Diablo IV

[Zeriel]

Grim Dawn is getting an expansion next year apparently

I continue to be annoyed how they have a very obvious refusal to move the main story forward, all expansions after Malmouth are sidecontent. I suppose they might be saving it for a main sequel where you go to the empire's heartlands, but they equally seem tired of Grim Dawn and wanting to do other stuff, so...

I'd fucking kill and throw my entire wallet at them for a proper focus on the original conflict and bringing it to a head, but sadly they seem totally disinterested in doing that.

 

[Lovely Feather Pillow]

hey guys so hows D4 ?

Player counts dropped dramatically and the entire discussion surrounding the game is that it sucks and is dead.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Grim Dawn is getting an expansion next year apparently

I continue to be annoyed how they have a very obvious refusal to move the main story forward, all expansions after Malmouth are sidecontent. I suppose they might be saving it for a main sequel where you go to the empire's heartlands, but they equally seem tired of Grim Dawn and wanting to do other stuff, so...

I'd fucking kill and throw my entire wallet at them for a proper focus on the original conflict and bringing it to a head, but sadly they seem totally disinterested in doing that.

In their recent video (that they announced the new expansion pack) they said that they wanted to move the story forward in GD2 and want to save a lot of stuff for it.
I think they got good money from the cty builder and now can run wild with GD2.
Colour me

 

[Zeriel]

Grim Dawn is getting an expansion next year apparently

I continue to be annoyed how they have a very obvious refusal to move the main story forward, all expansions after Malmouth are sidecontent. I suppose they might be saving it for a main sequel where you go to the empire's heartlands, but they equally seem tired of Grim Dawn and wanting to do other stuff, so...

I'd fucking kill and throw my entire wallet at them for a proper focus on the original conflict and bringing it to a head, but sadly they seem totally disinterested in doing that.

In their recent video (that they announced the new expansion pack) they said that they wanted to move the story forward in GD2 and want to save a lot of stuff for it.
I think they got good money from the cty builder and now can run wild with GD2.
Colour me

Yeah that was my suspicion originally, but they were giving the impression for a while they never wanted to do a sequel. If they do, I'd be pumped for that.

 

[Anomander]

Disclaimer - haven't read this topic.
I started playing this and it is so weird game that I don't even know what to say. With each level I am weaker. Like what the fuck. On level 5 (or 8) it took one fireball to kill some dudes. Now (around level 20) the same dudes takes 5 fireballs and still live. Leveling skills does almost nothing (difference is marginal).
I cannot understand how they could break the main point of these games - leveling. Well, I can, but who thought this is fun?

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Microsoft should just give Diablo to the Vicarious Visions team that made that Diablo 2 remake. Just build a Diablo 5 on the back of the Diablo 2 systems, maybe return to the dungeon roots of Diablo 1, and swap in new classes for the game. They could probably turn out a new Diablo that way about as fast as they did Diablo 2: Resurrected, and still bring in the kind of profits Diablo does; which, from Wikipedia: Diablo IV generated $666 million in revenue within the first five days after launch.[86] Diablo IV reached 12 million players by August 2023 [87].

This Diablo as a forever game bullshit is just fucking moronic. They spent around a decade developing Diablo 4, and while the upfront sales were great, it seems the idea of it being some games as a service thing is dead. And to turn that around they’re going to waste the money they made trying to dig the game out of the hole they created so Diablo 4 can be in a place where people want to dump more money into it. Meanwhile, Vicarious Visions made Resurrected in around 2 years. Theoretically, Vicarious Visions could maybe do a new Diablo every 2 to 3 years, and be making Diablo 4 sales money on them every 2 to 3 years instead of every 10 years.

 

[Lovely Feather Pillow]

Imagine spending years designing a live service game with the sole purpose of retaining players to drive MTX and people universally reject it. It must be soul crushing.

 

[Cyberarmy]

If they do, I'd be pumped for that.

They said that they are working on a new engine for GD2. Everyone wants a piece of hack&slash ARPG cake after D4s failure.

 

[abija]

Microsoft should just give Diablo to the Vicarious Visions team that made that Diablo 2 remake.

They did already. They even complained of too much crunch. Turns out a new game is harder than remastering and tweaking an old one.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Microsoft should just give Diablo to the Vicarious Visions team that made that Diablo 2 remake.

They did already. They even complained of too much crunch. Turns out a new game is harder than remastering and tweaking an old one.

I haven’t seen anything about Vicarious Visions taking over Diablo. Diablo 4 was made by Team 3, Vicarious Visions I think only served as a support studio on Diablo 4. Although it looks like the head of the Diablo 2 remake from VV already left Blizzard.

 

[gabel]

hey guys so hows D4 ?

Player counts dropped dramatically and the entire discussion surrounding the game is that it sucks and is dead.

Imagine spending years designing a live service game with the sole purpose of retaining players to drive MTX and people universally reject it. It must be soul crushing.

SDG still plays and pays, doesn't he?

 

[abija]

I haven’t seen anything about Vicarious Visions taking over Diablo. Diablo 4 was made by Team 3, Vicarious Visions I think only served as a support studio on Diablo 4. Although it looks like the head of the Diablo 2 remake from VV already left Blizzard.

They got renamed in early 2022 to Blizzard Albany and moved to D4 (they were hiring for D4 positions at least).

 

[Lovely Feather Pillow]

hey guys so hows D4 ?

Player counts dropped dramatically and the entire discussion surrounding the game is that it sucks and is dead.

Imagine spending years designing a live service game with the sole purpose of retaining players to drive MTX and people universally reject it. It must be soul crushing.

SDG still plays and pays, doesn't he?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the remaining player base are people with substance abuse problems.

 

[Modron]

I wouldn’t be surprised if the remaining player base are people with substance abuse problems.

Most whale economy games are driven by the saudi players so yeah probably.

 

[Zeriel]

Imagine spending years designing a live service game with the sole purpose of retaining players to drive MTX and people universally reject it. It must be soul crushing.

Eh I'd imagine it's just life as usual in the corporate machine. They get paid either way, the only people annoyed are the shareholders/top dogs, it's not like artist number #5,089 or even lead gameplay designer gets a fat million dollar check when the MTX sells more.

They have their mandate to include the stuff, but it's analogous to a retail slave's orders to always thank the shopper for shopping--just something they have to do.

 

[abija]

Go through their credits on moby games, see how many you find with "years" on D4.

As for shareholders, D4 so far was a success. If it fails later it will be discarded or repurposed, no biggie. D3 was supposed to be an entire different thing than it ended up for example.

Probably suits have meetings now how to get some of that sweet bg3 romance action in the game.

 

[Zeriel]

Go through their credits on moby games, see how many you find with "years" on D4.

As for shareholders, D4 so far was a success. If it fails later it will be discarded, no biggie. D3 was supposed to be an entire different thing than it ended up for example.

I suspect that has more to do with old workers choosing to leave Blizzard because they were used to being allowed to make quality products and not put profit before everything else. Most of the top designers on Diablo 4 were indeed lowbies in the Diablo 3 hierarchy, but they were there before. And considering the timeframes involved, we're talking about people with decade-long careers at Blizzard. They just moved up when all the old top people quit out of what I think we can safely presume is disgust and/or exhaustion.

 

[abija]

Sure... point still stands: nobody poured his soul for years in that live service game to be disgruntled when it fails.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

I haven’t seen anything about Vicarious Visions taking over Diablo. Diablo 4 was made by Team 3, Vicarious Visions I think only served as a support studio on Diablo 4. Although it looks like the head of the Diablo 2 remake from VV already left Blizzard.

They got renamed in early 2022 to Blizzard Albany and moved to D4 (they were hiring for D4 positions at least).

Yeah, I know that. They were transferred over to the Blizzard brand after the Diablo 2 remake. But they’re just a support studio on Diablo 4, not the main team making the game. Diablo 4 was made by a group called Team 3, and they’d been developing Diablo 4 since 2016 when development on their previous Diablo 4 (Project Hades) ended. Vicarious Visions only gets involved in D4 in like the final year of development, and its not like they take over the project.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if in the very near future Microsoft moves them back out of Blizzard and their name goes back to being Vicarious Visions.

 

[abija]

They moved all of them to D4, you can't have them "take over" since they don't have enough people. You're arguing semantics, the suits already had the idea of having the people that made D2R work on D4 and did it.

 

[RolePlayer]

Anybody seen the latest blizz embarrassment?

Diablo devs don't even know how to play their own game lol

 

[Fedora Master]

Devs very rarely do. This shouldn't come as a surprise.

 

[Rhobar121]

Devs very rarely do. This shouldn't come as a surprise.

Everyone knows this, but few people are stupid enough to choose someone who doesn't have the slightest idea about their own game. This makes developers look like a bunch of morons.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Devs very rarely do. This shouldn't come as a surprise.

Everyone knows this, but few people are stupid enough to choose someone who doesn't have the slightest idea about their own game. This makes developers look like a bunch of morons.

Yes. "Look like" a bunch of morons.

To be fair, this is the only way that Assmongoloid can appear to be the intelligent one in his videos.

 

[abija]

It's fine if some devs didn't touch a game in their life, but not in this case. Going by what they say in the video (which could be total lies ofc), the dyke playtests and then adjusts content based on that. She shouldn't be at that level of (in)competence.