D4 Open Beta Available for Early Download

I kinda feel like I'm cheating on my girlfriend or wife posting this. But I just got a notification on my bnet ap that you can download the open beta for D4 now. Maybe if you plan on playing this weekend download now before the rush.

Great tip thanks, this is very helpful since it's a >80gb download.

definitely download it now.
but don't expect to play on 9am pdt.
i was in the open, and i played only like 2 hours later because of stupid queue or whatever problems they had.

I am guessing its going to be way more bad in the open beta, since alot more people are coming.

however, the graphics and animation are incredible.
the design awesome. the gaemplay is fun, but the story quests are meh. the scaling sucks, but still fun. tons of things to discover. lots of challenges, if you don't play a sorcerer which is overpowering.

rikus wrote: 1 year ago

I am guessing its going to be way more bad in the open beta, since alot more people are coming.

If they haven't actually learned anything from how bad the last weekend already was and still haven't scaled up servers..that would not exactly bode well for the actual release.

That having been said, I fully expect it to be at least equally as bad, both tomorrow and on release. :p

Schnorki wrote: 1 year ago

both tomorrow and on release. :p

I bet you 5 bucks too that it's like that. they never got that thing right.

also you can cut the download size in half by unchecking high definition textures (4K) in the download dialogue

how do hell do i download the high definition textures?
is that separate?
i always got the medium textures option.
I heard its only available above 16gb ram?

Ok, fine !

Oh yeah?
Well...


Once again, capacity scaling = non-existent. As expected.
Cuz who coulda seen that coming?

I logged on right as the minute changed to available and I was 26 minutes to get in

Much as I enjoy being right..I am rather disappointed that I seem to be in this case.

I'll give them a point for atmospheric visuals. The landscape and whatnot look pretty solid.
Characters/models...not so much. Same cartoonish, overly plastic oddity to it that D3 had except now it clashes with the environment because that actually looks "normal".

Music seems to basically be non-existent and merely consists of atmospheric noise more than anything so...hard pass on that category.

Questing "gameplay" is just...god that's terrible design. "Here, watch this cutscene for half an hour so you can the walk for 20 seconds to watch another cutscene for half an hour to then talk to the npc already next to you for another cutscene before clicking him again to talk to the same damn NPC in the same exact spot for yet another cutscene". Seriously?! I don't think I've ever actually skipped cutscenes on a first playthrough in any game before as I do tend to like them ... until now. The sheer volume of cutscene vs. actual gameplay is beyond dumb. And that's not even counting the non-interruptable in-game ones. And just to make it worse..they're not the kind of quality cutscene/cinematic one is used to from blizz. The design and scripting of these is just...bad.

Gameplay when you do get to actually play feels basically exactly like D3. The whole thing (on the higher difficulty) is far, FAR too easy, running into events 3-5 lvls above you and having no problems whatsoever while everything even close to your level usually gets 1shot. Every chest event succeeded without even trying, sometimes without even reading what to do for that one...hell, even D3 was harder than that.

The entire interface is obviously console-tailored and feels just as "wrong" as you would hence expect on a PC.

And to round it off, network performance is just plain horrid. Rubberbanding, invisible walls, teleporting minions that shouldn't be teleporting, flat out freezing screens only for gameplay to resume multiple seconds later, ...

I mean yeah, I was biased against it going in (for good reason, based on everything revealed prior) but even considering that and adding a benefit of the doubt for it..I genuinely cannot bring myself to find a single good thing about it, other than the above-mentioned solid environmental visuals.

Though I guess that does yield a couple good things..I save a hundred bucks since it more than confirms that I'll never buy it and everyone in the queue gets to jump up a spot and won't be blocked by me ever again.

All in all, quite possibly the single fastest game uninstall I've ever had. Presented by the studio that - looking (far) back - has created some of my all time favorite games ever. Just..sad.

Aaaaaanyways, I'm sure those who genuinely enjoyed D3 might get a kick out of D4 as well. Have fun.

Ouch. Good that I don't even have time to try it. ^^

Necrarch wrote: 1 year ago

Ouch. Good that I don't even have time to try it. ^^

You can tell you kids that they are watching a movie

Tried out the necro until the game kicked me out and it seems your skeletons scale with your damage which means there's not much to do.
Definitely not broken...

Apart from that, the game lets you upgrade the skeletons or "

Sacrifice" them, meaning no skeletons, which unbinds the hotkey and after you click that you have to look in the interface for a minute or so how to re-bind your skills.

finished it with a barbarian to level 25.
it was good fun, but not great.
i'd say 7/10

to me the graphics are incredible btw, really solid stuff. non cartoonish also. although the dialogs/questing seems very netflix series stuff...not really thought this through dear false blizzard.

will play rogue, after finish freeing all the towns.

btw, as a barb, i had some pretty challenges with bosses. considerably lower damage compared to sorcerer and close combat, they whooop your ass pretty fast.

so that's a plus in my book. not some stupid one click screen clear.

I'm almost done it. I quite like the atmosphere, look and feel, as well as the overall creepyness. I upped the game difficulty so I actually had to kite the mobs a bit, could be a bit harder still though. Items are still D3 though, although now items can roll plus to skills, meaning I care about those ones.

davme_mcreg wrote: 1 year ago

I upped the game difficulty

yep. i don't see a point to game that doesn't challenge. did that with both my chars.

Played some hours today and yesterday, hero and world graphics are very good, monster design and animations suck just like in D3 not even close to D2 league, mobs (excelt bosses and fev others) look like bugs with extended arms and legs and have no Death animations (just splatter to pieces or str8 ragdoll). I hope mf and grind to max lvl best build will be end game but they plan to bring back paragon lvls which is bad mindless infinite grinding to get 1 lvl more then your party mates. Hit or miss so far.

I was actually genuinely surprised by the beta. I had fun, the gameplay loop is entertaining, the story is about what you would expect (cheesy but not as cheesy as D3 and with a much darker tone) but the world is well built and the side quests are actually fairly interesting.

The gameplay feels more like Grim Dawn + Path of Exile than it feels Diablo 2 but the world definitely feels more like Diablo 2 than Diablo 3.

rikus wrote: 1 year ago

btw, as a barb, i had some pretty challenges with bosses. considerably lower damage compared to sorcerer and close combat, they whooop your ass pretty fast.

so that's a plus in my book. not some stupid one click screen clear.

Apparently the devs have replied about various complaints about the game, notably the barb being underpowered. Rhyyker goes into what he got here at 4:05