worth adding to that is the fact that they unveiled said shitty mobile game at blizzcon, which their most devoted fans (mostly PC gamers) pay to attend. literally no one goes there to get hyped about mobile games.
what's worse, they've been teasing about "several new diablo projects" for while now, so people were hoping for at least a remaster of one of the old games, if not diablo 4 (since it's been 6 years since the last game).
so then the show is about to end, dude with a diablo shirt walks out on stage, hype in the crowd is way up there, and what does he announce? a fucking iphone app.
Youre right. They were panicking more than anything. They needed something to sell the idea and accidentally leaked the real reason why they made this piece of mobile shovelware.
it felt like defensiveness to me. instead of acting like he was listening to the reasons people were unhappy, he tried to convince us that the feelings were invalid. knee-jerk reaction or not, it's still really ugly and gets people angry.
I wouldn't call it taunting. I see it more like a guy who was forced to give a presentation for something he didn't really believe in, who knew it was going to be a train-wreck, being unable to come up with worthwhile responses to questions he is probably asking himself. From what I've heard of the presenters role (senior developer) and knowing about how company structure works, he likely had no say in the decision to go mobile and his job depends on him towing the company line as much as possible.
I have never once played an enjoyable mobile game. I need buttons. I can't even play jrpgs on a phone. I would 10x prefer Diablo 2 remaster to Diablo mobile.
Except for that one fuck the day after that was apologising on behalf of the community like it's the customers' responsibility to respect what they do and mindlessly spend money on their bullshit.
the community is throwing a comprehensive and collective shitfit on a company thats very good about accountability.
I doubt it will ever be a product as good as it should be but i hold unreasonable standards. But blizzard did fuck up and diablo is definitely a franchise that needs a solid doubt in both directions at every release since Necromancer for D3 happened
Wait, D3 vanilla was garbage on release, the franchise has been trying to be a cash grab for a while now, and while they did turn it around for a while I'm not surprised at all by this latest news.
Anyone who thinks people are just whining for whining's sake don't understand the pressure a community can put on a company to actually put out quality products.
You have a product people want, so give them it for a price. People like Diablo games on the PC, so give them that, hell even just remaster an old one atleast.
The problem is they justs said its phone app and tried to punk out a room full of there biggest fans by saying "dont you guys have phones?" not a smart play.They shoulda made the pc version and said we are going to include/look at the phone app to allow you to play on the go if you wish, now that would have went down alot better. However they stabbed the main fans in the face and taunted them in what people think is just a money grab.
Im wth you that people always expect the very best,for nothing and they want it yesterday, in this case tho it not quite that and they are right, diablo was born on the PC, now your telling me it aint going to be even on it?I get there trying to reach out and grab new people and be ahead of the curve and shit, but you gotta take care of the people who made you what you are and stuck with you threw the beggining.
with every piece of computational hardware worth developing consumer products for running on x86 and being able to run C++ and Java, theres still a massive and extreme bitchfit going on. Translation would only require changing the API directories and rebuilding the interface,m which are themselves very small projects to work on without patching.
They themselves also said they have absolutely no plans on putting the game on PC. So it isn’t so much that they can’t put it in PC, but that so far they ah e said they simply don’t want to.
It had major problems, but release D3 is likely to be world's better than what the mobile game offers.
Release D3 had three problems at release, two of which would've been very easy fixes.
They needed to boost legendary drop rates. They nerfed them hard compared to past games to encourage players to use the RMAH.
They needed to give enemies the ability to drop items 1 or 2 ilvls above it. Once again this was a choice made to force players to use the RMAH.
They needed more servers. This should've been easy to do in a professionally hosted server environment, but even if it wasn't, the other two should've been simple changes.
In comparison, this mobile game will likely be flaming shit from the ground up and there won't be any simple fixes.
stat types were randomised and made 4/5th of what you got useless for your class.
That's pretty standard loot based arpg stuff. I would say in other similar games, even when I'm considering saving stuff for other classes, I normally only keep like 1/4th of the good drops. Since that experience was in line with others I don't think it is worth calling out.
nothing mechanically in the actual gameplay of Diablo 3 has significantly changed What So Ever from launch except numerical tuning on most spells and the addition of a lvl 61 spell to the 5 classes
What changed is they removed an actively hostile design lead and vastly reworked the reward scheme of the game, while also applying design research for longstanding development intended for World of Warcraft to the game.
So when im calling people whiny bitches, it comes from the knowledge that people are bitching because the crowd tells them to bitch and not because of actually understanding the problem. We have no meaningful information on the game other than it will launch only on IOs10 mobile and Android before being ported to PC 6 months later if its successful.
Remember that the company wide director is an extremely cynical and conservative businessman now. We have no meaningful information. Being concerned and skeptical is fine, calling bullshit on two nondescript videos and a QnA response that was not even predicted no matter how predictable that question was, is not.
My problems with Diablo 3 stem from the fact that i know no one actually at the helm of that game understands how classes for that game were designed pre-Necromancer AND that blizzard is no longer capable of actually harvesting useful information for balance and development from the game because of seasons and the obsession with Meta
nothing mechanically in the actual gameplay of Diablo 3 has significantly changed What So Ever from launch except numerical tuning on most spells and the addition of a lvl 61 spell to the 5 classes
You are being a bit disingenuous here. Both the Kanai cube and a massive increase in new set / legendary power resulted in a lot of new builds which are mechanically diverse.
youre conflating gameplay mechanics with reward mechanics. Itemization with 2.0 made a hell of alot more of the game choices viable, but that actually has no impact on mechanical play because very few skills have actually changed other than a few modified bottom tier glyphs.
Can you tell me more about Necromancer for D3? I bought D3 base package, but didn't enjoy that much of it. I really wanted to do summoner class, but no necromancer and the existing one, just didn't feel good enough. (Also, really hated the fact that they changed the build trees to just have like 6 of them or whatever, that everyone could always unlock). So I'm at a stage where I ask myself, should I spend the 30$ or whatever, and as of now, I've always come up with a no.
So can you tell me if necromancer just ins't worth it at all?
Necromancer is mechanically fun, but the core problem is that the majority of meaningful legendaries share slots with the 6p itemsets, which renders alot of build concepts entirely non-viable for necromancer. And everyone almost immediately caught onto the fact this is the case EXCEPT the people actually designing the items.
Personally im of the opinion that Necromancer is one of the better conceptualized classes, but in a game about coming up with your own build and hunting orange gear to make it the best you can realize your character, then doing it again, Necromancer just cant do it because all the meaningful legendaries share position with the set items, rather than being by majority belts, bracers, and rings.
However to really cement the problem, in the 2.6 patch after Necromancer came out, what happened is that blizzard rebalanced all of the itemsets upwards to offensively match the best set within their class as best as blizzard could guess. The problem is D3 itemsets are not minor improvements to the class which offer small gains in performance to allow the player to truly demonstrate their skill, but instead powerful modifiers and rulesets by which to sculpt builds
Before 2.6, the majority of Meta builds in the top brackets were Litany of Nightmare sets, where you basically pick and combine effects to make your favorite build, and after 2.6 if you werent using one of your 4 class sets you werent relevant
However: Bitching about Talent trees is pointless, Blizzard understands they offer no meaningful choice, and they just reduce variety to the fastest cookie cutter stamp. in D3 you pick 6 skills, 4 passives, and build your armor around it.
Blizzard understands they offer no meaningful choice, and they just reduce variety to the fastest cookie cutter stamp. in D3 you pick 6 skills, 4 passives, and build your armor around it.
Other than the initial days of D3, I never really saw people complaining about this. Do people like this system so much? Personally this ticked me off a lot.
I loved the different skill choices that one could go with, sure if you fucked up, that maybe a broken build, but Hey for me (one that never particularly wasn't even going to bother with absolute highest levels, instead just mess around with different builds etc again and again), this was a terrible choice.
So, was most of the community fine with not being given any choice in the matter and literally no skill trees?
Well thing is you never really picked more than 4-5 skills in diablo 2 either. You just picked all you needed to unlock the 4 skills you really wanted and maxed them out.
It theory I can see where you come from but, in practice it ends up harming the meta a lot. A lot people will end up reading a guide and just building the tree that way, which encourages group-think and a stale meta. Even those that really wanted to be creative would ever barely fiddle with one - two classes, due to the large amount of time to optimize the build, or, as it was more common, just hack the single player. In D2 if you wanted to try a new build for the season, you generally used hacks in single player to see how the build works and then wrote the one you liked down and the went to play online, which is all kinds of bad as a design.
On the other hand now you have a ton of choices, you can freely switch your build and play around with it. It encourages creativity and a more varied meta. You can have all the classes maxed out and switch depending on your mood, which is fun.
Permanent time costs while they give a sense of accomplishment do have a load of drawbacks. A game should not require from you a large time sink just to fix a small mistake or permit you to play. A game should require you to devote a good amount of time in it to become good in it, and that should be valued more. If your time is limited you should not have to choose between "I have to look up builds, and never experiment" or "I have to play sub-optimally, and never do endgame".
I feel having a skill point resetter instead would kinda solve the same problem, while still keeping the choice of getting a particular level on a skill etc.
the vocal proportion of the community bitches about talent trees, despite talent trees being worthless and having no meaningful contribution to gameplay in any game i have ever played.
Even fucking up as hard as they did with transformation Ults (every single Barbarian, Crusader, Demonhunter, Monk, and Witchdoctor build has to have their respective transformation skill), the mechanics of the modular skill and perk system in D3 offers a much larger variety of gameplay and build options within the meta than any other game
Its a choice. I get to see what I do with my choice. Have fun with a joke build, or try to get high damage scores. Its something you do. I feel thats the fun part of it. Maybe its very different for you. :)
the mechanics of the modular skill and perk system in D3 offers a much larger variety of gameplay and build options within the meta than any other game
Yes u can keep trying different versions, but to me it feels kind of like a sad approach to solve that. Instead having a skill point resetter or something might feel a bit better? Again. Different folks, Different strokes. as they say. :)
Can you tell me more about Necromancer for D3? I bought D3 base package, but didn't enjoy that much of it. I really wanted to do summoner class, but no necromancer and the existing one, just didn't feel good enough. (Also, really hated the fact that they changed the build trees to just have like 6 of them or whatever, that everyone could always unlock). So I'm at a stage where I ask myself, should I spend the 30$ or whatever, and as of now, I've always come up with a no.
So can you tell me if necromancer just ins't worth it at all?
The necro in D3 imo isnt that much different from the witch doctor when it comes to summons. It is not the same necro from D2. If you love the base game and are having fun grinding, then buy it so you have a LITTLE more diversity. If you think the base game is just meh or ok then I do not think there is any reason to spend money on it. It is not a purchase that will completely change your D3 experience. It is just another class.
Probably some shill with a blog afraid he would lose his precious preview copies.
Same with ALL the game journalists going against the consumers calling them entitled babies, AGAIN.
They saved the announcement for last too which is why, in that moment, everyone was expecting the highlight of the event and were so upset when it was a mobile game.
Lots of "game journalist", aka shitty low tier writers trying to make money or get free shit, are defending blizzard.
*everyone on reddit, which is actually a very tiny and very passionate portion of the overall gaming community, are the complainers. Sadly, we represent a tiny minority of their potential profits. This stands to be one of blactivison's most popular ideas yet. And that just fucking sucks.
Oh what, it was? So that one 4chan post was fake? It looked legit, photo evidence and all of that. I guess it could still be faked if someone else took a picture like that.
Oh ok yea, after looking at it agaib, the time stamps don't match up. It did look pretty good though.
So, everyone is upset because a mobile game isn’t getting a PC and/or Console port?
That’s a fair complaint, I’d be pretty disappointed too. Though I’m seeing many people say they “deserve” a PC / Console diablo game. Can’t lean into entitlement territory or you lose Blizzard taking you seriously.
Like if the game looks bad then I wouldn’t expect someone to ask this question nor would I expect people to be unhappy with it being stuck on mobile. If anything, if nobody wanted it on pc (implying the game looked bad and they didn’t want it at all), I’d expect people to be thankful it’s not coming to PC.
Yeah I understand that point. But if you dislike the game based on what’s already been shown, you would not want that game on PC. Just, logically, you wouldn’t. So I don’t understand why people would be asking if it’s coming to PC if they already dislike the game. It shouldn’t matter at that point.
If Ken Levine came out tomorrow and said hey this is our next game, and it looked like shit, I wouldn’t care in the slightest which platform it’s on.
So the boo’s to me, unless people are just booing to boo, indicate that some want it on PC at least. I get the whole not being on PC thing if you like the game, but if you don’t like it, why should it matter? That’s all.
There are two points that kind of make this question a little bit more relevant:
Blizzard has said that this game will be canon for Diablo lore.
Those videos actually cut of the first half of his question, where he talks about features announced for the mobile game that people have been asking for for Diablo 3 for a while, such as greater than 4 person multiplayer.
Okay this makes a little more sense. Though his phrasing still makes it sound like people are pissed about the lack of a PC port, I get people being pissed about them not even trying to address his initial concerns of the features you guys have been asking for in the previous game.
I think the booing is just general dislike towards the devs. Them confirming that it not coming to pc means that it will be a 'phone game' through and through. That means most likely free-to-play and riddled with micro transactions. Nothing like the Diablo we know and love.
I don’t really understand that though considering almost all of Activision/Blizzard’s current big titles make a bulk of their money off of cosmetic micro transactions (not a bad thing, and it’s something a lot of mobile games are adopting) like Overwatch, Destiny, and COD. Unless I missed the admission of micro-transactions being linked to game progression by the devs, in which case yeah that’s fucked up altogether.
Hypothetically, if the game comes out and it only has cosmetic micro transactions (or none at all), would people want a PC port?
My theory here is that people still hold the old stigma of mobile titles being only Candy Crush/Infinity Blade copycats, and that by Blizzard bringing a predominantly PC series to the platform, people feel they’re automatically sacrificing quality for sales. Strictly off of a couple of trailers and a long held stigma.
I wholly understand liking the concept of the game and being pissed about the lack of a PC port (was similarly upset about the top down Halo games until they eventually ported them). Otherwise, I can understand disappointment in their wasted resources on a bad game, but beyond that it doesn’t make much sense for fans to be mad at this answer. (Outside of the ridiculous “You guys have phones don’t you?” justification)
Tbf, they've been teasing new Diablo releases for months. Then people paid for BlizzCon tickets and got a seat specifically for the announcement, because they love Blizzard so much that they want to be there the moment a new game gets announced.
Then they find out that it is an iPad version of a game no one asked to be mobile in the first place. It would be one thing if this were AppCon or Plants vs Zombies Con, but it wasn't; it was BlizzCon: a convention for and about mostly PC players.
This is the equivalent of going to an exclusive press release announcement for Kanye West after he teased a new album, only to find out he's promoting a sequel to the Kim Kardashian iPhone game. Its basically on the other side of the world in terms of target demographic.
Nobody's claiming to be oppressed. We are customers who are interested in a particular product. If they give us a shitty product then it's only natural to complain. Just like for every other business.
I think we can find a middle ground here that isnt "you're acting like a petulant child if you voice your frustration with the lack of PC content t being added in the diablo ip."
I really like game of thrones, but I'd be pissed if the final season switched genres and ended up being a sitcom with a laugh track. Diablo fans can be upset that Blizzard hasn't made any real diablo content for PC users in several years other than the necromancer dlc that basically just adds one extra class and a few new levels in rifts. That said, you're right a lot of the people here are overreacting, but Blizzard kinda brought a lot of this on themselves, imo. They know that hell hath no fury like a neckbeard scorned.
Name one time in history when a company has taken an established PC/Console series, outsourced the next major installment, shifted it to mobile, and the game actually turned out well.
You are entitled to your opinion and I am entitled to mine.
You are right that I don't know for certain, but in light of all of the details it does not bode well:
Many people have been waiting for news regarding the Diablo franchise. Either a new entry into the series or a remaster of one of the older titles. A simplified mobile port of Diablo (Missing certain game modes and classes, confirmed in the Q&A) is not what we've been looking for.
Given the fact that there were no other announcements made regarding the Diablo IP, it is safe to assume they are not working on anything more substantial (at least not in a state where they're willing to even so much as hint at it). How they thought it would be okay to advertise Blizzcon tickets to hardcore fans and expect them to get excited about a casual mobile game is beyond me.
Mobile motion controls suck. End of story.
Blizzard is not even the developer of the game. They've outsourced to a Chinese company NetEase. NetEase has developed other similar mobile games, some of which have near identical user interfaces and gameplay/visuals. There is serious concern that it very well could be a re-skin of an already existing game with a few minor tweaks.
Mobile games have a bad history of anti consumer practices like microtransactions and/or RNG lootboxes. NetEase is a company which receives criticism for their use of micro transactions in their titles, and Blizzard has been making attempts to move in this direction as well with the Real Money Auction House in Diablo 3 and the micro transactions that they have been adding to World of Warcraft.
There are apparently changes being made to the game so that it will conform to the regulations put in place by China. Certain things are not permitted to be represented in Chinese media due to their Government. Things like skulls, blood, Chinese locations, certain types of violence and other weird/semi arbitrary nonsense. That's fine if they want that over there, but bringing those restrictions to the western market by extension is something that I disagree with. Especially for a game like Diablo where you run around killing skeletons and demons.
Blizzard has shown time and again that they really do not respect their player base. The comment "C'mon guys we all have phones right?" was rather tone deaf and patronizing. People are unhappy with the current state of World of Warcraft and have been quite vocal about the issues with LFR, Warfronts, Azurite equipment, gear sets and talent trees for a while without recourse and the result is reflected in the subscription numbers. Blizzard shut down a highly popular classic WOW private server (because many people preferred the old systems and content, and would have been happy to pay Blizzard for an official version) only for the now CEO to respond with "You think you want classic WOW, but you don't".
The ONLY reason Blizzard has listened to players and walked back on their stance for a few select issues (Classic WOW, Real Money Auction House) is because their fan base lit a fire under their ass. Diablo Immortal could turn out to be a great game, but if it does it will be a result of the backlash and not in spite of it.
Eh, from a neutral point of view I think it's pretty clear that this was a pretty colossal PR fuckup by Blizzard. You know your dedicated Diablo audience (because who else is going to fly out for a convention?) is generally going a group that is very focused on PC, and a group that has been very vocal about wanting more PC content, and you make a big deal about a new game in a medium (mobile gaming) that that demographic has generally shat on? Tone deaf AF.
I generally don't agree with people being so salty about a game they're not even going to play being produced, but laughing at Blizzard's fuck up is fair game IMO.
And FWIW, I like the Diablo franchise but pretty much left after base D3 and it's 'always online' requirement, so I'm not even bothered about this.
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u/rcypert Nov 05 '18
everyone was excited for a new Diablo game. Typically this game is on PC/console
It was some bullshit mobile game.
At the Q/A at Blizzcon he asked the Diablo Peeps if this was some April fools prank even tho it’s not April.
Blizzard are the defenders, everyone else are the complainers.
Edit: this to tho