D4 had over 1 million closed beta access players, with multi-millions expected this weekend. Wow.
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Those Butcher murder stats are great. Probably an actual good side effect of scaling: he is always a fucking terror.
The name says it all.
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" Especially since you can't die to 1 butcher twice. It's imo brilliant design. | |
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Yeah. The fact that my first encounter with him was while chasing my first treasure goblin in a dungeon...one of those unforgettable moments that only the unholy marriage of bad RNG and good design can create.
The name says it all.
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Ha! I met the Butcher in the very first dungeon I was in. Couldn't do much and he got me good. I laughed when I heard him, knew it wasn't going to go well.
Made our rematch all the more sweet. Agreed this encounter/ mechanic is quite satisfying at every level, even if you lose. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
- Abraham Lincoln |
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Funny when you see Exiles bang on about how out of touch Blizzard are...when a little basic math from the Butcher stats show at least 2 million people are playing DIV regularly. At least.
But yknow. Clutch them pearls, Exiles. You're right and they're wrong. Too many people here have allowed PoE to become their identity. They react to the success of anything that might threaten PoE personally. It's kind of sad to watch. Why not revel in the fact that the ARPG genre is now that much more enriched by healthy competition? Or the idea that DIV and PoE, in their vastly different approaches to the ARPG style, prove that ARPGs are not constrained by narrow definitions? DIV shows that it is, in fact, quite a flexible and potent genre. Even now. I pity people who can't see what a great time it is to be a gamer right now, and just want to engage in petty tribal pugilism. The name says it all.
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" The Butcher becomes a pushover at level 60+. In WT3 and WT4 I could face tank and spank him no problem, but leveling in WT1-WT2 trying to fight him at all was an effort in complete futility. The Butcher is a n00b crusher, but the tables turn later on and he's basically a free loot pinata; a glorified treasure goblin. Last edited by MrSmiley21 on Jun 16, 2023, 8:01:53 PM
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" D4 got good launch numbers due to name recognition alone. The game attracts a more casual gamer base than PoE does, yet Blizzard insisted on making it more grindy than PoE is. Yes, it's more grindy than PoE. I can state as a matter of fact that in the amount of time it took me to get to 76 on a rogue, I'd be mid 90s with a character in PoE, and probably 70ish on another. The casual audience isn't gonna spend that sort of time, they're going to move on, and probably not come back after the initial launch. The hardcore ARPG players aren't gonna be satisfied with the game either long term, for a number of reasons, primary of which is the total lack of build diversity. There are no creative or out of the box builds you can run in D4 that simply work well for the game's content. It's got even less build complexity than Grim Dawn, or Last Epoch, let alone PoE. So, Blizzard is going to be left with a few options after the game dies out, they're going to have to appeal to the casuals like they did with D3 (this will be the most likely possibility), or they're going to have to double down on keeping the few hardcore players they have by making the game more complex. Even PoE moved away from being super hardcore to being more friendly for casual players to play. 80hrs in a league will get you a mid 90s leveled character who's capable of doing pretty much everything except for maybe the absolute toughest content. It takes at least 60hrs just to fill out the renown board in D4 to get the bonus paragon points, and they're going to make people do that every league if they want the extra points. Last edited by MrSmiley21 on Jun 16, 2023, 8:18:16 PM
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" Well that's one opinion to be sure. I think casuals will return for seasons, and we will find that out in July. Once they start introducing other classes like Paladin or Monk, or maybe even a new class, people will return for those expansions, and pay. D4 won't "Die out post launch", that's just not going to happen with the amount of money on the table. It would make zero sense. "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."
- Abraham Lincoln |
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" The TL;DR point I was making was that the game is going to have to change dramatically, similar to how D3 did. For better or worse, depending on the person's perspective. I supposed there's a few people out of the millions who played D3 that prefer launch D3 over loot 2.0 and RoS, and I have a feeling that in due time there's going to be an equal number of people who will say the same about launch D4. The game is too grindy, IMO. If it's even grindier than PoE, then there's a problem right there in keeping casual players around. Boosts to exp gains and loot drops, or additional methods for crafting gear (craft a base type of your choosing), and being able to reroll more than 1 mod on an item is likely going to happen. The biggest change of all that they need to make is they need to offer an alternative game mode for D4 that better suits the players who don't care about the open world BS. Which I believe is probably a decent chunk of the user base. One big central hub town, and you got portals for instant access to the places you want to go, or things you want to do. And if you want to skip the MSQ, and immediately go into the central hub town, you can. Last edited by MrSmiley21 on Jun 16, 2023, 8:42:54 PM
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I heard that the Shako drop in D4 is considerably rarer than a mirror in PoE, or a Zod rune drop in D2. Only 1 confirmed Shako drop out of millions of players. Only a few people have confirmed Grandfather sword drops, BiS weapon for barb.
I saw a windforce bow drop for my rogue, it's pretty trash tier, worse than the slopped together imprinted shit I was using. So, the shitty uniques will drop, frequently. Last edited by MrSmiley21 on Jun 16, 2023, 9:22:59 PM
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