The Queue: Curse this place, I’m being followed
Every single run of The Pit in Diablo 4: Lord of Hatred has your character, worried about some unknown marauder supposedly following them, cursing the place for it (no matter which place it is) — but the encounter with this mysterious assailant never actually happens. I don’t get it, man. Since people recently discovered the Secret Cow Level in Diablo 4, maybe the next secret they should devote themselves to is how to find this elusive character who always follows you in The Pit, but never actually shows their face.
This is The Queue, our daily Q&A column where you ask as questions and we answer them because that’s what “Q&A” means, I think. Right? Right. I mean, I *hope* I’m right about this; otherwise I’ve been doing this column all wrong.
Q4tQ Any plans for the weekend?
This Saturday it’ll be exactly one year since the last time I celebrated my birthday, so I would like to do that again. Yay!
Are you rubbing your hands atm
Yes, thinking about Saturday!
Hearthstone Q4TQ: How do you feel about the class sets? I think the sentiment in the community is that they’ve failed to really hit. There’s also very parasitic in design, something Blizzard claimed they were not going to do anymore. How much will Blizzard have to buff these so people buy the next class sets? Will people just wait a couple weeks for buffs before deciding to buy them?
Last week we were still in “it doesn’t look good so far, but let’s wait and see,” but now I think it’s safe to declare: they didn’t hit the mark. At all.
The sets are clearly underpowered, and didn’t make nearly as much of an impact as the Hearthstone team expected them to. Mage is one of the worst classes in the game at the moment; Leylines didn’t make any splash at all, the deck has a pitiful winrate. The other three do have viable decks at the top of the meta, but none of those decks rely on cards from the sets. With Paladin, Silver Hand is admitedly decent (and fun to play), but Bubble Paladin is considerably stronger. With Hunter, Companion Hunter is *below* decent; you have no reason not to play Face instead. And with Druid, the set is nowhere to be seen; you have Aggro Druid at the top of the meta completely ignoring all of the new cards.
A balance patch is sorely needed at this point, and I do expect one, otherwise a subsection of players might not even bother buying the class sets the next time, like you said.
I don’t wanna go all “you think you do, but you don’t” here, but a strong game design lesson when releasing new content for any ongoing game is: make the new stuff OP, and nerf it in time. Sure, players might complain about seeing the OP thing everywhere, or about being “forced” to play it for a while. But long term that’s still a considerably better game experience than the opposite: releasing weak stuff and then buffing it (after people have already lost a lot of excitement for it), and prolonging a stale state of things instead of stirring it up.
what do you think about the cadence of patches this expansion, too slow? too fast? just right?
:D
WAY too fast. I think the pace made me feel overwhelmed and less interested in catching up, overall, because it started to feel more like work than fun.
You’ve talked before about adding Diablo classes to WoW. Do you think there’s room for a Death Knight class in D4? I think that seeing a new game’s version of the blood, frost, unholy class power trinity could be really cool, and if they didn’t summon minions, maybe they wouldn’t have too much overlap with the necromancer.
But mostly I want the blood skills to drain life from enemies so I can feel like I’m playing my WotLK-era blood DK again.
I get where you’re coming from, but have you consider the Blood Knight from Diablo Immortal? I feel like it hits the exact fantasy you want, with much less Necromancer overlap!
Those guys are insanely cool. Hell, now *I’m* the one who wants them added to D4!
1) Q4tQ: Blizzard finally showed they are able to end a raid with a defeat instead of a victory, even if they only let us sit with it for 2 weeks. Do you think they were testing the waters to see if players would be able to handle waiting months?
2) Q4tQ: There’s the Pokemon Cafe, the Toadstool Cafe, the Kirby Cafe, and probably lots more that I’m not aware of. What game franchise would you like to see get a themed cafe, assuming you would have to travel a thousand miles to visit it?
3) Q4tRed: When you travel through space, do you experience red shift?
1) I don’t know if they were specifically testing the waters with a goal in mind, but I do think they might have been intentionally changing things up, yeah — which is great. The less predictable these things become, the better. If we know we’ll always beat the raid villain, there’s no sense of surprise. We do need some different results sometimes, and I don’t even mean just the binary choices of “win” or “lose.” Maybe a pyrrhic victory here, maybe a “both sides retreat to lick their wounds” there, maybe a “we won — but at what cost?” next time. Keep us on our toes!
2) Persona 5, because it’s already a game where you live in a café and spend a lot of time there. There’s already a theme, a decoration, even a menu (curry and coffee). Atlus should be swimming in money right now, but they choose not to! I think!
3) Trade secret, can’t tell.
Pick a fight! Are there any oft-requested new Races (Allied or otherwise) that you just really wouldn’t want to see, and/or have no interest in?
I’ve always been a proponent of “more options is more options,” but I’ll admit I wouldn’t be thrilled to see yet another Elf or Dwarf race added in any time soon. I even just mentioned Broken yesterday (blast from the past that I’m proud of myself for remembering) but if they were playable, I’ll admit I’d probably never actually use them. Though maybe I’d use them more than Lightforged, who for some reason are among the most offensive offerings to me, since they come off so objectively as “existing race with some scribbles on it.”
It’s a bit hard for me to answer this because I’m a big proponent of “the more the merrier.” But if I have to think about the would-be races that I’m not really excited for… I guess I have to say Tuskarr. (Sorry, Tuskarr fans!)
I don’t know, I think they’re a really neat race, and I have absolutely nothing against them. Quite the opposite. They’re chill dudes who make great soup, what’s not to love? However, I just don’t see myself playing one seriously. I’d probably roll one for the novelty, do any quests they might have (starting zone or heritage armor or whatever), but it would most likely end up as just a largely abandoned alt that I don’t enjoy much, like my Kul Tiran or my Mag’har.
Q4tQ:
What is your junk food opinion that infuriates people?
Mine is that yellow Hostess cupcakes are better than the chocolate.
I don’t care for chocolate mint. Don’t care for it at all. Feels like I’m eating toothpaste!
Wizard fashion. Big hat vs big cowl
As iconic as big wizard hats are, I’m more of a big cowl kind of guy. Iunno, looks cool and mysterious I guess. I dig that.
This has been The Queue. I hope you all have a great weekend, friends!
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