Yes, I agree with this to an extent. However, we’re rounding close to a year now on Diablo IV’s release. At some point, when do we stop pointing fingers at previous mishaps and start looking at the current team?
Because while I can definitely agree that mismanagement and a lack of leadership screwed them over at launch and thus resulted in them haphazardly making their way through season 1, I don’t think season 3 was exactly the product of those hurdles. The further we get away from release, the less plausible it seems for that to be the problem.
To be honest, I think these are critical issues and why I don’t view season 3 as favorably. Seasons center around their mechanics. If the mechanic is bad, then that makes the season difficult to swallow. Delaying gauntlets was also a critical error because, leading up to season 3’s reveal, we were told they’d be coming season 3. They never specified they would come at the start, but not doing it at the start really put a wind in its sails since the season’s already half over and none of us are on equal footing anymore.
I think unfortunately as much of the problem is that they actually can’t do very much. Software development is unnecessarily nasty and I think on top they don’t have greatly talented developers. Whatever this armory thing is it’s another case in point. Their designers, directors, and managers have little vision while their developers can’t do too much. If you listen in between the lines you can infer that internally you simply aren’t dealing with world-beaters.
I suspect that at this point many of Diablo 4’s problems are rooted in personal inadequacy rather than a stifling corporate structure and culture. As dumb as corporations could be it’s in their interest to offer innovative products and if people have great ideas there is considerable room for that.
In the end, I think both Blizzard and the people who work at Blizzard suck nowadays. That’s why Diablo 4 was, continues to be, and will be for the foreseeable future a crappy game. Everyone is to blame. That is the impression these “fireside chats” give me. Blizzard is a rotten place to the grassroots. That makes sense of what this game is, how it’s developed and presented.
Oh I completely agree, I’m not relieving them of blame or trying to give them an excuse, just pointing out how we got here is all.
Again completely agree with you, this was on the current team, not lack of leadership during development that eventually lead up to this point. Granted leadership signed off on S3, but they probably honestly thought it would do better.
Oh they absolutely are, I don’t favor S3 as well either, but I feel it’s better then S1, if only by a little.
Just looking at it objectively S3 brought with it:
Vaults (ignoring the trap mechanic these are great imo)
Always-Up Helltides
Guaranteed Distilled Fear Drops
Item Power Range Drops increased across the board, eventually leading to enemies dropping guaranteed 925 items
WASD Movement
Icons for Living Steel Chests during Helltides show up on the map
Various new items/aspects along with changes to existing items for classes
Easier to respec skill tree (hopefully they do the same for paragon soon)
1 Additional Stash Tab
Obvious class balancing like any major patch
Granted, yes, all this combined doesn’t make it a good season, but it helps overall in my opinion, and makes it far better then S1 which did nothing but disappoint on all levels.
I agree with both of you (SCRSCRSCR) and also with BorgerCrunch. I respect D3 for what it is and I was able to enjoy that game for a surprisingly long period, but it’s not a game for me. I was hoping D4 to be Diablo II 2.
I am not so sure that the Expansion will be that juicy. It seems the expansion will bring another class and a continuation of the campaign story. There will certainly be more items and maybe more skills but will any of that satisfy all the criticisms of the community? That is questionable.
I agree with the OP. The team seems to lack a decisive direction right now. I thought Joe P looked a little frustrated during the entire chat.
That’s exactly what I thought, and I believe something is holding him back at his job. Joe P was in his element during Blizzcon when he was talking to Kripp because they both share same kind of passion for games.
I would defend devs.
It’s a problem of being corporation, as Bli$$ard is.
Corporations are not about doing good, fun etc.
Corporations are about green and red bars.
Should I remind how much bunch of money they earned with D4?
You dont make fundamental changes to core game mechanics after release. I actually enjoyed the game before the crit changes that rendered 100+ hours of my time useless. That garbage is what beta was for. OP is completely correct. These guys have NO idea what game they are trying to make…STILL. They ALL need the axe and fresh blood. Even then the damage is already done. Game rate under 2…deserves it.
Yes. The tiny little group of vocal people saying “there’s no direction” are pulling it out of their A double dollar sign. There is an obvious direction to the game design if anyone cared to look instead of cry and cry and cry.
You’ve got people comparing a game that sold 10 million copies to a game that’s struggling to break 2 million. But not 1 to 1, that would show how stupid the comparison is. They want to compare a secondary purchase point to a game that has been on sale since 2019 in that eco system. LE hasn’t sold as many copies as D4 and has had less concurrent players than Diablo freakin 3 did 10 years after launch.
Why is D3 relevant to this discussion? Because this same vocal minority claim D3 killed the Diablo franchise. Yet no competitor has come close to touching D3 sales and player activity. D3 IS the future of the ARPG market.
You’re all a dying breed kicking and screaming before you all fade into obscurity. You don’t want this game to be the way it is so you say there’s no direction but the reality is it’s going in a direction that scares all of you.
For bonus points, the only times the direction of the game was broken was to appease you, the vocal minority. Leveling speed, AoZ, Duriel… all you guys. That’s right, the worst aspects of the game are direct responses to all of your (plurality) demands.
The game sold millions of copies because the name smart guy. People love the Diablo franchise. This game is garbage. From the get it has been over hyped and under delivered. I get it you want it to be good. All of us do. But it’s not and it’s ok to say it sucks. You’re entitled to suck on the teets of all things blizzard. However I will call it how I see it. Also take into account that they care more about charging you 80.00 USD for a cosmetic, versus taking the time to improve the game. Keep your green hair and your cosmetics.
Yea it was supposed to be extremely difficult, but I don’t think they got much done. The second team argued over a Battle mode that I swear became Mercenaries mode in Hearthstone lol
I mean, if you’re so smart and are able to identify Diablo IV’s direction, then by all means, enlighten us. I would certainly love to know what it is that Diablo has in terms of direction, because all I see are half-baked attempts at incorporating seasonal mechanics that are then backtracked and made close to irrelevant because nobody likes them.
I didn’t even bring up Last Epoch, but if you want to talk about the elephant in the room:
Last Epoch is a much lower profile game. It doesn’t have the marketing spin Diablo does nor the legacy. Moreover, it doesn’t have the resources at its disposal that Diablo does, yet it’s a far superior game in terms of what the ARPG is designed to achieve. It is a completely fair comparison to make in terms of highlighting everything Diablo IV gets wrong in spite of it having Activision, a mammoth publisher in the industry, fully backing it.
D3 made incredible headway in sales and then its momentum died almost instantly because the game greatly suffered due to underbaked mechanics and systems as well as anemic rewards that were gutted thanks to the RMAH. RoS made it a better game, but not even Blizzard was capable of recognizing that game as a success. If it was the future, Blizzard wouldn’t have abandoned it to make Diablo IV.
You’re being so unbelievably dramatic, it’s bordering humorous. I’ve gone on record saying that I like Diablo IV. I still like Diablo IV for what it is and I’ll probably play it for the foreseeable future, but I can’t deny that it’s struggling. Diablo IV going in a “different direction,” if you can even call it that, doesn’t scare me because, at the end of the day, I have several other games I can play instead. I’m only voicing my concern because I like the game and would like to see it live on for many years rather than being abandoned three years in for Diablo V.
I never asked for the leveling speed to increase. I still think that was a bad decision post-season 2 and even said as such in a thread I made. Moreover, AoZ is a bad example because, while challenging, it was challenging for all the wrong reasons. It was overtuned and didn’t provide a lot of incentive to complete.
Above all, don’t you think this is emblematic of Blizzard having no direction? All they do is cater to player demands rather than zeroing in on a goal and working towards that goal, even when those demands are stupid, such as in the case of leveling. They’re floundering around and basically giving the community whatever it is they want, which does make the game worse in the long-term.
I think, if Blizzard had a goal, they wouldn’t be so quick to waver. They would have an outlined design philosophy and would push back when the player base demands something a bit outrageous. They don’t, because they have no idea what they want out of the game. They just give us whatever we want in the hopes it’ll appease our discontent.
