Played the closed beta and put in easily well over 150 hours so far. Leveled all but the barb class post 50 and did everything possible. As a huge Diablo Andy I would give the game a 6 out of 10 just alone of the closed beta experience. I’m highly skeptical of the end game content. Hell tides gets boring real fast and there is nothing extra or special doing it. All you’re doing in running around killing tougher than normal mobs and collecting cinders to open chests up to get loot. World boss is fun at first but after the 5th or 6th time they get old really quickly. The encounter is so simple and certain classes have even soloed them. The bosses have maybe 2 moves and they are telegraphed. Nightmare dungeons are “okay” at best. They are simple and straight forward. You go in do a few objectives to further your progress within the dungeon, kill the end boss and your done. That’s it.
It seems to me they knew what needed to be done because they have it in the game but they were afraid to push the limits. I truly believe they are afraid to make the game “somewhat” complicated. I understand it doesn’t need to be on the level of Path of Exile but give us more choices and make the players think. Skill tree is boring and consists of the skills that are useless and no one will use them. They have nothing to offer for class build diversity. Most builds again will be the same. The paraboard (paragon board) is mainly stat stacking. You choose about 5 to 6 stat nodes to get to a rare or higher nodes (repeat) and they are nothing build defining. It doesn’t make your bottom jaw hit the floor cause how awesome it is.
My highest played class was the druid. I got him up to torment 4. I started leveling as a tornado build and when I got certain legendary drops, I went to werebear until torment 2 and from there I went to werewolf. It’s a fun class and was my favorite overall. The rogue you constantly moving around attacking. I did a pure ranged, melee and hybrid and I found all of them viable. They do a lot of damage but at the same time they take a lot of damage. Typical rogue class. Sorc was okay and there are only two viable builds. Cold and fire sorc. I played cold blizzard sorc with hydra to level and once I got enough gear, I went to pure fire for PvP to grief players in Fields of Hatred. PvP is not my thing but it was fun for a while. Necro class is really strong but they only have one damn build which is pet army. I don’t understand who made this class but they missed it. Necro has 3 main skills, darkness, blood and bone. All the of the necros I ran across were army with bone stack skills. None were petless playing full caster. They should of made it where necros can either be a ranged, pet or melee builds. Make the pet build use darkness skills, the ranged could be a DoT based caster using blood skills and lastly the melee easily the bone skills. There’s not even bone armor skill in the game. WTF Blizz? They could of have a necro use bone armor and a bone scythe attack. Last was barb and my lowest level character. This was the one I wanted to play the most but leveling a barb is pure aids. They have poor resource management (you’re constantly low or out of fury), they are very squishy and have zero ranged skills. I know all classes can’t have everything but at least give the barb axe throw. (Every other class has a choice to either go melee or ranged) You get the staple barb skill whirlwind very early in level. I believe before level 10 or something like that but yet there’s no way to sustain the skill that early. It costs 20 fury per second to channel it. After 2 to 3 spins (if your lucky) you’re out of fury and then you must use a basic generator skill to build up fury to use it again. It’s not fun game play at all and feels very clunky. They should of just moved the skill lower on the barb skill tree when you have nodes to help with fury management. But I know if you get past the leveling barb is one of the strongest classes with the right gear. Speaking of gear I’m not an itemization type person I read it needs work. Here is a post taken from D2JSP sums up how I feel about it.
“I think that's my problem with the game currently. There are a lot of systems in place that I think are ok, and a few small changes here and there could make a huge difference, I've sent them like dozens of feedback with my ideas to improve the game but I don't think it's going to make it
Overall if they keep it like this, the experience would also be a bit better if the amount of content in the game was significantly larger. I've seen people make the excuse of, oh these games have been released for years with new content added over time, D4 is just a new game so it will get there eventually.
But that's bullshit. I want a good game now. I don't want to wait a year for them to add new legendaries and uniques, new interesting boss fights, more fulfilling gameplay.
They need to add literally like 5x the amount of legendary/unique items. It's that simple. That one change alone would drastically improve build diversity and theorycrafting/experimentation.
The amount of power that is available from legendary mods means that they dictate how your build works, yet currently some of your skills have 0 alterations to be made from legendary mods, which means you probably will not use them.
So it's a situation where on release I think the game will just be ok. Maybe in a year or 2 things will be more interesting... But still it's shaping up to just be a worse Poe
Even the nightmare dungeon system is so lackluster, you obtain sigils(maps) which rolls modifiers on them, but you can't reroll or modify the sigils in any way. You can't choose which one you get, And there is like 15 sigils total. So in poe I could add delirium to my map, use any of the scarabs, run it while influenced by any of the map boss dudes(sirus' boss content) , as well as just straight up modify it using chaos orbs or alch or whatever. There's even blight maps, unique maps, etc.
The customization in Poe's map system is miles ahead and will stay miles ahead. You might say it's complicated, but it's also simple. You can opt in to and out of the content that YOU enjoy. If you want to add legion to every map, you can do so. And the modifications you make to the map are SIGNIFICANTLY more enjoyable than simply taking a map from tier 50 to tier 75, or tier 75 to 100 or etc. Literally all that does it raise monster HP and damage a little bit, which is NOT fun or exciting
Keep in mind that the rewards in D4 from these sigils is the exact same. Tier 50, tier 100, they have the same rewards. You can obtain the best gear from both, you can level your glyphs from both, there is no incentive to push your build to the absolute limits of the game because you are not rewarded for doing so.”
I got a feeling the game will be like D3. In a year or two they will fix all the glaring problems, but it may be too late. I don’t think they have enough time now to do so. Class balance, skill rebalance, itemization and end game needs to be looked at again and there’s not enough time before release. Then you have the behemoth PoE2 they have to worry about. The graphics, music, atmosphere, gameplay, controls are top notch. I give them a 12/10 in that area. I really wish the teams that worked on end game content had the same results as the teams who worked on what I mentioned above. The game would be amazing. I plan on buying it but I don’t see this as my forever game. I haven’t logged in the past 3 days cause and I started playing PoE again. I can see people burning through the content and getting bored quickly and quitting till next season in a month. It’s sad and depressing but I can see it happening. The game is not horrible and pure trash by no means. The devs need to realize there are many other ARPGS they could of taken ideas from, put it into the game and not afraid to take chances. They are playing safe and making the game a little too simple.
