Beta personal feedback

[SlapZ]

So - After playing for some time, and finishing Nightmare Difficulty I guess it's time to give some feedback from Sorcerers perspective. Let's start:

1: Game stability, general changes. (TL:DR - Bugs repaired, things implemented, keep up the good work.)

As far as my experiance goes: perfect. Game didn't crashed a single time for me on whatever occason. FPS change is solid, and the sprite animations don't glitch due to it. One second delay on skipping intro and logos is irritating, but nothing more. Definitely not a priority. Some people are having mouse-lag issues, but as I stated in another topic: It can be their OS problem, not the game itself. Need some tests with build-in Windows "enchance pointer precision" option, MarC mouse fix and v-synch. I've heard Belzebub's has sound problems on WINE, but they can be somehow fixed by forcing the usage of specific drivers in some way or another. The game also seems to have no problem with dual GPU's of laptops, which I was worried about. Good work.

While I feel waypoints were not entirely necessarily, I like that I don't have to run to the Cave/Catacombs entrance every time. I've noticed quite the number of bugs you fixed, especially the wretched chain lightning missing tiles and projectile not hitting targets. Kudos for that especially.

2: Items (TL;DR - Rares could be tweaked, recipies start to drop too late, staves are obsolete. Apart from that: Itemization is almost perfect.)

Item Sets: Found (or provided by other charactar) on appropriate level give huge advantage, especially on lower difficulty. While single set items are generally less usefull that a good craft/rare, the effectiveness of two or more items are sky rocketing. It was also a good idea do limit most sets to 3-4 items at best. Not only does this allow the rest of character's gear to compliment, but also actually allows players to complete sets. All in all: I think Belzebub is the second game/mod in which Item sets are done RIGHT, first one being MedianXL.

Unique Items: Solid. New or recovered uniques are awesome, usefull, and they carry on the legacy of D1: They have bad sides as well as good sides. I also like the way old uniques were tweaked a bit (namely thinking cap not having one durability). The idea of introducing "alternate" version of certain unique items is also interesting (The Undead Crown / Helm of Spirits, Tarnhelm / Thinking cap).

Rare items: Potentially the best items one can carry. Fishing for Rare items in Gheed's item pool is suprisingly good money sink, as I personally drowned A LOT of gold already, and got few items that are insanely good on various character classes. One thing is: They seem to be unable to roll negative values. I personally think that allowing them to roll one negative stat would add some flavour.

Magic items: Those on the other hand suffer from a bit too much negative values, and the effect of this has big impact in the start of the game. It helps control the amount of gold, and well as crafting materials, but it is a bit of a overkill.

Crafted items / Crafting system: First thing is I do not understand the reason of high prices for selling recipies. Not that it matters much, but selling a single recipe for 35k+ gold is insane. Second thing is the difference between player level and recipies level. Once the players starts to find his first recipies for crafted items: they are already rendered obsolete by items directly found by the player. An easy fix to this is allowing the recipies to drop earlier. "second tier" recipies also suffer a bit from this problem, but they are still good. About the crafted items themselves: Provided the player has luck for rolls and patience for farming: They are the best items player can get. I also fail to see reasoning behind not being able to put crafting mats into trade stash.

Staves problem:
Sheer amount of stat and bonuses from shield and weapon usually renders two-handers useless. This is especially visible with Sorcerer and his staves, as without INSANELY good roll on staff (and only rare and craft that is) it's suicide to not use weapon&shield. Perhaps building-in permament bonus spell power in all staves would fix the problem.

Relevancy of properties:
I like the way many classes are suppose to use many different bonuses from weapons instead of going only, for example - Magic/Mana/Spell lvl. Faster Hit Recovery, Bonus Crit, Bonus Crit damage, Faster casting, Magic Find: It all suplements characters instead of being useless addon to single, most valuable stat.

[SlapZ]

3: Spells (TL;DR - mostly fine, some desperately need tweaking. Magic requirements are over-the-top.)

Fire Bolt, Firewall, Guardian, Lightning, Chain Lightning, Lightning wall, Frost Shard, Circle of Ice, Healing, Heal Other, Holy Bolt, Warp, Telekinesis, Phasing, Mind Mace, Flash - All fine. Magic requirement, Mana coefficiency, damage and cooldowns are exactly the way they are supposed to be.

Nova, Immolation, Frozen orb and Flame Wave's damage are too low considering (especially the last one's RIDICULOUS ) mana cost. On paper the damage and effect seems fine for AoE spells like those, but in practice those spells are rendered useless by every other counterpart. Nova and Immolation one-second cooldown also seems misplaced due of the former defects.

Golem spell is severely underpowered. His damage is fine (none), but his endurance is non-existant, his cooldown is three times longer than his effective life-span. Heal Other does little-to-no help here. Due to the amount of charge damage he isn't usefull as a distraction, and in terms of scouting Guardian spell is simply better.

Apocalypse needs to have it's mana cost adjusted, perhaps the cooldown could also be increased to 3-5 seconds. But those nerfes can't take place without adressing the issues with Flame Wave and Immolation.

Fireball and Ice Blast have tendencies to either deal severely reduced damage, or to somehow MISS completely the target they directly hit, even with Magic to-hit value of over 360%. Ice Blast's description could use some info about the spell push-back effect. Both spells also suffer from Higher Magic requirements because of the projectile speed on lower levels.

Stone curse is useless. Literally. Every monster on which this spell could be a viable tactic is virtually immune to it, either by design or resist chance. You could add small AoE to it to make it usefull on normal monsters, or add cooldown to it and make it usefull on champion-type monsters. Right now I fail to see the reason for this spell to exist.

Inferno could use some more spell damage, especially given it's lightning-style damage spread and limited range.

Charged bolt's mana cost should be increased, as in it's current state is several times more powerfull than other spells on low levels. Be it multi or single target.

Blizzard and Meteor Cluster are generally weak early on, and they are becoming usefull only when leveled up a bit. Could use some bigger damage on earlier spell levels.

Sentinel, Dark Pact - both suffer from far to long cooldowns.

You could return the options to read spellbooks of spells already maxed out. They don't have to return mana

One last thing to adress while talking about spells is the value of Magic stat required for learning higher levels of spells. Tier (spellbook page) III and IV magic requirement is WAY over-the top. I understand this could have been introduced to make Sorcerer more gear-dependant, and to limit spellcasting of warriors and rogues. But in practice it feels that from level 26-28 Sorcerer's progress is crippled, especially that higher tier offensive spellsbooks can't be bought, or can be bought on level 36+.

[SlapZ]

4: Enemies (TL:DR - instant hitlocks and teleport haste needs to go.)

Normal monsters are fine, at least on Normal and Nightmare difficulty. Amount of resists and immunes are fine, Health and Damage could be toned down a bit on higher levels, but is still good and makes the player feel he really is in a hostile lapirynth rather than a theme park.

I like the idea of implementing champion monster groups, though they shouldn't roll triple immunities on higher difficulties. Elemental Drain skill has too long cooldown for such enemies, and items lowering resists usually don't help much then, making the enemy suffer invisible amounts of damage.

Unique monsters and Boss monsters can sometime have too big effective healthpool due to the combination of their abilties. This can make the fight longer, A LOT longer (I fought Horazon for half an hour) or basically a brick wall. Those are usually effects of monsters having haste+teleport/charge attack(Risen Hero, One of Horazon's pets, Bloodlord), or defensive teleport/haste (Horazon) with high defense/resists. Being instantly hit-locked (unable to move, run, cast or attack)or being unable to damage target (constantly teleporting before projectile / attack hits) isn't really a good design. Think Duriel in D2 classic. This is especially true due the fact that some theoretically-reliable strategies, such as using Stone Curse or Golem, are rendered ineffective due to those spell's properties. This in the end forces players to use exploits instead of tactics.

5: Cooldowns (TL:DR - too long.)

As Belzebub stands today, I've seen basically three kinds of cooldown: One second cooldowns on spell, which are meant to block the spell from being spammed. They do their job perfectly, but the spell choice is arguable.

Second type are long-tine cooldowns on crucial skills or spells. Those ones are problematic: The cooldowns are a bit too long. I'm talkng mainly about Elemental Drain, Etheralize, Temporal Slowdown and Dark Pact spell. Elemental Drain's cooldown is a bit too much on higher difficulty levels, as many times it forces the escape from the fight just to stand in place and do nothing for some time. Temportal Slowdown and Etheralize effects last too short in corelation with their cooldown. While agree that adjusting their single-use uptime could be a problem, lowering their cooldown shouldn't be. The cooldown on Dark Pact is especially long, and while I understand the cooldown is there to stop melee classes from having infinite mana and health due to Life Drain, it's too much.
Dark PAct should have 10-20 second cooldown, while the class-specific skills (and not only those of a Sorceer) should be reduced to 60 second TOP (Imho some should be lowered to 35-45 seconds).

[edited]Forgot about third type: short cooldowns lasting few seconds. Thankfully there are few of them, as well as generally very few cooldowns in the game. I think this is a great, especially in modern times in which balance of every skill in every game is centered around longer or shorter cooldown, which is retarded.

6: Quests (TL:DR - Yup, that's a cow alright...)

Good implementation, good rewards. From what we can see in the forum some people can have problems with completing them(by finding the objective), but in the end they can always ask on the forum. It also won't be long before uncle google will be able to help them out. My only "but" would take the form of one of previous arguments: Some boss-type enemies in quests can take forever to kill, or they can even became an obstacle impossible to deal with untill the player over-levels the content.

To sum it up: Kawal zajebistej roboty.
This is one of the best mods I've ever played (and I've played quite a lot of them), and I can honestly say it's equal to legends like The Dark Mod or MedianXL. I still kind of miss Hellfire's Crypt levels and music, but I MOST DEFINITELY DO NOT MISS the retarded Hive levels. Thank you, and keep up the good work when you'll have the time.

Had to cut the feedback into several posts, as it was apparently too big for one and screwed the search function.

[AlinBallin]

good feedback. with arguments n all. some stuff r debatable tho since im a barbarian player i dont see everything the same way. ill re-read this later and post some arguments. kind of getting super late now working in 5hours

[DREWPICKLES]

Very good feedback, i agree with almost everything here and i hope that the developer takes a look at these possible changes and tries to implement them in the near future.

The one thing i don't exactly agree with is the uselessness of stone curse. From what i have seen the only monsters who are not affected by the spell are ones with unique names (bosses and champion monsters that have a name other than the random prefix+suffix). I find it extremely useful for killing really tough champions with haste or behemoth, to the point where i use it even playing as a barbarian. I could just be getting lucky though, i will try this on enemies more often.

[Jofuss]

(Preface: I was playing Diablo 1 + Hellfire until the beta went public here so my memory of them is fresh.)
Golem and Stone Curse


Golem and Stone curse were severely overpowered in Diablo 1 (+Hellfire.) Anyone who tries to deny this is lying to themselves because they liked to take advantage of it. Tri-immune mob? Who cares, stone curse Golem and Big-Stick.

That being said, Golem and Stone curse are useless in Belzebub. By the time you get Golem, it is barely useful and it just gets worse from there. Heal other on Golem would be nice but since he dies so fast and its a frantic mousehunt to try and find him before he does, you usually end up hitting a monster instead.

Stone curse is just as bad. When you get it there is really no need for it since you wont normally see tri-immunes (quad-immune?) and you should be facerolling anyways. Then it happens... a big ole meanie comes up that not a single spell will hit... Firebolt, lightning and frost shard all just pass right through... "Crap crap crap!" You exclaim as you frantically look for blood star, flash, bonespirit (whatever you have at the moment.) just to have that not work either. You say "Stone curse, Golem, Big-Stick I choose you!" just to see a floating "Immune."

Now granted I'm probably sounding like I'm advocating for the overpowered facerolling Golem/Stonecurse of vanilla Diablo. That is simply not the case. They were far too powerful there and would be here too if similar. I personally am ok with just ignoring the fact they are in my spellbook. There are new ways around the problems that old school Golem and Stonecurse cured, negatives to monster resists and whatnot. I read the book if I get it but know I will never use it. I highly doubt the developers of this mod want any spell treated this way.

I have no idea of the plans for the Necromancer class, but I'm thinking Stonecurse and Golem SHOULD be useless... To everyone but the necromancer...

[Jofuss]

Items

Rares can't roll negative? I haven't noticed but if that's true that's a major oversight in my opinion.

Negative magic prefixes and suffixes was something severely lacking in Diablo 2. Not every magic item or effect should be beneficial. I personally am OK with the amount of negative magic items in early game. They drop off quite a bit in later levels though and should still be seen somewhat regularly. The truly good magic items should be less common. Truly good rares should be just that, Rare.

While I do not know how hard it would be to implement, some negatives could possibly have a hidden benefit.

Lower AC/Durability? - Perhaps it should also lower the strength requirement because it likely would weigh less in the real world.

Lower Damage weapons? - Lower Strength or Dexterity requirements depending on the actual prefix or suffix? Or possibly increased durability. If a weapons edge is already worn, wont it be more resistant to wearing more?

Perhaps some of the positive prefixes and suffixes might want higher requirements?

Massive Maul of Sturdiness sounds to me like it might be a much heaver weapon to hold than a Tin Maul of Brittleness.

This could just be me though.

[Jofuss]

Cooldowns

I get it... You don't want the super powerful skills and spells to be spammed into oblivion. I agree with the choice. Although you do find you are either always on cooldown waiting for it to come off to move on, or sadly not using the skills/spells at all due to the micromanagement required because of the long cooldowns.

I don't think they should be greatly reduced, but I agree that they should be reduced.

(Disregard for short cool down spells such as guardian and whatnot... those are fine)[/b]

[andronnik]

About staffes. I don't quite agree, i think staffes are really good in this game. Although not on early levels, but now that i got into Hell difficulty, there are monsters with 4 immunities, so a staff that lowers the resists of mobs is the only way to kill them
First i was carrying a staff, and a sword+shield with me. Now i only carry 2 staffs for different monster resistance reductions, plus staffs give you spell-cast speed and spell power too!

[Jofuss]

I second what andronnik said about staves.

Personally I'm too lazy to just switch back and forth all the time so I have been mostly running around with a spellpower staff. For a time I had that unique +firewall and lightning wall staff but eventually crafted a staff that had 18% spell power which added more damage without adding mana cost. I just recently picked up a 24% spellpower magic staff with a junk additional modifier that is serving me for the moment.

Crafting

I have found that even with disenchanting every single item I can that drops I never really have enough resources to craft much of anything. I am somewhere in the mid 30's with 25 recipes and well over a hundred azure and crimson oils but the gems are lacking. I understand that crafting can make some real good items but by the time I was able to craft the items, they were inferior to those shopped/dropped. I have crafted a total of five sorcerers type pieces and it has used all of certain gems that are shared and realistically only the staff was anything I was able to get any use of.

It seems to me that by the time you are actually able to get a recipe, or the materials, whatever you make is nothing more than twink gear...

*BUG*

On the crafting note, I have noticed what may be an unintended "feature" of crafting.

1.) I craft a belt, the belt gets a durability modifier and now has a durability of 96 (or whatever)
2.) I craft a new belt using the previously crafted belt, because I don't like what rolled, and it gets a durability modifier again and now has a durability of 148 (or such)

It seems that the durability is remaining during the rerolling and stacking up.

/*BUG*

[SlapZ]

As to some of your own feedback Jofuss:

(...) I'm thinking Stonecurse and Golem SHOULD be useless... To everyone but the necromancer...(...)

I whole heartedly disagree. If this was the case, then both Stone Curse and Golem should have been made Necromancer's exclusive skill, and not a normal spell. Also it was common for both Sorcerer and Rogue to use golem and stone curse. I see no reason to strip those classes from those spells. Also about those two being overpowered in classic game: It was needed. Either those, or waving around few staves of apocalypse. Triple immunities in D1 are a failed design, and should only be met in multiplayer games.

(...) While I do not know how hard it would be to implement, some negatives could possibly have a hidden benefit. (...) Perhaps some of the positive prefixes and suffixes might want higher requirements? (...)

God almighty... It is an interesting idea, but this would mean rebalancing every item in general, as well as every prefix / sufix in game... Not to mention Crafted, Unique and Set items... Definitelly too much work, especially when the development on Belzebub is basically on hold, and there are other issues to adress.

(...)i think staffes are really good in this game.(...)

(...)I second what andronnik said about staves.(...)

Now that I went on Hell difficulty, I admit staves (or rather - my crafted staff) is better than on lower difficulties. Spell damage boost is crucial, and weapon&shield combo doesn't give any more survivalability against enemies now.

(...) I understand that crafting can make some real good items but by the time I was able to craft the items, they were inferior to those shopped/dropped. I have crafted a total of five sorcerers type pieces and it has used all of certain gems that are shared and realistically only the staff was anything I was able to get any use of.

Methinks that crafting / gambling were meant to be alternatives:
Crafting: Destroy item for materials, create items from materials
Gambling: Sell item for gold, gamble item for gold
If You'd sell all those items and not disenchant them, you'd also had the chance to gamble few rares from gheed.

some crafts
some rares

So as you can see, both rare items as well as crafted items can be usefull (Using this staff on 42 lvl in hell...), but to get them you simply need luck.

For now I think the prime concerns of Belzebub are Instantly stunlocking single enemies with haste+invisibility/charge/teleport. We can see it on all the forum. Those monsters are for ranged classes the same thing that Grimspike pushback was for melee. The only difference is that Melee classes couldn't keep themselves in melee, and range can't keep their distance. Grimspike was hotfixed due to this, I really see no reason not to change those monsters.

[Jofuss]

Don't get me wrong... I think stone curse and golem should have utility for each class. What I was getting at is that they should not be like they were in classic. I just think it would be better that they be useless to everyone but necromancer that be as overpowered as in classic. This was mostly me showing how uncreative I am in that I can't offer a real suggestion on how to balance them out good.

I understand development is currently stalled and I'm only adding on to the going thread, not because I'm expecting anything to actually come of it in any short order.

You aren't kidding that negatives having positive effects and positive effects having negatives associated to them being a lot of work and that was more of an academic idea rather than a realistic or even necessarily requested feature. There are most definitely more important things to work on before anything like this, I agree completely.

I've never really been a fan of gambling for items. That's why I'm glad to have the crafting option. Its just sad when you spend a bunch of time to finally get the chance to craft something and it ends up being a dud. Gambling would definitely be faster and cheaper. Its just frustrating when you have 326 azure oil, 143 crimson oil, a few flawless gems, dozens of normal gems, and a bunch of flawed gems....but not sapphires or diamonds or whatever very specific one you are looking for. Maybe a recipe to break gems down to lower grades?

You definitely are having better luck than me on the crafting, although I've seen plenty of nice rares...FOR OTHER CLASSES.

I agree completely on the instantly stunlocking/teleporting/hasted/whatever crap... I don't know first hand but I can only assume they are bad on melee too... There are some guys that swing so fast and hit so hard... AND SWING FASTER as they continue to swing or get lower on hit points... I can't see anyone surviving in melee with the...

How do you fight a guy that hits 4 times a second and instantly teleports onto your face before you even know he's there?

On that note... anyone else find it annoying that ranged mobs seem to be able to see you from at least an extra half a screen away?

[andronnik]

Oh yes the vision of the ranged mobs is really annoying, good point! I understand that bosses can somehow see where you teleport, but when i teleport away from normal mobs, and they still follow me as if they have a maphack, or a GPS tracking device given to them by the NSA, then they are kinda too high-tech mobs for Diablo

[HAL9000]

I agree, I'll see an arrow coming for me, and when I go to find the archer, I'm going really far away to find the guy!

And this has no bearing on gameplay, but there seem to be a lot more barrels around in the first levels than in the vanilla game. Idk, I just thought it was kind of funny.

[Jofuss]

So tonight I say to myself, again, "Tonight is the night that nightmare butcher will die!"

Put up Manashield, Temportal Slowdown, Etherealize, and Elemental Drain. I start to spam lightning in the direction the butcher will come from and...

"The Butcher"
Bloodlust, Haste

286 damage per hit 4 hits per second later I say to myself, "Seriously?"

Granted I forgot to turn back from $player 10 to 0... but... Seriously? Oh well.



Of course after changing back to $player 0 and doing a whole lot of teleporting around I was able to defeat him... I just needed to complain apparently to beat him!