Blizzard Shelves Diablo III Team Deathmatch Mode
- Thread starter MikeWehner
- Start date
I know that the merger wasn't entirely on Blizzard; parent company Vivendi Universal bought both companies, and merged them.ExtraDebit said:
But whoever the hell is running Blizzard at this point has either run out of talent under them, or has let the power go to their head, because these decisions, even from a a simple logical perspective, do not make any sense to me.
Bnet 2.0, I get. It's a business strategy. It's a dirty business strategy, but I have come to expect that.
No, what's mind-blowing is that it takes them 7 months to come out and say they are not providing ONE major function for ONE game, and their reasoning for doing so is highly questionable at best.
A function that would take MODDERS maybe a week to create.
Everyone likes to scapegoat Activision. Blizzard has always been owned by Vivendi. Vivendi also owns Activision. Blizzard wasn't bought out by Activision, Vivendi decided to merger the two corporations together. The blame lies 100% with Mike Morhaime as much as fanboys will deny it. Blizzard learned to embrace corporate culture, where less is more.fix-the-spade said:
Cue "LOL DIBLO 3 SUX I M SO CLEVR SO MNY GUD GAMS R BETR Y PEPLE PLAI IT SO BAD"
Seriously people, it's getting old.
OT: Well, there goes the last chance for a Diablo 3 revival. PvP was the only thing that could have had a chance of bringing in some new players.
Seriously people, it's getting old.
OT: Well, there goes the last chance for a Diablo 3 revival. PvP was the only thing that could have had a chance of bringing in some new players.
Presumably it got stuck in development (for whatever reason) and was later sidelined when it was crunch-time for Mists of Pandaria. When WoW: MoP was out of the way Blizzard took a look at Diablo 3´s player "velocity" (if you excuse the macroeconomic term), found it unsatisfactory and decided that the PvP wasn't worth the time or the expenses.
[sub]I had my attention on other things at the time that event took place, you see.[/sub]
Let's turn around the question: What kind of development team needs two years (or more) to develop and playtest an expansion for balance?Atmos Duality said:
Or they have made so much profit that they have gotten too big for their breeches. Then again, that ties in with your latter guess.Atmos Duality said:
Sorry for asking, but what was the dirty thing about it?
[sub]I had my attention on other things at the time that event took place, you see.[/sub]
That sounds about right, though I'm curious as to just how dire things have become for D3 if they're cutting development for features.Hjalmar Fryklund said:
I have no idea. Either question at this point leads to an absurd answer...or an infuriating one.
So much for reinvestment.
Bnet 2.0's primary function is a DRM system. It has few benefits over Bnet 1.0, with many more drawbacks.
(and social profiles, VOIP, chat etc is done better elsewhere)
Nearly every technical problem I had with Starcraft 2 was directly related to Bnet 2.0. At least I was able to enjoy the campaign without needing to go online, but it's very obvious that they want you on their system at all times.
(and for the apologists in the peanut gallery: I know it's their "legal right" to implement such a system, and I know the business reasons behind it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it, nor does it excuse them from any criticism.)
That would be interesting to know, wouldn't it? Though, what Blizzard would do if things really went down the toilet for D3 would be even more interesting. And I'm not saying this because the idea of D3 tanking makes me salivate (Read: It doesn't), I am genuinely curious about the consequences that would follow.Atmos Duality said:
To answer my own question; it's (likely) either a very, very small dev team with a slow progression rate (due to, say, day jobs or family related matters), or a medium-to-large team that isn't very motivated at getting things done.
Indeed. Really, unless there are some serious financial issues that Blizzard are facing (which we are unaware of), I am willing to bet that they are just pocketing that money and living it off. Which is probably why they aren't all that motivated to actually get all the announced game features in working condition on launch date.
Oh, and thanks for the info on Bnet 2.0.
CAPTCHA: money lender
How very poetic indeed.
My basic opinion of Diablo III is that it's exactly what was advertised. The basic "click, loot, click, loot" system is pretty much the same that it's ever been, and what made the franchise famous. They dumbed it down to make it more approachable to casuals, which they also did to WoW, but to be fair that's not entirely unexpected nowadays. The core gameplay is still pretty much intact.
The problem seems to be mostly that the game didn't really innovate, if you've done clicking and looting before, you've done it here, and while more efficient, there isn't a lot more to it. Everyone had ideas for directions they would have liked Diablo to go in, but all they got was the same basic experience.
The new innovations like the real money auction house were always iffy, Diablo being a fairly solitary game (no persistant world) there really isn't a whole heck of a lot to do other than collect loot. Once you get up to the point where you can kill the strongest monsters, there isn't a lot left to do other than see how big you can get. In that kind of enviroment there is no real motivation for people to want to pay big bucks for epic loot from other players, because really, after a point, what's the big deal? The whole point is to get the loot, if someone sells it to you, you just paid to not play your own game, and in the end does it matter of you overkill a mob by an extra 50 points so maybe you and a friend can see it and apprecite how big your numbers get?
The flaw was simply that Diablo 3 wasn't ambitious enough, they decided to dumb down the core mechanics, but otherwise just do what they did before, eithout increasing the scope of the game.
I can easily see why team PVP was abandoned. It goes beyond simply the issue of reward (and making rewards worthwhile could disrupt the rest of the grind-infrastructure as far as it follows, as well as leas to situations where people would get together and throw matches just to grind PVP rewards and such), down to the basic issue of how you make it fair. Everything comes from loot, if you don't let people use their loot there is no point, if you do it comes down to people with the best loot always winning, which DOES provide some reason for people to farm for the real money AH, but then it just comes down to who is the richest to twink the most and while some people might do that, it's not something the whole community will get involved in.
Truthfully I think Blizzard should consider looking at what some other "loot clicker" games like Sacred 2 did, with open worlds, along with some of the refinements competitors in the pure dungeon crawler version like Torchlight pulled off. If they ever want to make a Diablo IV, they will need to learn from their competition.
I'll also say in response to some other posts, I suspect Blizzard might also not be too heavily involved here due to "Project Titan". If we assume Blizzard realizes D3 is kind od a dog at this point, one can see why they might not want to divert the resources there, especially if they are planning on getting their new MMO out in the next coupld of years and don't want to see it tank like just about every other MMO released in recent years. Time spent making a broken PVP battle arena for D3 is time they could spend polishing up the PVP in their new game for example, and hopefully learn from the mistakes they made with WoW.
The problem seems to be mostly that the game didn't really innovate, if you've done clicking and looting before, you've done it here, and while more efficient, there isn't a lot more to it. Everyone had ideas for directions they would have liked Diablo to go in, but all they got was the same basic experience.
The new innovations like the real money auction house were always iffy, Diablo being a fairly solitary game (no persistant world) there really isn't a whole heck of a lot to do other than collect loot. Once you get up to the point where you can kill the strongest monsters, there isn't a lot left to do other than see how big you can get. In that kind of enviroment there is no real motivation for people to want to pay big bucks for epic loot from other players, because really, after a point, what's the big deal? The whole point is to get the loot, if someone sells it to you, you just paid to not play your own game, and in the end does it matter of you overkill a mob by an extra 50 points so maybe you and a friend can see it and apprecite how big your numbers get?
The flaw was simply that Diablo 3 wasn't ambitious enough, they decided to dumb down the core mechanics, but otherwise just do what they did before, eithout increasing the scope of the game.
I can easily see why team PVP was abandoned. It goes beyond simply the issue of reward (and making rewards worthwhile could disrupt the rest of the grind-infrastructure as far as it follows, as well as leas to situations where people would get together and throw matches just to grind PVP rewards and such), down to the basic issue of how you make it fair. Everything comes from loot, if you don't let people use their loot there is no point, if you do it comes down to people with the best loot always winning, which DOES provide some reason for people to farm for the real money AH, but then it just comes down to who is the richest to twink the most and while some people might do that, it's not something the whole community will get involved in.
Truthfully I think Blizzard should consider looking at what some other "loot clicker" games like Sacred 2 did, with open worlds, along with some of the refinements competitors in the pure dungeon crawler version like Torchlight pulled off. If they ever want to make a Diablo IV, they will need to learn from their competition.
I'll also say in response to some other posts, I suspect Blizzard might also not be too heavily involved here due to "Project Titan". If we assume Blizzard realizes D3 is kind od a dog at this point, one can see why they might not want to divert the resources there, especially if they are planning on getting their new MMO out in the next coupld of years and don't want to see it tank like just about every other MMO released in recent years. Time spent making a broken PVP battle arena for D3 is time they could spend polishing up the PVP in their new game for example, and hopefully learn from the mistakes they made with WoW.
To say Diablo III "dumbed down" the gameplay of the series would be to imply that said gameplay was ever intelligent to begin with.Therumancer said:
Gameplay in Diablo II can be summed up as "Just spam your classes uber-skill[footnote]Like Frozen Orb & Sacred/Blessed Hammer, to name the biggest two[/footnote] and just chug potions if by some miracle you actually manage to be in danger of dieing", you don't get much more "casual friendly" than that.
All D3 did was remove the horde of padding that was the skill & stat system that surrounded said gameplay.
LUL wut? You make a virtual MMO then ban PVP....WTF?!?!!?!? As always modern games are worth more like 25$ than 50+.......................
Funny story about Torchlight 2:
With the coming tools, I can mod it as I see fit.
That means I can, if I had the resources, kick the awful and unmemorable lore and story and whathaveyou up the jaw and up its balls and force it to have reconstructive surgery lest I kick it some more. And I don't have to worry about internet connectivity or the prospect of being invaded by another player with hax because, in tandem with the Steam version, I bought their non-Steam version for my tablet laptop convertible whenever I need to travel to some treacherous and crime-ridden Southeast Asian city.
Diablo 3, on the other hand, dictates that I need a fucking 3G portable modem to even play the gods-forsaken thing, and faith to its server-side data storage for any semblance of progress, and modding is completely verboten.
I completely expect the entire world to say that that mindset alone still makes me a fucking fanboy and dismiss my calling it "the most optimal choice". Yes, just rub that in my face, will you? I don't suppose you'll come to my house and sledgehammer my computer to prove your point against mine?
With the coming tools, I can mod it as I see fit.
That means I can, if I had the resources, kick the awful and unmemorable lore and story and whathaveyou up the jaw and up its balls and force it to have reconstructive surgery lest I kick it some more. And I don't have to worry about internet connectivity or the prospect of being invaded by another player with hax because, in tandem with the Steam version, I bought their non-Steam version for my tablet laptop convertible whenever I need to travel to some treacherous and crime-ridden Southeast Asian city.
Diablo 3, on the other hand, dictates that I need a fucking 3G portable modem to even play the gods-forsaken thing, and faith to its server-side data storage for any semblance of progress, and modding is completely verboten.
I completely expect the entire world to say that that mindset alone still makes me a fucking fanboy and dismiss my calling it "the most optimal choice". Yes, just rub that in my face, will you? I don't suppose you'll come to my house and sledgehammer my computer to prove your point against mine?
If all you wanted was to beat the game and pad out your stats, then yes, you could make a typical Hammerdin, FO-MF Sorc get rushed to 85 and do Bhaal runs until you died of boredom.Aeshi said:
Nothing better demonstrates the banality of the genre than doing exactly that: High Efficiency with no room for deviation.
Factor in stupid amounts of Grind, and I cannot honestly call that "gaming" anymore: I call that a job.
If one actually wanted to play the game, they could make it legitimately more challenging by not just using max-efficiency cookie cutter builds, and seeing how far they could take them (or combine them).
What you call skill padding is design space for the player to experiment (though some skills have always sucked to the point of uselessness. I didn't claim it was perfect).
I beat the game with unconventional builds that "shouldn't have worked", and I had more fun doing that than picking the uber-skills and abusing them for maximum efficiency.
This may not make the game interesting for you personally, but the fact that the option was there on the table at all shows how D2 had more potential in concept than D3 ever will in practice.
Translation: We could not figure out how to effectively monetize it, so there is no way we would add something that allows players to decide their own enjoyment and draws attention away from other "features" we have properly monetized.
Now, if only we could get blizzard to shelf the entire game, and somehow undo all the damage done by people buying it in the first place, this might look less like the gory train wreck it has been since well before launch.
Yes well "concepts" are exactly that, concepts. Fleeting, insubstantial and - unless you happen to be one of the people capable of making them happen - useless. "Concept" has never achieved anything unless it had Practice to back it up.Atmos Duality said:
In concept, D2 may have more potential customization-wise than D3, but in practice the vast majority of said skill & stat combinations were basically useless even when they weren't competing with the aforementioned uber-powers.
In concept, the TF2 unlockables are side-grades, but in practice there are a good few that are basically flat-out upgrades (Escape Plan, Soda Popper & Red Tape Recorder to name the most notable 3)
When there's a game that actually proves that large skill trees and their like can be balanced then I'll start opposing the so-called "dumbing down" of games. Until then you get no points for multiple choices if there's an optimal one.
Lots of people have spotty internet. Mine right now is fine, but when I visited my family over Christmas they were having small disconnects constantly and I know my brother can't play anything that needs you to be always on reliably because things slow to a near halt several times a day. He doesn't even live out in the country, just a somewhat out of the way part of the city. While it may slow things down it doesn't stop him from using his email, downloading things, or any number of things, but it does prevent him from playing games that require you to be always online. Anyone who lives in his area wouldn't be able to either. It's really not that rare for places to have old or poorly maintained lines, especially in lower population areas or places where the primary provider has little competition.major_chaos said:
Actually they did, originally Diablo had multiple skill trees allowing you to build very differant kinds of characters out of each professions. Yes there were ideal builds and skill choices, but nothing ever forced you to use them, and those builds developed over a substantial period of time, playing, and community testing. Yes you did wind up with a lot of skills that wound up being replaced by better skills later on if you were looking for an ideal point, but you still had those skills, and the option to play the game using them beyond their peak point if you so chose, with people finding odd ways to maximize earlier skills through synergy to do some rather impressive things, part of the appeal that kept people playing Diablo 2 all the way up until the release of 3 (and afterwards).Aeshi said:
Diablo 3 removed that by making each class a complete cookie cutter, you didn't have to choose between trees and decide where to put points, rather your given everything, there is no real need for experimentation, or to have differant members of a class with differant skill configurations or whatever, because everybody has everything.
In short they removed what depth was present in what was a very simple game.
To put it into perspective other people working with the "click looter" genere (I have a hard time calling them Action-RPGs), increased the depth. For example "Sacred 2" not only went with an open world approach (multiple towns, quests, somewhat ambigious objective, etc...) but allowed you to develop each character type in radically differant directions with innate abillities, but also added skills into the mix. For example you could do a Dryad with either the magic or ranged weapons options that come from the basic uses of the abilliy path, but some people have also managed to do things like turn it into a melee monster using dual wielded staffs which is kind of counter-intuitive to the way the character is presented. This game expanded on what Diablo 2 allowed, but it used to be a similar kind of game. Diablo 3 went in the opposite direction, becoming simpler, rather than expanding on developments and depth of other "loot clickers". When I went into Diablo 3 I was thinking the game was going to blow my socks off, if a relatively small and failing company like Asceron entertainment could make something like "Sacred 2", imagine what Blizzard had for us... Yeaaah... imagine alright.
To be fair Diablo is not an MMO. It's more of a single player game that has some tacked on multi-player aspects. The issue of PVP and visiting other people's game worlds and such has always been a touchy one due to the single-player core of the game, with things being broken ever since the very first Diablo... PVP and large scale interaction was something they never could get to work here. The one thing that actually did work was a few people being willing to sell loot for real money, with some rather impressive Ebay auctions. The real money auction house was kind of intended to facilitate these transfers and give Blizzard a cut, but it was always a really fringe occurance, so the idea didn't explode quite like they were hoping. At the end of the day most people aren't going to pay someone else to get loot for them, when that's the point of the game. It's a little differant from games like WoW, where the reason why people have paid for things like that is because of the way raid tiers work, and players wanting to skip over shunned content or things they aren't interested in, to catch up with the majority of players at the level of endgame they are interested in. It's a practice I don't agree with, but fundementally differant in it's reasoning than Diablo loot sales, coming from a differant kind of game with a persistant community.ZippyDSMlee said:
Also understand that Blizzard has never, ever, been able to do PVP right. I consider surrendering the issue to be a good thing, rather than tacking on more broken modes that will lead to nothing but frustration with an unfixable mess. At the end of the day if your going to have PVP in an MMO balance needs to come before everything, that's fine if your doing a game totally based around PVP, but if the game exists primarily as a PVE experience, that isn't a whole lot of fun, and the tendency is to want to create the character types as you envision them and are fun to play in the majority of the game. There are also issues involving things like crowd control, which is a useful tool in PVE, but a character based around it becomes "all or nothing" in PVP. Loot accumulation also becomes a problem, after all if you can't use your loot it kind of defeats the purpose of wanting to compete with it, but if you can use it, it means nobody who doesn't have equivilent stuff remotely has a chance.
At the end of the day I am beginning to think PVP is going to be dead as an "add on" for MMOs, at least as a serious focus, Blizzard's "surrender" at least for this flavor of PVP (duelling is still in the works) is probably a sign of this as they are probably the most influential MMO developer. I suspect your going to see MOBA games totally based around PVP from the ground up filling that niche, while MMOs focus entirely on PVE and Cooperative play. Trying to do both has ruined a lot of games, with characters getting ruined trying to juggle the usefulness of abillities in PVE and PVP with them becoming gimped due to concerns about one arena or another. I look at the Smuggler in ToR as an example of that, they gimped the holy hell out of that character (at least when I played) because of PVP complaints, and made it very difficult to even play in PVE as a result. Of course I'd also say that I expect 90% of that problem was Sith "PVP masters" complaining about losing to smugglers, seemed to me like anything that was slowing down the Sith Inquisitor from being a PVP gawd class was getting nerfed for a while, but that's just how it looked. (I played Jedi Counslar, I did okay in both PVP and PVE, but wasn't super good at either, played pretty slow to me).
Seeing how I was still able to beat D2 on the highest difficulty using most of them in some fashion or another, I cannot call them "useless". They weren't OPTIMAL, but it's still quite possible to win, and it forces the player to improvise, which I find entertaining.Aeshi said:
D3 doesn't even offer you that. You *MUST* use cookie cutters and grind to win Inferno.
(and hope Blizzard doesn't nerf your build)
That doesn't entirely fit, because TF2 is a PvP, competitive game, and it's designed from the ground up to be a competitive game. Different philosophies for balance apply to PvP and PvE.
PvP, you feel pressured because you have to compete. That's the nature of it.
PvE, who cares how other people play?
Well, it wouldn't need those points anyway, because that isn't a universal truth in gaming.
Variant gameplay doesn't exist under that philosophy, and I prefer games that give me the options for variants.
If you enjoy totally-objective gameplay, fine. There are games for you.
And here I thought I was bad about long widened repliesTherumancer said:
At the end of the day I'd rather have it like it was than not at all.