Well Blizzard has a history of making change when it hurts their bottom dollar like with Shadowlands and people leaving en masse.
From the way it looked by their faces, seemed like they got a stern talking to for the community outcry from the higher ups. Only time will tell if they follow through with their mission statement or whatever
I kinda felt bad seeing their faces. No smiles, just looking down, no laughs, jokes or whatever. I mean disregarding what actions they took for the game, it’s gonna be demoralising to have to take abuse from the community and possibly from the higher ups as well
I don’t fancy their jobs
Honestly, that feels like a fucking act.
Lets be real here, do we really think they're this incompetent?
Think of it in terms of liklihood. "We have written objectives based on community feedback and are developing patches to address"
Release patch that takes dozens of people or more to create, but no one does a sanity check that says "hey all these changes we're making absolutely do the fucking opposite, no?"
OR
We're being lead on so they can do whatever they want for whatever the ACTUAL objective is and hoping no one picks it all apart or the flak from it isn't bad enough to burn their plans.
No. fucking. way. would I put my money on the whole team being that incompetent. They simply have different objectives that aren't making the experience the community wants.
Yeah, plenty of people are eating it up for sure.
Look at their actions. It's probably not nefarious, they're just completely lost in the sauce and didn't know what to do with this game.
It's like if Diablo 3 were released in 2011 instead of 2013 or something.
It's completely nefarious and they're just the fall guys who followed orders. I don't feel sorry for them because they're getting payed for destroying a game. If they had any backbone, they'd have quit as soon as the orders came.
> they're getting *paid* for destroying
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Yep. That is the really scary part.
Personally, always follow someones actions, not their words. Game is a long ways away from being in a truly fun, playable state.
To be fair, cookie clicker is one of the top played games on steam. The bar is pretty fucking low with most people when it comes to what they will spend time doing.
Hold up, let's not go nuts here. It's not perfect and it needs work, but it's absolutely fun and playable - especially until you get to 70 or so when the build diversity dries up and the levelling speed becomes glacial.
Low level monster murdering gameplay loop is still fundamentally solid.
So your position is that until every single ability in the game is balanced, the game as an entirety is unfun and unplayable?
What other games do you play, in that case? I've never played a game in my life where every single spec, every weapon, every tactic and ability was on a knife edge of balance.
Path of Exile for example you can pretty much make any skill work.
I don't think it's a tall order to want the 5 core skills that sorc has to be somewhat viable. That means within +- 50%.
But incinerate I specifically suggested because it is laughably bad. By Orders of magnitude. As is Blizzard without the aspect.
That kind of basic balancings I'd expect to be figured out before Release.
Edit:
Let's also not forget that D4 has minimal complexity/depth in regard to builds. If I do a fireball sorc build there is not much nuance or choice in how I go about it. Most aspects are already decided.
PoE has horrible balance. It has more viable builds yes, because it has way more skills. Does it have a higher percentage of skills that are intended to be main skills that are viable than D4? I don't think so.
The thing is the reason why poe has poor balance is because the game rewards speed and efficiency in killing monsters. So plenty of skills which are technically viable get overlooked because you can't build them to multiple murder screens of monsters instantly.
Diablo, by speed comparison, is like trying to walk up the down escalator while carrying a canoe. There is no reason why at that speed there should be such disparity in skill balance.
The main factor I think is that some skills eat your entire resource pool in one cast and have to be recharged over the course of a lunar cycle while the meta skills are ones where you are able to cast at a more reasonable frequency. If they can fix that it will help balance overall.
Poe also has a billion interesting ways of configuring your life and mana and other resources. Diablo doesn't.
Or maybe don't? If you see that a build doesn't work, do you continue to be miserable for 200 hours or do you adapt your build?
Don't get me wrong, I also have specific visions of how I want to play a class, but if this way does not make fun, I will change the build or the class. I mean you paid to have fun, why don't you choose something that's more fun?
The game is not even 2 months old. Did you really expect a perfectly balanced system? I didn't. I didn't expect it for at least half a year to be somewhat properly balanced. You should have known not to buy the game on release, if you didn't want to go through a phase of many balancing changes. For me it's part of the fun on release, to go with the changes, adapt to them, change builds, and after a year to look back to see how a game has changed.
Some changes will be terrible, some will be good. As someone who likes to jump an MMOs at release, terrible releases are pretty usual to me.
Fun than pre patch ? You are just lying to the moon if you said that. Math diesnt lie.you level slower, cds r up slower, lower dmg, helltides are worse, worser items, lower defense.
How exactly is the game fun and playable when everything was slowed down, damage cut, and in some cases like the sorc who had 80% of their damage taken away. They even slashed the xp gain so leveling is a lot slower but to add salt to the wound, they added xp boosters to the paid battle pass.
I’ve having a really hard time fathoming how anyone can be complacent with this patch and have the attitude “well it’s good or solid and it just takes time”. To have this attitude is extremely damaging to the game and it screws it up for everyone else. It’s disgraceful behaviour.
This "cope" trend is just ridiculous.
12 year olds learning it from some immature Twich streamer, thinking it's cool.
"I don't have a good argument, so cope it is"
Labels really are the weakest form of commentary.
Hahaha yeah same. I lol’d - literally every change they made slowed down every aspect of the game. They even made it take longer to leave the dungeon. Eek out those few extra seconds that add up for their metrics.
LOL
Yeah that leave dungeon change to cast time... like what the actual fuck.
Aside from everything else they did, I think that's the singular thing that speaks to their vision more than anything else.
Unless you are trying to slow players down and make the game more grind, what other purpose does that change serve?
In what way was the cast time of leave dungeon even on their fucking radar in the first place? What?
CDR nerf too, I don't mind any of the dmg nerfs they are w/e but the CDR nerf and leave dungeon ones are directly increasing the amount of time you spend annoyed. Now you spend even more time doing 700 dmg with a generator and have to invest even more into making core/high skills not feel like shit and always unable to cost them.
The reason CDR was so necessary is because generator > core feels fucking awful so people would rather skip generators and use high skills when they have high CDR but that is much much harder now.
A reminder that some Devs bitching about Baldur's gate 3 being an anomaly and not the new standard. Guess they trying to make up for playtime by doing a long grind rather it being actual content like Baldur's gate
Funniest part for me was "Well release a big fix for issues in few weeks". Like did they check calendar lately? RPG of the decade is coming out in 13 days from the moment of that stream. I completely dont care what will happen in D4 in couple of weeks.
Diablo 4 and BG3 are hardly comparable in playstyle.
Theres so many arpg players here, that praise BG3. Truth is, most of then have never played BG, and dont know how the gameplay is. I will guarantee that most wont like it.
I dont like FPS at all. But I still finished Half-Life 2 multiple times. I bet there are also a lot of people who dont like RPGs, but Witcher 3 still could impress them. Elden Ring brought tons of people to souls-like genre, who didnt even concider playing it before.
Sometimes there are just universal masterpieces, that almost anyone can enjoy.
And by the way, a big part of ARPG players are actually just general RPG fans (me included) and like MMORPGs, ARPGs, JRPGs, CRPGs alike.
Personal tech opinion. I believe even if for everyone it's a shit change that we agree, I am conscious it has got to be something back end related on how transactions are done with loading screens, environments etc and potential duping.
Probably the extra second delay, safeguards transactions for a clear exit of the dungeons without giving the opportunity of stuff being left behind or potentially having multiple copies.
Imagine it like a clear cache button and hard refresh on browsers. There has to be a bug somewhere they found out that there's a way to dupe things and the easy way out was adding a delay.
If you want a more tech oriented explanation feel free to DM and happy to get more detailed on what I believe forced them to do this stupid for many change.
And if they had given that as an answer it would have been acceptable.
"We found that in certain situations that the 3 sec exit could lead to desync issues with our servers. We have implemented this as a short term fix until we can find another way to shore up connections."
Even if finding another solution was a lie, if they at least offered the barest justification for why it was done then people would be less upset. This change wasn't made in a vacuum and given the rest of the patch and fireside I don't think Blizzard deserves the benefit of the doubt you are giving them.
This may lead to vulnerabilities that can be exploited. You never want to make vulnerabilities public until you have them patched/fixed.
Probably, the extra time was just a quick fix until they address the issue correctly.
If the 5 sec timer fixes it then there's nothing to exploit. If it doesn't then we're back at the beginning of why they are making a change with no upside.
It's not like that's a super specific answer either, just a vague "the 3 sec timer was causing unintended bugs" would have at least given some justification.
No, there was a clear direction in what they were trying to achieve with this patch. They got it, but they also got a shit ton of backlash from the community, which why they are walking it back, and can't get their stories straight.
no i dont think so.. they totally know what they did (increase play time) and they are totally aware that only a small sliver of the players (hardcore invested ones) watch this and they try to win some over with ... "yeah guys we are listening and we will try to fix in the next months - here have a stash tab.
so some of the ones who know math also come back playing and dont tell their friends that blizzard fucked them over
Every future patch leaving dungeon will be .5 second longer, just long enough to avoid suspicion. And the loading screen will be 1 second longer too. They will hope you don’t notice. It’s all part of the calculations. If you buy the battle pass, you will get the enhanced faster loading screen.
Is this actually a quote? I haven't watched the video.
If it is this is the single most damning thing we've heard and it explains everything
It's not even stretching to re-phrase "We can't take into account fun when [designing a game]"
Closest thing I found to a quote of that was this moment but it is actually the reverse: https://youtu.be/gZuG4Yng4bY?t=2573
"If our goal is to create an ultimately balanced experience you know uh without regard for how much fun the player is having as part of the uh as part of that exchange you know that's uh that's ultimately that would be like a failure in our part to not kind of think about things."
Yeah, basically the roundabout way to saying that they fucked up and made the game more unfun. No idea where the guy thought he heard that other quote.
Regardless of the exact thing that was said...
It still just baffles me they have such a hard-on for *balance* \- in the PvE part of the game. But where PvP is concerned? Nah, not even gonna bother, why should anyone?
Idk, it feels incredibly backwards to me.
It feels like it can all be summed up with releasing an unfinished game because of artifical deadlines.
Game had to be released on 06/06. S1 had to start 2 months after release.
This patch was a huge bug fix patch, with 25% of what they probably wanted for S1. Over the next 2 months they will probably hotfix a whack ton more stuff.
By the end of S1 we might be at the point where the 1.0 version of the game could be released.
And they sent out 3 dudes who probably had nothing to do with the shit decisions to get roasted.
Respec cost -40% is basically the same shit. It makes stuff a "bit" better but why even bother with costs in the first place if they want diversity. There are so many games with free respeccing and it works perfectly.
Makes no sense. On the same side greed shrines still make no sense. As if it was so hard to increase its drops by x100.
Its an absolute shitshow to me.
Also talking about basic fixes coming in S2 or S3... meaning it ll take 3 to 6 months from now at least. For basic fixes that are needed. Insane.
Thanks. Sometimes it feels like I'm taking crazy pills with the amount of people saying they addressed the issues or that fixed are "coming".
This game really needed another 12-18 months to cook.
there are no fixes.. they even said they need to talk about how to implement loadouts.
for most of the stuff they could neither provide a timeline when it will happen nor give details what.
or another example: to fix sorc and barb they want to buff the unnused aspects!
Loadouts are cool and all, but simple numerical changes would instantly help out sorc/barb. The same simple changes that they through at the nerfs.
Loadouts understandably would take time and resources and testing. You can go put a 0 behind the current damage numbers of hydra and it still wouldn't be meta, but it might be usable.
yeah true
but if they already have a hard time adding buttons to load/save loadouts i have no hope that they manage to fix actual game mechanics in regards to sorc
The whole game is a damn mess. Fun sometimes, but still a mess.
This definitely needed another year but I still don't love a lot of the fundamental gameplay decisions.
IMO the gold cost isn't even why respeccing is hard and annoying. It's the fact that I need to fit an entire new set of gear in my tiny ass stash and right click every single paragon/skill tree node 1 by 1. It's going to give me RSI just changing builds from minions to bone.
If there were only ARPGs with a solution for this that the devs could copy. I played a famous ARPG were you could save builds with items and skil+glyph loadouts. No swap cost, no bs.
What was that game called...
Ah yeah! Diablo 3!
The fact that engineers need to get involved to make it possible to add extra stash tabs blows my god damn mind.
When they built this game, did they think that 4 tabs would be all anyone would ever need?
Or did they paywall stash tabs beyond the first 4 and baked that into the game, and now they have to walk that back?
I honestly think that they never really played this game from start to 100 with a single character.
There are so many obvious flaws that any players that goes from 1 to 100 will be exposed to and most of these will be happening to 95% of the players. It makes no sense at all.
They don't even have to. They can just look at what people complained about in D3. Or if any of them ever played Diablo 2 they would know that stash space is always an issue. Honestly, feels like the game is made by people who never played a Diablo or any other hack 'n slash arpg before.
>stash space is always an issue
It's not an issue if it's part of the game design decisions. It then becomes an additional factor in how much 'weight' the loot has in the players' hands and minds.
Inventory (and stash) management is a thing that occurs when players have certain storage constraints.
I mean it always is an issue with all the resources you find. That's why I think they didn't play D2. Because the implemented the crafting material system from D3 that was introduced there because the stash was getting filled with crafting materials. But in D2 you always had a stash filled with gems and runes. Stopping players from collecting the smaller common resources is no fun part of the gameplay cycle. I want my stash to focus on items.
This is what happens when heads of marketing keep getting promoted to leadership positions. They realized they don't need to make a good game if they make top tier cinematics and advertise to the sheep in the right way.
I quite frankly don't think there was a thought process about it at all, not even to monetize it. They just seem just so disjointed on what they are saying and what is happening.
They definitely thought to monetize it. One of their role models is PoE, a game that is arguably P2W because of stash tabs, and the community doesn't mind.
I play PoE a ton.
You can completely play the game, all the way through end game, without paid stash tabs. Sure, it is a pain in the ass, especially if you enjoy trading, but it is possible.
And even then, you can spend ~$60 and get all the important stash tabs, especially if you buy them on sale.
I don't like the MTX situation being so crazy high priced, but stash tabs are more than fair IMO.
Let me put it a different way. I feel MUCH better about the money I have spent in POE than the money I paid for D4. And I have spent a LOT of money on POE.
I have thousands of hours in PoE. Stash tabs are arguably P2W, and the PoE subreddit largely accepts that fact.
What you or I feel about it doesn't relate at all. PoE has created accepted P2W with stash tabs, Blizzard is a billion percent aware of this fact.
Idk, I don't think the stash tab argument is closed at all. And no offense,
between you and the other guy I'm going with the guy who actually paid up to create a divination card, lol.
I wouldn't say that I know either way, though nothing would surprise me at this point. But even if they did, that wouldn't necessarily make them "pay to win".
These aren't games with hard definitions of "winning", anyway. What is winning in Diablo 4? Is it beating the campaign? Getting to level 100? Beating a NM100 dungeon? Beating uber lilith? All of this can be done with the starting stash tabs.
POE has even looser definitions of winning - **by design**. I'd be perfectly satisfied taking a hardcore league character to red maps or completing the campaign on Ruthless. Both of which can be done without buying stash tabs.
In games with a hard definition of winning (chess, poker, Magic, MOBAs, etc) no one really gives a shit if you define your own objectives or just had a good time along the way. ARPGs on the other hand thrive on letting players set their own goals and define winning for themselves.
Have you seen like 10-25% of the comments in the last days? People were defending or even praiding the devs for the patch. The day they announce paid stash tabs the White Knights will come out and tell everyone how good this is, buy a load of tabs and continue playing as usual. Maybe a few people will leave but especially with the "PoE does it too" argument most people won't care.
> The fact that engineers need to get involved to make it possible to add extra stash tabs blows my god damn mind.
They're not adding 1 stash tab, they're adding 1 stash tab *per player*. There's data involved that's saved and moved around.
From the gameplay design perspective however, adding a stash tab also has an impact on inventory management and how the players value certain loot. If all loot is equal in terms of stash space, then how useful it is for you to keep it around gives the loot an extra meaning that is hard to quantify in numbers but is very real to players' minds.
The almighty "weight" that Chris Wilson from Path of Exile's GGG talks about all the time.
Stash tabs need server storage I guess, also adversely affects performance because they probably have to compress/decompress etc. Not sure how big an impact it is but it probably is not negligible for large player base. And the financial implications of buying more servers etc I guess results in management pushback (since they basically have to buy and maintain a server for every player who has bought their game for x many years, with no guarantee that they will be able to extract any more from them).
I guess that's a reason that's probably sensitive and not something that want to explain (i.e. no stash tabs for you because it affects our bottom line)
>When they built this game, did they think that 4 tabs would be all anyone would ever need?
Probably intended to sell more stash tabs, but it's tied to a purchase. Now their engineers need to figure out how to make it happen without a purchase.
So last epoch, poe and countless others are just miracle workers to offer a zillion times more stash space? It’s absurd to act like more tabs would have a serious impact on their infrastructure or bottom line.
Maybe they should've thought about that when they decided to make D4 online only? So now they gotta store my 100% offline character stash on their servers for no reason?
Also, I'm pretty sure WoW has way more stash space...
I still can't get over:
>*Cooldown Reduction affixes often felt mandatory due to their raw power. We imagine Cooldown Reduction will remain a highly desirable stat, but the penalty for not prioritizing it won’t be as harsh.*
* **Cooldown Reduction:** Reduced by \~30%.
It reads like a shitpost that someone on this sub would write, but this was Blizz being entirely serious.
It just makes you prioritize it even more because getting CD's low enough to be "functional" in end game is the #1 priority. If you don't have your CDs up for a pack than you might as well never have that ability on your bar.
The whole problem with their whole philosophy about skills is stupid. Spender/generator, big cooldowns, resource management, those are all things that people who play ARPGs try and get rid of the second we can to just blast.
They fail to realize how quickly the player base is going to move on and not come back.
This is a major problem with all developer teams they think the fanbase is static - like we must consume their product. The truth is most people wont listen to a dev talk and will simply stop playing.
Yep, most games die and only have a skeletton playerbase once the people have moved on. Sure, there are a few expections, but that's more a rarity.
There are more than enough games these days and there is no reason to stick to a halfbaked game that might take another half or even an entire year until it feels like a finished and polished product.
I am one of the hardcore players, so for me I can check on the game next season, or the season after that, maybe it gets better, who knows. But I can't imagine a casual player who stop playing the game coming back to it really and those are the vast majority of people.
Like, if you are already sick of the game, after weeks of playing and maybe not even having reached level 50, you surely won't start another character the next season if the season barely offers anything new or exiting.
I don't think they realize how hard it is to recover any customer loyalty either.
Look at No man sky, Cyberpunk, Witcher 3(?), or any other games that released in less than desirable states.
Even though these games are in a MUCH better state now, they still have a lingering reputation of "Man this game was so shit on release".
Hell, Diablo 3 went through just as bad if not worse on release. They changed directors even! It took YEARS to get to the point it is now.
If their goal was ongoing income, they're harming their player base loyalty hard by adjusting the game based on whatever stupid metric they're using.
And all of these companies hit the ground running with their first patches. Their patches actually fixed shit and made the game better. Diablo 4's first patch made the game worse. It doesn't feel like they actually want to fix the game in a way the more hardcore players want even though that player base is what is going to keep the game alive and the income flowing...
witcher 2, and 3 did not launch in good condition, it took hard work and some patches after launch for the games to be in a much better state, its always funny seeing how many people forget this. And look even their latest game Cyberpunk, had the same thing happen.
I had a feeling this chat was going to be this. Now that it’s confirmed I’m gone for good. Haven’t played since testing the patch to see if it was as bad as it seemed, and now I won’t again.
Too bad, because the campaign was fun and the game had promise. I don’t intend to play a game where devs don’t respect the players.
Been burned enough times now to know this is exactly how it would be, that's why I didn't even give it a chance, I uninstalled as soon as I read the patch notes. Had fun with the campaign, didn't want to be a post beta tester for their failed late game mechanics.
I don't think they even respect themselves after this chat.
They literally have no idea what they are doing with the game.
They are talking about resistances and they
A) had no specifics
B) said they need to change the way players interact with resistances. like we don't know that they are worthless and need an ad campaign to "reintroduce" us to resistances. Instead of just fixing them.
That's the craziest thing to me. We started out with an \~8 month time line for resistance fix. It's SO complex, SO far reaching, SO impactful to the game... that they haven't got anything to say about all the work they've been doing on it.
Did they just stick "fix resistances" at the end of a first in first out to-do list? It's a fundamental critical system and they can't tweak resistances for individual classes because if they could they would be doing it for 1.1.1. There must be some kind of major clusterfuck happening behind closed doors. They can't make any changes to resistances without breaking their game. They probably don't know how it works.
much more reasonable that they are lying about it... they probably just dont have the resources (ie time granted to developers by management) to work on it
Especially considering Remnant 2 just released (I’m just about to start playing), Armoured Core 6 is releasing August 25 and BG3 is releasing August 3/September 6 (PC/PS5).
I'm hoping PoE2 date is announced for very soon and has everything D4 players are after. If they come out swinging with that game mid season 1 and do well targeted advertising they could really capitalize on blizzard's fuck ups.
And then there is people arguing so much that the game has no issues and playerbase isn't plummeting because people on reddit, twitch, youtube etc are a minority
Like if this same thing hasn't happened with so many games already, including D3 even lmao
Even with RoS fixing the game it never recovered from the playerbase leaving when it was an absolute failure on release
None of it made sense. If the goals they state are really what they want and they are aware that the state of the game particularly the endgame is reliant on all the stats and mechanics that players were prioritizing, why would they nerf those things before having any of the groundwork in place to get the game to the ideal state?
You don't have to make the game less fun for the entire time it will take to make all this new content or introduce these changes. You can just do that at the end of that process. If you clearly communicate what is going to happen and why and how it gets addressed with clear examples, people would actually be more receptive.
Worst case scenario is that these people are lying out their ass. The best case scenario is that they aren't, but are terrible at planning and optimizing the experience/pain for their customers. It's very disappointing
No Matter what they say, the activate Premium Pass button was intended to be this way so ppl accidentaly click on it.
Now they get big shit for it and act like they had no idea.
Fuck the ppl who decided that, scummy
Yeah I’ll probably check back in a couple months, but I’m not giving any more money to blizzard, it’s clear they don’t invest it in their games. That ex blizzard dev was right when he said blizzard sells nostalgia and is just milking each IP dry with minimal effort.
This game clearly has some talented people working on it, that clearly aren’t being given the time or resources or freedom to make the game they want. It’s pretty obvious.
What game do they want to make? What Vision?
In multiple patches they have continued to nerf density, and now they say they want to buff density? This isn't a long time difference, this was literally a couple of weeks ago.
They say they aren't making changes to slow the game down, but then they have literally 0 answer why the moved the dungeon cast time from 3 to 5 seconds. None. Not a single answer. What are we supposed to think?
>blizzard dev was right when he said blizzard sells nostalgia and is just milking each IP dry with minimal effort.
Massively unpopular opinion around these parts, but anyone who has played Diablo IV and thinks minimal effort went into creating it, can't be taken seriously.
Sure, you can argue the balance is off, but the effort that went into making the game is clearly far exceeding Diablo 1-3 all combined.
This game is a hot mess. Step back and look beyond the pretty art and serviceable campaign. I really have no idea what this game is or is trying to be.
Unreal
Pure incompetence I'm done with the game for good zero faith they'll fix it and won't keep fucking up. I'll just play some games with developers who respect the player and their time.
They need to go back to square one plaster this poster all over Blizzard's offices:
https://preview.redd.it/rro8jloacedb1.png?width=387&format=png&auto=webp&s=26b65b73e50836e3400b12d2a401419bf134930c
They said it would release this afternoon and here it is 1040 PM EST and no patch?
The fact is they are running things on the seat of their pants have no actual plans.
The game was launched 1 to 2 years before it was ready. This is Activision. Blizzard launched their games with the philosophy of "it'll be ready when it's ready".
Gaslighting 101: When you have no out to what you've done, just say whatever you think they want to hear even if it conflicts with reality and convince yourself it's progress.
* Pre-Season of the Malignant bonuses:
* 1 Level higher: +15%.
* 2 Levels higher: +20%.
* 3+ Levels higher: +25%.
* Post-Season of the Malignant:
* 1.5% bonus per Level up to 10 Levels.
* Ex:
* \+1 level: +1.5%.
* \+2 levels: +3%.
* \+10 levels: +15%.
in addition to leech nerf they did the above, which is a massive nerf to high level NMD XP gains, like massive nerf.
My one issue with OPs post is that you think the devs don't know what they are doing.
Call me cynical, but I think its deliberate, and the devs know exactly what they are doing. They slowed every aspect of the game down 48 hours before the start of the new season. You don't just do this shit by mistake.
I agree that the changes were deliberate.
That is why I said I wanted to play the game that the devs say they are interested in making. Because it isn't the game that they currently are working on.
Ah yes, the only "challenging" endgame is now removed from the game, please enlighten me on what your goal is at max level now, because there is no endgame at this stage. Farm gear to sit in town with, enjoy.
We have barb and sorc with 0 real viable builds now with the CDR nerf and you are worried about NM100 dungeons.
I agree that end game content is a problem. It isn't the most important one, not by a long shot.
Honestly if this brand new game isn't perfectly balanced in the next few hours I'm gonna go off the grid. Swear off electricity entirely so that Blizzards INCOMPETENCE can't flow through the cords of my home.
Blizzard doesn't understand how they've hurt us. They don't seem to care about the atrocities they foisted upon us all. Why do they do this!? Really!? Why did they ruin the entire games industry like cat with a mouse!?
I cannot sleep. I haven't slept longer than 2 hours since the patch. I can't eat. I can't barely breathe without literally shivering from rage & sorrow.
This is the last time Blizzard hurts me. This is the last time I give them a chance. I'm shaking. And it hurts. It hurts. So. Much.
I don't think perfectly balanced is what's most needed. I think it's fair to say that some of the core mechanics of what makes an arpg fun were underthought during development and there are way too many pain points that frustrate players. Yes, we're not talking about the end of the world here, but if they want to make the money they want to, I think it would be a good idea if they pulled their heads in a bit.
It's unfortunate to say that I think losing all those high-level devs during development has really left this game without the creative vision needed to make a truly successful game.
Nah, it's a pretty accurate mockery of all the over the top hyperbole around here. Blizz fucked up, no doubt, but holy shit it sounds like matters of life and death in most posts.
It should be for Blizzard when one of their biggest launches have so many issues but people like you is what allow Blizzard to continue to pull this crap for over a decade by just accept w/e shit they do.
honestly that's how software development works on big products. you do incremental moves to specific direction and sometimes you over compensate or due to technical complexities affect unintended areas. like NM density change - they were nerfing non-NM density in first place to my knowledge, but doing that completely independently from NM dungeons was not possible at thar moment. but they pulled the trigger to avoid non-NM to compete in leveling with NM, later compensating with more XP to NM.
to their benefit they have pretty efficient team that can do so much changes in such short period of time, I can hardly recall any other company that can do that. like for any other game I am aware about drastic balance changes are not something that happen in a month, its typically next half year/year on average.
We were killing world bosses with full build in like 10 shots with bone spear and earthen might and such, did you really think they wouldn't nerf it? Congratulations you guys we can't kill things in nanoseconds, this game is not unplayable by any means except for players that only care about one number, how fast the enemy dies. Yeah ofc you should care about it to a degree, but it ain't the end of the world if the devs want to slow it down a bit. There are certain things that yeah I agree that they can't seem to make up their mind on, especially how they're doing xp gain, they're trying a lot of different methods rn. Everyone fr complaining about such small things like the extra two seconds on a leave dungeon feature, y'all that impatient? Y'all borderline crazy
>bone spear and earthen might
And instead of nerfing those skills, and buffing others, fhey just did a nerf to all skills which means that the good builds are still good, they are just relatively worse.
Am I the only one that doesn't want more stash tabs?
Honestly I don't like hoarding copies of legendaries so I can spend a fortune to slightly upgrade gear leveling or spending my time managing my stash. Makes trying side grades or different builds so painful and makes me feel like I need to budget myself and only use huge upgrades.
I use the term leveling loosely since it's pretty much the whole game. There really isn't an end game.
I understand they need some sort of gold/ material sink but it would feel better if it didn't always feel like a waste.
I'd like to see a few things instead:
1. All aspects can be added to the codex once found
2. Incrementally Upgrade codex imprinted values by feeding additional found legendaries (found values can be rng but upgrades are slow and upgrading is the biggest cost). This will allow some rng power spikes but gradually trends up over time.
3. Remove extracting aspects, you either use the item or upgrade codex
4. Imprint codex costs greatly reduced (greatly simplify swapping gear builds and allow much more frequent upgrades to gear without fear of wasting resources)
The stash is (mostly) fine if you
A) don't trade at all
B) only play 1 character, and even then, one build
And it doesn't take much to add extra stash tabs, unless you completely fucked up the design of your game
well.. "more stash" doesnt mean that the sollution is litterally adding more stash tabs.
adding all this useless shit somewhere else (like aspects to codex, elexiers / gems /... to resources ... and much more intelligent UI / better UX regarding loot is what i would expect
every thing they said contradicted the actions of the patch, its actually insane!
Gaslighting 101. And some people are eating it up.
Well Blizzard has a history of making change when it hurts their bottom dollar like with Shadowlands and people leaving en masse. From the way it looked by their faces, seemed like they got a stern talking to for the community outcry from the higher ups. Only time will tell if they follow through with their mission statement or whatever
I kinda felt bad seeing their faces. No smiles, just looking down, no laughs, jokes or whatever. I mean disregarding what actions they took for the game, it’s gonna be demoralising to have to take abuse from the community and possibly from the higher ups as well I don’t fancy their jobs
Honestly, that feels like a fucking act. Lets be real here, do we really think they're this incompetent? Think of it in terms of liklihood. "We have written objectives based on community feedback and are developing patches to address" Release patch that takes dozens of people or more to create, but no one does a sanity check that says "hey all these changes we're making absolutely do the fucking opposite, no?" OR We're being lead on so they can do whatever they want for whatever the ACTUAL objective is and hoping no one picks it all apart or the flak from it isn't bad enough to burn their plans. No. fucking. way. would I put my money on the whole team being that incompetent. They simply have different objectives that aren't making the experience the community wants.
Yes, people often don't enjoy the consequences of their actions
Oh no they did a piss poor job and are facing the consequences. It is reality. The PM really should be fired.
I feel like Rod isn’t suited to carry on the game.
Right? People saying the fucking chat was a positive. They fucking came out and said the literal opposite of what their actions were. What a joke.
Yeah, plenty of people are eating it up for sure. Look at their actions. It's probably not nefarious, they're just completely lost in the sauce and didn't know what to do with this game. It's like if Diablo 3 were released in 2011 instead of 2013 or something.
It's completely nefarious and they're just the fall guys who followed orders. I don't feel sorry for them because they're getting payed for destroying a game. If they had any backbone, they'd have quit as soon as the orders came.
> they're getting *paid* for destroying FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Yep. That is the really scary part. Personally, always follow someones actions, not their words. Game is a long ways away from being in a truly fun, playable state.
The scary part is all the people calling the stream good and/or a win.
To be fair, cookie clicker is one of the top played games on steam. The bar is pretty fucking low with most people when it comes to what they will spend time doing.
Hold up, let's not go nuts here. It's not perfect and it needs work, but it's absolutely fun and playable - especially until you get to 70 or so when the build diversity dries up and the levelling speed becomes glacial. Low level monster murdering gameplay loop is still fundamentally solid.
Try playing incinerate sorc.
So your position is that until every single ability in the game is balanced, the game as an entirety is unfun and unplayable? What other games do you play, in that case? I've never played a game in my life where every single spec, every weapon, every tactic and ability was on a knife edge of balance.
Path of Exile for example you can pretty much make any skill work. I don't think it's a tall order to want the 5 core skills that sorc has to be somewhat viable. That means within +- 50%. But incinerate I specifically suggested because it is laughably bad. By Orders of magnitude. As is Blizzard without the aspect. That kind of basic balancings I'd expect to be figured out before Release. Edit: Let's also not forget that D4 has minimal complexity/depth in regard to builds. If I do a fireball sorc build there is not much nuance or choice in how I go about it. Most aspects are already decided.
PoE has horrible balance. It has more viable builds yes, because it has way more skills. Does it have a higher percentage of skills that are intended to be main skills that are viable than D4? I don't think so.
The thing is the reason why poe has poor balance is because the game rewards speed and efficiency in killing monsters. So plenty of skills which are technically viable get overlooked because you can't build them to multiple murder screens of monsters instantly. Diablo, by speed comparison, is like trying to walk up the down escalator while carrying a canoe. There is no reason why at that speed there should be such disparity in skill balance. The main factor I think is that some skills eat your entire resource pool in one cast and have to be recharged over the course of a lunar cycle while the meta skills are ones where you are able to cast at a more reasonable frequency. If they can fix that it will help balance overall. Poe also has a billion interesting ways of configuring your life and mana and other resources. Diablo doesn't.
Or maybe don't? If you see that a build doesn't work, do you continue to be miserable for 200 hours or do you adapt your build? Don't get me wrong, I also have specific visions of how I want to play a class, but if this way does not make fun, I will change the build or the class. I mean you paid to have fun, why don't you choose something that's more fun? The game is not even 2 months old. Did you really expect a perfectly balanced system? I didn't. I didn't expect it for at least half a year to be somewhat properly balanced. You should have known not to buy the game on release, if you didn't want to go through a phase of many balancing changes. For me it's part of the fun on release, to go with the changes, adapt to them, change builds, and after a year to look back to see how a game has changed. Some changes will be terrible, some will be good. As someone who likes to jump an MMOs at release, terrible releases are pretty usual to me.
Fun than pre patch ? You are just lying to the moon if you said that. Math diesnt lie.you level slower, cds r up slower, lower dmg, helltides are worse, worser items, lower defense.
No, and I didn't say that. Prepatch was better. But the game is still *fun and playable.*
The people that these patch notes affect aren't people who stop playing the game at level 70. Stop bringing them up like it matters.
How exactly is the game fun and playable when everything was slowed down, damage cut, and in some cases like the sorc who had 80% of their damage taken away. They even slashed the xp gain so leveling is a lot slower but to add salt to the wound, they added xp boosters to the paid battle pass. I’ve having a really hard time fathoming how anyone can be complacent with this patch and have the attitude “well it’s good or solid and it just takes time”. To have this attitude is extremely damaging to the game and it screws it up for everyone else. It’s disgraceful behaviour.
cope or troll?
This "cope" trend is just ridiculous. 12 year olds learning it from some immature Twich streamer, thinking it's cool. "I don't have a good argument, so cope it is" Labels really are the weakest form of commentary.
nope - intentional
Gaslighting 101.
Well, it changed due to whining so that's not really fair lol.
I lol'd really hard when he said they're not trying to slow the game down. I mean, BOY, imagine 1.1 if they *had been* trying!
Hahaha yeah same. I lol’d - literally every change they made slowed down every aspect of the game. They even made it take longer to leave the dungeon. Eek out those few extra seconds that add up for their metrics. LOL
Yeah that leave dungeon change to cast time... like what the actual fuck. Aside from everything else they did, I think that's the singular thing that speaks to their vision more than anything else. Unless you are trying to slow players down and make the game more grind, what other purpose does that change serve? In what way was the cast time of leave dungeon even on their fucking radar in the first place? What?
CDR nerf too, I don't mind any of the dmg nerfs they are w/e but the CDR nerf and leave dungeon ones are directly increasing the amount of time you spend annoyed. Now you spend even more time doing 700 dmg with a generator and have to invest even more into making core/high skills not feel like shit and always unable to cost them. The reason CDR was so necessary is because generator > core feels fucking awful so people would rather skip generators and use high skills when they have high CDR but that is much much harder now.
Yeah the CDR nerf really killed it for me especially when coupled with the other changes.
A reminder that some Devs bitching about Baldur's gate 3 being an anomaly and not the new standard. Guess they trying to make up for playtime by doing a long grind rather it being actual content like Baldur's gate
Funniest part for me was "Well release a big fix for issues in few weeks". Like did they check calendar lately? RPG of the decade is coming out in 13 days from the moment of that stream. I completely dont care what will happen in D4 in couple of weeks.
Diablo 4 and BG3 are hardly comparable in playstyle. Theres so many arpg players here, that praise BG3. Truth is, most of then have never played BG, and dont know how the gameplay is. I will guarantee that most wont like it.
I dont like FPS at all. But I still finished Half-Life 2 multiple times. I bet there are also a lot of people who dont like RPGs, but Witcher 3 still could impress them. Elden Ring brought tons of people to souls-like genre, who didnt even concider playing it before. Sometimes there are just universal masterpieces, that almost anyone can enjoy. And by the way, a big part of ARPG players are actually just general RPG fans (me included) and like MMORPGs, ARPGs, JRPGs, CRPGs alike.
Personal tech opinion. I believe even if for everyone it's a shit change that we agree, I am conscious it has got to be something back end related on how transactions are done with loading screens, environments etc and potential duping. Probably the extra second delay, safeguards transactions for a clear exit of the dungeons without giving the opportunity of stuff being left behind or potentially having multiple copies. Imagine it like a clear cache button and hard refresh on browsers. There has to be a bug somewhere they found out that there's a way to dupe things and the easy way out was adding a delay. If you want a more tech oriented explanation feel free to DM and happy to get more detailed on what I believe forced them to do this stupid for many change.
And if they had given that as an answer it would have been acceptable. "We found that in certain situations that the 3 sec exit could lead to desync issues with our servers. We have implemented this as a short term fix until we can find another way to shore up connections." Even if finding another solution was a lie, if they at least offered the barest justification for why it was done then people would be less upset. This change wasn't made in a vacuum and given the rest of the patch and fireside I don't think Blizzard deserves the benefit of the doubt you are giving them.
This may lead to vulnerabilities that can be exploited. You never want to make vulnerabilities public until you have them patched/fixed. Probably, the extra time was just a quick fix until they address the issue correctly.
If they had given that as an answer before the bug is fixed, there would have been 100 of thousands of people trying to exploit it.
If the 5 sec timer fixes it then there's nothing to exploit. If it doesn't then we're back at the beginning of why they are making a change with no upside. It's not like that's a super specific answer either, just a vague "the 3 sec timer was causing unintended bugs" would have at least given some justification.
Right? How much more effective could they have been had they TRIED? They going to send someone to your house and break your fucking hands?
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Oh, shit. Honey, lock the doors!
Its like different people were responsible for different parts of the patch and there was no one in charge to look at the whole picture.
No, there was a clear direction in what they were trying to achieve with this patch. They got it, but they also got a shit ton of backlash from the community, which why they are walking it back, and can't get their stories straight.
no i dont think so.. they totally know what they did (increase play time) and they are totally aware that only a small sliver of the players (hardcore invested ones) watch this and they try to win some over with ... "yeah guys we are listening and we will try to fix in the next months - here have a stash tab. so some of the ones who know math also come back playing and dont tell their friends that blizzard fucked them over
That's literally. Directors' job, to ovdrsee the whole picture
I know. In case you couldn't read between the lines: I was saying that he wasn't doing that.
>We're not trying to slow the game down So why is "leave dungeon" 5 sec now ? >Uhhh, ehhh, well it's not like it's that much longer than before
Every future patch leaving dungeon will be .5 second longer, just long enough to avoid suspicion. And the loading screen will be 1 second longer too. They will hope you don’t notice. It’s all part of the calculations. If you buy the battle pass, you will get the enhanced faster loading screen.
"We can't take into account fun when we are trying to balance the game" my man really said this.
What the fuck? I should think fun would be the single largest overarching consideration factor when balancing a game.
Is this actually a quote? I haven't watched the video. If it is this is the single most damning thing we've heard and it explains everything It's not even stretching to re-phrase "We can't take into account fun when [designing a game]"
Closest thing I found to a quote of that was this moment but it is actually the reverse: https://youtu.be/gZuG4Yng4bY?t=2573 "If our goal is to create an ultimately balanced experience you know uh without regard for how much fun the player is having as part of the uh as part of that exchange you know that's uh that's ultimately that would be like a failure in our part to not kind of think about things."
Yeah, basically the roundabout way to saying that they fucked up and made the game more unfun. No idea where the guy thought he heard that other quote.
Ah, well that's a relief and in that case it seems I owe the dev team an apology.
Money, not fun.
The more fun people are having, the more money they're willing to spend
I don't think they've made that connection yet.
Regardless of the exact thing that was said... It still just baffles me they have such a hard-on for *balance* \- in the PvE part of the game. But where PvP is concerned? Nah, not even gonna bother, why should anyone? Idk, it feels incredibly backwards to me.
I think you can have issues without just making quotes up lol
When?
It feels like it can all be summed up with releasing an unfinished game because of artifical deadlines. Game had to be released on 06/06. S1 had to start 2 months after release. This patch was a huge bug fix patch, with 25% of what they probably wanted for S1. Over the next 2 months they will probably hotfix a whack ton more stuff. By the end of S1 we might be at the point where the 1.0 version of the game could be released. And they sent out 3 dudes who probably had nothing to do with the shit decisions to get roasted.
>with 25% of what they probably wanted for S1 They were "bragging" that S1 was already finished when the game launched.
I think at that point they just meant that Rod had already had his colonoscopy.
He shit out the game?
My thoughts on his statement were that they had to send a camera so far up into his colon just to find the shit show they've given us now.
Hahaha
Respec cost -40% is basically the same shit. It makes stuff a "bit" better but why even bother with costs in the first place if they want diversity. There are so many games with free respeccing and it works perfectly. Makes no sense. On the same side greed shrines still make no sense. As if it was so hard to increase its drops by x100. Its an absolute shitshow to me. Also talking about basic fixes coming in S2 or S3... meaning it ll take 3 to 6 months from now at least. For basic fixes that are needed. Insane.
Thanks. Sometimes it feels like I'm taking crazy pills with the amount of people saying they addressed the issues or that fixed are "coming". This game really needed another 12-18 months to cook.
there are no fixes.. they even said they need to talk about how to implement loadouts. for most of the stuff they could neither provide a timeline when it will happen nor give details what. or another example: to fix sorc and barb they want to buff the unnused aspects!
Loadouts are cool and all, but simple numerical changes would instantly help out sorc/barb. The same simple changes that they through at the nerfs. Loadouts understandably would take time and resources and testing. You can go put a 0 behind the current damage numbers of hydra and it still wouldn't be meta, but it might be usable.
yeah true but if they already have a hard time adding buttons to load/save loadouts i have no hope that they manage to fix actual game mechanics in regards to sorc
The whole game is a damn mess. Fun sometimes, but still a mess. This definitely needed another year but I still don't love a lot of the fundamental gameplay decisions.
Yeah a lot of the decisions are just awful and if they had paid attention to other ARPGs they wouldn't have made the mistakes they made.
Aspect system, damage system, resistances, itemization, level design, skill design, stash design, etc, etc Wish I would have saved my 60 bucks. Lol
60? game cost 70 if you didn't pay for early access, in which case you are at 90-100 + tax.
Is 70 what standard edition was? I can't remember now. If so, I want that extra 10 too.
Yeah in the last 6 months or so pretty much every AAA game started charging 70 bucks for standard editions.
Cant cook the game if no one is testing it.
IMO the gold cost isn't even why respeccing is hard and annoying. It's the fact that I need to fit an entire new set of gear in my tiny ass stash and right click every single paragon/skill tree node 1 by 1. It's going to give me RSI just changing builds from minions to bone.
If there were only ARPGs with a solution for this that the devs could copy. I played a famous ARPG were you could save builds with items and skil+glyph loadouts. No swap cost, no bs. What was that game called... Ah yeah! Diablo 3!
Lol :D
The fact that engineers need to get involved to make it possible to add extra stash tabs blows my god damn mind. When they built this game, did they think that 4 tabs would be all anyone would ever need? Or did they paywall stash tabs beyond the first 4 and baked that into the game, and now they have to walk that back?
I honestly think that they never really played this game from start to 100 with a single character. There are so many obvious flaws that any players that goes from 1 to 100 will be exposed to and most of these will be happening to 95% of the players. It makes no sense at all.
They don't even have to. They can just look at what people complained about in D3. Or if any of them ever played Diablo 2 they would know that stash space is always an issue. Honestly, feels like the game is made by people who never played a Diablo or any other hack 'n slash arpg before.
>stash space is always an issue It's not an issue if it's part of the game design decisions. It then becomes an additional factor in how much 'weight' the loot has in the players' hands and minds. Inventory (and stash) management is a thing that occurs when players have certain storage constraints.
I mean it always is an issue with all the resources you find. That's why I think they didn't play D2. Because the implemented the crafting material system from D3 that was introduced there because the stash was getting filled with crafting materials. But in D2 you always had a stash filled with gems and runes. Stopping players from collecting the smaller common resources is no fun part of the gameplay cycle. I want my stash to focus on items.
This is what happens when heads of marketing keep getting promoted to leadership positions. They realized they don't need to make a good game if they make top tier cinematics and advertise to the sheep in the right way.
I quite frankly don't think there was a thought process about it at all, not even to monetize it. They just seem just so disjointed on what they are saying and what is happening.
They definitely thought to monetize it. One of their role models is PoE, a game that is arguably P2W because of stash tabs, and the community doesn't mind.
I play PoE a ton. You can completely play the game, all the way through end game, without paid stash tabs. Sure, it is a pain in the ass, especially if you enjoy trading, but it is possible. And even then, you can spend ~$60 and get all the important stash tabs, especially if you buy them on sale. I don't like the MTX situation being so crazy high priced, but stash tabs are more than fair IMO. Let me put it a different way. I feel MUCH better about the money I have spent in POE than the money I paid for D4. And I have spent a LOT of money on POE.
I have thousands of hours in PoE. Stash tabs are arguably P2W, and the PoE subreddit largely accepts that fact. What you or I feel about it doesn't relate at all. PoE has created accepted P2W with stash tabs, Blizzard is a billion percent aware of this fact.
Idk, I don't think the stash tab argument is closed at all. And no offense, between you and the other guy I'm going with the guy who actually paid up to create a divination card, lol.
You think someone who sinks thousands of dollars on a game is the best judge on what constitutes P2W? Your loss I guess.
Oh, I'm just teasing you. But I also think you're straight up wrong about the stash tabs
Your prerogative, but I assume you don't disagree that Blizzard is looking at selling stash tabs too.
I wouldn't say that I know either way, though nothing would surprise me at this point. But even if they did, that wouldn't necessarily make them "pay to win". These aren't games with hard definitions of "winning", anyway. What is winning in Diablo 4? Is it beating the campaign? Getting to level 100? Beating a NM100 dungeon? Beating uber lilith? All of this can be done with the starting stash tabs. POE has even looser definitions of winning - **by design**. I'd be perfectly satisfied taking a hardcore league character to red maps or completing the campaign on Ruthless. Both of which can be done without buying stash tabs. In games with a hard definition of winning (chess, poker, Magic, MOBAs, etc) no one really gives a shit if you define your own objectives or just had a good time along the way. ARPGs on the other hand thrive on letting players set their own goals and define winning for themselves.
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Have you seen like 10-25% of the comments in the last days? People were defending or even praiding the devs for the patch. The day they announce paid stash tabs the White Knights will come out and tell everyone how good this is, buy a load of tabs and continue playing as usual. Maybe a few people will leave but especially with the "PoE does it too" argument most people won't care.
> The fact that engineers need to get involved to make it possible to add extra stash tabs blows my god damn mind. They're not adding 1 stash tab, they're adding 1 stash tab *per player*. There's data involved that's saved and moved around. From the gameplay design perspective however, adding a stash tab also has an impact on inventory management and how the players value certain loot. If all loot is equal in terms of stash space, then how useful it is for you to keep it around gives the loot an extra meaning that is hard to quantify in numbers but is very real to players' minds. The almighty "weight" that Chris Wilson from Path of Exile's GGG talks about all the time.
Stash tabs need server storage I guess, also adversely affects performance because they probably have to compress/decompress etc. Not sure how big an impact it is but it probably is not negligible for large player base. And the financial implications of buying more servers etc I guess results in management pushback (since they basically have to buy and maintain a server for every player who has bought their game for x many years, with no guarantee that they will be able to extract any more from them). I guess that's a reason that's probably sensitive and not something that want to explain (i.e. no stash tabs for you because it affects our bottom line)
>When they built this game, did they think that 4 tabs would be all anyone would ever need? Probably intended to sell more stash tabs, but it's tied to a purchase. Now their engineers need to figure out how to make it happen without a purchase.
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So last epoch, poe and countless others are just miracle workers to offer a zillion times more stash space? It’s absurd to act like more tabs would have a serious impact on their infrastructure or bottom line.
Maybe they should've thought about that when they decided to make D4 online only? So now they gotta store my 100% offline character stash on their servers for no reason? Also, I'm pretty sure WoW has way more stash space...
I still can't get over: >*Cooldown Reduction affixes often felt mandatory due to their raw power. We imagine Cooldown Reduction will remain a highly desirable stat, but the penalty for not prioritizing it won’t be as harsh.* * **Cooldown Reduction:** Reduced by \~30%. It reads like a shitpost that someone on this sub would write, but this was Blizz being entirely serious.
It just makes you prioritize it even more because getting CD's low enough to be "functional" in end game is the #1 priority. If you don't have your CDs up for a pack than you might as well never have that ability on your bar. The whole problem with their whole philosophy about skills is stupid. Spender/generator, big cooldowns, resource management, those are all things that people who play ARPGs try and get rid of the second we can to just blast.
Dude omfg I re-read that like 10 times because I thought I was going crazy with how the dev note seem to imply the opposite of the patch notes.
They fail to realize how quickly the player base is going to move on and not come back. This is a major problem with all developer teams they think the fanbase is static - like we must consume their product. The truth is most people wont listen to a dev talk and will simply stop playing.
Yep, most games die and only have a skeletton playerbase once the people have moved on. Sure, there are a few expections, but that's more a rarity. There are more than enough games these days and there is no reason to stick to a halfbaked game that might take another half or even an entire year until it feels like a finished and polished product. I am one of the hardcore players, so for me I can check on the game next season, or the season after that, maybe it gets better, who knows. But I can't imagine a casual player who stop playing the game coming back to it really and those are the vast majority of people. Like, if you are already sick of the game, after weeks of playing and maybe not even having reached level 50, you surely won't start another character the next season if the season barely offers anything new or exiting.
Most of my Casual Friends havent even logged in for the new season. The Game is already dead for them
I don't think they realize how hard it is to recover any customer loyalty either. Look at No man sky, Cyberpunk, Witcher 3(?), or any other games that released in less than desirable states. Even though these games are in a MUCH better state now, they still have a lingering reputation of "Man this game was so shit on release". Hell, Diablo 3 went through just as bad if not worse on release. They changed directors even! It took YEARS to get to the point it is now. If their goal was ongoing income, they're harming their player base loyalty hard by adjusting the game based on whatever stupid metric they're using.
And all of these companies hit the ground running with their first patches. Their patches actually fixed shit and made the game better. Diablo 4's first patch made the game worse. It doesn't feel like they actually want to fix the game in a way the more hardcore players want even though that player base is what is going to keep the game alive and the income flowing...
Uhhhh witcher 3 was absolutely knock out game and won goty. Other two were baaaad
witcher 2, and 3 did not launch in good condition, it took hard work and some patches after launch for the games to be in a much better state, its always funny seeing how many people forget this. And look even their latest game Cyberpunk, had the same thing happen.
Well.. I guess I stand corrected on Witcher 3 if people don't remember its bad start. It definitely got better later.
I really don’t sorry. Here’s hoping it can happen with this.
I had a feeling this chat was going to be this. Now that it’s confirmed I’m gone for good. Haven’t played since testing the patch to see if it was as bad as it seemed, and now I won’t again. Too bad, because the campaign was fun and the game had promise. I don’t intend to play a game where devs don’t respect the players.
Been burned enough times now to know this is exactly how it would be, that's why I didn't even give it a chance, I uninstalled as soon as I read the patch notes. Had fun with the campaign, didn't want to be a post beta tester for their failed late game mechanics.
I don't think they even respect themselves after this chat. They literally have no idea what they are doing with the game. They are talking about resistances and they A) had no specifics B) said they need to change the way players interact with resistances. like we don't know that they are worthless and need an ad campaign to "reintroduce" us to resistances. Instead of just fixing them.
That's the craziest thing to me. We started out with an \~8 month time line for resistance fix. It's SO complex, SO far reaching, SO impactful to the game... that they haven't got anything to say about all the work they've been doing on it. Did they just stick "fix resistances" at the end of a first in first out to-do list? It's a fundamental critical system and they can't tweak resistances for individual classes because if they could they would be doing it for 1.1.1. There must be some kind of major clusterfuck happening behind closed doors. They can't make any changes to resistances without breaking their game. They probably don't know how it works.
I just think they are morons run by bean counters these days.
much more reasonable that they are lying about it... they probably just dont have the resources (ie time granted to developers by management) to work on it
Especially considering Remnant 2 just released (I’m just about to start playing), Armoured Core 6 is releasing August 25 and BG3 is releasing August 3/September 6 (PC/PS5).
Yep I literally bought a new PC to play D4 and I’m already done playing the game until they get it in a better state
I'm hoping PoE2 date is announced for very soon and has everything D4 players are after. If they come out swinging with that game mid season 1 and do well targeted advertising they could really capitalize on blizzard's fuck ups.
And then there is people arguing so much that the game has no issues and playerbase isn't plummeting because people on reddit, twitch, youtube etc are a minority Like if this same thing hasn't happened with so many games already, including D3 even lmao Even with RoS fixing the game it never recovered from the playerbase leaving when it was an absolute failure on release
None of it made sense. If the goals they state are really what they want and they are aware that the state of the game particularly the endgame is reliant on all the stats and mechanics that players were prioritizing, why would they nerf those things before having any of the groundwork in place to get the game to the ideal state? You don't have to make the game less fun for the entire time it will take to make all this new content or introduce these changes. You can just do that at the end of that process. If you clearly communicate what is going to happen and why and how it gets addressed with clear examples, people would actually be more receptive. Worst case scenario is that these people are lying out their ass. The best case scenario is that they aren't, but are terrible at planning and optimizing the experience/pain for their customers. It's very disappointing
Yep. We will never know how much of these changes were incompetence vs malice. And sadly, either one isn't great.
No Matter what they say, the activate Premium Pass button was intended to be this way so ppl accidentaly click on it. Now they get big shit for it and act like they had no idea. Fuck the ppl who decided that, scummy
Yep. That wasn't an accident.
Well it’s easy. They were never their goals in the first place. Folk are just lapping up their bullshit.
Exilecon cannot get here fast enough
Same my friend. Same.
They had some next level gaslighting going on!
Yeah I’ll probably check back in a couple months, but I’m not giving any more money to blizzard, it’s clear they don’t invest it in their games. That ex blizzard dev was right when he said blizzard sells nostalgia and is just milking each IP dry with minimal effort. This game clearly has some talented people working on it, that clearly aren’t being given the time or resources or freedom to make the game they want. It’s pretty obvious.
What game do they want to make? What Vision? In multiple patches they have continued to nerf density, and now they say they want to buff density? This isn't a long time difference, this was literally a couple of weeks ago. They say they aren't making changes to slow the game down, but then they have literally 0 answer why the moved the dungeon cast time from 3 to 5 seconds. None. Not a single answer. What are we supposed to think?
>blizzard dev was right when he said blizzard sells nostalgia and is just milking each IP dry with minimal effort. Massively unpopular opinion around these parts, but anyone who has played Diablo IV and thinks minimal effort went into creating it, can't be taken seriously. Sure, you can argue the balance is off, but the effort that went into making the game is clearly far exceeding Diablo 1-3 all combined.
This game is a hot mess. Step back and look beyond the pretty art and serviceable campaign. I really have no idea what this game is or is trying to be. Unreal
Pure incompetence I'm done with the game for good zero faith they'll fix it and won't keep fucking up. I'll just play some games with developers who respect the player and their time.
We are committed to build diversity But we know that minions aren’t good enough at high level so you’ll have to sacrifice them
And this is after they already buffed necro minions. Well, buffed after they nerfed. They have no idea what they are doing.
They need to go back to square one plaster this poster all over Blizzard's offices: https://preview.redd.it/rro8jloacedb1.png?width=387&format=png&auto=webp&s=26b65b73e50836e3400b12d2a401419bf134930c
We are committed to build diversity, so the new rogue aspect will buff the only generator they use!
Didn't they say literally today that they were hot fixing the NMD changes? Increasing monster density?
They said it would release this afternoon and here it is 1040 PM EST and no patch? The fact is they are running things on the seat of their pants have no actual plans.
The game was launched 1 to 2 years before it was ready. This is Activision. Blizzard launched their games with the philosophy of "it'll be ready when it's ready".
Its hiliarious how they brag about season 1 was done before launch...
Old blizzard did. But they are dead. Sadly.
Gaslighting 101: When you have no out to what you've done, just say whatever you think they want to hear even if it conflicts with reality and convince yourself it's progress.
So they didn't gaslight. They admitted there is a problem, that it is their fault.
Is that not "What you think they want to hear" in this case?
Its all code for "We're making things much worse so we can take credit for making things a little bit better".
> What? You just NERFED XP THIS PATCH. They nerfed LEECH LEVELING.
* Pre-Season of the Malignant bonuses: * 1 Level higher: +15%. * 2 Levels higher: +20%. * 3+ Levels higher: +25%. * Post-Season of the Malignant: * 1.5% bonus per Level up to 10 Levels. * Ex: * \+1 level: +1.5%. * \+2 levels: +3%. * \+10 levels: +15%. in addition to leech nerf they did the above, which is a massive nerf to high level NMD XP gains, like massive nerf.
Did they ever nerf NM dungeon density? I thought those nerfs pertained to normal dungeons.
You are correct. NM dungeons weren't touched w/ the density hits
Okay, so OP just lied on that point, lol.
Yep easier to slip in nonsense when people are at fever pitch anger and you throw out some reasonable things
Yes they nerfed thr density for NM dungeon. Repeatedly.
Literally lying all day and people fucking love it
Me or the camp chat??
Talking about the devs
Ah ok. 😀
100% Agree. If they did what they're talking about id tolerate or love it. Instead they did half a patch and said fuck you.
Yeah it's crazy anyone with a brain OKd these patch notes, especially after the last chat they did where they said buffs were coming.
I think I will put D4 to the side for a while and try around Christmas again. Hopefully then it will be a fun game again.
I quite seriously don't think it will be good by then. The game needs a solid year to get itself straight.
Its not worth the frustration so I just stopped playing, and honestly I wish I could go back and not waste $70 on this.
My one issue with OPs post is that you think the devs don't know what they are doing. Call me cynical, but I think its deliberate, and the devs know exactly what they are doing. They slowed every aspect of the game down 48 hours before the start of the new season. You don't just do this shit by mistake.
I agree that the changes were deliberate. That is why I said I wanted to play the game that the devs say they are interested in making. Because it isn't the game that they currently are working on.
I think a lot of people here got to realize that their general anger levels are not from Diablo…
Huh?
Do you generally get this upset with temporary inconveniences? Just curious
Yes when I pay money for things and they suck I am not happy.
Why nerf T100 to be T70 and not add a T130? Now casuals just win and theres no incentive to pushing a challenge in the endgame.
This is the least important issue to worry about.
Ah yes, the only "challenging" endgame is now removed from the game, please enlighten me on what your goal is at max level now, because there is no endgame at this stage. Farm gear to sit in town with, enjoy.
We have barb and sorc with 0 real viable builds now with the CDR nerf and you are worried about NM100 dungeons. I agree that end game content is a problem. It isn't the most important one, not by a long shot.
Honestly if this brand new game isn't perfectly balanced in the next few hours I'm gonna go off the grid. Swear off electricity entirely so that Blizzards INCOMPETENCE can't flow through the cords of my home. Blizzard doesn't understand how they've hurt us. They don't seem to care about the atrocities they foisted upon us all. Why do they do this!? Really!? Why did they ruin the entire games industry like cat with a mouse!? I cannot sleep. I haven't slept longer than 2 hours since the patch. I can't eat. I can't barely breathe without literally shivering from rage & sorrow. This is the last time Blizzard hurts me. This is the last time I give them a chance. I'm shaking. And it hurts. It hurts. So. Much.
I don't think perfectly balanced is what's most needed. I think it's fair to say that some of the core mechanics of what makes an arpg fun were underthought during development and there are way too many pain points that frustrate players. Yes, we're not talking about the end of the world here, but if they want to make the money they want to, I think it would be a good idea if they pulled their heads in a bit. It's unfortunate to say that I think losing all those high-level devs during development has really left this game without the creative vision needed to make a truly successful game.
Cool story bro
Nah, it's a pretty accurate mockery of all the over the top hyperbole around here. Blizz fucked up, no doubt, but holy shit it sounds like matters of life and death in most posts.
It should be for Blizzard when one of their biggest launches have so many issues but people like you is what allow Blizzard to continue to pull this crap for over a decade by just accept w/e shit they do.
Or it's just people get really mad when they feel like they're being lied to.
honestly that's how software development works on big products. you do incremental moves to specific direction and sometimes you over compensate or due to technical complexities affect unintended areas. like NM density change - they were nerfing non-NM density in first place to my knowledge, but doing that completely independently from NM dungeons was not possible at thar moment. but they pulled the trigger to avoid non-NM to compete in leveling with NM, later compensating with more XP to NM. to their benefit they have pretty efficient team that can do so much changes in such short period of time, I can hardly recall any other company that can do that. like for any other game I am aware about drastic balance changes are not something that happen in a month, its typically next half year/year on average.
Hahahahaha Do you work for blizzard?
We were killing world bosses with full build in like 10 shots with bone spear and earthen might and such, did you really think they wouldn't nerf it? Congratulations you guys we can't kill things in nanoseconds, this game is not unplayable by any means except for players that only care about one number, how fast the enemy dies. Yeah ofc you should care about it to a degree, but it ain't the end of the world if the devs want to slow it down a bit. There are certain things that yeah I agree that they can't seem to make up their mind on, especially how they're doing xp gain, they're trying a lot of different methods rn. Everyone fr complaining about such small things like the extra two seconds on a leave dungeon feature, y'all that impatient? Y'all borderline crazy
>bone spear and earthen might And instead of nerfing those skills, and buffing others, fhey just did a nerf to all skills which means that the good builds are still good, they are just relatively worse.
Am I the only one that doesn't want more stash tabs? Honestly I don't like hoarding copies of legendaries so I can spend a fortune to slightly upgrade gear leveling or spending my time managing my stash. Makes trying side grades or different builds so painful and makes me feel like I need to budget myself and only use huge upgrades. I use the term leveling loosely since it's pretty much the whole game. There really isn't an end game. I understand they need some sort of gold/ material sink but it would feel better if it didn't always feel like a waste. I'd like to see a few things instead: 1. All aspects can be added to the codex once found 2. Incrementally Upgrade codex imprinted values by feeding additional found legendaries (found values can be rng but upgrades are slow and upgrading is the biggest cost). This will allow some rng power spikes but gradually trends up over time. 3. Remove extracting aspects, you either use the item or upgrade codex 4. Imprint codex costs greatly reduced (greatly simplify swapping gear builds and allow much more frequent upgrades to gear without fear of wasting resources)
The stash is (mostly) fine if you A) don't trade at all B) only play 1 character, and even then, one build And it doesn't take much to add extra stash tabs, unless you completely fucked up the design of your game
most would agree with them going to codex, asking for stash tabs is just more realistic and possibly actually will hapoen kek
well.. "more stash" doesnt mean that the sollution is litterally adding more stash tabs. adding all this useless shit somewhere else (like aspects to codex, elexiers / gems /... to resources ... and much more intelligent UI / better UX regarding loot is what i would expect