I just read a recent article with Rod Ferguson commenting how they had to abandon the Diablo 2 style grind in Diablo 4 because players have changed over the past 20 years.
I found it incredibly ridiculous because this game never once touched how Diablo 2 works. There were never any pindleskin farms. I could never farm meph over and over. I couldn’t farm Trav for runes. They don’t understand what Diablo 2 is. They think renown and long prerequisite grinds for baseline power was like Diablo 2? That having to skim through every single rare you get spending most your time just staring at boring affixes was like Diablo 2? Give me a break.
The problem isn’t that players changed, the problem is you have no idea how to make a game that remotely works like Diablo 2. You have some shallow surface level naive version of it and then you tried to implement that. And then blamed Diablo 2 for being outdated.
Nonsense.
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Does it make sense for them to go for the Diablo 2 audience, when Path of Exile and Diablo 2 resurrected exist?
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Yes it would make sense since ARPG loot hunters are seasonal and they share an audience. People come back for the seasons and then go play the next season of the next game. There’s no competition.
Also, I’m not saying that making a sequel to Diablo 3 is an issue. That’s their prerogative. I’m suggesting his reasoning is ridiculous. They never made a game that had any dynamics remotely close to Diablo 2. Its failure is not remotely because of Diablo 2s design. Just their inability to make it.
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What about people like me and others, who actually like D4 being like it is and not being so grindy?
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There’s nothing wrong with having a Diablo 3 sequel. My problem is with Rod suggesting that the reason Diablo 4 failed is because the audience has changed since Diablo 2 and Diablo 2 dynamics don’t work anymore.
This game had nothing that even remotely resembled Diablo 2 other than art style.
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Rod: I’m the Diablo 4 Lead Developer
Diablo 4 Community: You’re game needs A LOT of fixing…
Also Rod: The D2 community is the Diablo 4 Lead Developer
No runes
No runewords
No endgame crafting worth anything
No constant and well paced progression
Capped defenses feel like they do nothing
Stats were all over the place and 70% of them were useless
I can go on, but… sheesh. Yeah, the game was/is NOTHING like Diablo 2 (and I’m not even that big of a D2 fan anymore)
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Yeah that was just really irritating. The player base being non-receptive towards Diablo 4 had nothing to do with Diablo 2 dynamics not being relevant anymore. This game never had them.
Their inability to implement Diablo 2 dynamics has nothing to do with Diablo 2. Just their ineptitude.
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I got also angry of the disrespect of that guy. In D2 there was heavy trade, so even with low drop rate you grind and save up for enigma.
I D4 they make zero drop rate for shako and though it is like D2 … nope.
Complete ignorance of that guy making so bad itemization at release and as we see in mid season patch they have no clue how to balance builds.
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POE2 will be here before you know it.
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Gaming is different from back then to today. I am a huge fan of final fantasy series, and look how it has evolved over time. The games now aren’t turned based, time based (ATB i know) but its more fluid with a non linear path, open world design.
This is how its going, yeah you get indie studios that go back to the old roots of early games styles. But those are the ones who create said games to live back them olden days.
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Good if I want to play D2 I still can.
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If they took the mat requirement off the bosses we could get something akin to mephisto runs.
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Blizzard doesn’t understand the difference between prerequisite grinds and just grinds. They have no clue. They do this across all of their games now. And they think because nobody likes their prerequisite grinds for their time engagement metrics that nobody likes grinds. This company is just done for, I swear.
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They could do that, but its funny the iconic areas where we fought “bosses” aren’t there no more, its One and Done. Where are D2 you could go face that foe again cause they were there.
Now i get it, it could work, with the current bosses with mats, just design a dungeon for them, but they are created after the fact.
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You arent serious are you? You realize its just a game. There is absolutely no reason you should get that upset because a guy tried to add elements of one game into another. Some of you get so tilted over the most insignificant things.
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And POE players will be flooding to other games or complaining about how it became a casual game.
Temper your expectations for POE2.
Right dude, and I’m now 20 years older and I don’t wanna go kill Meph, exit the game, open a new one, go kill him again, and then go to Pindleskin, then go to Trav… I don’t wanna do any of that anymore. I don’t have teenager dopamine anymore. I’d rather just get anything I want, from anywhere, and choose my own flavor for the current minute. Rods right man, I’d hate to say it. But he’s right bro
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I’m not saying Diablo IV needs to take after Diablo II. I’m fine with it being its own thing. However, claiming that was the problem is a COMPLETE copout because the two games have NEVER been anywhere in the same wheelhouse.
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d3 and Hello Kitty Online already exists but thats not stopping them from making another clone
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99% d3 1% last epoch