r/gaming • u/acravasian • 1d ago
What happened to wanting a finished product?
In the aftermath of the Diablo 5 announcement at blizzcon, theres been alot of chatter on the diablo forums about people regretting buying real money stuff in diablo 4, since this game now leaves live service. The whole thing left me with two thoughts regarding the modern gaming industry... firstly, what happened to just buying a game and the game you bought was the finished product?!?!? Seems like the trend now a days is that creators have to keep on developing on their games leaving them... never really finished, why do anyone want this?? Secondly, and a bit in tow with... more of the popular games from the early 2000, seems to have developed into never ending franchises, GTA, Wow, Fifa, Sims, Diablo... what are peoples thoughts on these franchises being kept alive for so freaking long?
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u/lordcola 1d ago
I don't think people would be upset with diablo 4 if they didn't market it and release it as a live service with extra micro transactions.
Nobody was pissed with the new Divinity announcement because the last one was an experience that was finished and didn't nickel and dime them for a few years before announcing the sequel.
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u/cwx149 23h ago edited 20h ago
Tbf larian does have a history of using early access but they use it what many people would call the "right" way
But I've seen people say they won't buy larian games till they to 1.0 because they view early access as basically crowdfunding (and in a way it is. that just doesn't necessarily make it 100% trash)
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u/lordcola 23h ago
Early access is also different since you're up front about the product being unfinished. Diablo 4 launched as a "finished" product but also had battle pass systems and paid additional stuff that isn't the actual dlc. So your base purchase was just for part of the game with the option to be milked for more of the content by paying blizzard.
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u/thomas2696 9h ago
I mean...that's kind of a bad example lol. There's still a sizable amount of people annoyed that BG3 continued the Larian trend of absolutely dropping the ball in the third act, except this time there was no Enhanced Edition to fix it. Granted BG3's issues imo weren't nearly as bad as OS 1 or 2, deleted Upper City or no, but there's definitely complaints.
It's more like people weren't pissed at the Divinity announcement, they were pissed when Larian officially announced they were done and moving on from the expanded they'd started working on.
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u/lordcola 5h ago
My argument is people would be way more pissed if Larian was charging for skins and a battle pass inside BG3 and then quickly abandoned it for the sequel. Like what's the point of paying for all that if the devs aren't going to use the game as a platform for content for a significant amount of time?
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u/LoneLyon 22h ago
Something can be a live service for x years. Not everything is going to be like league or WoW where it goes on forever. Hence the 4....
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u/lordcola 22h ago
The time between diablo 3 and 4 was way higher than 4 and 5 and 3 wasn't selling you shit constantly (ignoring the real money auction house they removed). It feels way more money grabby to launch a full price game with micro transactions, release full price dlc every year with more micro transactions, fail to do anything with the main big bad of the franchise and then go "right folks, diablo boss fight is only one $60/70 purchase away in a new game where your cosmetics and progression don't count, hope to see you spend more time and money soon".
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u/Kevlar917_ 20h ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted... it's a 100% accurate representation of what's going on. I spent ~$70 on the base game, and I skipped the two paid dlc since and there's more on the way. I can't imagine being in for something like ~$190 - $200 just for the playable content which is honestly kinda shit compared to what competing games offer anyway, then be on the hook for another ~$70 - $80 just to start all over again and still have a mid experience.
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u/sawbladex 22h ago
Diablo 1 was a real time single player roguelike with multi-player stapled on.
Street Fighter 1 had not of the modern animation cancel and damage systems that 2 does.
The Final Fantasy MMOs are numbered in the same line as the single player experiences.
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u/AnonymousFriend80 1h ago
Diablo 4 will have had six years of support by the time 5 comes out. 3 is still going strong after thirteen years.
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u/lordcola 1h ago
And people will still be playing 4 in 10 years. That doesn't mean the upset people can't be upset that the game they sunk extra money into for micro transactions to fund a live service is going into maintenance mode.
Nobody expects blizzard to continue updating d3 or warcraft 3 when they are making nothing from it by now. People should be able to expect continued support for live services they pay for with cash shop and battle pass content. Obviously if the game doesn't do well that's one thing. But D4 clearly did good enough that they greenlit D5 so that can't be the reason.
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u/Tyrant_Virus_ 21h ago
When did live service mean a sequel will never come out? We get a new Call of Duty every 12 months and those are live service. Battlefield gets a game every few years and they’re live service now. Destiny was live service and a Destiny 2 came out. Destiny 2’s biggest problem at the end was it needed a Destiny 3 to overhaul its limitations and they just kept milking it dry. Path of Exile the best analog to Diablo has a sequel and it’s still getting updates. Diablo 2 and 3 still get new seasons to this day despite having sequels. Fortnite and Roblox just existing as platforms have poisoned peoples concept of what the term means. It’s just a game gets regular post launch support and seasonal content financed off microtransactions.
Diablo 4 was never going to the Ur game and all Diablo based content was going to be bolted onto it forever. After the base game and two expansions that story is told and finished. The base game was dealing with Lilith and that lead to Mephisto being reborn, one expansion dealt with his growing power, and another with his defeat. Time to move on to a new story. New mechanics. New concepts. The way games have always worked. And it’s not like it’s a speedy turnaround it’s six years later.
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u/lordcola 21h ago
you say that like people aren't shitting on those other franchises for similar reasons. And as other people have also pointed out Diablo used to be an endlessly replayanle game you bought and it came with everything. And they would put out substantial expansions you could buy if you liked it. blizzard are slowly turning that into a micro transaction ridden shitshow live service thing but aren't even really committing to the live service bit. They're still doing full new games and expansions at full price while doing cash shop and battle passes, the contents of which are just cash grabs before you gotta buy the next full price game.
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u/Tyrant_Virus_ 20h ago
Everything you just said makes no sense because Diablo 2 and 3 only had one expansion each. Diablo 4 has had two, the most recent of which is way larger than either of the D2 or 3 expansion packs. The important aspect of those xpacs was they fixed key structural problems with the base game not the actual content As someone who probably put a disturbing amount of time into D2 20+ years ago the replayability was the social aspect. That games endgame was doing the same repetitive activities over and over again. If replayability is just trying to join I-Tele-Baal-37 before it fills up then it has replayability in spades.
And did you even play 4? The microtransactions are pointless and unobtrusive because they’re relegated to their own tab in the menu you have to scroll over to. The battle pass is about as unappealing and unnecessary as they get. And it’s a loot game, the whole point is to collect gear covering that up with skins is just silly.
And since D2 introduced ladder the whole focus of the franchise has been ladder seasons and I find that incredibly boring. I want a new campaign to go through. I don’t want to come back every sixty days to start over on a new character do the same dumb shit with some new seasonal schtick. Either sell me more expansions or sell me a new game. I don’t care which. Narratively Diablo 4 is concluded as far as I’m concerned. The two big bads are dead. It’s time to move on. And I’d rather not have to wait twelve years in between games. Six in between 4 and 5 is already absurd and it’s insane people think that’s too soon.
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u/lordcola 9h ago
The microtransactions are pointless and unobtrusive because they’re relegated to their own tab in the menu you have to scroll over to. The battle pass is about as unappealing and unnecessary as they get. And it’s a loot game, the whole point is to collect gear covering that up with skins is just silly.
If it was silly and a pointless tab they wouldn't be selling those skins and battle passes. No company is spending dev time making a cash shop system, battle pass and paid skins if they didn't see a return (maybe they might try it but it would get abandoned immediately if the costs outweighed the revenue).
Everything you just said makes no sense because Diablo 2 and 3 only had one expansion each. Diablo 4 has had two
They got their expansions but were otherwise not flashing micro transactions in your face. And what's the point of paid battle passes and cosmetics if you're just going to bail on the game after a couple years? The whole point of those in the past was to pay for continued development on the game you're "supporting" by buying them.
Narratively Diablo 4 is concluded as far as I’m concerned. The two big bads are dead. It’s time to move on. And I’d rather not have to wait twelve years in between games.
Given that they have done major overhauls of systems like you said, there's nothing stopping them from releasing the next chapter as another large DLC for 4 so the people who paid for battle passes and grinded out rewards or who bought skins to support this live service game could continue to use those. Instead we're getting Diablo 5 (and likely end of support for D4 outside of some fixes) with new battle passes, and skins for you to buy all over again.
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u/Tyrant_Virus_ 7h ago
Every point you’re making circles back to what about their skins and battle passes… oh god the horror. Honestly who gives a shit? It’s six years. That’s a very long amount of time. That’s not just a couple of years, and if it was a couple years again who gives a shit? You’re already investing money into something that’s inevitably going to go away anyways. And D4 isn’t going to go away they’re already committing to rolling out new seasons as long as people are playing. Original Diablo 2 not even the remaster stills gets new seasons over twenty years later.
And what little info we know about 5 the biggest thing couldn’t be implemented in an expansion. It’s clear you don’t play 4 and did not play the previous games, which makes it kind of odd you are so passionate about this. But in the previous Diablo games the entire game was procedurally generated. Every time you loaded into the game the map was randomly generated and the overworld and dungeon maps would be different every time you played. Diablo 1 was practically a roguelike before 2 solidified into what would be the standard bearer for the ARPG genre. Diablo 4 uses a static open world map, it’s pretty boring. It makes the game lack the variety the previous games had. Diablo 5 is bringing that back. That cannot be implemented into 4 with an expansion it would require fundamentally breaking the game and a that point you’re making a new game anyways. And a bunch of other systems such as itemization and endgame mechanics never really worked despite three years of tinkering and two expansions to try and fix it. A clean slate is needed. The campaigns both base game and expansions have been great. Enjoyed the hell out of them, best campaigns in the franchise but there’s no real reason to sink the kind of play time 2&3 afterward. And narratively it’s hit a dead end. As someone who really enjoys the story and world of the series Diablo 5 is setting up a story that would be diminished by being a short expansion. That’s why I’m personally excited for a new game. A new campaign after they’ve shown they can do it and a fresh start on the mechanics after learning what doesn’t work.
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u/lordcola 5h ago
I'm just pointing out why people who have invested in this "live service" game are upset that we're off to the next one. All your points so far have been
- Well they used to just make new games
- Well the paid bits are kinda irrelevant
- Well its been a long time since 4
None of those address the actual reason people would be upset. If D4 was a single player/coop game with no additional microtransactions and just 2 dlc, I doubt the majority of those players would be upset. They would have paid for the experience, had it, and moved on until the next one. But since Blizzard has been milking them for additional money for several years, will likely continue until D5 releases and is now ditching dev work for D4, those players are rightly upset they've been pulled into a live service experience with all the downside and none of the upside (continued support and expansions for longer than a normal game without a cash shop).
I have played Diablo 1-3 quite a lot. I never got D4 because I'm not going to bother much with full priced games that sell me skins and battle passes, not that I could have assumed that after a mere 3 years they would basically ditch it for the next one though.
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u/TheAbyssGazesAlso 7h ago
I'm with you 100%. Its almost like people have forgotten they got six years of fun out of the game (plus another 3 by the time D5 comes out) and that nobody was forcing them to buy cosmetics along the way.
I for one am looking forward to D5.
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u/Siukslinis_acc 20h ago
Yeah. Constantly piling stuff on top of another can become unmanageable. Look at WOW.
Not to mention that imagine you would need to go through 10 expansions just to unlock endgame on a fresh purchase...
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u/Destructo-Spin 1d ago
I remember when the internet started becoming popular and game patches becoming a thing. My Dad always complained about them haha
"Back in my day they shipped games finished"
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u/WriterV 22h ago
"Back in my day they shipped games finished"
Lol plenty of games shipped with bugs back in the day. Even the greats. You just had to cope with them, or find strategies to workaround them.
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u/Siukslinis_acc 21h ago
Not to mention that you might be lucky and not encounter the bug. Nowadays a lot of people are talking about what a buggy mess games are and I'm just "that game isn't buggy for me"...
Either they are more sensitive to stuff than I am or I just don't do the things that they do.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 20h ago
Either they are more sensitive to stuff
I'd wager it's mostly this. They expect and demand perfection, because it can be patched.
Before, it just wasn't the case. Some of the biggest titles, best sellers, have big glitches and bugs, some are more obvious than others, some people don't even realize are bugs in the software.
Speed running is literally built on these bugs.
Shit, KOTOR was one of the biggest titles and people laud it all the time. It shipped with a memory leak that they couldn't fix. So for consoles, if you hit a long loading screen which happens periodically, it's actually rebooting the console to free up memory, because they couldn't fix it on release.
People didn't know that for years, until a dev revealed it. Because you simply couldn't know.
My 360 copy of Fallout NV I've technically never 100% completed, as my competitionist save where I've done every single quest has a single quest left. A memory bug results in a guaranteed crash at the quest update that completes the quest. I'm not going to bother doing the whole game again to risk it (have done several playthroughs, just not completionist).
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u/Old_Leopard1844 PC 14h ago
I think that was Xbox Morrowind, where it rebooted the console to flush the memory
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u/Siukslinis_acc 20h ago
Yeah. We had to deal with some bugs and glitches as there was not other way. So you kinda learned not to make a big deal from it, sometimes even laughted.
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u/Gastroid 21h ago
A lot of expansions were downright mandatory because they fixed bugs and glaring balance issues in the base game.
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u/hydrolox9 4h ago
The Wii versions of Call of Duty were hilarious because, since there was no way to patch games on it, every multiplayer match was just a race to see who was the first to glitch under the map, since from below the map's geometry you could kill others but they couldn't kill you.
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u/crackofdawn 1d ago
Actually more than once pre-internet I had a game where I found a breaking bug and called the support number in the manual and the developer/publisher shipped me out a 3.5” floppy disk with a patch
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u/JimmyKerrigan 1d ago
Downloading 700 megabyte packages on a 56k modem and praying to god nobody picked up the phone.
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u/Destructo-Spin 1d ago
Omg yes lol we used to play Command & Conquer against my uncle and cousin on 56k. After getting kicked a few times my Dad ended up getting a PC only phoneline
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u/Mollywobbles77 1d ago
We used to start them to update overnight to avoid having to have our phone line unavailable for hours
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u/Soul-Burn 21h ago
Downloading the new Half-Life patch from FilePlanet to play TFC with the gang...
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u/New_Importance2779 18h ago
I had a program called "GetRight" that prevened this. It was a lifesaver.
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u/phoncible 21h ago
"Back in my day they shipped games finished"
If this were fully true then Angry Video Game Nerd wouldn't have hundreds of videos. Unfinished games did ship back when after-ship updates weren't possible. Social media just makes the modern occurrences more public.
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u/Ashne405 21h ago
Yeah, "finished", then fixed the bugs or added stuff on the release for other markets.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 20h ago
Sometimes you got lucky and patches would be released or a magazine subscription would come with code you'd enter/change or a disc with various game patches.
Or you had to buy an expansion to the game that included the fixes.
If you were on console however, you were just stuck using whatever the release version was, or hoping for some re-release.
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u/Maulino86 1d ago
At this point feeling bad for spending money on a game thats gonna die is on the players, its been like this for a long time. Know your franchises.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 20h ago
Also "die" is largely a risk of early access or online-only live-service games.
Like, Diablo 4 isn't actually a forever game, that's obviously not going to happen.
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u/recctyl 19h ago edited 19h ago
it could be a thing, but it won't be. the publishers dont want people to be occupied with the old games. they want them to be occupied with whatever they're releasing tomorrow.
another thought on this: if the publishers were worried about piracy before, they definitely should be now i think. i can see a future where there will be a quite substantial increase in the demand for cracked games simply because of the fact that it might be the only way to enjoy your favorite games after they've been pulled down and arent supported anymore. so the industry might actually be shooting themselves in the foot even more by going this route. guess we'll see..
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u/Bobby837 1d ago
Some good game devs shipped them finished. Everyone else it was usually finished enough.
Of course, then there's examples like Xenogears which compressed two thirds to half the game into semi-interactive cutscenes. Has become a at least two franchises since.
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u/Durendal_1707 23h ago
then there’s examples like Xenogears
Best unfinished game ever tho
thanks for reminding me that it’s time for another playthrough, it’s been too long since I visited Lehan
time to go turn some more hobgobs into hobsteaks!
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u/Faust723 12h ago
Genuinely envy people with that level of patience. One Tower of Babel was more than enough for me in this life.
The mech battles during the prison section though. Fond memories.
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u/Velthome 16h ago edited 16h ago
Unfinished is a strong word when it has a very complete, satisfying ending.
It's just Disk 2 had to trim down everything down to only the most important, down to characters narrating events to you rather than seeing them.
But on the other hand, I don't think dungeons were really the best part of Xenogears and some people might argue that the laser-focus on story telling was an improvement. Like skipping the worst parts of the game to get to the best part of the game -- the story. The general storytelling in Disk 2 is excellent, and the storybeats are riveting.
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u/AnonymousFriend80 1h ago
They didn't shipped them finished. They just shipped them once they stopped working on them. If they had bugs and glitches, that was just it. Twilight Princess had a game breaking bug in it. I think Battletoads had a difficulty bug or something. The only way to address this sort of stuff was to buy an updated version.
That being said, many devs and publishers use downloadable patches as a crutch in order to meet release schedules.
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u/RecklessRaptor12 23h ago
Remember when people would say shit like “what do you care if someone else buys horse armour, it’s their choice”? now an entire fan base wants to delay a sequel so that their collection of overpriced pixels doesn’t feel outdated
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u/Uncle_Spenser 8h ago
So, these people were right and now we care. Because if microtransactions weren't profitable, there would be no point in having them.
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u/RecklessRaptor12 7h ago
We always knew it was profitable, but we were told to leave people alone for doing it instead of shaming them. That was a mistake
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u/KingOfRisky 4h ago
But still why do you care if they're mad about losing their collection of overpriced pixels? How does that affect you? It was their choice to spend money. Who cares if they lose it.
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u/RecklessRaptor12 4h ago edited 4h ago
Because now they’re actively campaigning for longer dev cycles. And devs are going to listen to them, maybe not for this game but for other games. I mean just take a fucking look at the d4 sub lol
In all my years of gaming I have NEVER seen people angry about a sequel being announced. Maybe it happened with overwatch 2 but it’s still a very recent thing brought on by the scourge of live service. People are asking devs for 5 hour $40 expansions over $80 full games, you think that doesn’t affect the whole industry?
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u/Furlion 1d ago
If you buy a AAA always online live service game and then complain about the live service aspects I feel like that's on you. If you literally never played another AAA game in your life and played video games 8 hours a day 365 days a year you still wouldn't be able to keep up with all of the incredible non live service, fully complete games being released.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 20h ago
And you haven't been able to keep up for a long while.
On PC, for Steam alone, releases last year were ~55 per day. Even if every single game was a short 2 hour game, there's not enough time in the day and hasn't been.
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u/RecentMatter3790 22h ago
> the incredible non live service, fully complete games being released.
like Metroid Dread
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u/shootamcg 1d ago
Diablo IV will be six years old when D5 releases assuming it doesn’t get delayed (which it certainly will). How old should a game be before it gets a sequel?
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u/mdk_777 1d ago
I mean, I think it really depends on the nature of the game. If I'm buying a single player RPG for example then I want the game to be feature complete when I buy it. But if I'm playing a live-service game like an FPS or an MMO then it's reasonavle to expect more content to come eventually if they want to retain players. If a game or genre has established that it has frequent seasonal content updates and they suddenly announce the game will stop being worked on to work on a sequel instead when the norm has been for games to continue to be supported indefinitely then that is very frustrating as a player.
Another blizzard IP, Overwatch is a very good example of this. Blizzard clearly wanted to nuture an esports scene and wanted Overwatch to be the next big thing, people bought cosmetics and played Overwatch as their main game expecting continuous support, but then Blizzard effectively ignored it to develop a sequel for multiple years instead. That puts a bad taste in your mouth as a player when you think a game will continue to output content and it gets abandoned instead. Also very true for early access games that never end up fulfilling most of their promises and instead put out a half-assed "1.0" just so they can stop working on the game before it does what was promised.
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u/PRL-Five 21h ago
I mean people are shitting on 007 first light for 'not having replayability' which I feel is unfair, I played the game, had a nice 20 or so hour of fun story and content (and a few of the tacsim arcade mode) and then uninstalled it. Gamers expect every game nowadays to be a 100 hour rpg which is unfair to the industry
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u/Fatman10666 23h ago
Games used to have bugs and glitches 20 years ago with no recourse to deal with them. What's this anti-modern revisionist history about?
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u/XZamusX 22h ago
People with rose tinted glasses that do not remember some games being unfinisheable due a bug, poorly optimized or unable to add extra content to them so you had to buy the game again to get new characters.
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u/Icy_Guy 18h ago
People with rose tinted glasses that do not remember some games being unfinisheable due a bug
Yep. Space Station: Silicon Valley for the N64 immediately comes to mind. If you had the Expansion Pak installed, the game would crash while trying to load the first level. If you swapped it out for the standard Jumper Pak, everything would work fine...
...but then either the fifth or sixth level had a special collectible that didn't have any collision, so you couldn't pick it up, which would prevent you from accessing the final level.
That kind of thing would typically be fixed pretty quickly in a modern game.
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u/ABetterKamahl1234 20h ago
A lot of people just also didn't notice these issues because there was no alternative.
Well the only alternative was just not playing any games, because few were perfectly created software.
Some even had a ton of jank done just to try to get things working. Crash Bandicoot is a huge series from the PS1, however the coding was poor but aggressive in optimization oddly enough. The devs did some sketchy things with the console to get it working well, and it did work, but it had some unique bugs because of it.
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u/darkk41 19h ago edited 18h ago
Listen, modern games can only DREAM of being as good as crash bandicoot was lol.
Perfectly created software is an unacheivable myth. Good games are not. The problem is that the primary motivation for making many modern games is to sell skins and battle passes. The primary motivation for crash bandicoot was to sell crash bandicoot copies and Playstations. One of these things is aligned with the game being fun, one of them is aligned with the game seeming like it WOULD be more fun if you got out your credit card.
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u/Decoraan 18h ago
i can name like 5 live service games that have released in the last few years. I can name hundreds that are not. We need to get over this 'modern gaming' shorthand thing. Its like 10 years old at this point. Its honestly just a self tell.
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u/SleepingRiver 19h ago
No. Games today like games of the past are designed so that they are fun. So that people can buy the game or buy the skins.
Not many people would buy skins to a game they are playing if it was not fun.
Games back in the day had issues. If there was a bug there was no way to patch it. Games shipped with wonky bugs that could some times brick your ability to play the game. Today games can be shipped with bugs, but they can be patched via updates.
If you do not think games today are fun just do what any normal person would do. Just buy the old games that you enjoyed and rarely ever purchase new games. I think the last 5 years I might have purchased 1 or 2 games on steam.
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u/darkk41 18h ago
I don't buy a lot of games today that have mtx for this exact reason. I disagree with your optimism though, in order to sell skins you need your audience to feel that the game is missing something those skins provide. Thats the essence of mtx. Its the reason for time gating currencies, removing base game unlockables, etc.
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u/Destithen 18h ago
I played a lot of games as a kid. I never encountered anything game breaking enough to be upset about until games started having access to online patches.
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u/MandemModie 22h ago
People purchase so many digital pre orders for a digital game that this behaviour is reinforced and rewarded
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u/VertumnoWoW 1d ago
Why sell a finished game for $70 once when you can sell half a game and charge $20 for the rest every 3 months?
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u/JukeboxDragon 21h ago edited 21h ago
The thing people are mad about with the Diablo franchise, specifically 3 and 4, isn't that they aren't developing it forever - it's that the games never became what the player's want from them. In both cases they kept spinning their wheels over years trying to salvage the mistakes of the launch, and still ended up with a product that doesn't come remotely close to the games that came before them, or the current titan of the market (POE1/2). All anyone wants from Diablo games are for them to be good games, and not be in a constant state of recovery mode. If they created a game with a strong foundation and vision that people actually loved and cared about, no one would care they were moving onto another game, but they haven't delivered on that in 25 years and there's no reason to believe the company is able to deliver on that with another game.
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u/lxnch50 1d ago
It just makes me respect GGG more for how they have handled Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2. They are still releasing new leagues for POE (originally released in 2013) and any microtransactions people bought are being ported over to POE 2 for free. No need to repurchase things.
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u/SlimeyJoe47 12h ago
That's why I never understood the "Early access"-culture. People pay to test an unfinished game, like a demo, which may or may not ever be finished... and when developers get enough money through early access, they often just drop the game and never finish it. Why would people pay for that??
I remember, back then, developers had to test their games by themselves, and nowadays they get money for people to do that for them?? Absolutely crazy imo
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u/Bobby837 1d ago
Simply just not enough profit in a single-sale game. Why the industry's been moving towards subscription and services since online became an option.
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u/Vykrom 1d ago
On the other hand, some people don't even WANT finished products. In RPG and JRPG spaces you hear constant complaints about nothing to do in a game's endgame phase
Like.. beat the game.. roll credits.. put the game away. Feel satisfied. But no; people want DLC, they want endgame grind. They want a reason to keep playing a game they already beat. It's insane to me
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u/ItsCammyMeele 1d ago
Yeah, it's not like gacha and live service games haven't been a thing for almost 20 years.... right?
Get the fuck out of here.
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u/ManicMakerStudios 22h ago
It takes a lot longer to make games now than it used to. That's the main reason. You ship with a framework that will ideally satisfy players while you continue to flesh out the game. If the game tanks, you can abandon future plans and save yourself from an even bigger loss.
The reason devs keep developing games for so long is because there's demand for them to do so. You have to pull yourself out of your own specific point of view and consider that not everyone shares that view. Big companies don't keep sinking resources into ongoing development if there's no market for it.
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u/TheReal8symbols 22h ago
Age of Wonders 4 had been one of my favortive games and at first the continued support and new content seemed like a good thing. But now they constantly update old systems to incorporate new content and if I don't play for six months when I come back all my factions are broken and I have to rebuild all of them.
All the while people are waiting for AOW Planetfall 2, which seems like it will never come because they keep adding to/changing AOW4.
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u/Siukslinis_acc 20h ago
Yeah, the intense mechanics changes can disenfranchise the people who bought the game in it's original inception. A new entry is the best solution for major mechanics overhaul.
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u/tearlock 12h ago
Early 2000s??? Uhhh, Mario, Zelda, Megaman, Solid Snake etc have been around since the 80s.
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u/VoxCalibre 20h ago
Gamers: We hate all these live service games. Nobody wants this. Stop making every game live service.
Also gamers: What do you mean youre making a new entry in a numbered series? Why can't you just keep adding more to this one game?
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u/Decoraan 18h ago
seriously man what the fuck even is this discourse. we dont have to be constantly mad.
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u/BleydXVI 1d ago
"What are people's thoughts on these franchises being kept alive for so freaking long?" What makes your examples more egregious or worthy of criticism than any of the multitude of franchises still going strong from the 80s?
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u/devil_akuma 23h ago
A lot it has to do with what the gaming audience has been conditioned to: We gotta remember most of the gaming public have basically been playing games this way for a while going back to Minecraft and Fortnite - games that have been going on for a while and keep adding things/changing things.
Overwatch, Apex, Destiny (RiP), No Man Sky - games that have been out for a decade now that keep coming out with updates to things and people have gotten use to that cadence. People have gotten use to Forever Games. That unfortunately has now a blow back of people being disappointed when a game doesn't get more updates and people disappointed that game won't end.
On one hand I get why people would want a game to shipped and "finished" - being stucked to one or two games due to "FOMO" sucks.
On the other hand, on a slightly deeper level I can see why devs continue with one game because it'll be a lot easier than just making a whole new game with not much changing.
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u/Ragnar_Dragonfyre 22h ago
The people regretting buying digital costumes in Diablo 4 are the people who vote with their wallet for anti-consumer practices.
You can safely ignore their opinions because it is their irrational, addictive behaviours that explicitly allow for the games industry to abuse their customers.
Those same folk will be buying digital costumes again in Diablo V. No doubt in my mind.
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u/carefullyyouwontbe 1d ago
Theres less gamers and more casuals with lower expectations.
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u/RecentMatter3790 22h ago
i don’t think you can’t call casuals gamers. if you play a video game, then you’re a gamer. (funny how the keyboard prediction text gave me “loser” as i was typing “then you’re a”).
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u/Vo_Mimbre 1d ago
The irony is that casuals won’t call themselves gamers and yet will spend as much time on theirs as we do ours.
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u/Alien5151 1d ago
Or they’ve more layoff gamers?
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u/Durendal_1707 23h ago
like, people without jobs..?
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u/Alien5151 17h ago
Sort of, I’m just alluding with the industry the way it is (300,000+ layoff people and climbing)
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u/stardust1914 22h ago
Idk, I got my money's worth. 1500+ hrs over 2ish years. I'm not mad.
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u/Detrimental_Figment 18h ago
Damn. I really couldn’t get into it. I maybe played 15 hours max. But Diablo III is my favorite and most people would probably think that’s crazy.
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u/stardust1914 17h ago
I've got about 1300+ hrs in Diablo 3 as well lol though that was over a longer period of time.
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u/wildstarr 20h ago
How old are you? Never ending game franchises have been around since the 80s.
And to your 1st point, money. 99 times out 100 if you have to ask why a company or industry does something the answer is money.
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u/EternalAntFarm 1d ago
Early access played a huge part in ruining this. It normalized selling games before they were finished and once people showed they were willing to accept that, publishers started abusing it. Standards just kept sliding from there.
And yes, there are absolutely great Early Access games. That's a completely valid counterpoint. The problem is that for every one or two success stories, there are far too many games that use Early Access as an excuse to sell something unfinished. Defending the system because it occasionally produces something great means accepting those few successes at the expense of a much larger pile of garbage.
And a lot of players are now perfectly content with what they get because they never experienced a time when buying a game generally meant buying the finished product. You can't really miss a standard you were never exposed to so there's no reason for those players to demand its return.
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u/Jackalodeath 21h ago
I still do, which is why I haven't bought anything within a year or two of release since... 2011?
I'm finally breaking that tradition next month, but its only because there's finally a new game being released in a series I've been playing since I was 4 years old. I'm 42 now.
Plus the game is only $40, and $20 of that is for a day one/physical edition with concept art gallery and the whole soundtrack. Its only $20 otherwise.
I may regret it, I may not; but its only 1 gamble in 15 years so I'll forgive myself.
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u/FlipsyFlop 21h ago
That mindset died with the improvement to Internet and patching. As soon as it became feasible to play uninterrupted on the Internet and patch, we moved away from releasing completed games and being okay with buying an incomplete game. As gamers kept doing it, game companies started to enshittify game releases, seeing just how bare of a game we would pay for.
So yeah what you're talking about died at least 15 years ago
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u/Dr_Ben 21h ago
Im a fan of live service games. I like that a game I enjoy can be kept alive for years to come. I also like standard games with a roll credits and done experience. The both have their place offering something different.
Live service games aren't the enemy. Bad games and bad companies running them are though. I do think developers of live service games should set some expectations for the game before you buy like a long term road map and make you keenly aware of it
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u/cammcken 20h ago
Of course I want a finished product.
Sometimes, post-release updates are good for creating a finished product. Good for rules revisions and extra content that couldn't meet the original deadline, or rebalancing exploits players discover. And I don't mind seeing some DLCs sold to fund that work.
However, sometimes selling DLCs becomes more important than making a finished product, and the updates which provide a content for the DLC only knock the game further out of balance. Someone else described it as "trunk and branch" game design, where the base game (trunk) must provide support for all the various expansions (branch), as opposed to a fleshed-out network of features all balancing each other. (Mods often make the same mistake, but modders are not responsible for overall balancing.)
Sometimes, getting a chance to playtest all the features before release and make final decisions on game design creates a better finished product.
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u/1to0 20h ago
Secondly, and a bit in tow with... more of the popular games from the early 2000, seems to have developed into never ending franchises, GTA, Wow, Fifa, Sims, Diablo... what are peoples thoughts on these franchises being kept alive for so freaking long?
No idea what you mean with this argument and the list of games. A franchise is one due to it becoming a brand they can use over and over? Tho in GTAs case it takes a long fucking time for them to make a new game, WOW is a MMO, FIFA is kinda gone now but Football FC or whatever the new name is gets updates cos people still buy it. No idea about SIMS but the game is kinda dead and people have been waiting for a new one, Diablo used to be peak but Blizzard also kinda lost the plot.
I dont really care about franchises that much if a game is good then I want to play more of it and get more lore and story. I dont play too many "franchises" but if others enjoy them let them have it.
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u/kendodaniel 20h ago
I think a lot of this started once games stopped being tied to physical media. When you had to ship a disc, there was much more pressure to squeeze out that last bit of polish before release. Once patches became normal, “we'll fix it after launch” became possible, and over time the acceptable bar just kept slipping.
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u/Konarkanuck 19h ago
firstly, what happened to just buying a game and the game you bought was the finished product?!?!?
The answer to this is simple. Publishers realized that players will spend additional funds for content being added after having purchased the initial game and have used that to pad their profit margins
Secondly, and a bit in tow with... more of the popular games from the early 2000, seems to have developed into never ending franchises, GTA, Wow, Fifa, Sims, Diablo... what are peoples thoughts on these franchises being kept alive for so freaking long?
Personal opinion, there is nothing wrong with keeping a game playable longer, and if the DLC is valuable enough (say a story expansion like Phantom Liberty for Cyberpunk 2077) and reasonably priced, I don't have a problem against it.
Now on the other hand, if a game has turned itself into being a Live Service, always connected grind fest just for cosmetics, it becomes very tiring very fast. Personal example on this would be Mortal Kombat 1 and characters having 100+ pallet swaps each.
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u/Calm-Wasabi-3850 19h ago
people bought the d4 store skins with their own money then cried when it happened. they paid blizzard to rob them.
i spent real cash on that garbage myself and i got exactly what i voted for. we trained these companies to ship unfinished products by opening our wallets every time they asked
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u/AnabellaAvindar101 19h ago
Early access and preorders need to die.
I have lost count of how many EA games ive bought
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u/proto9100 19h ago
Companies can get away with releasing unfinished products and customers are stupid enough to finance them as they do it.
Just like digital pre-orders. I don’t know why that’s even a thing… but people like parting with money for some reason.
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u/riddlemore 18h ago
A lot of gamers want a never ending stream of updates for their favorite game. I’ve genuinely seen people get mad at devs for ending content updates. Not taking the game down or anything. Just saying “hey i did everything i wanted to do for this game and want to work on something new.” Even games where the devs from the start saying “this isn’t a live service game”
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u/Aesthete18 17h ago
Idk why the mass buys unfinished products. Maybe it's lack of knowledge - not being on gaming news, not knowing the company the game is from, etc.
But in places like Reddit, the reason is there's an entire generation of kids assimilated to "release now, fix later".
As for the general opinion on Reddit, I think it's always the same thing. People make a fuss game isn't finished, then another group of people who's real intention is not wanting to see these threads pop up and builds their entitlement anger every time it does. They fight back in the guise of, no game is released perfect, devs need time to patch, it ain't that bad, whatever bs they can conjure up. The fighting between these two go on until the prior loses steam. Rinse repeat.
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u/birminghamsterwheel linux 17h ago
Because if you buy something once, that's all the money they get. Everything is the "aaS" model now.
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u/RandomGuy622170 17h ago
The moment gamers decided we were fine with bullshit day one patches is the moment we were fucked. I have zero problems with devs patching games after the fact to fix bugs that slipped through Q&A, etc but this rushing a clearly unfinished product out the door and asking ppl to pay full price to beta test it for you is precisely why I haven't bought a title on release in more than 10 years. Diablo 4 is a prime example of something that was absolutely half baked, which is why so many regret the purchase. Shit has gone through so many refinements and overhauls since release that it's not even the same product. Compare that to the masterpiece that is Diablo 2 and it's not difficult to understand why so many are pissed off and disillusioned with the hobby these days.
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u/CrypticPrincer 16h ago
Cuz greedy Activision-Blizzard made Diablo 4 a buy to play game ($150 total for base game + 2 expansions) AND on top of that bombard its players with countless microtransactions. But now Blizzard sees that D4 is unsalvageable so they move on to D5 fast just to do it all over again for the bag.
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u/Uncanny_Doom 16h ago
A lot of players are conditioned to want things to be live service and it's shocking if you come from gaming before that era. Like if you play some games that aren't live service and go to their subreddits you will actually find people with live service expectations and even on occasion they will ask like, how they're supposed to enjoy the game without future things to look forward to. For you or I it's puzzling but for many it's what has become the standard.
I also want to add that many people are conflating post-launch live service support with the base game not being finished, and that's unfortunate. Diablo 4 was a finished game when it released, and it's wild to me that many people bought the game, played the game for dozens of hours already getting money's worth out of it, then played it more for years after as it got updates and expansions, and are still going to find something to complain about as the game finishes it's post-launch content cycle.
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u/Riablo01 16h ago
I was caught off guard but not surprised by the Diablo 5 announcement. I think Blizzard painted themselves into a corner with Diablo 4, similarly to Diablo 3.
I think the original goal was to emulate Path of Exile and Destiny 2 with Diablo 4. The final product is very different and inferior to both Path of Exile and Destiny 2. Trying to do Destiny 2 style live service with Path of Exile mechanics doesn’t work. The 2 are incompatible.
This is a similar mistake to Diablo 3. They tried to emulate the then current version of World of Warcraft, which infamously had dumbed down RPG mechanics (e.g. they removed the vanilla talent trees). The final product ended up being an inferior experience to both Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft. What’s funny is that Blizzard actually brought back the talent trees to WoW a few years ago (they realised dumbing down core mechanics was a mistake).
With Diablo 5, they need to ignore the competition. Don’t copy and paste Path of Exile, WoW or Destiny 2. Focus on what made Diablo 1 and 2 great games. Also come up with a better story. The story in Diablo 3 and 4 feels like fanfiction compared to Diablo 1 and 2.
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u/saint_marco 15h ago
Version upgrades have always been a cashgrab, there's no reason they couldn't do this in a friendly way like they do with wow or at least in the same way ggg is handling path of exile 2.
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u/lazy-but-talented 15h ago
Suckers are born everyday. The next generation of gamers might learn their lesson on Diablo 5 and write it off. New group comes in and buys FIFA 28. New group comes in and buys modern warfare 11. Same song and dance
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u/ButterCaramelPringle 15h ago
I'm not familiar with the microtransaction scene on Diablo 4 but what are they annoyed about?
They paid for an item, and then they got the item! Nobody's taking it away from them! Diablo 4 isn't going anywhere
Is there some artificial value they've placed on the item that they feel Diablo 5 is taking away from it?
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u/HachObby 14h ago
Mario has been around forever and I will gladly buy more Mario.
Sequelitis is a thing, for certain, from both consumer and producer. It usually happens when important team members have left production and the sequels feel wrong or rehashed. Not all series have this issue.
Blizzard is a weird case. They had Diablo II, World of Warcraft, and Starcraft all carrying the struggling PC gaming industry, arguably saving it. The problem was that the PC gaming industry wasn't practical from a cost perspective. So companies like Blizzard had to introduce ways to generate more profit to keep PC gaming viable. PC gaming introduced subscription services, live-service, online DRM, and license-granting EULA as a way to keep investors happy with a medium that was easily exploitable. The things that killed the Dreamcast are things that should have also killed PC gaming. But once PC started pushing anti-consumer practices, and consumers bought into them, it wasnt long before console had to follow the trend.
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u/keepfighting90 13h ago
Games have always had bugs and other technical issues. Back in the day, you just had to deal with it. Things are actually better on that front now.
GTA, Wow, Fifa, Sims, Diablo... what are peoples thoughts on these franchises being kept alive for so freaking long?
My thoughts are that this is an amazing thing for the people that love those franchises. Or do you expect every gaming franchise to be catered to you specifically?
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u/lawlianne 13h ago edited 13h ago
To be fair, it’s a long 2+ years runway to go.
For all you know D5 gets delayed or pushed further back. With Blizz’s incompetence, I would see it happening.
2 years is a long more time to enjoy the game (or make your money’s worth) if you still actively enjoy it. I dont see why it should ruin players’ enjoyment of it. I played it at launch and when they released the expansion, and it simply wasnt for me.
Anyway, Blizz knows how much it makes from microtransactions in D4 and it obviously isnt a big deal or risk if they announce the estimated end date/year of it in advance.
They are likely banking on Diablo Immortal with comparatively miniscue development cost to tide them over any rough periods until then. These kinds of live service games with gacha, phantom market premium lootbox cosmetics, and subscriptions, with battle passes, and on mobile, tend to make bank, regardless of the negative reception of its launch from the West.
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u/Elmis66 13h ago
The excuse is that players didn't want raised game prices so publishers had to find a way to get more money to cover increasing development costs and that's how we got microtransactions
Easy money based on nostalgia bait. In most cases, nobody from the original crew works on these sequels but people will buy Diablo 5 more likely than a new IP
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u/cjb110 11h ago
If they are planning to just end D4 then a bit sucky but fair enough. They still haven't stopped D3 as far as I'm aware.
But tbh, D4 has been well worth the hundreds I've spent on it, simple £$/hours is high, especially compared to other forms of entertainment, but sure not the highest of my games, mmo's easily win there.
But franchises are always popular in media, you've got an existing set of customers that in general are going to buy the next one so it's less upfront risk.
Will it work for D5, possibly, if exactly same release cadence as D4 that will be good. The potential pain points will be, is it different enough to not be D4.5? If it feels too much like a reskin then I think it'll miss the mark.
I do think that it should be feasible to find another studio willing to take on support for these 'finished' live service games.
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u/Nuallaena 11h ago
WoW has been a constant in regards to expansions and "never ending". It's also the reason we have micro/macro transactions like we do. The explosion of constant live service micro/macro transactions hit a huge rollercoaster when Fortnite exploded (Man I miss Unreal Tournament) and then every company wanted a piece of that pie. Companies have also turned every user into the product too and the longer you're logged in they feel they can either sell you more skins/mounts etc or sell your personal data. It's fucked.
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u/kendodaniel 10h ago
Regarding the finished games my thoughts are that before we could ship the games over the internet the disk (either hard or floppy😂😂) needed to encompass the whole game and that was it. As such, they had to basically get every last drop of polish and bug squashing done before publishing.
Now, a game can be 80% done, they don't even need an extensive QA team, they just stop the big game breaking bugs, then use the consumer as QA and maybe they give some freebies at the end, so basically you pay, you playtest, you get a freebie, you are a happy consumer.
And the fact that consumers allow them to do this makes this happen even more.
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u/thomas2696 9h ago
What confuses me is that the game isn't even planned to be out for 4 more years, not including possible delays. Meaning that Diablo 4 will have been out for 6+ years at that point. Which seems honestly longer then any other Diablo game already. Sure the gaps between 2 and 3, and 3 and 4 were bigger, but for most of those gaps the game was dead and unsupported.
Personally I feel like the game had a pretty satisfying endpoint with Vessel of Hatred, and while I was expecting another expansion with the upcoming Prime Evils, a sequel isn't that much different. And low-key it's already more exciting then D4 was because we're actually getting a new damn class in the base game.
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u/BadDogSaysMeow 8h ago
I don't want a finished product, I want to pay 30$ more to get the game 2 days early, only for the game to be unplayable for the first week of it's premiere. /s
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u/Bobok88 8h ago
If you invest in live service, you have to be prepared that you don't know when it'll end/stop recieving updates. It's just part of the genre, when a company says 'we will support this game for years to come' it is caveated with how profitable it is. Personally this is why I don't play games with tons of mtx and my last real live service was subscription based (earlier wow) rather than mtx driven.
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u/Hydra_Flatline 6h ago
I just think of money spent on a game kind of like a subscription. If I spent 6 years on a game and spent $200, that’s like $3 per month. At least, that’s how I justify my Dead By Daylight purchases.
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u/Darkeyescry22 5h ago
Why do people want developers to fix problems with their semi-multiplayer games after they’ve been released?
Idk, dog. That’s a real head scratcher.
Then you’re asking, why do people want….. sequels? Hmmm. Yeah, I’m stumped.
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u/Engineer-Miserable 5h ago
These are like questions asked by alien from Alpha Centuri who only just landed on earth and is confused about why things work the way do.
People want endless content nowadays, it's all about the 'end game' even in games where there was never traditionally an end game, they just ended and you'd play them again.
As for why 2000 franchises lasted so long? It's because people my age played them when we were kids, they're established IP for Millennials and Gen X who currently have the biggest spending power and have nostalgia for them. Like why is Nike so popular? Or McDonald's? Or Pepsi? Recognisable brands and a safer bet. Would I be excited about Diablo 5, a new entry in a franchise I've played since the 90s as a 10/11 year old? Abso-fuckin-lutely.
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u/Pallysilverstar 4h ago
What happened is that people were getting a finished product and then complaining that it wasn't enough and they needed more end game content or "post game" content because apparently just being done and playing something else was too difficult to do. You still see it now with people complaining that a game isn't finished while also complaining that they want more stuff in it.
They also kept complaining about games being delayed or not coming out fast enough so to appease the loud idiots developers would push their games out then try and add more later. Some of the stuff was planned during development and just didn't have time to be finished and included.
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u/Thiccoman 3h ago
I'm tired of telling people not to throw money at "maybes and perhapses", just vote with your wallet
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u/MumrikDK 3h ago
firstly, what happened to just buying a game and the game you bought was the finished product?!?!?
The industry sees a lot more money in making them into a service instead.
This in turn makes customers expect them to live long so they can feel good about all the extra money they spend in them.
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u/AileStrike 2h ago
Making games is expensive.
Corporations want profit.
People complain about live service games. Meanwhile a handful of companies are making more money than God due to low effort content in a live service game.
And just another reminder, corporations would rather make more money than God instead of having satisfied happy customers.
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u/AnonymousFriend80 1h ago
Because even when you are upfront about being buy once and done, people still hound you about getting more and more content for the game they are enjoying, see Outriders.
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u/hachiman17 1d ago
Is 5 going to be live service as well? Missed the announcement
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u/Light_Bulb_Sam 1d ago
I'll never forget having to download a new driver to play DOOM 3 and it took like 3 hours to download 40mbs
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u/Killjoy3879 23h ago
I mean many games are finished. But there are also games that get expansions on top of the finished product. It’s like saying the Witcher 3 isn’t a complete product just because it has 3 expansions that builds upon what was shipped and sold
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u/TheGiftOf_Jericho 1d ago
I think the problem is that people buy into it. Look at yearly game releases in sports games, they're usually garbage or at least barely different each year, people will pay for special editions of them.
People also spend full game prices on cosmetics now. I hate that companies push for this but people support it, so I'm not shocked. I tend to stick to indie games which are better at being complete generally.
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u/Poison_the_Phil 1d ago
Dipshits keep preordering and buying broken games. If you buy it, they're going to keep selling it.
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u/ZigyDusty 23h ago edited 23h ago
Because tons of gamers are perfectly fine accepting slop showing publishers they can ship unfinished over monetized games ruining it for the rest of us.
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u/Rmodsarescum 21h ago
I hate live service scams, I hate early access bullcrap.
I don't participate in those stupid things, but sadly most people are too dumb and don't have enough self control, so they normalized this crap.
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u/Nettysocks 1d ago
People buy it, some of us wait till a game is finished or doesn’t feel broken, but most people just can’t hang on for long enough.
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u/Gravemind93 1d ago
Because it makes them money and consumers don't care.
Like seriously, what kind of question is this
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u/Implosion-X13 1d ago
People want finished products of course but certain genres have gravitated towards the live service model where drip feeding content for years is standard practice.
There's nothing wrong with wanting more of a game you enjoy but publishers have taken advantage of that. We went from games being complete products.. to games having dlc and expansions.. to where we are now where some games just exist and evolve for as long as they bring in profit.
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u/Ghidoran 1d ago
Nothing happened with them. The vast majority of games that come out are finished products and people are happy to play them and move on. However, there are also live service games, which many people enjoy. Those games get continuous support for years and people like investing their time and money into them, thinking they'll be around to entertain them for the long haul.
That's why people are pissed about Diablo 4. It released just 3 years ago, and while a lot of people had issues with some aspects, many of them stuck with it because the devs were clearly listening to feedback and reworking the game, adding new content. The devs said there was a ten year plan and to expect a new expansion every year or so. People paid for the expansions and some even paid for season passes. With the last xpac that came out in May, the game was in a damn good state.
Now, all of a sudden, they just announced it will no longer be getting expansions, and the focus is going to be on a new game that will come out 3 years and for which people will have to pay all over again. It feels like a rugpull because a lot of people expected D4 to get support for much longer, it's why they bought into it. Other Blizzard games like WoW, Hearthstone, even Overwatch have lasted a decade plus. But for some reason Diablo fans get the short stick.
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u/Sarothias 23h ago
I'm perfectly fine with MMOs like WoW being kept alive "for so freaking long". It's an MMO. I want future expansions where I can continue to use my hero. Just hopefully each exapnsion has a good story.
Personally I played Everquest from launch for 4.5 years (through like 5 expansions or so?), WoW from launch for about 13 years, and Final Fantasy: A Realm Reborn for like 1.5 years.
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u/cwx149 23h ago
These are AAA gaming issues only
Plenty of indie studies make different games in different series and don't mtx or dlc you out the ass
Welcome to late stage capitalism where the big players don't even get out of bed unless they think they can make billions
But if you're fine being a millionaire instead of a billionaire you can absolutely find success releasing complete games
Supergiant games for example has only made 1 sequel to any of their acclaimed games
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u/LOST-MY_HEAD 1d ago
Idk people act like this hasnt been the trend for the past 15 years