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Diablo 4 tried to repackage Diablo 2's grind for the modern era, but series overseer Rod Fergusson says the "consumptive nature of a live service" made it unfeasible

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/diablo/diablo-4-tried-to-repackage-diablo-2s-grind-for-the-modern-era-but-series-overseer-rod-fergusson-says-the-consumptive-nature-of-a-live-service-made-it-unfeasible/

Rod Fergusson explains players have changed in the two decades since

Diablo 4 tried to repackage Diablo 2's grind for the modern era, but series overseer Rod Fergusson says the "consumptive nature of a live service" made it unfeasible

61 comments

djsoren19

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It's really sad that Blizzard has no idea what makes D2 a great game, especially considering they just released D2R so we can relive the glory for ourselves. D4 on release was nowhere close to D2, it was more like a toddler trying to make an MMO.

In D2, you can feel your character become more powerful with levels alone. In fact, gearing basically doesn't matter for most of normal difficulty, it's almost entirely level focused. D4 scales content to your players level, meaning every level you gained made you weaker. No shit people didn't want to go for a long XP grind, who wants to continually grind to do less damage?

Sabin10

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Maybe it's because I grew up with 8 and 16 bit rpgs but I despise level scaling. It really takes the enjoyment out of playing for me so I just don't play games that have it. Some games have min and max enemy levels based on location but others keep the enemies in lock step to you and it just makes playing the game feel pointless. In either case, every game with level scaling would be better without it.

Kolanaki

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The only kind of scaling I am okay with is how new enemy types will only start appearing after level X. You still feel like you're getting powerful, but at the same time you start getting slightly more challenging enemies sprinkled in. However you only really need this in non-linear games where you expect and encourage the player to go anywhere they want instead of having complete control over the progression and how things ramp up.

Like Fallout New Vegas and 4 do. Though even those could be a bit better.

withabeard

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Na... Honestly

Baldurs gate and bgII had an open world where you could go anywhere. Go to certain places early game, you'd get hard fucked up. Go there later, you could make progress.

I loved the feeling of getting more powerful and that was what unlocked more of the game.

kurcatovium

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The best example of this is any game from Piranha bytes. Especially first Gothic was prime example. You're such a piece of sht at the beginning that every single even the most basic creature will give you hard time killing it or will smash you with one hit in case of stronger ones.

But as you level up and get better gear things will change drastically. Even couple levels or stronger weapon will enable you to progress to new part of map, because now you're able to finally kill the pack of wild flies guarding the passage.

Few levels later you can even go through forest without constant fear of wolf attack. And at the end you smash shadowbeasts like it's nothing... This feels awesome and that's what level scaling absolutely ruins.

Kolanaki

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It's the mostly same for the games I mentioned, it's just incredibly easy to become OP in them so it's not that hard of a roadblock and it still scales enemies beyond just adding in new types. NV has static leveled areas and FO4 spawns more difficult enemies the further away you move from Sanctuary. You can go anywhere right at the start, but you're not gonna have an easy time fighting dearhclaws and cazadores at level 1.

Oni_eyes

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I still recall putting dark souls down for a solid couple months after being frustrated that I couldn't beat the area after the first boss.

Because my dumbass thought that I was supposed to go through the graveyard with all the skeletons and got my shit handed to me repeatedly. Honestly made me love the game more when I realized there was a little path up to the right to go to the actual next area...

Paradachshund

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I like this way too, as long as they don't make every area start at the same easy level. It's fun to find places you can't do yet. I think the new enemies thing works even better if it's more like they start to show up in areas you previously cleared out, rather than appearing in places you haven't been yet.

TrousersMcPants

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I still don't know what exactly it was about Assassins Creed Odyssey that made it work so well for me overall, but I liked the level scaling in it. Areas had a minimum level, so I'd try to go there at lower levels and get my ass beat. But being higher level didn't make the areas that much easier, because they would scale up to me. What gave me a feeling of progression was my available toolkit to deal with enemies as time went on.

ChicoSuave

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When the dev doesn't have enough resources or time or werewithall to make different areas with different mobs, they reuse the existing areas to pad out the grind. Level scaling is a sign of lazy development.

djsoren19

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At the very least, FromSoftware continues to prove that level scaling is not a requirement. I honestly think that without their influence, we would have seen a lot more adoption of the practice. It's the kinda brain-dead idea that comes from an MBA who's sole focus is reaching the widest audience possible.

DarkThoughts

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Weirdly enough the D4 skill tree is even worse than the one (I know not really a tree) in D3. The first abilities almost don't matter and are just "filler" for your resource regen or cooldowns and the main abilities are just a handful, most of them kinda meh and with barely any progression & variety behind them.

As for D2R I wish they would've gone a bit farther with it, like an item filter feels like a must have with how much it spams loot onto your screen to the point where it does not display everything. This can cause you to literally not see something like a high rune on the ground because of some trash items taking up the tooltip space. Or things like the vanity system from D3 and D4 (minus the micro transactions).

Whatever... They lost touch with their base in favor of a new one that they can milk. Their profits and shareholders will love it though. I'm done with them.

NukedRat

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It's funny you mention your first skills (basic skills) are just filler because this season some of the meta builds use basic skills as the main damage dealer so you don't need to even think about resource regen as they don't use it. Rogue and Sorcerer both have their best builds use the basic skills and work around them. There's still a lot to be desired with balancing and endgame but I feel they are turning things around gradually.

DarkThoughts

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I don't care about seasons, or rather more accurately I do not like seasons, but that makes me not care about whatever they do within a season. And season rewards are just there for FOMO, which I hate even more.

Postmortal_Pop

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Honestly, I can't get behind d2r. D2 still runs perfectly fine, my Battlebox still installs, and I know it won't have any bullshit from this side of the 2010's

djsoren19

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Seriously, give it a go. It's honestly a great remaster. There are some extra runewords added and some other small stuff, but it's basically D2 with nicer graphics and prettier cutscenes. Gameplay is unchanged, warts and all. We even get ladder resets again!

Postmortal_Pop

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I may try it, I just can't get behind paying blizzard more money.

djsoren19

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Yeah, that's fair. I guess I'm hopeful that things have changed after Microsoft bought them, but they probably still suck.

djsoren19

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I agree that an item-filter would have been a nice addition, but with Blizzard you have to take a hardline #NoChanges approach. Otherwise you'll get something like the WC3 remaster, or every Classic WoW expansion. They did add a few small additions after the remaster was released, like Helltides and some new Runewords, but they're all thankfully ignorable if you want to.

gila

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They adjusted the level scaling for S3, with different thresholds depending on the world tier you're in. As you approach the monster level cap for a given world tier, the scaling slows down so that it's outpaced by the player level.

I agree it shouldn't have scaled 1:1 all the way to max level on launch, but people are super quick to forget how well D4 was generally received on launch. It was literally used as a counterexample to games that launched badly, "it was more like a toddler trying to make an MMO" seems like a dishonest characterisation to me. What complaints do you have that aren't long since resolved?

djsoren19

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I mean, releasing one of the worst ARPGs of all time isn't exactly a triumphant launch. I think D4 is fine now that it's effectively become a sequel to D3, which is why I tried to use the past-tense as much as I could, but D4 was only received well by casuals. Every ARPG fan I know and every content creator I watched played it for like 2 days, realized there were deep systemic issues, and dipped.

gila

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That's just not consistent with the reality that Diablo 4 was released to wide acclaim. Wolcen was far worse than D4 in almost every area. I think you just got farmed for engagement, because contrarianism is trendy.

TauriWarrior

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Everyone I know that played at launch when I asked if it was worth getting told me no, even more so after the first few patches

gila

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_IV#Reception

There wasn't really any discontent online about the base game mechanics until there was discontent about the live service content for S1 a couple of months later.

I might be ignoring nonsense complaints like about barb nerfs despite barb being consistently the most powerful class by a significant margin to this day, simply due to having more slots for more affixes & legendary powers

Gigagoblin

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people were literally criticising the game so much on all the Diablo-related r/'s that i had to unsub from each one. like, yeah, it got good ratings, but if anything, that only served to further incense the ones displeased.

there was a lot of stupid, toxic bs, for sure, but there were also players dipping out before the first season even began -- myself included. like, this is just me, obviously, but D4 at launch was straight up the most let down i've ever been by a game.

for brevity's sake, i gotta say that season 4 made me wanna give D4 another shot. & you know, it's fun now, but there are still elements to it that make me want to scream & that's not gonna change, because it's all a part of their vision for the core experience of the game.

gila

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Ya, that's a subreddit for an online game tho - being a circlejerk of negativity is like its primary function, even for breakout hits like Helldivers or The Finals. It's part of why I left reddit completely, and why "someone online said it's bad" doesn't pass the sniff test for legitimate criticism for me. As an ARPG enthusiast, I went in with the expectation that it was neither POE nor Diablo Immortal; that I'd play it alongside other ARPG's cyclically; that it'd be made or broken by the quality of the seasonal content & meta.

I understand it fell short of others' expectations, but I think that's primarily an issue with the expectations. That I'd rather play D4 right now over PoE or Last Epoch doesn't mean that those aren't great games, they just don't have that fresh content right now and that's ok, despite that you can easily find equivalent negative discourse about it. And if D4 S5 sucks, the inverse will also be true.

Evotech

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I agree, it feels very artificial and it breaks my perception of the game almost immediately.

In path of exile, you kind do the same thing. You want to fight stronger enemies because you are stronger and by doing it, you can get more and better rewards. But it's ultimately your decision when you want to face harder content. Not some algorithm that is tied to your precieved gear level.

SchmidtGenetics

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Isn’t that the point of him saying about “the consumptive nature”? They couldn’t do what they wanted to, because they were doing a live service (that a large portion of people do want) so concessions had to be made.

I don’t think they are saying they tried doing it, it’s just the two ideas couldn’t coexist.

djsoren19

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Eh, it sounds to me like they're saying "we tried to imitate D2 exactly, but people don't want it anymore." That's just flat out a lie though, because they didn't imitate D2 at all. In the article, the mention that a player could conceivably take years to drop specific "uber uniques." While true that it would take a lot of time to drop it naturally, D2 had a pretty robust trading economy in it's later years. Unless you were specifically going solo, you had the option to save up. It took time, but it was a goal that was accomplishable on ladder.

Unless they changed it when I wasn't looking, uber uniques are not tradable in D4 at all. I'm not necessarily going to argue for or against that, it's a game design choice, but it's specifically not the choice made by D2. Obviously players aren't going to want to grind for years for a specific item, but they never had to in the past.

magic_lobster_party

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I just want a game without the time pressure of seasons. I want to play games in my own pace. It’s hard to maintain an attachment to the character when the character “expires” once the season ends.

I haven’t played D4, so I’m not sure how seasons are implemented in that game, but this was a problem in D3. Once the season ends there’s little reason to continue playing with the character.

tb_

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Warframe is kinda cool in that regard, almost all content remains accessible.. in some form or another. Save for a rare few time limited events, all quests and such have remained accessible.

The one major caveat to that is "prime" versions of weapons and frames, you will have to get into player trading if you want certain ones and don't want to wait for the rotating "unvaulting". But, thanks to that unvaulting, most primes aren't ridiculously expensive to trade for. Even when you get back into the game years later and are missing a bunch (me).

There's a completely free battle pass-like system too, but that also will return items from previous passes.

There's a lot of systems... one issue of keeping so much around I guess. There are more technicalities, some weapons become less viable with time and power creep, yet a new mod or update may revitalise them! Same goes for the frames themselves, the devs have gone back and reworked older ones to bring them up to par with more modern ones.

TimewornTraveler

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Warframe is an absolutely excellent game and one more devs should look towards. Nearly endlessly entertaining, genuinely F2P with virtually no strings attached (as long as there's a solid playerbase), lots of room for creative expression and exploration, care from the devs, great stuff.

Pretty much the only thing wrong with it is the endless bugs, but like, what game doesn't have bugs? Okay maybe Warframe has a few more bugs lol

LaserTurboShark69

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It's even worse in D4

Evotech

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There is a permanent league no?

magic_lobster_party

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The game is mainly designed around season play. You’ll miss out on content if you don’t participate in seasons. The game won’t be as enjoyable either, because it’s not designed to be played that way.

RunawayFixer

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This reads like a case of game design by spreadsheet to me. Instead of the lead designers being creative persons making creative decisions, these are accountants that are designing a game by ticking boxes. They didn't try to make a game that they would like to play, they tried to make a game that they think others would like to play.

haui_lemmy

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Huge difference between gaming and marketing. In gaming, you make things that you enjoy, hope others enjoy it too. In marketing, your opinion is worth jack shit. Only engagement counts. That makes for shitty games imo.

Robaque

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Ik it's only anecdotal, but I played Brawl Stars when it was in beta and witnessed almost all its updates until global launch (and have caught up with some more recent updates here and there). It went from a genuinely fun mobile game with character and potential to a plastic husk primed for whatever monetisation and "engagement" strategies analytics says needs to be shoved into it next.

At the time I couldn't fathom how all those updates that often made gameplay and progression less fun could ever be more "engaging" (the change from portrait to landscape in particular felt like straight up poor game design, trashing its unique mobile control schemes in favour of digital twin joysticks and "autoaim"), but in hindsight it's clear what that really meant.

kemsat

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I don’t understand the point of seasons. I don’t want to start a new character every 90 days.

magic_lobster_party

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It’s mostly to maintain user engagement. It’s a way to bring players back every now and then.

quafeinum

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Did the opposite for me. I quit before season 1 lol

magic_lobster_party

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Well it works best if the game is actually good.

A game that does seasons very well is Deep Rock Galactic. Each season comes with fresh new content. Old seasons can be revisited if you missed them, so no stress. The new additions to the game are permanent, which adds great variety to the missions. Progress follows between seasons, so no need to create new characters from scratch.

Most importantly: the game is really good as well.

GBU_28

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I don't mind an option. Some people enjoy the start more than the finish. "Alt-itis"

Evotech

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Fair, but there's also the permanent league.

kemsat

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Sure, but does the season content get added to the permanent league? As far as I know, it doesn’t, but I could be wrong.

Evotech

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Guess not.

For me the first two-the weeks are the best anyway. Everyone starts fresh, the economy is fresh, activity is happening.

Gives the game new life

Diablo bores me, but with PoE it's very exciting. And with every league you pay you become better at the game, so the next league you know more and you'll make stronger characters and farm better items

Daxtron2

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So don't play seasons then? Thats what the eternal league is for

TimewornTraveler

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Say it with me: Nothing that Activision Blizzard ever makes will be ever good again.

They sold out at least a decade ago and they have produced nothing but skinner box bullshit since. It's all 100% trash and I expect zero from them.

Rev

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I, for one, was never a fan of the grind. I played Diablo 2 online for years because the people and interactions made doing the same old runs more fun and exciting. These days it almost seems like games are intentionally made worse because success is measured in units sold and not cult followings or individual experience.

bjoern_tantau

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I got into the mood of some ARPG goodness with all the Path of Exile 2 news. Diablo 2 really was the only viable one for me. Even PoE 1 isn't right for me either. It feels too claustrophobic.

NuWuX

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Maybe try Last Epoch or No Rest for the Wicked? They aren't perfect and nothing will ever be Diablo 2, but I feel like they're decent.

Kolanaki

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Unfeasible... For whom? Certainly it isn't the players' ability to have fun.

Etterra

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Yet nobody comments on how these bastards used always online as DRM before realizing that they now had a captive audience to cram microtransactions down the throats of. Assholes.

Ashyr

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I'm pretty sure the always online drm was used to justify transactions in there first place due to the real money auction house.

Fades

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Fuck live service games, I’ve played enough for a lifetime. No more