Who gets sad about videogames?
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Diablo is the gateway drug to arpgās PoE is for the player that wants to tinker with everything.
Diablo is accessible and simple to pick up while PoE has a massive learning curve.
Both games have their place so do I feel saddened?ā¦ā¦hell no there are so many kick a$$ arpgs now take your pick they all have something cool.
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Itās dead Jim, you need to let go. I promise you itās much nicer outside of the maze, there is sunshine and kids selling lemonade for a quarter.
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Saddened is definitely the word.
We were talking about that in our guild chat today.
We love diablo and want it to win, but even though the changes in S7 are amazing they should have been here seasons ago. Couple that with once the novelty of the powers wear off you are left with +10 pit tiers from the power creep, and then just running duriel for materials and ubers.
Couple that with having no faith blizzard will provide content in the future:
They are letting the season fail at the moment when they could at least increase drops and ease the cost of masterworking to keep people interested. That is such an easy fix by moving decimal, and they just wonāt do it - so leave it this way for six more weeks?
Equally you know theres a 50% chance they legacy gear every season, and their idea of content is just nerfing some builds by 200% and buffing others by 300% without changing the core game.
The end game is currently unchanged:
Dark citadel and undercity are worthless due to drop rates
Duriel has been endgame content for three seasons now, and players really want LESS duriel but they made it so it has a double chance for mythics over anywhere else and the best way to get crafting materials.
Hordes and helltide are actually really fun currently, but the drop rate still make it so you have to grind too many of them.
Nightmare dungeons are better now, but we have had that content since season one.
Pits are fine, but I think I have probably done 3000 pits now?
Really wanted diablo to win.
Really sad to leave.
And it really is that, sad. Our entire guild purchased POE today and no one was really thrilled aboutā¦ that should say it all. But whats left to do here?
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Letās hope. Iām looking forward to POE2 though. Until then Iāve fired up D2R and went back into that one after a few years of not playing it and started up an Amazon (Javelin build) and Iām having a blast with it.
I doubt weāll see anything new in D4 anytime soon, beyond the seasonal themes, but we can hope. Either way, POE2 will have my full attention soon enough.
I will check out the D4 season theme for a week, but I doubt Iāll pay for the Seasonal Battle Pass or cosmetics anymore until we get more end game content. Sorry Blizzard, gotta do it. 
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I think, and i could be wrong here that the issue with Diablo 4 is that it tries to please everyone.
Say you have 100 people.
You can have all the 100 people rate the game a 5/10.
You can have 50 people rate the game a 10/10 and the remaining 50 hate the game.
Blizzard chooses the first option while GGG prefers the latter. Its evident by Diablo 4 having myriads of different difficulties, a difficulty for everyone.
But the game looses cohesion and special memorable moments because nobody will bang their head against something they dont have to so ppl will always play on a difficulty where nothing causes any problems. I suspect they want the 100 ppl on a 5/10 is that a 5 is enough for them to buy expansions. And getting 100 people to buy is better than 50.
PoE 1 and 2 has only 1 difficulty which for many will be too hard and frustrating.
In D4 its very easy for everyone to get every item needed for a full build. And they try to cater to the more hardcore players by having Greater affixes of the same exact items.
While in PoE none of that exists. You want this good item? Theres only 1 version of it and you gotta grind to find it or grind to eventually be able to buy it.
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Sad, yes.
At the same time, it has been in this state for over a decade, or two. So not sure how sad I feel about it anymore. More annoyed that they cant manage to reverse course.
Definitely feels like the top cause for all other issues it has. A game without vision, without direction.
Same core issue many other games suffer from.
It just another generic microtransaction cash grab game.
Nothing in it is Blizzard quality.
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Sad part is Blizz just keeps losing more reputation. Once great Developers"Gaming for Gamers" is long gone.
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What do you expect?
do you not know how capitalism works? Itās really simple.
Blizzard Does Not Consider The Diablo IP To Be profitable.
Any of their devs with any sort of talent have been reassigned to COD or games that the bosses feel have higher profit margins. Diablo is running on a skeleton crew with the talking heads unable to even speak intelligently on what their jobs are when it comes to the IP. Listen to the last campfire. No clue what class identity is for any class from those āin chargeā of the classes.
POE2 will be a superior game produced by a superior studio for the simple fact that their leadership considers the IP to be profitable and will assign the right resources to ensure it is a success.
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Itās a problem with AAA game development in general. These companies have absolutely humongous budgets and yet they somehow make less content than indie game studios.
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It is pretty sad. The thing is, I anticipated this would happen after how the July reveal streams shook out (D4 VoH Spiritborn reveal stream 2 hours before the PoE 1 Settlers league rundown).
The difference in quality was nothing short of staggering. Blizzard, with a full-blown expansion, failed to compete with the quality and polish of a typical PoE 1 league. They were supposed to āwinā that one, but were BTFO instead.
On the 21st of this month, the circumstances were reversed. The nuclear levels of salt in Rodās tweet just show how thoroughly and completely GGG disemboweled Blizzard, because PoE 2 was supposed to be the āanswerā to D4, while in reality, D4 failed to compete with PoE 1ās leagues.
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The funny thing is that these game would actually be called Diablo-likes if Diablo was still the industry standard.
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Incredibly saddened.
I may throw shade at Diablo now, but I remember having multiple copies of all the D1 and D2, loved Diablo 1 and put in so many hours just playing my mage over and over, dying to the butcher, then playing Diablo 2 and playing that for 10-years. Then Diablo 3 comes out a total dud with arguably the worst story ever told. Then we get this mess again with Diablo 4ā¦ no content and no variety in the gameplay.
Itās very much a massive disappointment and I expected better.
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Rodās anger is the equivalent of me getting really mad if I were to battle Gordon Ramsay in a head-to-head cook-off and the judges unanimously liked his dish more than mine.
Thatās why I and likely many others continue to bash D4. D3 submarined the franchise, and D4 only further destroyed its reputation among people who actually know what a good ARPG is.
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Thatās honestly quite a positive attitude. Back in D3 days, we didnāt even have the luxury to be as optimistic. Good for you.
They got us both buddy. That filthy marketing of theirs and the promise of āgoing back to the roots of Diabloā combined with developer blogs did it for me. But, full me onceā¦
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A lot of AAA developers are convinced that games are essentially art and hence they are trying to make an interactive movie rather than a game.
You can always find examples of them talking about how excited they are about storyboarding, making and animating 3d models, voice acting etc., but no one ever talks about how excited they are about the gameplay.
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Those elements are of massive import to a high-quality game, but presentation is meaningless if what youāre presenting is rotten to the core. You can coat a mouldy apple in as many layers of chocolate as you like, but one bite will tell anyone with functioning taste buds that it is, in fact, a mouldy apple. Only those who completely lack taste or have eating nothing but rotten apples all their lives would consistently eat it up and be content.
Thatās my analogy for most who blindly praise and defend D4, laughing at people who correctly identify that PoE is the gold standard of this genre, and has been for years. GGG actually spent a fair amount of time in ExileCon talking about all the stuff you mentioned (model rigging, art, etc). Itās a case of āand also thisā as opposed to āTHIS THIS THIS!ā however.
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Iām āsaddenedā at the thought that a once beloved franchise is in the hands of such incompetent and mediocre developers. But as for their creation, D4 itself, iām multiple stages past saddened, iām at what you would call ārevellingā at the sorry state that its in.
Annoyed at the industry being this way, a little.
I am a bit saddened that I didnāt give PoE a chance much much sooner and instead wasted time doing the āpinnacleā content/achievement title chasing in this game.
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