Don’t ship to check a box. Season’s need to get off the cycle of shipping, spending 2 months to fix issues, then repeating.
Pause and give the team time to really address the end-game issues. Playing for a week to then 1 or 3 shot a “uber” boss 500 times for a unique, then quitting until next season is fundamentally not fun.
Expansions schedule is too long - should be yearly. Reduce “story” investment (costs so much for 1 time element in a ARPG) and focus on new classes, new mob types, new end-game activities that last more than a few days.
If the cycle continues to just ship w/o fixing the fundamental issues, then I’m not sure where Diablo is going. You can add all the end-game activities you want, but you’ll be running in place with the same issues. At some point there’s just so many random things, it’s not worth the effort."
And yet we’re in another seasonal cycle of shipping bad season fixing issues for 10 weeks, then repeating.
Devs need to invest time fixing the game. D4 is BORING, the endgame feels pointless and not fun, no leaderboards or any type of aspirational content, group play is terrible the trading is terrible. Mike was spot on, spamming activities, killing bosses 500 times for a mythic than quit is not a fun gameplay loop.
Yes - as for the story rather than eliminate it completely, I wish they would release just as that a text story with further interesting lore paragraphs sprinkled in whenever they release a patch.
As someone above said, he was part of Blizzard when this game came out. He’s not scar-free. It’s easy to say this stuff from the sidelines.
His point 1 and his 3 conflict. You can’t say yearly expansions are mandatory because then you’re setting a box to check off. I agree we don’t HAVE to have 3 month seasons just to check a box. I know they like their seasonal influx of money, but I’d much rather seasons be cooked longer if it means more quality each season. We need a season that does zero fixing existing systems and does something all-new.
He was wrong about Oblivion remastered not being what players wanted and calling it a cash grab. Especially considering that he was in charge when Warcraft 3:Refunded wasreleased.
Him making bad choices in the past or being part of bad products doesn’t invalidate what he said though. I agree with most of it.
It’s worth pointing out too that no matter how “in charge” he was, he had people to answer to, and in any case, can give opinions now he might have had then but wasn’t at liberty to say.
Not every opinion he has is going to be on-point, that’s true of anyone.
if they always look back on Gen X games and want to do Reforge versions well it will always be a mistake just how they think WoW Classic is. Everyone knows that whoever played back in 2004 there was no features they implanted in the present and how many had to go through rough ganking when doing a class quest. The WoW Classic of today is to safe not like how it was way back then.
I agree with most that Mike Ybarra said but I dont agree with reducing story elements, the story/campaign has always been the best part in the diablo franchise so I think they should continue that. Removing that part would be a stupid move
Translation: it would turn off a sizable chunk of the player base, who mostly engage with story.
But Ybarra isn’t specifically saying story should be subordinated… he’s saying do what you need to do to fix the foundation - including trimming the ‘story’ budget until that goal is achieved. IOW, he’s saying the things that are being deprioritized right now (deep endgame & timely expansions) are the wrong things to deprioritize while the game is being “fixed”.
The implication is twofold: that there are also a ton of players who want endgame & expansions to get urgent attention… and that the long term success of the project depends on it.
If seasons 10-12 have minimal story, and are even extended to 4 months instead of 3… but at the end of that period we get a deeper, more robust endgame & a more regular expansion cycle (built on a stronger foundation), you might go on a slight diet for 3 seasons, but you’ll be eating GOOD later. That’s what Ybarra is saying.
I actually haven’t thought about the storylines the seasons brings but I guess those storylines need to be there and also done right so the new endgame has some backstory to it I guess? I think another answer could be that they should hire more experienced devs for endgame but just speculations.