I’ve been playing video games for 20+ years, and I wish that meant something to the younger generation, but I guess you have to make your own mistakes.
Others have mentioned it, but it’s glaringly obvious a key aspect of Diablo IV is to slow down the player. This game is one of the most obvious time-sinks I’ve ever seen. It’s very clear that the development team had “Waste Time,” on the whiteboard. Just because people are playing your game, doesn’t mean it’s a good game, but I guess the shareholders can’t tell the difference.
Like the only reason I’m still playing this game is because I spent money on it, and I want to feel like I get my money’s worth instead of feeling like I’ve been scammed. It’s pretty annoying that I’m playing at a good pace, and for no reason my character just stops moving, or attacking. Maybe it’s because Rapid Fire is supposed to keep you in place for 2 seconds after the animation finishes, even with 150% attack speed… Except this only happens like 30% of the time. Yes I’m aware of evading with Rapid Fire. I’ve had the game tell me “I can’t do that yet,” and all I’m trying to do is move my character, lol… It’s so bizarre.
Saying slow down the player might not even be the proper way of stating it. It’s like… I spend days generating gold, because most of the gear I find is junk. I don’t know why I’m even allowed to pick up items with Overpower damage or Barrier generation as a Rogue, it’s just so stupid. It’s obviously mucking up the item affixes to force me to farm even more than I should have to.
So then what do I do with the days spent making gold? Try to enchant my gear. 50,000,000 gold that took 20ish hours to generate is spent in less than 1 minute trying to find ONE affix on a piece of gear that’s closer to a side-grade than an up-grade. It’s so unrewarding. Then after failing to find that affix, the next enchanting cost is like 10m. It’s exponentially ****ty. Not to mention the world boss spawns every 6-8 hours, and the loot is a complete joke. It’s all a joke to be honest. I’ve killed hundreds of treasure goblins and oh boy some low quality legendries. My 500th Butcher and it may as well be dropping a middle finger and a pile of its droppings. I’d rather just waste a revive dying to it instead of wasting the 5 minutes killing it.
I mean there’s so many problems with this game, and… I guess I’m old enough now to realize… There’s nothing that Blizzard can do anymore, nothing this development team can produce or patch, there’s nothing that’s going to rinse my mouth of the terrible taste of that garbage launch. Like, for an indie company, sure. For a $20 game, sure. For early access, sure. But to officially launch a game for $70+ developed by a AAA studio gaming company worth over $60,000,000,000. It’s disgusting. It’s shameful.
The problem is they already have my money, so I’m super inclined to continue playing this obvious time-sink until I feel like I’ve earned the money I’ve put into it. Which at this rate… That’s like 10 more years.
I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that this games launch is the stake through this company’s heart that finally begins its descent to irrelevance. You guys used a brand-name like Diablo to take advantage of your consumers. It’s absolutely appalling. I feel so much sadness for all the programmers, graphic artists, all the actual workers of this game, to have been so screwed by the development team, the management team, whatever you want to call the people that are making the decisions.
