In fairness, what you quoted was written in November
Cookie cutter builds wont be inferior. Those are the builds that the majority of the playerbase adopts because the theorycrafters told them it’s the best build.
In my experience it’s the people who refuse to use cookie cutter builds because they want to be different but they don’t really understand how all the theorycrafting works that are the ones who end up being inferior.
As for the idea of inferior builds that progress significantly worse than serious ones, even Diablo 3 allows for that so I imagine that Diablo 4 will as well.
I just hope they work on not having abilities which are more or less just useless because there are no good builds that use them. Not every skill needs to be good in every build, but every skill should be good in at least 1 build.
I understand how theorycrafting works, most of the time those builds use skills I don’t care for and I much prefer playing how I like than what is theoretically the best, most efficient, or most optimal.
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Still applies, look around the forum.
Yep, only beaten by a game that doesn’t exist yet lol
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I think D3’s simplicity stemmed from the fact that it was designed for a very broad audience (13+?). If it the target audience was 18+ i think they would have added more engaging mechanics and character building. Of course this would also increase the intensity of the content as well, but i think D3 needed that too. (post on appropriate atmosphere in D4)
Considering D3 was rated Mature, itnwas not targeted at 13+. The simplification was to appeal to a broader audience, not younger. And it worked.
I still think that it was designed for 13+, but then the MA rating was added to increase the appeal to the older audience. I was comfortable with my brother ( who was 13 at the time) to play D3, but not so much for games like witcher 3. D3 was really mild in terms of language, gore, sexual themes, compared to witcher 3 which was also MA.
It’s not obvious what facts you are referring to here. If you are referring to D3’s record sales; I’d contend that D3’s success was due to blizzard’s stellar reputation and D2. D2 was such a beloved game that Blizzard could have wrapped up a steaming turd with the name of diablo on it and it still would have gotten two thirds of those sales.
You are right, its “mature rated”, and Jay Wilson claimed they were not aiming for 18+ but rather 15+.
UK has 15 age rate, seems they were smart regarding D3 actual content, since all other countries regarded the game to be at least 16+ (USA & Canada being 17+) which is way overboard tbh.
It’s worth noting that Diablo 2 is also rated PEGI 16 just like Diablo 3 is, while both games are rated M(17+) in North America by the ESRB.
I wish i new more about the rating system. Do you know if blizzard has any influence on the final rating (i mean outside of the fact that they built the game)? I just wonder if they can influence the ESRB in any way by outside means to get the rating they think will be most positively received.
It is a good point that D2 and D3 had the same rating, i’m just not sure if D3 really earned the intensity of 17+; perhaps i was just desensitized by time D3 rolled around =/ .
I went back and watched the trailers for D2 and D3. They seemed to be pretty close in terms of intensity. I would point out that the D3 has a more epic fantasy vibe with its focus appearing to be more on the sweeping vistas and scenery. Perhaps its merely this wow-ism that makes me think it was for a younger target audience; though it could be objectively stated that epic fantasy is for a younger audience than a dark fantasy.
As I understand it developers have to fill out some paperwork and submit a video detailing the most extreme content that is in the game along with normal gameplay, and the ratings boards use that to determine the ratings.
Which it’s also worth pointing out here that lying about what is in the game can get developers fined(and the rating will be corrected anyway).
One thing I think that happened with Diablo 3 is that it used a more cartoonish aesthetic, which is generally not a factor in the ratings but makes a lot of people feel like it looks more childish.
It’s also worth pointing out that a M rating is about the limits of what Diablo is going to get out of the ESRB. In the US and Canada we tend to be a lot softer on rating violence and a lot harsher on rating sexual content. Even games like DOOM are rated M and not Adult Only.
The AO rating is reversed for full on sex being shown in detail(not just people humping with clever camera angles like most M rated games) or violence with special context like Hatred, which is a mass murder simulator.
Europe is reversed on it and rates violence more harshly, so depending on what’s in the game it’s possible that Diablo 4 could get PEGI 18 but given that Blizzard Irvine has always opposed the more extreme displays of gore I imagine they’ll shoot for a 16 again.
The original devs of Diablo 1 and 2 have noted they had to fight Irvine a fair bit over the content in the game.
Blizzard should cater the game around the largest segment of their buyers.
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This is the audience which pays 90%of the money so the game is supposed to cater first of all to them. D4 is not some crowd funded Indie game for neckbeards.
and sold as good, i hope it.
Except that argument falls apart after the first week when the D2 lovers went rager online about it being garbage and the game continued to sell, and sold 10M+ on consoles. Sure the initial sales were all it’s a ew Diablo/Blizzard game and the goodwill of what came before. But moments after launch it was apparent how different it was and how upset the D2 community was.
Think you missed crushing blow?!
Na, i was a D2 fan, and i bought the game 3 months after release, solely because of my memories of D2 and blizzard fandom.
The number of people at that point that would have been buying it would be very small though, and even if we were to discredit all 2012 sales that’s still 18 million which is not even counting the last 5 years of sales.
On top of the fact that the game had 1 million unique players each day in 2013.
You want us to believe that Diablo 2 fans that hated the game kept buying and playing the game for years after the fact despite that they hated it?
Because that doesn’t exactly make them look very smart. Maybe Diablo 4 should be simplified if that’s the case =P
And D3 easily outsold D2 2X-8X depending on which source is official. Easily millions of people who never touched D2 played D3.