The backlash to Diablo 4's pre-Season of the Malignant patch (which was seen by many as a general nerfing across the board) has been addressed by Blizzard in the time-honoured fashion of embattled developers since forever. Key members of the studio have fronted an irate audience in a Campfire Chat-style livestream, a format that's supposed to put the audience at ease with its relaxed, informal style.
Instead, with the energy and body language of the guilty facing trial, associate director of community management Adam Fletcher, game director Joe Shely, and associate game director Joe Piepora promised change over the course of an uncomfortable hour.
Fletcher set the precedent for the tense mea culpa with admirable frankness: "To kick us off here, I think we want to obviously acknowledge everyone's feedback in regards to reducing player power. We know it's bad, we know it's not fun, and its something we ourselves know is not the greatest play experience for players out there"
A hotfix was deployed over the weekend that would increase the density of enemies in Endgame Nightmare Dungeons. Buffs are on the way for Sorcerers and Barbarians, in addition to another Stash tab for loot, but not until patch 1.1.1, likely still a couple of weeks away.
As you might imagine, unhappy gamers did what unhappy gamers tend to do in their own time-honoured tradition; Diablo 4 on PS5 enjoys an impressive Critical Rating of 88 on the review aggregate site Metacritic, which is quite at odds with its 1.9 User Score, which fell off a cliff after an apparent concerted review-bombing effort.
It remains to be seen where the game lands and only time will ultimately tell. Diablo 4 remains a sales juggernaut, with a monstrous player base, the majority of which (at least, last month) hadn't even beaten the game's campaign and, therefore, likely don't care much about Endgame balance right now. What do you think of all this? Let us know in the forgiving community found in the comments section below.
[source youtube.com, via eurogamer.net]
Comments 42
@StrawberryTurtle Lol you just had to throw some hate at Microsoft when this is totally unrelated to them, really don’t know how people can be so toxic basically 24/7…
I actually hope this is the kind of things that they can improve under Microsoft, at the very least they listen more to the community feedback than Blizzard which currently seems so keen on upsetting their own players.
Big developers always wait until after the reviews to release a patch that makes the game worse and push players into macro-transactions (not a typo).
I wish reviewers would update the score when something like this happens to reflect the actual state of the game
@Rhaoulos Macrotransactions is a pretty accurate term when it comes to games cod and Diablo 4.
@Rhaoulos I mean the MTX is just overpriced skins and not much else beyond a Battle Pass for the Season. They revealed they plan on buffing hard and will be making it less grindy in the coming weeks.
Can they just admit that they dont know what they're doing and are prolonging updates so they can overtime they fixed the game.
Pretty lame of them. Not Fun is really putting it mildly! They shouldn't have put it out if there was no practical way of rolling it back!
@IOI Microsoft doesn't really deserve any goodwill at this point. Sure Gamepass is excellent but look how they treat the things they already own. Halo Infinite became a terrible live service game, Rare is chained to sea of thieves for all eternity. I have no faith that conditions will improve under Microsoft and they'll have to re-earn that goodwill from me.
@StrawberryTurtle My thoughts as well, they knew what they were doing with the patch. Blizzard have done this time and again where they made their games less fun either through business models or nerfs and buffs in the name of "balance".
@Rhaoulos Thing is with the frequency that patches and updates are released nowadays it’s unrealistic to expect reviewers to update their score. They could end up having to revise the score every week.
Honestly makes me a bit glad to wait on playing it. I've got a lot on my plate to play now so nothing wrong with waiting.
Also on a small side note, since Microsoft is going to own Activision, and in turn Blizzard since they're a subsidiary, I do hope Microsoft lights a fire under Blizzard to improve. I know it may be farfetched but it'll benefit everyone if they do.
Considering the state Diablo 3 was released it really shows people only have short term memory.
Blizzard has fumbled almost every release for the past decade and their patches are able to kill player bases just like they did with Overwatch.
"Let us know in the forgiving community found in the comments section below." That just about sums it up 🤣.
Don’t apologise to these infantilised fans. You only Make them worse.
I still haven't got round to starting diablo 4 yet, but seems like I ain't missing much. ABK have slowly turned into the worst and most greedy publisher around.
It’s all about perspective. If the launch version had the debuts from the start no one would have cared.
@Deadlyblack
Generally when large buyouts like this happen it goes the opposite way - the new owners try to extract their returns as quickly as possible to justify the cost to the shareholders.
And negativity just continues. From people who mostly dont even play the game. Daily dose of negativity reached, can move to another things.
Was anyone surprised by this?
This is the company that allowed people to spend $10,000 to boost their character only for someone who spent $50,000 to come along in PVP and one hit kill them. (Diablo Immortals)
Why do people keep giving money to companies that practice such scummy exploitation?
We as a gaming community should be boycotting these companies and demanding regulation on how much can be spent. Otherwise we all lose out in the long run. But instead we throw money at them and then cry when they do something we don’t like.
More fool us.
You know something is seriously wrong when you have a loot based game but people would rather use randomly generated gear than the unique items. There is just no clear endgame direction. I think that is D4’s biggest problem.
@StrawberryTurtle Just some perspective on that point, I've barely spent a dozen hours like actually playing Diablo since reviewing it and writing guides, most of that before the day one patch. Reviewed multiple other games since, in addition to the games I'm playing personally (not to mention being married, with a baby haha). I wouldn't feel well-informed enough to re-review the state of the game every month, and I'd sound like a fool trying I think MaxRoll is probably the closest for that kind of focus but
@REALAIS the negativity is from end game players who frankly are best positioned to actually give feedback on the changes.
@JohntheRaptor which comment from this post is related to endgame players? Engame players are less likely to complain about nerfs which happened before devs will push for buffs in future because they are playing most likely season 1 and engame in there is pretty good with Seasonal malignant heart mechanics. Players who are playing eternal realm will not be core demographics for such game as Diablo is.
This whole thing made me genuinely LOL, The sullen faces, all dressed in black, the whole serious atmosphere, the OTT reactions from the players..like a demented Scandi Noir drama and all this over a patch LOL Buffs and Nerfs are nature of the beast when it comes to live games.
@Rhaoulos I have seen a review of Diablo 3 a year ago which heavily emphasized the real money auction house and several other things which were completely unavailable for at least 8 years at that point. Do you mean to include those changes as well? If a game gets better than the review score must also correlate to that, especially when games can change so much these days.
@Rhaoulos lol you're right. These aren't microtransactions anymore when you're paying 20 dollars for skins. That's the price of most indie games.
Imagine going from having a job where you have to deal with real problems to this.
That dude in the middle looks ready to give up on all of it.
Those three won’t be attached to the game in 6 mos - 1 year, bet.
@Victor_Meldrew I really don't like the level scaling either. Until about level 50, your level is really just a cosmetic.
To be fair though, the scaling kinda 'stops' when you switch to world tier 3 (around level 50). Some things will still scale, but nightmare dungeons do not. They also made the open world scale 'less' recently too.
lmao that's an amazing screenshot. Those dudes wear a look of utter shame so well~
I say just one thing... Last week I've finished story in Diablo 4. I didn't run D4 since... I have urgent need of "diablo" dose and I'm thinking about running Diablo 3 or Diablo 2.
...that is my current state about Diablo 4...
I won't be buying another Diablo game. Last straw for me.
So what is it then, they designed the patch and tought wow this is great were so happy with this, or they designed it and then realised oh this is junk l, but maybe we will release it and hope people think its OK.
It seems they went for option.
Typical blizzard never listening to their players or obvious beta results.
I dont understand why though,.they are just making more work for themselves, an lose players along side that
I do love paying for a created problem just for big corp to make some extra cash. But i do feel sorry for these guys it shows they are send to be the public punching bag.
Amazing to me how a game that was launched to rave reviews as basically the game of the decade has fallen so flat, so fast, as to be a complete joke.
More amazing is that this is the most profitable model. Imagine any other industry where intentionally breaking your product as it leaves the factory generates more repeat sales than selling quality products. Maybe Apple should make iPhones crash every few hours and sell weekly patches to "improve" it but never fix it.
@Kienda I was wondering why my level 50+ druid could wonder into PVP and get killed in one hit. By the same person. Multiple times. That was completely ridiculous and yes I agree. It happened so fast I couldn't do anything about it at all - and then I went into the north end of the region and the same IDIOT killed me - again! What the hell kind of fun is that???
@djlard Same for me. I finished the story on my necromancer the day before season one started. I made a new character for the season, but couldn't get into it. I gave up on the game for now and started playing Inquisitor - Martyr. I'm thinking of giving Last Epoch a try as well.
If they knew it sucked, why did they let it happen? Maybe they didn’t think it would be that bad.
@StrawberryTurtle They sunk time and money into it they have to defend it or else it'll seem as though they wasted their money on another garbage live service
Nerfing many characters this soon after launch was always going to be a bad idea. What were they hoping to accomplish?
we still got plenty of fun with this game.... thanks to local coop on ps5. honestly, i wouldnt play it alone.
at least not as long as any other diablo.
But im confident, their game has some seriously well made gameplay. things can be patched up
Ha! You have phones don't you!?
More cringe here then.
Got to say I'm enjoying the hell out of D4. Not doing any of the seasion stuff just leveing up my Druid. Got him to 89 last night and finally got my Tempest Roar Helm and Waxing Gibbous. The shed build I put together is just amazingly fun!
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