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 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:



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 flamingkillamajig wrote:
I consider us friends and all despite our political leanings but considering your avatar generally being about punching nazis and thinking a lot of my side as nazis (despite everybody in it laughing at that absurdity) i'd say both sides have done de-humanizing stunts.

I don't know how to say it, because I said it multiple time already and never managed to get my point across, but while I'm never sure who really is “your side” exactly, if “your side” is you and Carl Benjamin, I consider neither to be nazis. Really, Benjamin is more the Von Papen Zentrum type. Not a nazi . My avatar is about actual Nazis. To put it in the way he likes to phrase things, I wouldn't even punch Carl Benjamin . (For anyone wondering, it's a reference to this : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Benjamin#YouTube_career third paragraph)
And asking a Jew not to de-humanize Nazis is, well, taking the problem from totally the wrong angle.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Oh and journalists suck period. They're totally bought and paid for. Rather interesting they seemed to all defend or attack a game. Little too coincidental outside of them being paid for good reviews.

Disagree. There are differing opinion, though journalists tend to just agree to disagree rather than start big fights so it's not that visible if you don't pay attention and only get third-party accounts (sometime with some bias) of what journalists say.
And big game companies bribing journalists through sending them extremely lavish promo materials is a known problem in vg journalism, but it depends on the journalist and the newspaper/website they work for, it's not all of them, and it's way worse for YouTubers and other influencers.

I'd say the piece on him on wiki was not fully on point but close enough. I don't consider their group to be serial harassers but nice enough you realize they're not nazis. I do identify more with him and his friends however. I suppose that's off topic though and probably getting this thread in danger of a lock. Guess game politics refuses to die yet.

Anyway i still say the company should be held accountable for all business interactions with customers overall. This just sounds like one of quite a few. Still probably not as bad as EA though. I still feel bad about command and conquer. Been forever since i played it.

Voss wrote:
And B.J... eh. The levels of mindless, unanalyzed mass murder in the new Wolfensteins is uncomfortable and close enough.

Was it more or less uncomfortable than Donny's big scene?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCxqydj1FBo
Most disturbing scene in the whole movie I think, lol.



Being a Nazi isn't the same thing as being violent though.

Before Blizzcon even started Blizzard had made an announcement (on their forums I think?) that there's multiple Diablo projects atm but that they weren't ready to announce them all.

They knew there'd be disappointment over Immortal, I just don't think they realised just how out of proportion people would take it. And the backlash is over the top.

EDIT: It was a blog post, not a post of their forums

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Voss wrote:
And B.J... eh. The levels of mindless, unanalyzed mass murder in the new Wolfensteins is uncomfortable and close enough.

Was it more or less uncomfortable than Donny's big scene?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCxqydj1FBo
Most disturbing scene in the whole movie I think, lol.



Being a Nazi isn't the same thing as being violent though.

Never claimed it was, or anything about violence. But rather mass murder and the 'extermination' angle of the games, and how little apparent thought was put into it.
Or the disturbing possibility that they did put thought into it, and parallels were deemed just fine.


-----
Anyway, part of the issue was the whole presentation ceremony turned into a mess and wrapped with Diablo, a shrug and open questions.
Here is a summary of the whole presentation (not just Diablo, but the whole announcement event, with sound failures, stage failures, and various levels of bafflement or befuddlement due to poor planning or communication)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF4W9x5gWs8

Warning though: weird editing, rambling and a fair bit of partisanship. (And Jesse Cox, who can be entertaining but... clueless)
But it provides some first-hand context from someone who isn't angry (but who also doesn't care about Diablo).

Yikes...

What's funny is that IT WAS an April Fool's Joke.

One joke that aged like a fine wine.

Huh. I didn't know chaosbane was a thing (at least I don't remember knowing- so many GW licenses flying about). Interesting.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
That said, this still feels like Blizzard is spitting in my face and laughing.

Blizzard: Let's make a new Diablo game on mobile and announce it at Blizzcon.
Someone, somewhere: I have been spit in the face.

This is getting ridiculous. Blizzard failed at communication, creating expectations that they weren't able to match, sure. But the proper response to this is dissapointment ('Oh, it was just this game that I am not interested in, too bad!") not anger ("How dare they make a game I am not interested in, and not make the one I am interested in!"). If you want a new hack and slash on PC that much go try Path of Exile, or any of the non-Diablo ones. If you can't find any that you like... maybe it means making a good hack-and-slash is freaking hard and that you should be thanksful when one exist, rather than angry.

Or how about Blizzard listens to their very avid fanbase and give them what they are asking for, not what Blizzard thinks they want.

We have been through this before. Blizzard caved. Remember when Blizzard said "You guys don't really want WoW Vanilla servers." You know what? Feth Blizzard for telling me what I want. I know what I want. This is becoming more and more of an issue with them. They know what we want. We don't know what we want. Blizzard has our best interests in mind!

Why don't you get a stepping stool, step down from that horsey, and understand the situation the fans have been dealing with for years.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Or how about Blizzard listens to their very avid fanbase and give them what they are asking for, not what Blizzard thinks they want.

Yeah that'd be great.
(Though expanding to new audiences can be good too.)

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Or how about Blizzard listens to their very avid fanbase and give them what they are asking for, not what Blizzard thinks they want.

Yeah that'd be great.
(Though expanding to new audiences can be good too.)

The frustrating part of that is they could do it, so, so easily.
Pick any blizzard setting (except HotS because it isn't really one). Their settings are well crafted backdrops to their games. A bit repetitive in places (the elder things that want to destroy all life is really tiresome across three games), but they have a lot of details that don't come out in RTS, or Action Slashers like diablo.

Simply go for a different genre and explore a different aspect of an existing setting. Make it clear that it's being done inside the development cycle of the 'main game'- for example do Diablo 4, then announce Diablo the RPG centered around well, whichever town.

They've done this successfully twice with Warcraft (WoW and Hearthstone), but seem absurdly reluctant to do it again. Granted Starcraft: Ghost was some weird partnered development debacle, but with all their resources they should be able to produce secondary lines for all their major properties, and those definitely have the potential to grow new audiences. Especially since there are a lot of people who don't like RTS games but like Blizzard products.

Still waiting on a proper Warcraft RTS....

Check in year after year and I keep seeing all this nonsense. There is a reason I've slowly receded from electronic gaming into more traditional games.


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 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:
Or how about Blizzard listens to their very avid fanbase and give them what they are asking for, not what Blizzard thinks they want.

Yeah that'd be great.
(Though expanding to new audiences can be good too.)

Just look how it worked for GW. GW should be the poster child for working with your fanbase these days.

I was at Blizzcon didn’t try it but my friends that did say it plays well for a phone game. The backlash has at least gotten Blizzard to take a look at what they are doing, and hopefully they will announce D4 soon.

WC3 reforged I bought on my cellphone during the open My ceremony during the presentation. I’m a shill, I know.

 Togusa wrote:
Still waiting on a proper Warcraft RTS....

Well... I kind of get that. The RTS genre has been down in the dumps for quite a while. From a financial point of view, spending a lot to make a WC4 or SC3 is a risk.
Testing the waters with SC1 remastered and WC3 remastered makes some sense, to see if they can get the sales numbers they want based primarily on their IPs rather than the genre predictions.

The catch is, if they're going to do it, they need to put the new games into production now, to 'ride the wave' of the remastered versions. Otherwise it might just remind general audiences why this is a 'dead genre.' [I honestly think WoW Classic is going to drive home that players are going to really miss the improvements made to WoW over time. I watched a short video of Quill18 playing the WowClassic Demo. It didn't bring back nostalgia, it brought back how clumsy and terrible a lot of the systems and mechanics were. The opportunity cost in money and time to make the old version work again and integrate it into the modern bnet code could have been used to make better expansions for current WoW.]

Personally, I think they're being overly cautious. World of Warcraft is an absurd testament to the fact that they can flout industry 'common sense' and produce and maintain a money making engine where other companies fail or roll over to free-to-play.

Voss wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
Still waiting on a proper Warcraft RTS....

Well... I kind of get that. The RTS genre has been down in the dumps for quite a while. From a financial point of view, spending a lot to make a WC4 or SC3 is a risk.
Testing the waters with SC1 remastered and WC3 remastered makes some sense, to see if they can get the sales numbers they want based primarily on their IPs rather than the genre predictions.

The catch is, if they're going to do it, they need to put the new games into production now, to 'ride the wave' of the remastered versions. Otherwise it might just remind general audiences why this is a 'dead genre.' [I honestly think WoW Classic is going to drive home that players are going to really miss the improvements made to WoW over time. I watched a short video of Quill18 playing the WowClassic Demo. It didn't bring back nostalgia, it brought back how clumsy and terrible a lot of the systems and mechanics were. The opportunity cost in money and time to make the old version work again and integrate it into the modern bnet code could have been used to make better expansions for current WoW.]

Personally, I think they're being overly cautious. World of Warcraft is an absurd testament to the fact that they can flout industry 'common sense' and produce and maintain a money making engine where other companies fail or roll over to free-to-play.

This is what I mean, the entire endeavor has been taken over by Big Gaming. It's not enough to make some money, if our game doesn't make ALL of the money, it's a failure. The creativity is gone, it's just a factory of sewage these days. Look what happened to Hideo Kojima, look what happened to Westwood Studios, and the countless other murders that EA and Activision have on their hands. Loot boxes and microtransactions everywhere, meanwhile the creativity of the developer and designers are gone, or at the very least stale and playing to the status quo. The only place electronic seems to be surviving is on the PC system with access to inde dev titles.

To date I've put over 100 hours into Stellaris, having discovered it at the tail end of September. I've got over 400 hours in Cities Skylines.

I played RDR2 for about 5 hours and got bored, doubt I'll do anything with it beyond. It was a pretty game, but, it was GTA5 re-skinned and I already played that for 50 hours.

This year I passed as I did last year on COD BO4, BFWWII. Fallout 76, well, this game is the first game in history to make me offended, and I will pass on it. Probably will never buy some/all these IP's again. Haven't touched overwatch since June of 2017, haven't touched diablo 3 since August of 2016.

As it stands the only "AAA" title I give two rats about is Doom: Eternal. I would say TES6, but given the trend of dumbing down seen over the last decade in Bethesda games, I'm not holding my breath for a great RPG experience.

World of Tanks is still fun, but let's be fair, that game is what it is, P2W at its finest.

At the end of the day though, I'd much, much rather sit down and play some 40K, Kingdom Death, AoS or KT than I would anything I've mentioned above.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Before Blizzcon even started Blizzard had made an announcement (on their forums I think?) that there's multiple Diablo projects atm but that they weren't ready to announce them all.

They knew there'd be disappointment over Immortal, I just don't think they realised just how out of proportion people would take it. And the backlash is over the top.

EDIT: It was a blog post, not a post of their forums

I mean, is the backlash really out of proportion and the backlash over the top?

I don't think so. To me this is just a case of Blizzard thinking they can shovel crap and their audience would just take it.

There was a lot of hype for Diablo going into Blizzcon, and Diablo is dominated by PC gamers. So, you announce a phone game as the headliner, that is just a reskin of a chinese phone game that's already out? No. They should have taken a page from Bethesda and saw how they announced their mobile games.

I think this was a well deserved reaction.

 Togusa wrote:

This is what I mean, the entire endeavor has been taken over by Big Gaming. It's not enough to make some money, if our game doesn't make ALL of the money, it's a failure. The creativity is gone, it's just a factory of sewage these days. Look what happened to Hideo Kojima, look what happened to Westwood Studios, and the countless other murders that EA and Activision have on their hands. Loot boxes and microtransactions everywhere, meanwhile the creativity of the developer and designers are gone, or at the very least stale and playing to the status quo. The only place electronic seems to be surviving is on the PC system with access to inde dev titles.

To date I've put over 100 hours into Stellaris, having discovered it at the tail end of September. I've got over 400 hours in Cities Skylines.

I played RDR2 for about 5 hours and got bored, doubt I'll do anything with it beyond. It was a pretty game, but, it was GTA5 re-skinned and I already played that for 50 hours.

This year I passed as I did last year on COD BO4, BFWWII. Fallout 76, well, this game is the first game in history to make me offended, and I will pass on it. Probably will never buy some/all these IP's again. Haven't touched overwatch since June of 2017, haven't touched diablo 3 since August of 2016.

As it stands the only "AAA" title I give two rats about is Doom: Eternal. I would say TES6, but given the trend of dumbing down seen over the last decade in Bethesda games, I'm not holding my breath for a great RPG experience.

World of Tanks is still fun, but let's be fair, that game is what it is, P2W at its finest.

At the end of the day though, I'd much, much rather sit down and play some 40K, Kingdom Death, AoS or KT than I would anything I've mentioned above.

See, I've had the opposite experience this year, except actually with Blizzard itself (the BFA expansion was terrible).

The only real winner I bought this year was the AAA title: AC Odyssey.
But all the small studio stuff I was looking forward to has been buggy, boring or both. And not merely 'Bethesda Buggy' or a light 'Andromeda Buggy' (which affected me almost not at all) but buggy beyond all reason and sanity. (Thanks, Pathfinder Kingmaker!)

Loot boxes and microtransactions have affected me in no way whatsoever. They've rarely wandered in to the kind of games I play, and even when they do (Shadow of War, I believe), they're so unnecessary and contrary to actually playing the game that it never occurs to me to buy them.

Creativity... honestly I see a lot of creative stuff pass by. Not necessarily stuff I'm interested in (my library of games is almost all RPGs and Strategy, with the odd Action title), but it definitely isn't rote formula 'Big Gaming' stuff.

Sasori wrote:I don't think so. To me this is just a case of Blizzard thinking they can shovel crap and their audience would just take it.

Truthfully, I'm not surprised by that. It often is the reaction of their audience. But from watching their forums as Battle For Azeroth bored me to tears, I think it was the wrong year for it. People were starting to push back (even though it was often expressed badly), and despite Blizz's announcement, a lot of Blizz fans expected some sort of announcement of some new product, even if it was a long way off. New platforms for old games and new versions of old games don't matter to most people. Even new missions are devoured in a week or so, so non-WoW Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo have been effectively dead for years at this point. There's definitely a demand for something significantly new in the existing lines and Blizzard is almost aggressively losing the plot on their product lines.

I don't think the issue is a lack of creativity. I think there's a lot of creativity in the industry. The issue is that the creative element isn't making the games anymore. Bean counters and market managers are making the games. Executives who don't care about the product so long as it sells make the games. When a good game comes out it's because the creative guys went above and beyond in their own right, in spite of the forces that want them to just make a tested focused grouped product that meets a series of check boxes but is distinctively without a soul.

 LordofHats wrote:
I don't think the issue is a lack of creativity. I think there's a lot of creativity in the industry. The issue is that the creative element isn't making the games anymore. Bean counters and market managers are making the games. Executives who don't care about the product so long as it sells make the games. When a good game comes out it's because the creative guys went above and beyond in their own right, in spite of the forces that want them to just make a tested focused grouped product that meets a series of check boxes but is distinctively without a soul.

Same thing with any IP, franchise, or industry that starts out small and breaks into the mainstream. Cinema, television, music, you name it. On one hand it's understandable that a company wouldn't want to risk the big bucks by messing with the formula, but it still doesn't make the end product any good. Thankfully there are quite a few more publishers and developers out there other than EA, Activision and Ubisoft. Now, when Obsidian or CD Projekt Red sell out for good, then I'll be upset.

Now, when Obsidian or CD Projekt Red sell out for good, then I'll be upset.

https://www.pcgamer.com/rumor-microsoft-is-close-to-buying-obsidian-entertainment/

Though I laugh at their description of Obsidian as an 'indie' dev.

I won't cry many tears over Bugsidian, however. Especially after how disappointing Deadfire was.

Damn.

Time to pursue anti-trust action and break up these big publishers already

Too many for anti-trust. Especially with Zenimax (Bethesda) and Paradox snapping up small studios to build their own competing mini-empires.

Blizzard failed horribly at marketing. I don't know when companies do marketing right everybody is like "Oh man they are so cool, look at that!" but when they fail is like "Omg you shouldn't be upsted, is your fault your expectations where so high!"

No. Hype is a double edged sword, and Blizzard has been surfing from success to success thanks to that wave, but with this they have drowned.

I know nothing about all that stuff in the OP about racism and mysoginy, but probably thats for the better. The situation is stupid enough without people trying to add political implications to whats just a failure at basic marketing.

You can't hype the Blizzcon as the "Diablo's Blizzcon" and then just show , to close the opening ceremony, a mobile game. I'm the first one to accuse hardcore fans for not being open to change but this one was 100% fault of Blizzard. Is something worth sending them death threads? Nah. But people is right to be upset and make noise.

The best thing in this Blizzcon was Warcraft 3 Reforged. And thats sad. Not for W3: Reforged because that thing looks amazing and I'll buy it without a doubt. But you can't have a remake being the big thing of your annual convention.

 LordofHats wrote:
I don't think the issue is a lack of creativity. I think there's a lot of creativity in the industry. The issue is that the creative element isn't making the games anymore. Bean counters and market managers are making the games. Executives who don't care about the product so long as it sells make the games. When a good game comes out it's because the creative guys went above and beyond in their own right, in spite of the forces that want them to just make a tested focused grouped product that meets a series of check boxes but is distinctively without a soul.

That's only true if you stick to what Microsoft and Sony are selling or any of the stuff focused on the competitive multiplayer scene. There has been a pretty endless deluge of quality, highly creative games coming out for the last decade or so; just mostly created by a handful of people with pretty limited resources. They're games whose graphics need to rely on striking art direction over cutting edge technology and clever level design over sprawling open playgrounds.

For a while I worried that I just didn't like videogames anymore. I'd buy the big new release but generally wouldn't finish it, but a lot of it is just that most of these games are downright boring, dragged out time wasters. I get into the indie catalog and find myself losing weeks to things like Dead Cells, Iconoclasts, Fez, Shovel Knight, Celeste, Braid, Limbo, etc, etc, etc. Honestly, I don't think I've finished much in the last few years by a major publisher beyond Nintendo's stuff and the latest Spiderman (how this game exists as pure as it does is a total mystery).

Let EA, Ubisoft and Activision do their thing. Just don't be a part of it. They can only keep rampaging through the industry destroying its legacy as long as people keep shoveling them cash. Support the creative types and when you do buy the big titles, go for new brands over sequels. You're far more likely to remain invested if you can break yourself out of the grind cycle of annual sequels.

 Galas wrote:
Blizzard failed horribly at marketing. I don't know when companies do marketing right everybody is like "Oh man they are so cool, look at that!" but when they fail is like "Omg you shouldn't be upsted, is your fault your expectations where so high!"

No. Hype is a double edged sword, and Blizzard has been surfing from success to success thanks to that wave, but with this they have drowned.

I know nothing about all that stuff in the OP about racism and mysoginy, but probably thats for the better. The situation is stupid enough without people trying to add political implications to whats just a failure at basic marketing.

You can't hype the Blizzcon as the "Diablo's Blizzcon" and then just show , to close the opening ceremony, a mobile game. I'm the first one to accuse hardcore fans for not being open to change but this one was 100% fault of Blizzard. Is something worth sending them death threads? Nah. But people is right to be upset and make noise.

The best thing in this Blizzcon was Warcraft 3 Reforged. And thats sad. Not for W3: Reforged because that thing looks amazing and I'll buy it without a doubt. But you can't have a remake being the big thing of your annual convention.

Pretty much this. If Blizz had come out and said "We have some Diablo announcements. It isn't D4. But we are hoping you will like it until we can give you more information on our other Diablo products being made" we would have been just fine. Instead we got "Big year for Diablo!" Which we found out, was a lie.

 Dreadwinter wrote:
[Pretty much this. If Blizz had come out and said "We have some Diablo announcements. It isn't D4. But we are hoping you will like it until we can give you more information on our other Diablo products being made" we would have been just fine. Instead we got "Big year for Diablo!" Which we found out, was a lie.

More importantly, they probably should have made WC3: Reforged the big announcement.


There's mention up above about the possibility of adding other game genres within the existing settings. Funny thing is, after playing SC2: Legacy of the Void, I thought that was *exactly* what Blizzard was going to do with the StarCraft setting. Legacy of the Void added two additional Protoss factions, one of which was pretty much walking around with a "Kill me on sight for your own good!" sign. That looked to me like a set-up for some additional exploration of the setting either in an RPG or MMORPG (since it would provide some ready-made "always evil" Protoss bad guys, which the setting was lacking previously). But the only storyline release that we've had since then is the Nova missions. I would have expected a StarCraft announcement by now if there'd been any intention to do anything with the setting. But we haven't had so much as a hint of anything new. And Legacy of the Void came out three years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z50VBwSWE0E#action=share

My take away from this, and what it seems like a lot of game journalists seem to be criticizing about this is that at smacks of other instances of popular game franchises getting moved to mobile platforms as a way to get some serious micro transactions cash. Every article and video I've seen seems to include mention of Dungeon Keeper and Command and Conquer along with Diablo Immortal. it seems to me that there is still a backlash to loot boxes but publishers are still trying to make P2W a thing we just accept.

Do people overreact to stupid things from time to time? I'd say that the backlash against Diablo 3's art design is a yes to that question. I will say that the backlash to a reboot of XCOM as an FPS set in the 50s led to a much better game getting released that was truer to the original. I would also say that the backlash towards SW Battlefronts 2 was absolutely deserved and it is something that gamers should go after publishers for.

It still contributes to further alienating what has historically been their oldest and most loyal fanbases.

I remember ranting hard on Diablo 3's art direction and I still consider it a totally valid response. It represents a company abandoning their old customers in favor of new ones. It's like dumping your girlfriend for a hotter one.

 barboggo wrote:
It still contributes to further alienating what has historically been their oldest and most loyal fanbases.

I remember ranting hard on Diablo 3's art direction and I still consider it a totally valid response. It represents a company abandoning their old customers in favor of new ones. It's like dumping your girlfriend for a hotter one.

Or perhaps, Blizzard is the gold-digging girlfriend that dumps you for a richer sugar daddy.

 barboggo wrote:
It still contributes to further alienating what has historically been their oldest and most loyal fanbases.

I remember ranting hard on Diablo 3's art direction and I still consider it a totally valid response. It represents a company abandoning their old customers in favor of new ones. It's like dumping your girlfriend for a hotter one.

Does the girlfiriend gripe about all your decisions and decry how the relationship was perfect in your senior year of high school and should never have changed? It might not be Blizzard....