Diablo IV

[lycanwarrior]

Yeah seriously the best part about playing new games is exploring what it offers. The moment you search for build you lose that fun and you are playing effectively someone else game not yours.

This goes double for ARPG like diablo.

I'd bet money that almost everyone who says this is the first to copy popular ARPG builds online, rage at an unorthodox item build/hero position in Dota, netdeck in card games and mooch off combo videos in the latest FG

It's true, nonetheless.

Personally I don't. I go out of my way to avoid that stuff. The fun is in the discovery; even if you know your build is inoptimal, it's still fun making those decisions yourself. Netdecking as a philosophy is imo the refuge of people who are so bad at games they really need that handicap of a perfect build to not horribly fail. In card games it's a bit different since non-standard decks can just lose every game nonstop, but in games like PoE or Diablo, looking builds up is only required for absolute morons.

Always nice to see codexers frothing at the mouth and rabidly rooting for a game to fail. Who wants good games anyway amirite?

Who ISN'T rooting for Blizzard to fail at this point? If anything the people giving them a chance whatsoever are the ones who need to defend themselves. It's like being proud of being a bugchaser.

D4 doesn't have a Horadric Cube? Is this a fucking joke?

The irony is that D4 is markedly more decline than D3, if you look at the mechanics. The whole "we are returning to the artstyle of D2!!!!1" meme was just a headfake. It's remarkable on how many gullible people it worked.

D1 and D2 were better than D3 IMHO.

Weirdly enough I see more mixed opinions from users (those you played the beta) than from the critics. Makes you think...

 

[Zeriel]

Yeah seriously the best part about playing new games is exploring what it offers. The moment you search for build you lose that fun and you are playing effectively someone else game not yours.

This goes double for ARPG like diablo.

I'd bet money that almost everyone who says this is the first to copy popular ARPG builds online, rage at an unorthodox item build/hero position in Dota, netdeck in card games and mooch off combo videos in the latest FG

It's true, nonetheless.

Personally I don't. I go out of my way to avoid that stuff. The fun is in the discovery; even if you know your build is inoptimal, it's still fun making those decisions yourself. Netdecking as a philosophy is imo the refuge of people who are so bad at games they really need that handicap of a perfect build to not horribly fail. In card games it's a bit different since non-standard decks can just lose every game nonstop, but in games like PoE or Diablo, looking builds up is only required for absolute morons.

Always nice to see codexers frothing at the mouth and rabidly rooting for a game to fail. Who wants good games anyway amirite?

Who ISN'T rooting for Blizzard to fail at this point? If anything the people giving them a chance whatsoever are the ones who need to defend themselves. It's like being proud of being a bugchaser.

D4 doesn't have a Horadric Cube? Is this a fucking joke?

The irony is that D4 is markedly more decline than D3, if you look at the mechanics. The whole "we are returning to the artstyle of D2!!!!1" meme was just a headfake. It's remarkable on how many gullible people it worked.

D1 and D2 were better than D3 IMHO.

Weirdly enough I see more mixed opinions from users (those you played the beta) than from the critics. Makes you think...

Yes, my point is that D4 is not some return to form. It's even more babby-mode/simplified than D3. Basically, the people who said it is Diablo Immortal phone game without its most aggressive monetization (yet) were spot on the money.

 

[Great Deceiver]

There's no way they don't double down on some ridiculous monetization scheme soon after launch. It's pathetic really.

 

[Sykar]

Diablo 4. Good.

I have the finest game intuition out there. When I purchase a game, 9 and a half times out of 10 it's great. I purchased Diablo 4 so there's your answer.

 

[Reinhardt]

it is Diablo Immortal phone game without its most aggressive monetization

and with uglier characters

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

and with uglier characters

Still not as bad as "old woman Amazon" from D2R

 

[abija]

The irony is that D4 is markedly more decline than D3, if you look at the mechanics.

Can you be more specific? Other than less skills available, at least on paper D4 seems to improve on all mechanics vs D3.

 

[Kem0sabe]

According to ACG's latest podcast, the amount of money blizzard is spending with reviewers, you won't be seeing any negative reviews in this first batch of ore release reviews.

 

[Reinhardt]

woman

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Diablo 4. Good.

I have the finest game intuition out there. When I purchase a game, 9 and a half times out of 10 it's great. I purchased Diablo 4 so there's your answer.

Guess you bought it at halftime then.

 

[Sykar]

it is Diablo Immortal phone game without its most aggressive monetization

and with uglier characters

 

[Zlaja]

It's funny because to 'grognards', numbers in RPGs are important.

Damage numbers on screen are fun in proper RPGs, but in a fast-pased hack & slash where you keep hitting many enemies in quick succession the last thing I wish to see is damage numbers flooding the damn screen.

 

[abija]

It's a personal preference with on/off option, certainly not worth swinging so much monocled dick around.

 

[Hobo Elf]

This guy seems to know what he is talking about?

In case you weren't trolling: Rhykker is THE Blizzard shill (at least when it comes to the Diablow franchise)

I wasn't trolling. Fair enough, I didn't know he had that reputation.

I wouldn't call him a Blizzard shill so much as a shill in general, though he obviously does shilling for Blizzard mainly. I remember his shill videos on Wolcen pre-release. Then the game was released with massive technical issues that he had "mysteriously" failed to mention. He made a fake apology video later on, once people found out that the pre-release hype videos were paid content by the devs (also not mentioned in the videos).

 

[whydoibother]

I wouldn't call him a Blizzard shill so much as a shill in general

That used to be called "enthusiastic". Can't really accuse him of being a shill, if he "shills" competing products.
Hate merchants get to be called critics, why can't hype merchants be called enthusiasts? It might be genuine. Not everyone is a bitter grognard.

Anyways, I'm not buying Diablo on release, maybe never? The level 20 demo I played didn't get me hooked, and my wrists are begging me to stay away from the genre.

 

[Reinhardt]

I wouldn't call him a Blizzard shill so much as a shill in general

That used to be called "enthusiastic". Can't really accuse him of being a shill, if he "shills" competing products.
Hate merchants get to be called critics, why can't hype merchants be called enthusiasts? It might be genuine. Not everyone is a bitter grognard.

Anyways, I'm not buying Diablo on release, maybe never? The level 20 demo I played didn't get me hooked, and my wrists are begging me to stay away from the genre.

if you take bribes you are not "enthusiast"

 

[Jimeh]

"Accessible" is just a euphemism for "braindead", so, yes. Everything you say is correct. Diablo 4 is the next step in modern Blizzard dumbing down their dumb shit even more.

That's Diablo for you. They're probably not even allowed to design it any other way. AAA investment requires a AAA return on investment. Of course there will be modern monetization. Imagine thinking otherwise! Battlepass, item mall; it's all pretty much required. To have security for this sort of thing of course it will require you to be online. Gamers pretty much demand updates and content to be added. Of course it's a service! Nothing here should be surprising at all. We've come a long way since buying horse armour in Oblivion demonstrated clearly players actually want this sort of thing. 2023 is way too late to be complaining about modern business models.

I think it's a good sign that these are the major complaints people have. What's important; good gameplay, good sound, good graphics, etc, are mostly ignored by the haters because there's no real angle there. The closest to a legit complaint is that there's level scaling, but, as I think I said before, that just means you can farm the whole world at endgame instead of relying on a sorc with map hacks to portal you to bhaals room.

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diablo4/23954932/combatting-demons-with-accessibility-in-diablo-iv

Here's a little news bit they put up discussing just how much effort they put into accessibility for the "insert word that aligns with your agenda".

Anyway, reviews are out and look overwhelmingly positive. 37 hours to go!

I'm gonna have a shot at being one of those first 1000 to level100 hardcore.

edit - Oh, and the last thing I want to deal with is the loot-tetris inventory and "fill your whole bag with potions" systems from d1 and 2. Just having better systems for these two err systems is enough reason to upgrade, for me.

 

[whydoibother]

I wouldn't call him a Blizzard shill so much as a shill in general

That used to be called "enthusiastic". Can't really accuse him of being a shill, if he "shills" competing products.
Hate merchants get to be called critics, why can't hype merchants be called enthusiasts? It might be genuine. Not everyone is a bitter grognard.

Anyways, I'm not buying Diablo on release, maybe never? The level 20 demo I played didn't get me hooked, and my wrists are begging me to stay away from the genre.

if you take bribes you are not "enthusiast"

If you take bribes, one of the clauses is not unfavorably comparing the product to competing products.
You are very unwise, and have no clue, and are just shooting from the hip, posting feels, thinking you are profound. Childish. I hope you are in your early teens physically too, and not just mentally.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I wouldn't call him a Blizzard shill so much as a shill in general

That used to be called "enthusiastic". Can't really accuse him of being a shill, if he "shills" competing products.
Hate merchants get to be called critics, why can't hype merchants be called enthusiasts? It might be genuine. Not everyone is a bitter grognard.

Anyways, I'm not buying Diablo on release, maybe never? The level 20 demo I played didn't get me hooked, and my wrists are begging me to stay away from the genre.

if you take bribes you are not "enthusiast"

You don't get to call yourself an enthusiast if you are intentionally misleading people for payment. This is a pretty clear case of being a shill to me. I'm not super savvy when it comes to consumer laws concerning advertisement, but if a person gets paid to advertise a product then 1) I think you have to disclose this and 2) omitting the technical issues that makes it a flat out broken product is definitely against consumer laws as well as that would be false advertising.

Just because you are a youtuber / streamer doesn't mean that laws and taxes don't apply to you. Context changes with the transfer of money. I think it's still fair to call someone an enthusiast if you get paid to advertise a game, but for mercy's sake don't do it like that motherfucker did. People bought Wolcen because they trusted him only to get burned. Make it clear to the viewer that it's paid content and don't lie to them about the state of the product.

 

[Reinhardt]

Just because you are a youtuber / streamer doesn't mean that laws and taxes don't apply to you.

come on, it was just a prank!

 

[ArchAngel]

I wouldn't call him a Blizzard shill so much as a shill in general

That used to be called "enthusiastic". Can't really accuse him of being a shill, if he "shills" competing products.
Hate merchants get to be called critics, why can't hype merchants be called enthusiasts? It might be genuine. Not everyone is a bitter grognard.

Anyways, I'm not buying Diablo on release, maybe never? The level 20 demo I played didn't get me hooked, and my wrists are begging me to stay away from the genre.

if you take bribes you are not "enthusiast"

He is not even a shill, he is a common plant. He got flown to Blizzard HQ to be part of the official promotion videos for D4...

 

[abija]

Are all his videos stamped/begin with: "I took $$$ from blizzard/I work for blizzard PR" ? If not, he's a shill. Why downplay it?

 

[whydoibother]

Are all his videos stamped/begin with: "I took $$$ from blizzard/I work for blizzard PR" ? If not, he's a shill. Why downplay it?

Is he taking $$$ from Blizzard, or is that just feels?
I've seen exactly 1 video of his, and I'm just seeing he praises Blizzard competitors too. These games are full time, if he were a Blizzard shill he wouldn't be praising Path of Exile, its money out of Blizzard's pocket.

 

[abija]

He starts talking about combat saying D4 ads a tactical element on top of D3's fluidity. That's PR lines barely filtered (or Perkel writes his materials). Nobody with his "pedegree" in the diablo clones genre would go there.

"Enemies are designed in a way that requires to prioritize targets on the battlefield". Cmon... that's absolutely basics of this genre. Presenting this as some D4 achievement is 100% PR talk.

Anecdotal how a dev tried first time gamepad then never looked back...

If you don't realize this is pure shill in 5 mins...\


You do realize that someone shitting on PoE is not a very effective Blizzard shill right? You want to convince some of those players not to skip over your thumbnail (as they should).

 

[whydoibother]

He starts talking about combat saying D4 ads a tactical element on top of D3's fluidity. That's PR lines barely filtered (or Perkel writes his materials). Nobody with his "pedegree" in the diablo clones genre would go there.

Your post reads "i disagree with him, therefore he is paid to say what he says". Reconsider your views here. I think the simpler explanation for the discrepancy is that he likes different things. Or that he just played himself out of optimism, and is bargaining with his inner self on how well the game will end up.
"Shill" shouldn't ever be the null hypothesis. Enthusiast is the null hypothesis. Genuine hype. Shill is the alternative hypothesis, which requires proof.