Diablo 4 lead wants to stop appeasing “blasters” that rush through content

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.

[slate91]

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.

[LordoftheCritics]

Streamers/Content creators are very far from the average gamer

[Michiel1989]

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.

[slate91]

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.

[rippermcrip]

They're not going to build the game around people who play it 16 hours a day. Not hard to understand.

[Michiel1989]

@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.

[M3talDiamond]

"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.

[MeteorPanda]

and yet Blizzard always does. M+ in WoW suffers the same.

[-Foxtrot]

"So anyway, I started Blasting"

[Kosic]

Don't blame the gamers for the garbage that we call D4.

[gleepot]

millions of people would disagree

[gold_drake]

i think theres definitely space for casuals and those "blasters" haha

dumb

[GhostScholar]

That’s fine but not everyone wants to tap x 10 billion times just to get a new piece of loot that is less powerful and uglier than what they currently have

[shaenoide]

So more timegated content ?