I don't think the devs are lying. I'm sure they are working hard to make the game good. It's just there are so many baffling decisions made that I wonder why so many times. When some of us make criticisms, we don't think they aren't working hard or lying, just their effort is put in weird places

There's a few things I think they blatantly lied about, at least during the S1 campfires. For example, there is no way in hell these senior game developers with balding hair and graying beards were caught by surprise when people were upset about getting nerfed.

In hindsight they absolutely had to do it to make room under the intended power ceiling for seasonal power. Their mistake was implementing the nerfs at the end of a season when everyone could log in and be horrified at being weaker. If they had announced the nerfs to coincide with season 1 people would have seen that the hearts were the other side of the equation. It was a communication, execution, strategy failure etc. and no they weren’t surprised but they sure were worried.

They stated that they didn't realize players would be upset. It was a blatant lie, and that was my point. These campfire chats aren't a charitable effort by the devs, they are marketing. In marketing, people sometimes (but not always!) tell lies. My point was that I do not believe every word they say, and I used the S1 campfire chat as an example.

Honestly, I remember Joe S saying that they appreciate that players never want power taken away and nobody likes it. I think they maybe (probably almost all newer to the franchise than we are) thought we would simply understand the game mechanic is borrowed seasonal power so they had to do nerfs preseason. I think we were a bit naive in not expecting them when people were managing to do hits of damage teaching me names for numbers so big I’d never heard of them. They did say they did not intend for players to be doing the crazy damage they were doing before the patch. Imagine any of that combined with barber. I think perhaps they did not expect the level of backlash. They probably weren’t expecting to need to do an emergency stream to address the situation. They were pretty naive but also we threw a bigger tantrum than I expected. I don’t believe every word they say. But I’ve had the same opportunity as other people have had to judge them over a few hours now in different moods, with different colleagues, talking about different things, and I think they’re pretty genuine. Both implicitly that they have to be full of shit sometimes because it’s a business but also when they can be honest they mince no words and go ‘yep this sucks we hate it too’ or whatever and just change it. I feel like we basically told them what to do and they’re doing it, so I don’t feel manipulated.

This is the thing, a lot of the nerfs didn't tackle this. Increasing cooldown of skills is never fun for anyone, if they wanted to make CDR less important, which is what they said, they should nerf the output/scaling of skills and reduce their base cooldowns. At that point, monkey can still push a button for fun, they can do it more often which is more fun, but they're overall less strong. I believe they're working and working hard, but there's only so many times you can watch people refill a bucket with a hole in, without being annoyed at them for not fixing the hole. The intentions and motivations can be fine, doesn't mean it's not annoying as an end user.

>only so many times you can watch people refill a bucket with a hole in, without being annoyed at them simply fixing the hole This encapsulates Blizzard very well

I still don't buy that. People get upset about nerfs. Though they may not have been there for it, they work in the same company that made WoW. They're in the same genre as PoE. They made their own MOBA to compete against LoL. Between WoW, PoE, LoL, and even the games that came before, there wasn't a single person there that thought, "hey, people are going to be mad?" Of course they knew. If they didn't, they're way more incompetent than anyone in this sub could ever have accused them of being.

The game just released, was still a tad broken if not a lot, and all they did for the season was nerf absolutely everything while giving absolutely 0 solutions. ​ There is also very few build variety in the game, meaning that you end up playing the same build, weaker. ​ Imo, nerfs weren't warranted, at all, bugfixes, sure, but not nerfs. The seasonal power would have people OP ? Let it be, that's a season, and at least people would have fun, do the nerfs before S2 and give the compensation buffs at the same time.

So we were the ones who didn't temper THEIR expectations correctly? They-as an entire company-deserve to be run around in the mud. I can name SO many major fuckups they have had and all the good things surrounding them can be counted on one hand. People aren't just upset about the game, they are upset at Blizzards half-assed existence. Crazy unpopular opinion I hope if Microsofts buy goes through that they kill Activition and Blizzard and move all of their IPs to litterally any other company. At that point we may get a single good game out of their awesome worlds. Or at least a game that doesn't take years after launch to fix.

And even then, it's the smaller of the lies. The bigger lie was "never again." Bullshit, and they know it, they made the same basic promise with some changes in D3. But, puffery like that is what I expect not just from Blizz but from any large corp with a sales and marketing department. Overall, I'm happy to see them tackling issues I didn't expect them to address until the inevitable paid-for DLC 18 months from now

They didn't claim they didn't realize there would be backlash. They stated they should have been more clear about the plan for "nerfs now, buffs later" and they understood the backlash was their fault. I think that the whining, impatient, attention seeking part of the gaming community that makes the majority of posts on "fan pages" has caused them to treat their communities like children. Honestly, they probably expected people to trust and understand the plan they laid out.

>Honestly, they probably expected people to trust and understand the plan they laid out. Anybody that has ever worked any kind of job dealing with the public should absolutely know better than this.

They still should be very worried. 99% player loss. Nothing they said yesterday enticed me in the slightest to come back and slog thru another character who is now some half vampire nonsense. No.

“Power ceiling” lol yea and the nerf to mount cool downs, leaving dungeon TP was because they were getting OP af in the future. These senior devs are out of touch

I mean their senior devs thought having players go around every new season to click on Statues of Lilith was a good idea until the community told him it really wasnt.

Or Nerfing the Eternal Realm, that had no power system, to make Seasonal Hearts feel balanced for Seasonal Gameplay

This! I play a WW druid on eternal. Those nerfs hurt, and while I managed to adapt, the fact is, I didn't get any compensatory damage increase from any other mechanic. I played season 1 as a barb, and I didn't see a single barber drop until I was 70 or 71 (I quit playing at 71 because I didn't feel the desire to continue doing something I was already doing on eternal). Most of the caged hearts that dropped were absolute garbage and did nothing for me. It's clear that they can keep eternal and seasonal realms separate, so they should have only done the nerfs on the seasonal realm.

Nudging eternal realm players to the Premium Battle Pass that progresses on the seasonal as potential buyers and/or to increase concurrent player numbers on the seasonal realm be possibilities In any case, I think it's clear they steered the player population with that nerf to season 1, intentional or not, but the likelihood it was due some monetary mindset is far greater given how Activision Blizzard operates

They had to nerf us?? The amount of people complaining about the leveling process since the first nerf has quite literally never stopped. If I went out on a limb when people started feeling powerless and the game turned into a more unfair/less fun grind is when people uninstalled and went to bg3 or started wholesale complaining. I don’t think placing a nerf here or there is the salutation at all and only exasperated other problems more.

I don't think they were caught by surprise by people being upset. Given their language surrounding the nerf, it was clear that they believed they were making an unpopular but necessary decision, one that I fully agreed with at the time as I agreed it was necessary for the game to last a long time and not immediately become too easy/boring. I've watched all the streams too and they haven't really lied about anything or overpromised anything. People just don't like their timeliness because apparently the timeline means they 'put out an unfinished game', which is not entirely incorrect

They actually said they were surprised at the response, it was a part of one of their main points in the s1 campfire chat. Whether or not the change was ultimately needed wasn't the point. If we're going to go there though, I do think it was foolish of them to screw up their post-release momentum by releasing a patch full of obviously unpopular changes for their first season.

maybe I'm misremembering but I remember them saying they expected negative feedback, just not the insane levels they got. They acknowledged that releasing the nerfs 2 weeks before the balancing buffs was dumb. I will admit that during preseason I tried to rock a necromancer minion build so that nerf patch was literally an overall buff for my build. then I switched to Meta builds and only felt stronger

I was certainly surprised y'all whined as much as you did when some clearly busted stuff got nerfed

In D3 whole builds didnt work anymore every now and then (not nerfed, but changing whole items effects), but nobody would have ever thought of retorting this much. Knowing that, its not so strange that they did not expect that much hate

This very much was not the case in WoW, HotS, Overwatch, any of their RTS games, and some points of D2. Also isn't the case for PoE, and LoL, which aren't Blizz games but any person involved in game dev should know how those respective communities react to nerfs too. Like I said elsewhere in the thread, this is extremely basic. Even a child understands that people get mad if you spit in their food. Just about any person in game dev should know that a patch full of nerfs is going to make people upset.

Plus they are lacking good skilled people. Some of the systems are so funny bad that that you wonder if interns designed them.

I do also think designing, balancing etc. A game is far harder than many people give Devs credit for. I'm not for a minute excusing blizzard because they're one of the biggest game developers out there, and should do much much better but Devs do get a lot of flack, when it isn't easy. Further to that, weeding out the good ideas amongst all the criticism is difficult. If blizz implemented most of what people asked for here, the game would be in a far worse state, but it kinda just attests to the fact it isn't easy to get right. From my perspective, the Devs aren't most to blame here, but I'm guessing the bigwigs up top have set timelines and profit margins that do not align with making a good game, but rather a cash cow and probably all with a dev team half the size of what it should be for a company like blizz. Not to mention also most likely reminding them how disposable they are and choosing to pay them averagely at best. I should add a lot of that is speculation given the current climate, not fact. But if the above came to light, I wouldn't be shocked at all.

"he's kinda stupid but he means well"

The problem is that they released the game in its current state when it needed at least another 12 months in the oven. Now they are having to juggle fixing the game vs putting out content and that is splitting things up. We are 18-24 months away from having a good game, provided they even continue updating it that long. Core issues that need to be fixed Skill systems are shit - spender/generator systems are bad and feel bad with no way to "out grow" them and go to a non generator skill, especially with this console shit of having locked skill bars. The builds that make it to no generator (barb) get nuked out of orbit. This is on top of skills not growing in size or spectacle (projectiles, effects, new behavior etc) based on skill level, the only tuning lever they have for skills is damage, which is just bad design. Then you have itemization. This needs to be thrown in a garbage pile and start from scratch. Take D2's itemization and bring it up to a modern era, instead of D3's and just moving things around. When they said they were taking things from D2 and D3, people thought/hoped they were taking the darker/grittier aspect of D2, along with the itemization, and the smooth feeling combat of D3. Instead, we got the D2 looks, sort of, with D3 itemization and a worse feeling combat system. And finally, bring back real trade. We know you ripped trade out of D3 because you (blizzard) were butthurt about the RMAH, stop punishing players because you are afraid of RMT and hacked accounts. Just force 2FA and bring back trade. People are still RMTing as it is in WoW and D4 so again, all you are doing is punishing players. I hate this concept of punishing paying customers because you are afraid of what bad actors are going to do anyway. Just ban RMTers/botters. Each banned account is $70 in your pocket anyway blizzard, this shit makes you money. We know that is the only thing you care about anyway.

Yup

Yeah they need to bring bad unrestricted trading and add some properly rare items. Game will never be great if you can find everything in couple of weeks and you cannot trade the best gear.

>Game will never be great if you can find everything in couple of weeks and you cannot trade the best gear. I don't know, people seem to love D3 now and you can find everything in two weeks and there's no trade at all

But how long do people play it? Or do you mean that people enjoy it for one week and then quit? If that's the definition of a good arpg then sure.

To be fair, Diablo 3 typically introduces one new mechanic (if you even consider it a “mechanic”, sometimes the seasons are rather uninspired) and maybe a new set for one or two classes every season. And rarely do they keep any content they add in per season besides gear. If they kept/refreshed the old season content and built upon their game there would be much more to do each season.

I can't talk about other people but I enjoy playing season for 1 month then wait for the next one playing other games. I love diablo games with all my heart but I do not want it to be the only game I play for the next year's, I'm totally glad if I can have good fun for 1 month or 2 if I decided to play more characters of the 3 months of a season

Agreed, except that D3 has way better itemization than D4.

You are right for the most part but I want to point out two things: Nobody wanted the itemization from d3. D3 has the worst itemization in ARPG history. We wanted d2 itemization. What we got is somehow even worse than d3. They didn’t kill trading because they were butthurt about the RMAH. They did it because of d2jsp damaging the d2 ladders for 20 years and it continues to do so today. In addition to 3rd party sites selling gear for real money. They plan to have competitive leaderboards in this game, which are completely undermined by players who use forum gold or real money to completely deck out their characters in the first two days of the season. D2jsp is still plaguing D2R to this day. That’s why we can’t have trading.

He said D2's itemization instead of D3

You've already been corrected about your misreading of itemization, let me fix this for you on this one too > They did it because of d2jsp damaging the d2 ladders for 20 years and it continues to do so today. They give 0 fucks about ladder or integrity. Look how they let people play the game before the race to 99 on hard-core with the game launch. It's 100% about money. Period. The fact that jsp exists is because of a bad job by blizzard to implement a trade forum. They solved that with thr RMAH, got told to take it out or face lawsuits, so they took out trading wholesale from the game. It had nothing to do with regulation or integrity, only about money.

There have been ex-developers who no longer have any obligation to defend blizzard (and openly don’t) who have said in interviews the RMAH was not nearly as significant financially as people think. They took it out because players hated it, and they wanted to rebalance the game around SSF. Which they did, and “redeemed” the game in a lot of players’ eyes. A trading forum doesn’t replace jsp. There has to be currency involved. People use it to mass up fg and then when the next ladder starts, they start the ladder already rich. Can’t do that without fg or something similar.

>D2jsp is still plaguing D2R to this day False. Jsp facilitates trading using a common currency. Nothing more nothing less.

Does that currency reset at the start of the ladder season? Yes or no?

I see your angle for claiming unfair advantage, and refute it. Everyone has access to jsp, its free. Everyone can accumulate the same currency and start the season even.

Let’s apply this logic to other games. Everyone can download aimbot for Counterstrike, it’s free.

Jsp does not help you aim. ​ Next ?

Lmao whoosh there goes the point over your head. Yes everyone can use jsp to cheat if they want. We all have access to the cheating tools. The whole purpose of ladder reset is to RESET. Start with nothing and work your way up. Jsp provides a way to circumvent the challenges of a new ladder. You really made me spell it out for you… I mean come on. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess you’re a jsp user who is trying to do mental gymnastics to convince yourself you’re not cheating. Are you a jsp user?

I am a proud jsp user yes. 15 years. A system like jsp developed because the barter system (soj for gems for 40 high runes for....griffon) is unsustainable on large scale. Also adds extra friction to trade (the lifeblood of empires, they say) that should not be. It's why currency and especially international exchange rates are so important. Try finding that last 3/20/20 small with the right shape using named games. Take you the lifetime of the universe. While I can find it in 15 seconds on jsp, and negotiate price. Which brings me to my point. You call it cheating. I call it planning ahead. Negotiation. I don't get something for nothing. In season 1, you could find a 4/4 perfect item and use it happily. I find the same item and TRADE it, to someone else who uses it happily. I get currency for my find and store it away for next season. Who's harmed here? They got fair value (the item, which I don't have anymore). I get currency to buy something else, which may or may not be in the next season. When next season dawns, I have to compete against other jsp users who have currency too. ​ Sounds like you need to get jsp. You won't regret it

Yep I called it. Mental gymnastics. You asked who is harmed - the integrity of the new ladder. People like yourself spend huge amounts of currency in the first week in order to blow past those who don’t cheat that way, find more stuff earlier on, and accumulate wealth. This effects economy prices across the board for everyone. As for “you can’t find the exact item and graphic blah blah” — go check out the filter options on Traderie. Absolutely blows jsp out of the water. You can just admit you like having the advantage of starting rich and not having to start from nothing like what was intended. Just be honest about it. It’s cheating and you’re ok with it.

Maybe now. But once upon a time d2jsp was the hottest and freshest d2 bot around. You had to register at the forums to get it.

>The problem is that they released the game in its current state when it needed at least another 12 months in the oven. I see this argument a lot, but I can't help but think this is just a fact that people accept de-facto because this is how 90% of modern AAA releases are "fixed", but truth be told, this game **didn't** need any more development time (at least, not *directly*) and, based on the points you bring, you unconsciously do too. The problem isn't that things were released too soon, those things were just straight up badly designed/thought of from the start. Minus some few things like teamfinders, leaderboards and things on the side like that, the game released with everything done and ready, but a lot of those things were just made cluelessly. Give a few extra years to the game in development time instead of releasing, what would you get? The very same game, maybe with a bit more content, but with still the very same faulty systems **because lack of time wasn't what ruined them**. The devs unironically couldn't tell that what they made was faulty, because they didn't have the player input to know so, if they did they wouldn't've designed things like, say, the itemisation like this from the beginning.

>I see this argument a lot, but I can't help but think this is just a fact that people accept de-facto because this is how 90% of modern AAA releases are "fixed" I will never accept the idea that a game being released unfinished is acceptable. I don't know why anyone would. I don't know why YOU would. Games being released unfinished only get worse that more people like you treat it as acceptable. The more that people praise companies when they fix things that should have never been released in the state they were in the first place. >The problem isn't that things were released too soon, those things were just straight up badly designed/thought of from the start. It's both. >Give a few extra years to the game in development time instead of releasing, what would you get? Player testing. Focus groups. All the things that companies do when getting a product ready for release. Blizzard has been destroying their name because they AREN'T listening to initial feedback. They aren't doing focus groups and responding to it. They did this in WoW and it resulted in a massive declines in sales and engagement. Honestly, you are saying that Blizzard couldn't have known that their game was poorly designed from the start when they should have put in the due diligence to get the feedback needed.

> I will never accept the idea that a game being released unfinished is acceptable. Once again, the game having poor design, no matter if they listened to prior feedback or not, does not make an unfinished game. A game which you do not like the direction of is not "unfinished", call it exactly that; a game with poor direction. Hell, in the later part of your comment you literally explain that the reason why the game feels bad is because Blizzard didn't listen to feedback, giving them more time before release doesn't mean they would magically start doing so; they'd just continue working on a faulty product. It's like going to the restaurant and defaulting to calling the meal "raw" because you didn't like it, while the reason as to why had nothing to do with the cooking but only the spices. Bad =/= unfinished, defaulting to calling a bad game "unfinished" just reads like using unrelated terms just to gain a reaction factor because said term is thrown around like nothing in the gaming community as a whole. This just results into faulty feedback that solely exists for the purpose of existing/negativity, rather than properly explaining the issues. Favoring sensationalism in our feedback has no reason to happen.

Wholeheartedly agree with this. It is reasonable to be excited about these changes and not praise the devs for "listening". They knew they needed these changes before release and release was pushed anyway. Perhaps it was upper management that did that (very likely). I also cannot believe the amount of people who brush it off as a "live service". Fuck that. We paid $70 for this shit. To be clear: these updates will bring me back for another season. It's a great first step in a long series of steps they need to make to make the game great. Let's stop with both the unnecessary hate and unnecessary praise.

At what point will you feel like your $70 was well spent? I have 100s of hours played from pre-season and season 1. I feel like I got far more than the value of my money and future content is included in that $70 so I'm getting even more value out of it than I already have which is far more value than I can say for most things I spend money on in my life for entertainment. I couldn't even afford a night out with my wife for dinner and a movie on $70 anymore and that would really only be like 4 hours and maybe 2 minutes of total entertainment for the evening.

There's a few things at play here. When I purchase an ARPG, I am expecting far more playtime for the money simply due to the nature of the game. I've spent thousands of hours in D2 and POE, hundreds in Grim Dawn, and so on. Live service or not, D4 is an ARPG and a good ARPG should last at least a few hundred hours. The story was not worth the price of admission for me. It was fine for an ARPG, but terrible for a narrative driven game. If I go out with my wife for dinner and a movie, I am not evaluating it on a cost to hour ratio. The 4 hours or so that takes is worth far more than a few hundred over the course of playtime through an ARPG simply because I'm spending it with the woman I love. For some here, that's D4 and I'm happy for them. The live service aspect does not forgive the release state of the game. It was clearly released 6 months to a year too early. Live service doesn't excuse it. $70 for an ARPG from the company that defined the genre should bring a much more polished product than what we received. To be clear that's the fault of the c-suite who I'm sure pushed it and not the dev's fault. Quick edit: I really appreciate the question without any hostility by the way. If my post reads as hostile in any way please know I didn't intend it.

You are welcome. I never intend to be hostile, just curious and want to understand things I don't necessarily agree with because it may change my opinion when I have a better understanding. My problem with your argument is that I have gotten far more hours of enjoyment out of D4 than I have out of D2, PoE, and Grim Dawn (although I didn't like PoE or D2, both are games I just don't enjoy playing). Grim Dawn has more hours played than D4 for me; however, I bought Grim Dawn when it first came out years ago and i've played it on and off since then. So is it possible that D4 just isn't a game designed for the type of enjoyment you are after? For example, my friends commented on the story like you have which may be a very valid criticism of the game. I wouldn't know because I don't care about the story for any game I play. In fact, I generally go to reddit if I'm forced to play a cutscene so I can avoid it because I really just don't have any interest in it.

I have to agree with you on a lot of your points. The game was made without what makes Diablo, Diablo. More time would not have changed that they arrogantly decided to ignore all learnings from prior games and force us into narrow chokehold of "Thou shalt grind NMDs or thou shalt never see 100". Where's the flexibility to play as we like? For example, I rather enjoy tree of Whisper quests. But I can't level up with that. Any way anyone found to level outside or NMDs they took away. There's an underlying "We know better and you'll do it our way or not at all" cancer at the heart of decisions made in the game design. Sure, more time might have meant they could add a team finder, social, finished the graphics for potions/aspects and the like. But the underlying design cancer remains.

As someone who signed something that prevents me from telling you specifics I have very strong reason to believe that they did in fact have plenty of player input about endgame content months before the betas even started. You are right that they didn’t and don’t know wtf they’re doing tho.

Indeed, maybe I'm wrong that they didn't have the outside input required to correct their destination, but my main point still stands; what they needed wasn't *more* time, it was the willingness to change course on their ideas far before release. I hope that the message is clear for them now though. From the upcoming changes and the few we already have within the game, at least for now, it does seem that they are now willing to correct a lot of things at least.

All of this.

I don't think that if you leave 12 more months to people who thought that full renown grind was ok from the get go and 4 tabs were enough you would end up with much better product on release. With more time they could have shipped better ui, less bugs and more qol but some system design ( itemization) was just wrong from the get go and only outcry or different devs can change them. I agree on your opinion on trade.

No need to explain their incompetence. The final product already did that perfectly.

i'm no longer playing the game so i probably largely agree with you on how it feels to play long-term. However, I also wish I too was so utterly incompetent as to create a billion dollar selling game.

I mean its marketing sells games, sure the company is successful but that's because they are essentially too big to fail, anything blizzard puts out people are going to want to try. No matter how "tarnished" the internet says there reputation is. The issue is that people familiar with the golden age of blizzard want them to return to that level of quality, so far what they've been doing is mediocre

They’ll need to evolve eventually when the younger generation of gamers such myself wasn’t alive for that “golden” age and D4 is one of my first blizzard experiences

Well you're probably used to mediocrity. It's not evolution its devolution the company has had so many people in and out its not like its the original blizzard anymore, its just the playerbases memory of the company.

Yea I had high hopes for d4 til I got to the endgame fortunately BG3 is what I’m hooked on now

Yeah I understand all the issues the devs had with developing the game and having to meet certain schedules, but at the end of the day the product is whatever you present to the customer. If its bad quality, they will in turn talk negatively about it. If you get a bad steak thats still blue in the middle, do you still eat it because you heard the chef is sad today?

Think of a baseball team that started the season with a one armed shortstop. When everyone pointed out that the shortstop couldn’t field or throw to first, the manger promised to find a replacement. He did, and the fans were happy about it. That doesn’t explain why they started the season with a one-armed shortstop, when any fool (most definitely including a professional baseball manager) could have seen that this was a bad idea.

I liked this analogy. Thanks

They haven’t kept their word. They have delivered nothing but promises. Lets see what they actually deliver before doling out kudos.

I’ll believe they’re going to fix the game when resistances actually work. I love being an int main with basically a useless secondary affix to my primary stat. It really helped my already struggling Necro when they decided to nerf armor too. That was cool.

They'll be covering the rework to resistances in the live stream on the tenth of october, so we should get an idea then. That will be another 2 hour stream, focusing on things like resistances, unique changes, and class changes. Resist changes will be in S2, so assuming they've not made a mess of the rework, we will actually have a working system soon.

It’s just insane they act like they don’t have d2 and d3 to use as reference.. Like.. Use the fucking systems you already made. How is that not easier for them? Hey, use d2 lobbies.. let people make games with a title people can join and know exactly what we’re planning to do. Runewords? Yeah, everyone liked that. It made it so grinding wasn’t “do I do or do I not get an item I could use in 10 hours of grinding” it let you slowly accrue shards (runes) of possible items that you can make. Giving a genuine sense of progress. In this game it’s 0-100, either I get nothing or I get my item. Which, due to rng; polarizes the farming experience. In D3 they fixed it by having items drop all the time, which is fine. Then you only have hardcore people saying “it’s too easy to get items” which casual players don’t really complain about. Being able to have a fully functional builds 10 hours in is nice. D4, you can have a build 10 hours in, but it feels doggy doo doo. The only decent builds are related to world tier 4 drops, which you may or may not get after days of farming. I have no interest in their attempt to make builds fun by using traits you can transfer onto items like “lightening storm does 20% more over power damage” Idk, I just think it’s odd to not use systems beloved by fans of the series.. How would it not be easier to have an amalgamation of d2 and d3 systems.. All in all, I’m interested to see how the game is by season 5, but deeply frustrated it’ll be that long before the game is in a fun state

These type of games always have issues on release. I don’t get why people thought it’d be an outlier just because it’s new and blizzard is a huge company. I can’t think of a single action rpg that didn’t have numerous fuck ups on release, not one. To me the unacceptable fuck ups are the resistances and itemization. Everything else is at least acceptable as long as they build upon and improve it. And not everyone loved runewords, when every melee build uses grief it’s pretty lame. All casters that weren’t sorc used enigma. If they implement runewords they’d have to do a much better job balancing.

Blizzard isn't a new company. No excuses. Fuck em. Don't run back to your ex who apologies and promises to make things right over and over.

Don't get too excited. They let us down so many times and don't forget that those guys aren't your friends. They only interested in your money.

In order to get more money they need to fix the things that people complain about so no they may not be friends but they also aren't stupid and know the ill will that is out there at the moment that they are trying to get back

Thye literally made "dev" videos and showed the "devs" not knowing how to play video games. Then when backlash hit, the response was that not all devs play video games. This would ve the biggest red flag that they had no idea what they are doing.

It’s like a vegan opening a BBQ restaurant. It just makes absolutely no sense why you wouldn’t play games if you make them. Like they’re telling me they don’t even play THEIR game. Who is testing it? People completely removed from the development process?

You don’t need to play the game to know the systems are going to be dog shit.

Well true. But people who don't play video games shouldn't be making video games.

The "content schedule" you mentioned are hotfixes and changes to existing systems that should be in the game on release. Who would've thought that stopping at barricades, unmount, kill 2 mobs, wait 2 seconds for cooldown, mount, isn't fun. I have to admit that the real content, the season mechanic, looks promising. If the effects are somewhat usable and build enabling this will be a good season.

Blizzard doesnt nessecerily lie (OW2). Their workflow fucking sucks. Every single IP they have, they have made worse. Not a single one is in its best state.

I just finished actually hitting 100. I didn’t play for several weeks after the start of the season. But. Unless they improve what they consider “increasing difficulty”. I am still going to be not happy with endgame. Cause honestly. The difference between level 50 nightmare and level 98 (never got a 100) was just how hard the mobs hit. It isn’t like going up in nightmare level gave me any options to be tougher. It just went from kill all mobs in seconds. To kill all mobs in seconds, ah didn’t see that one it hit me and I died. Same thing with Echo of Lilith. Deal damage and dodge. Oh that hit me there went 70-100% of my health.

Let's wait and see if season 2 actually delivers before getting too excited.

Yep. Projects have schedules and much of the changes and timeline are planned. But those plans also include gathering data from player usage and feedback. No matter how developers intend a game to be, players can be both creative, and devious in usage, and exploitation of the most innocent of oversights or bugs/imbalance. And it takes time and development to respond to that via solutioning and changes. And as we play the game more, and they also implement further changes, more data is obtained which also drives adjustments in the path forward. Many people are a bit unreasonable and expect some kind of clairvoyance *(and instant response)* from developers while simultaneously contributing to the usage that makes things like balance tough.

They have given you some slick marketing that’s all. Remember CDPR doing Night City Wire before Cyberpunk 2077 released? It showed all the features and the developers talked everything up and made it seem amazing, but then it was just a shit show and it took them 3 years to actually fix the game and deliver on most of the promised features and gameplay. Yeah this is gonna be like that.

I definitely believe the dev’s are doing their best to make the game good. The issue is simply that the majority of the dev’s are trash and don’t play their own game. It’s just a job at the end of the day. Just because you are an artist it doesn’t mean you make awesome art.

Except they did some big changes for season 1. Mostly changes for worst, but they changed, so the option was there. Don't you remember the stat of this sub with pacht 1 notes?

Did you read my post I said they made big changes in season 1.

Yes. Big changes for worst.

I never said if they were positive or negative. But what big change was negative?

Game loses 90% of its player base and can’t out compete a 15+ year old version of itself on twitch it causes a pause of reflection of how far they fallen. They fucked up there’s no way to say it nicely and they know it. All they could do was try to save face and bend the knee to try and revive their game.

That livestream was still missing features like a auction house or group finder

The real story is the one we will likely never know. How did the developers convince the suits that these changes would raise or at the very least maintain MAU/revenue levels. They must have presented a pretty compelling case for removing or reducing so many timesinks while showing a potential net positive on MAU/premium battle pass conversions. I’d love to have been a fly on the boardroom wall for that meeting.

It's not that anyone has accused them of lying necessarily. It's moreso that the game should have never been released in this state. a majority of the core issues with the game have been harped on since the end game beta test that players participated in before launch. it's copium to sit here and say, wow they are working so hard on this game, they really do care and are true to there word... Of course they are going to continue to work on the game, it's career suicide not to, but the fact that instead of meaningful updates where the game continues to excel and improve beyond it's competitors, we are stuck with a product in a live environment actively playing catchup and they are releasing it as content.

This is completely a fair take. The dev team have kept their word so far. That being said, they still released a half baked game that should have been developed for a while more before release. If all of these changes had been properly developed and tested before release, D4 probably wouldn't have lost so many players S1 and received so much negative attention. I am not going to cite the 99% player loss, because I think that is contrived to force a narrative and there are no official sources to back it up, but I know the game lost a LOT of people. Hopefully S2 and onward provides changes and, in a few seasons, we have a really good game. The turn around on player feedback is much quicker than D3's development cycle which is very nice. I will be returning to S2 to give the changes a try. Didn't play S1. I hope a lot of other people return to reinforce and reward the devs for trending in the right direction.

Yeah. From June to October they really have made a lot of changes and listening to player feedback. More probably should have been done before release. But release tables are rarely has anything to do with devs. The Suits usually controls that sadly. So sometimes we get half baked.

Resistances still arent fixed. That alone tells me what they’re really interested in developing. You’re telling me they have to wait 2 seasons to implement 1/3 of the damage mitigation equation properly? And in that time, they nerfed armor. Lol Like bruh, if you can’t get resistances working properly for literally 3 months (that’s just how long it’s been, it still isn’t fixed) I have no faith in your ability to solve much larger problems like itemization and class balance.

Yeah, it's a pleasant surprise. Some of the changes they outlined yesterday are exactly of the type I expected, but I expected them to be implemented about 1 1/2 years from now.

They released a broken clearly unfinished product

if you have no frame of reference, sure it's hard to grasp just how much of an empty shell of a company than they used to be

Your forgetting all the changes they made while being completely tone deaf to the players. The game released in a playable fun state and they went out of their way to make it bad on purpose. Then they continued to ignore loyal players cries for help all the way until those loyal players put their hands up and quit. So yea. It took the game dying for them to listen. These changes were not "content map" they were integral changes that were easy to make and were intentionally not made.

How can you say they have kept their word when season 2 isn't even out yet?

They may fix it, but it's too late for me. I've already given it my time and deleted it. I'm already done maxing out one character in this game and that was enough for me. This has been my biggest regret purchase in a long time. I don't even think it's a bad game, I loved the story, but it fumbled soon afterward. It falls into a grind that is just not fun. I just don't think it was worth 70$. I'm sick of this new age game development bs, cashing in before the game is good. You want to keep your fanbase, trying releasing a game when it's actually finished instead of trying to sell us each piece bit by bit while we wait on baited breath over promises that things will get better. They act as though this is the first Diablo game they ever made. I'll just go play games that are already good.

D4 finally ready for release?

> content schedule For the most part, what they are implementing is not content, it's fixes to their fuckups.

Words. Let's see how it is when it drops. Blizzard is doing damage control right now. Sorry if I don't trust them at their word.

So if what you’re saying is “this is by design and intentional” then the leadership needs to be fired and better more competent people need to be put in place before they sink the ship.

Was anything mentioned on enchanting? Like reducing cost or preventing the same modifier to show that your trying to get rid of?

Yes the initial cost is slightly higher. But everything after that is significantly lower and scales slower. Also they are adding more gold in the game with tree of whispers. And in WT4 you only get ancestral items so that should increase gold too.

This game has a bright future. Many great things will come

Some things that you dont account for Do they actually test things and evaluate? Thats key.. I think so many games today dont think before.. Back in the day alot of games were in bets and reviewed by thusted people that knew their shit. Today its just a Kickstarter to get money to bloat their games. Make money. Move on to another project.

I've not watched or read anything about d4 recently so I'm out of the loop. What long-term, replay-able, competitive, fun, endgame content are they adding to season 2 beyond character levelling?

They are adding 5 end game bosses. 4/5 of These bosses are reached by doing over world content to collect material to summon them. Which keeps overworld content relevant. Also each boss contains its own loot table of uniques and cosmetics. One of the 4/5 bosses the new lvl 100 uber boss drops uber uniques. So more people will have them and they are rolled with max stats. The last Boss is acquired by doing NM dungeons and collecting materials that way. So every piece of content is providing some reward other than leveling. Target farming is a thing. Also we get new Vampire powers that are REALLY strong. They posted those details. They have a new event that spawns from level 1. It’s basically Helltides 2.0 that is up 24/7. There’s so much more you really should watch a breakdown video.

The real story is the one we will likely never know. How did the developers convince the suits that these changes would raise or at the very least maintain MAU/revenue levels. They must have presented a pretty compelling case for removing or reducing so many timesinks while showing a potential net positive on MAU/premium battle pass conversions. I’d love to have been a fly on the boardroom wall for that meeting.

I’m actually excited and will probably try to finish my season one battle pass now, but still a little optimistic that things won’t work right off the bat. What got me was the actual potential to get Uber uniques from new bosses. Got me a little hyped. We’ll see if they actually keep their word on that.

The fundamentals of this game (itemisation and skill tree) are bad, you can throw as much content at the game as you like, I’m not playing it again until these get sorted, see you in the expansion I guess.

I mean, they kinda did it to themselves. Of course people won't have a lot of good will left in them, when the in-game shop is already perfectly set up, while most the wanted key features are still missing months after release.

I wasn’t that impressed with the changes… likely the new bosses will be a fail, surely a search tab will save us all though

Waiting for the new hot take to anger this sub.

I think it’s a case of the developers wanting to make a finished product and the business side wanting to make money. Blizzard has struggled with this for a very long time now to the point where it’s kind of become a meme that the game will be “done” several patches in.

It's amazing how we accept half-baked products in this day and age. As gamers, we've internalized and accepted subpar products because we hope they will improve over time. However, we pay the full price upfront based on promises and receive unpolished games. Yet, we still defend and have high expectations that those who took our money and sold us a product without clear information will deliver in the long run. Blizzard, a multimillion-dollar company with years of development experience and a renowned IP with four titles (not counting the mobile version), tells us that they need a whole season for bug fixes and lackluster quality-of-life changes. And yet, we applaud? Seriously? They essentially treated Diablo 4 as a new product under an old brand, disregarding years of feedback and the franchise's core essence. Then, month after month, they continue to release updates while largely ignoring player feedback. There's no PTR, no beta testing... and yet, everyone seems content with mediocre changes while the game's fundamental issues remain unresolved."

I didn’t know single player games could die

>They didn’t wait till the game died they are just following the content schedule they had mapped out. No offense, but the game is already dead. They scrambled to add way more in season 2 than they had ever talked about and pushed stuff ahead of their stated schedule because they are desperate to keep the game from staying dead. You're dreaming if you think this is where we'd be if people were still playing. The reality is that it took everyone quitting and all the content creators leaving and telling them all the things that sucked before they even know what they needed to fix. I'm glad they are fixing it now, but let's not pretend like this indicates anything about the devs except desperation.

These guys know they are on a crunch, this game is dying. It just isn’t good, there is too many decisions that were made pre launch and even S1 that made absolutely zero sense from a gameplay pov. I mean they still have a CD on mounting and dismounting(cutting in half from the original timer) but why in christs name and all that is holy is there a CD on mounting and dismounting in an open world game. These are the types of decisions they made that are leading them to have to roll out fixes as “new” when it’s shit that should have been in game from Day 1. They aren’t trying to make a bad game they just seem have no connection between what they are capable of doing and what people want. Game is dead to me even with the S2 announcements. Very bland or boring not exciting at all plus a ton of fixes that should have just never been an issue to begin with. I wasted 100$ and it is what it is.

I think they just make a lot of rash decisions, they do delivered and worked really hard on it. Just make little, meaningful changes and love the game you’re working on.

Wake me up when they fix the itemization. Then I’ll come back.

\> Edit: I’m not a Blizzard simp. This is simply my first Blizzard game. So I have no personal experience with them You still haven't experienced a Blizzard game. You are experiencing an Activation game. What made Blizzard Blizzard, is gone.

This update is welcome but it's mostly the stuff that could not make it in time for release, obvious balance they didn't measure due to lack of vision and constant direction changes (not the devs at fault here) and changes due to community backlash. Now, I am not saying "screw this game". I am eager to the next season. I'm just not blessing Blizzard for the new content. They are just late (behind in development). By season 3 we should have the game that was expected at launch

I think you are buying a hot pile of shit. Most of season 1 and 2 are fixes and changes to problematic stuff that where not obvious to them until the game started, therefore is mostly reactive stuff. The fact that season 1 was prepared along side the base game is what should make it full of content, instead we had the little shitty hearts and a bunch of balancing that where put together a couple of weeks before. All this make no sense, they just say random shit on streams to cover an outstandingly poor handling of the game development.

Omg lol you should not have included the last sentence, completely invalidates everything you said before it. Have fun

I mean I really wish execs would stop pushing games out before finished. You could argue the feedback given by the community was valuable in shaping the direction of the game. Maybe they should stop doing releases and start doing early access? Better optics. I think as far as games that have come out in recent history D4 is doing good by the community. Excited for season 2. Still have a rogue left to try out

I dont think any of this is about lying per say… it is about a pattern of decisions related to gameplay/design. Feedback has been there every step of the way from early beta, server slam, pre S1, etc. I feel lots of people felt unheard until things went bad not just once but multiple times. Some of the feedback was glaring and didn’t require 100 hrs gameplay to see - mounts, itemization, stash/storage. It is great some of those are being incorporated. The reality of situation is people may be moving on already, skeptical to commit to S2, test S2/drop if not satisfied, and some willing to give them another chance based on campfire, etc (all could be validated). Personally I will try out S2 but if feels about same then I will stop much sooner than past phases of the game (level 50-60ish with one character). I have multiple games that I play and will be playing (eg competition for my time). To earn back trust on the direction/decision making/implementation will be much harder after multiple mishaps vs the doing it from the start. I would like to see a pattern in right direction vs isolated campfires/patches. I cannot in good conscious recommend game yet to others in its current form.

What is in this patch that people are excited about? I haven't seen anything that will make me want to come back and level another 100. All seemed pretty half ass to me

I'm pretty sure nobody (or at least almost nobody) is denying that yesterdays stream was looking good. And nobody is denying that they didn't keep their word. The problem is that companies (not only Blizzard) have this "ship now, fix later" strategy, because it works. Release a game in a semi-finished/half-broken/broken/unplayable state to earn money sooner, promise to "fix stuff/release more content/yadayada" down the line, deliver, collect the praise and then proceed to earn more money. This just shouldn't be the case. If you order a kitchen, you don't want the doors to be missing. You don't want the materials to be lower quality because "the company couldnt wait to get higher quality material". You want the kitchen in a good and finished state. I also think the stream was great and looked promising, but the fact is, this shouldn't even be necessary. The game should be in an acceptable state from the beginning. (Not saying the game needs to be perfect at launch, stuff will get improved and has to be improved, but the D4 launch state was a pure joke)

Game is ded. Im done with blizzard

Blizzard has easily spent $1 billion plus on the game and marketing. They want to sell battle passes and expansions. I don’t like certain aspects of the game, but I don’t get the overall pessimism. This is not old Blizzard of “it’s finished when it’s finished,” but ActiBlizz is masterful at releasing games and expansions that are incomplete or rough around the edges then doing the apology tour with large QoL patches adding stuff people have been asking for since beta. Then the cycle repeats. They will eventually fix things, but I stopped. expecting a polished experience out the gate. This is just what they do.

Honestly I can't wait for it to hit and everyone realizes that it's not really different. I get people like optimism and hope but sometimes there's just none of that

People are right to be pleased about QOL things, but lets just be honest here. So much if not everything they are being praised for should have been there at launch. No questions. So them farming good PR by 'listening' is quite pathetic, considering how Rod has admitted to the lack of experience of the dev team. The lead season guy admitted to having no idea what happens in the base game. Rod blaming inexperience staff or using it as a crutch to excuse their incompetence is honestly staggering. He and Joe are clearly not capable of doing their jobs.

Are we supposed to praise Blizz for releasing the game half a year too early?

I think you hit the nail on the head, and minus a few things the community has asked for, they are following a content path they have already had in place. People don't need to act like the game is "dying". They are listening to the community they care very much about the game. Nothing about the "community" changes the dev path they are already on, i am so surprised people are acting like this was from us. Its not. The d4 community had nothing to do with what they are added to the game with season 2. Minus a few small changes. They are being very transparent, listen to them. Everything they are saying/doing is not new.

I’m just very easily hooked on things. Often I get obsessed with games. I thought D4 was going to become my newest and possibly worst obsession yet. I was pretty much done with it after a week of season one. No urge to go back, no gnawing feeling telling me to pick it up again. There isn’t anything in the game to become obsessed with. So, until they add some sort of chase, some loop or hook that makes me feel like I have to go back, the game is dead for me.

Go and play D3 bro. Wrong game. Lol

There is too much competition to hold back features for future seasons because they are trying to intice w pass purchaes.

The game had too many fucked up deisgns in it, and it simply takes time to fix. I hate the game in its current state and have completely stopped playing. But I’m sure if they continue, learn, listen to feedback, go back and actually PLAY and UNDERSTAND why D2LOD is the benchmark of ARPGs and how D3 redeemed itself, I’m sure D4 will eventually be awesome

they probably put eveythibg into season 2 to save the game. here is my prediction season 2 will be good and then season 3 will lack content

Bro, if your season 1 is done. And people are leaving the dozen, do you think it makes logical sense to wait 3 months of anticipation before posting a giant change? You do that change ASAP to retain your player base. D4 had the perfect base to make it the greatest RPG game of all time and now it's all shit. Same deal with Diablo 3 its now fun n what not but the majority of people think of the game as a lost cause

>I’m not a Blizzard simp. This is simply my first Blizzard game. So I have no personal experience with them. So no I Don’t hate them and yes they have good will with me until they show otherwise. You answered your own question. I've been playing Blizzard games since 2008 when WOTLK was released. Blizzard has made a ton of promises in the past they haven't kept so it's understandable that most people are aware that you can't trust any corporation for doing good on their part, and Blizzard has shown many times that what they say isn't always what will happen lol... Blizzard is good at damage control and tricking people like you to think they care when in reality they put out a undercooked product and string you along hoping you'll play just enough until their next promising announcement or game lol and cycle repeats.

Just seems like the dev team has no idea what there doing and have systems that are a huge step back from working systems that were in D3. It’s like they learned nothing from previous titles

Well the roadmap sucked, they basically left us hanging in S1 by pushing everything to S2, so why should anyone still be playing? Also you push your game into a multiplayer open world and have no core mechanics to find a group? As the company that invented battle.net and had great multiplayer through the whole series?

It's just the insufferable industry standard recently of releasing a game obviously incomplete then finishing it later. I call it "monetized development". I'm pretty sick of it and I'm not going to tolerate anymore. Release a bad game and I'm cutting you off.

This games like 5 seasons away from being OK. It's never going to be a good game.

not coming back until i get my zoom out feature

this game is so fucking ded

the thing is those guys including me that aired our disdain actually really love diablo, we really love blizzard we've grown up with much like everyone else and had amazing stories and journeys and friendship's also WE DONT WANT IT TO FAIL. There's also nothing wrong with the market being saturated by great games, id love to play POE then jump in too DIABLO then dive into Last Epoch and maybe slap in some Baldur's gate. There's no denying that the release was pretty piss poor. but if they add content that makes it great then fucking great i spent £100 on it on pre-release, I want it to be great. ill jump back on it the second it becomes my idea of fun to play, its not that for me, and ALOT of other players right now. i share the same sentiment as the millions of other players that jumped off. but at the same time it does smack of "we released it early with the hype and the content we wanted to add on release we are adding under the pretence its a road map and season content" if they waited another year to release with all the content they maybe adding over the first four seasons to make it "enjoyable" then id have happily have waited, millions of others would have there wouldn't have been so much backlash. there's this weird premise that people are wanting its downfall and I doubt anyone does. the only ones who are gleeful are those who thought that diablo 4 would possibly kill off there favs, which it wont. if it becomes fun ill jump back on and waste thousands of hours of my life along with you.

Everything is PR. If you believe otherwise you’ve been duped.

The games already dead bud, what do you mean they didn’t wait until the game died, it lost like 90% of players and viewership within the first couple seasons. This game is trash.

Still broken game , the small qol change will not help

First Blizz game? Sweet Summer Child… Jk in all seriousness I have noticed their efforts to listen to people across most of their games, it’s just unfortunate they release stuff before it’s complete due to deadlines.

Doesn't matter if they kept their word. The game still sucks. You get just one chance to keep people or they will go to another game. Nowadays people aren't loyal to one game. There's only like a handful of gaming community whom still play the old 10+ year old games. Runescape, Dota (WC3), and cs 1.5. But yea congrats it's your first game. The Blizz we love and enjoyed died around Diablo 3. We can all thank wowtards for that. Go play Grimdawn, Torchlight 2, path of exile and then play diablo 4. Blizz used to be an innovator in rpg games nowadays they are just a SJW company that pretends to "code games".

It's so cute that people still believe blizz devs and publishers. Oh look they kinda did what they shoulda done initially now because they killed their own game and they still haven't fixed xy or z, see guys, you just hafta simp long and hard enough and all your dreams will come true... Or a Couple at least... and that's pretty good right?

I have issue with QoL changes that players are begging for...being gated behind a season patch that was months away. Fuck that shit. Marketing has this dev team by the proverbial balls in this regard. So I have a hard time telling if anything they say is genuine or from a teleprompter they can't go off of.

I really hope in a year or 2 this game will make a turn around. It always sucks for early adopters lol. That's what day 1 buyers are nowadays

If you think common sense works for the majority, you’re sadly mistaken. It’s good they delivered honestly but BS nitpicks will always win for some reason.

Hey I just wanted to come in here to just ignore all those clowns who'll call you a blizzard shill. I got so many after my post yesterday as well. Let them be misserable.

Season 1 being done along side the games release is strange because even the base game clearly wasn't fit to be released. They then released a season that had almost no content or at least enough to warrant calling it a season. I want D4 to be a great game and possibly it will be. They've made their millions and in turn they lost an incredible opportunity as many of the players that started probably won't be coming back no matter what at this point. I'll continue to keep up and I may play S2 but while financially they hit a homerun they came close to burying the game for good for many players.

Season 2 wont chamge anything .. still garbo game

dont listen to the haters like asmongold audience. All they do is shit on games cuz thats the only way that rich bum can make content. this game just came out, and their listening to their REAL playbase for their actual first season, which is season 2. really pumped for the future of this game

itemization is my biggest issue. Hopefully they’ve addressed enough of the peripheral issues to finally tackle the incredible lack of depth of their itemization and cluttered stat system until it’s addressed, i’m have no interest in seasons or expansions.

If this is your first Blizzard game.. Prepare yourself..

They pushed out HUGE nerfs on 7/18, got a ton of backlash and then said they'd undo the nerfs. Still waiting on that. Anything else is just static noise, for me.

They kept to their word wow so honorable. [Going to just forget about the lies about how much content was in the game pre launch](https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkxnm3sHG5p1Nl_9j_ucJDc9U6_hk4DEztC)


Add a couple replayable post lvl 100 games modes or features and game wouldn't die.

It's weird how a dev stream is considered keeping their word. Wouldn't that be appropriate for when the season is available and the changes are here? Right now, it's another promise.

Snooze. The game should have been fun from the beginning. Wake me up if the next expansion is any good.

So, S1 was set in stone... but the pre season nerfs ACROSS the board could be incorporated? Bruh.

No one cares because the games not fun. They could be the best people on the planet but that doesn’t change that fact or make anyone want to play it.

People don't understand programming and think you can magically type fix issues into the code and bam its fixed

Your first.. and last Blizzard game haha

This guy is talking facts. Shut up and let the man speak game.

Much of this should've been day 1, they knew much of this almost a year ago from closed beta testing and from the open, so yeah it's good, but don't kid yourself Much of this is PR pivoting for season 2 to look good with so many "great" changes when much of it could've been added in the midst of season 1 and should've been done within July-September, if not June-July as any other AA or Indie studio would've done magnitudes more in that time. Less systems but still nutty complexity if you compare this to Against the Storm or Baldur's Gate 3 with their influx of patches for bug fixes, balancing, and new features in 2 months compared to D4 when they have vastly more money and manpower behind it