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Do the announced changes at Halo Studios (prev. 343 Industries) have you optimistic for the future of the franchise?

Yes 16 50.00%
 
No 12 37.50%
 
Still need convincing (sp... 4 12.50%
 
Total:32
gtotheunit91 said:

Here’s the Twitter thread! You can see the first reply questioning the “launching exclusively” statement and Aaron responding to it. Can’t embed since I’m on mobile.

https://twitter.com/aarongreenberg/status/1432457510464622595?s=46&t=hJidbSPIp85ThbwsDK_eJA

The video made me think it could be a possibility, but this tweet pretty much clears it up. 



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smroadkill15 said:

Any thoughts? 

Yes, I have a thought. Let's all stop giving attention to people trying to make this topic happen. Starfield isn't coming to PlayStation. Everyone fucking move on.



Yeah, Starfield is definitely a lifetime Xbox/PC exclusive. I have seen no indication whatsoever from Microsoft or Bethesda that it is a timed exclusive. Xbox is usually pretty upfront about what is and isn't timed exclusive.



Hopefully 343 doesn't patch it, but it probably will be



Finished off all I'm planning to play of Diablo 4 this weekend. My impressions:

World Size

This game is big, if you were worried that this game wouldn't be meaty enough for the $70 price tag, worry not. The game has 5 regions, each about the same size, and only 1 of the 5 regions is available in the beta. There is no in-game playtime tracker nor can I check my playtime on TrueAchievements or Exophase since there are no achievements in the beta nor an Xbox stats tracker page for Exophase to pull data from, but I would guess that I played about 15 hours over the weekend. In that time I completed all of the main story missions that are available in the first region in the beta (which I'm pretty sure is not all of the main story quests that will be in that region), 24/35 side quests, 7/23 side dungeons, 5/28 altars of Lilith, and discovered 72/77 areas of the map. Based on that, I would guess that the first region will take somewhere between 20-25 hours to 100% complete. Since all regions appear to be about the same size on the world map and there are 5 regions, it seems like there will be somewhere between 100-125 hours of content for completionists available in the base game. And that is of course before any time spent grinding for better gear or doing end-game content or PvP.

Gameplay

As I noted on my day one impressions, the game is noticeably more difficult and less casual friendly than Diablo 3 and Diablo Immortal. Legendary drop rates are reduced, Legendary effects are nowhere near as overpowered, XP/Gold earning rates for higher world tiers are reduced, heal over time and heal on damage gear doesn't seem to exist like in past games while heal on kill gear provides smaller bonuses than in the past games, bosses are more difficult, dungeons are more difficult, dodge is on a cooldown instead of unlimited (though the dodge can be improved with certain gear stats including one that reduces your dodge cooldown each time you deal damage).

Combat is generally alot of fun imo, the increased difficulty means that you actually need to read enemy attacks and make careful use of dodge making it less mindless than past games. Sorceress, which I picked, seems like the most powerful of the 3 classes in the first beta weekend and has some really cool builds already. Hydra in particular might be the single most useful skill in the game, it's a summon that can't take damage from enemies and puts out a steady decent supply of damage, very useful for difficult boss fights where you will spend most of your time dodging and kiting without being able to attack much yourself, Hydra seems invaluable for any Sorceress build.

Servers

While the servers weren't great on day 1 of the weekend (I got booted once and my 2 queue times that day were 50+ and 90+ minutes), more servers were brought online by day 2, my longest queue time on day 2 or 3 was 3 minutes and the others were all less than 1 minute, and I didn't get booted at all on day 2 or 3.

Story

So far I'm quite impressed by the ramp up in storytelling quality compared to Diablo 3. In fact from what of the story we are allowed to play in the beta, I'd say it has the potential to be among the best RPG storylines. Some of the side quest stories are quite good too, I especially enjoyed the Sister Octavia questline.

Bugs

I'm actually quite impressed by how unbuggy the game is right now for a beta test. I only experienced 2 bugs the whole weekend, one where I got into the character selection screen after a queue and then was unable to select a character, the other where when I got booted from the server on day one, it looked like my character had been deleted on the character select screen (though rebooting the client fixed that).

Shortcomings

  • Variety could be better. Lots of dungeons reuse the same few themes and tiles pieces, just with different layouts, and alot of cellars don't even change the layout or theme at all. Not as much enemy variety as I would like to see either, most dungeons are hordes of the same 4 or so enemy types.
  • Character creation, while a definite step up over previous Diablo games, is still quite limited. Only 4 faces per gender per class, no body customization except for tattoos on sorceress, not alot of hair style options. They probably plan to put more options into the cosmetic battlepasses, which is a real shame when the base game creator is as limited as it is.
  • Gear scaling is poor. I was often getting drops that were much lower level than the enemy that dropped them. At one point I got a level 4 piece of gear in a zone rated as level 24 on my map.
  • The minimap is too zoomed in and needs an option to zoom out more. UI in general needs more customization options
  • I dislike the scaling costs for respeccing your character. In a game with randomized loot that encourages frequently respeccing to make use of your loot drops, especially your legendary drops, it is stupid to have scaling respec costs. Blizzard has said that eventually scaling respec fees will reach a point where it becomes so expensive to respec that you are better off starting a new character for that class instead of respeccing. That is absolutely bogus, and feels like something where they plan to sneak in a microtransaction to reset your respec costs. They badly need to rebalance the scaling and set a maximum respec fee so that a respec remains relatively cheap during leveling and then eventually hits a maximum that is relatively moderate by the endgame. 

All in all, I could definitely see this game getting a 90+ average from critics on launch if they address some of these shortcoming, the season pass isn't too egregious, the end-game is good, and they have enough servers online to handle the traffic on launch so we don't end up with ridiculous queue times again.  

Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 19 March 2023

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I’m really glad to hear how well Diablo IV is being received so far.

Blizzard was my favorite developer for a long time till the mid-2010’s and it’s great to see they finally have seemingly nailed the Diablo formula ever since the closure of Blizzard North.

I’m still thinking Diablo IV will be the best-selling game of the year!



gtotheunit91 said:

I’m really glad to hear how well Diablo IV is being received so far.

Blizzard was my favorite developer for a long time till the mid-2010’s and it’s great to see they finally have seemingly nailed the Diablo formula ever since the closure of Blizzard North.

I’m still thinking Diablo IV will be the best-selling game of the year!

I'd say there is a good chance of it considering how well Diablo 3 sold (35m in 3 years), only Hogwart's Legacy has a chance of beating it on the 2023 charts since it has several months headstart over it. CoD will have a huge launch as usual but comes too late in the year, as does FIFA. Starfield may give it a run for it's money in terms of overall player count over a similar time frame (not sales since Starfield sales will be hurt by day one Gamepass), since Diablo 4 won't be boosted by China due to Blizzard pulling out of China, though it will still receive a substantial player count boost from South Korean gaming cafes (South Korea loves Blizzard).

Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 19 March 2023

It'll still be CoD, Lol.

Modern Warfare 2 beat everything last year as per usual in US NPD even Elden Ring which had massive hype behind it and came out 8 months before it and the same in Europe, after CoD it'll probably be Fifa as per usual, I wish there was a year without a CoD/Fifa so it would make things more interesting.

After that though, it's a tossup between Diablo, Hogwarts Legacy and Breath of the Wild 2.

Spider-Man 2 after those, it'll be hurt by being PS5 only unless the attach rate is crazy.

Last edited by Ryuu96 - on 19 March 2023

Ryuu96 said:

It'll still be CoD, Lol.

Modern Warfare 2 beat everything last year as per usual in US NPD even Elden Ring which had massive hype behind it and came out 8 months before it and the same in Europe, after CoD it'll probably be Fifa as per usual, I wish there was a year without a CoD/Fifa so it would make things more interesting.

After that though, it's a tossup between Diablo, Hogwarts Legacy and Breath of the Wild 2.

Spider-Man 2 after those, it'll be hurt by being PS5 only unless the attach rate is crazy.

I'm not so sure. 

1. CoD will only have 9 or 10 weeks of sales on the year as a late October release. Hogwarts Legacy already sold 12m in the first two weeks (more than Elden Ring sold last year), and will receive multiple price cuts before the end of the year (more price cuts than Elden Ring got in 2022 as WB is better about discounting games than Namco Bandai is), including likely being down to $30 by Black Friday. It also still has 3 more platform releases to go, with Switch in particular receiving a metric crap ton of Hogwarts preorders so far. Diablo as well has time for some price cuts before the end of the year and will probably be down to at least $35 by Black Friday.

2. CoD this year is said to have started as an expansion pack for CoD MW2 before Activision decided to turn it into a full game. The game will be rushed as a result which could hurt the reviews and sales, and also some people may hold off and wait for a sale since the multiplayer is basically just an expansion pack for CoD MW2, reusing maps and weapons and such from MW2 and then adding new maps and weapons and such to them. I think this will be among the lower selling CoD's, perhaps even lower than CoD Vanguard in 2021, which was the lowest selling CoD since CoD became huge in 2007 with CoD 4: MW.

Last edited by shikamaru317 - on 19 March 2023

One things for sure…..ActiBlizz going ham in 2023 lol