DnD 5e had a license for use that allowed 3rd party companies to make stuff for the game following specific rules, and they did so which of course helped with increasing the popularity of the brand. This license existed due to the backlash from players and 3rd party developers who did not like the 4e licensing which was ridiculously restrictive.
Then WotC/Hasbro decided they wanted more control and put out a draconian revision and also tried to invalidate the existing license using questionable legal logic that wouldn't stand up in court, but would be cost prohibitive for the 3rd party companies to fight in court. This revision also included licensing costs that would drive 3rd party companies out of business. Then they did a revision that tried to make creating a virtual tabletop that could be used with DnD a violation to try and corner the market for WotC's completely non-existent virtual tabletop.
Basically they tried to stop doing the thing they had in place for like a decade to milk an unrealistically high amount of money out of companies that were working with them and tried to force this on extremely short notice. So same thing as reddit and now Unity are doing.
Expect the next version of DnD to be a walled garden again like 4e was and most likely fade out of the public view again.
The true irony here is that TSR went bankrupt because they tried to mess with the community content licenses that were basically gentleman’s agreements at the time, allowing WotC to purchase D&D in the first place with 3rd edition. I hope they sell the property to someone that understands how to run that golden goose, without expecting unlimited growth.
Look at what they just did for the new D2R ladder season. There were literally no patches at all. They just reset the ladder. It’s not like there are any glaring problems cough cough mosiac cough cough that need to be fixed or anything.
If I use a sample size of me and use my library of a measurement, it’s probably more than 25% of games I haven’t even launched let alone completing the first mission.
A new Expansion is in the works too! Crate Entertainment really cares about their game and it shows, not many games out there with that kind of long-term support
I don‘t support Microsoft in any way but it is kinda funny that some PlayStation Users seem to feel personally attacked that Microsoft starts to do all the exclusivity shit that Sony has done for ages. Quit treating the whole thing as a team thing - a my team vs. that other team thing. Sony AND Microsoft are companies that will both fuck you over within the blink of an eye if it will make them money or damage the other company.
I don‘t support Microsoft in any way but it is kinda funny that some PlayStation Users seem to feel personally attacked that Microsoft starts to do all the exclusivity shit that Sony has done for ages. Quit treating the whole thing as a team thing - a my team vs. that other team thing.
I don’t even own a PlayStation so why should I quit anything? In fact, I’m a PC gamer running Windows. I can make my dumb jokes as often as I like and when I want to make fun of the fact that both Microsoft and Bethesda claimed before the acquisition that it was not about removing cross-platform support for Bethesda games and Microsoft also claims to “❤️ Linux”, you cannot stop me, even if you’d like to.
I also find it hilarious that Microsoft apologists claim that “that Sony has done the same for ages” which is factually untrue. Sony hardly ever bought cross-platform games in-house for PlayStation exclusivity (maybe the would of they had enough spare money but they don’t). Sony also releases plenty of games for Microsoft platforms, including MLB The Show, Horizon, Spider-Man, Ratchet and Clank, God of War, etc. Heck, the recently announced Marathon reboot is confirmed to come to Xbox and not just PlayStation and Microsoft Windows. Much of my PC gaming in recent years was spent playing Sony games on Windows.
I bought a PS5 because my old XBone was on the fritz, and the series x wasn’t available at the time… plus hardware failure from the Xbone made me lean towards Sony anyway. Hard-core console gamers also helped push me into it as well… “who cares about Halo, you will be able to play all the good games on either console”.
I have no team, and now I kind of regret even buying a console at all, it’s only real feature for me is it has a fast boot up time lol. Every other article about a new game seems to be a kick in the nuts to console owners.
What’s the benefit of Steam deck vs something like Ally ROG? Genuine question, I have no horse in the race. (I can’t even find as much time as I wished to game in my free time at home, I am definitely not going to spend book reading time on subpar gaming)
Scaling content means there’s little power scaling variety, viable builds are very narrow so there’s not much build variety, the leveling curve is punishingly slow because they are trying to live service it, and seasons have lame rewards and boring features so far. Dungeon variety is nearly non-existent and poorly randomized with time wasting objective design.
Also it’s a Diablo game where none of the endgame content takes place in Hell.
TL;DR: Designing games as a live service means designing around time wasting and anti-player choices.
Damn, really disappointing to hear. I felt like D3 was ok but for some reason couldn’t quite match up to D2, and so was hoping that D4 would deliver. But now I know to at least adjust my expectations if/when I finally play.
Basically a game that is designed to receive regular content updates and have revolving meta elements. It’s a game that is designed to not have an end.
Agreed. It’s a solid game that just gets boring. I enjoyed the campaign and the co-op play. I liked the variety of play of the classes.
But since the launch they’ve just made the game boring. The first big patch just nerfed every build. It’s not a competitive game - they just decided you should have less fun I guess.
Gems are super boring - instead of being excited for them to drop, inactively ignore them. And the first seasons only mechanic is… fancy gems.
The towns are designed to make you run around a ton. The mount mechanics are actively hostile (maps have areas where you need to dismount to progress, then there’s a 10s cool down before you can mount again). Inventory management kinda sucks. The whole loot management part of the game is kinda flat and that’s a major component of this series.
It’s weird because this was the smoothest launch of a Diablo and the game felt feature rich as you leveled. But the end game is so fucking boring. They have so many things in D3 they could have just copied but instead we’ll end up with yet another patch of nerfs in a single player game.
From my time playing it, the looting wasn’t satisfying nor was the combat. In looting, the drop rate of things good or useful for your class seemed too low. For combat, it kinda felt like there were wild swings in difficulty that made level progress kinda disappointing. Some of this may have been fixed more recently; I have not played in at least two months.
I tried the D4 beta, and I was unable to turn off seeing other players, presumably because they want me to see players in paid shop gear and get sick with envy. That and the battle pass bullshit was enough to make me blacklist a series I've played for thousands of hours since the first installment.
Blizzard don't make games anymore, they make cash extraction software masquerading as games. But hey, they sold a trillion copies to dumb fucks across the globe, so I'm sure the next thing they release will be even worse.
The game industry seems to have been heavily infected with capitalistic bullshit. It’s really sad to see what was once a fun combination of art, entertainment, nerdiness, and tech turn into another soulless cash machine.
I’m not sure if they were or not. I wasn’t around during that time. I’m more commenting on this prevailing narrative that video games were this auteur-focused medium that’s just now being sullied by capitalism. That’s a false narrative and I think what’s really happening is that we’re becoming more and more aware of just how insidious unchecked capitalism can really be and we’re noticing it more and more in the things that we love. Whereas in the past, we may have been less critical or interrogative of the industry as a whole.
I’m just sitting around playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon and, while id prefer something narrative driven, it’s been giving me the happies for quite a while.
Well compared to D2, the progression was reverse linear, you started off strong at Level 1, and cleared rooms and then you became weaker as you levelled up.
To maintain your strength, you needed to have the optimal gear in every slot (head, armor, gloves, boots, etc), and have an optimal spec.
The issue was that the items were egregiously generic, and were replaced pretty much on a constant basis, anything you picked up was an upgrade until Level 50, when “Sacred” and “Artifact” became a class, and your entire inventory was outdated.
The main issue was they began by making Diablo: Immortal, a mobile game and midway through development remembered it’s a PC game and not a mobile micro transaction machine, and kept the MT shop in the game regardless (which retails for $100, mind you)
I’m a Diablo 1&2 Veteran, who has meleed Uber Diablo to death with a Fury Druid in 2022, soloed Diablo in 1996 with a Warrior, and I’ve never been more bored playing an ARPG than Diablo 4.
My best friend is a stoner, so he got far more value out of it. To be fair, he also gets a lot of value out of staring at walls, so there’s that.
I finished the campaign with my wife and we had fun do it together than after 90 hrs or so (we kept the screen a lot so I’m not sure its actually 90 hrs) I deleted it and went on, right when season 1 started. I tried to come back to it yesterday alone and it was just… Dull. The game was boring as hell playing alone, after 2 hours I deleted it again
In D2 finding gear felt fun. Runes were rare but powerful and sets/legendaries offered different build paths. You also had control over magic find with the ability to lower your power to increase magic find.
D3 (much later) expanded sets so that a number of builds were viable per class, making it fun to find any piece of gear. They also added rifts to challenge yourself to no end. The devs liked watching people push higher tiers and celebrated it.
D4 does not have runes or sets. Every legendary effect can to removed from the legendary and added to any yellow piece of gear. As a result, you’re typically chasing random yellow items for a .1% increase that all feels very samey until you find a unique. Currently, uniques are not even close to all being viable. Also blizz activity monitors unique drop rates and decreases them/bans people for finding ways to increase drop rates. The devs do not like people pushing harder stuff because that means they spending less time looking at the intentionally shitty (free) transmogs. They want you to grind away for days to get incremental success so you tire of your looks and buy skins and battle passes. If that explanation sucks, then I have no fucking idea what they’re doing. Maybe they expect us to grind because they don’t know how to create more content?
The short and sweet answer is that it’s just not Diablo. It does not compare with any of the previous Diablo releases in the slightest. It might as well be a generic mobile game like immortal…
It’s just fucking boring and bland looking. It’s everything that sucked about 3 and then doubled down on the suck. I may be biased as fuck, but Path of Exile is infinitely more fun than D3 and 4 combined. I dumped hundreds of hours into D2 and then a bunch more into the remaster, but D3 felt like a chore and D4 couldn’t even hook me with the beta enough to buy the game.
I was reading a blog post that talks about exactly how much the author is able to put in the public domain. My understanding is that Willingham has a fairly individualized contract with DC that he is grandfathered in on and is rather abnormal nowadays and gives him more control. DC has been trying to, as stated above, “reinterpret” that contract to give them more control.
Essentially, DC may own the rights to the individual products they published, but the world and characters Willingham created can be used outside of those in new or reimagined context.
That creates a significant can of worms in regards to what parts of the character are derived from the source material that is owned by DC. See not allowing sherlock holmes to smile for an example.
games
Gorące
Magazyn ze zdalnego serwera może być niekompletny. Zobacz więcej na oryginalnej instancji.