New diablo game confirmed

[Lochton]

I am actually excited.

[mrgreenthump]

All of my nopes. Diablo has never been about being social - it was about farming and those 8 player maps where mostly ran by people who acrried others through leveling. There was an active community for sure but it was mostly because trading and grouping up was extremely unconvenient and you needed to keep up contact with people.

Don't read me wrong, your ideas are not bad per se, but they simply don't fit into an action-packed, fast paced game like diablo. You farm to farm faster.

D3 failed for a lot of reasons, and social isn't even contemplated.
- gearing systems sucks
- no freedom in builds
- crappy leveling/endgame structure
- no item hunt at all
- fucking random GRs as the one and only thing to do (and honestly the whole focus on time races is totally crap as it just promotes a very small subset of builds)
- paragons
- legendary gems
- no actual content at endgame (bounties that are completely useless)
- power creep to the limit and extremely low longevity

Not only that, but if you were looking to get to the leaderboards, you simply couldn't compete as solo player, due to groups being so efficient and bots running wild. Pretty much killed any season I played in, because my friends slowly dropped off and public queue was snooze fest most of the time.

[Coldkil]

Not only that, but if you were looking to get to the leaderboards, you simply couldn't compete as solo player, due to groups being so efficient and bots running wild. Pretty much killed any season I played in, because my friends slowly dropped off and public queue was snooze fest most of the time.

I just think that ladders should be as collateral as they could be. Racing to level cap? ok. Like in PoE, uber lab clear speed? Ok, since it's the same map for everyone in a specific day - also requires a lot of commitment (need to farm tokens to open up and when you die it's over, you restart). Also PoE addes the solo self-found mode which has separate ladders for everything (and you can opt-out when you want but your ladder progress is frozen, and you can never get back until on a new char).

Having ladders tied to the actual farming content means that only the most optimized setup wins - hence GR fishing, farming as a group to compete in solo and so on. They don't make any sense, and they're actually followed by a small subset of players. Most people just log in and play at their pace ignoring everything else, that's what's good about ARPGs in general.

[Kokolums]

All of my nopes. Diablo has never been about being social

Aboslutely disagree. For the late 1990s, battle.net was arguably the cutting edge of social gaming. The games were good but the draw was you could socialize in chat with friends and then hop into D2 for a bit, then switch to SC for a while, then jump into War3 after that. And you had observer games in SC where people could join your contest as observers and chat to each other while they watched you play. they could interact (but not move) your stuff while you did your thing and comment about it. In some ways, it had far more advanced capabilities than twitch. The social atmosphere was amazing. THAT was the draw.

Blizzard thinks what made them great was an amazing story with polished games. Nope. Lots of games are actually pretty polished and have a decent story. What made Blizzard great was it was social.

Take for example torchlight 2. That is an EXTREMELY polished ARPG with amazing graphics, mood, setting, with lots of builds to try out and a massive world to explore. But they never provided strong communtiy tools. So it wasn't social. The game was never very popular.

Humans are social creatures. When you play a solo game, there could be lots of things to do but if there is no-one to share the experience with, it feels meaningless. But throw in a huge social component with a reputation to maintain and friends to cheer for and EVERYTHING has meaning.

David Brevik just released a solo RPG game called it Lurks Below. There's no multiplayer at all. it has some pretty nice elements in it and lots of things to do but it won't be a massive game in any way because people want social games.

People want to assert that ARPGs are a dying genre, or RTS is a dead genre. But they cannot quantify why they think that. I don't think they are dead. The problem is the genre went very antisocial. These games need strong cutting edge social tools. Then they will have a huge following again.

[Battlebeard]

So much negavitity. I just gotta be a little positive and say that D3 is an amazing game. I don't like that they added seasons though. If anything "ruined" the game so to speak, it was seasons. While I can focus my non-season hero, seasons made non-seasons kinda dead in comparison

[Dastreus]

What the fuck could they even do with the plot? The prime evils are dead, and crazy angel is also dead.

[Eapoe]

What the fuck could they even do with the plot? The prime evils are dead, and crazy angel is also dead.

To the route of bad movies: PREQUELS!!!

[Dastreus]

To the route of bad movies: PREQUELS!!!

[Allatar]

What the fuck could they even do with the plot? The prime evils are dead, and crazy angel is also dead.

Not strictly true as the spirits of the Prime Evils that Malthael had absorbed were released when we killed him, weren't they? They could do something with that I guess, or go somewhere with the small cutscene at the end that implied the Nephalem themselves might become a threat to Sanctuary.

[Gadzooks]

while in D2 you were always searching for that elusive item

All I wanted was one Zod. I wouldn't even use it. I just wanted to hold one in my pixelized hands...

- - - Updated - - -

It was 'black on white' that they are working on an "unannounced project". But they never specifically said "for Diablo" before. I think that's what he meant.

In the past, they had job listings for a "unannounced game set in the Diablo Universe", and a lot of the listings mentioned "first person" type games, I believe they were for the game engine jobs.

I was watching the Blizzard game jobs for a long time, contemplating moving to LA anyway. They've redone the careers section many times over that time, and they've re-labeled a lot of the job listings, probably because a lot of YouTubers and reddit were referring to them. Like Titan - it wasn't mentioned specifically, but they had job listings up for that one a long time.

[Vorenos]

So, I have very little skin in in this game, as I didn't play D1 or D2 back i nthe day (though my brother was in to it so I was familiar with the games) but I did play D3 when they gave it for free with the 1 year WoW subscription.
That being said, I enjoyed playing through D3 the first couple times (wizard for first play through, then a barbarian which I loved), but I did not really ever feel the need to play through the exact same game on a harder difficulty right after I had just beat the game. Maybe I am missing something, but that to me seemed like a waste of my time.

So, if they were to make the game longer, with the difficulty increasing organically through the course of the game or even make this type of playthrough a different mode or something, I can seem myself playing D4. But the constant repeating of the same levels over and over to gear up, to just do it again really seems like the reason why D3 or this type of genre in general aren't thriving right now.

[Otrew]

Why people call D3 a failure when it sold 30 millions of copys between pc and consoles??? ROS made the game a lot better and they give us a lot of "free" content before necromancer. Sure right now the game is boring as fuck if you arleady played the first 10 seasons, but still was a great game.

[Arrashi]

What the fuck could they even do with the plot? The prime evils are dead, and crazy angel is also dead.

Just call it "Diablo" and start all over again ? I mean, majority of franchises goes through this sort of "reset" nowadays.

- - - Updated - - -

Why people call D3 a failure when it sold 30 millions of copys between pc and consoles??? ROS made the game a lot better and they give us a lot of "free" content before necromancer. Sure right now the game is boring as fuck if you arleady played the first 10 seasons, but still was a great game.

Because D2 was game that had legacy, and for some people is still interesting to play after all those years. D3...not so much.

[Deleted]

Aboslutely disagree. For the late 1990s, battle.net was arguably the cutting edge of social gaming. The games were good but the draw was you could socialize in chat with friends and then hop into D2 for a bit, then switch to SC for a while, then jump into War3 after that. And you had observer games in SC where people could join your contest as observers and chat to each other while they watched you play. they could interact (but not move) your stuff while you did your thing and comment about it. In some ways, it had far more advanced capabilities than twitch. The social atmosphere was amazing. THAT was the draw.

Blizzard thinks what made them great was an amazing story with polished games. Nope. Lots of games are actually pretty polished and have a decent story. What made Blizzard great was it was social.

Take for example torchlight 2. That is an EXTREMELY polished ARPG with amazing graphics, mood, setting, with lots of builds to try out and a massive world to explore. But they never provided strong communtiy tools. So it wasn't social. The game was never very popular.

Humans are social creatures. When you play a solo game, there could be lots of things to do but if there is no-one to share the experience with, it feels meaningless. But throw in a huge social component with a reputation to maintain and friends to cheer for and EVERYTHING has meaning.

David Brevik just released a solo RPG game called it Lurks Below. There's no multiplayer at all. it has some pretty nice elements in it and lots of things to do but it won't be a massive game in any way because people want social games.

People want to assert that ARPGs are a dying genre, or RTS is a dead genre. But they cannot quantify why they think that. I don't think they are dead. The problem is the genre went very antisocial. These games need strong cutting edge social tools. Then they will have a huge following again.

There are plenty of single player games thriving. Even RPG ones like Pillars of Eternity.

I disagree with you. The reason i got into Diablo 2 was because it was cool. The items where really cool and knowing that almost no matter what i did something much more powerful was still attainable further in. Item hunt, Rune hunt and so forth. Warcraft had extremely good story and even by todays standards some of the absolute best user created content(WC3 ofc). Starcraft was a good competitive game as it was fast paced and micro managy. Basicly the fast pace of blizzard games(along with a few others) led to mobas(not even talking about the first moba being a map for wc3).

I literally never used battle net socially before wow. I would play the games with friends at net cafe's but we played non Blizzard games just as much.

The social aspect was niche until wow

- - - Updated - - -

Just call it "Diablo" and start all over again ? I mean, majority of franchises goes through this sort of "reset" nowadays.

- - - Updated - - -



Because D2 was game that had legacy, and for some people is still interesting to play after all those years. D3...not so much.

Diablo has been a boss in all three diablo games. Not sure why this is suddenly a problem....

[Coldkil]

Why people call D3 a failure when it sold 30 millions of copys between pc and consoles??? ROS made the game a lot better and they give us a lot of "free" content before necromancer. Sure right now the game is boring as fuck if you arleady played the first 10 seasons, but still was a great game.

From a business standpoint was definitely a success. I am also going to say that the game after RoS release has been really enjoyable for quite same time, so it's not like people didn't get their share of fun.

The point is that most of this success was due to the incredible hype/traction for the D2 sequel and the fact lots of people just bought one year of WoW sub and got it for free. Blizzard got their money from it but for the wrong reasons.

D3 Vanilla was wrong on every design aspect - shallow character building/gearing, everything tailored to AH use and the actual possibility of being stuck in progression due to no luck in drops. Combat style and generally pace were and are top notch.
RoS solved many of the issues the game had making it a lot better, but unfortunately the drastic measures taken have a very detrimental effect on the game longevity and player retention: everything is so fat people is "done" in a matter of hours leaving only the few ones left that care for leaderboards, as there's nothing in game to strive for after you've completed your journey.
The first seasons were very nice, but also lots of subsequent released content were assets from the scrapped Expansion 2 there were in a decent state before the scrapping, culminating with the release of the Necro and finally closing the game cycle.

There are still deep design issues: example the Necro itself, whose best build is revolving around a 2mintued CD for nuking everything and then just waiting and running. One would think that after Archon/Vengeance/WotB they had learned the lesson, but that's not the case.

D3 did its job, but nothing more than that. There's no improvement nor progression in the franchise excluding the purely technical ones (new engine, better graphics). Blizzard is famous for axing projects that don't deliver - they didn't kill outright D3 because the PR damage would have been disatrous, hence better finishing what was started (RoS), getting as much money as possible with whatever was left and then leave the game up in maintenance mode. Not exactly the thing a Diablo game should aspire to become.

Hopefully the new Diablo game will be different in those aspects.

[Syld]

D3 is fun to play occasionally, it just gets boring really fast. When new seasons start I usually play a lot for a couple days, but then after you complete the cookie-cutter build that everyone is playing it just gets boring doing insane amounts of GRs just to get barely better versions of the items you already have. I hope they do endgame content completely different on D4.

[Ergunk]

The Diablo scene has been very quiet lately.
I really hope it is something big. D4 or D3 expansion i will be happy either way.

[KainneAbsolute]

Left 4 Diablo or DiabloTide

[DeltrusDisc]

I would love two different kinds of Diablo games:

A new Diablo 4, ARPG, done better like D2/PoE, as obviously we all know D3 has a plethora of issues.

But also... a first person or mildly third person Diablo game that is like a horror game. The visuals are perfect for that. But this game could take place for the story from D1 through D3 and/or 4, maybe in an expac. It would not be a gear farming game so much, think more like a regular RPG.

[Stormspellz]

Wonder if they going to stick with the arpg, go with a different game genre, dark souls/witcher/vindictus style possibility