There is some really cool stuff in the UMS maps for StarCraft 2 (or whatever they call them these days, I'm an old man). Some of it is crazy; I know there's for sure a Dungeon-Keeper-styled game where you build and develop a subterranean Zerg hive.
But yeah, the glut of readily available and absurdly cheap independent games really tamped down my excitement for playing custom StarCraft maps like I used to obsessively as a kid. There's just so much out there now. So much.
The trouble with modding today is that all the most passionate and motivated indie devs are now just making real games in Unity/UE4. Making and distributing indie games is infinitely more accessible than it was in the days of WC3 custom maps. And the players as well are just going to Steam for those types of games instead of playing mods. I do want someone to figure out a way to bring back the golden era of modding though.
The trouble with modding today is that all the most passionate and motivated indie devs are now just making real games in Unity/UE4. Making and distributing indie games is infinitely more accessible than it was in the days of WC3 custom maps. And the players as well are just going to Steam for those types of games instead of playing mods. I do want someone to figure out a way to bring back the golden era of modding though.
It depends on the game. Certain titles--certain Bethesda-produced titles that are launched with various glitches, some of which will not be corrected--are still enjoying a Golden Age of modding. Skyrim modding, a least on networks like Nexus, is so resilient that both Skryim and its SE re-release have their own massive, somewhat-interconnected communities.
Of course, these are more the exception than the rule. It's no secret that people in Japan, South Korea, Russia and elsewhere bought copies of Skyrim even without availability in their own languages purely for the sake of modding, and have barely played the game--they're exceptional. The whole "If you get a game on PC, it might get mods!" argument is usually hollow, since the majority of major releases won't even get necessary fixes from the community due to difficulty, much less actual content mods.
The trouble with modding today is that all the most passionate and motivated indie devs are now just making real games in Unity/UE4. Making and distributing indie games is infinitely more accessible than it was in the days of WC3 custom maps. And the players as well are just going to Steam for those types of games instead of playing mods. I do want someone to figure out a way to bring back the golden era of modding though.
There's two main issues with mods these days
1. Games are COMPLEX. What a team of 100 could do even 10 years ago is now done by like a team of 200. As games scale in complexity, mods often have to scale more too. Bigger scale means more people, which means less modders to go around, which means less mods.
2. Why make a free mod when you can put a game up on Steam and actually get paid for your work. Especially in this day and age where fair labor practices are becoming a more and more of a talked about thing.
Honestly, while the golden age of mods was a beautiful thing, and saw some incredible stuff come out, it's a practice that I'm not surprised to see start to go by the wayside.
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
I don't really see a whole lot of Diablo on the Blizzcon schedule. Remind me why we think that some big Diablo news is coming? Is it just because Diablo is the first scheduled thing, kicking off the show?
I don't really see a whole lot of Diablo on the Blizzcon schedule. Remind me why we think that some big Diablo news is coming? Is it just because Diablo is the first scheduled thing, kicking off the show?
Just ignore that they think it's Diablo 4, because Blizzard released an overworded statement which said "We know what you all want, and it is coming, but we're not ready to show it yet." Which leads us to, well what Diablo related are they showing us?
Ok. So I admit fully up front that this is just wishful thinking.
But!
In Blizzard's post about what they aren't going to show us, they never say they aren't going to show us Diablo 4. Their wording is very obviously vague and very obviously intentionally abstract. But they didn't say they aren't announcing D4.
They could conceivably pull a "hah, we got you" at Blizzcon. Maybe the thing that we all want is Diablo 2 Remaster, and they aren't ready to show it. It could be that. Or anything else. I'm just saying. People have asked for everything Diablo related. So their carefully constructed "nothing was really confirmed or denied" message could literally mean anything.
I'm just saying. They could still announce D4. They probably won't. The message can probably be taken at face value even if they didn't outright say "No D4 announcement this year." It can probably be taken at that. But there's also a chance that the message is so vague and full of nothing because they are being intentionally deceptive so they can get us all at the show.
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KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
Ok. So I admit fully up front that this is just wishful thinking.
But!
In Blizzard's post about what they aren't going to show us, they never say they aren't going to show us Diablo 4. Their wording is very obviously vague and very obviously intentionally abstract. But they didn't say they aren't announcing D4.
They could conceivably pull a "hah, we got you" at Blizzcon. Maybe the thing that we all want is Diablo 2 Remaster, and they aren't ready to show it. It could be that. Or anything else. I'm just saying. People have asked for everything Diablo related. So their carefully constructed "nothing was really confirmed or denied" message could literally mean anything.
I'm just saying. They could still announce D4. They probably won't. The message can probably be taken at face value even if they didn't outright say "No D4 announcement this year." It can probably be taken at that. But there's also a chance that the message is so vague and full of nothing because they are being intentionally deceptive so they can get us all at the show.
IDD. For all intents and purposes, the post was simply a 'Whoa these fans are hype for the fucking world and if we don't deliver literally everything it will be a disaster.' temper your expectations type of press release. I also still think Diablo 4 will get announced, but I'd be surprised if we see literally any gameplay.
Ok. So I admit fully up front that this is just wishful thinking.
But!
In Blizzard's post about what they aren't going to show us, they never say they aren't going to show us Diablo 4. Their wording is very obviously vague and very obviously intentionally abstract. But they didn't say they aren't announcing D4.
They could conceivably pull a "hah, we got you" at Blizzcon. Maybe the thing that we all want is Diablo 2 Remaster, and they aren't ready to show it. It could be that. Or anything else. I'm just saying. People have asked for everything Diablo related. So their carefully constructed "nothing was really confirmed or denied" message could literally mean anything.
I'm just saying. They could still announce D4. They probably won't. The message can probably be taken at face value even if they didn't outright say "No D4 announcement this year." It can probably be taken at that. But there's also a chance that the message is so vague and full of nothing because they are being intentionally deceptive so they can get us all at the show.
IDD. For all intents and purposes, the post was simply a 'Whoa these fans are hype for the fucking world and if we don't deliver literally everything it will be a disaster.' temper your expectations type of press release. I also still think Diablo 4 will get announced, but I'd be surprised if we see literally any gameplay.
It's kind of funny. Their statement was:
BlizzCon 2018 is almost here and weβve seen a lot of rumors flying around about our plans for Diablo at the show. These are very exciting timesβwe currently have multiple teams working on different Diablo projects and we canβt wait to tell you all about them... when the time is right.
They didn't say that they weren't going to talk about future Diablo plans...just that they'll talk about them "when the time is right." BlizzCon itself counts as when times are "right."
But yeah...I'm not going to be expecting anything. I just got the virtual ticket for the sweet Sombra skin (and her hand-crossbow micro-uzi).
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der ErlkΓΆnig (the umlaut is important) |
if this blizzcon was when the time was right they wouldn't have needed to put out a press release about not getting your hopes up too much about announcements at blizzcon, though
if this blizzcon was when the time was right they wouldn't have needed to put out a press release about not getting your hopes up too much about announcements at blizzcon, though
They didn't come out and say "Don't get hyped for an announcement of Diablo projects at our Diablo-themed BlizzCon" did they? Continued from their post: "While we wonβt be ready to announce all of our projects, we do intend to share some Diablo-related news with you at the show." So, evidently, they think the time is right for some announcements.
| Origin/R*SC: Ein7919 | Battle.net: Erlkonig#1448 | XBL: Lexicanum | Steam: Der ErlkΓΆnig (the umlaut is important) |
I recall a few years ago, when D3 was being announced at Blizzcon, there was a logo reveal that slowly evolved over the course of a few days. I could see that being what happens this week/at Blizzcon. D4 is announced, but nothing is shown. Couple that with D2: LoD Remastered (with gameplay shown), and that's a pretty significant Diablo showing, even without any D4 stuff really being shown.
I got a Blizzcon Virtual Ticket for free from watching one of those sponsored streams. So at the very least when my dreams get snuffed out on Friday, it will be free dream-snuffage.
Man.
I've got Blizzcon traditions at this point. That's how long I've been doing this. Take off work. Go to breakfast with friends. Go to a designated hangout house. Play at least one of each Blizzard game (on the Blizzard launcher, we don't mess with the super old ones that aren't on the launcher). Then stream opening ceremony and play the rest by ear. Usually more Blizzard games are played while watching various other streams and esports.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
There's also a lot of internet rumor that there's a Netflix animated series for Diablo. That would not surprise me at all.
In the vein of Castlevania? I'd eat that up.
I wouldn't. Castlevania is a disaster of "use hyper gore in place of being compelling." If they did that with Diablo I would be disappointed as shit.
See I'm on the other edge of the fence thinking they want to do something as good as Castlevania and I have no hope of them succeeding. Although I didn't have any hope that Castlevania would be as good as it is either so what do I know.
Growing up, I always associated Blizzard with creativity, because of their map editors. They've gotten away from that in recent years, but I'd love to see a new title built with player-generated content in mind.
I guess StarCraft II had a pretty in depth map editor? It seems like it didn't quite click with people the same way the old ones did. Or maybe "spawns an entirely new popular game genre" is unrealistic to expect every time.
the SC2 map creator did click with people, it's much more powerful than the warcraft 3 editor, it's so flexible you can make shit like shmups and first person shooters in it. It just didn't spawn any breakout phenomenons like Warcraft 3's editor spawned Dota, yeah.
And tower defenses. I'm still kind of bowled over that the Warcraft 3 editor managed to spawn two entirely separate game subgenres.
It's been a loooooong time since I've played D2, to be clear, but I'm struggling to think of anything a remaster would bring to the table that D3 doesn't already provide.
SC at least had enough differences in gameplay to make sense for the upgraded version alongside SC2, and because it is a competitive game it can still provide some reason to return.
If they redid D2 would they keep the same loot? Systems? perspective? It seems like the sort of thing people think they want until they get it and realize that they really didn't want to go and redo the same stuff they've already spent a god awful amount of time doing for no ultimately different result. I honestly haven't payed enough attention to WoW to know if they ever did release the vanilla servers they said they would a blizzcon or two ago; but every MMO that has done something similar found the same thing: players say they want it, but once they discover they can't recreate that moment in time, those servers end up as ghost towns.
It seems to me a Diablo 2 remake/remaster would produce the same results. There would be an initial rush of nostalgia and then it would just disappear quickly. I would imagine few want to do baal runs hours on end for the same loot they already grinded for two decades ago. And if Blizzard changed/modernized the loot system?
Hah! I can see the shitstorm from that already. Or hell, if they changed the visuals in a way that differs from the original in any significant way (the initial reveal of D3 was good times!)? End of the god damned world.
Just an updated engine for modern visuals with the same systems? Nice to have, but nothing that will keep people coming back for long. Updated systems? Hoooo boy that's a can of worms that can't possibly be worth opening, when they could just do D4 and avoid it all entirely.
Some games warrant remakes or remasters. Competitive games, games on systems that have antiquated controls and such that aren't really very playable anymore (most 90's era PC adventure/rpg's and some fps's), sure. D2 is still completely playable, just maybe a bit rough on the eyes.
Not saying they won't do it. Financially there's a lot of good reasons they would. If they keep the networking virtually identical they don't have to do much more than they already do to make it work, and assuming no sane person would expect them to release further D2 content, they can just get the sales and from their end call it a day. But for the players? I don't think we'd be getting the good end of that deal. Our monkey brains might tell us we want it, but when we get it there inevitably be a lack of satisfaction and we won't fully understand why. And many will just turn on Blizzard, assuming they did something to sour it, when really it's just the impossibility of reality meeting the expectations of memory and point in time that can't ever be recreated.
But! I'd buy it. Because of course I would. Just please god not mobile ports. Yeah, it might be easy in theory to replace a mouse click with a finger press (they'd have to redo D1's combat for sure), but I think people might not be considering how obtrusive having your finger over what you're trying to do, would be. I understand that there's plenty of games for mobile devices that do basically that; but these are games we're already used to, and how their visual representations are. Whole swaths of the satisfaction of using your abilities to mow down hordes of demons will be lost when your fat thumb is covering it all. Maybe that works in other mobile games, but Diablo and Diablo 2 are iconic, and it shouldn't underestimated how much the visual satisfaction that came from them would be ruined by not actually seeing what you're doing.
There's no way I'd play a D2 remaster unless they did away with the first-click-first-serve loot system. I'm under no hurry to deal with that again, especially not in pugs.
They need to do the following: (in my opinion)
-Remove Charms completely
-Fix Run so that it doesn't decrease armor/dodge when you're running.
-Add perma-run
-Add area loot to gold, gems, runes, and other stackable items
-Add an autofill to the cube
-Add an in-game recipe book for the cube so players don't have to access 3rd party sites for rune words
-Clean up the talent trees across all classes
Honestly, the better option at this point would be to just put their art team on it and remake D2 inside the D3 game engine, and do a full rebuild of the campaign, and also make a brand new D2 adventure mode with repeatable/runnable dungeons for loot. Doesn't have to exactly mimic the Rifts/Greater Rifts of D3, but they need to do something to add life and challenge to the game past Hell Difficulty.
I remember that back when SC2 launched, they completely screwed up the point of custom map matchmaking by having people select the maps that they're looking for rather than letting people throw up lobbies with any map like in WC3. Did they ever get around to fixing that?
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
D2 Remaster would need auto gold pickup, independent loot drops from other players, and fixing the stat sheet. At minimum. It can't just be lolupres.
I would be surprised if they changed actual game mechanics. Charms, magic properties, the stamina thing, defense clearing when you're moving and only working when you are stationary, etc.
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KlatuAussie Aussie AussieOi Oi OiRegistered Userregular
I wouldn't even give them money if they did a D2 remaster. I had fun back in the day but I'd rather something new.
If it is really just a Diablo 2 HD with no gameplay changes, I would probably watch some YouTube videos out of nostalgia and that's it. I don't think I would feel inclined to revisit that game unless they modernize large chunks of it in the process. At which point it is more remake than remaster, and I think Diablo 1 is more likely to get a remake. Diablo 1 has more to gain from being remade with modernized ARPG gameplay or reimagined from a different perspective while retelling the original story.
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But yeah, the glut of readily available and absurdly cheap independent games really tamped down my excitement for playing custom StarCraft maps like I used to obsessively as a kid. There's just so much out there now. So much.
It depends on the game. Certain titles--certain Bethesda-produced titles that are launched with various glitches, some of which will not be corrected--are still enjoying a Golden Age of modding. Skyrim modding, a least on networks like Nexus, is so resilient that both Skryim and its SE re-release have their own massive, somewhat-interconnected communities.
Of course, these are more the exception than the rule. It's no secret that people in Japan, South Korea, Russia and elsewhere bought copies of Skyrim even without availability in their own languages purely for the sake of modding, and have barely played the game--they're exceptional. The whole "If you get a game on PC, it might get mods!" argument is usually hollow, since the majority of major releases won't even get necessary fixes from the community due to difficulty, much less actual content mods.
There's two main issues with mods these days
1. Games are COMPLEX. What a team of 100 could do even 10 years ago is now done by like a team of 200. As games scale in complexity, mods often have to scale more too. Bigger scale means more people, which means less modders to go around, which means less mods.
2. Why make a free mod when you can put a game up on Steam and actually get paid for your work. Especially in this day and age where fair labor practices are becoming a more and more of a talked about thing.
Honestly, while the golden age of mods was a beautiful thing, and saw some incredible stuff come out, it's a practice that I'm not surprised to see start to go by the wayside.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Here's a good sum-up: https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/6581/everything-points-to-diablo-iv-for-blizzcon-2018
Just ignore that they think it's Diablo 4, because Blizzard released an overworded statement which said "We know what you all want, and it is coming, but we're not ready to show it yet." Which leads us to, well what Diablo related are they showing us?
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
I'm kinda wondering if it's Diablo 1 and 2 on mobile.
Hey, if they can cram Titan Quest onto the iTunes and Google Play store, I don't see why they couldn't get an up-res'd Diablo on there.
EDIT - made it clear so it doesn't sound like I'm reporting something substantive.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
But!
In Blizzard's post about what they aren't going to show us, they never say they aren't going to show us Diablo 4. Their wording is very obviously vague and very obviously intentionally abstract. But they didn't say they aren't announcing D4.
They could conceivably pull a "hah, we got you" at Blizzcon. Maybe the thing that we all want is Diablo 2 Remaster, and they aren't ready to show it. It could be that. Or anything else. I'm just saying. People have asked for everything Diablo related. So their carefully constructed "nothing was really confirmed or denied" message could literally mean anything.
I'm just saying. They could still announce D4. They probably won't. The message can probably be taken at face value even if they didn't outright say "No D4 announcement this year." It can probably be taken at that. But there's also a chance that the message is so vague and full of nothing because they are being intentionally deceptive so they can get us all at the show.
IDD. For all intents and purposes, the post was simply a 'Whoa these fans are hype for the fucking world and if we don't deliver literally everything it will be a disaster.' temper your expectations type of press release. I also still think Diablo 4 will get announced, but I'd be surprised if we see literally any gameplay.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
It's kind of funny. Their statement was:
They didn't say that they weren't going to talk about future Diablo plans...just that they'll talk about them "when the time is right." BlizzCon itself counts as when times are "right."
But yeah...I'm not going to be expecting anything. I just got the virtual ticket for the sweet Sombra skin (and her hand-crossbow micro-uzi).
They didn't come out and say "Don't get hyped for an announcement of Diablo projects at our Diablo-themed BlizzCon" did they? Continued from their post: "While we wonβt be ready to announce all of our projects, we do intend to share some Diablo-related news with you at the show." So, evidently, they think the time is right for some announcements.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
In the vein of Castlevania? I'd eat that up.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
Man.
I've got Blizzcon traditions at this point. That's how long I've been doing this. Take off work. Go to breakfast with friends. Go to a designated hangout house. Play at least one of each Blizzard game (on the Blizzard launcher, we don't mess with the super old ones that aren't on the launcher). Then stream opening ceremony and play the rest by ear. Usually more Blizzard games are played while watching various other streams and esports.
Hell it'd fit more in Diablo than it does in Castlevania. But I think the gore in Castlevania is great so...
See I'm on the other edge of the fence thinking they want to do something as good as Castlevania and I have no hope of them succeeding. Although I didn't have any hope that Castlevania would be as good as it is either so what do I know.
And tower defenses. I'm still kind of bowled over that the Warcraft 3 editor managed to spawn two entirely separate game subgenres.
SC at least had enough differences in gameplay to make sense for the upgraded version alongside SC2, and because it is a competitive game it can still provide some reason to return.
If they redid D2 would they keep the same loot? Systems? perspective? It seems like the sort of thing people think they want until they get it and realize that they really didn't want to go and redo the same stuff they've already spent a god awful amount of time doing for no ultimately different result. I honestly haven't payed enough attention to WoW to know if they ever did release the vanilla servers they said they would a blizzcon or two ago; but every MMO that has done something similar found the same thing: players say they want it, but once they discover they can't recreate that moment in time, those servers end up as ghost towns.
It seems to me a Diablo 2 remake/remaster would produce the same results. There would be an initial rush of nostalgia and then it would just disappear quickly. I would imagine few want to do baal runs hours on end for the same loot they already grinded for two decades ago. And if Blizzard changed/modernized the loot system?
Hah! I can see the shitstorm from that already. Or hell, if they changed the visuals in a way that differs from the original in any significant way (the initial reveal of D3 was good times!)? End of the god damned world.
Just an updated engine for modern visuals with the same systems? Nice to have, but nothing that will keep people coming back for long. Updated systems? Hoooo boy that's a can of worms that can't possibly be worth opening, when they could just do D4 and avoid it all entirely.
Some games warrant remakes or remasters. Competitive games, games on systems that have antiquated controls and such that aren't really very playable anymore (most 90's era PC adventure/rpg's and some fps's), sure. D2 is still completely playable, just maybe a bit rough on the eyes.
Not saying they won't do it. Financially there's a lot of good reasons they would. If they keep the networking virtually identical they don't have to do much more than they already do to make it work, and assuming no sane person would expect them to release further D2 content, they can just get the sales and from their end call it a day. But for the players? I don't think we'd be getting the good end of that deal. Our monkey brains might tell us we want it, but when we get it there inevitably be a lack of satisfaction and we won't fully understand why. And many will just turn on Blizzard, assuming they did something to sour it, when really it's just the impossibility of reality meeting the expectations of memory and point in time that can't ever be recreated.
But! I'd buy it. Because of course I would. Just please god not mobile ports. Yeah, it might be easy in theory to replace a mouse click with a finger press (they'd have to redo D1's combat for sure), but I think people might not be considering how obtrusive having your finger over what you're trying to do, would be. I understand that there's plenty of games for mobile devices that do basically that; but these are games we're already used to, and how their visual representations are. Whole swaths of the satisfaction of using your abilities to mow down hordes of demons will be lost when your fat thumb is covering it all. Maybe that works in other mobile games, but Diablo and Diablo 2 are iconic, and it shouldn't underestimated how much the visual satisfaction that came from them would be ruined by not actually seeing what you're doing.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
They need to do the following: (in my opinion)
-Remove Charms completely
-Fix Run so that it doesn't decrease armor/dodge when you're running.
-Add perma-run
-Add area loot to gold, gems, runes, and other stackable items
-Add an autofill to the cube
-Add an in-game recipe book for the cube so players don't have to access 3rd party sites for rune words
-Clean up the talent trees across all classes
Honestly, the better option at this point would be to just put their art team on it and remake D2 inside the D3 game engine, and do a full rebuild of the campaign, and also make a brand new D2 adventure mode with repeatable/runnable dungeons for loot. Doesn't have to exactly mimic the Rifts/Greater Rifts of D3, but they need to do something to add life and challenge to the game past Hell Difficulty.
I would be surprised if they changed actual game mechanics. Charms, magic properties, the stamina thing, defense clearing when you're moving and only working when you are stationary, etc.