General Gaming Diablo IV - Information Thread, update: "Season of the Construct" announcement trailer (January 23)

[Remarkableriots]

Diablo 4 just got a whole lot bloodier with the addition of the Blood Knights

WWW.VG247.COM

---

The Blood Knights have arrived in Diablo 4, bringing their unique brand of bloody carnage to the battlefield.

This is hilarious! 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

4 minutes ago, Remarkableriots said:

Diablo 4 just got a whole lot bloodier with the addition of the Blood Knights

WWW.VG247.COM

---

The Blood Knights have arrived in Diablo 4, bringing their unique brand of bloody carnage to the battlefield.

This is hilarious! 

 

OLOLOLOLOLOLO

 

That's a hilariously dick move, VG247 

[Paperclyp]

I’m legit confused. Did they do this on purpose or is it complete incompetence??

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

10 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

I’m legit confused. Did they do this on purpose or is it complete incompetence??

 

I'd say that it's completely on purpose

[Paperclyp]

2 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

I'd say that it's completely on purpose

They issued a correction now. I think it was not on purpose. 

 

It didn't really make sense to me even at a troll / joke. I felt like I was missing something. 

[DPCyric]

I got Diablo IV bundled with my Series X 🔥 I was really going to wait until they introduced set items but now I have no excuses 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Blizzard is currently broadcasting what amounts to an "emergency livestream" to explain the reasoning behind this week's update 1.1 debacle:

 

[legend]

It's crazy how volatile the game is. I haven't played in a while now, but shit like this keeps happening and it makes it completely pointless to try and build a character.

[Brick]

So what I'm hearing is wait a year for this to be like other MMOs and be better in its second year. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

4 hours ago, legend said:

It's crazy how volatile the game is. I haven't played in a while now, but shit like this keeps happening and it makes it completely pointless to try and build a character.

 

At this point, it's practically a coin flip as to whether your build will remain viable with the next patch release.

 

Unless you're playing as a Sorcerer because in that case, a 50/50 chance would actually represent an improvement!

[legend]

2 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

At this point, it's practically a coin flip as to whether your build will remain viable with the next patch release.

 

Unless you're playing as a Sorcerer because in that case, a 50/50 chance would actually represent an improvement!

 

I am actually playing a Sorcercer  

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

1 hour ago, legend said:

 

I am actually playing a Sorcercer  

 

My most sincere condolences 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

3 hours ago, Brick said:

So what I'm hearing is wait a year for this to be like other MMOs and be better in its second year. 

 

I'd say waiting until after the release of the first expansion would be a safe bet!

[Brick]

1 hour ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

I'd say waiting until after the release of the first expansion would be a safe bet!

 

Funny how MMOs can't seem to avoid this trap, and now that they wanted to kind of make this game an MMO it also fell into it (although Diablo III also was better after its first expansion, and it wasn't Mo-like I don't believe). 

[Firewithin]

11 hours ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

 

At this point, it's practically a coin flip as to whether your build will remain viable with the next patch release.

 

Unless you're playing as a Sorcerer because in that case, a 50/50 chance would actually represent an improvement!

I think the problem is that players seem to be a lot smarter than the devs and can break most classes with what they are given so they have to over react and mess everything up.

[AshsToAshs]

This reminds me so much of Diablo 3's awful launch.

Back then they had crazy low drop rates, because that helped increase prices on their real money auction house.

 

It took about a year or so for the community to completely die off, before the devs were like "ok, so we admit that no one liked that. We'll focus on making the game fun".

And, IMO, they did a pretty good job after that. I played a TON more after the removal of the auction house than I did before.

 

I think D4 is going to have a similar moment, where they realize having be this much of a grind is not going to keep the community interested.

[Paperclyp]

I find that many live games do a poor job at explaining what I should be doing and why I should be doing it. I'm not even capable of having an opinion on the state of the game because I can't keep track of what resources do what, what I'm supposed to be doing with my equipment, etc. I will say this is not particularly an issue for me yet because I'm playing this game at my own (slow) pace, but I did complete the campaign and started a new class with the new season. I plan on just leaving him up to 50 and going from there. 

 

But yeah it seems a lot of games nowadays want you to take time to watch youtube videos and whatnot to learn optimal end game strategies, builds, what you should do and when, and while Diablo has been adequate at just letting me play it as I naturally would, I usually have this nagging feeling that I am wasting some time by not playing it in the optimal way. For example, I can't beat the dungeon that gets you World Tier 3 on my own (i'm a sorcerer). I'm level 51. I understand that I could probably get better just basic skill wise at the game, but I am also getting my ass handed to me in that dungeon by the boss, like I feel like I have 0 chance of beating it. But I'm not sure if it's like, hey, my class build is trash (which it probably is) or if I need better shit (which I probably do), or if I do do that stuff if the enemies will just scale in such a way that it'll always be pretty difficult. 

 

I just don't feel like the game itself is good at communicating these things. 

[Bacon]

Nuts how some people on YT and Reddit are still slobbering on Blizzard's knob and saying shit like," Wow they are owning up to their mistakes and actually apologizing. Blizzard is b-Based! All the issues they caused, it's only going to take weeks to fix all of them." It's really that last point that is nuts to hear. They are rolling out "fixes" to something they "broke" all at once.

 

This is a classic blizzard move.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

As a long time Destiny player this kind of thing isn’t surprising. But where Blizzard went wrong here was we barely had this game before stuff got nerfed hard. We didn’t expect this many nerfs as nothing was communicated in advance. And there was virtually no buffs to counter the nerfs. 
 

the best builds are still the best builds, they’re just worse now. This didn’t make other builds more worth using. They slowed down XP gains, made players weaker in defense and damage output. In one fell swoop Blizzard made the game less rewarding and fun for everyone as a surprise. And the new “content” in the season we had to wait a month and half after the launch of the game to start playing isn’t worth the wait. 
 

as somebody who has bought every season pass in Destiny, this will probably be my only premium pass in Diablo 4. It looks to be such an obnoxious grind to get to lvl 100 with nothing new in the game to do. The franchise name is the only thing keeping this from dying, because like every other live service game chasing Destiny and Warframe, Blizzard put the cart before the horse by trying to make a game they expect you to play every waking moment without content that feels engaging beyond however long it took to beat the campaign. 

[XxEvil AshxX]

Anybody playing this and getting upset about balancing changes and nerfs has obviously never played an mmo/live service game, ever. If you think you've made the "perfect build" and that it will exist two months from now, you're just setting yourself up.

 

it's the nature of the beast. Devs make a game. Players find ways to make game-breaking builds. Devs nerf game-breaking builds so that no longer break the game. Players find new ways to make game-breaking builds. It's the eternal conflict, fuck the angels and demons.

 

To play a game like this is to understand that your build will not be viable forever.

[Bacon]

Q: But why are we only getting 1 extra stash tab? What is the problem to add a load of them or even unlimited?

 

A: When we say they are expensive what we mean is that they create a lot of memory overhead. When you see another player in game you load them and their entire stash filled with all their items. This is what teams are working diligently to improve so that we can have more asap. - Joseph Piepiora via twitter

[CitizenVectron]

58 minutes ago, Bacon said:

Q: But why are we only getting 1 extra stash tab? What is the problem to add a load of them or even unlimited?

 

A: When we say they are expensive what we mean is that they create a lot of memory overhead. When you see another player in game you load them and their entire stash filled with all their items. This is what teams are working diligently to improve so that we can have more asap. - Joseph Piepiora via twitter

 

lol, such a BS excuse. You're loading, what...another few dozen lines of text that represent the items. Total BS.

[Firewithin]

after dozens of hours and on a new character I finally ran into the butcher and he fucked me up lol

[legend]

7 hours ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

Anybody playing this and getting upset about balancing changes and nerfs has obviously never played an mmo/live service game, ever. If you think you've made the "perfect build" and that it will exist two months from now, you're just setting yourself up.

 

it's the nature of the beast. Devs make a game. Players find ways to make game-breaking builds. Devs nerf game-breaking builds so that no longer break the game. Players find new ways to make game-breaking builds. It's the eternal conflict, fuck the angels and demons.

 

To play a game like this is to understand that your build will not be viable forever.

 

I expect a build to be able to last for a least a couple of weeks or to even be able to spend some time planning one, like I did in D2. And if the norm is that volatile, then everyone else sucks too.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The main issue with the recent 1.1 update was that it was practically ALL nerfs with no buffs to compensate.  It was essentially "all stick/no carrot" which seemingly came out of nowhere.

 

I agree that it's unreasonable to expect that a build will remain viable for the long-term in a live-service game.  However, Diablo IV is only about 1.5 months old and that just doesn't seem long enough to implement such a stringent update.

 

It's also become obvious that someone on the development team has a personal vendetta against the Sorcerer class as that's the only explanation that I can come up with as to why they keep kicking that class while it's down!

[Xbob42]

I've honestly never understood the "oh no, some players are powerful, let's fuck up the game and piss everyone off immediately" mentality Blizzard always has. Who was pissed off that some builds were too powerful? I'd wager the number outside of Blizzard is pretty close to zero. Now who's pissed off with all the changes they made? According to their sad boy faces during that pathetic, whimpering livestream, I'd say pretty much everyone. And instead of just reverting it and spending more time making better, more permanent fixes at a more opportune time, they were just like "lol here's why we're fucking idiots" -- like, bro, I've played WoW for almost 20 years, I already know why you're idiots, but that's probably also why you made this move to begin with instead of waiting.

 

These kinds of changes would be much less "visible" during a season change or with a bunch of other changes. But Blizzard gonna Blizzard.

You remember when they'd ban people for getting to slightly out of bounds places in WoW like getting on top of Ironforge and seeing the airstrip? Good times. There's a huge difference between keeping your shit balanced (which shouldn't have been too difficult in the 600 year dev window) and being the fun police and making sure no one's having too good of a time.

The burden of a livestream game should always be 100% on the devs and never on the players. This is the complete opposite. Yes, of course things will get balanced down or nerfed eventually, but holy shit guys, way to not even try.

[XxEvil AshxX]

11 hours ago, legend said:

 

I expect a build to be able to last for a least a couple of weeks or to even be able to spend some time planning one, like I did in D2. And if the norm is that volatile, then everyone else sucks too.

 

I could have told anyone before this game even released, that there were going to be multitudes of balancing patches for at least the first six months.

 

Not saying it doesn't suck, but it's just expected at this point.

[Paperclyp]

I wonder how much of the nerfing is a reactionary thing due to the game being live service. Like fear out of some people being able to get to the end of a battle pass way too early and then spreading how to do that. 

 

If you stop and think too hard about it, it makes you question the entire reason a game like this even exists. 

[Chris-]

There should only be buffs/nerfs if there are significant imbalance issues in PvP; implementing them for PvE content is lame as hell.

[Spawn_of_Apathy]

4 hours ago, Paperclyp said:

I wonder how much of the nerfing is a reactionary thing due to the game being live service. Like fear out of some people being able to get to the end of a battle pass way too early and then spreading how to do that. 

 

If you stop and think too hard about it, it makes you question the entire reason a game like this even exists. 

Oh these are definitely nerfs targeted mostly at the top percentage of players, but it’s going to reverberate down through the player base. It’s trying to stop people that no life the game with 40-50+ hours a week into the game from maxing out and fucking off to play something else. But it ends up meaning the rest of players struggle or even never max out. Never complete the battle pass, and never get even a single seasonal character to lvl 100. 

[CitizenVectron]

Blizzard's main issue is that they sell 99% of their copies to regular players and then balance their games for the 1% who try and be competitive. Same thing with Overwatch, where they balanced characters for professional players and as a result some characters were basically useless for regular players who didn't have the same skill.

[elbobo]

1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

Blizzard's main issue is that they sell 99% of their copies to regular players and then balance their games for the 1% who try and be competitive. Same thing with Overwatch, where they balanced characters for professional players and as a result some characters were basically useless for regular players who didn't have the same skill.

 

yep they are balancing for the handful of sreamers/obsessors that have spreadsheets of data they pour over to squeeze the most out of their build after putting in 100 hours into the game a week, all the while most players probably haven't even beat Lilith on WT1 yet 

[Firewithin]

started a rogue and going with a flurry build and while it started out squishy, i just hit my capstone passive and its been feeling really good now

[Paperclyp]

On 7/24/2023 at 2:41 PM, CitizenVectron said:

Blizzard's main issue is that they sell 99% of their copies to regular players and then balance their games for the 1% who try and be competitive. Same thing with Overwatch, where they balanced characters for professional players and as a result some characters were basically useless for regular players who didn't have the same skill.

 

On 7/24/2023 at 4:14 PM, elbobo said:

 

yep they are balancing for the handful of sreamers/obsessors that have spreadsheets of data they pour over to squeeze the most out of their build after putting in 100 hours into the game a week, all the while most players probably haven't even beat Lilith on WT1 yet 

For me, at least, though, it feels profoundly different than an overwatch thing. Like, I see the outrage about 1.1 and I have absolutely no idea what people are mad about without looking into it. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be upset, I’m just saying that for me, the casual Diablo player, nothing has changed other than I have more stuff to do and more bars to try to fill up. I would say I’m enjoying the game more than pre patch. 

[PaladinSolo]

On 7/24/2023 at 3:41 PM, CitizenVectron said:

Blizzard's main issue is that they sell 99% of their copies to regular players and then balance their games for the 1% who try and be competitive. Same thing with Overwatch, where they balanced characters for professional players and as a result some characters were basically useless for regular players who didn't have the same skill.

They did this with Starcraft 2, each expansion they added devastating AOE units that in a pros hand isn't so bad cause the guy they're playing against is also damn fast, but in normies hands you blink and you just lost your whole army, stuff like this also happens in pro games, but the game is worse off because of it.

 

A lot of there problems also stem from modern gaming revenue where they can't just sell you a 60+ dollar game anymore they now have to get you to buy shit so you end up with endless grinds or buy this to get around it.  Live service games are generally a no from me anymore cause of this.