The same folks that created the real money auction house for Diablo 3, the memes “You think you do, but you actually don’t”; “Don’t you guys have phones?” and Diablo Immoral, continues to show their complete dissociation from reality because money.
Similar to his recent comments about how gamers turned the series towards live-service, Fergusson claims the “consumptive” nature of modern fans means a true, classic Diablo wouldn’t succeed anymore.
Ah yes, it’s the gaymurrs that asked for more fucking live service. Fuck off. To be fair, the actual interview doesn’t have anything saying that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a statement thrown elsewhere, since diablo immoral is full of lootboxes, gems and all the predatory bullshit that works wonders to funnel money. It worked exactly as expected, it’s profitable beyond reason. To conflate that with “gamers want more of that” is pure corporate bullshit and they know it.
(Fergusson): And so we launched that way with D4 and we found out very quickly that if you don’t give me my Uber in my season, then I’m upset. And so we’re like, oh, wow, okay. And now it’s not like, now we actually have an uber currency, uber unique currency that you can go make the one. If you’re not finding it, you can actually go make it for yourself, right? And so, which is very different. It’s just a kind of a recognition of how much players have changed in 20 years. You know, what they, that consumptive nature of a live service and that time is money and I don’t have much time, so let’s go, right? And so that idea of like, oh, you’re going to get a unique every six months. So what are you talking about? I need to get all the unique in six months, you know? And so it’s been, so that’s that clarity that Brent talks about is just putting in players’ hands, getting their actions and adapting."
That’s a “problem” because of how you decided the game should work, as a fucking live service.
For more Diablo coverage, read about Fergusson’s wish to have the ARPG genre renamed to “Diablo-likes”.
Everything old is new again, I guess.
Diablo 2 was my first and favorite, I played the shit out of that game with my friends. We’d join up and rush each other, share equipment, meticulously plan our builds, and kill the strongest stuff we could find.
The story was stale after the first playthrough, and yeah I killed Baal and Mephisto thousands of times, but it was so much fun. There wasn’t an auction house or an ability to buy the best equipment. Leveling up didn’t take forever, so I could build a level 80 character in a few weekends of grinding away.
I played Diablo 3 too, but it felt like they lost the storytelling magic and focused more on monetization. Rifts were cool, but I really just felt like it was more of the same with better graphics and different characters / skill trees. It wasn’t novel enough to grind away my weekends on.
I haven’t tried the latest, and despite having a phone, I refuse to play Immortal or whatever (if that is still around).
I am over Blizzard games at this point … in the 90s and early 2000s they could do no wrong. Since they hitched up with Activision they completely lost the plot.
I wish they never discovered that all gamers were monolithic.
Shit like this is why people go back and play much older titles and have a great time with them.
c/patientgamers rise up! Or maybe not. We’ll just wait until it goes on sale and maybe give it a try down the road.
A friend and I literally just finished Diablo II with SlashDiablo’s servers so we avoid Blizzard. It was an awesome time
“People” as in maybe 5% of players. Most of the money is in what is being released - live services, forever games. They’re not idiots, they have statistics and know what most players actually pay for.
The entirety of sales for Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty, generated less money than a single mount skin in World of Warcraft.
47% of the total playing time on Steam was spent on games released in the last one to seven years, while a sizeable 37% of time was spent in games that have been out for eight years or more.
Also with all the recent Concord-style live service fails maybe investors will want to fund other stuff from now on? idk
Playtime has nothing to do with this. If I pull 800hrs in Garry’s Mod and then 10 people buy Fifa and put in 2hrs each, most of the playtime is mine in an old game. Yet I paid like $10 for it and they spent $600. It also isn’t surprising that older games have more playtime - more time for someone who is “hooked” to play something. There is only 24hrs in a day after all. Also this doesn’t count live service games seperately and games outside of steam - League of Legends comes to mind. Same for Warframe. Huge behemoths that people play for hundreds of hours and spend hundreds of dollars on.
Shit like this is why people go back and play much older titles and have a great time with them
“People” as in maybe 5% of players
That’s the part of the comment I was referring to. It’s factually wrong: only ~15% of playtime is spent on 2024 games
LoL didn’t release in 2024, neither did Warframe. I’m not arguing that old service games don’t make the most revenue, they obviously do, I’m arguing that a lot of the live service games that are actively comming out are almost all underperforming and failing to get any kind of audience. All that means there’s very little incentive to develop a new live service game unless you already have a big community for it or a brilliant idea
If you have a lot of money, you’re better off investing in a “Black Myth Wukong” or “Elden Ring” – both of which are outperforming the newest Call of Duty on Steam in revenue – compared to a new random live service game
A lot of it is untracked, though. I know we live in the era of big data, but Blizzard et al has no clue how many people are playing TIE Fighter Total Conversion and countless other old games. 5% is way too low of a made up estimate.
Hell, classic arcade emulators are ubiquitous.
My point here is not that game publishers aren’t making money. My point is, gamers don’t have to buy into it to have fun.
The only reason the players are “too consumptive” is because the game is designed to not give the player any other way to play. You wanted that outcome, so you designed it so there was no other option.
Don’t you guys have phones??
It was a pain in the ass unless you played everyday. Playing with friends was tiresome because you’d have to do the same boss battles over and over. Diablo was great because of the horror and the levels got more twisted as you went deeper. There was also the secret cow level.
Now, it’s open world and a bit soulless because it caters to always online. Art direction was great in D4 but I got so sick of the 40Gb updates everytime I booted up the game every few weeks. Just give me a one and done solo offline story mode and separate online.
That’s the only thing that could bring me back to Blizzard. Dedicated and fulfilling solo for most of their ips
Kins alike when they said “you think you do but you don’t” about doing WoW Classic, which turned out to be extremely popular.
Today’s gamers just want slots machines on their phone! You guys have phones right?
Ironically Balatro has proven this is close to what we wanted. Of course if blizz made that game, buying jokers would require a credit card.
They are right about the latter part, but attributing who doesn’t want the classic ways back to the wrong group. Developers don’t want to go back because people will actually pay for the MTX/Battlepass/whatever the fuck bullshit and they (the developers and publishers) love money.
I loved D2 and yes D3. But 4… I’ve tried to play it twice and gave up. It is just such a giant expanse of soul sucking nothing that I’ve not been able to find any “fun” in the game.
The intro was cool. When I played it I thought “nice, they’re going back to Diablo 1’s atmosphere”. Then the rest of the game happened.
IMO Path of Exile 2 is kind of like “Diablo 4 classic”.
Sure it lack some QoL just because it wants to be old school but it nails the mood of the older Diablo games.
I also played Diablo 4 and there is no way I will return to that game. They clearly don’t have a good formula anymore.
I’ve been jamming on poe2, and (to me) it feels like D2 resurrected, but with a bunch of extra content. Act biomes are identical, storyline is conceptually very close (chasing a corrupting force across the continent), look and feel, etc…
Also, it’s too bad the VGAs don’t have a “Stable Release” award, because, even being early access, the level of polish on POE2 is pretty amazing.
Have you by any chance played Grim Dawn? I really enjoy the mechanics and aesthetics of it, and I’m wondering how PoE2 compares. I don’t think I’ll ever be in the market for Diablo 4; the P2W cash-grab of Diablo Immortal really soured me on the franchise.
I prefer Last Epoch to Grim Dawn. When I played Grim Dawn it felt like the “right” way to play was to put 90% of my skill points into stats, which is frankly boring. In Last Epoch I get to put skill points into customizing my abilities in pretty diverse ways.
Yeah, I don’t worry too much about my GD builds being “end-game viable”, I just like finding combinations that are fun to play, and there are enough unique item sets and abilities to keep me entertained for a while. I’ll check out Last Epoch—looks like it might be up my alley!
Indeed. And its half a game, without classes, without systems and act 4-6 as well as all the skills and abilities associated with that stuff.
Another 6 months of balance and polish on it plus all the above mentioned content, it’s gonna have something for everyone that is even slightly a fan of arpg’s I’d hope.
PoE took, what, four years before they decided to change it from 3 acts repeated thrice to the 10 act arc? I loved playing it from beta, but I think I’ll wait a while for PoE 2. I’ll bet 6 months is just enough for chis wisson to figure out what horror he wants to add to the rnGods, and that’s much more important than balance and polish.
You can’t exactly compare the studio to how it was a decade ago…
And you know… It was their first game like this and they had never done anything like a 10 act story. They already stated their future plans. Back then it was up in the air.
This would be like saying it took engineers 10+ years to make the first useful car. Surely the next upgrade wont be for a while.
Also chris wilson isnt on the poe2 team. He’s barely on the poe1 team.
I notice path of exile has sucked xi xinpings cock exactly zero times and is also a better game even if they had.
I notice path of exile has sucked xi xinpings cock exactly zero times
In 2018, Tencent became a majority holder in GGG, acquiring 86.67% of the company’s shares.
-sourceI enjoyed Path of Exile, and may give PoE2 a go. But ya, GGG looks set to deepthroat some Xi Xin Pooh cock,
I played Diablo II so much as a kid and then when the remake came out over twenty years later, it was just as great as I remembered and I play it regularly. I haven’t bought Diablo III or IV.
(It was much harder when I was a kid so I do wish there was more challenge now.)
/players 8
I wish they would enable that in battle.net games so I don’t have to choose between trading and it.
I picked up the base for III after sinking countless hours in II and LOD. It was so much less fun and more grindy… maybe some people like it, but it didn’t hook me like I & II did. I never even finished the base game I got maybe 10-20yrs tops and gave up. Luckily it was on a steep discount at the time.
They did try loot and difficulty changes that are closer to Diablo II in style. Players moaned endlessly until they gave up.
Is the difficulty in 4 as broken as it is in 3? I gave up in disgust after realizing I could win most encounters by literally just standing still and holding down the A button.
Diablo 3 has nearly infinitely scaling difficulty. If it was too easy, you were playing on too low of a difficulty.
I enjoyed D3 and D4, I think they both do difficulty well (at this point, D3 was stupid at launch). In both there are now hundreds of fine grained tiers you can shift up or down to find the right difficulty for your gear/build/skill.
That said, holding down a button to win is more of a build issue unless you’re running embarrassingly low difficulty. There will always be easy builds and more challenging, technical, timing based builds. Finding a fun build is part of the fun of ARPGs.
holding down a button to win is more of a build issue unless you’re running embarrassingly low difficulty. There will always be easy builds and more challenging, technical, timing based builds. Finding a fun build is part of the fun of ARPGs.
A well designed game does not have the “fun thing” work against “the smart thing”.
It’s subjective. Easy builds can be super fun. Especially if you earned it by getting some gear. It’s also an accessibility issue. Not everyone is 25 years old with lightning reflexes (or, conversely, not everyone has 20 years of history with the genre).
Anyway, my point was only that if you’re bored with being OP, try something different. If you think you’re invincible but killing things is a slog, maybe shift your gear to be more offensive etc. The way these games work, difficulty is entirely up to you.
He’s not wrong. As much as we loved the old games, it’s hard to go back once you’ve gotten used to the QoL improvements in modern games.
We think we want the old games back, but really we just want the emotions that came with playing it.
There are studios out there making games with the QoL improvements modern gamers demand without without modern bullshit like subscriptions and microtransactions. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a particularly prominent example of a studio doing the right thing and being massively rewarded with sales.
Absolutely! I just meant that going back to an old game is never quite as good as it was the first time.
We want the old style of games back with the modern QoL changes. Not just remakes.
Modern Corporation:
Just in… we’re re-releasing old classic games, but making every reward 10x harder to earn… but adding in microtransactions so you can get them without having to do all the playing portions.
Is making the game live service a quality of life improvement? There’s still a market out there for Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, and Borderlands, after all; a large one.
I’d play D2 over D4 any day
I barely finished my first D4 playthrough because I got bored in the first few weeks.
I was still playing D2 (off and on) 10 years after it’s release.
That was my experience with Diablo 3. Never finished it cause it was boring.
I mean there’s a wide range of possibilities between “diablo 1, but you can walk faster in town” and “Diablo 1, with battle pass”
I fucking hate battle passes.
What do battle passes even do? Is that the same thing as “season pass” things in other games (not that I know what those do either tbh)?
I never pay for, and thus don’t look at, any game stuff that’s not included, so I’m totally ootl on this one.
A season pass is a bundle of several DLCs intended to release over a period of time, usually a year, and they usually come with a small discount for buying in bulk or maybe a few extras for buying them all together instead of separately. A battle pass will often have a “free tier” and a “paid tier”, and it’s basically a experience points progression meter that encourages you to keep playing the game longer (and they have an incentive to put the best rewards behind the paid tier to get you to pay for them). Typically battle passes are only available for a limited time, and if you don’t get them while they’re available, you missed out, which creates a greater sense of urgency to play longer during that period of time.
It really is genius. Evil genius, but genius nonetheless.
That’s been the elusive key to nostalgia that half of these remake projects (80s and 90s franchise revival movies in particular) don’t understand.
It’s about recreating the experience of doing that thing the first time that people want, not the experience of doing the exact same thing. To recreate that first time experience, you have to understand where your audience is now, and also give them a comparable “new” experience to what they had originally.
I want old games back! Give me more Old School CRPGs damnit, hell give me janky as unpolished Fallout 1 and 2 CRPGs.
That’s exactly one of the inspirations for my post.
I tried playing Fallout 2 again, and it was painful. Couldn’t even force myself to get very far into it.
Sounds like a skill issue. Joking aside I play largely old school games as a baseline, but maybe try playing some newer CRPGs to ease into it like Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, or really any of Owlcats games. Also it could be worse ya couldve tried playing Arcanum which is rough even for me to play.
I find this comment amusing because other than Vagrant Story needing 1h to access the memory card, I think modern QoL has destroyed the fun and community in video games. Exhibit 1: the souls series. Not only did it introduce actual difficulty (not HP bar go brrrrr) in a world where it was gone it also had obtuse storytelling and a lot of missable content. It has resulted in one of the best franchises of the last 10y and a strong community that produces lore and discussion content to this day.
The main issue is in surveys of people who identify as “gamers”, your farmville enjoyer also considers itself a gamer, so AAA studios started to produce games to an audience that didn’t exist. Now the laid off development teams are paying the bill.
There should be more games like Outward, Valheim etc. Fun games that eschewed QoL that should have never existed like map click fast travel anywhere.
Friggin Farmville. I forgot about that shit. 😂
