last. I'm glad I finally got this build going and reached 25. It got some interesting concepts in there, as the Whirlwind build with the tornadoes is great and fantastic against enemies and looks good too.

However, this is a very early character progression and does not represent the end game, when things might change at every level. Again giving the Barbarian as an example, this class has access to most amount of weapons. So gameplay-wise, they'll have the most legendary effects. Who knows, they might even be the best class of them all, but it might also be different. Of course, looking forward to the Droid that Necromancer classes in the following open Beta 2.

In the end, it's been a while since we've been waiting to play Diablo IV, and we only have to wait till June 6 to play the full game. Blizzard has promised a lot of things, including not heavily relying on microtransactions. If things go as we've experienced in the betas, we can exact a solid game after all. Only time will tell. 

 

Azfar Rayan (@AzfarRayan)
Editor, NoobFeed