Xebeche

"He who talks much but says nothing."

This was the word which kept repeating in my mind as I watched the Diablo IV Developer Update today. I started watching it while working, and thank god, because I can't imagine being an actual fan of this game, clinging to the hope that two hours of live stream might reveal something worth my time, only to discover that it wasn't worth the time it took just to watch the stream.

I should mention that I didn't re-watch the raw stream to take notes; I watched Asmongold's version, with Asmongold's commentary included.

That said, here are my thoughts about the details...

Vampires. 

Why vampires? The thing about vampires in fiction is that they typically are a Big Deal when they show up... which is why they've never showed up in Diablo before. Because Diablo is a game in which you kill the devil himself; compared to that, Dracula is just second-rate. At least they have some sort of rationale to tie the vampires into Lilith's blood-themed thing, but it's still really, really weak.

Also, the villain of the upcoming season, Lords Who-Gives-A-Fuck. Because who gives a fuck.

Vampiric powers will be "class-agnostic," which sounds like another way of saying "generic." It does economize on dev time, though, when you only have to develop one set of seasonal things, rather than five.

The vampiric powers themselves are boring. Well, maybe not boring... more like basic. Like low-level Path Of Exile skills, but not as good. 

Not kidding about that PoE comparison, BTW. They've just showed off a channeling skill that looks exactly like Scorching Ray.

Yet another itemized piece of player power: Pacts. Because D4 really needed more shit to clutter up players' inventories.

"We've added a bunch of new monsters." They're re-skins. They're just re-skins. The Blood Skeletons are just skeletons, but red. All of the "new" monsters are like this.

Glamour shot of Lord Whogivesafuck. I'm not just being sarcastic, BTW, I literally can't remember his name, and they've said it a half-dozen times already.

I was about to say something nice about the vampiric player character skins, but they're actually more monsters. I guess they ran out of actual monsters to re-skin.

Yet another currency, specific to the season. Yawn.

"Very very fun." Sorry, Joe, but I don't believe you. You don't sound like a man who actually believes that any of this is fun.

ALERT! The most exciting thing to happen so far has been a test of California's emergency alert system.

New event: Blood Harvest! It's just like a Hell Tide, but lower-level, and more frequent. Variety!

Now they're showing us a flow-chart of the player experience. Jesus, it really does start out thin, and then thin out even more as you go up levels.

Now they've added the new boss fights to the flow-chart. Each boss fight being presented as equivalent to en entire end-game system. Excuse me while I press X to doubt on that. 

Target-farming of certain item types will now be tied to the new bosses. I guess that's how they justify equating them to entire game systems. It is an improvement, I guess, but it's hardly a selling point.

Duriel added as a new level 100 boss, will drop uber unique items. "You will absolutely know people who have uber uniques after this goes live." And you only need to spend a few hundred hours farming the ingredients for a summoning ritual which gives you one shot at one of these bosses, who will almost certainly not drop an uber unique for you. Your buddy will get one, though.

Class balance changes and unique item changes will not be discussed in this stream. Come back on the 10th! (If it's this thrilling, I probably won't. Hopefully DM:D4 will recap it.)

Quality of Life changes:

• Scrolls of Escape will now save your HC character if you disconnect, consuming the scroll. You can also trigger this with a logout macro. Already announced, but we didn't know when it was coming. Game still needs an offline mode for solo play.
  
• Experience grind now less grindy. Basically, the bullshit levels of extra grind that they'd added to the game in order to disguise the game's lack of content are being toned down to something more reasonable. Level 100 now 40% faster in S2 than in S1.
• Skip Campaign now unlocks 10 waypoints automatically, 2 per zone. 
• Renown rewards are now unlocked for your account, not your character. Also already announced, now confirmed for S2.
• Devs confirmed that they've now played the game. LOL.
• Level-scaling buffed; increased level-scaling to be offset by buffs to player power in other areas. Details TBA.
• More stash locations! One for every waypoint, one for every vendor in capital cities, waypoints all over the fucking place. Immersion!

Horse changes:

• Horses can jump now! 
• And are less likely to get stuck or slow down unexpectedly. 
• Also faster. 
• Using spur now breaks through barricades (I seem to remember Asmongold recommending this one).
• Better mount control for PC. Apparently they hadn't tested the PC mount controls until players started complaining.
• Dismount skill also improved.
  

Nightmare dungeon changes:

• Teleporting to a ND now put you inside the ND, rather than just outside. Fewer loading screens make for a good change, but doesn't fix the issue with ND being the only thing in the game worth doing.
• Dungeon events improved. NPCs will not get one-shot during events.
• Traps nerfed: better readability (easier to see them), less crowd control (fewer freezes, etc.).
• CC not just reduced for traps; it's an across-the-board change.
• Paragon Glyphs will also level faster, in line with the 40% faster to 100.
• Objectives removed from some dungeons. Objectives in other dungeon will be placed on the critical path through the dungeon. These are good changes; dungeon objectives sucked

World event changes:

• Legion events and world boss spawns will be more frequent.
• Warning timers doubled for both; you'll know if one is going to start.

End game activities:

• Nightmare Sigils rewarded by the Tree of Whispers will be worth doing now.
• Tree of Whispers more rewarding generally (this is the point where Asmongold declared the changes to be good enough for him to try S2).
• XP from Whispers and Helltide increased (similar to other changes; they're serious about fixing the grind, it seems).

User Interface changes:

• You can now mark items as favourite or junk in inventory.
• Favourite items cannot be sold or salvaged.
• Junk items can be sold all at once, instead of one-by-one.
• Sorting will now group legendary aspects together.
• Stash can be searched and filtered. Welcome to 2013, guys! Path of Exile has had this forever; it's shocking that D4 didn't have this at launch.
• Streamer mode added (hides identifying information while playing).
• Combat text can now be hidden.
• Auto-run added - pressing the bound key/button will cause the character to move continuously in the direction of the mouse cursor. This is actually good; I've been wanting this to be added to every ARPG I've player in the last decade, and D4 actually got to it first.

Item changes:

• Gems are now crafting materials, not items (don't need inventory space).
• Must be crafted (i.e. converted from material to item) in order to be socketed.
• Enchantment costs updated (mostly reduced) - starts higher, increases more slowly.
• Crafting materials will drop in place of crap items in higher world tiers. This is basically a loot filter, except that it converts the items to materials, instead of hiding them.
• Higher level monsters will drop better items (Sacred and Ancestral). Having items improve as monster level increases is an improvement.
• Uber unique items are always capped when they drop. There are no better versions; if you've got one of these, then you have the best version.

Hyping the next stream. Adam Jackson will be there. Do I care? I'm not sure I do. 

God, this whole stream is so boring. I actually nodded off, missed about ten minutes of bullshit, went back to the last thing I remembered, and then discovered that I hadn't missed anything,

I just realized that both Joes, Shely and Piepora, are balding. I don't know why, but I now can't see anything else about either man. At least one of them has a beard.

Diablo 4 is launching on Steam, just like Overwatch 2. I can't wait to see the user reviews. So, Steam Deck now officially supported.

Q & A.

Second question has them stumped: What plans do you have to make the open world fun? They have no plans.

Question about there being more stuff to do after Paragon cap. They have no plans.

Two questions in a row deferred to next stream.

Question about community features. They have no plans.

Question about the stingy season pass. They've heard the feedback, but have no plans.

Question about further nightmare dungeon changes. They're still working on it, but have no plans.

Question about visual clarity of boss fights. Some changes in S2, otherwise no plans.

Question about trade, which players are currently using third-party sites and tools to do. They have no plans.

Question about changes to the Codex of Power. They still want to make changes, but have nothing to announce yet.

Question about buying the game on Steam. Yes, you'll have to buy the game again on Steam if you want to play it on Steam. Cross-platform is a feature, though, so you don't have to be on Steam to play with Steam players.

Question about loot filters. They've heard the feedback, but have no plans.

Question about rotating the dungeons in the Nightmare Dungeon pool. No changes.

Question about adding more stash tabs. They've heard the feedback, but have no plans beyond those already announced.

S1 end on Oct. 17th; S2 starts on the same day. No down time! Play all the fucking time!

Overall impressions:

This stream could have been a forum post. Two hours of them droning on was just punishingly long, and boring to boot. The changes announced are all positive, but don't address the game's worst issues, which means that they're still just tinkering, not fixing.

If you've already bought the game, and mostly enjoyed it, then these changes might be enough to inspire you to try again with the start of S2. If you haven't already bought the game, then nothing announced in this stream should have changed your mind. Even with the game being available on Steam, I will not be buying Diablo IV.

I do think that adding the game to Steam is the most interesting thing announced, though. Battle.Net had been the OG launcher, and Blizzard was of the few studios that didn't need to put games on Steam to sell them. That has now changed; Blizzard is no longer special, and their games are no longer special.

Will I wishlist D4 on Steam? No. Do I look forward to them putting Hearthstone on Steam, thus allowing me to eliminate the Lutris launcher from my Linux gaming life? Yes.

Overall, though? I think that the D4 devs did just enough here to stop the bleeding, and maybe pull some of their lapsed players back into the fold, but I don't think they've done enough to revive their moribund game. We'll see what other reactions are like, both to the stream and to the season when it drops, but I think they still have a lot more work to do to fix this game, and I don't see them doing any of it.

C+