Icewind wrote on Aug 19, 2012, 17:05:
Beamer wrote on Aug 19, 2012, 16:58:
Of course, most of that knowledge and most of that people went on to create Hellgate: London.
No, Roper is mostly to blame for that. Also his insistence on making 50% of the game essentially an FPS. He had too many ideas and wanted to please too many gamer types than reality would allow.
Plus Hellgate was a gigantic clusterfuck. It was released far too soon, never fully bug tested (even months after launch) and the different tiers of paying/non-paying players created a lot of ill will towards the designers from gamers. It was just a mistake all around.
You're going to blame one man?
Here are the top minds from Diablo, with an asterisk next to those that did NOT participate in Hellgate:
Senior Designer
David Brevik, Erich Schaefer
Additional Design
Max Schaefer, Eric Sexton*, Kenneth Williams
Lead Programming
David BrevikOnly 1 person.
Hey, let's look at the Hellgate credits:
The Originators of Hellgate London
David Brevik, Bill Roper, Erich Schaefer, Max Schaefer, Kenneth Williams, David Glenn, Peter Hu, Phil Shenk, Tyler Thompson
Lead Designer
Erich Schaefer
Game Visionary
David BrevikMan, so you're blaming Roper when he was just one of the "originators" (all of whom come from Blizzard North) yet not the Lead Designer or the Game Visionary.
You guys need to stop associating "public face" with "guy making every single decision." Roper likely did make all the business decisions, but that's not what doomed the game. What doomed the game is that it wasn't fun. Blame the Lead Designer and the "Visionary" for that.