I’ve never seen Blizz listen and follow through on so much player feedback. The things they’ll do to keep the money flowing.
It’s still a week before the first ever D4 PTR so it remains to be seen if they’ve really bent that much. Yeah, on paper (or whatever you call the patch notes) it looks like they’re FINALLY responding to months of player frustration but lets get real… a game that released 9 months ago shouldn’t be in such bad shape that a 4th season patch is considered salvation.
They’ve screwed up the economy, the end game, the class balance, and more. And they expect us to shovel out another $70 - $100 for the expansion in 3 to 6 months?
Not to mention that the game is still unstable with horrible latency/connection issues. I try playing it on the same computer I play D3 on. In D3 I have ZERO network issues and play HC on all three regions (NA, EU, and Asia) I have maybe one DC per season. With D4 I get DC’d every hour or less… At the start of S2 I couldn’t get more than 15 minutes before one hit. And latency? LOL… with D3 I’m at 50-70ms with spikes to 200ms. In D4 I’m at 200-250ms with spikes to 2000ms. How the hell is latency 4 to 10 times WORSE in a newer game?
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They’re not listening to “player feedback.”
We gave them feedback for YEARS, across MULTIPLE betas both closed and open, and then CONTINUED to give feedback for MONTHS post-release.
They’re listening to quarterly profits and investors. THAT’s who they’re listening to.
Which, ironically, is what has doomed them into this position in the first place. If they listened to the player feedback, we’d have a game people would be playing instead of review bombing.
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Are they even doing that at this point? The company is now a part of the 3 trillion dollar Microsoft corporation. Activision/Blizzard is a small piece of that pie. Do the shareholders even care about D4 numbers? I bet they’re more focused on WoW subscriptions or maybe… maybe… the Cash Shop in D4.
Yeah big shark pressure (Microsoft)
We know this because D3 was in that same position nearly a decade ago when they were over-confident on their position and wouldn’t budge till near the end so they can’t drop the ball now that someone bigger is over them, they gotta impress!
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I find it hilarious that people knowingly spent top end game money to be beta testers and will line up again for the same when the xpac is released. 5-8 years from now, when the game is ready for release, I’ll pick up for $20 on the Valentine’s Day sale.
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Only 5-8 years? Optimist.
I doubt D4 will ever be a game worth sinking time into at this point. The basic premise is badly implemented… a weird MMO/ARPG hybrid without real grouping tools… with no actual group content… hell, they’re actually going to PUNISH you for playing in groups in S4 for some content. Sure, we’ve complained that they over reward group play with XP bonuses, etc. so instead of just toning those down they’re going to take stuff away from groups. These clowns can’t do ANYTHING right.
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Basing it on the D3 design scheme which D4 seems to be following. D3V was a stripped down farming simulator. No end game except farming for RMAH. Hell, it didn’t even have adventure mode. Soooo many bad design choices. They fixed some major, glaring issues with ROS release, but it was still 2-3 years before they decided which direction they wanted to go.
I am figuring D4 will get a little better in each of the next 2-3 xpacs. About year 5, they will find another potential gold mine and leave D4 for dead, as it isn’t bringing the money they want. By then, the game will start being ready for release and will become a good game because the Developers will be able to design the game and not the business majors and accountants.
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Yup… the real End Boss in every game… the fools in sales and marketing.
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Any company I have worked for those are definitely 2 of the 3 Prime Evils.
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What happened? What do they do?
desperation.
D4 dying
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D4 is a prime example of what garbage the entire triple A game industry has become.
The entire industry can’t crash and burn to ashes that enough
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I wouldn’t personally say the entire industry. There are still companies who make amazing games with critical acclaim.
They may not “make” as much money as these garbage games but how much a game makes is not what matters to gamers. A game being fun to play is what matters to gamers.
Blizzard used to be a company like that. They wanted to make fun games. They cared about customers and their feedback. Now they are not. They’ve become a greedy entity that mistreats customers and makes games where most gamers are eager to find fun elsewhere.
I’ll leave it at that before Kilometer goes on about how if a game makes a lot of money, that means it’s fun to play, etc.
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Indy games are still great. It’s the games made by giant corporations with $100 mil+ budgets that need to burn to the ground.
How many hundreds of people worked on D4? And the game still sucks. Not even blaming the people who did the actual work creating the game because they’re all underpaid and mistreated too.
This bloated way any software project is done anymore sucks, especially when they’re run by massively top heavy corporations who’s only purpose of existence is to feed the greed of already rich people.
Not too mention all the other parasites who have attached themselves to gaming and want to do nothing but destroy it because they’re miserable hateful people.
A crash will be good gamers in the long run
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I don’t know if it’s true, don’t care to look further than a quick google search but I saw over 9000 people were credited in making it.
Hollow Knight was an acclaimed game made by 3 people.
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Mpt true at all, there are still many AAA games that are amazing. Even if Diablo doesn’t quite live up to its former glory
The only rule without an exception is the one that states there are exceptions to every rule.
Yea, sure, there are definitely big budget games from big name studios that are amazing. There are also low budget games made from indie companies that are amazing. There are also games made from both extremes or anywhere in between that are utter trash. I’m less interested in finding the one exception, and more concerned about the general rule.
Most of the time, rich people don’t get rich by being kind, or compassionate, or considerate, or literally any other moral/ethical virtue. Most of the time, they get rich either by complete accident, or by being miserly. Which, in a society whose economics and sociology are conjoined, usually means being anti-consumer at best, possibly even anti-humanist at worst.
I bought D4 because I drew on my past experience with the company. I knew them from a time when they released games “When They’re Done™” or else literally, not at all. The company that made Diablo 1-3, WoW, SC’s 1 and 2, WC 1-3, Hearthstone even. That Blizzard had different values than the Blizzard we have now.
That’s “fine,” lesson learned, “fool me once” etc. But the larger picture, the bigger question, is this: WHY did Blizzard change? WHAT caused the shift?
It certainly wasn’t becoming SMALLER or POORER that did it. Correlation vs causation is irrelevant at this point. I don’t just mistrust big daddy Blizz. I mistrust those that influenced how Blizz grew up to become.
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Greed
Social media is really highlighting how unintelligent and naive so many people are. We have people who are eagerly willing to live poorly so they have have that shiny cosmetic. We have steamer fans. We have people who will watch a TikTok from any random person and take what they say and believe it, no matter how far-fetched it is without question. Some companies know this. They figure “we can bank off these people”.
Which leads back to my previous statements that most gamers are their own worst enemies.
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It always cracks me up when people assume stockholders have some magic lever that forces corporate boards to bend to their will over the most miniscule details. The big boys are institutional investors who don’t care how the sausage is made. If a corporation isn’t profitable enough the computers that actually do the investing just move the money elsewhere. The board members decide what to do about it. They’re usually wrong anyway.