The “general manager” for all things Diablo (Rod Fergusson), was interviewed by GamesRadar+ (addressing some of the criticism surrounding Season 1 of Diablo IV). IMHO, Fergusson should step down as that general manager because this interview highlights why Diablo IV is the way it is. If they actually felt “they were doing the right things”, then they obviously really had no clue what they were doing at all in that echo chamber (especially if NDA end game beta testers were providing feedback to the contrary). The Season 2 announcement changes none of what is actually wrong with the game (which is the core endgame loop is utterly unfun). Even the ancillary aspects of the game, come across as intentional time sinks (how spread out necessary NPC functions are at the main hubs). I get it (engagement metrics since anyone can see that in Activision Blizzard’s financial statements), but don’t make it so damn obvious with everything (including the placement of a lot of dungeons being so out of the way where they had to relent with a temporary fix with allowing direct teleport to the entrance for nightmare dungeons).
Just like Diablo III, Diablo IV was designed by mostly designers that lack in-depth ARPG experience. And it is clear the brain drain from the internal turmoil, has impacted everything at Blizzard Entertainment including the programmers who write the server/client code (the fact that it even went as far as where you could get seasonal and eternal realm characters together due to the lack of proper validation in specific network disconnect conditions, is flabbergasting for a game that was intentionally designed to be online). Obviously, QA has taken a backseat (where this sort of stuff would be caught when you start testing for these out of the normal conditions). Sure, there has been gold duping in the game as well (but that seems par for the course with every Diablo game), but not having client/server validation checks for making sure different realm characters remain in their proper realms, is pretty astounding in 2023 with a AAA studio.
A lot of the QoL stuff should’ve been in from the start (no excuse for that in 2023). We know they acknowledged the technical limitations of inventory management (stash space) in D4 (since they probably just borrowed most of that code from D3). But that is also inexcusable to have shipped a loot hunt based game with such a braindead stash implementation (and Fergusson obviously didn’t take issue with allowing the game to ship this way). The problems start at the top when it comes to franchise related things, and it is clear that Fergusson didn’t help put the game at a better place for its launch (and initial season).
UPDATE: a later interview has Fergusson (in really tone deaf fashion) confirming that expansions will be an annual thing. This would be great news IF the base game wasn’t so lacking/requiring a lot of fixes/an overhaul of its itemization. And it is becoming clear that a lot of this will be walled behind those expansions (besides new classes and new story lines/areas). The reason this is tone deaf because of all the backlash with season 1 with the nerfs (and then having to walk a lot of those changes back). As the title says, the problem starts at the top.
