Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls

[schild]

If traditional gaming companies did more thorough user-studies, even in-house, they would discover things like:

1. The only book series people will care about in Skyrim is The Lusty Argonian Maid.
2. Everyone fucking hates Leah. She's the Raymond of videogames.
3. Story, unless it's absolutely stellar, doesn't matter. Phone it in, it's not worth the effort.
4. In an action game, all that matters is the action.
5. If there's loot in said action game that is randomly dropped, it suddenly matters more than the action.

I don't mind the attitude of most designers, but they tend to be uppity bitches about their own ideas. All that matters is user-opinion. And if you can't get that, TALK TO YOUR FUCKING QA PEOPLE, ANONYMOUSLY IF YOU HAVE TO.

Goddamn game development. Same mistakes every fucking time.

[Sjofn]

Eh, I think if you're going to have a story, there is a minimum required. I hear about how a story in a game is awful all the time (I mean if the story didn't matter even a teeny tiny bit, there wouldn't be so much "what the shit was that in SC2" or "holy shit D3 was bad" floating around in their threads). Basically you want it to be juuuuust a hair better than "really terrible fanfic." That still means story doesn't matter a lot to most people (only dorks like me), but if you're bound and determined to have a story in your game, you might want to have an actual writer write it. Not necessarily a good writer! Just one who is a better writer than, say, Metzen. Which shouldn't be difficult.

The other option, of course, is no story, which I do think is an option more games should probably look into. 

[Malakili]

Their stories used to be serviceable though.  The problem is that somewhere along the line they stopped being a framework in which to put good gameplay and became "the vision" itself.  So if you imagine this story done like Diablo 2, Act 1 is about killing the Leoric and the Butcher, and if you happen to read that one lore book in Leoric's manor, you know something about the cult.  Act 2 is about saving Caldeum and getting the black soulstone. Act 3 is about stopping a demonic invasion from Arreat, and Act 4 is about killing Diablo.

But done as Diablo 3 Act 1 is about investigating a fallen star, and meeting a blacksmith, and finding an angel, and killing leoric, and hunting for artifacts, and finding out you are a nephalem, and blah blah blah and there's no rest from nagging meaningless plot point after plot point.

[Paelos]

Meaningless is a good adjective for the plot. Nothing at all you do matters or somehow makes any sense that you are doing something to stop Diablo, simply because Diablo did not exist in the time frame, and stopping the other evils only screwed up things worse.

[Ratman_tf]

Diablo 1 had the main story, that wasn't a "quest", it was the backstory. And then you had the occasional intersting event, like the goat man dude, "Nooo kill I!"
Then EQ came along and was boring as fuck, and WoW came along and "fixed" that by driving game direction through quests, and then every game picked up on that collect 10 bear asses stuff, whether it fit or not, and now we're all running down a train track with lots and lots of expensive cutscenes.

Proof that Everquest ruined everything.  

[Sjofn]

That was essentially my point, Malakili? That story is low on many people's priority lists, but there's a level of shittiness one shouldn't dip below.

[schild]

That's what I'm saying. Either have it be a good, compelling story or let it be a passable thing no one cares enough to complain about.

For the love of god don't put a story in because you feel the need to shove our professional fanfic in peoples faces.

[Ironwood]

Quite right.  I wouldn't give a shit either way if I could press my spacebar once and that fucking awful story would just STOP.

[schild]

If I ever make a loot-based action game that is even A let alone AAA, I promise to have an option to turn the actual story completely off.

[schild]

There's this sort of endemic problem in the gaming industry that when people reach a certain level it is because they think they possess the skillset to be at that level or the skills to excel at that level. It happens very commonly at large developers / publishing houses - that people are doing a job they simply shouldn't be doing, regardless of the amount of "experience" on their resumes. It's the net result of an entire 2 eras worth of "you're only as good as your shipped games."

This is why nearly every game people play is a total fucking let down.

[Ingmar]

That's just the Peter Principle.

[Malakili]

There's this sort of endemic problem in the gaming industry that when people reach a certain level it is because they think they possess the skillset to be at that level or the skills to excel at that level. It happens very commonly at large developers / publishing houses - that people are doing a job they simply shouldn't be doing, regardless of the amount of "experience" on their resumes. It's the net result of an entire 2 eras worth of "you're only as good as your shipped games."

This is why nearly every game people play is a total fucking let down.

This happens all the time and is basically just another form of the Peter Principle.  

Edit: Damn beaten to it.

[schild]

I'm keenly aware.

Edit: I'm sort of OK with it in lots of industries. One MBA is another MBA. Whatever. Perfect proxies. I'm less OK with it in creative industries.

[Paelos]

I was unaware of that principle and at first thought about Peter Griffin.

Oddly it still made sense.

[apocrypha]

2.5. I'm a big fan of lore that can be gleaned but is otherwise not obvious.  I hold Demon's/Dark Souls high in this regard.  Diagolev: The Game will feature bookshelves that you can read from or smash or ignore.

I was going to say this. If you need a story then you, the player, should be given then feeling that you're exposing a tiny corner of something much larger. You make a story feel epic in two ways - either the story really IS all about you and your epic deeds, which works if you can pull it off (Star Wars), or you hint at a huge, complex universe and history and let the player see some glimpses of it indirectly, e.g. Demon's/Dark Souls.

Blizzard tried for Star Wars but ended up with Family Guy in D3.

[Ironwood]

Peter principle doesn't really count here.   The success made was pretty much by other guys who've left or been canned.  That's the bit that makes me laugh.

Meanwhile, they're over there making Torchlight, a much better game.

[Maledict]

I just can't square the idea that Torchlight is a better game. For all the fundamental problems with D3, it's combat was still far superior. I've always found both Torchlight games to be dreary, ill-designed messes. Generally I don't think anyone has designed a decent ARPGS since D2 (although PoE came close and had a lot of good stuff in it).

[schild]

Diablo 3 is a superior game to TL2 in every way except for the way that matters.

The fucking loot.

[Ironwood]

Nope.  But we've been round and round this so many times I'm dizzy.

[ajax34i]

Disagree.  It's "the loot and the always online requirement" for me.  And the next guy will add one more thing to the list, and so on.

We should vote the better game in the BIIF forum.  More fun in Torchlight 1 than D3 for me.

[dusematic]

Anyone ever think with some of this stuff maybe your tastebuds change over the years?  I don't know that my 16 year old self wouldn't be enthralled with Diablo 3.  The counter argument would be that D2 still holds up, but thats in large measure because we were so into it then, so there is some nostalgia and all that.  I still like playing colonization but chuckle if anyone catches me playing it because they always say it looks like it was made by a 4 year old and wonder wtf im doing.

[Yegolev]

We would need to play Frankenstein to assemble a superior ARPG.  Trouble is that we would not agree on the superior pieces.  Except for the TQ/Grim Dawn WHOMP.  Who doesn't like that?

[Malakili]

We would need to play Frankenstein to assemble a superior ARPG.  Trouble is that we would not agree on the superior pieces.  Except for the TQ/Grim Dawn WHOMP.  Who doesn't like that?

Honestly, despite the bad story and the AH and whatever else.  If they had managed to make interesting loot with reasonable drop rates, everyone would love Diablo 3.  Most people would probably even forgive the always online stuff.

[Anxious Apatosaurus]

One of the datamined leaks seems to be something called "Adventure Mode" that's unlocked once you finish the campaign. I'm guessing (hoping) this strips out all the unnecessary cut scenes and dialogue so we all can all pretend Metzen's story was just a shitty fever-dream we all had.

[Paelos]

Yes, I think from that same data-mine they also had a "story mode" which will be where you go if you want to hear about Leah.

My guess is that people will take advantage of that mode, never.

[schild]

Im a 31 year old with a cable connection that plays nearly exclusively releases i can get from Steam. Whenever someone complains about always being online in a game tied to Steam, Battle.net, etc - well, I just assume its someone posting from 1997 when that sort of concern was valid. I don't think any of my consoles or PC has been offline in 12 years unless they couldn't be online, like my PS2.

[Merusk]

 

[Yegolev]

Did you de-friend me on XBL or something?

[schild]

My 360 is Schrodinger's Cat, I don't know if it has been alive, dead, or both since like 2010. I never took it out of storage. I obviously meant, for the consoles, they're always online when they're turned on.

[Paelos]

I honestly don't care about always online as much anymore if it's not something I have on Steam.

If it's already on Steam and I have to jump through ridiculous hoops of even more DRM? I get pissed. I'm already online, you know I'm online, I bought the damn thing off steam.

[Ironwood]

You can also run steam shit offline if you really need to.

[Fabricated]

Diablo 3 is a superior game to TL2 in every way except for the way that matters.

The fucking loot.

Man, I'm playing D3 off and on again and it's just such a deary experience I think the combat being "better" is horseshit at this point. There's nothing really interesting or dynamic about it other than Blizzard's superior visual/sound design. Shit explodes when I touch it and I send ragdolls flying everywhere when I play my monk or wizard but it's still just "spam primary attack, spam secondary on tougher things, hit 'oh shit' button as needed". It is literally the exact opposite of interesting or fun.

Everything about the actual gameplay is just miserable. It's slow and plodding, the maps aren't terribly random, the loot of course is horrendous, the rune system is lame since there are pretty much 'optimal' builds, I barely notice the abilities of enemies, vendors and crafting have almost no worth, champs are irritants instead of interesting. Torchlight, PoE, etc have done all of this better to varying degrees even if they have respective warts that would cause people to believe specific bits are worse. D3 is a fucking cold bowl of soggy oatmeal. I'll take just about anything that does at least one thing better over it.

[Malakili]

Watching the Reaper of Souls panel at Blizzcon.

Adventure Mode
- All acts, all waypoints, move freely between everything.
- Totally separate mode from the campaign mode, so nothing needs to be played in order.
- more randomization
- Bounties
    - When you start an Adventure Mode game, you have 25 random bounties.  You can kill them for extra rewards, but are optional.  Can be bosses, clearing a dungeon, kill a random unique monster.
    - Rewards, gold + experience, items, rift keystones.
    - Rift keystones open portals to totally randomized dungeons which pull from all tilesets + monsters.  Multiple floors (1-10 levels deep), each floor is randomized differently.  They showed a video where the player did something and spawned like 12 treasure goblins at once 

[Merusk]

Q&A from an Irishman, "Offline mode, when are we going to get it?!"

A: Long, roundabout never. 

[Ironwood]