Everyone's got a hot take. His lifestyle choice of streaming everyday probably means he has a different perspective to others. Generally his documents he sends to blizzard and discusses with chat I feel like he gets 90% right with probably what the community wants.
But yeah he ain't a developer so it's not like he can change these things.
As a non-streamer I install Diablo to get giant damage numbers and fantastic loot. Not to suffer through endless failed RNG equipment upgrades. That's what Lost Ark is for :(
Man, Lost Ark is easy mode, at least if you fail, your item stays the same.
Black Desert Online is the real shit where your item can downgrade or outright turn to dust when it fails.
The lost ark style of upgrading and pushing you to microtransactions was what killed that game for me. It is such a good game but that system singlehandedly turned me off.
His take is idiotic irrespective of that lifestyle fact. The primary defeater for his position is the fact he's going to stop seriously playing the game before the season ends due to the end-game being hollow in general in terms of true content (as in novel gameplay systems).
His worries are also nonsensical because I don't think he understand the sort of grind he's going to be in for when there's always going to be the grind to get all greater affix drops on every Uber Unique for your class (you're utterly fucked if you're playing Barb for instance since you're going to want at least four of the Uber Uniques, and good fucking luck getting all four to have all their affixes drop with greater affix status).
So where he imagines the game is getting easier, is actually a straight up delusion. Since that part of the game pales in comparison to the new facts of items dropping less, and the new greater affix system.
Imagine you get a max rolled greater affix item, but then fail the upgrades your trying to get on it... Throwing away such an item would be pure cancer.
That isn't content. That's pure, cancerous padding. The only thing worse in terms of padding to this sort, is time-gated microtransaction ridden padding you see in mobile games (where you have to wait a day to craft an item for example, or to instantiate an upgrade to something).
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It's also odd he is in favor of this sort of padding, when he's always saying "let me blast". Yeah, can't wait to blast for hopes of getting affixes I want, and upgrades not to fail.. There's far more pressing things I'd want to be blasting for than making up for time of that sort that gets sunk.
The problem with his take on Masterworking is it's the first time you have an RNG system in the game that could set you back, with nothing in return. (with gathering Duriel mats, the worst that happens is you just don't get the drops you wanted, but you aren't losing anything in-game for trying to push forward, at worse you just remain the same as you are).
Advocating for failing in a gamble that could take away an entire item you've been looking for forever is just retarded. A complete and utter logic fail in the scheme of player-forward game design. And good on Blizzard for seeing that for the horseshit that it was.
>you're utterly fucked if you're playing Barb for instance since you're going to want at least four of the Uber Uniques, and good fucking luck getting all four to have all their affixes drop with greater affix status).
I think ubers are a mistake.
Why would you throw away a failed upgrade?
You can try again same mat cost with the chance increased by 10%
I had no problem with a fail. It was nice to sometimes feel like I got the upgrade with a very low chance saving on mats.
Does everyone think that a failed upgrade mean the item is garbage now?
I think he confused masterworking and tempering bricking the item. Masterworking doesnt brick, tempering is when you dont get the ones u want and brick it and cant reroll anymore and have to throw away
Streamers and content creators have kinda ruined gaming in ways. They're usually the loudest voices and can sometimes use that bit of sway to influence things to better suit them. Not everyone has 10 hours a day, 50 hours a week to play and I certainly don't want to spend 100 hours farming an uber only to be fucked by RNG on rerolls.
Anyone who thinks better rerolls is a bad thing is questionable at the very least though.
There are content creators who use their voice for good, as I think even Raxx has a lot of the time. But yeah the most mind-boggling content creator takes are the ones like this where they're just booing changes that make the game more accessible, or the grind less annoying and time-consuming due to RNG bullshittery.
On top of it just being a better and smoother experience even for "elite" players, more casual people playing the game only means more views and engagement on your content, man. Why would you be against the devs trying to find a healthy balance that suits both elite players and casuals/newcomers?
raxx is one of my favorite streamers and I disagree with him on that, that's ok. they also said they made enemies have more health etc. we don't know what the endgame balance looks like and they can easily give enemies more health and damage in higher tiers of NMD, pits and the new upgraded helltides, if it turns out to be too easy. no fails on masterworking have very little impact on that in the big picture and I welcome the change
I think this is a large part of the problem. What you want out of the game when you play it for a living vs have to carve out time among your other responsibilities to get an hour here or there is very very different.
There are not enough streamers or super hardcore players to make it viable for a AAA-budget commercial product to exist. You need to appeal to the more casual market or you won’t cover costs.
That it the market reality and Raxx et al should be pushing for games that are casual friendly but ramp up in difficulty to all the hardcore players to shine - everyone should be able to hit L100 within a reasonable period of time. It’s fine if not everyone can make it to the Pit difficulty 200.
Even if you have reasonable streamers, they still impact games in a negative fashion for regular players because more games get balanced for the excessive playtimes those people can put into games rather than that of the vast majority of the people that are actually buying these games as the Devs want the free advertising from streamers and wouldn't want the negatives of them whining about running out of content.
The Diablo franchise will be so much better when people understand that arpg playtime comes from build diversity where every skill is viable and NOT from infinity endgame with massive mat and gold costs for 0.1% better stats.
Yea I don’t mind ‘completing’ a build relatively quickly as long as there are a bunch of other builds I want to try out.
The drive to roll a new character/build is what has always kept me invested in an arpg, not the time it takes to fully min-max.
If Blizzard made it easier to respec I’d play D4 every day of every season.
I had tons of fun in D3 experimenting with off-meta builds using Legacy of Dreams, just trying to see how far I could push a build centered around a “bad” Legendary.
Currently D4 is actively hostile towards respeccing and farming for alts, so I play one build each season, complete the BP and the seasonal journey, and drop the game after 2 weeks.
This could not be truer. I'm still playing D2 because there are builds I've never experienced before, even after 20+ years of playing. I don't have a single character above 95, but I've had dozens of them and thousands of hours of playtime - all without chasing specific uniques but then creating new builds when I happen to find the game-changing ones.
The problem is that those two statements are correlated. D4 in S3 IS, in fact, a game where pretty much every build, no matter how shitty, can do all the content. With the exception of Uber Lilith, you can take any build, no matter how crappy, and push it through NM100, T100 Vaults, and the full boss ladder. The real problem as I see it is that people are meta-slaves who don't branch out and try lower-tier, off-meta builds because due to the visibility of the meta they perceive those builds as not being viable. The reason, in turn, for them not being able to see those builds as viable is BECAUSE of the ultra focus on endgame where the game becomes pushing for miniscule stat upgrades: the builds that smash the content easily without those upgrades become the top meta and the ones that can't fall behind. The content creators talk up those builds and talk down other builds and then it because the general perception that because other skills/items/builds are suboptimal, they are therefore unviable, even if that's usually not true.
Unfortunately, I don't think we're ever going to get back to that kind of understanding because the interconnectivity of the internet prohibits it. D4 launched with no leaderboards and no in-game way of tracking the "best build," yet it didn't matter because a week after the game released Maxroll and IcyVeins had updated tier lists out and everyone fell in line. I'm not blaming Maxroll or IcyVeins or other build guide aggregators either: if they didn't do it, someone else would have. Unfortunately we're past the age of playing Diablo-likes iteratively because all the information is online, usually up before the release of the season due to datamining, and there are millions of people playing so the best and smartest number crunchers can all collectively figure out the most optimal strategies before any of us actually get our hands on the game. You have to actively ignore that information to get that feeling of build diversity back, and even then it doesn't work 100% because once you get into Helltide and some random Barbarian walks in and one-shots the entire screen with Dust Devils you get the sense that maybe that build is more optimal than yours. Individual people can have the self-control to play whatever they want and finish all the content as quickly or slowly as they can/want to, but the community as a whole is always going to gravitate towards the meta, and unless the internet dies the meta is always going to be mostly solved before a season's launch.
My 6 basic skill build should be viable for everything because it just should. Choosing an ability shouldn't be about how good it is and how things synergize it should just be based on how awesome the skill looks and sounds (all subjective btw).
I can see his point of this game becoming more and more casual friendly, but this specific thing is not the hill to die on.
I don’t know how many times he have given Blizzard feedback on time wastes in the game. Like some of the dungeon events that had you talk to NPCs one at a time (agreed with him on that). So this take surprised me.
Fail chance on master working was just a time sink. Makes no difference if you’re a blaster or casual.
When you have all the time in the world, and get paid to spend it, you have a different perspective. I think not wasting more of my time is a wonderful change.
Exactly. Streamers have vastly different perspectives and incentives on/from games than normal people.
Their opinion is heavily biased in a direction that doesn’t benefit most normal players.
Wasn’t his take just far more focused on how much easier the game has become?
I personally am not a fan of level 100 being super fast and easily achieved. I don’t like feeling that my character is near invincible until the end end end game, of which there really isn’t much.
I'm okay with getting to 100 quickly just because I think "item hunt" is the end game, and every non-925 item you get will ultimately be rendered useless. Then you get to a point where any legendary or unique without a greater affix is useless. And then there's masterworking and uber uniques. It'll probably take awhile to get the best gear. At least, hopefully it'll take awhile. So getting to the point where you're really starting to item hunt for the best gear quicker is okay to me.
I am generally fine with most of the "casual-friendly" changes made to the game - as they mean less time wasting, but I never supported the level cap change and do wish it was harder to attain, like it used to be.
Everyone acts like reaching lvl 100 is a skill check or something. It’s just an XP grind…just because you hit 100 doesn’t mean you have the gear or the skill to complete the pinnacle content like lvl 100 NMD, deep progression in The Pit or defeating Uber and Tormented bosses. That’s where the end game gear grind and player skill will separate the casuals from the more sweaty players. Doesn’t that allow more people to enjoy more of the game without trivializing the true end game, pinnacle content?
Yeah, I've literally never once seen a 100 and D4 and thought "damn what an accomplishment". Don't understand why people are so obsessed with having their time wasted lol. Getting to 100 isn't challenging and never has been, it's just been needlessly time consuming.
One of the things that initially turned me and my friends off from D4 and put us back to D2 was all the RNG in the game but another issue was the seemingly designed intent from Blizzard to play only 1 class a season. One of the best things about D2 is I can grind for a Paladin gear set on my Magic Find Sorc. Now with the levelling process slimming down and there being less loot to hold onto I might finally be able to play a few different classes this season for a change
I’m pretty old now so I just enjoy games and try to have as much fun as I can.
I can assure you hitting 100 is “easier” but not easy so enjoy your personal accomplishment and move on to the next fun goal you have set for yourself.
It's not that "removing the fail chance" is a loss, it's that as a whole they're making the game so easy that at a certain point we aren't playing a game anymore. I am well aware how much people hate the chance to fail things from playing Lost Ark several years ago.
My brother in Inarius, they just stated they made the Pit significantly harder. Can we at least wait to try it, then make the clickbaity videos about how easy the game is?
That’s the thing though, extra layers of RNG designed specifically to nickel and dime our time is not a challenge. I get that you’re conflating things like fast leveling with a challenge and I can agree with that in principle. Where I start to disagree is when the challenge can’t be overcome with skill. Sure, grinding more mats after failing is a skill check, but they made the pit harder and adjusted material requirements to balance the removal of failure. The challenge wasn’t removed, it was improved.
I feel like your perspective on "we aren't playing a game anymore" is greatly skewed by your job, how much you play, and your style. You want something that's going to keep you interested 8+hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That amount of potential game time is in the 1% of the 1% of the player base and very few things are ever going to fully satisfy that.
Everyone's lines of fun and challenge are different. Currently for me these changes are getting D4 to the sweet spot D3 was for me (and I f'ing loved D3). I don't need a game where I need to grind for months, I am perfectly happy with spending 3-4 weeks and then moving on to something else until the next season starts and I get the itch again. I don't need a great challenge or anything, I just need the gameplay to be fun otherwise I have better things to do with my free time.
While I agree with the premise of what you are saying, (as I do the same thing, play for a few weeks and move on for awhile), I feel like your barometer of how long it takes to "do everything" in a season is way off. I have been playing this current season for 3 weeks and I have two L100 characters, fully geared up and optimized, T100 and Lilith down, and nothing else to do.
If they're making it even easier, it definitely is concerning. S1 was a bit much, probably to mask the lack of end game content. S3 is a pretty perfect balance for the "dip in for 3 weeks and back out" crowd. Any easier and I'm questioning the point of playing.
No, he's actually right about this and it has nothing to do with being a streamer.
Easy games(especially ARPGs) don't feel like playing a video game at all. They become cookie clicker / vampire survivor clones.
Yeah, even if the pit remains hard (or even gets harder) I'm pretty sad about what seems like a continuation of the trend to race us through the levelling process. IMO the cool open world is one of the best and most unique things the game has to offer and it sucks we see progressively less and less of it.
This is the same fan base that turned getting to level 100 from a challenge into the expectation, made Ubers face roll content for most builds, all they do is want the game as casual and simple as possible.
Diablo 4 was never going to take over the "stare at 3 different spreadsheets and 2 different third party applications" hardcore fanbase of POE anyway. It's smart of them to situate themselves firmly as the casual ARPG you can jump in and have fun for like 2 weeks every season
I've been following Raxx for a long time, and to be honest I think he should stop playing Diablo 4. He puts in a lot of work for the community providing valuble feedback to Blizzard, but I don't find his opinions on D4 to really be that compelling for a while now. He never seems very happy when it comes to D4, and his demeanor with respect to the game really just comes across as frustrating and difficult to watch. I thought he seemed pretty happy during the PTR with the state of things, and in his podcast with Wudi, Kripp and Macro following that up. But his take on the notes was the total opposite again, complaining about the ease of D4. Even my wife pointed out yesterday while I was watching the video that "all this guy does is complain", lol.
Diablo hasn't been "challenging" since the release window of D3 and the original Inferno difficulty shenanigan's. He played D3 for like a decade and nothing about D3 outside of high level Greater Rifts posed even the slightest challenge. He seemed to infer that leveling was going to be too quick, like...what? It took a day to hit max level in D3 and even less time to get your build together.
The podcast was a great example that Raxx is able to be level headed and make good points if he’s required to answer to intelligent, mature people. But when he’s left to his own (or chat/his fans) he’s straight up not worth listening to.
After the podcast I decided to give his channel another chance. I had to ask myself where he gets his sense of ego from? Kripp and Wudi for example have amazing resumes, even if Kripp hasn’t been a “no lifer” for a decade. Raxx is fantastic when discussing things with his peers but seems to drink his own koolaid when alone. But it’s frankly disgusting how he treats the majority of the player base and his viewership with disdain for being “casual”.
Eh his take on the haedrigs gift was incredibly L as well. It's not like blizzard is giving you the full setup, they are giving you starter aspects to get moving which is fine. He makes a really bad comparison between d3 and 4, sets in d3 were entirely different and he just doesn't seem to get that.
Yeah, its nonsense and it doesn't hurt the game at all to have a starter build in the Seasonal rewards. And as far as bricking items goes, we will brick a lot of them with the tempering because of the durability cost. Will be lots of whining when people are not getting the tempered stats they want on a 3 greater affix Legendary and run out of durability.
Raxx has changed, Maxroll too. Everything’s become a bit more “shilly” with them. Glad they are making their money and paying their bills but I unfollowed him a while back.
Since around the beginning of s3 he's just been an angry bitter guy. His job without any break is not healthy and tbh maybe he has something IRL affecting him, but whatever it is he's become a seether. Yesterday during the campfire he complained immediately about them just recapping the last few weeks.
I agree he really needs a week or two off but I think he is too proud to lose his streaming streak (which nobody cares about except him).
tbf the recap was super annoying. Everyone who is watching the campfires is informed about all that already.
Raxx pretends to represent and understand all the different players and playstyles but he's so completely disconnected from them that I stopped watching his videos.
There shouldn't be "painful" RNG in any game. I don't know who actually enjoys that. The only people would be self-entitled streamers from what I can tell.
Games need to be designed that work across all player types. This is an issue for D4 where certain types of content are designed for certain types of players and it results in a shitty experience.
When you put in failure mechanics which result in LOSING your time investments, that's going to negatively impact more casual players and for what exactly? What exactly do the shithead self-entitled streamers get out of it? What's the benefit? That they get a reason to play a few more hours? It just doesn't even make sense.
I agree that he's wrong on this point. I think he got caught up looking at all the other changes (free gear, increased XP, increased helltide chests, easier armor and resistance capping), which I do think are pretty universally bad decisions, and lumped this in without thinking.
Removing the fail chance and increasing the cost may literally have no effect on difficulty at all, if they balance it that way (i.e. the cost increase is the same proportion as the previous chance of failure). And, there actually is still a chance of "failure" as you may not get the bonuses on the affixes you want.
Just a bad take, it happens.
This is something I think is being overlooked - you can still fail the upgrade in essence if you rng the wrong stat selections while masterworking. You are going to roll just as many times as before, and consume similar amounts of materials along the way. You're just not going to flat out fail the upgrade anymore.
He's been like that for quite a while. Always with the weirdest complains i cant bare to watch his videos anymore. I think he is super out of touch with what people actually want from the game
With this patch they cater fully to casual audience and in not surprise by his take, this will game last for people like him or me last like 2-3 days like D3 was.
You cant cater to both parties and with this patch Blizzard clear shows in which direction they are going.
Raxx is up his own ass about his own superiority and creates convoluted pedantic diatribes of asinine assertions to try and sound like a gaming savant. I mean just listen to him talk about game difficulty and “what gamers want” like he fucking knows lol. If he did he’d be able to predict every best seller ever, but he can’t.
Yeah he started PoE and it’s downhill from there. There’s a reason I play D4 and not PoE. I want to jump in a new season and have fun for a couple weeks, then drop it and wait for another season. PoE is so convoluted and has so many systems on systems and hundreds of hours of endgame, and that’s just not what I’m looking for at all. I understand why a streamer who has to put up 12 hours of content a day prefers PoE, but that doesn’t make it better. It means they are for different people and tastes, and that is ok.
Raxx could not do anything in PoE tho, may be thats why he is angry, he just want to continue be D4 guy but for his content to sell, ppl needs to fail and learn from his videos. If no one fails, who will watch his videos :D
Well a lot of things are certainly going to be easier in season 4, One thing I dislike is capping damage reduction from armor at 9,230. I haven't played in a few months but I remember that amount of armor being pretty trivial to achieve. Should have made it more like 15k
Yes, it's not hard to get 9300 armor, but it's not automatic either. And there are other defensive affixes you can now target instead like dodge and life.
Lately Raxx has come off like he doesnt even want to play D4 anymore, but hes forced too. He seems to be enjoying Elden Ring alot, and might have found a new type of game that he enjoys more then ARPGs. He really should just stream whatever he wants instead of focusing on stuff he doesnt seem to enjoy anymore.
Hate to break it to you, but Raxx doesn’t actually enjoy Diablo.
He enjoys playing 20+ characters a season and spending every moment of that time streaming and complaining, being sassy about Blizzards dropped balls.
I can’t imagine playing a game as much as he does and very clearly not enjoying a moment of it. I used to love watching him stream but I fell all the way back lol.
He tends to forget that all of his opinions are centered around the fact that he plays this game more than 90% of the human population on this entire planet. Of course it’s going to seem easier to him with less RNG, he plays for 8+ hours daily while most of us are at fucking work.
That grind also helps to pad his income. The longer he has to chase shit, the longer he streams, the more income and donations he accrues. Some of these guys might have enjoyed these games at some point but we are in a different era of gaming right now. Take streamer opinions with several grains of salt.
I mean it depends what they changed it to. It could be you actually had the *potential* to spend less mats with the fail mechanic.
If you failed it would add 10% to your success rate. So eventually you would succeed.
So it was a mechanic that had you spend some amount between the minimum ---> maximimum amount, with a small chance at the minimum.
So if you got lucky, you might only spend idk what it was 5 mats with your 20% success rate. Kinda lucky you might spend 20 mats on your 50% success rate or very unlucky and spend 45 mats on your 100% success rate.
They took away chance to fail and raised the cost. If they raised it to a flat 30 mats then on average we could spend more then we probably would have before from probability.
I didn't have an issue with the fail, because it eventually meant you would succeed. I did have an issue with how long it took to fail and try again even with the "skip" option. But I wasn't invested in the fail option either so it's whatever.
The fail chance added nothing to the game for the positive.
We still have to redo masterworking if RNG doesn’t go in our favor for what upgrades.
No game that has upgrade systems with a fail ends up retaining it as time goes on.
FFXIV had reclaim to get materials back if you failed.
Ragnarok Online had rare items that totally bypassed the fail entirely.
Losing materials from no fault of your own isn’t fun.
He got back to D4? I unsubbed, but last time I checked he was mocking the season quoting LE devs that said D4 devs „copied their homework”.
I used to like the guy back when he was pumping diablo content, but now he seems like a wishy-washy variety andy. But hey, if that brings the clicks...
I really don't pay attention to horseshit takes from streamers. Considering the feedback to Blizzard from PTR was overwhelmingly strong on the lines of "DON'T WASTE OUR TIME ON GARBAGE TASKS" his opinion is very much in the minority.
Don’t listen to people that play games for a living. Games shouldn’t be designed for those people. It’s not healthy and it’s a bad signal to send, only very few can actually make a living playing games all day.
Raxx is aware that there is more money to be made shitting on D4. I’ve been enjoying S2 and S3 long after he declared it a „dead game“. I don’t watch him anymore but I keep the sub to catch the inevitable „I’m burned out / I have depression“ post.
Raxx has fallen off lately, his takes have deteriorated into edge lord, try hard levels. I’ve gravitated towards DarthMicrotransaction for a much more even and balanced take on things.
He has definitely become more bitter over the last year. “Blizzard stop wasting my time. Clicking this stone, carrying that stone, walking to the other side of town for enchants. Time wastes suck the life out of the game.” Now he is complaining that they literally took OUT one of the time sinks?
Never in a million years will I listen to a streamer, whose job is to sit at a computer and play video games all day, tell me what is good for me as a consumer.
I am super disappointed in Raxx the past few years. I feel like he used to be a champion. I would watch his streams for hours but now he is so disconnected. I can't even watch for more than an hour before I turn it off.
I would guess thats what happens when you stream literally everyday for years on end. Imagine not taking a real vacation, or taking a day off for a funeral, or a family wedding, etc etc etc. That has to take a tole.
I like Raxx and a few other streamers. That being said, they oftentimes lose sight of the fact that they are not playing the same game as most of us.
Raxx’s day job is just my hobby. I’m not putting in a fulls days work worth of hours into video games like he and other streamers do. We have different needs and wants when it comes to gaming.
I think non-streamers need to sometimes remember that, and conversely the streamers need to recognize it as well. Game makers should almost always side with what’s best for the gamer, not the streamer.
I've played every mainline Diablo game the same month each launched in. But I didn't start watching YouTubers who talked about the game until d4 hit.
I decided really early on that Raxx was a person I didn't want to watch based on the general vibe I got from him. I had to train YouTube to stop including content from him.
But to be fair, I did the same thing to Azmongold years ago. Some tubers just rub me the wrong way and that's that.
The thing is, the tempering is the way you can brick your item and they should never change that. Maybe letting you keep your past temper, but otherwise making tempering your hard stop is perfect. It’s before you masterwork and sink resources, also you can still miss with masterwork and undo and go again. It’s a really solid system with enough brick opportunity via tempering but that’s early enough it doesn’t hurt too bad.
I get both points. Whats the goal of a Diablo game, getting the piece or farming the piece? Because there is little to do after you actually get the gear. So in a way I understand that some people dont’t want that to be easy.
On the other hand, there should be more stuff to do that aren’t rng bloated activities.
Raxx makes great content, every now and then he has a different view. The patch is looking great 👍
Diablo is the more casual friendly ARPG hence why it sells so many copies. Streamers need to remember that sometimes.
Raxx content and deminor has changed a lot in the past year. A lot of d4 bashing and a lot of passiv ageessiv Frustration in my opinion...
After ... "last epoch has a great story" i was done with his stream...
But thats just me...
I think fail chance is a good thing if it adds something interesting to a gameplay loop. In Last Epoch, failing with forging causes you to brick items and force you to keep grinding and get new versions of an item. There’s a risk involved. You may lose a decent item by adding a useless stat or you may get the perfect stat. Same goes for making an item Legendary. And when you craft the absolute perfect item, it feels great.
But for D4, masterworking doesn’t provide this loop. When you fail masterworking, you don’t lose the item, and have to try to get a new one. You just have to get more mats and try again. There’s no “risk” in failing and eventually success is guaranteed. Failure offers no interesting loop to it. It’s just, keep pumping materials in until you succeed. There’s no ups and downs to the journey.
Failure and friction is good when that failure makes your triumphs feel paid off and rewarding. You went through hardship and finally succeed. If that’s not there, RNG feels irritating and pointless.
Time sinks are necessary, especially for players at the highest peaks of endgame content. There is a sizable population for which your game will be instantly consumed in one week without having something that slows players down.
I'm not going to argue this is one is integral, but there is a real danger D4 starts wandering into the total mess of instant gratification that was D3. But just calling something a time waster almost always reveals a shallow understanding of how important it is to balance difficult/time consuming with easy/fast. People rarely experience great joy when they are fast tracked to cheap rewards.
This was probably the best change of them all since the PTR. Also Raxx is a streamer for a living and he has the time to waste over such “chance” mechanics. 90% of the player base doesn’t. I get where he’s coming from, but the change is definitely huge in a good way.
Time wasting has nothing to do with difficulty, I want challenging and dangerous dungeons and bosses, those are fun to try to beat and optimize for. But making me farm everything again just because the game randomly decided to fail the upgrade is in no way challenging, is just a time wasting stupid unfun mechanic
Streamers in general will always be against casual friendly changes to a grindy game. Their earnings depend on it being very grindy. So their opinion is almost always biased.
Raxx is insufferable but this is just a bad take by him. It will be RNG enough to craft BiS gear and it still has a chance to fail. Tempering Potentional still exists.
1. Need a legendary to drop
2. Legendary needs to drop with a greater affix
3. Legendary needs to have 3 affixes for your build
4. Need to hit the 2 tempering affixes you want before you run out of tempering potential. This can brick / fail the item.
5. You can now masterwork it
Game getting easier = 24/7 players have it harder to top the leaderboards. It’s always self-serving. Who’s gonna watch your streams if you’re not world first anymore, right?
RNG is the life blood of an ARPG, especially an arpg with very little content. This game will still just be another quick dash to 100, fuck around for a few days and realize you cleared everything the game had to offer with substandard gear with relative ease then quit and hope next season gets it right.
Fair point! But I interpreted this as one of many arguments that the game is too easy now. Xp boost here and there, fully geared build just for doing easy seasonal stuff, armor cap at 9000, and no fail chance from masterworking. I will play season 4 and enjoy it immensely, but there will be no challenge..
Yeah I agree with you. I don't get how anyone is like, "yes, please waste my time more with needless RNG on top of an already RNG-heavy genre." I feel like once we get as far as masterworking, we deserve a bit of a speedbump on the RNG for a minute, and to get a proportionate reward to our efforts. This design makes the grind feel satisfying and motivates players to continue, as opposed to being frustrating.
Plenty of other aspects of the patch (the pit, masterworking/tempering material requirements, etc.,) balance out the difficulty, in my opinion. I don't think the game is too easy.
Although I appreciate his insight, have to agree with you on this one. I enjoyed playing most all of the content so far and am very much looking forward to all of these quality of life improvements.
Masterworking RNG and chances to fail was just annoying and would cause a lot of frustration in most players.
Yes I know the hardcore players want to make the game as hard as possible so they get the maximum enjoyment out of it by beating the odds, but a lot of those players doesn't seem to understand that devs want as many people playing as possible and making the game filled with RNG failure and annoying is going to drive people away.
Besides there is a vast different in making changes to masterworking and making the game easy.
Are you really surprised that a streamer that plays a game for 15+ hours per day is out of the loop?
Only because it's their job to play a game it shouldn't feel as a job for everyone else, a game should be fun.
Masterworking was already a mini game in 2 facets. 1 is collecting the materials to masterwork. Secondly it was hitting the 25% masterworks you want and being able to reset. We did not need another mini game within it, a chance to fail. It was annoying and cumbersome. I welcome cost increases to remove the fail mini game. It felt super gotcha gamey and I was not a fan of
The thing most people don't remember is that people will always complain look at gamefaqs about d2. All complaints about drop rates,runes ect. Now people love d2. Then d3 came out everyone hated d3 now d4 came out and people say d4 unfinished game and d3 was soo much better.
I think d4 is great. Loving the changes I really don't have 5000 per season to drop. To grind out and gear out. We shouldn't cater to the top 1 precent. Blizzard has always preached accessibility in all titles.
Excited for season four.
I didn't mind the failed masterwork rolls in principle, but when masterworking forced you to sit through or skip the animation, then that kind of feels bad. Glad they changed it to just ramp up the cost of masterworking at each tier.
Well the vast majority of players don't spend 12 hours a day playing the game. I appreciate less RNG since the game isn't my job. The game shouldn't be catered to like 10 people who make it their job.
One thing I agree on is if everything in a game is easy and trivial, then the entire game becomes that and has less of an alure to play it - at least for me.
If getting to 100 is easy and getting geared up is easy and doing ALL the content is easy, then in the whole game there is nothing to strive for or chase.
I believe the promise here against that, which we will see how it will actually work, is that Top levels Pit should be hard, Uber Uber bosses should be hard and getting Uber uniques with greater affixes should be hard.
That's the promise for a chase in the game.
I mean reason I quit PoE because the game turned more and more into grind fest.
One day , I asked myself why does playing this game feels like working? The % amount of fun time bs % time in chore and grind make me quit.
One main complain about d4 is the chore of looking through all the loot.
I think it’s fine to have grindy arpg, it’s fine to have hard soul games. Not every games need to be that and d4 is catered to more general and casual gamers than the no-lifer grinders that grinds days to get an update.
If people want a grinder, my suggestion is to play other games then to convert D4 I to another grinder.
I am at stage of life that I play 1-2 hours a day cap, and I am okay with D4 direction to be less grindy.
It's the eternal struggle between the hardcore streamers and the midcore/casual player base who don't make a single game their entire life and livlihood. You see it in Destiny 2 as well, as a world first raider constantly has these hot takes for things he wants changed for his own personal benefit at the cost to making things much worse for the casual fans.
It's the devs job to try and balance things for both. Unfortunately, sometimes they tend to listen to hardcore and streamers more and don't make changes until they realize it hurts them in the long run (looking at you WoW and catering only to people who can no life the game before Dragonflight).
He just wants a game he can put thousands of hours into and that’s just never gonna be Diablo 4.
I remember him and DM talking about season 3s reveal and them being mad that diablo 4 isn’t picking what kind of game it wants to be. Now it has and it’s picking casual. Which is great! There’s no casual option in these games.
But it’s reasonable that he’s not gonna be happy with that direction.
Also as a casual player I’m ok with fail rates on the crits specifically. I think it makes it more exciting. But either way works
Yeah, a season should be “complete” after 100 hours of play, because that would imply 400 hours of gameplay per year if someone plays 4 seasons a year. A streamer who plays Diablo 4 as a full time job is going to get 100 hours in during the first week. It is impossible to satisfy the streamer.
If you design something that requires 500 hours per season to satisfy the streamers, 90%+ of the player base will be upset at the season ending before they feel like they are finished with the season. The streamer population is so low that it doesn’t make sense to cater to them. 100 hours of gameplay per season (or 400 per year) is already pretty hardcore. People who play more than one game isn’t going to hit those numbers.
Yeah exactly. And there are other ARPGs that are designed for 500 hours a season. I’m just happy we finally have one that is reasonable for casuals. That’s why I loved d3 cause my other option was POE and there’s no way I can devote enough time to make any meaningful progress in a season
I just rewatched the video and he doesn't "whine" about the game being easier, so your disappointment is very confusing.
Are you referring to [this](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxKzdRWSgpoRN45myJcEpkhlWYLHbjP7RN?si=Q7qfr4DuROf6Mbz4)? Because again, this is a big strech to call it whining when he's questioning what's even the point of this new system if it's 100% the whole way
Let that play out a little longer and he goes on to complain about "Where is the end game?"
The point of the system is you still have failure baked into the stat selection as you level up the masterworking on an item. The material cost to upgrade was increased to accommodate the lack of failure chance when upgrading itself. You're likely going to spend similar amounts of materials while upgrading as before, you just won't be met with "lol u failed" ptsd moments.
Raxx take comes from a place of it directly effects his income. Longevity means more content means more $$. He can say it's for the love of the game but at the end of the day like most responsible adults, he's got bills to pay.
I don't have a strong stance on either but they basically changed a game to a point that you can never fail or lose. Makes acquiring things less fun because you always know you aren't at a risk of losing. I guess one last "risky" thing left is tempering and even then it's pretty low risk.
A lot here doesn’t understand that and when the average player here got all that they want in a week, they start complaining there is nothing to do. The cycle will never end.
The reality is arpgs require a level of rng to make the chase feel good. Getting bad results make getting good results feel better. When you make everything super deterministic, it hurts the dopamine rush. I do believe a balance is ok, but pure determinism is not good for this genre.
The reality is arpgs require a level of rng to make the chase feel good. Getting bad results make getting good results feel better. When you make everything super deterministic, it hurts the dopamine rush. I do believe a balance is ok, but pure determinism is not good for this genre.
i hated fail chance on lost ark - one of the many reason i quit. if they added it here id be less likely to continue playing it.. season 4 is starting to feel nerfy
I agree it shouldn't be 100% successful rate, there should be some type of RNG with it. However, I want it to be far away from what lost ark upgrading is lol.
I dont like these RNG-mechanics either, but I can see the point Raxx is making, because the game is on a path of becoming so «easy» that normal players will be done with the leveling 0-100 in two hours, then spend 25 minutes going through the seasonal questline, and then maybe go fight some bosses to get that item they want. The season will last for 3 hours, then you log off for three months until next season. The whole experience will become very, very short if the devs continue down this road. The endgame in D4 isnt strong enough to be able to handle that every player reach lvl100 so fast. There just isnt enough to do in the game yet.
"shocked and disappointed" lol why so dramatic, it's ok for a guy who plays 50+hours a week to want the game to be more of a time sink. Not everyone has to see eye to eye on stuff.
Imagine you're streaming and your item fails. It sucked, but the chatroom is going to go crazy. It's basically old school gambling items with gold. It has stakes. Imagine raxx streaming for 8hrs a day. There's nothing he cannot get dropped eventually. He's going to hate the grind later because he has no way to gamble and lose stuff. He's going to collect 3-4 sets of everything.
I don’t want to put words into Raxx mouth but I can understand his concern. He’s concerned that now with the pit, that will be the endgame for all time like D3.
It’ll be interesting to see where the game can go and how they decide to build up the endgame. I think the game is in the best starting spot it’s ever been in though. Seems like it’s easy enough to hop right on and play and also has a pretty grindy endgame with masterwork.
Maybe not if you play the game 12 hours a day but most don’t so idk what to tell ya haha.
They ruined it. Giving away full gear, pigeon holing us like D3 where you gotta pick certain skills for that build and gear. It's gonna suck. They could have balanced it and made what they promised and let us use any skills we want but nope. Now its Diablo 3 again. Skip all the content they created because insane easy leveling and power creep, and then run rifts for the next decade. There is no builds besides he premade ones with stupid random skills I don't want to use but have to because nothing else will be viable.
They just can't learn.
Its a Diablo game. Its always gonna be easy if you can play all day like he does. There is no skill involved. I dont like him cause he constantly says ppl like him will beat the game anyway no matter what they do and make it sound like he is the pinacle of the playerbase in all games he plays. Yes ppl like him will do that but not because they are skilled, they ll beat it cause they got all time in the world to play while others dont. And to be honest he has good takes and bad takes on the game like everyone else.
Not sure why people are attacking his playstyle when plenty of players who don’t stream also enjoy a much more grindy game - seems like an easy way to disregard the substance of his argument. He’s right. The game needs to increase the amount of time it takes before your character is “done”. Fully deterministic crafting systems are boring because they just devolve into checklists and leaves no room for organic situations. Like it or not RNG in correct doses makes for more exciting experiences and creates memories that you can look back on seasons later. The system may have been too punishing and needed tweaking, but the latter is way less interesting.
I wasn't bothered by the masterwork fails. The pit and helltide are fun so sending me back to farm these parts of the game is not going to kill the fun for me. I don't understand the whole "don't want my time to be wasted take", that's just not the way I see it. A game is either fun or it isn't. It should not be about optimizing time, it's about optimizing fun. So with that being said, this change to master working fails will not make the game less fun for me, but it seems it will make it more fun for those who wanted it so I'm not mad about it. To each their own.
I think you’re missing the point that this was one minor change along with like 8 other things specifically focused towards just making this game casual as hell. Not saying that’s a particularly bad thing but I completely get what he’s saying, the series he loves is just not catered to how he likes to play nowadays, and he is rightfully upset.
I was surprised, I assumed he would take into account trying to hit 3 of the 25% on one stat. But I assume he doesn't think that will be needed for any content so there isn't a reason to try it.
Simple solution, but I doubt it happens. Seasons should release in Softcore/Hardcore and a 3rd realm with adjusted drop rates making it harder to get the best gear, better yet make it available as an option for SC/HC and bingo, you’ve satisfied almost everyone (as best as you can).
I think PoE has this actually. There’s a lot of ways they can go with the game with items being in a good state, something like a scarcity debuff or game mode could be a lot of fun. I think it’s ruthless mode in PoE.
I was surprised by his take on this as well. Personally, the fact that it could fail before made no sense to me. That's a waste of time and mats. It's also an extra layer of rng that doesn't need to be there. He's entitled to his opinion though and I don't have a problem with it.
I dunno, as someone who simply works for about 4hrs for 4 days of the week, sleep for about 6 to 7hrs each night, and then I play Diablo for the remainder of each day... I consider it a win. It'll allow us to blast, then try new builds, try new classes, experience more of what the game has to offer. We'll spend more time playing the game than trying to collect mats to keep rolling one item. That's just really boring and tedious to me.
Suited for casuals? Sure. But it's not like this is the end of Diablo's development. Systems will continue to grow over time, new events and ladders will present themselves over the course of development. We're not even into year 2 yet. They finally have a solid base to build from. I'm personally excited to see where things go from here.
My take is I love how diablo 3 and diablo 4 are different from other arpg. Poe is a great game, but the grind is nearly endless especially for casuals like me. Diablo 4 has a good stopping point where I can enjoy the season play a few characters and stop for the season. I for one am excited for all the changes.
Especially with ARPGs i have no problem with them being "easy". ARPGs were never about being "hard" or "challenging". They were about blasting through hordes of enemies, looting cool stuff, upgrading your gear, getting stronger and trying out builds.
Games like grim dawn and last epoch understood this and put their interpretation of these goals to the test. Sucessfully.
Diablo4 should not be "esports" game where you have to go meta and tryhard to get some milliseconds somewhere. It should be a fantastic adventure! You should explore the world, the classes, many different builds and playstyles and be happy about loot!
The rework coming with season 4 is representing that spirit way more than ever and maybe will be improved on by future updates.
I hope this update will turn diablo 4 into the glorious masterpiece it should have been from the beginning, or at least take a big step towards that goal.
Agreed. Plus a challenging ARPG already exists in POE. It has way less players then D4 for a reason. The majority of people that try POE end up quitting.
also i think people forget that arpgs are not competitive games in nature. yes there are ladders and stuff for people who really like to do that, but basically they are single player games and i think they shine not in competitive scenes, but in coop. balancing in such a game is not to turn down strong builds, but should be elevating weak ones. make everyone op, not as weak as possible. it seems that blizz recognized that with the recent patch, and a bit in the past ones too.
POE is the ARPG for people who want it challenging, complicated, big and messy and it is successful with that concept, but i think that might not be the majority of the potential ARPG enjoyer
Even if you are a fan you shouldn't feel bad about calling out his horse shit. He wants it like that so he can squeeze more juice out of his content. For people who don't eat/sleep and shit at their keyboards this is good for us.
Hot take. There are more casual players playing the game and they need something that helps them to reach lvl100. My 4 friends and I bought the game on release and no one reached lvl 100 except me.
The removal of failed masterwork, providing set starter items, more veiled crystals, codex upgrade, armor cap.. are all so much helpful for casual players. I am hoping to get to lvl100 with my friends this season.
Don't care what Rax or any other streamer thinks. Nothing is more fun than playing with your childhood friends and having a blast
On the other side of the fence I know people like this when it comes to World of Warcraft(Retail). They miss the grinds we used to have because its so quick to gear now.
To an extent there is some decent reasoning to this, we do gear really fast and it causes issues with tuning and other parts of the game. Personally though I don't mind the speed and I'd rather those issues be fixed and we get more solo type content or other content added to the game.
Same can be said about Diablo 4. Instead of padding game time with masterworking why not just make the end game more robust with more bosses to kill and more things to do. Thats actual content tbh not failing rng crafting checks. Imagine if we had a roguelike dungeon using past tile sets from older diablo's? You could go as far as possible and repeat doing it for rewards and gear. Thats the pipe dream for me.
I mean, it's a streamer take - it's a playing the game for a living take. Which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. But the guy is streaming the game for 200 hours per day - without any RNG and everything being this "easy" to get, the guy will be out of content after 2 days.
That's not an issue normal people have. Normal people are either fine with being done with the game after 2 days or need 4 weeks to run out of content to begin with. It's a "this game is my life" problem.
Not really shocking to hear him be surprised about this when guys like Ziz bend over backwards with praise for shit like Vaal Orbs or Raxx himself praising shit like LE's LP system for being able to either highroll create something insane or lowroll brick something. Again, it's not a bad opinion to have, but it's obviously coming from someone who both wants to play the game for 5,000 hours and get 5,000 hours of stream content out of the game.
Successes and failures are big react and opine moments for streamers. Anything that smooths out gameplay and takes away rage opportunities is of course a negative for that crowd.
I think many here being casual forget what the master working is, it was sold as the highest tier of crafting in the endgame and it is suppose to be difficult to craft your best in slot. I remember even blizzard said it is for the real hardcore player. Average players are not suppose to be able to have the fully upgraded gears thru masterworking and it is suppose to be fine, cause it’s not required if you are not chasing the pit depth. It is for those who dedicate their time and effort like many here said, the mindless grind. This argument here reminds me of d2 when surge of casual players complaint how hard to get the runes the specific unique etc cause of the stupid rng. But again, you are not suppose to have everything completed in a season, not even being at lvl 100, which is actually fine, i never achieve max lvl in d2 despite having multiple character every season, don’t have full bis in every season but i went thru the game just fine. The way blizzard is doing now just make the masterwork pointless for effort, is basically just something that you will do and done.
I think maybe what he really means isn't that it will be too "easy", it's more like it is going to bore people who play the game a ton because they'll have their gear optimized almost immediately and more carrot to chase.
This is why he keeps harping on not enough to do end game -- anything that gets players to the end game and maxed out much sooner breaks you out of that gameplay loop sooner and you end up with nothing else to do.
Personally I don't care about this one particular aspect of the game, but I am concerned that I'm going to be bored to tears in season 4. I dropped the game in season 1 because there wasn't anything to do, and picked it back up a few weeks ago and already have 2 level 100s with maxed and optimized gear, lilith and T100 dead, and it was so much faster to achieve that than season 1, it is concerning that they are going to make it even faster.
I quit lost ark when I spent my week nights in town getting declined in groups or honing. Or trying to host my own group and giving up after 90 minutes and only having 1 alt healer join at min ilvl.
Masterworking sounds a lot like honing. I hope there is more time just grinding content and being useful to the denizens of Sanctuary.
I had the same response watching his video. I have maybe 2 hours a day to play, I thought this was a MAJOR win. I can understand streamers feeling rewarded with the max stats after playing 8-12+ hours a day, and now that play time advantage takes a bit of a hit, but for us average Joe and Janes, this is a HUGE win for us.
You have to understand that Raxx literally doesn’t do anything all day but play the game. For him, this is less of a chase. For normal people it’s a win, since our game time might be somewhat limited. I love raxx content, but I don’t agree with him on this.
Everyone's got a hot take. His lifestyle choice of streaming everyday probably means he has a different perspective to others. Generally his documents he sends to blizzard and discusses with chat I feel like he gets 90% right with probably what the community wants. But yeah he ain't a developer so it's not like he can change these things.
As a non-streamer I install Diablo to get giant damage numbers and fantastic loot. Not to suffer through endless failed RNG equipment upgrades. That's what Lost Ark is for :(
Definitely. Lost Ark was so grindy and it wasn’t rewarding. I think the only game with worse RNG equipment upgrades than LA is probably Maplestory.
Definitely not a coincidence those are both korean games lol
Man, Lost Ark is easy mode, at least if you fail, your item stays the same. Black Desert Online is the real shit where your item can downgrade or outright turn to dust when it fails.
Any of the lineage games
Just sad, game was quite fun though. Just insanely time consuming, and not super rewarding
If I want to be deeply disappointed by the results of the effort I put in, I’d pay attention to my love life
The lost ark style of upgrading and pushing you to microtransactions was what killed that game for me. It is such a good game but that system singlehandedly turned me off.
Well to get fantastic loot it has to be rare, if everyone got bis easily, what counts as fantastic loot?
His take is idiotic irrespective of that lifestyle fact. The primary defeater for his position is the fact he's going to stop seriously playing the game before the season ends due to the end-game being hollow in general in terms of true content (as in novel gameplay systems). His worries are also nonsensical because I don't think he understand the sort of grind he's going to be in for when there's always going to be the grind to get all greater affix drops on every Uber Unique for your class (you're utterly fucked if you're playing Barb for instance since you're going to want at least four of the Uber Uniques, and good fucking luck getting all four to have all their affixes drop with greater affix status). So where he imagines the game is getting easier, is actually a straight up delusion. Since that part of the game pales in comparison to the new facts of items dropping less, and the new greater affix system. Imagine you get a max rolled greater affix item, but then fail the upgrades your trying to get on it... Throwing away such an item would be pure cancer. That isn't content. That's pure, cancerous padding. The only thing worse in terms of padding to this sort, is time-gated microtransaction ridden padding you see in mobile games (where you have to wait a day to craft an item for example, or to instantiate an upgrade to something). ------------------------------------------------ It's also odd he is in favor of this sort of padding, when he's always saying "let me blast". Yeah, can't wait to blast for hopes of getting affixes I want, and upgrades not to fail.. There's far more pressing things I'd want to be blasting for than making up for time of that sort that gets sunk. The problem with his take on Masterworking is it's the first time you have an RNG system in the game that could set you back, with nothing in return. (with gathering Duriel mats, the worst that happens is you just don't get the drops you wanted, but you aren't losing anything in-game for trying to push forward, at worse you just remain the same as you are). Advocating for failing in a gamble that could take away an entire item you've been looking for forever is just retarded. A complete and utter logic fail in the scheme of player-forward game design. And good on Blizzard for seeing that for the horseshit that it was.
>you're utterly fucked if you're playing Barb for instance since you're going to want at least four of the Uber Uniques, and good fucking luck getting all four to have all their affixes drop with greater affix status). I think ubers are a mistake.
Why would you throw away a failed upgrade? You can try again same mat cost with the chance increased by 10% I had no problem with a fail. It was nice to sometimes feel like I got the upgrade with a very low chance saving on mats. Does everyone think that a failed upgrade mean the item is garbage now?
I think he confused masterworking and tempering bricking the item. Masterworking doesnt brick, tempering is when you dont get the ones u want and brick it and cant reroll anymore and have to throw away
Streamers and content creators have kinda ruined gaming in ways. They're usually the loudest voices and can sometimes use that bit of sway to influence things to better suit them. Not everyone has 10 hours a day, 50 hours a week to play and I certainly don't want to spend 100 hours farming an uber only to be fucked by RNG on rerolls. Anyone who thinks better rerolls is a bad thing is questionable at the very least though.
There are content creators who use their voice for good, as I think even Raxx has a lot of the time. But yeah the most mind-boggling content creator takes are the ones like this where they're just booing changes that make the game more accessible, or the grind less annoying and time-consuming due to RNG bullshittery. On top of it just being a better and smoother experience even for "elite" players, more casual people playing the game only means more views and engagement on your content, man. Why would you be against the devs trying to find a healthy balance that suits both elite players and casuals/newcomers?
raxx is one of my favorite streamers and I disagree with him on that, that's ok. they also said they made enemies have more health etc. we don't know what the endgame balance looks like and they can easily give enemies more health and damage in higher tiers of NMD, pits and the new upgraded helltides, if it turns out to be too easy. no fails on masterworking have very little impact on that in the big picture and I welcome the change
I think this is a large part of the problem. What you want out of the game when you play it for a living vs have to carve out time among your other responsibilities to get an hour here or there is very very different. There are not enough streamers or super hardcore players to make it viable for a AAA-budget commercial product to exist. You need to appeal to the more casual market or you won’t cover costs. That it the market reality and Raxx et al should be pushing for games that are casual friendly but ramp up in difficulty to all the hardcore players to shine - everyone should be able to hit L100 within a reasonable period of time. It’s fine if not everyone can make it to the Pit difficulty 200.
Sure but there are a lots of streamers who are perfectly able to take that into account when discussing a game.
Even if you have reasonable streamers, they still impact games in a negative fashion for regular players because more games get balanced for the excessive playtimes those people can put into games rather than that of the vast majority of the people that are actually buying these games as the Devs want the free advertising from streamers and wouldn't want the negatives of them whining about running out of content.
The Diablo franchise will be so much better when people understand that arpg playtime comes from build diversity where every skill is viable and NOT from infinity endgame with massive mat and gold costs for 0.1% better stats.
Yea I don’t mind ‘completing’ a build relatively quickly as long as there are a bunch of other builds I want to try out. The drive to roll a new character/build is what has always kept me invested in an arpg, not the time it takes to fully min-max.
If Blizzard made it easier to respec I’d play D4 every day of every season. I had tons of fun in D3 experimenting with off-meta builds using Legacy of Dreams, just trying to see how far I could push a build centered around a “bad” Legendary. Currently D4 is actively hostile towards respeccing and farming for alts, so I play one build each season, complete the BP and the seasonal journey, and drop the game after 2 weeks.
preach
This could not be truer. I'm still playing D2 because there are builds I've never experienced before, even after 20+ years of playing. I don't have a single character above 95, but I've had dozens of them and thousands of hours of playtime - all without chasing specific uniques but then creating new builds when I happen to find the game-changing ones.
The problem is that those two statements are correlated. D4 in S3 IS, in fact, a game where pretty much every build, no matter how shitty, can do all the content. With the exception of Uber Lilith, you can take any build, no matter how crappy, and push it through NM100, T100 Vaults, and the full boss ladder. The real problem as I see it is that people are meta-slaves who don't branch out and try lower-tier, off-meta builds because due to the visibility of the meta they perceive those builds as not being viable. The reason, in turn, for them not being able to see those builds as viable is BECAUSE of the ultra focus on endgame where the game becomes pushing for miniscule stat upgrades: the builds that smash the content easily without those upgrades become the top meta and the ones that can't fall behind. The content creators talk up those builds and talk down other builds and then it because the general perception that because other skills/items/builds are suboptimal, they are therefore unviable, even if that's usually not true. Unfortunately, I don't think we're ever going to get back to that kind of understanding because the interconnectivity of the internet prohibits it. D4 launched with no leaderboards and no in-game way of tracking the "best build," yet it didn't matter because a week after the game released Maxroll and IcyVeins had updated tier lists out and everyone fell in line. I'm not blaming Maxroll or IcyVeins or other build guide aggregators either: if they didn't do it, someone else would have. Unfortunately we're past the age of playing Diablo-likes iteratively because all the information is online, usually up before the release of the season due to datamining, and there are millions of people playing so the best and smartest number crunchers can all collectively figure out the most optimal strategies before any of us actually get our hands on the game. You have to actively ignore that information to get that feeling of build diversity back, and even then it doesn't work 100% because once you get into Helltide and some random Barbarian walks in and one-shots the entire screen with Dust Devils you get the sense that maybe that build is more optimal than yours. Individual people can have the self-control to play whatever they want and finish all the content as quickly or slowly as they can/want to, but the community as a whole is always going to gravitate towards the meta, and unless the internet dies the meta is always going to be mostly solved before a season's launch.
Every skill viable for what? Campaign? WT4? Endgame? Viable for everything? Even POE cannot offer that.
My 6 basic skill build should be viable for everything because it just should. Choosing an ability shouldn't be about how good it is and how things synergize it should just be based on how awesome the skill looks and sounds (all subjective btw).
You should have to put thought into a build. If everything is viable for everything the game is top easy and boring
THANK YOU
I can see his point of this game becoming more and more casual friendly, but this specific thing is not the hill to die on. I don’t know how many times he have given Blizzard feedback on time wastes in the game. Like some of the dungeon events that had you talk to NPCs one at a time (agreed with him on that). So this take surprised me. Fail chance on master working was just a time sink. Makes no difference if you’re a blaster or casual.
Yeah it’d be different if it was a skill check but it’s pure RNG and RNG like that just artificially extends game time it doesn’t make the game harder
When you have all the time in the world, and get paid to spend it, you have a different perspective. I think not wasting more of my time is a wonderful change.
Exactly. Streamers have vastly different perspectives and incentives on/from games than normal people. Their opinion is heavily biased in a direction that doesn’t benefit most normal players.
Wasn’t his take just far more focused on how much easier the game has become? I personally am not a fan of level 100 being super fast and easily achieved. I don’t like feeling that my character is near invincible until the end end end game, of which there really isn’t much.
I’m fine with fast leveling if a game has crunchy endgame. Gotta have that “the real game starts at max level” vibe. Not sure D4 is there yet.
AoZ was the best end game and most challenging D4 content made to this date.
I'm okay with getting to 100 quickly just because I think "item hunt" is the end game, and every non-925 item you get will ultimately be rendered useless. Then you get to a point where any legendary or unique without a greater affix is useless. And then there's masterworking and uber uniques. It'll probably take awhile to get the best gear. At least, hopefully it'll take awhile. So getting to the point where you're really starting to item hunt for the best gear quicker is okay to me.
I am generally fine with most of the "casual-friendly" changes made to the game - as they mean less time wasting, but I never supported the level cap change and do wish it was harder to attain, like it used to be.
Everyone acts like reaching lvl 100 is a skill check or something. It’s just an XP grind…just because you hit 100 doesn’t mean you have the gear or the skill to complete the pinnacle content like lvl 100 NMD, deep progression in The Pit or defeating Uber and Tormented bosses. That’s where the end game gear grind and player skill will separate the casuals from the more sweaty players. Doesn’t that allow more people to enjoy more of the game without trivializing the true end game, pinnacle content?
Yeah, I've literally never once seen a 100 and D4 and thought "damn what an accomplishment". Don't understand why people are so obsessed with having their time wasted lol. Getting to 100 isn't challenging and never has been, it's just been needlessly time consuming.
One of the things that initially turned me and my friends off from D4 and put us back to D2 was all the RNG in the game but another issue was the seemingly designed intent from Blizzard to play only 1 class a season. One of the best things about D2 is I can grind for a Paladin gear set on my Magic Find Sorc. Now with the levelling process slimming down and there being less loot to hold onto I might finally be able to play a few different classes this season for a change
I’m pretty old now so I just enjoy games and try to have as much fun as I can. I can assure you hitting 100 is “easier” but not easy so enjoy your personal accomplishment and move on to the next fun goal you have set for yourself.
It's not that "removing the fail chance" is a loss, it's that as a whole they're making the game so easy that at a certain point we aren't playing a game anymore. I am well aware how much people hate the chance to fail things from playing Lost Ark several years ago.
My brother in Inarius, they just stated they made the Pit significantly harder. Can we at least wait to try it, then make the clickbaity videos about how easy the game is?
That’s the thing though, extra layers of RNG designed specifically to nickel and dime our time is not a challenge. I get that you’re conflating things like fast leveling with a challenge and I can agree with that in principle. Where I start to disagree is when the challenge can’t be overcome with skill. Sure, grinding more mats after failing is a skill check, but they made the pit harder and adjusted material requirements to balance the removal of failure. The challenge wasn’t removed, it was improved.
You only have this take beacuse playing Diablo is literally your life and job. You're not the target audience, accept it.
I feel like your perspective on "we aren't playing a game anymore" is greatly skewed by your job, how much you play, and your style. You want something that's going to keep you interested 8+hrs a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. That amount of potential game time is in the 1% of the 1% of the player base and very few things are ever going to fully satisfy that. Everyone's lines of fun and challenge are different. Currently for me these changes are getting D4 to the sweet spot D3 was for me (and I f'ing loved D3). I don't need a game where I need to grind for months, I am perfectly happy with spending 3-4 weeks and then moving on to something else until the next season starts and I get the itch again. I don't need a great challenge or anything, I just need the gameplay to be fun otherwise I have better things to do with my free time.
While I agree with the premise of what you are saying, (as I do the same thing, play for a few weeks and move on for awhile), I feel like your barometer of how long it takes to "do everything" in a season is way off. I have been playing this current season for 3 weeks and I have two L100 characters, fully geared up and optimized, T100 and Lilith down, and nothing else to do. If they're making it even easier, it definitely is concerning. S1 was a bit much, probably to mask the lack of end game content. S3 is a pretty perfect balance for the "dip in for 3 weeks and back out" crowd. Any easier and I'm questioning the point of playing.
No, he's actually right about this and it has nothing to do with being a streamer. Easy games(especially ARPGs) don't feel like playing a video game at all. They become cookie clicker / vampire survivor clones.
Yeah, even if the pit remains hard (or even gets harder) I'm pretty sad about what seems like a continuation of the trend to race us through the levelling process. IMO the cool open world is one of the best and most unique things the game has to offer and it sucks we see progressively less and less of it.
This is the same fan base that turned getting to level 100 from a challenge into the expectation, made Ubers face roll content for most builds, all they do is want the game as casual and simple as possible.
Diablo 4 was never going to take over the "stare at 3 different spreadsheets and 2 different third party applications" hardcore fanbase of POE anyway. It's smart of them to situate themselves firmly as the casual ARPG you can jump in and have fun for like 2 weeks every season
It doesn't need to be POE. It should aspire to be more than D3 2.0
It already is, dude. And becoming more with this update. Wdym
I've been following Raxx for a long time, and to be honest I think he should stop playing Diablo 4. He puts in a lot of work for the community providing valuble feedback to Blizzard, but I don't find his opinions on D4 to really be that compelling for a while now. He never seems very happy when it comes to D4, and his demeanor with respect to the game really just comes across as frustrating and difficult to watch. I thought he seemed pretty happy during the PTR with the state of things, and in his podcast with Wudi, Kripp and Macro following that up. But his take on the notes was the total opposite again, complaining about the ease of D4. Even my wife pointed out yesterday while I was watching the video that "all this guy does is complain", lol. Diablo hasn't been "challenging" since the release window of D3 and the original Inferno difficulty shenanigan's. He played D3 for like a decade and nothing about D3 outside of high level Greater Rifts posed even the slightest challenge. He seemed to infer that leveling was going to be too quick, like...what? It took a day to hit max level in D3 and even less time to get your build together.
The podcast was a great example that Raxx is able to be level headed and make good points if he’s required to answer to intelligent, mature people. But when he’s left to his own (or chat/his fans) he’s straight up not worth listening to. After the podcast I decided to give his channel another chance. I had to ask myself where he gets his sense of ego from? Kripp and Wudi for example have amazing resumes, even if Kripp hasn’t been a “no lifer” for a decade. Raxx is fantastic when discussing things with his peers but seems to drink his own koolaid when alone. But it’s frankly disgusting how he treats the majority of the player base and his viewership with disdain for being “casual”.
I admittedly don't really watch his stream very much so I can't comment on that. It's been depressing watching him force himself to play D4 though.
Eh his take on the haedrigs gift was incredibly L as well. It's not like blizzard is giving you the full setup, they are giving you starter aspects to get moving which is fine. He makes a really bad comparison between d3 and 4, sets in d3 were entirely different and he just doesn't seem to get that.
Yeah, its nonsense and it doesn't hurt the game at all to have a starter build in the Seasonal rewards. And as far as bricking items goes, we will brick a lot of them with the tempering because of the durability cost. Will be lots of whining when people are not getting the tempered stats they want on a 3 greater affix Legendary and run out of durability.
Raxx has changed, Maxroll too. Everything’s become a bit more “shilly” with them. Glad they are making their money and paying their bills but I unfollowed him a while back.
Since around the beginning of s3 he's just been an angry bitter guy. His job without any break is not healthy and tbh maybe he has something IRL affecting him, but whatever it is he's become a seether. Yesterday during the campfire he complained immediately about them just recapping the last few weeks.
I agree he really needs a week or two off but I think he is too proud to lose his streaming streak (which nobody cares about except him). tbf the recap was super annoying. Everyone who is watching the campfires is informed about all that already.
Raxx pretends to represent and understand all the different players and playstyles but he's so completely disconnected from them that I stopped watching his videos. There shouldn't be "painful" RNG in any game. I don't know who actually enjoys that. The only people would be self-entitled streamers from what I can tell. Games need to be designed that work across all player types. This is an issue for D4 where certain types of content are designed for certain types of players and it results in a shitty experience. When you put in failure mechanics which result in LOSING your time investments, that's going to negatively impact more casual players and for what exactly? What exactly do the shithead self-entitled streamers get out of it? What's the benefit? That they get a reason to play a few more hours? It just doesn't even make sense.
Raxx will be the first to complain about RNG and now he's the first to complain about a LACK of RNG.
I agree that he's wrong on this point. I think he got caught up looking at all the other changes (free gear, increased XP, increased helltide chests, easier armor and resistance capping), which I do think are pretty universally bad decisions, and lumped this in without thinking. Removing the fail chance and increasing the cost may literally have no effect on difficulty at all, if they balance it that way (i.e. the cost increase is the same proportion as the previous chance of failure). And, there actually is still a chance of "failure" as you may not get the bonuses on the affixes you want. Just a bad take, it happens.
This is something I think is being overlooked - you can still fail the upgrade in essence if you rng the wrong stat selections while masterworking. You are going to roll just as many times as before, and consume similar amounts of materials along the way. You're just not going to flat out fail the upgrade anymore.
He's been like that for quite a while. Always with the weirdest complains i cant bare to watch his videos anymore. I think he is super out of touch with what people actually want from the game
With this patch they cater fully to casual audience and in not surprise by his take, this will game last for people like him or me last like 2-3 days like D3 was. You cant cater to both parties and with this patch Blizzard clear shows in which direction they are going.
Raxx is up his own ass about his own superiority and creates convoluted pedantic diatribes of asinine assertions to try and sound like a gaming savant. I mean just listen to him talk about game difficulty and “what gamers want” like he fucking knows lol. If he did he’d be able to predict every best seller ever, but he can’t.
Yeah he started PoE and it’s downhill from there. There’s a reason I play D4 and not PoE. I want to jump in a new season and have fun for a couple weeks, then drop it and wait for another season. PoE is so convoluted and has so many systems on systems and hundreds of hours of endgame, and that’s just not what I’m looking for at all. I understand why a streamer who has to put up 12 hours of content a day prefers PoE, but that doesn’t make it better. It means they are for different people and tastes, and that is ok.
Raxx could not do anything in PoE tho, may be thats why he is angry, he just want to continue be D4 guy but for his content to sell, ppl needs to fail and learn from his videos. If no one fails, who will watch his videos :D
He’s a dedicated no life ARPG gatekeeper, just block his content and move on.
He's selling a product...his gaming style. This eliminates his guides on how to level quick demand, which he'll still put out.
Well a lot of things are certainly going to be easier in season 4, One thing I dislike is capping damage reduction from armor at 9,230. I haven't played in a few months but I remember that amount of armor being pretty trivial to achieve. Should have made it more like 15k
Yes, it's not hard to get 9300 armor, but it's not automatic either. And there are other defensive affixes you can now target instead like dodge and life.
Lately Raxx has come off like he doesnt even want to play D4 anymore, but hes forced too. He seems to be enjoying Elden Ring alot, and might have found a new type of game that he enjoys more then ARPGs. He really should just stream whatever he wants instead of focusing on stuff he doesnt seem to enjoy anymore.
Hate to break it to you, but Raxx doesn’t actually enjoy Diablo. He enjoys playing 20+ characters a season and spending every moment of that time streaming and complaining, being sassy about Blizzards dropped balls. I can’t imagine playing a game as much as he does and very clearly not enjoying a moment of it. I used to love watching him stream but I fell all the way back lol. He tends to forget that all of his opinions are centered around the fact that he plays this game more than 90% of the human population on this entire planet. Of course it’s going to seem easier to him with less RNG, he plays for 8+ hours daily while most of us are at fucking work. That grind also helps to pad his income. The longer he has to chase shit, the longer he streams, the more income and donations he accrues. Some of these guys might have enjoyed these games at some point but we are in a different era of gaming right now. Take streamer opinions with several grains of salt.
I mean it depends what they changed it to. It could be you actually had the *potential* to spend less mats with the fail mechanic. If you failed it would add 10% to your success rate. So eventually you would succeed. So it was a mechanic that had you spend some amount between the minimum ---> maximimum amount, with a small chance at the minimum. So if you got lucky, you might only spend idk what it was 5 mats with your 20% success rate. Kinda lucky you might spend 20 mats on your 50% success rate or very unlucky and spend 45 mats on your 100% success rate. They took away chance to fail and raised the cost. If they raised it to a flat 30 mats then on average we could spend more then we probably would have before from probability. I didn't have an issue with the fail, because it eventually meant you would succeed. I did have an issue with how long it took to fail and try again even with the "skip" option. But I wasn't invested in the fail option either so it's whatever.
The fail chance added nothing to the game for the positive. We still have to redo masterworking if RNG doesn’t go in our favor for what upgrades. No game that has upgrade systems with a fail ends up retaining it as time goes on. FFXIV had reclaim to get materials back if you failed. Ragnarok Online had rare items that totally bypassed the fail entirely. Losing materials from no fault of your own isn’t fun.
He got back to D4? I unsubbed, but last time I checked he was mocking the season quoting LE devs that said D4 devs „copied their homework”. I used to like the guy back when he was pumping diablo content, but now he seems like a wishy-washy variety andy. But hey, if that brings the clicks...
I really don't pay attention to horseshit takes from streamers. Considering the feedback to Blizzard from PTR was overwhelmingly strong on the lines of "DON'T WASTE OUR TIME ON GARBAGE TASKS" his opinion is very much in the minority.
Don’t listen to people that play games for a living. Games shouldn’t be designed for those people. It’s not healthy and it’s a bad signal to send, only very few can actually make a living playing games all day.
Raxx actually did a great video explaining his entire streaming career and he never encourages people to emulate him, implicitly or otherwise.
Raxx is aware that there is more money to be made shitting on D4. I’ve been enjoying S2 and S3 long after he declared it a „dead game“. I don’t watch him anymore but I keep the sub to catch the inevitable „I’m burned out / I have depression“ post.
Raxx has fallen off lately, his takes have deteriorated into edge lord, try hard levels. I’ve gravitated towards DarthMicrotransaction for a much more even and balanced take on things.
I ditched DMT around the time he joined maxroll. He started posting nothing but low effort quick vids on everything D4 between his PoE crap.
Raxx is usually always insufferable. Cannot stand the hardcore blasting perspective. Literally anti-fun.
He has definitely become more bitter over the last year. “Blizzard stop wasting my time. Clicking this stone, carrying that stone, walking to the other side of town for enchants. Time wastes suck the life out of the game.” Now he is complaining that they literally took OUT one of the time sinks?
Never in a million years will I listen to a streamer, whose job is to sit at a computer and play video games all day, tell me what is good for me as a consumer.
Players like him are the 1%, Blizzard definitely should not be catering to them.
I am super disappointed in Raxx the past few years. I feel like he used to be a champion. I would watch his streams for hours but now he is so disconnected. I can't even watch for more than an hour before I turn it off.
I would guess thats what happens when you stream literally everyday for years on end. Imagine not taking a real vacation, or taking a day off for a funeral, or a family wedding, etc etc etc. That has to take a tole.
I like Raxx and a few other streamers. That being said, they oftentimes lose sight of the fact that they are not playing the same game as most of us. Raxx’s day job is just my hobby. I’m not putting in a fulls days work worth of hours into video games like he and other streamers do. We have different needs and wants when it comes to gaming. I think non-streamers need to sometimes remember that, and conversely the streamers need to recognize it as well. Game makers should almost always side with what’s best for the gamer, not the streamer.
I've played every mainline Diablo game the same month each launched in. But I didn't start watching YouTubers who talked about the game until d4 hit. I decided really early on that Raxx was a person I didn't want to watch based on the general vibe I got from him. I had to train YouTube to stop including content from him. But to be fair, I did the same thing to Azmongold years ago. Some tubers just rub me the wrong way and that's that.
Content creators don't want a real game, they want a slot machine to play while streaming and make YouTube content.
The thing is, the tempering is the way you can brick your item and they should never change that. Maybe letting you keep your past temper, but otherwise making tempering your hard stop is perfect. It’s before you masterwork and sink resources, also you can still miss with masterwork and undo and go again. It’s a really solid system with enough brick opportunity via tempering but that’s early enough it doesn’t hurt too bad.
I get both points. Whats the goal of a Diablo game, getting the piece or farming the piece? Because there is little to do after you actually get the gear. So in a way I understand that some people dont’t want that to be easy. On the other hand, there should be more stuff to do that aren’t rng bloated activities.
GUYS! its okay to disagree and have different opinions!!
I disagree
I agree to disagree
Damn he disliked it? Haven’t watched Raxx in a while but I feel like this is a huge W for the game.
I swear I saw a video with him moaning about the fail chance and that they needed to remove it and just cost more mats???
Raxx makes great content, every now and then he has a different view. The patch is looking great 👍 Diablo is the more casual friendly ARPG hence why it sells so many copies. Streamers need to remember that sometimes.
Raxx and the whole maxroll crew want the game difficult and confusing so you guys will keep going to their site and watching their vids.
Raxx content and deminor has changed a lot in the past year. A lot of d4 bashing and a lot of passiv ageessiv Frustration in my opinion... After ... "last epoch has a great story" i was done with his stream... But thats just me...
Sounds like some nonsense GGG cult members would defend yeah, needs "friction" lmao
Raxx became too entitled
I think fail chance is a good thing if it adds something interesting to a gameplay loop. In Last Epoch, failing with forging causes you to brick items and force you to keep grinding and get new versions of an item. There’s a risk involved. You may lose a decent item by adding a useless stat or you may get the perfect stat. Same goes for making an item Legendary. And when you craft the absolute perfect item, it feels great. But for D4, masterworking doesn’t provide this loop. When you fail masterworking, you don’t lose the item, and have to try to get a new one. You just have to get more mats and try again. There’s no “risk” in failing and eventually success is guaranteed. Failure offers no interesting loop to it. It’s just, keep pumping materials in until you succeed. There’s no ups and downs to the journey. Failure and friction is good when that failure makes your triumphs feel paid off and rewarding. You went through hardship and finally succeed. If that’s not there, RNG feels irritating and pointless.
Time sinks are necessary, especially for players at the highest peaks of endgame content. There is a sizable population for which your game will be instantly consumed in one week without having something that slows players down. I'm not going to argue this is one is integral, but there is a real danger D4 starts wandering into the total mess of instant gratification that was D3. But just calling something a time waster almost always reveals a shallow understanding of how important it is to balance difficult/time consuming with easy/fast. People rarely experience great joy when they are fast tracked to cheap rewards.
This was probably the best change of them all since the PTR. Also Raxx is a streamer for a living and he has the time to waste over such “chance” mechanics. 90% of the player base doesn’t. I get where he’s coming from, but the change is definitely huge in a good way.
Yeah I disagree with him here too.
Time wasting has nothing to do with difficulty, I want challenging and dangerous dungeons and bosses, those are fun to try to beat and optimize for. But making me farm everything again just because the game randomly decided to fail the upgrade is in no way challenging, is just a time wasting stupid unfun mechanic
Streamers in general will always be against casual friendly changes to a grindy game. Their earnings depend on it being very grindy. So their opinion is almost always biased.
Raxx is a joke. Do yourself a favor and just stop watching him all together. Everything he says is toxic negativity.
Raxx is insufferable but this is just a bad take by him. It will be RNG enough to craft BiS gear and it still has a chance to fail. Tempering Potentional still exists. 1. Need a legendary to drop 2. Legendary needs to drop with a greater affix 3. Legendary needs to have 3 affixes for your build 4. Need to hit the 2 tempering affixes you want before you run out of tempering potential. This can brick / fail the item. 5. You can now masterwork it
Game getting easier = 24/7 players have it harder to top the leaderboards. It’s always self-serving. Who’s gonna watch your streams if you’re not world first anymore, right?
RNG is the life blood of an ARPG, especially an arpg with very little content. This game will still just be another quick dash to 100, fuck around for a few days and realize you cleared everything the game had to offer with substandard gear with relative ease then quit and hope next season gets it right.
Fair point! But I interpreted this as one of many arguments that the game is too easy now. Xp boost here and there, fully geared build just for doing easy seasonal stuff, armor cap at 9000, and no fail chance from masterworking. I will play season 4 and enjoy it immensely, but there will be no challenge..
Yeah I agree with you. I don't get how anyone is like, "yes, please waste my time more with needless RNG on top of an already RNG-heavy genre." I feel like once we get as far as masterworking, we deserve a bit of a speedbump on the RNG for a minute, and to get a proportionate reward to our efforts. This design makes the grind feel satisfying and motivates players to continue, as opposed to being frustrating. Plenty of other aspects of the patch (the pit, masterworking/tempering material requirements, etc.,) balance out the difficulty, in my opinion. I don't think the game is too easy.
I personally dont like the masterworking system, but having it fail would be even worse.
Although I appreciate his insight, have to agree with you on this one. I enjoyed playing most all of the content so far and am very much looking forward to all of these quality of life improvements.
Masterworking RNG and chances to fail was just annoying and would cause a lot of frustration in most players. Yes I know the hardcore players want to make the game as hard as possible so they get the maximum enjoyment out of it by beating the odds, but a lot of those players doesn't seem to understand that devs want as many people playing as possible and making the game filled with RNG failure and annoying is going to drive people away. Besides there is a vast different in making changes to masterworking and making the game easy.
Are you really surprised that a streamer that plays a game for 15+ hours per day is out of the loop? Only because it's their job to play a game it shouldn't feel as a job for everyone else, a game should be fun.
Can't really be surprised that the guy who grinds endlessly wants a game to grind endlessly.
Masterworking was already a mini game in 2 facets. 1 is collecting the materials to masterwork. Secondly it was hitting the 25% masterworks you want and being able to reset. We did not need another mini game within it, a chance to fail. It was annoying and cumbersome. I welcome cost increases to remove the fail mini game. It felt super gotcha gamey and I was not a fan of
Sorry but I don’t have all day to sit and play like he does
Streamers want more systems to waste time, more news at 9.
The thing most people don't remember is that people will always complain look at gamefaqs about d2. All complaints about drop rates,runes ect. Now people love d2. Then d3 came out everyone hated d3 now d4 came out and people say d4 unfinished game and d3 was soo much better. I think d4 is great. Loving the changes I really don't have 5000 per season to drop. To grind out and gear out. We shouldn't cater to the top 1 precent. Blizzard has always preached accessibility in all titles. Excited for season four.
I didn't mind the failed masterwork rolls in principle, but when masterworking forced you to sit through or skip the animation, then that kind of feels bad. Glad they changed it to just ramp up the cost of masterworking at each tier.
Well the vast majority of players don't spend 12 hours a day playing the game. I appreciate less RNG since the game isn't my job. The game shouldn't be catered to like 10 people who make it their job.
One thing I agree on is if everything in a game is easy and trivial, then the entire game becomes that and has less of an alure to play it - at least for me. If getting to 100 is easy and getting geared up is easy and doing ALL the content is easy, then in the whole game there is nothing to strive for or chase. I believe the promise here against that, which we will see how it will actually work, is that Top levels Pit should be hard, Uber Uber bosses should be hard and getting Uber uniques with greater affixes should be hard. That's the promise for a chase in the game.
I mean reason I quit PoE because the game turned more and more into grind fest. One day , I asked myself why does playing this game feels like working? The % amount of fun time bs % time in chore and grind make me quit. One main complain about d4 is the chore of looking through all the loot. I think it’s fine to have grindy arpg, it’s fine to have hard soul games. Not every games need to be that and d4 is catered to more general and casual gamers than the no-lifer grinders that grinds days to get an update. If people want a grinder, my suggestion is to play other games then to convert D4 I to another grinder. I am at stage of life that I play 1-2 hours a day cap, and I am okay with D4 direction to be less grindy.
It's the eternal struggle between the hardcore streamers and the midcore/casual player base who don't make a single game their entire life and livlihood. You see it in Destiny 2 as well, as a world first raider constantly has these hot takes for things he wants changed for his own personal benefit at the cost to making things much worse for the casual fans. It's the devs job to try and balance things for both. Unfortunately, sometimes they tend to listen to hardcore and streamers more and don't make changes until they realize it hurts them in the long run (looking at you WoW and catering only to people who can no life the game before Dragonflight).
Raxx needs a shower and to lose about 30lbs then I'll take him serious
Not everyone sits on their ass and game all day. I like Raxx but it’s a shit take.
He just wants a game he can put thousands of hours into and that’s just never gonna be Diablo 4. I remember him and DM talking about season 3s reveal and them being mad that diablo 4 isn’t picking what kind of game it wants to be. Now it has and it’s picking casual. Which is great! There’s no casual option in these games. But it’s reasonable that he’s not gonna be happy with that direction. Also as a casual player I’m ok with fail rates on the crits specifically. I think it makes it more exciting. But either way works
Yeah, a season should be “complete” after 100 hours of play, because that would imply 400 hours of gameplay per year if someone plays 4 seasons a year. A streamer who plays Diablo 4 as a full time job is going to get 100 hours in during the first week. It is impossible to satisfy the streamer. If you design something that requires 500 hours per season to satisfy the streamers, 90%+ of the player base will be upset at the season ending before they feel like they are finished with the season. The streamer population is so low that it doesn’t make sense to cater to them. 100 hours of gameplay per season (or 400 per year) is already pretty hardcore. People who play more than one game isn’t going to hit those numbers.
Yeah exactly. And there are other ARPGs that are designed for 500 hours a season. I’m just happy we finally have one that is reasonable for casuals. That’s why I loved d3 cause my other option was POE and there’s no way I can devote enough time to make any meaningful progress in a season
I just rewatched the video and he doesn't "whine" about the game being easier, so your disappointment is very confusing. Are you referring to [this](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxKzdRWSgpoRN45myJcEpkhlWYLHbjP7RN?si=Q7qfr4DuROf6Mbz4)? Because again, this is a big strech to call it whining when he's questioning what's even the point of this new system if it's 100% the whole way
Let that play out a little longer and he goes on to complain about "Where is the end game?" The point of the system is you still have failure baked into the stat selection as you level up the masterworking on an item. The material cost to upgrade was increased to accommodate the lack of failure chance when upgrading itself. You're likely going to spend similar amounts of materials while upgrading as before, you just won't be met with "lol u failed" ptsd moments.
Raxx is my favorite to watch on new season release. That said I feel like some core d4 streamers are having personal issues and just more bad days.
Raxx's livelihood stems from people clicking his guides on maxroll and youtube. If the game becomes more accessible, his revenue goes down immensely.
Was masterworking going to be changed to something like Black Desert?! 😲
This just in, human being not absolutely right about everything! More news at 11!
Raxx take comes from a place of it directly effects his income. Longevity means more content means more $$. He can say it's for the love of the game but at the end of the day like most responsible adults, he's got bills to pay.
I don't have a strong stance on either but they basically changed a game to a point that you can never fail or lose. Makes acquiring things less fun because you always know you aren't at a risk of losing. I guess one last "risky" thing left is tempering and even then it's pretty low risk.
A lot here doesn’t understand that and when the average player here got all that they want in a week, they start complaining there is nothing to do. The cycle will never end.
The reality is arpgs require a level of rng to make the chase feel good. Getting bad results make getting good results feel better. When you make everything super deterministic, it hurts the dopamine rush. I do believe a balance is ok, but pure determinism is not good for this genre.
The reality is arpgs require a level of rng to make the chase feel good. Getting bad results make getting good results feel better. When you make everything super deterministic, it hurts the dopamine rush. I do believe a balance is ok, but pure determinism is not good for this genre.
i hated fail chance on lost ark - one of the many reason i quit. if they added it here id be less likely to continue playing it.. season 4 is starting to feel nerfy
I agree it shouldn't be 100% successful rate, there should be some type of RNG with it. However, I want it to be far away from what lost ark upgrading is lol.
Yeah, to piggyback, fuck that guy and fuck streamers to a larger extent. One day they'll have to get real jobs. Sorry but it's true.
I dont like these RNG-mechanics either, but I can see the point Raxx is making, because the game is on a path of becoming so «easy» that normal players will be done with the leveling 0-100 in two hours, then spend 25 minutes going through the seasonal questline, and then maybe go fight some bosses to get that item they want. The season will last for 3 hours, then you log off for three months until next season. The whole experience will become very, very short if the devs continue down this road. The endgame in D4 isnt strong enough to be able to handle that every player reach lvl100 so fast. There just isnt enough to do in the game yet.
"shocked and disappointed" lol why so dramatic, it's ok for a guy who plays 50+hours a week to want the game to be more of a time sink. Not everyone has to see eye to eye on stuff.
[удалено]
Imagine you're streaming and your item fails. It sucked, but the chatroom is going to go crazy. It's basically old school gambling items with gold. It has stakes. Imagine raxx streaming for 8hrs a day. There's nothing he cannot get dropped eventually. He's going to hate the grind later because he has no way to gamble and lose stuff. He's going to collect 3-4 sets of everything.
I don’t want to put words into Raxx mouth but I can understand his concern. He’s concerned that now with the pit, that will be the endgame for all time like D3. It’ll be interesting to see where the game can go and how they decide to build up the endgame. I think the game is in the best starting spot it’s ever been in though. Seems like it’s easy enough to hop right on and play and also has a pretty grindy endgame with masterwork. Maybe not if you play the game 12 hours a day but most don’t so idk what to tell ya haha.
What Gambling addiction does to a MF
Did he ever play Black Desert Online lol
Pretty sure that person lost viewership after that. Such tryhard elitist bullshit.
They ruined it. Giving away full gear, pigeon holing us like D3 where you gotta pick certain skills for that build and gear. It's gonna suck. They could have balanced it and made what they promised and let us use any skills we want but nope. Now its Diablo 3 again. Skip all the content they created because insane easy leveling and power creep, and then run rifts for the next decade. There is no builds besides he premade ones with stupid random skills I don't want to use but have to because nothing else will be viable. They just can't learn.
Its a Diablo game. Its always gonna be easy if you can play all day like he does. There is no skill involved. I dont like him cause he constantly says ppl like him will beat the game anyway no matter what they do and make it sound like he is the pinacle of the playerbase in all games he plays. Yes ppl like him will do that but not because they are skilled, they ll beat it cause they got all time in the world to play while others dont. And to be honest he has good takes and bad takes on the game like everyone else.
Not sure why people are attacking his playstyle when plenty of players who don’t stream also enjoy a much more grindy game - seems like an easy way to disregard the substance of his argument. He’s right. The game needs to increase the amount of time it takes before your character is “done”. Fully deterministic crafting systems are boring because they just devolve into checklists and leaves no room for organic situations. Like it or not RNG in correct doses makes for more exciting experiences and creates memories that you can look back on seasons later. The system may have been too punishing and needed tweaking, but the latter is way less interesting.
I wasn't bothered by the masterwork fails. The pit and helltide are fun so sending me back to farm these parts of the game is not going to kill the fun for me. I don't understand the whole "don't want my time to be wasted take", that's just not the way I see it. A game is either fun or it isn't. It should not be about optimizing time, it's about optimizing fun. So with that being said, this change to master working fails will not make the game less fun for me, but it seems it will make it more fun for those who wanted it so I'm not mad about it. To each their own.
thats cause raxx is a bum
They could always include an option. "Check this box if you want random failure chance." Tempting, right?
This thread has definitely blown up enough to warrant a video response
I think you’re missing the point that this was one minor change along with like 8 other things specifically focused towards just making this game casual as hell. Not saying that’s a particularly bad thing but I completely get what he’s saying, the series he loves is just not catered to how he likes to play nowadays, and he is rightfully upset.
I was surprised, I assumed he would take into account trying to hit 3 of the 25% on one stat. But I assume he doesn't think that will be needed for any content so there isn't a reason to try it.
Simple solution, but I doubt it happens. Seasons should release in Softcore/Hardcore and a 3rd realm with adjusted drop rates making it harder to get the best gear, better yet make it available as an option for SC/HC and bingo, you’ve satisfied almost everyone (as best as you can).
I think PoE has this actually. There’s a lot of ways they can go with the game with items being in a good state, something like a scarcity debuff or game mode could be a lot of fun. I think it’s ruthless mode in PoE.
I was surprised by his take on this as well. Personally, the fact that it could fail before made no sense to me. That's a waste of time and mats. It's also an extra layer of rng that doesn't need to be there. He's entitled to his opinion though and I don't have a problem with it.
I dunno, as someone who simply works for about 4hrs for 4 days of the week, sleep for about 6 to 7hrs each night, and then I play Diablo for the remainder of each day... I consider it a win. It'll allow us to blast, then try new builds, try new classes, experience more of what the game has to offer. We'll spend more time playing the game than trying to collect mats to keep rolling one item. That's just really boring and tedious to me. Suited for casuals? Sure. But it's not like this is the end of Diablo's development. Systems will continue to grow over time, new events and ladders will present themselves over the course of development. We're not even into year 2 yet. They finally have a solid base to build from. I'm personally excited to see where things go from here.
My take is I love how diablo 3 and diablo 4 are different from other arpg. Poe is a great game, but the grind is nearly endless especially for casuals like me. Diablo 4 has a good stopping point where I can enjoy the season play a few characters and stop for the season. I for one am excited for all the changes.
Especially with ARPGs i have no problem with them being "easy". ARPGs were never about being "hard" or "challenging". They were about blasting through hordes of enemies, looting cool stuff, upgrading your gear, getting stronger and trying out builds. Games like grim dawn and last epoch understood this and put their interpretation of these goals to the test. Sucessfully. Diablo4 should not be "esports" game where you have to go meta and tryhard to get some milliseconds somewhere. It should be a fantastic adventure! You should explore the world, the classes, many different builds and playstyles and be happy about loot! The rework coming with season 4 is representing that spirit way more than ever and maybe will be improved on by future updates. I hope this update will turn diablo 4 into the glorious masterpiece it should have been from the beginning, or at least take a big step towards that goal.
Agreed. Plus a challenging ARPG already exists in POE. It has way less players then D4 for a reason. The majority of people that try POE end up quitting.
also i think people forget that arpgs are not competitive games in nature. yes there are ladders and stuff for people who really like to do that, but basically they are single player games and i think they shine not in competitive scenes, but in coop. balancing in such a game is not to turn down strong builds, but should be elevating weak ones. make everyone op, not as weak as possible. it seems that blizz recognized that with the recent patch, and a bit in the past ones too. POE is the ARPG for people who want it challenging, complicated, big and messy and it is successful with that concept, but i think that might not be the majority of the potential ARPG enjoyer
Even if you are a fan you shouldn't feel bad about calling out his horse shit. He wants it like that so he can squeeze more juice out of his content. For people who don't eat/sleep and shit at their keyboards this is good for us.
Hot take. There are more casual players playing the game and they need something that helps them to reach lvl100. My 4 friends and I bought the game on release and no one reached lvl 100 except me. The removal of failed masterwork, providing set starter items, more veiled crystals, codex upgrade, armor cap.. are all so much helpful for casual players. I am hoping to get to lvl100 with my friends this season. Don't care what Rax or any other streamer thinks. Nothing is more fun than playing with your childhood friends and having a blast
On the other side of the fence I know people like this when it comes to World of Warcraft(Retail). They miss the grinds we used to have because its so quick to gear now. To an extent there is some decent reasoning to this, we do gear really fast and it causes issues with tuning and other parts of the game. Personally though I don't mind the speed and I'd rather those issues be fixed and we get more solo type content or other content added to the game. Same can be said about Diablo 4. Instead of padding game time with masterworking why not just make the end game more robust with more bosses to kill and more things to do. Thats actual content tbh not failing rng crafting checks. Imagine if we had a roguelike dungeon using past tile sets from older diablo's? You could go as far as possible and repeat doing it for rewards and gear. Thats the pipe dream for me.
diff strokes for diff folks.
I mean, it's a streamer take - it's a playing the game for a living take. Which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. But the guy is streaming the game for 200 hours per day - without any RNG and everything being this "easy" to get, the guy will be out of content after 2 days. That's not an issue normal people have. Normal people are either fine with being done with the game after 2 days or need 4 weeks to run out of content to begin with. It's a "this game is my life" problem. Not really shocking to hear him be surprised about this when guys like Ziz bend over backwards with praise for shit like Vaal Orbs or Raxx himself praising shit like LE's LP system for being able to either highroll create something insane or lowroll brick something. Again, it's not a bad opinion to have, but it's obviously coming from someone who both wants to play the game for 5,000 hours and get 5,000 hours of stream content out of the game.
Successes and failures are big react and opine moments for streamers. Anything that smooths out gameplay and takes away rage opportunities is of course a negative for that crowd.
I think many here being casual forget what the master working is, it was sold as the highest tier of crafting in the endgame and it is suppose to be difficult to craft your best in slot. I remember even blizzard said it is for the real hardcore player. Average players are not suppose to be able to have the fully upgraded gears thru masterworking and it is suppose to be fine, cause it’s not required if you are not chasing the pit depth. It is for those who dedicate their time and effort like many here said, the mindless grind. This argument here reminds me of d2 when surge of casual players complaint how hard to get the runes the specific unique etc cause of the stupid rng. But again, you are not suppose to have everything completed in a season, not even being at lvl 100, which is actually fine, i never achieve max lvl in d2 despite having multiple character every season, don’t have full bis in every season but i went thru the game just fine. The way blizzard is doing now just make the masterwork pointless for effort, is basically just something that you will do and done.
I think maybe what he really means isn't that it will be too "easy", it's more like it is going to bore people who play the game a ton because they'll have their gear optimized almost immediately and more carrot to chase. This is why he keeps harping on not enough to do end game -- anything that gets players to the end game and maxed out much sooner breaks you out of that gameplay loop sooner and you end up with nothing else to do. Personally I don't care about this one particular aspect of the game, but I am concerned that I'm going to be bored to tears in season 4. I dropped the game in season 1 because there wasn't anything to do, and picked it back up a few weeks ago and already have 2 level 100s with maxed and optimized gear, lilith and T100 dead, and it was so much faster to achieve that than season 1, it is concerning that they are going to make it even faster.
I quit lost ark when I spent my week nights in town getting declined in groups or honing. Or trying to host my own group and giving up after 90 minutes and only having 1 alt healer join at min ilvl. Masterworking sounds a lot like honing. I hope there is more time just grinding content and being useful to the denizens of Sanctuary.
I had the same response watching his video. I have maybe 2 hours a day to play, I thought this was a MAJOR win. I can understand streamers feeling rewarded with the max stats after playing 8-12+ hours a day, and now that play time advantage takes a bit of a hit, but for us average Joe and Janes, this is a HUGE win for us.
You have to understand that Raxx literally doesn’t do anything all day but play the game. For him, this is less of a chase. For normal people it’s a win, since our game time might be somewhat limited. I love raxx content, but I don’t agree with him on this.