The best information from Raxx' interview with the devs according to Raxx and people

PC General Discussion
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It’s kind of bananas that a large portion of the community think the developers don’t play their own game.

Wow devs play wow.
Diablo devs play diablo.
Hearthstone devs play hearthstone.

Been this way for decades and every year they have to reconvince people of it.

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It became a meme with that particular “play with the devs” video.

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I think they have to convince people of it because of the state the game was in. If the game was cohesive people would believe that the dev team actually played it.

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What I think most gamers fail to realize is that Devs DO play their own games, but they:

  1. Are not necessarily good at them, nor do they need to be
  2. Have a bit of a blind spot between “yup, this is working as intended” and “oh, this is/is-not fun”
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The general public associate Executives as developers since it’s mostly Executives that show up for press release. Anyone who ever worked before knows for a fact, management can’t do floor work.

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Most people are stupid and don’t understand game development in the slightest, yet think they do. What else is new lol

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Adding on even further than that, it’s impossible for the devs to find every problem with the game on their own. Theres too many builds, too many items, too many interactions. It’s like, ofcourse we’re going to have to bring to their attention some things. It’s always going to be that way for any game. I feel like sometimes people find something wrong and immediately think “how could they miss this” “this doesn’t work!” and then even shout “devs should lose their job over this”

It’s just a bit exhausting. I am still very disappointed by diablo 4 despite being a big diablo-franchise lover. But the lack of awareness the community can have and the aggression towards devs to that level just makes me mad.

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Important things I learnt from the interviews:

  1. Larger world goes to the category of ‘redundant’ just like white, blue and now yellow items.
  2. The game is according to the devs about OP characters. If anything, it may be tuned to become easier but never more difficult. The dodge move goes to the category of ‘redundant’ aside from using it as a jerky speed boost in town.
  3. I surely did lose 70 “oh, balls!”
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What I liked is that they talked about the opportunity cost of decisions both in terms of resources (time) but also how the game plays. Also that they have to consider different pockets of the player base and how they interact with the game and its systems.

Its a much better concept having someone like Raxx as questions than the developer campfire chats. Rhyker looked like he was out of his depth and provided very little interaction…wonder how DM’s is going to unfold.

Reading between the lines;

  • Loadouts will be in the game at some point
  • Social features are probably already being worked on
  • Runewords are a near certainty
  • Set items are on the backburner - thank god
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They obviously don’t play whirlwind or gushing wounds

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I think they question “at what level the devs play their game”. Sure it works fine from lvl 1- ~75 give or take a few levels. Then it is all over the place. Almost like they threw in numbers based on theory. You can’t blame people for “doubting” especially when things aren’t fun.

Do you think anyone at Ubisoft is playing Skull and Bones? If you said “yes”, you would be wrong. Devs have left that project because of what it became,

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Yes I can.

Blizzard isn’t ubisoft right? They’ve very publicly played their own games for years. They’ve said it a million times in diablo 4 since day 1.

Theres this inane idea that people seem to have that developers are constantly lying to the players and it comes from freaking nowhere. If I had to put up with that I would hate everyone.

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Well, let’s be clear.

What does “play” mean?

I’m sure all the devs must play diablo to some extent.

But do they play it like fans do?

or do they play it as a job requires them to do?

The amount of play that the job requires them to do - is it sufficient to cover what the basic fans also do?

Shrug.

When you actually watch some of the streams and see them play, some devs definitely play because they want to and it’s fun, and some others definitely…play because of work.

The disconnect we see tends to be blamed on people who don’t play the game enough to understand it at the same level as the players do. (or so the players believe)

If they actually played the game, some of the bugs that we saw should have been easily caught (or assumeable easily caught). yet we need a PTR to gather the play time to really play test the changes…

Kinda tells you something is amiss…

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Honestly boils down to how many devs vs players there. developers of any game will never be able to catch all the bugs. Players always run into something. The more complicated the game, the more bugs get by. This is an arpg with a multitude of complex systems, items, skills ,paragon.

If you think bugs being “not caught” right away means they don’t play their own game then you’re just wrong. They can’t play all the builds that we play, theres way more of us than there are of them and not every single person who works on a game can play it as much as any how. Some people will love to go home and play after work and some are not going to want to do that.

I mean its so obvious that it really should go without saying. Nothing is a miss here. It’s the natural state of being a player vs. being a developer.

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Zolmation, it’s really about perception is what I’m referencing.

Transparency is not blizzard’s forte along with communication.

How many times have we seen:

“IF THE DEVS JUST PLAYED THEIR OWN GAME, THEY WOULD KNOW THAT…”

This statement is almost never challenged. Actually, it’s very refreshing that you are addressing it now.

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My whole point is that the people who say that are ignorant, willfully or otherwise of what the developers over at blizzard do. And thats the players’ own fault imo.

The developers over at blizzard have said so many many many times over the years that they play their own games and in their communications it’s obvious that they have as well.

People who say things like that are just accosting the devs in an unfair way.

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Or Blizzard could do a better job of showing themselves playing and interfacing with players more and get some actual street cred?

Players are the mob / sociology applies. To learn how to interface with it without generating backfire and toxicity is a key skill set no?

I guess that’s why they have their public affairs / marketting peeps.

Image and reputation is extremely important to branding so…lol

Agree totally players have it wrong - however, it’s hard to “fix” the players so the best solutions lie on Blizzards side (I know this isn’t our discussion point - i think we both agree that it’s unfair that the player assume the devs don’t play).

You know what’s funny is that there are a lot of the game devs and programmers that just know each other in the irvine area because there’s a microcosm there and I know they like to play each others games more so then their own but at the same time I’ve literally seen a disney programmer give feedback to a blizzard programmer over dinner. Kinda like cooking your own dinner vs cooking for someone else lol.

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they need to reconvince people of it because of the bizarre decisions they make regarding gameplay and the UI.

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Probably more of a “How did Diablo IV turn out the way it did if you actually played it.” After hearing some of the responses in this interview, I can understand more why it did. They just don’t seem to “get” the ARPG genre, honestly.

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