Blizzard is dead. At the time they were Activision. Now they are Microsoft. The blizzard that existed to make StarCraft, warcraft and diablo only exists in name.
I don’t know, the World of Warcraft dev team recently unionized and got Chris Metzen to return as creative director. And, personally, as a current WoW player (War Within is great so far btw) the whole feel of the studio is so much better than during Shadowlands when things were bad and I quit the game. I think that Warcraft at least is having a bit of a comeback now.
I don’t really know details about who does what at Blizzard, but isn’t he the guy responsible for the utter train wreck of Diablo3’s writing? Whoever wrote and approved “How tastes your fear, Nephalem?” did a bad job.
He wrote the setting for Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft. He developed the story for Diablo 1 - 3 as well as most of the lore for the first 3 Warcraft games I believe.
There was no story for Diablo 1. At exile con the creators of Diablo talk about how there was no story and the execs at Blizzard tacked one on. Chris Metzen had nothing to do with it.
What? I played Diablo 1, it literally had a story? Chris Metzen co-created the setting for the franchise with David Brevik and Bill Roper in 1996. The changes Blizzard wanted made from the original concept of Diablo was to make it real-time rather than turn based and to add multiplayer as part of the publishing agreement. I don’t see anything about a storyline being “forced” on the developers.
Basically David brevik said that there was no story and the cut scene on the end was added by blizzard south. They had no intent to add that.
I stand corrected though. Metzen is credited as a writer on Diablo. But not Diablo 2.
I suspect Metzen wrote the ending that was tacked on according to Brevik, since at that time blizzard north was a completely different team at the time.
One game was all it took for Big Red to turn from an epic “Not even death can save you from me” into a cartoon villain. Fucker wouldn’t shut up throughout Act 4…
Review bombs and “boycotts” are frustrating because it seems like the average player has the willpower of a hungry toddler. “Hey, don’t buy this game. They make their developers work 20 hour days.” -> “Oh yeah fuck them! …ooh, but there’s a shiny angel wing skin if I preorder? Well mmmmmmm well sure it’s just $90 what does it hurt”
But I don’t know. I’m kind of in a mood lately where I feel like I’m surrounded by overgrown toddlers.
It’s a shame, I liked OW1, even with the tired meta and 6v6 more than I liked OW2.
The loot boxes weren’t predatory, allowing unlocking of skins and content without spending anything extra was a nice balance in my opinion that I wish more games did.
They took OW1 and bastardized it, it deserves the rating it has. It used to be that new versions of games were better.
It used to be that new versions of games were better.
I for one am very interested to see the quality differences between worker owned game studios and corporate studios. But last I heard they had only just started unionizing.
And a programmer friend I talked to couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
Tech workers in general have been finally making baby steps with unions trying to form at goog and maybe a couple others. I think kickstarter got a union a couple years ago as well… There are some other examples too which is a big change from just a few years ago
unions are a harder sell in an industry like tech where it’s common to have a diverse skill set spanning work that could arguable each be it’s own union. does a full stack dev have to join the database admin union before they can write sql queries?
those diverse skill sets also make the individual value of workers fluctuate a lot more as well.
I still like the idea of unions but I just don’t know how you can make them work for tech;if anyone has any good resources on the subject I’d love to read more about it
And a programmer friend I talked to couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
I also had a programmer friend that was anti-union. He was like “If the place I’m working at sucks, I’ll just find another place.” Very short sighted and optimistic.
Ehhh, they were basically the same thing as a slot machine. The battlepass is certainly worse, as it just encourages rampant (not so) microtransactions, but just because the current battlepass system is really predatory, doesn’t mean the old loot box system wasn’t predatory at all. It was just less predatory.
There’s a community at !finalfantasyxiv if you guys have any questions.
I’ll also say that if you are using KB/M to try a controller for a little bit, too. You’ll be surprised at how well it works. I can’t even play this game with a KB/M setup it’s so foreign to me.
I played 2.0-7.0 on KB/M, and now I’m learning to play on Steam Deck (so a controller is mandatory). It is surprising easy for DPS and tanks, but I’m still struggling with Healers.
Steam Deck was how I chose to play it too for my first time yesterday (though I played on the dock with PS3 controller). I chose arcanist, and it’s really smooth sailing for me.
I started with the Arcanist too, then Scholar. I really liked the gameplay.
Then I changed main class almost every expansion, starting with the Dark Knight, then Dancer, Sage, and now back to Dancer. None of the new classes caught my fancy this time 😅.
Healing is definitely its own little animal. My main job is Scholar, so I’ve had to create a couple of mostly healer specific things to help out. (You may already do some of this, so forgive me)
I don’t really use any macros for casting spells or anything like that, but what I have found helpful are three really simple ones that help with targeting.
The first being simply a focusTarget one that lets you set up, well, a focus target: /focustargetSince as a healer you are most oftes worried about the tank, I generally set them as the focus target. By itself that doesn’t do a whole lot, but then…
…I have two others that help. One that when you use it it selects whatever your focus target is: /target <f>So no matter where you are, you can get to the tank (or other focus) super quick for heals.
And the last one is one that jumps to whatever your current target is targeting. Kind of a mouthful, that, but pretty helpful: /target <tt>So in practice if you are doing damage to the boss and just need to quickly swap to whatever the boss is targeting, you can hit this, swap to a party member, heal them, and then press it again to go back to the boss.
Along with these are some settings that you might look into if you haven’t already. Control Settings -> Filters -> Filter Customization. In this section you can filter target groups by hitting LB + [one of the face buttons]. I basically 100% of the time use one that targets only enemies because you can always hit up and down to select party members. That lets me always use right and left for bad guys and there’s no confusion.
Lastly for targeting, pressing LB + up/down will select just enemies on your enemies list (this is obviously super handy for tanks). And LB + right/left will target Alliance members on other parties. So if you see that some healers are down on another team, that’s the shortcut to cycle through those members to help.
And then lastly lastly: there are some extra crossbars you can put up on the screen at all times under the Custom tab of Hotbar Settings. You may already know about these at this point, though.
So anyway, again, if you already know these things, then obviously feel free to ignore. But I hope at least some part of that helps a little.
I ended up choosing to play with a PS3 controller for my first time. My friends all say I’m crazy, but honestly I love the controls more than the standard MMO “Hit this numpad key and then switch hotbar, then hit this key”
I have 3,400 hours in this game. What I enjoy is that I’m not expected to dedicate my life to it. I pay for 30 days at a time and play when new content is released every 3 months.
I know the last expansion Dawntrail is being slated on Steam reviews, but gameplay wise it was great. The music was solid as always, the Arcadion content was fun and the new zones looked great. Given how good the story has been in the past expansions I can understand how hard it must be to write a whole new story arc and make everyone happy. Some people want something entirely new, while others want to keep it all the same.
I can understand how people can sink 3,400 hours into it. I alone sank 14 hours into it yesterday. I will say I personally don’t like the idea of paying a subscription for my time after buying the standard edition, but I do understand they need to make income somehow and for live service games like this that is hard without a subscription.
The subscription fee imo is warranted given they release new content every 3 months, which includes voice acting, new dungeons, and new raid content. If it was a monthly sub with nothing released between expansions it wouldn’t be acceptable imo. Highly recommend not having a recurring sub
I’m playing since the 2.0 days, I almost grew up with this game and its characters. Top tier game, be it as an MMO or a single player game, it is worth it.
I was dating a girl that sold me on 1.0, and I was going to play it with her. We broke up, and 1.0 released, and I just said fuck it. It wasn’t until Heavensward that I came back. It kills me that in that time I lost my original key, so I don’t even have my swanky 1.0 survivor rewards.
I’m so glad I came back, though. It’s been my only MMO since then, and it just gets better with every new release.
I still have my 1.0 disc, given how useful it is now, it horrifies my friends when they find out I’m using it as a coaster. I stopped playing before I could get the rewards too, so seeing people with the tattoos always makes me sigh.
My friends and I started with the 2.0 beta, and it’s wild to me that I’ve now played one game in three decades of my life (started when I was 29 and we are now into year 11).
Gonna be in a retirement home grinding to level 250 or whatever.
I’d recognise Limsa Lominsa anywhere. I’ve been playing since 1.0, with some breaks here and there. FFXIV is one of my favourite games ever, for story and gameplay.
I hope you enjoy it and have a great experience. Feel free to join us at !finalfantasyxiv as well.
The game kind of lost me eventually, but I’ve had some amazing experiences with it and it has a lot of good qualities. The music is fantastic, especially the parts where Soken is riffing on themes written by Uematsu like Coils and Stormblood.
Despite my reservations about the game of late, the stretch of post-ARR into Heavensward into Stormblood and post-Stormblood patch quests was amazing. And the community is unreasonably lovely for being an MMO.
I’m in love with the base game (haven’t touched any of the expansions yet). I love the music, it’s graphically gorgeous for a game of its age, and I like the characters. I will say I don’t personally care for the combat, that’s mostly because I don’t really care for MMO combat in general. But my issues have been somewhat alleviated by using a PS3 controller to play
The combat gets better, FFXIV has a massive issue of most classes only playing the way they’re supposed to on max level. I guess that’s common for many MMOs, but it’s especially bad here imo. I also stopped playing during Endwalker, so I don’t know what’s been revamped since then.
Even if they’ve continued to simplify and homogenise the classes, the dungeons and raids will get better. Once you get into the expansions you’ll start having more fun mechanics to play around.
“I like to preorder my groceries. I know they’re going to have what I want, they always do, but I just give them a few hundred in advance to make sure they’ll still have some when I get there.”
Tesco probably will but plenty of Christmas club companies have gone bust and left people without their order. Even companies as big as Tesco can get in a mess, it’s not like they hold the stock for you in advance.
IMO the issue isn’t WotC, it’s Hasbro. WotC is their golden goose and they’re squeezing it for everything. I haven’t checked their recent earnings calls but I wouldn’t be surprised if WotC is still their only subsidiary where the revenue isn’t declining.
I’ve got family members that have loyally progressed through this game over the course of years and they absolutely love it still. Great music throughout.
After playing it I went through the soundtrack and added a few songs to my “Background Music” playlist I use when trying to focus. It has a ton of great tracks.
lemmy.world
Aktywne