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exquisite tea posted:You don't even need to have industry insider status to know that Diablo 4 is a timid and unfocused project with no identity of its own, you just simply need to look at anything related to Diablo 4. The fact that an entire closed beta came and went with zero hype generated is telling on its own. There were a few hypey articles like a week or so ago. https://www.nme.com/features/gaming-features/diablo-4-preview-a-hell-of-a-good-time-3361515 https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/12/diablo-iv-preview-embracing-the-series-dark-past-and-open-world-future/ More if you search Whether or not they're accurate...  Did you do the beta? I'd probably trust your opinion better than a games journalist tbh.
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Dec 16, 2022 19:25
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No. Blizzard wants their games to fail.
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Dec 16, 2022 19:26
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harrygomm fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Mar 16, 2023 |
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Dec 16, 2022 20:11
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harrygomm posted:doesn’t it say all it needs to that it is being released as a live service game? Fully baked, not sure, but Multiversus is the most recent example I can think of that's decent. Does Marvel Snap count? Those live service games are inherently multiplayer though. I want the game to be good. Maybe it'll just be a little while.
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Dec 16, 2022 20:15
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I think the biggest difference between d2 and d3 is that within d3 you can expect to see "most" of the content within a reasonable amount of hours. In d3 if you start a season and put ~20 hours or so in you can level to 70, complete Haedrigs gift (gives you a free 6 piece set bonus which is a huge power spike), and complete most/all builds of your class from maxroll.gg. Sure you won't be paragon 2000 or be on the leaderboard but you are doing mostly the same content as someone on a leaderboard, just with a lower level. Also, you basically can't make a decision that is destructive except for your gender and class. The class part can be overcome by just leveling a new character which is not too bad. With d2 there's huge gotchas in picking a class. Want to play melee? You are worse off than any caster because melee needs to actually "hit" something where as in d3 melee characters always hit just like a caster does in d2. There's a bunch of metagame stuff that you need to know if you want to have an easier time. Like runewords. Put the runewords in the wrong order, effectively gone. Put the runewords into a blue/yellow, effectively gone. Want a Spirit (pretty cheap but really great weapon)? Better know to farm cow level on normal to use your "socket an item" for a glass sword because use too low of an ilvl (a hidden level that you can't see) and you won't get 4 sockets but use too high if an ilvl and you might get 5 sockets and Spirit needs 4. Also, you statistically won't even start to get "cheap" high end gear. Don't expect an Enigma (a runeword that makes your chest piece give you teleport) or any of the other "cheap" items. Want to be a fire wizard, lightning amazon, or another single element class? Hell is going to suck for you because there are immunities that you need to deal with. I wish d2 just wasn't so obtuse and punishing, it's kind of fun. However, if you are playing by yourself and not trading you are basically locked out of most of the game. Where in d3 you get to see the same game just with smaller numbers.
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Dec 16, 2022 20:21
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It still kinda sucks in D2 that the fastest most efficient way to roll a melee or any off-meta character is to make an MF Sorc and spend the first two weeks of ladder farming gear for the class you really want to play.
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Dec 16, 2022 20:25
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Just echoing that the closed beta was boring. I still think they'll make tons, but people will be back to Poe pretty quickly. The greed on this product is... A bit much. Yesterday I got an email they were doing a live stream, turns out it was them hawking the preorder poo poo, with comments turned off, lol. They also confirmed that like the most expensive bundle didn't actually include the game! He tried to spin it as a "feature" so you could mix and match. Box price, expansion prices, battle pass, preorder bonus and early start, mtx, likely cost for new classes too like d3 Necro... It's just excessive. Plenty of other online games pick *one* of those and it's enough.
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Dec 16, 2022 23:52
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The thing to understand with my optimism about the launch is that I don't expect a fully baked product, Blizzard just doesn't do that. It will be rough, and there will be many updates. The servers will poo poo themselves relentlessly under the somehow incalculable demand of projected sales. But what I do look forward to is a campaign that isn't full of cartoon villains, the ability to actually complete what content is available with any class, and the experience of playing through the many iterations to laugh at their terrible decisions before things finally settle. If the end game sucks I simply won't grind it and that's fine by me. As for D3, here's that post about the seasonal event: https://us.diablo3.blizzard.com/en-us/blog/23891307/sanctuary-freezes-over-during-the-hellish-holiday-event-12-16-2022 It's a bunch of recycled content where you get access to cosmetics and transmogs from killing goblins or gr guardians  At least I'll finally get those Cosmic Wings 
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Dec 17, 2022 01:13
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External Organs posted:There were a few hypey articles like a week or so ago. yes those are hype pieces from the big marketing push coinciding with the game awards/release date announcement. the beta was months ago and generated, like, anti-buzz if anything Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Dec 17, 2022 |
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Dec 17, 2022 02:30
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Swilo posted:At least I'll finally get those Cosmic Wings Finally a way to get them that isn't soul crushing.
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Dec 17, 2022 02:50
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Swilo posted:The thing to understand with my optimism about the launch is that I don't expect a fully baked product, Blizzard just doesn't do that. It will be rough, and there will be many updates. The servers will poo poo themselves relentlessly under the somehow incalculable demand of projected sales. But what I do look forward to is a campaign that isn't full of cartoon villains, the ability to actually complete what content is available with any class, and the experience of playing through the many iterations to laugh at their terrible decisions before things finally settle. If the end game sucks I simply won't grind it and that's fine by me. I rather play a game that's fun and "finished" without game breaking bugs/constant crashes from the get go but hey whatever floats your boat.
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Dec 17, 2022 04:26
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Regarding the gifts, the drop rate seems abysmally low, but it might be bugged. Brute forcing an ancient vault ring via crucibles supposedly causes a lower drop rate on the gifts. I only found two gifts on T16. Compared to someone earlier who found ~40 in an ancient vault from a dropped ring on T13. Also heads up, they claim when they teleported back to town they had despawned. Others are saying moving too far away from the gifts makes them despawn as well. You can get a Sword of Mediocrity with orange text that sets your stats to zero or something. I was wondering if this is the entire gag itself or if it could be tied to a new Easter Egg for the Tristram event. Kind of neat to see new stuff but I'm still going to wait until the new season. MrMidnight posted:I rather play a game that's fun and "finished" without game breaking bugs/constant crashes from the get go but hey whatever floats your boat. Jay Wilson has crawled out of the secret prison Blizzard locked him away in to talk about Diablo 3. He said he was shocked players weren't more forgiving of Blizzard's "fix it in post!" attitude. Even though his team knew the game was launching in a rough state. D3 sold incredible numbers and they still took forever to fix things. The biggest band aid being an expansion pack we had to pay for. That's my fear with D4. Another cycle of: Launch errors, bad reviews, fix the game years later, then send it in to maintenance mode and call it a loss anyways. Beta or not, 6 months doesn't sound like enough time to fix all the jank people reported.
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Dec 17, 2022 04:52
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Swilo posted:But what I do look forward to is a campaign that isn't full of cartoon villains, Have . . . Have you played a Diablo game before? Because nuanced villains operating in subtle shades of grey isn’t exactly this franchise’s strong suit.
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Dec 17, 2022 05:43
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Suburban Dad posted:Finally a way to get them that isn't soul crushing. I burned through my entire stash tab of ancient puzzle rings in non-seasonal on T16 and wound up with a handful of transmogs and glowing ores, no cosmic wings or sword of mediocrity  Did at least complete my set with that stupid King Maker axe I could never find.MrMidnight posted:I rather play a game that's fun and "finished" without game breaking bugs/constant crashes from the get go but hey whatever floats your boat. Then I hope you have a time machine because that never happens any more. paid money to post posted:Regarding the gifts, the drop rate seems abysmally low, but it might be bugged. Brute forcing an ancient vault ring via crucibles supposedly causes a lower drop rate on the gifts. I only found two gifts on T16. Compared to someone earlier who found ~40 in an ancient vault from a dropped ring on T13. Also heads up, they claim when they teleported back to town they had despawned. Others are saying moving too far away from the gifts makes them despawn as well. I didn't notice any of this weirdness for what it's worth. The drop rate was enough to get on average slightly more than one holiday gift per ancient vault. Never noticed any green beams on my map vanishing but if you leave too much garbage laying around they do not render properly (nor do the names at all) so that might explain those complaints. The usual problem of rolling a dog poo poo ancient vault with 2 goblins still exists though, so that's fun. Cyrano4747 posted:Have . . . Have you played a Diablo game before? Because nuanced villains operating in subtle shades of grey isn’t exactly this franchise’s strong suit. There's a world of difference between how they were handled in 1 and 2 compared to 3. I never said anything about nuance.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:00
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Having done a long dive into the lore of Diablo, I can conclude that Diablo is a kids show, and "cartoon villains" is exactly what to expect from this series. e:And yes, I looked at 2 and 3. It's always been a kids show.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:03
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Cyrano4747 posted:Have . . . Have you played a Diablo game before? Because nuanced villains operating in subtle shades of grey isn’t exactly this franchise’s strong suit. The delivery and presentation is important too. Azmodan has a bunch of incredibly corny "Dear minions, you have failed me again!" letters strewn about the place, and he materializes and antagonizes you every five steps you take. It's so cheesy. He may as well be twirling his mustache and tying damsels in distress to railroad tracks.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:10
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Swilo posted:
1 is literally the devil. 2 is the devil bit wearing the body of the hero from 1 like a skin suit. Oh and his brothers. 3 is a cackling witch who murders the series hallmark NPC in a giant, comical mustache twirl followed by the devil wearing the skin of an NPC you didn’t really care about but which makes it a femme devil now. Plus some random assholes we’ve never been given a reason to care about but who mock is for not finding the princess in this castle. These are the definition of cartoon villains. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed all three games. But plot and strong characters aren’t exactly the draw.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:10
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Node posted:The delivery and presentation is important too. Azmodan has a bunch of incredibly corny "Dear minions, you have failed me again!" letters strewn about the place, and he materializes and antagonizes you every five steps you take. It's so cheesy. He may as well be twirling his mustache and tying damsels in distress to railroad tracks. Yeah the series is at its best when you’re just vibing on atmosphere. Act1 of D2 remains strong as gently caress to this day for this reason.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:13
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The lore is good enough that if the dialogue wasn't awful across all games I'd take it seriously. Alas, a good setting means nothing if you can't write good characters for it. But yo dem stones on arreat summit.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:15
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paid money to post posted:You can get a Sword of Mediocrity with orange text that sets your stats to zero or something. I was wondering if this is the entire gag itself or if it could be tied to a new Easter Egg for the Tristram event. Kind of neat to see new stuff but I'm still going to wait until the new season. This was in the ROS closed beta originally, it kinda simplifies the math/shrinks numbers when you're testing new affixes or set bonuses on PTR or right after a patch.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:18
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Cyrano4747 posted:Yeah the series is at its best when you’re just vibing on atmosphere. Act1 of D2 remains strong as gently caress to this day for this reason. Me playing D2: Act 1: gently caress yeah I’ll stay a while and listen to this sick loving string score. Act 2: not bad this is different oh gently caress I forgot that Wizard dimension Act 3: fuuuuck why am I playing this ugh ok only a bit more until . . . Act 4: hell yeah. Literally. Let’s go gently caress up a bunch of conveniently close together bosses in a level with cool lava and ruins and poo poo Act 5: well this is different and in a kind of good . . . oh ice caves gently caress I forgot about this part. Oh hey I got to the worldstone whew I can go back to Act 1 and that awesome guitar soundtrack again.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:19
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Swilo posted:Then I hope you have a time machine because that never happens any more. lmao what the gently caress? I've played plenty of games this year that are not constantly crashing or buggy as gently caress at launch. Blizzard just LOVES consumers that are willing to buy an unfinished product and just go "welp that's just how it is now!" The developers need time to iron poo poo out and not have to deal with crunch for 6 months to push out something that will get review bombed because of all the broken stuff I saw in the beta. Come on man.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:26
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harrygomm fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Mar 16, 2023 |
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Dec 17, 2022 06:31
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harrygomm posted:live service games though? i don’t play a lot of them but the last one i remember with a kinda decent launch was apex i think? someone said multiversus as well? i’ve just kinda stayed away from them because the familiar thread i see about them is “bad/buggy/broken for 6 months +, then devs have heartfelt “we’re listening” sit down then fix the game over the next year or just drop it right then, based on vibes i guess That seems to be the route for games that needed more time in the oven yes. poo poo the recent Witcher 3 next gen patch apparently wasn't ready either with all the PC issues I'm reading. However it's not impossible to release a game that just needs tiny fixes here and there at release. I really hope I'm wrong and D4 is super fun and worth a shot at launch. I'm just saying don't get your hopes up. I'm definitely taking a long wait and see attitude with the game at this point.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:40
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MrMidnight posted:That seems to be the route for games that needed more time in the oven yes. poo poo the recent Witcher 3 next gen patch apparently wasn't ready either with all the PC issues I'm reading. However it's not impossible to release a game that just needs tiny fixes here and there at release. If I am ever convinced to get the game at launch date it's probably going to be because I am convinced it will be bad in the fun ways. ...Oh right. Seventy dollars. Okay, I can let other people find that out for me.
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Dec 17, 2022 06:43
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Once I realized it was $20 for both D2:R and all of D3 on Switch, both of which I've wanted, I sadly caved. Gave money to a poo poo company in hopes random bites of Diablo work out for me.
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Dec 17, 2022 07:07
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DarkMatt posted:Having done a long dive into the lore of Diablo, I can conclude that Diablo is a kids show, and "cartoon villains" is exactly what to expect from this series. Playing D1/D2 when you're an edgy teen and carrying that nostalgia forward is the key, here. MrMidnight posted:That seems to be the route for games that needed more time in the oven yes. poo poo the recent Witcher 3 next gen patch apparently wasn't ready either with all the PC issues I'm reading. However it's not impossible to release a game that just needs tiny fixes here and there at release. If casting Frost Nova causes my character to fart and then blast off to outer space that'll be a bug they fix like any other jank technical issue and I just won't play a sorc with that spell until it's fixed. If casting Frost Nova is worthless because everything is CC immune due to the devs listening to clowns telling them D3 is "too easy", then that's a design problem and it will probably be present throughout the game. The technical issues get ironed out fairly quickly but you have to wait for people to leave before you get to change core design values.
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Dec 17, 2022 07:40
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Jay Wilson was the most dangerous of the prime evils anyway. Motherfucker did his best to murder the franchise.
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Dec 17, 2022 08:06
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Is the seasonal thing a hotfix patch on switch? Because i havent had an update and theres no apparent change but i kind of assumed it might be a bit behind on switch
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Dec 17, 2022 08:43
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My biggest problems with D4 aren’t things you can really fix with patches. You can stabilize servers, adjust drop rates, and balance classes with regular updates, that kind of thing is expected. You can’t patch in more creativity for a game completely lacking in a distinct identity.
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Dec 17, 2022 08:47
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Node posted:Jay Wilson was the most dangerous of the prime evils anyway. Motherfucker did his best to murder the franchise.  tbh it's been kinda funny seeing some of the effort to rehabilitate jay wilson after cheng became the willing face of diablo immortal Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 09:04 on Dec 17, 2022 |
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Dec 17, 2022 09:02
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Herstory Begins Now posted:tbh it's been kinda funny seeing some of the effort to rehabilitate jay wilson after cheng became the willing face of diablo immortal The game he released was, overall, rear end. His recent "we always had all these things planned so why couldn't people withhold judgment for many years?!?" schtick also doesn't look good. Saying that you were also unhappy with the state the game released in doesn't mean anything when you were responsible for the design. Removing illusory choice was a good call, and there were several other good calls, but those don't mean much in a game you effectively finish in two days because further play requires dual wielding credit cards. I did find it funny, years later, when the much-maligned console release wound up being the blueprint for what saved it.
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Dec 17, 2022 10:08
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The console releases showed us that it was possible to run D3 as an offline game, and was all the better for it And then the PC still can't do that lmao
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Dec 17, 2022 10:09
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Node posted:Jay Wilson was the most dangerous of the prime evils anyway. Motherfucker did his best to murder the franchise. Don't forget he ruined world of warcraft on the way out
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Dec 17, 2022 14:15
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What did he do to WoW?
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Dec 17, 2022 17:11
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Dameius posted:What did he do to WoW? From what I recall, he had a "special thanks" in the credits for Warlords of Draenor. While that expansion had plenty of issues, I personally doubt Wilson was much of a hand behind them.
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Dec 17, 2022 18:53
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I haven't been following D4 news but it's going to have a battle pass? LMAO no loving way imma buy it.
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Dec 17, 2022 19:29
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Inzombiac posted:I haven't been following D4 news but it's going to have a battle pass? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOFCoT74wL0 sounds like monetization was the first thing they focused on figuring out. be nice if there's a non-awful game attached as well
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Dec 17, 2022 19:33
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Inzombiac posted:I haven't been following D4 news but it's going to have a battle pass? jesus christ
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Dec 17, 2022 19:35
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Maybe the first major expansion for Diablo IV will salvage the whole thing, much like it did for 3. It really does look like Diablo IV will be fun for the "which game did Blizzard lift this idea from wholesale" factor. That article that talked about the crunch, the lovely story elements that were considered and how even people who worked on it were lukewarm on the whole thing did dampen my enthusiasm to the point of me taking the "I'll wait for a sale after a few expansions and even then see what word of mouth is like" stance. I've been playing Overwatch 2 and every decision gone into that mess is been bad or worse, with new maps being mostly bad and it mainly being a vector to milk money out of people for the executives to get a few extra bucks before they're fired if the merger goes through (or continue to get a fat payday if it fails). It's pretty obvious where the focus of these "live service" games lie. At least in Overwatch's case it can coast on the solid foundation laid by the previous team while the slipshod house its built upon leaks and falls apart (the solid shooting and gameplay loop being that foundation), Diablo IV doesn't even have that.
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