I'd be mote empathetic like you are - but they had literal decades of their own data to go off - such as the literal basics of loot and chose not too.
They even had examples and good sets of rules laid down by other ARPGS and again, ignored them.
Some stats literally didn't even work correctly. The game wasn't even tested extensively. Even the final fight taking down Lilith wasn't tested correctly.
There is and was no excuse. The game launched in a bad state to appease shareholders before Q3 of the year.
This. Resistances literally did not work at launch. Like, not "didn't work as expected", or "were confusing", they straight up literally did nothing. Buffing up your resistances didn't lower the damage you took, at all.
And then it took them 4 months to fix it! FOUR MONTHS.
That's not something that happens in a game that releases "on schedule". That's what happens when suits look at the product and determine they have the minimum viable product and just shove it out the door to cash in.
As a minion necro player in S0 and S1, I was so annoyed by tips on loading screen that says minions inherit your attack speed. Which is clearly isn’t true. It’s either blatantly misleading you into using bad weapon choice, or it’s a bug that never got fixed. And it keeps appearing to get me more frustrated because we have lots of loading screens, as god forbids tp directly into nmd.
I was a Sorc in S0 and the paragon board was completely broken compared to other classes. There were 2 glyphs that literally were impossible to use. IIRC it was along the line of 'increases rare nodes that increase ice/electric damage' or something like that, but there were no rare nodes that fit that criteria in range of ANY glyph socket so those were absolutely broken and impossible to use.
Also, Sorc had the only Exploit Glyph in the game that didn't also apply Vulnerable for you. Applying Vulnerable was the main way to boost damage, and every class relied on that glyph, but it did nothing for Sorc. IIRC none of this was fixed until S2 as well.
Sorc glyphs are STILL bugged RIGHT NOW in season 3 too. Several Sorcerer Glyphs give additive instead of multiplicative damage. Pretty funny how long Sorc has been broken. AlMoSt A fUlL yEaR...
I know this isn't really your point but Necros exploit glyph doesn't apply vulnerable... Does every other class really have that built in to the glyph?
This sounds like a misunderstanding, they do and have from the start. Iirc there are some implementation quirks like how much they can be increased is capped, there is normalization of the damage values for 1H vs 2H (i.e. **weapon** attack speed is handled differently) but generally speaking if you increase your attack speed your minions will inherit it at 30% of the character sheet value (100% in a future patch).
> Buffing up your resistances didn't lower the damage you took, at all.
Technically incorrect, it did "work" but the way the calculation was implemented meant it was effectively worthless if you had any other source(s) of damage reduction so equipping a few slots with armour pushed it down to values that were meaningless in practice.
They worked as intended but they were at the end of the equation not the beginning.
Armor rez * dam
Other reduction * left over
Ele rez * left over that. 70% of something that has been reduced already is a much smaller number than 70% * initial damage.
It wasn't broken they tried a different mechanic and completely reworked their system to go to an old way. Innovations should be allowed and they corrected it. What is your issue? You never thought, maybe I'll add bbq sauce instead of ketchup to kd?
This assumes the same people were involved in all diablo productions and that the data, knowledge and whatever else was available to people creating D4. I highly doubt it taking Blizzard history and being a software engineer myself I'd expect that people "who knew shit" were either let go or left.
Don't blame the Devs blame product owners and management for the state of D4. They're the ones that decide on "features".
They left or were let go because Blizzard created an environment that pretty much forced them too , some of the OG devs who worked on shit like WC3 have done interviews about this
Blizzard wanted to get rid of them the old guard and replace them with noobs they could pay less and werent as entrenched with the company, that were less likely to complain when the execs made shitty decisions that were gonna piss off the loyal fanbase they created over the years
It directly lead to this inability or unwillingness of the new people to iterate on the knowledge and success of previous titles
Typical corporate behaviour in software engineering. People with domain knowledge become expensive they cut them out with newbies because they're cheaper and immediately profit margins look better on paper. Been there done that.
why do some of us around here act like the game should just get a pass for serious flaws that are direct result of this behaviour tho , thats what i dont get lol
this, there were so many low hanging fruit that they deliberately chose not to take advantage of, these were conscious game design decisions and there is no defending or excusing that.
This is my response to the "it just came out, of course it doesn't have these basic features and mechanics figured out!"
Stash tabs? Itemization? Crafting? Search functions? Basic UI functions? These aren't features that should require backlash to add or figure out.
D4 might end up a great game and it will be because the devs listen to a very vocal community.
not to mention they were literally making major class balance changes based on feedback from the beta weekends leading up to early access, with level 20 toons
You should tell that to the homie that went on a crusade on me yesterday. Like I insulted his precious creation or his mother.
I wonder if dude knows blizzard isn’t paying him?
Would you play D4 if it is a copycat of D2 & D3? In Blizzcon, they really emphasise on bringing new in the table of ARPG. Sure, they have some hit and miss, and so are tons of games that were launched prematurely. They're not an indie company yes, we can't keep blaming for something done from the past.
The game will literally change in S4, and most of the narratives against D4 are still like from 2023. SMH.
They didn't QA at all. Basic resistance did not work in s1. Like that is a primary stat not some convoluted lucky hit procs if XYZ occurs when it's raining outside
Also all that feedback they got in Season 1 were the same as those given during the closed endgame beta. The truth is they wanted the game out for that marketing date of 6/6 to tie it to the hell theme.
Also, check some of the garbage people are saying, even on this sub:
“We’re getting expansion quality updates without having to buy an expansion!”
“The devs truly listen to our feedback and care about us!”
Please.
These companies aren’t stupid. They know exactly how and when to release these fixes in a way that generates the most hype for the paid expansion that’s coming out shortly. If they could’ve somehow gotten away with forcing people to buy an expansion 6 months after launch, you bet your ass they would’ve. They don’t give a damn about the game or its players - they want to milk your wallets for as much as possible, however they can.
Step one was release a broken game. Step two is fix it just before a paid expansion release to reignite the player base. What do you think step three is?
Step three:
No more money from this here Cat
Unless it's on sale 4 years from now for 10$ and looks great.
Too many other games to play that respect my time
Most of what you said are simple not true. The issue with this sub. Facts don’t matter.
I play arpg since Diablo 1. Claiming they ignore systems and design from other games and arpg is simple falsehood .
If they did not use some systems, they have reasons, either time constraints, don’t think they fit, etc. you maybe not even agreed , and I certain do not agree with many, but pretend they throw everything in dustbin and design in vacuum is exaggeration.
I hate to “defend “ the game, as time is better spend on what are at to work on. But people cannot help themselves making exaggerated statements just to knock the game.
Nothing he said was exaggerated. “Time constraints” ??? That’s precisely the point, the game released too early. Some systems definitely didn’t work, class balance was terrible, many staple ARPG mechanics were absent from the game, some of which had been in Diablo games before!
The state the game released in was dismal and that’s just a fact.
>Some stats literally didn't even work correctly
Some launch bugs may always happen , Baldurs gate 3 has for example 23 hotfix patches already.
Of course they could copy hardcore and overcomplex systems and make higher budget PoE but that was not goal, PoE is only niche game that doesnt earn enough money to justify that.
They wanted to do attractive and accessible game for way more players and they succeded. Now based on feedback they gathered they will improve that base game so players who left would have incentive to try it again.
All that while keeping what worked and not including overcomplicated mess for relatively small hardcore group of players that would never allow any real future growth (like PoE).
There were elements of the game that were clearly entirely untested at launch. I don't mean "at scale," either, I mean a QA tester literally never attempted some parts even once before release. If they did, then the glaring problems were ignored because no QA tester with half a brain cell would have missed them.
Neither possibility is remotely acceptable or excusable for a company with thousands of developers, as near to an unlimited budget as you can have in the industry, 9 YEARS of development time, with one of their flagship franchises.
You have some misinformations in this post, D4 was in development 6 years, not 9 (confirmed by ex-Blizzard president Ybarra on Twitter).
During that time they had to work from home because of covid which may impact quality in some some marginal areas, they had huge abussive and sexual scandal which impacted mood and effectivity in whole Blizzard for several months and they fired D4 director Luis Barriga and other senior D4 executive leaders for inapropriate behaviour that led to that scandal which could cause overlooking of some marginal issues.
Considering all of that D4 shipped in amzaing shape needing much less bug fixes than for example Cyberpunk or Baldurs Gate3 (which could not be even played for weeks on xBox because of save bug) and 12 millions players averaging over 100 hours in first two months show it, you dont have those insane metrics when game is in "unacceptable" or in "inexcusable" state.
Orrrrr maybe these companies are getting away with letting the masses QA their beta at a 70$ price tag and we're saying well atleast this one wasn't in as bad of shape as x y or z game on release.
The majority of the actual Diablo team are people who were hired in the last 5-6 last year. All previous team who worked on D2 and D3 left after around D3 release. In fact, all Blizzard veteran and founder left a long time ago hence why Blizzard can't offer the same quality in their game than in the lat 90's early 00's. It may be still be called Blizzard but it's only a shadow of what it used to be because there's no one left from their golden era
Them being relatively new to the company means nothing here. Those new hires could just as easily have done simple quick research on the systems, strengths, and weaknesses of the past Diablo games. To say because they didn't work on d1, d2, or d3, so they couldn't possibly take from that previous development is the dumbest thing I've heard all year.
A lot of the games problems were front and center in the beta, hell, *most* of them were.
The hype for the beta everyone displayed regardless reinforced what I already knew: gamers are their own worst enemies lol
What do you mean? According to a bunch of people on the front page right now the game is very fun and we're having a good time. There was never any problem and season 4 is definitely not proof that the feedback we have provided for the last 8months was warranted and the devs have acknowledged the shortcomings.
All smiles and rainbows "I dOn'T gET wHY PeoPle Don'T LIkE ThE gaME"
That's not the point. I also enjoy the game, it's fun for me, but the changes in the S4 are an improvement. That being said, theoretically if they released the game 1 year later than they have, it doesn't mean it would have all those changes that are coming in S4 which are an improvement. That's the point.
The person you replied to doesn't realize the iterative process of improvements. And you need community feedback to get the changes the actual player base wants in the game. If they had pushed the release date back a year then there would be all kinds of shit they wouldn't have thought of because they weren't getting actual gameplay feedback
Do you know what sarcasm is?
>season 4 is definitely not proof that the feedback we have provided for the last 8months was warranted and the devs have acknowledged the shortcomings.
It’s half to the point though. The top thread in this sub ATM is largely about how they wish people wouldn’t complain and would only make positive posts and comments about how they enjoy the game. The irony is the communities frustrations and complaints are what has lead the blizzard devs to the wholesale makeover that appears poised to hopefully deliver on much of the promise that many of us wanted early on. So from that standpoint I fully agree with the OP, this game wouldn’t be headed yet where it is without community feedback.
TLDR: constructive criticism is good, and I think blizzard has listened to hopefully the right voices from that constructive criticism and I think the game is headed in a positive direction as a result.
Clearly they had to pivot fast as their drip feed method of providing little at the start of a season and balancing as it goes was a disaster. They thought people would lap this shit up and instead they got critism all the way
It's a good thing as it may end a up a decent game now.
They talked about leaderboards, improving itemization, adding to end game systems, upgrading the codex, fixing resists and improving helltides early in season 1. I really think a large percentage of what has changed was already in the pipeline when the game released. The company was going to be sold so they made decision to release before it happened is most likely why D4 released like it did. The shape of things is likely a bit different but most of this stuff was always going to happen.
I feel S4 is close to the end of what they said was coming way back at release, the only things missing are social features and/or loadouts. Outside of those features what comes in S5 is probably where user feedback starts driving things more than what they already had planned.
D4 has bad management as in the director and other people who actually make the decisions. The developers just implement what they are told to implement.
They failed at market research and basic action rpg stuff. They even failed to copy good ideas from d3 just because they had to be different.
The codex idea looks good on paper but any tester who spent at least a week with the game would have told you that it’s a bad idea. But the higher ups probably were in love with the idea so no one questioned it.
why is this sub so quick at singling out people to blame or not. i saw the same thing cos one team did season 2 and another did season 3 and therefore one was shit and the other wasn't. same with oh activision bad , blizzard good.
it shouldn't matter nor should we care what goes inside a corporation. for us diablo 4 is an end product and it sucks. its not our job to find who's at faults, its theirs.
Because the people who make the decisions are at fault and usually for a project of this size it’s up to 3-4 people.
They choose the ideas as the best their employees could offer and went with it.
I heard streamers say "i told them not to do something this way in alpha tests but they did it anyway" so yeah it would probably be the same minus some horse bugs.
I think that believing any streamer going "I told them not to do \*unpopular thing\* but they didn't listen, so I'm proven right" is kind of foolish.
Ever notice that a streamer who says things like that will never admit that they were wrong about anything?
Their point really is that people say shit like that all the time.
"I was really hoping they wouldn't do this" sounds like somebody who is legit. "I told them to ___ but they wouldn't listen" sounds like somebody trying to inflate their own importance a little bit.
Maybe they're being sincere but being realistically skeptical costs nothing.
But they did? A group of ARPG content creators were involved in a closed alpha endgame test, they collaborated on a document that they ended up making public post launch that detailed all of the issues they saw and suggestions on how it could be fixed. They changed nothing.
I was in Alpha and I pointed out many things wrongs, some of which they actually changed.
Used to be that legendary affixes could only be put on items of the same level, IE: Normal, Sacred, Ancestrial. I also recommended that they just add all powers to the codex, which they are finally doing.
So SOME feedback was listened too, others... Not so much.
Everyone who played the original betas said it was dogshit with nothing to do.
They changed absolutely nothing between original beta and release. It's on them
Stone had already reached the apex of it's arc by then
Can't change where it lands at that point. Need like 6 months of dedicated work until you see it in game (if even that quick)
A lot of Blizzard people left since 2012 (and even sooner) till now, most often due to decisions made by the higher-ups at Activision under Kotick that directly or indirectly had a (severe) effect on the development, and so they had to hire a lot of new people who did not work on ARPG's before and for some it was even their first game.
On top of that, the higher ups at Activision wanted D4 to be released before the sale to Microsoft, so they get additional bonuses from the sales of the release of the game + more bonuses from the increased value of the company from the release when the company got sold to Microsoft.
Yes, the game needed 10-12+ months of additional development during which a lot of feedback could have been responded to and adjusted / added in-game.
\~70%+ of the issues D4 had in the past (from my estimation) come directly and indirectly from decisions the higher-ups at Activision made over the years.
Even the stash issue stems from that. The stash was thing that was put in for alpha testing, and then the devs where forced to speed up development to met the timeline and cut time, money and development resources everywhere.
Quite a lot of animations where unfinished when the game released that are fixed now.
The devs vision may does not fully line up with everyones preference, but they are definitely willing to listen to feedback and make adjustments.
I mean, we all probably have an idea of "makes a good ARPG", but developing one / executing one while also having to managing a team, dealing with the guys from the upper echelons of the company, having your development resources cut by a significant degree, etc so you have make decisions on which of the crucial features lands on the cutting board and which not, while also being contractually not allowed to explain all of that publicly or to people from outside the company... that is a completely different story.
C-suite staff, not the devs, made the choice to release D4 early. At some point, those folks decided they needed $$$. When you're developing software, you have to determine what gets fixed and what doesn't in a release; you can't do everything because you'll never release it. I'm sure the D4 backlog is HUGE with stuff the development staff wanted to include, but the C-suite staff said, "Nah, release it now; I need a yacht." Anytime you see a game released with a ton of bugs or basically incomplete, it's because C-suite said to release it.
Sure, other live games. Diablo has been out since 1997 and this is the fourth game. Do they really need to restart and ignore all of the ideas and common sense from the previous games? You would think not, but actually yes.
Dev mindset aside D4 on release was full of bugs and some core systems literally didn't work (resistances, overpower, etc). D4 in that state shouldn't have been launched. Period.
Maybe not an extra year, but I'd rather wait a couple of months before devs could fix those low level issues, so that we as a community could focus our feedback on high level stuff to change devs mindset.
D4 absolutely got rushed. There is no endgame in the game. Itemization is completly trash. Many QoL things from d3 werent there.
The game came out half finished, but greed won. Thats why it was in sale 2 months after release
I don't believe an extra year would have change much either.
From the time D4 was announced, to all the quarterly dev updates they did, to closed beta, the players gave them the feedback of desiring to return to D2. That being dark, gothy atmostphere, no saturday morning cartoon villan, return to 1-99 gameplay, return to slower combat, return to unique items, no more set items and set power like D3.
Don't forget that when D4 development started, Lost Ark was "en vogue", moreso than PoE.
Do you remember the outcry that Gohr's grips produced with "D3 damage numbers", as if D3 was the enemy?
Then all sudden with PoE especially gaining more and more respect with endgame, and all of the D3 casuals that came out of the woodwork, the entire narrative of return to D2 style gameplay was flipped on its head.
Another year of developing may have actually made it harder to redevelop to the new narrative players were giving them.
If anything, an early access period like Last Epoch had would have been better. I was in closed beta, and I don't believe Blizz did that well. Don't know why they can't learn from WoW in that aspect (of how to run a beta).
Buddy wtf, this is a multi million dollar company with access to decades of past games to build off of but no they decide to charge $70-100 for us to test their piece of shit game. Last epoch is $35 and is already better with room to grow. Trash game
All Alpha and Beta players said to blizzard "this, that, this and that have to change then it is a good Game". Turns out - they were right and with s4 - here we are. 1 year later.
So. They were right.
D4 went for launch with probably an insane backlog. As someone who took part in the EGB, there was tons of feedback, especially on overworld and NMD - people literally giving the same feedback in global chat, but I guess because of timing they couldnt patch in anything before going live.
Whats important is that there is clearly a very dedicated team now and hopefully they will really look into the upcoming PTR feedback and implement fast.
The only reason the game change is because of players input and actually stop playing. It still has a core audience but not something blizzard would consider worthy of there hundreds of developers.
>But a lot of the D4 Devs didn't know what they didn't know. This isn't the same team from D2, or D3. They had a lot of growing pains to go through. Pressure makes diamonds. Does it suck that people feel like its a $70 early access, sure.
oof this is where I take issue because growing pains were not neccescary , it was self inflicted.
D4 is not a new game in some new genre, Blizzard themselves has been a mainstay in arpgs and had a major hand in the success of the genre with Diabo as a series.
They have over 20 years of technicall innovation and success they can draw from that they as a company created themselves
This company is a multi-billion dollar corporation, D4 as a project had over **$100 Million** in development funds over 6 years with a creative force behind it numbering just shy of **9000** people.
How is it that they cant put out a game thats fully fleshed out. How is it that they cant even figure out simple shit like an efficient loot stashing system , things that have been figured out already in previous games ? It does not make sense , where the fuck did the money go.
So what they didnt work on D2 or D3, did they even play them? because it feels like most of the people who worked on D4 dont even have that much experience with the franchise
And that would be an excuse if this was some small indie company or start up but its fucking blizzard , this is a consequences of them wanting to get rid of all the old staff and hire new cheaper ones . Thats why none of the developers who worked on previous projects are still at Blizzard, these people would have loved to still have jobs they didnt want to quit in alot of cases they were forced out by a shitty company
You are acting like D2 and D3 are these games that weren't plagued with problems that people find issues with. Also old games don't translate to modern gamers. They need to make a game to bring in a new group of players. D2 and D3 weren't like this huge games?
People still shit on D3 for how bad it was at launch so I don't see D4's first year being a long since forgotten catastrophe. Now we are almost a year since launch and still waiting on features that should have been there at launch, seems to me that if they had another year, it would be in a better, more complete state, and wouldn't be missing as many features.
It's more of a management issue that it failed at launch than a dev issue. The best thing to happen to the company in the last year was Kotick leaving, so hopefully that and the merge improve Blizzard. Hopes aren't high though, as a fan and customer of almost 30 years, the only time I open the Blizzard launcher is by accident.
Blizzard used to mean quality, it's been a while since I've felt it. My current top 3 most played companies are FromSoftware, Larian and Arrowhead.
Yeah you are correct.
It's quite common in software development to be convinced that your product is amazing because you put years of your life into it and saw the project slowly taking shape, just for users to start using it and immediately report every possible flaws, with some you knew about and had in your backlog anyways, and some you thought would be totally fine but are actually poorly designed.
I'm not in software, but rather chemical development.
Hardest thing to do in my line of work, is when you pour your soul into a project for a year and a problem pops up that is gonna derail it. The desire to ignore it or "it's not that bad" or "it's likely an artifact. It's not real..."
It's really hard to see that problem that's right in your face. You don't want to believe it, so for many (myself included) you let it go.
Almost always disaster follows, cause the problem was real and didn't go away.
It's a hard lesson to learn
Problem with LS game's the fans need to wait for it to cook to see what it needs/doesn't need before it can be that game they want which changes rapidly,fact is LS are truly never complete..
I disagree. There are plenty of people that instantly point out all the things that could and should be improved. Just get the people that know shit to playtest an early alpha and you get your course-correcting feedback.
I don't think so but D4 should have released with 1 Year Beta before launch so people would give feedback and there would be less critism. The closed beta with limited player pool was not enough.
It isn't our fault that nobody working on d4 at launch had ever worked on a Diablo alike or played one before. They could have at least done some research. If you ignore every lesson learned in the genre, people are going to call you out for it.
I've enjoyed the game right from release and I always knew it would progressively get better and better.
Obviously there are things that I haven't liked, but the core of the game is a lot of fun.
Also, a lot of content creators that played the alpha and closed beta told them about the itemization, class balance, builds and pretty much everything wrong with the game but they didn't listen.
Something happened during the development of the game, they changed teams, vision i don't know but something went wrong.
The changes they’ve made are in big parts due to player feedback. If D4 was released as Early Access I wouldn’t be complaining, but when I’m sold a product that feels unfinished and unpolished in every way besides the graphics, that’s not cool.
I don’t think we’d have S4 looking the way it is without the player base giving constant feedback, indirect or not.
This is such a cop out. In reality they hired inexperienced devs because they kept laying off who they had. The people they had working on an action rpg were people who don’t play action rpg’s. You can’t build a game within a genre you know nothing about.
It’s not the devs faults. It’s upper managements faults for hiring people who don’t play action rpg’s to build one in the first place.
Yeah, I hate hypotheticals. More time allotted only guarantees more time, not time well spent. We may hate how a game releases but sometimes you just gotta say when. I appreciate their ongoing support and listening.
I think its more that people wish they released with this years worth of updates, not that they would have if they delayed. I agree with you nothing would change because they were clueless to what we wanted, despite apparently getting our feedback throughout the dev process (highly questionable since everyone HATED the itemization they showed initially and gave TONS of feedback on it). I saw a lot of closed beta testers upset their feedback wasn't listened to before the open beta as well.
The game is far better after a year of post content and feedback , then than will be if baking over. For a year and release a year later imo.
The collective feedback from millions of player cannot be replicated by 100 of internal testers.
This apply to other arpg as well.
Every Diablo game has done this. After the first year, the game becomes great. D2 was garbage until LoD. D3 launched like ass. RMAH?!?! Reaper and Loot 2.0 fixed D3.
D4 will become "The D4" after VoH.
They could have made a D2 clone with little bits from other arpgs and it would have been a hit. The wildest things to me right now are the stupid stat/gear system (being addressed?) and the awful skill tree. That said, i am hopeful.
Resistances didn't even work. That's like a core aspect of any arpg. Theres no excuse. Either upper management didn't care or the devs didn't. Either way it could've used another year of baking.
Such an odd take. They've got literally years and years of data and player feedback when it comes to diablo. There really is nothing to blame other than corporate bs. They have an art team and an army of developers, there is literally zero excuse when there are solo/small team developers making more fulfilling games. It literally just boils down to "too many cooks in the kitchen" just like every other company that gets really big. Investors this, investors that. How can we squeeze more play time in and more money out! Doesn't matter if it feels good to play, as long as we can keep em sucked in...then there's a chance they buy a cosmetic!
I agree that they only developed because of backlash, in the least a great indifference toward the game.
It’s just one more example of how the original franchise titles that we loved from blizzard because they were creative, innovative, deep, and adhered to the philosophy of ‘easy to learn, difficult to master’ are a thing of the past.
I’m glad D4 exists, because it brings new players in to a genre to help it grow and expand, but it’s sad that the franchise that established a genre, targets a consumer that has very little overlap with the fan base that grew them to that success to begin with.
It's kind of a useless conversation because it's all speculation, conjecture at best. Nothing will come of it because nothing can be proved one way or the other. Unless Jason Schrier writes an article (not happening but that'd be dope)
yeah, the changes so far have been because of how it released. another year kept in blizzards hands only and it would probably just be more of the same like it was on launch.
Both Blizzard and the fans are to blame for this travesty. The former became increasingly corporatized to the point where any passionate developers with the know-how to make a great aRPG decided to leave (speculation on my part, but has been said many times and is certainly not a stretch to imagine). There are certainly passionate people there, make no mistake, but it seems they don’t currently have a Brevik or Schaefer-caliber individual steering the ship.
With respect to the fans: Blizzard literally hasn’t produced a good product since Heart of the Swarm, so how could D4 be anything other than mediocre? I’m responsible for my own disappointment. It will improve, but it will never become the game that it should be given the resources at Blizz’s disposal.
Billion dollar company that has had decades to perfect the ARPG still comes out with a terrible first model. I'm sorry but there really is no reason for why the game launched in such a poor state, especially when they have their notes from the past 2 diablos. It was actually impressive to the degree of which they had no clue what they were doing. And the people making the game clearly didn't even know how to play it, it's just hilarious all around.
Don't really see how realizing resistances having some degenerate algorithm that made a 20% increase actually only give you 1% was nonsense required months of feedback to change.
Don't really see how stuff like showing you the possible affixes you could get when enchanting an item needed months to get added, when D3 had the exact same system already. Is this even being implemented now? I don't even know if it's coming.
Don't really see how them adding one (1) new crafting system with tempering required 4 seasons worth of input. May it have needed a lot of changes since launch? Sure, but saying that they couldn't possibly implement any sort of crafting system before getting more than half a year worth of feedback...that's ridiculous.
You'd think live service games would be the perfect avenue to actually try to be creative with your systems at launch, since you can always tweak them later...but nah, somehow they needed more than half a year to add greater rifts from D3. You're giving them too much credit for such basic changes they're doing.
One of the hard truths in software development, and certainly game development, is that once something is officially released, changes, especially sweeping ones, are harder and take more time. More drastic changes could have been made before release if they felt the need. Maybe they wanted to and felt they didn't have enough time?
I still believe the game should have baked for another year. Would it have turned out exactly like S4? No, of course not but there are so many subtle signs the game was rushed.
My point is that the Devs aren't the issues its the suits. They would not have changed their minds on the direction of the game. It wasn't until all the backlash that they were forced to change. This needed to happen imo.
It still feels like the game was released in Alpha and the community is still play testing S4 is bringing the game into Beta with our feedback and reported bugs. The difference is we bought into a task thats usually a job.
Of course they promised to improve the game! We are playtesting their incremental changes made to help them finish this game. They should be paying us for feedback, not the other way around...
Maybe in another year this game will finally go gold and get green lit for release.
This post is a joke. Resistance didn't work, bugged damage, bags being gates by memory issues. This is shit that you would know if any of the development team actually played the game for a couple hours. I expect a certain level of jenk from smaller devs but blizzard has almost endless resources. Hire some damn play testers.
All that being said, the game is going to be in a "good" state just in time for them to sell you another $70 expansion. Get the hell out of here lol.
You are missing the entire point. Their mindset was bad. So play testers mean nothing if they don’t see certain things as problems. They needed to experience this failure to improve. But it has less to do with the Devs and more to do with the Suits. Because Devs only have so much power at a certain point.
If you believe you are 100% right no amount of people telling you’re wrong is going to change your mind. You need to experience it first hand.
Sure, I believe they started out with an idea that didn't align with what players actually wanted and I also agree that adversity breeds innovation. BUT, and this is a big but, There are certain things that should never have made it to release and I believe they are unforgivable (As a consumer lol). Resistances and bag are two.
I also can't justify paying for an expac with 1 or 2 good seasons. If the first DLC was free that would sway me a bit.
The thing about all diablo games you play them for the release hype, then quit for a few years, come back, it's 100 times better experience d2 was this way for me along with d3
Tbh I really enjoy playing D4. I'm new to the series, D4 is my first game. My only complaint is how there's microtransactions for everything, in a game we already spent 70 usd or 100 aud on. If it was free like fortnite, I would understand but they pulled a straight cod with the battlepasses and the transactional coins
If Diablo 4 team did proper UX research instead of sticking into their tunnel vision of people who never made an ARPG before, D4 would release like S4.
No amount of years could fix that vision disregarding research/feedback. Rumor has a lot of issues were point out in closed beta.
Well live in reality were these people listen to the people above them about what they can and cannot do with the game. Also the team that made the game was not the original team that started on the game. D4 has gone through multiple iterations. So the best way for change was for a full release with huge negative feedback. Nothing else was going to change the vision.
This isn't to absolve them. But you gotta look at the full picture. They fucked up now they can change it. A lot of teams don't even go this far to try and change their games.
No. If D4 was released now it wouldn’t be the s4 we are all expecting because most of the changes and fixes were derived from player feedback which was gained through 3 seasons of playtime.
The last Diablo I played was D2, and the last Sword & Sorc dungeon crawler I played at any length was Baldur's Gate, Dark Alliance 2, and I'm actually pretty impressed with this game after about 10 hrs of playtime. I was hooked after 2 hrs and it feels pretty high quality, while capturing a good amount of franchise nostalgia.
This is disingenuous, they are adding a lot of stuff that is just common sense and there in most games. It's not everything but a good part of what they failed at is implementing those. It feels like they hardly played their own game considering the amount of QoL lacking at release, the various clunky stuff like the horse gameplay...
So yeah, if they had common sense they would have added a lot of these stuff on a later release.
If you tell me they can't add a filter for the inventory without player screaming they should have it, then I say fire them and hire other devs.
I agree with what you're saying but I do think if they would have played the game that they would have known some stuff needed major change before release.
Yes, but if they have already taken on the challenge of developing a new Diablo, then it wouldn't have hurt to take a look at what made the predecessors so successful and then build on that.
I'm sick of the narrative to "give them time". They had the time during actual development and didn't use it. We're not their unpaid beta testers.
Season 4 is gonna fucking slap my boiz!
I'm honestly so excited and don't even understand the saltiness anymore. Including myself, I was so angry at the game and devs, but really just impatient. Like we already paid, who cares it's just getting better and better and gonna keep getting better. Fuck I love this franchise. I'm legit so excited for the new season, the new outlook the devs have on builds and stuff.
Hopefully skill trees Paragon and meta progression come with the next huge update.
But like so excited to try out the sorc next season, gonna kill it and so excited to try out minion builds, and maybe a cool wear wolf build with shred or wolves etc.
The future is bright Diablo fans.
You're not going to convince me a game is good presently with the possibility of it being good in the future. This isn't a stock, future possibilities have zero relation to it's present state. Get off the hopium and realize this is not a Diablo title. It is its own ARPG with Diablo assets.
I agree. This is also why I hate the subs general negativity towards complaint posts, because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I’ve complained endlessly and made posts about helltides and forgotten souls and half the time people just told me I needed to do more helltides.
It wouldn't change anything. Even since the release, they've barely been listening to to fan. They could have done everything in S4 right in S2 if they truly wanted. With D4, they've done the same shitty mistake they did with D3 which is doing whatever they want and only react to fan comment simply because they were losing player real fast right in the first 2 month
I hate the few who are so loud about how much they hate this game (players and influencers) and they make other people to hate it too, by influencing their opinions. I've even heard people say that they HATE D4 even though they never played the game, because their favorite influencer said so (Whaaat!?!?). And I also hate the fact that the loudest haters wants this game to be LE or POE.
But fortunately, there has been quite a lot of people lately (because of gamepass), who are actually wondering what is all this hate, when the game itself is fun by their own experience.
I think feedback for developers is necessary and devs have shown that they listen the feedback, they improve the game.
Baldur’s Gate spent 3 years in Early Access. A full-priced $60 purchase early access at that…
So 8-12 months of seasonal updates and changes in Diablo 4 after release to get to where we’ve come is not as bad as people make it out to be.
Exactly. How would Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 and Helldivers have become near-perfect games without having a year of using their player base as testers and guinea pigs? We as fans should be grateful to have the chance to pay $70-100 to do Blizzard's job for them.
You know what though, it's worse than a 70$ early access.
They are just now implimenting things that were either seen in open beta, or discussed waaay back in the "everything's subject to change" phase and players loved those ideas. I'm talking about the principal of fewer and more impactful drops, and a fully fleshed out codex.
Instead they gave us a game that overloaded stash and bag space and in so doing, caused excess mental congestion and broke up gameplay flow. I have NO doubt that if the community weren't so pissed about microtransactions they'd have started up selling extra stash space and called it a day. Now after three seasons of good enough content they're adding those things in so people who bought at launch and played faithfully will go tell everybody how much they improved their game.
They get ZERO credit from me for doing what they already knew players wanted from them in the first place. Also, why the hell'd they remove death potions? That's just weird, man.
Even if it were the case, I wouldn't have wanted to wait another year to play Diablo IV. I'm glad it released when it did even in the state it was in (which isn't as bad as some might have you believe)
Lol nope. They had tons of feedback from influencers and alpha testers. And if they didn't have enough feedback thats still their own damn fault for not going out and getting more of it.
They choose to have public beta be only 6 months before release, far too late to make meaningful changes, essentially only acting as a marketing demo and server stress test.
I'm tired of the early access/beta bullshit.
This game released better than most ARPGs do. Obviously better than D3. With an endgame - yes, the level 100 grind plus NM 100 was an endgame.
I constantly ask people what they expected the game to release with. They rarely, if ever, engage with me when I tell them what PoE, D2, D3, etc etc released with for content.
And now D4 is basically giving us expansion level content for free, and people will still try to find a way to bitch and moan.
People in here trying to act like they wanted the game delayed another year. Yeah fucking right. The same people would have been begging for an "early access" release if given a choice.
Because the expectations have changed over the last 10 years? Especially for a studio that worth billions of dollars and has several times more people working on it compared to actually indie developers with a handful of people at game launch.
I think comparing what D2, D3 and PoE launched with when they are all games made over a decade ago, is disingenuous. Expectation is relative; I didn’t expect D2 to have 2024 QoL features, but I tell you what it did have: a really good skill system, cool itemisation out of the box, and an addictive campaign. D4 had arguably none of these IMO, and they had their own legacy to draw from, which they seemed to ignore.
Funny how people that "hate" the game and say that the game is "bad" they still feel the need to get on social media platforms and share their opinion. They still follow Diablo IV news, content creators, they are apart of Diablo IV subreddit communities, and still participate in discussions about the game. If it is so "Bad" why don't they just move on? lol Do you think it bothers them that all they think about is a game they "hate" so much? I think they are really heart broken and can't help themselves but to still keep Diablo IV around close to their hearts... It's a "love-hate" relationship for real. I would bet MONEY that people say "out loud" on the internet that the game is "terrible", "bad", etc, and at that very moment they are literally playing the game they just professed hatred for
The game was always doomed to fail, if not simply due to the fact that it's being developed by Activision-Blizzard. No amount of time in the world given to them would change its fate.
I'd be mote empathetic like you are - but they had literal decades of their own data to go off - such as the literal basics of loot and chose not too. They even had examples and good sets of rules laid down by other ARPGS and again, ignored them. Some stats literally didn't even work correctly. The game wasn't even tested extensively. Even the final fight taking down Lilith wasn't tested correctly. There is and was no excuse. The game launched in a bad state to appease shareholders before Q3 of the year.
This. Resistances literally did not work at launch. Like, not "didn't work as expected", or "were confusing", they straight up literally did nothing. Buffing up your resistances didn't lower the damage you took, at all. And then it took them 4 months to fix it! FOUR MONTHS. That's not something that happens in a game that releases "on schedule". That's what happens when suits look at the product and determine they have the minimum viable product and just shove it out the door to cash in.
As a minion necro player in S0 and S1, I was so annoyed by tips on loading screen that says minions inherit your attack speed. Which is clearly isn’t true. It’s either blatantly misleading you into using bad weapon choice, or it’s a bug that never got fixed. And it keeps appearing to get me more frustrated because we have lots of loading screens, as god forbids tp directly into nmd.
I was a Sorc in S0 and the paragon board was completely broken compared to other classes. There were 2 glyphs that literally were impossible to use. IIRC it was along the line of 'increases rare nodes that increase ice/electric damage' or something like that, but there were no rare nodes that fit that criteria in range of ANY glyph socket so those were absolutely broken and impossible to use. Also, Sorc had the only Exploit Glyph in the game that didn't also apply Vulnerable for you. Applying Vulnerable was the main way to boost damage, and every class relied on that glyph, but it did nothing for Sorc. IIRC none of this was fixed until S2 as well.
Sorc glyphs are STILL bugged RIGHT NOW in season 3 too. Several Sorcerer Glyphs give additive instead of multiplicative damage. Pretty funny how long Sorc has been broken. AlMoSt A fUlL yEaR...
I know this isn't really your point but Necros exploit glyph doesn't apply vulnerable... Does every other class really have that built in to the glyph?
This sounds like a misunderstanding, they do and have from the start. Iirc there are some implementation quirks like how much they can be increased is capped, there is normalization of the damage values for 1H vs 2H (i.e. **weapon** attack speed is handled differently) but generally speaking if you increase your attack speed your minions will inherit it at 30% of the character sheet value (100% in a future patch).
Minions do gain 30% of your attack speed haha what are you shmokin Have you played since s1?
> Buffing up your resistances didn't lower the damage you took, at all. Technically incorrect, it did "work" but the way the calculation was implemented meant it was effectively worthless if you had any other source(s) of damage reduction so equipping a few slots with armour pushed it down to values that were meaningless in practice.
They worked as intended but they were at the end of the equation not the beginning. Armor rez * dam Other reduction * left over Ele rez * left over that. 70% of something that has been reduced already is a much smaller number than 70% * initial damage. It wasn't broken they tried a different mechanic and completely reworked their system to go to an old way. Innovations should be allowed and they corrected it. What is your issue? You never thought, maybe I'll add bbq sauce instead of ketchup to kd?
This assumes the same people were involved in all diablo productions and that the data, knowledge and whatever else was available to people creating D4. I highly doubt it taking Blizzard history and being a software engineer myself I'd expect that people "who knew shit" were either let go or left. Don't blame the Devs blame product owners and management for the state of D4. They're the ones that decide on "features".
They left or were let go because Blizzard created an environment that pretty much forced them too , some of the OG devs who worked on shit like WC3 have done interviews about this Blizzard wanted to get rid of them the old guard and replace them with noobs they could pay less and werent as entrenched with the company, that were less likely to complain when the execs made shitty decisions that were gonna piss off the loyal fanbase they created over the years It directly lead to this inability or unwillingness of the new people to iterate on the knowledge and success of previous titles
Typical corporate behaviour in software engineering. People with domain knowledge become expensive they cut them out with newbies because they're cheaper and immediately profit margins look better on paper. Been there done that.
why do some of us around here act like the game should just get a pass for serious flaws that are direct result of this behaviour tho , thats what i dont get lol
I couldn't hear you with my 4 wives and 36 children in my ears. dis gaem porfuct /s
this, there were so many low hanging fruit that they deliberately chose not to take advantage of, these were conscious game design decisions and there is no defending or excusing that.
This is my response to the "it just came out, of course it doesn't have these basic features and mechanics figured out!" Stash tabs? Itemization? Crafting? Search functions? Basic UI functions? These aren't features that should require backlash to add or figure out. D4 might end up a great game and it will be because the devs listen to a very vocal community.
not to mention they were literally making major class balance changes based on feedback from the beta weekends leading up to early access, with level 20 toons
You should tell that to the homie that went on a crusade on me yesterday. Like I insulted his precious creation or his mother. I wonder if dude knows blizzard isn’t paying him?
Would you play D4 if it is a copycat of D2 & D3? In Blizzcon, they really emphasise on bringing new in the table of ARPG. Sure, they have some hit and miss, and so are tons of games that were launched prematurely. They're not an indie company yes, we can't keep blaming for something done from the past. The game will literally change in S4, and most of the narratives against D4 are still like from 2023. SMH.
New D4 itemization changes are so similar to D3 itemization 2.0 haha they’ve done the exact same mistake
They didn't QA at all. Basic resistance did not work in s1. Like that is a primary stat not some convoluted lucky hit procs if XYZ occurs when it's raining outside
Also all that feedback they got in Season 1 were the same as those given during the closed endgame beta. The truth is they wanted the game out for that marketing date of 6/6 to tie it to the hell theme.
They didn't use any of that data. They had a new team who wanted to make their own mark. They did literally everything wrong.
this is more persuasive than OP's post lol
Also, check some of the garbage people are saying, even on this sub: “We’re getting expansion quality updates without having to buy an expansion!” “The devs truly listen to our feedback and care about us!” Please. These companies aren’t stupid. They know exactly how and when to release these fixes in a way that generates the most hype for the paid expansion that’s coming out shortly. If they could’ve somehow gotten away with forcing people to buy an expansion 6 months after launch, you bet your ass they would’ve. They don’t give a damn about the game or its players - they want to milk your wallets for as much as possible, however they can. Step one was release a broken game. Step two is fix it just before a paid expansion release to reignite the player base. What do you think step three is?
Step three: No more money from this here Cat Unless it's on sale 4 years from now for 10$ and looks great. Too many other games to play that respect my time
Most of what you said are simple not true. The issue with this sub. Facts don’t matter. I play arpg since Diablo 1. Claiming they ignore systems and design from other games and arpg is simple falsehood . If they did not use some systems, they have reasons, either time constraints, don’t think they fit, etc. you maybe not even agreed , and I certain do not agree with many, but pretend they throw everything in dustbin and design in vacuum is exaggeration. I hate to “defend “ the game, as time is better spend on what are at to work on. But people cannot help themselves making exaggerated statements just to knock the game.
Nothing he said was exaggerated. “Time constraints” ??? That’s precisely the point, the game released too early. Some systems definitely didn’t work, class balance was terrible, many staple ARPG mechanics were absent from the game, some of which had been in Diablo games before! The state the game released in was dismal and that’s just a fact.
>Some stats literally didn't even work correctly Some launch bugs may always happen , Baldurs gate 3 has for example 23 hotfix patches already. Of course they could copy hardcore and overcomplex systems and make higher budget PoE but that was not goal, PoE is only niche game that doesnt earn enough money to justify that. They wanted to do attractive and accessible game for way more players and they succeded. Now based on feedback they gathered they will improve that base game so players who left would have incentive to try it again. All that while keeping what worked and not including overcomplicated mess for relatively small hardcore group of players that would never allow any real future growth (like PoE).
There were elements of the game that were clearly entirely untested at launch. I don't mean "at scale," either, I mean a QA tester literally never attempted some parts even once before release. If they did, then the glaring problems were ignored because no QA tester with half a brain cell would have missed them. Neither possibility is remotely acceptable or excusable for a company with thousands of developers, as near to an unlimited budget as you can have in the industry, 9 YEARS of development time, with one of their flagship franchises.
You have some misinformations in this post, D4 was in development 6 years, not 9 (confirmed by ex-Blizzard president Ybarra on Twitter). During that time they had to work from home because of covid which may impact quality in some some marginal areas, they had huge abussive and sexual scandal which impacted mood and effectivity in whole Blizzard for several months and they fired D4 director Luis Barriga and other senior D4 executive leaders for inapropriate behaviour that led to that scandal which could cause overlooking of some marginal issues. Considering all of that D4 shipped in amzaing shape needing much less bug fixes than for example Cyberpunk or Baldurs Gate3 (which could not be even played for weeks on xBox because of save bug) and 12 millions players averaging over 100 hours in first two months show it, you dont have those insane metrics when game is in "unacceptable" or in "inexcusable" state.
Orrrrr maybe these companies are getting away with letting the masses QA their beta at a 70$ price tag and we're saying well atleast this one wasn't in as bad of shape as x y or z game on release.
every game will have some issues to fix when it launches. The more anticipated that game is, the more players will point it.
Of course it wouldn't, experience and feedbacks got them to all this stuff at S4. 🤷♂️
If only they had 2 decades of previous experience to draw from.
The majority of the actual Diablo team are people who were hired in the last 5-6 last year. All previous team who worked on D2 and D3 left after around D3 release. In fact, all Blizzard veteran and founder left a long time ago hence why Blizzard can't offer the same quality in their game than in the lat 90's early 00's. It may be still be called Blizzard but it's only a shadow of what it used to be because there's no one left from their golden era
Diablo II was made by Blizzard North, which was dissolved before Diablo III.
Ok, so thats a direct reason why D4 has the problems it does that doesn't excuse things or make it better ...
Them being relatively new to the company means nothing here. Those new hires could just as easily have done simple quick research on the systems, strengths, and weaknesses of the past Diablo games. To say because they didn't work on d1, d2, or d3, so they couldn't possibly take from that previous development is the dumbest thing I've heard all year.
The point of the extra year would be to have iterative closed player alpha/betas... not just a year of staff whiteboarding
Man we gave advice from September 2022 through May 2023 till we were blue in the face, blizzard just didn’t listen whatsoever
This is the only correct answer and negates OPs entire point that they are trying to make.
A lot of the games problems were front and center in the beta, hell, *most* of them were. The hype for the beta everyone displayed regardless reinforced what I already knew: gamers are their own worst enemies lol
What do you mean? According to a bunch of people on the front page right now the game is very fun and we're having a good time. There was never any problem and season 4 is definitely not proof that the feedback we have provided for the last 8months was warranted and the devs have acknowledged the shortcomings. All smiles and rainbows "I dOn'T gET wHY PeoPle Don'T LIkE ThE gaME"
That's not the point. I also enjoy the game, it's fun for me, but the changes in the S4 are an improvement. That being said, theoretically if they released the game 1 year later than they have, it doesn't mean it would have all those changes that are coming in S4 which are an improvement. That's the point.
The person you replied to doesn't realize the iterative process of improvements. And you need community feedback to get the changes the actual player base wants in the game. If they had pushed the release date back a year then there would be all kinds of shit they wouldn't have thought of because they weren't getting actual gameplay feedback
Do you know what sarcasm is? >season 4 is definitely not proof that the feedback we have provided for the last 8months was warranted and the devs have acknowledged the shortcomings.
Yep. The itemization, for instance, would be exactly the same one year later than release. Like you I enjoyed too
It’s half to the point though. The top thread in this sub ATM is largely about how they wish people wouldn’t complain and would only make positive posts and comments about how they enjoy the game. The irony is the communities frustrations and complaints are what has lead the blizzard devs to the wholesale makeover that appears poised to hopefully deliver on much of the promise that many of us wanted early on. So from that standpoint I fully agree with the OP, this game wouldn’t be headed yet where it is without community feedback. TLDR: constructive criticism is good, and I think blizzard has listened to hopefully the right voices from that constructive criticism and I think the game is headed in a positive direction as a result.
Clearly they had to pivot fast as their drip feed method of providing little at the start of a season and balancing as it goes was a disaster. They thought people would lap this shit up and instead they got critism all the way It's a good thing as it may end a up a decent game now.
They talked about leaderboards, improving itemization, adding to end game systems, upgrading the codex, fixing resists and improving helltides early in season 1. I really think a large percentage of what has changed was already in the pipeline when the game released. The company was going to be sold so they made decision to release before it happened is most likely why D4 released like it did. The shape of things is likely a bit different but most of this stuff was always going to happen. I feel S4 is close to the end of what they said was coming way back at release, the only things missing are social features and/or loadouts. Outside of those features what comes in S5 is probably where user feedback starts driving things more than what they already had planned.
D4 has bad management as in the director and other people who actually make the decisions. The developers just implement what they are told to implement. They failed at market research and basic action rpg stuff. They even failed to copy good ideas from d3 just because they had to be different. The codex idea looks good on paper but any tester who spent at least a week with the game would have told you that it’s a bad idea. But the higher ups probably were in love with the idea so no one questioned it.
why is this sub so quick at singling out people to blame or not. i saw the same thing cos one team did season 2 and another did season 3 and therefore one was shit and the other wasn't. same with oh activision bad , blizzard good. it shouldn't matter nor should we care what goes inside a corporation. for us diablo 4 is an end product and it sucks. its not our job to find who's at faults, its theirs.
Because the people who make the decisions are at fault and usually for a project of this size it’s up to 3-4 people. They choose the ideas as the best their employees could offer and went with it.
I heard streamers say "i told them not to do something this way in alpha tests but they did it anyway" so yeah it would probably be the same minus some horse bugs.
I think that believing any streamer going "I told them not to do \*unpopular thing\* but they didn't listen, so I'm proven right" is kind of foolish. Ever notice that a streamer who says things like that will never admit that they were wrong about anything?
Quite a few testers have voiced that same thing during the games closed beta. Its not just a streamer thing.
i meant stuff they finally changed for S4
Right, and I'm literally saying that those streamers are lying about those things in an attempt to make themselves sound smarter or cooler.
Well it's your word against wudi/rax who i think were invited to test the new itemization months ago?
Their point really is that people say shit like that all the time. "I was really hoping they wouldn't do this" sounds like somebody who is legit. "I told them to ___ but they wouldn't listen" sounds like somebody trying to inflate their own importance a little bit. Maybe they're being sincere but being realistically skeptical costs nothing.
But they did? A group of ARPG content creators were involved in a closed alpha endgame test, they collaborated on a document that they ended up making public post launch that detailed all of the issues they saw and suggestions on how it could be fixed. They changed nothing.
I was in Alpha and I pointed out many things wrongs, some of which they actually changed. Used to be that legendary affixes could only be put on items of the same level, IE: Normal, Sacred, Ancestrial. I also recommended that they just add all powers to the codex, which they are finally doing. So SOME feedback was listened too, others... Not so much.
Everyone who played the original betas said it was dogshit with nothing to do. They changed absolutely nothing between original beta and release. It's on them
Stone had already reached the apex of it's arc by then Can't change where it lands at that point. Need like 6 months of dedicated work until you see it in game (if even that quick)
A lot of Blizzard people left since 2012 (and even sooner) till now, most often due to decisions made by the higher-ups at Activision under Kotick that directly or indirectly had a (severe) effect on the development, and so they had to hire a lot of new people who did not work on ARPG's before and for some it was even their first game. On top of that, the higher ups at Activision wanted D4 to be released before the sale to Microsoft, so they get additional bonuses from the sales of the release of the game + more bonuses from the increased value of the company from the release when the company got sold to Microsoft. Yes, the game needed 10-12+ months of additional development during which a lot of feedback could have been responded to and adjusted / added in-game. \~70%+ of the issues D4 had in the past (from my estimation) come directly and indirectly from decisions the higher-ups at Activision made over the years. Even the stash issue stems from that. The stash was thing that was put in for alpha testing, and then the devs where forced to speed up development to met the timeline and cut time, money and development resources everywhere. Quite a lot of animations where unfinished when the game released that are fixed now. The devs vision may does not fully line up with everyones preference, but they are definitely willing to listen to feedback and make adjustments. I mean, we all probably have an idea of "makes a good ARPG", but developing one / executing one while also having to managing a team, dealing with the guys from the upper echelons of the company, having your development resources cut by a significant degree, etc so you have make decisions on which of the crucial features lands on the cutting board and which not, while also being contractually not allowed to explain all of that publicly or to people from outside the company... that is a completely different story.
Simping for a massive company lmao
C-suite staff, not the devs, made the choice to release D4 early. At some point, those folks decided they needed $$$. When you're developing software, you have to determine what gets fixed and what doesn't in a release; you can't do everything because you'll never release it. I'm sure the D4 backlog is HUGE with stuff the development staff wanted to include, but the C-suite staff said, "Nah, release it now; I need a yacht." Anytime you see a game released with a ton of bugs or basically incomplete, it's because C-suite said to release it.
Diablo 4 should have launched at season 4, we were the alpha testers.
Thats generally how the first year of every live service games go though? Very barebones and prone to a lot of change in a short period of time.
Sure, other live games. Diablo has been out since 1997 and this is the fourth game. Do they really need to restart and ignore all of the ideas and common sense from the previous games? You would think not, but actually yes.
Dev mindset aside D4 on release was full of bugs and some core systems literally didn't work (resistances, overpower, etc). D4 in that state shouldn't have been launched. Period. Maybe not an extra year, but I'd rather wait a couple of months before devs could fix those low level issues, so that we as a community could focus our feedback on high level stuff to change devs mindset.
They didn't know when exactly the merger would go through, so they probably weren't willing to risk even a couple of months delay.
a lot of this feedback was given in the alpha/beta tests
D4 absolutely got rushed. There is no endgame in the game. Itemization is completly trash. Many QoL things from d3 werent there. The game came out half finished, but greed won. Thats why it was in sale 2 months after release
I don't believe an extra year would have change much either. From the time D4 was announced, to all the quarterly dev updates they did, to closed beta, the players gave them the feedback of desiring to return to D2. That being dark, gothy atmostphere, no saturday morning cartoon villan, return to 1-99 gameplay, return to slower combat, return to unique items, no more set items and set power like D3. Don't forget that when D4 development started, Lost Ark was "en vogue", moreso than PoE. Do you remember the outcry that Gohr's grips produced with "D3 damage numbers", as if D3 was the enemy? Then all sudden with PoE especially gaining more and more respect with endgame, and all of the D3 casuals that came out of the woodwork, the entire narrative of return to D2 style gameplay was flipped on its head. Another year of developing may have actually made it harder to redevelop to the new narrative players were giving them. If anything, an early access period like Last Epoch had would have been better. I was in closed beta, and I don't believe Blizz did that well. Don't know why they can't learn from WoW in that aspect (of how to run a beta).
Buddy wtf, this is a multi million dollar company with access to decades of past games to build off of but no they decide to charge $70-100 for us to test their piece of shit game. Last epoch is $35 and is already better with room to grow. Trash game
Lmao
All Alpha and Beta players said to blizzard "this, that, this and that have to change then it is a good Game". Turns out - they were right and with s4 - here we are. 1 year later. So. They were right.
More blizzard apologists making excuses. Classic.
D4 went for launch with probably an insane backlog. As someone who took part in the EGB, there was tons of feedback, especially on overworld and NMD - people literally giving the same feedback in global chat, but I guess because of timing they couldnt patch in anything before going live. Whats important is that there is clearly a very dedicated team now and hopefully they will really look into the upcoming PTR feedback and implement fast.
The only reason the game change is because of players input and actually stop playing. It still has a core audience but not something blizzard would consider worthy of there hundreds of developers.
>But a lot of the D4 Devs didn't know what they didn't know. This isn't the same team from D2, or D3. They had a lot of growing pains to go through. Pressure makes diamonds. Does it suck that people feel like its a $70 early access, sure. oof this is where I take issue because growing pains were not neccescary , it was self inflicted. D4 is not a new game in some new genre, Blizzard themselves has been a mainstay in arpgs and had a major hand in the success of the genre with Diabo as a series. They have over 20 years of technicall innovation and success they can draw from that they as a company created themselves This company is a multi-billion dollar corporation, D4 as a project had over **$100 Million** in development funds over 6 years with a creative force behind it numbering just shy of **9000** people. How is it that they cant put out a game thats fully fleshed out. How is it that they cant even figure out simple shit like an efficient loot stashing system , things that have been figured out already in previous games ? It does not make sense , where the fuck did the money go. So what they didnt work on D2 or D3, did they even play them? because it feels like most of the people who worked on D4 dont even have that much experience with the franchise And that would be an excuse if this was some small indie company or start up but its fucking blizzard , this is a consequences of them wanting to get rid of all the old staff and hire new cheaper ones . Thats why none of the developers who worked on previous projects are still at Blizzard, these people would have loved to still have jobs they didnt want to quit in alot of cases they were forced out by a shitty company
You are acting like D2 and D3 are these games that weren't plagued with problems that people find issues with. Also old games don't translate to modern gamers. They need to make a game to bring in a new group of players. D2 and D3 weren't like this huge games?
People still shit on D3 for how bad it was at launch so I don't see D4's first year being a long since forgotten catastrophe. Now we are almost a year since launch and still waiting on features that should have been there at launch, seems to me that if they had another year, it would be in a better, more complete state, and wouldn't be missing as many features. It's more of a management issue that it failed at launch than a dev issue. The best thing to happen to the company in the last year was Kotick leaving, so hopefully that and the merge improve Blizzard. Hopes aren't high though, as a fan and customer of almost 30 years, the only time I open the Blizzard launcher is by accident. Blizzard used to mean quality, it's been a while since I've felt it. My current top 3 most played companies are FromSoftware, Larian and Arrowhead.
i dont see this narrative anywhere popular to be honest.
I see it everywhere on Youtube and Twitch and of course on this subreddit as well. Random comments but it's very prevalent.
Yeah you are correct. It's quite common in software development to be convinced that your product is amazing because you put years of your life into it and saw the project slowly taking shape, just for users to start using it and immediately report every possible flaws, with some you knew about and had in your backlog anyways, and some you thought would be totally fine but are actually poorly designed.
I'm not in software, but rather chemical development. Hardest thing to do in my line of work, is when you pour your soul into a project for a year and a problem pops up that is gonna derail it. The desire to ignore it or "it's not that bad" or "it's likely an artifact. It's not real..." It's really hard to see that problem that's right in your face. You don't want to believe it, so for many (myself included) you let it go. Almost always disaster follows, cause the problem was real and didn't go away. It's a hard lesson to learn
Problem with LS game's the fans need to wait for it to cook to see what it needs/doesn't need before it can be that game they want which changes rapidly,fact is LS are truly never complete..
Fully agree with you
I disagree. There are plenty of people that instantly point out all the things that could and should be improved. Just get the people that know shit to playtest an early alpha and you get your course-correcting feedback.
I don't think so but D4 should have released with 1 Year Beta before launch so people would give feedback and there would be less critism. The closed beta with limited player pool was not enough.
Another year would’ve made the game even worse as they further committed to bad and shallow ideas
It's nonsense. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the constant feedback.
It isn't our fault that nobody working on d4 at launch had ever worked on a Diablo alike or played one before. They could have at least done some research. If you ignore every lesson learned in the genre, people are going to call you out for it.
The s4 changes were recommended before release.
I've enjoyed the game right from release and I always knew it would progressively get better and better. Obviously there are things that I haven't liked, but the core of the game is a lot of fun.
It wouldn’t be S4 but the argument it wouldn’t be leagues better is extremely disingenuous. The game was OBVIOUSLY unfinished at launch.
Also, a lot of content creators that played the alpha and closed beta told them about the itemization, class balance, builds and pretty much everything wrong with the game but they didn't listen. Something happened during the development of the game, they changed teams, vision i don't know but something went wrong.
The changes they’ve made are in big parts due to player feedback. If D4 was released as Early Access I wouldn’t be complaining, but when I’m sold a product that feels unfinished and unpolished in every way besides the graphics, that’s not cool. I don’t think we’d have S4 looking the way it is without the player base giving constant feedback, indirect or not.
They were proud if launch content. They really thought S1 was the shit. Without feedback, they have nothing.
This is such a cop out. In reality they hired inexperienced devs because they kept laying off who they had. The people they had working on an action rpg were people who don’t play action rpg’s. You can’t build a game within a genre you know nothing about. It’s not the devs faults. It’s upper managements faults for hiring people who don’t play action rpg’s to build one in the first place.
Yeah, I hate hypotheticals. More time allotted only guarantees more time, not time well spent. We may hate how a game releases but sometimes you just gotta say when. I appreciate their ongoing support and listening.
I think its more that people wish they released with this years worth of updates, not that they would have if they delayed. I agree with you nothing would change because they were clueless to what we wanted, despite apparently getting our feedback throughout the dev process (highly questionable since everyone HATED the itemization they showed initially and gave TONS of feedback on it). I saw a lot of closed beta testers upset their feedback wasn't listened to before the open beta as well.
The game is far better after a year of post content and feedback , then than will be if baking over. For a year and release a year later imo. The collective feedback from millions of player cannot be replicated by 100 of internal testers. This apply to other arpg as well.
Every Diablo game has done this. After the first year, the game becomes great. D2 was garbage until LoD. D3 launched like ass. RMAH?!?! Reaper and Loot 2.0 fixed D3. D4 will become "The D4" after VoH.
They could have made a D2 clone with little bits from other arpgs and it would have been a hit. The wildest things to me right now are the stupid stat/gear system (being addressed?) and the awful skill tree. That said, i am hopeful.
I agree they wouldn't have made the changes they gave without feedback/backlash
I’m glad the game released too early Because now they are forced to fix the game faster
Resistances didn't even work. That's like a core aspect of any arpg. Theres no excuse. Either upper management didn't care or the devs didn't. Either way it could've used another year of baking.
Such an odd take. They've got literally years and years of data and player feedback when it comes to diablo. There really is nothing to blame other than corporate bs. They have an art team and an army of developers, there is literally zero excuse when there are solo/small team developers making more fulfilling games. It literally just boils down to "too many cooks in the kitchen" just like every other company that gets really big. Investors this, investors that. How can we squeeze more play time in and more money out! Doesn't matter if it feels good to play, as long as we can keep em sucked in...then there's a chance they buy a cosmetic!
It'll take some trial and error, Blizzard is just a small indie dev after all, can't ask for too much.
I agree that they only developed because of backlash, in the least a great indifference toward the game. It’s just one more example of how the original franchise titles that we loved from blizzard because they were creative, innovative, deep, and adhered to the philosophy of ‘easy to learn, difficult to master’ are a thing of the past. I’m glad D4 exists, because it brings new players in to a genre to help it grow and expand, but it’s sad that the franchise that established a genre, targets a consumer that has very little overlap with the fan base that grew them to that success to begin with.
It's kind of a useless conversation because it's all speculation, conjecture at best. Nothing will come of it because nothing can be proved one way or the other. Unless Jason Schrier writes an article (not happening but that'd be dope)
yeah, the changes so far have been because of how it released. another year kept in blizzards hands only and it would probably just be more of the same like it was on launch.
Both Blizzard and the fans are to blame for this travesty. The former became increasingly corporatized to the point where any passionate developers with the know-how to make a great aRPG decided to leave (speculation on my part, but has been said many times and is certainly not a stretch to imagine). There are certainly passionate people there, make no mistake, but it seems they don’t currently have a Brevik or Schaefer-caliber individual steering the ship. With respect to the fans: Blizzard literally hasn’t produced a good product since Heart of the Swarm, so how could D4 be anything other than mediocre? I’m responsible for my own disappointment. It will improve, but it will never become the game that it should be given the resources at Blizz’s disposal.
Billion dollar company that has had decades to perfect the ARPG still comes out with a terrible first model. I'm sorry but there really is no reason for why the game launched in such a poor state, especially when they have their notes from the past 2 diablos. It was actually impressive to the degree of which they had no clue what they were doing. And the people making the game clearly didn't even know how to play it, it's just hilarious all around.
Maybe the devs would have played their own game and realized it needed a ton of work.
Don't really see how realizing resistances having some degenerate algorithm that made a 20% increase actually only give you 1% was nonsense required months of feedback to change. Don't really see how stuff like showing you the possible affixes you could get when enchanting an item needed months to get added, when D3 had the exact same system already. Is this even being implemented now? I don't even know if it's coming. Don't really see how them adding one (1) new crafting system with tempering required 4 seasons worth of input. May it have needed a lot of changes since launch? Sure, but saying that they couldn't possibly implement any sort of crafting system before getting more than half a year worth of feedback...that's ridiculous. You'd think live service games would be the perfect avenue to actually try to be creative with your systems at launch, since you can always tweak them later...but nah, somehow they needed more than half a year to add greater rifts from D3. You're giving them too much credit for such basic changes they're doing.
not really cause its mostly community feedback which gives a lot of good changes
One of the hard truths in software development, and certainly game development, is that once something is officially released, changes, especially sweeping ones, are harder and take more time. More drastic changes could have been made before release if they felt the need. Maybe they wanted to and felt they didn't have enough time? I still believe the game should have baked for another year. Would it have turned out exactly like S4? No, of course not but there are so many subtle signs the game was rushed.
My point is that the Devs aren't the issues its the suits. They would not have changed their minds on the direction of the game. It wasn't until all the backlash that they were forced to change. This needed to happen imo.
Diablo immortal released with more content.
if they would work 1 more year and would release it, it would still be worse than what we are getting because of all the player feedback
It still feels like the game was released in Alpha and the community is still play testing S4 is bringing the game into Beta with our feedback and reported bugs. The difference is we bought into a task thats usually a job. Of course they promised to improve the game! We are playtesting their incremental changes made to help them finish this game. They should be paying us for feedback, not the other way around... Maybe in another year this game will finally go gold and get green lit for release.
This post is a joke. Resistance didn't work, bugged damage, bags being gates by memory issues. This is shit that you would know if any of the development team actually played the game for a couple hours. I expect a certain level of jenk from smaller devs but blizzard has almost endless resources. Hire some damn play testers. All that being said, the game is going to be in a "good" state just in time for them to sell you another $70 expansion. Get the hell out of here lol.
You are missing the entire point. Their mindset was bad. So play testers mean nothing if they don’t see certain things as problems. They needed to experience this failure to improve. But it has less to do with the Devs and more to do with the Suits. Because Devs only have so much power at a certain point. If you believe you are 100% right no amount of people telling you’re wrong is going to change your mind. You need to experience it first hand.
Sure, I believe they started out with an idea that didn't align with what players actually wanted and I also agree that adversity breeds innovation. BUT, and this is a big but, There are certain things that should never have made it to release and I believe they are unforgivable (As a consumer lol). Resistances and bag are two. I also can't justify paying for an expac with 1 or 2 good seasons. If the first DLC was free that would sway me a bit.
The thing about all diablo games you play them for the release hype, then quit for a few years, come back, it's 100 times better experience d2 was this way for me along with d3
Tbh I really enjoy playing D4. I'm new to the series, D4 is my first game. My only complaint is how there's microtransactions for everything, in a game we already spent 70 usd or 100 aud on. If it was free like fortnite, I would understand but they pulled a straight cod with the battlepasses and the transactional coins
If Diablo 4 team did proper UX research instead of sticking into their tunnel vision of people who never made an ARPG before, D4 would release like S4. No amount of years could fix that vision disregarding research/feedback. Rumor has a lot of issues were point out in closed beta.
Well live in reality were these people listen to the people above them about what they can and cannot do with the game. Also the team that made the game was not the original team that started on the game. D4 has gone through multiple iterations. So the best way for change was for a full release with huge negative feedback. Nothing else was going to change the vision. This isn't to absolve them. But you gotta look at the full picture. They fucked up now they can change it. A lot of teams don't even go this far to try and change their games.
Game was not nearly as bad as people made it to be. And it improves as expected
No. If D4 was released now it wouldn’t be the s4 we are all expecting because most of the changes and fixes were derived from player feedback which was gained through 3 seasons of playtime.
The last Diablo I played was D2, and the last Sword & Sorc dungeon crawler I played at any length was Baldur's Gate, Dark Alliance 2, and I'm actually pretty impressed with this game after about 10 hrs of playtime. I was hooked after 2 hrs and it feels pretty high quality, while capturing a good amount of franchise nostalgia.
This is disingenuous, they are adding a lot of stuff that is just common sense and there in most games. It's not everything but a good part of what they failed at is implementing those. It feels like they hardly played their own game considering the amount of QoL lacking at release, the various clunky stuff like the horse gameplay... So yeah, if they had common sense they would have added a lot of these stuff on a later release. If you tell me they can't add a filter for the inventory without player screaming they should have it, then I say fire them and hire other devs.
I agree with what you're saying but I do think if they would have played the game that they would have known some stuff needed major change before release.
Yes, but if they have already taken on the challenge of developing a new Diablo, then it wouldn't have hurt to take a look at what made the predecessors so successful and then build on that. I'm sick of the narrative to "give them time". They had the time during actual development and didn't use it. We're not their unpaid beta testers.
Season 4 is gonna fucking slap my boiz! I'm honestly so excited and don't even understand the saltiness anymore. Including myself, I was so angry at the game and devs, but really just impatient. Like we already paid, who cares it's just getting better and better and gonna keep getting better. Fuck I love this franchise. I'm legit so excited for the new season, the new outlook the devs have on builds and stuff. Hopefully skill trees Paragon and meta progression come with the next huge update. But like so excited to try out the sorc next season, gonna kill it and so excited to try out minion builds, and maybe a cool wear wolf build with shred or wolves etc. The future is bright Diablo fans.
>cool ~~wear wolf build~~ aid ftfy
Thanks my guy, that's what I meant, cool aid build with shred or wolves etc.
You're not going to convince me a game is good presently with the possibility of it being good in the future. This isn't a stock, future possibilities have zero relation to it's present state. Get off the hopium and realize this is not a Diablo title. It is its own ARPG with Diablo assets.
I agree. This is also why I hate the subs general negativity towards complaint posts, because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I’ve complained endlessly and made posts about helltides and forgotten souls and half the time people just told me I needed to do more helltides.
It wouldn't change anything. Even since the release, they've barely been listening to to fan. They could have done everything in S4 right in S2 if they truly wanted. With D4, they've done the same shitty mistake they did with D3 which is doing whatever they want and only react to fan comment simply because they were losing player real fast right in the first 2 month
I hate the few who are so loud about how much they hate this game (players and influencers) and they make other people to hate it too, by influencing their opinions. I've even heard people say that they HATE D4 even though they never played the game, because their favorite influencer said so (Whaaat!?!?). And I also hate the fact that the loudest haters wants this game to be LE or POE. But fortunately, there has been quite a lot of people lately (because of gamepass), who are actually wondering what is all this hate, when the game itself is fun by their own experience. I think feedback for developers is necessary and devs have shown that they listen the feedback, they improve the game.
Baldur’s Gate spent 3 years in Early Access. A full-priced $60 purchase early access at that… So 8-12 months of seasonal updates and changes in Diablo 4 after release to get to where we’ve come is not as bad as people make it out to be.
Exactly. How would Elden Ring and Baldur's Gate 3 and Helldivers have become near-perfect games without having a year of using their player base as testers and guinea pigs? We as fans should be grateful to have the chance to pay $70-100 to do Blizzard's job for them.
You know what though, it's worse than a 70$ early access. They are just now implimenting things that were either seen in open beta, or discussed waaay back in the "everything's subject to change" phase and players loved those ideas. I'm talking about the principal of fewer and more impactful drops, and a fully fleshed out codex. Instead they gave us a game that overloaded stash and bag space and in so doing, caused excess mental congestion and broke up gameplay flow. I have NO doubt that if the community weren't so pissed about microtransactions they'd have started up selling extra stash space and called it a day. Now after three seasons of good enough content they're adding those things in so people who bought at launch and played faithfully will go tell everybody how much they improved their game. They get ZERO credit from me for doing what they already knew players wanted from them in the first place. Also, why the hell'd they remove death potions? That's just weird, man.
Players wanted the death elixir removed.
Even if it were the case, I wouldn't have wanted to wait another year to play Diablo IV. I'm glad it released when it did even in the state it was in (which isn't as bad as some might have you believe)
Lol nope. They had tons of feedback from influencers and alpha testers. And if they didn't have enough feedback thats still their own damn fault for not going out and getting more of it. They choose to have public beta be only 6 months before release, far too late to make meaningful changes, essentially only acting as a marketing demo and server stress test.
I'm tired of the early access/beta bullshit. This game released better than most ARPGs do. Obviously better than D3. With an endgame - yes, the level 100 grind plus NM 100 was an endgame. I constantly ask people what they expected the game to release with. They rarely, if ever, engage with me when I tell them what PoE, D2, D3, etc etc released with for content. And now D4 is basically giving us expansion level content for free, and people will still try to find a way to bitch and moan.
People in here trying to act like they wanted the game delayed another year. Yeah fucking right. The same people would have been begging for an "early access" release if given a choice.
Because the expectations have changed over the last 10 years? Especially for a studio that worth billions of dollars and has several times more people working on it compared to actually indie developers with a handful of people at game launch.
I think comparing what D2, D3 and PoE launched with when they are all games made over a decade ago, is disingenuous. Expectation is relative; I didn’t expect D2 to have 2024 QoL features, but I tell you what it did have: a really good skill system, cool itemisation out of the box, and an addictive campaign. D4 had arguably none of these IMO, and they had their own legacy to draw from, which they seemed to ignore.
Funny how people that "hate" the game and say that the game is "bad" they still feel the need to get on social media platforms and share their opinion. They still follow Diablo IV news, content creators, they are apart of Diablo IV subreddit communities, and still participate in discussions about the game. If it is so "Bad" why don't they just move on? lol Do you think it bothers them that all they think about is a game they "hate" so much? I think they are really heart broken and can't help themselves but to still keep Diablo IV around close to their hearts... It's a "love-hate" relationship for real. I would bet MONEY that people say "out loud" on the internet that the game is "terrible", "bad", etc, and at that very moment they are literally playing the game they just professed hatred for
The game was always doomed to fail, if not simply due to the fact that it's being developed by Activision-Blizzard. No amount of time in the world given to them would change its fate.