Yeah and Diablo III came out 10 years ago. There’s no excuse for Diablo IV.
Diablo III was (and still is) dumb mindless fun, it’s perfect at what it offers. Diablo IV is just boring, with a cash shop and paid seasons on top of it. Like oh sure, I’d love to pay to get a super nice transmog that nobody except me will ever see since the game is super dead.
That sounds like “guys we’re totally not going to announce the Switch 2 soon, don’t worry, we still support the OG Switch so you can still buy consoles and games for Christmas, k? Don’t need to wait for the next console, that totally doesn’t exist.”
You need dozens of hours just to get the grasp of mechanics and UI, less alone to figure out whether you even like the game
The problem with this thinking is that you split the game in 2 parts: first a tedious learning process of dozens of hours, and then an enjoyable experience once you know how to play, and imply that you need to get over the first part before being able (or allowed) to rate the game. But the learning part is the game, even more so if you need to invest dozens of hours.
Many players will simply enjoy the grind of Mount and Blade, because they don’t care about the endgame. Many players (maybe the same) will uninstall Dwarf Fortress after half an hour, because they will estimate that the learning curve isn’t worth their time, even if it was the greatest game ever.
As usual, people have no idea of the complexity of software. Games are extra complex. Games that are meant to run on an infinite variety of hardware combinations are worse. And it’s not any game, it’s an expansive RPG with hundreds of hours of gameplay and paths.
It’s impossible to ship this kind of product bug-free, and it’s quite probable that it will never truly be bug-free. A day-1 patch is obviously expected, and bugfixes in the following weeks mean that devs are closely monitoring how it goes, and are still working full-time on it. That’s commendable.
I bought it on sale 6 months ago, I have 20h on my main save and 8h on the last expedition. I can confidently say that I haven’t seen 80% of the game activities, but at the same time I feel like I’ve seen everything. That game is truly an inch deep, it’s incredibly shallow.