I haven’t really posted anything about Diablo 4 since it was announced at Blizzcon. Most of my time has been spent on playing Path of Exile to get my ARPG fix. However, with the direction of GGG and the recent leagues being what I consider bad jokes, I feel it’s a good time to discuss Diablo 4 and what it means to Blizzard.
Blizzard has been known for very high quality games ever since I discovered them. While their games have bugs, the general smoothness, style and presentation have garnered Blizzard huge praise by the gaming community.
I think when Activision and Viviendi acquired them, there was a huge change in tone. It was said that Blizzard had autonomy in being a studio under Activision, but I don’t think that really had been the case. Over time, from what I’ve heard, Blizzard was slowly losing control over to Activision pressure and that eventually led to many of the lifers leaving, including the former CEO Mike Morhaime.
The first real disaster from Blizzard occurred when Diablo Immortal was announced. It wasn’t what the hardcore Blizzard fan wanted and looked to be Blizzard caving into pressure not just from the mobile market, but the Chinese market (where the game apparently was outsourced).
But even before that the game company had been experiencing smaller failures that looked like terrible marketing ideas or cash grabs. Diablo 3’s Auction House was a notorious example where the worst incident allowed people to abuse some bugs and effectively make real cash. Warlords of Draenor and the last WoW expansions were considered poor busts as expansions to WoW. Hearthstone is pretty much a game dictated on keeping up with the meta, which implies either hard grinding or buying packs of cards. Titan was dead in the water and lead to a pretty bland copycat version of various shooter games mixed with a bit of MOBA action. And Heroes of the Storm was Blizzard’s feeble attempt at getting into a market that they had missed by a long shot.
So what does this have to do with Diablo 4? The thing here is that Diablo 4 has to be perfect as an ARPG in the minds of the fans because it will be the deciding factor in a post-Morhaime led Blizzard whether the company still has its mojo.
From what I know of Diablo 3, the game originally was supposed to be the next gen MMORPG from Blizzard. However, the original team left for some reason (possibly an internal conflict of interest between WoW and the Diablo crews). If I read the way Cataclysm was done, it looked to be the final WoW expansion and possibly a hand off to Diablo 3. I only say this because WoW was effectively thrashed to death by Cataclysm so badly that it alienated fans. I feel that Wrath of the Lich King was too successful for Blizzard’s own good; why else would you want to change the design that would turn away all the casual players?
However, Diablo 3 didn’t turn out to be anything that was promised. I know that the original PVP system was nothing like that garbage that was put out because I knew people who did internal testing and praised it. But it was never released for whatever reason (probably the impossibility of balancing)
My gut believes that Diablo 3 in the end when it first was released just used the skin of whatever engine was started but striped down to make a deadline. However, the game was overtuned to make it appear people could grind forever.
I don’t think Blizzard could have predicted the hype of their own game because of how poorly it launched. The other thing I don’t think they could have predicted was the backlash of how poorly tuned the game was.
I know some people enjoyed it but it was a small percentage. After a few months, the game kinda died down. I feel that a lot of people saw right through the Auction House as a marketing joke that basically said Blizzard had sold out their fans.
Naturally, those good at the game and those with low cunning loved the Auction House because they could scam people and make a profit from their abilities to manipulate the market while the casual gamer just wanted to get to the end game and feel that they got their money’s worth.
I feel that there’s a lot of people who will remember this. While Reaper of Souls managed to fix a lot of the issues with the core game, it effectively was very limited. Thus, even though I think there is a desire from the community to see a Diablo 4, it has to exceed all the bad taste that was left from the polluted history.
When I looked at Diablo 4, I felt that they probably took either parts of the original engine intended for Diablo 3 or at least the ideas and incorporate the visual essence of Diablo 2. There’s a few aspects from the game that look like parts promised as major features from Diablo 3 such as terrain interaction (e.g. hopping from large cliffs) and town hubs.
But the real question is whether the Diablo 4 team understands what the community really wants from an ARPG or if they understood what made Diablo 2 a long running game.
The thing about GGG is that, despite the quality flaws on release, they understand the essence of what the ARPG gamer wants. That essence is the idea of a mindless hack-n-slash, mixed with the ability to configure a character in any manner they want while searching for the perfect loot (or even crafting it).
When Diablo originally was released, the reason why it was revolutionary as an ARPG at the time was because it stripped down all the elements of RPGs into a basic hack-n-slash game. You still had standard RPG-like elements in basic classes, gear and monsters. But all the other elements such as useless questing, hardcore puzzle solving, lengthy boring dialog and stupid story lines were removed.
Also, the key thing Diablo had was a great atmosphere. The enemy was definitive as demons and undead hordes while the overall colors were grim with unapologetic images of death and gore. That pretty much was revolutionary at the time.
The thing about an ARPG that can make or break it is that it really is meant to be mindless. That’s part of why I feel a lot of people are slowly becoming disillusioned with GGG’s direction with boss fights and league mechanics. The complexity that a player likes in an ARPG is the options of being able to play a game they want to, being able to customize characters in infinite manners without worrying about game balance or whether one build is OP or not.
The addiction I feel to an ARPG is the feeling of progress. It’s the idea of having a project where I feel that I can accomplish something over time in a manner that doesn’t insult my intelligence with the inept decisions made by people who overthink gaming mechanics. I want to see what I can do with a game and how I go from a pleb to a god.
That said, Diablo 4 really is Blizzard’s last true hurrah. If they can’t produce a game that exceeds all expectations, they will look like a second rate company that has sold out to the marketing demons at Activision. It’s really that simple.
And here’s the thing: GGG needs Diablo 4 to be better than Path of Exile. Path of Exile 2 looks like dogshit to me. I remember hearing how Quin69 mentioned that some of the GGG developers telling him that they were not impressed by Diablo 4. But Path of Exile 2 looks like Path of Exile.
Without Diablo 4 creating a new standard in the ARPG world, GGG will clearly take the crown. This will not be good because the game is a mess. However, GGG will be able to brag through their sheep community leaders that Path of Exile is the best ARPG out there. And they won’t be wrong just because Path of Exile will have so many features crammed in that Diablo 4 will look empty.
The positive for Diablo 4 is that they have a world class company and really kill on the presentation aspect along with general high quality. Most importantly, they have a brand name both in the form of Blizzard and its own IP. So they have that built-in audience.
But a new game engine (which I assume is what Diablo 4 is working with) is a daunting thing because you have to design features from the ground up. You cannot tack on new features the way a World of Warcraft or Path of Exile can.
I think Diablo 4 will be excellent in the game play feeling department and visuals. But the thing that will make or break the game is the number of features that will determine its longevity as a stand alone product.
Already, I had seen a crucial mistake in the Diablo 4 design where characters were limited to something like level 40. I don’t know where they determined an arbitrary number like that but it feels low for an ARPG. Also, having that ceiling means that one eventually will be “finished” with the leveling process.
So does that mean the game will result in just a gear grind? I really hope not. This was a huge mistake imposed by Diablo 3 and World of Warcraft. Progress in an ARPG should not just be marked by the items you find. It’s a compliment to the development of your character.
I do know they want set items and legendaries to be a huge part of the itemization process. I’m very afraid in this department because of my previous statement. If you want a long lasting game, it shouldn’t just be about item hunts.
Also, I think they intend to make items bind-on-equip. I have a friend that says that this is what really killed Diablo 3. While RoS ended up working with this system, I would say that not having an economy is worse, especially if the game intends to be a social one.
And if they do town hubs, I really hope that they become meaningful. Most town hubs I’ve seen in games are pretty stupid and meaningless; they’re just used to show off skins and allow talk with occasional trade. Outside of showing off MTX crap, I don’t see how this is different than just listening to a global chat channel.
What the game needs to think about is advancing what interactions can be done with the world. The problem I see in basic ARPGs is that there’s not a lot of effort put into the interaction with the world around the character. Diablo 3 seemed to initially want to go in this direction but outside of one or two areas in Act 1, the whole environmental interaction aspect pretty much was dead in the water.
Even PoE is pretty shitty. I find most of the environment just to be obstacles that are nothing more than another form of a wall with a different appearance. I mean, if I see furniture, I should be able to destroy it, right? And maybe each type of environment has different attributes like their own hit points or ways they interact with our abilities (e.g. wood burns and can cause the rest of an area to catch fire). Or if I use ice against a surface, then things should slip. To me that’s cutting edge ideas.
Again, I cannot emphasize how good Diablo 4 needs to be. It has to really push the idea of what an ARPG can do. It shouldn’t just focus on visuals and boss fights. That’s just one aspect that I feel game designers put too much effort into. It needs to make people feel like they can fuck with things in all sorts of ways that make people want to explore what they can do to the world.
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