You know, I think Blizzard deserves more respect

If you look at D3 as an action game then sure, it wasn't that bad. Unfortunately it does wear the name "Diablo", a franchise millions of people recognize, this is why it is judged so harshly.

The label Diablo was exploited by Blizz, that's true.
No matter they intended to design D3 quite differently than its famous predecessors, they didn't announce it, nor there were any clear signs the new Diablo will come out with a vastly different design concept.

Basically speaking, Blizz were thinking with their wallet.
Besides taking credits of D2 success to increase sells, they may have considered the D2 design not profitable enough. Could be.

All of these still doesn't automatically make a bad game out of D3.
Anyway, different people, different tastes.

I'm just triggered by the whole new levels of shitting over it on PoE forums, not that I'd play D3. I dislike it for reasons.
Yet, it's still not a reason to consider this game "bad". Millions of people think it's "good". Who am I to teach and preach.

Yeah more optimization and polish for PoE would be good.

I don't know what to think about the polish thing in terms of graphics. D3 was an attractive game, but it also felt bright and cartoon like. That's not a bad thing, but I can't say that I prefer that over the dark and gritty feel of POE either. POE feels more realistic on some elements when I look at it, than when I look at D3.

I also think folks are wearing some rose tinted glasses in terms of D3's performance. I recall gathering monsters in D3 to kill and basically watching the servers vomit. Rubber banding was bad at times too; much worse than what I experience with current POE*. That being said, I have no idea what the current state of D3 is. It's been a while since I played it. The combat mechanics were easier to see (mostly) though; whereas POE today is 4th of July all the time now and you can't see anything with all the stuff that is going on....and that's playing solo.

As for the optimization piece, clearly that is an area that could use some work though I sympathize with them on the AMD compatibility. If I recall, they reached out to AMD to improve performance and got the middle finger whereas NVIDIA worked with them. There is a source for that comment, but I don't have time to search for it right now.


*POE pre-lockstep was clearly bad in this area.

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Johny_Snow wrote:

But that was the main point of the expansion - smart loot. The crusader was good I guess but the main drive was the "play to get what you want" instead of "trade to get what you want" and it ultimately failed.

How exactly did it fail? Reaper of Souls sold 2.7 million copies on its first day; the actual D3 release sold 3.5. So, quite a large chunk of people showed up again to buy the "failed" expansion.

And there are still god knows how many people playing the game off and on nowadays.

I never understand these statements. People make them about WoW all the time, or many other games. Its this notion that if I no longer play a game or like it, then its dying/other people feel the same way. No, thats not how it works. A game doesn't die because you stop playing it. PoE doesn't die off when I take league or 2 break, and D3 doesn't die off when you burn out and quit during a season, either.

I see these statements all the time.

I mean how do you know that people don't like Loot 2.0? PoE players are heavily biased against it, yes, because PoE is heavily trade-driven. Meanwhile I'm pretty sure D3 players are heavily in favor of it, compared to PoE's trade system.

People can say what they want about Blizzard, but they have a pretty good idea about what goes on in their games. For all the shit they took about the RMAH, they knew the black market was a huge part of d2. To be perfectly honest, it could probably succeed nowadays. People throw money at mobile games like they are going out of style. RMAH was just a little too early. Anyways, Loot 2.0 was in direct backlash to the AH. Considering they sold so many copies of RoS, I doubt it ultimately failed.

And I think RoS was a good game. I even play a season here and there. Just like I think PoE is a good game, and I play a league here and there. I actually enjoy the change of pace between the 2 games as an Arpg fan. When I feel like playing the economy side, I play PoE. When I just wanna kill some stuff and SSF it, I play D3.

Firstly, PoE is polished too. If you find it's not, you have a shit PC and/or a shit connection.

Secondly, Blizz presented their game as the third installment of a very successful franchise, while it had in fact pretty much nothing to do with that franchise (except the lore I guess, and wgaf about the lore in a hack-and-slash ?)
That's scammy-scummy marketing tactics, and I among many others found myself robbed of 60$ (yup, had preordered it too, to be able to play "right when the servers go live"... we saw how that launch turned out).

So they knowingly fucked over all the long awaiting D2 fans, the same way Bethesda fucked over Fallout fans when they made "Fallout"3.

These companies don't deserve the least bit of respect.

You know how Blizzard achieves polish? They severely limit the ways a player can "break" the game. And even then, with D3, if you really push it you can still make the frame rate tank and force desync. I'd rather have janky freedom than polished restraint. And I feel like PoE isn't really that janky.

Why does Blizzard deserve respect? Because they once hired the talented guys who made Diablo and D2 and thus own the IP? Because they once employed the guys who made Warcraft, Blackthorn and Vikings some of the most polished games in PC gaming history?

Right now about 0.01% of BLizzard are people who earned our respect, the rest is just a name, attached to a company owned by a bigger company thats owned by a bigger company cashing in on your sense of nostalgia and the foolish belief that a Diablo 4 must be a good game because it uses all the letters of the alphabet in its title that the first two games also used. There's literally that much substance to the connection between the two good Diablo games and D3 or a future D4. Nothing but a name and warm feelings about two games made by people who don't work for Blizzard any more.

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alhazred70 wrote:

Why does Blizzard deserve respect? Because they once hired the talented guys who made Diablo and D2 and thus own the IP? Because they once employed the guys who made Warcraft, Blackthorn and Vikings some of the most polished games in PC gaming history?

Right now about 0.01% of BLizzard are people who earned our respect, the rest is just a name, attached to a company owned by a bigger company thats owned by a bigger company cashing in on your sense of nostalgia and the foolish belief that a Diablo 4 must be a good game because it uses all the letters of the alphabet in its title that the first two games also used. There's literally that much substance to the connection between the two good Diablo games and D3 or a future D4. Nothing but a name and warm feelings about two games made by people who don't work for Blizzard any more.

What do you mean hired? The guys who made Diablo 1 and 2 founded the good half of the company.

Blizzard's issue today is they've ran out of stories and ideas made by better people who came before

polish, no lag, no crashes.... wtf u talking about? for sure u never play d3 on group in high lvl, dont say shit bro