Yet people are keen for poe2. slower pace and more complex…people dont even understand CC or Overpower…so…idk.
People are just too fixed on what diablo is…and spread across too generation or so.
People don’t know what they want.
Rod is hack. I don’t think he grasps what makes a good arpg. He needs to go play some other arpgs like PoE, D1 and D2R, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Last Epoch, ect. They still don’t understand itemization is the core of the problem and why people don’t stick around.
5 Likes
“Salvage simulator” is the best description of the current state - absolutely hilarious.
Bravo, Marauder. Bravo.
2 Likes
Look, they didn’t make the game for me or for you. They did it for the paycheck and possibly for the pride in their work. The same reason they should “fix” it.
So, again NO. I don’t care what people think about my work. I just do it for the pay check and for my personal pride.
If they have no pride in their work, then they can certainly not do their best to “fix” it.
Either way, I don’t care. I wish I did. But, I don’t and I won’t support any more Diablo IPs in the future.
GLHF!
1 Like
Expectation officially nerfed. Good job, Rod!
There was nothing slow in this transition. It happened instantly when Activision acquired them. And sadly, will continue with Microsoft.
2 Likes
I don’t look at it that way. Dropping 2/3 is a knee jerk reaction to appease the complainers. Managing expectations is ‘this is our plan, patch notes, and when’, so that they can drop a 3/3 - after its been tested, preferably on a ptr.
2 Likes
Ignoring the fact that the OP and several posters don’t understand the difference between “managing expectations” and “ZOMG U DON’T MANAGE MEEEHHHH I CUSTOOMARRR!!!11!” …
It’s insane that a company of this size, with these resources, and this much HISTORY of live service games would come out and say they didn’t know they needed to manage expectations properly.
That’s the real takeaway here. Multi-billion dollar decades old live service game development company - didn’t know how important it was to manage expectations properly?! Just wow…
4 Likes
"hey, we need to have all builds be viable, we want a level playing field so everybody can be successful with all kinds of builds' - we didn't get out in front of that enough."
There should have been a separate beta for balance testing. Closed beta doesn’t count when its only up for a very short time and doesn’t give enough time, and you have to learn and grind everything blind. Not sure why that wasn’t a lesson learned from their other games.
"It was hard because we felt like what we were doing for the game were the right things to do."
I don’t put that fully on the devs. Player feedback/expectations has been like shifting sands.
Development/quarterly updates years ago:
players - we don’t want d3, want meaningful combat not D3 numbers. We want dark. We want meaningful build choices like d2. getting to 99 in D2 is cool. Look at Lost Ark! that’s pretty good game!!
Open Beta:
you aren’t allowed to put d3 style skill multipliers on gear!! gets druid companion gear nerfed
Release:
Rob shows off WW gloves → players - That’s D3 numbers! nerf it! nerfed
vulnerable is dominating our builds! nerfed
Now what?
“don’t want Lost Ark mmo style elements/quests!”
“we don’t want slow, we want zoom zoom without regard to resource or cooldown.”
“its too dark, i’m falling asleep”
“blizz my companion build SUCKS!”
“don’t want meaningful build choices, want easy/free respec!”
“vulnerable nerfed - worst patch in history!”
“don’t want d2 99 style leveling! its too slow with nothing except grind!”
2 Likes
People who are enjoying the game but think it could be improved are interested in the ways they are improving it. People who have decided they hate the game and that it is years away from being what they want and that it has to make a laundry list of specific changes they dreamed up before they will consider logging in again aren’t the player base. The player base is… playing the game. Or at most taking a break with plans to play next season.
So it needs balancing? That’s not a lack of functionality, it’s an issue of smooth drop rates better across higher levels, something they have said they are working on.
If you don’t know what those are and don’t recognize how what they are doing is improving the loot, then you will never be back I guess. If you are just waiting for other people to tell you it is fixed, then why even comment on dev updates?
Yeah, there are no posts here with concerns or criticism 
Yeah, they don’t understand there are issues with one of the core things they keep working on. They keep improving it because they think it’s fine.
So they don’t have to care what the players think, but they have to do exactly what you think they should do or they don’t have “pride.” Irrefutable.
Yeah I agree that’s the better approach. Taking that approach means managing expectations. But when you have a deadline and have to ship a season at the predetermined date to make sure that all the other things in the works line up with the timing you want, then you sometimes need to ship less of an update than you wanted. The right way to deal with that is to carefully manage both what you choose to include (don’t include the all nerfs if all the buffs aren’t ready) and what temporary measures you include (or temporarily decrease difficultly in a blanket way, then release the better-tuned version later).
They had to nerf items before the season started so they weren’t bricking any seasonal drops. They did a poor job of accounting for player expectation and experience because the mob density buffs weren’t available. They needed a stopgap to go along with shipping the nerfs and better communication so players
understood why it was happening.
No, they do not serve you. They serve Activision. Your mindset is completely asinine.
Haha, imagine if they did 
;
SUDDENLY!
~empty forum~
If you were smart enough to understand what he said, then you would understand.
The behavior in here screams you need babysitters, so he is not wrong.
I see a lot of people talking like everything is simply a matter of opinion but when you go from 6,750,114 players to 365,259 in less than 2 months … and you cant admit you are wrong about game design and features … this is nothing more than denial and ego.
The numbers speak louder than words and people are not complaining just to complain nor is everything relative … you objectively made a bad game and the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.
13 Likes
I never once said they have to care about me in any way. I do think they should care in general. But, about me personally, no I’m not the main character and that’s fine.
They don’t have to do anything. They didn’t have to make the game. They don’t have to listen to my criticism. They don’t have to care about their work. They don’t have to have pride.
They do have to accept that I get to have my opinion. I do get to criticism them. I don’t have to have irrefutable anything.
You don’t have to defend them like you get paid to. You certainly are entitled to though.
GLHF!
4 Likes
I’ll do my best. Customers (or consumers) often are searching for the best/low cost product or service they want to purchase. I don’t think most customers go in with the intention of running a business/provider into the ground.
I think it’s really a provider vs provider that is running one another into the ground, constantly and intentionally trying to be better than their competitor.
Let’s be honest. It’s all a smoke screen. They knew all the problems existed, they were told since the betas. They counted on a quick cash grab.
They knew they weren’t managing expectations because as others have said this is a several decade old company with plenty of experience in live service games.
What they really didn’t count on was as many customers standing up for themselves and calling them out for the husk of a game D4 is.
That’s what happens though when you make a game that has an older demographic fanbase that can see through all the marketing schemes and dishonesty.
It also didn’t help that Elden Ring released before it, BG3 after, and then the outbursts from AAA studios like Blizz crying about their job being hard and not to “unfairly” (haha) compare them adding fuel to the fire.
11 Likes
From the article OP posted: “Fergusson also adds that “the previous couple of updates were very buff-oriented””
Literally pissing on our legs and telling us it’s raining.
6 Likes
i know exactly what the issues are and even made suggestions for improvements. Like these:
But no matter what happens, if they dont change loot to be rewarding and desireable to farm, and passively force us to use 3rd party plattforms to trade to get the items we want and need there is no reason to play the game. People play for getting Loot, not to play a weird trading simulation with p2w risks involved… its basically D3 Auction House all over again.
There is really a huge amount of flaws with the current itemization, i dont really get how someone could not see any issues. Unless ofc looking in the other direction in intention of abusing a flawed system, that supports blackmarket options.
Its impressive to see the bar still being lowered.
1 Like