It's not a game I really talk about. It's pretty shallow but that's the genre. I just like to kill demons and zone out listening to music or something. It's a time killer not the next coming of Christ.
But it’s not the genre, last epoch, chronicon, grim dawn, and even Poe which I don’t particularly like are deeper and all around better. The fun of the genre is making a build and testing it against mobs. There is no theory crafting in d4 and not even fun loot.
Guess I'm just to casual really, I don't min max or anything, stumble into a build and if it works then fun if not just tinker with it a bit until it does what I want. D4 is pretty low I'm build variety etc but it's pretty fun regardless, I can only put In a few hundred hours into the others before I'm bored, this is no exception so I'd rather just play the new thing because it's new, it's one of the lower entrys of the genre, but still fun enough to warrant playing
Pretty much this. Find something interesting, figure out how it works, figure out how to make it work, enjoy yourself until you get bored of it and find something else or balance changes alter it.
D4 has... none of that
There's zero point in attempting to talk about D4 on Ganker because every thread has 50 schizos who act like Blizzard raped them, so they act like crazy ex-girlfriends and sperg out like crazy.
If it was just one schizo then he could easily be ignored. Unfortunately it was like half of the posters in every D4 thread leading up to release and like 1-2 weeks post-release too.
>you now remember that d3 came out over a decade ago >nobody learned from that, not customers, not developers
there's a reason they all feel raped
they were dumb enough to fall for a worse product a decade after a company failed majorly and now they've done it and more (or less depending on how you look at it)
can't wait for them to just take it offline for 'diablo 5' (an even further scaled down d4)
as someone who hasn't played it, it is visibly, obviously less fun to play. doesn't even look remotely close.
they even got the camera distance wrong.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>camera distance wrong.
What does that even mean?
I've played both, d3 is faster but everything is more floaty and less meaningful for lack of any better way to put it.
It's a very trivial feeling game, nothing in it feels like it matters when you're playing it, it's much more transparently just a skinner box.
>wrong, it's the same just with more crap you don't actually care about
Except we have aspects in this game which are more interesting and the gear isn't all set garbage you have to equip for 5,000x effectiveness.
The affixes themselves tend to be slightly more interesting, though I'd still argue they're on the boring side, still 100% better.
>debatable
Not debatable at all, aesthetics and atmosphere are arguably what d4 does best and even people panning the game give it credit for this, d3 was an actual joke on release and it still is. >wrong
not an argument >uber wrong
I'm very convinced
You quoted me on the last point and didn't even have a counterpoint, are you actually brain damaged?
>gearing
wrong, it's the same just with more crap you don't actually care about >aesthetic and atmosphere
debatable, while more 'diablo-like' it's too literally 'hell on earth' brown and bland and I'd rather be in unicorn land than look at d4 for even a minute >world
wrong >monsters
uber wrong >character appearance
kek I can't believe how bad d3 is and how much worse d4 is it literally has almost nothing over d3 what a time to be alive
you just can't discuss video games here anymore unless they're flavor of the month.
games from a long running popular series like FF, Diablo, WoW, Zelda have the worst threads filled with nothing but complaining that the devs have "reskinned" the previous game or that the new game isn't as good as a game from 20 years ago
the people actually playing these games are certainly not coming here to try and discuss them
Or at least they're not going to bother discussing them in this climate.
I've been playing plenty of Diablo 4 but you're not going to catch me dead actually discussing anything about it here in this environment.
That's because those people don't exist not to a substantial degree, its why these companies always end up performing layoffs after this shit because it isn't selling well enough contrary to the bullshit they post to make people buy it thinking its popular
The people who make these threads are the poorgays who constantly go "imagine paying Blizzard $70." There are tons of people playing the game. We're too busy working on our characters, getting ready for the season. There's no reason to post constantly.
This. I played every day since release until last week when I got all my best legendaries on one character. No reason to grind for better rolls for 2 weeks just to start over.
Why are people exited about the season where they delete your character and force you to skip grind all those sidequests and dungeons for renown? Seriously, what the frick are they thinking with this decision?
You dont need all of the renown bonuses, currently most decently built chars will be able to do content dozens of levels above them once they ~70 since thats when you will likely acquire good 3-4 mod gear
Threads died out about 3 weeks ago. I tried making a thread to talk about it last week since there were none on the board all day -- barely anyone spoke
https://arch.b4k.co/v/thread/643573461/#q643573461
I'm guessing any of the remaining players have already surpassed the honeymoon period
Even the consumers on reddit were starting to turn on the game
This. I played every day since release until last week when I got all my best legendaries on one character. No reason to grind for better rolls for 2 weeks just to start over.
What's the point? Did you watch the dev videos? They are adding almost nothing to the game. The biggest thing they are adding is the gay FOMO battlepass that you both already paid $30 for
At least a bunch of good games are releasing soon that weren't made by Blizzard
Reminder that he admitted to stopping at level ~47, as a DRUID and not doing WT3 at all.
A large majority of his complaints are addressed by WT3. As a Druid main, the class is absolute fricking dogshit 35 - 51 unless you go Trampleslide. Yet, the game will constantly bait you into going a Companions build.
I also played Diablo 2 up until launch and this dude's nostaglia goggles are fricking welded on. By his own logic, he would have stopped at finishing Normal, who in the actual frick does that.
>he would have stopped at finishing Normal, who in the actual frick does that
Diablo 4 isn't compelling enough to play once the slog fricking hits (and it hits hard)
You slave away in the digital coal mines performing mindnumbingly boring tasks wasting as much of your time as possible to get a casino rare drop and a little bit of extra stats every once in a while. “Content players” and “hours played per $” players are a scourge
What's a casino coal mine?
Is that an American cultural reference?
https://i.imgur.com/rpZZm3E.jpg
What went wrong? Is the casino coal mine genre just a dead end?
I thought the game is like a casino and you're underground all the fricking time like a coal miner. This is a smarter answer tho. Lol, wither way, I laughed.
Reminder that he admitted to stopping at level ~47, as a DRUID and not doing WT3 at all.
A large majority of his complaints are addressed by WT3. As a Druid main, the class is absolute fricking dogshit 35 - 51 unless you go Trampleslide. Yet, the game will constantly bait you into going a Companions build.
I also played Diablo 2 up until launch and this dude's nostaglia goggles are fricking welded on. By his own logic, he would have stopped at finishing Normal, who in the actual frick does that.
The world tier system doesn't justify how dogshit the level scaling feels for the 40 hours you play the campaign and renown farming. In fact it makes it worse by forcing you to want to skip everything so you can push for the end of game where it starts feeling like a real video game
>Reminder that he admitted to stopping at level ~47 >played game for 20+ hours >does not enjoy the game >quits the game and makes video explaining why he does not like the game
I don't know anything about this guy and im not gonna watch the video, but this seems perfectly reasonable to me.
>game is dogshit unless you go one specific build for the entirety of your time that needs specific aspects to even use
And this is an argument in favor of the game?
>Run around right clicking shit >Level up, get weaker >Finish main story >Run around right clicking shit >Unlock teh epig divviguldy and divine legondaries or watever :DDDDDDD >Run around right clicking shit
Not enough content
Bad design philosphy
They are going to drip feed interesting things because GaaS model
Aspects should have been support skill gems, but most of them are moronic "do x% more damage if Y"
Instead of getting fun stuff like "frost nova is cast at target location (not exactly high hanging fruit) or maybe even spicy stuff like "convert cold damage to fire damage and it inflicts burning for X damage" we get "fun" stuff like "Do 25% more damage when you have a barrier" and "Do 25% more damage while you have a barrier and the enemy is vulnerable" and "Do 35% more damage while the enemy is frozen, stunned, or immobilized".
I suspect in a few years time the meta will be exclusively using skills that are good without augmenting aspects ( such as 'ball lightnings now orbit) so you can squeeze as many of the inevitable slew of "do X% more damage if Y" on your equipment as possible
Video games don't have soul anymore, they aren't made for fun just for monetary purposes or too push the creators shitty ideologies
You can tell with the first two diablos it was made by a small team of developers that were making something fun and interesting with money just being secondary
diablo 4 makes me physically tired. like it's so boring I actually have a hard time staying awake playing it. I can be well-rested and caffeinated but when I boot up D4 and get 10 mins into a session my eyelids get heavy
Good foundations in gameplay, littered with some moronic design decisions. >Combat feels good, animations are solid and the sound design is top-notch and hits hard >Game visually looks goods, both graphically and art design wise >Gear system is interesting enough (to a point, and that point comes too soon) >Aspects are a somewhat unique way to build your character and give rare items identity
>The mount is buggy as shit and feels horrible to use >Endgame content is dry as frick, you practically have Nightmare Dungeons only and they are boring >Mandatory ""puzzles"" / intermission rooms in dungeons that exist just to waste time >Nightmare dungeon mods aren't interesting/fun, just tedious (Lightning strikes, explosion on death, etc) >Too many mobs have explode on death mods which kills momentum entirely >Towns are designed to waste as much of your time as possible with stashes placed far away from vendors >Stash space is non-existent >Re-rolling alts is shit because of the way gear drops and their equip levels are tied to character level (e.g. a level 95 char will only drop gear that can be equipped by 95+ chars) >Gear upgrades after you hit WT4 / around 80, become miniscule and non-existent >Build diversity is horrendous because the balance is shit. Sorc as a class barely exists and every other class has 3/4 builds that are worth looking at. >Barb and Druid levelling is horrendous (This shouldn't have to be offset by their power levels at end-game being good) >Respeccing paragon boards is a pain in the ass (No respec all button, have to do it point-by point)
There is probably a lot of other stuff I'm missing. The game can be good but the design team made some fricking moronic decisions, mostly just to waste your time in game. Will be a lot better after a year or two I feel.
You missed the absolute biggest flaw in the game that fundamentally makes it unfun and will be the single biggest cause for players quitting.
The level scaling.
Your criticisms are actually pretty generous. The game needs a major overhaul before it could ever become fun for me.
To put it simply, these games are about two basic things
1. The Loot to gear with
2. The Progression of your character into a power fantasy
1. Combat is fricking garbage and a major weak point. The flow of combat is completely stilted and held back by the resource system. Mvmt is slow, characters gain barely any power with levels
2. Sounds is garbage you fricking shill. Terrible almost non existent music; just ambient shrill noises
3. Graphics - literally the only selling point
4.Aspects - fricking trash that should be on the passive skill tree
Blizzard is a mega corporation. This is entirely the reason for D4's low quality.
Humans have proven time and time again that they are incapable of organizing large groups of people (communism). A small group of 3-5 devs can produce way more value/fun than a large group of 100+ pajeets. Think about it: Grim Dawn and Path of Exile were created by small teams, and those games are infinitely better than D4.
None. I think D2 really drives Blizzard into a corner, because there is no way they can ever create a Diablo game better than the originals. For the rest of time, people will be comparing modern Diablo games to the original games, and every time the modern games will be worse.
Diablo is basically a dead IP in this respect - nu-Diablo will always be overshadowd by old Diablo.
I think the only thing D4 does better than D2R is having much better character cosmetic options. But we're comparing it to a game two decades old so that makes sense
That's all I've got for you
I wanted to like D4, but with the S1 reveal, I'm pretty disheartened. Will no doubt grind through the season journey and call it quits within a week or less until S2, just like D3. While I'm looking forward to hopefully more improvements coming with next reset in D2 and will no doubt put another 2-3 weeks into it regardless.
Serious reply here.
What makes you stop playing either game? When you "solve" it. How the game becomes solved? You master and know everything that is needed to be done to achieve anything in the game. So if you have played Diablo 2 before and have done all challenges and you know exactly what you need to do - there is no reason, there is no fun to play it again.
Diablo 4 plays a bit differently, but I'm amazed how quickly players have "solved" this game. And I haven't played it, I've only seen some streams, and I think that item drops don't change the way you play the game. Or maybe they do, but it's not much. In Diablo 2 or PoE - it's completely opposite, and I'll explain how.
When I played Diablo II 20 years ago, do you know how much it took me to beat Hell? One year. And the most recent playthrough? Two weeks. Beating Mephisto on Hell took me a couple of hours for the first time. On my last character I could do it in 3 minutes on /players 8. But yes, to get there you have to have a lot of hours played on a lot of characters, so you finally know all the small details of every encounter. It's not very easy to "solve" the game without reading a lot of guides (it spoils your game experience) and without playing for many days.
Is Diablo 4 like that? Can you make HUGE leaps in efficiency after you learn how to play after 500+ hours?
No I didn't mean it like that.
Imagine two people started fresh. One is a new guy, who maybe played some ARPGs before and another guy is Diablo 4 veteran. How faster a veteran will beat the game than a new guy? Can a new guy even encounter impassable stuff?
10 months ago
Anonymous
i get what your saying but in the case of D4 that is still true especially how broken vulnerability mechanics are, a vetern will know when to use a leveling build and when you go into vulnerability once he has the right item power/ stat spike
D4 no lifers will also kill uber Lilith while Baal is something everyone will kill eventually
I have played Diablo 2 again to see how fast I can make it to Baal on Hell and defeat him. I started as Amazon Charged Strike build and dropped some good items early in the game, it allowed me to go smoothly until Hell Act 2. There were bugs that were lightning immune that I couldn't pass to progress through the act. So I started to farm for gear, until a big flamberge with fire damage dropped. Flamberge is a 2-handed sword, amazons don't use it! But what did I do: I gave it to my Act V (from earlier difficulty) hireling, and it allowed me to go past the bugs! But my gameplay has changed: instead of attacking enemies with my spear, I let my hireling kill them. Of course, a good +all resist armor was needed, but luckily I dropped it before. Otherwise my strategy wouldn't work: bugs would kill a hireling instantly with charged bolts.
Next obstacle was the Ancients in Arreat Summit. One of them is immune to Lightning by default. They kill a hireling INSTANTLY no matter what armor he has. This time I was sure the playthrough was over, but I tried farming and getting stronger, but no meaningful upgrades dropped for my build. Then I checked a vendor and found a staff with Lower Resist charges - it allowed me to bypass Lightning Immunity. Then some gg items dropped (new armor, new 2-handed sword for my merc, resist and hp charms) - it allowed me to finally overcome the Ancients. But if a good bow dropped, I could change my spec. If good runes dropped, I could make myself a better weapon or armor. If uniques that gives auras dropped, my merc would amplify me greatly, or other way around.
So what I'm saying that drops are rare as frick, but they can be VERY impactful, otherwise you won't make it through. And in Diablo 4 there is no "hard" gear checks and the gear is standard and only offers very small upgrades to your current gear, doesn't even change the way you are pressing buttons on your keyboard and mouse. And why even play then?
What is it about this game, and really Blizzard games in general, that bring out the absolute worst poopsocking psychopaths the internet has to offer?
They get the game and nolife it for 300 hours squeezing every last drop of entertainment value from it, getting their character as high level as possible, grinding out their reknown, getting all the legendaries they want etc.
And then they complain that the game is too short and has no content and they want updates.
Like, you finished it. You played through it, got to the end, did everything there was to do. It's over. Either start a new character and play it again (which is why they have new seasons, to encourage you to do another playthrough) or go do something else.
I don't understand people with these games.
because Diablo games use to be good. for many people like myself, Diablo 1/2 is one of their favorite games ever made. to see Blizzard frick it's corpse is embarrassing
not everyone played 300 hours feels that the game has major flaws. I I refunded my copy of the game after the beta because I knew what the game would be like after launch
thousands of people have already posted their iterations on why the game is stale or unrewarding for them that go beyond just exhausting content from the game
your post is disingenuous if you pretend that this is the sole reason your strawmen don't like D4
I don't feel sorry for anyone that fell for their aggressive marketing and FOMO tactics. I'm just here to discuss ARPGs in general and looking at D4 post mortem is good for discussion
Blizzard isn't Blizzard North and doesn't know how to ARPG. It's designed by committee, metrics and analytics. The knee jerk changes from beta to release and during EA, show they haven't a fricking clue what they're doing.
If 4's story was utter garbage are we ever going to criticize 2 for it's story?
Doubt it.
I'll love when this place calls the story for this game great in 10 years when it's no longer cool to hate it and gets in the hands of third worlders (half this board).
I'll start "with what about it is actually better?"
Do you actually have any real points to that sort of defense or are you just defending it because it's Diablo 2 and it's cool to love Diablo 2?
I asked you a question you fricking Black person. Don't deflect
10 months ago
Anonymous
My problem is with the fact that you could just rerelease Diablo 2 under a different name and you tards would tear it to shreds, you don't need there to be a point.
Your mind is already set in stone.
My point is that this place holds colossal double standards that will never be fricking addressed, you'll just change your mind or stop talking about this in ten years and act like you were never this moronic.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>could just rerelease Diablo 2 under a different name and you tards would tear it to shreds, you don't need there to be a point.
This is sophistry and doesnt address the question. Name your contentions with the story of diablo II. You've failed to provide an argument. D4 has obvious plot issues, a contrived story arc, and retcons several important aspects of established lore. NAME YOUR FRICKING CONTENTIONS WITH D2 YOU SALTY DIVERSITY HIRE FRICK
10 months ago
Anonymous
>D4 has obvious plot issues
Like? >a contrived story arc
How so?
10 months ago
Anonymous
>plot issues
Lilith the main antagonist is given a role in the creation of sanctuary that is not canonically hers. She is given preternatural importance and plot armor because "muh women" >contrivances
Dumbass girl given major important roles in a serious matter when she is not important nor sturdy enough for the role she is given. Major characters die in seemingly nonsensical ways. Due diligence and importance not given to the disappearance of a soul stone.
Again, what are your contentions with D2? You have named nothing of substance
10 months ago
Anonymous
>and plot armor
But your completely out of nowhere character beats her ass before we even get DLC for the game, I don't think that phrase means what you think it means. >Dumbass girl given major important roles in a serious matter when she is not important nor sturdy enough for the role she is given
Okay, I'll actually give you that, though we haven't seen the consequences for her actions yet either.
As far as I can tell she is 100% going to get corrupted by the soulstone she took with her and it will become a major plot point in the expansions. >Major characters die in seemingly nonsensical ways
I'll actually give you that too, but I don't think it particularly tore the story down as much as you'd b***h about it being awful.
The vast majority of the story was incredibly inoffensive, this is practically coming down to nitpicking.
>Again, what are your contentions with D2?
I think an easy first one would be that I actually can't remember frickall about it, it's forgettable, barebones and barely serves as a backdrop to work as context for why you're killing shit.
It is virtually a non story.
I've played the game and practically have to go searching around the internet to even find a summary, maybe that's why you think it's so hard to criticize, there's nothing there.
That itself is an easy obvious problem.
It's basically just quest dialogue you skip throughout the game, and don't lie and claim you actually followed half of it start to finish or like any of it was actually meaningful when playing the game.
10 months ago
Anonymous
> i dont remember it that means it doesnt exist
moron
10 months ago
Anonymous
Great post, very worth talking to you.
10 months ago
Anonymous
What the frick do you want? You didnt offer up any substantive claim and handwaved established lore over "I didnt read it so it doesnt exist".
I've been doing a bunch of the side quests so I'm only in Act 4. I mean, when I max out my character I'm usually done with these games unless I decide to roll a new character, or in this case, play the new season. I don't need to play this religiously every day for the next 5 years. I'll throw my time into it, get bored and move on to my new flavor of the month, and kaybe come back to it to play new seasons.
I don't just play a singular game, I play bunches of them.
Nothing went wrong. The amount of people still playing is more or less the amount of real ARPG casino morons who are actually hooked on the genre. MOST people who bought it, are 1 play through casuals.
I am a casual. I always liked Diablo for fun gameplay, atmosphere, and godtier soundtrack. I played every game and finished them. Some I replayed several times.
It is you no-life, NEET Black folk who are so autistically adamant on grinding same fricking mobs a billion times for meaningless, low-drop chance loot, which doesn't it even make sense considering this isn't even for a poopsocking MMO prestige.
As a former PoEgay I've been enjoying it, but I've also been playing it fairly casually.
PoE has been bloated garbage for years now that isn't exactly much better on most fronts.
it's just doing the same shit over and over but incrementally getting faster at it. Yes that describes a lot of games, but diablo wants you to do it for hundreds of hours
Yes. ARPGs have reached an end. There's basically nowhere else to go.
The problem is that psychotic optimization over the years has resulted in the goal of a modern ARPG being to not actually have to interact with the game. Things become smoother, but you can't step back from that. In pursuit of a perfectly smooth and satisfying experience, we have essentially done everything in our power to transform them into a Vampire Survivors type experience.
Because complicated gameplay means your numbers aren't going up as smoothly as they could
Because actual mechanical difficulty means your numbers aren't going up as smoothly as they could
Because player interaction means your numbers aren't going up as smoothly as they could
Because anything more than pressing a single button and then scanning over loot means your numbers aren't going up as smoothly as they could.
The goal of an ARPG is to not have to play the ARPG. It's so fricking stupid. We've reached the point where we might as well just load up the character builder for any given game, because that has the gameplay we want but skips all that annoying gameplay, which is really what we want.
It's not though, because gacha games don't tend to actually be fun or have any meaningful gameplay.
How can it be an evolution if it's a step back on the most important part?
The only fun part of a gacha is buying new thing and getting your short little burst of fun using it for a bit, by design, as a rule.
It's simply how these games maintain profit.
this is why gacha games are popular, cut the gameplay to the most dopamine inducing parts and add in a casino
it's the final evolution of gaming
youre both wrong in basically every way
-for one gacha games arent popular. they are only popular in asia, except for
-genshin impact, which is a real game, and has the fun parts of games, unlike other gachas which are basically all not real games
Except genshin isn't actually fun for very long, you hit what I would generously call midgame and have to farm artifacts, which is gated by a resource and meant to get you to waste your time and feel frustrated till you pay them more money.
Even genshin suffers from being a gacha, it would be much better as a non gacha game that you just pay 60$ for upfront.
>Even genshin suffers from being a gacha, it would be much better as a non gacha game that you just pay 60$ for upfront.
lmao, it would have 1/8 as much content. as it stands it has a bigger and deeper world than any similar game, and the world is about to hugely expand
games like genshin *can't* exist under a typical $60 model because it has more content than those games
10 months ago
Anonymous
>as it stands it has a bigger and deeper world than any similar game
Yeah, because it's a massive outlier for a gacha game in that it actually tries on some level to be a real game, which is only viable because it can capture a massive audience due to lack of competition. >games like genshin *can't* exist under a typical $60 model because it has more content than those games
Wrong.
Genshin has less meaningful content than games like totk which are actually made to be games. >tell the other 60 million ppl
This is the weakest argument ever, sales=/=quality, in fact sales usually come by offering the most inoffensive, watered down product possible.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>Wrong. >Genshin has less meaningful content than games like totk which are actually made to be games.
incorrect by an order of magnitude. you are saying what you think has to be true-- it's not true. what I said was true
totk is an awful, $70 cash grab. Genshin's world is larger and *far* denser in terms of content. It isn't even a competition. And genshin's world is about to get massively enlarged with underwater swimming added.
10 months ago
Anonymous
Well, if you enjoy genshin more power to you.
It's pretty clear you don't actually want to discuss it point for point and want to just stand on a hill of "it's better because I said so" and also clearly have massive bias.
I've played both games, I really don't care about this trash argument if you're going to duck out like that.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>It's pretty clear you don't actually want to discuss it point for point
no, I don't want to discuss it point for point. You haven't/don't play genshin impact, just like most people who want to talk about it, and hilariously compare it negatively to totk, which is about as bad of a product that can be shat out for $70
genshin impact has content of *multiple AAA games*
this is *only possible because of its development model*
this is not an argument or a discussion-- it is me informing you of something you do not know about
the industry has changed. sometimes you are just wrong. you should go play it.
10 months ago
Anonymous
I've played like a 100 hours of genshin.
I fricking wasted money getting Raiden Shogun, jump off a fricking cliff.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>100 hours >like it's a lot
10 months ago
Anonymous
>You haven't/don't play genshin impact
yes and now the game world is like 3 times larger/longer than the version of the game you had played to
so i just won the argument, even to you. go look at the map.
if you compare genshin negatively to totk based on value you don't have a leg to stand on and are attempting to make a stupid as frick argument. fricking $70 6 year retread. literally pathetic/an insult.
And the game sucks enough that I don't feel like coming back, just because I can play more for free now doesn't mean it's worth my time.
10 months ago
Anonymous
yes and now the game world is like 3 times larger/longer than the version of the game you had played to
so i just won the argument, even to you. go look at the map.
if you compare genshin negatively to totk based on value you don't have a leg to stand on and are attempting to make a stupid as frick argument. fricking $70 6 year retread. literally pathetic/an insult.
gacha games are incredibly popular in the west you just don't hear about them because normies play then and don't talk about them...
countless gacha games are in the west.. afk arena, raid shadow legends, etc.
well the most popular gacha games are just distilled versions of there genre:
1. Genshin - RPG with party building that rolves around one skill rotation that one shots everything
2. Blue Archive - Solo MMO-style raids focused on a couple boss mechanics
3. Nikke - Time crisis/arcade shooter without the need for movement
And none of them really stand particularly strongly on their gameplay other than genshin, and even genshin is at best just ok from a gameplay perspective.
That's the best example in your "superior" genre I can pull from for talking about gameplay, so why the frick would I give your genre the credit of being "distilled" or somehow superior in terms of gameplay, it might be more accessible, but it's not any of that.
it doesn't matter if the gameplay isn't amazing, the point is that you don't have to go through the bullshit to get to the fun part
for example D4 as a gacha game would be like you said, just one skill that one shot everything because having "builder" skills that you have to use to get to the "fun" skill is a common criticism
10 months ago
Anonymous
So like I said then, accessibility, gameplay loop.
A good gameplay loop is important but if I end up wasting my time with subpar gameplay it doesn't have much keeping me there.
> just one skill that one shot everything because having "builder" skills that you have to use to get to the "fun" skill is a common criticism
Yeah, and it'd be significantly worse for that.
10 months ago
Anonymous
>itd be worse if the gameplay were better and not dogshit
oh frick off
10 months ago
Anonymous
>click 1 button everything dies is good gameplay
I hope you die, this race to the bottom mentality degrades everything it touches.
You probably play fricking MOBA trash.
10 months ago
Anonymous
ok, tell me the reason why builder skills are necessary in D4's gameplay loop? and if you don't get what i'm saying i'm asking why you would include anything in a gameplay loop that's not fun
10 months ago
Anonymous
Builder skills add their own individual use cases, but also give you something to use for lower powered mobs.
Basically having a dynamic between builders and finishers means target priority is more important in the gameplay, you use your builders against trash and your finishers on priority targets and in situations when your build may give you significantly more resources to spend.
This can also be fun because you can try and build around removing builders entirely, or around set windows where you spam your spenders, which I don't think I even need to argue is fun, you clearly prefer the spender skills and like spamming them.
Not being able to spam them all the time, then getting to conditionally spam them because of something you built for is more satisfying, there'd be nothing special about spender skills if you got to use them 24/7 and then you'd complain about something else. >Make the builders actually interesting to use
Except you very obviously would rather they just not exist, you don't like resource management at all.
You want spam spam unga bunga spam ugh me smash, it's fine, you're moronic, half the people who play diablo are it's the niche it has I get it.
I have no idea what you're doing wrong if your builder skills are doing 1% of mob health anywhere in the game, let alone at endgame, I was 2-3 shotting most mobs with just fricking frenzy while my barb was still alive and I didn't even have full ancestral gear.
10 months ago
Anonymous
yes that would make sence if this was a card game or turn based RPG we're talking about, but for D4 everyone just uses their builder skills out of combat and then one shots everything anyways with their spender skill
10 months ago
Anonymous
>builder skills give their own use cases
no they dont >but can also be used on lower powered mobs
no they cant
They take like 1-10% of a mobs health away unless were talking about little tics/spiders which is a moronic argument to make in their favor
10 months ago
Anonymous
>was playing barb
did you play any of the other classes you shit for brains?
10 months ago
Anonymous
All of the best and most desirable builds in the game are already that are you fricking dumb? People get so pissed off at the gameplay that they only play one button builds and seek out all the combinations of items that allow them to circumvent the resource system. It offers nothing. Make the builders actually interesting to use and not take away 1% of mob health
Its an arpg that feels like it was made by people who dont play or care about arpgs. It doesnt bring anything to the table that isnt already done better by some other modern arpg. Jack of all trades, master of none, so on
>casino coal mine genre
it just got superceded by vampire survivorslikes, same gameplay loop in a much more efficient package.
Arpgs like diablo are basically shmups at the end of the day, saddling it with unnecessary mmo and open world shit was possibly the worst thing d4 could've possibly done.
I'd argue VS like games tend to be shallower and offer less long term, I've long since stopped playing or wanting to play VS itself and even Halls of Torment which I think is very good is sort of dropping off before 20 hours, other games in the genre I've played haven't even been that good.
They just don't have the same staying power as an actual good arpg even if their moment to moment gameplay can be good when done well, and I don't think their potential has even been scratched yet, but the genre has weaknesses it's not just some flat upgrade.
I'm convinced 80% of this board is poorgay third worlders who make my COMPLETELY broke NEET ass look filthy fricking rich complaining about every goddamn release due to fox and grapes.
I'm convinced 80% of this board is poorgay third worlders who make my COMPLETELY broke NEET ass look filthy fricking rich complaining about every goddamn release due to fox and grapes.
>"Sorrt, chum, you're not allowed to have an opinion about the game unless you've given Blizzard money first."
>casino coal mine
no you just need to develop it with enthusiasm.
halls of torment is the true sequel of diablo 1/2 because it actually improves upon the concept:
-you actually need to learn to control your character even for regular progress not just speedruns and autism. it matters a lot and you build different muscle memory for different builds
-you gotta go through all classes and different builds because they unlock useful stuff for other builds
honestly this actually unlocks an insane lot more of the game for regular progress. i could never get myself to finish diablo with more than 1 class, so always only experienced a tiny fragment of the game. but here they make you experience all of it and actually do it in a way that it all feels challenging and novel, not grindy
They nerfed the shit out of everything that was fun from closed beta, refused to fix anything that was bad, and made all the good items so rare you might as well not exist.
The servers are operating on a quality-over-quantity state so unless you have an amazing computer / connection to begin with you're just stuck dealing with rubberbanding. Made worse by the lack of region filtering.
Diablo 4 will end up the same fate as every Diablo game--being overrated until the expansion hits and fixes everything wrong.
The character balance makes me feel like the game was designed by a guy who still thinks it's 1995.
There is no reason why a modern RPG should have an experience as shit as an early game Barb or Druid. There is no reason for Necromancer and Sorcerer to fall off so hard in the late game. It's just obnoxious bullshit that makes the lveling process and endgame unbearable.
And build diversity sucks too. So much shit that feels like it should be able to synergize and work together, just doesn't. It feels like classes only have 3 viable build paths at maximum, paragon doesn't help with this. Some class features like Necromancer's summons basically don't exist at all. It just gets boring, it's like they took all the bad things from D2 and forgot the good things
I did the Airidah boss fight on my barb at 13 (I think) and it took me 15 minutes. I ran 2 hardcore necros through it and it was like a minute or so. My barb is a goddamn beast now, but early game was so tedious.
Nothing went wrong. It's peak HnS and the campaign was solid. Complainers are just poor third worlders or people going to bat for an inferior game because they're already heavily financially invested. Just look at all the complaints. Their preferred shit game seems to be immune to all the same criticism.s
People one of the primary complains was its price tag which is minimal for any adult with a big boy job (i.e. not a wagie or third worlder making pennies) and what group has been avidly lashing out baselessly at D4 the most? POE gays. What demo are POE's playerbase?
Simple math, hun.
Where are the real numbers?
I tried to find them and all i read is le 666 and akshually it was like 540 or something
I don't think it flopped but it's a shit game
The devs were too lazy / incompetent to level balance zones so they just made all the enemies your characters level making the entire map pointless. There is no sense of zone progression through the entire leveling process, then you just run the same nightmare dungeons over and over for slightly better stats on loot. It's a very boring game.
Waiting for season 1 to start.
Why are the threads about D4 so slow and dead? Not even Ganker cares about Diablo anymore
>let friend talk me into playing diablo 4
>beat it
>now the game really sta-
>can't be fricked to play that boring game again
It's not a game I really talk about. It's pretty shallow but that's the genre. I just like to kill demons and zone out listening to music or something. It's a time killer not the next coming of Christ.
But it’s not the genre, last epoch, chronicon, grim dawn, and even Poe which I don’t particularly like are deeper and all around better. The fun of the genre is making a build and testing it against mobs. There is no theory crafting in d4 and not even fun loot.
Guess I'm just to casual really, I don't min max or anything, stumble into a build and if it works then fun if not just tinker with it a bit until it does what I want. D4 is pretty low I'm build variety etc but it's pretty fun regardless, I can only put In a few hundred hours into the others before I'm bored, this is no exception so I'd rather just play the new thing because it's new, it's one of the lower entrys of the genre, but still fun enough to warrant playing
Pretty much this. Find something interesting, figure out how it works, figure out how to make it work, enjoy yourself until you get bored of it and find something else or balance changes alter it.
D4 has... none of that
There's zero point in attempting to talk about D4 on Ganker because every thread has 50 schizos who act like Blizzard raped them, so they act like crazy ex-girlfriends and sperg out like crazy.
>1 schizo that has a lot of free time
ftfy
If it was just one schizo then he could easily be ignored. Unfortunately it was like half of the posters in every D4 thread leading up to release and like 1-2 weeks post-release too.
>you now remember that d3 came out over a decade ago
>nobody learned from that, not customers, not developers
there's a reason they all feel raped
they were dumb enough to fall for a worse product a decade after a company failed majorly and now they've done it and more (or less depending on how you look at it)
can't wait for them to just take it offline for 'diablo 5' (an even further scaled down d4)
Except d4 is better than d3 in almost every way
gearing
aesthetic and atmosphere
world
monsters
character appearance
It loses out on classes and on skill variety but it's not like 80% of the skills in d3 are viable anyways.
as someone who hasn't played it, it is visibly, obviously less fun to play. doesn't even look remotely close.
they even got the camera distance wrong.
>camera distance wrong.
What does that even mean?
I've played both, d3 is faster but everything is more floaty and less meaningful for lack of any better way to put it.
It's a very trivial feeling game, nothing in it feels like it matters when you're playing it, it's much more transparently just a skinner box.
>wrong, it's the same just with more crap you don't actually care about
Except we have aspects in this game which are more interesting and the gear isn't all set garbage you have to equip for 5,000x effectiveness.
The affixes themselves tend to be slightly more interesting, though I'd still argue they're on the boring side, still 100% better.
>debatable
Not debatable at all, aesthetics and atmosphere are arguably what d4 does best and even people panning the game give it credit for this, d3 was an actual joke on release and it still is.
>wrong
not an argument
>uber wrong
I'm very convinced
You quoted me on the last point and didn't even have a counterpoint, are you actually brain damaged?
>gearing
wrong, it's the same just with more crap you don't actually care about
>aesthetic and atmosphere
debatable, while more 'diablo-like' it's too literally 'hell on earth' brown and bland and I'd rather be in unicorn land than look at d4 for even a minute
>world
wrong
>monsters
uber wrong
>character appearance
kek I can't believe how bad d3 is and how much worse d4 is it literally has almost nothing over d3 what a time to be alive
> who act like Blizzard raped them
But Blizzard is always raping his fanbase and even the female coworkers.
>Why are the threads about D4 so slow and dead?
there's no way in hell I'm paying 70 bucks for D4 in its current state
We're too busy playing.
you just can't discuss video games here anymore unless they're flavor of the month.
games from a long running popular series like FF, Diablo, WoW, Zelda have the worst threads filled with nothing but complaining that the devs have "reskinned" the previous game or that the new game isn't as good as a game from 20 years ago
the people actually playing these games are certainly not coming here to try and discuss them
Or at least they're not going to bother discussing them in this climate.
I've been playing plenty of Diablo 4 but you're not going to catch me dead actually discussing anything about it here in this environment.
>the people actually playing these games
That's because those people don't exist not to a substantial degree, its why these companies always end up performing layoffs after this shit because it isn't selling well enough contrary to the bullshit they post to make people buy it thinking its popular
The people who make these threads are the poorgays who constantly go "imagine paying Blizzard $70." There are tons of people playing the game. We're too busy working on our characters, getting ready for the season. There's no reason to post constantly.
It's their fastest, selling game. It runs video cards fastest until melting.
This. I played every day since release until last week when I got all my best legendaries on one character. No reason to grind for better rolls for 2 weeks just to start over.
Why are people exited about the season where they delete your character and force you to skip grind all those sidequests and dungeons for renown? Seriously, what the frick are they thinking with this decision?
They have the make the game annoying so they can sell ways to skip it.
You can still play your character in the eternal realm
You dont need all of the renown bonuses, currently most decently built chars will be able to do content dozens of levels above them once they ~70 since thats when you will likely acquire good 3-4 mod gear
Threads died out about 3 weeks ago. I tried making a thread to talk about it last week since there were none on the board all day -- barely anyone spoke
https://arch.b4k.co/v/thread/643573461/#q643573461
I'm guessing any of the remaining players have already surpassed the honeymoon period
Even the consumers on reddit were starting to turn on the game
What's the point? Did you watch the dev videos? They are adding almost nothing to the game. The biggest thing they are adding is the gay FOMO battlepass that you both already paid $30 for
At least a bunch of good games are releasing soon that weren't made by Blizzard
>he would have stopped at finishing Normal, who in the actual frick does that
Diablo 4 isn't compelling enough to play once the slog fricking hits (and it hits hard)
Same.
Why, it's literally the same boring shit.
I dont hate D4. But the passion just isnt there.
I guess I'm just not the same teeanger that would spend every afternoon grinding out the same game anymore.
They should have made a third person game with better combat like they initially intended instead of making more generic top-down clicker slop.
can you imagine the whining if D4 had been a soulslike?
The hype would drown out the whining.
>casino coal mine
fricking kek that's exactly it
What's a casino coal mine?
Is that an American cultural reference?
You slave away in the digital coal mines performing mindnumbingly boring tasks wasting as much of your time as possible to get a casino rare drop and a little bit of extra stats every once in a while. “Content players” and “hours played per $” players are a scourge
I thought the game is like a casino and you're underground all the fricking time like a coal miner. This is a smarter answer tho. Lol, wither way, I laughed.
Lmao that’s how I interpreted it too. I think it works on multiple levels
NEW ACTMAN VIDEO JUST DROPPED!
FINALLY I HAVE AN OPINION TO PARROT!
>yooooooo diablo 4 sucks(despite it being very good) frick activision haha
Reminder that he admitted to stopping at level ~47, as a DRUID and not doing WT3 at all.
A large majority of his complaints are addressed by WT3. As a Druid main, the class is absolute fricking dogshit 35 - 51 unless you go Trampleslide. Yet, the game will constantly bait you into going a Companions build.
I also played Diablo 2 up until launch and this dude's nostaglia goggles are fricking welded on. By his own logic, he would have stopped at finishing Normal, who in the actual frick does that.
>it gets good 20 hours in
I thought this was just a meme
You don't get the good Uniques/gear in Diablo 2 until Hell difficulty.
It's a genre thing. We accept it and put the work in. It's better than MMO style, which takes a couple hundred hours for the game to start.
d4 is the opposite. you put in 40 or 50 hours and then the game is not worth playing anymore
The world tier system doesn't justify how dogshit the level scaling feels for the 40 hours you play the campaign and renown farming. In fact it makes it worse by forcing you to want to skip everything so you can push for the end of game where it starts feeling like a real video game
>Reminder that he admitted to stopping at level ~47
>played game for 20+ hours
>does not enjoy the game
>quits the game and makes video explaining why he does not like the game
I don't know anything about this guy and im not gonna watch the video, but this seems perfectly reasonable to me.
>game is dogshit unless you go one specific build for the entirety of your time that needs specific aspects to even use
And this is an argument in favor of the game?
>Run around right clicking shit
>Level up, get weaker
>Finish main story
>Run around right clicking shit
>Unlock teh epig divviguldy and divine legondaries or watever :DDDDDDD
>Run around right clicking shit
>get weaker
>t. didn't play
Mobs outscale you as you level up, so time to kill increases, ergo you become weaker as you level.
Are you stupid?
They don't outscale you that much, and Uber Lilith is piss easy at level 100.
Oh so they outscale you then.
They were always outscaling if you were playing on the tier you were supposed to. You're high 40s killing in 70+ areas after the campaign.
Not enough content
Bad design philosphy
They are going to drip feed interesting things because GaaS model
Aspects should have been support skill gems, but most of them are moronic "do x% more damage if Y"
Instead of getting fun stuff like "frost nova is cast at target location (not exactly high hanging fruit) or maybe even spicy stuff like "convert cold damage to fire damage and it inflicts burning for X damage" we get "fun" stuff like "Do 25% more damage when you have a barrier" and "Do 25% more damage while you have a barrier and the enemy is vulnerable" and "Do 35% more damage while the enemy is frozen, stunned, or immobilized".
I suspect in a few years time the meta will be exclusively using skills that are good without augmenting aspects ( such as 'ball lightnings now orbit) so you can squeeze as many of the inevitable slew of "do X% more damage if Y" on your equipment as possible
Ill let you know once I play it on XBOX game pass in a few months.
Video games don't have soul anymore, they aren't made for fun just for monetary purposes or too push the creators shitty ideologies
You can tell with the first two diablos it was made by a small team of developers that were making something fun and interesting with money just being secondary
diablo 4 makes me physically tired. like it's so boring I actually have a hard time staying awake playing it. I can be well-rested and caffeinated but when I boot up D4 and get 10 mins into a session my eyelids get heavy
Good foundations in gameplay, littered with some moronic design decisions.
>Combat feels good, animations are solid and the sound design is top-notch and hits hard
>Game visually looks goods, both graphically and art design wise
>Gear system is interesting enough (to a point, and that point comes too soon)
>Aspects are a somewhat unique way to build your character and give rare items identity
>The mount is buggy as shit and feels horrible to use
>Endgame content is dry as frick, you practically have Nightmare Dungeons only and they are boring
>Mandatory ""puzzles"" / intermission rooms in dungeons that exist just to waste time
>Nightmare dungeon mods aren't interesting/fun, just tedious (Lightning strikes, explosion on death, etc)
>Too many mobs have explode on death mods which kills momentum entirely
>Towns are designed to waste as much of your time as possible with stashes placed far away from vendors
>Stash space is non-existent
>Re-rolling alts is shit because of the way gear drops and their equip levels are tied to character level (e.g. a level 95 char will only drop gear that can be equipped by 95+ chars)
>Gear upgrades after you hit WT4 / around 80, become miniscule and non-existent
>Build diversity is horrendous because the balance is shit. Sorc as a class barely exists and every other class has 3/4 builds that are worth looking at.
>Barb and Druid levelling is horrendous (This shouldn't have to be offset by their power levels at end-game being good)
>Respeccing paragon boards is a pain in the ass (No respec all button, have to do it point-by point)
There is probably a lot of other stuff I'm missing. The game can be good but the design team made some fricking moronic decisions, mostly just to waste your time in game. Will be a lot better after a year or two I feel.
You missed the absolute biggest flaw in the game that fundamentally makes it unfun and will be the single biggest cause for players quitting.
The level scaling.
Your criticisms are actually pretty generous. The game needs a major overhaul before it could ever become fun for me.
To put it simply, these games are about two basic things
1. The Loot to gear with
2. The Progression of your character into a power fantasy
The game fails completely on both fronts
Tell me you're an npc without telling me
The game is trash. If you think any of the shit you talk about positively is good game design then you are the problem with gaming
>combat, gear, and aspects listed as positives
frick no
1. Combat is fricking garbage and a major weak point. The flow of combat is completely stilted and held back by the resource system. Mvmt is slow, characters gain barely any power with levels
2. Sounds is garbage you fricking shill. Terrible almost non existent music; just ambient shrill noises
3. Graphics - literally the only selling point
4.Aspects - fricking trash that should be on the passive skill tree
Blizzard is a mega corporation. This is entirely the reason for D4's low quality.
Humans have proven time and time again that they are incapable of organizing large groups of people (communism). A small group of 3-5 devs can produce way more value/fun than a large group of 100+ pajeets. Think about it: Grim Dawn and Path of Exile were created by small teams, and those games are infinitely better than D4.
they saw people grinded a lot in D2 but did not understand why
Posting in a Blizzpig epic thread!
seasons haven't actually started yet
literally the only long-term appeal to games like this is when a season is going on or just started
Does D4 have public player counts?
I remember D3's playercount plummetting hard and fast. It wasn't long until D2's playercount was far above D3's.
I wanna play with her bros, it's so unfair
Looking for serious replies only: what incentive do I have to play diablo 4 instead of d2lod?
None. I think D2 really drives Blizzard into a corner, because there is no way they can ever create a Diablo game better than the originals. For the rest of time, people will be comparing modern Diablo games to the original games, and every time the modern games will be worse.
Diablo is basically a dead IP in this respect - nu-Diablo will always be overshadowd by old Diablo.
>t. hammerdin
I think the only thing D4 does better than D2R is having much better character cosmetic options. But we're comparing it to a game two decades old so that makes sense
That's all I've got for you
I wanted to like D4, but with the S1 reveal, I'm pretty disheartened. Will no doubt grind through the season journey and call it quits within a week or less until S2, just like D3. While I'm looking forward to hopefully more improvements coming with next reset in D2 and will no doubt put another 2-3 weeks into it regardless.
Serious reply here.
What makes you stop playing either game? When you "solve" it. How the game becomes solved? You master and know everything that is needed to be done to achieve anything in the game. So if you have played Diablo 2 before and have done all challenges and you know exactly what you need to do - there is no reason, there is no fun to play it again.
Diablo 4 plays a bit differently, but I'm amazed how quickly players have "solved" this game. And I haven't played it, I've only seen some streams, and I think that item drops don't change the way you play the game. Or maybe they do, but it's not much. In Diablo 2 or PoE - it's completely opposite, and I'll explain how.
Game is shallow as a puddle, there's not much to solve.
When I played Diablo II 20 years ago, do you know how much it took me to beat Hell? One year. And the most recent playthrough? Two weeks. Beating Mephisto on Hell took me a couple of hours for the first time. On my last character I could do it in 3 minutes on /players 8. But yes, to get there you have to have a lot of hours played on a lot of characters, so you finally know all the small details of every encounter. It's not very easy to "solve" the game without reading a lot of guides (it spoils your game experience) and without playing for many days.
Is Diablo 4 like that? Can you make HUGE leaps in efficiency after you learn how to play after 500+ hours?
the answer is yes, and will get even easier to do so with power creep on the equipment and damage
No I didn't mean it like that.
Imagine two people started fresh. One is a new guy, who maybe played some ARPGs before and another guy is Diablo 4 veteran. How faster a veteran will beat the game than a new guy? Can a new guy even encounter impassable stuff?
i get what your saying but in the case of D4 that is still true especially how broken vulnerability mechanics are, a vetern will know when to use a leveling build and when you go into vulnerability once he has the right item power/ stat spike
D4 no lifers will also kill uber Lilith while Baal is something everyone will kill eventually
I have played Diablo 2 again to see how fast I can make it to Baal on Hell and defeat him. I started as Amazon Charged Strike build and dropped some good items early in the game, it allowed me to go smoothly until Hell Act 2. There were bugs that were lightning immune that I couldn't pass to progress through the act. So I started to farm for gear, until a big flamberge with fire damage dropped. Flamberge is a 2-handed sword, amazons don't use it! But what did I do: I gave it to my Act V (from earlier difficulty) hireling, and it allowed me to go past the bugs! But my gameplay has changed: instead of attacking enemies with my spear, I let my hireling kill them. Of course, a good +all resist armor was needed, but luckily I dropped it before. Otherwise my strategy wouldn't work: bugs would kill a hireling instantly with charged bolts.
Next obstacle was the Ancients in Arreat Summit. One of them is immune to Lightning by default. They kill a hireling INSTANTLY no matter what armor he has. This time I was sure the playthrough was over, but I tried farming and getting stronger, but no meaningful upgrades dropped for my build. Then I checked a vendor and found a staff with Lower Resist charges - it allowed me to bypass Lightning Immunity. Then some gg items dropped (new armor, new 2-handed sword for my merc, resist and hp charms) - it allowed me to finally overcome the Ancients. But if a good bow dropped, I could change my spec. If good runes dropped, I could make myself a better weapon or armor. If uniques that gives auras dropped, my merc would amplify me greatly, or other way around.
So what I'm saying that drops are rare as frick, but they can be VERY impactful, otherwise you won't make it through. And in Diablo 4 there is no "hard" gear checks and the gear is standard and only offers very small upgrades to your current gear, doesn't even change the way you are pressing buttons on your keyboard and mouse. And why even play then?
They have had 13 years to reinvent the wheel, but decided to ship out a lazier D3 except with the graphics it was supposed to have.
Easily the worst and most unrewarding ARPG on the market. It's perplexing how shit this game feels to play.
What is it about this game, and really Blizzard games in general, that bring out the absolute worst poopsocking psychopaths the internet has to offer?
They get the game and nolife it for 300 hours squeezing every last drop of entertainment value from it, getting their character as high level as possible, grinding out their reknown, getting all the legendaries they want etc.
And then they complain that the game is too short and has no content and they want updates.
Like, you finished it. You played through it, got to the end, did everything there was to do. It's over. Either start a new character and play it again (which is why they have new seasons, to encourage you to do another playthrough) or go do something else.
I don't understand people with these games.
because Diablo games use to be good. for many people like myself, Diablo 1/2 is one of their favorite games ever made. to see Blizzard frick it's corpse is embarrassing
not everyone played 300 hours feels that the game has major flaws. I I refunded my copy of the game after the beta because I knew what the game would be like after launch
thousands of people have already posted their iterations on why the game is stale or unrewarding for them that go beyond just exhausting content from the game
your post is disingenuous if you pretend that this is the sole reason your strawmen don't like D4
I don't feel sorry for anyone that fell for their aggressive marketing and FOMO tactics. I'm just here to discuss ARPGs in general and looking at D4 post mortem is good for discussion
Blizzard isn't Blizzard North and doesn't know how to ARPG. It's designed by committee, metrics and analytics. The knee jerk changes from beta to release and during EA, show they haven't a fricking clue what they're doing.
How is the game story and lore wise?
Utter garbage with a cliffhanger to sell expansions.
If 4's story was utter garbage are we ever going to criticize 2 for it's story?
Doubt it.
I'll love when this place calls the story for this game great in 10 years when it's no longer cool to hate it and gets in the hands of third worlders (half this board).
2's story is much better the frick you talking about? Name your contentions
I'll start "with what about it is actually better?"
Do you actually have any real points to that sort of defense or are you just defending it because it's Diablo 2 and it's cool to love Diablo 2?
I asked you a question you fricking Black person. Don't deflect
My problem is with the fact that you could just rerelease Diablo 2 under a different name and you tards would tear it to shreds, you don't need there to be a point.
Your mind is already set in stone.
My point is that this place holds colossal double standards that will never be fricking addressed, you'll just change your mind or stop talking about this in ten years and act like you were never this moronic.
>could just rerelease Diablo 2 under a different name and you tards would tear it to shreds, you don't need there to be a point.
This is sophistry and doesnt address the question. Name your contentions with the story of diablo II. You've failed to provide an argument. D4 has obvious plot issues, a contrived story arc, and retcons several important aspects of established lore. NAME YOUR FRICKING CONTENTIONS WITH D2 YOU SALTY DIVERSITY HIRE FRICK
>D4 has obvious plot issues
Like?
>a contrived story arc
How so?
>plot issues
Lilith the main antagonist is given a role in the creation of sanctuary that is not canonically hers. She is given preternatural importance and plot armor because "muh women"
>contrivances
Dumbass girl given major important roles in a serious matter when she is not important nor sturdy enough for the role she is given. Major characters die in seemingly nonsensical ways. Due diligence and importance not given to the disappearance of a soul stone.
Again, what are your contentions with D2? You have named nothing of substance
>and plot armor
But your completely out of nowhere character beats her ass before we even get DLC for the game, I don't think that phrase means what you think it means.
>Dumbass girl given major important roles in a serious matter when she is not important nor sturdy enough for the role she is given
Okay, I'll actually give you that, though we haven't seen the consequences for her actions yet either.
As far as I can tell she is 100% going to get corrupted by the soulstone she took with her and it will become a major plot point in the expansions.
>Major characters die in seemingly nonsensical ways
I'll actually give you that too, but I don't think it particularly tore the story down as much as you'd b***h about it being awful.
The vast majority of the story was incredibly inoffensive, this is practically coming down to nitpicking.
>Again, what are your contentions with D2?
I think an easy first one would be that I actually can't remember frickall about it, it's forgettable, barebones and barely serves as a backdrop to work as context for why you're killing shit.
It is virtually a non story.
I've played the game and practically have to go searching around the internet to even find a summary, maybe that's why you think it's so hard to criticize, there's nothing there.
That itself is an easy obvious problem.
It's basically just quest dialogue you skip throughout the game, and don't lie and claim you actually followed half of it start to finish or like any of it was actually meaningful when playing the game.
> i dont remember it that means it doesnt exist
moron
Great post, very worth talking to you.
What the frick do you want? You didnt offer up any substantive claim and handwaved established lore over "I didnt read it so it doesnt exist".
You're a fricking moron.
typical roastie diversity hire crap
I'm lvl 43 and have been enjoying pretty thoroughly thus far. Had it about a week now. Why is everyone doonposting about it?
>Why is everyone doonposting about it?
it's Ganker, what do you think?
Ganker loves to hate the popular thing.
>Lv 43
You have a ways to go before you start to see. Did you even finish the story yet?
I've been doing a bunch of the side quests so I'm only in Act 4. I mean, when I max out my character I'm usually done with these games unless I decide to roll a new character, or in this case, play the new season. I don't need to play this religiously every day for the next 5 years. I'll throw my time into it, get bored and move on to my new flavor of the month, and kaybe come back to it to play new seasons.
I don't just play a singular game, I play bunches of them.
why is the barbarian a Black person now?
Nothing went wrong. The amount of people still playing is more or less the amount of real ARPG casino morons who are actually hooked on the genre. MOST people who bought it, are 1 play through casuals.
I am a casual. I always liked Diablo for fun gameplay, atmosphere, and godtier soundtrack. I played every game and finished them. Some I replayed several times.
It is you no-life, NEET Black folk who are so autistically adamant on grinding same fricking mobs a billion times for meaningless, low-drop chance loot, which doesn't it even make sense considering this isn't even for a poopsocking MMO prestige.
Not fun to play like D3 but also not pleasing the D2/PoE gays either.
As a former PoEgay I've been enjoying it, but I've also been playing it fairly casually.
PoE has been bloated garbage for years now that isn't exactly much better on most fronts.
it's just doing the same shit over and over but incrementally getting faster at it. Yes that describes a lot of games, but diablo wants you to do it for hundreds of hours
Yes. ARPGs have reached an end. There's basically nowhere else to go.
The problem is that psychotic optimization over the years has resulted in the goal of a modern ARPG being to not actually have to interact with the game. Things become smoother, but you can't step back from that. In pursuit of a perfectly smooth and satisfying experience, we have essentially done everything in our power to transform them into a Vampire Survivors type experience.
Because complicated gameplay means your numbers aren't going up as smoothly as they could
Because actual mechanical difficulty means your numbers aren't going up as smoothly as they could
Because player interaction means your numbers aren't going up as smoothly as they could
Because anything more than pressing a single button and then scanning over loot means your numbers aren't going up as smoothly as they could.
The goal of an ARPG is to not have to play the ARPG. It's so fricking stupid. We've reached the point where we might as well just load up the character builder for any given game, because that has the gameplay we want but skips all that annoying gameplay, which is really what we want.
this is why gacha games are popular, cut the gameplay to the most dopamine inducing parts and add in a casino
it's the final evolution of gaming
It's not though, because gacha games don't tend to actually be fun or have any meaningful gameplay.
How can it be an evolution if it's a step back on the most important part?
The only fun part of a gacha is buying new thing and getting your short little burst of fun using it for a bit, by design, as a rule.
It's simply how these games maintain profit.
youre both wrong in basically every way
-for one gacha games arent popular. they are only popular in asia, except for
-genshin impact, which is a real game, and has the fun parts of games, unlike other gachas which are basically all not real games
Except genshin isn't actually fun for very long, you hit what I would generously call midgame and have to farm artifacts, which is gated by a resource and meant to get you to waste your time and feel frustrated till you pay them more money.
Even genshin suffers from being a gacha, it would be much better as a non gacha game that you just pay 60$ for upfront.
>Except genshin isn't actually fun for very long
dont bother...tell the other 60 million ppl
>Even genshin suffers from being a gacha, it would be much better as a non gacha game that you just pay 60$ for upfront.
lmao, it would have 1/8 as much content. as it stands it has a bigger and deeper world than any similar game, and the world is about to hugely expand
games like genshin *can't* exist under a typical $60 model because it has more content than those games
>as it stands it has a bigger and deeper world than any similar game
Yeah, because it's a massive outlier for a gacha game in that it actually tries on some level to be a real game, which is only viable because it can capture a massive audience due to lack of competition.
>games like genshin *can't* exist under a typical $60 model because it has more content than those games
Wrong.
Genshin has less meaningful content than games like totk which are actually made to be games.
>tell the other 60 million ppl
This is the weakest argument ever, sales=/=quality, in fact sales usually come by offering the most inoffensive, watered down product possible.
>Wrong.
>Genshin has less meaningful content than games like totk which are actually made to be games.
incorrect by an order of magnitude. you are saying what you think has to be true-- it's not true. what I said was true
totk is an awful, $70 cash grab. Genshin's world is larger and *far* denser in terms of content. It isn't even a competition. And genshin's world is about to get massively enlarged with underwater swimming added.
Well, if you enjoy genshin more power to you.
It's pretty clear you don't actually want to discuss it point for point and want to just stand on a hill of "it's better because I said so" and also clearly have massive bias.
I've played both games, I really don't care about this trash argument if you're going to duck out like that.
>It's pretty clear you don't actually want to discuss it point for point
no, I don't want to discuss it point for point. You haven't/don't play genshin impact, just like most people who want to talk about it, and hilariously compare it negatively to totk, which is about as bad of a product that can be shat out for $70
genshin impact has content of *multiple AAA games*
this is *only possible because of its development model*
this is not an argument or a discussion-- it is me informing you of something you do not know about
the industry has changed. sometimes you are just wrong. you should go play it.
I've played like a 100 hours of genshin.
I fricking wasted money getting Raiden Shogun, jump off a fricking cliff.
>100 hours
>like it's a lot
>You haven't/don't play genshin impact
And the game sucks enough that I don't feel like coming back, just because I can play more for free now doesn't mean it's worth my time.
yes and now the game world is like 3 times larger/longer than the version of the game you had played to
so i just won the argument, even to you. go look at the map.
if you compare genshin negatively to totk based on value you don't have a leg to stand on and are attempting to make a stupid as frick argument. fricking $70 6 year retread. literally pathetic/an insult.
gacha games are incredibly popular in the west you just don't hear about them because normies play then and don't talk about them...
countless gacha games are in the west.. afk arena, raid shadow legends, etc.
well the most popular gacha games are just distilled versions of there genre:
1. Genshin - RPG with party building that rolves around one skill rotation that one shots everything
2. Blue Archive - Solo MMO-style raids focused on a couple boss mechanics
3. Nikke - Time crisis/arcade shooter without the need for movement
And none of them really stand particularly strongly on their gameplay other than genshin, and even genshin is at best just ok from a gameplay perspective.
That's the best example in your "superior" genre I can pull from for talking about gameplay, so why the frick would I give your genre the credit of being "distilled" or somehow superior in terms of gameplay, it might be more accessible, but it's not any of that.
it doesn't matter if the gameplay isn't amazing, the point is that you don't have to go through the bullshit to get to the fun part
for example D4 as a gacha game would be like you said, just one skill that one shot everything because having "builder" skills that you have to use to get to the "fun" skill is a common criticism
So like I said then, accessibility, gameplay loop.
A good gameplay loop is important but if I end up wasting my time with subpar gameplay it doesn't have much keeping me there.
> just one skill that one shot everything because having "builder" skills that you have to use to get to the "fun" skill is a common criticism
Yeah, and it'd be significantly worse for that.
>itd be worse if the gameplay were better and not dogshit
oh frick off
>click 1 button everything dies is good gameplay
I hope you die, this race to the bottom mentality degrades everything it touches.
You probably play fricking MOBA trash.
ok, tell me the reason why builder skills are necessary in D4's gameplay loop? and if you don't get what i'm saying i'm asking why you would include anything in a gameplay loop that's not fun
Builder skills add their own individual use cases, but also give you something to use for lower powered mobs.
Basically having a dynamic between builders and finishers means target priority is more important in the gameplay, you use your builders against trash and your finishers on priority targets and in situations when your build may give you significantly more resources to spend.
This can also be fun because you can try and build around removing builders entirely, or around set windows where you spam your spenders, which I don't think I even need to argue is fun, you clearly prefer the spender skills and like spamming them.
Not being able to spam them all the time, then getting to conditionally spam them because of something you built for is more satisfying, there'd be nothing special about spender skills if you got to use them 24/7 and then you'd complain about something else.
>Make the builders actually interesting to use
Except you very obviously would rather they just not exist, you don't like resource management at all.
You want spam spam unga bunga spam ugh me smash, it's fine, you're moronic, half the people who play diablo are it's the niche it has I get it.
I have no idea what you're doing wrong if your builder skills are doing 1% of mob health anywhere in the game, let alone at endgame, I was 2-3 shotting most mobs with just fricking frenzy while my barb was still alive and I didn't even have full ancestral gear.
yes that would make sence if this was a card game or turn based RPG we're talking about, but for D4 everyone just uses their builder skills out of combat and then one shots everything anyways with their spender skill
>builder skills give their own use cases
no they dont
>but can also be used on lower powered mobs
no they cant
They take like 1-10% of a mobs health away unless were talking about little tics/spiders which is a moronic argument to make in their favor
>was playing barb
did you play any of the other classes you shit for brains?
All of the best and most desirable builds in the game are already that are you fricking dumb? People get so pissed off at the gameplay that they only play one button builds and seek out all the combinations of items that allow them to circumvent the resource system. It offers nothing. Make the builders actually interesting to use and not take away 1% of mob health
>WHY DID YET ANOTHER GAME MADE FOR CONSOLES FLOP?
No one knows, tyrone.
Its an arpg that feels like it was made by people who dont play or care about arpgs. It doesnt bring anything to the table that isnt already done better by some other modern arpg. Jack of all trades, master of none, so on
story sucks
mmo-ness sucks
overworld made for mounts sucks
ui ultra sucks
muddy washed out graphics sucks
skills suck
>casino coal mine genre
it just got superceded by vampire survivorslikes, same gameplay loop in a much more efficient package.
Arpgs like diablo are basically shmups at the end of the day, saddling it with unnecessary mmo and open world shit was possibly the worst thing d4 could've possibly done.
I'd argue VS like games tend to be shallower and offer less long term, I've long since stopped playing or wanting to play VS itself and even Halls of Torment which I think is very good is sort of dropping off before 20 hours, other games in the genre I've played haven't even been that good.
They just don't have the same staying power as an actual good arpg even if their moment to moment gameplay can be good when done well, and I don't think their potential has even been scratched yet, but the genre has weaknesses it's not just some flat upgrade.
they made the world open and boring. monsters scale. almost no loot drops. removed even more abilities and simplified stats even more somehow.
who is the moron in this thread who bought this slop lol?
>I didn't buy it
>I can tell you why it's bad
You're just a poor liar. Post your specs.
I'm convinced 80% of this board is poorgay third worlders who make my COMPLETELY broke NEET ass look filthy fricking rich complaining about every goddamn release due to fox and grapes.
>"Sorrt, chum, you're not allowed to have an opinion about the game unless you've given Blizzard money first."
You're not allowed to have an opinion unless you've played it. Watching a youtuber doesn't count.
No offline, no buy.
It's Act Man so eh... but he brings up some good points if someone needs an explanation in video form.
Doesn't seem to know much about endgame as he didn't go into it at all and mentioned that gold barely has a use.
why are you posting a video of a guy who doesnt understand endgame to "Explain" what is wrong with diablo 4?
frick off kid
Because the endgame isn't the only pile of shit residing in the game.
>casino coal mine
no you just need to develop it with enthusiasm.
halls of torment is the true sequel of diablo 1/2 because it actually improves upon the concept:
-you actually need to learn to control your character even for regular progress not just speedruns and autism. it matters a lot and you build different muscle memory for different builds
-you gotta go through all classes and different builds because they unlock useful stuff for other builds
honestly this actually unlocks an insane lot more of the game for regular progress. i could never get myself to finish diablo with more than 1 class, so always only experienced a tiny fragment of the game. but here they make you experience all of it and actually do it in a way that it all feels challenging and novel, not grindy
They nerfed the shit out of everything that was fun from closed beta, refused to fix anything that was bad, and made all the good items so rare you might as well not exist.
The servers are operating on a quality-over-quantity state so unless you have an amazing computer / connection to begin with you're just stuck dealing with rubberbanding. Made worse by the lack of region filtering.
Diablo 4 will end up the same fate as every Diablo game--being overrated until the expansion hits and fixes everything wrong.
level scaling is the most bogus mechanic you could ever put in an ARPG
The character balance makes me feel like the game was designed by a guy who still thinks it's 1995.
There is no reason why a modern RPG should have an experience as shit as an early game Barb or Druid. There is no reason for Necromancer and Sorcerer to fall off so hard in the late game. It's just obnoxious bullshit that makes the lveling process and endgame unbearable.
And build diversity sucks too. So much shit that feels like it should be able to synergize and work together, just doesn't. It feels like classes only have 3 viable build paths at maximum, paragon doesn't help with this. Some class features like Necromancer's summons basically don't exist at all. It just gets boring, it's like they took all the bad things from D2 and forgot the good things
I did the Airidah boss fight on my barb at 13 (I think) and it took me 15 minutes. I ran 2 hardcore necros through it and it was like a minute or so. My barb is a goddamn beast now, but early game was so tedious.
Nothing went wrong. It's peak HnS and the campaign was solid. Complainers are just poor third worlders or people going to bat for an inferior game because they're already heavily financially invested. Just look at all the complaints. Their preferred shit game seems to be immune to all the same criticism.s
The game is fine. The criticisms are just whining. This is no war in ba sing sei.
>muh $70
>muh poors
why is this always what you shills pivot to?
People one of the primary complains was its price tag which is minimal for any adult with a big boy job (i.e. not a wagie or third worlder making pennies) and what group has been avidly lashing out baselessly at D4 the most? POE gays. What demo are POE's playerbase?
Simple math, hun.
PoE is the new Runescape. Poorgays will swear it's superior just because it's free.
>game is worth $0
>they try to sell it for $70
I'd complain about it at any price. Because it's shit
Proove your geo location and post pay stub or employment account transfer.
The only fun part of d4 is hotaing morons in pvp
skin shop
>NOOOO YOU CANT BUY COSMETIC ITEMS!!!!!!!!!! WHY???????/ BECAUSE I SAID!!!!!!1 REEEEEEEE
awful itemization and dogshit post game activities
Where are the real numbers?
I tried to find them and all i read is le 666 and akshually it was like 540 or something
I don't think it flopped but it's a shit game
There's a frickton of people playing at all times in WT3 and 4, I know that.
>2 weeks till exilecon
D4 devs will literally be on suicide watch
Funny that it's "two more weeks."
The devs were too lazy / incompetent to level balance zones so they just made all the enemies your characters level making the entire map pointless. There is no sense of zone progression through the entire leveling process, then you just run the same nightmare dungeons over and over for slightly better stats on loot. It's a very boring game.
>enemies your characters level
>t. plays games on easy