Diablo 4 - Hellish Grind

[JGP]

1 hour ago, Argonath Diver said:

Super skeptical the Chat will have anything but mild backtracking and some weak promises.

I think on balance, for some classes and builds, that dot jewel will be incredible- most definitely for Bleed Barb. I'm trying to get a handle on whether they're just hanging on, got a plan here or what. If they're going to force glass canon, fine I guess. Adding another skill check isn't the way I'd have gone but who the fuck am I. 

They got me for S1 so far, so good job on that. Got to land something here, Blizz. 

 

 

 

 

[Soylent Brown]

I think with the toughness nerf, they just weren't that happy seeing people completely comfortable tanking the highest level content. After all, it's not like people were farming GR150 in D3 from the moment Greater Rifts were introduced.

With regard to the season theme too, it's not the most amazing thing ever, but they're damned if they do and damned if they don't here - too weak, and people complain now, or too powerful, and people will complaing when the next season underwhelms.

[Relic]

6 hours ago, JGP said:

 

They got me for S1 so far, so good job on that. Got to land something here, Blizz. 

 

 

 

 

You really went through a journey there haha

[JGP]

 

6 hours ago, Relic said:

You really went through a journey there haha

Dude… lol

[Soylent Brown]

Minor additional patch released just before the start of the season, which removes the level cap for T3 and T4, and also-

Quote

Malignant Hearts will now always grant armor that directly maps with their item power.

I assume high end hearts will give 250 armour each then.

[JGP]

Smart if so. I think the Tier requirement relax is [also] on the Malignant Gems themselves, no Tier lock = not entirely stupid

Edited July 20, 2023 by JGP

[JGP]

I also figured out where Bajheera is getting his Fears from. Butcher's Carver, I vendored mine before [was too low ilvl anyway] but will definitely need to hang on to that for PvP.

[Kalbear]

It is cool to see someone speedrunning the 5 stages of grief in this thread

[Arakasi]

Hehe I’m enjoying the game but I come from a pov that I just don’t play a lot of games. So I probably lack a good comparison that annoys others. To me it’s a fun game with warts that will probably get fixed. I work in game dev so I know things can be harder than expected to fix.
 

That being said it seems pretty clear Blizzards qa process for these patches/events seem to be crap. One thing with the super rare items in Helltides sure but right now in the new season apparently town portals are bugged and there is some issue with leaving zones. Like come on test your shit. You should have a full testing environment with a private server where this stuff should’ve found before live.

[Arakasi]

2 hours ago, Soylent Brown said:

Minor additional patch released just before the start of the season, which removes the level cap for T3 and T4, and also-

I assume high end hearts will give 250 armour each then.

Not sure on exact numbers but Wudijos stream seems to be reporting 40 armor per 100 item power. So an 800 item power heart would be 320 armor. That’s a nice buff. 

[Soylent Brown]

The clownshow continues, with lots of people unable to get into the game to start their seasons.

I managed to get in, but am now stuck in a malignant tunnnel, unable to get past the loading screen and escape, haha ffs.

[JGP]

Everything working ok for me so far [knocks on wood] nice you can start the Seasonal Questing right away [or can you even if you chose Campaign] Anyway, looks like jewelry is dropping with sockets now, which will save on money and mats, so small QoL improvement there too.

Level 11, let’s see how she goes.

[Arakasi]

43 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

The clownshow continues, with lots of people unable to get into the game to start their seasons.

I managed to get in, but am now stuck in a malignant tunnnel, unable to get past the loading screen and escape, haha ffs.

Always sucks to get stuck in a malignant tunnel. :p

[DanteGabriel]

So I'm one of those dad gamers that can devote maybe 3 hours a night to it, and in these types of games I like to level a few different classes together. I spent a lot of time on side quests and events and mostly ignored the story. Then when the season opening got announced I figured I better finish the storyline and do the capstone. My sorc was the furthest along so I just focused on story completion, then tried to open up as much map as I could. She's only up to 55 or so and I haven't done T3 stuff yet so having a nerfed class and inefficient build hasn't really hurt. I got an Ice Shards amulet that fired 6 additional shards pretty early on so that's basically the foundation of my build. I guess I'll do a Druid for the season, I was having fun trying to embrace both my wolf and bear souls.

It was a really complex emotional journey when the credits started to roll after I finished the story. A ton of my former peers in the MMO industry ended up at Blizzard. I knew my old boss was one of the design managers but there were a lot of surprises. Most of us aren't on Facebook any more so I lost track of a lot of my industry friends. I left the industry over ten years ago. Some people I hired, mentored, and managed are now leads and managers there.

It makes me wonder where I would have been had I stayed in the industry. I left because I couldn't subject a family to the instability of the industry. My last company crashed ignominiously literally a week before my wife and I were supposed to close on a house.

There's a lot to miss from the culture, the friendships, and the work itself, but I sure as shit am glad not to have to deal with the hate coming their way. I've been that guy responsible for a widely hated nerf, I don't miss that.

[JGP]

16 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

I left because I couldn't subject a family to the instability of the industry. My last company crashed ignominiously literally a week before my wife and I were supposed to close on a house.

That sucks, Dante, and would've soured me too.

 

16 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

There's a lot to miss from the culture, the friendships, and the work itself, but I sure as shit am glad not to have to deal with the hate coming their way. I've been that guy responsible for a widely hated nerf, I don't miss that.

I can gripe as good as the next guy, but the level of vitriol being spewed on other platforms is pretty amazing. Nerfs are normal-- but if you don't want to alienate your base [or minimize such, anyway] that shit really ought to make sense and be relatively balanced. 

[DanteGabriel]

20 minutes ago, JGP said:

That sucks, Dante, and would've soured me too.

My cancer-stricken mother finding out from CNN that I'd been laid off was the cherry on the Schilling sundae...

 

20 minutes ago, JGP said:

 

I can gripe as good as the next guy, but the level of vitriol being spewed on other platforms is pretty amazing. Nerfs are normal-- but if you don't want to alienate your base [or minimize such, anyway] that shit really ought to make sense and be relatively balanced. 

I left before Gamergate but even before that, it was really toxic. Our community manager circa 2008 almost had a nervous breakdown from the reaction after observing some players had a sense of entitlement.

It's been an interesting evolution of dev-player relationships. Back when I started, 2000ish, my closest colleague and I hung out all day on an IRC channel devoted to our game and has pretty unfiltered conversations with people. I had a couple of different players crash on my couch on various occasions. Hell, I even bought some acid from one of the IRC regulars, I paid via PayPal, and had it mailed to me. Rules got formalized pretty shortly after that (I had a profane and authoritative response to someone on the channel insulting us, someone else posted it to a widely read message board, but the design director at the time just saw fit to give me a ceremonial slap on the wrist for it). It's obviously it's not like that any more.

For what it's worth, I don't think anybody here has been overboard. That's all standard feedback, part of the job. It's just, as a good friend of mine said on a message board, "Your ten bucks a month doesn't mean you can talk about my mom."

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

For what it's worth, I don't think anybody here has been overboard. That's all standard feedback, part of the job. It's just, as a good friend of mine said on a message board, "Your ten bucks a month doesn't mean you can talk about my mom."

That's why I pay her an additional $10

[Arakasi]

To answer Relics question from a few pages back I work at EA but on a central team. Been a while since I was on a game team. But yeah it’s tough at times to not be affected by criticism. Reason why it works for me is that I find EA to be a pretty stable place to work. We’re kinda like the Microsoft of gaming companies. It’s maybe not that exciting as cutting edge stuff but it’s stable and we do seem to care about work life balance here. I’ve also had very few negative experiences. So I’m happy to continue my career here instead of chasing more money at a startup or going to a company with a higher stress culture like Riot.

Edit: Especially with having two kids and gone through a cancer scare this last year.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Arakasi

[Soylent Brown]

One thing they've done, which is really nice, is they've buffed the renown side quests and dungeons give by 10, so it should be a little easier to unlock everything.

None of the zones have minimum level requirements anymore either. I guess it made sense to have that during the campaign, but it's nice to have access to everywhere immediately having skipped that.

 

[horangi]

26 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

To answer Relics question from a few pages back I work at EA but on a central team. Been a while since I was on a game team. But yeah it’s tough at times to not be affected by criticism. Reason why it works for me is that I find EA to be a pretty stable place to work. We’re kinda like the Microsoft of gaming companies. It’s maybe not that exciting as cutting edge stuff but it’s stable and we do seem to care about work life balance here. I’ve also had very few negative experiences. So I’m happy to continue my career here instead of chasing more money at a startup or going to a company with a higher stress culture like Riot.

 

Give it a couple of years and EA will just be the Microsoft of Microsoft.