On June 29 2012 21:45 Kickboxer wrote: Well, one of the most blasphemous blunders they did was cramming "comic relief" into their games. Every thime the buthcer says meat bad, vegetables good I cringe to the bottom of my soul and putting whymsyshire into d3 instead of a real endgame level is not only retarded but also disrespectful to the game and its playerbase.
Who even appreciates these things? I thought 5-year-olds preferred horror to cheesy humor and I sure as hell know adults like me find it extremely annoying. Had it even been remotely funny to begin with, it's still gimmicky as hell and gets stale in a matter of days.
Some really bad decisions on their part, that's for sure.
... cow level thereisnocowlevel nearly every single terran cinematic in the original starcraft
comic relief is new?
Haha.
I know right.
I think a bigger problem than Blizzard putting comic relief in their games, is the amount of people playing their games (key word games) that take themselves so seriously that they are honestly offended by comic relief in their video game experiences.
Things were so simpler when we were children weren't they? sigh.
i play games first and foremost for the gameplay, it has to be fun to get through the game or i lose interest fast. that being said i have a film degree and write screenplays and if the story is good/engaging then those are the games i really love (story combined with good gameplay, like bioshock, hl2 sc1 scbw).
personally, i still remember moments from sc and scbw story that were awesome. when i tell people to go through sc1 they are still impressed with the story to this day. sc2 story was an abomination and i didnt even finish it, something i thought would be impossible. i was so pumped to see what they would come up with for the story and it was just bad. the game itself was good, but flawed in many ways, and it takes blizzard so freakin long to fix things/respond to customer feedback. i find that frustrating.
you could say sure you are just older now and the things that appealed to you when you were a teenager naturally wont be as appealing now. that is just not true, a good game story can be every bit as involving/entertaining as a movie, they just rarely are, because companies dont believe players want a good story, or even most players wont play the full story anyway so why bother making it good.
i played WoW for about 6 months when burning crusade came out. the game was good, not mindblowing, but fun enough to lvl and get geared for pvp. the changes to skills and smoothing out the lvling curve (essentially dumbing the game down) was not appealing to me and while i understand why they would make these changes, it wasnt a game i was remotely interested in anymore. and it has just gone further and further away from what it made it good since.
which brings me to diablo. next to starcraft, diablo 2 is my favorite game. in high school me and my buddies would play hardcore mode every day after school. it was so much fun, some of my very favorite gaming memories are from those sessions. what i liked most was designing a build that i thought would be good, suffering through the first 25-30 levels so my build could get goin, and then just wiping out whole screens of enemies in a few seconds at later levels (lightning javelin amazon, and phoenix assassin were my main hardcore characters).
i was so excited for diablo 3 and got into the beta. i literally played 5 minutes and couldnt play anymore. it felt like diablo but too similiar. sc1 to sc2 many things stayed the same but it felt different enough, and modern enough to be enjoyable, gameplay wise at least. i just couldnt take diablo 3. the changes they made didnt appeal to me either. i LIKED planning my builds out and seeing how they turned out late game. the RMAH was disturbing to say the least. i havent mentioned the story of diablo 2 because it wasnt why i played the game, i dont really remember much/any of it. if sc2 story was any indication i have a bad impression in my head of what the diablo3 story turned out to be, and i dont care enough to play the game solely to see the story.
now you have to ask yourself why has blizzard gone down this path with their releases. and the answer is simple: cash money. right now, blizzard is free to do whatever they want because they bring in so much money for their parent companies. they can continue to coast for another few years at least and play things extremely safe. if there ever comes a day when their name isnt enough to move millions of copies then you can rest assured their freedom will go away also.
diablo 3 didnt appeal to me for many reasons but i am probably in the minority, what i want in a game is no longer what blizzard offers apparently. this is sad to me because blizzard games have been such a large part of my life, but it is the reality of what has happened.
Bros and bro-ettes, come on now. Blizzard of the yore was an independent game publisher who sank or swam in one of the most diversified video game markets in the history of man kind. Literally hundreds of little publishing houses were busy trying to push out games during the pre-Windows 95 era of gaming and while many of them were awful many of them were fucking awesome. Age of Kings? Dark Reign? Star Control? Master of Orion? The Fallout Series? and slightly later with Bungie with had Myth! And the original Halo. Epic epic games. But that was when video games were for nerds and 'losers.'
Today, Blizzard is part of a giant conglomerate whose biggest cash cow is re-releasing the exact same game with slightly better graphics every year and their target demographic are the common public. So yes, guys like Dustin Browder and whoever runs Diabo 3 can be hired away from terrible franchises that were already gutted, come in, fist all the creativity to death and exist because they are excellent corporate employees who do what they are told by their even-less-interested-in-games corporate overlords. Why do you think Big Studios in movies started making generic, expensive crap that they paddle to the masses in the summer? Its no coincidence that as movies became big business, garbage like the Transformers series keep getting green lights. The bland, number crunchers and political infighters whose chief expertise is sucking up to the more power who run most massive studios are neither visionary or innovative but since they operate in massive corporations that is not a negativism.
Which all goes to say is, if you want innovative games you have to take advantage of the second digital revolution and search out independent game producers and try to support them as best as you can before inevitably some boring corporation like Microsoft or Activision finds them, buys them for their creativity and intellectually property ,fires the creative people who dont want to see their intellectual property be turned into Transformers 4, MORE EXPLOSIONS edition and then proceeds to churn out over warmed garbage.
The problem is that everyone here votes with their dollars by buying the games that come out. COD breaks records with every 'new' release. Why should they do something else? The only way for this to change is for gamers to support smaller companies by buying their games, don't pirate them since pirating hurts the startup much more than the multi-billion dollar establishment game companies.
On April 13 2012 00:27 4ZakeN87 wrote: To put it simple, how did we get from this - -
To this -
My complaints about blizzard can be summarised by the progression of these videos alone.
Compare either of those to.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Well the D3 cinematics were not released yet when I made that post, and regarding SC2 I took it out as the exception from what I think otherwise is a bad trend if I remember correctly.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
You realize the pandas came from Warcraft 3 right? The game where both of the cinematics you linked are from right? Right?
You also realize that in Mists of Pandaria, the focus of the lore of the game is going back to the war between the Alliance and the Horde rather than some big conflict with a third party enemy (Lich King, Deathwing) Right? Or that the seemingly tranquil and happy facade of the Pandarens is merely a catalyst with which to make the war that the player brings them all the more tragic right?
Did you have a point?
Here they come, the blizzard fanboys that wont move an inch regardless of what Blizzard releases. Last time I wasted 10-15 post and maybe 10-15hour of my life describing why the D3 story would be shit. Now I dare you to find a person who thought that D3 had a great story. Weird that no of those guys are here now, dont you think?
If you want to ramble on about on how great the freaking panda land story is going to be, be my guest. Personally I will just wait for the game this time and then I will comeback, see how many persons I kind find that are willing to jump to the defense of the epic panda story that they have experience on panda island.
And yeah there was a panda in WC3. I am sure there was a sheep somewhere to, why not make a Goatdaria instead? And then Alliance and Horde can both claim the goat! It will be an epic war between the two sides. Blizzard should hire me.
In my opinion WC2 > WC3 >>>>>>>>>>>>> WoW in story and atmosphere Diablo 2 had way better atmosphere and story than Diablo 3 (which was TERRIBLE in that regard - how can blizzard even justify Leah and Maghda and all the stupid taunting prime evils?!) Starcraft 1 was also more interesting than Starcraft 2.
It feels like whatever change in attitude that happened in WC2 -> WC3, has increased with every single blizzard release - and for the worse IMHO
Why are you guys even arguing over cinematics? You don't really need those in a game for it to be good. And please stop praising D2 story and atmosphere as it was as nothing compared to the true Diablo.
This, my friends, is how you make the quest interesting and build atmosphere. And this is how a truly dark and terrifying game looks like, D2 is for kiddies.
Guys. I think I know the cause behind all of this.
High-End graphics..
Ranging from the Transformers of movies to the Battlefield 3's of games, the high-end graphics brought in a swooping force of low-intelligence (i say low, but it's an exaggeration) that are willing to pay top-dollar for realistic shit.
Think about the "old", "shitty graphics" games... they were cool, awesome, badass, amazing, quality. Yet who played them? People who cared about the games, and rarely the graphics themselves.
well, i guess many people are not really involved into dota 2, so id like to pint out here that valve is actually exactly doing what so many people miss in todays work of blizzard. they spent such a huge amount listening to and communicating with the community its absolutely amazing. and i would not exaclty consider valve a small company...so, no, times have certainly not change for the worse in general, but maybe its time to accept that todays blizzard is not what it was many years ago. however, there are other companies to take their place.
On June 30 2012 09:18 Keitzer wrote: Guys. I think I know the cause behind all of this.
High-End graphics..
Ranging from the Transformers of movies to the Battlefield 3's of games, the high-end graphics brought in a swooping force of low-intelligence (i say low, but it's an exaggeration) that are willing to pay top-dollar for realistic shit.
Think about the "old", "shitty graphics" games... they were cool, awesome, badass, amazing, quality. Yet who played them? People who cared about the games, and rarely the graphics themselves.
Think about it...
No. Correlation is not causation.
Homeworld series had a brilliant storyline and absolutely breathtaking graphics for its time. It STILL looks pretty good nowadays. Blizzard games have bad stories simply because they have bad writers and bad management. There's no other mystery cause. Blizzard is just a bad company nowadays. I bought SC2 and I liked it, but it's mostly because they tried really really hard not to screw up perfection. (And it still fell short of the original). D3 they tried to do the same and just blew hogballs.
All in all, Blizzard nowadays is a maggot feeding off the corpse left behind by the actual talent and creativity that made Blizzard a studio worth buying out by some soulless megacorporation.
If you want to assign blame anywhere, blame the big money publishers and companies that are run by finance people who don't know or give a shit about games and just want to pump out trash to turn a quick, reliable buck.
I feel company size is one of the attribute on declined creativity, especially if management didn't put as much effort into gameplay, instead it's all about money.
When company was small, everyone were close, people discuss what would be fun, things that people wanted to play themselves. When company gets too big, you lose the passion because you just doing small part of a project, you're just do what you're told and other things don't concern you anymore. This is what I personally experienced in a develop environment.
When company gets so big, so many shareholders and all. It's all about money as any loss will be very impact and harder to recover, a safer formula might be more appeal as well, however I could be wrong.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
You realize the pandas came from Warcraft 3 right? The game where both of the cinematics you linked are from right? Right?
You also realize that in Mists of Pandaria, the focus of the lore of the game is going back to the war between the Alliance and the Horde rather than some big conflict with a third party enemy (Lich King, Deathwing) Right? Or that the seemingly tranquil and happy facade of the Pandarens is merely a catalyst with which to make the war that the player brings them all the more tragic right?
Did you have a point?
Here they come, the blizzard fanboys that wont move an inch regardless of what Blizzard releases. Last time I wasted 10-15 post and maybe 10-15hour of my life describing why the D3 story would be shit. Now I dare you to find a person who thought that D3 had a great story. Weird that no of those guys are here now, dont you think?
If you want to ramble on about on how great the freaking panda land story is going to be, be my guest. Personally I will just wait for the game this time and then I will comeback, see how many persons I kind find that are willing to jump to the defense of the epic panda story that they have experience on panda island.
And yeah there was a panda in WC3. I am sure there was a sheep somewhere to, why not make a Goatdaria instead? And then Alliance and Horde can both claim the goat! It will be an epic war between the two sides. Blizzard should hire me.
Oh I agree the Diablo 3 story was terrible, but it was no worse than Diablo 2 or Diablo 1's story. The fact of the matter is, the story in those games was never that great to begin with. The argument that somehow Diablo 3's story is worse is what baffles me.
Same goes for Mists of Pandaria. I'm playing in the beta and the lore is no worse than in any of the previous WoW expansions, the REAL downslide of WoW lore happened with the Draenei/Blood Elf fiasco in the Burning Crusade. Everything since then has been brilliant lore writing by comparison, which isn't a decline it's an improvement.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
You realize the pandas came from Warcraft 3 right? The game where both of the cinematics you linked are from right? Right?
You also realize that in Mists of Pandaria, the focus of the lore of the game is going back to the war between the Alliance and the Horde rather than some big conflict with a third party enemy (Lich King, Deathwing) Right? Or that the seemingly tranquil and happy facade of the Pandarens is merely a catalyst with which to make the war that the player brings them all the more tragic right?
Did you have a point?
Here they come, the blizzard fanboys that wont move an inch regardless of what Blizzard releases. Last time I wasted 10-15 post and maybe 10-15hour of my life describing why the D3 story would be shit. Now I dare you to find a person who thought that D3 had a great story. Weird that no of those guys are here now, dont you think?
If you want to ramble on about on how great the freaking panda land story is going to be, be my guest. Personally I will just wait for the game this time and then I will comeback, see how many persons I kind find that are willing to jump to the defense of the epic panda story that they have experience on panda island.
And yeah there was a panda in WC3. I am sure there was a sheep somewhere to, why not make a Goatdaria instead? And then Alliance and Horde can both claim the goat! It will be an epic war between the two sides. Blizzard should hire me.
Oh I agree the Diablo 3 story was terrible, but it was no worse than Diablo 2 or Diablo 1's story. The fact of the matter is, the story in those games was never that great to begin with. The argument that somehow Diablo 3's story is worse is what baffles me.
Same goes for Mists of Pandaria. I'm playing in the beta and the lore is no worse than in any of the previous WoW expansions, the REAL downslide of WoW lore happened with the Draenei/Blood Elf fiasco in the Burning Crusade. Everything since then has been brilliant lore writing by comparison, which isn't a decline it's an improvement.
Oh yes it is. Diablo 2's story is amazing. And the cinematics are the best I've seen in a video game. The writing was mature, the story about chasing the dark wanderer was compelling, Marius' story was even more amazingly told, the atmosphere and tone was perfect, the ending was a mindfuck cliffhanger.
So your argument is that all games ever released by blizzard has had a terrible story so it is good/expected that they keep doing that. Pretty much saying it is okay for Blizzard to having forced and goofy story lines in there games, that is the way we like it! Thus we should expect the story of Pandaria to be shit and rejoice over the fact!
Well first I think you are going to have to search the globe to find another person that agrees with your statement that the story if Diablo 3 is equal to its to predecessors.... and.. no... Sorry your argument is just really weird and based on an assumption that no one on this forum would agree on. And I wont explain this one more time, read the thread.
Blizzard can still make a fucking fantastic cinematic when they want to. You're comparing a beta preview to two pre-rendered cinematics. If you're going to make comparisons at least compare them with their new pre-rendered cinematics.
Although I believe that the BW and D2 cinematics had more depth than the more modern variants. My point actually doesn't really have anything to do with the cinematics alone.
How did we get from Orcs vs Humans to Happy Asian Humanoid Pandas in the same universe?
You realize the pandas came from Warcraft 3 right? The game where both of the cinematics you linked are from right? Right?
You also realize that in Mists of Pandaria, the focus of the lore of the game is going back to the war between the Alliance and the Horde rather than some big conflict with a third party enemy (Lich King, Deathwing) Right? Or that the seemingly tranquil and happy facade of the Pandarens is merely a catalyst with which to make the war that the player brings them all the more tragic right?
Did you have a point?
Here they come, the blizzard fanboys that wont move an inch regardless of what Blizzard releases. Last time I wasted 10-15 post and maybe 10-15hour of my life describing why the D3 story would be shit. Now I dare you to find a person who thought that D3 had a great story. Weird that no of those guys are here now, dont you think?
If you want to ramble on about on how great the freaking panda land story is going to be, be my guest. Personally I will just wait for the game this time and then I will comeback, see how many persons I kind find that are willing to jump to the defense of the epic panda story that they have experience on panda island.
And yeah there was a panda in WC3. I am sure there was a sheep somewhere to, why not make a Goatdaria instead? And then Alliance and Horde can both claim the goat! It will be an epic war between the two sides. Blizzard should hire me.
Oh I agree the Diablo 3 story was terrible, but it was no worse than Diablo 2 or Diablo 1's story. The fact of the matter is, the story in those games was never that great to begin with. The argument that somehow Diablo 3's story is worse is what baffles me.
Same goes for Mists of Pandaria. I'm playing in the beta and the lore is no worse than in any of the previous WoW expansions, the REAL downslide of WoW lore happened with the Draenei/Blood Elf fiasco in the Burning Crusade. Everything since then has been brilliant lore writing by comparison, which isn't a decline it's an improvement.
Oh yes it is. Diablo 2's story is amazing. And the cinematics are the best I've seen in a video game. The writing was mature
WOOSH
that's the sound of your credibility leaving this thread
EPT
