| After more than ten years, can the belated Diablo 4 work? |
Text/Andrew Collection? Stitching monsters? Last weekend and this weekend, Diablo 4 began its external Early Beta and Public Beta, following the last targeted invitation, expanding the game's testing to all players. If the ticket is no longer bounced, then Diablo 4 will be officially released in June this year. At the current stage, the game has reached the "pull out and yo" node. The first time I played Diablo 4 was at BlizzCon more than 3 years ago, when it was mostly a surprise at first sight, and the offline demo was just an early demo of 1 hour. This time, Blizzard released 3 classes, a complete first-act story, and the first of several plots. After experiencing more content in these two 5 days, I found that in addition to continuing some of the traditional gameplay of the series, Diablo 4 also has some slightly unfamiliar new experiences. These new experiences have their surprises and their unsatisfactory aspects. Judging from the current open content, it can be regarded as both highlights and hidden worries.
On the one hand, as a sequel to the current generation of Dark Orthodoxy, the impact and sense of substitution provided by Diablo 4 with the current technical support are top-notch, and the adjustment and improvement of some mechanisms are also in place; On the other hand, the introduction of MMO elements in the game framework and the adjustment of some operation methods, while providing freshness, will inevitably make people worry about the longer-term direction of the game. In addition, for Blizzard, which has not had a "substantial new work" since 2016, the success or failure of Diablo 4 may also be a decisive matter. (The following contains minor spoilers about the plot of the first act, please read as appropriate; Some images may cause discomfort)
01 First Sight 4 Generations: Some Familiar Tastes
First of all, let's talk about the first impression, as early as the beginning of the announcement in 2019, the visual style of Diablo 4 has been basically finalized, and the sequel abandons the style of Diablo 3 partial cartoon/oil painting, and turns to the traditional dark, gothic style of the series closer to Diablo 2.
The character creation page is also obviously applying the style of the 2nd generation Entering the game, a plasma-filled opening CG, and some cult plots and scenes in the subsequent plot, will soon make you realize the tone of this generation.
At the same time, although it is still the classic 45° isometric viewing angle, Diablo 4 greatly enhances the experience at the visual expression level through real-time calculation and scene/shot switching.
In terms of plot, a lot of real-time cutscenes have been added to the game flow, and there are many first-perspective scenes, instead of simply removing UI+ characters from a top-down perspective to do actions. This has significantly improved the sense of narrative substitution of the new work.
In some specific scenes, the game also sets up "observation points", which can show a more macroscopic and deep space through camera movements and close-ups. It can also be regarded as making up for the lack of scene display in some previous works.
Secondly, for the Dark series, action feedback is also an important part of the game experience. After the art style returned to the tradition, the physical feedback and killing effect of the game were also adjusted accordingly. The exaggerated scene of an explosive skill in the previous game falling down, and the corpse flying several feet high out of thin air and then falling is gone. In its place, it has been replaced by a more realistic killing effect: corpses left after the flame burning, bodies frozen by ice skills, explosions of broken ice, severed limbs caused by physical hits, blood splatters... These have a more realistic performance with the support of the next generation.
To put it simply, in the first few hours of getting started with Diablo 4, the consistent atmosphere of the series, the story unfolding, as well as the sense of blow and action feedback in the core battle, these are all familiar tones for veteran players of the series. Thanks to current technology and design concepts, the way the game tells stories has also been somewhat enhanced.
Compared to the series' previous somewhat straightforward plot, some of the story trends in the first act are very unexpected, and throughout the early experience, the intuitive feedback of the game is "very right". In terms of production specifications, Diablo 4 also reveals the appearance of a similar game in the current generation. And the overall performance is above average, which is more surprising than when I first played the demo.
02
More like Diablo 2 or Diablo 3
The Dark Core gameplay should not need to be introduced, after talking about the first impression, let's take a look at the game's equipment and skill system.
If you want to simply and crudely characterize, this part of Diablo 4 is a combination of 2 and 3 generations. Judging from the existing content, it is slightly biased towards the framework of Diablo 3. You can also see these from the details such as UI layout and operation interaction.
In addition to the basic white, blue and yellow suits, there are 3rd generation legends and 2 generations of dark gold in Diablo 4 (although this test did not open Dark Gold equipment acquisition). At present, there is no professional suit (green suit) in the official version for the time being, but after the future continues to operate, there is a high probability that there will be. Under the system of Diablo 4, legendary equipment has become more flexible and seems to have been "downgraded". Under the current design, each legendary piece of equipment has a special affix that can be extracted - just like Diablo 3's Carnay Box, but the ease of operation seems to be more like Dark Mobile Game. Adding the extracted affix to the yellow equipment also upgrades the piece into a new legendary piece of equipment and inherits the strength of the high-level yellow item. It can be foreseen that this is a motivation to repeatedly brush in the middle and late stages. To a large extent, the card plate has been revitalized in yellow, avoiding the embarrassment of becoming a decomposition material in the later stage.
However, with such a simple and crude "combat power/score" as item strength, as well as the setting of item enhancement, it will make people jump to the dark mobile game Previously, in Diablo 3, the effect of class suits was extremely strong, which led to the fact that the game in the late stage could basically only rely on "several suits to choose one + a small number of loose pieces" to form BD, and the flexibility and diversity were somewhat limited. While some recent release development teams are still trying to introduce some new elements drastically, this is still driven by the official Season update, not explored by players themselves. This is also a point that has been criticized from time to time in the long-term operation of Diablo 3. As for Diablo 4, the designer has previously emphasized that there will be a bias for the loose saga and the adjustment of the overall idea to avoid this situation, but the long-term trend in this regard is still a little unclear.
Many legendary pieces still have the potential to build gameplay around it In terms of skill mechanics, the skill tree of the 4th generation also combines some of the characteristics of each of the 2 and 3. Take the mage as an example - the composition of character skills is still generally still the basic skills of "no energy consumption/can be produced", the main output skills that consume energy, defensive skills, functional skills, and the killing moves of long CDs such as finishing skills.
Each active skill grid on the skill tree basically extends some single-choice branches to strengthen the skill itself, which is a bit similar to the rune of the 3rd generation of multiple choices; The tree-shaped skill level distribution and the setting that requires a certain number of points to unlock subsequent skills have some sense of déjà vu of the second generation. In addition to the skill tree, each class also has its own set of mechanics. For example, the mage will unlock the skill enchantment system as it upgrades, in addition to 6 active skills, you can also choose two additional unlocked skills through the enchantment slot. At present, it is mostly triggered, similar to the effect of "automatically release chain lightning every 100 mana consumed" and "20% probability of releasing ice balls when using non-basic skills". It's a bit like a more flexible passive skill that looks like it's scalable. The necromancer's exclusive mechanic is the "customization" of summons, making the skeleton warrior more fleshy, or more flexible and comprehensive - or simply "sacrificed" and turned to enhance the character's attributes.
In this test process, one of the more surprising things in the early combat experience is that from the limited legendary equipment in the current beta version, you can feel the subtle linkage of some equipment and skills. For example, when I was in my teens, I collected the reduction of basic skills to core skills, and the two affixes of the basic skill attack speed bonus, and these two legends alone can build a small range of loops, which makes my combat experience at this stage a lot better.
Or the necromancer who opened this week, relying on the blood mist ring alone can make the gameplay of the corpse explosion circulate well:
As for the rune words that some old players were looking forward to, they were temporarily shelved by the development team, but they had promised to join after a more mature design. At present, it seems that the ideas of Diablo 4 in terms of skills and equipment are generally continuing the framework of the 3rd generation, and avoiding the shortcomings that have been verified as much as possible, while combining some classic settings of the 2nd generation. From the perspective of the dark new work, there is a sense of freshness, and what kind of chemical reaction can be produced by the current proportion of "stitching", or combined with the large and small secret realms that are likely to be in the future, as well as long-term content such as seasons.
03
Is Brush Brush compatible with Big World?
In addition to the above inheritance and adjustment of the main features of the past generations, the parts of Diablo 4 itself that extend out are also worth expanding - firstly, new content under the open world framework, and secondly, changes after the introduction of some so-called MMO elements. One of the most intuitive changes is that the map is larger, and the rhythm of the same plot advancement and errand running tasks is obviously much slower than the previous generation. This feedback is based on the fact that Diablo 4 includes a mount system, but this test did not unlock the mounts, so there was a lot of boring running time during the first act experience. As the map gets bigger, the game's terrain becomes more complex, and many scenes are designed with more staggering and depth, and some locations require characters to climb, slide, or jump back and forth between cliffs. On the bright side, the game can show more map content from a top-down perspective, and from a utilitarian point of view, it may feel that these "redundant" are a bit dragging the pace.
Along with the open-world map, there are also mining and medicine gathering, corresponding to several materials for equipment, or potion alchemy.
In addition, the big world of Diablo 4 is inevitably stuffed with some list-style collection content, such as some "statues of Lilith" will be linked to higher rewards such as skill points, which means that as long as they are not very Buddhist players, they must go to the map to collect. Open the map page, and some items such as regional reputation will also be familiar to MMO players.
This also brings us to the topic of introducing MMO elements in Diablo 4. Frankly speaking, judging from the current testing experience, the content disclosed by the last invitation to test, and the various news released by the current official, I don't agree with the argument that "Diablo 4 has become an MMO", and the core gameplay and low-level system of the game are still the setting of the traditional Dark series. At present, MMO elements appear, which are nothing more than some additional condiments, and they cannot reach the degree of qualitative change. During the test, the first thing that made me clear about "adding some MMO elements to the game" was the markings on the map for side quests.
I picked up a few side lines on the main line, and the moment I opened the map and saw the mission range, I couldn't help but blurt out: "Isn't this World of Warcraft?" Of course, the MMO-style feedback in the game doesn't stop there: after entering the town, you can see other players walking around, and in the town, the player's default perspective is automatically lowered; Other players who appear in scenes such as wild world bosses and randomly refreshed public events will invigorate this perception.
In terms of levels, the current game greatly strengthens the presence of dungeons. Some dungeons are linked to class-specific/universal extraction power, and it is inevitable to open it once. But the other quest experience is a bit lackluster: first, the distribution of monsters needs to be optimized; The second is that the quest target can be a little unfriendly - for example, after clearing the monsters of the entire map, you will find that you have to get a certain collection at the other end of the map to settle. According to previously released information, Diablo 4 also has a similar mechanism to Diablo 3 Small Secret Realm. Judging from the tonality of the game's continuation of the Diablo 3 framework, it is likely that there will be a big secret in the future version. With these layers, it should be able to support PVE targets in different dimensions. Otherwise, the current copy-heavy PVE content alone will inevitably make people skeptical of "brush resistance". To be fair, it's hard to see how the core gameplay of the Diablo series has changed dramatically, or led the way in the 200X years. The open world and MMO elements are the development team's solution to the problem of "dark new works". With the blessing of freshness, this part of the experience has some differences and highlights. The current combination is not blunt, but it is not outstanding either.
04
Blizzard's next Diablo
In the early morning of the 18th, on the day of the last test service, the traditional programs of Dark 4 called Carmen, Queuing and Dropping were staged one after another. Poor preparation is one thing, but also the enthusiasm of the players. According to official data, 1 million players reached level 20 or more in the last 3-day test.
The Diablo series is in need of a new work, and 12 years have passed since the release of Diablo 3, and now Diablo 4 is more than 10 years away from its predecessor. When it comes to Blizzard's signboard, most people probably think of Warcraft first. In the development of Blizzard, the Dark series happened to stand at several important nodes. In the previous article "Blizzard's Midlife Crisis", we combed through this interesting timeline. It's just that at that time we probably defined the "mid-life crisis" prematurely, and after writing this article, the 2018 Carnival, when the outside world was looking forward to the official announcement of Diablo 4, Blizzard took out the dark mobile game, and for a while public opinion was in an uproar and the stock price was cut. The following year, our poll for coverage of BlizzCon in 2019 showed that compared to the new expansion pack of World of Warcraft, OW2, which announced PVE content, Diablo 4, which has experienced some ups and downs, is undoubtedly Blizzard's most "new" and most anticipated product. In recent years, the stormy blizzard also needs a new product to prove itself.
Dark-like gameplay audiences also need a weighty new product, such as Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem two or three years ago, a small team crowdfunding product that can occupy a good Steam hot position in the short term. Judging from the existing test content, the series of new works from the pioneering category are always much more solid. After all, the so-called hidden worries I have listed throughout have covered most possible scenarios - but it is really unlikely that the future official version will trample on all these mines. I have listed all the problems that may arise, which is nothing more than a careful restraint in anticipation.
It's just that the only thing that makes me feel is that the twists and turns in the release time of Diablo 4 seem to have been unfortunately said by me...
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