We're now two weeks past the launch of Diablo Immortal (D:I). The white hot outrage which was sparked by that game's monetization is starting to burn itself out; meanwhile, general sentiment about D:I itself, and about the Diablo franchise as a whole, has begun reverting to the mean.
That mean average level of sentiment seems a lot less positive towards the Diablo franchise as a whole than I expected, though, and while D:I has made a pile of cash in its first two weeks, that pile is also smaller than I thought it might be.
It's been a couple of weeks now since I switched from Windows 7 to Linux. If you're thinking of making the switch yourself, and wondering what that's like, I feel like I've now got enough experience to tell you what you can expect.
Yesterday, I switched from Windows 7 to Ubuntu, with the intention of gaming on Linux using Steam Play + Proton. Today, having installed a couple of dozen games to use as test cases, I finally booted up Path of Exile for the first time.
PoE is not a Linux game, and Grinding Gear Games does not provide any support for Linux. This means that I have to rely entirely on Valve's new Proton addition to Steam Play to run the game (well, I could try to run it myself independently, using Wine, but since Proton is Wine, it amounts to the same thing). And so, I booted up the game for the first time.... and it crashed the OS.
On Windows, this would mean ten minutes of downtime; on Linux, however, reboots take seconds, and are just no big deal. So, I booted it up again, dove into Steam, and restarted PoE... and it crashed again.
This time, though, only the game crashed; and, afterwards, Steam asked if I'd like to try booting the game in DX9 mode, rather than DX11. And so, figuring third time lucky, I said yes, and re-restarted the game... and it worked!
In fact, the login process was working better that it had been working on Windows, lately. I'm not sure why, but PoE on Windows 7 had been failing to open instances for the first two login attempts, every time the game was started, needing at least three tries to actually start the game. On Linux, once I managed to get the game to load, it started first on the try. Excelsior!
I've been a fan of Grinding Gear Games for a long time now. I've been playing Path of Exile since Open Beta (January 2013), and have spent more than I care to admit supporting development of a game which is entirely free to play. And I do mean entirely free; none of the gameplay content will cost you a single cent, ever.
Did I mention that they just added six new acts to the story, and did away with the few-acts-repeating-with-bigger-damage-numbers structure that has been a feature of ARPGs since the original Diablo? PoE is now ten acts of story, which you play through once per character, before moving on to the end-game Atlas (i.e. lots of maps). Yes, there's a reason why David Brevik himself went to work for Grinding Gear Games, describing PoE as "push[ing] this genre to new heights" -- a genre that Brevik was instrumental in inventing, remember.
Excellent as PoE is, though, with its deep and engaging gameplay, and its industry-best ethical microtransaction model, the game has spent most of its existence in the shadow of Diablo 3. It didn't seem to matter when PoE was named as Gamespot's PC Game of the Year in 2013; the games media mostly didn't seem to notice that GGG had kept on improving the game, adding content at a rate that giants like Blizzard weren't even able to approach, let alone match. Fans of the game kept singing its praises, but sometimes it felt like we were preaching to the choir; the player base kept growing, but slowly, and the game never gained the kind of attention that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds has managed to garner while still in early access.
GGG never let any of that stop them, though. They had a vision, and a supportive, steadily growing fan base, and they just kept on innovating, adding to and polishing their game until it really was the best ARPG ever made. Maybe that's why it feels so satisfying to see Path of Exile, and Grinding Gear Games, finally receiving their due and proper: top tier placement on Twitch, nestled between perennial A-list games like Hearthstone and Overwatch, with only DOTA2, PUBG, and League of Legends really outdoing them... and, let's face it, DOTA2 and LoL are behemoths of Esports that consistently outdo everybody, while PUBG is currently approaching saturation levels of gaming media coverage.
If you were wondering which was actually the most successful game of Blizzard's Diablo line, consider this: after years of claiming that Diablo III was a YUGE success, Blizzard has apparently abandoned development on D3 almost completely, with only one further DLC (the Necromancer class) planned, and nothing else in the pipeline. Diablo II, meanwhile, appears to be getting a high-def remaster.
Without a doubt, the Diablo franchise is one of the most
revered series to ever be released thanks to its populous fan base that
is so dedicated to the titles, that some have even made a theme wedding
revolving around the art, characters, and design style of the releases.
With this being the case, long-time followers and even newbies to the
action-RPG will likely rejoice to learn that a job listing on Blizzard’s
website points to the possibility of there being a remaster for Diablo 2 in the works.
The posting on the publisher and developer’s jobs page is
advertising a “Lead Software Engineer, Engine” role and it insinuates
that not only is Diablo 2 seemingly getting an HD upgrade, but also a Warcraft 3 remaster
is in the cards as well. The open position originally alluded to these
titles getting enhanced versions, but it has since been changed. Thanks
to the screenshot from Blizzplanet below, however, fans can see that the
following quote was at first used as a means to get folks to apply
prior to being scrubbed and relisted as an “unannounced project.”
The job posting itself looks like this:
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: D3 is dead, and Blizzard knows it. Their best hope for resuscitating the Diablo franchise involves pandering to the same D1 & D2 fans that they spent years talking alienating, but they've been trying to have their cake and eat it: pretending that D3 was still a popular goldmine, while simultaneously pandering to D2 fans with Kanai's Cube, the Darkening of Tristram event, and even the classes they've added to the game, starting with almost-the-Paladin, and culminating with straight-up-the-Necromancer.
Well, the pretense seems to be finally nearing its end. With a straight-up remaster of D2 in the works, and nothing much in production for D3, it sure looks like Blizzard is squarely aiming their nostalgia cannons at D2 fans in an effort to win them back, while simply letting D3 lie fallow.
The problem? After having spent years telling D2 fans that they needed to let it go and move on, most of them actually have let it go, and moved on, mostly to competitors' games like Grim Dawn and Path of Exile. Having moved on to other, better games, from developers that didn't spend years shitting on them, I'm not sure that D2 fans actually have whole lot of nostalgia left for Blizzard to tap into.
Time will tell, I suppose, but I'll tell you for nothing that I'm neither excited nor surprised by the news that Blizzard is taking the obvious next step with their Diablo franchise. It's just a little too little, and much too late, for me to actually give a shit.
I can't help it. I'm finding the reaction Blizzard's latest D3 PTR to be rather fascinating. The next take? Paul Tassi's, at Forbes.
Blizzard just rolled out the patch notes for 2.5.0 for Diablo 3, and while they are adding a few welcome features to the game, they show just how dry the well is starting to run as well.
Positive changes include new tabs for materials to free up stash space, a quasi-buff to bounty rewards, and a new “loadout” armory system where players can save not just gear, but skills, socketed gems and even Kanai Cube powers to be able to switch easily between builds.
[...]
But the one addition in the patch that’s managing to roll a lot of eyes in the yes-we’re-still-playing-Diablo community is the addition of Primal Ancient Legendary weapons.
Right now, there current system in place has Legendary/set weapons/armor that drop with special properties and increased stats over “normal” items. For a while now, there has been a chance for each of those items to drop as an “Ancient” variant, which has increased stat ranges in categories like Strength, Vitality, Intelligence, Resist All and so on.
Now, Primal Ancient Legendary Weapons will be even more rare, and have a chance to drop with even better stats than those.
Why is this bad? More powerful gear is fun right?
Yes and no. The problem is that this puts yet another insane level of RNG into the game as a way of artificially extending playtime without actually adding anything new or valuable. The concept of an “Ancient Ancient,” or a Primal Ancient, is the definition of pure power creep.
[...]
This may not be a big deal, but it’s emblematic of Blizzard sort of throwing in the towel when it comes to supporting Diablo 3 in what are apparently the last stages of its life. The Darkening of Tristam event was very underwhelming, and now the answer to “now what?” is just creating yet another god tier of items that push power creep up to new heights, and make players feel like the builds they’ve perfected so far are now trash.
What can I say? I agree with all of this.
I did take issue with one thing that Tassi wrote in his article, though, when he described the Armory as "something every game in this genre desperately needs." D3 definitely needed an Armory, because D3 doesn't have characters in the way that most RPGs have characters. Instead, D3 has loadouts, which means that switching around your equipped items changes your entire build.
Games with robust RPG elements don't work this way. Path of Exile, for example, has a passive skill tree that profoundly affects the way your character plays, and which simply cannot be respec'ed in a few seconds with a couple of button clicks. PoE has characters, and encourages players to make more than one character in order to experiment with different builds and various game mechanics, all of which would render an Armory system like D3's useless.
By saying that every game of this genre desperately needs an Armory-like system, Tassi is either saying (a) that Diablo III isn't an ARPG, or (b) that he knows very little about ARPGs, and needs to play some Path of Exile, stat. Or Torchlight II, or Grim Dawn, or Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem... or, really any real ARPG.
Go on, Paul. Give it a go. You're bored with D3, anyway.
Was it just this morning that I was writing about how broken Diablo III still is, and how desperately Blizzard has been trying to appeal to the nostalgia of Diablo II fans to breathe life back into their moribund franchise? I think it was:
Of all the recent BlizzCon Diablo rumours, this is the one that I
believe, simply because it's exactly the kind of desperate, pandering
bullshit that Blizzard have been doing for years, trying to
convince Diablo II fans to come back to Diablo III (and buy its
expansion pack) in spite of the fact that D3 is simply an inferior game,
in spite of its gloss and polish.
Well, wait no longer, Diablo fans, because the pandering is real.
Diablo 3 players will get access to a brand new character, the oft-requested Necromancer, as an update to the Reaper of Souls expansion next year.
Blizzard showed off a trailer for the Necromancer during
its BlizzCon 2016 Opening Ceremony Friday. Blizzard co-founder Frank
Pearce said its addition was something fans had been asking for since Diablo 3’s launch in 2012.
The new Necromancer, Pearce said, is inspired by Diablo 2’s version of the character, and "takes advantage of everything Diablo 3 has to offer."
No details yet on exactly what the hell a "character pack" is -- my guess is paid-for DLC, because the players who've been begging for Blizzard to add Necromancers to D3 for years will obviously be stupid enough to stump up some green for that shit. I'll tell you what a "character pack" isn't, though. It isn't an expansion pack, or a sequel, or prequel, or even an HD remake of D2.
The class itself will be shit, too -- even if it takes advantage of
everything D3 has to offer, D3 is such a shallow, hollow shell of a game
that "everything" amounts to more of the same boring skill system,
broken itemization, and mind-numbing gameplay that have sent D2 fans
fleeing en masse.
So... Blizzard have now delivered basically nothing for their Diablo fan base for a third straight BlizzCon, and on the 20th Anniversary, no less, except for one new class that should be added to the game for free but which will probably cost $20. Diablo fans have every right to be disappointed, and so far, it looks like quite a few of them are.
Did I mention that Path of Exile is running an all-weekend race event? And has a huge content patch coming in the next 2 weeks? With the beta for their even huger 3.0 content patch coming on the heels of that? And that PoE is completely free? No wonder the Father of Diablo calls it the ARPG that's actually pushing the genre to new heights.
I've blogged before about my Diablo III experience, but just in case I wasn't clear enough before, let me state this explicitly: I believe that D3 is shit.
It's very glossy, highly-polished shit, to be sure, all glossy and kinda pretty from a sufficient distance, but if you get close enough to smell what it's made of... well, there's just no mistaking what it's made of:
of D3's four primary attributes, two are mechanically identical to each other, a third is mechanically equivalent to the first two, and the fourth (Vit) goes up at the same rate for all classes as they level, meaning that it may as well not exist, either;
of D3's many, many skills, most are so boring and useless as to see no use at all; the only ones that get used are those with 6-piece sets, or set-compatible legendary items, to support them;
breaking the game's attribute system actually broke its combat mechanics, creating a "hit box" problem which gets worse as characters' move speed increases, which is (at least partly) why characters' move speed bonus is capped at 25%;
breaking D3's attribute system broke its itemization, too, resulting in a game where every character, regardless of class, uses exactly the same gear, where the gear is mostly boring and interchangeable, and where melee characters need 30% of extra damage reduction to be viable;
gutting the game's RPG systems and putting all of its gameplay into the loot system resulted in a game where short-circuiting the loot hunt is game-killing, according to Blizzard themselves, and yet also essential, which is why they added Kanai's Cube (and its multiple legendary-yielding formulae), and eventually Haedrig's Gift (which just gifts you with a 6-piece set if you play the latest season);
leveling a new character is so trivialized that it's possible to reach the level cap in just 33 seconds;
the story is so lacklustre that Reaper of Souls added an entirely separate game mode in which players don't have to interact with the story at all;
even in that mode, bounties are so boring that people only run them when they need the crafting mats that you can't get any other way, and rifts are only run to obtain greater rift keystones, resulting in an expansion that actually contracted the experience, leaving all of the remaining active player base doing one thing, and only one thing, which is running grifts over and over.
Do I need to go on? Because I can. You know I can.
Most of these issues have been issues since the game launched in May of 2012; four-plus years of additional development have added polish and gloss, but haven't actually fixed the game, since the developers have been either unable or unwilling to admit that the game's problems all have their roots in these core design flaws. D3 is a game which feels very fluid, thanks to some stellar character animation work, and which is neurologically stimulating, thanks to glossy visuals full of flashing lights, bright colours, frantic motion, and constant chiming sounds, but it's pretty and stimulating in exactly the same way slot machines are stimulating; and, like a slot machine, it's designed to be addictive without being engaging at all.
That's why the Reaper of Souls expansion sold so poorly that Blizzard won't talk about its sales numbers, and redefined the term "Reaper of Souls" at the end of RoS's release quarter to mean all basic game licenses going back to the base game's launch in May of 2012. It's why Blizzard quietly stopped telling Diablo II fans to take off their "rose-tinted glasses," and started talking up their love of the Diablo legacy at BlizzCon 2015. It's why they started nakedly pandering to Diablo II fans with features like Kanai's Cube, which was literally pitched as being reminiscent of the older game:
Those who played Diablo II might remember the Horadric Cube, a unique device which allowed you to combine items. Useful as it was, it was easily surpassed in power by the item from which it originated, Kanai’s Cube. In Patch 2.3.0, players will be able to discover this powerful ancient relic and utilize its incredible potential, including the ability to break down Legendary items and equip their special effects as passive skills (which are separate from your other passive skills), convert crafting materials from one type to another, and so much more.
Diablo III is a highly polished turd, a glossy, smelly mess which sells millions of units whenever launched in a new market, but which totally fails to retain those players. Blizzard desperately needs to bring those older Diablo fans back into the fold, but can't just admit that their latest Diablo game is crap, or apologize to Diablo II fans for having spent years talking smack to and about them.
So, if you were wondering why Blizzard is leaked the concept art this week for a new Necromancer class that could be coming to D3... well, now you know why.
Of all the recent BlizzCon Diablo rumours, this is the one that I believe, simply because it's exactly the kind of desperate, pandering bullshit that Blizzard have been doing for years, trying to convince Diablo II fans to come back to Diablo III (and buy its expansion pack) in spite of the fact that D3 is simply an inferior game, in spite of its gloss and polish.
D3's problem is not that it lacks a Necromancer class; its issues are all the result of terrible design decisions which continue to cripple the game from its core, and a terrible story that even Blizzard themselves would rather you not think about anymore. I know, there are some active D3 players who have been basically begging Blizzard for years to add a Necromancer class to the game, and I'm sure they'll get some enjoyment from playing with it, but even Necromancers can't raise D3 from the dead. And when Blizzard eventually add the Druid class (which you'd better believe is next on the list), it will not shape-shift D3 from a shit game into a good one.
So, it's the wee hours before BlizzCon, but I'm not excited. Why would I be? More than anything else, the one and only thing that I want from Blizzard this BlizzCon is closure... which I'm not going to get, because they're still trying to sell their expansion-which-contracts-the-game-experience pack to me.
D2 fans are not going to get an apology from Blizzard for having fucked up Diablo so badly, or for years of belittling and insulting us when we complained about their terrible product, or about the broken state in which it launched. Instead, we're going to get a broken, boring, bastardized D3 version of a popular D2 class in a desperate attempt to pander to exactly the same nostalgia that Blizzard spent years mocking us for.
Oh, and a pre-recorded video of Dave Brevik helping to celebrate Diablo's 20-year anniversary... pre-recorded because he's overseas, helping Grinding Gear Games launch Path of Exile in China, a game that he describes as pushing the ARPG genre "to new heights" in exactly the way that D3 didn't. GG.
BlizzCon 2016 starts today, and Path of Exile is running a three-day race event, with thirty-four races in three days. I think I'll do that instead.
