RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS - CON SEASON

[213374U]

This deals with the internal conditions over at Blizzard and helps explain some of the recent happenings around the business. It really makes a lot of things clear. It mostly deals with employee compensation in relation to Blizzard's recent performance and all the implications that follow.

 

Gotta love how homeboy there prefaces what is essentially a huge talk on income inequality by saying "I don't have a problem with people making as much money as they earn". How's that cognitive dissonance working out for you chief?

 

Seriously, someone link the "reserve labor army" wiki article to this guy. Of course, he's never going to change his mind about "the left" becuz muh free market and idpol. What a joke.

Edited November 21, 2018 by 213374U

[213374U]

Why would a fantasy book change his mind about politics? It's like saying reading Lord of the Ring changes your mind about government.

It might, if you are an orc living in Mordor.

[Mamoulian War]

Under age gambling in UK has quadrupled over last two years. Their gambling commision points at the culprit.

 

Jim sterling’s take on the article. NSFW.

 

[Malcador]

Wonder if the high level of gambling advertising in the UK also matters. 

[213374U]

Wonder if the high level of gambling advertising in the UK also matters. 

 

Yeah. A family member works in the local advertisement oversight agency, and they are seriously fuming over the huge increase in online (actual) gambling advertising in the last few years. I think the idea is to curb that **** down to the level of traditional gambling ads (i.e. none at all), but once the cat's out of the bag...

 

I'm not sure I'd point at lootboxes as a significant contributor to the increase in bona fide gambling, either. Sounds a bit like the whole "gateway drug" thing with weed.

[Fenixp]

Not that Star Traders: Frontiers updates are particularly newsworthy considering they come out on weekly basis, but I really dig this and now wish a lot more games implemented it:

Setting up Permadeath

Permadeath settings have never allowed Save Slots which unfortunately has removed the ability to use Save Slots to store the setup of your game, crew and officers. We've changed these rules to now allow Save Slots for permadeath games within the first 12 weeks (120 Turns). This gives you ample time to run the first Arbiter Mission, promote or fire officers, assign outfits to your crew, name your crew and whatever type of "setup" you like to do as a new captain. Then, save the permadeath game to a Save Slot before 210.15 AE! If your captain is lost to the void or takes a terrible wrong turn, you can always come back to this early setup Save Slot for a quick restore.

So basically, you get an extremely short timeframe to resolve the tutorial quest, set your **** up and do all the chores you tend to do in new game of complex games like these, and have a starting point for permadeath runs where you don't have to do all of this stuff again. Simple and exceptionally clever solution to an old problem.

Edited November 21, 2018 by Fenixp

[SonicMage117]

NMS Visions

[IndiraLightfoot]

Some credible info about Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 development at Blizzard, courtesy of the poster Fusion at Battlenet, and of course Kotaku:

https://kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-diablo-1830593195

 

• DIII originally planned to have two expansions but since it was perceived a "failure" after launch Blizzard decided to scrap the second one before seeing how Reaper of Souls performed to jump straight into D4 development.
• D4 started in 2014 as Project hades. over the should point of view, dark souls inspired title. Was scraped around 2016.
• D4's second iteration code named Fenris started around 2016. Want to make it dark, scary atmosphere like DII, remove cartoony graphics. Not sure if they want to do over the shoulder or isometric camera. (how can this even be an argument)
• much more. see below.
  Even as speculation this already relieves me so much.
  Pretty sad that this journalist has provided us more information than Blizzard has though.

Edited November 22, 2018 by IndiraLightfoot

[Chilloutman]

seems like Paradox are WOKE AF, cant stop laughting:

 

[213374U]

I legit watched that stream start to finish, and I'm not sure what you mean. Devs playing space commies have mostly been making a joke of the whole thing, what with the anarchist police state shenanigans and all, as have those playing megacorps.

 

Today's stream had Wiz jokingly suggesting that space corps are evil, but if you don't think that profit-driven interstellar entities bound by nothing but the military might of their neighbors can be anything but evil, I have a bridge to sell you...

[Chilloutman]

i was joking, i like hot they poke everything, they mentioned something about one of commie empires being hell bend on gender studies

[marelooke]

 

Some credible info about Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 development at Blizzard, courtesy of the poster Fusion at Battlenet, and of course Kotaku:

https://kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-diablo-1830593195

 

 

• DIII originally planned to have two expansions but since it was perceived a "failure" after launch Blizzard decided to scrap the second one before seeing how Reaper of Souls performed to jump straight into D4 development.
• D4 started in 2014 as Project hades. over the should point of view, dark souls inspired title. Was scraped around 2016.
• D4's second iteration code named Fenris started around 2016. Want to make it dark, scary atmosphere like DII, remove cartoony graphics. Not sure if they want to do over the shoulder or isometric camera. (how can this even be an argument)
• much more. see below.

  Even as speculation this already relieves me so much.

  Pretty sad that this journalist has provided us more information than Blizzard has though.

 

 

The parts about Activision influence near the end are really depressing though. Based on my prior experience of being part of companies that got assimilated I'd say it might very well be the beginning of the end for the Blizzard we've known so far.

[evilcat]

Space Commies or Galaxy Apple Store... PDX really up their game.

[213374U]

i was joking, i like hot they poke everything, they mentioned something about one of commie empires being hell bend on gender studies

 

Sorry, I didn't get your meaning. Their commie RPing is really on point as they have the biggest alliance and have accomplished exactly diddly squat. And on the other side of the spectrum you have some guy playing a megacorp that's about buying up slaves in the galactic market and making them into board members and xenophilia (in the alien hybridization sense). No space nazis though, which is kinda weak, even though purifiers weren't explicitly disallowed.

 

The dev clash is entertaining to watch as they are emphasizing roleplay (and memes galore), but the fact that they keep routinely getting desyncs is worrying. This has been a problem for a while and it's starting to look like they don't know how to fix it for good. Performance also is less than... stellar *cough*, and they haven't reached even mid game yet.

[Vitalis]

 

 

Some credible info about Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 development at Blizzard, courtesy of the poster Fusion at Battlenet, and of course Kotaku:

https://kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-diablo-1830593195

 

 

• DIII originally planned to have two expansions but since it was perceived a "failure" after launch Blizzard decided to scrap the second one before seeing how Reaper of Souls performed to jump straight into D4 development.
• D4 started in 2014 as Project hades. over the should point of view, dark souls inspired title. Was scraped around 2016.
• D4's second iteration code named Fenris started around 2016. Want to make it dark, scary atmosphere like DII, remove cartoony graphics. Not sure if they want to do over the shoulder or isometric camera. (how can this even be an argument)
• much more. see below.

  Even as speculation this already relieves me so much.

  Pretty sad that this journalist has provided us more information than Blizzard has though.

The parts about Activision influence near the end are really depressing though. Based on my prior experience of being part of companies that got assimilated I'd say it might very well be the beginning of the end for the Blizzard we've known so far.

Why is everyone acting as if the merger was recent? It happened ten years ago!

[Katphood]

[*]D4 started in 2014 as Project hades. over the should point of view, dark souls inspired title. Was scraped around 2016.

[*]D4's second iteration code named Fenris started around 2016. Want to make it dark, scary atmosphere like DII, remove cartoony graphics. Not sure if they want to do over the shoulder or isometric camera. (how can this even be an argument)

 

So they wanted to go for a cartoon-ish Dark Souls experience with over the shoulder camera in Project Hades?!

 

...

 

Suddenly, that mobile game doesn't seem half bad anymore.

 

Edit: Good lord! Brace yourselves: https://www.vg247.com/2018/11/22/blizzard-working-on-pokemon-go-style-warcraft-game/

Edited November 23, 2018 by Katphood

[Chilloutman]

Seems like Activision got completely bonkers on Blizz, well we enjoyed it while it lasted. As I already mentioned last game from them I enjoyed was D2 so no big loss for me

[Vitalis]

 

[*]D4 started in 2014 as Project hades. over the should point of view, dark souls inspired title. Was scraped around 2016.

[*]D4's second iteration code named Fenris started around 2016. Want to make it dark, scary atmosphere like DII, remove cartoony graphics. Not sure if they want to do over the shoulder or isometric camera. (how can this even be an argument)

 

So they wanted to go for a cartoon-ish Dark Souls experience with over the shoulder camera in Project Hades?!

 

...

 

Suddenly, that mobile game doesn't seem half bad anymore.

 

Edit: Good lord! Brace yourselves: https://www.vg247.com/2018/11/22/blizzard-working-on-pokemon-go-style-warcraft-game/

Well the cartoonish graphics and over the shoulder camera worked for World of Warcraft. Really, the only thing that sounds inherently bad about it is the cartoon graphics.

 

Now, the pokemon go style Warcraft game sounds like crap regardless of what they do about it simply because pokemon go is inherently boring/dangerous.

[Chilloutman]

its not surprising tho in relation to latest comments from Blizz that they are going to focus on mobile games   

[Blarghagh]

Vitalis hated Blizzard before it was cool.

 

But really, who's surprised at this after Hearthstone made all the money in the world?

[Katphood]

I've played WarCraft 3, Starcraft and Diablo 3. I enjoyed them all to a certain extent. Gotta check out older Blizzard titles someday...Blackthrone maybe?

[marelooke]

 

 

Some credible info about Diablo 3 and Diablo 4 development at Blizzard, courtesy of the poster Fusion at Battlenet, and of course Kotaku:

https://kotaku.com/the-past-present-and-future-of-diablo-1830593195

 

• DIII originally planned to have two expansions but since it was perceived a "failure" after launch Blizzard decided to scrap the second one before seeing how Reaper of Souls performed to jump straight into D4 development.
• D4 started in 2014 as Project hades. over the should point of view, dark souls inspired title. Was scraped around 2016.
• D4's second iteration code named Fenris started around 2016. Want to make it dark, scary atmosphere like DII, remove cartoony graphics. Not sure if they want to do over the shoulder or isometric camera. (how can this even be an argument)
• much more. see below.

  Even as speculation this already relieves me so much.

  Pretty sad that this journalist has provided us more information than Blizzard has though.

The parts about Activision influence near the end are really depressing though. Based on my prior experience of being part of companies that got assimilated I'd say it might very well be the beginning of the end for the Blizzard we've known so far.

Why is everyone acting as if the merger was recent? It happened ten years ago!

 

 

I think you missed the part where I've been on the receiving end of something like this a few times.

 

Depending on management (of the bought company, usually), it can take quite a while before stuff starts trickling through from the "parent" company. Usually once it does it goes downhill pretty fast, relatively speaking at least, these are still "corporations". Sounds like Blizzard's management managed to hold off the boat for a very long time but I expect things to decline at an accelerating rate from this point on out.

 

And the reason why it usually goes downhill fast is that once the culture starts changing for the worse the employees with the option to leave for greener pastures tend to do exactly that. These are usually some of the most talented, or at least well known, individuals as they have the easiest time getting jobs elsewhere. Resulting in the company running worse than before, as core employees are now missing, resulting in more involvement of the parent company which results a nice downward spiral.

Edited November 23, 2018 by marelooke

[Blarghagh]

I recommend Lost Vikings. It really holds up.

[Lexx]

I think even if Diablo 4 would be like D2 again, at highest I would play through it only once... just like D3. I've grown out of that gameplay and it isn't as much fun to me anymore as 15 or what years ago.

[Katphood]

I hated how you could customize EVERYTHING in Diablo 3. Certain weapons and items lose their charm that way.