The Diablo love/hate thread

[sandwich_bird]

Lets talk about/hate on Diablo here instead.

News: https://ca.ign.com/articles/2018/11/...fb2fcb0b0008d0

Of note:

A major pillar for the game and its art direction is reportedly “Embrace the darkness.”

“There’s a lot of people who felt like Diablo 3 got away from what made Diablo “Diablo" in terms of art style and spell effects,” said a current Blizzard employee, who claims the game is aiming to be more like Diablo 2 than its immediate predecessor.

“They want to make this gross, make it dark, [remove] anything that was considered cartoony in Diablo 3… Make what people were afraid of in Diablo 2, but modern,”

introduce "light MMO elements” into the series, taking social inspirations from Destiny.

The other allegedly canceled project, code named Hades, was supposed to take the franchise in a "very different direction.” It was reportedly Diablo's take on Dark Souls: a gothic, difficult dungeon crawler. It would act as a departure from the mainline series, and many at Blizzard felt it wouldn't have ended up being labeled Diablo 4.

The team has reportedly been deciding if it will keep the isometric camera angle from past Diablo games, or use an over-the-shoulder, third-person view that was experimented with in the canceled Hades. However, recent builds of the game are reportedly isometric.

Soooo I'm carefully optimistic. I'm a huge Dark Souls/Demon Souls/Bloodborne fan and I'd love Diablo to go that route. I would probably have loved their canceled project so I sincerely hope D4 moves in that direction. The isometric view is a 90s choice due to limitation imo and we can have a much better dark rpg experience in 3rd person. I'm personally done with isometric games where you control 1 character for the most part but I understand that hardcore fans are going to hate it any other ways so whatever.

[Visions of Khas]

Interesting you should bring this up right now. Seeing the holiday sale, I was considering finally getting DIII and RoS. So I downloaded the demo, set it up and tried to play. Damn thing won't work.

So much for that. XCom 2, here I come.

[Turalyon]

Too little, too late methinks. It's pretty clear Blizz's only interest and focus in developing games now is moneh what with their tone deaf release of Immortal. This is just more PR/damage control for Immortals poor reception.

[Visions of Khas]

In Kotaku's article, The Past, Present, and Future of Diablo, some Blizzard employees spoke out:

After weak sales on 2018, Activision execs began scrutinizing all costs;

“You would’ve thought Blizzard was going under and we had no money,” said a former Blizzard staffer, who told me they left the company this year in part because of Activision’s influence.

“The way every little thing was being scrutinised from a spend perspective. That’s obviously not the case. But this was the very first time I ever heard, ‘We need to show growth.’ That was just so incredibly disheartening for me.”

Further, because of the profits garnered by Overwatch, Activision saw that as the bar to be hurdled;

“We are being told to spend less at every corner because we have no new IP,” said one former developer. “Because Overwatch set this bar of how much we could earn in a single year, there’s a ton of pressure from Activision to get shit moving. They want something to show shareholders.”

Also, Blizzard initially seemed to have a more nuanced strategy for Diablo Immortal;

Three Blizzard sources told me that the original plan for Diablo Immortal had been to release it only in China at first for a few months or maybe a year, in large part to test it out among Chinese fans before releasing it in the west. “The quality bar in the Chinese market, especially for framerate, is extremely low,” said one.

“You can release something that’d be considered alpha footage here and it’d be a finished game there.” Later, those sources said, Blizzard decided to take more time to polish the game and prepare it for a simultaneous global announcement and release.

[sandwich_bird]

Seeing the holiday sale, I was considering finally getting DIII and RoS. So I downloaded the demo, set it up and tried to play. Damn thing won't work.

It's for the best. If you're not into endless end game grind fests then you should skip it entirely. Blizzard messed up the difficulty level so even on the hardest difficulty available to you, the game is easy to the point of being boring. There's 0 challenge until you unlock the higher difficulties and I'm not saying this as a "hardcore gamer/everything is easy" kind of way. For example, I think you can afk a boss for >1 minute and still live and kill it in 2.

That wasn't the case at release but they later re-balanced everything when they took down the auction house and introduced the seasons. Everything is now balanced for the end game loops so playing for the campaign is a waste because the story is not worth the dullness of the gameplay.

So yeah.. stick with XCOM 2, now that's a great game! I need to play the new xpac

This is just more PR/damage control for Immortals poor reception.

You're probably right. I'm just hoping that the mobile crap is a way for the company to support the long dev cycles for their "main games" but it sure sounds like the main games are now the mobile shits.

I kinda get the investors and execs though. Blizz spent > 1 year on this 'Hades' project and just canned it. From all indications, that's not the only project who got the ax after MM$ lost. Lets not forget Titan that dragged for years. Sure, it got a happy ending but at what cost? You might argue that this is just part of the creative process but there are many other studios that produce more games, of greater quality in a much shorter time frame. I'd expect a leader in the field to do just as good. Especially if said leader isn't even making games that are super innovative. There's a problem when CDPR can make the Witcher 3 in 3.5 years while Blizz take ~4+ years to make Diablo 3.

[Turalyon]

You're probably right. I'm just hoping that the mobile crap is a way for the company to support the long dev cycles for their "main games" but it sure sounds like the main games are now the mobile shits.

I kinda get the investors and execs though. Blizz spent > 1 year on this 'Hades' project and just canned it. From all indications, that's not the only project who got the ax after MM$ lost. Lets not forget Titan that dragged for years. Sure, it got a happy ending but at what cost? You might argue that this is just part of the creative process but there are many other studios that produce more games, of greater quality in a much shorter time frame. I'd expect a leader in the field to do just as good. Especially if said leader isn't even making games that are super innovative. There's a problem when CDPR can make the Witcher 3 in 3.5 years while Blizz take ~4+ years to make Diablo 3.

Yeah, their inefficiency in making games kinda sheds light on the current direction in which they're going. They blow loads of money on these projects (whether they see the light of day or not), so they have to make it up with micro-transactions. Thing is, people actually buy these micro-transactions, so Blizz is just going to keep pumping those sorts of things out since they're also very cost-efficient. In light of that, it's no wonder that something like a mobile game would be the next logical step.

Given all of that, it's kinda weird how the Diablo IP doesn't have much in the way of micro-transactions in the time that it's been out. With Sc2, they have co-op commanders (and cosmetic stuff which you can now buy?) but Diablo3 never had much in the same vein. I'm not sure if that's because it being an ARPG has something to do with it, where buying loot lent toward "pay to win/play/have fun" dynamics and that cosmetic upgrades are useless when there's no PvP and little player interaction in general to show them off. I'm guessing the failure of the Auction House thing probably screwed the pooch in terms of microntransactions.

[ajaymehta10]

really obsessed with your writing. Thank you for sharing this.

[TheEconomist]

I'm a huge Dark Souls/Demon Souls/Bloodborne fan and I'd love Diablo to go that route.

When the games started getting so popular, I was just like "SEE! IT CAN BE DONE!", make Diablo 4 dark. It doesn't scare the kiddies off as much as you think. I was 9 playing Diablo II. Keep it up for the next generations.

[TheEconomist]

DiabloFans is shutting down. The Diablo equivalent of SCLegacy. Sign of the times. RIP Blizzard. RIP Blizzard Fan Forums.

[sandwich_bird]

RIP Blizzard

-Diablo immortals
-preparation to kill HotS
-mass layoff
-key people leaving
-etc

2018 was probably the shittiest year ever for blizz. rip indeed.