You know one of those news cycle elements in where everyone looks bad?  This is one.

Kotaku’s Jason Shcreier put an update on with “insider notes” that Diablo 4 was supposed to have a teaser at the end of the Immortal showcase, which would have apparently made all right in the world.  But it was pulled at the last minute.  Drama!

Then Blizzard responded this wasn’t the case.  More drama!

Then the article was appended to say the video was made after all, but the timing for it being at Blizzcon was the issue.  It was never planned for that event.  Even more drama!

Does it Matter?

It generated reactions, including this post.  But…

No one in their right mind thinks that Diablo 4 is not being worked on.  It’s the real black sheep of the Blizzard franchise – the only one with a sell it, have no e-sports, and upkeep for free model.  That doesn’t work with Blizzard in 2018, as made ultra clear with the announcement of Immortals.

Everyone has a good idea of the basics.  You have heroes.  You attack demons.  Loot drops.  The story makes little sense.  Infinite replay through infinite grind.  Small-group multiplayer.

Is D4 so far out on the schedule that even a teaser isn’t viable?

Lessons Learned

For a company that prides itself on ultra polishing the genre, and paying attention to trends, the work on Diablo was ultra tone deaf.  Bethesda knocked it clear out with FO4 + Fallout Shelter, then ES6 + ES Blades.  Even though there’s a mobile game, the main line game is there too.  EA didn’t get this memo when they announced C&C Renegades.  Blizzard apparently ignored that too.

And really, of all the mobile games to launch, who here was surprised that WoW Pet Battles wasn’t on the list?  PokemonGo has been gangbusters.  Seems like a license to print money.

No, instead we get game writers (whom by their very profession get various leaks) to spread a message, and then paid to give a counter message, which gets people talking.  Except all the parties in this case look bad.  The writer looks more like a shill (which is funny, because isn’t that the point of being a writer?), and Blizzard looks all the more foolish to have both prepared and not prepared for this event to unfold.  And it keeps Diablo in the news, entirely based on speculation which has never worked out for the best in any time in history.

It’s amazing I’m even blogging about it.

And I was just throwing some bull to the wind at that!

Be forewarned, this is more rant than much else.

Wyatt Cheng

I think it’s fair to say that Diablo 3 would not be here today without Wyatt at the helm.  He took the junk that Jay Wilson delivered and somehow managed to give us Reaper of Souls.  Seasons, real legendaries, Kunai’s Cube, sets that mattered, balanced skills, adventure mode, nephalem rifts, GRs, drop rate changes, and the removal of the auction house.

At no point does anyone question Wyatt’s devotion to the Diablo franchise.

The people who Wyatt works for… those are the ones that put him on stage this weekend.

Diablo Immortal

It exists and I honestly thought it would be a great April fool’s joke when I posted earlier.  I have tried a few dozen ARPG games on mobile – all of them follow the exact same formula.  The best ones are fun for a week or two, never past that point.  It’s the limitations of the medium.  Certainly it supports the infinite grind.  Mobile is all about infinite grind.  What’s missing is the controls. (and the monetization, but there’s no details on that so I’ll skip it)

Controls from the perspective of people who will sink hundreds of hours into detailed and complex builds.  The quick info that I’ve read from the demo that proves that point with gusto.  The Barbarian build works due to whirlwind being a caster-centered AE attack.  The Monk struggles a bit more since you need to aim some attacks.  The Wizard doesn’t work since you need to aim almost everything, and some attacks have such a large wind up time that the creatures are dead before you get the cast off.  Will the game make money?  For sure.  Will the playerbase be those that went to Blizzcon?  No way.

And that is entirely the problem.

Head in Butt Syndrome

There’s a problem in large companies where people are conditioned to believe that they are correct and the client is not.  In most cases, those companies are taking advantage of a specific customer base and ignore both their feedback and the trends, while making disastrous decisions with long term impacts.

Kodak is right up there.  US automakers are a group that nearly everyone was impacted by.  At the ground level, the people who are helping the customers see the extremely boneheaded decisions.  Their feedback is either ignored, or so filtered that it’s near useless when it reaches the people who make the actual decisions.  Marketing seems to run all.  It takes a heck of a management team to course correct, or tell the execs that they are wrong… and great execs to demand that type of team.

I think we’re at the point now where it’s pretty clear that gamer-first culture is gone at Blizzard.   The ridiculousness of WoW’s BfA work.  The tone deaf responses on Hearthstone until M:TG launched.  HotS which still can’t seem to find forward progress.  Overwatch is one space where it seems to have something positive going – this from Kaplan.

Does it make sense to make Blizzard Immortal?  From a business perspective, 100%.  They should have a ton more presence in mobile.  Does it make sense to have people PAY to come see you and decide to launch a product you KNOW they don’t want?  In what world would you run your own convention and get booed?  Wyatt knows this.  Everyone that has ever set foot at Blizzcon knows this.  That they decided to make this the item of discussion for this year is insulting to everyone involved – both fans and developers.

All Could Have Been Avoided

Blizz built the hype, which was pretty clear after 6 years that people were looking for something.  They tried to douse expectations, but that ship had clearly sailed.  Instead of just dropping this with nothing else (and no release date), they could have pitched a new D3 class with a TBD date.  They could have announced a D2 remaster, with a TBD date.  They could have just had a D4 trailer with pure cinematics, and a TBD date.

Or they could have simply waited to announce Immortal until a PAX-like event, or in Asia where 95% of the playerbase is going to be anyhow (like they did with Starcraft 2).  Hearthstone wasn’t even announced at Blizzcon – it was at PAX.  That makes sense since CCG games were already at PAX.

Blizzard is a billion dollar company, with some of the most hardcore fans on the planet.  It dwarfs all competition in terms of self-run conventions (EvE would likely be 2nd).  The company knew what it was doing.  Any possible defense to the opposite would mean that someone needs to be fired for incompetence.  A 10 minute google search would have told you that.  A 10 second visit to any fan forum would have made that super clear.

Customer Service

And to be again quite clear, none of the people that were on stage deserve any personal attacks.  They do however deserve every snarky comment.  They are the face of the company, just like any help desk agent would be. For every ovation a presenter may get, it comes with the risk of heckling and boos.

Someone isn’t toxic when they disagree with you.  They are toxic when they focus on the personal aspects rather than the business decisions.  There’s plenty of hyperbole.  The world is ending nonsense. But it’s a drop in the bucket compared to say, LoL chat.

What really sucks here is that clearly the fans and the developers are highly invested in the franchise.  A near 25 year relationship.  The players are looking around at things like Path of Exile, or Torchlight:Frontiers and wondering how their BFF Wyatt can improve on that model.  There is a still an opportunity here for dialogue.

Other Sites Feeback

• Blessing of Kings
• Biobreak
• IHASPC
• Kaylriene
• TAGN

Not so much lions and tigers.

Some folks have seen the videos about hunting in RDR2.  Aside from the fact that there are so many animals around, the actual act of hunting is relatively close to real life.  The location, light, movement, noise, and weapon type all impact the success rate.

One quest related to hunting a legendary bear.  It teaches the basics, and then drops you down to finish the job at your leisure.  You learn about hunting rabbits, making a campsite, cooking food, benefits of sleep, and how to craft bait.  Then the game give syou back control/

The seas were angry that day!  I plugged that bear at least 4 times with shots to the head and he still bull-rushed me.  Somehow I was able to get the hunting knife to take him out, then skin him for the pelt.

Apparently there are plenty of legendary creatures in the wild – they show up on the map when you are in their range (VERY large range I may add).  Kill, skin, then bring the pelt to the Trapper.  That then opens us some unique clothing options, based on the animal pelts.  But….

I mentioned before how things were slow in RDR2? The bear you find is next to O’Creah’s Run.  The Trapper seems close, but it’s a 5 minute canter to get to him.  During that time, I crossed:

• A lady pinned by a dead horse, who I could not escort home due to the pelt on my horse.
• A horse thief
• A massive herd of deer
• Was run over by a wagon

Trapper met, sold the pelt for $60 and didn’t buy the now-available $40 bear skin hat.  Looks sweet as heck, but I need the cash for something else.

Now the trek from the Trapper to anywhere I know is extremely long.  And there’s no way to speed up that type of travel except with better stats on the horse.  I had a large draft horse (War-type if I recall).  Strong but slow.  Internets to the rescue!

Polygon has a quick piece on the White Arabian, a top tier horse that I could simply capture in the wild.  Sadly, he is at the NW point of the map and the Trapper is pretty close to the middle.  It was at least 15 minutes of horse travel to get there.  Lessons learned on this trek.

• Cinematic mode will auto-pilot your horse if you have a waypoint marked, and if you are on real road.
• Cinematic mode will not avoid trains, or trees, or gangs, or toll bridges
• Cinematic mode goes at the 2nd slowest possible speed.  Just above grass growing.
• RDR2 seems to have random (?) events show up on the trail every couple minutes to compensate for the very long travel times
• Drawing a weapon through a bad button press while at a toll bridge will kill you
• Manual saves are located in the pause menu, under Story.
• Finding a white horse in snow is hard
• Taming a wild horse requires a very slow and deliberate movements
• Riding a bucking horse in the woods is hard
• You need to swap the saddle from your main horse to the new one, then manually call that original horse while travelling so as not to lose it
• The travel time from anywhere to anywhere is directly related to your personal sense of urgency
• It is oddly relaxing to pet/brush a horse

Going through this I’m reminded of the elevator scenes in the original Mass Effect.  They were glorified loading screens of just nothing meaningful.  RDR2 is astoundingly slow – and it’s clearly intentional due to the events you come across.  It feels like an ancient relic in game design.  It is my largest struggle with the game.  I find myself turning auto-pilot on and then doing something else for 5-10 minutes.  This isn’t FO4 or Skyrim, where you want to explore and find neat new niches that hide other environments.  There are no interior environments in RDR2 – what you see on the map is what’s there.  Exploring serves no larger purpose than expanding the map. You may find a random event, but that event starts and ends on the map (like saving someone from a wolf attack).  It doesn’t go farther (that I’ve yet to see).

In that sense, travel in RDR2 is a tax on time.  Staring at my character on a horse for 15 minutes at a time is not fun.  There’s bound to be a balance here to make travel meaningful without it being painful.  I need to change that mindset is order to find more enjoyment of the rest of the game.

RDR2 is slow.  Infuriatingly slow.  Purposefully slow.

I’m down from the mountains and the snow, which is essentially the tutorial section of the game.  I’m now in the town of Valentine, which is where the game proper opens up.  Pieces of the game are still opening up to me.  Bounties, the concept of snitches, bar fights, sub-missions, general stores, stealing horses, exploratory events…  It’s starting to feel like a never ending list of things to do.

But they always seem tempered by game speed.

The bar fight is a good example, where in many games it’s more about offense and active dodging.  Here, it’s about methodically taking apart your opponent with strikes, chokes, blocks, and movement.  God of War may have a 10 hit combo chain, here you have starts and stops of fisticuffs.  It’s both jarring and oddly realistic.

Even the time spent between the various events is slow.  The distance from town to camp is a solid 3 minutes of just following a road/trail.  The farther a task takes you away from a hub, the longer it takes for you to get back to said hub.  You know this is a factor since when you complete a task it actually has timed targets in order to increase your rank in said task (e.g. getting a bronze medal).

Yet I am in no way motivated to do any of these things faster. I’m in no rush to complete anything faster than the game projects the options.  And in an immersive sense, this works wonderfully.  If you can find the time to sit down, play through, and just enjoy the experience.  It doesn’t work at all if life is pulling you in a dozen directions, or if you have but a moment to spare.  It doesn’t work if you are playing any other game and jumping between.  It is the antithesis to real life.

But good golly is it rewarding when you take it in.  When you consider the effort put into each little detail.  The fact that your hair grows and you need to keep it clean/trim is an insane detail that someone must have dreamt of. The mo-cap details for some of the interactions (and there are seemingly infinite interactions) are spot on.  Even things we take for granted, like camera angles, are in nearly all cases put in the perfect spot to capture what’s going on.

The purposeful slow approach to this game really makes you take in all the pieces.  I am continually amazed at what pops around the corner.

92gigs.  I can still remember when floppies had massive games.

I could pay more for better download speeds, but I don’t need to.  Netflix on 2 boxes is about the peak requirement, and that’s a really rare occurrence.  Downloading on Steam + Netflix… well I need to throttle Steam.  This sucker made my internet melt for 8 hours.

Slight gripe to start.  I’m struggling to figure out why this isn’t on PC, or at least scheduled to be. It’s the same engine as GTAV…

The Start of the End

RDR1 is set after this game, so we have a decent idea going in how this thing will bookmark.  The starting intro cards also speak about the end of the wild west, as the east’s laws start coming across.  Pretty clear this story will not be a cheerful one.

The game proper starts you off in a blizzard.  I’ve seen a fair my fair share of snow storms, and rarely are they well represented in games.  The visuals here are super solid, really capturing the desolation of snow.  No one sounds like they are in a Blizzard though.  And the way everyone’s tracks are not only captured in the snow, but maintained for a long time…that’s got to be first.

(Sidenote.  In Spider-Man, they recorded all of his lines twice.  One at normal rate, another to simulate him exerting himself while moving across town.  That touch was super immersive.  So far, all the lines in RDR2 sound like they came from a recording studio.)

The first couple missions are just intro work.  The starter has you enter a firefight while searching for food.  In one, you see how John Marsten (main guy in RDR1) got his scars.  In another you attack another camp with your seeming arch-rival.  They are exposition quests that provide fancy tutorials.

I won’t sugar coat this; the controls are like molasses and the UI is attrocious.  The number of button presses and menu options is so very high. It is so jarring as compared to pretty much any other modern game (God of War really hit a new benchmark for me).  It’s almost justifiable since it’s not like the West had auto-rifles, or accelerators.  It feels much more like a simulation in that sense.  But then you get things like auto-aim, or auto-navigation.  It’s a weird mix.  I’m not sold on it.

Simulate Me

You need food to stay healthy, you need to keep your horse in health, you need to keep the gun clean, you need to rest, you need….That’s the entry fee for just playing the rest of the game.  I’m not a fan of survival games.  Primarily because they do such a horrible job showing what survival really is about.  Survival isn’t about eating one of the 100 cookies you have in your bag.  Survival is about never having enough.

I am really early in the story, but that’s certainly the theme all around.  Surviving in the world when your type of life is on the way out.  The characters all have an air of desperation, of defeat, of one more hill to climb.  They are somewhat sympathetic.  Feels a bit like rooting for the most likeable bad guy.

I think the series Firefly did the best job of showing what it’s like to live out on the edge of civilization.  Mal had his own way of thinking, but it failed as often as it worked.  They never made it big, but were always chasing the next big score.  They had their own set of moral code to follow.  It worked because everyone was a bad guy.  Mal is isolation would come off as a jerk – put him in a room full of jerks and he’s pretty OK.

I’m certainly looking forward to RDR2’s story moving forward.  Rockstar’s characters have always been impressive, and I’d expect no less here.  Going to take a long time to get through it all.

The first time I played Monster Hunter: World on PS4, I reached the Tempered Kirin fight, which had a requirement of hunter rank(HR) 49.  It was a fair chunk of time invested.

On the PC, I’m currently HR 23 which isn’t exactly reflective of the middle point of the game.  In fact, I’ve killed every single target but the two who were not in the PS4 version when I stopped (Deviljo & Lunastra).  Now it’s about taking on monsters to fill out specific armor/weapon sets.  So I guess you could say I’ve killed half the monsters that I did last time.  Now it’s about putting my head down and running investigations on repeat.

One of the neat things about RPGs is the player flexibility when it comes to power progression.  MH:W is a prime example, where all power increases are based on player choices.  If I took off my armor, I would be as powerful as a level 1 character.  Every weapon, armor, charm, decoration has a direct impact on power.  Every temporary buff (potion or food) has a direct impact.  And it’s time/effort to unlock those various pieces.  Not like all of a sudden you get that 1 unlock and game transforms – it’s a slow and steady build.

Example.  I had forgotten about Power/Armorcharms.  There are two items you can buy that sit in your inventory and provide passive boosts to DEF and ATK.  You can boost this effect through crafting by combining a drop from Bazelgeuse.  Then buy the base items again.  The progression goes 0/0 –> 12/6 –> 18/9 –> 30/15.  To compare, one piece of rank 5 armor has ~40DEF.  Rank 7 has ~70DEF.  So when you first get this piece, well it’s a near 20% boost of power.  As you get much stronger, the effect is still there but the overall impact is lesser.  To compare again, a large food buff is 15ATK, but goes away when you faint. Every bit helps.

In Practice

Great games operate on the concepts of gradual improvements, and a world that grows with you.  There are times where it’s fun to just faceroll through an event, but people typically play for the challenge.  MH:W has ever increasingly dangerous enemies that you can tackle, either through pure skill (bit of luck too), or through investment in power levels.  I’m sure I could kill Teostra in beginner gear… it would just take 50 minutes to do and a whole lot of attempts.

In my journey so far, Diablos was the one that gave me the most headaches.  I was trying to learn to guard point (use shield to be invulnerable) and it really wasn’t working for me.  I’m sure I tried that quest a dozen times until I got the timing just right.  Well, I needed to capture the bugger for a quest and ended up fighting him in the Arena the other night.  He died in 4 minutes.

Rank 8 weapon and  Rank 7 armor, all the canteen items unlocked, a Palico with rank 8 gear and a maxed Palarang.  I put on the Vitality Mantle (prevents some damage) and went to town.  Running up walls and crashing down to mount him for massive damage.  Dodging at the right time.  Using Guard Points on every charge.  I felt like one of those instructional YouTube videos on how to play the game.  With a Charge Blade and long windups, you really need to have some luck on your side for a couple of the swings.  Felt super easy.

That was the last arena battle in normal mode.  I’ve done nearly every optional quest available, but one hidden part of the game is the need to capture monsters and fight them in the arena.  I have most of them for High Rank mode… now to get 1 or 2 more.  If it goes anything like Diablos, it should be fairly smooth sailing.

If.

Where the true journey begins.

Xeno’Jiva is down, which effectively marks the transition from story game (and High Rank) to end game.  From the start until this point, there was mostly linear progress.  I am now in the horizontal progress phase.  What I mean by that is that I never felt the need to hunt a specific monster for a rare drop.  I just kept plugging away at the Assigned (story) quests until I got here.  It’s provided me with a rank 5 (of 8) weapon, which has been quite enough for most cases.  I’ve also acquired a fair chunk of armor upgrade, making earlier battles a lot easier.

What’s next is the question.

Breadth & Depth

In terms of weapons, I need to fan out with a few more Charge Blades that address specific monster weaknesses.  The one I have now is focused on Blast damage (build up for an explosion), but it would be extremely practical for a set of water/fire/ice/dragon weapons to dramatically speed up specialized farming.

Some high level theories on damage.  Some weapons provide innate elemental damage.  That listed damage coverts ~10% per attack (depending on weapon speed).  So if a weapon lists something like 500 normal, 250 elemental, then on a monster weak to that element, you will be doing 50% more damage per attack.  In practice most weapons have a 25% bonus through elemental damage.  This can be further boosted through weapon enchantments (gems) up to their cap.  That cap depends on the base damage… more complicated than need be so here’s a link to explain it.

This is all discounting the fact that some weapons are just plain better on some enemies than others.  The Charge Blade (Hammer and Greatsword are similar) are skill-based weapons that require very good positioning.  Something like Dual Blade or Sword and Shield can be much more mobile.  Some enemies spend way too long in the air, or have some seriously deadly AE attacks, making ranged weapons a better alternative.

A Good Defense

At the base, everyone needs armor.  It has a linear relationship to the amount of damage you take.  High rank gear makes a tremendous different when it comes to a generic armor set.

Yet similar to weapons, armors have elemental resistances.  Something like Teostra who is pure fire, would be best served by fire resistance.  It’s entirely possible to find a piece of gear with amazing armor stat but resistances that make you into a wet tissue.  Fighting Kirin without Lightning resistance is key to a bad time.

I will say that elemental resistances are the safety net of battles.  If you are significantly overpowering your target, then it doesn’t matter that much.  If something like Teostra is taking half your life with a single swing… then get some fire resistance and see a world of difference.

Putting it into Practice

Bazelgeuse.  I need his horns.  I wasn’t too flustered with him in the past as a dual blade user – easy to get in and out.  Charge Blade is more of a challenge since you can get move locked and then he decides to blow up everything around him.

This particular mission decided to have Deviljo show up.  For those unawares, he randomly spawns in HR zones and is top of the food chain.  He will attack anything, and doesn’t give up chase.  I didn’t realize he was in this zone until he roared (stunned me), which gave Bazel ample time to finish his dive bomb and wipe me out.

He is massive.  He’s even deadlier when he has a monster in his jaws.

My second death was also due to that bugger shoulder checking me into the wall, then body slamming Bazel on my body.  Ok, enough.  I knew I had Bazel on the ropes, he took a nap and I put a barrel bomb to get things going again.  Deviljo was far away, so I figure to finish it off with a mount.

Sure enough, as I’m in the middle of the final swing of the mount attack, Deviljo shows up.  Maybe I lucked out, maybe it’s the code, but he didn’t attack me while mounted.  He did however attack me when I dismounted and couldn’t move.  3rd faint and will need to give it another shot.

So now the journey begins to round out the gear set.  Less large jumps in power and more about targeting specific builds for specific monsters.  Make a goal and work back from there.  Fun times.

Einstein was right.

There’s an interesting argument to be had around the duration of an activity in relation to another.  The old “holding a burning pot vs a loved one” argument. Mega Man’s 25 screens/level format feels just the right length of engagement, while the time spent travelling between one location and another in Pillars of Eternity can feel like years.  Clearly, it’s based on subjective pleasure of an activity.  More than that, it often relates to player engagement.

Menial tasks are not engaging.  Very few people find pleasure from the act of cleaning a garage, though the end result is certainly pleasant and cathartic.  Games that focus on the menial busywork lose my attention quickly.  I certainly don’t mind fiddling with details, but those details need purpose and impact.  Back to PoE2 for a second.  I’m still stuck in the first part of the game because travel takes so damn long and does nothing for the game.  I’ve never had a random event, a ship battle, and only seen 2 isles to explore – all without combat.  Why pad on 2-3 minutes of non-interactive and repetitive gameplay?  Spider-Man has a ton of travel, but the act of travelling is chocked full of random events and interactive gameplay.  You learn the ability to fast travel long before you’ve completed the checklist of random events.

The disengagement from WoW relates strongly to this as well.  World Quests are even more menial than in Legion.  Dungeons (non-M+) could have been mistaken for MoP dungeons in many cases.  The world and story items are excellent, but they lack replayability.  I truthfully miss Suramar’s evolving story, or the Withered dungeon, or the Mage Tower.

MH:W’s missions are generally time-based – 50 minutes a shot.  Sometimes less if you’re on an investigation.  50 minutes that cannot be paused I may add.  When you start off the game and learning the ropes, very few battles go over 20 minutes.  As you progress, the larger enemies start taking a lot longer.  Either due to them having larger HP pools, or due to the combat mechanics requiring more patience.

Example is a recent Lavasioth fight.  30 minutes to hunt, and I wanted to actually capture it for the collection.  Capturing and fighting all monsters in the Arena unlocks extra gear bits.  He’s a bit of a bugger as his armor gets more resistant over time, until he goes back in the magma.  He also has a tremendously powerful fireball attack, so positioning is key.  Throw in a roaming Rathalos and you have a potent mix for long fights.  I ended the fight with about 2 minutes to spare.  Dung pods would have helped with the Rathalos.  Making the fight go faster still requires a better weapon (such as water-based), and overall better skill with using the weapon.  Considering I’ve just completed Nergigante, I need a whole lot more drops to widen my weapon arsenal.

Still, if I were to randomly capture 5 minutes of that fight, it would likely include a whole pile of dodging, rolling, striking, healing, and getting thrown around.  It would be more hectic than practiced, that’s for sure.  But every piece of that would be engaging to me.  Don’t get me wrong, there are certainly menial tasks in MH:W- like killing 8 Girros or some such.  But they are so rare, that they feel like reprieve from the walking death machines on other quests.

MH:W doesn’t do bite-size gaming well, since you can’t really leave a quest mid-point without losing all the previous progress.  It doesn’t try to.  It does moment to moment gaming very well, so that you don’t see the time go by.  Better than a whole pile of other games I’ve played in recent years.  I often find myself losing track of time, thinking I’m a minute away from my goal.  Then the dreaded “one more turn” thought comes in, and there goes 15 more minutes.  That’s an oddly good feeling to have – wish it applied to more things in life.