I think most everyone can agree that some adjustment to Delves felt necessary with how the group scaling was working combined with the rewards we get out of Delves, but this change is WILD.
Not sure what their plans are, and if they are actually happy with where it’s at. But I think they should at least show the community while running one that they’re happy with where things are at. Because just getting out of a Duo, it’s madness now. What was a 10-20 minute activity took us 40-45 mins to drudge through.
Edit: I’d like to clarify them run a Duo T8 Delve. Just ran a T8 solo as Blood and the scaling still feels fine. The Duo scaling all sorts of wack.
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Have you ever seen Blizzard dev’s play their own game?
YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THAT!
It will break your heart and you’ll understand enough to break it a second time.
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I saw the D4 devs play their game and had a good laugh.
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Which it should considering how long M0 is taking while providing lower gear.
Not saying Blizzard releasing delves in the state they were on Tuesday and then hotfixing it a few days later should be condoned, but delves were obviously broken from a time / risk versus rewards basis in groups when compared to other content.
The issue was launching them with broken scaling, then brute force hotfixing them a few days later.
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I may be misremembering, but I thought initially when announced it was presented as a slightly quicker optionally solo alternative to M0/M+. Especially with the map sizing being as small as they are compared to normal dungeons.
I guess if the goal was for them to be the same duration, they have accomplished that with the change.
If you are an extreme masochist, search “Diablo IV | Adventure with a Dev | Belfry Zakara” on YouTube
Solo they weren’t ten-minute romps, though the marketing was something like ‘bite sized’ or similar which would lead one to believe they should be fairly quick (though in Blizzard speak it may mean ‘don’t have to group’ rather than ‘quick content’).
I don’t know (and not sure Blizzard even knows) what they want from delves.
They are already gated in multiple ways (keys, bountiful), have a temporary power system that has been nerfed several times (Brann), have weird scaling for some class and roles, and at least solo, seemed to be tuned more as a time sink with gear checks than anything.
I get the feeling that if we ever saw WoW gameplay from devs, they’d be doing it with a 630+ ilvl and tell us that everything’s just fine.
It would probably end up like that Diablo dev stream with those 2 people wandering around auto attacking, dying to torment 2.
Usually your QA people are the ones who are actually ‘good’ at the game, and we all know they don’t exist anymore in a major capacity.
In that guy’s defense, the person in question literally didn’t work on the gameplay aspects of D4 in any capacity (and probably isn’t even a gamer).
Blizzard got the absolute wrong employee for that particular gameplay showcase; a lot of the lead D4 devs frequently post their shenanigans on Twitter and are actually very good at the game (Adam Fletcher plays a Lightning Spear Sorc this season LOL), and there are WoW devs that raid at a Cutting Edge level or push high keys and often run their own guilds.
Occasional Excellence and Nexus Sx are two pretty prominent CE guilds with devs in leadership roles, the Zskarn dev’s guild infamously exploited his own boss the night before they buffed the living daylights out of it, Ion himself used to be GM of Elitist Jerks which is a late-CE guild, the dev who designed Kazzara and Nexus Princess is a top M+ Ret Paladin, the dev who designed a lot of the coolest items we’ve gotten since mid-Shadowlands (most specifically Manic Grieftorch, the most iconic trinket in the last several expansions) plays a Frost DK and tends to get pretty far in Mythic, etc.
So again, like I said: if you get someone who’s just responsible for maintaining servers, or Customer Service, or something like that to do your gameplay showcase it’s not going to look pretty because those people don’t actively play the games (and should not be expected to).
It wasn’t one guy. It was two women on world tier II getting stomped. I don’t work on gameplay aspects either but I can survive tier II easily.
Sure, but like… you play video games. Those two devs weren’t a part of that department, and likely didn’t really play many video games.
That’s not their fault. Blizzard quite literally got the absolute wrong people for that showcase; any of D4’s gameplay-related team leads would curbstomp any WT4 content.
I’d like to hope so. But I have my doubts that Blizz gives them any time at all to play their own game.
Did… did you not read what I said earlier? There are a LOT of Blizzard devs that play their respective games at a very high level (particularly in WoW, but also in Diablo). Blizzard just happened to get folks that are not among that crowd to showcase D4 that one time and it backfired spectacularly.
I did see that. I just doubt it. Even Ion went lax on his character.
There are for sure, but clearly not enough. If we had one dedicated dev for each class that understood numbers / appreciated that class, the game would be in a much better place. That isn’t even asking a lot, and they can’t manage that.
Because Blizzard wanted to market the most casual-friendly ARPG on the market to people who are significantly less casual than the people they used to showcase their gameplay? Diablo’s playerbase is overwhelmingly casual (like, probably north of 85% based on some stats Blizzard posted a little while back), but most of the people who would’ve been watching said showcase are hardcore, longtime Diablo fans.
It was a blunder, but it was a pretty genuine one. I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply here.
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I have, when they were “playing” Diablo 4 on the controller. You could literally hear that they weren’t actually playing because they were mashing buttons on the controller and on screen their character was just running down a hallway.
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You could see the abilities they were using on their action bars.
That was the big giveaway.
Fun times! Go Blizz!
Yeah that could be why. Sorry, didn’t mean to imply anything untoward.
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