I like Diablo 4 a lot, and I am not afraid to admit that, as a casual player of ARPGs (including Diablo), I tend to get excited about the little things. This is especially true in cases when those little things are fixes to annoying pet peeves. With the Season 5 PTR, Blizzard delivered the best solution to a set of visibility issues I've always had with Diablo 4 - properly this time.
All the major mechanical overhauls Diablo 4’s Season 4 PTR introduced to the game were exciting and amazing and everything, but as I admitted around the time, it was really the change to the Codex of Power that had me the most eager to launch the game when Season 4 officially started. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a similar change in the Season 5 PTR, which kicked off earlier this week, that also has me all giddy. No, it’s not the new horde mode (which is fine) or any of the new pieces of gear, it’s actually a tiny option in the game’s settings menu (with a massive impact).
Diablo 4 has always had a problem with combat text, which is the various alerts you get when fighting monsters. This is stuff like status effects (Vulnerable, Fortified, etc.), damage numbers and so on.
It can get so overwhelming that it covers the entirety of your screen and makes it hard to see what you’re actually clicking on. In earlier patches, Blizzard attempted to address that issue by letting players hide it all, show it all, or only hide damage numbers. While that was a welcome change, it simply didn.
