If your level designers arent straight up BLASTERS at the game it says A LOT; period, stop with the excuse enabeling.
I think D4 is an OK game; on the surface it is quite good actually. However the game lacks depth, and it lacks passion. The Dev gameplay video was extremely eye opening for me, basically EVERYTHING makes sense now.
People trying to hide behind diversity and inclusion… N A H FAM. It wouldnt matter if this game was made by 200 black trans midgets, if its good its good, if its trash its TRASH. Bobby’s World was able to crank out a beautifully polished major release, but the beauty is skin deep and ultimately you will walk away thinking about how good it could have been, before forgetting about it completely much like almost all big budget productions these days. Give me your money, look at the pretty lights, now GET OUT seems to be the philosophy.
What struck me most about all of these stupid “campfire” hostage videos is that THERE IS NO DIVERSITY AT BLIZZARD. Every single one of these employees comes off as disconnected, out of touch, passionless, talentless, coastal California NPCs, that seem to care more about being put on show trial in front of the Politburo than they do about actually creating a great game . They have slightly different skin tones, hair colors, and genders; but ultimately THEY ARE ALL THE SAME.
I dont think it is all the Devs fault though, its pretty clear that Blizz suffers from SEVERE siloing, where different departments arent even allowed to know what the other departments are doing. Im sure some of these people work hard, but they are working on a tree within a forest, and they have no concept of what the forest even looks like. Its also Blizz fault for not fostering a culture of EXCELLENCE; too many aspects of this game (itemization, dps/ehp calculations, gameplay loops… you know the CRITICAL parts of an aRPG) are shallow, bugged, or otherwise of questionable quality. Community Youtube videos on Week 1 of release show far more depth of knowledge and passion for the game than anything I have ever seen in any of the campfire videos; that is just sad and completely UNACCEPTABLE.
It is what it is Blizz quality has fallen off of a cliff, and I doubt it will ever recover; all of their titles are clearly and firmly in decline. Its clear that they value checking off boxes on some Marxist equity matrix, employing people that look slightly dfferent but think the same way; milking customers for as much money as possible, and not getting sued again over making quality content. At this point would you even be hype for a Starcraft or RTS announcement knowing that the same pool of Devs responsible for WoW, Overwatch, Diablo, and Hearthstone would be making it?
Seeing Dev gameplay was the biggest of reality checks, and truly put everything into perspective for me.