Considering the betrayal that was Diablo Immortal and the way you disappointed us and KEPT disappointing us in D3, I say you have to prove that this D4 is actually playable.
I felt 2 things that you likely did not want to convey when I read your introduction to D4, and they were thus:
a) Swap like a madman. It is about YOU, not where the state of the game. You consider it to be dynamic when the player has to mash buttons to swap weapons and bunny hop around and shift forms, but that isnt dynamic, that is just several repetetive tasks you carry out independant from whats actually happening otherwise. Your general idea of positioning seems to be nothing but “evade telegraphed ability X” and “dont be surrounded”. You want to see real dynamic gameplay? Play HoTS or Dota2. Ranges, movement speeds and cutting off is relevant there. Your programming has boiled down to having a threat hub like a huge boss that creates danger zone blips on the map so you dont stand there and pummel him. That is garbage and that HAS been garbage. In D1, you didnt have a sprint button so if you werent careful you got flanked as a rogue and you got melee’d by demons. That hasnt happened in the AOE mess that is D3, but it was still somewhat present in D2.
b) The devil’s in the details, and that is what hasnt been said. The text has been clearly written for approval (and it failed on me because it was so cheaply manipulative on the “you asked for this so we give you this so you are happy now right?” idea of manipulation it was kinda sad… I would expect a bit more from a company that constantly has to create presentations to win over an incompetend design board. Shouldnt you have more practice in manipulative tactics by now?)
But you didnt really dive deep. You didnt present your own idea of what should happen, all you did was present a non-dynamic gameplay trailer that was just bad and then you are spouting how much buttons we get to press so that must be dynamics, right?
You didnt seem to get the overall idea of all the individual criticism you faced. That D3 lacked depth and complexity. That means, we didnt get enough stuff to explore. NOT that we didnt like Sets or that we preferred skilltrees to the mess you made with the runes. It was a general problem, it wasnt just an individual problem that is fixable just by adhering to the criticism of somebody that fondly remembers features he liked. Those features he remembers are part of a greater feel and a bigger picture. You seem determined to fix issues, and I approve. But you dont seem to think ahead of the feedback and you dont seem to envision what is the underlying issue you are and will be facing, and that is just that: Depth and complexity. Replay value, you might say.
In D2, we liked Rune words because several rune words were playable on either you or your merc, and each of them gave some identity. Depth. Complexity. It wasnt about how freaking awesome your greater rift level was. It was about you clearing stuff with a sense of progression, and it still puzzles me how you managed to do it. Quite possibly I was just simply younger and more patient with my games. But there WAS a sense of change and progression, all the same. A sense I didnt really get in D3 despite your efforts with Paragon (which was undermined with Seasons, the conflicting concept) and mythics you can use on different characters, and a quick-equip function and all that. Progression didnt really happen. It was all a bit hollow and void.
A word of advice: With nothing to trade for except the top levels of an established identity (mythic and beyond rarity levels of the same item) you get the OPPOSITE of depth, you just get higher numbers. You failed on that end before, and I cannot give you an advice on how to avoid said pitfall, but luckily that is your profession, I have my own problems to tackle on company time, and you got yours. Tackle it if you have an idea, and dont act on it at your own peril. The feedback will be spirited, and you know it. Some of the criticism can be toned down a bit if you are actually figuring out what went wrong BEYOND what you were told repeatedly.
Nothing you wrote so far regarding D4 makes me belive that you have even a general idea of what went wrong, or even THAT something went wrong. You pushed the meta of D3 into a funnel of identical gameplay and just made us be more efficient at the same identical thing we could do, and since all you offered us were different sets or higher levels of rarity for sets that we had, you had to compensate with adjustable difficulty. Didnt seem like an approach that pleased the masses sufficiently, did it? D2 had a difficulty flat and once players were sufficiently efficient, they naturally got bored and restarted to explore something else. And for some reason they did not feel bad about it. Will you recreate a “non-punished-feel” again in D4? So far I doubt it. Very much so.
Yeah buddy. Woot Woot! Thank you very much.
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