This month we've been rolling out content based on our trip to The Coalition to see Gears of War 4, and now we want to give our readers a chance to ask their own questions to the developers. Do you have a question about Gears of War 4's tweaked gameplay, narrative, or even the history of the series? Now is your chance to ask studio head Rod Fergusson! We'll be pulling questions from the comments section, but we should give you a heads up that The Coalition doesn't want to share too many new details on multiplayer just yet.
Post your questions in the comments section below. We'll be talking to studio head Rod Fergusson for a special edition podcast in the near future, and we'll use the best reader-submitted questions during our conversation.
Speaking to journalist Stephen Stephen Totilo at Game File (paywalled), the Fergusson explained that Diablo 4 players who rush through content are no longer the target.
This is a very big issue in game development right now. The loudest in the community are the influencers who get paid to play games and put 400 hours into a title and cry "nothing to do" on twitter.
when you make a game thats all about loot, ofc everyone is gonna try the fastest way to get all the loot, they wanna make an arpg now thats not for arpg players? A lot of those influencers have actually very nuanced takes, the people you mean aren't influencers, they're the twitter and reddit crowd.
I can appreciate not blaming it all on content influencers. I think they do add to what I'm saying though.
But it's clear to me that there is a lot of unnecessary pressure put on game devs today to cater to the 1% of gamers that "blast" through all the content in a week and then cry about how bad the end game is. When the rest of us with normal jobs, families, and other responsibilities haven't even completed 20% of the game at that point.
They're not going to build the game around people who play it 16 hours a day. Not hard to understand.
@slate if you look at the history of the d4 patches, you know its all on the devs. They messed up so much, they released the biggest patch of all time without beta testing it or asking for community feedback, basically made the game unplayable for 2.5 months.There is hardly any customization in the game when it comes to skills because the skill tree and how they set up progression for it allows almost no freedom, the loot is boring, they had 15 different stats that all did the same thing, gold prices for reenchanting items was ridiculous, the mount went faster if you moved your mouse closer to the edge of your screen, the game loaded every player's stash and inventory if you ran across them in the overworld, no endgame bosses besides Lillith, mob density was atrocious. When they did gameplay showcases you could see the person playing it never played the game before and those people are somehow supposed to make the game?
Also they have on of the biggest ips which they ask 70 euros for + battle pass + extra cosmetics + yearly expansions, I'm not feeling sorry for them at all. oh yeah and like 30 bucks extra for 3 days early access. Of course my expectations are gonna be super high if that is the price they want me to pay. Compare that to a game thats free, path of exile or some of the other ones that are better and just ask for 20 bucks once, the game deserved all the shit that it got.
They sure as hell wanted to make a game for the blasters, they were just incapable of making one after close to a decade of development.
"Blasters" Oh great a new buzzword invented to shame people for doing trivial things, George Orwell would turn over in his grave if he saw what the world is coming to.
Rod Fergusson writes: "Feels like the genre of "ARPG" is starting to mean a lot of different things. Much like "Souls-like" and "Rogue-like", I wonder if we could normalize "Diablo-like" for ARPGs that follow the Diablo formula..."
Yeah no that is not a good term for every ARPG. Just use Diablo-clone as they do already.
We used to call Diablo games hack and slash RPGs.
to be fair we used to say diablo-like since D2 but that tweet when POE2 presentation will go down in history.
From this day forth, im saying POE-like
Blizzard mentions: “The notion that you’ve missed four seasons, the only thing you’ve missed is us continuing to learn and iterate”
Agreed. I just put in 50 hours of it because I was told to just push through but I think I’m over it.
A shame because I had so much fun with Diablo 3. I bought it twice. Putting 100 of hours into both.
Diablo 3 on the switch saved me from going crazy on a deployment. Oh well hopefully next Diablo will be better.
As long as I keep my gamepass sub I won’t miss a thing
diablo 4 is actually a pretty good game now, the launch was just terrible, but honestly it was worse for D3 at launch. Farming inferno for 10 hours just to get a bunch of yellows that weren't for your class or 10 levels lower, combined with the rubberbanding and Hydra getting double the bonusses that it should have and the real money auction house. Hardcore was unplayable in D3, in D4 it was fine for me at least. Combined with not being able to log at launch or just getting kicked out. D3 was definitely way worse than D4 at launch, took them 2.5-3 years to turn it around.
If you played D3 once rifts were out, then there was actually some content, but that was YEARS into the game.
Have people just forgotten how terrible D3 was at the start? Real Money Auction House? Absolutely abysmal gear drops with stats that make no sense whatsoever?
Bring back Paladin/Crusader or GTFO. The fans never asked for Spiritborn.
Look at BG3. Great story, online co-op, couch co-op no micro transactions, no unnecessary seasons. Once you've finished the game you can play again and make different choices that will change the story. What happened to diablo?
if you're playing diablo to get branching story paths you're doing something wrong. Completely different game. The replayability in arpgs is the grind for better items and the ultimate chase is the perfect item. Might not be your cup of tea, but millions of people do.
We wouldn't feel like we're missing anything if you made it so people could go back and play through each season rather than miss out on it entirely. But that's not your goal. You want people to feel like they are missing out on things and force them to play when you want them to, regularly each season, rather than just make a game that is more enjoyable to play and with better content.
