Blizzard is so damn terrible at rolling out games

[WorldWatcher]

Have you tried Marvel's Midnight Suns? It is made by the developers of XCOM, and has a very XCOM kinda feel, except it is a card battler, except it is so much more. Probably the best game to come out in the last year.

I haven't played it, watched a lot of Chris Odd's YouTube playthrough.

Not into card battlers, nothing against those that are into it, just something about it break immersion for me.

WW

 

[Mycroft]

This time with Diablo 4.

I was part of the beta testing and yeah you expect issues. There were some. We've been live and out of beta for a month now and even more and bigger problems. It seems for Blizzard, Beta stage is actually alpha stage and the first several months of release is the actual Beta testing. So annoying.

I played D4 before my stroke, but I haven't logged in since then. I have a Whirlwind build Barbarian, level 44. I'm not one to blast through a game's story in an effort to reach max level. I take my time.

I didn't play the beta nor buy the early release.

I've seen a few minor bugs, but nothing game breaking.

I played D2 and skipped D3. So far, I like D4.

Oh...my two sons tell me it gets to be a real grind-fest after level 60 or so. That's probably when I'll stop playing.

 

[poweRob]

I played D4 before my stroke, but I haven't logged in since then. I have a Whirlwind build Barbarian, level 44. I'm not one to blast through a game's story in an effort to reach max level. I take my time.

I didn't play the beta nor buy the early release.

I've seen a few minor bugs, but nothing game breaking.

I played D2 and skipped D3. So far, I like D4.

Oh...my two sons tell me it gets to be a real grind-fest after level 60 or so. That's probably when I'll stop playing.

Currently 53. Doing all the side quests so I haven't finished the storyline yet.

 

[Redress]

before my stroke,

I was unaware of this. Get well soon! I know my stroke changed my life, but I am 100 % recovered and doing well in that area.

 

[Mycroft]

I was unaware of this. Get well soon! I know my stroke changed my life, but I am 100 % recovered and doing well in that area.

Thank you.

Yeah, I've mentioned it in various threads...even while I was in the hospital recovering.

I was lucky. This was a "tiny stroke", as the Doctor called it. There were only two effects...double vision and loss of balance. The vision cleared up the second day after and the balance is almost completely back to normal. I'm not quite 100%, but damned close.

I'm glad you have recovered from your stroke. I've certainly learned a lot about this stuff and I know strokes can be devastating.

 

[Nomad4Ever]

This time with Diablo 4.

I was part of the beta testing and yeah you expect issues. There were some. We've been live and out of beta for a month now and even more and bigger problems. It seems for Blizzard, Beta stage is actually alpha stage and the first several months of release is the actual Beta testing. So annoying.

They've had some server issues, but in terms of performance and content Diablo seems fine to me? What issues have you been having?

 

[poweRob]

They've had some server issues, but in terms of performance and content Diablo seems fine to me? What issues have you been having?

Server lag and rubber banding. No freegin way I'll roll out a hardcore character until they stabilize their servers.

 

[PeteEU]

Server lag and rubber banding. No freegin way I'll roll out a hardcore character until they stabilize their servers.

I suspect it is the memory leak issue. If I close everything in the back ground and relog the game, then it usually goes away. Only really happens during helltides.

And why hardcore even exists is crazy. Don't understand why people would want such a thing on any online game. One glitch by the ISP or backbone ISP and wasted time...

 

[Redress]

I suspect it is the memory leak issue. If I close everything in the back ground and relog the game, then it usually goes away. Only really happens during helltides.

And why hardcore even exists is crazy. Don't understand why people would want such a thing on any online game. One glitch by the ISP or backbone ISP and wasted time...

There is a memory leak, devs hope to fix it the 18th, but no promises. I do not believe that is the only issue with servers, which can be pretty bad at times.

 

[jmotivator]

 

[jmotivator]

 

[jmotivator]

 

[Redress]

My Season 1 review: https://debatepolitics.com/threads/blog-your-current-game.326360/page-46#post-1078189339

 

[PeteEU]

Anyone that lived through Anarchy Online debut and the 2 day emergency patch of Everquest in the early 2000s, knows that Blizzard gets it right far far more than it gets it wrong with new games.

Anarchy Online did not even have encryption enabled for payment for weeks when it launched and the servers were taken down multiple times during a day for emergency patches.

Or the Everquest expansion that required days of maintenance to fix critical problems.

 

[Redress]

Or the Everquest expansion that required days of maintenance to fix critical problems.

That was the Luclin patch? I remember for about a week I kept a book at my desk, because zoning took about 10 minutes.

Edit: Also, in terms of bad launches, you have to include WW2 online. "I will taxi to victory!"

It should also be pointed out that bad launches from 20 years ago do not excuse the mess Blizzard has made of this.

I

 

[PeteEU]

That was the Luclin patch? I remember for about a week I kept a book at my desk, because zoning took about 10 minutes.

Yea. Luclin was rushed and incomplete. Irony is that it was a great expansion once it worked.

Edit: Also, in terms of bad launches, you have to include WW2 online. "I will taxi to victory!"

It should also be pointed out that bad launches from 20 years ago do not excuse the mess Blizzard has made of this.

I

I disagree. The game worked. You could play it with very few bugs. Now what people are pissed about are quality of life stuff they expected to be in from the start...frankly people are spoilt..I mean ohhh i have to waste a minute or two to get to my nightmare dungeon. You try running for 15 minutes to retrieve your corpse.

And they had to nerf everyone to balance the game out. Yea it sucks, but come on you can still play the game!

 

[jmotivator]

Yea. Luclin was rushed and incomplete. Irony is that it was a great expansion once it worked.


I disagree. The game worked. You could play it with very few bugs. Now what people are pissed about are quality of life stuff they expected to be in from the start...frankly people are spoilt..I mean ohhh i have to waste a minute or two to get to my nightmare dungeon. You try running for 15 minutes to retrieve your corpse.

And they had to nerf everyone to balance the game out. Yea it sucks, but come on you can still play the game!

It's not really QOL issues with D4 though, it's bonehead planning and failing to learn from the mistakes of others.

Take for instance the paltry storage issue. On the surface it appears to be a QOL issue but it really isn't. At its core it is a fundamentally stupid programming issue.

The reason that the storage is so paltry in D4 is the exact same reason that storage in Fallout 76 started off so low.. but with less reason than Fallout 76.

The issue is that when you zone in to a server, your game client issues a sever fetch to tell your client the content of all of the other players storage on the server with you. They limit the size of storage to minimize the lag that many still experience as their connection is flooded with table population data. Why did Blizzard build it this way? There is no mechanism within the game that would require this. There is no open trade like in POE, and even in POE most of the exchange of storage data only happens at the request for trade, and only shares storage contents when the player publishes a stash tab as trade items.

So blizzard made a bonehead technical decision that then manifested as a QOL issue. Rather than streamline how the server and client share data, and what data needs to be shared, they just short-cutted the bonehead decision with an abysmally low storage cap.

Then there are the too numerous to mention "balancing" issues in the game on release that lead to an unacceptable amount of fun.

 

[Redress]

Yea. Luclin was rushed and incomplete. Irony is that it was a great expansion once it worked.


I disagree. The game worked. You could play it with very few bugs. Now what people are pissed about are quality of life stuff they expected to be in from the start...frankly people are spoilt..I mean ohhh i have to waste a minute or two to get to my nightmare dungeon. You try running for 15 minutes to retrieve your corpse.

And they had to nerf everyone to balance the game out. Yea it sucks, but come on you can still play the game!

Pete, a 60 dollar game still, a month from release, has latency issues and a memory leak. The balance shit is bad, but nerfs are part of online gaming and most people know that. What has people up in arms is that the game is poorly optimized, that they balance the things that are small problems while ignoring things which are a big problem. This is not good for a AAA 60$ game. I will be the first to say that I am still enjoying the game, and alot was done right, but that does not excuse what was done wrong. The 1.1 patch was bad.

I remember corpse runs(to the bottom of Dalnir was the worst), I remember logging in with the plan for the day in game was just to get from Qeynos to Freeport...no leveling, no farming, just traveling. I remember the outrage at how being able to portal every 15 minutes when Luclin came out, so you could change continents in only 30 minutes! The horror, the dumbing down the game. Those where stupid complaints. A game should try to expedite doing the fun parts. People expecting quality are not spoilt, they want value for their money.

 

[PeteEU]

Pete, a 60 dollar game still, a month from release, has latency issues and a memory leak. The balance shit is bad, but nerfs are part of online gaming and most people know that. What has people up in arms is that the game is poorly optimized, that they balance the things that are small problems while ignoring things which are a big problem. This is not good for a AAA 60$ game. I will be the first to say that I am still enjoying the game, and alot was done right, but that does not excuse what was done wrong. The 1.1 patch was bad.

I remember corpse runs(to the bottom of Dalnir was the worst), I remember logging in with the plan for the day in game was just to get from Qeynos to Freeport...no leveling, no farming, just traveling. I remember the outrage at how being able to portal every 15 minutes when Luclin came out, so you could change continents in only 30 minutes! The horror, the dumbing down the game. Those where stupid complaints. A game should try to expedite doing the fun parts. People expecting quality are not spoilt, they want value for their money.

The GPU memory leak is unacceptable and should have been fixed with the first hotfix. Poorly optimized comes down in part to them releasing it for 4 plus different OS. Could the game be better optimized.. sure, but that goes for all games. When Elden Ring got released it was also poorly optimized and that is a single player game. They improved it fast, but it was hardly optimal at launch.

But most of the other "issues" are in the spoilt category. Take the stash space. I would agree that having a gems tab from the start is an oversight, but more stash space only encourage the hoarders.

My point is, on the scale of bad releases, this is hardly in top 10 or even 20 of top games.

 

[Jetboogieman]

**** Diablo IV…. I’m out.

I just don’t get it, the whole point is gear and you get basically nothing, ever.

Mountains of useless trash with stats that mean absolutely nothing.

Over 10 levels and got not one decent piece of gear.

My Necromancer slaps but what’s the point? Got a couple of BiS pieces for bone spear and it was sorta fun but it’s such a slog to level, again haven’t got a single upgrade in over 10 levels… what’s the point?

Followed guides and with my sorcerer and Rogue, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing wrong but even on Tier 1 im getting absolutely handled because I guess my gear And ability synergy has to be absolutely S Tier otherwise you’re toast…

How the **** did this happen?

Sorry needed to rant, I’m so pissed about D4, so much promise, games beautiful, a lot of good here absolutely destroyed by poor decisions, just baffling.

 

[PeteEU]

**** Diablo IV…. I’m out.

I just don’t get it, the whole point is gear and you get basically nothing, ever.

Mountains of useless trash with stats that mean absolutely nothing.

Over 10 levels and got not one decent piece of gear.

My Necromancer slaps but what’s the point? Got a couple of BiS pieces for bone spear and it was sorta fun but it’s such a slog to level, again haven’t got a single upgrade in over 10 levels… what’s the point?

Followed guides and with my sorcerer and Rogue, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing wrong but even on Tier 1 im getting absolutely handled because I guess my gear And ability synergy has to be absolutely S Tier otherwise you’re toast…

How the **** did this happen?

Sorry needed to rant, I’m so pissed about D4, so much promise, games beautiful, a lot of good here absolutely destroyed by poor decisions, just baffling.

Welcome to every Diablo game ever.

Now saying that, D4 has issues with gear and interface. The removal of priority stats at the dude where you can change them, was a huge mistake. It made the usual slog even worse.

The cost of respecing and re-paragoning is far too high.

The inability to save a spec so you can be able to switch easily (Like in D3) is.....freaking annoying.

The fact that T4 helltides still drop sacred when mobs are 102+, that T50+ nightmare dungeons drop sacred at all and that treasure goblins not only are faster than a lightning and ultimately drop sacred in T4 is......

And don't get me started on the chat..

 

[Felis Leo]

**** Diablo IV…. I’m out.

I just don’t get it, the whole point is gear and you get basically nothing, ever.

Mountains of useless trash with stats that mean absolutely nothing.

Over 10 levels and got not one decent piece of gear.

My Necromancer slaps but what’s the point? Got a couple of BiS pieces for bone spear and it was sorta fun but it’s such a slog to level, again haven’t got a single upgrade in over 10 levels… what’s the point?

Followed guides and with my sorcerer and Rogue, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing wrong but even on Tier 1 im getting absolutely handled because I guess my gear And ability synergy has to be absolutely S Tier otherwise you’re toast…

How the **** did this happen?

Sorry needed to rant, I’m so pissed about D4, so much promise, games beautiful, a lot of good here absolutely destroyed by poor decisions, just baffling.

Hey, I hear if you shell out an extra $100-$200 to Blizzard, you can have access to the gear that is worth anything.

ORRRRR...you can play Baldur's Gate 3 which doesn't hide its best gear behind a paywall.

 

[bomberfox]

Now diablo 2 resurrected has 30 day check in because **** if i know why DRM bullshit. They never ever had this crap when D2 came out.

 

[poweRob]

Super freakin' stoked. I got a new computer today that's quite beefy. Doing updates and downloads right now. D4 has been quite fun once I got to end game stuff. Story was fun too though. Currently grinding through Season 2. I keep getting new fun gear that is bad ass and beefed up my Necromancer but then all the sudden the Butcher just randomly shows up from time to time to bring the reality back to me as he stomps me into the ground.

 

[jmotivator]

Diablo 4 needs to die.

I say this with no real malice. I have managed to enjoy the game, and nothing I oppose about Diablo 4 is in the game itself, but the management of the game.

There is a rot in Diablo 4 that I haven't really seen in any other game company, a kind of obliviousness that I rarely see in developers. Given the scale of Blizzard, tough, they need to be it harder that an indie developer with equal levels of don't-get-it.

The last shoe dropped when Blizzard floated the idea of a new expansion for Diablo 4 that was so damn outrageous that I finally broke. I've had it with this nonsense. It goes beyond me just writing the company off, even though I have, it goes to the root of the kind of clueless bullshit that needs to be nuked from orbit.

Let me explain:

Since Diablo 4 launched there is one thing that has been at the top of the list of problems from those playing the game, and that is inventory space.

While there are only a few viable builds for each class for end game in Diablo 4, most players like to gather gear for potential late game builds for their characters. This kind of gathering includes rare gear with stat roles that fit a specific build, uniques that fit a specific build, and gear aspects that fit a specific build. Given that every character has up to 11 gear slots to fill, it's easy to fill the limited storage space with gear collections for ONE charcater, but Blizzard would rather you play them all... which leaves you at best with 1 single tab per character, and that is only after they added a single tab to the game in a patch.

They argue that there is a technical reason for the limited space, but the explanation for that technical problem isn't the player's problem, it's theirs. I don't care how inefficient and assinine their back-end database management is, I can point to Path of Exile whenever they try to tell me how hard it is to scale storage to show them I have no sympathy. While POE puts new tabs as a premium buy, the game itself is free and, moreover, starts with more storage than is offered by Diablo 4.

So why the sudden abandonment? Because Blizzard just floated the option of an expansion that would include expanded storage. The base expansion would be $45 and have 1(yes, 1) new storage tab. If you ponied up the cash for the premium expansion you could get 2 whole storage tabs for... $100. Just enough storage that you would be struggling again in about an hour of play time.

To put that in perspective, my POE account currently has 16 tabs and the ony limiter on how many I can have is whether I want to spend ~$5 for another.

I realized when I read that announcement that Diablo 4 isn't getting any better, Blizzard only seems to hear complaints as future paths of monetization.

They don't get it.