So today, Blizzard had their Diablo 4 Campfire Chat and boy howdy, it took only a minute before I got pissed and decided not to listen to this drek. It was so awful that I felt as though being thrown in an active volcano would’ve been more reassuring. You could jam rusted nails through my fingers and I would have preferred that than go through this soul crushing experience again. Dumping a rabid, vampiric squirrel in my underpants would be more relaxing than the stream. I mean, I can go on and on but you get the point.
First, they had the audacity to replay the propaganda video advertising the wreck of this current season as a pre-roll prior to the start of the chat. While the content ended up being okay for what it was, the presentation of that video in retrospect made me want to lob grenades at baby bunnies to vent my frustration at something. So immediately, I had an inkling that the rest of the stream was going to be a downer. And they wasted no time in unveiling the yawn fest of the return of the vampire powers in no less as Aspects. I had warned that doing something as uncreative as another item hunt type of activity would demonstrate the lack of vision, courage and sense that the current version of Blizzard is at and they have not failed to disappoint.
I said that the issue with the game is extraordinarily low effort being put on providing enticing content in the game. If vampire powers made their return in the same format as S2 with the farming, the slots and all that, the game would add a bit of life to itself because this game desperately needs more activities and methods to build characters. But these dickless, small minded, weak so-called game developers decided to merely add these things to an already trash pool that is unfun and about as imaginative as watching dog poop on a sidewalk turn white. Like they had a system in place that worked and people liked. Why spend extra hours trying to balance that system and fumble it into a poorly designed system that supposedly is going to be revamped anyway in the next season? It’s one thing to use a previous system into a set of rings as a one time deal. It’s another if that’s going to be the pattern.
But that leads me to the next point of why this whole thing probably revolves around: this stupid gauntlet feature. And I stated it before that this gauntlet/leaderboard system is catering to a niche audience. But I have a feeling that the devs were unable to balance the game so that builds would have a chance in these leaderboards. Yet they already stated that the leaderboards were going to be split between classes. So it’s not going to be barbarian vs sorcerer. It’s going to be a single type of barbarian build vs itself because people are going to be racing against a clock. Outside of PVP, which is virtually meaningless as demonstrated by the lack of participation for the season achievement stuff, there’s zero reason to balance any builds against each other. This is so futile and demoralizing at where Blizzard perceives they should be spending their effort.
I could hear a collective sigh once people understood what this gauntlet was going to be. The incentives looked awful and for a casual player who cannot obtain the top gear, etc. this has no appeal to them. It’s just a single layout at a single difficulty level where people are going to run around like blind hamsters trying to find an escape. There is no fun in this. It’s just another version of bozosort.
But again, I have to refer back to the quote I read about how companies like Blizzard do not respect the time and money of their customers anymore. This entire day I felt like I was having an existential crisis because this verified all my fears about Blizzard. It might seem small but it really just made me lose all hope for this company. Part of me wanted to finish up my Necromancer that I had been working on. Of course, the minion build is going to be buffed so I might just pause for now and return later since I’m already a little over midway of leveling this character. At the same time, I keep telling myself that I’m just wasting my time and that even when I get to that point, I just won’t care because the situation won’t be satisfying. Instead, I’ll end up being tired from staying up late and feeling like shit every morning before work.
Then there’s Last Epoch, which sounds amazing on paper, but I’m still on the fence of spending money for the game. It looks better from a variety of points of view but swapping to something new has become more difficult for me in my later years. Hence, this situation has put me in this mental crisis of what should I do. Part of me just wants to finish what I started then move on because that’s my personality. But the other part of my brain is screaming that I’ve already wasted too much time on something I had condemned.
And I’m reminded of one of the main guys in charge philosophy where he talked about sugar and stringing players along. I said that it’s a horrible philosophy that borders on entrapment, emotional and psychological abuse. In describing this view of players as a way of doing things, it just sickens me that maybe I’ve become mentally ill as a result of this abuse.