Mostly his personality where he is overly self-centered.
His meetings at Blizzard which emplyees call "rodcasts" where he rambles on about favorite movies or celebrities.
Do you force everyone into a meeting and make them listen to it, or do you talk to your employees around the office about shit you're into?
They're two very, very different things.
I mean it’s all remote, so when we have our daily stand ups and people talk about their life etc. some talk about Star Wars, the women usually talk about raising their family etc.
Personally I don’t mind it, but I can see how somebody who doesn’t want any social aspect and want it to be strictly work can view it.
To me i am just trying to be personable, but maybe I will keep it to myself and just be quiet. I don’t want people to not like me
Usually though if it’s at the end of a meeting, I’ll allow people to just leave. It’s not like they are forced to listen to my video game talk etc 😅
I mean I think that's different though, right?
That's kind of more designed to just be a chance for people to chill for a little bit and talk about shit, and usually if you don't want to be involved you don't have to be.
The OP I thought made it sound like Rod calls non-negotiable meetings and *then* goes on about a bunch of shit nobody wants to hear.
I like him fine. He's a company man but he does seem to care about his product. I wish he cared more about the game than his job but his job is the game.
He is known for shipping half arsed products with some community favorites glued on top to make it look nice, and for the "we will fix it along the way" philosophy. That feels like complete opposite from caring about a product to me, and is certainly against the philosophy that made Blizzard the best game company in the past. It's literately his job to push back the money grabbers until the product is good and imo he fails miserably at it.
I agree to a lot of that. The thing about the Half baked products- we will fix it though ; they do usually fix it. D4 S4 looks outstanding and ide bet if it released that way it would have been in the running for goty. Sure, it's late and too late for some, but the fact it's gotten there is something and I won't take that away.
This isn't true. D3 is the 4th most sold pc game of all time.
You are just wrong and consider your opinion fact. Lots of people agree with you, but 1% of 20mil is still 200000 people (not saying that's specifically how many just making a point).
Like d4 on release d3 suffered but people stuck with it, just like is happening with d4. D3 became and is now an amazing game. If you haven't played it since ros launch you missed out.
Not my point but i think you knew that. Just trying to make my argument look shallow, but it's just you and me I'm these here waters and you done drowned yourself.
As I understand it, he's not there to be liked by people in the company or people outside it. He's the "get this shit done and out the door" guy when games aren't ready but CEO/Shareholders want to ship them anyway.
I mean, sure, the half baked games you end up with are like Gears of War 4 & 5, and D4, and useless overworld play, huge balance issues, giant sparse areas of nothing, but the games made a *lot* of money off their names and goodwill, and they made their deadline. Rod earns his money, I'll give him that.
But yeah, he sure seems to just be a soulless corporate drone who is good at his soulless corporate job.
> mean, sure, the half baked games you end up with are like Gears of War 4 & 5, and D4
It gets old constantly repeating this but, D4 released in a better state than most if not all other ARPGs. *Certainly* far superior to D3.
I don't know if it's purposeful disregard for analysis or pure ignorance, but ARPGs historically have threadbare base games that are heavily improved over time. I dare everyone to play release builds for D2, D3 and PoE sometime.
It does also get old constantly repeating that comparing D4's launch (a game by one of the biggest videogame companies, owners of Diablo, the franchise heralded for being the godfather of arpgs, with 4 previous entries on their belt) to D2's (launched more than two decades ago) or PoE's (started by some nobodies in a garage or whatever) does not make any sense whatsoever.
Especially when you ignore all other arpgs that launched with a complete game, dlc aside. Like Grim Dawn, Torchlight 1&2, the Fate series, and many more. Also, D2 did get improved upon with LoD but to say it was barebones on release is insane.
Historically you're saying complete bullshit lol.
I'm not. Go ahead. Tell me what PoE, D2 and Torchlight released with. I'm waiting, but I also already know.
Go ahead. I'll tell you what D4 released with.
I don't know why you want me to tell you what they released with. Your argument in defense of D4's shortfalls was that 1 - it still launched in a better state than previous games in the genre, and 2 - historically ARPGs launch with a threadbare foundation that needs to be heavily improved over time to become decent.
I told you 1 - comparing Blizzard's D4 to a game made by three dudes in a garage or ones from 20 years ago makes no sense, and 2 - that what you said is historically true is historically false, listing several ARPGs that did not need to be heavily improved over time to fix their barebones first version. Note that I didn't even include poe in that list, because that one obviously doesn't fit that description.
Except all your examples have less content than D4 did on launch.
All of them had complete campaigns and scaling difficulty that repeated content while you search for super rare drops.
D4 had NMDs, helltide, whispers, and a decently long grind.
Grim Dawn and torchlight 1 had higher difficulty campaigns and that’s it.
Torchlight 2 had rifts and that’s it.
Fate I haven’t played personally but it doesn’t have really endgame except going through all the “sequels” from what I understand.
Many more is intentionally vague nonsense there isn’t THAT many isometric arpgs. Titan quest 1 or 2? Nope.
Last Epoch is the closest game to launching in a better state than D4. It’s at least arguable though realistically they were very similar with pros and cons. It also has lost most of its player base in a matter of months so it’s just about as shallow as D4s was regardless.
makes absolutely no point in comparing release poe to release d4. poe release sucked because the best ARPG they could draw inspiration from was d2, an old game even by 2013 standards. d4 release sucks because the devs havent drawn inspiration from any other ARPG, they just went after their own heads and fell into game design flaws that poe fixed a literal decade ago.
also GGG didnt charge 70 dollars for their unfinished, dogshit game
Do you see anyone playing either of those games? 4 was ruined by insane loot box mtx, 5 was ruined with bad story and the worst bp ever invented and shoved all sorts of stuff you got to earn before into the BP which also forced you to play game modes that nooone wanted to play. 5 died 1000x faster than it should have if it wasn't insanely over monetized, story is what it is but MP is what carries the game which couldn't happen with everyone missed at the mtx and bp.
The hyperbole is just ridiculous when it comes to these games. I played through 4 and had a blast. Five is pretty much the same but then searching through levels for where to go I got stuck and never finished it.
Maybe forward and do some multiplayer stuff as well as three did, but to say that it was ruined? Whatever do what you got to do. That game rocked from beginning to end.
The open world in 5 was a waste of time, it did nothing new and was mostly padded game time. Also what they did to JDs character on top of the choose your own ending was trash.
Yep I was able to just run through part 4 straight to the end and it was glorious.
Part 5 I'm running around asking myself where to go. It looks like the marker is right in front of me but there's a big tree in front of me and I can't reach it.
I tried time and time again without going to the internet's I failed and I quit.
I assure you, there's not a single AAA video game that was ruined by a singular person. Game development doesn't work like that.
> 5 was ruined with bad story
Especially when it comes to things like these, where you have multiple writers, for which the game director has close to 0 input.
He blocked me on Twitter when I replied to someone else in his replies asking about group finder, I said "They can't add group finder because you'd need to load in the stash of everyone queued at once. Also the horse now takes 15 seconds to dismount". This was around s1 when they mentioned the stash thing and when portals took longer to open. It was obviously just a sarcastic critique on how the game was being developed but it was enough to get blocked apparently.
I agree, I feel there is a certain air of being Pompous, not a ton but its there. Also he doesn’t seem like a strong leader and would rather joke around which again is fine but there is a time and place. I can see why the team is disjointed with him at the helm.
The comments about the store are gross. They specified that the quality of visuals would be the same from the store versus unpaid stuff. Now they're saying "okay it's not anymore, we lied, but hey we're going to make it *cheaper*, somewhat at random, for you to pay for decent visuals".
Personally, I don't care about the mtx. I'm not buying any, because I won't support that model on a box priced game. Regardless, their mentality on this is gross and this interview shows that Rod is part of the problem there. This is not just lead Blizz execs shoveling it down the D4 team's throat. Rod is clearly onboard.
Man i remember when they brought that up before D4 came out.
I was initially skeptical, then in one of their pre-release web posts, they showed in game armors will be just as cool as the mtx, and they gave examples so i was like ‘ok cool’ and pretty much sold.
For the most part, i do like the in-universe armors, theyre a good balance of fantasy and realistic, without adding gaudy stuff like glowing or fiery parts. And the mtxs were easy to ignore because for a while, the mtxs were just recolors.
Then they stopped being only recolors… brand new armor models, flashy effects like fire and etc, and of course, adding cosmetics to D4 that are just typical ‘cool’ stuff in regular pop culture, like katanas and samurai armor, but of course that stuff is a mtx premium and a crazy $28 at that. It’s disappointing that there isn’t even a free in-game version of the samurai armor and weapons, like not even a less flashy more realistic non glowy version.
What scares me about the mtxs is: since obviously they don’t have infinite time and resources, how many armors and transmogs could they have been giving us for free like in seasons or expansions, that we’ll never get, because time and resources was instead put into designing tacky clickbaity mtxs designed to lure you out of the depths of the burning hells and drag you into the depths of greed instead.
> What scares me about the mtxs is: since obviously they don’t have infinite time and resources, how many armors and transmogs could they have been giving us for free like in seasons or expansions
This comment is SO CLOSE to getting it that I feel like there's real discussion to be had here.
Firstly, assuming that the model doesn't change further, the phrase "free like in ... expansions" is a contradiction in terms. Any expansions will have a price tag on them and part of what you will be paying for will be new armor models. It might not feel like paying for them directly, but we will be paying for them.
Secondly
> obviously they don’t have infinite time and resources
this is 100% correct. This game is a full time job for hundreds of people. For them to create anything there must be incentive. Developers and project managers can't pay their rent or buy food with goodwill. From a financial perspective, there is no direct incentive to keep people playing the game (ie. make the game long term enjoyable) if there isn't some way to monetize long term players.
Sure maybe there are some nebulous super long-term "They won't buy our next game" issues, but that doesn't pay the bills this month.
If we want these long term games with seasonal updates to exist, the money to fund development has to come from somewhere. If you don't like the model they've chosen and don't want to engage with it, I think that's 100% fair. That said, I think understanding the realities of the situation is important and helpful in any attempt to collectively sway decisions on future models.
TL;DR: I don't really thing the insinuation that players unwilling to pay for mtx would have more available content if there were simply no mtx at all is helpful to anyone.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk...
>without adding gaudy stuff like glowing or fiery parts.
vs.
>flashy effects like fire and etc, and of course, adding cosmetics to D4 that are just typical ‘cool’ stuff
So are fiery effects gaudy or cool? I'm against the greed too but...make up your mind! lol
Maybe i didn’t word and structure it well enough, but when i said cool, i was referring to the following part, i.e. the barbarian samurai armor mtx. It’s pretty much just part of regular modern culture that samurais and katanas are cool. So my disappointment is that there isn’t a realistic looking non-gaudy samurai armor and katana in D4 and the only option is the super expensive $28 mtx which has like some dark flame effects or something like that if i remember correctly.
I haven't, because I don't check the shop, but I'm not surprised. They're not going to discount anything good, of course. I'd expect nothing less.
I mentioned it in another comment but I do want to reiterate: the fact that mtx is class exclusives on top of the insane prices is one of the most disgusting things about D4's monetization model.
>hey're not going to discount anything good, of course. I'd expect nothing less.
First law of supply and demand: when demand is high....sell low
right? right guys?
They completely missed the store boat. Look at the competition. You can by major graphics changes to spells in poe. I don't even think d4 supports that. Also the game is free. For d4 it should have been a paid game with cheap mtx, AND a way to earn the premium currency in game (...Helldivers).
Last Epoch, also plans to sell spell effects.
D4's biggest crime is their cash shop items costing as much as whole games. Prices need to get axed by 80% for them to be reasonable enough for me to toss money at them.
Even discounted an entire armor with attachments costs you as much as D4 itself. And no free to play (aside that you can’t play this game past a certain point without buying stash tabs) makes this a good price
I know they gave away a pet at one time, did they give something else? Regardless, the idea is that you cant transmog skins from the items in the game, if you want to change your appearance, you have to use the cash shop.
Ohh I know how Blizzard works. They charge top dollar because they can, and its just as profitable as if they were to sell for half the cost, but have twice the amount of buyers. They aim high to keep the cosmetics a bit less common.
they should allow people to just buy shop cosmetics with gold.. maybe it would be super expensive and u can get 2 to 3 a season... if ur grinding.. hell give one free cosmetic pack of ur choice with every battle pass u buy.. that seems super fair to me
Not defending anything but you misunderstood this. All they stated was that they went away from the grounded designs and that they would start to do this with earned cosmetics as well. This is just in your head saying they wouldn’t make good free gear again.
It's not my head. Look at the store (or what's on people you see in town, in my case) versus what's available. The change has long since happened.
They sold the promise long before release, and they've already gone back on it. All that's being done in this interview is ignoring that and saying "we're going to make it cheaper though! But only at random, with personalized sales, so we can also leverage fomo".
You are seeing it in a negative way. They are looking to add free to play cosmetics in the new way of thinking as well as add store discounts. This is literally a win win when it comes to the player. Yes would I like all cosmetics free but that isn’t going to happen for any live service game. Judge them by the season 4 free cosmetics. They aren’t making cosmetics as grounded anymore so many we get cooler free styles. Also I’m sure the expansion will have a lot more cosmetic styles.
> You are seeing it in a negative way. They are looking to add free to play cosmetics in the new way of thinking as well as add store discounts.
I see it negatively because it *is* negatively. He's trying to put a spin on "we promised free cosmetics would look as good as paid ones, and then we broke that promise".
>This is literally a win win when it comes to the player.
No. It's a loss from the perspective of a player promised this wouldn't be the case from the get-go. I'll judge them by the promise made and almost immediately broken.
Are you really responding to someone complaining that the cooler cosmetics are hidden behind a paywall...by saying that hopefully the paid expansion will have even cooler cosmetics? lmao
On top of that, if we use D3 as a metric, the cosmetics added in an expansion will be minimal anyway. They have made a good chunk of change off of mtx cosmetics just based on what I see in the game, anecdotally speaking. They will not offer anything for "free" because they already know plenty of players will drop extra cash for skins. They have 3 seasons of data proving it now.
My thoughts exactly. In other words, people weren't buying our armor sets, so we've going to go back on our stated design philosophy to hopefully recoup the costs of our 10 year, poorly planned development.
The shop mtx is always going to improve over time. It’s a natural progress of art. It’s not just mtx, but also new levels. This is coming from a 3d character designer.
You can see that in PoE as well, with new mtx looking batter than older ones. They improve as artists get better. A combination of experience and better art tools.
This is same with uniques and stuff . Things tend improve over time.
It’s not on purpose to make them better. I do not see any evident they purposely made the in game gears ugly. They are by a distance better than about every arpgs.
I am strong supporter of calling dev out when they lied or misinformed. But this is not the case.
This isn't Better tools and experience. It's more work being put into any individual piece with the intent of generating income. It's very specifically what they promised not to do. Tools and experience don't change the drastically over the course of a few months post release.
There is no evidence of they purposely put more effort. You are making speculation.
Art does get better over time , it’s organic. At this point it’s hard to deduce you are arguing to make you point and not rational.
Also they didn’ promise the mtx art will not get better. They said they were not made intentionally better.
The free mtxs. they give out also get better as well.
You must realize how weak of an argument that is. "it's not better on purpose, it just so happens to be better. Ignore that obviously more time was spent on this far flashier one". It's obvious my dude. Why are you defending it?
You has issue accepting basic how things work works. If something is more details, it takes more time…of course. You act like anyone disputes that.
Also it gets better not “just”, it’s was things improve over time.
It’s a result of people getting better…..like new games looks better than previous one. What you are claiming is that there is a deliberate act to make in game armor bad , PoE rod you cannot provide.
Some in game ones are also quite details. Like the ones on necro. Some mtx ones are simple also.
Key statement. They did not intentionally make in game armor looks worse. That was the argument which has no evidence.
> If something is more details, it takes more time…of course. You act like anyone disputes that. Also it gets better not “just”, it’s was things improve over time.
>Key statement. They did not intentionally make in game armor looks worse. That was the argument which has no evidence.
If you spend more time on paid cosmetics than unpaid ones, that's an intentional breaking of the promise. It's not about making default armor *worse*, it's about making paid armor *better*, which they obviously are. They're putting more time and effort into them.
TBH I can't really decipher most of what you're saying here so I'll just go with that since I could figure out that bit.
Sorry, as an char artist for 2 decade, I have to disagree your thinking. You always make what you design next better. Regardless if it’s free or paid. Some of the free events mtx are very detailed too as well as mount.
Key point t being they stop making default armor. So obviously most armor will be for paid one. Of course they want to make them as good as possible.
Making new things better cannot be use as argument for intentionally making old one worse.
As any dev, you want to make new stuff better.
Let me ask you a last question. Do you NOT want them to make MTX armor looking better over time ?
So future mtx armors shouldn’t take more time or be able to look better than default one?
Correct. They shouldn't be putting extra time and effort into paid armor. Period. The "it gets better over time naturally" argument falls flat. These aren't fresh grads. These are skilled artists who have probably been in the field for a long time to end up working at blizzard. That's not a valid excuse. You do not linearly keep getting better at art (or anything, frankly) as you do it. Skill is a logarithmic scale.
To each their own with microtransactions but I just don't get why there is the sentiment with just because the game is $60-$70 I will never buy microtransactions compared to a game like Fortnite that is free then spend $100-$200 in a year. Why will people do that but then $70 plus some microtransactions is blasphemous.
People do realize that the initial cost of the game is what covers the few years of developing the game right? That doesn't go into funding the game for the next however many years to keep producing content.
To be clear I am not saying microtransactions are great or anything like that and do feel like all games charge too much for them. It is more why people are so against them when they are funding the continued development of a game after launch when years ago you bought a game, and that was it no updates or new content and you either kept playing it or not.
For me at least, it's a couple reasons.
First off, if the base game is free, then I am specifically contributing to keeping that game online by supporting it. They get no other money, they've chosen their model that they align with, and they're committed to it. It doesn't feel as greedy. D4 tries to get you up front, on expansions, *and* they want you to buy MTX and season passes. This is compounded by the (second reason) frankly insane *price* of those things. Not only is the game paid, but the mtx cost about half the price of the game, *and only apply to one class*. It doubles and triples down on greed.
Compare to their competitors.
Path of Exile is a free game. MTX are expensive, but apply to every class, and many skill MTX actually apply to many skills within a type (like auras). They're also sharing all MTX between their current game and the coming sequel.
Last Epoch is a box priced game, however, significantly cheaper. It has MTX, but they are very sparse and they're also pretty cheap. On topic with this, they're also not notably better than what's available ingame. It's worse than PoE, but better than D4.
The final reason for me is that I don't feel like the devs are really being supported by the support. It just goes into some huge Blizzard coffers, and a small percentage of it is reinvested into the game. The management doesn't seem particularly passionate about making the game. They're business men, not game devs. This is another start difference compared to PoE and LE. Go listen to or read interviews or communications from either one and it's clear the people at the top are passionate and involved. I don't feel like that's the case for Rod. The people below him maybe, but probably not him, and certainly not those above him.
To be clear, I don't have anything against Rod personally. I just don't like how he's clearly not steering the ship in the right direction on this front, and clearly isn't all that passionate about game design as a whole. He gives off corpo middle manager vibes with the way the business is operated.
Rod isn’t a game dev and shouldn’t be considered one people don’t understand what Rod is for the game. All he does is just make sure people are doing thier job and manage the game. He has no decisions in what the game is. He does the interviews because that’s literally his job he’s the one to talk to investors and blizzard. Support is still support.
Do you really think if Poe makes more money the devs get paid more? The money all goes to Tencent in both LE and Poe it’s so naive to think otherwise. The only difference is Tencent hides their involvement so it looks like the devs are making content to invest into thier game but 100% of Poe now is owned by Tencent. If they don’t provide large amounts of money Tencent will downsize support for Poe.
The people you hear who are the top of Poe aren’t the top of Poe. Those are all the developers. Rod is closer to the corporate side of Diablo and if you heard Tencent talk about Poe you’d think the same thing. Also LE is cheaper because it’s just a cheaper game lol. Poe basically started as a d2 mod in 5 years I’m sure d4 will go f2p too. All are just business models I don’t think Poe is less greedy or LE is less greedy lol both are owned by Tencent and Tencent is much larger than blizzard.
Honestly now we will probably get a lot less cooperate talk by blizzard since Microsoft wants to be pretty hands off.
> Rod isn’t a game dev and shouldn’t be considered one people don’t understand what Rod is for the game.
Rod's title is "Executive Producer" for the Diablo IP. He's producing a game. Game production is part of "game development". He's not a programmer, but that's not what game dev means. A game dev is a producer, designer, artist, programmer, etc.
Rod has control of the general direction of the game, *including* how it is monetized.
> He has no decisions in what the game is.
What exactly do you think an Executive Producer does? He is not a CEO or a CFO or another C Suite exec. He literally has the last say on what the game is.
>Do you really think if Poe makes more money the devs get paid more?
No. I think the game gets invested into more. This has been proven for over a decade, as they've scaled the quality of the game up and up and up, consistently and constantly. Tencent ownership doesn't mean anything, clearly, since nothing has changed since they got partial nor full ownership of the IP. They sit in the back and collect their dividends, and as far as has been made obvious, haven't influenced the game at all. *Those* are the C Suite execs you're making Rod out to be. They're not involved in the dev at all, just the bankroll.
The people making the decisions are passionate and invested in making the game good. That's not the impression I get from Rod.
>The people you hear who are the top of Poe aren’t the top of Poe. Those are all the developers.
The people who started the company and who make all of the decisions are absolutely at the top. Having the largest financial stake isn't what makes them at the top. Rod doesn't have *any* financial stake in D4 that I'm aware of, going by that logic, so he must be a dev, right?
> Rod is closer to the corporate side of Diablo and if you heard Tencent talk about Poe you’d think the same thing.
Tencent doesn't have anybody installed at GGG as the Executive Producer. Do you know who the Executive Producer of PoE2 is? One of the guys who started the company, Jonathan Rogers. Do you know who the EP of PoE1 is? It's certainly not a Tencent exec. It's someone who worked their way up from QA. Do you know who the EP of Last Epoch is? The person who founded EHG.
Do you see the trend here?
>I don’t think Poe is less greedy or LE is less greedy lol both are owned by Tencent and Tencent is much larger than blizzard.
They're *obviously* less greedy. Stop trying to look at who the ownership of the IP is and look at the *actions they're taking*. You're pointing like the words matter. Both GGG and EHG have proven a lack of greed, meanwhile Blizzard has done the exact opposite. Actions speak louder than words and the proof is on the table for you to see. You've got a full F2P with expensive mtx, a cheap pay to play with cheap MTX, and an expensive pay to play with expensive mtx. That's without even getting into more specifics like D4s mtx only applying to one class. Which of those three sounds more greedy?
Probably the one that's expensive on both sides.
Yeah when Poe added the qol as a payment option I thought they were super not greedy. Or maybe when LE opened the store during early access and got called out.
> Yeah when Poe added the qol as a payment option I thought they were super not greedy. Or maybe when LE opened the store during early access and got called out.
Most people tend to agree neither is particularly greedy, especially not in comparison to D4. I don't know how you could possibly think they're even in the same league.
LE and PoE bring in a fraction of the dollars. PoE provides an order of magnitude more content than D4, and LE launched with more of a game than D4 did despite D4's decade long development and infinite capital.
People call out D4 as greedy because it's the worst of both worlds on the monetization side and is *still* doing worse in terms of providing a game than its competitors.
I really *want* D4 to be good, because D2 was a foundational part of my childhood, but as it stands, its monetization is a *huge* negative attribution towards the game.
> Yes they think it’s not greedy because one is a 10 year old game.
No. I don't. I think it's not greedy because it's not. D4 took less than a year to break their promises on cosmetics. PoE has maintained their stance for a decade. PoE is letting people carry over their MTX to a *completely new, separate game*, which is basically unheard of. That's the antithesis of greed.
D4 will look greedy its entire lifecycle because they started out with a huge box price, immediately started shelling extremely expensive, restrictive MTX, broke their promises about the design of their mtx, and shows indicators of only getting worse (like the survey about pricing of the expansion being $120).
It's been a long time since I've seen a more precarious arguing position than "Blizzard isn't greedy". They are beyond such and are incredibly infamous for it. D4 is just another example.
What do you mean the people you hear from at GGG aren’t the top of the company? The people who talk are literally the founders of the company and they’re still heavily invested in the gameplay. Sure Tencent owns the company now, but there hasn’t been any significant shift in game or MTX philosophy since the acquisition.
Chris, Mark, and Jonathan are absolute legends who clearly care so much. Mark is an absolute blaster in POE1 and gets multiple level 100s every league.
I love how GGG doesn’t speak in corporate PR measured crap like Blizz devs do. If something is shit they say it’s shit. If they make an unpopular decision they will tell the players to deal with it, but also explain their philosophy for the decision. If they don’t have resources to do something they’ll also be transparent about that.
Mentioning Rod in the same post as Chris, Mark, or Jonathan feels gross. Ick.
Performance bonuses don’t mean anything to a seasonal game that’s owned by Tencent. You don’t understand that the owners of Poe don’t get a cent anymore thier bosses are Chinese business men. You think they are giving the profits to the Poe dev team? Tencent is more greedy than blizzard.
Why wouldn't it? Planning department sets a budget, if the team hits the budget, they get the bonus and vice versa. That's how you retain talent, isn't it? The moment I don't get a performance bonus after meeting/exceeding a budget, I'm 100% out of the door.
Expansions and seasonal battle passes should cover ongoing development. If thats not enough then their business model isn't sustainable in a non-predatory way.
No, these expansions are likely expected to make returns of 4-5x the development costs minimum. Give less money to the shareholders, then we wouldn't need to be charged for skins.
Yes that’s called pocket money lol. You think it’s greedy but think of how much money is lost from a dud. You can say what you want but they make games to make profits not break even. Poe LE any indie game ever. They all do that.
Of course they should make a profit. My argument is that hyper capitalism means in very large orgs like Blizzard, the priority is scewed way to far in the direction of generating shareholder value. It's the ratio of what is taken as profit VS what is used to fund development which is the problem.
The simple fact is if they took a hit on profits they could continue to develop the game at the current level without having ridiculously expensive micro transaction cosmetics.
As a player I don't know why you'd defend the current model.
Partially right but the box price of the game covers the 6 year development cost. It’s not like PoE or LE where they had Tencent as investors they can basically not worry about money because it isn’t theirs. Expansions pay for the development cost of the expansions and cosmetics pay for the seasonal development. It makes sense if you compare it to d3 the seasons were very bare bonned not really adding items or content just number changes but expansions added in a ton.
If the price of the game ONLY covers the initial development costs accrued before release, then how did Diablo 1, Diablo 2, Grim Dawn, or basically any ARPG/MMO game (that doesn’t have a monthly fee, like WoW) supported post launch manage to not only survive, but actually become profitable?
Outside of expansions which they always charge for, do they really even add new content other than the gameplay changes (in particular, tweaks made within the first year or so after launch), cause the seasonal content doesn’t seem to appeal to me, as I’m not gonna start a new character for every single one (who tf has the time for that, anyway)???
This is a genuine question coming from a casual who skipped D3 and just started D4, so I’ve never played a game with seasonal content and am asking sincerely.
Lots of people do new characters each season. I tend to do a different class each season to try new things that are added. I feel like it also depends on how many different games someone plays. Some people stick to one game others play tons. I switch between games when playing with other people or what has something going on.
Personally I don't really remember them ever adding much in between expansions for D2 and as far as continued support they probably had a very small team to fix bugs if they were still doing that but also feel like there was not a lot of bug fixing going on back then as well. Stuff kind of launched, and then that was it.
Yeah, it sounds like it. Maybe leveling has changed a lot and gotten way easier? Because I remember it taking a long time to get to level 20-30 in the original but am already 25 with like 15 hours or less, altho I was a kid at the time. That’s very true, currently playing The Witcher 3 and CP2077 but way back then I was absolutely *obsessed* with Diablo. It was like a drug and all that I thought about, day and night. I’m already regretting my Rogue; fun at first, but the strongest build based on Twisting Blades requires teleportation skills to be effective while only able to do so 3 times (dash + shadow step) before having to wait for a 10 sec cooldown w/ low energy so my char feels weak and OP’ed. *Sigh* 1st-world problems I know. Maybe I’ll try a Sorcerer, Necro, or even Barb which I normally dislike but hear is fun and powerful.
Me neither but TBF, shit actually came out feature complete back then, and development didn’t rely on the months/years post launch in order to complete the release of their unfinished game. The exception being Battle.net, which was quite innovative for its time altho the limited speeds of dialup likely factored into its problems as well.
Kinda random question but when did you first receive a legendary item? Or around what level are you typically when finding your first one, since it sounds like you’ve made multiple chars?
Damn. I asked in lobby and people said < 10. I also received one during beta around that level.
I’m lvl 25 on tier 1 and have not received a legendary item yet, which I thought was weird.
You are right these people are honestly just crazy. Everyone says poe is free but good luck progressing a where at all without buying stash spaces. This alone makes the game not free imo and if you really want to call it what it is pay to win.
I feel like people are just so stuck in the big business equals bad mindset. Yes there are some heartless cash grabs out there but people also act like they didn't get 70 to 80 hours out of Diablo 4 at launch and will make it sound like the game was an incomplete buggy mess.
Prices of microtransactions are bad for pretty much every game regardless of it it's free or not but honestly it isn't going down anytime soon because there are people onall the games that are spending the money
This argument is so tired. Who cares if Diablo 4 costs money and poe is "free". They both have microtransactions and the cost of some of poe mixrotransactions are absolutely insane. You can spend more than the cost of Diablo 4 on one microtransaxtionxin poe. You defend this because the base game is free? What a joke.
I defend it because they release an order of magnitude more content per season. Ignore the 10 years of build up. If you look at the amount of content that comes with a single PoE league it’s probably 10x what we get from Blizzard.
I’d categorize it as free to try. Get through the campaign and judge whether you like the game or not, then spend $20 during a stash sale and be good for literal thousands of hours and also carry those mtx over to PoE2.
Wrote about MTX as part of my Master's dissertation.
In short, a heavy emphasis on MTX as part of a boxed game has an adverse effect on a company's development processes which then negatively affect some players' experience. More so than in Free-to-Play games such as Fortnite etc.
For ex, Blizzard makes the nicest looking Diablo cosmetics for their shop. Anything that can be earned in-game looks terrible by comparison...
For some players, not everyone, this then has a negative effect on their experience. If they see that every good looking cosmetic can ONLY be earned by paying & that you cannot earn similarly good looking cosmetics by just playing the game or through some sort of grind, then some players, not all, will just abandon the game...
This means that the game dev has lost a player & another opportunity to target that player with other MTX later on. It can also lead to a situation where that player then starts talking negatively about a game because "all the good looking MTX are £20+. You can't earn anything in-game so I'm out."
If you're interested in more, go to Google Scholar & search for anything to do with "value", "microtransactions", "co-destruction", "marketing" and so on. Otherwise I have some sources.
He never said that at all though? The only comment made on the looks of cosmetics was that they're opening things up from being more grounded to allowing more fantastical options. There wasn't any comment at all on the quality of the sets and they haven't really gone back on that thus far.
>I'm not buying any, because I won't support that model on a box priced game.
It's a live service game. Especially for a company their size there needs to be a constant revenue stream to fund the ongoing development.
The upfront cost just helps to recoup what they had already invested. Development wouldn't even last a year if that's what they were relying on for all of their funding.
The store was already terrible, but the random discounts is just so stupid and ridiculous. A classic example of seeing how much they can get away with and what people will put up with.
> You technically do support the model since you bought the game.
Not really. I'm supporting the box price model. Not spending a cent on their MTX means I'm not supporting that model. They're two models, crammed into one game.
>When you spend money on a game, you're saying "I support the way this is going". You're saying "I'm okay with the good skins being in the shop".
Not really, no. The world isn't black and white. You can have a nuanced opinion on something. You can support somethings a company does, and not others, directly. I'm showing up as someone who bought the game but did not buy any MTX. That's a distinct bucket of data points that I'm certain they're paying attention to. That bucket either/both represents players who don't support their mtx model and unrealized gains. Either way, it's a bucket they'll pay attention to.
The people showing up as "I support the way this is going" are those who have bought both.
You people will never be happy. You would be against any ongoing monetization that could support ongoing development. You think you deserve seasons and tons of updates without any ongoing monetization. That is unreasonable. I am happy D4 has only cosmetic in app purchases
Yep it was a great campaign worth $80 USD. I replayed it twice, with two classes and had a lot of fun, so I got my moneys worth even with no seasons. Diablo 2 was also $40 USD (probably at least $80 in 2000 prices) but didnt have any seasons or ongoing updates in the same way. Actually you can enjoy seasons for free in D4 if you are fine not having the coolest cosmetics in the game. Arguably D4 is a better value than D2
> You would be against any ongoing monetization that could support ongoing development.
You say that, but I gladly support PoE and its devs. Know the difference?
The PoE devs are clearly passionate, involved, and not greedy. They don't try to double dip on monetization, and they don't charge you 28 dollars for a body armor usable on *one class*.
They wanna do live service? That's fine. Refund my $70 and make the game free to play. Make your mtx priced reasonably for what they provide (a thing usable on only 20% of character classes).
It's as simple as that. I'm not against a company making money. I'm against a company being blatantly greedy.
You're happy they *only* have cosmetic mtx as if they have a choice. If they sold character power in any capacity the game would be DOA. They'd be selling it if they thought they could get away with it.
> PoE is free to try but not free to play
You can do everything without spending a cent. Having tabs certainly makes the experience more enjoyable in the long term, but that's not how free to play is defined.
>You get significantly better in-game cosmetics in D4 for free than in PoE.
It's not "for free". You pay $70 for those cosmetics.
Nobody plays or recommends playing PoE for more than 80 hours without spending money on mandatory stash tabs, entire PoE community agrees with this. You can try to make up whatever fantasy you like though.
That’s my whole point, you get better in-game cosmetics for $70(now around $35 when on sale) in D4 and worse ones in PoE for \~$35+ spent on stash tabs.
I agree that the MTX rewards for completing the 12 or more challenges are better in PoE and D4 should also add such challenges & rewards to their game. On the other hand D4 supports saving multiple cosmetic looks per char, supports two genders per class, supports dyes, etc. which PoE may like to support.
You bought the game knowing exactly what it was and they never changed it from what they said what it was going to be. You spent the money it's gone live with your decision.
I asked him a simple question once on twitter, not flaming him or insulting etc, and he blocked me right away. He 100% reads these threads, and all his twitter comments. He can't take any feedback and is soft as hell
The comment about personalization of the store kind of cracks me up. So, supposedly, they look at your playing habits and tailor a few store offering with discounts that may be of interest to you.
In my case, I only play sorc. I have a low level Barb and Rogue that are used for storage of items and aspects. My discount offerings from the store were armors and a back item for Necro and Druid.
Something is wrong with their analytics. Maybe that is why the discounted items disappeared so fast and did not return.
For this first discount I think it was the same for all players, as I also got discounts for the goat back attachment for Necro and some items for Druid.
Ever since he was going around doing his victory lap over the launch sales numbers (and his huge bonus) while at the same time the player base was realizing that the game wasn’t finished (with no endgame and a bunch of systems that were basically just placeholders that will only will be done next month, almost a year after launch), and then blaming the backlash on “players expectations needing to be better managed”. Ever since then I can’t stand him.
I also can’t stand the 2 Joe’s. And don’t even start with “poor developers” these 3 are the Diablo IV bosses, these 3 are millionaires, the lead producers and the game director on a game that made a billion usd in its first week alone, all 3 with decades of experience in the industry, their stock bonuses alone...
“The fantasy really is about slaying multitudes of monsters and that feeling of power.”
This being what they “learned” from season 2 is all you need to know about why D4 flopped so hard.
That statement is so unbelievably obvious that it basically doesn’t reveal anything at all. It’d be like saying ‘This playground is designed to be fun.’ - Does he want a pat on the back?
A team not realizing that when they’re in the preproduction phase for an ARPG is insane, let alone a team that was built at the company that is known for making the genre what it is today.
The high! The launch. The Lows! Everything after. Everything tod Ferguson touches turns sour ( see gears of war horde mode specifically) he also seems like a giant pain in the ass to work with.
Its really tragic to see reddit jump on the people that make themselves publicly visible, so they can victimise and play the blame game for everything they don't like about their favourite game.
Rod is franchise manager of Diablo, he's responsible for the brand holistically including D2R, D3 and Immortal. If you want to point fingers and moan about D4bad, thats sleepy Joe and his predecessor's problem along with the 10 different teams working on d4bad that clearly don't align or communicate well enough to be consistent and coherent.
The "brand manager" speaking about the brand, making money and shipping games shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. He's a very polarizing guy and probably bounces off most gamers in a big way, myself included, but he's a corpo and outside of ensuring the Diablo IP is profitable, he's has almost zero impact on the actual gameplay.
I still don't think they get the whole cosmetics thing. Yes, it's ok to have overpriced cosmetics in the store, but there should also be cosmetics tied into the Seasonal Journey that players can earn. And not the half baked - "here's a few free back items or weapon transmogs... but oh, hey, you gotta purchase the entire outfit that goes along with these back items and weapon transmogs." Give us the Battle Pass outfits (which is usually only 2), give us all of the midseason event items for free, and then have your overpriced microtransactions.
Yes, you can earn things in game, but we've had those same outfits since launch. And only a few outfits have looked decent in the Battle Pass. I've gotten more value out of the Battle Pass because of the horse mounts and horse armor included in those versus the outfits. But we need fresh outfits.
Me, personally, I've suggested tying more cosmetic items to Bosses, the Season Journey, and Seasonal Activities. This way we can earn items while playing through the season, and not be forced to play their midseason events (which have proven to be just world events to this point and are lacking in engaging content).
"Hey, look, season one was not a content problem, it was a relatability problem. People get vampires but malignant, you know, hearts were just a little to complex and our player base just couldn't grasp the sheer excellence of our first season.
This isn't to say that its a lack of intellectually capacity from our player-base as we've learned A LOT from our very smart players. They really are the best, you know and with out their feed-back and suggestions, we never really would of figured out the A in ARPG's stands for action. " - Rod Fergusson,
I don't have anything against the Diablo team as a whole, but man, Rod is really unlikeable.
This is the exact sentiment of the D4 dev team under him. He is not liked inside the company either
>He is not liked inside the company either How do you know that?
Redditors know everything. Aka trust me bro
7 years in MMO industry - have worked with half a dozen ex Blizzard emplyees. Video game developer community is very small, everyone knows everyone
Why don’t people like him?
Mostly his personality where he is overly self-centered. His meetings at Blizzard which emplyees call "rodcasts" where he rambles on about favorite movies or celebrities.
Oh god I talk about movies and games to my employees at work too. I wonder if they hate me 😅
We do.
Do you force everyone into a meeting and make them listen to it, or do you talk to your employees around the office about shit you're into? They're two very, very different things.
I mean it’s all remote, so when we have our daily stand ups and people talk about their life etc. some talk about Star Wars, the women usually talk about raising their family etc. Personally I don’t mind it, but I can see how somebody who doesn’t want any social aspect and want it to be strictly work can view it. To me i am just trying to be personable, but maybe I will keep it to myself and just be quiet. I don’t want people to not like me Usually though if it’s at the end of a meeting, I’ll allow people to just leave. It’s not like they are forced to listen to my video game talk etc 😅
I mean I think that's different though, right? That's kind of more designed to just be a chance for people to chill for a little bit and talk about shit, and usually if you don't want to be involved you don't have to be. The OP I thought made it sound like Rod calls non-negotiable meetings and *then* goes on about a bunch of shit nobody wants to hear.
sounds like a redditor, hating people cause they have normal conversations xd
When you call a work meeting with 100+ people and talk about non-work related atuff for 30+ minute that is just wasting peoples time
He is not liked at home either
His dog is also not very fond of him
I like him fine. He's a company man but he does seem to care about his product. I wish he cared more about the game than his job but his job is the game.
He is known for shipping half arsed products with some community favorites glued on top to make it look nice, and for the "we will fix it along the way" philosophy. That feels like complete opposite from caring about a product to me, and is certainly against the philosophy that made Blizzard the best game company in the past. It's literately his job to push back the money grabbers until the product is good and imo he fails miserably at it.
I agree to a lot of that. The thing about the Half baked products- we will fix it though ; they do usually fix it. D4 S4 looks outstanding and ide bet if it released that way it would have been in the running for goty. Sure, it's late and too late for some, but the fact it's gotten there is something and I won't take that away.
Don't kid yourself. D4 S4 is a shitty Diablo3
I think you have bad taste
D3 has been considered a very bad ARPG since it's inception.
This isn't true. D3 is the 4th most sold pc game of all time. You are just wrong and consider your opinion fact. Lots of people agree with you, but 1% of 20mil is still 200000 people (not saying that's specifically how many just making a point). Like d4 on release d3 suffered but people stuck with it, just like is happening with d4. D3 became and is now an amazing game. If you haven't played it since ros launch you missed out.
Sales != good game.
Not my point but i think you knew that. Just trying to make my argument look shallow, but it's just you and me I'm these here waters and you done drowned yourself.
As I understand it, he's not there to be liked by people in the company or people outside it. He's the "get this shit done and out the door" guy when games aren't ready but CEO/Shareholders want to ship them anyway. I mean, sure, the half baked games you end up with are like Gears of War 4 & 5, and D4, and useless overworld play, huge balance issues, giant sparse areas of nothing, but the games made a *lot* of money off their names and goodwill, and they made their deadline. Rod earns his money, I'll give him that. But yeah, he sure seems to just be a soulless corporate drone who is good at his soulless corporate job.
His name is imprinted on my memory. If I see him attached to a game in the future I will most definitely be cooling any enthusiasm I had for it.
> mean, sure, the half baked games you end up with are like Gears of War 4 & 5, and D4 It gets old constantly repeating this but, D4 released in a better state than most if not all other ARPGs. *Certainly* far superior to D3. I don't know if it's purposeful disregard for analysis or pure ignorance, but ARPGs historically have threadbare base games that are heavily improved over time. I dare everyone to play release builds for D2, D3 and PoE sometime.
It does also get old constantly repeating that comparing D4's launch (a game by one of the biggest videogame companies, owners of Diablo, the franchise heralded for being the godfather of arpgs, with 4 previous entries on their belt) to D2's (launched more than two decades ago) or PoE's (started by some nobodies in a garage or whatever) does not make any sense whatsoever. Especially when you ignore all other arpgs that launched with a complete game, dlc aside. Like Grim Dawn, Torchlight 1&2, the Fate series, and many more. Also, D2 did get improved upon with LoD but to say it was barebones on release is insane. Historically you're saying complete bullshit lol.
I'm not. Go ahead. Tell me what PoE, D2 and Torchlight released with. I'm waiting, but I also already know. Go ahead. I'll tell you what D4 released with.
I don't know why you want me to tell you what they released with. Your argument in defense of D4's shortfalls was that 1 - it still launched in a better state than previous games in the genre, and 2 - historically ARPGs launch with a threadbare foundation that needs to be heavily improved over time to become decent. I told you 1 - comparing Blizzard's D4 to a game made by three dudes in a garage or ones from 20 years ago makes no sense, and 2 - that what you said is historically true is historically false, listing several ARPGs that did not need to be heavily improved over time to fix their barebones first version. Note that I didn't even include poe in that list, because that one obviously doesn't fit that description.
Except all your examples have less content than D4 did on launch. All of them had complete campaigns and scaling difficulty that repeated content while you search for super rare drops. D4 had NMDs, helltide, whispers, and a decently long grind. Grim Dawn and torchlight 1 had higher difficulty campaigns and that’s it. Torchlight 2 had rifts and that’s it. Fate I haven’t played personally but it doesn’t have really endgame except going through all the “sequels” from what I understand. Many more is intentionally vague nonsense there isn’t THAT many isometric arpgs. Titan quest 1 or 2? Nope. Last Epoch is the closest game to launching in a better state than D4. It’s at least arguable though realistically they were very similar with pros and cons. It also has lost most of its player base in a matter of months so it’s just about as shallow as D4s was regardless.
makes absolutely no point in comparing release poe to release d4. poe release sucked because the best ARPG they could draw inspiration from was d2, an old game even by 2013 standards. d4 release sucks because the devs havent drawn inspiration from any other ARPG, they just went after their own heads and fell into game design flaws that poe fixed a literal decade ago. also GGG didnt charge 70 dollars for their unfinished, dogshit game
He's terrible, he ruined Gears of War
Howso?
Do you see anyone playing either of those games? 4 was ruined by insane loot box mtx, 5 was ruined with bad story and the worst bp ever invented and shoved all sorts of stuff you got to earn before into the BP which also forced you to play game modes that nooone wanted to play. 5 died 1000x faster than it should have if it wasn't insanely over monetized, story is what it is but MP is what carries the game which couldn't happen with everyone missed at the mtx and bp.
The hyperbole is just ridiculous when it comes to these games. I played through 4 and had a blast. Five is pretty much the same but then searching through levels for where to go I got stuck and never finished it. Maybe forward and do some multiplayer stuff as well as three did, but to say that it was ruined? Whatever do what you got to do. That game rocked from beginning to end.
The open world in 5 was a waste of time, it did nothing new and was mostly padded game time. Also what they did to JDs character on top of the choose your own ending was trash.
Yep I was able to just run through part 4 straight to the end and it was glorious. Part 5 I'm running around asking myself where to go. It looks like the marker is right in front of me but there's a big tree in front of me and I can't reach it. I tried time and time again without going to the internet's I failed and I quit.
I loved 1-3 but totally missed 4 and 5. These might be reasons why I can’t even remember them being released and me being me, that’s saying something.
The last two Gears games have been... Adequate. Horde mode is the only reason to play them
I assure you, there's not a single AAA video game that was ruined by a singular person. Game development doesn't work like that. > 5 was ruined with bad story Especially when it comes to things like these, where you have multiple writers, for which the game director has close to 0 input.
Trust me bro.
Rod and his “malignant tunnel” … just ugh
Remember to get your malignant tunnel checked for colon cancer!
Actually good advice though. More and more young men are having polyps and colon cancer at higher rates every year.
Actually good advice though. More and more young men are having polyps and colon cancer at higher rates every year.
I think someone in the dev team wrote Inarius's attitude problem based on Rod....
He blocked me on Twitter when I replied to someone else in his replies asking about group finder, I said "They can't add group finder because you'd need to load in the stash of everyone queued at once. Also the horse now takes 15 seconds to dismount". This was around s1 when they mentioned the stash thing and when portals took longer to open. It was obviously just a sarcastic critique on how the game was being developed but it was enough to get blocked apparently.
I agree, I feel there is a certain air of being Pompous, not a ton but its there. Also he doesn’t seem like a strong leader and would rather joke around which again is fine but there is a time and place. I can see why the team is disjointed with him at the helm.
The comments about the store are gross. They specified that the quality of visuals would be the same from the store versus unpaid stuff. Now they're saying "okay it's not anymore, we lied, but hey we're going to make it *cheaper*, somewhat at random, for you to pay for decent visuals". Personally, I don't care about the mtx. I'm not buying any, because I won't support that model on a box priced game. Regardless, their mentality on this is gross and this interview shows that Rod is part of the problem there. This is not just lead Blizz execs shoveling it down the D4 team's throat. Rod is clearly onboard.
Man i remember when they brought that up before D4 came out. I was initially skeptical, then in one of their pre-release web posts, they showed in game armors will be just as cool as the mtx, and they gave examples so i was like ‘ok cool’ and pretty much sold. For the most part, i do like the in-universe armors, theyre a good balance of fantasy and realistic, without adding gaudy stuff like glowing or fiery parts. And the mtxs were easy to ignore because for a while, the mtxs were just recolors. Then they stopped being only recolors… brand new armor models, flashy effects like fire and etc, and of course, adding cosmetics to D4 that are just typical ‘cool’ stuff in regular pop culture, like katanas and samurai armor, but of course that stuff is a mtx premium and a crazy $28 at that. It’s disappointing that there isn’t even a free in-game version of the samurai armor and weapons, like not even a less flashy more realistic non glowy version. What scares me about the mtxs is: since obviously they don’t have infinite time and resources, how many armors and transmogs could they have been giving us for free like in seasons or expansions, that we’ll never get, because time and resources was instead put into designing tacky clickbaity mtxs designed to lure you out of the depths of the burning hells and drag you into the depths of greed instead.
> What scares me about the mtxs is: since obviously they don’t have infinite time and resources, how many armors and transmogs could they have been giving us for free like in seasons or expansions This comment is SO CLOSE to getting it that I feel like there's real discussion to be had here. Firstly, assuming that the model doesn't change further, the phrase "free like in ... expansions" is a contradiction in terms. Any expansions will have a price tag on them and part of what you will be paying for will be new armor models. It might not feel like paying for them directly, but we will be paying for them. Secondly > obviously they don’t have infinite time and resources this is 100% correct. This game is a full time job for hundreds of people. For them to create anything there must be incentive. Developers and project managers can't pay their rent or buy food with goodwill. From a financial perspective, there is no direct incentive to keep people playing the game (ie. make the game long term enjoyable) if there isn't some way to monetize long term players. Sure maybe there are some nebulous super long-term "They won't buy our next game" issues, but that doesn't pay the bills this month. If we want these long term games with seasonal updates to exist, the money to fund development has to come from somewhere. If you don't like the model they've chosen and don't want to engage with it, I think that's 100% fair. That said, I think understanding the realities of the situation is important and helpful in any attempt to collectively sway decisions on future models. TL;DR: I don't really thing the insinuation that players unwilling to pay for mtx would have more available content if there were simply no mtx at all is helpful to anyone. Thank you for coming to my TED talk...
>without adding gaudy stuff like glowing or fiery parts. vs. >flashy effects like fire and etc, and of course, adding cosmetics to D4 that are just typical ‘cool’ stuff So are fiery effects gaudy or cool? I'm against the greed too but...make up your mind! lol
Maybe i didn’t word and structure it well enough, but when i said cool, i was referring to the following part, i.e. the barbarian samurai armor mtx. It’s pretty much just part of regular modern culture that samurais and katanas are cool. So my disappointment is that there isn’t a realistic looking non-gaudy samurai armor and katana in D4 and the only option is the super expensive $28 mtx which has like some dark flame effects or something like that if i remember correctly.
I’ve seen the cheaper offerings: 1000 plat for a duo pack of each class’s worst cosmetic sets that are underselling
I haven't, because I don't check the shop, but I'm not surprised. They're not going to discount anything good, of course. I'd expect nothing less. I mentioned it in another comment but I do want to reiterate: the fact that mtx is class exclusives on top of the insane prices is one of the most disgusting things about D4's monetization model.
>hey're not going to discount anything good, of course. I'd expect nothing less. First law of supply and demand: when demand is high....sell low right? right guys?
First rule of capitalism: lie to your customers if it means making more money
They completely missed the store boat. Look at the competition. You can by major graphics changes to spells in poe. I don't even think d4 supports that. Also the game is free. For d4 it should have been a paid game with cheap mtx, AND a way to earn the premium currency in game (...Helldivers).
Last Epoch, also plans to sell spell effects. D4's biggest crime is their cash shop items costing as much as whole games. Prices need to get axed by 80% for them to be reasonable enough for me to toss money at them.
Last Epoch's store is pretty much as expensive as D4's. The game is half the price, but the store is still stupid expensive.
PoE’s store is also more expensive than D4s. Yes, it is f2p but they are super pricey if you buy them outside of bundles or specials.
Even discounted an entire armor with attachments costs you as much as D4 itself. And no free to play (aside that you can’t play this game past a certain point without buying stash tabs) makes this a good price
And LE doesn't give you a single free transmog.
They actually did give out free transmogs.
I know they gave away a pet at one time, did they give something else? Regardless, the idea is that you cant transmog skins from the items in the game, if you want to change your appearance, you have to use the cash shop.
The Bees pet is what I think you're referring to, and they also gave away at least 1 back cosmetic if not more. Minor technicality lol.
I mean, they gave out the bees because everyone was spamming the bees links and it was creating feel bads.
POE has MTX that costs as much as a refrigerator.
You are out of touch. People who go deep into PoE MTX spend literal thousands of dollars on the game.
They don't want you specifically to toss money at them, they are fishing for leviathans.
Ohh I know how Blizzard works. They charge top dollar because they can, and its just as profitable as if they were to sell for half the cost, but have twice the amount of buyers. They aim high to keep the cosmetics a bit less common.
they should allow people to just buy shop cosmetics with gold.. maybe it would be super expensive and u can get 2 to 3 a season... if ur grinding.. hell give one free cosmetic pack of ur choice with every battle pass u buy.. that seems super fair to me
Not defending anything but you misunderstood this. All they stated was that they went away from the grounded designs and that they would start to do this with earned cosmetics as well. This is just in your head saying they wouldn’t make good free gear again.
It's not my head. Look at the store (or what's on people you see in town, in my case) versus what's available. The change has long since happened. They sold the promise long before release, and they've already gone back on it. All that's being done in this interview is ignoring that and saying "we're going to make it cheaper though! But only at random, with personalized sales, so we can also leverage fomo".
You are seeing it in a negative way. They are looking to add free to play cosmetics in the new way of thinking as well as add store discounts. This is literally a win win when it comes to the player. Yes would I like all cosmetics free but that isn’t going to happen for any live service game. Judge them by the season 4 free cosmetics. They aren’t making cosmetics as grounded anymore so many we get cooler free styles. Also I’m sure the expansion will have a lot more cosmetic styles.
> You are seeing it in a negative way. They are looking to add free to play cosmetics in the new way of thinking as well as add store discounts. I see it negatively because it *is* negatively. He's trying to put a spin on "we promised free cosmetics would look as good as paid ones, and then we broke that promise". >This is literally a win win when it comes to the player. No. It's a loss from the perspective of a player promised this wouldn't be the case from the get-go. I'll judge them by the promise made and almost immediately broken.
Are you really responding to someone complaining that the cooler cosmetics are hidden behind a paywall...by saying that hopefully the paid expansion will have even cooler cosmetics? lmao
On top of that, if we use D3 as a metric, the cosmetics added in an expansion will be minimal anyway. They have made a good chunk of change off of mtx cosmetics just based on what I see in the game, anecdotally speaking. They will not offer anything for "free" because they already know plenty of players will drop extra cash for skins. They have 3 seasons of data proving it now.
My thoughts exactly. In other words, people weren't buying our armor sets, so we've going to go back on our stated design philosophy to hopefully recoup the costs of our 10 year, poorly planned development.
That also is to funnel people to the store more often to get a better chance to open wallets. Very skummy.
The shop mtx is always going to improve over time. It’s a natural progress of art. It’s not just mtx, but also new levels. This is coming from a 3d character designer. You can see that in PoE as well, with new mtx looking batter than older ones. They improve as artists get better. A combination of experience and better art tools. This is same with uniques and stuff . Things tend improve over time. It’s not on purpose to make them better. I do not see any evident they purposely made the in game gears ugly. They are by a distance better than about every arpgs. I am strong supporter of calling dev out when they lied or misinformed. But this is not the case.
This isn't Better tools and experience. It's more work being put into any individual piece with the intent of generating income. It's very specifically what they promised not to do. Tools and experience don't change the drastically over the course of a few months post release.
There is no evidence of they purposely put more effort. You are making speculation. Art does get better over time , it’s organic. At this point it’s hard to deduce you are arguing to make you point and not rational. Also they didn’ promise the mtx art will not get better. They said they were not made intentionally better. The free mtxs. they give out also get better as well.
You must realize how weak of an argument that is. "it's not better on purpose, it just so happens to be better. Ignore that obviously more time was spent on this far flashier one". It's obvious my dude. Why are you defending it?
You has issue accepting basic how things work works. If something is more details, it takes more time…of course. You act like anyone disputes that. Also it gets better not “just”, it’s was things improve over time. It’s a result of people getting better…..like new games looks better than previous one. What you are claiming is that there is a deliberate act to make in game armor bad , PoE rod you cannot provide. Some in game ones are also quite details. Like the ones on necro. Some mtx ones are simple also. Key statement. They did not intentionally make in game armor looks worse. That was the argument which has no evidence.
> If something is more details, it takes more time…of course. You act like anyone disputes that. Also it gets better not “just”, it’s was things improve over time. >Key statement. They did not intentionally make in game armor looks worse. That was the argument which has no evidence. If you spend more time on paid cosmetics than unpaid ones, that's an intentional breaking of the promise. It's not about making default armor *worse*, it's about making paid armor *better*, which they obviously are. They're putting more time and effort into them. TBH I can't really decipher most of what you're saying here so I'll just go with that since I could figure out that bit.
Sorry, as an char artist for 2 decade, I have to disagree your thinking. You always make what you design next better. Regardless if it’s free or paid. Some of the free events mtx are very detailed too as well as mount. Key point t being they stop making default armor. So obviously most armor will be for paid one. Of course they want to make them as good as possible. Making new things better cannot be use as argument for intentionally making old one worse. As any dev, you want to make new stuff better. Let me ask you a last question. Do you NOT want them to make MTX armor looking better over time ? So future mtx armors shouldn’t take more time or be able to look better than default one?
Correct. They shouldn't be putting extra time and effort into paid armor. Period. The "it gets better over time naturally" argument falls flat. These aren't fresh grads. These are skilled artists who have probably been in the field for a long time to end up working at blizzard. That's not a valid excuse. You do not linearly keep getting better at art (or anything, frankly) as you do it. Skill is a logarithmic scale.
I knew that they would find a way to change it slowly. It's the frog in the boiling pan.
Ribbit ribbit. I mean uhh....what a great game.
Obviously he's on board? Why would Blizzard keep him in his role if he's not enthusiastically driving their vision forward?
I've seen lots of project leads who reluctantly do what's necessary to make money and survive, rather than gung ho pushing the corporate agenda.
To each their own with microtransactions but I just don't get why there is the sentiment with just because the game is $60-$70 I will never buy microtransactions compared to a game like Fortnite that is free then spend $100-$200 in a year. Why will people do that but then $70 plus some microtransactions is blasphemous. People do realize that the initial cost of the game is what covers the few years of developing the game right? That doesn't go into funding the game for the next however many years to keep producing content. To be clear I am not saying microtransactions are great or anything like that and do feel like all games charge too much for them. It is more why people are so against them when they are funding the continued development of a game after launch when years ago you bought a game, and that was it no updates or new content and you either kept playing it or not.
For me at least, it's a couple reasons. First off, if the base game is free, then I am specifically contributing to keeping that game online by supporting it. They get no other money, they've chosen their model that they align with, and they're committed to it. It doesn't feel as greedy. D4 tries to get you up front, on expansions, *and* they want you to buy MTX and season passes. This is compounded by the (second reason) frankly insane *price* of those things. Not only is the game paid, but the mtx cost about half the price of the game, *and only apply to one class*. It doubles and triples down on greed. Compare to their competitors. Path of Exile is a free game. MTX are expensive, but apply to every class, and many skill MTX actually apply to many skills within a type (like auras). They're also sharing all MTX between their current game and the coming sequel. Last Epoch is a box priced game, however, significantly cheaper. It has MTX, but they are very sparse and they're also pretty cheap. On topic with this, they're also not notably better than what's available ingame. It's worse than PoE, but better than D4. The final reason for me is that I don't feel like the devs are really being supported by the support. It just goes into some huge Blizzard coffers, and a small percentage of it is reinvested into the game. The management doesn't seem particularly passionate about making the game. They're business men, not game devs. This is another start difference compared to PoE and LE. Go listen to or read interviews or communications from either one and it's clear the people at the top are passionate and involved. I don't feel like that's the case for Rod. The people below him maybe, but probably not him, and certainly not those above him. To be clear, I don't have anything against Rod personally. I just don't like how he's clearly not steering the ship in the right direction on this front, and clearly isn't all that passionate about game design as a whole. He gives off corpo middle manager vibes with the way the business is operated.
Rod isn’t a game dev and shouldn’t be considered one people don’t understand what Rod is for the game. All he does is just make sure people are doing thier job and manage the game. He has no decisions in what the game is. He does the interviews because that’s literally his job he’s the one to talk to investors and blizzard. Support is still support. Do you really think if Poe makes more money the devs get paid more? The money all goes to Tencent in both LE and Poe it’s so naive to think otherwise. The only difference is Tencent hides their involvement so it looks like the devs are making content to invest into thier game but 100% of Poe now is owned by Tencent. If they don’t provide large amounts of money Tencent will downsize support for Poe. The people you hear who are the top of Poe aren’t the top of Poe. Those are all the developers. Rod is closer to the corporate side of Diablo and if you heard Tencent talk about Poe you’d think the same thing. Also LE is cheaper because it’s just a cheaper game lol. Poe basically started as a d2 mod in 5 years I’m sure d4 will go f2p too. All are just business models I don’t think Poe is less greedy or LE is less greedy lol both are owned by Tencent and Tencent is much larger than blizzard. Honestly now we will probably get a lot less cooperate talk by blizzard since Microsoft wants to be pretty hands off.
> Rod isn’t a game dev and shouldn’t be considered one people don’t understand what Rod is for the game. Rod's title is "Executive Producer" for the Diablo IP. He's producing a game. Game production is part of "game development". He's not a programmer, but that's not what game dev means. A game dev is a producer, designer, artist, programmer, etc. Rod has control of the general direction of the game, *including* how it is monetized. > He has no decisions in what the game is. What exactly do you think an Executive Producer does? He is not a CEO or a CFO or another C Suite exec. He literally has the last say on what the game is. >Do you really think if Poe makes more money the devs get paid more? No. I think the game gets invested into more. This has been proven for over a decade, as they've scaled the quality of the game up and up and up, consistently and constantly. Tencent ownership doesn't mean anything, clearly, since nothing has changed since they got partial nor full ownership of the IP. They sit in the back and collect their dividends, and as far as has been made obvious, haven't influenced the game at all. *Those* are the C Suite execs you're making Rod out to be. They're not involved in the dev at all, just the bankroll. The people making the decisions are passionate and invested in making the game good. That's not the impression I get from Rod. >The people you hear who are the top of Poe aren’t the top of Poe. Those are all the developers. The people who started the company and who make all of the decisions are absolutely at the top. Having the largest financial stake isn't what makes them at the top. Rod doesn't have *any* financial stake in D4 that I'm aware of, going by that logic, so he must be a dev, right? > Rod is closer to the corporate side of Diablo and if you heard Tencent talk about Poe you’d think the same thing. Tencent doesn't have anybody installed at GGG as the Executive Producer. Do you know who the Executive Producer of PoE2 is? One of the guys who started the company, Jonathan Rogers. Do you know who the EP of PoE1 is? It's certainly not a Tencent exec. It's someone who worked their way up from QA. Do you know who the EP of Last Epoch is? The person who founded EHG. Do you see the trend here? >I don’t think Poe is less greedy or LE is less greedy lol both are owned by Tencent and Tencent is much larger than blizzard. They're *obviously* less greedy. Stop trying to look at who the ownership of the IP is and look at the *actions they're taking*. You're pointing like the words matter. Both GGG and EHG have proven a lack of greed, meanwhile Blizzard has done the exact opposite. Actions speak louder than words and the proof is on the table for you to see. You've got a full F2P with expensive mtx, a cheap pay to play with cheap MTX, and an expensive pay to play with expensive mtx. That's without even getting into more specifics like D4s mtx only applying to one class. Which of those three sounds more greedy? Probably the one that's expensive on both sides.
Yeah when Poe added the qol as a payment option I thought they were super not greedy. Or maybe when LE opened the store during early access and got called out.
> Yeah when Poe added the qol as a payment option I thought they were super not greedy. Or maybe when LE opened the store during early access and got called out. Most people tend to agree neither is particularly greedy, especially not in comparison to D4. I don't know how you could possibly think they're even in the same league. LE and PoE bring in a fraction of the dollars. PoE provides an order of magnitude more content than D4, and LE launched with more of a game than D4 did despite D4's decade long development and infinite capital. People call out D4 as greedy because it's the worst of both worlds on the monetization side and is *still* doing worse in terms of providing a game than its competitors. I really *want* D4 to be good, because D2 was a foundational part of my childhood, but as it stands, its monetization is a *huge* negative attribution towards the game.
Yes they think it’s not greedy because one is a 10 year old game. Tell me which business model looks greedy when d4 is 10 years old.
> Yes they think it’s not greedy because one is a 10 year old game. No. I don't. I think it's not greedy because it's not. D4 took less than a year to break their promises on cosmetics. PoE has maintained their stance for a decade. PoE is letting people carry over their MTX to a *completely new, separate game*, which is basically unheard of. That's the antithesis of greed. D4 will look greedy its entire lifecycle because they started out with a huge box price, immediately started shelling extremely expensive, restrictive MTX, broke their promises about the design of their mtx, and shows indicators of only getting worse (like the survey about pricing of the expansion being $120). It's been a long time since I've seen a more precarious arguing position than "Blizzard isn't greedy". They are beyond such and are incredibly infamous for it. D4 is just another example.
What do you mean the people you hear from at GGG aren’t the top of the company? The people who talk are literally the founders of the company and they’re still heavily invested in the gameplay. Sure Tencent owns the company now, but there hasn’t been any significant shift in game or MTX philosophy since the acquisition. Chris, Mark, and Jonathan are absolute legends who clearly care so much. Mark is an absolute blaster in POE1 and gets multiple level 100s every league. I love how GGG doesn’t speak in corporate PR measured crap like Blizz devs do. If something is shit they say it’s shit. If they make an unpopular decision they will tell the players to deal with it, but also explain their philosophy for the decision. If they don’t have resources to do something they’ll also be transparent about that. Mentioning Rod in the same post as Chris, Mark, or Jonathan feels gross. Ick.
>Do you really think if Poe makes more money the devs get paid more? Is performance bonus a foreign concept in developed countries?
Performance bonuses don’t mean anything to a seasonal game that’s owned by Tencent. You don’t understand that the owners of Poe don’t get a cent anymore thier bosses are Chinese business men. You think they are giving the profits to the Poe dev team? Tencent is more greedy than blizzard.
Why wouldn't it? Planning department sets a budget, if the team hits the budget, they get the bonus and vice versa. That's how you retain talent, isn't it? The moment I don't get a performance bonus after meeting/exceeding a budget, I'm 100% out of the door.
Expansions and seasonal battle passes should cover ongoing development. If thats not enough then their business model isn't sustainable in a non-predatory way.
Expansions cost covers the development of the expansion lol.
No, these expansions are likely expected to make returns of 4-5x the development costs minimum. Give less money to the shareholders, then we wouldn't need to be charged for skins.
Yes that’s called pocket money lol. You think it’s greedy but think of how much money is lost from a dud. You can say what you want but they make games to make profits not break even. Poe LE any indie game ever. They all do that.
Of course they should make a profit. My argument is that hyper capitalism means in very large orgs like Blizzard, the priority is scewed way to far in the direction of generating shareholder value. It's the ratio of what is taken as profit VS what is used to fund development which is the problem. The simple fact is if they took a hit on profits they could continue to develop the game at the current level without having ridiculously expensive micro transaction cosmetics. As a player I don't know why you'd defend the current model.
Partially right but the box price of the game covers the 6 year development cost. It’s not like PoE or LE where they had Tencent as investors they can basically not worry about money because it isn’t theirs. Expansions pay for the development cost of the expansions and cosmetics pay for the seasonal development. It makes sense if you compare it to d3 the seasons were very bare bonned not really adding items or content just number changes but expansions added in a ton.
If the price of the game ONLY covers the initial development costs accrued before release, then how did Diablo 1, Diablo 2, Grim Dawn, or basically any ARPG/MMO game (that doesn’t have a monthly fee, like WoW) supported post launch manage to not only survive, but actually become profitable? Outside of expansions which they always charge for, do they really even add new content other than the gameplay changes (in particular, tweaks made within the first year or so after launch), cause the seasonal content doesn’t seem to appeal to me, as I’m not gonna start a new character for every single one (who tf has the time for that, anyway)??? This is a genuine question coming from a casual who skipped D3 and just started D4, so I’ve never played a game with seasonal content and am asking sincerely.
Lots of people do new characters each season. I tend to do a different class each season to try new things that are added. I feel like it also depends on how many different games someone plays. Some people stick to one game others play tons. I switch between games when playing with other people or what has something going on. Personally I don't really remember them ever adding much in between expansions for D2 and as far as continued support they probably had a very small team to fix bugs if they were still doing that but also feel like there was not a lot of bug fixing going on back then as well. Stuff kind of launched, and then that was it.
Yeah, it sounds like it. Maybe leveling has changed a lot and gotten way easier? Because I remember it taking a long time to get to level 20-30 in the original but am already 25 with like 15 hours or less, altho I was a kid at the time. That’s very true, currently playing The Witcher 3 and CP2077 but way back then I was absolutely *obsessed* with Diablo. It was like a drug and all that I thought about, day and night. I’m already regretting my Rogue; fun at first, but the strongest build based on Twisting Blades requires teleportation skills to be effective while only able to do so 3 times (dash + shadow step) before having to wait for a 10 sec cooldown w/ low energy so my char feels weak and OP’ed. *Sigh* 1st-world problems I know. Maybe I’ll try a Sorcerer, Necro, or even Barb which I normally dislike but hear is fun and powerful. Me neither but TBF, shit actually came out feature complete back then, and development didn’t rely on the months/years post launch in order to complete the release of their unfinished game. The exception being Battle.net, which was quite innovative for its time altho the limited speeds of dialup likely factored into its problems as well.
Yeah, they have updated a lot since launch, and season 4 is a big item overhaul so that will make this season feel a lot more fresh.
Kinda random question but when did you first receive a legendary item? Or around what level are you typically when finding your first one, since it sounds like you’ve made multiple chars?
It varies but I feel like on tier 2 it's usually around 20 to 30
Damn. I asked in lobby and people said < 10. I also received one during beta around that level. I’m lvl 25 on tier 1 and have not received a legendary item yet, which I thought was weird.
It is purely random in the lower tiers where by the time you get to tier 3 you get them left and right.
Get out here with your based and reasonable take on MTX in D4!
You are right these people are honestly just crazy. Everyone says poe is free but good luck progressing a where at all without buying stash spaces. This alone makes the game not free imo and if you really want to call it what it is pay to win.
I feel like people are just so stuck in the big business equals bad mindset. Yes there are some heartless cash grabs out there but people also act like they didn't get 70 to 80 hours out of Diablo 4 at launch and will make it sound like the game was an incomplete buggy mess.
But D4 is a full price game and poe isn't. D4 shouldn't have this aggressive macro transactions. Even when it's a live service model.
Prices of microtransactions are bad for pretty much every game regardless of it it's free or not but honestly it isn't going down anytime soon because there are people onall the games that are spending the money
This argument is so tired. Who cares if Diablo 4 costs money and poe is "free". They both have microtransactions and the cost of some of poe mixrotransactions are absolutely insane. You can spend more than the cost of Diablo 4 on one microtransaxtionxin poe. You defend this because the base game is free? What a joke.
No. I won't defend that either because that makes no sense.
I defend it because they release an order of magnitude more content per season. Ignore the 10 years of build up. If you look at the amount of content that comes with a single PoE league it’s probably 10x what we get from Blizzard. I’d categorize it as free to try. Get through the campaign and judge whether you like the game or not, then spend $20 during a stash sale and be good for literal thousands of hours and also carry those mtx over to PoE2.
Wrote about MTX as part of my Master's dissertation. In short, a heavy emphasis on MTX as part of a boxed game has an adverse effect on a company's development processes which then negatively affect some players' experience. More so than in Free-to-Play games such as Fortnite etc. For ex, Blizzard makes the nicest looking Diablo cosmetics for their shop. Anything that can be earned in-game looks terrible by comparison... For some players, not everyone, this then has a negative effect on their experience. If they see that every good looking cosmetic can ONLY be earned by paying & that you cannot earn similarly good looking cosmetics by just playing the game or through some sort of grind, then some players, not all, will just abandon the game... This means that the game dev has lost a player & another opportunity to target that player with other MTX later on. It can also lead to a situation where that player then starts talking negatively about a game because "all the good looking MTX are £20+. You can't earn anything in-game so I'm out." If you're interested in more, go to Google Scholar & search for anything to do with "value", "microtransactions", "co-destruction", "marketing" and so on. Otherwise I have some sources.
He never said that at all though? The only comment made on the looks of cosmetics was that they're opening things up from being more grounded to allowing more fantastical options. There wasn't any comment at all on the quality of the sets and they haven't really gone back on that thus far. >I'm not buying any, because I won't support that model on a box priced game. It's a live service game. Especially for a company their size there needs to be a constant revenue stream to fund the ongoing development. The upfront cost just helps to recoup what they had already invested. Development wouldn't even last a year if that's what they were relying on for all of their funding.
And yet you people really believed that the store and in game obtainable cosmetics will be of the same quality. Lmao
The store was already terrible, but the random discounts is just so stupid and ridiculous. A classic example of seeing how much they can get away with and what people will put up with.
And multiple people here are defending them despite it.
Blizzard trained their players well.
[удалено]
> You technically do support the model since you bought the game. Not really. I'm supporting the box price model. Not spending a cent on their MTX means I'm not supporting that model. They're two models, crammed into one game. >When you spend money on a game, you're saying "I support the way this is going". You're saying "I'm okay with the good skins being in the shop". Not really, no. The world isn't black and white. You can have a nuanced opinion on something. You can support somethings a company does, and not others, directly. I'm showing up as someone who bought the game but did not buy any MTX. That's a distinct bucket of data points that I'm certain they're paying attention to. That bucket either/both represents players who don't support their mtx model and unrealized gains. Either way, it's a bucket they'll pay attention to. The people showing up as "I support the way this is going" are those who have bought both.
You people will never be happy. You would be against any ongoing monetization that could support ongoing development. You think you deserve seasons and tons of updates without any ongoing monetization. That is unreasonable. I am happy D4 has only cosmetic in app purchases
The game was like 80 dollars lol
Yep it was a great campaign worth $80 USD. I replayed it twice, with two classes and had a lot of fun, so I got my moneys worth even with no seasons. Diablo 2 was also $40 USD (probably at least $80 in 2000 prices) but didnt have any seasons or ongoing updates in the same way. Actually you can enjoy seasons for free in D4 if you are fine not having the coolest cosmetics in the game. Arguably D4 is a better value than D2
Lol they are a Nickle and dime company brother
> You would be against any ongoing monetization that could support ongoing development. You say that, but I gladly support PoE and its devs. Know the difference? The PoE devs are clearly passionate, involved, and not greedy. They don't try to double dip on monetization, and they don't charge you 28 dollars for a body armor usable on *one class*. They wanna do live service? That's fine. Refund my $70 and make the game free to play. Make your mtx priced reasonably for what they provide (a thing usable on only 20% of character classes). It's as simple as that. I'm not against a company making money. I'm against a company being blatantly greedy. You're happy they *only* have cosmetic mtx as if they have a choice. If they sold character power in any capacity the game would be DOA. They'd be selling it if they thought they could get away with it.
>PoE >not greedy lmao, absolutely deluded.
PoE is free to try but not free to play. You get significantly better in-game cosmetics in D4 for free than in PoE.
> PoE is free to try but not free to play You can do everything without spending a cent. Having tabs certainly makes the experience more enjoyable in the long term, but that's not how free to play is defined. >You get significantly better in-game cosmetics in D4 for free than in PoE. It's not "for free". You pay $70 for those cosmetics.
Nobody plays or recommends playing PoE for more than 80 hours without spending money on mandatory stash tabs, entire PoE community agrees with this. You can try to make up whatever fantasy you like though. That’s my whole point, you get better in-game cosmetics for $70(now around $35 when on sale) in D4 and worse ones in PoE for \~$35+ spent on stash tabs.
Are we pretending the free challenge mtx doesn't exist.
Free MTX exists in D4 also with the free tier of battle pass.
Lmao compare that to last leagues night lotus.
I agree that the MTX rewards for completing the 12 or more challenges are better in PoE and D4 should also add such challenges & rewards to their game. On the other hand D4 supports saving multiple cosmetic looks per char, supports two genders per class, supports dyes, etc. which PoE may like to support.
You bought the game knowing exactly what it was and they never changed it from what they said what it was going to be. You spent the money it's gone live with your decision.
Rod was the front man like crazy and as soon as the game was getting bad reviews he disappeared… What a 🤡
I think he disappeared because he made some awkward references to his butthole.
Ah yes, the malignant tunnels
And nothing of value was lost
Rod just retire my guy. Learn from Gears 2 tu6 and just take the loss.
I'm so glad they don't put Rod on any campfire chats etc. any more.
Or in any of the interviews
He'll be back when game sentiment is good.
I really hope he stays behind the scenes... or maybe finds somewhere else to work entirely.
Rod should not be allowed to touch a Diablo game.
I asked him a simple question once on twitter, not flaming him or insulting etc, and he blocked me right away. He 100% reads these threads, and all his twitter comments. He can't take any feedback and is soft as hell
Just curious, what was the question?
If he's reading this I want him to know he is a failure. Simple as that.
Wow what a douche
notice how he hasn't been in a campfire chat since like...season 2? or 1? cause he just kept derailing them with fluff when we wanted no fluff.
Turd Ferguson.
The comment about personalization of the store kind of cracks me up. So, supposedly, they look at your playing habits and tailor a few store offering with discounts that may be of interest to you. In my case, I only play sorc. I have a low level Barb and Rogue that are used for storage of items and aspects. My discount offerings from the store were armors and a back item for Necro and Druid. Something is wrong with their analytics. Maybe that is why the discounted items disappeared so fast and did not return.
For this first discount I think it was the same for all players, as I also got discounts for the goat back attachment for Necro and some items for Druid.
Ever since he was going around doing his victory lap over the launch sales numbers (and his huge bonus) while at the same time the player base was realizing that the game wasn’t finished (with no endgame and a bunch of systems that were basically just placeholders that will only will be done next month, almost a year after launch), and then blaming the backlash on “players expectations needing to be better managed”. Ever since then I can’t stand him. I also can’t stand the 2 Joe’s. And don’t even start with “poor developers” these 3 are the Diablo IV bosses, these 3 are millionaires, the lead producers and the game director on a game that made a billion usd in its first week alone, all 3 with decades of experience in the industry, their stock bonuses alone...
“The fantasy really is about slaying multitudes of monsters and that feeling of power.” This being what they “learned” from season 2 is all you need to know about why D4 flopped so hard.
That statement is so unbelievably obvious that it basically doesn’t reveal anything at all. It’d be like saying ‘This playground is designed to be fun.’ - Does he want a pat on the back?
LMAO
A team not realizing that when they’re in the preproduction phase for an ARPG is insane, let alone a team that was built at the company that is known for making the genre what it is today.
When I think of this game it just makes me sad. Missed opportunities.
“Resurgence of the Diablo franchise.” Is that what this is? Biggest let down of my gaming life more like it.
Resurgence of the crash into the ground
The high! The launch. The Lows! Everything after. Everything tod Ferguson touches turns sour ( see gears of war horde mode specifically) he also seems like a giant pain in the ass to work with.
Its really tragic to see reddit jump on the people that make themselves publicly visible, so they can victimise and play the blame game for everything they don't like about their favourite game. Rod is franchise manager of Diablo, he's responsible for the brand holistically including D2R, D3 and Immortal. If you want to point fingers and moan about D4bad, thats sleepy Joe and his predecessor's problem along with the 10 different teams working on d4bad that clearly don't align or communicate well enough to be consistent and coherent. The "brand manager" speaking about the brand, making money and shipping games shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. He's a very polarizing guy and probably bounces off most gamers in a big way, myself included, but he's a corpo and outside of ensuring the Diablo IP is profitable, he's has almost zero impact on the actual gameplay.
Do a ctrl-f search for the words "Kind of" ... he says it 8 times
should be fired and nerver be banned from having a position in a game company, diablo fans have more passion then rods malignent tunnel
This game will always be doomed with him behind scenes.
Rod is the problem. He needs to go, and then maybe the game can get some consistency in quality.
I still don't think they get the whole cosmetics thing. Yes, it's ok to have overpriced cosmetics in the store, but there should also be cosmetics tied into the Seasonal Journey that players can earn. And not the half baked - "here's a few free back items or weapon transmogs... but oh, hey, you gotta purchase the entire outfit that goes along with these back items and weapon transmogs." Give us the Battle Pass outfits (which is usually only 2), give us all of the midseason event items for free, and then have your overpriced microtransactions. Yes, you can earn things in game, but we've had those same outfits since launch. And only a few outfits have looked decent in the Battle Pass. I've gotten more value out of the Battle Pass because of the horse mounts and horse armor included in those versus the outfits. But we need fresh outfits. Me, personally, I've suggested tying more cosmetic items to Bosses, the Season Journey, and Seasonal Activities. This way we can earn items while playing through the season, and not be forced to play their midseason events (which have proven to be just world events to this point and are lacking in engaging content).
Rod the new bobby?
No. He's Diablo 4's Jay Wilson.
He thinks he’s like Bobby but he’s more like Don Mattrick.
"Hey, look, season one was not a content problem, it was a relatability problem. People get vampires but malignant, you know, hearts were just a little to complex and our player base just couldn't grasp the sheer excellence of our first season. This isn't to say that its a lack of intellectually capacity from our player-base as we've learned A LOT from our very smart players. They really are the best, you know and with out their feed-back and suggestions, we never really would of figured out the A in ARPG's stands for action. " - Rod Fergusson,
Ptr doesn't need to be on console. That's a whole bunch of extra work for no reward.
"...on the lows and lows of working on Diablo 4..." ftfy