I play on console version so it may be different than PC but I have been seeing an increase in the amount of players online at any given time. I can always find a game with other players on any difficulty. Also, people keep playing this game because of its replayability due to the fact that no experience within the game is ever the same since all the maps/mobs are randomly generated. I've played since D2 and D3 is still a game I keep coming back to because of its varied content and experiences.
The thing about the console versions is that they are practically brand new. It makes perfect sense that a recent/new release would see steadily increasing player numbers. Doubly so for the XBONE and PS4 versions, since they just received a major patch (2.1).
The one thing I don't understand is that many complainers don't seem to understand economics. They want more content but they don't want to pay for it. WoW has constant content updates because users effectively pay the employees salary via the monthly subscription. And don't go on about how WoW subscriptions pay for Diablo. If WoW ceased to exist tomorrow how would Blizzard pay employees salary and thus give users more content? Yes, a downloadable content model is an option but there needs to be revenue. Yes, an expansion pack generates revenue but that takes time. Ok, I'm off my soapbox, bash away.
Well, consider this: Patch 2.1 was a free patch -- we didn't have to pay for it. It introduced leaderboards and Grifts. Now, I understand that Grifts are, essentially, a minor update of regular rifts, (which is why I don't consider it to be much of a content update), but leaderboards are a pretty large undertaking. There was also the greed realm, which included a brand new boss fight.
Like I said: We didn't pay for patch 2.1, but it still included new content. With that in mind, what's to stop Blizzard from putting in a Boss-rush mode?
Think about it: Boss-rush is more competitive than Grifts could ever be, since you're fighting established bosses with established mechanics -- no randomness. It makes perfect sense for this mode to be implemented. I can't imagine it would take much more in the way of development resources than Grifts did, or even the Realm of Trials.
But, no, it's a suggestion for new content that doesn't involve repeatedly farming loot for the sole purpose of farming more loot, so your average Diablo 3 forum poster is never going to support the idea. That, apparently, isn't the kind of game that Diablo 3 is, right D3 community?
So, we're going to continue having forum posters complaining about how "the popularity of this game dropped so dramatically" and how "were heading back into the "dark age" of diablo 3 again." In fact, the most insightful part of DeboSc2's comment was his last line, "Oh well not like im gonna stop playing LOL". It sounds to me like DeboSc2 is a Diablo fan. Well, naturally Diablo fans aren't going to quit playing, because Diablo fans are fans of endless grinding and farming. The problem, though, is that the majority of people buying this game aren't Diablo fans -- they're gamers. I'm willing to bet that more people have bought and quit this game due to the grinding nature than are still playing it.
Just gone 4000 shards , got 1 legendary . This is for cheap items too , can't really bring myself to gamble 2 handers and amulets etc .
I said in an earlier post I can easily go 500 without a legendary , now after some time I can say , I can go fairly regularly 1500 shards for 0 .
Seriously not happy with this .
Just want some clarification: 4000 shards and 1 total legendary or 4000 shards and 1 usable legendary and some other salvaged legendaries?
Usually, when I ask this question, the answer is "just because an item is orange doesn't mean it's legendary," which is another way of saying, "I don't understand the question and I'm just complaining because I didn't get the item I wanted."
For those of you that are unaware, spawning the Rift Guardian in a Greater Rift will despawn all enemies in a certain range of the Rift Guardian spawn. It does not, however, despawn every enemy in the rift. If you move further into the rift, you can and will run into enemies. So, you know, don't drag the RG into parts of the map that you haven't explored yet unless you want some extra trouble.
true end game will only become available after all content is released, all patches and expansions, so you don't have to rethink your entire game strategy every time a major change comes in and makes your build look like a shopping bag picked up by the wind.
It doesn't HAVE to be that way, though. WoW has "true end game" and it gets updated with every major patch and every expansion. There's no real reason that Diablo 3 couldn't have a "true end game" as well, as long as they continued to balance it.
Of course, they'd have to come up with something that isn't random, for once (like the boss rush idea I posted above :P)...
I would actually like to switch the topic at this point if we can. We now know that there are people that do feel there is no "end game." Let's say that someone that could potentially could influence the direction of D3 sees this. I'd want them to see some ideas on what direction they could take this to fix the problem. I have an idea or two, but I'm sure plenty of people could give better input than myself as they've probably played way longer than I have. ...
edit: Sorry for the triple post.
I like the idea of multiple tiers of gear, but I'd want a pretty solid difficulty revamp if that's the direction they're going to go. I'd also like for there to be more source-specific legendaries. Like how some legendaries are restricted to caches -- have other legendaries restricted to other modes, or to bosses, or to chests, etc.
I came up with a mode that I'd like to see in Diablo 3. I'm going to copy and paste my reddit post.
One of the most common complaints I see about the Greater Rift system is how random it is. It's supposed to be competitive and, yet, no rift is the same... so, I was thinking... what kind of activity is easily measured and still competitive? BOSS RUSH!!!
What Is It?
Boss rush mode is a fairly common mode in action games where the player faces off against (most) every boss in the game, one after another, to see how many of them they can beat and how fast they can do so.
How Would It Work In Diablo?
Picture a large, specially designed room. Probably somewhat circular, though with little nubs along the edge. Plenty of room to move around in and pick strategic positions. Upon entering this room, you could click an object (or button) to start the Boss Rush mode. After a short countdown, the first boss appears and you kill it. Upon death, the next boss spawns. And so on until you finally kill Malthael. At this point, the bosses would start cycling through again, more powerful than the last time.
Okay, But Can't We Spice It Up a Bit?
Absolutely! You remember those little nubs around the edge of the room that I mentioned earlier? Well, let's put orbs there that will allow players to spawn the bosses early. That way, those of us that can kill each of the first wave's bosses in seconds can just spawn all the bosses right away and clear the first wave, bringing down our overall time.
Also, there could be specially placed buff shrines (non-random) that will recharge after a certain amount of bosses are killed, allowing for more potential strategies.
Let's Go Over Some Specifics
How would we start this mode? Well, people are starting to get bored of Greater Rifts already, so we could either add another drop to the final Greater Rift Guardian (meaning, you get it when you either choose not to upgrade your rift key or when you fail the timer). Alternatively, the Keystone of Trials could be used as the key.
Difficulty? Simply set the difficulty based on the game's difficulty level. Torment 6 players automatically start with Torment 6 bosses. Naturally, the only really interesting leaderboard for this would be the Torment 6 leaderboard, but other difficulties would still be present for those that can't handle Torment 6. Boss difficulty would obviously increase with new set of bosses.
Rewards
There would be three obvious sets of rewards for this mode...
Leaderboards: Fastest wave clears, most waves cleared. This way you could either choose to go for speed or for longevity.
Loot: Players would obviously expect some kind of loot reward, so why not add some more legendaries to be dropped specifically from this game mode? Utility items like Ramalandi's Gift could also be included. Perhaps the player would be guaranteed one item that would add a specific affix to a piece of gear for a specific slot. Say, you get an item that adds an All Resist roll to a ring, or an item that adds Cooldown Reduction to your helm. There are any number of potentially appealing items that could be made specifically to drop in this game mode.
Achievements: 'Nuff said.
Wouldn't This Just Get Boring, Eventually?
Much like everything else in Diablo 3, yes, repeated use of this game mode is bound to get boring after so long. But now that we've got this system in place, what's to stop Blizzard from updating it on a regular basis?
Tired of Boss Rush mode? We'll add a new challenge! New bosses! Bosses from Diablo 2! Famous Nephelem of legend to test yourself against! There could be the Set Item challenge, where you fight bosses based upon the set items in the game. Finally, you get to fight Bul-Kathos, Natalya, Roland, and everyone else! Danger mode, where you have to actively avoid non-random (or random, though I'm trying to avoid that with this idea) environmental affects that limit your ability to navigate the room while fighting bosses. Really, there's no end to the new challenges they could come up with.
Tell Me What YOU Think
I think that this could be a great addition to the game... how about you? Comments, concerns, critiques? Go for it!
One last thing:
This just occurred to me, but Diablo 3 could really use something like the Brawler's Guild from WoW. For those that don't know, Brawler's Guild is an Arena where you fight progressively more difficult and unique bosses.
What irritates me is the reason behind the change, aka
As a result, we're working to reduce the frequency at which players need to run between Kadala and the Blacksmith to salvage unwanted items
Come on, this was never a problem. If you gambled in New Tristam you literally turned around and the Blacksmith is there. There is probably another, true reason, but they could atleast lie better than this.
I havent had a chance to gamble enough to get a feel for the change. Lets see this weekend!
If you never believe the reasons Blizzard gives, then you're never going to accept any of the changes they make that aren't made for you. Knock that shit off.
Well that is dumb and entirely different than diminishing returns. If that were the case, every single stat has diminishing returns. The first point of strength will add a lot more to your total DPS than the last. going from 5->10% crit chance adds a lot more dps than 50->55%. Diminishing returns means something like: oh, after you reach 40% crit, every additional crit roll will only add 50% of what it actually says. i.e. if you have 40 crit and add a 6 crit roll on a ring or something, you will only go to 43.
That is the established definition of diminishing returns, yes. I guess some Diablo folk aren't used to playing other games that make use of the concept
They canned Project Titan from what I can tell. I don't think they should make another MMO given that WoW is bleeding subs. I do think they have had enough time to at least work out what the next expac is for D3.
WoW has been "bleeding subs" for, what, 5-7 years now? And it's still the most popular MMO out there.
It'll continue bleeding subs for another 10 years, at least. That's the mark of an extremely successful MMO. Indeed, it's probably the most successful MMO ever created. If Blizzard made another MMO, it'd probably be nearly as successful.
Also, WoW isn't bleeding subs. Yes, the subscriber numbers are going down, but they'll go back up when the expansion arrives. It's been doing this ever since the first expansion and it'll always be this way and, indeed, is exactly what anyone should realistically expect from a 10-year-old game MMO. Old players get tired, quit, come back, quit for good, and new players replace a portion of the old players. Meanwhile, new MMOs are crashing out of the gates, going free-to-play within a year of release, and are well and truly losing subscriptions at an astounding rate. If WoW is bleeding subs, then every other MMO is experiencing major brain aneurysms on a regular basis.
The game will remain profitable for a long time, whether that means 10 million subs or 3 million.
I would love to see D1/D2 remastered...WITH ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER CHANGES....not a one.
And then watch the forum for all the "D2 is da bestest game ever" crowd having their nostalgic illusions shattered and thrown on the floor as the reality comes back and punches them in the face.
Nostalgia..
you do realise that tons of people are still playing D2 now right?
you do realisethat a lot of people went back to playing D2 after the buyer's remorse of D3 right?
You do realize that this happens with literally every game that has sequels ever, right?
You do realize that nostalgia is one of the main reason anyone plays old games, right?
My personal opinion: Anyone still playing Diablo 2 needs to find a new game to play.
The pity timer probably has not kicked in on live servers even once since 2.0.5. It was designed to avoid long streaks of multiple hours of ACTIVE playing (standing 4 hours in town does nothing) without a drop. That is virtually impossible. I call BS on anyone who wants to tell me that when doing 3 hours of normal bounties (even with Junger Rules) you don't get a single legendary drop. You have to kill stuff to complete the bounties...
The people who buy into things like the Junger Method are the same kind of people who either have never looked into how the pity timer works or who remain willfully ignorant of its functionality (they've seen the blue post/blue quote and simply don't believe that it's true).
1
Well, consider this: Patch 2.1 was a free patch -- we didn't have to pay for it. It introduced leaderboards and Grifts. Now, I understand that Grifts are, essentially, a minor update of regular rifts, (which is why I don't consider it to be much of a content update), but leaderboards are a pretty large undertaking. There was also the greed realm, which included a brand new boss fight.
Like I said: We didn't pay for patch 2.1, but it still included new content. With that in mind, what's to stop Blizzard from putting in a Boss-rush mode?
Think about it: Boss-rush is more competitive than Grifts could ever be, since you're fighting established bosses with established mechanics -- no randomness. It makes perfect sense for this mode to be implemented. I can't imagine it would take much more in the way of development resources than Grifts did, or even the Realm of Trials.
But, no, it's a suggestion for new content that doesn't involve repeatedly farming loot for the sole purpose of farming more loot, so your average Diablo 3 forum poster is never going to support the idea. That, apparently, isn't the kind of game that Diablo 3 is, right D3 community?
So, we're going to continue having forum posters complaining about how "the popularity of this game dropped so dramatically" and how "were heading back into the "dark age" of diablo 3 again." In fact, the most insightful part of DeboSc2's comment was his last line, "Oh well not like im gonna stop playing LOL". It sounds to me like DeboSc2 is a Diablo fan. Well, naturally Diablo fans aren't going to quit playing, because Diablo fans are fans of endless grinding and farming. The problem, though, is that the majority of people buying this game aren't Diablo fans -- they're gamers. I'm willing to bet that more people have bought and quit this game due to the grinding nature than are still playing it.
1
Usually, when I ask this question, the answer is "just because an item is orange doesn't mean it's legendary," which is another way of saying, "I don't understand the question and I'm just complaining because I didn't get the item I wanted."
1
1
Of course, they'd have to come up with something that isn't random, for once (like the boss rush idea I posted above :P)...
1
edit: Sorry for the triple post.
I like the idea of multiple tiers of gear, but I'd want a pretty solid difficulty revamp if that's the direction they're going to go. I'd also like for there to be more source-specific legendaries. Like how some legendaries are restricted to caches -- have other legendaries restricted to other modes, or to bosses, or to chests, etc.
I came up with a mode that I'd like to see in Diablo 3. I'm going to copy and paste my reddit post.
One of the most common complaints I see about the Greater Rift system is how random it is. It's supposed to be competitive and, yet, no rift is the same... so, I was thinking... what kind of activity is easily measured and still competitive? BOSS RUSH!!!
What Is It?
Boss rush mode is a fairly common mode in action games where the player faces off against (most) every boss in the game, one after another, to see how many of them they can beat and how fast they can do so.
How Would It Work In Diablo?
Picture a large, specially designed room. Probably somewhat circular, though with little nubs along the edge. Plenty of room to move around in and pick strategic positions. Upon entering this room, you could click an object (or button) to start the Boss Rush mode. After a short countdown, the first boss appears and you kill it. Upon death, the next boss spawns. And so on until you finally kill Malthael. At this point, the bosses would start cycling through again, more powerful than the last time.
Okay, But Can't We Spice It Up a Bit?
Absolutely! You remember those little nubs around the edge of the room that I mentioned earlier? Well, let's put orbs there that will allow players to spawn the bosses early. That way, those of us that can kill each of the first wave's bosses in seconds can just spawn all the bosses right away and clear the first wave, bringing down our overall time.
Also, there could be specially placed buff shrines (non-random) that will recharge after a certain amount of bosses are killed, allowing for more potential strategies.
Let's Go Over Some Specifics
How would we start this mode? Well, people are starting to get bored of Greater Rifts already, so we could either add another drop to the final Greater Rift Guardian (meaning, you get it when you either choose not to upgrade your rift key or when you fail the timer). Alternatively, the Keystone of Trials could be used as the key.
Difficulty? Simply set the difficulty based on the game's difficulty level. Torment 6 players automatically start with Torment 6 bosses. Naturally, the only really interesting leaderboard for this would be the Torment 6 leaderboard, but other difficulties would still be present for those that can't handle Torment 6. Boss difficulty would obviously increase with new set of bosses.
Rewards
There would be three obvious sets of rewards for this mode...
Leaderboards: Fastest wave clears, most waves cleared. This way you could either choose to go for speed or for longevity.
Wouldn't This Just Get Boring, Eventually?Loot: Players would obviously expect some kind of loot reward, so why not add some more legendaries to be dropped specifically from this game mode? Utility items like Ramalandi's Gift could also be included. Perhaps the player would be guaranteed one item that would add a specific affix to a piece of gear for a specific slot. Say, you get an item that adds an All Resist roll to a ring, or an item that adds Cooldown Reduction to your helm. There are any number of potentially appealing items that could be made specifically to drop in this game mode.
Achievements: 'Nuff said.
Much like everything else in Diablo 3, yes, repeated use of this game mode is bound to get boring after so long. But now that we've got this system in place, what's to stop Blizzard from updating it on a regular basis?
Tired of Boss Rush mode? We'll add a new challenge! New bosses! Bosses from Diablo 2! Famous Nephelem of legend to test yourself against! There could be the Set Item challenge, where you fight bosses based upon the set items in the game. Finally, you get to fight Bul-Kathos, Natalya, Roland, and everyone else! Danger mode, where you have to actively avoid non-random (or random, though I'm trying to avoid that with this idea) environmental affects that limit your ability to navigate the room while fighting bosses. Really, there's no end to the new challenges they could come up with.
Tell Me What YOU Think
I think that this could be a great addition to the game... how about you? Comments, concerns, critiques? Go for it!
One last thing:
This just occurred to me, but Diablo 3 could really use something like the Brawler's Guild from WoW. For those that don't know, Brawler's Guild is an Arena where you fight progressively more difficult and unique bosses.
1
1
1
It'll continue bleeding subs for another 10 years, at least. That's the mark of an extremely successful MMO. Indeed, it's probably the most successful MMO ever created. If Blizzard made another MMO, it'd probably be nearly as successful.
Also, WoW isn't bleeding subs. Yes, the subscriber numbers are going down, but they'll go back up when the expansion arrives. It's been doing this ever since the first expansion and it'll always be this way and, indeed, is exactly what anyone should realistically expect from a 10-year-old game MMO. Old players get tired, quit, come back, quit for good, and new players replace a portion of the old players. Meanwhile, new MMOs are crashing out of the gates, going free-to-play within a year of release, and are well and truly losing subscriptions at an astounding rate. If WoW is bleeding subs, then every other MMO is experiencing major brain aneurysms on a regular basis.
The game will remain profitable for a long time, whether that means 10 million subs or 3 million.
1
You do realize that nostalgia is one of the main reason anyone plays old games, right?
My personal opinion: Anyone still playing Diablo 2 needs to find a new game to play.
1