When I started writing again it was with the goal of impressing no one and remains the case today. However, I also stated a goal I would write opinion not caring about our environment today, the touchy feeling aspect drives me out of my mind. Opinions do not tell you my ethics in business and you are free to decide what you wish.
I’ve been quiet about Blizzard’s Diablo 4 simply because there are way to many poster children out there today claiming how wonderful the game is when reality is this is the worst in the franchise history. But hey, today the young are taught to say good things only because they may hurt someone’s feelings. So they are good little sheeple by saying only good things.
The programmers behind Diablo 4 are clueless about functionality in the game. They are creating something they sit and pray every morning will win them some gaming award. Blizzard developers are like government officials; they will promise you EVERYTHING and deliver NOTHING and YOU WILL LOVE IT!
I have played every version, every expansion of Diablo Blizzard ever released. I love the game so much I begged them in Diablo 3 to give me more expansions, I would scream “here take my money, give me more.” All to fall on deaf ears.
Younger fanboys when you issued real complaints would say “shut up they let you play for free.” What? Did you really just say that? How freaking ignorant are you. The only reason people stopped spending money on Diablo 3 was because Blizzard STOPPED offering more for purchase. I cannot buy what you don’t sell. How the hell can you be so ignorant to this simple fact.
As demand for Diablo 4 was climaxing; Blizzard at Blizz-Con announces Diablo Immortal; a phone game. Then when negative response comes from those there the Blizzard employee says, “everyone has a phone.” What? Really? Blizzard are all your employees that ignorant? It was soon after that major flop, which by the way it took another 3-4 years before they released Diablo Immortal; one year before releasing Diablo 4.
Finally Diablo 4 comes out. Long time players, and I mean long time players; those of us in our mid to late 50s and early to 60s who were responsible for creating the Blizzard Diablo franchise; expected a massive improvement to Diablo 3. Diablo 3 was to many of us a fantastic game and only needed to be expanded and improved. What Blizzard delivered was an entire new game, an entire new world and entirely new NPCs. Even new story lines, new maps, etc. This wasn’t bad enough as someone at Blizzard said “hold my beer.”
Launch was a disaster. A company that for 15 years has had servers to run their online games, the release was riddle with random disconnects, massive wait times to get logged in to play. Hardcore characters that would die when disconnected. Loot lost because of disconnects. A monetary system that is fit for the 1% whereby the player is a pauper having to find the money of the rich. The answer for hardcore issues was introduction of up to 10 items automatically going to your stash introduced as a “feature” when it is nothing more than a band aid for the issues. Also introduced was a safety mechanism that hard core characters were not immediately marked as dead; a safety net for their unexplained disconnects.
Slowly Blizzard attempted to introduce new features with headlines about tempering and master crafting items. They even said in their fireside chats “you can now develop the character so you can play your character the way you want to play your character.” Sure Blizzard anything you say. What they did not tell you was when tempering the result would be a random temper. If you have a sorcerer who does fire, say you want to extend the duration of your flame shield; there is a temper aspect for that. However, it is mixed with several others that are not related to skills you use and low and behold, 98% of the time the item will be tempered with an aspect not fitting the skills you are playing with. I want to get someone at Blizzard to give me 1 million dollars for a custom oak bookcase so I can give them a cardboard box. This is Blizzard’s tempering. Then you can only temper an item a limited number of times. You’ve spent 100 hours finding a weapon with good aspects for your build. To the forge you go where you need the roll of a chance to case firebolt twice; you roll it five times and end up with a chance to cast ice bolts twice. That is now a brick and you can spend another 100+ hours finding a similar weapon only to find out that one bricks to as you wound up with chance to cast arc lash twice.
On a sorcerer I was looking for +4 to an aspect. Within 10 minutes I spent 300+ million gold pieces to get it. I failed. Now I had the job of farming for gold to get money so I can try again and fail, then rinse and repeat until the Blizzard god’s finally give me the one in 100 trillion chance of getting what I want and need for my build. Yet remember “you can play your build the way your want.”
Of course the fanboys would tell you your weapon is not bricked; you can still use it. However, these ignorant people don’t understand it is useless to my build, the build I want to play with. Nor do they understand if I was a cold sorcerer then the majority roll would be fire or electric; not the build I am currently playing. If they can write code to increase chance of rolling on aspects I don’t use in my build they can write code to increase chances to get aspects that I do use on my build.
Last for today, Blizzard and Diablo 4 has proven what anyone knows. It is easy to develop one hit mechanics that will wipe out any character or build you create. That formula is simple:
total damage = character_health + 1;
Player is now gone every time. Yet every NPC in the game has the chance of this one hit mechanics. Frequency depends only on the level of the NPC you encounter. I mean really how many times have you seen in the game logs:
player name killed by player name
Yes, in the world of Diablo 4 your character is suicidal at times and will kill themselves in the middle of a battle.
