What happened to Blizzard?

[Rubber Cannonball]

This kind of thing isn't new.  Ever hear of the East India Company?  It "...was an English and later British joint-stock company. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with Mughal India and the East Indies, and later with Qing China. The company ended up seizing control of large parts of the Indian subcontinent, colonised parts of Southeast Asia, and colonised Hong Kong after a war with Qing China." Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

Mickey Mouse hasn't gone quite so far, yet.   

[Nikita_Sadkov]

The corporations are fully responsible for bribing lobbying the politicians for those overblown copyright laws.  See below for plagiarized fair use excerpt from https://www.theiplawblog.com/2016/02/articles/copyright-law/disneys-influence-on-united-states-copyright-law/

"So, how, you might wonder, have companies like The Walt Disney Company managed to maintain copyrights on certain creations for almost 100 years? In the case of the Walt Disney Company, the answer is simple. It is powerful enough that it actually changed United States copyright law before its rights were going to expire."

Blizzard did the equivalent of Disney taking a single surviving reel tape of early Mickey Mouse cartoon and throwing it into garbage. Then taking say Star Wars an re-voicing all characters, replacing Wookiee and Ewoks with 3d models, and releasing it on a badly mastered blu-ray, which crashes after 10 minutes of playback. In addition adding a license clause that viewers submit right to all fanart and fan fiction. And when customers complained, accusing them of setting expectations too high. That is what Blizzard basically did.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

At least Nightdive Studios put System Shock Remake back on rails. They actually scrapped their early work, because it was not up to the standards. That enraged fans and backers. But they apparently found better a funding and now it looks much better than their original prototype.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

Some fans remade the 1997 Fallout in Bethesda's 3d engine. I remember playing the original Fallout and it was more like reading Pick Your Own Adventure book, with occasional hex based battles, which offered little tactical choice. I'm not a huge RPG fan or a book worm, so I found it a bit boring. Then there was Fallout Tactics, it had little dialogue, but an expanded battle system, with vehicles, like tanks, and maps becoming actually 3d. It also had cool large robot bosses at later stages, and was generally a really difficult, even given its linear nature. Like XCOM Apocalypse it offered realtime mode as an additional challenge

Then Bathesda turned it all into a Morrowind game, but with reduced amount of text. I personally found it a bit better than the original 1997 Fallout, since RPGs naturally call for 1st person experience, but fans accused it of misunderstanding the original Fallout's narrative and retrofuturism in general. More recently Bathesda tried to diversify into MMORPGs with that online Fallout game, but without much QA it resulted into a buggy mess, although still less embarrassing than Blizzard's failure. Apparently now they have patched it into a playable state, early adopters were basically free beta testers

Anyway, with fanbase dedication now you can have a near perfect Fallout experience

[The Reaver of Darkness]

I wouldn't worry to much about ownership, Blizzard is just one company.  There are whole countries with the mindset:  "All your (creative works) are belong to us."   

What matters more is who backs them up. The USA government is often on the fence with these things, but they've been known to side with broken license agreements over common sense, previously existing laws, their own constitution, etc. If your own country won't defend you from a large corporation, then you have no defense against that corporation.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

Modern Blizzard apparently also lost grasp of what Diablo is. Since in Diablo III they tried to implement item trading between players. The whole item trading idea is absolutely incompatible with the roguelike genre, which builds completely around player solving problem with limited resources, given randomly on each playthrough. Taken to absurdity, roguelikes are similar to point and click adventure games, but with randomly generated item puzzles and RPG elements, where player develops character around what is available. Diablo also added real-time action element, to make it appealing to wider audience. Beside that, roguelikes have repeating tropes, like cursed items and scrolls. Original Diablo omitted that "cursed" element, despite it being very important to the genre, because it forces player to consider trade offs and taking risks, instead of just identifying each item (identify scrolls are rare and valuable by design). But I guess you cant expect Bobby Kotick to play Nethack or even original Diablo.

[Rubber Cannonball]

Diablo 2 had quite a bit of item trading between players at least in the multiplayer games.  Diablo 3 was done by a different team since the Blizzard North guys were gone.  They tried changing how item trading was done with Diablo 3 which the player base didn't like.  They also didn't care for the change in artistic style in D3 from 1 and 2.  I have D1 and D2 and their expansions, but never got D3 as the playerbase was complaining loudly about it when it came out.  The reason item trading was important in D2 was that many of the good and great items were only useful for a few character class builds.  Also the player's item stash was quite small compared to the number of good finds a player came across during a game.  Most of which his character couldn't use.  It was a big problem for those that only played offline single player until item stash programs came along.  They allowed a player to keep those finds for future character builds in future games.

Nethack is different in that there are much fewer great items, although there are more item types.  And those great items are usable by most or all character classes.  IIRC only a few of the named weapons cared about the character's alignment of which there were only 3 types.  Rogue, the original, while relatively simple in comparison to Nethack and the Diablo games, might be the hardest one to win.  I don't think I ever won it; it didn't help that I never figured out how to use the scare monster scroll correctly.

As for point and click adventure games, I generally much preferred the earlier text adventure games like the ones from Infocom.

West of House
You are standing in an open field west
of a white house, with a boarded front
door.
There is a small mailbox here.
>_



(from Zork 1)

[Nikita_Sadkov]

The reason item trading was important in D2 was that many of the good and great items were only useful for a few character class builds.  Also the player's item stash was quite small compared to the number of good finds a player came across during a game.  Most of which his character couldn't use.

Well these items are meant for ingame trade with AI merchants, or used in cooperative multiplayer. Then again, even the AI merchant idea is broken, if it allows player to trigger the merchant into restocking with a new set of artifacts. Classical roguelikes usually have traders with non-restockable inventories, which player could have tried to rob. There was a Diablo II clone called Broken Land, which restocked merchants on reload, allowing player to buy rare runes to upgrade equipment. The game is so broken and quirky, it was never completed by any one until recently. Now it is played by speedrunners exploiting the glitch to max out everything at the beginning. No challenge in there.

As for point and click adventure games, I generally much preferred the earlier text adventure games like the ones from Infocom.

These had the same room graph as Diablo, just in a text form. But yeah, it is easy to implement rather complex stuff with pure text.

[Yankes]

Modern Blizzard apparently also lost grasp of what Diablo is. Since in Diablo III they tried to implement item trading between players. The whole item trading idea is absolutely incompatible with the roguelike genre, which builds completely around player solving problem with limited resources, given randomly on each playthrough. Taken to absurdity, roguelikes are similar to point and click adventure games, but with randomly generated item puzzles and RPG elements, where player develops character around what is available. Diablo also added real-time action element, to make it appealing to wider audience.

But you do not understand D2 on BN, this was sole reason why they try implemented AH in D3. To any way play competitive with other you would need trade with others to get very rare runes of uniques to make your build work. Fun fact was that base currency was ring Sone of Jordan, it was in so demanded it was most duped item in game, because of that Blizz make some game mechanics that selling it to vendor could trigger spawn of UberDiablo.
In D3 blizz wanted to prevent most of this exploit and cheaters and create AH (D2 have it too but its unofficial).
Blizz succeeded in that, even too much because trading become so easy that is more effective to play AH than hardest difficulty.
Only real solution was simply ban trading all together, this mean now you can do less in that aspect in D3 than in D2.

[Nikita_Sadkov]

Petroglyph guys managed to recover lost data used for original Command & Conquer movies. At first they believed everything was lost, and nobody at EA knew what happened to original data and it was believed they just thrown it into a dumpster. But it was actually stored, and some detective work was required to tack it down. Guess when companies become as big as EA they lose grasp as what is happening inside. Hope EA also have stored the source material for other classic games, and it wont get damaged by fire or flood.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Blizz succeeded in that, even too much because trading become so easy that is more effective to play AH than hardest difficulty.

They failed because they made drop rates way too high. Drop rates in Diablo 3, last I checked, are high enough for a solo player to get high-end gear without really grinding much. Diablo 2 drops were orders of magnitude lower. If you didn't have a high-MF character that could run bosses really fast, and you couldn't trade with anyone else who could, then you had to make do with a lot of cheap drops and maybe one or two good items if you were lucky. But there was a huge scaling of item qualities in both games, enabling such rarity to work. Diablo 3 devs shot themselves in the foot making drops so high. Also, Diablo 3 itemization is exceedingly boring compared to Diablo 2 itemization, and there's virtually no theorycrafting to do at all. Reaper of Souls improved theorycrafting significantly, but it's still absolute trash compared to Diablo 2.

[Rubber Cannonball]

Diablo 2 was great but a bit too grindy.  Balance wise, power leveling, speed running, endless boss running shouldn't have been as effective as it was.  Full clear needed to be buffed a bit.  It might have been as simple as using a different drop algorithm for better drops for killing the last monster and popping the last chest between waypoints along with lowering the odds even more for top tier drops from repeat boss killing.  Also quests should have changed from game to game like in Diablo 1 but from a much larger pool of quest options to help replayability.  Top tier items could have been balanced better as a few of those items showed up as the best choice in too many character builds.  There were also a couple of OP runeword items.  But these are minor nitpicks compared to how good the rest of the game was.  I only played self found single player with gomule to stash finds.  I think I've come across only about 80% of the items.

[Yankes]

They failed because they made drop rates way too high. Drop rates in Diablo 3, last I checked, are high enough for a solo player to get high-end gear without really grinding much. Diablo 2 drops were orders of magnitude lower. If you didn't have a high-MF character that could run bosses really fast, and you couldn't trade with anyone else who could, then you had to make do with a lot of cheap drops and maybe one or two good items if you were lucky. But there was a huge scaling of item qualities in both games, enabling such rarity to work. Diablo 3 devs shot themselves in the foot making drops so high. Also, Diablo 3 itemization is exceedingly boring compared to Diablo 2 itemization, and there's virtually no theorycrafting to do at all. Reaper of Souls improved theorycrafting significantly, but it's still absolute trash compared to Diablo 2.

a) Many people accused Blizzard that they LOWER drop rates in D3 because they tried "force" people to use AH. This mean dorp rates can be relative.
b) Drop are smart in D3, you do not get crap and items for other classes (one thing this that irritate me at first was that only last mob in champion pack drop loot).
c) True fail that Blizz did in D3 is not nerfig sets, right now you have 1000% damage bonuses as base line for main sets that make any other items combination obsolete.
d) If we would remove sets and use only legendaries then D3 could have more interesting selection of items because many change how you spells work, this mean if blizz at finally decide to nerf every set to ground then then D3 itemization will be 1000% more compelling
e) There is color shift in D3 compared to D2: D3 legendaries are D2 Rares, and Ancient & Primal Ancients are D3 Uniques. D3 Rares after 70lvl are vendor trash that is only used for mats (in basic D3 this was not always the case, some rares with 63ilvl was better than 60ilvl legendaries but people complain and blizz changed that).

[Rubber Cannonball]

Except for a couple of cases, sets were too weak in D2.  That said having anything deliver 1000% damage bonus sounds OP.  IMO, a top tier set should be the best choice for a particular build of a character class.  But it shouldn't be the best or only build viable for that character class.  There should be a dozen or so viable builds for a character class relying on different items and skills of which the set choice is only one build.  I also think the best possible items should be randomly generated: magic, rare, and crafted.  A unique should have fixed stats as it represents an item of lore.  A magic item should be capable of being the best in a single attribute compared to any other item with that same attribute in the game.  For example, if the best unique headgear item has +2 to all skills in addition to other attributes then it should be possible but low odds to find a simple magic headgear with +4 to all skills as its only magic attribute. A +3 to all skills magic headgear could have a second magic attribute of less than top tier value.  A rare headgear with only 3 attributes could have +4 to all skills along with 2 lower tier attributes.  A rare with 5 attributes wouldn't have any top tier attribute values.  The player would have to choose between filling the head slot with 1 top tier attribute or 5 lesser tier attributes or something inbetween.  Essentially choosing between quality vs quantity and where quantity isn't always the best choice.  The reason the rare should have a chance to be to slightly better than a unique is simple:  Why can't the player's character have a unique item named after him when his rare item is found a few hundred years later and his story has passed into legend?  Isn't that where all the other uniques and sets come from; they do tend to be named after renowned people from the past.  All this is based on a Diablo 2 perspective as I haven't played D3.

[Yankes]

Except for a couple of cases, sets were too weak in D2.  That said having anything deliver 1000% damage bonus sounds OP.

I bit miss represents ranges of bonuses in D3: https://us.diablo3.com/en/item/raekors-burden-Unique_Shoulder_Set_05_x1
1000% * 5500% * 5 for one hit

And this is not OP, simply when you get full set you skip multiple difficulty levels and continue paly on high difficulty.
Right now in D3 because of this power creep we have around base 20 "difficulty levels".
Aside from that it have up to 150 level of challenge in Greater Rifts that slowly scale exponentially.
If you trivialize one level you can always go up one in challenge.

This is way I said that other items become obsolete, even if it give you +500% damage, and it can be used only as support for main set.

On bright side of this, every class have 4 different sets plus each set can sometimes have some variations.

IMO, a top tier set should be the best choice for a particular build of a character class.  But it shouldn't be the best or only build viable for that character class.  There should be a dozen or so viable builds for a character class relying on different items and skills of which the set choice is only one build.  I also think the best possible items should be randomly generated: magic, rare, and crafted.  A unique should have fixed stats as it represents an item of lore.  A magic item should be capable of being the best in a single attribute compared to any other item with that same attribute in the game.  For example, if the best unique headgear item has +2 to all skills in addition to other attributes then it should be possible but low odds to find a simple magic headgear with +4 to all skills as its only magic attribute. A +3 to all skills magic headgear could have a second magic attribute of less than top tier value.  A rare headgear with only 3 attributes could have +4 to all skills along with 2 lower tier attributes.  A rare with 5 attributes wouldn't have any top tier attribute values.  The player would have to choose between filling the head slot with 1 top tier attribute or 5 lesser tier attributes or something inbetween.  Essentially choosing between quality vs quantity and where quantity isn't always the best choice.  The reason the rare should have a chance to be to slightly better than a unique is simple:  Why can't the player's character have a unique item named after him when his rare item is found a few hundred years later and his story has passed into legend?  Isn't that where all the other uniques and sets come from; they do tend to be named after renowned people from the past.  All this is based on a Diablo 2 perspective as I haven't played D3.

Overall they plan do something like this in D4, sets stop begin top tier and they will be only "introduction" level.