Let’s just get one thing out of the way. Diablo 2 was popular enough to warrant a Diablo 3. Whether you liked it or not, this is a fact.
That said, Diablo games have in many ways regressed versus it’s predecessors. These are just some examples:
D2 has 8 player parties - D4 has 4
D2 maps were random - D4 is primarily static, with little randomness
D2 has offline play - D4 is online only
D2 has an overlay map - D4 makes you look at a minimap constantly
D2 has a feature to find and group up with parties - D4 has nothing
D2 has unrestricted trade - D4 has BoA
D2 items can roll up to 6 affixes - D4 has up to 4
D2 allows use of any skills you have unlocked - D4 has 6
D2 had crafting - D4 let’s you re-roll one stat.
This isn’t a feature, but:
D2 fanboys were from D1 - D4 fanboys are from WoW
To be fair, the more recent Diablo games are graphically superior, but mechanic and feature wise, not so much. Rather than take an approach to be innovative and find ways to build on the past games, they’ve decided to reinvent the wheel. That much effort to ignore systems that were good, could have been put into things that all other ARPG’s would be copying. Instead, they are all copying the D2 style.
The Blizzard that created Diablo 2 no longer exists. The business model has changed. They are a product sales company, not a creative game studio. That’s a passion that you only find in the indie studios, which continue to kick the crap out of so called AAA Studios.
Look at the threads where people talk about spending hundreds on cosmetics. Blizzard doesn’t care about their games any more. They only care how they can use their games to sell more pixels. Everything else is secondary.
Monetization needs to change. Gaming development can not occur with such skimp resources - especially at the indie level.
Games just cost more to make than they used to, not including inflation.
Just 10 years ago, I could get mcdoubles for as low at 1.39 cents.
Now…lol.
Regular meals at fastfood joints are up over 9-10 dollars.
If we tracked that linearly with game cost, we should be paying around 100 dollars a game on a regular basis as opposed to the 59.99 / 69.99 we are seeing now.
I agree with you percent except WoW is my favorite Blizzard game and in my 18 years as a Blizzard customer I never experienced so many issues and problems with any game like Diablo IV! And, I am NOT a fan of all the issues, bugs, and problems with Diablo IV at all! It is still a broken, buggy, beta game and all players who paid for D4 like myself are all Game testers for Blizzard, sadly! That’s pretty obvious now.
As for WoW, it is the most epic, fun and rewarding Blizzard game ever - no other game comes close. It never gets old! The music and rich stories are awesome and inspiring! Something the Diablo IV Team should look into - because at least D3 is fun and rewarding in many ways vs D4, and it is not a broken, buggy mess like D4 either.
Considering D4 Season 2 was off to a good start, and I noticed several improvements, I don’t understand what the hell went wrong with D4 Season 3!? But it’s clear the Diablo IV Blizzard Team has a lot of fixing, improving and revamping to do for this game, big time!
Not to mention, Blizzard needs to do the right thing for all players who paid for this game, sooner than later. - JJ -
the general chat and channels missing too.
we will never see the features from d2 in d4, it’s useless to hope.
while they improve on many points like graphics etc …, the regression is real on those essential points op mentionned .
Not all, I’d say it was roughly 20% that weren’t random.
Hilarious but highly inaccurate.
D2 was a product of its time, it innovated at the time, and set a new standard. D3 was supposed to do the same, and in a sense it did (eventually), but for a completely different crowd. D4 is underdeveloped to put it lightly and is trying to play catchup. While some systems were good in D2, not all of them were. ARPG’s today have picked apart pieces from D2 and have innovated their own spin on it.
I also hate to say it, D2 was all there was back in the day. It quite literally had no competition what so ever when it was released. If you wanted to play a top down ARPG with loot drops, D2 was it, there were no alternatives. It was popular at the time due the fact no other game was like it on the market, and it was fun at the time it came out. A lot of the practices are outdated by todays standards, but the core of the game still remains intact for all ARPG’s on the market. Kill things, get loot, rinse repeat.
Fast forward to today, people want and expect more out of a game then D2 can deliver. Think of going from a Ford Model T to a Ferrari, hell people would settle for a Volvo at this point as long it was fun and improved upon the current model.
The reason game prices seemed immune to inflation for many years was the switch to digital downloads rather than hard copy sales. used to be 30-40% of the cost of the game was in creating the box/disc it came in. When digital downloads started, stores like steam agreed to sell games at the same price as walk in stores and just pocket the difference as a bonus (that’s why steam could afford to put everything on sale so often)
That effect is coming to an end though and now we get to see the real gameflation.
The Ferrari kept using and/or improved on doors, windshield, wheels, internal combustion engine, and many other features that made it a car. They didn’t say, let’s make this a plane.
I don’t see any other company trying to make a plane either. Just saying. Almost every single ARPG out there is trying to improve on the base of ARPG’s when they were first conceived way back when. D1 wasn’t the first ARPG, now it may have been the most popular one people played back then, but it definitely wasn’t the first. Same with D2.
D4 is an ARPG at its core, now it may not have all the features one would expect after 3 decades of ARPG evolution, but it is still an ARPG, albeit a disappointing one. All the QoL, itemization, content, etc. are what make an ARPG great, and make you want to play it for hours on end. D4 is currently lacking that.
Now yes they’ve tried to reinvent the wheel for certain aspects of the game, but again it’s more so the equivalent of going from power steering back to no power steering, and adding an extra lever for no apparent reason. They aren’t trying to turn it into an airplane, they’re just screwing up what’s already been established, big difference.
What’s new about D4? Paragon frames? Which are statistical. You created very little in D4, I would like to see hundreds of builds, several unique items. We don’t have a single beast. I miss modifying my build. D2 was slow, but you would repeat it as many times as necessary. Suddenly you found a green set that made you fast. Your build is an ice bow but you find a quiver that shoots rays and it’s worth changing it all.
I agree…Soon as I got my WOW pre-order CD in the mail…It was hard to pull away from Diablo LOL . Day one UTHER SERVER …It was a blast in the spider-caves LOL !
percent except WoW is my favorite Blizzard game and in my 18 years as a Blizzard customer I never experienced so many issues and problems with any game like Diablo IV! And, I am NOT a fan of all the issues, bugs, and problems with Diablo IV at all! It is still a broken, buggy, beta game and all players who paid for D4 like myself are all Game testers for Blizzard, sadly! That’s pretty obvious now.