Most likely a quest area.
I grabbed a KFC Little and some fries this week so I could play this weekend. Work was a bit slow Friday, so I took a half day and played for about 3-4 hours after sitting through a 30-40 minute queue. There were a lot of network related issues like rubber banding, disconnects, game state not correct (events showing on the map but not in the world). I think I died twice to lag spikes that hit when I waded into a group of mobs with my Barbarian. All of this I expected though, and is pretty typical for any Blizzard beta. I think Iāve hit level 11 so far, playing on Veteran.
Iāve played all the Diablos, and this is certainly another of them. Iām just not sure itās an improvement yet. I remember reading or hearing at some point that they were going for a darker Diablo (itās even in this thread title), and if the prologue and Act I are an indication, thatās really guided them in both the art direction and the narrative.
The game looks really washed out, dark, and gray. That may be in part because Act I is in a bleary frozen area, but even the interiors look this way. Iām on the default settings, so I havenāt tried messing with the graphic options at all, but this seems an intentional choice so I doubt thereās much that can be done about it.
The story is also quite a bit darker, and the cutscenes are more graphic than what I remember from past Diablos. Iām know Iāll be in the minority, but itās a step (or two) too far for me. I played through D2 and D3 stories with my wife several times, and I know from the start that this one will be right out for her.
That said, I enjoy the core gameplay loop so far, but not sure I find it better than D3. Itās hard to comment on some of the systems because itās still so early, but Iām also one of those that preferred the more open (in terms of being able to switch), focused skill system in D3 to the D2 style, and it seems like D4 is leaning more towards D2. I would rather be able to switch around and experiment with different builds freely than be forced to pay to respec. And putting multiple points into a skill just to see minor incremental gains is just not as fun to me, although it does seem they put some customization options beyond the incremental skill points in the tree.
Iāll keep playing through the beta (looking forward to trying out the Druid), but I may end up skipping launch and waiting to see if they end up doing an overhaul similar to what theyāve done in the past.
Oh, and take any performance issues I had with a grain of salt. Iām playing with a below spec processor (still rocking my i7-920), but 14GB RAM and GTX 1060 running off SSD. I still think most of the problems are network issues on their end, but I canāt rule out the CPU on some of the lag.
[edit] Forgot to mention, like a few others in thread I was generally wading through most fights without issue, but I hit level 10 in the middle of a dungeon (the one in the North, Forbidden City?) and died 5 or 6 times on the boss. I donāt know if it was scaled to account for the improved health potions or what, or whether my lack of skills was the major part (I had focused all my points into Bash and Whirlwind) but that fight was much, much harder, and thatās not necessarily a bad thing.
And thanks to whoever posted about the emote to get out of the dungeon. Iām planning to run the others and that will save some time.
