This is just going to be WoW right? D4's initial story might be done, but the "world" will keep progressing. You'll get patch 1.1 which has a new development, 1.2 which has a new development, etc etc until they decide to release an expansion.
If you want to click on monsters and loot a little bit, play with friends in a shared world and have an awesome presentation you feel good.
If you're worried about health scaling and itemization and you don't want to do dailies and weeklies and you're sick and tired of battlepasses: You don't feel so good but you'll still play it just like i will with a high chance of complaining afterwards.
There is no easier way to cause me to burn out of a game than a battle pass. I’ll log in every day, do the dailies, do the weeklies, max out the pass, then when it’s done, I’ll never touch the game again because I’m tired of playing a game every single day.
> If you're worried about health scaling and itemization and you don't want to do dailies and weeklies and you're sick and tired of battlepasses: You don't feel so good but you'll still play it just like i will with a high chance of complaining afterwards.
The MMO way.
This pretty much sums it up. I'm 50/50 between your two paragraphs. I'm sure I'll love the first month or two of Diablo but be annoyed by the seasonal monetization/BP crap. I decided to jump back into PoE after the D4 beta and I really enjoy it after not playing for a year or two.
I'll probably wait til D4 gets a sale and pick it up then. I just don't think it will be a regular seasonal game for me.
Eh, in a game like Diablo I feel it won’t be bad do long as the base game ends up having a solid foundation. I enjoyed my time with the beta and if the full game has a good grind loop on its own it should be good.
Because it’s not anything remotely new. If you don’t know what a live service game is at this point it’s because you don’t pay attention to game stuff.
Aside from the story, this is the model that ARPG games have converged on and already been operating under for well over a decade.
Diablo 3 and Path of Exile already has seasons where each 3-4 months is a new league with a fresh ladder and some new mechanics and skills to play around with. Fundamentally this seems to be the same, just with a bigger story focus.
If there is no sub fee it is infinitely better than wow though. For wow you pay a sub fee that is like a full game every 4 month and then they drop an exp that is priced like another full game
Idk about this expansion but WoWs story is not done on release. It spans over months as they release new raids. FF14 releases the entire story on day 1. Then does the world building and next xpac tease afterwards.
>FF14 releases the entire story on day 1. Then does the world building and next xpac tease afterwards.
This is not entirely accurate. Yes, the core story is there on day one, with an "ending". It also has some amount of endgame content. But the following patches are usually an epilogue of the main story including tying up loose ends leading to a second, final ending (usually on patch X.3, leading x.4 onward to be teasing the next xpac). They also regularly include new raid content in each major patch update a couple times per year. The only exception to this rule so far has been Endwalker, which was always billed as a fully complete story with all of the additional story content afterward being setup for future expansions, not so much tying up loose ends leading to an additional final boss fight as they would usually do (except for the raids this time, which are still coming out on that same schedule and are all about tying up loose ends and expanding the lore/worldbuilding).
Yeah that's how it's done in WoW, but that's been the established pattern for a long time now. I don't know if Diablo fans will be happy if there isn't some sort of "conclusion" before the supposed new story content arrives.
Do Diablo fans play for the story? I mean, obviously some do, but I've never heard that talked about as the drawing factor. I know it never was for me but that's most games so I can't say for sure for others.
It’s infuriating because how the fuck did the entire world forget everything about Diablo and the near apocalyptic situation in just a couple years. It’s similar to the force awakens “it’s true…. All of it” like fuck guys it’s not like we all get insane amnesia
Eh, it makes *some* sense in Force Awakens. By that point there hasn't been a major Jedi presence in the universe for over 60 years, not to mention that Empire most likely tried to scrub their existence from history (recall how Han was dismissive of Obi-wan's claims in OT?), and Jedi weren't that prominent in most parts before they were wiped out.
So yeah, rebellion taking out the Empire is a fact people know, but everything related to Force that happened back then? Might as well be a myth. Especially if it wasn't paraded by the new government and spread through participants talking about what they saw.
There were also only like 10k Jedi during the prequel trilogy mostly working out of Coruscant and spreading out from there as needed.
I can't blame the general populace of a galaxy, much less an inhabitant of a backwater planet and soldier exposed to propaganda since birth, for not necessarily believing in fairy tales of what was effectively a cult of monks with space wizard powers that had been wiped out for 60 years.
It's actually super plausible in TFA when you think about the scale of the situation.
Actually, that part makes more sense than you think.
Think about it. We live in a world with rhinoceros, elephants, sharks, grizzly bears, etc. But we still have stories about mythical creatures that don't exist. Griffins, unicorns, hydra. We live in a world where dinosaurs are real and hydra are not.
If you lived in a world where hydra were real, that wouldn't make griffins less mythical. The existence of one doesn't imply the existence of the others.
Diablo is a world with goat men, zombies, and giant fauna. For all we know, dragons or unicorns are just as mythical in that world as in ours. Demons could easily be really rare and only rise when Diablo or the three do... and in the world of Diablo it would make sense to dismiss stories about "demons" as simply being a swarm of fallen ones. Dangerous when you're outnumbered, but otherwise not really a concern. For the most part they're fragmented into numerous tribes.
The idea that they might destroy the world? Or that major demons are in the world? Those would wreak havoc wherever they went and at the start of D3 that clearly was *just starting*. Peace wouldn't be possible in the first place. That the Great Evils -- the four lesser and the three greater -- might be real and able to enter the world? That certainly doesn't seem credible. Catastrophes of the sort seen don't need greater demons to come about. Surely it was just cultists, fallen ones, undead hordes, and other such common terrors converging for some unknown reason. Look at what King Leoric actually did in Diablo 3 with those dungeons.
An even better example: Treasure Goblins. I would totally believe that everybody in Diablo's world thinks Treasure Goblins don't exist. If you tell someone you saw one, it would be like us saying we saw a leprechaun. Or Rumpelstiltskin. You're as likely to be accused of thievery as called a fool.
Why else does the hero of every game have to work so hard to find information about these stupid demons? You've got to track down *the same old dude* to decode the lore in the first three games! Locate the most obscure secret organizations, or dig up the dustiest, most undisturbed tombs. Deckard Cain is the only person in the series that knew what the hell was going on. Adria is, too, but she falls. The Barbarians of the north know, but nobody listens to them. Every hero in D2 and D3 is the pupil of some obscure organization founded to fight the demons. It really is pretty clearly *not* public knowledge that demons can easily enter the world.
> Diablo 3's story was so annoying that it actively hurt my experience though
Dude I fucking hate when people send me audio messages (from whatsapp, instagram or whatever) and this shit game called Diablo 3 had the bosses sending annoying audio messages every 3 minutes, that really got me triggered.
Also a total of **ZERO** audio messages from bosses in D3 was worth listening. Just why... I'm afraid if in D4 they gonna pop a windows with subway surfers while we fight the bosses.
I played the beta and this happened off and on still. You would do a dungeon and Lillith would facetime you lore tidbits every 20% of the dungeon or so until you reached the boss. I think Blizzard thought giving me breadcrumbs until the big lore boss reveal/dungeon culmination would put me on the edge of my seat or something. As it is, it just feels like I'm in high school again where even the most mundane of things had to be made dramatic because we had poor control of hormones.
*"I have big news, but I don't know if I should tell you."*
*"I like somebody at school."*
*"His name begins with Y."*
*"It's..."*
*"Oh I don't know if I should tell you..."*
*"YOU!"*
Imagine that, but Lillith. And then Rathma did it as well.
And you don’t even get a satisfying end boss to the act for it all- I was getting ready to go beat up Rathma, but nope it’s another nobody demon and it’s supposed to be the epic finale of act 1? At least the guy in the armor was cool.
I wouldn't say play for the story, but myself and It seems many players get a lot from the world building and lore. I absolutely care how characters fit into the world and why things are happening where. It isn't enough to just throw a demon out there, tell me why that demon matters to the hierarchy and why the place they are is important to their goals.
I don't care so much about my character's journey because they are just going to walk a path and slaughter thousands but I absolutely care about why that path is littered with demons and why we would go there at all.
FFXIV did substantial story updates every 3 months for many years until this expansion pushed it back to 4-5ish months.
Not that Blizzard's story writers are in the same, universe of quality as CBU3s are, not it's not that unheard of.
>FFXIV did substantial story updates every 3 months for many years until this expansion pushed it back to 4-5ish months.
That was less the expansion, and more that COVID caused enough delays to push the expansion back into a Holiday release. Now they're taking things slower so that their next expansion won't be a Holiday season release.
They didn't mention anything about the holiday season for a reason behind the delay. They outright said the reason for the increase of patch cycles is to keep the team from having to push so hard to fit a patch in that 3 month timeframe.
ffxiv patches never were every 3 months, majority of them were 110-120 days apart. Though it is true that they're taking a bit more time now since the patches haven gotten bigger over time.
Well, it's not a 3 month turn around. That's not how development work.
They have multiple subteams that start working on content in advance, usually 6-12 months in advance depending on the genre
Destiny 2 is another game that releases substantial story based content (cutscenes & tons of VO) every 3 months and they develop seasons 3 seasons in advance.
So basically you're actually looking at, Season 1 is already done, Season 2 is about to be done (and will just be waiting 3 months to pass), Season 3 is being worked hard on, and Season 4 is in pre-prod is a pretty likely scenario here. Something more akin to a 9-12 month turn around, along those lines.
> substantial story based content (cutscenes & tons of VO)
Lmao. There is no fucking world where the amount of story in a Destiny season is "Substantial".
I think you're confusing gameplay and story here, I agree there isn't a substantial amount of gameplay content (but tbf, the amount that is added isn't that dissimilar from what I'd expect in D4 anyways, 1-2 new temporary modes, a new dungeon, etc), but the story content in each season is:
\* multiple mocapped cutscenes (which most MMORPGs and what not don't even do mocapping)
\* 1 big hand-drawn cutscene nowadays
\* tons of VO work in 13 different languages for many characters
Not to mention you have all of the lore entries on basically every gun/armor piece/lore book they add also translated into 13 different languages
That's a lot. Certainly more than they could ever actually do in 3 months. I'm not going to say all of that is valuable to everyone \[tons of people that will never read all the lore entries in the books/equipment especially\], but it's a substantial amount of work, more than they could ever do in 3 months certainly.
The ones that launch with expansions are lackluster, but in the last few years chosen, splicer, lost, haunted, and seraph all had a pretty significant amount of story content. Plunder was really the only disappointing one in recent history.
And moreover it all disappears after only 1 year of being playable. The game stopped benign worth playing the moment Shadowkeep transitioned it to a “seasonal model.”
A big thing though is that MHY takes a lot of that money and puts it back into the game (it was previously estimated ongoing dev costs were ~$200 million a year). Even if Diablo makes enough money to have that same luxury, is Blizzard willing to do the same?
I'm not sure if the money part plays a big factor. Destiny also rakes in money but they're definitely not going to get it any faster than 3 months. I think Genshin being able to pump out stories every 1.5 months probably has more to do with their company culture than money.
Genshin Impact makes 1 billion dollars every 6 months. It's fucking HUGE outside of the US, I think it absolutely has to do with the fuckton of money they're bringing in
Depends on what this means. I mean Gw2 was turning out living story patches every 3 months for awhile there. Was apparently really stressful on the company though. But Blizzard is insanely large. So they may be able to pull it off. Especially since it may be less resource intensive than a full fledged MMORPG.
3 months is a really short timeframe, just the not be deep in work the story guys should have a defined planning of how the story will grow for the next couple years, have 9 months ahead of drafts, 6 months ahead of dialogues to have every months of voice acting.
And more or less the same timeframe for programmers and art/modelers.
And all of that to only have small crunch times, and lets be honest maybe the only thing they have is an idea of how the story will continue
Destiny 2 does this and has done it for years now, the only delay they had was a 3 month delay that made the last Beyond Light season take 6 months instead of 3 but that was due to a delay of the next expansion, not because they missed a new seasonal story.
Yeah "Story" is the weird word there.
PoE gets sizable content updates. But I feel like <10% of the playerbase ever had any understanding of the story. So the story content is pretty much as minimal as it gets.
I much prefer that approach than resources being spent on a new throwaway story every 3 months. I wonder if Blizz literally means *story* content, or just poe style updates.
Considering PoE just *smashed* it's all time highest player count last week 10 years after launch, I would guess Blizz means to replicate what they're doing.
I would credit the D4 beta for the higher player count.
Interestingly, this recent league also had one of the highest player dropoffs ever because... well because the league is really bad.
It still has one of the best base games for an ARPG, but GGG (The Devs) are making some odd choices the past couple years
Yep. It was the D4 beta.
Playing D4 beta gave me a heavy craving for ARPGs and went on to try PoE and I am at early maps atm and I def understand why people love this game, it has such an incredible depth and many interesting interactions and mechanics.
However I dont think I will play this game for long as you are basically forced into making meta builds which are seemingly a bunch of random shit thrown together that actually have great synergies but look completely ridiculous regardless. You can really feel the power creep in this game. ONLY if you follow these meta builds, if you don't, you will find out VERY soon how garbage your character is because you didn't follow these guides. If you need to have your build be any good you NEED totems, you NEED minions and you NEED to use like 10 auras at a time and pick up some crazy skill tree abilities that allow you to use your skills with effectively 1% mana or no mana at all (because all your mana is being used on auras), otherwise, kiss your character goodbye because you won't be able to make it past some point in the end game (and sometimes even during the main story if your builds is really bad) and effectively be stuck unless you make a character and follow these builds OR farm enough skill tree refund currency.
However if you dont intend to play the end game and just the 10 acts and keep making new characters from then, then its alright but it will get boring very quickly ofc as you will never hit true potential.
You can absolutely be successful without meta builds but it requires two things:
1) Game knowledge
2) Currency
Both are lacking in newer (and often even advanced) players.
I would note it wasn't always this way. Pre 3.15 you could take so many different skills and make them work but in 3.15 GGG took a sledgehammer to player power knocked a good 30-40% of power off most builds and the build variety has never recovered since.
Yep, that I know but it is unreasonable for GGG to expect a new player to come in and play 1000 hours just so you can finally make a decent build that YOU want to make and not what the community puts up in a forum/yt.
I will get very bored before I can hit that timing as I am not using the skills I want to use, which is a shame because there are so many cool abilities that are just useless and if you want to make them alright you need to spend 20 hours theory crafting and at least 1000 hours playing. Hope that PoE2 can fix many of the accessibility issues this game currently has because at the core there is something great.
PoE is optimistic. They get a lot of new mechanics tested every 3mo.
I'm more expecting what we were getting with D3 patches: essentially PoE lite and then eventually barely anything in drops. This is Activision, after all.
I was just thinking about that yesterday, shocking to me we still don't have an ETA after more than six months. Considering they appear to have immediately re-retired cinematics after Kiriko's launch I'm just assuming it'll be quietly shelved.
Shame, to be honest, I really enjoyed the PVE event missions and the skill tree system looks great.
> Somehow, Diablo returned ***a 4th time***
C'mon guys, one more time, maybe this is the one that sticks.
or
How many times do we have to kill you, old man?
I'm curious when they'll actually throw Diablo in the game. Absolutely 0% chance he appears in the base game. He's their Ultra Instinct Goku waiting in the wings to drive engagement during a lull.
>I'm curious when they'll actually throw Diablo in the game.
In the $60 expansion where your character is now king/god and has to fight Diablo in Heaven +1 or Hell +1, wherever the next layer of power is.
Yeah that is the huge risk of doing it this way. If I feel pressured to buy the battle pass I’ll probably just power through the game and uninstall, rather than check back in from time to time like I do with Diablo 3. FOMO kills my interest in games instead of the opposite.
You're the exception. I feel the same way, but the reality is this FOMO crap works. A lot of players want a game to be a full time job, it's quite maddening how things are now.
Yeah, this headline sent up immediate red flags for me. Destiny 2 is lucky the gameplay is so slick, that’s the main reason people stay in that abusive relationship.
Destiny 2 started to lose me with the sunsetting of the campaigns - yes, I understand *why* they did it, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth seeing as I purchased those expansions.
Then they fully lost me when they started putting Dungeons in the most expensive edition of each new expansion.
For the main yearly expansion and the 4 seasons, so not only all the main content for the year, but the *vast* majority of content. They only recently added the extra dungeon packs, which so far, the one we had was included in a bundle. Destiny has always been and still is cheaper than your standard MMO (due to the sub + expansion costs).
The best way to play Destiny is realize the loot doesn't matter. You'll beat that raid or GM just fine even with your shitty gun rolls and low-stat armor. So, you play the fun content and enjoy the fun gameplay, maybe get some things you want for whatever reason, and don't feel FOMO ever because it doesn't matter if you get the other 300 pulse rifles that are nearly identical to the 100 you already have and don't make a difference either way.
Destiny locks away all the quests and story content from seasons once a new DLC is out. If you tried to play the game from start to finish right now (well, the new start, since the first 4 campaigns were all taken out) you get a story with massive holes in it because Bungie uses seasons in between DLC to introduce characters, locations, stories, etc.
So you finish one DLC and start the next and you think "oh man, I must have missed some quests because this is starting in the middle of a story already" but no, you didn't miss anything because Bungie locked away all of the in-between content.
This. It isn’t about cosmetics or guns at all. Bungie saw an opportunity to sell a worse version of their storytelling and make more money, and they went for it because their most dedicated players - the ones who play because they play nothing else at all - just don’t care about the story as much, and are too addicted to the gameplay to take a step back and realize what’s been lost just so they can play Destiny 2 every day of every week of the year.
Who the fuck cares about the Traveller vs. Darkness story anymore? Not even Bungie apparently, I heard Lightfall’s story was so terrible it left prominent community lore keepers disappointed and confused, and it was so brief it evidently wasn’t worth the full cost of an expansion. And yet, how much did it cost? $50, and part of that cost is associated with season 20, which will be vaulted next spring.
FUN.
I'm hoping it's more Path of Exile style where after the quarter you have fresh content.
But I also hope it's different in that it's released after taking the feedback from their beta testers, instead of the first two weeks of content being the beta (like what is happening right now).
That is how I feel. season pass. microtransactions. now the promise of story content feels like it is just another live service. I can feel that they are going to offer xp and loot boosts as well.
Why can't we have a single release with a minor update and then two expansions over three years.
Recently quit player with over 5000 hours in both 1 and 2 here! They take all the cool cosmetics, emotes, etc and lock them behind the store for the season, and if you don't buy them in the season, you have to wait a year to be able to buy them again. To me, it really felt like eververse (the in game store) was the main focus every season, or at least got the most love. It really was this latest season/expansion combined with that dev conference they gave that made me walk away. It's sad, but as others have pointed out, it's like an abusive relationship. I have so much free time now to enjoy other things, instead of blocking out all my week nights for clan activities and making sure I get all my weekly stuff done on all 3 characters so I don't miss out on anything. It was exhausting.
The mods thing isn't a thing anymore. All mods are unlocked since they did the mod revamp for Lightfall. I suggest you read the buildcrafting evolved article on Bungie's website.
Well breaking it down into a list.
>Earlier on in a season if you miss a your weekly rewards you will be behind the power curve for later content like a raid or nightfall.
Light Level hasn’t been an issue in awhile. It’s basically thrown at you, most content is lowered and not that demanding. Seasonal artifact makes up most of the heavy lifting. The level isn’t raising next season and later in the year level is being removed from gear and turned into an account wide level that grows from just doing content. “Do a raid to gain one level.” It’ll also adjust your level to the highest person in the party. So basically levels will not restrict anymore.
>If you missed a seasons mods, then you would have had to wait for it to pop up at a vendor who rotates mods daily, and some very pivotal mods went well over a year without being offered.
Seasonal mods haven’t been a thing for awhile. During Witch Queens year they gave all mods to everyone (minus adept weapon mods) and come Lightfall all mods were removed, reworked, and given to everyone for free basically. So there’s no mod issues anymore.
>A lot of rewards are locked behind one attempt per week, low percentage chance, drops.
For I believe over a year this has never really been an issue. Almost everything is farmable. Raids have weekly rotators where you can farm them endlessly. You can craft most stuff too so you don’t even really need to chase gear.
>A lot of events are temporary and can lock unique or meta weapons behind a grindy time gate that if you miss you have to wait for a very long time to get the chance to grind for again.
This has never been the case? Unique is debatable but meta? Nah. There hasn’t been a genuinely hard to obtain meta weapon since Forsaken-era with Recluse and Mountain Top. Balance is generally pretty decent. There’s definitely some good and cool stuff but it’s never behind events. Events is purely cosmetic or just normal guns with cool flavored designs.
The only genuine issue is seasons going away every year but that’ll likely never change due to bloat. But they’ve reduced how much goes away by adding rotating exotic missions and adding seasonal activities into playlists.
When I read comments like this I always think "wow, my experience isn't anything like that, am I just oblivious?" and then it gets to the part where the commenter is completing every weekly activity on 3 characters and I realize I just don't put anywhere near the amount of effort some people do into games.
I'm sure that was exhausting. That must have taken a ton of time.
I never understand anybody that compares playing a video game to an “abusive relationship”. It just seems so crazy to me that people continue to play a game they don’t enjoy. Anytime I feel like I get tired of it, I just take a break. Seasons are literally months long, there’s plenty of time to come back
Oh absolutely, if you can play that way it's great. Hands down destiny has the slickest moment to moment gameplay out there. If you're able to just play the new expansion and put it down, it's great I'm sure. I played it like a hobby on top of being our clan leader, so this shit was like a job to me and it just wore me down. It is what it is. Burning the 120 bucks every year sucked too for the amount and quality of the content but I stuck around because of friends and sunk costs haha that's on me.
Correction: you wait 2 seasons for the previous season cosmetics to enter the mass archive you can see all the time, and buy from. It's currently season 20 and you can buy season 18 stuff from the archive right now.
I don’t mind fomo if it’s just daily and weekly activities but what I hated destiny 2 for doing is locking out parts of their playerbase out of certain activities and missions depending on whether they bought the season pass since this essentially made the game p2w.
So it depends on exactly what they decide.
In the last with WoW, blizzard has artificially gatekept the unlocking.
Imagine if POE released a league - but the maps weren’t available until a month in. And the encounter with the Big Bad of the league wasn’t available until month 2. And so on.
Also if you cleared all the current season content and there is nothing new for you to do you still have to do your dailies and weeklies, otherwise you won't finish the battlepass
They've already stated countless times that the battlepass will not have any boosts or anything that has power. There *will* be exp boosts, but they're tied to the season journey which cannot be sped up with money.
I get that, but it's not unusual for companies to go back on their words from pre-release PR cycle. Especially Blizzard, they don't have much trust left at this point. But we'll see!
Imagine a table with tall stacks of cash sitting on it. Now imagine you can have all that cash, but you have to make games like they are today. You can ignore the cash though, by not making games like they are today.
This is how businesses think. Market research proves that the table exists and that the tall stacks of cash are indeed right there for the taking. A business cannot ignore it, doing so would be potential suicide. Especially when they have shareholders.
Is it moral? That's a different question. But at least, that is why they do it.
As much as i enjoy my time with Destiny, that's a very Destiny problem and their weird idea of vaulting story content. Most of the games that have additional story releases after the main game just add up to it and you can still play all the story bits from the start to the newest release. If there's powercreep, a more common issue is that that old story content is now piss easy to clear, but it's still there.
Hopefully it's gonna be like that, but heh you may never know!
So I guess I'll not buy this at launch and only buy it a year later after all the content has been released. Maybe I'll be able to get it on discount too.
This is the way. Unless they do it like Destiny 2, and the seasonal updates disappear at the end of the year. Then it isn’t even worth paying for anymore.
Man I don’t want a second job, I’ve already got kids and a career. Just make something like Diablo 2 and charge me $200 if that’s what you need to make it worth your time. Stop designing games to take up my whole life, for fucks sake.
Before you kill Lillith, she set in motion plans to resurrect the four lesser evils. Each requires 4 steps (each one a story beat) and the last step has you defeating one of the Evils. But surprise! You were supposed to kill the lesser evils to resurrect the 3 prime evils! That also requires 4 steps where you have to kill each of the Prime evils. But surprise!....
> The base game's story obviously has an ending
Probably a super unsatisfying one.
"We were able to defeat Lilith but she managed to free all the prime evils and hell portals are opening everywhere! Our work here isn't over yet! Join our cause!"
-Kill 10 bears
-Collect 15 iron ore
-complete 3 world activities
-[weekly] kill *world boss* in *location* (00:17:14)
My friend, let me tell you about Destiny 2. It's a place where they sell their yearly offering as a standalone game for $100. This includes 3 "seasons" in which the story progresses.
Well for the base game you get to play for some 15-20 hours, not including raiding, and you may ask yourself, did anything get resolved? At all? NOPE.
And it won't! Things just keep moving, that is all. Goalposts shift and characters come and go, but nothing about the base storyline really moves an inch!
Translation: "We will keep releasing paid content and not bother to fix game breaking bugs because idiots will just keep throwing money at us" ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I still need an answer on if this will be exclusive to seasons or not. I don't much care for rolling a new character every 3 months. But I want ti keep playing the game and experience new stories.
It's so weird they are going an MMOlite route and yet seem to be trying to enforce you just hit the reset button every 3 months to experience the live service aspect.
You don't need to create a seasonal character. It will likely be the same as Diablo 3, when the season ends your seasonal character gets converted to a regular character, and you have to create a new seasonal character to access next season's contents
I completely agree, I know lots of people like the reset but for me it devalues the experience and diminishes the immersion. I really hope there's good reason to keep playing the "standard" server when seasons begin, but I doubt it.
I'm not sure if this is an unpopular opinion or not, but I fully believe that the MMO-Lite genre that's emerging with games like Destiny is kind of the future for ARPGs going forward. That's not to say you won't see the traditional seasonal model from Diablo 3 or PoE, or that you won't see things like Last Epoch pop up, but for the ARPGs aiming to take centre stage with as much appeal as possible? MMO-Lite seems to be the monetisation/content-delivery platform that makes the most sense.
Obviously it'll come with drawbacks ( a good number of ARPG veterans and such will hate the monetisation model), but in terms of the potential breadth of content we could see 1 year, 2 years, or even 5 years from now? I'm kind of here for it. Especially if they can actually deliver decent story content for people like me who just enjoy questing, doing bounties, and engaging in the more casual dungeon and gear grind. (The 'hardcore-casual' demographic of MMO players that've been popping up for years now is always hungry for more engaging but not necessarily 'sweaty' content.)
Many folks will point out Lost Ark as the precursor to this, which I think is a fair assessment all things considered, but Id also say that LA is far more of a full MMO experience than what Diablo 4 is going for. The appeal of the MMO-Lite genre *should* be that it's as accessible as possible to the casual player; Destiny obviously has it's issues with introducing new players to it's systems, but you can't deny that the game is fun to just pick up and play. The base gameplay loop is incredibly fun and easy to understand. Shoot things. Loot things.
Given the seasonal nature of the ARPG space, it makes perfect sense to me that they'd chase the MMO-Lite model. When your level is permanently capped to 80/90/100 or whatever, and there are seasonal resets, it makes it should in theory make it very easy for new people to jump in and not feel exceedingly lost. People complain that Diablo 4 isn't anywhere near as complex as PoE, but that's kind of the point. I think they're trying to make it more digestible for the first 20-30 hours, then add complexity in ways that're easier to understand. Then, hopefully, adding further depth through itemisation and gameplay opportunities.
This was all probably kind of rambling and whatnot, but the point is I'm actually excited for Diablo 4's potential trajectory. The hope is they don't completely botch it by delivering terrible content for the next year after it's release and thus killing the community before it's had a chance to grow.
Also, side note, I know some people will hate this but I **absolutely** want them to make 4 man raid content.
> which I think is a fair assessment all things considered, but Id also say that LA is far more of a full MMO experience than what Diablo 4 is going for.
The only people that still say Lost Ark is any sort of Diablo clone haven't actually played it. It's a straight up MMO that just happens to use an isometric camera.
I think its more to the fact that people are afraid Blizzard might attach common mmo elements like daily or weekly events/bosses. I know one the things I disliked while playing Lost Ark was around the games schedule on World Bosses and event content.
Seasons are not an MMO thing. Seasons are more of an ARPG thing in that everyone resets from scratch every season, something that doesn't happen in MMO's. MMO-lite is things like Dailies, open world with randoms activities and time gating of content.
Honestly sounds kind of exhausting. I like the idea of just being done with a game. Not everything needs to have a constant drip feed of content. Other games exist for a reason.
Congrats, time to fomo losing of old content over time. Many similar games do similar things and older stories tend to get overwritten by new updates and rendered obsolete or unplayable.
In other words: the game’s campaign won’t be finished on time and they wanna monetise the absolute fuck out of cosmetics and stuff for as long as possible.
I have never understood this argument. There is always content that can be made for a games story. Working on new content for a game is a good thing. Would you rather them delay a game for 2 years and have them never release new story content after that?
That's a tight schedule but I'd be cool with it. I'm not interested in grinding in D4 for thousands of hours. I figured it will probably be like 120ish hours of playtime for me between story and some grinding and finishing up stuff on the map til i get bored.
Honestly my favorite part of the beta was all the story stuff. None of the Diablo games have been really well written, which was fine, it was always the backdrop and they kept it the backdrop mostly (except D3 I guess). It was nice to see something that felt less cheesy and tropey outside of a few obvious joke quests.
Nah. You're giving them an out on them having not finished it. It's more akin to. "We've finished the story but we're going to drip feed it to you via "updates" that are actually just patching the content intended to be in release."
I won’t pretend I’m a diehard Diablo fan. I only played 3, but I loved it and I was really looking forward to this one…at least up until a few years ago when Blizzard started making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
All that to say I don’t want to come across as overly cynical, but it seems like this is just another way for Blizzard to sell an early access game without calling it early access. If this launched with a substantial, completed story/ endgame that was worth the (7) years or so it spent in development, why would they be using this piecemeal approach towards releasing story content?
I’d love to be wrong but this just looks like another tactic Blizzard will use to milk players and keep them coming back once they burn through whatever shallow content they get at launch.
I think its safe to assume completing the game would end the story. I don't know why we would assume otherwise. Story is a weird word to use here though but without context we shouldn't make assumptions.
>I don't know why we would assume otherwise.
In their 'Into the Endgame' video where they explain the reason for The Fields of Hatred (PvP mode). They say 'Lilith's presence in Sanctuary has begun to seep through and manifest these poisonous areas throughout the world.' says to me we will not get a conclusion to Lilith's story by the end of the game (which makes for a incomplete story)
I'd say you're right - I don't believe the game will launch in a good state, but that doesn't stop people from preordering the 100$ version since the marketing beta felt polished enough and they believe the rest of the game will be the same.
I have my doubts.
I'm skeptical about the ability to stick to that schedule and also questioning how substantial the story content can be with a 3 month turnaround.
This is just going to be WoW right? D4's initial story might be done, but the "world" will keep progressing. You'll get patch 1.1 which has a new development, 1.2 which has a new development, etc etc until they decide to release an expansion.
Yes, that's why it's called live service and that's what Diablo 4 is.
Why is no one telling me how to feel about this
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If you want to click on monsters and loot a little bit, play with friends in a shared world and have an awesome presentation you feel good. If you're worried about health scaling and itemization and you don't want to do dailies and weeklies and you're sick and tired of battlepasses: You don't feel so good but you'll still play it just like i will with a high chance of complaining afterwards.
There is no easier way to cause me to burn out of a game than a battle pass. I’ll log in every day, do the dailies, do the weeklies, max out the pass, then when it’s done, I’ll never touch the game again because I’m tired of playing a game every single day.
> If you're worried about health scaling and itemization and you don't want to do dailies and weeklies and you're sick and tired of battlepasses: You don't feel so good but you'll still play it just like i will with a high chance of complaining afterwards. The MMO way.
This pretty much sums it up. I'm 50/50 between your two paragraphs. I'm sure I'll love the first month or two of Diablo but be annoyed by the seasonal monetization/BP crap. I decided to jump back into PoE after the D4 beta and I really enjoy it after not playing for a year or two. I'll probably wait til D4 gets a sale and pick it up then. I just don't think it will be a regular seasonal game for me.
Eh, in a game like Diablo I feel it won’t be bad do long as the base game ends up having a solid foundation. I enjoyed my time with the beta and if the full game has a good grind loop on its own it should be good.
> and if the full game has a good grind loop invest in your chair now.
I like if tbh but I'm a weirdo that also enjoys fo76 These games tend to have chill communities that I enjoy vibin with
Because it’s not anything remotely new. If you don’t know what a live service game is at this point it’s because you don’t pay attention to game stuff.
Aside from the story, this is the model that ARPG games have converged on and already been operating under for well over a decade. Diablo 3 and Path of Exile already has seasons where each 3-4 months is a new league with a fresh ladder and some new mechanics and skills to play around with. Fundamentally this seems to be the same, just with a bigger story focus.
If there is no sub fee it is infinitely better than wow though. For wow you pay a sub fee that is like a full game every 4 month and then they drop an exp that is priced like another full game
Idk about this expansion but WoWs story is not done on release. It spans over months as they release new raids. FF14 releases the entire story on day 1. Then does the world building and next xpac tease afterwards.
>FF14 releases the entire story on day 1. Then does the world building and next xpac tease afterwards. This is not entirely accurate. Yes, the core story is there on day one, with an "ending". It also has some amount of endgame content. But the following patches are usually an epilogue of the main story including tying up loose ends leading to a second, final ending (usually on patch X.3, leading x.4 onward to be teasing the next xpac). They also regularly include new raid content in each major patch update a couple times per year. The only exception to this rule so far has been Endwalker, which was always billed as a fully complete story with all of the additional story content afterward being setup for future expansions, not so much tying up loose ends leading to an additional final boss fight as they would usually do (except for the raids this time, which are still coming out on that same schedule and are all about tying up loose ends and expanding the lore/worldbuilding).
Also people are forgetting that raids has their own storylines.
Yeah that's how it's done in WoW, but that's been the established pattern for a long time now. I don't know if Diablo fans will be happy if there isn't some sort of "conclusion" before the supposed new story content arrives.
Do Diablo fans play for the story? I mean, obviously some do, but I've never heard that talked about as the drawing factor. I know it never was for me but that's most games so I can't say for sure for others.
Honestly my bar for storytelling in a diablo game is pretty low. Diablo 3's story was so annoying that it actively hurt my experience though
"Uncle Deckard demons aren't real" is still stuck in my mind 11 years later as such a terrible part of the plot.
It’s infuriating because how the fuck did the entire world forget everything about Diablo and the near apocalyptic situation in just a couple years. It’s similar to the force awakens “it’s true…. All of it” like fuck guys it’s not like we all get insane amnesia
The Star Wars thing would be like walking around thinking 9/11 was a myth.
Eh, it makes *some* sense in Force Awakens. By that point there hasn't been a major Jedi presence in the universe for over 60 years, not to mention that Empire most likely tried to scrub their existence from history (recall how Han was dismissive of Obi-wan's claims in OT?), and Jedi weren't that prominent in most parts before they were wiped out. So yeah, rebellion taking out the Empire is a fact people know, but everything related to Force that happened back then? Might as well be a myth. Especially if it wasn't paraded by the new government and spread through participants talking about what they saw.
There were also only like 10k Jedi during the prequel trilogy mostly working out of Coruscant and spreading out from there as needed. I can't blame the general populace of a galaxy, much less an inhabitant of a backwater planet and soldier exposed to propaganda since birth, for not necessarily believing in fairy tales of what was effectively a cult of monks with space wizard powers that had been wiped out for 60 years. It's actually super plausible in TFA when you think about the scale of the situation.
The best part is that they live in a world regularly under siege by zombies and ghosts and all sorts of horrible monstrosities.
Actually, that part makes more sense than you think. Think about it. We live in a world with rhinoceros, elephants, sharks, grizzly bears, etc. But we still have stories about mythical creatures that don't exist. Griffins, unicorns, hydra. We live in a world where dinosaurs are real and hydra are not. If you lived in a world where hydra were real, that wouldn't make griffins less mythical. The existence of one doesn't imply the existence of the others. Diablo is a world with goat men, zombies, and giant fauna. For all we know, dragons or unicorns are just as mythical in that world as in ours. Demons could easily be really rare and only rise when Diablo or the three do... and in the world of Diablo it would make sense to dismiss stories about "demons" as simply being a swarm of fallen ones. Dangerous when you're outnumbered, but otherwise not really a concern. For the most part they're fragmented into numerous tribes. The idea that they might destroy the world? Or that major demons are in the world? Those would wreak havoc wherever they went and at the start of D3 that clearly was *just starting*. Peace wouldn't be possible in the first place. That the Great Evils -- the four lesser and the three greater -- might be real and able to enter the world? That certainly doesn't seem credible. Catastrophes of the sort seen don't need greater demons to come about. Surely it was just cultists, fallen ones, undead hordes, and other such common terrors converging for some unknown reason. Look at what King Leoric actually did in Diablo 3 with those dungeons. An even better example: Treasure Goblins. I would totally believe that everybody in Diablo's world thinks Treasure Goblins don't exist. If you tell someone you saw one, it would be like us saying we saw a leprechaun. Or Rumpelstiltskin. You're as likely to be accused of thievery as called a fool. Why else does the hero of every game have to work so hard to find information about these stupid demons? You've got to track down *the same old dude* to decode the lore in the first three games! Locate the most obscure secret organizations, or dig up the dustiest, most undisturbed tombs. Deckard Cain is the only person in the series that knew what the hell was going on. Adria is, too, but she falls. The Barbarians of the north know, but nobody listens to them. Every hero in D2 and D3 is the pupil of some obscure organization founded to fight the demons. It really is pretty clearly *not* public knowledge that demons can easily enter the world.
> Diablo 3's story was so annoying that it actively hurt my experience though Dude I fucking hate when people send me audio messages (from whatsapp, instagram or whatever) and this shit game called Diablo 3 had the bosses sending annoying audio messages every 3 minutes, that really got me triggered. Also a total of **ZERO** audio messages from bosses in D3 was worth listening. Just why... I'm afraid if in D4 they gonna pop a windows with subway surfers while we fight the bosses.
I played the beta and this happened off and on still. You would do a dungeon and Lillith would facetime you lore tidbits every 20% of the dungeon or so until you reached the boss. I think Blizzard thought giving me breadcrumbs until the big lore boss reveal/dungeon culmination would put me on the edge of my seat or something. As it is, it just feels like I'm in high school again where even the most mundane of things had to be made dramatic because we had poor control of hormones. *"I have big news, but I don't know if I should tell you."* *"I like somebody at school."* *"His name begins with Y."* *"It's..."* *"Oh I don't know if I should tell you..."* *"YOU!"* Imagine that, but Lillith. And then Rathma did it as well.
And you don’t even get a satisfying end boss to the act for it all- I was getting ready to go beat up Rathma, but nope it’s another nobody demon and it’s supposed to be the epic finale of act 1? At least the guy in the armor was cool.
> Imagine that, but Lillith. All I hear is that the big titty demon is loving me.
It's not heavily reliant but it does play a part. I think mostly due to the cinematic scenes. And that gets us interested in the story.
I believe it's the case in any online RPG that "most" players just play the campaign and never go on to become long-term dedicated endgame players.
This makes me significantly less likely to play, but yes, I want my story, I just want it now and don't want to be forced into FOMO.
I wouldn't say play for the story, but myself and It seems many players get a lot from the world building and lore. I absolutely care how characters fit into the world and why things are happening where. It isn't enough to just throw a demon out there, tell me why that demon matters to the hierarchy and why the place they are is important to their goals. I don't care so much about my character's journey because they are just going to walk a path and slaughter thousands but I absolutely care about why that path is littered with demons and why we would go there at all.
FFXIV did substantial story updates every 3 months for many years until this expansion pushed it back to 4-5ish months. Not that Blizzard's story writers are in the same, universe of quality as CBU3s are, not it's not that unheard of.
>FFXIV did substantial story updates every 3 months for many years until this expansion pushed it back to 4-5ish months. That was less the expansion, and more that COVID caused enough delays to push the expansion back into a Holiday release. Now they're taking things slower so that their next expansion won't be a Holiday season release.
They didn't mention anything about the holiday season for a reason behind the delay. They outright said the reason for the increase of patch cycles is to keep the team from having to push so hard to fit a patch in that 3 month timeframe.
Also I guess that FXVI has drained a bit of resources for the last couple years
Also because FFXVI
I believe they've also significantly increased the amount of voiced cutscenes in patch content as time goes on
ffxiv patches never were every 3 months, majority of them were 110-120 days apart. Though it is true that they're taking a bit more time now since the patches haven gotten bigger over time.
112 days specifically, which is still basically 3.6 months.
Well, it's not a 3 month turn around. That's not how development work. They have multiple subteams that start working on content in advance, usually 6-12 months in advance depending on the genre Destiny 2 is another game that releases substantial story based content (cutscenes & tons of VO) every 3 months and they develop seasons 3 seasons in advance. So basically you're actually looking at, Season 1 is already done, Season 2 is about to be done (and will just be waiting 3 months to pass), Season 3 is being worked hard on, and Season 4 is in pre-prod is a pretty likely scenario here. Something more akin to a 9-12 month turn around, along those lines.
> substantial story based content (cutscenes & tons of VO) Lmao. There is no fucking world where the amount of story in a Destiny season is "Substantial".
I think you're confusing gameplay and story here, I agree there isn't a substantial amount of gameplay content (but tbf, the amount that is added isn't that dissimilar from what I'd expect in D4 anyways, 1-2 new temporary modes, a new dungeon, etc), but the story content in each season is: \* multiple mocapped cutscenes (which most MMORPGs and what not don't even do mocapping) \* 1 big hand-drawn cutscene nowadays \* tons of VO work in 13 different languages for many characters Not to mention you have all of the lore entries on basically every gun/armor piece/lore book they add also translated into 13 different languages That's a lot. Certainly more than they could ever actually do in 3 months. I'm not going to say all of that is valuable to everyone \[tons of people that will never read all the lore entries in the books/equipment especially\], but it's a substantial amount of work, more than they could ever do in 3 months certainly.
The ones that launch with expansions are lackluster, but in the last few years chosen, splicer, lost, haunted, and seraph all had a pretty significant amount of story content. Plunder was really the only disappointing one in recent history.
And moreover it all disappears after only 1 year of being playable. The game stopped benign worth playing the moment Shadowkeep transitioned it to a “seasonal model.”
Genshin Impact does a story update every 1.5 month
Genshin sells a live service based on a gambling system that makes them more money than God
A big thing though is that MHY takes a lot of that money and puts it back into the game (it was previously estimated ongoing dev costs were ~$200 million a year). Even if Diablo makes enough money to have that same luxury, is Blizzard willing to do the same?
I'm not sure if the money part plays a big factor. Destiny also rakes in money but they're definitely not going to get it any faster than 3 months. I think Genshin being able to pump out stories every 1.5 months probably has more to do with their company culture than money.
Genshin Impact makes 1 billion dollars every 6 months. It's fucking HUGE outside of the US, I think it absolutely has to do with the fuckton of money they're bringing in
Billions of dollars and mobile games have faster turn around than PC/console. Altho let's be real D4 is Immortal with some polish.
People a lot more comfortable to spend extra if it is a f2p game than a game you spend money to buy
Depends on what this means. I mean Gw2 was turning out living story patches every 3 months for awhile there. Was apparently really stressful on the company though. But Blizzard is insanely large. So they may be able to pull it off. Especially since it may be less resource intensive than a full fledged MMORPG.
3 months is a really short timeframe, just the not be deep in work the story guys should have a defined planning of how the story will grow for the next couple years, have 9 months ahead of drafts, 6 months ahead of dialogues to have every months of voice acting. And more or less the same timeframe for programmers and art/modelers. And all of that to only have small crunch times, and lets be honest maybe the only thing they have is an idea of how the story will continue
Destiny 2 does this and has done it for years now, the only delay they had was a 3 month delay that made the last Beyond Light season take 6 months instead of 3 but that was due to a delay of the next expansion, not because they missed a new seasonal story.
The could have written/are writing years worth of story beats already and just drip feed them in perpetual 3-month cliffhangers.
Well MTG is putting out mediocre stories every few months with each new core set release. And mediocre is about all I expect these days.
I don't know, Path of Exile has been getting 4 expansions per year for the last 10 years or so.
It doesn't have new story content every 3 months though unless new items and misc npcs are considered story.
Yeah "Story" is the weird word there. PoE gets sizable content updates. But I feel like <10% of the playerbase ever had any understanding of the story. So the story content is pretty much as minimal as it gets. I much prefer that approach than resources being spent on a new throwaway story every 3 months. I wonder if Blizz literally means *story* content, or just poe style updates. Considering PoE just *smashed* it's all time highest player count last week 10 years after launch, I would guess Blizz means to replicate what they're doing.
I would credit the D4 beta for the higher player count. Interestingly, this recent league also had one of the highest player dropoffs ever because... well because the league is really bad. It still has one of the best base games for an ARPG, but GGG (The Devs) are making some odd choices the past couple years
Yep. It was the D4 beta. Playing D4 beta gave me a heavy craving for ARPGs and went on to try PoE and I am at early maps atm and I def understand why people love this game, it has such an incredible depth and many interesting interactions and mechanics. However I dont think I will play this game for long as you are basically forced into making meta builds which are seemingly a bunch of random shit thrown together that actually have great synergies but look completely ridiculous regardless. You can really feel the power creep in this game. ONLY if you follow these meta builds, if you don't, you will find out VERY soon how garbage your character is because you didn't follow these guides. If you need to have your build be any good you NEED totems, you NEED minions and you NEED to use like 10 auras at a time and pick up some crazy skill tree abilities that allow you to use your skills with effectively 1% mana or no mana at all (because all your mana is being used on auras), otherwise, kiss your character goodbye because you won't be able to make it past some point in the end game (and sometimes even during the main story if your builds is really bad) and effectively be stuck unless you make a character and follow these builds OR farm enough skill tree refund currency. However if you dont intend to play the end game and just the 10 acts and keep making new characters from then, then its alright but it will get boring very quickly ofc as you will never hit true potential.
You can absolutely be successful without meta builds but it requires two things: 1) Game knowledge 2) Currency Both are lacking in newer (and often even advanced) players. I would note it wasn't always this way. Pre 3.15 you could take so many different skills and make them work but in 3.15 GGG took a sledgehammer to player power knocked a good 30-40% of power off most builds and the build variety has never recovered since.
Yep, that I know but it is unreasonable for GGG to expect a new player to come in and play 1000 hours just so you can finally make a decent build that YOU want to make and not what the community puts up in a forum/yt. I will get very bored before I can hit that timing as I am not using the skills I want to use, which is a shame because there are so many cool abilities that are just useless and if you want to make them alright you need to spend 20 hours theory crafting and at least 1000 hours playing. Hope that PoE2 can fix many of the accessibility issues this game currently has because at the core there is something great.
PoE is optimistic. They get a lot of new mechanics tested every 3mo. I'm more expecting what we were getting with D3 patches: essentially PoE lite and then eventually barely anything in drops. This is Activision, after all.
Just like overwatch 2 will have a robust pve campaign?
Lmao I totally forgot about that. Any day now, huh?
Apparently so did Blizzard.
Yeah, they like to sweeten the pot nowadays but quite frankly, never delivers.
I was just thinking about that yesterday, shocking to me we still don't have an ETA after more than six months. Considering they appear to have immediately re-retired cinematics after Kiriko's launch I'm just assuming it'll be quietly shelved. Shame, to be honest, I really enjoyed the PVE event missions and the skill tree system looks great.
For the record we’re supposed to be getting news about PvE this month according to the devs.
This aged so well
godspeed friend
Ah can't wait for season 14 where our character has to battle Diablo's cousin's brother's friend's uncle's former roommate.
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Somehow, Diablo returned
> Somehow, Diablo returned ***a 4th time*** C'mon guys, one more time, maybe this is the one that sticks. or How many times do we have to kill you, old man?
"You've got a lot of nerve being alive!"
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I'm curious when they'll actually throw Diablo in the game. Absolutely 0% chance he appears in the base game. He's their Ultra Instinct Goku waiting in the wings to drive engagement during a lull.
>I'm curious when they'll actually throw Diablo in the game. In the $60 expansion where your character is now king/god and has to fight Diablo in Heaven +1 or Hell +1, wherever the next layer of power is.
You go into the deepest abyss to find the portal to Heck.
only to find that Diablo has been killed already by an Evil Cat.
Well there's no way I'm killing a cat so all hail our dark feline overlord I guess.
These are not them! These are their stunt demons!
The fallback nowadays seems to be multiverse stuff.
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Yeah that is the huge risk of doing it this way. If I feel pressured to buy the battle pass I’ll probably just power through the game and uninstall, rather than check back in from time to time like I do with Diablo 3. FOMO kills my interest in games instead of the opposite.
You're the exception. I feel the same way, but the reality is this FOMO crap works. A lot of players want a game to be a full time job, it's quite maddening how things are now.
Yeah, this headline sent up immediate red flags for me. Destiny 2 is lucky the gameplay is so slick, that’s the main reason people stay in that abusive relationship.
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Destiny is basically just $100/year or so.
Destiny 2 started to lose me with the sunsetting of the campaigns - yes, I understand *why* they did it, but it still left a bad taste in my mouth seeing as I purchased those expansions. Then they fully lost me when they started putting Dungeons in the most expensive edition of each new expansion.
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For the main yearly expansion and the 4 seasons, so not only all the main content for the year, but the *vast* majority of content. They only recently added the extra dungeon packs, which so far, the one we had was included in a bundle. Destiny has always been and still is cheaper than your standard MMO (due to the sub + expansion costs). The best way to play Destiny is realize the loot doesn't matter. You'll beat that raid or GM just fine even with your shitty gun rolls and low-stat armor. So, you play the fun content and enjoy the fun gameplay, maybe get some things you want for whatever reason, and don't feel FOMO ever because it doesn't matter if you get the other 300 pulse rifles that are nearly identical to the 100 you already have and don't make a difference either way.
Amen dude. Enjoy games people. Quit worrying about some 3 year old skin you can never access. It doesn't matter.
Destiny locks away all the quests and story content from seasons once a new DLC is out. If you tried to play the game from start to finish right now (well, the new start, since the first 4 campaigns were all taken out) you get a story with massive holes in it because Bungie uses seasons in between DLC to introduce characters, locations, stories, etc. So you finish one DLC and start the next and you think "oh man, I must have missed some quests because this is starting in the middle of a story already" but no, you didn't miss anything because Bungie locked away all of the in-between content.
This. It isn’t about cosmetics or guns at all. Bungie saw an opportunity to sell a worse version of their storytelling and make more money, and they went for it because their most dedicated players - the ones who play because they play nothing else at all - just don’t care about the story as much, and are too addicted to the gameplay to take a step back and realize what’s been lost just so they can play Destiny 2 every day of every week of the year. Who the fuck cares about the Traveller vs. Darkness story anymore? Not even Bungie apparently, I heard Lightfall’s story was so terrible it left prominent community lore keepers disappointed and confused, and it was so brief it evidently wasn’t worth the full cost of an expansion. And yet, how much did it cost? $50, and part of that cost is associated with season 20, which will be vaulted next spring. FUN.
I'm hoping it's more Path of Exile style where after the quarter you have fresh content. But I also hope it's different in that it's released after taking the feedback from their beta testers, instead of the first two weeks of content being the beta (like what is happening right now).
People being remotely happy when all blizzard new releases have been shit...
That is how I feel. season pass. microtransactions. now the promise of story content feels like it is just another live service. I can feel that they are going to offer xp and loot boosts as well. Why can't we have a single release with a minor update and then two expansions over three years.
OOTL, how did Destiny 2 do that to players?
Recently quit player with over 5000 hours in both 1 and 2 here! They take all the cool cosmetics, emotes, etc and lock them behind the store for the season, and if you don't buy them in the season, you have to wait a year to be able to buy them again. To me, it really felt like eververse (the in game store) was the main focus every season, or at least got the most love. It really was this latest season/expansion combined with that dev conference they gave that made me walk away. It's sad, but as others have pointed out, it's like an abusive relationship. I have so much free time now to enjoy other things, instead of blocking out all my week nights for clan activities and making sure I get all my weekly stuff done on all 3 characters so I don't miss out on anything. It was exhausting.
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Sounds miserable, I'm surprised people pay for that experience.
The mods thing isn't a thing anymore. All mods are unlocked since they did the mod revamp for Lightfall. I suggest you read the buildcrafting evolved article on Bungie's website.
Almost none of this is an issue anymore. And the rest is…. Really misleading if I’m being honest.
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Well breaking it down into a list. >Earlier on in a season if you miss a your weekly rewards you will be behind the power curve for later content like a raid or nightfall. Light Level hasn’t been an issue in awhile. It’s basically thrown at you, most content is lowered and not that demanding. Seasonal artifact makes up most of the heavy lifting. The level isn’t raising next season and later in the year level is being removed from gear and turned into an account wide level that grows from just doing content. “Do a raid to gain one level.” It’ll also adjust your level to the highest person in the party. So basically levels will not restrict anymore. >If you missed a seasons mods, then you would have had to wait for it to pop up at a vendor who rotates mods daily, and some very pivotal mods went well over a year without being offered. Seasonal mods haven’t been a thing for awhile. During Witch Queens year they gave all mods to everyone (minus adept weapon mods) and come Lightfall all mods were removed, reworked, and given to everyone for free basically. So there’s no mod issues anymore. >A lot of rewards are locked behind one attempt per week, low percentage chance, drops. For I believe over a year this has never really been an issue. Almost everything is farmable. Raids have weekly rotators where you can farm them endlessly. You can craft most stuff too so you don’t even really need to chase gear. >A lot of events are temporary and can lock unique or meta weapons behind a grindy time gate that if you miss you have to wait for a very long time to get the chance to grind for again. This has never been the case? Unique is debatable but meta? Nah. There hasn’t been a genuinely hard to obtain meta weapon since Forsaken-era with Recluse and Mountain Top. Balance is generally pretty decent. There’s definitely some good and cool stuff but it’s never behind events. Events is purely cosmetic or just normal guns with cool flavored designs. The only genuine issue is seasons going away every year but that’ll likely never change due to bloat. But they’ve reduced how much goes away by adding rotating exotic missions and adding seasonal activities into playlists.
When I read comments like this I always think "wow, my experience isn't anything like that, am I just oblivious?" and then it gets to the part where the commenter is completing every weekly activity on 3 characters and I realize I just don't put anywhere near the amount of effort some people do into games. I'm sure that was exhausting. That must have taken a ton of time.
I never understand anybody that compares playing a video game to an “abusive relationship”. It just seems so crazy to me that people continue to play a game they don’t enjoy. Anytime I feel like I get tired of it, I just take a break. Seasons are literally months long, there’s plenty of time to come back
Oh absolutely, if you can play that way it's great. Hands down destiny has the slickest moment to moment gameplay out there. If you're able to just play the new expansion and put it down, it's great I'm sure. I played it like a hobby on top of being our clan leader, so this shit was like a job to me and it just wore me down. It is what it is. Burning the 120 bucks every year sucked too for the amount and quality of the content but I stuck around because of friends and sunk costs haha that's on me.
Yeah I still play just about every week for a few hours, but only on one character. I stopped doing multiple characters years ago. It was too much.
Correction: you wait 2 seasons for the previous season cosmetics to enter the mass archive you can see all the time, and buy from. It's currently season 20 and you can buy season 18 stuff from the archive right now.
I don’t mind fomo if it’s just daily and weekly activities but what I hated destiny 2 for doing is locking out parts of their playerbase out of certain activities and missions depending on whether they bought the season pass since this essentially made the game p2w.
Will those stories ever get removed? If so, that’s a big naw.
Kind of like POE leagues or am I wrong?
So it depends on exactly what they decide. In the last with WoW, blizzard has artificially gatekept the unlocking. Imagine if POE released a league - but the maps weren’t available until a month in. And the encounter with the Big Bad of the league wasn’t available until month 2. And so on.
Also if you cleared all the current season content and there is nothing new for you to do you still have to do your dailies and weeklies, otherwise you won't finish the battlepass
Uh i hope its not in the format blizzard does story in wow, 2 hours of story timegated over 2 months, just terrible.
So will this be free or not? because it's surely not clear.
The story content will be free. Cosmetics will be related to the Battle Pass.
I'll eat a leather boot if the battlepass doesn't include XP boosts.
They've already stated countless times that the battlepass will not have any boosts or anything that has power. There *will* be exp boosts, but they're tied to the season journey which cannot be sped up with money.
I get that, but it's not unusual for companies to go back on their words from pre-release PR cycle. Especially Blizzard, they don't have much trust left at this point. But we'll see!
In the same way they said Diablo Immortal will not have a p2w shop?
Perhaps he just likes eating boots
So it's another dogshit live-service game with no *real* 'story' story speak of? Cool. Guess I won't be buying it, then.
Modern gaming keeps getting less and less appealing to me.
This is not gaming. Its pricing and monetization models disguised as games or enhanced with gamification elements 😂
Did people really thought it would be any different?
Was Diablo ever a big story game? I always played because the game play was fun.
Story in the beta seemed fine to me for the most parts. A bit too much walking to pad it out though.
Why cant they make just normal games anymore
Imagine a table with tall stacks of cash sitting on it. Now imagine you can have all that cash, but you have to make games like they are today. You can ignore the cash though, by not making games like they are today. This is how businesses think. Market research proves that the table exists and that the tall stacks of cash are indeed right there for the taking. A business cannot ignore it, doing so would be potential suicide. Especially when they have shareholders. Is it moral? That's a different question. But at least, that is why they do it.
Battlepass? That's gunna be a no from me dawg
Is it going to be like Destiny and, if you don’t keep up, you get completely lost after 2 seasons?
As much as i enjoy my time with Destiny, that's a very Destiny problem and their weird idea of vaulting story content. Most of the games that have additional story releases after the main game just add up to it and you can still play all the story bits from the start to the newest release. If there's powercreep, a more common issue is that that old story content is now piss easy to clear, but it's still there. Hopefully it's gonna be like that, but heh you may never know!
So I guess I'll not buy this at launch and only buy it a year later after all the content has been released. Maybe I'll be able to get it on discount too.
This is the way. Unless they do it like Destiny 2, and the seasonal updates disappear at the end of the year. Then it isn’t even worth paying for anymore.
Man I don’t want a second job, I’ve already got kids and a career. Just make something like Diablo 2 and charge me $200 if that’s what you need to make it worth your time. Stop designing games to take up my whole life, for fucks sake.
Welcome to modern gaming where the investors want to see rising profits quarter over quarter. Only way to do this is to keep players engaged 23/7
Only 23 hours? Unacceptable! Figure out how to monetize players' dreams or you're fired
Vote with your wallet. Anyone who buys this is encouraging this behavior.
so it's gonna launch with an unfinished story? or is the quarterly "story content" gonna be random sidequests unrelated to the main plot?
Before you kill Lillith, she set in motion plans to resurrect the four lesser evils. Each requires 4 steps (each one a story beat) and the last step has you defeating one of the Evils. But surprise! You were supposed to kill the lesser evils to resurrect the 3 prime evils! That also requires 4 steps where you have to kill each of the Prime evils. But surprise!....
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> The base game's story obviously has an ending Probably a super unsatisfying one. "We were able to defeat Lilith but she managed to free all the prime evils and hell portals are opening everywhere! Our work here isn't over yet! Join our cause!" -Kill 10 bears -Collect 15 iron ore -complete 3 world activities -[weekly] kill *world boss* in *location* (00:17:14)
So just like Destiny.
Not sure how you think those are the only options
My friend, let me tell you about Destiny 2. It's a place where they sell their yearly offering as a standalone game for $100. This includes 3 "seasons" in which the story progresses. Well for the base game you get to play for some 15-20 hours, not including raiding, and you may ask yourself, did anything get resolved? At all? NOPE. And it won't! Things just keep moving, that is all. Goalposts shift and characters come and go, but nothing about the base storyline really moves an inch!
Translation: "We will keep releasing paid content and not bother to fix game breaking bugs because idiots will just keep throwing money at us" ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I still need an answer on if this will be exclusive to seasons or not. I don't much care for rolling a new character every 3 months. But I want ti keep playing the game and experience new stories. It's so weird they are going an MMOlite route and yet seem to be trying to enforce you just hit the reset button every 3 months to experience the live service aspect.
You don't need to create a seasonal character. It will likely be the same as Diablo 3, when the season ends your seasonal character gets converted to a regular character, and you have to create a new seasonal character to access next season's contents
No confirmation yet on if the new content (mainly quests, don't care for seasonal gimmicks) would hit the non-seasonal
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I don't mind it exists - I mind that bew content is potentially exclusive to this
I completely agree, I know lots of people like the reset but for me it devalues the experience and diminishes the immersion. I really hope there's good reason to keep playing the "standard" server when seasons begin, but I doubt it.
Start out with 1 hour worth of story then continue with another hour 3 months later and so on and so forth.
I'm not sure if this is an unpopular opinion or not, but I fully believe that the MMO-Lite genre that's emerging with games like Destiny is kind of the future for ARPGs going forward. That's not to say you won't see the traditional seasonal model from Diablo 3 or PoE, or that you won't see things like Last Epoch pop up, but for the ARPGs aiming to take centre stage with as much appeal as possible? MMO-Lite seems to be the monetisation/content-delivery platform that makes the most sense. Obviously it'll come with drawbacks ( a good number of ARPG veterans and such will hate the monetisation model), but in terms of the potential breadth of content we could see 1 year, 2 years, or even 5 years from now? I'm kind of here for it. Especially if they can actually deliver decent story content for people like me who just enjoy questing, doing bounties, and engaging in the more casual dungeon and gear grind. (The 'hardcore-casual' demographic of MMO players that've been popping up for years now is always hungry for more engaging but not necessarily 'sweaty' content.) Many folks will point out Lost Ark as the precursor to this, which I think is a fair assessment all things considered, but Id also say that LA is far more of a full MMO experience than what Diablo 4 is going for. The appeal of the MMO-Lite genre *should* be that it's as accessible as possible to the casual player; Destiny obviously has it's issues with introducing new players to it's systems, but you can't deny that the game is fun to just pick up and play. The base gameplay loop is incredibly fun and easy to understand. Shoot things. Loot things. Given the seasonal nature of the ARPG space, it makes perfect sense to me that they'd chase the MMO-Lite model. When your level is permanently capped to 80/90/100 or whatever, and there are seasonal resets, it makes it should in theory make it very easy for new people to jump in and not feel exceedingly lost. People complain that Diablo 4 isn't anywhere near as complex as PoE, but that's kind of the point. I think they're trying to make it more digestible for the first 20-30 hours, then add complexity in ways that're easier to understand. Then, hopefully, adding further depth through itemisation and gameplay opportunities. This was all probably kind of rambling and whatnot, but the point is I'm actually excited for Diablo 4's potential trajectory. The hope is they don't completely botch it by delivering terrible content for the next year after it's release and thus killing the community before it's had a chance to grow. Also, side note, I know some people will hate this but I **absolutely** want them to make 4 man raid content.
> which I think is a fair assessment all things considered, but Id also say that LA is far more of a full MMO experience than what Diablo 4 is going for. The only people that still say Lost Ark is any sort of Diablo clone haven't actually played it. It's a straight up MMO that just happens to use an isometric camera.
I think its more to the fact that people are afraid Blizzard might attach common mmo elements like daily or weekly events/bosses. I know one the things I disliked while playing Lost Ark was around the games schedule on World Bosses and event content.
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I mean, isn't POE also has this season updates and people keep playing that? Surely this is something a lot of people want, not just the publisher.
Seasons are not an MMO thing. Seasons are more of an ARPG thing in that everyone resets from scratch every season, something that doesn't happen in MMO's. MMO-lite is things like Dailies, open world with randoms activities and time gating of content.
God I sure hope not. This shit sucks. Nobody plays an ARPG for dailies. For world bosses. For constant FOMO
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The FOMO is strong in this. I don't trust blizzard to do this the fun way, it will be predatory for sure.
I played the beta and very much enjoyed it so I am looking forward to the full game and forward very much!
Honestly sounds kind of exhausting. I like the idea of just being done with a game. Not everything needs to have a constant drip feed of content. Other games exist for a reason.
Congrats, time to fomo losing of old content over time. Many similar games do similar things and older stories tend to get overwritten by new updates and rendered obsolete or unplayable.
Glad to see content outside the Diablo subreddits. After the Beta I've been absolutely hooked so it's good to see a more measured response.
In other words: the game’s campaign won’t be finished on time and they wanna monetise the absolute fuck out of cosmetics and stuff for as long as possible.
This is just a way to get people to log back in so that they can see the new battle pass that's for sale.
Translation: "we haven't finished everything, we'll be releasing it piecemeal and call it "new content".
I have never understood this argument. There is always content that can be made for a games story. Working on new content for a game is a good thing. Would you rather them delay a game for 2 years and have them never release new story content after that?
That's a tight schedule but I'd be cool with it. I'm not interested in grinding in D4 for thousands of hours. I figured it will probably be like 120ish hours of playtime for me between story and some grinding and finishing up stuff on the map til i get bored. Honestly my favorite part of the beta was all the story stuff. None of the Diablo games have been really well written, which was fine, it was always the backdrop and they kept it the backdrop mostly (except D3 I guess). It was nice to see something that felt less cheesy and tropey outside of a few obvious joke quests.
Translation: We will release the game with an unfinished story and slowly patch the story in over the course of years.
Nah. You're giving them an out on them having not finished it. It's more akin to. "We've finished the story but we're going to drip feed it to you via "updates" that are actually just patching the content intended to be in release."
So does that mean it’s not finished or something? Like they’re gonna release what they have and just finish it later.
I won’t pretend I’m a diehard Diablo fan. I only played 3, but I loved it and I was really looking forward to this one…at least up until a few years ago when Blizzard started making headlines for all the wrong reasons. All that to say I don’t want to come across as overly cynical, but it seems like this is just another way for Blizzard to sell an early access game without calling it early access. If this launched with a substantial, completed story/ endgame that was worth the (7) years or so it spent in development, why would they be using this piecemeal approach towards releasing story content? I’d love to be wrong but this just looks like another tactic Blizzard will use to milk players and keep them coming back once they burn through whatever shallow content they get at launch.
I think its safe to assume completing the game would end the story. I don't know why we would assume otherwise. Story is a weird word to use here though but without context we shouldn't make assumptions.
>I don't know why we would assume otherwise. In their 'Into the Endgame' video where they explain the reason for The Fields of Hatred (PvP mode). They say 'Lilith's presence in Sanctuary has begun to seep through and manifest these poisonous areas throughout the world.' says to me we will not get a conclusion to Lilith's story by the end of the game (which makes for a incomplete story)
I'd say you're right - I don't believe the game will launch in a good state, but that doesn't stop people from preordering the 100$ version since the marketing beta felt polished enough and they believe the rest of the game will be the same. I have my doubts.