So the solution to consumers making informed choices is to have the consumer buy everything and test everything personally?
No.
What? You don’t have to play yourself, just lisen only to those who played and not everyone, and don’t share opinion without playing.
Plain and simple, the difference is you can’t trust people not to talk out of their ass or not to distort informations without biases.
I don’t trust myself to have a good opinion if i didn’t play, and even if i did i’m still biased. No one should lisen to one individual.
Best way to know if a game is good is to look at the overall reception. Because if everyone is pointing out a qualitiy or flaw, it must hold some truth.
Although the best way to see if you will like it is to look at gameplay. (That or you know exactly what you’re looking for…)
True, but it’s not that cut and dry. If someone who’s played Overwatch “2” tells me it’s Overwatch 1 with monetized competitive gameplay elements and no earnable cosmetics or any of the progression systems, that’s not a statement of opinion. It’s a fact, and it’s easily verifiable. (also, this is me, someone who has played Overwatch since release, telling you that it’s true)
Judging a game for something like that without having played it is valid. So I think, especially if you’re objecting to engaging with a game on ethical grounds, there’s a lot more room for judging a game without playing it than you’d think.
I don’t know why you would not lisen to a source that checked it directly rather than a third party.
But sure, it will be much easier to speak objectively on some facts like the one you quoted, bypassing the need for the actual source of information.
So for speaking ethics for exemple i completely agree.
For buying the game though (that was my premise), i think it has it’s limits. There is some informations that can be more subject to interpretation. Personally, those informations are often very relevant too.
Huh, I never knew there was no middle ground between hating on something and liking it. TIL
Cool, let me try: Fortnite is overrated bullshit!
Yep, feels great indeed :D
Don’t you dare attack my slot machine
It’s not a slot machine when items have no value because they can’t be traded
Diablo II gang
Diablo 3 (pre-expansion) was built around trading though and it was fucking awful.
Farming Act 1 hoping for something you could sell to somebody else so you could buy that mythical Resist All gear in order to survive Act 2 made me quit in disgust. Drops were completely random, could be for any class and 90% of what dropped was no good for anyone.
That’s what I LOVED about it! I know it’s a super unpopular opinion, but it felt so much more rewarding to find something halfway decent. Like it did in Diablo II.
Post-expansion it took a couple hours to fully gear a char, then every Primal Ancient Holy Mega Sickass Ancient Legendary was like “maybe I can go up another grift yawn” to me.
You make a great point about the state of post-expansion endgame. But loving the Auction House loot system is akin to banging your face on a brick wall because it feels good when you stop.
I totally get where you’re coming from, but I don’t feel that way personally! Finding a valuable item with a 1/10,000,000,000 drop rate is the real dopamine injector.
Fair enough! To each their own. Personally the 200 hours in between shots of dopamine put me off of that. I found myself being bored most of the time I was playing the game and supposed to be enjoying myself.
Though, that said, I found myself bored most of the time running GRifts too. Modern Diablo may just be poorly designed from the base up. The glory days of Blizzard are well behind us, unfortunately.
actually had a great time with D4’s story.
the service game elements detract from replayability though.
The level scaling absolutely ruined that game. It had so much potential, too…
Whoever at Blizzard decided it’d be a good idea to not get more powerful with every level needs to be slingshotted into the sun
So I totally agree, the game just getting harder every level made it rather unenjoyable grinding my character to lvl 100 last season. How else could Blizzard have done an open-world Diablo game, though?
The same way they made World of Warcraft, I suppose. (That is, until they changed it to be the same as D4) Or the same way From Software made Elden Ring. All they really had to do was stick to the formula they established in the first 3 games, because the map being bigger doesn’t have any bearing on the RPG mechanics or anything. There’s just more walking now.
It’s a lot of work to balance all of the enemies for all of the different types of players, but that’s kind of what I expect when I pay $70 for a game with microtransactions
Last Epoch has been treating me well. The power progression feels good for the classes ive tried so far. The pacing is good too.
Did you play Path of Exile? If so, how does Last Epoch feel compared to PoE. My favourite aspect of PoE is the hilariously fast gameplay when skilled somewhat correctly and up to this point I didn’t find a loot based ARPG that got to this point.
I didn’t stick to PoE long enough to say i played it despite a frieng group playing, just seemed like a bit too much for the amount of time I was willing to invest on just one game. Im doing endgame on my first character and it’s pretty damn fast. Im clearing empowered monolith maps in sub 5 mins. A lot of things one shot me but they’re telegraphed and im a rogue subclass thats 8 levels below the empowerd monolith level. I love the movement skills I have available I feel like im always able to be flipping around the enemies.
Are there interesting powers? I want a hack n slash that has more physicality to the powers so there’s more strategy to positioning and mob management. Like cleave powers that send enemies flying backwards, or wind powers that blow open a path forward, or time bubbles that slow enemies and projectiles in an area. I’m kinda bored by games that just have numbers tied to an animation.
Theres some cool stuff ive seen but Im not super familiar with the classes I haven’t played. I got a rogue that drops turrets and a paladin thats throws tons of hammers in a spiral, so not exactly brand new ideas for the ones ive picked so far. Theres a runemaster I think its called where using certain elemental skills in certian orders lets you use a unique spell. Like fire fire cold would be a different spell than cold fire fire, and theres tons of combos for that class. I only know it from what ive seen others do, but for interesting a deep classes that may be the best example.
Want throwing weapons.
I know they’re all just stat sticks, but one set of fundamental stats is missing.
Ha. But I really do feel like that about D3 & D4 - completely irrationally, I know that, but I’ve also never bitched about it. No, wait, the memes do you guys not have phones were pretty funny …
The opposite of that image is how it feels to hate games you’ve played. I’m seriously still very upset at myself for buying D4. I regret it more than I think I’ve regretted any game purchase ever, and I’m old.
Yeah. Fuck Hell Divers 2.
Socialist detected. Calling in an airstrike!
Stalinum Shield activated.
Is that for the game or for how invasive it is?
Years and years ago, there was a huge snowstorm. I played diablo 3 throughout the week with this guy from work and had a pretty decent time.
I regret purchasing Diablo III and with everything I’ve been hearing from people playing IV and what I’ve observed going into the game, I’m 95% sure I won’t enjoy it. It’s a fact that most twitch streamers playing IV abandoned it to play previous versions of Diablo. Connecting the dots isn’t hard and doesn’t require you to play the game.
I own 3. Played through it with my wife. You could download dungeon alliance 4 or whatever it’s called from Google play and it’s the same thing. Diablo immortal was dicks. Genuinely In my own head never registered Diablo 4 existed.
I played Diablo 3. It was extremely boring.
The Diablo 2 remaster is way better, highly recommend checking it out
Giving Blizzard money is against my religion.
Valid lol. It might be on g2a or something like that
I recommend Last Epoch, quality ARPG, good customization options.
Diablo IV is better than III.
Diablo 4 has some QoL elements that are better, but D3 with those changes would be better than D4.
Is it? Honestly speaking I loved both 1 and 2, but the slot machine mechanics of 3 made me steer away towards other similar games instead.
If I do not need to grind, I’m fine.
There’s on big flaw with 4, pricing. I would have loved to play but i just can’t spend that much on one game.
Ironically it’s probably the one thing you can hate a game for without playing.
It’s not worth it. The new combat mechanics are cool, but the level scaling ruins the whole thing.
Source: I was one of the chumps who paid for it.
I liked summoning in 3, but in 4 it feels like all the monsters just run straight past my summons to me. It’s like having an incompetent offensive line in American football. I just spend every fight running around avoiding monsters because they’re smarter than my skeletons.
Damning with faint praise
All I ask for is more levels and content for diablo 2. Please…please. I beg the universe. May I have some more.
That’s because they shifted from ‘making a great game’ to ‘making a lot of money’ after they saw what the auction market was like in D2.
The love of money is the root of many evils and capitalism will destroy everything you love for profit.
I got pretty bored with my witch doctor build.
