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Personally I'm heartbroken watching Diablo IV. There are many unpolished details, mounts rotate dead at the center, they simply seem to have no turning animatio

Personally I'm heartbroken watching Diablo IV. There are many unpolished details, mounts rotate dead at the center, they simply seem to have no turning animation. Characters' feet slide instead of planting correctly on many scenarios. Blizzard didn't use to miss on these things. Oh well, we will always have Nintendo.

TheRealPomax 3y ago
Look everyone had to work on optimizing the game economy to make sure the seven in-game currencies all funnel into making sure players keep paying throughout the day, each day, every day. There's simply no time to fix irrelevant S3/P3 stuff like "giving models animations" or "pathing". Those things only generate dollars once, they have no value.
- ChrisClark 3y ago
  What are the seven currencies? Also, I'm not sure the draw of a cosmetics only shop is that compelling. I haven't felt the need to buy a skin that doesn't do anything to gameplay.
  - nickthegreek 3y ago
    D4 barely has any, especially compared to Diablo Immortal. The game is actually pretty good at handing out resources that farming doesn’t really become an issue.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      > especially compared to Diablo Immortal Which the company is and has been spending significant dev time on. For a criticism like "everyone is busy working on X instead of good things", X doesn't have to be in the same game.
      - seanhunter 3y ago
        True, but the idea that everyone at Blizzard is working on cash shop items for the mobile game rather than the AAA title just doesn't bear even the most basic of scrutiny though.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        The word "everyone" is obviously hyperbole. Both games have developers. But the idea that microtransaction cash influences the allocation of developers and artists is pretty reasonable.
        seanhunter 3y ago
        Yes that's reasonable but the idea that somehow people who aren't inside the sausage-making process can assume that the reason they don't like the "horse turning" animation in Diablo IV is that people were assigned to cash shop items in the mobile game is not reasonable. It's entirely possible for example that they had plenty of animators and but ran out of time. Or they had animators and time but found that they had to compromise on some animations because there was too much going on on-screen and otherwise the frames would drop or the minimum spec would get uncomfortably high or whatever. There are any number of reasons that could be the cause here and we on teh outside have absolutely no way of knowing. I hate what they did with diablo immortal as much as anyone but we don't know enough to say how that affected diablo IV if at all.
  - femiagbabiaka 3y ago
    Every Blizzard cash shop drifts towards selling player power eventually.
- seattle_spring 3y ago
  You seem either very confused, or to be talking about a different game.
  - TheRealPomax 3y ago
    Those two can absolute be the same thing. I was thinking Diablo Immortal.
batmanthehorse 3y ago
I was also very surprised by the lack of polish visible in the first 15 minutes of gameplay. It’s still a very good looking game but there are enough rough edges that it’s noticeable and doesn’t seem up to Blizzard’s old standards.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Blaine0002 3y ago
  Have.... you actually played d1 or d2??
  - Solvency 3y ago
    Have you played D3? It's insanely polished.
    - dbg31415 3y ago
      It didn't really start that way! (= For me, it didn't feel polished until few patches in... Necromancers, and Challenge Rifts, and Seasonal Content were what made Diablo 3 for me. At launch, D3 was pretty dull. We ran through it, and were bored a day later. All it really had was Adventure Mode, and most of the sets were relatively weak. Farming was just slow and tedious. Never felt rewarding to run around a low-density world map... the abilities and speed tuning was just off. To be honest, it was pretty boring. A lot of people quit after getting to max level. Diablo was always a "dungeon grinder" but the grind just wasn't enjoyable. Like at all. At launch the grind just sucked. There was this quirky little auction house, but it felt like a bolt-on after thought. I don't think anyone really used it. Over time they really sped up the game play considerably with high-density Rift maps. All the set synergy, and class combo synergy, started to kick in. Adding The Cube, and The Vault, and a bunch of fun little things that sped up the game. Arguably, inventory management didn't get "slightly less crappy" until fairly recently -- maybe a year ago? I forget when they added Search. So yeah, like now it's polished. But 11 years ago at launch it certainly had some rough spots!
hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
I’m not sure if your last statement was sarcasm? The latest Zelda runs like a dog and has extremely poor looking pixelation, I know the hardware is limited, but surely not that limited..
- Auracle 3y ago
  Oh, the hardware is pretty freaking limited. There aren't really any other games on the Switch that are as good looking + open world. Maybe an RPG or two?
  - loveparade 3y ago
    The hardware being limited is not an excuse. It's of course much more work to polish high-fidelity graphics than it is to polish something on an old console where you only have a few pixels to work with. Zelda looks and runs abysmally compared to any modern non-Switch game. People should stop giving Nintendo passes for that.
    - lelandbatey 3y ago
      > The hardware being limited is not an excuse > Zelda looks and runs abysmally compared to any modern non-Switch game Yeah, and all games for generations looked worse than Crysis on a souped up PC etc, but we all recognize that's a poor comparison. We compare games to other similar games created and running under similar constraints (e.g. similar hardware, similar scope, similar budget) so that we can make useful comparisons. Zelda looks great compared to other 3D open world games running on the same hardware. It looks bad compared to Crysis. News at eleven. But Diablo 4 looks bad and unpolished compared to the prior Diablo 3, a game that ran on worse hardware, made by the same people as Diablo 4. That's a very damning comparison, as there's no reason to do things worse in a sequel when the prior game made tons of money and was super popular and you've had tons of time to get things right with the sequel.
sdwr 3y ago
Cmon, D4 looks sexy as hell. Great style, detailed models, looks way better than D3. Not a perfect game but its a visual treat.
- boredtofears 3y ago
  Yeah, I feel crazy reading these comments because D4 looks so much better than D3's flashy colorful-but-somehow-boring aesthetic. D4 brings it back inline with the D2 gothic era and its technological improvements over D3 are obvious and noticeable.
  - senttoschool 3y ago
    Does it really bring back the D2 gothic graphics? To me, D4 just looks like a modern D3 but darker lighting and more gore. And D3 looked like WoW but darker. And WoW's style descended from WC3. It seems like Diablo 3 & Diablo 4 are made by veterans of Warcraft instead of Blizzard North and it shows. Diablo 2 has a very distinctive style that D3 and D4 don't follow.
    - boredtofears 3y ago
      I somewhat agree, but D4 feels closer to D2 in aesthetics than D3, to me. I do wonder if some of D2’s distinct artwork has to do with the fact that it’s 2d isometric instead of true 3d. Well done 2d art is hard to replicate with 3d, imo, and blizzard we’re masters of that.
ENGNR 3y ago
Maybe this is the benefit of poor taste but.... I honestly did not notice any of that! We've been having a blast with Diablo IV, the gameplay is simple and fun, the setting is soooo much darker and truer to the original than Diablo III. The polish to me is evident in having accessibility settings be the first thing you see. You know engineering got everything done that they'd planned when accessibility got the proper treatment

TheRealPomax 3y ago

Look everyone had to work on optimizing the game economy to make sure the seven in-game currencies all funnel into making sure players keep paying throughout the day, each day, every day. There's simply no time to fix irrelevant S3/P3 stuff like "giving models animations" or "pathing". Those things only generate dollars once, they have no value.

ChrisClark 3y ago
What are the seven currencies? Also, I'm not sure the draw of a cosmetics only shop is that compelling. I haven't felt the need to buy a skin that doesn't do anything to gameplay.
- nickthegreek 3y ago
  D4 barely has any, especially compared to Diablo Immortal. The game is actually pretty good at handing out resources that farming doesn’t really become an issue.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    > especially compared to Diablo Immortal Which the company is and has been spending significant dev time on. For a criticism like "everyone is busy working on X instead of good things", X doesn't have to be in the same game.
    - seanhunter 3y ago
      True, but the idea that everyone at Blizzard is working on cash shop items for the mobile game rather than the AAA title just doesn't bear even the most basic of scrutiny though.
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        The word "everyone" is obviously hyperbole. Both games have developers. But the idea that microtransaction cash influences the allocation of developers and artists is pretty reasonable.
        seanhunter 3y ago
        Yes that's reasonable but the idea that somehow people who aren't inside the sausage-making process can assume that the reason they don't like the "horse turning" animation in Diablo IV is that people were assigned to cash shop items in the mobile game is not reasonable. It's entirely possible for example that they had plenty of animators and but ran out of time. Or they had animators and time but found that they had to compromise on some animations because there was too much going on on-screen and otherwise the frames would drop or the minimum spec would get uncomfortably high or whatever. There are any number of reasons that could be the cause here and we on teh outside have absolutely no way of knowing. I hate what they did with diablo immortal as much as anyone but we don't know enough to say how that affected diablo IV if at all.
- femiagbabiaka 3y ago
  Every Blizzard cash shop drifts towards selling player power eventually.
seattle_spring 3y ago
You seem either very confused, or to be talking about a different game.
- TheRealPomax 3y ago
  Those two can absolute be the same thing. I was thinking Diablo Immortal.

batmanthehorse 3y ago

I was also very surprised by the lack of polish visible in the first 15 minutes of gameplay. It’s still a very good looking game but there are enough rough edges that it’s noticeable and doesn’t seem up to Blizzard’s old standards.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Blaine0002 3y ago
Have.... you actually played d1 or d2??
- Solvency 3y ago
  Have you played D3? It's insanely polished.
  - dbg31415 3y ago
    It didn't really start that way! (= For me, it didn't feel polished until few patches in... Necromancers, and Challenge Rifts, and Seasonal Content were what made Diablo 3 for me. At launch, D3 was pretty dull. We ran through it, and were bored a day later. All it really had was Adventure Mode, and most of the sets were relatively weak. Farming was just slow and tedious. Never felt rewarding to run around a low-density world map... the abilities and speed tuning was just off. To be honest, it was pretty boring. A lot of people quit after getting to max level. Diablo was always a "dungeon grinder" but the grind just wasn't enjoyable. Like at all. At launch the grind just sucked. There was this quirky little auction house, but it felt like a bolt-on after thought. I don't think anyone really used it. Over time they really sped up the game play considerably with high-density Rift maps. All the set synergy, and class combo synergy, started to kick in. Adding The Cube, and The Vault, and a bunch of fun little things that sped up the game. Arguably, inventory management didn't get "slightly less crappy" until fairly recently -- maybe a year ago? I forget when they added Search. So yeah, like now it's polished. But 11 years ago at launch it certainly had some rough spots!

hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago

I’m not sure if your last statement was sarcasm? The latest Zelda runs like a dog and has extremely poor looking pixelation, I know the hardware is limited, but surely not that limited..

Auracle 3y ago
Oh, the hardware is pretty freaking limited. There aren't really any other games on the Switch that are as good looking + open world. Maybe an RPG or two?
- loveparade 3y ago
  The hardware being limited is not an excuse. It's of course much more work to polish high-fidelity graphics than it is to polish something on an old console where you only have a few pixels to work with. Zelda looks and runs abysmally compared to any modern non-Switch game. People should stop giving Nintendo passes for that.
  - lelandbatey 3y ago
    > The hardware being limited is not an excuse > Zelda looks and runs abysmally compared to any modern non-Switch game Yeah, and all games for generations looked worse than Crysis on a souped up PC etc, but we all recognize that's a poor comparison. We compare games to other similar games created and running under similar constraints (e.g. similar hardware, similar scope, similar budget) so that we can make useful comparisons. Zelda looks great compared to other 3D open world games running on the same hardware. It looks bad compared to Crysis. News at eleven. But Diablo 4 looks bad and unpolished compared to the prior Diablo 3, a game that ran on worse hardware, made by the same people as Diablo 4. That's a very damning comparison, as there's no reason to do things worse in a sequel when the prior game made tons of money and was super popular and you've had tons of time to get things right with the sequel.

sdwr 3y ago

Cmon, D4 looks sexy as hell. Great style, detailed models, looks way better than D3. Not a perfect game but its a visual treat.

boredtofears 3y ago
Yeah, I feel crazy reading these comments because D4 looks so much better than D3's flashy colorful-but-somehow-boring aesthetic. D4 brings it back inline with the D2 gothic era and its technological improvements over D3 are obvious and noticeable.
- senttoschool 3y ago
  Does it really bring back the D2 gothic graphics? To me, D4 just looks like a modern D3 but darker lighting and more gore. And D3 looked like WoW but darker. And WoW's style descended from WC3. It seems like Diablo 3 & Diablo 4 are made by veterans of Warcraft instead of Blizzard North and it shows. Diablo 2 has a very distinctive style that D3 and D4 don't follow.
  - boredtofears 3y ago
    I somewhat agree, but D4 feels closer to D2 in aesthetics than D3, to me. I do wonder if some of D2’s distinct artwork has to do with the fact that it’s 2d isometric instead of true 3d. Well done 2d art is hard to replicate with 3d, imo, and blizzard we’re masters of that.

ENGNR 3y ago

Maybe this is the benefit of poor taste but.... I honestly did not notice any of that! We've been having a blast with Diablo IV, the gameplay is simple and fun, the setting is soooo much darker and truer to the original than Diablo III. The polish to me is evident in having accessibility settings be the first thing you see. You know engineering got everything done that they'd planned when accessibility got the proper treatment