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Usually games with deep development issues have those issues show up everywhere. Not so in Diablo 4. The art direction is great, they produced a massive amount

Usually games with deep development issues have those issues show up everywhere. Not so in Diablo 4. The art direction is great, they produced a massive amount of assets at a very high quality, the story is great by Diablo standards, the marketing was good, the tech is pretty good. The player experience is still very good and very high quality. I usually find the only people who complain are the hardcore players. It makes sense because once you've run out of campaign content, you really have to rely on those core mechanics to keep the game going. A lot of the people involved are competent and have a good track record. I just don't understand why the foundations are shaky. They're not even innovating so much on what an ARPG is supposed to be.

brandensilva 3y ago
You hit it quite well on what I was getting at. I think many of us did enjoy Diablo 4 but the systems that make an ARPG shine fell through the cracks which is surprising given Blizzard defined the category. I am very much am aware they aren't the same people running the show now from Blizzard North, and they had some major team shake ups in D4s dev cycle, so that was part of the problem but it's hard not to have high expectations. It's just those pieces or connections in-between the excellent departmental work that fell apart, along with the foundation of an ARPG being flawed, that a gaming generalist could have solved to bring it all together. I imagine things would look quite different now if that generalist person or persons on D4 played ARPGs for decades, had Diablo DNA infused in them with equal experience in game design and systems, and had some authority they could have made the best ARPG all over again since D2 given how good D4 is in so many ways. They equally learned a lot from D3 and it's shortcomings but that knowledge all felt lost in D4.

brandensilva 3y ago

You hit it quite well on what I was getting at. I think many of us did enjoy Diablo 4 but the systems that make an ARPG shine fell through the cracks which is surprising given Blizzard defined the category. I am very much am aware they aren't the same people running the show now from Blizzard North, and they had some major team shake ups in D4s dev cycle, so that was part of the problem but it's hard not to have high expectations. It's just those pieces or connections in-between the excellent departmental work that fell apart, along with the foundation of an ARPG being flawed, that a gaming generalist could have solved to bring it all together. I imagine things would look quite different now if that generalist person or persons on D4 played ARPGs for decades, had Diablo DNA infused in them with equal experience in game design and systems, and had some authority they could have made the best ARPG all over again since D2 given how good D4 is in so many ways. They equally learned a lot from D3 and it's shortcomings but that knowledge all felt lost in D4.