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

The main difference from last week was the playable characters (necro and druid were not available), and the initial Friday queue was quite large, over 100 minutes at times. Stability was inconsistent too.

By Saturday things were OK buy early Friday was tough.

All in All for a beta with these extreme numbers it went pretty well.

Finished Act 1. That was very engaging.

Leaving map exploration for release. Barely scratched that surface.

Time to try other classes for a bit.

Probably a day one for me now.

Some of the side quest storylines are very good as well. Fully voiced and narrative. It's very impressive given the scope that there are 6 acts, and then an epilogue.

I'm very much looking forward to launch. I was going into D4 with an open mind and some caution, but these beta weekends have left little doubt for me. Of course endgame loops, paragon boards, and seasonal content will be important, but again, the core game is solid. If it takes a bit to iron out, I will ride those bumps.

It's not everyone's cup of tea to be sure, but it's hitting the right notes for me, of that there is no doubt.

ya tbh the paragon boards look amazing as a concept, im not too worried there. with the content as long as we can skip stuff like the full clear dungeons or theyre rare itll be fine. ultimately in an arpg there a zone and you run along and kill the monsters, it doesnt need to be too fancy.

if you feel forced to full clear or close to full clear like a dungeon that demands it or like a poe map system where you paid currency to run the consumable map and need a return to sustain then it feels a bit bad, it hurts build diversity imo. in D3 there are builds like the old impale demonhunter where you sucked against packs, to the point where the entire build was flying around vaulting hunting out elite monsters to put down with extreme single target damage, you mostly ignored trash packs because you had 0 effective AOE. you just cant do that in poe, you have to kill all the packs because weve got this kind of shitty map system that feels like ur forced into almost full clearing. this takes the idea of a single target focused build off the table entirely, in diablo 3 those builds were perfectly viable as a strategy. people meme about heavy strike over here, if you had a big damage heavystrike build in d3 it would be totally fine as long as u had good mobility.

if we can avoid that feels bad kind of full clear nonsense for the most itll be great, theres not a lot to it really. you run around you kill some monsters and some items drop, repeat for 10k hours. you can dress that up in a million ways but really if the gameplay feels good and the build and item systems hold up to some extent you got a game you can keep coming back to. im still playing diablo 3, its just load greater rift and smash mobs til the boss spawns then repeat. nothing to it but its fine, what stops you in d3 isnt the simplicity of the grift system imo its the simplicity of the item and build system + stupidly high drop rates, thats why you quit so quick every season.

all the indicators are that D4 is significantly improved on all fronts compared to d3, and i still play d3 every season so im almost certain this will be a regular play game for me, probably for at least the next 5 years honestly.

guys diablo 4 is an amazing game (for what we've tested in the betas), it changes some rules of genre, like little mob counts (that give a more tactical playstyle), top notch graphics and great storytelling.

it will be an amazing game untill...

...path of exile 2 which it seems to have choosen this road too (much less monsteres for a more tactical gameplay), but with all the feature that we love with poe, correcting every problem poe had, like too much intrusive spell effect, mediocre graphics etc, and it will be again the definitive arpg.

ill buy and play diablo 4, i actually already bought it, and i will play poe like crazy when it will be released.

ARPG GENRE IS NOT DEAD, thanks to blizzard and GGG

I've been playing PoE since open beta. I'm burned out, I actually decided to fire up Diablo 3 for the first time in ages in anticipation of Diablo 4. The last time I played the RMAH was still a thing, that's how long it's been.

I've actually been burnt out for a few years now, but I still play because there is no good alternative. Years of hearing how much Blizzard and Diablo suck made me not even think of it as an option.

Well, I took the plunge today, and I'm sure a lot of you are gonna shit on me for saying this, but Diablo 3 is actually a pretty good game.

The polish is miles ahead of Path of Exile, and the gameplay feels way better too. It doesn't have the deep customization that PoE has, but its quality of life and smooth feel make up a lot of that. It's also a lot less punishing and tedious, which I'm sure many people hate because they mistake those things for difficulty, but I enjoy the relaxation. Having absurd defenses and having death still being unavoidable ala PoE isn't fun anymore.

Am I gonna play it for years? Probably not. Is it better than Path of Exile in the long run? Again, probably not due to PoE's deep customization. However, D3 does a lot of things right, and it definitely gives me a lot of hope for Diablo 4.

TLDR: Diablo franchise isn't as fucked as the PoE community likes to think

D3 after adventure mode was and is a lot of fun. For a fantasy themed brawler.

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Six acts plus epilogue? I figured 3 acts playable in any order (peaks, scos, steppes) then a 4th in kehj, a 5th in haze...then a final act...hm yeah I guess. The open(ish) world style and area scaling (which I neither love nor hate) definitely makes act progression less fundamental -- I could stay in peaks until 30+ easy, or blaze through the story and be out well before that.

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I dislike having to respec between clearing groups and dealing with dungeon bosses but only because it is a chore. If we had loadouts with a gold cost that'd be perfect.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

If we had loadouts with a gold cost that'd be perfect.

I wouldn't be surprised since there are already cosmetic loadouts (for gold).

However that smells like a monetization feature tbh. If equipment loadouts (with skill tree selections) come, I"m guessing it would have a real cost in the shop.

With paragon boards though, maybe a tech issue, and not even possible.

I guess we will see.

We will.

Got my icy sorc to a level of fun flow
Started necro, felt too similar...time to quad-wield.

Yup, D3 is basically an action game with loadouts - you choose a set and run the skills it boosts.