Good Morning Friends! I freaking love Last Epoch. Back in 2018, I have to admit I did not see where this game would go but it has honestly become that happy medium between Diablo III and Path of Exile for me. As much as I love it though, there are still some features that I wish it had. This morning I am going to spitball a wishlist of features that I would love to see that I feel would turn this diamond in the rough into the perfect game. I feel like this is fair game since the group at Eleventh Hour Games seems to be constantly evolving the game to make it better. The multiplayer patch really brought Last Epoch into the pantheon of great ARPGs for me. That however is not to say that there cannot be improvements.
Guilds/Clans
With the drop of 0.90 we got the ability to group up with other people, which is really key for my long-term enjoyment of an ARPG. When this was implemented there were also some very basic social features, like the ability to add players to your friend list. This is sort of the bare minimum of required functionality, but I would love to see this expanded a bit more. I am very much a guild-minded person, and even in the largely throw-away Open Beta weekend, I created a branch of Greysky Armada in Diablo IV. Guilds are many things, but at their most simple level, they are an easier way of meeting up with your friends rather than having to trade dozens of individual account ids. Even if we got nothing more than the ability to join a guild and the ability to have a guild chat channel, I would be happy enough.
I mean ultimately that is the only functionality that we have within Diablo III, but it is important enough to me that I consider it on the “should haves” if not on the “must haves” list when approaching a long-term social ARPG. I mean I did not play Path of Exile very long without going through the process of creating a guild.
Guild Bank/Trading/Locking
Surrounding the announcement of the multiplayer patch there was a lot of discussion surrounding trade. Right now it is extremely simple and follows something akin to the rules of Diablo III. If you are with a player when an item drops, you can gift the item to another player. However, I believe with the 1.0 patch, they will be working in a brilliant compromise to the debate of no public trade or a full-on POE-style trading economy with APIs supporting it. Essentially every player will have the choice of either joining the Merchants’ Guild and eventually receiving access to full trading including a public auction house system or joining the Circle of Fortune and receiving improved drop rates but losing the ability to publicly trade items. Circle of Fortune players will be able to build up a currency with another player and then use that to gift items to them, pending they are also a member of the Circle of Fortune. Merchants’ Guild players will never have access to items dropped by folks on the Fortune side.
I would love to see this tweaked a bit to add a new classification to the item locking. I would love to have something similar to the guild bank from Path of Exile. As we work our way through a new league, we are often dropping items that look decent for folks coming up behind us. I would love for some way to have “guild locking” for lack of a better term so that if you donate an item to the guild bank, it can only be used by members of that guild. This would keep those items from ever making it to the trade economy but also increase the social aspect of the gameplay. Maybe even create a “guild currency” that you gain from spending time grouped with guild members, which you can then spend to remove items from the guild bank. Granted there would need to be some administrative level that allows folks to clean out the bank and dump unneeded items straight to gold or shattering, but I am certain Eleventh Hour Games could reach a good compromise for how all of that might work.
Adventure Mode/Bounties
The worst part about leveling a new character in both Path of Exile and Last Epoch is the fact that you need to go through the story content again. One of the systems that work brilliantly is Adventure Mode from Diablo III, and I am somewhat shocked that no other game has implemented something similar to this. Essentially in Diablo III, once you have finished the campaign one time (and I believe now it is just immediately open to everyone), you get access to adventure mode which allows you to freely move between all waypoints available in the game and choose your own path to leveling.
Given that the Last Epoch map feels pretty similar to the Diablo III one, I could see this sort of system working beautifully. Another aspect of Adventure Mode that I really enjoy is doing Bounties for Bounty Caches. I get that for many players these are not exactly the highlight of their gaming experience, and they are often much maligned by more hardcore players as being a “requirement” of the seasonal journey there. I personally like them because it gives me a clear micro objective that is broader than running a single map, but less time-consuming than completing an entire quest sequence. There are lots of generally useful resources that already drop like candy, that I could see rolling up into specific bounty caches. You could have a cache of crafting resources, a cache of idols, or even a cache of rare gear with the very limited ability to drop uniques or set pieces. More paths to the same result is always a good thing as far as I am concerned because it allows folks to vary up their gameplay.
Unstable Echoes
This idea goes somewhat hand in hand with the opening of an alternative leveling mode like Diablo III’s adventure mode. Right now you can technically start the Monolith when you reach the End of Time zone for the very first time. Whether or not you can actually do that is another question, because the Monolith system as it exists today is at a fixed level and requires you to be able to survive a level 55 map. What I would propose is something akin to the Nephalem Rift/Greater Rift system from Diablo III. The idea I had is to call them “Unstable Echoes” and effectively zone into a random echo map with random objectives and random rewards. Much like players enjoy leveling through doing Rifts in Diablo III, it would be awesome if we could just start doing Monoliths in a random system independent from the ACTUAL Monolith progression.
I mean if Eleventh Hour Games wanted to go for the gold, it would be neat if these Unstable Echoes had a sequence of objectives that ultimately led to fighting a miniboss similar to a Rift Guardian. That however isn’t necessary, and I would honestly be perfectly happy with just randomly spawning one of the existing Monolith Echoes at a level that scaled to the player. Bonus points would be if the system allowed players to choose what level of Monolith they wanted to tackle. This could even be spun into a completely unique progression system that worked kinda like Greater Rift progression so as you passed level 100, you were gaining a certain amount of corruption as well to keep making harder and more rewarding singleton Echoes.
Hideouts/Housing
Right from the start I know this request is a bit out there because player housing is an exceptionally expensive system to implement. It is one of those systems that can have some extremely solid returns when it comes to selling cosmetics, but a massive initial outlay of work to put even the most basic version in the game. That said… I love the Hideout/Guild Hideout system from Path of Exile and I would love to see something like this implemented at some point in the future in Last Epoch. I mean these really don’t serve a purpose other than allowing players to have a trophy hall of sorts and a shared communal space. This is definitely on the long-term “wouldn’t it be cool” list.
Appearance Collection/Wardrobe
I love cosmetics and wardrobe systems, and right now Last Epoch already has the most basic version stubbed out. Currently, if you have one of the pets gained through backing the game at various times during its development process, you can have them follow you around. In-game there is an Appearance tab for your character and it has slots similar to Path of Exile where you can in theory modify the visual appearance of every item you have equipped. I would assume that the idea as it stands to have a similar cosmetic shop to Path of Exile where you can buy an appearance and then wear that as a sort of visual override to what you actually have equipped.
This is a good start for certain, but what I would love to see as the final implementation is something akin to games like Guild Wars 2 where every item that drops saves a copy of that appearance to your wardrobe. Then when you click on a slot you see every appearance that has dropped along with every appearance that you have purchased. This sort of system just feels better than a cash-shop-only system, because it allows everyone to participate and also… gives folks options if nothing available through the cash-shop really interests them. Sometimes you just want to wear something that matches and don’t necessarily want to be blinged out. Cosmetic systems are great, but the systems that blend in world drops with purchased appearances are always the best ones.
Character Creator/Gender Options
Last Epoch suffers from the same problem that a lot of older ARPGs have, where when you choose your character class you are also locking in gender and a specific appearance. At this point, I am mostly numb to this construct as I have dealt with it over and over in these games. Diablo III has a slightly improved system where when you choose your class you are still locking in a specific appearance, but you get to choose between a male and female option. Mike one of the developers from Eleventh Hour Games regularly hosts a Friday live stream over on Twitch where he fields questions from the audience, and this has come up multiple times. Each time he gives essentially the same answer… that they would like to do this but they have not felt they could devote the budget to it yet.
On some level this makes sense. In development, especially when you are working on missing features… you often end up with a mindset of “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” and right now they have a functional character system. However at some point, I would love to see them address this, and they have at least shown some modicum of interest in it as a long-range goal. When they do rework the character creation system, I would love to see them at least have some basic appearance options as well. Diablo IV did not have necessarily the most amazing character creation system, but you at least felt like you could put your own mark on what the character looks like and I would love to see them implement at least something along those lines. Not every character creator has to be something that you are going to spend literal hours on perfecting, but it would be nice to have options.
Account-Based Monolith Progression
The Monolith Timeline and Echo system feels really good. It is a fun endgame that sees your character zipping around the end of time collecting resources and fighting interesting bosses. The problem is when approaching a seasonal progression arc… you are quickly locked into making a hard choice of what character you want to play because progressing this system on multiple characters is a huge ask. I’ve been chewing away at this for weeks, and I’ve still not entered the “true” endgame of Empowered Monoliths. I’ve been interested in trying out a primalist character, but it feels like the idea of progressing another character to this point is a massive outlay of time. Sure you can get a friend to somewhat cheat your way into empowered monoliths… but even that feels super janky.
What I would love to see is something akin to the Atlas of Worlds in Path of Exile, where your progress is tied to your account and not any individual character. Alting is healthy in an ARPG, and I feel like right now… Last Epoch is not terribly alt friendly. A good number of the suggestions that I have made above are to make a variety of ways that you can interact with the game on different characters, and having account-based progression is quite possibly the most important of these. I am hoping that internally Eleventh Hour Games already realizes this is a problem and is working on its own solution.
Seasonal Expansions
Eleventh Hour Games has already announced that they do have a seasonal mechanic planned at some point called “Cycles” and that they plan on these being pretty basic resets. This is fine, and I would expect them to stay basic for a while. However, I do hope at some point the door is open to using this seasonal cadence as the introduction of entirely new game modes. While I feel like maybe the Path of Exile seasonal mechanic system is a bit much for any other game, I would love to see some new game mode added each year or so. I love Delve and Heist in Path of Exile and they wildly change the enjoyment of that game for me. Eleventh Hour Games has already had some pretty brilliant solutions to classical ARPG problems, and I would love to see the sort of game modes they can come up with to expand the base of the game. I am not saying we need the expansion every three months cadence of Path of Exile, but I would love to see something eventually.
Wrapping Up
Last Epoch is a phenomenal game, and so far has been the game I always wished for… something that kinda splits the difference between the overwhelming complexity of Path of Exile and the quick simple joy of Diablo III. That said it can always be improved and my goal of this morning was to lay out some of my ideas for things I would love to see. Do I think anyone from Eleventh Hour Games is even going to see this? No not really. I realize I very small voice from a very small corner of the internet, but I think more than anything I did this for my own benefit to get this nonsense out of my head. I am going to keep playing Last Epoch and enjoying myself, but also going to keep playing Path of Exile and other ARPGs to keep collecting “wouldn’t it be cool” ideas. I love where the ARPG genre is right now and how many different expressions of it exist, but as with MMORPGs, there are always things I would love to see from one game to another game.
Do you agree with some of my assessments? Did I completely get this all wrong? Drop me a line below and tell me your own thoughts.
The post Perfecting Last Epoch appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends. This past weekend was the Open Beta for Diablo IV and since my friend Ace was going to give it a spin, I thought I would try out the Necromancer. That gameplay is something that I have enjoyed greatly in other games, so I figured it was worth a shot here as well. At this point, I have leveled Barbarian and Necromancer both to 25, and they were wildly different experiences. Necromancer felt pretty solid and honestly a bit on the grossly overpowered side, and Barbarian felt like I had made a mistake at the character selection screen. You would think that the Necromancer would have improved my opinions of Diablo IV, but in truth, it didn’t because there is something intangibly wrong with this game and it is almost impossible to put my finger on it.
I thought it was just me honestly. I thought maybe I was struggling to grasp the brilliance of this game. Then Ace played it and had some of the exact same comments. There was a side thread going on over slack about how they felt like the game just was wrong, that there was something not right with the combat, and that they could not put their finger on it either. I’ve tried to give you a close approximation over my several posts about Diablo IV… but none of them really explain the totality of the experience. The thing is… the game that is there seems to be what a lot of players wanted. I’m seeing quite a few comments showing up in my threads about how much they enjoyed the experience. I did not. I stopped playing a little way into Saturday because after hitting 25… I just felt like I didn’t care enough to keep playing. I had accomplished the ephemeral goal I had for the weekend which was maxing out the Necromancer and was largely done with the game after that.
I contemplated trying out the Druid, because that is another class I have liked quite a bit in the past and wished that Diablo 3 got. However, after watching this video from Wudijo… I decided against it. All signs point to the Druid feeling even worse than the Barbarian did. I think maybe my general takeaway is that much like Path of Exile… playing melee is arguably the wrong choice. The players that opted to play the Sorceror or the Necromancer had pretty good experiences. Playing a ranged rogue was fine, but was not really doing it for me in the way that the Demon Hunter did in Diablo III. Though honestly, it seems like a lot of people liked the sluggish gameplay because to them it felt more weighty and meaningful. For me, it just felt like a game from a different genre than the one I was wanting to play. I said this on the podcast but had I not been gifted a copy of Diablo IV, I would have absolutely made the decision to just pass this game up until a year or so after launch. I feel like there are more issues with the game than three months can solve.
Really stupid thing that pissed me off. This screen. When you exit the tutorial you are given a prompt to buy the game. When you finish the campaign… you are yet again given a prompt to buy the game. I own a copy of the game. In fact, I own the granddaddy super mega package for the game, because my benefactor was overly generous. I feel sort of awful not liking the game knowing how much they spent on it. Doesn’t Blizzard have the tech to be able to detect if someone owns a valid license to the game or not? Because that seems like a relatively trivial check. If I already own the game… stop showing me a billboard in the game.
Honestly, I think the problem really is me and my expectations. I am too ingrained in the culture of the ARPG game to accept this MMORPG as the next Diablo game. Had I been someone who played through Diablo III once, and then showed up to play this game… I probably would have been extremely happy with what I saw. It would have been a better-looking game that has the window dressing of a franchise that I remember fondly. However, I have expectations of what it should be based on what I have experienced from games that have moved on past Diablo and created honestly better experiences. So a key example of expectations biting me in the ass is with the World Boss. When you say that, I picture the deep mechanical feasts that are the world bosses and meta bosses of Guild Wars 2 that feature 50 players. What we got instead was a 10-player limited instance featuring a bag of hit points with three mechanics that all one-shot you if you failed any of them. It felt awful and was so much less than what I was expecting as the bare minimum.
So instead of playing any more of Diablo IV after I finished up with Ace on Saturday afternoon… I went back to Last Epoch a game that is making me extremely happy. I’ve since moved on to the level 80 monolith after fighting my way through the annoying revamp of Lagon at the end of the level 75 monolith. Ace is far enough ahead of me to now be on empowered monoliths, so I am trying to catch up. Slowly bit by bit I am replacing gear that I had held onto for far too long, and that is making me feel more powerful as a result.
When I got to the level 75 Monolith I started saving all of my level 75 chest pieces and then using the stockpile of runes that turn an item into a random unique for that slot. There is a new unique chest that went in with the 0.9 patches called Aaron’s Will, named after the content creator behind the Action RPG channel on youtube. Essentially it makes it so you can no longer summon Skeletal Warriors/Archers and instead for every 4 warriors you can summon, it gives you an additional full sized full strength Bone Golem.
So now I am running around with two giant Pyre Bone Golems, that do stupid amounts of AOE fire damage… and the game feels amazing. Like it felt good before now, but after swapping things out it feels dumb in the best of ways. It also meant that I dropped Skeletons since that didn’t really do me much good and let me pick back up Dread Shade again. I had a blast last night chipping away at the level 80 monolith. I ended up killing the Shade of Orobyss without realizing what I was doing… and now have +5% corruption on all of my maps. I think I am stepping away from Diablo IV and the rhetoric surrounding it because clearly, it was not making me happy. Instead, I am focusing on the things that are making me happy and just moving on with life. If you enjoyed Diablo IV, then awesome. I hope it has a very smooth launch. I hope the next few months turn it into exactly the game you want it to be. For me, I think it is too far off the mark to really salvage.
The post Necros and Pyre Golems appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, and Tamrielo
Hey Folks! Tonight we are down three folks and contemplated not recording at all… eventually deciding on the recording to save ourselves from a mega show. The original intent was to record a fairly short show, but ultimately we ended up chatting away for the full time regardless. Tonight we talk about Diablo IV again and some of our frustrations. This weekend Grace got to play the game in the Open Beta so we start out with their opinions and devolve from there. After that Tam talks a bit about his experiences with Triangle Strategy. Finally, we talk about Adepticon and all of the news coming out of it for new miniature gaming releases.
Diablo IV Login Screen showing my level 24 Barbarian
Good Morning Friends! This weekend I spent quite a bit of time playing the beta for Diablo IV and have some thoughts about my experience. I honestly was not sure if I would be playing the game, but I had a friend gift me a copy unexpectedly so it would have been rude to not play after that. I love ARPGs and over the years Diablo 3 Seasons have been something that I almost set my calendar by. More recently I have gotten extremely engaged in Path of Exile Leagues and spent copious amounts of time playing Grim Dawn, Wolcen, and more recently Last Epoch. Back in the day, I spent a truly excessive amount of time playing Titans Quest, Fate, Torchlight, and the assorted Dungeon Siege games.
Diablo III Rift showing a Loot Explosion
Suffice it to say I am an aficionado of the genre or more specifically the kill-fast-get-big-prizes style of gameplay that comes with the modern ARPG. I like grinding out content for big prizes and tend to play either ranged classes that can do screen-wide explosions or tanky classes that are effectively invulnerable as the multitudes break themselves on my body. I like turning off my brain and just becoming one with the controls and greatly enjoy the mechanical loop of gameplay that I can find in many modern ARPGs. Last night for example I spent the entire evening leveling a Necromancer in Last Epoch while listening to an Audiobook, and I was honestly in heaven. I am trotting out my resume if only to let you understand what sort of engagement with these games I enjoy, and that I am very familiar with the genre.
Diablo IV Barbarian in the tundra with a flaming sword
I have to be honest… at this point, I am not sure if I like Diablo IV. It is at the very least not the game I was expecting it to be. If you stripped off the branding of this game and presented it to me from another publisher with a slightly altered setting and I am not sure if I would have described it as “like Diablo”. The core gameplay loop that I enjoy so much in a Diablo-style game, isn’t really the core gameplay loop of this game. It instead is a game with much more deliberate slow-paced combat and a world that is much more dangerous than I have come to expect from even Path of Exile. Everything about the game feels much more akin to an Isometric MMORPG that you more commonly find on a mobile platform than what I have come to expect from a PC ARPG. So for me at least it is way less of a contemporary of Path of Exile, Diablo II, Diablo III, and Torchlight and more a challenge-focused version of Lost Ark. I am almost certain at some point during its development process someone uttered the phrase “the Dark Souls of ARPGs” even though it lacks the traditional soulslike trappings apart from “don’t get hit”.
The First Boss fight – X’Fal, the Scarred Baron
Diablo IV feels like it has doubled down on the “bossing” style of gameplay from Path of Exile. Every boss has 4 sections of their health bar, and whittling down a quarter will produce some sort of intermission mechanic or phase shift. This has more or less been true with all of the dungeon bosses I have fought as well. They feel a lot like fighting a Legendary mob in Guild Wars 2, so read… super tanky bag of hitpoints that will take you quite a while to whittle through while avoiding a number of other mechanics. Bossing in general in an ARPG is probably my least favorite part of the game, and I gave up on progressing past the Searing Exarch in Path of Exile because I simply did not really enjoy building for that sort of mechanic. So far all of the bosses in Diablo IV seem to be punitive towards a melee playstyle because my brief amount of time spent playing a ranged rogue saw me breezing through them whereas I had to play much more carefully on the Barbarian.
The conquering of Stronghold Malnok
Dungeon delving however is just a small part of the gameplay in Diablo IV, and you are going to spend a much larger amount of time roaming around the open world. Here you will stumble across events that are spawning constantly in an almost Guild Wars 2 style, where you and any players sharing your map can work together to complete them. So far all of the events I have tried can be completed solo, but simply go much faster with a host of randoms. The coolest of these however is the Strongholds which are one-time completed events that will open up new areas to the players. Malnok for example required me to defeat a number of Goatmen shamen that were channeling into a boss in the center of the map. After killing all of these it shifted into a big boss fight, and upon completing it the area turned into a town. This reminds me quite a bit of the area in Witcher 3 where after defeating all of the monsters in a town, the locals come back and set up shop again. It feels cool, but also a bit like any modern Assassin’s Creed or Farcry game with similar zone control mechanics.
A story mission in Diablo IV
One of the places where Diablo IV excels is in its storytelling. Traditionally the bar for storytelling in the ARPG is something you might be at risk of tripping over. While they often have amazing world-building and lore… they often have a pretty hamfisted narrative that is the bare minimum to keep the game from completely falling apart. Diablo IV is a great story game, and some of the side quests honestly are better than the main story. Once again I am going to pull out the Witcher 3 as a reference because a number of the side quests remind me of just how detailed that game got with its off-the-beaten-path narrative. I feel for a lot of people that this is going to be one of those games that they play through all of the stories once and then feel satisfied and walk away never to touch it again. That is going to be a completely reasonable way to approach this game honestly.
Combat on the Barbarian showing a Legendary Drop
I think my core problem with the game in its current state is the moment-to-moment gameplay loop doesn’t feel amazing. The time to kill in combat feels sluggish and not exactly what I have come to expect from the ARPG genre. Sure a Diablo III Demon Hunter feels awful for the first ten levels or so… but those are over in maybe ten minutes. With Diablo IV I was three or four hours into the game and it still felt like I was fighting while mired in quicksand. Admittedly most of my experience comes from playing the Barbarian but if you don’t nail that class… the most straightforward of Diablo archetypes… I have concerns. Playing as a ranged Rogue felt a little bit more snappy, and I’ve heard tales that the Sorceror is extremely overpowered… so then that raises a whole other line of concerns around class balance. What I expected was honestly something that played and felt a bit more like Diablo Immortal, since there is deep parity between the systems of that game and this game… and quite frankly I would probably rather spend my time playing Diablo Immortal were it not for the egregious monetization strategies. I think it is probably a better game across the board.
All of the Legendary Drops I have Seen So Far
The itemization is also lacking at least in what I have come to expect. Magic and Rare items aka Blues and Yellows are effectively what you would expect from any other game. Where things get weird is Legendary Drops. Generally speaking both Legendaries and Uniques from other games are “curated” rolls that are capable of dropping with very specific parameters making them almost always useful for specific builds. Legendaries in this game however are randomly generated items that just have a single legendary trait on the item. So that means it is entirely possible for you to get a Legendary trait on an item that does not make any sense and is generally useless otherwise. Roll curation is a big part of what made legendaries so special in the first place because getting one meant you knew exactly what you were getting ahead of time. A lot of the chase of item drops is a search for specific cornerstone pieces that you need for your build. Screwing with this mechanic is going to at least in part cheapen the search for those build-defining items.
Extracting Imprints from Legendary Items and the Codex of Power
Now one cool aspect of the crafting system is that you can extract any legendary trait from an item, and then imprint it upon another item. So for example, if you have a yellow item that is perfectly rolled but is missing the legendary trait, you can effectively upscale that item into a legendary by adding the trait. The process is destructive and rather cost prohibitive at least with the sorts of money we are able to get in the beta so far. The problem is this is a somewhat flawed process because they also have another system in the game called the Codex of Power. This effectively allows you to collect legendary imprints that are permanent recipes that you can create as many times as you like. What would have been a much better system is that eating a legendary added it to your Codex of Power instead of how it works now and producing a one-time-use item that will ultimately clog your inventory. The codex of power would have been akin to cubing an item in Diablo III and would have added a whole pokemon aspect to trying to find all of the patterns out in the world and add them to your codex. For now, you unlock the Codex through running dungeons and it is a different set of “Legendaries” than the ones you consume and turn into imprints.
Completing an Event by killing monsters to spill blood into a pillar
Throughout the weekend I spent some time threading my comments over on Gamepad.club. In doing so I was reminded by friends of a simple truth. While I might not terribly enjoy the game at the moment, I also did not really love Diablo III at launch either. It was only the significant changes brought on by the Reaper of Souls expansion at the “Loot 2.0” mindset that led me to love that game. Similarly, the Destiny 2 that launched looks very little like the game that exists today. This is sort of the way of the live services game, that it morphs and changes over time to hone in on the types of gameplay that the players want. So while I may not love Diablo IV at this very moment, it does not mean that there is not a Diablo IV in the future that I will not deeply enjoy to the point of setting my calendar around its schedule.
Highly Detailed Dungeon Environment
What I currently see is a game that I think a lot of people are going to play through once and then walk away from. However, it is very clear that Blizzard wants long-tailed transactional income from this game in the form of battle passes and cosmetics. What I do not see is a game that is going to really appeal in large part to the “Core ARPG” demographic that competes in Diablo II: Resurrection Ladders, Diablo III Seasons, and Path of Exile Leagues. The game instead seems to be tailored more to the sensibilities of the MMORPG game player and feels very much akin to the sorts of interactions you might have with a World of Warcraft. If I adjust my expectations to that sort of a game, then Diablo IV honestly holds up pretty well. I would probably rather play this than I would World of Warcraft at that point. However, in that space, I think Guild Wars 2 is doing a far better job of a lot of the things that this game is trying to do with its Strongholds and Zone events.
Lilith from one of the early cinematics
I have to be honest, the game was a little disappointing for me because I was ultimately expecting it to be something that it is not. What I was hoping for was a happy medium between Diablo III and Path of Exile with a glossy coat of paint. What I got instead is something more akin to a darker version of Lost Ark and the mobile isometric MMORPGs. In truth, I already have my happy medium between Diablo III and Path of Exile and it is called Last Epoch… but just because Diablo IV is not what I was expecting does not mean it is a bad game. I highly suggest you judge for yourself and next weekend you will be able to. While this weekend was only for those who had purchased the game, next weekend is as I understand it open to anyone with a Battle.net account. The next period begins on March 24th at 9 am PDT and will conclude on March 27th at 12 pm PDT. If it is anything like this week, you will be able to preload the game roughly a day ahead of time.
Screenshot from Quin69’s stream hitting a 108-minute login queue
I will say if you do plan on participating next weekend… maybe don’t take any time off from work. This is good advice in general, to never take off time specifically for a game launch because it will most likely only end in heartbreak. I was off on Friday already, so I did the dumb thing and tried to play when the servers opened. However, there was a period of time on Twitch where the entire Diablo IV section looked like the above shot of various streamers stuck waiting in extremely long queues. While the servers stabilized by Saturday, I would expect them to be bleeding again when the next phase opens up. This first phase was only for folks who have purchased the game, the next one will open the floodgates and let anyone play. If you are interested in this game, I would highly suggest giving it a test drive before you make the purchase. It likely does not match your expectations.
Did you spend time this weekend playing the Diablo IV Beta? What were your thoughts? Am I being weird for not really being all that into it? Drop me a line below.
The post Diablo IV Beta Thoughts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
