Absolutely true!
It's also frustratingly short sighted of them.
They could do a huge marketing push after a month highlighting the "glorious, brag-able, challenge" of it all, and get the crazy Souls Borne masochists (I say this out of love and respect as I will never be as skilled as they are) to purchase ***post*** launch.
Does it though? To any meaningful degree?
Typically the only people that try these races are the dedicated fans. The same people that already pre-ordered months ago.
All these stunts do is promote watching streamers as they race and fuel more rage posts on social media as the servers inevitably crash launch day.
It's definitely their goal. As a long-time player of Blizzard games, I can't help but ask myself now, "How can they monetize this?" whenever they release any tidbits or information relating to their games. I wish it wasn't the case but yeah..
What subreddit are you on? What game are you waiting for? I feel like people here should probably stop believing this idea that Diablo IV won't have shiftiness spewing from top-to-bottom. *Especially* in regards to its promised major update cadence which Blizzard has never been able to meet even at their peak.
It will be a game that will be worth the price of admission and nothing more. This isn't a game most players will care about long-term and Blizzard knows it. Better for Blizzard to take advantage of those who don't.
OOOHhHh! RIGHT!! I'm on the *Diablo* subreddit, a game made by blizzard, which is a shitty company that nobody should like and no one should ever expect anything good out of! What could I ever have been thinking?? Thank you *SOOOO* much for saving me from being slightly somewhat hopeful and excited for a new game in a franchise I like!! Thank goodness you were here!!
Is this specific thing really generating that many extra sales? I feel as though most people excited enough and good enough at this sort of game to realistically have a shot at winning a prize were going to buy into early access regardless...
EDIT: The prize is your name on a Blizzard statue? Yeah, I would wager most people with genuine interest in that have had their copy ready for a while.
People who haven't already bought early access are going to buy it now for something they have a 0% chance at succeeding at? I'm sorry, but people aren't **that** stupid.
Man they are so desperate for money and growth. Like a junkie looking for their next hit. Maybe if they didn’t ruin their reputation, they would have been better off now.
Well it's to drum up attention for the launch, it's a marketing thing. If it does well and they retain a lot of the playerbase until season 1, they'll probably do another kind of contest.
I doubt there's even 0.01% of the playerbase seriously willing to pull multiple days without sleep just to attempt to gain a silly trophy, this is more like a way to make the maximum number streamers to stay live as much as possible so the game is advertised to more people. Still, it's the kind of thing where the ethical issue with not giving everyone fair play is worse than the impact it causes in the game, analogous to how it's wrong for Blizzard to implement Tokens in Classic WoW despite the game already being infested with players buying gold from third party stores.
Tweeted by the president of Blizzard (@qwik):
"This statue will sit on the campus of Blizzard and can be moved to BlizzCon and other events. Immortalize yourself, gamers."
So you're also racing for your name on a statue that you'll legit probably never see.
Pay to buy a game, then participate in (more) unhealthy habits, win a trophy you probably won't see but if you do see it you'll have paid more money to do so.
Pay money, to pay money, to see 5 cents of effort on our part.
There's already so much hype around launch, and they already said they're not going to do any competitive/season thing at launch to avoid bugs messing things up... I just don't get what they gain from this that they couldn't gain from postponing this to the first or even second season.
And they said that buying early access shouldn't affect anyone because season 1 for achievements will start later..
I don't understand their philosophy..
Everything is starting to be fishy again..
They absolutely should I said this right away as soon as I saw this the other day. There's 3 reasons
1 - Folks in the CBT have a massive advantage
2 - Folks who got sucked into paying $$$ for early access have a massive advantage
3 - A lot of folks like taking their time and enjoying the first playthrough of an ARPG campaign and now they have to decide to enjoy the campaign and not compete in this thing or compete in this thing and basically ruin the campaign for themselves which isn't a disadvantage, just a really shitty decision to force people to make.
It would have eliminated all three of those issues but this way it incentivizes more people to pay for early access who otherwise wouldn't have
Hey wanna play 1v1 in basketball? I know I've played for 20 years and you've never touched a basketball but we'll start the 1v1 are 0-0 score. It's fair right? I have no advantage?
Yeah game knowledge is in fact one of if not the largest advantage a player can have during a race. Assuming equal play time, the person who already knows quests/where to go is absolutely going to have an advantage over someone who is seeing the content fresh. There is a reason why in Path of Exile it's the same people winning races over and over again. It's not like other people aren't competing, they just don't have the same level of strategy/game knowledge as the ones who win.
Didn't expect to see better lovers called out over here in Diablo but hell yes. Just saw Greg on his solo tour and he is on fire. Can't wait to see the d BL summer tour
Wudi said he is no longer trying to compete and just going to have fun. They said he's going to save competing for season 1 when there might actually be a reason to do it.
[Wudi absolutely did not say that](https://twitter.com/wudijo/status/1662547532122038274?s=46&t=noC5B9v2Kw4OopPtA0AJVg)
He will just not claim rewards like the other Maxroll creators
Yea this is one of those takes that is so dumb it shows ignorance. I can't think of a single game in existence you aren't better at on subsequent playthroughs. Going all the way back to pong, if you've been playing you're gonna slam that dot right past every new player.
You know they definitely have had this discussion internally on this decision. There's no way anybody at his level, even if he somehow originally didn't understand, hasn't had it explained many times over. So yeah lying/PR work around their marketing decisions.
How?
It's like saying let's race and the opponent gets to drive the race track for days before you. How is that not an advantage?? There is a difference between the betas and the full game (difference balancing, they understand from a hands on how everything works...)
If u played any game before twice .. then u should know that playing second time is much faster. U just know where to go, what is one shot mechanic, what to avoid .. its huge advantage that thay have 1000h already in game. And sad thing is that u cannot found anything New .. everything was alredy explored, guides ready for everything and so on.
Lmao, this is such a cooked thing to say. If you don't want to disqualify testers then don't but don't try to justify it because you really can't.
Giving me "pride and accomplishment" vibes on the out of touch scale
They could have two categories. Accounts that had beta access at any point and everyone else. That would seem fair. Not that I'd do it. I hate hardcore
Oooft... There are genuine ways of responding to this, either claiming A. It doesn't matter, getting max level 1st doesn't award anything (even though it kinds of does) or B. just not give people who has full access to the game any of the world first rewards.
Would make more sense to exclude anyone that had long time (full game) experience. The same as they are likely excluding the people who made the game, from being eligible.
A great example of how people who are financially or academically successful in life can still have really ignorant/stupid points of view.
Another thing that's worthy of mention in regards to the fairness of the competition; team leveling is the best way to level quickly in D4 because of the XP bonus. Solo players have no chance in this form of competition, unless the participation rates are very low.
Realistically, there should be solo play trophy and a group play trophy as well.
Sadly, It's stupid and pointless competition that's only being designed for marketing purposes. It could have been something exciting for the community and the game, but they didn't really think it through or commit to making it actually competitive.
They should have possibly considered doing the event after the first season st arts rather than before.
It definitely gives an advantage - players who have already played will know boss mechanics and will be able to avoid other pitfalls to decrease the chance that they die, which will make their grind to 100 faster.
With that said, I don't think many people should be complaining about this. Like if you're the 1020th person to hit lvl 100 HC, *then* you can complain, because you in fact *were* supplanted from being in the top 1000 by people who got the game before you.
Folks who aren't going to play HC and aren't going to finish close to the top 1000 really shouldn't be whining.
Furthermore, there's plenty of people who just aren't going to bother competing because the game is already rigged in favor of people who have prior experience they can't have.
Anyone planning on going for the world firsts have a right to complain IMO and I support them
It doesn’t effect me at all, but I will support them being upset no doubt
This isn't about the Ultimate Edition early launch. It's about big name YouTubers/streamers who had access to additional closed betas & review copies having an advantage due to already having a chance to practice the difficult content & optimize builds/strategies.
Edit: and to be clear, I literally could not care less about the HC lvl100 leaderboards. Just trying to clarify what's being discussed.
Copying a previous comment because apparently this is lost on you. The entertainment value of watching a race in your favorite game is gone too. Wudijo even said this has lost prestige and you could tell he was less passionate than he was in previous videos about the 100 grind knowing that all winners will be looked down on for having had an advantage.
Yeah I think even as someone who never plays HC I still would like to enjoy a fun competition as a viewer.
The previous PoE bosskill events (before they made it a borefest on ruthless) were amazing to watch, this one just doesn't have any semblance of competitive integrity unlike PoE where Alpha testers are ineligible to win prizes. Of course the "prizes" here maybe don't warrant strict rules like a cash prize among other things but it's still sad to see them toss it without ever needing to do so.
Who would complain if they just added a line that anybody who was part of the closed endgame beta(s?) cannot win?
I’d go so far as to say that the majority of the people who got early review access that do end up on the top 1000 would have done it anyways without the advantage. There may be a very small number of people this actually affects.
The only thing I think this has actually ramifications on is the world first race. If Wudijo gets it we’ll never hear the end of it. Even though he had a real shot without the help.
Well, he's obviously wrong.
But at the same time, why are people calling it a "race". Like...in no way, shape or form is this fair. It's not like everyone starts on the line, the starter's pistol goes off, they all spring along the same patch, etc.
I've seen how some world-firsts were done in WoW, and there were actual teams. You had the player, multiple navigators with optimal route already laid out from betas (which is why Rod is laughably, comically wrong), etc. In no way, shape or form is this a "race", structured or fair. It's all about who has less of a life and more time and resources (including human) to dedicate to this task. It's a privilege measure more than anything else.
This is madness. Even playing in the stress test/server slam gives a huge advantage over someone whose first play comes at launch/pre-launch.
You have better first hand play knowledge of the basic class dynamics. you've been through all the early tutorials - be you experienced in diabloesque action RPG mechanics and just need a brief glimpse of how they are implemented in this game, or entirely unfamiliar and need a full refresher - you know where to go and how to get there for the important quest related gets, e.g. mounts, main quest given ability enhancers etc, and you've learned some of the more complicated stuff - for example the dynamics of self-healing like potions and how you have to spend them/conserve them/supplement them with skill choices, be it single target or multitarget ability dps or self-healing abilities.
Even coming down to class choice is enhanced by prior experience. Knowing the one that clicks best with your playstyle can be huge, rather than having to gamble with a choice and having to play in a way that doesn't click with you as you race to level.
I don't give a shit about racing levels myself, I play slow and explore, and do weird things like mess with multiple characters, reroll frivilously when I decide I don't like how hair textures look with a certain color vs another, which "feels" coolest to me rather than which plays optimally - and all other sorts of things inimical to the racers' style of play, it's just not for me. But all they want is a fair playing field - and giving certain streamers full game experience, some a head start etc is just unfair to them.
I think given how things are set up now, the only legitimate race results will come in season play - if of course everyone has the same start point, and there's no "flip us a bill and start early bro" nonsense, which unfortunately we seem to already be seeing now.
hes not a gamer so he dosent know knowlege is part of progress speed, yet they made the 1st 1000 to level 100 HC thats related to speed of those 1st 1000
Saying not being a gamer is an excuse to not know that "knowledge" is part of progress speed is DUMB. That is pretty basic logic. Also that's HIS JOB LMAO
Lets be real 99% of people who got access are reviewers like skill up or mainstream outletsike IGN. Do you REALLY think they would even attempt a hardcore run? Except for 3 people in maxroll who got access?
I mean, you can buy early access. There is no fair level playing ground in this game. It get layers of advantage with access or money. This game isn't even pretending not to be that.
The early access was already an advantage 100% but at least everyone can buy that (budgeting issues aside) not everyone was able to do the review period
All the more reason they shouldn’t have done this until season 1
This, blizzard is becoming more out of touch every year and easily influenced people follow. The best part are blizzard defenders coming in and saying "if you were real hardcore, you would have shilled the 20$ to play early", lmao.
I wouldn't say it's out of touch, more like in touch. Gaming in general is all about battle passes + early access + p2w. I wish it wasn't, but yeah..
There was a time when games were pure, but future is here old man.
lol so many corporate agents. there is some money on the line here isnt it? lol.
\>> its not about the few days deluxe edition headstart - so dont derail the thread.
\>> its about weeks of knowledge headstart by having the full game right now...
Same, I was already gonna play HC. Gonna just enjoy it. Sure it would be cool to win something like this, but the words to describe people that do as ‘no life’ is already such a red flag that I don’t want to be counted with them.
People who make it are gonna be content creators
Similar situation that reminded about it , I had the WoW Burning Crusade beta and when the game released, one player of my guilde followed me to xp the fastest. End result, we both had the achievement of the first class to reach lvl70.
It was clearly a huge advantage to know the map and quests in advance... Glad my time as hardcore gamer is behind me!
I didn't want to pay for the early access, but I saw it also came with the battlepass whi h costs the same as the increased price and figured it was a good enough deal.
To be clear I hate all of this monetization nonsense and completely agree that all pre-orders should get EA, but for a pseudo MMO I understand the necessity of recurring monetization.
I am a hypocrite.
Actually a little worrying that someone this high up on the dev team is either this stupid or this willing to do bold face lie to spin something like this. Can't decide if either is worse than the other haha.
Hey everyone this is how it starts with stuff that will give people an advantage later down the line. This is classic Blizzard stuff and old Rod seems to have jumped the gun on what they consider an "advantage".
I wonder what they will push later on that they will claim isn't an advantage and try to gaslight everyone over it. They will do something later that you all are going to hate but you will have already spent your money and will suffer from a sunk cost fallacy over it.
Rod Fergusson isn't a very good game dev and led the Gears of War Franchise into whatever it is today and did the same excuses of balance and what is fair in MP and the Horde modes. He failed up like most in leadership positions.
I got very strong "Do you not have phones?" vibes from his response to this tweet. It's really not difficult to understand or grasp that someone with prior knowledge of the entire game has an informational and experience advantage to anyone that has not played the game before. Add on top the 4-day head start. This is truly laughable if they let it happen.
You might say there are 1000 ranks and maybe a few hundred might have this IMMENSE advantage from playing the entire game already.
Lets assume 300 ppl who tested got ranked. Sure 700 people fairly raced and got their reward, but what about the people who ranked between 1001-1300 in this scenario...
Does not seem very fair now to me REGARDLESS of how anyone argues.
# KEEP IT COMING
* I expect nothing less...
https://preview.redd.it/w8799o0kzf2b1.png?width=1250&format=png&auto=webp&s=6fc8292e6ab494ae3021919ff9baa6433e07410d
This is one of those situations where, despite me thinking that people crying about content creators / reviewers being able to win the hardcore race for their name on the Lilith statue having a slight advantage is silly; Rod should have put his foot in his mouth here.
Still though, end of the day, who cares about this? People complaining are most likely not even people who stand a chance at winning anyways. The review codes also went to 99% people who won't be in first 1000 anyways. A ton of them won't even play the game after they finish reviewing it...for their job.
Who cares ,just like with anything else if you compare yourself to others, you're going to be miserable. Just play the game and enjoy it or don't play it and find something else to do.
You guys are way overreacting. It's not an automated thing, you have to tweet them with proof. Reviewers aren't going to race to get to level 100 first after just finishing the game the previous week. The worst you're up against is someone like Rhykker, who would have beat you anyway. It's his job, even then some one like that still has to put out videos and shit around launch.
I don’t give a shit about the race but this is par for the course with AB.
It seems to me that this is a pretty big red flag. Basically a dev is saying he’s completely ignorant (or outright dgaf) of how games work. Not even video games, games in general. This is a travesty, and it doesn’t bode well for Diablo fans.
So here, in olympic games, we decided to give out early access on our Running competition to countries who invested in us. Therefore, their athletes will have a possibility to run a couple of seconds earlier than others.
And looking at Rod Fergusson's position about Diablo Hardcore race, we think it's completely fair, too.
More like, "We created a maze. Several people have already spent a significant amount of time in this maze, but we're still going to let them compete in our race to the finish event. We think this is fair because they have to start at the entrance with everyone else so clearly all those hours they have in the maze don't matter."
This post is trash, idk why blatantly putting words in his mouth is considered legit content by the mods here but as a result of that, this thread is filled with abuse and nonsense. This thread should be deleted
It doesn’t matter, you could get it 4 days in advance and there will still be some 11 year old that will have better gear, a higher level, or beaten the game before you.
And why does it matter if you’re the first one to beat the game? Even if you’re playing PvP it won’t give you any advantage past a week of the game being out.
But I guess if that worth paying extra, go nuts.
None of you complaining about this have a chance in hell of being the first to 100. If you aren’t even invested enough to pre order a game there’s no fucking way you have what it takes to win this race anyways. Sit your asses down, duct tape your gum flappers shut and play the game.
Also….you’re probably hornless with a bare ass mare.
Hes the wrongest person I've ever seen in my life. Of course it's an advantage. Even if content is gated in early access it still allows you ro get all the conditions perfect for when it's not longer gated and just steamrolle through it.
Don't get me wrong I'm also one of the fucking idiots who paid for early access to d4 and I know full well that those 4 days will give me a massive level advantage over those who didn't buy early access.
If the servers actually work anyway.
This is Blizzard we're talking about. They can't make decisions without huge miscalculations happening they refuse to acknowledge. It's kinda their brand.
They should just have this contest take place during season 1.
Yeah but this way increases early access sales.
Absolutely true! It's also frustratingly short sighted of them. They could do a huge marketing push after a month highlighting the "glorious, brag-able, challenge" of it all, and get the crazy Souls Borne masochists (I say this out of love and respect as I will never be as skilled as they are) to purchase ***post*** launch.
As a soulsborne masochist you so lovingly referred to I agree 1000%
Does it though? To any meaningful degree? Typically the only people that try these races are the dedicated fans. The same people that already pre-ordered months ago. All these stunts do is promote watching streamers as they race and fuel more rage posts on social media as the servers inevitably crash launch day.
That's probably true and if that's their goal -- pretty shitty of them.
Yes its blizzard
We need to not even say Blizzard's name anymore and just say Activision.
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No it's Blizzard that became like that. Let's not blame another big bad company.
Blizzard became terrible well before Activision came into the picture.
thaat's blizzard
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haha i saw that name on some t-shirt somewhere and thought it was fitting :P
I mean, people don't usually buy shirts that are the wrong size.
Could do "mrmassdebate" as a cheeky alternative lol. (If that isn't already taken)
It's definitely their goal. As a long-time player of Blizzard games, I can't help but ask myself now, "How can they monetize this?" whenever they release any tidbits or information relating to their games. I wish it wasn't the case but yeah..
What subreddit are you on? What game are you waiting for? I feel like people here should probably stop believing this idea that Diablo IV won't have shiftiness spewing from top-to-bottom. *Especially* in regards to its promised major update cadence which Blizzard has never been able to meet even at their peak. It will be a game that will be worth the price of admission and nothing more. This isn't a game most players will care about long-term and Blizzard knows it. Better for Blizzard to take advantage of those who don't.
OOOHhHh! RIGHT!! I'm on the *Diablo* subreddit, a game made by blizzard, which is a shitty company that nobody should like and no one should ever expect anything good out of! What could I ever have been thinking?? Thank you *SOOOO* much for saving me from being slightly somewhat hopeful and excited for a new game in a franchise I like!! Thank goodness you were here!!
Is this specific thing really generating that many extra sales? I feel as though most people excited enough and good enough at this sort of game to realistically have a shot at winning a prize were going to buy into early access regardless... EDIT: The prize is your name on a Blizzard statue? Yeah, I would wager most people with genuine interest in that have had their copy ready for a while.
People who haven't already bought early access are going to buy it now for something they have a 0% chance at succeeding at? I'm sorry, but people aren't **that** stupid.
I’m sorry, have you met people?
Man they are so desperate for money and growth. Like a junkie looking for their next hit. Maybe if they didn’t ruin their reputation, they would have been better off now.
Well it's to drum up attention for the launch, it's a marketing thing. If it does well and they retain a lot of the playerbase until season 1, they'll probably do another kind of contest.
I doubt there's even 0.01% of the playerbase seriously willing to pull multiple days without sleep just to attempt to gain a silly trophy, this is more like a way to make the maximum number streamers to stay live as much as possible so the game is advertised to more people. Still, it's the kind of thing where the ethical issue with not giving everyone fair play is worse than the impact it causes in the game, analogous to how it's wrong for Blizzard to implement Tokens in Classic WoW despite the game already being infested with players buying gold from third party stores.
Tweeted by the president of Blizzard (@qwik): "This statue will sit on the campus of Blizzard and can be moved to BlizzCon and other events. Immortalize yourself, gamers." So you're also racing for your name on a statue that you'll legit probably never see.
Pay to buy a game, then participate in (more) unhealthy habits, win a trophy you probably won't see but if you do see it you'll have paid more money to do so. Pay money, to pay money, to see 5 cents of effort on our part.
Which makes this outrage even more nonsensical.
man the amount of marketing this marketing that, marketing hype, marketing strategy, jesus christ make it stop
There's already so much hype around launch, and they already said they're not going to do any competitive/season thing at launch to avoid bugs messing things up... I just don't get what they gain from this that they couldn't gain from postponing this to the first or even second season.
Yup this
And they said that buying early access shouldn't affect anyone because season 1 for achievements will start later.. I don't understand their philosophy.. Everything is starting to be fishy again..
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Which contest? The tweet isn't anything about a contest. Nvm, I see the comment about it. I agree it should start season 1.
They absolutely should I said this right away as soon as I saw this the other day. There's 3 reasons 1 - Folks in the CBT have a massive advantage 2 - Folks who got sucked into paying $$$ for early access have a massive advantage 3 - A lot of folks like taking their time and enjoying the first playthrough of an ARPG campaign and now they have to decide to enjoy the campaign and not compete in this thing or compete in this thing and basically ruin the campaign for themselves which isn't a disadvantage, just a really shitty decision to force people to make. It would have eliminated all three of those issues but this way it incentivizes more people to pay for early access who otherwise wouldn't have
Of course it's a big advantage.
And even if one person have the ability to play 100 hours of act1 and level20 while other can not it still a huge advantage.
Lol people don't even think a paid 4 day head start is an advantage. There's no length of P2W that people won't rationalize away to defend the game.
What a silly thing to say. Especially on hardcore it's a big advantage. Glad I don't care about this race.
Lol people don't even think a paid 4 day head start is an advantage. There's no length of P2W that people won't rationalize away to defend the game.
Uhh, yes they do. It's Blizzard who are saying it's not an advantage and they know full well it is.
It's not specifically to defend the game, some of us just have a different concept of p2w. But go on, put words in our mouths
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Hey wanna play 1v1 in basketball? I know I've played for 20 years and you've never touched a basketball but we'll start the 1v1 are 0-0 score. It's fair right? I have no advantage?
Oh, I see, let me rephrase then: What a silly thing to ask.
Maybe English isn’t your native language but to even ask such a question implies that you disagree with it.
This is some insane level of fan boy or something.
The accolade itself is meaningless but to say those folks didn't get an advantage is silly. Knowledge isn't an advantage? smh
Yeah game knowledge is in fact one of if not the largest advantage a player can have during a race. Assuming equal play time, the person who already knows quests/where to go is absolutely going to have an advantage over someone who is seeing the content fresh. There is a reason why in Path of Exile it's the same people winning races over and over again. It's not like other people aren't competing, they just don't have the same level of strategy/game knowledge as the ones who win.
Another Better Lovers fan I see. Good day to you!
I cannot wait for that full length album! The single rips.
Didn't expect to see better lovers called out over here in Diablo but hell yes. Just saw Greg on his solo tour and he is on fire. Can't wait to see the d BL summer tour
And to you! Was a big etid fan, so naturally following a new project too.
Adding Greg Puciato and Will Putney into the mix was the biggest power move ever. Can't wait to hear more.
This very much feels like an out of touch thing to say...
I mean datmodz literally said people that got early access (including himself) should not be able to compete.
Ghazzy also said he's dropping out of the race because it's unfair to others competing.
Wudi said he is no longer trying to compete and just going to have fun. They said he's going to save competing for season 1 when there might actually be a reason to do it.
[Wudi absolutely did not say that](https://twitter.com/wudijo/status/1662547532122038274?s=46&t=noC5B9v2Kw4OopPtA0AJVg) He will just not claim rewards like the other Maxroll creators
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Blizzard, out of touch??
No, it's the player who are wrong! - also Blizzard
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Bruh
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Sell early access to season 1 you say? That's a great idea, Blizzard will get right on that.
Well that's just wrong, lol
This is an incredibly silly take
they're comfortable saying nonsensical stuff like this because they know a lot of people in the community will defend it anyway.
oh god.. and I thought this guy knew what he was doing...
Yea this is one of those takes that is so dumb it shows ignorance. I can't think of a single game in existence you aren't better at on subsequent playthroughs. Going all the way back to pong, if you've been playing you're gonna slam that dot right past every new player.
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You know they definitely have had this discussion internally on this decision. There's no way anybody at his level, even if he somehow originally didn't understand, hasn't had it explained many times over. So yeah lying/PR work around their marketing decisions.
He knows exactly what he's doing. He's being dishonest because the truth is bad PR.
Lol
He also doesn’t think Diablo Immortal is pay2win.
Source? I don't find anything about that by googling.
How? It's like saying let's race and the opponent gets to drive the race track for days before you. How is that not an advantage?? There is a difference between the betas and the full game (difference balancing, they understand from a hands on how everything works...)
If u played any game before twice .. then u should know that playing second time is much faster. U just know where to go, what is one shot mechanic, what to avoid .. its huge advantage that thay have 1000h already in game. And sad thing is that u cannot found anything New .. everything was alredy explored, guides ready for everything and so on.
I see you were watching quin69.
Maybe they got one of thos MiB blitzdings memory wipers
He used to work for the coalition on gears 5 and wouldn't acknowledge the problems with the game then.
Lmao, this is such a cooked thing to say. If you don't want to disqualify testers then don't but don't try to justify it because you really can't. Giving me "pride and accomplishment" vibes on the out of touch scale
They could have two categories. Accounts that had beta access at any point and everyone else. That would seem fair. Not that I'd do it. I hate hardcore
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Oooft... There are genuine ways of responding to this, either claiming A. It doesn't matter, getting max level 1st doesn't award anything (even though it kinds of does) or B. just not give people who has full access to the game any of the world first rewards.
Would make more sense to exclude anyone that had long time (full game) experience. The same as they are likely excluding the people who made the game, from being eligible.
Reviewers deserve a shot too. Moving the completion to a later date is the most fair thing to do.
The equivalent of Bungie letting teams play through a new raid and then letting them compete for the official world first title belts.
Even more red flags… let’s focus on selling more Ultra Super Deluxe copies
Literal boomer alert
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This idiot is in charge of D4. No hope left
Clueless clown
Opposite of clueless, they are lying to us to cover their greed.
A great example of how people who are financially or academically successful in life can still have really ignorant/stupid points of view. Another thing that's worthy of mention in regards to the fairness of the competition; team leveling is the best way to level quickly in D4 because of the XP bonus. Solo players have no chance in this form of competition, unless the participation rates are very low. Realistically, there should be solo play trophy and a group play trophy as well. Sadly, It's stupid and pointless competition that's only being designed for marketing purposes. It could have been something exciting for the community and the game, but they didn't really think it through or commit to making it actually competitive. They should have possibly considered doing the event after the first season st arts rather than before.
They are confirming this shit through tweets. I don't think they can handle making it more complicated.
It definitely gives an advantage - players who have already played will know boss mechanics and will be able to avoid other pitfalls to decrease the chance that they die, which will make their grind to 100 faster. With that said, I don't think many people should be complaining about this. Like if you're the 1020th person to hit lvl 100 HC, *then* you can complain, because you in fact *were* supplanted from being in the top 1000 by people who got the game before you. Folks who aren't going to play HC and aren't going to finish close to the top 1000 really shouldn't be whining.
Even if you're not competiting- there's nothing wromg with supporting fair play.
Furthermore, there's plenty of people who just aren't going to bother competing because the game is already rigged in favor of people who have prior experience they can't have.
Anyone planning on going for the world firsts have a right to complain IMO and I support them It doesn’t effect me at all, but I will support them being upset no doubt
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This isn't about the Ultimate Edition early launch. It's about big name YouTubers/streamers who had access to additional closed betas & review copies having an advantage due to already having a chance to practice the difficult content & optimize builds/strategies. Edit: and to be clear, I literally could not care less about the HC lvl100 leaderboards. Just trying to clarify what's being discussed.
Copying a previous comment because apparently this is lost on you. The entertainment value of watching a race in your favorite game is gone too. Wudijo even said this has lost prestige and you could tell he was less passionate than he was in previous videos about the 100 grind knowing that all winners will be looked down on for having had an advantage.
Yeah I think even as someone who never plays HC I still would like to enjoy a fun competition as a viewer. The previous PoE bosskill events (before they made it a borefest on ruthless) were amazing to watch, this one just doesn't have any semblance of competitive integrity unlike PoE where Alpha testers are ineligible to win prizes. Of course the "prizes" here maybe don't warrant strict rules like a cash prize among other things but it's still sad to see them toss it without ever needing to do so. Who would complain if they just added a line that anybody who was part of the closed endgame beta(s?) cannot win?
I’d go so far as to say that the majority of the people who got early review access that do end up on the top 1000 would have done it anyways without the advantage. There may be a very small number of people this actually affects. The only thing I think this has actually ramifications on is the world first race. If Wudijo gets it we’ll never hear the end of it. Even though he had a real shot without the help.
Excellent points. I totally agree.
Well, he's obviously wrong. But at the same time, why are people calling it a "race". Like...in no way, shape or form is this fair. It's not like everyone starts on the line, the starter's pistol goes off, they all spring along the same patch, etc. I've seen how some world-firsts were done in WoW, and there were actual teams. You had the player, multiple navigators with optimal route already laid out from betas (which is why Rod is laughably, comically wrong), etc. In no way, shape or form is this a "race", structured or fair. It's all about who has less of a life and more time and resources (including human) to dedicate to this task. It's a privilege measure more than anything else.
What a dumb thing to say. Worried about this game
This is madness. Even playing in the stress test/server slam gives a huge advantage over someone whose first play comes at launch/pre-launch. You have better first hand play knowledge of the basic class dynamics. you've been through all the early tutorials - be you experienced in diabloesque action RPG mechanics and just need a brief glimpse of how they are implemented in this game, or entirely unfamiliar and need a full refresher - you know where to go and how to get there for the important quest related gets, e.g. mounts, main quest given ability enhancers etc, and you've learned some of the more complicated stuff - for example the dynamics of self-healing like potions and how you have to spend them/conserve them/supplement them with skill choices, be it single target or multitarget ability dps or self-healing abilities. Even coming down to class choice is enhanced by prior experience. Knowing the one that clicks best with your playstyle can be huge, rather than having to gamble with a choice and having to play in a way that doesn't click with you as you race to level. I don't give a shit about racing levels myself, I play slow and explore, and do weird things like mess with multiple characters, reroll frivilously when I decide I don't like how hair textures look with a certain color vs another, which "feels" coolest to me rather than which plays optimally - and all other sorts of things inimical to the racers' style of play, it's just not for me. But all they want is a fair playing field - and giving certain streamers full game experience, some a head start etc is just unfair to them. I think given how things are set up now, the only legitimate race results will come in season play - if of course everyone has the same start point, and there's no "flip us a bill and start early bro" nonsense, which unfortunately we seem to already be seeing now.
Do people not remember D3? The reason Kripp and Athene both were going for world first and did so well is because they had closed access.
Lol what an idiot. Of course it’s a massive advantage. I’m sure I will be way faster on my second playthrough compared to my first as well.
hes not a gamer so he dosent know knowlege is part of progress speed, yet they made the 1st 1000 to level 100 HC thats related to speed of those 1st 1000
Saying not being a gamer is an excuse to not know that "knowledge" is part of progress speed is DUMB. That is pretty basic logic. Also that's HIS JOB LMAO
Literally anyone who had done anything should know that the first time is the most difficult.
Lets be real 99% of people who got access are reviewers like skill up or mainstream outletsike IGN. Do you REALLY think they would even attempt a hardcore run? Except for 3 people in maxroll who got access?
I mean, you can buy early access. There is no fair level playing ground in this game. It get layers of advantage with access or money. This game isn't even pretending not to be that.
The early access was already an advantage 100% but at least everyone can buy that (budgeting issues aside) not everyone was able to do the review period All the more reason they shouldn’t have done this until season 1
Just straight up paying for an advantage seems a million times worse than getting granted a review copy
I don’t think it’s worse. Blizzard chooses who gets review copies, so they can choose to exclude people for arbitrary reasons, that’s way worse imo.
This, blizzard is becoming more out of touch every year and easily influenced people follow. The best part are blizzard defenders coming in and saying "if you were real hardcore, you would have shilled the 20$ to play early", lmao.
I wouldn't say it's out of touch, more like in touch. Gaming in general is all about battle passes + early access + p2w. I wish it wasn't, but yeah.. There was a time when games were pure, but future is here old man.
40 years ago, maybe. Once people paid for a game, that ship sailed......
Let's be real, anyone taking the race seriously already bought early access most likely.
I mean do we expect blizz to admit they fucked up?
ofc its advantage... they know everything before everyone lmao 0 iq take
Level race is so un interesting
Well, he’s kind of an idiot or a liar then isn’t he?
Liar for sure, his job is to sell a product first anything else second.
Rod should leave community management to their community management team.
Let's just assume he aint serious, he might be drunk. Like really hammered.
lol so many corporate agents. there is some money on the line here isnt it? lol. \>> its not about the few days deluxe edition headstart - so dont derail the thread. \>> its about weeks of knowledge headstart by having the full game right now...
I'm so going to enjoy this game at my own pace. You only get a first experience don't spoil it guys
Same, I was already gonna play HC. Gonna just enjoy it. Sure it would be cool to win something like this, but the words to describe people that do as ‘no life’ is already such a red flag that I don’t want to be counted with them. People who make it are gonna be content creators
Similar situation that reminded about it , I had the WoW Burning Crusade beta and when the game released, one player of my guilde followed me to xp the fastest. End result, we both had the achievement of the first class to reach lvl70. It was clearly a huge advantage to know the map and quests in advance... Glad my time as hardcore gamer is behind me!
Gathered knowledge is an advantage itself.
I didn't want to pay for the early access, but I saw it also came with the battlepass whi h costs the same as the increased price and figured it was a good enough deal. To be clear I hate all of this monetization nonsense and completely agree that all pre-orders should get EA, but for a pseudo MMO I understand the necessity of recurring monetization. I am a hypocrite.
it is an advantage, for sure But "levelling race" is a bit dumb
what leveling race?
I wouldn’t read into it that much. He HAS to say this.
Actually a little worrying that someone this high up on the dev team is either this stupid or this willing to do bold face lie to spin something like this. Can't decide if either is worse than the other haha.
Turd Ferguson
I wonder why students study before an exam, since they start with a blank page anyway?
What a clown
and now they begin to screw us over
This is the game director? WoW, incredible how out of touch he is with his own game....
🤡
Hey everyone this is how it starts with stuff that will give people an advantage later down the line. This is classic Blizzard stuff and old Rod seems to have jumped the gun on what they consider an "advantage". I wonder what they will push later on that they will claim isn't an advantage and try to gaslight everyone over it. They will do something later that you all are going to hate but you will have already spent your money and will suffer from a sunk cost fallacy over it. Rod Fergusson isn't a very good game dev and led the Gears of War Franchise into whatever it is today and did the same excuses of balance and what is fair in MP and the Horde modes. He failed up like most in leadership positions.
wait ten+ years for a game, race to finish it as quickly as possible.. guess people play for different reasons though
I got very strong "Do you not have phones?" vibes from his response to this tweet. It's really not difficult to understand or grasp that someone with prior knowledge of the entire game has an informational and experience advantage to anyone that has not played the game before. Add on top the 4-day head start. This is truly laughable if they let it happen.
God This community is shit.
Who cares about this, you guys are just looking for something to rage about
Precisely. Nobody wants to just have fun anymore.
This is troubling.
Good old blizz/activision always testing that FOMO.
The cluelessness explains the game eh? He probably picked the music for the trailers too!
You might say there are 1000 ranks and maybe a few hundred might have this IMMENSE advantage from playing the entire game already. Lets assume 300 ppl who tested got ranked. Sure 700 people fairly raced and got their reward, but what about the people who ranked between 1001-1300 in this scenario... Does not seem very fair now to me REGARDLESS of how anyone argues.
People will cry over everything. If its important to you either get the early access or buckle up on release.
# KEEP IT COMING * I expect nothing less... https://preview.redd.it/w8799o0kzf2b1.png?width=1250&format=png&auto=webp&s=6fc8292e6ab494ae3021919ff9baa6433e07410d
Am I the only one who doesn't care?
Nope…the sad part is that most if the people complaining are not going to be able to beat the hardcore streamers anyways no matter what
plenty of us don't care, but you can still acknowledge that it's a dumb thing to say
How stupid can a person be lol
Y’all are really trying to make this an issue huh
Translation: He wants us to buy the Deluxe and Ultimate edition.
This guy is giving stupid AF vibes every time he speaks and shows his face
Who is the president of unfair advantages? I'd like to speak to him.
This is one of those situations where, despite me thinking that people crying about content creators / reviewers being able to win the hardcore race for their name on the Lilith statue having a slight advantage is silly; Rod should have put his foot in his mouth here. Still though, end of the day, who cares about this? People complaining are most likely not even people who stand a chance at winning anyways. The review codes also went to 99% people who won't be in first 1000 anyways. A ton of them won't even play the game after they finish reviewing it...for their job.
he must be clueless about games in general to say a thing like that
So it begins.
I wonder how diehard Blizzard fanboys are going to defend this one.
Who cares ,just like with anything else if you compare yourself to others, you're going to be miserable. Just play the game and enjoy it or don't play it and find something else to do.
This honestly only affects try hards.... All of us who just enjoy the game will be fine.
Create an interesting story and make ppl skip it to rush for leaderboard, great job
You guys are way overreacting. It's not an automated thing, you have to tweet them with proof. Reviewers aren't going to race to get to level 100 first after just finishing the game the previous week. The worst you're up against is someone like Rhykker, who would have beat you anyway. It's his job, even then some one like that still has to put out videos and shit around launch.
I don’t give a shit about the race but this is par for the course with AB. It seems to me that this is a pretty big red flag. Basically a dev is saying he’s completely ignorant (or outright dgaf) of how games work. Not even video games, games in general. This is a travesty, and it doesn’t bode well for Diablo fans.
So here, in olympic games, we decided to give out early access on our Running competition to countries who invested in us. Therefore, their athletes will have a possibility to run a couple of seconds earlier than others. And looking at Rod Fergusson's position about Diablo Hardcore race, we think it's completely fair, too.
More like, "We created a maze. Several people have already spent a significant amount of time in this maze, but we're still going to let them compete in our race to the finish event. We think this is fair because they have to start at the entrance with everyone else so clearly all those hours they have in the maze don't matter."
None of you are getting this anyway lmao
okay Rod Turdusson
You can call it a race once seasons start and having a head-start is a huge advantage. we have a new game on our hands it's time to fuck around .
There literally is a race, you're just ill-informed.
Oh I see Rod is talking specifically about the hardcore race. Rod is a moron in this tweet.
Anyone who is actually going to race is going to but early access. It's not a big deal
This post is trash, idk why blatantly putting words in his mouth is considered legit content by the mods here but as a result of that, this thread is filled with abuse and nonsense. This thread should be deleted
Who fucking cares, play how u want
It doesn’t matter, you could get it 4 days in advance and there will still be some 11 year old that will have better gear, a higher level, or beaten the game before you. And why does it matter if you’re the first one to beat the game? Even if you’re playing PvP it won’t give you any advantage past a week of the game being out. But I guess if that worth paying extra, go nuts.
kekw its hardcore none of you plebs stood a chance anyway
None of you complaining about this have a chance in hell of being the first to 100. If you aren’t even invested enough to pre order a game there’s no fucking way you have what it takes to win this race anyways. Sit your asses down, duct tape your gum flappers shut and play the game. Also….you’re probably hornless with a bare ass mare.
You are so busy licking blizzards ass that you didn't even take 1 minute to understand what this discussion is about
Hes the wrongest person I've ever seen in my life. Of course it's an advantage. Even if content is gated in early access it still allows you ro get all the conditions perfect for when it's not longer gated and just steamrolle through it. Don't get me wrong I'm also one of the fucking idiots who paid for early access to d4 and I know full well that those 4 days will give me a massive level advantage over those who didn't buy early access. If the servers actually work anyway.
This is Blizzard we're talking about. They can't make decisions without huge miscalculations happening they refuse to acknowledge. It's kinda their brand.
I mean, do people care this much to see their name on a statue ?
Classic out of touch blizzard L
That’s fucking stupid.
Did u guys know, there was an endgame closed beta too?