Rod Fergusson Departs Blizzard, Diablo Franchise
- Thread starter havoc00
- Start date
StereoVsn
Gold Member
I thought D3 was decent after the yanking of the auction house, expansion release and some patching. Was it as good as D2? No, but it was enjoyable on say consoles with a bit more dynamic gameplay.
D4 was a turd that had that enshitification as a base mechanism due to MMO-lite mechanic and focus on mainly seasons. It felt like a chore to play and wasn't fun at all.
D4 was a turd that had that enshitification as a base mechanism due to MMO-lite mechanic and focus on mainly seasons. It felt like a chore to play and wasn't fun at all.
bighugeguns
Member
He had an outstanding run.
Now it's time to find and onboard a monster.
Now it's time to find and onboard a monster.
mayham2199
Member
Is he moving to Xbox and taking Phil/Botty's asses
next/ongoing : Power Vacuums and turmoil.time
This is exactly what I think of everytime I hear another big name leaving MS.
xVodevil
Member
I have absolutely no clue whether this is a good or bad thing. I get the dislike towards D4 but I do enjoy jumping in for 2 weeks or so for new seasons. For a side activity it's fine for me, but guessing there's no D5 coming anytime soon let's just hope they do justice with the next expansion to freshen things up.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Rod wasn't the mastermind to create a vision here, nor did he create the loop of content they follow now. So nothing changes.
He's just the guy making sure people hit deadlines and coordinating teams.
To be fair his other projects were Gears 4&5 as lead, and those never lived up to 1-3 under Cliffy Bs helm.
It's hard to gauge what Rods legacy is, or his direct involvement. He's not a visionary like Cliffy, Todd, Kojima, Levine, etc. He's more of a management role/coordinator.
So far I'd say he's getting a B- from me. Gears 4,5,& Diablo 4.
DownLikeBCPowder
Member
Yep. Buried deep in that grave, too. I kept hoping each iteration would bring "Diablo" back, but it just travels farther and farther away. I stick with the first two games even to this day.
bighugeguns
Member
Yeah, it's probably not good to speculate about this stuff after the fact. I'm sure at the least we might see interesting and brave new directions, preferably across the board.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Titan Quest 2 IMO even in early access is a love letter to Diablo 2 fans.
Keep that on your radar.
Miyazaki’s Slave
Gold Member
Everyone has their opinion, ultimately I think trying to make D4 more "D2 like" was a huge mistake. They, IMO, do not have the development talent to produce that type of cohesion. I personally put more hours intoD3 than I did into D2 and I enjoy the end game activities in D3 more than D2. While I played a good bit of D4...I will not come anywhere close to the time I spent in the previous 3 games.
I am also willing to bet that the next D4 expansion pack will be the last (if we even get that one). The writing has been on the wall in the past few developer campfires; would I love a turnaround, yes...the diablo franchise is in my top 5 for sure. Is that going to happen..."You don't have quite the treasure there in that mis-begotten pile of game you call Diablo 4!" (in the best D.Cain impression I can muster)
I am also willing to bet that the next D4 expansion pack will be the last (if we even get that one). The writing has been on the wall in the past few developer campfires; would I love a turnaround, yes...the diablo franchise is in my top 5 for sure. Is that going to happen..."You don't have quite the treasure there in that mis-begotten pile of game you call Diablo 4!" (in the best D.Cain impression I can muster)
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Kacho
Gold Member
What happened?
Miyazaki’s Slave
Gold Member
Should be been specific there, but the past few Campfires has seen some of the core "presenters" (including Fergusson) just *poof* disappear, which in and of itself isn't a major issue. What was an issue was the constant repeated information. The last two campfire chats were almost 100% identical. Not only that, but they doubled down on the content that had already been not well received by the players in the PTR.
I don't expect them to make sweeping system changes half way into a season, but to just ignore the comments/complaints from the people that were invested enough to play the PTR was, at least for me, all I needed to know in terms of skipping season 9.
I have enjoyed maybe 4 out of the 9 seasons at this point but I (and I think most players) would rather them spend time tweaking/creating new core end games systems since they have trivialized the "path to endgame" in the most recent seasons.
I do not think that is a bad game design decision, I think it is a huge mistake to MAKE that decision when you have not added additional content to the end game mechanics.
Just my .02 but I do not know how they are going to recover from the current state of the game.
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SILKYSMOOTH30FPS
Member
D4 is easily one of the worst games i ever bought. Such a hollow game made by suits who thought of nothing else but how to introduce an mtx in every hole.
DownLikeBCPowder
Member
Definitely am. Loved the original TQ - played a lot of it LAN with friends and my daughter. Backed Grim Dawn also, though I like it somewhat less for reasons I can't articulate. But definitely interested in TQ 2 and was surprised to hear about it some time ago.
foamdino
Member
100% this - he's the guy that gets a phone call "our game is in trouble" and he comes in an cuts half-baked stuff out to rescue the project. Almost uniquely at Microsoft he *can* ship games. Now he's leaving...
"Fergusson also worked with Stormfront Studios to help finish Blood Wake"
"Fergusson returned to a producer role to help bring Valve's Counter-Strike to the Xbox, as the project at Ritual Entertainment was behind schedule"
"Fergusson was introduced to the upcoming Gears of War from Epic Games, targeted for Microsoft's new Xbox 360 console. Fergusson described the state of the game as being "on fire" and well behind schedule, which he attributed to Epic having only one producer at the time, splitting duties between Gears and Unreal Tournament 3. Fergusson discussed the situation with Microsoft where it was determined the best route would be for him to quit Microsoft and join Epic in a full-time capacity to help get Gears back on track"
His whole thing is to come in and rescue a complete mess - which suggests that D4 was in a bit of a bind before he joined the team...he's obviously salvaged it to the point where it's on token life-support and he's ready for the next "oh crap we need to ship - lets call Rod" phone call
MiguelItUp
Member
D3 at least rebounded with Reaper of Souls and beyond. 4.... is still trying lmao.
Jinzo Prime
Member
If Rod's happy playing fireman his whole career, more power to him. There is no shortage of projects on fire he can rescue right now.
Like, where's that new Tomb Raider game that Crystal Dynamics needs to stay afloat? Or the next Bioshock game from T2? Or the new Splinter Cell game at Ubisoft? Lots of people need a to get a game shipped right now, which appears to be a dying art.
P:axMagellanic
Member
The mmo shit was ridiculous. What a waste of time and effort.
Arsic
Loves his juicy stink trail scent
Bingo. That's his job. Align, and help get things out on time in a good state.
All of his oh shit projects release to high review scores and high sales, it's after they become turds. Which isn't his gig. He isn't a visionary or creative type. He's like you said, the guy you call to save a giant investment from being cancelled to recoup dollars.
So anytime you see his name you know that game is a shit show behind the scenes.
Surprised Sony didn't call him up for Concord lmao.
Kacho
Gold Member
People still shit on D3 because it isn't D2, but it was good in its own way.
D4 is fundamentally ASS
MiguelItUp
Member
Truth, lmao.
Jinzo Prime
Member
Sony should call him up to make sure their Jason Blundell/Call of Duty game gets shipped. They could really use a hit right now and Marathon and Fairgames ain't it.
Edit: Freudian slip.
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Codes 208
Member
Sadly that wasnt even the worst part (who the hell adds a 'choose who dies' in a pen-ultimate game? Not to mention the general character assassination of JD in general)
Felessan
Member
Old boring crap. That get archaic and outdated the day WoW launched
D3 Reaper is much better and more fun
DavidGzz
Member
Yeah, it's nostalgia. D2 for its time shits on almost any game for me. I played my life away on D1 and D2 but I know it's outdated today and hard to play despite the amazing graphics. D3 is better.
Felessan
Member
I liked repetitive grind games myself when those games were actual. Grind and bullet-sponge bosses (another archaic from the past) were fun in their own way.
But market moved mid-00' to a more skill-based gameplay and never looked back.
I just remember weird difficulty spikes that made no sense, esp in boss fights.
Hudo
Member
Blizzard made 2 good Diablo games: Diablo 1 and 2. And both are different enough from each other that it would not surprise me you'd only like one of them. Diablo 1 is a fucking dungeon crawler, man. It channels the spirit of Wizardry or classic D&D. It's slower, more brutal. It's just fucking rock-hard murder, man. You know everything's fucked but you keep going. No health potions? No scroll of town portal in my inventory? Fuck it, I am going to slay my way to the next level up, or I die here. Diablo 1 is awesome (and still the best out of all the Diablo games, imho). Diablo 1 is like being 7 years old and your father asks you to fetch something from the basement at 11pm and the lamp in the basement is fucking broken. And so you go down the stairs of complete blackness.
Diablo 2 is great for the "overworld adventure" kind of feel, like you're playing an epic D&D campaign. Especially when you play it with friends. But it just did not have the same "hopeless" vibe. And it's not as big on dungeon crawling as the first Diablo, for obvious reasons. Diablo 2 is like being 13 years old and you explore the woods with your friends at sunset. There is a certain forboding atmosphere, because you know it's going to get dark and you gotta return at some point and the woods are not necessarily the safest place to be, but you are familiar enough with everything to not get lost.
Diablo 3 and 4 are direct-to-cable sequels to movies your father likes and you are forced to watch them with him. And they fucking suck ass.
Diablo 2 is great for the "overworld adventure" kind of feel, like you're playing an epic D&D campaign. Especially when you play it with friends. But it just did not have the same "hopeless" vibe. And it's not as big on dungeon crawling as the first Diablo, for obvious reasons. Diablo 2 is like being 13 years old and you explore the woods with your friends at sunset. There is a certain forboding atmosphere, because you know it's going to get dark and you gotta return at some point and the woods are not necessarily the safest place to be, but you are familiar enough with everything to not get lost.
Diablo 3 and 4 are direct-to-cable sequels to movies your father likes and you are forced to watch them with him. And they fucking suck ass.
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\m/etalStorm
Member
I had fun with D4, but the game can be made better in so many ways.
TQ2 shows that sometimes less is more, when designed with an intend beyond selling cosmetics.
TQ2 shows that sometimes less is more, when designed with an intend beyond selling cosmetics.
SamuraiEdge
Member
I keep hearing great things about D3 Reaper but the original game at launch (D3) really put me off. One of these days I should really give this a go again sometime. I really didn't like the original D3 given my love of Blizzard North back then.
Felessan
Member
They tried to turn D3 into "d2 mmo/gaas" and it was a disaster
Reaper scrapped all this and turn game into fast funny SP/Coop game with clearly visible progression.
Paragon and Rifts were godsent - you clearly understands how you power grow, how it match against content, get rewards for time spent and directly related to your power and have a ladder to climb. Millions of damage on the screen was very satisfying.
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Killjoy-NL
Member
Sounds exactly like PoE2, which has been praised by many.
For what it's worth, as a newcomer to the genre with PoE2, I played D4 through PS+ and I actually really like the game.
As far as the story goes, I couldn't give less of a shit as I just skip through all of it (did the same with PoE2).
Just the grind is pretty fun until you get all your gear to masterworks 12/12. At that point I left the game, because I didn't feel like Torment 3 was worth the hassle just to min/max my character.
I think the reset with every season is a nice concept.
D4 can just go into my rotation, along with games like Poe2 and The First Descendant and I will basically always have something to play.
No idea how it holds up against older Diablos, but I do know that I like D4 for exactly what it is now.
Mister Wolf
Member
Diablo 4 not having matchmaking out the gate killed my interest for it quickly. Didn't even bother to finish it.
Dr. Wilkinson
Member
He's the guy that's called in to help finish a game and get it over the finish line. I was surprised he stayed so long after it launched. He's just waiting for his next phone call to come in and help finish another big game. Bioshock 4, here he comes? 
Dr. Samuel Hayden
Member
Literally all of MS' big names are jumping ship. Todd's probably next.
phant0m
Member
Mm….ma-…..tchmaking? In an ARPG?
…..what?
Also, at no point do you need another player to be D4's campaign
Mister Wolf
Member
I had a blast joining randoms games in Diablo 3 and having them join mine.
Nydius
Member
I know there's a lot of dislike for Diablo 3 around here and I get it but at least base Diablo 3 told a story from beginning to end. D4's constant "to be continued…" dragging out of Mephisto's story wore thin a year ago. Two and a half years in and we haven't even resolved Mephisto's story, and haven't heard a peep about Baal or Diablo.
Neyrelle is about as likable a character as Ava was in Borderlands 3.
The gameplay itself is okay but the shift more towards the MMO-lite side of things has turned the end game into a boring meta copy/paste, just like WoW. If you want to play in Torment 4 and not suck, you're going to end up carbon copying some build from icy veins or wowhead. Otherwise you're going to find yourself stuck in lower torment tiers. Seasons have been lackluster with most of them simply being slight revisions of "here's a special power for 90 days".
I know people didn't like gear sets in D3 but at least they gave me something I felt I was farming toward, unlike D4 where 99% of everything that drops is dismantling trash. Only thing I'm farming now are the two mythics I haven't seen yet.
I dunno. Given Microsoft's rrecent cuts, I wouldn't be surprised if they told Blizzard to begin putting D4 into a more "maintenance mode" status and Fergusson decided to split. The game launched well but fell off quickly and the VoH expansion landed with a dull thud. I'm not sure D4 can have a "redemption arc" like D3 because of how much the MMO and microtransaction elements are baked into the design.
Neyrelle is about as likable a character as Ava was in Borderlands 3.
The gameplay itself is okay but the shift more towards the MMO-lite side of things has turned the end game into a boring meta copy/paste, just like WoW. If you want to play in Torment 4 and not suck, you're going to end up carbon copying some build from icy veins or wowhead. Otherwise you're going to find yourself stuck in lower torment tiers. Seasons have been lackluster with most of them simply being slight revisions of "here's a special power for 90 days".
I know people didn't like gear sets in D3 but at least they gave me something I felt I was farming toward, unlike D4 where 99% of everything that drops is dismantling trash. Only thing I'm farming now are the two mythics I haven't seen yet.
I dunno. Given Microsoft's rrecent cuts, I wouldn't be surprised if they told Blizzard to begin putting D4 into a more "maintenance mode" status and Fergusson decided to split. The game launched well but fell off quickly and the VoH expansion landed with a dull thud. I'm not sure D4 can have a "redemption arc" like D3 because of how much the MMO and microtransaction elements are baked into the design.
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xrnzaaas
Member
Sounds like the captain is escaping a (slowly) sinking ship. The game seems to be losing interest way faster than Diablo 3 and the reception of the story expansion wasn't good as well. Plus if you don't play regularly you'll miss out on unique mechanics, because they're only available during certain seasons.
There's also a really serious competition on the market, catering to those who play more casually and more profesionally.
There's also a really serious competition on the market, catering to those who play more casually and more profesionally.
Varteras
Member
You really took the time to type out a contrarian post to the opinion of me and my friends, didn't you? Did you want me to go back and tell them what other people think?
Killjoy-NL
Member
I'm just giving a different perspective from a casual Diablo player.
You can just ignore it if you want. Idc what you and your friends think.
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Varteras
Member
I'll go ahead and engage on this for a little while. Everything I say is with respect, even if it doesn't sound like it. It'll also be a bit of a rant. Apologies.
PoE2 has a 69% on Steam compared to D4's 65%. Not much of a difference and both are "mixed". Over the last month PoE2 has peaked at 12k concurrent players and has been down to 4k on Steam. D4 peaked at 27k and has been down to about 7k. That's also considering that, when it comes to PC, a shit load of people bought it on Battle.net before the Steam version ever came out. Despite that, it's doing better Steam numbers. Yes, PoE2 has a standalone client and is also available on Epic. But I highly doubt it's in the same boat. Even if it is, D4 still tops it in consistent Steam numbers regardless. It's not a huge difference, but it doesn't need to be for the point.
Might PoE2 do better when it eventually leaves early access, whenever that is? Anything is possible. But what's there now doesn't seem to be much better by comparison. It doesn't seem to be doing enough to be some contradiction to the problem people like myself and my friends have with D4. Sure. It had wild numbers at launch and a big bump back in March. Both promptly plummeted below D4 numbers and were quite likely the result of big disappointment with D4 that made people want to play it. I heard a lot of people having that sentiment. That sentiment just doesn't seem to carry for very long.
All that is to say it's not just people in my circle or others like us being unreasonable towards D4. The very design of both of these games seems to be one that isn't holding people the way they wanted. I'm sure there are people like yourself who love what they're being fed. But when you're Diablo, a legendary franchise, the numbers it seems to be pushing are indicative of a disappointed fanbase. It's held to a higher standard for a reason. You don't even need numbers to know this. The general feeling towards D4 has been negative since shortly after release. It's also not as if people wanted to be disappointed. There was a lot of excitement for it. The very fact that Blizzard had to loosen its restriction and allow D4 to be sold on PC outside of Battle.net was seen by nearly everyone as a pretty good indication that things were not going well, as suspected.
The praise I've seen on PoE2 doesn't come from the things it does similar to D4. From what I've seen, it's what it does better or different. Like build variety and better combat mechanics. You're new to the genre. You have a perspective of someone who has no history with these games or the Diablo franchise. There are many of us who have played this genre for literally decades and Diablo was our start. Many of us have bigger expectations from such a revered franchise from a billion-dollar company like Blizzard.
We don't like paying $40 for a short, lackluster expansion. We do like story in our games. We don't want to level a new character every few months, especially when a system added for a given season sucks. We do want the content they make to stick around and not just vanish. We don't like knowing that a smaller, more inexperienced studio ate Blizzard's lunch when it comes to overall gameplay and that it'll be F2P at full release while we pay for D4.
For fuck's sake, the resistance stat in D4 was broken for months on end. Yet Blizzard made us wait until a seasonal patch, 4 months later, to fix it. Because somehow fixing numbers ASAP was just not an option and a seasonal patch was when it would magically work. That was just the first of a long string of "WTF are you doing" moments Diablo fans have put up with. The Diablo team has, seemingly, almost perpetually been having to do apology tours. Constantly reassuring Diablo fans that despite their growing list of failures, tomorrow will be different. Well, tomorrow just got different for the guy in charge.
I'm sure some people will try to say that he's just brought in to get troubled projects across the finish line, as I'm already seeing in some articles. You don't take over a major franchise, depart five years later amid mixed reception and persistent negativity for the flagship title, an expansion that failed to improve sentiment, and a remaster that launched as a technical disaster with a 37% rating in its first month, and expect anyone to believe it was on good terms.
TLDR: You may have reasons to like D4, but a shitload of people don't. Whatever praise PoE2 got doesn't translate to people being unfair with D4. They have plenty reason to be disappointed with how Rod and his crew handled it.
Killjoy-NL
Member
My post wasn't a rant about critics of the game.
I just said I liked it for what it is now, as it's perfect filler for in between main games.
Varteras
Member
This was the very first line of your post in response to mine:
In a post where I gave the opinions of myself and my friends, you started your post off with that.
That's just a dismissive side step of the opinions I shared and it set the tone for the rest of your post.
The rest of your post is just you taking the exact opposite stance.
It doesn't come off as "just my opinion" or "just what I like". You brought another game, and its supposed many praises, into the conversation right off the bat.
All that served to do was validate your opinions and dismiss someone else's.
Either that wasn't your intention and you're just unaware of how you come off, or you're playing innocent while knowing full well what you were doing.
Regardless, it is what it is and at this point nothing more needs to be said.
Killjoy-NL
Member
If it was my intention to dismiss your opinion, I would just say it.
Varteras
Member
You'll have to forgive me for not expecting bold, declarative statements of intent.