[kosei]

It was a different time: “Condor plans to spend one year in the development of Diablo. Personnel will consist of: one designer, one chief programmer, 2 junior programmer, 2 art director/artists, 1 illustrator/sculptor, 3 pixel artists, and 1 sound FX person”

So, 11 people for a year for Diablo. Meanwhile Diablo 4 took 300+ people 6+ years. So over 150x the cost, not accounting for the fact that game developers are paid much more now as well. People pretend it’s the same industry but it’s evolved dramatically.

[eek2121]

Yet I have to say this:

Diablo was more fun.

Diablo 2 is pretty great. My only complaints about it surround harder difficulties. Those of us with accessibility issues (like me with a gimped hand) found hell to be super challenging.

Diablo 3 sucked when it launched, however, right now, it is absolutely amazing. Blizzard has absolute gold with the tiered difficulty/rift/season design. Unsure why they didn't improve upon it...

Diablo 4 has potential, but many of the great systems developed in 1-3 are gone.

What made previous diablo games great:

A fixed level/difficulty system

Randomly generated levels

A way to measure yourself against both yourself and others. Potential for multiple unique build paths for every class. An awesome loot/gear system that eventually makes you feel overpowered until you aren't.

Diablo 4 has none of those.

Diablo 1-3 have some combination of those.

[bob1029]

> A fixed level/difficulty system

This is the central aspect of fun for me in an ARPG. When I come back through that starting story area at level 40, I expect to absolutely melt the enemies I run into. If I get super fucking lucky on a roll and pick up a legendary (i.e. against the story/balance team's wishes), I should be able to have a goddamn romp through the world for quite a bit. This emergence of potentially-unintended gameplay outcomes in an ARPG results in the fun for me.

Maybe there's a way to do the multiplayer-friendly scaling thing that my dopamine loop would enjoy but I haven't seen it yet. Ultimately, it feels like Blizzard tried to solve a cursed problem and walked right into the predictable outcome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uE6-vIi1rQ

[logicchains]

Diablo 4 has no sense of progression because enemies level up as you do. In fact they increase in power faster than you, under the assumption you'll be itemising optimally, so if you level up but don't update your items fast enough, you'll find that mobs actually get harder and harder to defeat as you increase in level.

[nemo44x]

You didn’t need a gimped hand to name hell super challenging! =)

Diablo 4 is unbelievable imo. Easily the pickup where Diablo 2 left off. It’s super complex while being simple. Really good game!

[hourago]

The results are also vastly different as the expectations, the number of platforms to support, the quality of the cut-scenes, ... and the revenue.

But there are still indie games developed with such small teams. So, that is still a viable possibility.

[mikepurvis]

And there's a massive trickle-down in terms of what very small teams are able to accomplish now by leveraging modern tools, engines, and art pipelines. It astonishes me to this day that Hollow Knight was basically developed by three people, including all the writing, art, design, and programming— there's definitely more content in that game than what passed for triple-A in the PSX era, maybe even PS2.

[ricardobayes]

Definitely. This complexity creep is very visible with certain franchises which churned out a new game steadily every 3-4 years but not a peep for 10+ years now. (Elder Scrolls, Grand Theft Auto etc)

[Cthulhu_]

Said franchises - well, mainly GTA and now D4 - also are a live service though, in that they have recurring income from in-game purchases - in the case of GTA 5, it paid off to spend hundreds of millions on development, given it's earned the company billions ($6bn according to wikipedia).

[Cthulhu_]

Counterpoint: indie games, they will often have similar sized teams or smaller and come out with great games. AAA games build on top of gameplay mechanics from either older games or indie games, but need the extra staff and investment due to higher quality (and quantity) assets.

To generalize, indie games focus on the core gameplay loop, AAA games on high effort visuals.

[enkid]

This is why I've been playing indie ges almost exclusively lately. The core game play is just so much tighter in a small game vs. AAA games where they implement a huge amount of features.

[fennecfoxy]

Whether a modern game turns out to be fun or not is besides the point, the answer is fidelity, fidelity, fidelity.

I think it's fair enough that modern games take much more effort; we have much higher expectations as gamers/consumers than we used to.

[jayd16]

AAAs are paying for consistency. The marketing budget is fixed. This makes the goal something that's certainly good enough and hopefully great.

[YurgenJurgensen]

They may pay for consistency, but they're not really getting it. There hasn't been a year since 'AAA games' were a concept that hasn't had multiple high-profile titles that failed to deliver.