Five questions about the riot surrounding Diablo IV last week
The Diablo IV community is in turmoil. At the end of ‘season zero’, Blizzard already implemented the changes that would apply to season one. Those changes were not easy. All classes have received massive nerfs to varying degrees, much to the chagrin of players. Due to the popularity of Diablo and the intensity of the fuss, we will answer five questions here about the commotion surrounding Diablo IV version 1.1.0.
What happened?
Blizzard has implemented a laundry list of nerfs. For those who are not familiar with the term: the metaphor is that you give a real firearm the striking power of a Nerfgun, a toy gun that shoots cartridges made of plastic and foam rubber.
The nerfs are for every class: Barbarian, Sorcerer, Rogue, Necromancer and Druid. Some have been hit harder than others. For example, Rogue players say they have been hit the least, and those at the controls of Sorcerer characters have seen the fun drop the most. They say they die after a single blow from a certain enemy, where before they could handle entire hordes of the same enemy. Normally you do that because characters are too powerful. In multiplayer this often bothers others and in single player the motivation is usually not to make the game too easy.
The patch notes can honestly be described as a laundry list. IGN made a valiant attempt to summarize the main points of this in a video and still ended up with fifteen minutes of footage. A commenter on Reddit summarized it more briefly, but also more subjectively. Without trying to sugarcoat it, in summary the patch does this: All classes feel weaker than they ever have. The damage stats have been significantly reduced, as well as defense and the drop rates of other important items have been reduced.
What does the community think about that?
The reaction was not pleasant. The tenor seems to be almost unanimously negative. The subreddit makes critical jokes like: “They fixed an issue that kept players having fun.” Others say they’ll just sit out the season if things go this way, seeing a shift from fun to more grinding, a practice that requires players to invest an inordinate amount of hours to see the progression they want. “The Sorcerer has gone from a glass cannon to plain glass and to paper,” says another. Distrust has been expressed several times about whether Blizzard has tested this patch itself.
“Fixed an issue where player base was having fun.”Yet another player, who may or may not be rich, is offering developers a million dollars if they play a Sorcerer on a stream for twenty minutes. Presumably he forgot to mention that they also have to be effective in combat and it has to be a bit of fun. Finally, players also engage in review bombing on Metacritic; the game has one at the time of writing user score of 2.2.
A single user ignores the cutting criticism against Blizzard. He says he suspects Blizzard overpowered players at launch and it ‘always hurts when it’s taken away from you’. He states that “we are probably not supposed to be able to easily defeat enemies that are 25 levels higher.”
What did Blizzard say next?
The developer decided not to go radio silence, but came up with one fireside chatin which several relevant leaders of the studio provided explanations about their decisions.
In summary, the team says it “intends never to release a patch like this again.”
In this video, Blizzard explains that the intention was to “slow down players.” “We wanted to prevent players from rushing through all the content,” the company said. “Ultimately, we’re trying to make the game more fun for players,” adds game director Joe Sheely. “The players are the heart of everything we do and if players can’t believe that is the case as the game changes, then we will not achieve our goals.” In summary, the team says it “intends never to release a patch like this again.”
All in all, Blizzard really messed up here. It essentially admitted that it has taken a completely wrong path and that a change of direction is coming.
What are the concrete consequences?
In the short term, nothing will follow and that is once again causing the players to be dissatisfied. Patch 1.1.0 will not be rolled back. Blizzard does plan to make the Legendary Aspects for the Sorcerer and Barbarian more powerful in patch 1.1.1. With those Aspects, items can be upgraded to the highest rarity. That patch will only have to wait a few weeks.
In addition, Blizzard promises to announce the content of updates “at least a week” in advance. This should provide an opportunity for feedback and to ‘digest the information in advance’. Blizzard does not say that it will do anything with this feedback, only that there is an opportunity to provide it.
All’s well that ends well, all right?
Given how angry the Diablo community is, it’s no surprise that tempers are soaring with this not be much appeased. “If you have to implement a huge power creep fix with patch 1.1, you really messed up the initial release,” says one commenter. Others say they understand that characters who are too powerful ultimately take all the fun out of a game, but that this was the wrong strategy. “It should have been presented differently,” someone argues. “If it were packaged as an extra challenge that also offered new and better rewards, it would be a different matter.”
Finally, other commenters say that they don’t really expect anything different from Blizzard these days. They see such changes as means to extend the hours played at the expense of gaming enjoyment. They are also not impressed with Blizzard’s communication. There is particular criticism of the fact that no questions from the live chat were answered during the stream and that the patch has not been rolled back.
Finally, this is not Blizzard’s only PR failure. With certain more expensive editions of Diablo IV, buyers receive a single battle pass; which is worth around 10 euros and unlocks additional rewards within a gaming season. In response to season one that was not fun at all, players already shared the tip that you can simply save that battle pass for a later season. However, in the Season screen, in which you keep track of which rewards you have already unlocked and where you can activate the battle pass, it turned out that when you open the screen your cursor is positioned on the battle pass activation button by default. This means that players quickly activate their battle pass unintentionally and ‘give’ Blizzard another 10 euros. Blizzard was accused of deploying a dark pattern and promises to fix this as well.
It’s over in an instant, which makes it difficult to look back, but it also went too quickly for YouTuber Rurikhan.