I’m having a hard time determining if they are purposefully trying to minimize the complexity level of putting together a character in an attempt to retain the plethora of couch co-op casual console players they marketed the game to. The Season 1 direction of malignancy gems seems like an extremely un-fun, but safe, way to inject more depth into a build.
These gems would have better suited to slot into our character’s skill tree directly. Evolving the way our skills play the game when empowered with such corruption. Removing 3 basic gem sockets and adding in basically a secondary legendary aspect on 3 items, specifically jewelry (that can’t currently be target-farmed), doesn’t leave the itemization to evolve on its own external from your core character power. The socket color also adds an additional layer of RNG in an already messy loot table. (BIS ring takes forever to roll, you are now required to land the 1 in 3 roll of the correct socket color on top of that).
Idk if they had massive developer personnel changes and they’ve been trying to scrape together and rehash a bunch of mis-matched systems in order to ship the game on time or what. Not to continuously criticize the development team, but I’d like to think they are actually aware how barren the core game is.
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The thing is that it doesn’t even matter.
It’s not permanent. The only way this stays is if the masses beg them to keep it on the eternal realm, and based on, “How we are hearing the feedback,” right now, I’m sure they will make the wrong call.
I’m less concerned with the end result of the mechanic and the road they took to get to that point. That’s what I’m worried about.
If they don’t evolve their philosophy soon people are going to drop it until the first expansion where we’ll get actual changes.
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It’s permanent for the season, which is three months. That’s all that matters.
You people blaming console as lazy are unreal.
FFXIV, an MMO with 30+ keybinds and 30 second long rotations for an opener somehow accomodates console players just fine.
You need to stop being such a turd to console players because the fault lies strictly with bad game development, not console limitations.
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You cannot tell me PC Development is not hindered by console platform development.
You are absolutely delusional to think otherwise.
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Their vision was to sell cosmetics by taking away iconic set items and loot. The game literally has no soul and forcing people to start over to earn seasonal rewards they paid for is bogus. They don’t even have to add new bank slots because there’s nothing meaningful to collect in this game.
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I’m happy it changes things up and makes them interesting. Every season will have something new added to it that changes up gameplay and this season was also already being developed before the game even released.
At least there’s also a new endgame boss to try to strive for and some new items to try.
But yeah like most of us Diablo vets here already know it’s going to take at least a year or so before additional features are added via expansion or future patches. I say this just as a heads up to everyone that doesn’t already have a general idea.
It is not. Keybinds are not an issue. What else sre you gonna blame console for, graphics? Diablo Immortal has similar graphics and better looking character models and hair than D4, and is a SMARTPHONE game.
So what are you pinning exactly on console? Be specific. You are irrational.
The UX on a console is nowhere near the level of UX on a PC w/ M+K.
I’m not irrational at all. It has nothing to do with mapping abilities or controlling your character in combat.
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The UX on FFXIV functions just fine, is highly customizable, and is an MMO UI, far more complex than any UI an arpg may aspire to. It accommodates console and PC just fine.
Be specific about what limits the console is causing PC features. They can always be only available for PC as current mount and teleport functionality already does for PC vs console.
Console isn’t the reason gameplay is barren, boring, imbalanced, or unrewarding. Bad development is.
I don’t know why people defend the trash that is D4. They could have just remade D3 and it would have been a better experience. I didn’t even like D3.
I don’t give a flying squirrel about what Final Fantasy is doing in their game space.
Diablo 4 was solely developed with the UX of a console environment and ported to PC. You can feel it after you’ve played both environments extensively. I’m not saying it’s even the biggest issue. You brought up these points.
The reason console development hinders PC is the development cycle to be included in Sony or Microsoft’s game space. Some markets force you to hand over data for verification over a month before the product reaches consumers. They can’t push out weekly patches and are forced to systematically schedule major changes that aren’t a server side fix. I don’t care how accessible console is, or the quality of the hardware. It’s the market.
MMO development cycles are static and less volatile, the balancing changes don’t happen like they do in ARPGs. A lot of the problems Diablo 4 is suffering from won’t reach us for months, because they have to playtest everything and verify their patch integrity weeks in advance for each final release.
Remember your history. Blizzard never wanted to make this game. Diablo: Immortal was supposed to be the path forward for the franchise, then the fans revolted and magically j/k, we’re working on Diablo 4.
The vision is, create a vehicle for transitioning these backwards PC and console players into the new light of truth, highly monetized mobile style gaming.
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I think they didn’t play D4 for very long. They seem unaware.
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Is there a situation where you’re not putting skulls in your jewelry? Don’t think there’s any loss of complexity there. Personally I think at this point in the genre’s life they could do something more interesting with gems.
Putting the season gems into the skill tree would represent a permanent type of addition though wouldn’t it?
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They are adding, and presumably removing, sockets on jewelry… Why not sockets on the skill tree? I’m just trying to grasp what concept they have for how the core character design should work. Not saying they literally should have moved it to the skill tree. It was an example of design philosophy. The answer is not in deepening the scope of items, outside of meaningful affix changes, it lies within the character class itself.
it’s real clear for me that they didn’t play their own game before release
I don’t think they have a plan or vision or anything. They are essentially winging it.
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You have no experience of successful coexistence, nor do you care to acknowledge, but instead you go on this tirade about patch cadence thanks to console.
What’s the patch cadence for non-console Blizzard games? That’s right, not monthly or even every 2 months. We have Heroes of the Storm, an actual PvP game requiring frequent patch cadence. Did it happen? No. Not even before they went maintenance mode.
You are irrational and putting out nebulous claims about player market and patch verification.
Guess what, Genshin Impact puts a patch out every 2 weeks, including PS5. It’s a game available on all platforms.
If you wanna keep simping for Blizzard developers in favor of your console scapegoating, feel free. I’m not the delusional one here. Blizzard’s scummy development practices did not start with consoles. Warlock in WoW has been sitting with a vanilla mage Pyroblast placeholder animation for Soulfire since BfA. That’s 3 damned expansions past. It took them over 15 years to update player models to something passable. They’re a rich company who doesn’t lax funds for programmers, sf, artists, or UX devs.
They. Don’t. Care.
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