Love to see yet again that it doesn’t matter how horrible of a company you are, it literally doesn’t matter, nobody cares, consumerism wins.
This is the weirdly unlearnable realization that’s going to hit third party app reddit users in 6 or so weeks. Because Reddit will just truck along unchanged.
I haven’t played a Blizzard game or touched anything even close to related to Battle Net in years. I did my part. In 30 years Blizzard will still be there, and I’ll have had no impact, but that won’t make me regret a thing. It was just some video games that I’ll have missed out on. I’m already missing out on video games as is, every single person is, and time will only increase the amount. Blizzard isn’t and will never be worth being “the ones” at the top of that mindspace.
I still find the fact somewhat bewildering. The gaming industry is literally the only industry that I can think of that can get away with pissing their customers right in the face with anti-consumer ethics. Somehow noone seems to care here. Other entertainment industries seems to have to be mindful with PR, gaming industry somehow doesnt. No matter how big the scandal, gamers seem to easily forget or just dont care. And I fear its mostly the latter.
Won’t play anything from Blizzard. Support indie games and ethical publishers/developers!
Somehow this really surprises me. I’m not sure if I have seen even a single promotional image (except for the cover image on the battle net launcher) but apparently that speaks more of my internet bubble than the games promotional campaign.
But still, Diablo 3 seemed like a much bigger deal. Can anyone speak about how the hype is compared to Diablo 3?
Diablo 3 was following Diablo 2, so there were very high expectations before that.
Diablo IV, has a shown a good amount, and has mostly very positive reviews. It’s return to the dark and gritty world of Diablo II. There have been couple of demos, and the game looks and plays great, and most diablo fans are very excited.
One issue the game has, is that it’s more of a live service game, so one world, shared by lots of players.
BTW I haven’t seen the after-release reviews by normal people, but it has gotten very good rating.
I think the live service aspect is a bit played up though. You can play the game almost entirely solo, and it seems as though the ‘peristent world’ is more of a mirage than anything else.
Not a big fan of a BP and cash shop in a $70 game though, which is why I haven’t purchased.
If it’s anything like the absolute ass that is Overwatch 2’s monetization scheme I absolutely will not buy it. I enjoyed Diablo 3 but putting pay to win FOMO bullshit in a paid game, let alone a paid game that they then turned into a free game, is absolutely unacceptable. Battle pass needs to die off, but it won’t unless people vote with their wallets.
Is it the same type of cash shop they tried in Diablo 3 at first or something else?
@Magusbear No, it’s the ‘standard’ cash shop that’s in every game now - overpriced cosmetic bundles.
Super disappointed by it. I get that it’s just cosmetic, but it feels really scummy to have purchasable cosmetics in a $70 game. Just makes me feel as though that content got ripped out of the base game to be sold.
Bad enough. Looking cool is half the fun.
@Magusbear Agreed. It’s really sad that the whole ‘Pay Us to Look Cool™’ thing has become the standard over the last few years.
Call me old fashioned, but I would vastly prefer the older model of selling full-priced DLC expansions every year or two. At least then it didn’t feel like development time was wasted on feeding a cash shop.
I’m right with you. I’m a huge fan of the whole souls (games) fashion thing and usually prefer cool armour over stat bonuses (if the game doesn’t become impossibly hard because of it).
Yes, content DLCs are my preference as well. I can understand cosmetic shops in free to play games though. I don’t necessarily like them, but they at least make sense to me, but not in full priced games.
I see, thanks for the insights!
Why the last ones weren’t that great. I own 1-3, only 1 and 2 are worth playing IMHO. I can’t wait for the typical broken AAA release lol. The amount of copium is gonna be great.
PS: I do hope I’m wrong, but the game industry kinda blows right now.
it does blow indeed right now. I hope we’ll see a change soon but the way things are going it’s only going to get worse. Time to invest even more time into indie gaming I guess.
As long as it isn’t early access. Been burned way too many times lol.
There are exceptions. Nintendo first party games are generally pretty good, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a recent example, and before that there was Metroid Prime remake and Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
Also Final Fantasy XVI just announced that there won’t be a day 1 patch, showing their confidence in the game.
The same Nintendo that hates it’s fans. I got a PC I’m not buying a console to play Zelda. It doesn’t interest me gameplay wise. I’ll take your word it’s good, just not what I’m into. Maybe if I happened across a decent trade or really really cheap, but um not interested in consoles/handhelds.
Sure, you don’t have to play them. Everyone has their own taste and preferences, but you were talking about the game industry in the context of “typical broken AAA release”, and I just gave you a few examples where it’s not the case.
If you don’t like Nintendo, Sony also generally releases games in very finished and polished state.
If talking specifically about PC, I don’t have much information about it, but I do know some of the bigger releases (even Sony’s port) were messed up when released on PC, so I can understand your point of view.
I would have a real hate boner for Nintendo as a PC player, but with one exception (Fire Emblem series) they never managed to make a game which i would be even remotely interested in playing.
Hype on 3 was bigger from what I remember, but the in-game auction house was much more controversial than 4’s MTX. Also the dumbing down of skill trees in 3 garnered a lot of hate from fans of 2.
After what Blizzard did to Overwatch, I can’t bring myself to buy their games. Same with EA. But to each his own.
Surprisingly… its better than I had hoped for. I’m ~6-8 hours in, level 23 or so… and its been great.
Maybe this is just me being an old man screaming into the wind but Diablo, ironically, feels like its lost its soul.
Diablo 1 and 2 were nice, D3 kinda felt like a Diablo theme park, like I never felt challenged. So I didn’t get excited about D4, and haven’t gotten it. Nothing I’ve read is really making me rethink that decision.
@dalarist Blizzard is also getting more and more predatory as a company with time. I’m no longer a fan.
Yeah, I wasn’t really gonna lean into it, but I was kinda put off by both their RMAH in D3, and sort of worrying treatment of their developers, crunch and all that. I figured they’d keep being greedy and grinding their developers to the bone so I’m not super interested in supporting those practices.
played the open beta, liked it, and will get it when its on 50% sale or something
I’m in the same waiting boat. No way will I pay their insane retail prices
How bad are the microtransactions? I’m debating getting for my steam deck because people claim that it runs well on it.
Also that it’s online only does not seem nice for the steam deck experience.
FWIW I briefly tried it on my Deck yesterday, and yes it runs well. Though I capped the framerate to 45 because the fan was running at full blast and the device was getting hot.
What a shame
Isn’t it just Path Of Exile with a different story?
Diablo is a much more approachable game, more casual, more streamlined. It’s much less complicated than PoE
Now that’s the question i would really want to have answer. I like PoE until something around 90 level and the last few Atlas bosses which are way too twitchy and oneshotty for my reflexes.
Isn’t it also the most expensive Blizzard game of all-time? Easier to get bigger numbers with lower folks buying even with fewer folks playing. Not saying this is the case. I know I’ve seen a MASSIVE amount of Twitch streamers playing it.
Looking at the buisnesswire article linked in the twitter:
- Fastest selling based on more units sold on all platforms before launch (through June 5, 2023). Sell-through figures based on reporting received from digital partners and Blizzard internal reports.
That seems like an odd way to say this. They had more Presales, ergo it’s fastest selling? Ok.
Before i left Reddit, I made a post in r/gaming pleading for people not to pre purchase Diablo 4, my inbox was full of hundreds of hateful replies, then shortly after, admins banned my account from all of Reddit.
I got it reinstated a few days later, but moral of the story is that the mass community in general will continue to support this junk, seems hopeless.
Also, deleted all my Reddit accounts yesterday, huzzah!
Not surprising when you consider just the name alone. And it probably attracts casual ARPG gamers more than the competiton due to its ease of access. I’ve seen a couple of streams and I am unimpressed, to say the least. D3 Reskin basically, thrown in the aspect system to simulate complexity and some mmo elements. Poor build variety when it comes to endgame viability. Same as D3, just prettier. Just doesn’t do it for me when PoE and Last Epoch exist. And I’ve not even started about not especially cheap MTX in a 70€ game, complete with battlepass and every psychological trick in the book to milk players even more. “Shameful shiat.”
