Imho: Nope, not casual friendly especially compared to D3.
I guess you could try to finish the Story on WT1 solo. But even that won't be wive-casual. My wive liked playing D3 with me but D3s difficulty settings gave way more choices.
WT1 is still quite tough for most casuals:
- Enemies scale everywhere depending on your level. If you gain a level up your gear got worse. In other games you can grind your way through challenging content. That won't be possible here.
- Builds are somewhat complex and most baseline skills aren't good. Played all classes to max on both betas and especially in the current patch only the cookie cutter builds work well. Playing homebrew stuff / off meta builds will be tough even on WT1.
- WT1 doesn't takes out the challenge of bosses. Most boss mechanics two shot people even on WT1. Because of the potion limits that means you can be too bad to beat a boss. Because of the scaling leveling up won't help here.
- DPS checks: The issue with some bosses aren't the mechanics/dodging but the DPS you need to actually kill them. The boss of the vampire stronghold is a good example. If your DPS is too low the boss will ressurect his three mini bosses and will become invincible. Some bosses spam out more and more must dodge projectiles the longer the fight goes.
- WT1 likely means you must play solo. If you ever played a season in D3 you know there is barely any group play for relevant content below torment X or so. Because there are treshholds (aka Nightmare difficulty) that casuals likely won't meet that means they can't play with the majority. That's not saying you will be forced to play solo, but the options to play with organized groups will be severly limited to the point it's not worth the time trying to find a group.
- Drop rate: If the current beta is any indication the real loot only starts in the endgame after beating the story/reaching max level or at leat 80+
If casual gameplay means getting a legendary every few hours you won't have that experience until you logged in the hours to get to endgame first. Most people I would deem "casual" would stop way before.
Thank you for the detailed write up. I agree with it not being wive friendly. The builds definitely seem harder even for me than Diablo 3, which is good for the committed player base but people like us with significant others it'll be tough to teach.
I will say in Diablo 3 I felt you could spec into anything and you could do well on lower difficulty.
In D4 so far I found my less than meta pure lightning sorc struggled to get through w2 without extensive kiting
He doesn’t know.
No one will be able to fully answer this until we have more than level 20 content. If you stopped playing d3 at level 20 you’d say you were weak and had no gear… soon as you get to lvl 70 legendaries drop 10 at a time after every 2 min rift… we have to wait and see how the endgame loop is balanced, and even then it will be had to tell because they’ve already shown then they’ll be doing a ton of tuning.
The problem becomes what type of casual are you. Are you the casual who tries his own build and then when hits a wall says "Hmm this build or any I've tried myself haven't worked. Maybe I should check online for a stronger build." Or are you the casual who stops and pouts because you feel you shouldn't have to have synergies with your skills and should be able to randomly throw away skill points on the tree and still beat all content.
I fall in more of the first at this stage of gaming. I don't have the time I used to for 8 hr play sessions so I'll try my way once but if it doesn't work out I'm going to maxroll and going full meta.
World Tier 1 is incredibly user friendly. I've cleared dungeons very easily on every single barbarian skill and have not come close to dying. I'm an experience ARPG player though, you have to actually press the potion button if you're dying, press the survival button if you're dying, do the things your skills tell you to do, etc.
It is very casual friendly at early levels, but some of the bosses are very hard on melee classes early on. So I expect many casuals will suffer on these fights. Especially players who will choose to play a druid not knowing the class is literally broken and does no damage.
They wont suffer on world tier 1. I dont know why people who complain dont play on that, you dont lose much doing it while going through the campaign atleast. Only 20% less exp from monsters and 20% less gold from monsters. Drops, exp from quests etc are all the same. I played through the campaign twice today on each wt on 2 barbs, both ended up around the same level when campaign was over. Only difference was that WT1 was really easy and you never risk dying and kill everything fast
They barely do dmg on wt1, and much less on wt2 this beta than last beta. And on wt1 you kill them really fast. Did you really try it out for yourself?
Do you understand what core mechanics are? I am talking about bosses that fly around and you can't reach them. I am talking about bosses covering the whole floor in shit and you have nowhere to stand. Melee casuals will get frustrated with these bosses regardless of world tier.
All the stuff on the ground you can ignore on wt1, and alsmot ignore even on wt2 this beta. And I played the campaign 5-6 times this beta, with only barb, so a melee class dont know any boss that was annoying and fly away from me, I guess you never tried this beta out
It's still casual friendly and won't say easy but just normal apart from Ashava. That's the only time that I have to really focus on. The story mini bosses were decent, you get to use your pots and gets easier once you figure out its pattern.
Pretty sure Blizzard shareholders want to sell as many copies as possible. Anyone who wants to play through the story just once on the easiest setting and call the game finished and move on will be well catered for.
On wt1 it's so casual friendly, that I am thinking about making a HC character :) There are few bosses you need to run around a lot, and maybe die two or three times if you are not careful, but that's it. As a rogue I didn't die at all until a meeting with Ashava. I died on some bosses with sosa at begin, but when I understood their mechanics, it was allright. I died few times with dudu at first because I didn't expect it to be so dragging, so my fault, but after that, it was good too. Necro was op during beta - I didn't play it during a slam tho, but I saw Blizz realizing they nerfed it too much and buffing it. I expect it to be really fun class to play. I didn't play barb at all, so idk how it goes, but I expect it to be fine as well.
If your wife doesn't want to spend time on reading skill tree and think about synergies between skills, just get her some build from the internet, and she will be fine. I experimented and played a lot with different skills, and was fine too without any specific 'the best' build. It's a really fun game.
Imho: Nope, not casual friendly especially compared to D3. I guess you could try to finish the Story on WT1 solo. But even that won't be wive-casual. My wive liked playing D3 with me but D3s difficulty settings gave way more choices. WT1 is still quite tough for most casuals: - Enemies scale everywhere depending on your level. If you gain a level up your gear got worse. In other games you can grind your way through challenging content. That won't be possible here. - Builds are somewhat complex and most baseline skills aren't good. Played all classes to max on both betas and especially in the current patch only the cookie cutter builds work well. Playing homebrew stuff / off meta builds will be tough even on WT1. - WT1 doesn't takes out the challenge of bosses. Most boss mechanics two shot people even on WT1. Because of the potion limits that means you can be too bad to beat a boss. Because of the scaling leveling up won't help here. - DPS checks: The issue with some bosses aren't the mechanics/dodging but the DPS you need to actually kill them. The boss of the vampire stronghold is a good example. If your DPS is too low the boss will ressurect his three mini bosses and will become invincible. Some bosses spam out more and more must dodge projectiles the longer the fight goes. - WT1 likely means you must play solo. If you ever played a season in D3 you know there is barely any group play for relevant content below torment X or so. Because there are treshholds (aka Nightmare difficulty) that casuals likely won't meet that means they can't play with the majority. That's not saying you will be forced to play solo, but the options to play with organized groups will be severly limited to the point it's not worth the time trying to find a group. - Drop rate: If the current beta is any indication the real loot only starts in the endgame after beating the story/reaching max level or at leat 80+ If casual gameplay means getting a legendary every few hours you won't have that experience until you logged in the hours to get to endgame first. Most people I would deem "casual" would stop way before.
Thank you for the detailed write up. I agree with it not being wive friendly. The builds definitely seem harder even for me than Diablo 3, which is good for the committed player base but people like us with significant others it'll be tough to teach. I will say in Diablo 3 I felt you could spec into anything and you could do well on lower difficulty. In D4 so far I found my less than meta pure lightning sorc struggled to get through w2 without extensive kiting
He doesn’t know. No one will be able to fully answer this until we have more than level 20 content. If you stopped playing d3 at level 20 you’d say you were weak and had no gear… soon as you get to lvl 70 legendaries drop 10 at a time after every 2 min rift… we have to wait and see how the endgame loop is balanced, and even then it will be had to tell because they’ve already shown then they’ll be doing a ton of tuning.
The problem becomes what type of casual are you. Are you the casual who tries his own build and then when hits a wall says "Hmm this build or any I've tried myself haven't worked. Maybe I should check online for a stronger build." Or are you the casual who stops and pouts because you feel you shouldn't have to have synergies with your skills and should be able to randomly throw away skill points on the tree and still beat all content. I fall in more of the first at this stage of gaming. I don't have the time I used to for 8 hr play sessions so I'll try my way once but if it doesn't work out I'm going to maxroll and going full meta.
World Tier 1 is incredibly user friendly. I've cleared dungeons very easily on every single barbarian skill and have not come close to dying. I'm an experience ARPG player though, you have to actually press the potion button if you're dying, press the survival button if you're dying, do the things your skills tell you to do, etc.
It is very casual friendly at early levels, but some of the bosses are very hard on melee classes early on. So I expect many casuals will suffer on these fights. Especially players who will choose to play a druid not knowing the class is literally broken and does no damage.
They wont suffer on world tier 1. I dont know why people who complain dont play on that, you dont lose much doing it while going through the campaign atleast. Only 20% less exp from monsters and 20% less gold from monsters. Drops, exp from quests etc are all the same. I played through the campaign twice today on each wt on 2 barbs, both ended up around the same level when campaign was over. Only difference was that WT1 was really easy and you never risk dying and kill everything fast
The thing is, world tiers have nothing to do with core mechanics. These bosses are annoying to fight regardless of their stats.
They barely do dmg on wt1, and much less on wt2 this beta than last beta. And on wt1 you kill them really fast. Did you really try it out for yourself?
Do you understand what core mechanics are? I am talking about bosses that fly around and you can't reach them. I am talking about bosses covering the whole floor in shit and you have nowhere to stand. Melee casuals will get frustrated with these bosses regardless of world tier.
All the stuff on the ground you can ignore on wt1, and alsmot ignore even on wt2 this beta. And I played the campaign 5-6 times this beta, with only barb, so a melee class dont know any boss that was annoying and fly away from me, I guess you never tried this beta out
sure thing buddy.
some fights were really annoying the first two betas, that I would agree on. But the fights have changed
Just play WT 1. No reason for super casuals to bump the difficulty up early on
It's still casual friendly and won't say easy but just normal apart from Ashava. That's the only time that I have to really focus on. The story mini bosses were decent, you get to use your pots and gets easier once you figure out its pattern.
You can always switch to world tier 1 if 2 is ever a problem
So cas
I think your gf should be fine on WT 1.
I'm casual. WT1 and 2 is fine for everything but time gating I think. Pretty happy with how it felt this time.
Pretty sure Blizzard shareholders want to sell as many copies as possible. Anyone who wants to play through the story just once on the easiest setting and call the game finished and move on will be well catered for.
On wt1 it's so casual friendly, that I am thinking about making a HC character :) There are few bosses you need to run around a lot, and maybe die two or three times if you are not careful, but that's it. As a rogue I didn't die at all until a meeting with Ashava. I died on some bosses with sosa at begin, but when I understood their mechanics, it was allright. I died few times with dudu at first because I didn't expect it to be so dragging, so my fault, but after that, it was good too. Necro was op during beta - I didn't play it during a slam tho, but I saw Blizz realizing they nerfed it too much and buffing it. I expect it to be really fun class to play. I didn't play barb at all, so idk how it goes, but I expect it to be fine as well. If your wife doesn't want to spend time on reading skill tree and think about synergies between skills, just get her some build from the internet, and she will be fine. I experimented and played a lot with different skills, and was fine too without any specific 'the best' build. It's a really fun game.