From a developer perspective, tonnes of stuff. Shortcuts, power (edit: see Diablo Immortal for some live examples). From a gamer perspective, it’s really the ideal scenario in this day and age, but Blizzard’ll cop hate all the same.
Other similar games like Last Epoch are doing paid alt animations for skills, but Diablo team just aren’t that creative, and the game wasn’t designed well enough to accommodate something like that.
My experience: I do the game sharing trick on xbox where you and a friend can mutually access both of your digital libraries. Preordered collector’s edition, which included 5 days of early access before launch. Blizzard had implemented a special access control on the server side which checked for a unique collector’s edition license. My friend could download and launch the game using my license but couldn’t login during early access. I refunded my purchase because the point of the extra cost was invalidated by that.
I later bought the standard edition. My account still had all the preorder and collector’s edition bonuses, including MTX currency & a battle pass token. Said token was later redeemed by mistake via Blizzard’s dark pattern implementation at the start of S1. There was some backlash about that at the time which was certainly valid, but personally I didn’t feel affected because I got it at no extra cost.
I’ve played for 1000s of hours since but never spent the free in-game currency. I had never seen another player in-game using MTX cosmetics until the wings items were recently added as preorder bonuses for the upcoming expansion. It’s not surprising that only 15% of the revenue came from MTX because the paid cosmetics are pointless, expensive and they aren’t substantially better than the free ones. Using transmog at all robs the player of any sense of cosmetic progression. Paid portal skins are kinda cool the first time you see them, but the free activity-specific ones like for infernal hordes are cool too.
I’m left confused at why someone would boast about these figures given they’re evidence of not having implemented any solid post-launch monetisation strategy, and more generally the half-baked nature of the post-launch development for the game. The MTX is purely for vanity and it doesn’t even achieve that. The skins might as well be a dork sign. I wouldn’t be surprised if their revenue figures included my original purchase as well.
tl;dr my read is that this dude has done more to unintentionally subvert blizzard’s MTX sales than he’s done to generate them
You could just refund it if it doesn’t work well for you. GOG are usually pretty generous
Everyone is better off without game pass (though MS have had the capability to do it for a long time before they launched it, and that infrastructure was largely just going to waste). IMO it doesn’t change that the millions that show up to buy CoD every year will be direct marketed game pass as a way to get it for $20 instead of $70 and that will be highly successful
Game pass numbers stalled out because Microsoft stalled out on adding blockbuster games since Starfield, which was poorly received. Check the numbers once the new CoD, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., ARK, Indiana Jones all get added towards the end of the year. CoD in particular will likely show the reports about them reaching full saturation to be false
I’m really meaning the lack of option not to consume fast-moving consumer goods, rather than the option to pay a premium for them elsewhere. When their market position is similar to like an outlet for government rations except for private profit, their net is essentially what was skimmed off the top of free enterprise. 2.66% is just the current maximum amount that is justifiably worth without doing societal harm
That’s an expected tradeoff of operating an essential service is the point. It’s not as though their margin is that slim by mistake, or out of goodwill, or bad business sense. It’s meant to lead to the situation where we shop at Walmart not by choice, but in lieu of other options.
Steam/Steamworks is DRM. You can’t purchase games on Steam and play them independently of Steam.
The overlay, the community pages, reviews, friends chat etc were all there circa 2010 and function identically to how they do today. Regional pricing was there too, today it’s been reneged in many countries to protect against region-spoofing.
The primary group of people who prefer Steam only for Steam Workshop and/or Community Market are those who seek to extract profit from them. There were paid mods before Steam Workshop and it was fine. There were digital collectibles inside games before Steam Community Market and it was fine. There wasn’t any skin gambling, though.
These systems are designed to provide functions which already existed, but with Valve taking a cut of the sales. That is a profit-adding for Valve, and literally value-reducing for consumers. They are popular because they are bundled with a popular pre-existing service, that’s it.
A launcher is an unnecessary contrivance of anti consumerism (DRM). GOG Galaxy is entirely optional.
That and the other launchers are a product of Steam’s dominance, not a cause of it.
Steam only historically dominated GOG, snowballing off the success of their first-party titles & providing a platform for DRM where GOG chose not to.
Valve has done a lot of great things, I’m not seeking to argue against that. To argue it hasn’t become artificially bloated for purposes of maximising profit over the years seems silly, though.
Its content delivery network for games existed without those things 15 years ago is my point. If the argument is that being privately run exempts them from the need for constant pointless expansion, there is no greater contradiction of that than examples where it expanded pointlessly. Systems which they hired an in-house economist to develop; whom rejects their modern implementations on the principles I described.
Also, GOG exists.
Steam has certainly degraded over the past 15 years, it just gets a pass because the pointless economies it created to capitalise on are player-driven: steam workshop & steam community market.
Neither offer something which didn’t already exist, they just do so in a way which generates income for Valve. Including in ways that are predatory toward people predisposed to gambling etc behaviours, and enable exploitation by 3rd parties (which Valve also profits from)
It can become surprisingly complicated with axial deadzone settings, but that’s not really important to understand. The simple concept is it’s the zone in which the stick is moved but no change in movement is registered in-game. The complication that is added is mostly related to more precise calculation of where that zone is
You guys do know that outside the US you can’t generally advertise permanent positions and then just decide it’s temporarily more convenient not to have people on payroll, right?
Y’all need employment reform
Metroid Prime series are more “action games” than FPS’ per se, but they are must-plays if you haven’t, & might scratch that itch. There’s a switch remaster of the first game, none yet for Prime 2 or 3 but it’s likely they’ll come out leading up to the release of the recently-announced Prime 4
Moving a joystick is fundamentally different to moving a mouse. With a joystick there is a spring constantly acting to center it - no equivalent force when using a mouse. So you need to get a feel for estimating that force and accurately counteracting it in various gameplay scenarios. That’s a completely different “muscle” to have a memory of vs. using a mouse I think
Also, modern controller joysticks generally are not great. Most have medium to large deadzones in the center by default. I’d recommend reducing them for more responsiveness. It comes with the tradeoff of being more susceptible to stick drift. But that isn’t something you should be afraid of. It’s a physical impossibility for their design to not wear over time. I’d recommend recalibrating and adjusting settings regularly. At the end of the day, replacing joystick modules only requires screws (no soldering) so it’s cheap and relatively easy.
If you’re really serious you could get some hall effect joystick modules. That way you wouldn’t need to recalibrate often and could keep a consistently small deadzone setting without encountering drift. i.e. default settings from like dualshock 2, when stick drift was just as apparent but people hadn’t gone crazy over it yet.
Minecraft would be fine for learning fps movement in a relaxed setting.
Your overall point seems to be that despite the wide acclaim on launch & yourself / your peer group’s historic enthusiasm for blizzard games, you came to the conclusion it wasn’t worth engaging with the game via word-of-mouth. What is there to argue about that? The reasons you shared generally don’t ring true to me, but I’m not the arbiter of your collective impressions. At the start of this comment chain I tried to elucidate genuine reasons to dislike it - either reasons that haven’t been already addressed for a significant part of the game’s lifecycle, and aren’t ones where D4 is simply guilty by association with blizzard or another of their games. I think the reasons you’ve given generally fall into these categories.
on initial dev/community response, I agree specifically vulnerable damage didn’t take long to be revealed as overpowered & that cheapened the launch meta. The first dev stream primarily served to address that issue. I’d agree it was significant enough an issue to warrant addressing quickly, but I’d disagree that the response was outside the scope of general expectation for post-launch corrections to the meta of an ARPG. Here I think you’re mistaking the acknowledgement of any fault with the game as going into “damage control” mode, likely due to the issue being played up by commentators. I acknowledge they went into that mode later - following the S1 mid-season patch.
on sticking with bad design, or the intention behind it, it’s hard to respond about the examples you’ve given because the fact both minions & dungeons have been reworked exemplifies that isn’t true. Minions received small updates in S2, buffs & further reworks in S4. Many of the more annoying dungeon affixes were removed for S2 - lightning storm affix was also removed for S4. You could certainly argue that they were intentional parts of the design during the development stage, but that dev time was straight up sacrificed to improve it, so it’s clear to me they aren’t staunch about really any part of the design. Indeed following the codex reworks, running a normal dungeon is no longer necessary at any stage of the game (except for the sorc lvl15 quest). You can still get aspects that way if you want, but you can also get them all from salvaging gear over time. It’s optional content, and additionally there are many small tweaks over the seasons I’d describe as “surprises” - minor things like new animations for normal mobs in particular locations, spider elites creeping down from the roof of a cave, and other small touches that cumulatively make dungeons more interesting / less repetitive. These are mostly not mentioned in patch notes and as such have been almost completely ignored by commentators.
on monetisation, as someone that has had multiple battle passes, they aren’t worth it. There’s simply very little motivation to buy them or any of the individual paid cosmetics in the game, because they aren’t meaningfully better than the free cosmetics. My toons don’t wear my paid cosmetics - it’s literally more interesting to go without transmog. The free cosmetics are good enough & that way there’s at least variety in what’s displayed on the loading screens. When you refer to monetisation as a problem with this game, my question in response is - acknowledging the state of live service game monetisation is generally predatory - how could it be less so in D4? Isn’t an entirely optional system that doesn’t involve fomo about as good a place as you could expect the monetisation to be in?
There are 2 exceptions in my mind regarding generally anti-consumer stuff (the isolated incidents I referred to earlier). That is 1. additional DRM that was in place during the early access period for purchasers of the collector’s edition, and 2. the dark pattern implementation causing unintentional activation of S1 battle pass tokens for that same group. These are both things I disagree strongly with on principle, and if anyone dropped the game because of them - I’d agree with them. Indeed when my buddy ran into DRM roadblocks during early access, I promptly refunded my collector’s edition and purchased the standard one upon launch instead.
Now in regards to yours/your friends initial impressions, I think it’s worth considering the impact of external factors such as Blizzard’s reputation, and the general launch state of the litany of games released post-covid delays during 2022-23, both of which I think served to negatively impact interest at launch. IIRC it was their first major non-WoW release following the revelation of issues that culminated in the DFEH lawsuit, and the resulting major changes in company structure. I actually think D4’s launch state is pretty admirable overall in light of those issues, but could certainly understand if Blizzard fans were trepidatious about continuing to support them at the time. Against a backdrop of failed major launches, it’d at least make a lot of sense to wait for post-launch independent feedback.
And likewise if they had held off until that S1 midseason patch where everything was nerfed to shit and people logged in to find their builds suddenly needed extensive reworking, I’d agree with anyone dropping interest in the aftermath of that. I did too, temporarily.
Lastly, keep in mind that they had Megan Fox advertising the game in Superbowl ads. I don’t think it’s the case that D4’s launch state was bad and caused a noteworthy player exodus. I think that ARPG’s simply aren’t that mass-marketable, and that advertising reached a lot of people that otherwise wouldn’t pay D4 any mind, and that group just aren’t generally interested in that kind of game. And so once they reconciled how it was advertised vs what it is, they stopped playing. From my perspective, that isn’t meaningful in terms of analysing whether it’s a good game.
I wrote out a longer reply but my phone died partway through. Suffice to say, fair enough, I can’t argue with your lived experience. I still disagree about several of your points - minion AI was reworked in S4 - outside a couple of isolated incidents, monetisation is relatively fair - timeline/urgency of dev/community response re: post-launch corrections (“damage control” mode specifically followed a horrible S1 mid-season patch). But ultimately your opinion is valid and I’m happy to agree to disagree.
I think you’re playing into a content creator-driven narrative that doesn’t quite exist for the reasons you think. It isn’t quite as simple as D4 bad, followed by D4 saved (or the delicate nuance of ‘D4 mid’). Indeed masses already flipped their use of these polar opposite terms several times since its release. This is more of a treadmill you’re on to drive engagement, views. If you’re bored with a game, that doesn’t necessarily have to be because the game is bad. It could just be that the available content has run its natural course for you. This explanation just doesn’t compel people to watch videos about it, though. It can be more satisfying to have it explained to you that there is a problem with the game, that some external factor is inhibiting your enjoyment of it.
I just don’t think that is an accurate representation of reality in this case. I think the latent majority audience isn’t terminally online, doesn’t form their opinions based on what a content creator said, doesn’t watch a line on the steam charts page and cheer when its direction validates them. They just play the game until they’re done, and enjoy their time with it. And that by no means is the same thing as being a ‘casual’.
Ya, that’s a subreddit for an online game tho - being a circlejerk of negativity is like its primary function, even for breakout hits like Helldivers or The Finals. It’s part of why I left reddit completely, and why “someone online said it’s bad” doesn’t pass the sniff test for legitimate criticism for me. As an ARPG enthusiast, I went in with the expectation that it was neither POE nor Diablo Immortal; that I’d play it alongside other ARPG’s cyclically; that it’d be made or broken by the quality of the seasonal content & meta.
I understand it fell short of others’ expectations, but I think that’s primarily an issue with the expectations. That I’d rather play D4 right now over PoE or Last Epoch doesn’t mean that those aren’t great games, they just don’t have that fresh content right now and that’s ok, despite that you can easily find equivalent negative discourse about it. And if D4 S5 sucks, the inverse will also be true.
D4 has shortcuts for battle pass tiers, i.e. cosmetics. There aren’t any level skips like there is in WoW.
You can skip the campaign at the time you create a new toon, if you have already completed it. It is faster to level that way, because you can stick to activities that reward more XP and don’t have to turn in quests/listen to dialogue. You still start at level 1 though, so it’s not really a shortcut. Rather there are certain things in the game that you’re only required to earn once, given it’s intended to play multiple characters/builds. It’d be a slog to have to continuously go around the game world collecting the minor stat boosts for finding altars, for example. Instead the ones you’ve found will carry over between characters and seasons.
Yeah, P2W is what I mean by paying for power and it’s a good thing for players that it isn’t in D4 (like it is in Immortal for example). I edited my earlier comment to include that other games have come up with more creative ways to monetise cosmetics like you mentioned, but that they aren’t really possible in Diablo for technical reasons. It is very poorly optimised for online play by design - when you load an instance, your client loads the full loadout of every player character in that instance. Their full inventory, stash, everything. That’s part of what I mean - it’s an opportunity to monetise which many players would be amenable to, totally missing from the game.
Personally though, I think that there being minimal compulsion to buy MTX post-game purchase is exactly the way it should be. I wouldn’t expect them to continue a live service with no ongoing revenue, so if MTX is how they do that it should be relegated to rich fuckers with nothing better to spend their fortunes on, so I can point and laugh at them while they fund additional content for me. It’s just weird that a dev would subsequently use “hey 150m big number” to try and claim the situation as some sort of business success, as much as it’s weird players (like some in this thread) would consider this revelation as additional points against D4. Are they completely oblivious to the absolute hellscape in which we exist?!