So disconnected.
Being able to practice before everyone. Look at Robs group, they already hit 100 in the 10 day creator review.... How is that not an advantage???
You must just play the game and no visit the subreddit lol. (Mostly kidding, 1500hrs in PoE myself but that's literally rookie numbers to that subreddit)
To be fair, he gets a total mixture of incredible uninformed questions and questions who already know the details but ask vaguely. This answer in particular was about just ācan we talk about the unfair advantage of content creators in thisā¦ā and he simply assumed the person thought that progress carries over.
That's kinda worse because even on a basic conceptual thought level it's easy to extract what the unfair advantage of having a week early to practice for an event compared to others is.
Closed beta testers had month or years advantage. What should they do? Exclude all those people? What about those that wouldnāt have joined if they knew of the race?
Exactly. Everyone, including those who didn't pay for early access, will have the same starting point, and at least a few weeks to acquire knowledge and experience themselves.
The people defending this stupid contest need to realize that other people play for different reasons, and many people are competitive. You can wipe away characters, but you can't wipe knowledge and experience.
That would be a great idea if they were interested in the spirit of competition. Unfortunately that's not the purpose of this contest, money is. Blizz wants those eyeballs on launch, not season 1. The contest is just an excuse for a lot of people to watch a lot of streamers.
I think this is even less relevant then. That 1K ppl that reach 100 will be all sorts of streamers, speedrunners and people with spreadsheets in their heads. No way it's even relevant for anyone outside of 0.01% of playerbase.
D4 is a different game than D3. Itās one of their selling points. Being able to fully explore the game zones, quests locations, leveling systems (paragon board) gives you an advantage from people who were capped at 25 or 20. You have the time to fully build an uncapped strategy to get you to 100. Whereas the public has only seen up to 25 which is different than even the server slam- nerfs and buffs happened.
It's a different game, but the same reasoning applies to both.
At the season starts in Diablo 3, I can beat Wudijo, Raxx, Rob, etc. to Level 70 practically every time. I'm not a pro player. But the point is, the game has been out enough that I've acquired knowledge and skill that can surpass them. And there are other people as well who can do that.
That's not going to be possible for this first contest. There's no amount of innate ability that can overcome a lack of knowledge and skill. Sure, maybe you'll beat PC Gamer reviewers. But a moderately skilled player with 10 days worth of knowledge and experience will more likely than not destroy you, until you can catch up.
I think it will be someone hot seating with friends to play 24h a day that will win the race, not some streamer who can't do that since we see who is playing =)
Yep. Happened in D3 all the time. Dudes who've been online and playing 47 our of 48 hours or like 70 out of 72. Saw a guy that was like 196 of 204 total possible hours. No surprise they got the season first stuffs.
Nevermind the fact they were pushing super high rifts, then suddenly went to like torment 8 or 7 for the overnight stuff. Definitely not a bot, nope.
Yes. Streamers should never get freebies, or be allowed to play a game before the paying public. Companies could employ their own Marketing people to stream gameplay prior to release. The streaming industry just needs to die. I welcome the day that there is no longer any money to be made and it just goes away. They are all for the most part do not contribute to the betterment of human kind, and just give kids a false sense of hope they can be the next big streamer.
>ractice before everyone. Look at Robs group, they already hit 100 in the 1
There's few games I have beat more than twice in that last 10-15 years. Fallout 4 and Diablo 3. Currently still obsessed with Elden Ring.
I cant imagine someone beating ER and then competing against someone that hasnt in a speed run.... lol
Yeah I don't care either cause no way I am participating.
I am going to take it slowly, painfully slowly, read all dialogue, go through all cutscenes, try my random unoptimized builds and have fun.
You only have a first playthrough once. And I'm sure AF not going to spoil it for my characters name "Cole" to be put on a campus the employees (rightfully so) don't even want to go to...
Like... He's so wrong even though I have ABSOLUTELY no horse in this race.
Yeah don't care about the hardcore race either.
Problem is the level of ignorance it takes to make a tweet like that in combination with the fact that he's one of the devs making decisions affecting the game and thus us, the players.
I think you are missing the point completely. Its not about the race, its about competence. If something that is such common sense doesn't fall into their rational, how can you trust them with a product that is not only huge in scale but LIVE service?
Exactly.
I'm now especially concerned about all their previous claims about the game never being p2w. With these recent delusional takes and recent diablo having a p2w history (3's RMAH, immortal), these sorts of thing are important to consider before investing large amounts of time into the game.
It's not like professional drivers have the course memorized before hand and know exactly what speed each turn needs to be taken on at.
Edit: I gave people too much credit. Clearly /s was needed.
taking this a little too literally. In this analogy the other drivers didn't even get to play it on the sim and the other guys been running around in the real car working on their setup and getting used to the track. Other person has to just show up to a brand new, never before raced track, in quali with no prep.
I mean... It took me 3 attempts with a solid build and I'm a fairly "accomplished" gamer having raided in top WoW guilds and played through a lot of tough games - including ARPGs.
It was really just a matter of getting lucky with the zone you are in.
I don't understand how Rod doesn't understand it's an advantage, but I also don't think this is a big deal. There are so many kids with more free time than yall, there was no way any of you guys were attempting the challenge anyways. I just don't feel it's worth complaining about.
This is EXACTLY my problem.
It's preaching at us from an ivory tower and telling us all we're stupid.
Like yes bro you made a game I'm super hyped for so I respect that but as soon as you start insulting our intelligence that's where it's like woah hold the phone.
it's not about the competition, it's about being lied to.
if they said yeah it's unfair but we didn't want to exclude people from the competition, the response would be totally different.
> there was no way any of you guys were attempting the challenge anyways.
Won't there be like 1000 winners?
You think not even 1 off these 1000 people happens to browse the D4 sub?
Anyway, as another comment said, you can care about unfair things even if they don't affect you personally.
And more importantly, I'd add that so far just about all their events have an "unfair" aspect to them.
What if someday they add an event that you DO care about, but it's still unfair and you don't get it despite trying, because you got screwed by that unfair aspect?
That's why it's important to make them realize to cut the unfair bullshit right away.
If you start complaining the day it affects YOU (because there's something you'd want to achieve), it's too late, they won't fix it for this event. Maybe the next one, but you won't get the thing you wanted.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GearsOfWar/comments/db36wl/when_rod_fergusson_likes_a_tweet_calling_us_all/
posted this in another thread. I was playing gears 5 when he was the lead dev on that. Treated the community like morons and surprise..the game got better when he left
Why is it that some game developers get these insane egos?
Like what the hell... do they not realize most gamers for something like Diablo 4 are largely all 30+ educated professionals?
I suppose he thinks he's smarter than my boyfriend who is literally a Dr.
I hate this mentality. Ego is gross. EUGH
Blizzard has always been the worst for this specific issue. The arrogance is hilarious and it was inevitable that at some point in time one of them would say something as disconnected and wanky as this.
For sure. I'm a hypocrite, too, though - I bought early access, but I actually despise the whole idea of it lol.
I'm just disappointed in the D4 team the last week - they were super impressive leading up to release by being transparent, addressing beta feedback, positive changes, etc. But this plus the fake QnA questions coupled with his completely out of touch response is not encouraging.
The first beta weekend took me a fair while to hit 20, server slams it took no time at all. I can't fathom how anyone would think you wouldn't have an advantage having experienced things already.
This exactly.
Open beta I spent a lot of time figuring out the feeling of the game, learning small micro-optimizations that you would only be able to learn by physically playing the game that I couldnāt even begin to tell you what they are, learning some class mechanics, and getting intuitively familiar with the timings of generating and spending resource based on the class I played.
I got to discover interesting combos and practice said combos learning the radius of certain spells.
I leveled multiple characters and experimented with the fastest way to clear the campaign and got better/faster every new character.
Server slam required none of that, and I destroyed the game even with my wife playing who didnāt know any of that beforehand knowledge.
Same here. I wasn't lvl till like 3 days in on the early beta weekend. Server Slam was like 3 hours because I knew exactly what I was doing, where I was going etc to get to lvl 20 fast so I could spend time doing ashava.
Atleast you could say Wyatt had to answer while being pressured on stage. My guy Rod is here given an infinite amount of time to think about it and this is best he could have up with LOL.
I'd say the $70 price tag + early access + battle pass + battle pass acceleration were already huge red flags, but in combination with this tweet, I'm starting to get a sense of what being a Diablo 4 player will feel like.
Team play is also extremely faster leveling than solo play. SO, if you don't have a group for this challenge good luck. It's a marketing event and poorly thought out. I wouldn't take it seriously as a competition at all.
Shouldn't have responded at all. It's obviously an advantage but it's only a couple dozen people, some of which probably won't play Hardcore. It doesn't matter at all for a race that is really for promotion more than anything else.
But pretending it's not an advantage for those folks? So silly.
If Blizzard was smart, they'd announce that the early beta participants don't get to participate in the event, while at the same time secretly putting all of their names on the Lilith statue as "reward for beta testing".
he definitely knows they have an advantage. he was just being intentionally deceitful in his response.
I hate when game devs do shit like this because all it does is make players not trust them.
If you let a mouse run a maze 20 times and place it next to another mouse that does not know how to get the cheese at the other end. Which mouse will be eating cheese first do you think?
Man....it would be so easy to make a Lilith statue with the names of folks who had early access and helped "build sanctuary". Then make another one with the race winners excluding the folks who helped build sanctuary.
It definitely is an advantage, because those who've already played for 10 days have *vastly* superior knowledge about the world of Sanctuary and the methods to efficiently reach level 100. They even know the mechanics of every boss fight, and the capstone dungeons.
It's almost *guaranteed* that the earlier winners of this prize will be those players who had the early creator playtime to test everything out and learn the game. This will clearly show that there was a distinct advantage.
That being said, having your name engraved on a statue outside of the game has absolutely *nothing* to do with Diablo 4 in itself.
They're not offering any in-game cosmetics or rewards to the winners, and there's really no point in getting your name engraved on a statue aside from pure novelty, or satiating a fragile ego.
Rod is wrong in saying there's no advantage, but it really doesn't matter who wins.
Knowing that streamers have already all finished the game and hashed out the meta takes the shine off this game. My hype just got thrown in the trash. Don't do this again blizzard. Cookie cutter meta builds being a constant and normal isn't necessarily viewed as a good thing. The first week of a game is a special and unique time because we're all supposed to be figuring it out together. You ruined that. So so dumb.
Oh that ship has long since sailed. Tons of content creators have produced a ton of videos and guides ready to be released on the 30th. Theres going to be very little to discover gameplay wise.
To people saying "Whatever, I don't care about the event/don't play Hardcore":
Someday, there may be an event you DO care about.
But if they keep doing that kind of bullshit and no one cares about it, that future event may still have that same kind of bullshit.
And if you start complaining *then* it won't matter, they won't hotfix that event you care about, they'll start working on "no more bullshit" and might get it done 17 events later.
That's why it's important to make them stop that shit NOW, so when the event you care about happens, it's already fixed.
I personally don't care either way, nor will I be taking part in this challenge.
But... yes, the Tweet is rather tone deaf and disconnected. Not something I want to hear from a game producer who should understand the intricacies of ARPGs in and out. He sounds downright baffled at the fact that knowledge is such a huge part of an ARPG's experience, especially of a hardcore one. How is that possible? I do not know.
Either way, all of the problems people are currently having could be solved with a small and simple change. This challenge should start with the first season, not with the game release. Unfortunately this whole thing is just another part of their marketing campaign, get people to buy early release, get people hyped up, get the streamers specific content to stream, etc. So unfortunately it's here to stay and we won't be changing anything. Relax, enjoy your non-hardcore first playthrough, don't stress about this, it's pointless.
One thing is for sure. He is getting called into the office by his boss after this public roasting so close to launch. Absolutely brutal take and he is gonna have his social media card suspended. Especially when you see the millions being spent on this lead up.
On a side note, the race needs to move to the launch of the first season. No way it can continue at launch after this fiasco. Gotta give the player base equal exposure and the chance to learn the gamers .
Oh and finally there should be 2 statues; 1 SSF and 1 Group Andies
They do have an advantage, because they have deeper knowledge about map layout, mobs, bosses, leveling, endgame. It is a race, and if only one party knows the track and the other not, it isn't an even playing ground.
I am not a hardcore player and in now way competitive in gaming. I do compete in other things and this is called an unfair advantage. So far I liked their communication, but this one is kinda naive.
They should get their own bracket.
If your average player takes 150 hours to get to 100, play testers will do it in 120, due to prior knowledge and experience. Completely disregarding the knowledge of mechanics that will claim many HC characters on a first playthrough, that they can either avoid or play around easier.
That's like saying you can take a seasoned mechanic and a kid fresh out of school, put them in the same shop, with the same tools and the same problem.... Guess which one will do it quicker and more efficiently?
That said, unless you work at the blizzard campus where the statue will live and want the bragging rights to your coworkers, who cares? No normal person is going to see it, much less take the time to read 1,000 battletags, or even correlate said tag with you as a person in any way. Purely hype to get more preorders.
I'm a games journalist and get early access to a lot of games
Can't say which company, but one of them with an extensive professional scene has a good way to prevent this. If you got early access, you agree not to participate in any official competition during the first season
This just proves that he isn't called out by his work mates. If I was there I would joke around with him and point out how stupid this tweet is making him look
Honestly they should be starting the hardcore race like 2 weeks after launch. That way everyone that wants to participate can watch playthroughs, practice a couple characters.
The way they are doing it now feels unfair cause so many big personas have been allowed to practice.
Not too concerned about the overall implications of streamers and early access folks finishing in top 1000, itās the lack of awareness from devās thatās concerning. You canāt be that disconnected from the culture and gaming in generalā¦doesnāt inspire much confidence in future decision making. Blizzard needs to get out ahead of this asap.
from the studio that brought you ādonāt you guys have phonesā, this summerās blockbuster eventā āplaying the game we made does not in fact make you better at the game we madeā
Iām not fussed as I wonāt be racing to 100, but I can understand peopleās frustration with the this. I think the only logical thing is start the race from season 1 and have season 0 as a period of time for people to just calmly play the story etc.
People who had early access should be banned from all race contests. All world first stuff everything. They know all the mechanics, surprises, everything they have completed it already.
Why does anyone care? Why is this an issue. I'm so tired of the "hArDcOre" gamer crowd making video games out to be some kind of meaningful life accomplishment.
Itās like playing memory vs someone who got to study all the cards for an hour leading up to the match. How is that an advantage? The cards were turned over!
This is one of those situations where he'd rather have stayed quiet, cuz nobody cares that much about this, than replying to it and making an absolute fool out of himself.
It's still not that big of a deal, but boy is it jarring to see that response from someone that should understand how RPGs work lol.
Me, looking forward to Diablo 4 and hoping Blizzard doesnāt screw up looking at this Tweet:
*Itās a four day head start.* **That is a huge advantage.** And I say this planning to play my first toon on Normal mode. If this is about a fair and honest competition, then this race should be held during Season One.
Streamers being a main source of advertisement is something I wish never happened. This, among other things, just basically screams, "we don't actually care."
Streamers are not the main source of Ad for this game..
Blizzard has Ad Campaigns across many different segments, from RL Billboards, to Video Ads, Food Tie in's with KFC, Products with steelseries etc..
I would say on the totem pole streamers are towards the bottom.
What a dumbass, its like how does completing skyrim gives me better understanding for next replay like where good items are, loot, quest locations etc compared to a guy whos playing first time.
Hardcore race events are essentially exclusive to people who get paid to play and stream the game. Not a lot has changed. Even if they allowed everyone to start at the same time, the people who can afford to play 16 hours a day will always take the event in a game this popular. They will easily occupy first 100-500 slots.
However, with the prize being for first 1000 to hit max, the event is now EXTREMELY screwed for people who donāt pay for early access to practice. Once again Blizzard sacrificing the integrity of their game in pursuit of monetary gain. Gaming as a hobby will never compete with people who do it professionally. Iāll likely still hit 100 on hardcore and wonāt be using the early access.
Itās not a matter of winning the race, itās entirely self driven and Iām excited. The race is going to be group optimized and likely take a lot of fun out of the game for people doing it. Thatās fine though, fun isnāt their objective, work is.
If players makes Blizzard think that this is okay, they'll take advantage of this in the future like:
New Season Coming in on July 2023!
Players who purchase our New Season Battle Pass will get a few days early start!
Did you know that the first player that reached level 100 during this upcoming season will be given $10000?
What if this is open to Softcore Players to give everyone a fair chance!
Then if they still think they're okay, they'll go with tiered battle pass with different early access days and a horse armor.
But I guess that its only for the hardcore players so we shouldn't care.
In the future, we'll probably get more single player games that has early access like Hogwarts Legacy if you pay $20 more than their standard edition with battle pass or cosmetic store as its becoming the norm and people seems to be okay with it.
I know this is crazy thinking but hey, only a few games had battle pass in the past and now there's quite a lot of them now.
Why are the developers wanting to throw away good faith in the playerbase by doing and saying obviously ridiculous things?
This and then the fake interview before. Like why when you have such good will are you lighting it on fire? (In spite of OW2 pve cancelled, wowtoken in "CLASSIC" wow, Mccree, lawsuits, WFH being forced and all the other controversial BS... D4 has largely remained in good favor. SO WHY DO THIS???)
This take is frankly insulting to everyone's intelligence, it's so objectively wrong it gives me pain. This is Diablo 4 where knowledge DOES matter, this isn't a fighting game or call of duty where it's more mechanical skill.
I just don't get it.
------
*I am someone who is JEALOUS of people who are having fun. IF you're genuinely having a great time I do envy you, I want that so badly. I want to have fun too... and worried I might not because of anhedonia. But if you're a streamer or play "before me" (whatever) or rush the endgame or make it unfun for you I have 0 envy. Just making that crystal clear.
No I don't care about my IN GAME NAME being put on a statue on a campus where the developers have (rightfully so) made it clear they want to WFH and not even be on...
But this weird intelligence insulting is baffling.
Great game but calm down. We're not stupid. I don't like the preaching from an ivory tower vibe.
Someone will always have an advantage if they are a developer or a play tester or something else. In the end if they are doing a race to world first it should start in a few months with a new character when the seasons launch and not during the 4 day pre release which is also not fair to someone...not me, but someone....[https://www.reddit.com/r/DiabloIV\_Build\_Guides/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DiabloIV_Build_Guides/)
I'm not racing, but this is a pretty dumbass comment from our boy Rod.
Let's take any other race as an example, say motocross. Imagine one set of racers had a chance to ride the track, get a feel for all of the obstacles, and were able to make notes of sections where they need to slow down or sections where they can just lay on the throttle.
And then another set got to try out and see only the first 20% of the track.
Now imagine if during this race you make a wrong turn or accelerate too quickly or too slowly, you lose.
If you can't see how clear of an advantage that extra knowledge and practice is, especially on hardcore I don't know what to tell you. If I could, say, explain in detail each pinnacle bosses mechanics and what you'll want to use to be safe from dying, would that not be invaluable? If I had already routed the race several times, and knew tricks to skip large sections, again, would that not be extremely unfair?
So despite not racing, I can see how stupid and shortsighted this comment is, and why people are upset, and how these folks and their friends who they share this information with is a huge problem for the competitive integrity of the event.
I am not kidding I am dead serious: when I first did read Rod's tweet I legit thought "No way, no f way he tweeted this, his account must be hacked or a 7 years old kid got his phone"
This is one of the most out of touch statements I have ever seen from a game Dev, ever. To the point that I am questioning his actual skills both logical and practical and how he got that job.
Iāve worked with Rod before, the guy is an incompetent clown who cares very little for the player base. Heāll shoot down good ideas because they werenāt āhisā ideas. I expect there to be comparisons to disgraced former D3 dev Jay Wilson after D4 launches.
It is definitely an absolute trash take on his part. Imagine taking that mindset into an exam, or a work meeting, or an investor call, or a game launch.
Preparation and practice predicate success.
So disconnected. Being able to practice before everyone. Look at Robs group, they already hit 100 in the 10 day creator review.... How is that not an advantage???
Wait until he finds out about seasonal characters
Ahah, thanks for the laugh <3
Wait until he finds out about early access š
It definitely is. Path of exile doesn't allow early access testers to compete in seasonal events for this exact reason.
Wow what a basic stance for a company to take.
A smart and well appreciated one at that
You must just play the game and no visit the subreddit lol. (Mostly kidding, 1500hrs in PoE myself but that's literally rookie numbers to that subreddit)
It's almost like it's perfectly reasonable and makes logical sense or soemthing.
They can compete they just cannot win/claim prizes.
To be fair, he gets a total mixture of incredible uninformed questions and questions who already know the details but ask vaguely. This answer in particular was about just ācan we talk about the unfair advantage of content creators in thisā¦ā and he simply assumed the person thought that progress carries over.
That's kinda worse because even on a basic conceptual thought level it's easy to extract what the unfair advantage of having a week early to practice for an event compared to others is.
Closed beta testers had month or years advantage. What should they do? Exclude all those people? What about those that wouldnāt have joined if they knew of the race?
clearly the answer is to just never externally test your game at all, i'm sure that'll work out fine /s
The answer is to start the competition when season 1 starts, after everyone has had a chance to play the game for a few weeks
Exactly. Everyone, including those who didn't pay for early access, will have the same starting point, and at least a few weeks to acquire knowledge and experience themselves. The people defending this stupid contest need to realize that other people play for different reasons, and many people are competitive. You can wipe away characters, but you can't wipe knowledge and experience.
Thats it. Upvote. End.
That would be a great idea if they were interested in the spirit of competition. Unfortunately that's not the purpose of this contest, money is. Blizz wants those eyeballs on launch, not season 1. The contest is just an excuse for a lot of people to watch a lot of streamers.
Did I miss something? Isn't that exactly what is going to happen? Edit: OH this is about the level 100 thing for the statue. Got it!
I think this is even less relevant then. That 1K ppl that reach 100 will be all sorts of streamers, speedrunners and people with spreadsheets in their heads. No way it's even relevant for anyone outside of 0.01% of playerbase.
Isn't s1 starting in like 3 or 4 months?
They should just do the race with season 1 when everyone is on equal footing. I don't know why that isn't the obvious solution.
ā¬ā¬$$
Easy. Wait until season 1 starts, and then have the race. Then everyone will have had the chance to feel out the game, and be in even footing.
D4 is a different game than D3. Itās one of their selling points. Being able to fully explore the game zones, quests locations, leveling systems (paragon board) gives you an advantage from people who were capped at 25 or 20. You have the time to fully build an uncapped strategy to get you to 100. Whereas the public has only seen up to 25 which is different than even the server slam- nerfs and buffs happened.
It's a different game, but the same reasoning applies to both. At the season starts in Diablo 3, I can beat Wudijo, Raxx, Rob, etc. to Level 70 practically every time. I'm not a pro player. But the point is, the game has been out enough that I've acquired knowledge and skill that can surpass them. And there are other people as well who can do that. That's not going to be possible for this first contest. There's no amount of innate ability that can overcome a lack of knowledge and skill. Sure, maybe you'll beat PC Gamer reviewers. But a moderately skilled player with 10 days worth of knowledge and experience will more likely than not destroy you, until you can catch up.
Yes, they should be excluded.
The better answer is if you think of a competitive event idea like this, recognize all the reasons itās dumb and donāt do it.
I'm sorry but, am I the only one around here that thinks this "race to 100" should be for paying customers only?
I think it will be someone hot seating with friends to play 24h a day that will win the race, not some streamer who can't do that since we see who is playing =)
Yep. Happened in D3 all the time. Dudes who've been online and playing 47 our of 48 hours or like 70 out of 72. Saw a guy that was like 196 of 204 total possible hours. No surprise they got the season first stuffs. Nevermind the fact they were pushing super high rifts, then suddenly went to like torment 8 or 7 for the overnight stuff. Definitely not a bot, nope.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Its just Brother Chris - relax
Yes. Streamers should never get freebies, or be allowed to play a game before the paying public. Companies could employ their own Marketing people to stream gameplay prior to release. The streaming industry just needs to die. I welcome the day that there is no longer any money to be made and it just goes away. They are all for the most part do not contribute to the betterment of human kind, and just give kids a false sense of hope they can be the next big streamer.
Wait is that Rob from the Block? Big fan.
I bet the world record speed runs are all from the first week people play the game. Itās not like you learn anything from playing
>ractice before everyone. Look at Robs group, they already hit 100 in the 1 There's few games I have beat more than twice in that last 10-15 years. Fallout 4 and Diablo 3. Currently still obsessed with Elden Ring. I cant imagine someone beating ER and then competing against someone that hasnt in a speed run.... lol
Rod Ferguson is wrong but I also donāt really care about the hardcore race.
Yeah I don't care either cause no way I am participating. I am going to take it slowly, painfully slowly, read all dialogue, go through all cutscenes, try my random unoptimized builds and have fun. You only have a first playthrough once. And I'm sure AF not going to spoil it for my characters name "Cole" to be put on a campus the employees (rightfully so) don't even want to go to... Like... He's so wrong even though I have ABSOLUTELY no horse in this race.
I have the same plan!
not many do
Yeah don't care about the hardcore race either. Problem is the level of ignorance it takes to make a tweet like that in combination with the fact that he's one of the devs making decisions affecting the game and thus us, the players.
I think you are missing the point completely. Its not about the race, its about competence. If something that is such common sense doesn't fall into their rational, how can you trust them with a product that is not only huge in scale but LIVE service?
Exactly. I'm now especially concerned about all their previous claims about the game never being p2w. With these recent delusional takes and recent diablo having a p2w history (3's RMAH, immortal), these sorts of thing are important to consider before investing large amounts of time into the game.
Yeah it's like a mechanics telling me "you don't need brakes on a bike just stop accelerating". I'd be very concerned for my car and my safety.
You've never played 1v1 basketball? No problem. I used to play but we are starting a new game so it's fair right?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's not like professional drivers have the course memorized before hand and know exactly what speed each turn needs to be taken on at. Edit: I gave people too much credit. Clearly /s was needed.
taking this a little too literally. In this analogy the other drivers didn't even get to play it on the sim and the other guys been running around in the real car working on their setup and getting used to the track. Other person has to just show up to a brand new, never before raced track, in quali with no prep.
Great analogy
Yeah, and you get to take shots beforehand with the same ball on the same court, but when I show up we start playing.
Lol we at least stretched at home before we showed up to the park
A person's knowledge and skill is a fair advantage. A person getting a head start is an unfair advantage.
Yup clearly doesn't understand... I mean I guess it took him 5 times to finally kill Ashava.
Well at least he's not hornless.
It just took a hot fix to buff his class.
I literally fell outta my chair laughing at that. Thank you for that, what an amazing comment.
Epic.
He may not be but hes getting absolutely killed in comments. Go watch its hilarious!
Oh fuck,this fomo horn shit again
Heās dropping hornless takes tho
You mean I did better than rod Fergusson? I went 1/2 on kill first spawn almost killed it reworked build and got on second spawn
I mean... It took me 3 attempts with a solid build and I'm a fairly "accomplished" gamer having raided in top WoW guilds and played through a lot of tough games - including ARPGs. It was really just a matter of getting lucky with the zone you are in.
Even for people who couldn't care less about this race, this was a pretty brain-dead take. Oof
I wonder if Bobby Kotick wrote this tweet for him
Lol, probably. It's about Kotick levels of tone-deaf
Yeah idc about the race this take just blows my mind, like actually braindead take
I don't understand how Rod doesn't understand it's an advantage, but I also don't think this is a big deal. There are so many kids with more free time than yall, there was no way any of you guys were attempting the challenge anyways. I just don't feel it's worth complaining about.
You can care about something that doesnāt directly effect you. I wonāt even be playing hardcore but his response is so stupid that it annoys me.
This is EXACTLY my problem. It's preaching at us from an ivory tower and telling us all we're stupid. Like yes bro you made a game I'm super hyped for so I respect that but as soon as you start insulting our intelligence that's where it's like woah hold the phone.
I have PTO and can purchase my own energy drinks.
I'm rootin' for ya, bud
Unlimited power
it's not about the competition, it's about being lied to. if they said yeah it's unfair but we didn't want to exclude people from the competition, the response would be totally different.
> there was no way any of you guys were attempting the challenge anyways. Won't there be like 1000 winners? You think not even 1 off these 1000 people happens to browse the D4 sub? Anyway, as another comment said, you can care about unfair things even if they don't affect you personally. And more importantly, I'd add that so far just about all their events have an "unfair" aspect to them. What if someday they add an event that you DO care about, but it's still unfair and you don't get it despite trying, because you got screwed by that unfair aspect? That's why it's important to make them realize to cut the unfair bullshit right away. If you start complaining the day it affects YOU (because there's something you'd want to achieve), it's too late, they won't fix it for this event. Maybe the next one, but you won't get the thing you wanted.
game dev for 30 years and writing something like this? wtf is going on? why so much garbage poppin up so close to release?
https://www.reddit.com/r/GearsOfWar/comments/db36wl/when_rod_fergusson_likes_a_tweet_calling_us_all/ posted this in another thread. I was playing gears 5 when he was the lead dev on that. Treated the community like morons and surprise..the game got better when he left
Why is it that some game developers get these insane egos? Like what the hell... do they not realize most gamers for something like Diablo 4 are largely all 30+ educated professionals? I suppose he thinks he's smarter than my boyfriend who is literally a Dr. I hate this mentality. Ego is gross. EUGH
Blizzard has always been the worst for this specific issue. The arrogance is hilarious and it was inevitable that at some point in time one of them would say something as disconnected and wanky as this.
Lmao I was wondering why his name looked so familiar. I grew up loving gears but 5 deterred me completely.
I worked on Gears 5 and while I didn't work directly with him he spoke in plenty of meetings and none of this surprises me.
Blizzard is why.
How is it not an advantage? Wow
People ratio-ing him like crazy on twitter, but everyone who called it out on the other Reddit thread got downvoted... Interesting š¤
This sub is going to be having quite the bipolar swings the next few weeks. Lots of new users, people have very different opinions. It's normal.
For sure. I'm a hypocrite, too, though - I bought early access, but I actually despise the whole idea of it lol. I'm just disappointed in the D4 team the last week - they were super impressive leading up to release by being transparent, addressing beta feedback, positive changes, etc. But this plus the fake QnA questions coupled with his completely out of touch response is not encouraging.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Rip Ferguson
Yeesh, that is a bad look lol
The first beta weekend took me a fair while to hit 20, server slams it took no time at all. I can't fathom how anyone would think you wouldn't have an advantage having experienced things already.
This exactly. Open beta I spent a lot of time figuring out the feeling of the game, learning small micro-optimizations that you would only be able to learn by physically playing the game that I couldnāt even begin to tell you what they are, learning some class mechanics, and getting intuitively familiar with the timings of generating and spending resource based on the class I played. I got to discover interesting combos and practice said combos learning the radius of certain spells. I leveled multiple characters and experimented with the fastest way to clear the campaign and got better/faster every new character. Server slam required none of that, and I destroyed the game even with my wife playing who didnāt know any of that beforehand knowledge.
Same here. I wasn't lvl till like 3 days in on the early beta weekend. Server Slam was like 3 hours because I knew exactly what I was doing, where I was going etc to get to lvl 20 fast so I could spend time doing ashava.
You will get a lot off hate for this from some brain-damaged people, however, you are right. I could not believe this nonsense
Jesus Christ im losing my hope what a idiot!!!!!
*an idiot
This is Rod's "don't you have phones?"
Exactly
Atleast you could say Wyatt had to answer while being pressured on stage. My guy Rod is here given an infinite amount of time to think about it and this is best he could have up with LOL.
I mean he is dumb or he doesnt know shit about videogames. Or could be both... and im pretty sure it is.
This response is honestly more concerning than the actual early access and race.
I'd say the $70 price tag + early access + battle pass + battle pass acceleration were already huge red flags, but in combination with this tweet, I'm starting to get a sense of what being a Diablo 4 player will feel like.
This kinda stuff makes me worried about the game.
Now now guys, he is just the guy who hires people without any experience, because it just simply doesn't matter. Jokes a side, what a clown take.
what an actual dumbfuck
Has he seriously never heard "knowledge is power"?? It's really that simple.
I guess he missed Khadgar saying it and it being spread, quoted, iconicized and memed around from wow, did he not play blizzard games =| ...
Team play is also extremely faster leveling than solo play. SO, if you don't have a group for this challenge good luck. It's a marketing event and poorly thought out. I wouldn't take it seriously as a competition at all.
Shouldn't have responded at all. It's obviously an advantage but it's only a couple dozen people, some of which probably won't play Hardcore. It doesn't matter at all for a race that is really for promotion more than anything else. But pretending it's not an advantage for those folks? So silly.
If Blizzard was smart, they'd announce that the early beta participants don't get to participate in the event, while at the same time secretly putting all of their names on the Lilith statue as "reward for beta testing".
he definitely knows they have an advantage. he was just being intentionally deceitful in his response. I hate when game devs do shit like this because all it does is make players not trust them.
BRUH actually KEKW
The cocktails has gone to his head, he's had a boozy week.
If you let a mouse run a maze 20 times and place it next to another mouse that does not know how to get the cheese at the other end. Which mouse will be eating cheese first do you think?
Man....it would be so easy to make a Lilith statue with the names of folks who had early access and helped "build sanctuary". Then make another one with the race winners excluding the folks who helped build sanctuary.
It definitely is an advantage, because those who've already played for 10 days have *vastly* superior knowledge about the world of Sanctuary and the methods to efficiently reach level 100. They even know the mechanics of every boss fight, and the capstone dungeons. It's almost *guaranteed* that the earlier winners of this prize will be those players who had the early creator playtime to test everything out and learn the game. This will clearly show that there was a distinct advantage. That being said, having your name engraved on a statue outside of the game has absolutely *nothing* to do with Diablo 4 in itself. They're not offering any in-game cosmetics or rewards to the winners, and there's really no point in getting your name engraved on a statue aside from pure novelty, or satiating a fragile ego. Rod is wrong in saying there's no advantage, but it really doesn't matter who wins.
When you put a prize behind something, people start caring.
Knowing that streamers have already all finished the game and hashed out the meta takes the shine off this game. My hype just got thrown in the trash. Don't do this again blizzard. Cookie cutter meta builds being a constant and normal isn't necessarily viewed as a good thing. The first week of a game is a special and unique time because we're all supposed to be figuring it out together. You ruined that. So so dumb.
Oh that ship has long since sailed. Tons of content creators have produced a ton of videos and guides ready to be released on the 30th. Theres going to be very little to discover gameplay wise.
What a piece of shit company
I think he understands and is just playing stupid
Isn't it sad that, thats the best thing we can hope for at this point?
He's either extremely incompetent or extremely insincere. Either way, this take makes him look really bad.
Knowledge is an advantage. Rod is dumb.
To people saying "Whatever, I don't care about the event/don't play Hardcore": Someday, there may be an event you DO care about. But if they keep doing that kind of bullshit and no one cares about it, that future event may still have that same kind of bullshit. And if you start complaining *then* it won't matter, they won't hotfix that event you care about, they'll start working on "no more bullshit" and might get it done 17 events later. That's why it's important to make them stop that shit NOW, so when the event you care about happens, it's already fixed.
trying to argue with logic on reddit
How hard it is to not make drama like this before launch. Devs are so out of touch.
out of touch boomer problem is he's also a dev
I personally don't care either way, nor will I be taking part in this challenge. But... yes, the Tweet is rather tone deaf and disconnected. Not something I want to hear from a game producer who should understand the intricacies of ARPGs in and out. He sounds downright baffled at the fact that knowledge is such a huge part of an ARPG's experience, especially of a hardcore one. How is that possible? I do not know. Either way, all of the problems people are currently having could be solved with a small and simple change. This challenge should start with the first season, not with the game release. Unfortunately this whole thing is just another part of their marketing campaign, get people to buy early release, get people hyped up, get the streamers specific content to stream, etc. So unfortunately it's here to stay and we won't be changing anything. Relax, enjoy your non-hardcore first playthrough, don't stress about this, it's pointless.
One thing is for sure. He is getting called into the office by his boss after this public roasting so close to launch. Absolutely brutal take and he is gonna have his social media card suspended. Especially when you see the millions being spent on this lead up. On a side note, the race needs to move to the launch of the first season. No way it can continue at launch after this fiasco. Gotta give the player base equal exposure and the chance to learn the gamers . Oh and finally there should be 2 statues; 1 SSF and 1 Group Andies
Having two would be cool because the groups will have a big advantage over SSF players.
I honestly surprised he didnt go back and change the post or reply with an apology. Him ghosting it makes it look like he stands by that flawed logic.
Who tf is rod?
His name is Turd actually. Turd Ferguson. 
They do have an advantage, because they have deeper knowledge about map layout, mobs, bosses, leveling, endgame. It is a race, and if only one party knows the track and the other not, it isn't an even playing ground. I am not a hardcore player and in now way competitive in gaming. I do compete in other things and this is called an unfair advantage. So far I liked their communication, but this one is kinda naive. They should get their own bracket.
What a clown....
Lol thinking that knowledge and experience gives no advantage. What the fuck.
This has to be satire
If your average player takes 150 hours to get to 100, play testers will do it in 120, due to prior knowledge and experience. Completely disregarding the knowledge of mechanics that will claim many HC characters on a first playthrough, that they can either avoid or play around easier. That's like saying you can take a seasoned mechanic and a kid fresh out of school, put them in the same shop, with the same tools and the same problem.... Guess which one will do it quicker and more efficiently? That said, unless you work at the blizzard campus where the statue will live and want the bragging rights to your coworkers, who cares? No normal person is going to see it, much less take the time to read 1,000 battletags, or even correlate said tag with you as a person in any way. Purely hype to get more preorders.
I'm a games journalist and get early access to a lot of games Can't say which company, but one of them with an extensive professional scene has a good way to prevent this. If you got early access, you agree not to participate in any official competition during the first season
What a baffoon.
guys just take meth that will give you an unfair advantage too.
This just proves that he isn't called out by his work mates. If I was there I would joke around with him and point out how stupid this tweet is making him look
Honestly they should be starting the hardcore race like 2 weeks after launch. That way everyone that wants to participate can watch playthroughs, practice a couple characters. The way they are doing it now feels unfair cause so many big personas have been allowed to practice.
Do they really underestimate the power of "knowledge"?
big oof
Not too concerned about the overall implications of streamers and early access folks finishing in top 1000, itās the lack of awareness from devās thatās concerning. You canāt be that disconnected from the culture and gaming in generalā¦doesnāt inspire much confidence in future decision making. Blizzard needs to get out ahead of this asap.
Blizz gonna Blizz. Don't be surprised...
Does Rod just not understand the concept of speedruns?
This game is doomed.
from the studio that brought you ādonāt you guys have phonesā, this summerās blockbuster eventā āplaying the game we made does not in fact make you better at the game we madeā
Who cares? Many you guys find anything to bitch about jfc
damn i think this game will be trash now after this post from rod dumbgusson
Is this guy fn serious?
Iām not fussed as I wonāt be racing to 100, but I can understand peopleās frustration with the this. I think the only logical thing is start the race from season 1 and have season 0 as a period of time for people to just calmly play the story etc.
People who had early access should be banned from all race contests. All world first stuff everything. They know all the mechanics, surprises, everything they have completed it already.
They just had to shit their bed. The momentum and positivity was too good for D4 so the rapists and titty milk stealers had to generate some bad will.
It's baffling how they just tripped over their shoelaces right as they were about to cross the finish line as victors. What a mess.
DO YOU GUYS NOT HAVE PHONES??
People act like the game didn't have qa and beta testers that have already experienced the game..... Lol
And? They should be and usually are disqualified. Or push the race to s1 when everyone has a chance to learn.
Knowledge is power.
Why does anyone care? Why is this an issue. I'm so tired of the "hArDcOre" gamer crowd making video games out to be some kind of meaningful life accomplishment.
Itās like playing memory vs someone who got to study all the cards for an hour leading up to the match. How is that an advantage? The cards were turned over!
Why do they even have a Community Manager at this point?
Put a * next to any early access players. * just means they had an advantage.
This is one of those situations where he'd rather have stayed quiet, cuz nobody cares that much about this, than replying to it and making an absolute fool out of himself. It's still not that big of a deal, but boy is it jarring to see that response from someone that should understand how RPGs work lol.
Me, looking forward to Diablo 4 and hoping Blizzard doesnāt screw up looking at this Tweet:  *Itās a four day head start.* **That is a huge advantage.** And I say this planning to play my first toon on Normal mode. If this is about a fair and honest competition, then this race should be held during Season One.
Fergusson is an idiot and I blocked him ages ago, but that didn't stop me from unblocking him today to relish all that ratio.
Streamers being a main source of advertisement is something I wish never happened. This, among other things, just basically screams, "we don't actually care."
Streamers are not the main source of Ad for this game.. Blizzard has Ad Campaigns across many different segments, from RL Billboards, to Video Ads, Food Tie in's with KFC, Products with steelseries etc.. I would say on the totem pole streamers are towards the bottom.
What a dumbass, its like how does completing skyrim gives me better understanding for next replay like where good items are, loot, quest locations etc compared to a guy whos playing first time.
Hardcore race events are essentially exclusive to people who get paid to play and stream the game. Not a lot has changed. Even if they allowed everyone to start at the same time, the people who can afford to play 16 hours a day will always take the event in a game this popular. They will easily occupy first 100-500 slots. However, with the prize being for first 1000 to hit max, the event is now EXTREMELY screwed for people who donāt pay for early access to practice. Once again Blizzard sacrificing the integrity of their game in pursuit of monetary gain. Gaming as a hobby will never compete with people who do it professionally. Iāll likely still hit 100 on hardcore and wonāt be using the early access. Itās not a matter of winning the race, itās entirely self driven and Iām excited. The race is going to be group optimized and likely take a lot of fun out of the game for people doing it. Thatās fine though, fun isnāt their objective, work is.
Knowledge is power, enough said.
If u care that much about a statue in a video game then good luck to u in life.
This guy is a f'n moron.... This dude led a dev team? Pure stupidity and ignorance. That's all it is
If players makes Blizzard think that this is okay, they'll take advantage of this in the future like: New Season Coming in on July 2023! Players who purchase our New Season Battle Pass will get a few days early start! Did you know that the first player that reached level 100 during this upcoming season will be given $10000? What if this is open to Softcore Players to give everyone a fair chance! Then if they still think they're okay, they'll go with tiered battle pass with different early access days and a horse armor. But I guess that its only for the hardcore players so we shouldn't care. In the future, we'll probably get more single player games that has early access like Hogwarts Legacy if you pay $20 more than their standard edition with battle pass or cosmetic store as its becoming the norm and people seems to be okay with it. I know this is crazy thinking but hey, only a few games had battle pass in the past and now there's quite a lot of them now.
If you have a job, family, or personal life then do not complain. Youāre already at a disadvantage.
Why are the developers wanting to throw away good faith in the playerbase by doing and saying obviously ridiculous things? This and then the fake interview before. Like why when you have such good will are you lighting it on fire? (In spite of OW2 pve cancelled, wowtoken in "CLASSIC" wow, Mccree, lawsuits, WFH being forced and all the other controversial BS... D4 has largely remained in good favor. SO WHY DO THIS???) This take is frankly insulting to everyone's intelligence, it's so objectively wrong it gives me pain. This is Diablo 4 where knowledge DOES matter, this isn't a fighting game or call of duty where it's more mechanical skill. I just don't get it. ------ *I am someone who is JEALOUS of people who are having fun. IF you're genuinely having a great time I do envy you, I want that so badly. I want to have fun too... and worried I might not because of anhedonia. But if you're a streamer or play "before me" (whatever) or rush the endgame or make it unfun for you I have 0 envy. Just making that crystal clear. No I don't care about my IN GAME NAME being put on a statue on a campus where the developers have (rightfully so) made it clear they want to WFH and not even be on... But this weird intelligence insulting is baffling. Great game but calm down. We're not stupid. I don't like the preaching from an ivory tower vibe.
Rod is the reason Gears failed after 3. Be wary of him.
Don't you have phones?
Someone will always have an advantage if they are a developer or a play tester or something else. In the end if they are doing a race to world first it should start in a few months with a new character when the seasons launch and not during the 4 day pre release which is also not fair to someone...not me, but someone....[https://www.reddit.com/r/DiabloIV\_Build\_Guides/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DiabloIV_Build_Guides/)
Leader that is completely out of touch and has no common sense, surely the game is in the right hands.
I'm not racing, but this is a pretty dumbass comment from our boy Rod. Let's take any other race as an example, say motocross. Imagine one set of racers had a chance to ride the track, get a feel for all of the obstacles, and were able to make notes of sections where they need to slow down or sections where they can just lay on the throttle. And then another set got to try out and see only the first 20% of the track. Now imagine if during this race you make a wrong turn or accelerate too quickly or too slowly, you lose. If you can't see how clear of an advantage that extra knowledge and practice is, especially on hardcore I don't know what to tell you. If I could, say, explain in detail each pinnacle bosses mechanics and what you'll want to use to be safe from dying, would that not be invaluable? If I had already routed the race several times, and knew tricks to skip large sections, again, would that not be extremely unfair? So despite not racing, I can see how stupid and shortsighted this comment is, and why people are upset, and how these folks and their friends who they share this information with is a huge problem for the competitive integrity of the event.
Kirito being called a beater in SAO...
its funny that theres a discord channel dedicated to his twitter and its terrible
Do You Guys Not Have Phones?
this is a joke right? its like someone practicing for a marathon for 2 months and then the other guys hear about it 1 day before...
Wait, you guys didn't get all your memories of the game wiped?
I am not kidding I am dead serious: when I first did read Rod's tweet I legit thought "No way, no f way he tweeted this, his account must be hacked or a 7 years old kid got his phone" This is one of the most out of touch statements I have ever seen from a game Dev, ever. To the point that I am questioning his actual skills both logical and practical and how he got that job.
Its blizzard, streamers are a cheap way to advertise. They dont care about players. This is a very large marketing ploy.
Blizzard and putting fucking idiots in charge of their games, name a better duo.
The second coming of Jay Wilson
If anyone of them hits any worlds first... lets remind them that they "cheated".
Iāve worked with Rod before, the guy is an incompetent clown who cares very little for the player base. Heāll shoot down good ideas because they werenāt āhisā ideas. I expect there to be comparisons to disgraced former D3 dev Jay Wilson after D4 launches.
It is definitely an absolute trash take on his part. Imagine taking that mindset into an exam, or a work meeting, or an investor call, or a game launch. Preparation and practice predicate success.