When Diablo 2: Resurrected got released in august 2021 there werent any complains in its forum about “burnout” or not enough content. The only forum threads complaining were : respec is too expensive (which we have in D4 too), server issues and some unstatisfying game mechanics (in D2 it was immunities in D4 its the requirement of unstoppable for WT4 which blocks one entire spell slot).
So how does blizzard manage to release a game that pleases everyone including dads who just play 1-2 hours each day and hardcore gamer and just less than 2 years later they release a game that pisses everyone off including the casuals and the hardcore gamer at the same time?
At the current point i would even say that blizzard would release a expansion to D2R and D4 at the same time the D2R one would be better selling cause its the better more well rounded game
This 100%. D2 creators/Blizz North were gamers not businessmen as said by David Brevik himself. The devs of D4 made a gorgeous game with a cosmetic shop, and then for some reason decided that grinding without substance/style is the new way to play. They basically took inspiration from Mephisto and poured all their hate into it because games that are fun are simply outdated.
D4 has potential and I believe that…But what we have right now is baffling to me. There are so many choices regarding builds, skills, character resources, itemization, endgame content that seem lazy and uninspired.
Because far less people bought D2R than D4. Thus much smaller range of people to please for D2R. I would imagine D2R was mostly played by nostalgia crowd and hardcore crowd. Should kinda be obvious.
d2r has 20 years worth of content. do you remember diablo 2 on release? I do. all you did was farm chaos sanctuary looking for rare lances and iceblink because barbs were op.
Id like to see how many D2R players were brand new to the genre. D2R was/is fan service. In any event, all it got was a face lift.
Unfortunately, it seems D4 attracted a much broader amount of brand new players who know absolutely zip about this genre or its history. Blizzard will make a huge mistake changing this game for a few thousand bratty noobs.
Diablo2: Resurrected is a poor example for your argument because the truth is it didn’t sell that well and even those who bought it out of nostalgia haven’t played it that much in many cases.
I bought it and Played probably less than 2 hours, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I remembered. I have changed a fair amount since I played Diablo 2 originally after all it was 23 years ago.
I prefer playing Diablo 4 to Diablo 2 by some margin personally, but your subjective opinion could differ from mine and that’s ok.
I do not believe it is actually valid to compare D2R vs D4 for the important reason on who would be purchasing D2R. The target audience is people that are already familiar with the game, and are purchasing it for the visual facelift.
With that said though, part of the problem many have had going back to D3 is twofold. The first is the obvious difference in design team and their goals. One wanted to make a fun game for enjoyability and put effort that showed. The other were more interested in sales figures, income goals, and proving to the world how brilliant they were and how their predecessors were just awful. Hmmm now which game was good enough, popular enough that it warranted a remaster, and which one will soon be forgotten? It is absolutely not positive that now D4’s release is making so many nostalgic for a 20 year old game!
Now with D4, seems to be a repeat of the mistakes made by D3’s development. But is it really a mistake when they release a game with so many aspects that appear to never have been tested or played internally? I challenge anyone at Blizzard to spend 10 minutes riding their horse and tell me there is no problem. I challenge any of them to look at the UI for the Paragon board and tell me, is this something that they are proud of.
Both D3 and D4 seem to have been made by teams who never opened D2, never saw how their game was played. D4 released lacking many “quality of life” features that most of us D2 players took for granted.
The game, if it can even be called a game; is terrible- The skills feel like poo, the items feel like poo, the mob density is garbage, everything is boring - after your first play through the campaign there is zero incentive to keep playing whatsoever - there is zero fun to be had playing this painfully boring game
You do realize that D2R has twice as many people currently online as D3, right? It’s also the highest selling remake of all time. Further, when D2 first came out, it was the highest selling video game to ever release.
D4 has an amazing foundation and could end up being much better, but it doesn’t have an item hunt past level 70, which kills the end game. All the uniques suck, there are only 20 of them (which is honestly completely insane and asinine), and there’s no trading.
As long as they fix the game, it’ll be great, possibly even taking the top spot as the greatest ARPG of all time, but that’s extremely unlikely since Blizz is generally extremely stubborn about their gameplay decisions.
Well, because most studios that were once great were bought by mega corporations. Many of those developers have since retired or have moved on. They then hire temporary developers who learned how to make games at university, which prioritized things like monetization and maximizing profits because that’s what they’re going to be hired for. So, you end up with a fragmented team where each person is working on a different system, and then they mash it all together.
Most people who worked on the development were on a temporary contract ,who did their job and left to find the next one. They don’t have any long term investment in the product, so it lacks passion and feels stale and by the numbers. That’s because it is, profit numbers and designing games to generate revenue, both in initial sales and over time through mtx transactions. The game systems themselves are designed to promote this behaviour in its players.
There are now many tools used to reduce time and production costs during development. A lot of autogenerated content, even AI assisted is a common way to generate the majority of a games world and such, and very little is handcrafted and given a personal artistic touch.
People have been conditioned over the past couple of decades to be okay with games being broken on release because they will be fixed with patches. Companies are fine with this, because it doesn’t hurt sales. Advertising sells products, not the quality of the product itself.
They also expect an in game cash shop and find it completely normal. In fact, many people complain that there is a lack of one, or that there isn’t anything in the shop they want to spend their money on. It’s as if they are asking the company to give them a reason to throw their money at them, because paying a premium entry fee just isn’t satisfying enough.
Anyway, there is a summary. I hope you enjoyed my essay.