Two Diablo IV Expansions in Development at Blizzard

[erek]

Hmm

"Blizzard Entertainment received much criticism for its slow and sparse trickle out of seasonal material for Diablo III, and Fergusson is keen to not repeat similar post-launch patterns with the latest entry in a very long running series (the first game debuted back in January 1997!). Diablo IV has been built with a live-service format in mind - thus allowing for greater and more substantial content to be delivered over seasonal time periods. Blizzard is likely aiming to compete with the likes of Bungie (Destiny 2) in terms of keeping an online game alive for a while - Fergusson outlines a key goal for his team: "We're going to be supporting Diablo 4 for years to come - (with) very rich seasons, much richer than we had in Diablo 3.""

Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/309695/two-diablo-iv-expansions-in-development-at-blizzard

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Technically there were 2 planned for D3. But they eliminated the second one due to “not enough sales” which is total BS.

 

[MrGuvernment]

You mean more ways to milk the franchies over time, like WoW probably by adding some new map area, couple new bosses and a boat load of useless grinding...

 

[UnknownSouljer]

You mean more ways to milk the franchies over time, like WoW probably by adding some new map area, couple new bosses and a boat load of useless grinding...

I honestly don’t get WoW. I played WotLK, for 1 year. And while I enjoyed the game to a degree, I recognized pretty quick that it was a bunch of useless grinding and an endorphine rush for getting gear and trying to clear content on weekends.

Rinse, wash, repeat with some new skins in a different area with more fetch quests. While competitive play to be the best seems cool, still an unrewarding play loop when you realize what is the point in playing the same stuff over and over?

That’s why I basically just play story oriented single player games and a limited number of mechanics driven single player games.

D3 I played a lot because it was free to do new seasonal content and comfortable. But it amounted to playing 20-40 hours a season (so that amount of play time every 3 months). And that was it.

 

[DukenukemX]

I honestly don’t get WoW. I played WotLK, for 1 year. And while I enjoyed the game to a degree, I recognized pretty quick that it was a bunch of useless grinding and an endorphine rush for getting gear and trying to clear content on weekends.

Rinse, wash, repeat with some new skins in a different area with more fetch quests. While competitive play to be the best seems cool, still an unrewarding play loop when you realize what is the point in playing the same stuff over and over?

WoW was a pretty good game up until near the end of WOTLK, when Blizzard made it clear that going forward your efforts are meaningless. It went from going into dungeons and raids killing hard bosses to a theme park. WOTLK particularly started off badly because WOTLK Naxx was so easy, but the introduction of Ulduar with hard modes revitalized the game... only to have it brought back in TOGC and ICC as a difficult switch you flip before entering the raid. You also don't go back to old raids to clear for loot because there's nothing anyone needs from old raids. It made what players did seem meaningless since anyone can clear a raid and get slightly worse loot than those who did harder versions of the raid. Think of it as adding an easy mode to Dark Souls or Eldin Ring, and imagine how bad it is for those games. Near the end of Cataclysm they added PTR and well... you can see the comic bellow how that was. WoW is a single player game that you sometimes play with people, and that's generally why the game is as bad as it is.

That’s why I basically just play story oriented single player games and a limited number of mechanics driven single player games.

The thing people here need to understand is that the game industry goes through phases, which is the multiplayer phase and the single player phase. We are currently in the single player phase, because at some point players are sick of other people and just want to experience a new game alone. There's also a point when people want to go online and play with or against other players because they get tired of single player games. Yahtzee points it out in his video bellow. The problem for D4 is that multiplayer is currently not in, which is gonna hurt their sales. I know that Blizzard said that Diablo 4 is their best selling game of all time, but they've said this about ShadowLands and also Battle for Azeroth and we know how those games ended up.

D3 I played a lot because it was free to do new seasonal content and comfortable. But it amounted to playing 20-40 hours a season (so that amount of play time every 3 months). And that was it.

I'm not exactly sure what compels people to play games like Diablo 3 or 4 over and over again just to farm loot to do... what? I will say that at least Diablo 4 has PvP this time, and that is some reason to farm for better gear, assuming Blizzard doesn't just normalize all the gear in PvP to make it useless unless you bought something off the in game store which does give you a PvP edge. This is Activision-Blizzard after all. For the most part, Diablo games are just single player games with multiplayer added onto it, but now you get to play the campaign over and over until even your autism gets tired of it.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

WoW was a pretty good game up until near the end of WOTLK, when Blizzard made it clear that going forward your efforts are meaningless. It went from going into dungeons and raids killing hard bosses to a theme park. WOTLK particularly started off badly because WOTLK Naxx was so easy, but the introduction of Ulduar with hard modes revitalized the game... only to have it brought back in TOGC and ICC as a difficult switch you flip before entering the raid. You also don't go back to old raids to clear for loot because there's nothing anyone needs from old raids. It made what players did seem meaningless since anyone can clear a raid and get slightly worse loot than those who did harder versions of the raid. Think of it as adding an easy mode to Dark Souls or Eldin Ring, and imagine how bad it is for those games. Near the end of Cataclysm they added PTR and well... you can see the comic bellow how that was. WoW is a single player game that you sometimes play with people, and that's generally why the game is as bad as it is.

View attachment 575126

I’m probably not the right person to try and discuss the intricacies of MMO’s with. I just think they’re endless grind games without enough point (irony incoming later in this post). While I think there is some merit to skill based games and mechanics based games, for me MMO’s aren’t it. They’re all trash to me. A good chunk of that feeling coming from having to commit paying to pay a game I’ve already paid for.

The thing people here need to understand is that the game industry goes through phases, which is the multiplayer phase and the single player phase. We are currently in the single player phase, because at some point players are sick of other people and just want to experience a new game alone. There's also a point when people want to go online and play with or against other players because they get tired of single player games. Yahtzee points it out in his video bellow. The problem for D4 is that multiplayer is currently not in, which is gonna hurt their sales. I know that Blizzard said that Diablo 4 is their best selling game of all time, but they've said this about ShadowLands and also Battle for Azeroth and we know how those games ended up.

I don’t necessarily disagree here. But I do think in general much more of the field is based towards multiplayer and it kind of has been slanted that way since Q3A and UT 2k4.

I'm not exactly sure what compels people to play games like Diablo 3 or 4 over and over again just to farm loot to do... what? I will say that at least Diablo 4 has PvP this time, and that is some reason to farm for better gear, assuming Blizzard doesn't just normalize all the gear in PvP to make it useless unless you bought something off the in game store which does give you a PvP edge. This is Activision-Blizzard after all. For the most part, Diablo games are just single player games with multiplayer added onto it, but now you get to play the campaign over and over until even your autism gets tired of it.

It’s just an endless grind with an endorphine drop. And there is a competitive aspect to clearing content. In a big way it is similar to MMO’s, except the challenger most often is yourself (unless you have time to do competitive. Most people do not).

That’s why for most players, even ones that have played as long as I have, just clear content for the season and stop playing. Because grinding end game stuff repeatedly for perfect rolls on gear, being able to clear a GR 150 time as the fastest in the season for that class and season (often 2:30 or less), and maxing paragon through multiplayer isn’t all that fun unless you really enjoy that game play loop. D3 then was for a very small group of long term players. Most like you don’t/won’t see the point unless you also understood the D2 loot drop loop. And also it’s why D3 had trouble going for 10 years where d2 did not. I think they’re trying to rectify that in D4.

 

[Usual_suspect]

WoW was a pretty good game up until near the end of WOTLK, when Blizzard made it clear that going forward your efforts are meaningless. It went from going into dungeons and raids killing hard bosses to a theme park. WOTLK particularly started off badly because WOTLK Naxx was so easy, but the introduction of Ulduar with hard modes revitalized the game... only to have it brought back in TOGC and ICC as a difficult switch you flip before entering the raid. You also don't go back to old raids to clear for loot because there's nothing anyone needs from old raids. It made what players did seem meaningless since anyone can clear a raid and get slightly worse loot than those who did harder versions of the raid. Think of it as adding an easy mode to Dark Souls or Eldin Ring, and imagine how bad it is for those games. Near the end of Cataclysm they added PTR and well... you can see the comic bellow how that was. WoW is a single player game that you sometimes play with people, and that's generally why the game is as bad as it is.

View attachment 575126

Something I can actually agree with you about. As a WoW veteran of 15 years total time subscribed. Ulduar is still my favorite raid. I was a big fan of being able to up the difficulty mid-raid to try and push harder content, and having the option to just do things regularly if your raid just wasn't cutting it. I hated when they took that out in favor of just adding a difficulty option at the beginning of the raid since if you hit a wall half way through, let's say ICC, you couldn't just drop the difficulty to clear the raid, you had to start over from the beginning, and ICC was a massive raid.

I think what killed WoW, at least for me, was making good gear so easily accessible, which killed the very spirit of what made WoW what it was, having to work for what you have, to feel a sense of accomplishment. In Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK you had to work for the good stuff, now it's handed out like candy on Halloween. It took away the specialness of WoW--needing a group of friends, being social, and putting in work to get a sense of accomplishment. Now it's like whatever, even the harder versions of the raids are only minor stat bumps, making it less encouraging to want to get into a good guild, or work for the gear you have. Unlike Diablo, WoW wasn't a lootathon game, it was a get out there, get into a group and tackle some difficult content and be rewarded with something good, but now that you can literally do daily quests and get loot that's just right under raid loot, it gives no incentives for casual players to get better, or try their hand at harder content, especially when it'll just get replaced with the next content release. It became TOO accessible, and turned into something it wasn't meant to be.

The thing people here need to understand is that the game industry goes through phases, which is the multiplayer phase and the single player phase. We are currently in the single player phase, because at some point players are sick of other people and just want to experience a new game alone. There's also a point when people want to go online and play with or against other players because they get tired of single player games. Yahtzee points it out in his video bellow. The problem for D4 is that multiplayer is currently not in, which is gonna hurt their sales. I know that Blizzard said that Diablo 4 is their best selling game of all time, but they've said this about ShadowLands and also Battle for Azeroth and we know how those games ended up.

I can see Diablo 4 being highly successful. From the outset, just reading down the list of available content it's like they took the best of WoW, and Diablo 1-3, sprinkled in a bit of Destiny 2, and made this game. The game is super accessible to basically anyone. I loved Diablo 3 once they fixed it with the RoS expansion. They made the game accessible to everyone, while offering a game-play loop that was fast, fun, and rewarding; something I couldn't find in any of the other ARPGs I played like Grim Dawn, or even Torchlight 2. Diablo 4 sold like gangbusters, even with the sheer amount of titles coming out this year, with no pandemic, or anything else to boost it's sales, and the reviews, for what they're worth, were very positive, and a good number of reddit posts I've read all gave it glowing remarks, so I don't think it'll follow a similar fate to Shadowlands or BFA.

BFA benefitted from coming off of the success that was Legion and failed hard to recapture what made Legion so successful--it's story, and Shadowlands released during the pandemic so people needed games to play, and Shadowlands fit the bill since BFA was all dried-up content wise. I wasn't a fan of either expansion frankly, not because they were bad games, they were just boring since they literally added no real new mechanics to the game play, just added new scenery and changed some names around. Diablo 4 on the other hand is a vast departure from D3, namely in the builds and the fact that it's open world, so you can go explore in whatever way you wish, and there being 120 dungeons to go and do, each with it's own theme, and nightmare versions of each dungeon having added challenges, to me seems, in theory, superior to the GR system in Diablo 3 because it forces you to go explore and travel around instead of standing in town clicking on stone obelisk doing the same thing over and over. I know a lot of people are complaining about the live-service aspect, but I don't see it as an issue, even with the season passes. If they're anything like it was in Destiny 2, they offer no real advantage, and stand as more convenience if you don't have hundreds of hours to grind away, and the fact that they'll streamline new content on a regular basis is something I'm looking forward to since the world itself seems intriguing, something I wish they would have done with D3.

I'm not exactly sure what compels people to play games like Diablo 3 or 4 over and over again just to farm loot to do... what? I will say that at least Diablo 4 has PvP this time, and that is some reason to farm for better gear, assuming Blizzard doesn't just normalize all the gear in PvP to make it useless unless you bought something off the in game store which does give you a PvP edge. This is Activision-Blizzard after all. For the most part, Diablo games are just single player games with multiplayer added onto it, but now you get to play the campaign over and over until even your autism gets tired of it.

I asked the same question myself... why am I farming gear to do harder and harder activities and it all boiled down to--because it's actually fun since it's so readily available and easily accessible to do. Unlike WoW, getting look in D3 was simple, but time consuming as all hell since no gear was off the table when it came to stat rolls, so getting that perfect roll just made it all the better. With Diablo 4 having an actual talent tree with hundreds, of different ways to customize your character I'm looking forward to some of the builds I'll see come out, I'm even looking forward to the orange glowies that'll pop on the screen after killing a large pack of monsters in mere seconds. Diablo 3 was just pure unadulterated fun, I can imagine D4 being a step up in that department.

 

[Comixbooks]

This game is great in a way....I really like the engine they used but the fast gameplay basically turns the game into nothing. If you used this 3-D engine and made a exploration game instead of lets drive to this city and demolish this and this.
It could be a really great game but I expect that with Baldur's Gate 3 hopefully in 3 more months.

Coolest River I saw in the game and the bridge too bad you can't fish there...

 

[GotNoRice]

In Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK you had to work for the good stuff, now it's handed out like candy on Halloween. It took away the specialness of WoW--needing a group of friends, being social, and putting in work to get a sense of accomplishment. Now it's like whatever, even the harder versions of the raids are only minor stat bumps, making it less encouraging to want to get into a good guild, or work for the gear you have.

I don't see it like this at all. I've played since 2004 and I've been in tons of guilds. Casual guilds are by far the most fun. The hardcore guilds are full of elitist pricks with huge egos who love to think that they are better than other people because of a number on their screen. People constantly getting bitched out because they don't have a piece of gear enchanted or because they didn't spend 2 hours prior to raid watching youtube videos of fights in order to get an over-complicated raid mechanic done correctly. Hostility because the newb just out-DPS'd the entrenched veteran and tarnished his ego. The Casual guilds are the ones where everyone is drinking alcohol while playing, joking, laughing the whole time as we clear content together. The focus is less on the elitist sense of progression and more on the community, with the game being what brings us together. And then a subset of us do more difficult Mythic+ 5-man content on the side for extra gear.

WoW is in a great place right now, where you can get good gear through through raiding, 5-man dungeons, or PvP; each having their own difficulty curves (4 difficulty tiers of raiding, 20 difficulty levels of 5-man dungeons, etc). It's great when you can have a guild that includes everyone from teenagers to grandparents, all working together to clear content, and getting it done, with a sense of progression as you work through the raid over the course of the season. But I guess that doesn't do it for the players who prefer the old-school mentality of raiding as a 2nd job, with the end goal being to sit on their mount in Orgrimmar/Stormwind showing off their gear, thinking that they are better than everyone else because of their amazing accomplishments. Our guild might be raiding Heroic instead of Mythic, but our sense of progression comes from the sense of community that our team brings, and wanting to accomplish goals together and for the sake of the team. I'm having so much fun in WoW right now; I didn't even buy Diablo 4 yet because they released it during the peak of WoW's 2nd season. I'd rather just keep playing WoW right now.

 

[RanceJustice]

I played WoW pretty much from near launch (An EverQuest player, I look over at my EQ2 Collector's Edition from launch with a bit of a sigh meaning I didn't pick WoW up until its CE's were gone) until the end of the Legion expansion. I've also played, worked for, or backed as good bit of the MMOs during the biggest boom period in the West with some excursions Eastward. I'll definitely object to those who claimed that removing or altering tedium (and that's what it was in a lot of cases, tedium), FOMO nonsense, and an "exclusionist gulf" etc somehow ruined the game; none of this was accurate but I see it repeated over an over again. . I also have some major objections with what happened with WoW over BFA / Shadowlands / Dragonflight in many regards and I'm skeptical about going back, but all of this WoW and MMO related stuff is a whole separate discussion

As far as Diablo 4, let me say that I'm skeptical to say the least. Allusions to following Bungie's Live Service isn't inspiring to me - Destiny 2 is a confusing mishmash of seasonal content and expansions where old content is "vaulted" away and they continue to sell premium currency for cosmetics. Long term plans for Diablo 4 don't inspire much faith either considering that Blizzard just tanked the "long term plan" to bring PVE and co-op content/campaigns to Overwatch 2 (ostensibly the whole reason for the "2" replacing the base game) so instead the difference between 2 and 1 is a MUCH more punishing monetization where cosmetics cost twice what they used to, you have to buy more stuff if you want new cosmetics , and grind a ton i with seasonal battle pass nonsense. As far as Diablo 4 itself, they already started with some bad precedents including unlocking a rare mount during the last beta from having to defeat a buggy "raid boss" level enemy that only spawned once every 3 hours. Apparently this boss is coming back in the live game (Ashava) but defeating it this time won't get you the fancy mount oh no, that was beta only (despite the problems with the event including despawning, or players not getting credit). Everything I've read about the game's "season" starting soon is a lot of fast FOMO stuff too, with the first battle pass being only a month long so better get to grinding! I don't necessarily hate the idea of a battle pass or season content for D4 given that previous Diablo games have had seasonal content (which was free mind you) but how it looks to get started is not inspiring. Atop all of this even during the Early Access (for those who bought Deluxe or Ultimate versions of the game only) there were huge, $20+ cosmetics to buy on the Item Shop in game. Oh you want to look like the Skeleton King for your Necromancer? $25 please! And similar sets for other classes, plus a variety of other accessories, mounts etc.

Its fucking frustrating to see Blizzard resort to this. It wasn't like D3 sold poorly, and there was enough backlash during the "guess we'll let people buy items/auction house for real money and take a cut" proposal it never came to fruition. D4 however while it may be a solid game underneath the monetization is just so disapppointing that the delicious ice cream is basically covered under a shit sauce, a shit garnish, and shit-shell coating. People can tell you "oh, just don't eat the shit. Move it out of the way. You didn't REALLY come here for the sauce, garnish, or coating did you?" but that's just apologia for greed and bad monetization; you shouldn't have to - some people like those parts of the dessert! - , and it only further reminds you that you could have had a caramel sauce, strawberries as garnish, and chocolate shell coating instead but no executive compensation and shareholder masturbation demands that they all be shit.

Edit: I am reading that Ashava, the raid boss during the "server slam" will be returning after June 8th for another event...but will NOT drop the "Cry of Ashava" mount like during beta. This is the kind of thing that is just bloody infuriating FOMO, but watching "hardcore" types cackling with glee that they got the special thing that was only available for fucking hours on one particular day is why this nonsense continues and people defend it. No, it wasn't the fact that everyone else couldn't meet the challenge, they just didn't happen to be able to play that bloody Saturday , the boss despawned, they couldn't hang around for it to respawn hours later, they killed it but ended up not getting credit (happened to a friend of mine) or whatnot. It would be VERY easy for Blizz to bring back the "same challenge" but letting players flag themselves to a lower level or whatever, buff Ashava for the encounter etc... or whatever else for a "challenge mode" and grant the mount again, but then they'd have to contend with the most mentally defective shrieking children of how their exclusivity was robbed and - if its like many other live service games - they figure that the people yelling are most likely the ones to be "influencers" for the title or spend tons on the Item Mall, I gather. I've seen tons of MMOs end up strangling themselves by catering more and more to the exclusionist hardcore, lootbox / gacha whales, and other demographics that are offputting to everyone else, which creates a downward spiral where the game must do more and more to cater to that group as those are the only ones keeping it alive.

 

[Usual_suspect]

I don't see it like this at all. I've played since 2004 and I've been in tons of guilds. Casual guilds are by far the most fun. The hardcore guilds are full of elitist pricks with huge egos who love to think that they are better than other people because of a number on their screen. People constantly getting bitched out because they don't have a piece of gear enchanted or because they didn't spend 2 hours prior to raid watching youtube videos of fights in order to get an over-complicated raid mechanic done correctly. Hostility because the newb just out-DPS'd the entrenched veteran and tarnished his ego. The Casual guilds are the ones where everyone is drinking alcohol while playing, joking, laughing the whole time as we clear content together. The focus is less on the elitist sense of progression and more on the community, with the game being what brings us together. And then a subset of us do more difficult Mythic+ 5-man content on the side for extra gear.

WoW is in a great place right now, where you can get good gear through through raiding, 5-man dungeons, or PvP; each having their own difficulty curves (4 difficulty tiers of raiding, 20 difficulty levels of 5-man dungeons, etc). It's great when you can have a guild that includes everyone from teenagers to grandparents, all working together to clear content, and getting it done, with a sense of progression as you work through the raid over the course of the season. But I guess that doesn't do it for the players who prefer the old-school mentality of raiding as a 2nd job, with the end goal being to sit on their mount in Orgrimmar/Stormwind showing off their gear, thinking that they are better than everyone else because of their amazing accomplishments. Our guild might be raiding Heroic instead of Mythic, but our sense of progression comes from the sense of community that our team brings, and wanting to accomplish goals together and for the sake of the team. I'm having so much fun in WoW right now; I didn't even buy Diablo 4 yet because they released it during the peak of WoW's 2nd season. I'd rather just keep playing WoW right now.

As a person who raided with several "casual" guilds, they were fun to be in. There are drawbacks though. For instance when you and a few guild members hit a certain point gear wise while the rest of the guild is playing catch up due to work schedules or other irl obligations, you reach a point to where you start questioning why you're playing. As someone who's spent more hours on WoW helping others than focusing on raiding to get the absolute best--I can tell you it's exhausting, especially when you reach a certain point gear/content wise and get bored. You start wanting more, and when the guild you're in has a bunch of people who do raid, but often times miss raids due to obligations outside of WoW, and you get stuck hitting the que looking for random people to no avail, the question will come up... why pay $15/month to be bored more often than I'm entertained? Then there's the flip side of that coin, what if you're the one who's missing raids due to irl obligations? You have to resort to finding ways to entertain yourself, and you start doing LFR/Mythic dungeons, get geared... and that's it? What happens when you get that gear, but are unable to attend 90% of the raids your guild does? Sit there in Valdrakken? Go farm? Do more pointless dungeons for currency you don't have a use for?

I agree to an extent with the hardcore raiding guild mentality, but they aren't THAT bad, at least not with what I saw/experienced. They weren't bitching about you not having gear enchanted, unless it was of course your weapons which provided the biggest benefit of all enchants, and they certainly weren't hostile towards newcomers performing better than their veterans, they want that kind of thing, unless of course the people you're outperforming are guild leaders, or friends with the guild leader, but even then, the atmosphere just wasn't fun, not for me.

As for your remarks about people wanting to see raiding as a second job... not me. The point of my post was that WoW over-rewards players for doing simple things, and the rewards are up there with raid level gear, so it sometimes begs to question, why raid when I can get almost equal level gear from doing five man's, or world quests? I don't have time to raid like I used to, being a family man and all that, so I geared myself via LFR, and mythic+ dungeons because of my guilds raiding schedule. When it came time to actually raid, I saw really no point in it since I was able to hit heroic ready (401) item level gear before I even stepped foot into a normal raid, and since my guild was struggling to get a decent raid group together, it made it even worse. So, at that point, I unsubbed again since I was bored. That's what I meant when I said WoW started sucking for me, it's when they started handing out loot like candy, it took away any and all motivation to push myself to try harder and try bigger things like raiding, to get the sweet raid level gear, and thus essentially killed my motivation to continue logging in.

 

[Usual_suspect]

I played WoW pretty much from near launch (An EverQuest player, I look over at my EQ2 Collector's Edition from launch with a bit of a sigh meaning I didn't pick WoW up until its CE's were gone) until the end of the Legion expansion. I've also played, worked for, or backed as good bit of the MMOs during the biggest boom period in the West with some excursions Eastward. I'll definitely object to those who claimed that removing or altering tedium (and that's what it was in a lot of cases, tedium), FOMO nonsense, and an "exclusionist gulf" etc somehow ruined the game; none of this was accurate but I see it repeated over an over again. . I also have some major objections with what happened with WoW over BFA / Shadowlands / Dragonflight in many regards and I'm skeptical about going back, but all of this WoW and MMO related stuff is a whole separate discussion

As far as Diablo 4, let me say that I'm skeptical to say the least. Allusions to following Bungie's Live Service isn't inspiring to me - Destiny 2 is a confusing mishmash of seasonal content and expansions where old content is "vaulted" away and they continue to sell premium currency for cosmetics. Long term plans for Diablo 4 don't inspire much faith either considering that Blizzard just tanked the "long term plan" to bring PVE and co-op content/campaigns to Overwatch 2 (ostensibly the whole reason for the "2" replacing the base game) so instead the difference between 2 and 1 is a MUCH more punishing monetization where cosmetics cost twice what they used to, you have to buy more stuff if you want new cosmetics , and grind a ton i with seasonal battle pass nonsense. As far as Diablo 4 itself, they already started with some bad precedents including unlocking a rare mount during the last beta from having to defeat a buggy "raid boss" level enemy that only spawned once every 3 hours. Apparently this boss is coming back in the live game (Ashava) but defeating it this time won't get you the fancy mount oh no, that was beta only (despite the problems with the event including despawning, or players not getting credit). Everything I've read about the game's "season" starting soon is a lot of fast FOMO stuff too, with the first battle pass being only a month long so better get to grinding! I don't necessarily hate the idea of a battle pass or season content for D4 given that previous Diablo games have had seasonal content (which was free mind you) but how it looks to get started is not inspiring. Atop all of this even during the Early Access (for those who bought Deluxe or Ultimate versions of the game only) there were huge, $20+ cosmetics to buy on the Item Shop in game. Oh you want to look like the Skeleton King for your Necromancer? $25 please! And similar sets for other classes, plus a variety of other accessories, mounts etc.

Its fucking frustrating to see Blizzard resort to this. It wasn't like D3 sold poorly, and there was enough backlash during the "guess we'll let people buy items/auction house for real money and take a cut" proposal it never came to fruition. D4 however while it may be a solid game underneath the monetization is just so disapppointing that the delicious ice cream is basically covered under a shit sauce, a shit garnish, and shit-shell coating. People can tell you "oh, just don't eat the shit. Move it out of the way. You didn't REALLY come here for the sauce, garnish, or coating did you?" but that's just apologia for greed and bad monetization; you shouldn't have to - some people like those parts of the dessert! - , and it only further reminds you that you could have had a caramel sauce, strawberries as garnish, and chocolate shell coating instead but no executive compensation and shareholder masturbation demands that they all be shit.

Edit: I am reading that Ashava, the raid boss during the "server slam" will be returning after June 8th for another event...but will NOT drop the "Cry of Ashava" mount like during beta. This is the kind of thing that is just bloody infuriating FOMO, but watching "hardcore" types cackling with glee that they got the special thing that was only available for fucking hours on one particular day is why this nonsense continues and people defend it. No, it wasn't the fact that everyone else couldn't meet the challenge, they just didn't happen to be able to play that bloody Saturday , the boss despawned, they couldn't hang around for it to respawn hours later, they killed it but ended up not getting credit (happened to a friend of mine) or whatnot. It would be VERY easy for Blizz to bring back the "same challenge" but letting players flag themselves to a lower level or whatever, buff Ashava for the encounter etc... or whatever else for a "challenge mode" and grant the mount again, but then they'd have to contend with the most mentally defective shrieking children of how their exclusivity was robbed and - if its like many other live service games - they figure that the people yelling are most likely the ones to be "influencers" for the title or spend tons on the Item Mall, I gather. I've seen tons of MMOs end up strangling themselves by catering more and more to the exclusionist hardcore, lootbox / gacha whales, and other demographics that are offputting to everyone else, which creates a downward spiral where the game must do more and more to cater to that group as those are the only ones keeping it alive.

You might want to temper those expectations a bit. Firstly, we don't even know how the live-service will pan out in this case, and Destiny 2 is wildly successful, so it's not as bad as you're making it out to be. As for the cosmetic shop, well, that's just it, it's optional. If you want that look, and have the money, then you can buy it, it's a choice. Gamers need to stop being so expectant that every single thing developed for a game is going to be included in the initial price and that's that. Sure if it's content that should have been included with the base game, or content that gives a clear advantage, I can see the problem, but when it comes to cosmetic items, or items that don't offer you any advantage, I don't see any issue with it existing.

As for the exclusionist/FOMO elements, I agree to an extent, but I also agree that exclusive content should be available for those who worked to get it. If you didn't take time to figure out how you were going to make it happen, then it wasn't something you really wanted or needed in the game. I've seen it done over and over in WoW, FOMO bs, and at one point I put an overly unhealthy amount of time into that game with that mentality, but I learned to step back, and quit being lured in with that shit. If it exists, and I'm able to be there, cool, if not then oh well, life priorities took precedence over a custom pixels on a screen.

The reason I'm looking forward to the live-service aspect of D4 is purely because the world of Sanctuary seems interesting, something I'd really get into, and dig like I did Azeroth on WoW. Continuously adding story content would only make it even better, but I guess you really have to be into the story part of the game really see this as a good thing.

At the end of the day, these games are getting more and more expensive to develop. I'm sure Diablo 4's development budget went well over the hundreds of millions of dollars, they have to not only recoup those losses, but also fund the live-service portion of the game, future support, and still prove to be profitable in the eyes of investors. I'm not defending Blizzard, just pointing out the reality of things.

 

[Lakados]

Blizz is bleeding talent, it is no secret that they currently have a chart with projects that gets shifted around as critical staff leave.
Makes sense that they would want to get as much done on D4 and build a buffer before they loose anybody critical to the project.

 

[DukenukemX]

I think what killed WoW, at least for me, was making good gear so easily accessible, which killed the very spirit of what made WoW what it was, having to work for what you have, to feel a sense of accomplishment. In Vanilla, TBC, and WotLK you had to work for the good stuff, now it's handed out like candy on Halloween. It took away the specialness of WoW--needing a group of friends, being social, and putting in work to get a sense of accomplishment. Now it's like whatever, even the harder versions of the raids are only minor stat bumps, making it less encouraging to want to get into a good guild, or work for the gear you have.

Many things are why WoW has fallen from grace, but yea gear plays a roll. This is generally why people hate games with micro-transactions and/or loot boxes because it inevitably turns into a pay-to-win mechanic but covered up carefully. Is buying gold a pay-to-win mechanic? Blizzard sure doesn't think so, but the players know it is. That and a personalized drop system which made things more of a grind.

Unlike Diablo, WoW wasn't a lootathon game, it was a get out there, get into a group and tackle some difficult content and be rewarded with something good, but now that you can literally do daily quests and get loot that's just right under raid loot,

WoW was like Dark Souls before Dark Souls was a thing. Except that it quickly turned away from skill based to time based loot system. Put enough time into the game and you'll get good loot. Unlike before where you kill a hard boss you get hardcore loot.

it gives no incentives for casual players to get better, or try their hand at harder content, especially when it'll just get replaced with the next content release. It became TOO accessible, and turned into something it wasn't meant to be.

It was meant to give incentives to keep paying your monthly fee. Turns out casual players weren't big into it, but whales are a different tale.

I can see Diablo 4 being highly successful. From the outset, just reading down the list of available content it's like they took the best of WoW, and Diablo 1-3, sprinkled in a bit of Destiny 2, and made this game.

I'm not sure how Diablo 4 works as a game but I've played Diablo 2 and 3 and I can't imagine they reinvented the wheel here. Destiny 2 was kind of a failure, for the same reasons which might effect Diablo 4, because it's a loot a thon.

The game is super accessible to basically anyone.

It's a single player game, of course it should be.

I loved Diablo 3 once they fixed it with the RoS expansion.

Just took an expansion to do it.

They made the game accessible to everyone,

I'm sure nobody had a problem buying the base game and the expansions.

while offering a game-play loop that was fast, fun, and rewarding;

Sounds cursed honestly.

Diablo 4 sold like gangbusters, even with the sheer amount of titles coming out this year, with no pandemic, or anything else to boost it's sales, and the reviews, for what they're worth, were very positive, and a good number of reddit posts I've read all gave it glowing remarks, so I don't think it'll follow a similar fate to Shadowlands or BFA.

Don't look on MetaCritics user reviews, you might be disappointed. Honestly I haven't looked into the game yet to see why people are upset.

 

[Usual_suspect]

Many things are why WoW has fallen from grace, but yea gear plays a roll. This is generally why people hate games with micro-transactions and/or loot boxes because it inevitably turns into a pay-to-win mechanic but covered up carefully. Is buying gold a pay-to-win mechanic? Blizzard sure doesn't think so, but the players know it is. That and a personalized drop system which made things more of a grind.

Yep. When they implemented that personal drop bs, it killed it for me. Weeks, if not months running the same LFR content only to get absolutely nothing, not even a chance. The fact that they added that players can't trade an item if it's an upgrade only cemented the crap even further.

WoW was like Dark Souls before Dark Souls was a thing. Except that it quickly turned away from skill based to time based loot system. Put enough time into the game and you'll get good loot. Unlike before where you kill a hard boss you get hardcore loot.

Oh I remember vividly, you couldn't just run up to an elite monster and smack it around, you literally went in with all cooldowns and if you weren't geared, you had to rely on every single cooldown available, health potions, etc. Now you can just run up and kill elite monsters like they're just slightly harder versions of the normal mob, no challenge whatsoever.

It was meant to give incentives to keep paying your monthly fee. Turns out casual players weren't big into it, but whales are a different tale.

Absolutely right. I became a more casual player prior to Dragonflight, tried my hand at being a bit more serious, and found that WoW has nothing for me to be excited about. I can just watch the story videos on Youtube, and skip the monthly fees.

I'm not sure how Diablo 4 works as a game but I've played Diablo 2 and 3 and I can't imagine they reinvented the wheel here. Destiny 2 was kind of a failure, for the same reasons which might effect Diablo 4, because it's a loot a thon.

D2 still sees it's fair share of players daily. I wouldn't call it a failure, but definitely nowhere near it's peak, but I think that has more to do with age, the fact that it's story is convoluted and requires real investment, the content that was sunset and no longer available, another thing that hurt it for me personally was having to use a phone app as a group finder. Like c'mon now, games going on six years old, how the hell can you not have one already in place?

It's a single player game, of course it should be.

Dark Souls, Cuphead, Super Meatboy, and Celeste all said hello!

Just took an expansion to do it.

True, but at least it went from the shit show it was at launch, and pushed it in the right direction. The game was night and day after the expansion released, like you couldn't even tell they were the same game basically outside of the locations.

I'm sure nobody had a problem buying the base game and the expansions.

I was one of the early adopters of D3, I pre-purchased it and played the hell out of it... just couldn't stand the low drop rates, the real money auction house, and the fact that it was limited in content at the time.

Sounds cursed honestly.

Time will tell, so far I've put about 30 hours into the game and I just hit Act 4 of 6 in the campaign. There's a lot to do in the game baseline, and I figure by the time I get through the story mode, I'll probably have put closer to 40 hours in, then it's on to end-game content.

Don't look on MetaCritics user reviews, you might be disappointed. Honestly I haven't looked into the game yet to see why people are upset.

After reading through some of those reviews, it's mainly people being upset over the in-game purchases. One person went as far as to say it'll lead down the road to pay-to-win, which so far I don't see that happening if WoW's in-game shop is anything to go by. I think a lot of it stems from people thinking Blizzard as a whole is a shitty company, while I've held my stance on it being mainly the upper management, not the developers, so I don't let stupid shit affect my judgement of a game until the developers make it so. I think people just like to default to that, and automatically pan a game because of the studio that made the game, not the game itself. I've honestly stopped relying on reviews to gauge how good or bad a game is. After the whole Redfall debacle, which I think the game is fine for what it is, could use a some work, but it's no where near the bad that people are saying. D4 is another example, people are going to love it because it's a good game, some might not like it because it's just not their cup of tea, or there's going to be hate towards it purely because it's Blizzard, it's got in-game purchases, and not even bother giving the game they just paid $70 for, if these people even bought the game to begin with since their reviews tend to be vitriol towards Blizzard and not the game itself, a proper explanation on why they feel the game is bad.

I saw a post on Reddit earlier where a guy basically said "If any of you are playing a game with microtransactions, you are the fucking problem and I hate you." If that's anything to go off of when you see those user reviews on Metacritic.

The game itself is good, has a shit load of content to chew through even before you hit end-game, and even at end-game you have all sorts of extra shit to do like world events, finish up dungeons, side quests, bounties, completing all map objectives, etc. I'd venture a guess and say to get every map and objectives completed, every dungeon completed, and every side quest done you'd probably put a good 75-80 hours into the game before you even hit the true end-game loop, and then the fact that it's a live-service game and there will be continuous flow of content into the game, for everyone, not just "season pass holders" adds even more value to the game. Sure you can't get all the specialized transmogs unless you pay real money for them, but it's not like the game doesn't already have cool ones already in the game that you don't have to pay for, some I'm sure are as good, if not better than what you pay real money for. Thing is though, those cosmetic items are optional, and it's not in your face. You have to dig a little to get to it, so at least Blizzard isn't pushing their cosmetic store on people, but unfortunately it being Blizzard, people are still going to hate because it "exists."

Another thing to take into account is the game is extremely polished on the PC, it is capable of running on hardware for 7-8 years ago with respectable frame rates and good image quality.

 

[DukenukemX]

Yep. When they implemented that personal drop bs, it killed it for me. Weeks, if not months running the same LFR content only to get absolutely nothing, not even a chance. The fact that they added that players can't trade an item if it's an upgrade only cemented the crap even further.

Yep like this.
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx26JKv976HJwPFOxD9xZ16aEVOmCthSUW

D2 still sees it's fair share of players daily. I wouldn't call it a failure, but definitely nowhere near it's peak, but I think that has more to do with age, the fact that it's story is convoluted and requires real investment, the content that was sunset and no longer available, another thing that hurt it for me personally was having to use a phone app as a group finder. Like c'mon now, games going on six years old, how the hell can you not have one already in place?

I'm surprised it's #10 on Steam. At the same time Team Fortress 2 is #9. Now that I'm looking at it, the top 10 games people play are generally old.

After reading through some of those reviews, it's mainly people being upset over the in-game purchases.

Those are good reasons to be upset about.

One person went as far as to say it'll lead down the road to pay-to-win, which so far I don't see that happening if WoW's in-game shop is anything to go by.

The WoW token is a pay-to-win mechanic, just indirectly. That doesn't sound very promising.

I think a lot of it stems from people thinking Blizzard as a whole is a shitty company, while I've held my stance on it being mainly the upper management, not the developers, so I don't let stupid shit affect my judgement of a game until the developers make it so. I think people just like to default to that, and automatically pan a game because of the studio that made the game, not the game itself. I've honestly stopped relying on reviews to gauge how good or bad a game is.

Which is why I'm gonna wait for an actual review before giving my opinion on the game.

After the whole Redfall debacle, which I think the game is fine for what it is, could use a some work, but it's no where near the bad that people are saying.

Game seems pretty bad.

I saw a post on Reddit earlier where a guy basically said "If any of you are playing a game with microtransactions, you are the fucking problem and I hate you." If that's anything to go off of when you see those user reviews on Metacritic.

He's not wrong.

Another thing to take into account is the game is extremely polished on the PC, it is capable of running on hardware for 7-8 years ago with respectable frame rates and good image quality.

It should be considering what type of game it is.

 

[Comixbooks]

Just uninstalled the game not worth the waste of time DLC us going to be a hard sell when the core game isn't captivating just ADD for to the Boss in ACT 3 beat him and quit for good.

 

[Usual_suspect]

Those are good reasons to be upset about.

I understand being upset, that’s one thing, but saying game is good but shop is bad and giving it a 0? I don’t know, seems like there’s more to it. People being that upset over an in-game shop that has optional, non-game impacting items for you to buy if you so choose seems petty compared to the string of poorly optimized games being released this year. As a life long gamer myself, I find it more concerning that games are being released in broken states, an in-game shop with optional cosmetic items is literally nowhere on my radar of things to be concerned about. Even if the game was bad, I still wouldn't care that it had an in-game shop for cosmetics.

The WoW token is a pay-to-win mechanic, just indirectly. That doesn't sound very promising.

I disagree. It would be pay to win if gold was actually hard, tedious, or time-gated to earn, but gold is easy to obtain if you have a bit of patience. I was never really good at making gold, but I've had my moments where I would spend an hour of day farming and managed to go from 10k gold to 500k gold in a matter of 4-5 days, and I wasn't even trying to game the auction house, just selling things normally. I've also seen buddies of mine who use those auction house mods and utilize their professions and make 700k gold in a matter of hours, gold in WoW is not like it was during Vanilla, it's super abundant.

The only real advantage of having tons of gold in WoW is being able to buy stuff, there’s nothing having tons of gold can buy you that gives you an advantage over anyone else. Sure you can make a claim at the beginning of expansions when you got folks gearing up via the AH, but, considering how easy gold is to obtain, and Tokens being worth like 270K gold, that’s not really an advantage, considering how fast people can make 270k gold if they apply a little bit of effort.

The one thing I will say about tokens is it is a nice feature that people with the gold they earn can nab themselves some free playing time. Good for people who consider WoW something they enjoy, but don't want to actually pay the monthly fee, if anything, with how easy gold is to make, that's the opposite of pay to win.

Which is why I'm gonna wait for an actual review before giving my opinion on the game.

What do you mean “actual” review? The games been reviewed by basically everyone. If you’re referring to your own review, fair enough.

Game seems pretty bad.

I found the game fun. Yes, it has it's flaws, but it's a good mindless romp through an interesting setting, killing vampires. I went into the game with zero expectations. Right now I have it on the backburner only because this month is a busy month for gaming with Diablo 4 currently, Street Fighter 6 which I plan to start playing after I'm done with the main campaign in Diablo 4, and then on the 22nd Final Fantasy 16.

He's not wrong.

So claiming people are wrong and that you hate them because they’re playing games they enjoy that also happen to have micro transactions is okay? That's a lot of people to just hate considering how many popular, highly played games have microtransactions, even if they're just cosmetic.

It should be considering what type of game it is.

You’d think that about many games these days, but it’s refreshing to see some developers actually care about more than pushing out broken games onto us with the promise to fix later.

 

[Decko87]

Hmm

"Blizzard Entertainment received much criticism for its slow and sparse trickle out of seasonal material for Diablo III, and Fergusson is keen to not repeat similar post-launch patterns with the latest entry in a very long running series (the first game debuted back in January 1997!). Diablo IV has been built with a live-service format in mind - thus allowing for greater and more substantial content to be delivered over seasonal time periods. Blizzard is likely aiming to compete with the likes of Bungie (Destiny 2) in terms of keeping an online game alive for a while - Fergusson outlines a key goal for his team: "We're going to be supporting Diablo 4 for years to come - (with) very rich seasons, much richer than we had in Diablo 3.""

View attachment 575043
Source: https://www.techpowerup.com/309695/two-diablo-iv-expansions-in-development-at-blizzard

Is that picture a joke? There's been season in diablo for decades now. Diablo 4 is an okay game, I think people will be bored in 2-3 weeks given how shallow the game is currently. I'm enjoying my time with it but I don't see myself doing much past tinkering with each character. There's no build diversity, every build is still "sets" they just dump them into legendary aspects like D3. There's good bones here to make this a great game, right now it's an okay game that's in a honeymoon phase. Either way, they'll actually make both expansions for this game, it's selling like hotcakes. I don't think microtransactions are going too do well however, the cosmetics you get just by playing the game look amazing and will likely keep people from buying stuff.

 

[Ranulfo]

Seasons in Diablo aren't new..its been years since they did that in D3 to get people playing it. The battlepass stuff is new though along with a cosmetic shop. I'm also waiting to see people's thoughts after a month or so. I figure I'd be bored again like I was with D3 (and most arpg's these days) after a month so I don't see it being worth my money now. I did enjoy the stress test enough but not to fork over $70.

Also, Legion killed WoW for many reasons. Ending loot master for non full guild raids killed many raid teams that weren't guilded. It had idiotic legendary weapons locked to spec, not class...spec. Enter the Dragon of Destroyed Time and Nerfs. Hell, the grind in WoD was less annoying with your outpost and follower missions for every alt. Oh, you want to switch specs because of a nerf? Go level up your frost wand vs your geared out fire wand or your healer staff vs tank mace etc. etc.. Oh, and then you had the legendaries that drop based on how much grinding you did. My druid got liteally the worst in slot item for his spec first time out. You had the hardcore players rerolling new main characters from zero to get a better chance at a legendary because it would take LESS time to level a new character to 110 or whatever than grind out quests for your next legendary.

Even worse though was that I would get gear in the easy mode raid that would be auto upgraded to normal/heroic/mythic level gear. It sort of defeated the purpose of raiding at times. At least it sped up gear distro for the raid team as I would pass on set items I really didn't need because they were a small stat upgrade. Then all my fellow healers would fight over the one best in slot trinket for most of healers. Bah. Damn, WoW. I miss the raid team fun, the digital bowling league as it were but there are so many things now I don't miss.

 

[Usual_suspect]

Is that picture a joke? There's been season in diablo for decades now. Diablo 4 is an okay game, I think people will be bored in 2-3 weeks given how shallow the game is currently. I'm enjoying my time with it but I don't see myself doing much past tinkering with each character. There's no build diversity, every build is still "sets" they just dump them into legendary aspects like D3. There's good bones here to make this a great game, right now it's an okay game that's in a honeymoon phase. Either way, they'll actually make both expansions for this game, it's selling like hotcakes. I don't think microtransactions are going too do well however, the cosmetics you get just by playing the game look amazing and will likely keep people from buying stuff.

I think that was the goal of the developers, create amazing looking gear in the game already, and just have niche sets that only a certain group of people would be into as an optional purchase if they absolutely have to have it. The way people have been acting, you would think Blizzard lives and dies by their in-game shops, which couldn't be further from the truth. Diablo: Immortal was the only game where Blizzards intent was to get people to buy from the in-game shop, but considering the game is free to play, and cost about $20 million to develop, gotta recoup those losses some how, but that's the only instance I've ever seen where Acti-Blizzard intentionally used in-game purchases as pay to win, the rest of their games have all been solid releases that appeal to their audiences.

I guess people just don't realize that AAA games have massive budgets. When games are coming out costing $100+ million just to develop, and then you have marketing costs, support, and all that a company has to be able to not only recoup those losses, but make enough to finance future games, pay for day-to-day operations, future support like patches and future content, while keeping the investors happy. I'm sure Diablo 4 probably set Acti-Blizzard back about $200-$250 million considering how long the game has been in development, and the fact that it's live-service, means they're going to be continuously supporting which also costs money. I'm surprised they supported D3 for as long as they did considering it had no means of making money outside of the initial sales.

Also, I wouldn't call a single player 70+ hour campaign if you aim to complete every map entirely, shallow per-se, and considering there's five classes to choose from, all with probably five or six viable builds, 120+ different aspects to build around, that's quite a lot, more than what recent releases of WoW or Destiny 2 have released with. I'm sure by the time people have gone through everything the game has to offer, the first season will be starting, and who knows how much content will come with that. I think this game selling like hotcakes will push Blizzard to be more active in it's development to keep the people coming back for more.

 

[Decko87]

I think that was the goal of the developers, create amazing looking gear in the game already, and just have niche sets that only a certain group of people would be into as an optional purchase if they absolutely have to have it. The way people have been acting, you would think Blizzard lives and dies by their in-game shops, which couldn't be further from the truth. Diablo: Immortal was the only game where Blizzards intent was to get people to buy from the in-game shop, but considering the game is free to play, and cost about $20 million to develop, gotta recoup those losses some how, but that's the only instance I've ever seen where Acti-Blizzard intentionally used in-game purchases as pay to win, the rest of their games have all been solid releases that appeal to their audiences.

I guess people just don't realize that AAA games have massive budgets. When games are coming out costing $100+ million just to develop, and then you have marketing costs, support, and all that a company has to be able to not only recoup those losses, but make enough to finance future games, pay for day-to-day operations, future support like patches and future content, while keeping the investors happy. I'm sure Diablo 4 probably set Acti-Blizzard back about $200-$250 million considering how long the game has been in development, and the fact that it's live-service, means they're going to be continuously supporting which also costs money. I'm surprised they supported D3 for as long as they did considering it had no means of making money outside of the initial sales.

Also, I wouldn't call a single player 70+ hour campaign if you aim to complete every map entirely, shallow per-se, and considering there's five classes to choose from, all with probably five or six viable builds, 120+ different aspects to build around, that's quite a lot, more than what recent releases of WoW or Destiny 2 have released with. I'm sure by the time people have gone through everything the game has to offer, the first season will be starting, and who knows how much content will come with that. I think this game selling like hotcakes will push Blizzard to be more active in it's development to keep the people coming back for more.

The campaign itself is like 20 hours, I think I finished it in around 25. I'm calling it shallow in that everything is "number go up" for the most part in terms of gearing (get x stat in x bucket). The 120 aspects isn't per class, you have 5 classes so that's 24 aspects per class. A lot of the aspects are skill specific and force a build. The skill system is basically a twig with a handful of skills you can actually use, honestly, the rune system in D3 was deeper and more interesting in terms of build diversity. Like if I make whirlwind in d4 at level 4 or whatever, it feels essentially the same at level 45 (where I'm at now). In diablo 3 however, runes majorly modified the way my skills functioned and their damage type. I have some shouts to buff, and some legendary aspects, but they don't change much. They could fix a lot of the major problems overnight (resource generation feeling horrible for one), and just adding one more skill slot maybe just for an ultimate skill would be massive game changer.

 

[Usual_suspect]

The campaign itself is like 20 hours, I think I finished it in around 25. I'm calling it shallow in that everything is "number go up" for the most part in terms of gearing (get x stat in x bucket). The 120 aspects isn't per class, you have 5 classes so that's 24 aspects per class. A lot of the aspects are skill specific and force a build. The skill system is basically a twig with a handful of skills you can actually use, honestly, the rune system in D3 was deeper and more interesting in terms of build diversity. Like if I make whirlwind in d4 at level 4 or whatever, it feels essentially the same at level 45 (where I'm at now). In diablo 3 however, runes majorly modified the way my skills functioned and their damage type. I have some shouts to buff, and some legendary aspects, but they don't change much. They could fix a lot of the major problems overnight (resource generation feeling horrible for one), and just adding one more skill slot maybe just for an ultimate skill would be massive game changer.

Yeah, the campaign is short if you go straight through it, but I think the game has something like 100+ side quests, then you have something like 110+ statues of Lillith which provide permanent buffs, 120 dungeons, and 12 fortresses, I can imagine if you aim to complete all of that I'd think it'd be at 70'ish hours mark.

The whole numbers go up is just a side-effect of these kinds of games. To me it's more about efficiently making those numbers go up while enjoying yourself. Like in D3 I had a whirlwind Barb that was capable of hitting 900m-1T critical strikes, I was farming GR110+ regularly, but I quickly got bored because the whirlwind build itself is boring. I'm hoping Blizzard can make more interesting, involved builds that don't detract from the enjoyment of this game. That's what killed it in WoW for me, playing as a Rogue and having to rely on addons just to make sure I got the timings right, abilities in the right order, etc. but on the flip side, in D3 having too simplistic of a build eventually drove me to boredom, and being limited on time, I didn't have time to start over from scratch every time I got bored of one class, at least in D4, to my understanding is once you complete the campaign you can roll new characters and just level up and jump right into the end-game without any restrictions.

Ultimately, time will tell if D4 pans out, I personally think it'll see its success. Even Diablo Immortal, the bastard child of the Diablo series saw a modicum of success, and with Blizzards track record of making good games, at least in my eyes, I can't see them letting this game fail.

 

[DukenukemX]

I understand being upset, that’s one thing, but saying game is good but shop is bad and giving it a 0?

I don’t know, seems like there’s more to it. People being that upset over an in-game shop that has optional, non-game impacting items for you to buy if you so choose seems petty compared to the string of poorly optimized games being released this year.

No such thing as micro-transactions that don't effect the game, even cosmetic ones. If doing hard things gets you hard loot that also looks cool, then that's part of the game. Also comparing this to poorly optimized games are not the same thing. Just cause your PC can't run it doesn't mean it wasn't a good game.

As a life long gamer myself, I find it more concerning that games are being released in broken states, an in-game shop with optional cosmetic items is literally nowhere on my radar of things to be concerned about. Even if the game was bad, I still wouldn't care that it had an in-game shop for cosmetics.

Badly optimized games are temporary, but micro-transaction games are forever bad. The game isn't free or asking for a low amount, they want $70 for the game, plus we know there's going to be expansions. You can't have both a full retail price and micro-transactions, it's just wrong.

I disagree. It would be pay to win if gold was actually hard, tedious, or time-gated to earn, but gold is easy to obtain if you have a bit of patience. I was never really good at making gold, but I've had my moments where I would spend an hour of day farming and managed to go from 10k gold to 500k gold in a matter of 4-5 days, and I wasn't even trying to game the auction house, just selling things normally. I've also seen buddies of mine who use those auction house mods and utilize their professions and make 700k gold in a matter of hours, gold in WoW is not like it was during Vanilla, it's super abundant.

You have an auction house where you can buy things, and there's also the black market auction house. You can buy your way to power. WOTLK classic now has tokens and soon ShadowMourne which you can buy your way to a legendary since the items needed to craft it can be sold on the auction house. It's just a clever way of claiming it isn't pay-to-win.

The one thing I will say about tokens is it is a nice feature that people with the gold they earn can nab themselves some free playing time. Good for people who consider WoW something they enjoy, but don't want to actually pay the monthly fee, if anything, with how easy gold is to make, that's the opposite of pay to win.

The reason tokens was introduced was because some players like myself would never pay a monthly fee for the game, so Blizzard came up with the token. The problem is that now I'm grinding to make gold to play the game to grind some more. This is a game that is not respecting my time.

What do you mean “actual” review? The games been reviewed by basically everyone. If you’re referring to your own review, fair enough.

I mean a quality game reviewer like Dunkey. There aren't many game reviewers that I consider valuable, and they tend to take their time reviewing the game. Asmongold is not quality, and I feel tends to speak in favor of games that might be giving him some money under the table.

So claiming people are wrong and that you hate them because they’re playing games they enjoy that also happen to have micro transactions is okay? That's a lot of people to just hate considering how many popular, highly played games have microtransactions, even if they're just cosmetic.

That list you showed me about the most played games on Steam while do have micro-transactions, they are mostly free games. The ones that aren't free, aren't asking for much. Looking outside of Steam, I'm betting that Minecraft, Fortnite, League of Legends, and Roblox are all free games. Free games with micro-transactions but free. Diablo IV is a $70 game with micro-transactions.

1. 1.	<--free game	Counter-Strike: Global Offensive	1,165,257	1,661,663	1,818,773	+
   2.	<--free game	Dota 2	365,301	618,829	1,295,114	+
   3.		Source SDK Base 2007	152,266	189,850	213,168	+
   4.	<--$20	Rust	110,516	133,655	245,243	+
   5.	<--free game	Apex Legends	94,809	405,469	624,473	+
   6.	<--$15	Grand Theft Auto V	81,974	161,078	364,548	+
   7.	<--free game	PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS	75,172	341,385	3,257,248	+
   8.	<--free game	Destiny 2	72,387	83,058	316,750	+
   9.	<--free game	Team Fortress 2	69,117	72,695	167,951	+
   10.	<--free game	Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® II | Warzone™ 2.0	58,257	71,623	491,670	+

You’d think that about many games these days, but it’s refreshing to see some developers actually care about more than pushing out broken games onto us with the promise to fix later.

Micro-transactions in a paid game is not the same as broken games. You're just mentioning it because it's a hot topic.

 

[1_rick]

No such thing as micro-transactions that don't effect the game, even cosmetic ones. If doing hard things gets you hard loot that also looks cool, then that's part of the game.

How do you feel about cosmetic items that are *only* available in-shop (that is, you can't get them in game)?

 

[1_rick]

Minecraft

Minecraft is not, and never has been, free (except that there have been a few rare deals, like when they introduced the Windows version, I think you could get the Java one for free, for a time.)

 

[SomeGiantIdiot]

Heh. I laughed at people who paid $100 to beta test this game and will continue to laugh at those who continue to pay to beta test for the rest of us till the inevitable release of the final version of the game with DLC, bells, and whistles for $30 bucks.

Blizz has had a track record for releasing broken games that takes a DLC or two to iron out bugs and game balances. It took a decade of patches and LoD for D2. RoS for D3. The 50 Expac of WoW. Even TFT for WC3 (special shoutout to the OG Dota map) to be memorable.

D2 has 3rd party TRADING that kept the game going for over 2 decades. This is thanks to a community of diehard fans, not on any of Blizz's merits. D3 opened on a high note thanks to D2's legendary legacy. RoS and rebalancing arrived way too late for D3. The lacking of Trading and PvP made the game irrelevant. The biggest gripe I had with D3 wasn't even the auction house or the P2W aspect. Its the long cooldowns that are meant to force us players to sit around and add played-game-time to their numbers sheet. For a ARPG, D2 had it right. Charge in and unleash everything with minimal down time. You can traverse through the entire game in under 2 hours.

The same fate will fall upon D4. From playing the 3x Beta weekends, one can easily see that the game is nothing but a time sink for the sake of wasting time. The travel time between merchants IN THE SAME TOWN, the cooldowns on every single action, and the poor resource management, the Den of Evil D2 Quest applied to half the dungeons. Its all just a hassle.

I stated my discontent before in another thread about the outrageous price people are paying for this incomplete game. I only wished I was proven wrong but the endless threads on reddit and Blizz forums of people complaining sort of validates the idea of waiting.

 

[Usual_suspect]

View attachment 575517

I wouldn't exactly call metacritic reviews "professional." lol

No such thing as micro-transactions that don't effect the game, even cosmetic ones. If doing hard things gets you hard loot that also looks cool, then that's part of the game. Also comparing this to poorly optimized games are not the same thing. Just cause your PC can't run it doesn't mean it wasn't a good game.

I know they're not the same thing, but let's say Blizz decided to pull the in-game market, it would still have the same reputation for a while. Same with bad, or unoptimized games, same reputation until people are convinced its fixed. Just look at CP2077, it has a "mostly positive" review on Steam, and the game has been fine for at least a year now. Every other triple AAA release outside of anything "Capcom" has a mixed rating, or worse. Tell me, if you're a prospective buyer of a product and you see it has a mixed review, would you buy it? The major difference here is Blizzard released a game that works out of the gate, and people are complaining about something completely optional, and unobtrusive, in other words nothing to do with the game itself, it's about something that's completely avoidable, and that is petty and misleading to people looking to buy it. While a broken game is well, broken, and gets review bombed to hell on platforms like Steam and Metacritic. Sure, in due time it'll get fixed, but I paid my money now, I want to play now, not months down the road when it's finally working like it should. I don't care if the game is "good," if it's broken, it's in a state where it's not playable. In the case of D4, the game isn't broken, everything is intact, game is loaded with content, but because Blizzard decided to include something completely optional people grabbed their pitchforks and complained.

Badly optimized games are temporary, but micro-transaction games are forever bad. The game isn't free or asking for a low amount, they want $70 for the game, plus we know there's going to be expansions. You can't have both a full retail price and micro-transactions, it's just wrong.

Again, same thing I said above, badly optimized games will carry that stigma for awhile, while optional micro-transactions that don't impact gameplay will eventually get overlooked. You say that as if that $70 didn't already include a meaty game. I can understand if you bought a game and it was like maybe 15-20 hours of content and then a company turned around and tried to sell you on expansions and DLC for $20-$30, stuff that should have been in the base game, in that situation I'd gladly agree with you. In this case, people are going to get an easy 100+ hours of gameplay out of D4 just as it is, and Blizzards track record with expansions is pretty damn good, sure they have a few misses, but most have been solid and worth the price. Again, you're acting as if the in-game shop is this huge bad thing, it's not. Literally, it's all optional crap to make your character look a certain way, it has absolutely no bearing on the in-game gameplay, so I don't see how it's a problem to the game itself. I said it before, and I'll say it again--people are acting as if everything designed for a game should be included with the base-price of the game, like Blizzard isn't a business that's trying to pay it's bills, fund new games, support current games with updated content, all while trying to please investors. How are they supposed to manage that? Unicorn farts and rainbows?

I'll admit, Blizzard is probably my second favorite game developer of all time, right behind the original Squaresoft before they became Square Enix. So I'll admit a bit of bias here, but they haven't let me down with any of their products or their customer service. At least they're no where near the realm of EA. EA is just a crap company. I bought a game published by EA called Wildhearts, the game itself wasn't bad, but when I tried to login to my EA account for the first time in six months, I got a pop-up saying my account was banned so I couldn't play online. I tried to appeal the banned, so I looked up the reason, and it was attached to a game I don't even play--Apex Legends, and the shit that got me banned was shit that looked like a 12 year old would say, so I did all I could to prove that it wasn't me, and that my account had been hacked, but they basically told me to go pound sand, and start a new account and buy my games again if I wanted online functionality. They didn't even provide lube, they just raw dogged me and threw me out the door. Blizzard has never once told me to go pound sand, they've been solid in that department, fixing any and all issues I'd bring to them, and in some cases throwing in freebies for the inconvenience. I know this is a bit of a "what's the point of this" statement, so the point is, Blizzard hasn't given me any reason to distrust their practices when it comes to micro-transactions being in their games.

You have an auction house where you can buy things, and there's also the black market auction house. You can buy your way to power. WOTLK classic now has tokens and soon ShadowMourne which you can buy your way to a legendary since the items needed to craft it can be sold on the auction house. It's just a clever way of claiming it isn't pay-to-win.

That's a very niche, and obscure pay-to-win scheme that requires you to be able to get into an ICC group, convince them to prolong the Blood Queen Lana'thel fight long enough for you to absorb the essences. In other words, that's borderline retarded, especially if you're at that level of content, chances are you play a lot, and probably already have a lot of gold, and probably have already farmed a vast majority of the items need, if you already haven't gotten help from the guild you're in. I read about WotLK Classic's economy, people were saying that gold was so abundant that shit was going for outrageous prices because people just had so much gold. So, in some wierd, obscure, "why" way that's pay to win, but nothing direct, or even intentional on Blizzards behalf. Hell, it really doesn't give you an advantage, it gives you a nice shiny legendary, but it doesn't magically make you better than others. I remember raiding with people that had Shadowmourne, and only one or two of them could keep up on the meters with me or any other good player in the raid.

The reason tokens was introduced was because some players like myself would never pay a monthly fee for the game, so Blizzard came up with the token. The problem is that now I'm grinding to make gold to play the game to grind some more. This is a game that is not respecting my time.

When's the last time you played WoW? My last time playing it was in February. My statement above about how simple it was to make gold with a bit of effort doesn't require the amount of grind you're implying it would take. I suck at making gold and saving it, but I was never poor per-se, I'd always fluctuate between 10k gold and 200k gold like it was nothing, and all I did was sell extra mats from mining or herbalism, which I probably spent 20-30 minutes a day doing while bs'ing with my guildies on Discord while we were putting together a mythic plus group, and the occasional item I'd craft trying to level up a profession. When I left out, they implemented a work order system where people were making 4k-12k gold just to push a button if they had the ability to craft what you were needing. Gold is so easy to make in WoW, so no, it's not a grind unless you just make bad decision after bad decision. As I stated above, and you confirmed, the token was brought in for people who want to play, but don't want to pay.

I mean a quality game reviewer like Dunkey. There aren't many game reviewers that I consider valuable, and they tend to take their time reviewing the game. Asmongold is not quality, and I feel tends to speak in favor of games that might be giving him some money under the table.

I've never watched Dunkey, so I can't comment on his reviews--but I'll definitely give it a look. I'll agree with Asmongold, I honestly can't stand people's infatuation with him, it's honestly puzzling how people can get so awe-struck by a damn Youtuber who plays videogames.

That list you showed me about the most played games on Steam while do have micro-transactions, they are mostly free games. The ones that aren't free, aren't asking for much. Looking outside of Steam, I'm betting that Minecraft, Fortnite, League of Legends, and Roblox are all free games. Free games with micro-transactions but free. Diablo IV is a $70 game with micro-transactions.

1. 1.	View attachment 575518 <--free game	Counter-Strike: Global Offensive	1,165,257	1,661,663	1,818,773	+
   2.	View attachment 575519<--free game	Dota 2	365,301	618,829	1,295,114	+
   3.		Source SDK Base 2007	152,266	189,850	213,168	+
   4.	View attachment 575520<--$20	Rust	110,516	133,655	245,243	+
   5.	View attachment 575521<--free game	Apex Legends	94,809	405,469	624,473	+
   6.	View attachment 575522<--$15	Grand Theft Auto V	81,974	161,078	364,548	+
   7.	View attachment 575523<--free game	PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS	75,172	341,385	3,257,248	+
   8.	View attachment 575524<--free game	Destiny 2	72,387	83,058	316,750	+
   9.	View attachment 575525<--free game	Team Fortress 2	69,117	72,695	167,951	+
   10.	View attachment 575526<--free game	Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® II | Warzone™ 2.0	58,257	71,623	491,670	+

Micro-transactions in a paid is not the same as broken games. You're just mentioning it because it's a hot topic.

Destiny 2 is not really "free." The free edition of Destiny 2 is just the base game with literally nothing else, but whatever was in the base game, which isn't much but a little sampler to get you to buy the expansions if you want to actually enjoy the game. GTA V was $60 not too long ago, with micro-transactions in the completely optional online mode that has seemingly now become the centerpiece of the game, and micro-transactions in that game are actual pay to win, not just cosmetic.

I know they're not the same, my point was, and is, I see no issues with them existing in a game if they don't serve any purpose other than cosmetic, paid game or free game alike. If the game is good, if the game works, if the developers deliver, then I see no issue with in-game shops or micro-transactions. When a game is released broken, especially games you were waiting to play, and you have to wait even longer until the developer gets around to fixing the game, and for developers to take note of a game being broken, enough people have had to buy the game and complain loudly, meaning developers and publishers aren't quality testing their game before release, but instead releasing a half-baked port while asking for a full price, and basically saying here's an "IOU" with an apology, and players accept this since games will eventually get fixed, it becomes a problem worse than in-game shops, especially ones that only offer cosmetic items.

 

[Usual_suspect]

Heh. I laughed at people who paid $100 to beta test this game and will continue to laugh at those who continue to pay to beta test for the rest of us till the inevitable release of the final version of the game with DLC, bells, and whistles for $30 bucks.

I gladly paid $100 for it, and have absolutely no regrets with my purchase. The time I've accumulated thus far has already validated my decision in my eyes. Kudo's to you if you're going to wait 3-4 years for that to happen, I'll enjoy the game in the mean time.

Blizz has had a track record for releasing broken games that takes a DLC or two to iron out bugs and game balances. It took a decade of patches and LoD for D2. RoS for D3. The 50 Expac of WoW. Even TFT for WC3 (special shoutout to the OG Dota map) to be memorable.

Yet, every game you mentioned in that list worked right out of the gate. You could play from start to finish and get a solid quality experience, and let's not go there with WoW, that game became the biggest MMO for a reason, and set the bar for what an MMO should be for a reason.

D2 has 3rd party TRADING that kept the game going for over 2 decades. This is thanks to a community of diehard fans, not on any of Blizz's merits. D3 opened on a high note thanks to D2's legendary legacy. RoS and rebalancing arrived way too late for D3. The lacking of Trading and PvP made the game irrelevant. The biggest gripe I had with D3 wasn't even the auction house or the P2W aspect. Its the long cooldowns that are meant to force us players to sit around and add played-game-time to their numbers sheet. For a ARPG, D2 had it right. Charge in and unleash everything with minimal down time. You can traverse through the entire game in under 2 hours.

By irrelevant you mean a game that only saw an average of 30k-40k people playing it per day 10 years after it was released, and a game that sold 30 million copies within 3 years of release, right? Oh, you mean irrelevant to you. If you honestly thought cooldowns were a problem, then maybe you weren't playing the game right, or didn't have the right gear to accommodate the build you were using? If you honestly think Blizzard did that to pad play time, you might want to get checked. Last I played D3, as a whirlwind Barb I literally spammed one two abilities Whirlwind and Rend and watched shit explode all over the place. I was clearing Greater Rifts in ~3-4 minutes, and clearing out full maps of monsters like it was nothing. IIRC last I played D2 you have a stamina bar, meaning you can't continuously "run," and with all the dungeons and caves you go through, I seriously doubt with a limited stamina bar new players are traversing the map in 2 hours.

Edit: You act like that 3rd party trading was actually a good thing? You gave your money to people you don't even know, in the hopes they gave you the item you wanted? Isn't that basically P2W? The exact opposite of the in-game store in D4 that everyone is up in arms about? *facepalm*

The same fate will fall upon D4. From playing the 3x Beta weekends, one can easily see that the game is nothing but a time sink for the sake of wasting time. The travel time between merchants IN THE SAME TOWN, the cooldowns on every single action, and the poor resource management, the Den of Evil D2 Quest applied to half the dungeons. Its all just a hassle.

Time sink or not, game is fun. I don't mind time sinks if they're entertaining me. Then again, I love tinkering with builds and gear, and min-maxing. I lived in spreadsheets during WotLK. Also, not every action has a cooldown, and even then, I'm sure, like D3, most of the cooldowns will have gear that reduce that cooldown to basically nothing anyways. You're sounding like a troll honestly.

I stated my discontent before in another thread about the outrageous price people are paying for this incomplete game. I only wished I was proven wrong but the endless threads on reddit and Blizz forums of people complaining sort of validates the idea of waiting.

Now I know you're trolling. Endless threads? Just a quick glance at both Reddit and the Blizzard forums would prove you wrong.

 

[SomeGiantIdiot]

I gladly paid $100 for it, and have absolutely no regrets with my purchase. The time I've accumulated thus far has already validated my decision in my eyes. Kudo's to you if you're going to wait 3-4 years for that to happen, I'll enjoy the game in the mean time.

I understand people value their money and time differently and I'm glad you like the game as is now.

Yet, every game you mentioned in that list worked right out of the gate. You could play from start to finish and get a solid quality experience, and let's not go there with WoW, that game became the biggest MMO for a reason, and set the bar for what an MMO should be for a reason.

D2 was plagued with bugs at launch. D3 had people queued up for ages for the first week and had slow servers for at minimum 2 weeks after that.

By irrelevant you mean a game that only saw an average of 30k-40k people playing it per day 10 years after it was released, and a game that sold 30 million copies within 3 years of release, right? Oh, you mean irrelevant to you. If you honestly thought cooldowns were a problem, then maybe you weren't playing the game right, or didn't have the right gear to accommodate the build you were using? If you honestly think Blizzard did that to pad play time, you might want to get checked. Last I played D3, as a whirlwind Barb I literally spammed one two abilities Whirlwind and Rend and watched shit explode all over the place. I was clearing Greater Rifts in ~3-4 minutes, and clearing out full maps of monsters like it was nothing. IIRC last I played D2 you have a stamina bar, meaning you can't continuously "run," and with all the dungeons and caves you go through, I seriously doubt with a limited stamina bar new players are traversing the map in 2 hours.

I would love to see where you get your stats from. 30-40k/day for 10years straight? While I am basing my personal opinion on the matter, the blizz friend list I've accumulated over the past 12-14 years as well as the big diablo discords (main reddit, maxroll, chaos sanc, various streamer DC) show very few people actually playing D3 much less talk about it.

I said D3 launch was good (albeit thanks for the Diablo name set forth by D2). But keeping its player count and attracting new players was the problem which led to its irrelevancy.

Your WW barb was only so powerful thanks to the millions who suffered in the beginning, paid beta testing. The game was extremely different at launch. Auction House. Goblin farming parties. Opening chest and kicking over rocks for Drops (rares, not legends) instead of killing mobs. The infamous Inferno Act 2 wall. The constant nerfs to viable builds (happened to D4 during beta and right at launch(rip barbs)). I played D3 vanilla for at least 1000 hours. I unfortunately only played the campaign of RoS and called it quits. The Paragon levels, GR, Legendary Gems, Ancient Legendary equipment or whatever came much after that so unless you're a diehard fan of D3, most didn't stick around long enough to experience it.

D2 had limited life, mana, stamina but potion usage easily fix that problem. Regular Potions had no cooldown but they had a fix rate for refilling each resource. While new players can't beat the game in 2 hours, a season veteran who comes back season after season can achieve it almost routinely. People come back to D2 again and again, season after season.

Edit: You act like that 3rd party trading was actually a good thing? You gave your money to people you don't even know, in the hopes they gave you the item you wanted? Isn't that basically P2W? The exact opposite of the in-game store in D4 that everyone is up in arms about? *facepalm*

Time sink or not, game is fun. I don't mind time sinks if they're entertaining me. Then again, I love tinkering with builds and gear, and min-maxing. I lived in spreadsheets during WotLK. Also, not every action has a cooldown, and even then, I'm sure, like D3, most of the cooldowns will have gear that reduce that cooldown to basically nothing anyways. You're sounding like a troll honestly.

Now I know you're trolling. Endless threads? Just a quick glance at both Reddit and the Blizzard forums would prove you wrong.

3rd party anything kept D2 alive for over 2 decades. Whether is "good" or "bad" for the game is up to debate. But it kept the game relevant. You willingly paid to beta test D4 for season runners and you're talking about P2W?

Again if you like it as is, good for you. As stated earlier, CDR and Resource reduction builds with items enabling such came much later in RoS which I did say made the game better.

 

[NightReaver]

Somebody really, really likes Blizz. And that's fine. However it doesn't change the fact they have some real player retention issues across the board, and that's an issue for a company that relies on relatively few titles and aims for longevity instead.

The issue with Blizz is they swagger about as if they're the old Blizz that brought SC and Warcraft to the table. They couldn't even manage a clean WC3 remake. SC2 was a joke. WoW continues to die. Hearthstone....lol. They did damage to Diablo with that crappy mobile game.

We'll see how D4 does a long with expansions. It hasn't been a clean start, but maybe it'll stick around with enough people.

 

[Decko87]

I understand people value their money and time differently and I'm glad you like the game as is now.

D2 was plagued with bugs at launch. D3 had people queued up for ages for the first week and had slow servers for at minimum 2 weeks after that.

I would love to see where you get your stats from. 30-40k/day for 10years straight? While I am basing my personal opinion on the matter, the blizz friend list I've accumulated over the past 12-14 years as well as the big diablo discords (main reddit, maxroll, chaos sanc, various streamer DC) show very few people actually playing D3 much less talk about it.

I said D3 launch was good (albeit thanks for the Diablo name set forth by D2). But keeping its player count and attracting new players was the problem which led to its irrelevancy.

Your WW barb was only so powerful thanks to the millions who suffered in the beginning, paid beta testing. The game was extremely different at launch. Auction House. Goblin farming parties. Opening chest and kicking over rocks for Drops (rares, not legends) instead of killing mobs. The infamous Inferno Act 2 wall. The constant nerfs to viable builds (happened to D4 during beta and right at launch(rip barbs)). I played D3 vanilla for at least 1000 hours. I unfortunately only played the campaign of RoS and called it quits. The Paragon levels, GR, Legendary Gems, Ancient Legendary equipment or whatever came much after that so unless you're a diehard fan of D3, most didn't stick around long enough to experience it.

D2 had limited life, mana, stamina but potion usage easily fix that problem. Regular Potions had no cooldown but they had a fix rate for refilling each resource. While new players can't beat the game in 2 hours, a season veteran who comes back season after season can achieve it almost routinely. People come back to D2 again and again, season after season.


3rd party anything kept D2 alive for over 2 decades. Whether is "good" or "bad" for the game is up to debate. But it kept the game relevant. You willingly paid to beta test D4 for season runners and you're talking about P2W?

Again if you like it as is, good for you. As stated earlier, CDR and Resource reduction builds with items enabling such came much later in RoS which I did say made the game better.

The druids being fat is the funniest complaint. It'd be cool if in the future they just gave us access to body morphs. I'd love to have chunky tank ass Necro just to throw everyone off.

 

[Westwood]

I'm going to wait until the game is $40 and things seem a bit more finished.

 

[SomeGiantIdiot]

The druids being fat is the funniest complaint...

This is the ideal Druid body. Some many not like it. But this is what peak performance looks like.

 

[NightReaver]

This is the ideal Druid body. Some many not like it. But this is what peak performance looks like.

When you channel your inner bear so hard you become it.

 

[ng4ever]

Technically there were 2 planned for D3. But they eliminated the second one due to “not enough sales” which is total BS.

That what happens.

 

[1_rick]

When you channel your inner bear so hard you become it.

FWIW, there's a quest whose completion gives you the title "The Bear".

You make your own fun. I've been playing around with ridiculous titles based on the suffix "Casualty" for a few days. Apprentice Casualty, Bubbly Casualty, Lucky Casualty, you get the idea. I've seen a couple other people doing stuff like that.

 

[Rattle]

Wow a lot of typing this last page I guess not enough playing. For me personally I like all the Diablo games. It's a time sink that's the point ! I'm laid up out of work with back issues, I wish this came out a month ago cuz I've been bored. Level 35 Necro WT1 just for fun. Nothing else. I don't care about early access I don't care about the store. I don't care who's lvl 50 or 100. You can ignore all that crap. You can also ignore seasons and just play the game you bought.


Arrr ! Loud noises and really long posts. Type moar things longer!

 

[Usual_suspect]

I understand people value their money and time differently and I'm glad you like the game as is now.

D2 was plagued with bugs at launch. D3 had people queued up for ages for the first week and had slow servers for at minimum 2 weeks after that.

The problem, and yes, I was one of those "beta" testers that pre-ordered and played D3 at launch, was the game had no real end-game content. They attempted to mimic Diablo 2 in this regard, and people were burned out with it considering WoW was highly successful, and Diablo 2 was getting dated. It wasn't until RoS that Blizzard took D3 in another direction to make it more appealing to casual fans.

I would love to see where you get your stats from. 30-40k/day for 10years straight? While I am basing my personal opinion on the matter, the blizz friend list I've accumulated over the past 12-14 years as well as the big diablo discords (main reddit, maxroll, chaos sanc, various streamer DC) show very few people actually playing D3 much less talk about it.

Source on active players. You can view up to 365 days prior. With RoS D3 saw a resurgence, so you can extrapolate the data I presented to guess what the average player count was/would be.

I said D3 launch was good (albeit thanks for the Diablo name set forth by D2). But keeping its player count and attracting new players was the problem which led to its irrelevancy.

They tried to do more of the same with Diablo 3, and it didn't work. The end game in the original pre-RoS Diablo 3 sucked. It didn't help that drop rates were extremely low, and the game was a lot harder than even the developers anticipated.

Your WW barb was only so powerful thanks to the millions who suffered in the beginning, paid beta testing. The game was extremely different at launch. Auction House. Goblin farming parties. Opening chest and kicking over rocks for Drops (rares, not legends) instead of killing mobs. The infamous Inferno Act 2 wall. The constant nerfs to viable builds (happened to D4 during beta and right at launch(rip barbs)). I played D3 vanilla for at least 1000 hours. I unfortunately only played the campaign of RoS and called it quits. The Paragon levels, GR, Legendary Gems, Ancient Legendary equipment or whatever came much after that so unless you're a diehard fan of D3, most didn't stick around long enough to experience it.

I pre-ordered, so yeah I was there at the beginning. I gave it a fair shake for a few months, but due to life situations, I didn't get back into it until mid-2016 when I sorted out the problems in my life. If anything though, it should show that Blizzard at least cared enough, even if the player counts were diminished, to fix the game, and continue supporting it. Plenty of studio's out there quick to shut a game down when it's no longer financially viable, or worth it for them to fix it.

D2 had limited life, mana, stamina but potion usage easily fix that problem. Regular Potions had no cooldown but they had a fix rate for refilling each resource. While new players can't beat the game in 2 hours, a season veteran who comes back season after season can achieve it almost routinely. People come back to D2 again and again, season after season.

You see, new players wouldn't know, or understand it unless they invested time into the game to learn it's intricacies. That's where I think Diablo 4 is doing a good job--it's inviting to new players by taking everything they got right with Diablo 2 and 3, while doing their best to be beginner friendly.

3rd party anything kept D2 alive for over 2 decades. Whether is "good" or "bad" for the game is up to debate. But it kept the game relevant. You willingly paid to beta test D4 for season runners and you're talking about P2W?

Beta testing implies that the game is broken, it's not. It might have bugs, but that's to be expected in open world games, but to say I'm beta testing when the game is fully functional, and working? C'mon now.

Regardless of if it kept it relevant or not, it's the same concept as pay to win whether you get it from the developer, or some 3rd party site. You're paying some person on the internet real life money for an item that has a particular stat set, or affix that you're looking for to give you an advantage. Diablo 4's shop literally has nothing in it that can change the course of the gameplay.

Again if you like it as is, good for you. As stated earlier, CDR and Resource reduction builds with items enabling such came much later in RoS which I did say made the game better.

I will agree Diablo 3 was in rough shape at launch, they did themselves no favors with the RMAH, but it should at least be a testament that Blizzard didn't give up and just shut it down and focus only on SC2 and WoW.

 

[Usual_suspect]

Wow a lot of typing this last page I guess not enough playing. For me personally I like all the Diablo games. It's a time sink that's the point ! I'm laid up out of work with back issues, I wish this came out a month ago cuz I've been bored. Level 35 Necro WT1 just for fun. Nothing else. I don't care about early access I don't care about the store. I don't care who's lvl 50 or 100. You can ignore all that crap. You can also ignore seasons and just play the game you bought.

I agree. I just type a lot because I like to be detailed in my opinion. One thing I've learned from being on forums, Reddit, etc. is if you leave out minor details, even if by accident, or if you were just assuming and trying to keep it short, people will point that out and use it as a counter-argument. During the work week, which for me is Tuesday through Saturday, I tend to have little to no playing time so I spend my time before work, and sometimes after work if my wife is asleep or not home, on message boards. On my days off is when I go ham on play time, so I seldomly come around these parts.