I think you first need to understand pointing out the bads of the game doesn’t need a solution or statistics of a perfect game to disprove that the game isn’t bad.
We only need a “normal” or up-to-par game, if that’s at least reasonable. Complaints inevitably are gonna come, no matter in what games we play because people have different perceptions. If however something is bad (especially QoL stuff), it’s very easy and well justified to be complained. You’ve seen long posts on this forum and most of those are justified.
Do not create a post and give blindless defenders opportunities to say Diablo 4 is a good game. No, it isn’t after you’ve compared gameplay, mechanics, progression, story, etc. There sure are good things done in this instalment but it’s not even close to cover its bad.
There is no perfect game to me. Everything wears old eventually. I used to play D2 for hours every day. Eventually, it just wasn’t fun anymore. Same with various Final Fantasy Games, WoW, Elden Ring, Animal Crossing, Xenoblade Chronicles, etc, etc, etc.
People who think there’s a “perfect” game that never gets old are either living with rose tinted glasses on, or have a genuine obsession that they should consult a professional about.
For now tho? I’m loving D4, playing daily, and feel that my time and money are well spent.
I haven’t said D4 is a terrible game, and everything gets old eventually, but: Deus Ex(2000), but you could argue it drops a bit in quality at the military base. VtM:B assuming you’re using the fan patch. Expeditions: Rome is a more recent game that came out and is much more accessible than previous games by the same devs(but those are good as well). The story also makes D4 look like a kindergartener wrote it.
Are you asking specifically for ARPGs? Then I can’t help you. I’m not a connoisseur.
The thing is I’m not arguing against this point, because that’s what the whole debate is over? They don’t “want” people respec’ing for every piece of content, but they have balanced every piece of content, to require different build setups to play at a high level and maximize your build. I’m going to skip ahead in your post to this point because it ties into what I’ve just said…
If you’re a GOOD player, rather than adding 16.66 points into a category that is for AOE, when you’re doing pvp content, or a single target content, you would be a fool to not redistribute those 16.66 points into more single target. Doing so, immediately makes your knowledge of making that switch rewarding, by giving you an advantage over players that don’t.
Now what’s going to happen, is players who purely enjoy playing pvp, will realize this and their builds will be set up in that way where someone showing up with their NM dungeon “well rounded” build, won’t stand a chance anyways.
Skilled players will ALWAYS find ways to maximize their character for the content they are doing. All blizzard has done is made this a massive hassle for something that will inevitably still happen anyways.
If I know I’m going to progress on Lilith over the next few days, I will make my build single target oriented to maximize that until I get her down. Same goes with if im farming red dust from pvp (I know we already both agree on this), I’ll just spec and build my character purely for that and stay as that build for a few days or a week until I collect everything I need from that.
The difference is, this is forcing players into a situation where it’s a hassle to swap between these modes freely, and to simply play the game with builds they know are super effective, because blizzard is stubborn.
Adding 3 loadouts that you can swap between on a 30 minute cooldown, does not affect blizzard in anyway, and would be much better overall for the players of the game regardless of how they “developed” the game and what their intentions were.
I would agree with you on this, if it weren’t for the fact that Lilith is not a fight the majority of players can even do right now anyways. Only a small percentage of the higher end players will down her (until nerfs happen or further seasons make her irrelevant power wise), and like I said, these higher level players are ALREADY spec’ing and building their characters specifically for her anyways.
The casuals who run “well rounded” builds, will not be killing her the way she is currently. So your argument doesn’t apply because the way it is CURRENTLY implemented, requires you to build for it to beat her.
It’s not that she’s too hard… it’s that she requires you to have a build that makes sense for fighting her, as well as many attempts learning her mechanics. Like I said earlier, something casuals will not be able to do until nerfs happen, or gear scaling further down the road make her irrelevant.
I don’t get where you’re getting that I think because something is difficult, to remove it. I’m stating that if they expect us to maximize our build purely to beat a certain form of content, they shouldn’t be going out of their way to make it hard for players to do so out of their own stubbornness about respecs. It doesn’t need to be this hard to simply build your character for certain situations.
Like I said, she’s already balanced around this concept. Am I going to go into the Lilith fight with the aspect I use in NM dungeons that when I CC an enemy it has a 50% chance to chain to another when damaged? No, what use would that be on single target. Am I going to use the unique spec pants that when an enemy dies, they have a chance to release a frost Nova? No, because it serves no purpose in a fight against a single target. Therefor when you start removing certain legendaries or uniques, your build changes at that point. If I’m removing AOE centred pieces from my gear, why would I not also change my build and paragon board to reflect that considering I’m not using it anymore.
Why would I go into Lilith with something like “crowd control duration” as a roll on my gear when it serves zero purpose and is a dead slot at that point. Casuals will always go into these fights without making tweaks like this, which is why most of them will be incapable of defeating the hard pinnacle fights blizzard adds to the game.
The people that have actually killed her currently, I guarantee you have redone their builds beforehand to prepare for her and build specifically for it. Nobody is going in there winging it with a jack of all trades build. So in theory, your “balanced builds” should be fine in all content, makes sense… but in reality that’s not the case and it never will be unless blizz makes the content extremely trivial to where casuals can complete it
This is literally the definition of world of Warcraft. NOBODY goes to raids, pvp, and mythic plus with the same builds for all 3. You do that and you’re parsing at the bottom end and most likely going to struggle finding people to play with.
A game that is focused around making builds, and gearing around that build, makes complete sense to have people build for certain content.
I think you truly underestimate how tweaks are made to builds at the high end that distinguish themselves from the rest of the players in the game. It’s not a matter of whether a well rounded build can do content or not, it’s the fact that when players know how to build their characters to give them success at endgame, they have a clear advantage and are going to do so 100% of the time. At that point anyone not doing it for whatever content it is, is already at a disadvantage to those that are. It’s a skill gap that will always be there
One thing in common with a lot of the great games over the decades is that most were ground breaking or new IP. First example would be Castle Wolfenstein and then Doom. Warcraft & Diablo 1 were not necessarily "new’ but they innovated their genres.
D3 & D4 were and are judged because of their lineage, and rightly so. Because of that lineage there is built in expectations, and when Blizzard does not meet them, well this is the result. D3 truly should have just been a new title, it deviation was just too far. Typically good games way back when did not try to re-invent with the successor, but rather implemented new additions coupled with better graphics and other “quality of life” aspects. Two good examples would be Age of Empires 1-3 and even better was the Close Combat series 1-5. Each iteration was an addition and improvement, but not a reimaging.
Here is an analogy. Star Wars, big success, so they make a sequel. But Lucas is not involved, so the studio hires a different director, writer, who make the it a romantic comedy. Ignore everything already established, and replaced with something nobody asked for.
So any of you kiddies upset that your beloved D4 is not gotten the masses flagellating at the alter of Blizzard have only Blizzard to blame. Or maybe lesson learned, set expectations extremely low and just avoid D5 (which is what I believe a LOT of people are going to do).
none of the games im going to say are perfect but they are all amazing morrowind, baldurs gate 2, fallout 2 and NV, project zomboid, rdr2 is closest to perfect maybe?
I use to love DC Universe online I thought it was near perfect until they introduced F2P. We are talking PS3 generation MMORPG. They ruined it with microtransactions and greed I have never found a game that I’ve liked more.
For me was Elden Ring a mediocre experience. I tried to get into it, but the loop is somehow not enjoyable at all. Go to the boss and got killed by his first attack. Now memorize it and go again. Now you can evade first attack but got kill by the second one… I admit I was not playing souls game so I am not good at these, but dying 30 times to one semi-boss does somehow not define fun for me. It could be all somehow bearable if there was no loading screen between attempts. I don’t mind doing boss fights but the long waiting time for loading, then running back just to be instantly killed by a wrong move… yeah, totally NOT a masterpiece at all.
See guys, tons of people have many different 10/10 games, it all depends on preference. There’s a lotta good stuff out today even with “modern gaming” in its current state.
I honestly don’t play many big multiyear gring games like diablo and Poe amd such becuase I’d miss out on so many awesome single player games if I did. I still need to play ff16 but i won’t be getting it for a while and i have like…3 games in September coming up.
Also that was intended oddly. Apparently the lead designer said, for some reason, he wanted geralt to control like a horse, to show how…tanky he is or some weird justification.
I see. TBH if Geralt controls felt more like any of the latest Assassin’s creed games, I would have enjoyed Witcher 3 a lot more as the story and quests were far superior to other games.
They said they’ll be a new witcher at some point. With ff16 adopting some of the devil may cry combat directly from its designer, i wouldn’t be surprised if CDPR asks another company for a hand as well.
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