Diablo 4 is in development, and it started as a Souls-like
79 replies, posted
https://www.pcgamesn.com/diablo-4/diablo-4-development-souls-like
Reaper of Souls director Josh Mosqueira was picked to head up development of the next Diablo title, first code-named Hades by Blizzard. The Diablo team worked on Hades from 2014-16, until the project was cancelled, according to Schreier’s reporting for Kotaku.
Schreier’s sources say Diablo IV is currently code-named Fenris, and that it’s a darker, “grosser” vision of Diablo than we saw in Diablo III. There’s a push to make it a more social game, with the team taking inspiration from Destiny and considering hub areas where players can meet each other and group up for cooperative activities like strikes or instanced dungeons.
Jesus christ
Yikes. At least we have Grim Dawn and Path of Exile to carry the torch...
From the Kotaku article:
Then, in October 2018, Blizzard lost its leader. Co-founder Mike
Morhaime, the soft-spoken CEO who jovially addressed fans at every
BlizzCon, said he was stepping down, to be replaced by veteran World of Warcraft
producer J. Allen Brack. Allen Adham and chief development officer Ray
Gresko also joined Blizzard’s executive management team, perhaps to help
ensure that the studio would be helmed by game developers who lived and
breathed Blizzard.
It was a massive shake-up for Blizzard, and it came during a time when
there were already questions about Activision’s influences. Morhaime was
widely beloved at the company. One former Blizzard developer described
him as the “anti-CEO.”
”He doesn’t care about profitability,” that
person said. “He just wants employees to be happy, and he just wants to
make good games and keep the community happy.”
Suddenly, there were whispers in hallways, concerns about future cost-cutting
initiatives and furtive exchanges about what plans Activision CEO Bobby
Kotick might have in mind for Blizzard. “There’s a perception within
Blizzard that finance is making more calls than they ever did in the
past,” said one person who left Blizzard recently. “You never heard that
three or four years ago.”
Pack it up, fellas: the Blizzard fans love is dead. Activison runs the show now, and Papa Kotick wants money.
Is there gonna be a trend of devs saying "Hey, we have this spooky fantasy series, why don't we make it a SOULS LIKE"
cause that's just about all diablo and dark souls have in common
It's OK, a year and a half after D4 is released it'll be a good game
Every company will become shit eventually. Every single one
wasnt the case with d3 unfortunately
Man i fucking love grim dawn
Please guys if you havent played this gem i suggest you drop everything and do so right now
Except it was. Might have been longer or shorter than a year and a half, I don't remember. But the real money auction house going away, Reaper of Souls, adding the Necromancer, and a lot of patches and updates have made it a good game indistiguishable from it's initial state. I still go back and play every few months when a new season starts.
This is from the Kotaku article:
"The natural extension of that was for one of Blizzard’s incubation teams to develop a Warcraft version of Pokémon Go, which is in development for smartphones now. Surely it occurred to the decision-makers at Blizzard that this Warcraft spinoff could be a massive revenue generator, but the game is also in production because lead designer Cory Stockton (formerly of World of Warcraft) is a huge fan of Pokémon. (People who have played the Warcraft mobile game say it’s also got a lot more to it than Pokémon Go, including single-player mechanics.)"
This is fucking awful.
Yeah, Grim Dawn is tight. They also just released some huge pieces of DLC, but the base game is on sale for 65% off at 8 dollars. Totally worth it and then some.
I feel like theres a big difference between a passable game, and an actual good game. Going from diablo 3 back to diablo 2, or to path of exile, really showcases what separates those two types of games. I played d3 for a real long time, ever since launch, and while it was laughably bad at the start, it progressively got better in ways, but also stayed the same shit in others. Like the pathetic 'stat' system where everything is just dictated by damage%. Mainstats just give damage and armor (which barely matters), defensive stats are totally thrown by the wayside outside of vitality and maybe some all res, and thats it. It's an almost laughably shallow game where everyone just pulls on a 5 piece set+rorg and gathers the sheep together in grifts to spam their skillbars on before moving to the next herd. I could rant about how lame diablo 3 is compared to almost every other arpg forever. It's an okay game, but not good by any means.
”He doesn’t care about profitability,” that person said. “He just wants employees to be happy, and he just wants tomake good games and keep the community happy.”
Yeaaaaah, I guess that's why Blizzard has been funneling all those profits into tax heavens for years now huh? I'm not buying that as a CEO he didn't have a hand in that. It's almost impossible for a publicly-traded big corporation to act ethically because that would harm their bottom lines.
I miss the skill system from D2 that let you make basically a god character early on by investing heavily in one skill. You could then become a double god by investing in other skills that acted as multipliers to that skill and vice versa.
"Souls-Like"
How long are we going to keep doing this shit for? Souls-like is such an uncreative way to explain a game, oh it's a souls-like game, at least when someone describes a game as being a Metroidvania you know exactly what to expect, but Souls-like? does that means it's difficult? Does that mean respawning enemies when you rest or something? Levelling as in RPG mechanics and shit?
I don't believe a lick of it, I think Schreier is throwing shit out there to cover Blizzard's ass.
Suddenly, there were whispers in hallways, concerns about future cost-cutting
initiatives and furtive exchanges about what plans Activision CEO Bobby
Kotick might have in mind for Blizzard. “There’s a perception within
Blizzard that finance is making more calls than they ever did in the
past,” said one person who left Blizzard recently. “You never heard that
three or four years ago.”
This doesn't sound like he's trying to "cover Blizzard's ass"
I'd love more genuine, high quality souls like. Many games took inspirations from souls games, few actually tried to replicate its best elements together, barely any succeeded. And now from soft is moving on for the most part, and good for them.
But not by sacrificing other franchises, who are their own gameplay niche that their fans want. If blizz wants to make a souls like they should start a new IP, not turn a mainline game of a completely different franchise into one. People play diablo for diablo and souls for souls.
And honestly, I dont see blizz making a proper souls like. They make polished, easy to get into, easy to enjoy, instantly addicting gameplay, sacrificing debth. That's the exact opposite of the souls game experience.
As opposed to Diablo 2 where you pretty much just dumped every single point into Vitality for nearly every single build? And while I've been quite enjoying Path of Exile recently, I'd argue that while the character building is far deeper than Diablo 3, that actual gameplay is perhaps even shallower than Diablo 3's grifts. One-button builds are more prevalent, skills have less interesting interactions between one-another, and and a very binary difficulty curve based where you have the stats to out sustain and avoid one-shots, or you don't.
A Diablo souls like spin off would have been cool, but dont call it D4
I always take it to mean "kinda bullshit hard but people like it and also cool bosses"
Not very useful as a descriptor
It's not as descriptive as Metroidvania like I said, since describing something like that is fairly distinct and rarely gets misused, as opposed to souls-like which gets fucking throw at any difficult game.
"There’s a push to make it a more social game, with the team taking inspiration from Destiny and considering hub areas"
Man fuck OFF. Stop trying to make every goddamn game super social buddy buddy bullshit, especially Diablo. Not to mention, even Destiny players don't give a shit about the hub areas, the Reef and Farm were abandoned immediately and the only reason people spend time in the Tower outside events is to do vendor stuff or AFK. As well, Destiny isn't exactly a shining example of a game that should used as a standard right now.
I just think "third-person action RPG game with that strongly punishes taking any hits"
To be fair though, 76 isn't shit because it's a multiplayer game or more social or whatever, it's shit because of Bethesda being fucking garbage.
Though the Destiny comparison, I can't really talk too much about that game without complaining about it.
Not to mention the endgame is locked unless you find 3 other poor souls to help you do raids. Because who needs matchmaking.
I'm not saying diablo 2's stats where really that great, because pretty much every character was just dump points into stats until you can get gear, etc. But at least they did things that didn't just give bonus damage. And the items had stats that actually meant...anything. Literally every item in diablo 3 is just 'x main attribute, vitality, crit, cooldown reduction or %element damage' and thats it. Compare that to diablo 2, which has a much more varied stat system with its items. Poe is more about actually planning and executing a build rather than the 'actual gameplay' but thats pretty much most of what an arpg is at its core. Diablo 3's gameplay is really shallow as well (especially in high grifts where its literally just ignoring 80% of mobs as you run around, gathering up some white ones to kill, a few blues, while searching for pylons, ignoring rares most of the time), and its difficulty is really binary as well, idk what you're talking about there. Yea, poe has a good bit of one skill builds, but d3 has a bunch of that as well, especially with sets commonly emphasizing one or two skills to use. (like leap earthquake barb) Outside of the transmog system, and the skill interaction system, d3 is inferior in every way compared to poe. D2's atmosphere makes it better than d3 as well. (I haven't really played grim dawn much) It isn't a good game, it's just passable. It would have been a good game if blizzard actually gave any flying fuck about it, but considering the first real update in a year consists of heavily buffing a few sets and thats it, that isn't the case.
To be fair, as someone who picks up Reaper of Souls every now and then, a Dark Souls like game set in the Diablo universe would be baller. You could play as a angel who can never really die or a undead warrior cursed with undeath where killing your master can be your only solace. As a mainstay title I can see why people would be mad. Why go through three titles with the good familiar formula everyone loves only to throw it away because another title did something with their combat that swept mainstream audience members away?
blizzy got it shitty, uh
[quote]There’s a push to make it a more social game[/quote]
https://youtu.be/FygQ0aMS1Oo
Seriously, FUCK OFF. Like, I enjoy the social aspect of Diablo well after I've completed the main game, but not all the time.
Most people online are shit, the quality of interactions is terrible 90% of the time and I usually just play with friends who I know have the game. If it's anything like FO76/Destiny/WoW count me the fuck out.
Like I'm happy about the idea of going back to the darker, more gothic art style of the previous games but not if that's just the bait to lure players into a mile wide, inch-deep pit of procedurally generated "social gaming" crap.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.