you do realize blizzard makes more than just diablo 4 right? he isnt just referring to diablo. so as the president of a large developer with many titles he stated that players want new stuff every day, every hour.
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That’s a gross oversimplification of Diablo 2’s development.
But whatever floats your boat angy boi.
Your first error was that you did not read the original article, instead you read someone’s opinion piece on it in Rock Paper Shotgun.
If you read the original article, it makes perfect sense what he said and it’s all true and it seems like they are aiming to do just that! I love it.
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So much this. When D2 launched you didn’t have streamers with their top ten builds or guides showing you the most efficient way possible to play the game and save time. You had to figure things out for yourself or buy one of those official game guides that still never told you “everything.” There is no taking time to discover anything anymore. Everything is right there for you online.
I love the complaints I see these days about “endgame.” Back in the day, end game meant END OF THE GAME. As in there was nothing to do at the end except repeat what you did before. The journey was what mattered. Today people want a game that they can play forever and that just isn’t realistic. Hence the creation of seasons and more gimicks to keep people playing the same game again.
I’ll also freely admit, I did NOT know that there were people still playing D2 all these years later. I thought it was a decent game until the campaign ended. Then I put the game down and moved on to RTS because that was more my thing back then. I never even reached max level in D2 because the grind was so long and boring. I thought the biggest mistake D4 did was trying to go back to the D2 style leveling because most players these days don’t care to take months just to level one character. I certainly wouldn’t have come back for season 2 if the grind was still that ridiculous.
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Also for those that care about seeing what was actually said and not a parsed statement ///
Now that the actual comments of what he said has been posted here, would the OP care to point out where he is wrong?
he is very wrong. people dont want new stuff all the time, players want GOOD stuff. so when you put out trash at lightspeed, yes people will still want content since they want something good not trash. so the more trash you put out, the more people yell at you about new content completely dismissing the existence of the current trash, because, and this might surprise you, they are the customers, and dont have to pretend they like the trash you are putting out.
now blizzard is stuck in an infinite loop of putting out progressively more trashy trash thinking its content, and then getting yelled at by the community for not putting out enough content, because no one likes trash so they arent participating in it, so from the players perspective they clearly arent putting out any content. since they are just ignoring the trash and asking for GOOD content.
D2 lived for years with just 3 main bosses and while some people were indeed asking for something new, most were happy to just kill mephisto for the 100 billionth time. but d2 wasnt trash. so it could stand on its own with nothing new.
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WE are a long ways removed from D2. The entire gamer culture and culture in general has changed and sped up. So much so that microtransactions are king now. The world moves faster now and players have changed as well to match.
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I used to not care much for Shely but the man is really trying out here.
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only time will tell tbh
too soon to set anything on stone
all i can say is that it isnt working on me
well
in d2, 98% of the loot/gear is trash or has very niche use (usually for pvp)
we just cant put d2 on a pedestal
every caster there uses the same belt, the same helmet, the same amulet and even the same shield…with few exceptions
theres anothe way to interpret what was said
we, the players, are the sole responsible for our expectations
it doesnt matter how great the game of the dev team is, if we expect hype every day, week or month, we gonna get disappointed
first off d4 wasnt in development for 9 years. it was closer to 6 and there was a pandemic in the middle of that, that basically put everything on hold. there are still things i am waiting on releases for that were slated for 2020-2021 that the pandemic fubar’d.
In a way your last comment is something that concerns me a little bit. You have streamers that play diablo 4 for hours every day and they complain that there isn’t any content or the game is too easy etc. That’s all fine but the problem comes when you start appeasing these people and balance the entire game around them. What about everyone else? So you have a bunch of broken builds and you create new content to make sure that these builds have a hard time - wait a moment? What about the other builds that are nowhere near as good?
I don’t expect them to balance the game anytime soon or ever for that matter but at least make sure that the content is actually doable for all classes and whatever builds people are using. I played a companion druid the other day and it’s beyond awful. I’m sure they could actually fix it if they put some effort in like for example the ravens need a complete revamp. The wolves die to everything and they feel really bad without the glyph that increase the companion damage.
Okay I’m going on a tantrum here point is some builds are just BAD in the game. Don’t make content that only aims at the top tier(broken) builds.
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I was expecting something from the Blizzcon and actually nothing is worth it.
I already quitted the game in the middle of season 1 without playing it.
Thanks for this update!
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You realize that wouldn’t have been necessary if they actually FINISHED the game first, instead of do it 85% along the way and then “Telenovela” the rest of it ?
And also disagree - I won’t name names but sadly feel like I have to:
- Blizzard, why do I have to click here, and then wait for 3 seconds before the event begins
- Blizzard, the second I enter the room, the second the event starts, otherwise I won’t do it
- Blizzard, when I start the event I don’t want to see 3 mobs, or 5 mobs, give me 10-15
- Blizzard, give me “go to the Tree of whispers” emote
Now I get it, waiting sucks in a “high action” game. BUT there was still a tradeoff - hard to realize and certainly admit that the net-balance was still positive
Behaving like one can SEEK & IDENTIFY and kill more monsters than in an event in those 1:30 which who knows perhaps could have been done, but highly doubt it
NOW, the game is literally polluted, there is no semblance of strategy, it’s all about mass AoE, or say mass AoE and mass CC, heck the MOMENT they announced the following:
- We understand, we want to reduce time to level up between lvl50 and 100 so we’re increasing monster density
We definitely KNEW something was wrong. They sacced the game’s core design in favor of publicity rant, AND used a sledgehammer to kill a fly
Now sure, would take more time to analyse, discuss, do the right thing - BUT one thing is obvious and pretty sure they should’ve been aware of
Different mindsets provide different feedback, what they should’ve understood is impatience is not a one to be listened to - at least not when there are other things left unfinished
And focus on ACTUAL FEEDBACK instead of impatient rattling
Sadly they did EXACTLY THAT, and now they dare patronize us all (and put us in the same bucket) according to it, and will say it again - treat us like drug addicts
I guess we shouldn’t blame them when many of us here (not all but sadly most) asked for “more” of everything
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Their decisions could also be coupled with the fact that they are a public company, so they actually need to both please their consumers and shareholders.
When it is a small seasonal thing I’m kind of okay with it being some “topper” to the season. I definitely do not want any of the “gear loop” content to be set-up like that though
It took 20+ years for D2(R) to make it viable so… maybe it’ll be good in a decade =p (nah, it sucks that companion Druid isn’t good as I’d love it or a hybrid shapeshifter + companion to be good. Until minion Necro is working I wouldn’t hold out much hope for companion Druid)
Wait…when they say “players” do they mean ME also???
It’s like some of you just wait around for something to get offended by. 
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I’m a level 87 Necromancer using minions and it was a struggle getting to that point. Through much of the game I wore items that were sometime 10 levels below my level which means I felt weak and dyed a lot. No drops I got at the time were an improvement, I looked at every one. That is the problem.
Now in The 80s I feel strong. I haven’t died in awhile but now, items are raining down. But they made the top item level 925 and I’m already wearing gear that high and I think that is wrong, I have 13 levels until I am max, which means I will spend those 13 levels probably feeling weaker. Itemization needs a lot of work for not only this, but the crap tons of worthless stuff.
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Thing is the Blizzard head is not wrong though. The demographics of gaming has changed a lot in the last 20 years. The attention span has decreased and the people playing 20 years ago have Jobs and family. and also Blizzard has been known for milking the players.
A studio has to decide to make a more :Hardcore: experience or water it down. The devs decided to go the game as a service route.
I personally admire studios who go their own way and stay true to their vision disregarding how the community is in uproar. You only can loose if you try to ingratiate towards people in general. Because theres always someone complaining even if they are in the minority.
LOL overreactions like this pretty much sum up “some people” in a nutshell. Take some harmless comment from Mike, get all bent-out-of-shape, turn everything around like some mad ex-girlfriend trying to twist the past to their favor. This is all the dude said:
We know players want new content literally almost every single day," Ybarra went on. "At the same time, it takes large teams to be able to deliver that. So you have to monetize it in the right ways. At the same time, I always tell the teams, ‘When someone spends one dollar or a penny with Blizzard, I want them to feel good after they do that. How do we get to a world where we know that’s always going to be the basis of what we’re doing?’
“We want to serve players with more content in our universes,” he added. “At the same time, we want to make sure we’re responsible and meet their expectations. I think we’re still fine-tuning a lot of those things as we go forward. But it’s something top of mind for me as we go forward.”
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Blizzard, you are selling your players time. The challenge for you is your players want value in exchange for that time you are selling. If you cannot deliver, get rid of the model where you sell time and go back to selling “box copies” every few years. Other wise rise and overcome.
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