lol, he steered Diablo III development into being the top-selling PC game of the year, and as a result, Blizzard have tasked him with replicating that success on a new title.
The only reason it was the best selling game was because people were waiting for a sequel for many years. It doesn't mean the game was good. It was only until a week (or less) after it's release that people realized this and were pissed.
I don't know what to think of this. I am no fan at all of Jay Wilson's work. I don't know the guy, but the decision he took towards Diablo 3 were more than terrible, especially to Blizzard standards. I really hope he doesn't get reassigned on another title as game director. ESPECIALY not titan. In a way, I feel like Blizzard felt like having Jay say good bye and putting him somewhere off the heat for a bit was the smartest move, and I agree. While Diablo 3 isn't doing as good as they would like, they can probably save the game with an expansion that will fix the very bland gameplay.
Oh well, I don't think I will play Diablo 3 more than I did before, but I am still glad Blizzard woke up and understood Jay just couldn't bring a game with so much espectation up to them.
lol, he steered Diablo III development into being the top-selling PC game of the year, and as a result, Blizzard have tasked him with replicating that success on a new title.
The only reason it was the best selling game was because people were waiting for a sequel for many years. It doesn't mean the game was good. It was only until a week (or less) after it's release that people realized this and were pissed.
That's correct. Blizzard just can't be happy with how Diablo 3 turned out. They had Blizzard fans in the palm of their hands. They didn't have to make a good game to ensure a record sale. But delivering a bad game would make fans more aware next time. This is actually a very bad situation to be in. I preordered Diablo 3 collector's edition, my first collector's edition EVER. I bought every Blizzard game on day1 before preorder was a marketing stunt. Now I know I will never preorder a single game, and will wait to see how the game feels before buying it. I will not give my money so blindly next time. Not anymore.
Everyone I talked of Diablo 3 with share the same feeling about Blizzard, like they lost their touch, simply because Diablo 3 wasn't as good as it could have been. They thought they could do anything about this game, changing every aspect of it every 2 months in front of the fanbase. Add a transaction system, remove gameplay mechanics that were well thought in earlier itterations before removing them so it could fit their new RMAH system. They played with fire and they got burned. I wouldn't want to be in the shoes right now, must be a hard time when you know you aren't the flawless, most perfect, game company in the world anymore.
The hyperbolic treatment that Jay Wilson (and D3 in general) recieves is pretty crazy to me.
Does/did D3 have issues? A handful of objective ones but most are subjective.
You are one person and one opinion, there are tons of people who think differently than you. You are childish to demand things of people. It is this bizzare thing you really only see in video games and comics/manga and shit. Nobody is making you buy or play this game. It sucks if you don't like it but that is really tough titties at the end of the day. You can't please everyone and that is really the main issue behind a large majority of controversy surrounding any blizzard game.
I think for a lot of people it is because what they want is something they really can't get back in the first place, the sense of youth and excitment that came with playing games when they were younger.
D3 is not a terrible game in any sort of critical manner. The game functions well, looks and sounds nice, offers a substanial amount of gameplay (compared to most $60 games these days), and has added a considerable amount of content and fixes since its release. This is not a bad game. If you think D3 is bad then you really need to play some of the shitty random NES and SNES games that used to exist. Perhaps the overall vision of the game was misguided, but it doesn't make the game terrible or bad. Just because you don't personally enjoy something it doesn't make it a bad thing, its the entire point behind the whole 'not my cup of tea' type thing.
The D3 team could have certainly done better, but I don't really think you guys understand how stressful, time consuming, and complex software development (especially video games) can be. Especially a game that had been in development for so long and had been changed so many times. They have admirably tried to deliver you what you want and are met not only with no appreciation, but with hatred. Seriously? Its a video game. Jay Wilson is a human. Diablo 3 is his job. Can you imagine if a small mistake at work (which is what this would compare to) was met with public redicule, threats, and a constant spew of vitriol? Its immature and unfair.
I don't doubt Jay did the best job he could. He had the challenge of making a genre of game that hadn't been done really well since the last Diablo. Since then games have changed drastically. Anyone who thinks Jay could've release a game just like D2 and all would've been well is kidding themselves. Jay had a huge challenge and I think he did well. Of course much changes needed to be made, but much of the changes have already been made and many are still to come.
I wish he could be around to direct the game to its final product, but his fingerprints will be on this game forever and I think, for the most part, he did a great job. There are always haters of games, and I'm glad Bilzzard heeds their advice to some extent, but some people are so rude because they've never had or will never have a job this big. Cheers Jay, you did a great job. It's clear you you put blood, sweat, and tears in to this. I played a lot of hours and am not even close to done yet.
I think this had less to do with fans bitching and more to do with the MASSIVE amount of time they spent on PVP that they have scrapped and taken back to the drawing board now. I'll mess around with it whenever it shows up, but I'm not fixated on it. Still, I was concerned when the blog went up that basically said, "We've got nothing to show for the last 9 months. Here is dueling so that you can beat each other up if you want." Granted, other systems have been introduced since release, but all teams were not required at all times to put those together.
Or, as someone on page 1 said, Jay made more money from this game than any other PC game in 2012. Time to put those talents to good use in other IPs. I do think he is used as a scapegoat, it makes me sad. D3 hasn't been an endless source of entertainment for me, but I got more play time out of it than most games I've bought in the last few years, and I'll get yet more I'm sure. I never expected WoW with demons. After all, they can't support the game in the same way they do WoW on box sales alone.
IMO the team pussied out of a lot of things during the development. Obviously, not all of those decisions were Jay's, but still, he was the game director, and I'm not sad at all that he is moving on.
D3 is most certainly not a bad game. But it's not nearly as awesome as it could have been. Hopefully someone with a little more balls will take over. All the best to Jay.
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"Fear is the mind killer. Fear is the small death that brings total obliteration."
the only real mistake with d3 was not having regular content updates and pvp ready at release. the game is good and certainly worth the money. most people buy a game and play it for 20-50 hours at most. i'm betting every single person in this thread broke 100 hours on d3. i'm sure some went past 200 or even 300.
people wanted a game they would play as much and for as long as WoW while not paying a subscription. they may not admit it, but that's the cause behind a lot of the whine/complaint posts.
I could have told you the lead designers of Diablo 3 would eventually be asked to step down the day I saw that the beta was nothing like the original E3 demo.
I'm pleasantly surprised. Jay has himself to blame for over-promising and under-delivering on D3. His personal behaviour since release didn't help him any either.
I hope he was put on a pet project within Blizzard so that he won't do any further harm to existing projects in the pipe. If it's Warcraft 4 with him in charge I'm sure it'll release with the campaign but lacking multiplayer.
The hyperbolic treatment that Jay Wilson (and D3 in general) recieves is pretty crazy to me.
You don't see news like this article coming from games that are actually good.
It has far more than a handful of issues and the fact that you can't see that is why you're in the minority that thinks the game is fine.
Take other leading competing games in a genre like BF3 and CoD:Blops2. If you go to any article about one of those games there is often a debate about the other game being better (as is the nature of competition in general). In pretty much ANY article about D3, the majority of people are spitting on it and recommending the competition (articles on fansites mitigate this somewhat but even then, not much). Yet if you go to articles about other games in the ARPG genre, people still use the comment space to spit on D3 and recommend the product in the article or another competing title.
I have never seen a game so hated in 25+ years of gaming. It's not billed as the worst game ever made like say: the Atari E.T. game or Superman 64, but it's probably the game with the largest difference between the hype and the resulting reception.
People don't talk about games they don't care about. People go out of their way to flame D3 because they DO care. There are many like me who LOVE the series, but very much dislike some of the decisions made about this game. And since in the end it's just code, it can be changed. Some changes would be monumental and unlikely, but in the hopes that the series can have a modern epic, veteran fans pray (figuratively or literally) and continue to provide feedback to remind Blizzard where they stand currently with the game.
Good luck to Jay in future projects.
Im not stuck in the 90s, so I can enjoy D3 for what it is and not grasp at an old, outdated, "good-for-its-time" relic.Im certain D3 will be better than D2 ever was.
Lots of the good stuff from the 90s havent been implemented though, and thats a big mistake.
No Ladder
No runewords.
No PvP until 1.7
Only 4 players max instead of 8? big mistake.
heavy gold inflation as there is no gold sinks, or alternative currencies
Very little reason to team up
Removal of the usability og gold and magic find + a stupid cap.
No manual stat distribution as you are leveling up.
No infinite dungeon system.
Too much emphasis on weapon dmg and primary stats, which forces you to focus on only specific stats.
No funny weapons/items with special skill abilities(D2 teleport spell on a runeword comes to mind)
Poor combat against botters, resulting in a heavily inflated economy.
Little reason to level a new char as you can change your skills at a whim.
Runeword rofl.. D2 was way better before runeword.
If you want all this, go play back to D2.
D3 is actually nice to play, Give time to build and add content to the game.
Diablo 2 sucks until 1.08 to 1.10.
Good luck to Jay in future projects.
Im not stuck in the 90s, so I can enjoy D3 for what it is and not grasp at an old, outdated, "good-for-its-time" relic.Im certain D3 will be better than D2 ever was.
Lots of the good stuff from the 90s havent been implemented though, and thats a big mistake.
Many of the things you list are exactly what the OP was referring to.
Putting points into stats? There is a right vs. wrong answer to stats, so it adds nothing ot the game except punishing people who don't google for a cookie cutter build. Designers have figured this out since the 90s, thank goodness.
Likewise with magic find as a stat. They experimented here, but ultimately gear-switching for kills was dumb. The design they have right now where you need less MF the higher your paragon level actually makes for interesting gearing decisions and gear changes at endgame beyond straight upgrades.
Little reason to level a new char as you can change your skills at a whim.
Groan. You can't be serious, can you? Disallowing respecs is a great way to force everyone into the same cookie cutter build because attempting a new build requires an enormous time investment. If you enjoy leveling multiple characters, you can still do it. I did, and I did in WOW too despite having respecs available.
You mention other points that certainly have truth to them, and D3 isn't perfect by any means. But I thank Jay for the ambitious and creative direction they took with the game. They could have crapping out a Diablo2 clone (as other companies still do), but instead they gave us something new and interesting. Even if it has problems, at least they're new problems, not the same problems ARPGs had in the 90s. Most of their bets paid off, and the few that didn't are still solvable.
The game's direction since launch has been good, and I hope Jay's removal lets the same team that made the game and the post-launch improvements continue to iterate on the game with less animosity from the community.
1) He is going to work on prject titan = bad for us
2) He is going to work on project blackstone = bad for us
3) He is going to work on D3 expansion = bad for us
4) He is going to work on D3 secretely = bad for us
take your pick
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Rencol - Diablo fan since 1996 and walking encyclopedia of Diablo lore.
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The only reason it was the best selling game was because people were waiting for a sequel for many years. It doesn't mean the game was good. It was only until a week (or less) after it's release that people realized this and were pissed.
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8CBbeSAjVo
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI4peeO3yzY
LOL -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcJ_XT3oWtY
Oh well, I don't think I will play Diablo 3 more than I did before, but I am still glad Blizzard woke up and understood Jay just couldn't bring a game with so much espectation up to them.
That's correct. Blizzard just can't be happy with how Diablo 3 turned out. They had Blizzard fans in the palm of their hands. They didn't have to make a good game to ensure a record sale. But delivering a bad game would make fans more aware next time. This is actually a very bad situation to be in. I preordered Diablo 3 collector's edition, my first collector's edition EVER. I bought every Blizzard game on day1 before preorder was a marketing stunt. Now I know I will never preorder a single game, and will wait to see how the game feels before buying it. I will not give my money so blindly next time. Not anymore.
Everyone I talked of Diablo 3 with share the same feeling about Blizzard, like they lost their touch, simply because Diablo 3 wasn't as good as it could have been. They thought they could do anything about this game, changing every aspect of it every 2 months in front of the fanbase. Add a transaction system, remove gameplay mechanics that were well thought in earlier itterations before removing them so it could fit their new RMAH system. They played with fire and they got burned. I wouldn't want to be in the shoes right now, must be a hard time when you know you aren't the flawless, most perfect, game company in the world anymore.
Does/did D3 have issues? A handful of objective ones but most are subjective.
You are one person and one opinion, there are tons of people who think differently than you. You are childish to demand things of people. It is this bizzare thing you really only see in video games and comics/manga and shit. Nobody is making you buy or play this game. It sucks if you don't like it but that is really tough titties at the end of the day. You can't please everyone and that is really the main issue behind a large majority of controversy surrounding any blizzard game.
I think for a lot of people it is because what they want is something they really can't get back in the first place, the sense of youth and excitment that came with playing games when they were younger.
D3 is not a terrible game in any sort of critical manner. The game functions well, looks and sounds nice, offers a substanial amount of gameplay (compared to most $60 games these days), and has added a considerable amount of content and fixes since its release. This is not a bad game. If you think D3 is bad then you really need to play some of the shitty random NES and SNES games that used to exist. Perhaps the overall vision of the game was misguided, but it doesn't make the game terrible or bad. Just because you don't personally enjoy something it doesn't make it a bad thing, its the entire point behind the whole 'not my cup of tea' type thing.
The D3 team could have certainly done better, but I don't really think you guys understand how stressful, time consuming, and complex software development (especially video games) can be. Especially a game that had been in development for so long and had been changed so many times. They have admirably tried to deliver you what you want and are met not only with no appreciation, but with hatred. Seriously? Its a video game. Jay Wilson is a human. Diablo 3 is his job. Can you imagine if a small mistake at work (which is what this would compare to) was met with public redicule, threats, and a constant spew of vitriol? Its immature and unfair.
Dirty play Blizzard, dirty play.
I wish he could be around to direct the game to its final product, but his fingerprints will be on this game forever and I think, for the most part, he did a great job. There are always haters of games, and I'm glad Bilzzard heeds their advice to some extent, but some people are so rude because they've never had or will never have a job this big. Cheers Jay, you did a great job. It's clear you you put blood, sweat, and tears in to this. I played a lot of hours and am not even close to done yet.
Or, as someone on page 1 said, Jay made more money from this game than any other PC game in 2012. Time to put those talents to good use in other IPs. I do think he is used as a scapegoat, it makes me sad. D3 hasn't been an endless source of entertainment for me, but I got more play time out of it than most games I've bought in the last few years, and I'll get yet more I'm sure. I never expected WoW with demons. After all, they can't support the game in the same way they do WoW on box sales alone.
D3 is most certainly not a bad game. But it's not nearly as awesome as it could have been. Hopefully someone with a little more balls will take over. All the best to Jay.
people wanted a game they would play as much and for as long as WoW while not paying a subscription. they may not admit it, but that's the cause behind a lot of the whine/complaint posts.
"You fcked it up, we we'll put you on another project where you won't have as much resposibilities."
http://www.thebroctopus.com/comic/jay-wilsons-failed-pvp-ideas/
I hope he was put on a pet project within Blizzard so that he won't do any further harm to existing projects in the pipe. If it's Warcraft 4 with him in charge I'm sure it'll release with the campaign but lacking multiplayer.
You don't see news like this article coming from games that are actually good.
It has far more than a handful of issues and the fact that you can't see that is why you're in the minority that thinks the game is fine.
Take other leading competing games in a genre like BF3 and CoD:Blops2. If you go to any article about one of those games there is often a debate about the other game being better (as is the nature of competition in general). In pretty much ANY article about D3, the majority of people are spitting on it and recommending the competition (articles on fansites mitigate this somewhat but even then, not much). Yet if you go to articles about other games in the ARPG genre, people still use the comment space to spit on D3 and recommend the product in the article or another competing title.
I have never seen a game so hated in 25+ years of gaming. It's not billed as the worst game ever made like say: the Atari E.T. game or Superman 64, but it's probably the game with the largest difference between the hype and the resulting reception.
People don't talk about games they don't care about. People go out of their way to flame D3 because they DO care. There are many like me who LOVE the series, but very much dislike some of the decisions made about this game. And since in the end it's just code, it can be changed. Some changes would be monumental and unlikely, but in the hopes that the series can have a modern epic, veteran fans pray (figuratively or literally) and continue to provide feedback to remind Blizzard where they stand currently with the game.
Runeword rofl.. D2 was way better before runeword.
If you want all this, go play back to D2.
D3 is actually nice to play, Give time to build and add content to the game.
Diablo 2 sucks until 1.08 to 1.10.
Many of the things you list are exactly what the OP was referring to.
Putting points into stats? There is a right vs. wrong answer to stats, so it adds nothing ot the game except punishing people who don't google for a cookie cutter build. Designers have figured this out since the 90s, thank goodness.
Likewise with magic find as a stat. They experimented here, but ultimately gear-switching for kills was dumb. The design they have right now where you need less MF the higher your paragon level actually makes for interesting gearing decisions and gear changes at endgame beyond straight upgrades.
Groan. You can't be serious, can you? Disallowing respecs is a great way to force everyone into the same cookie cutter build because attempting a new build requires an enormous time investment. If you enjoy leveling multiple characters, you can still do it. I did, and I did in WOW too despite having respecs available.
You mention other points that certainly have truth to them, and D3 isn't perfect by any means. But I thank Jay for the ambitious and creative direction they took with the game. They could have crapping out a Diablo2 clone (as other companies still do), but instead they gave us something new and interesting. Even if it has problems, at least they're new problems, not the same problems ARPGs had in the 90s. Most of their bets paid off, and the few that didn't are still solvable.
The game's direction since launch has been good, and I hope Jay's removal lets the same team that made the game and the post-launch improvements continue to iterate on the game with less animosity from the community.
2) He is going to work on project blackstone = bad for us
3) He is going to work on D3 expansion = bad for us
4) He is going to work on D3 secretely = bad for us
take your pick