I don’t understand why so many players feel the need to create vindictive narratives when there are highly plausible and exacting technical statements on the specific issue.
Playing a game for hundreds of hours for cosmetics alone seems like a waste of time.
Instead, Imagine simply playing the game because it is fun. The cosmetics are clearly secondary to having fun.
Which is not to say that you can’t prioritize cosmetics. But you shouldn’t assume you have any clue about how any game works unless you have worked on it.
Perhaps instead of claiming knowledge you simply do not have, you could instead accept that you are not as interested in playing this season. There are other games and other ways to occupy your time. Taking a break can be fun.
It’s not an attack on you.
Personally, I find the OPs definition of “lazy” developers to be insulting and puerile. That is in addition to being flatly false on the facts of the matter. Any developer will confirm that technical issues are often technical. This is entirely uncontroversial to anyone with the appropriate experience.
That’s not the point. Pretending like some smart recycling they’re pretty damn well acquainted with by now is somehow this titanic task demanding a lot of work IS insulting people’s intelligence. We know Blizzard has a lengthy history of recycling assets, and there’s absolutely no shame in that because as I mentioned already, it helps streamline a lot of production kinks all over the place. I’m very grateful for the work they’ve put into more impactful areas of the game such as updated items, but this post simply came across as a lame excuse that nobody needed to hear.
I mean, consider the hyperbolic tone of that post:
For re-skinned assets that have already been tested well enough and are already functioning within the game since years? Adding a different texture isn’t going to magically break the model and somehow render it unusable, you know? The texturing process itself for a relatively small asset isn’t going to set them back in the very least either, even with a small resource pool, because a competent texture artist will take less than an evening to get it done, and squeezing it within a more recent build isn’t going to break your game. Take a good look at many of the seasonal rewards. A lot of them follow this re-skinning pattern, and that’s fine, because they’re different enough to keep people happy with new goodies to look forward to.
Then again, in the incredibly unlikely scenario Blizzard, a multi-billion dollar corporation just couldn’t afford to have an intern do a texture for an old model, they could’ve at least been honest about it.
It is not about how easy or hard it would be. It is all about holding power of two different things. Which would hold more players till D4 launches, if D4 is announced at this year’s Blizzcon as I predict?
1.) A bunch of different cosmetics with only a few balance changes that cause one or more new viable builds.
2. New gear with the possibility of more than just a few new builds and maybe even tons of balance changes that could possibly bring all classes to where they are almost equal to one another in relative power.
You along with others might think one, but I would say two has the best chances of holding players than one. Don’t say that it is easy to do both either. That is unless you are one that has made games before.
People like you have made me feel that it is so easy to make games that I without any programming experience could go out and make the next AAA title all by myself. Yes where I would do all of the coding, artwork, etc… and have it all done within a three year window after starting.
It is not about money or time spent it is about what will have the most holding power for the majority of the players. I think you know what will have the most holding power.
I have played countless times the diablo 1 demo from windows 95 game sampler (back in 1996), then everything diablo…
My answer is: let’s see what’s next!
Creating a new wing include testing is at best a 2 days effort, & I am being generous.
Sometimes its a bit sad of the lost potiential. So many cool skill that was rotting. A dedicated crew of 5 developers would be sufficient, but they couldn’t even bother to allocate.
Punching code cant be simple Lango. Its a chain reaction through out im sure. If that was they case we would all do it. As far as I got was “Hello World” in c++ lol. My only question would be do you thing D3 could of gone better if they released a 2nd expansion? Im kind of thinging myself that code was done years ago when x-pac was canceled and they reworking It today until d4 is ready.