Diablo 3 Player Count Drops Big Time on Xfire, Consumers Are Fed Up
- Thread starter sazzy
- Start date
I can definitely see this being the case. The game feels like a chore to play instead of the joy that was D1 and D2. I put hundreds of hours into D1 and D2 and D3 already feels like a chore after 30. I moved on and just hope Torchlight 2 can make up for it.
I think the thing that bothers me the most is that this game was a huge success even though it wasn't very good. I hate that I promoted this type of game philosophy by buying it purely on my past love of Diablo.
I think the thing that bothers me the most is that this game was a huge success even though it wasn't very good. I hate that I promoted this type of game philosophy by buying it purely on my past love of Diablo.
michaelius
Banned
Grinding bosses is fine. Taking 4x quest exp using exploit for same boss is not.
Yes i read it. Some naive idiot belives his automatic checking software will actually be able to detect cheated characters after he leaves save file on players PC.
Considering Torchlight is made by people who made Diablo II and witnessed Open Battlenet gameplay it's really mind bogling.
I pushed through to Inferno a couple weeks ago in the hopes that the drop rate/itemization would be reasonable. Quit after deciding it was still shit. Out of my group of friends (13 total) that were playing Diablo only four are still playing much at all. In a few more weeks that will likely be down to 1-2.
No one expects the best loot on a plate. People expect some actual variety and atleast some progression in a multi-hour session.
In Diablo II, there were constant drops and you always were making a choice about which piece of gear suited you the best at that moment in time.
In Diablo III, you get a drop for a specific item slot after 4 hours (even in low difficulties) thats marginally better, and you use it because there is no alternative.
In Diablo II, items may have lower base stats but improve a skill. You then have to make a decision about whether or not that skill is worth the tradeoff.
In Diablo III, items with lower base stats nerf all of your skills, almost always leading to there being no sense of choice because item A is plain better than item B.
In Diablo II, the drop rate was high enough that you always felt capable of continuing. Those who explored every nook and cranny were rewarded with being slightly overpowered.
In Diablo III, the drop rate is so low that you frequently will find yourself pathetic compared to the enemies, and be nearly forced to look at the auction house.
This next one is a personal issue of mine:
In Diablo II, you get a drop that's much better and you think "Wow, this is amazing!". You always feel powerful.
In Diablo III, you had to use the Auction House to continue, and have to filter through all of the vastly better items at your level to settle on one that's reasonably priced at that point in time. This feels the equivelant of if Diablo II displayed a list of better gear next to every drop you pick up, to constantly remind you that your gear sucks in the grand scheme of things. You always feel weaker than others.
I stopped playing as well...at this point I'm just waiting for PVP, which will hopefully be interesting.
But here's the other thing: Does Blizzard care? WoW has monthly fees that require them to actively hold onto subscribers. Diablo, however...RMAH aside, they've got your $60. I think those who went in expecting MMO levels of endgame content/consideration may be sorely disappointed.
But here's the other thing: Does Blizzard care? WoW has monthly fees that require them to actively hold onto subscribers. Diablo, however...RMAH aside, they've got your $60. I think those who went in expecting MMO levels of endgame content/consideration may be sorely disappointed.
I'll take that shit over always online BS any day. I won't even dare trying a HC toon in D3 thanks to the terrible latency and rubberbanding issues. Plus, a lot of players on different timezones have to play on the US server, and Blizzard just loves doing server maintenance weekly at the peak hour (6-12pm). Essentially, I can't play the single player game I bought one night a week thanks to the always online feature. Yay!
Im still playing D3 but I wouldn't say that I'm having fun per se. Bashiok was the blue that said the drop rates were balanced around the AH, the Jay Wilson refuted that, so we really don't know who was telling the truth.
I tend to lean towards the idea that drops were balanced around the ah and by extension RMAH because blizzard makes money from the rmah, and therefore wants players to use it. The most annoying thing to me is that the regular ah now has become a graveyard, compared to the rmah, and since i refuse to use the rmah, im sort of out of luck for buying gear, so my progression has slowed. I mean, Im in act 3 inferno with 3 different toons (barb, wizard, WD) and I've just gotten bored.
I really like NV at the beginning, but not being able to switch up skills without losing stacks is a dumb mechanic. Then again, in the case of my WD, most of the skills are terrible, so I would just use the same build anyways.
Still playing, but I honestly don't know why, Im bored with the game. They need the PVP patch yesterday.
I tend to lean towards the idea that drops were balanced around the ah and by extension RMAH because blizzard makes money from the rmah, and therefore wants players to use it. The most annoying thing to me is that the regular ah now has become a graveyard, compared to the rmah, and since i refuse to use the rmah, im sort of out of luck for buying gear, so my progression has slowed. I mean, Im in act 3 inferno with 3 different toons (barb, wizard, WD) and I've just gotten bored.
I really like NV at the beginning, but not being able to switch up skills without losing stacks is a dumb mechanic. Then again, in the case of my WD, most of the skills are terrible, so I would just use the same build anyways.
Still playing, but I honestly don't know why, Im bored with the game. They need the PVP patch yesterday.
theMrCravens
Member
It took an expansion for D2 to become what it is.
Let's wait for the D3 one before passing final judgement.
Let's wait for the D3 one before passing final judgement.
Wizard, Witch Doctor and Demon Hunter, actually. Not all max level, because...well, they're boring.Are you playing DH by any chance? Cause surely my Wizard skills are quite different
But for Wizard, you can't tell me that all of their primaries are essentially the same thing, with the one changing factor being range (blades/pulse). Hell, some of the runes turn the primaries into facsimiles of other skills, like Piercing Orb rune becoming an Arcane Orb, Lightning Blast becoming Disintegrate.
Then you have the Force tree, which is all just straight damage in various guises, or useless (Wave of Force). Conjuration is the token boring +X tree that simply raises damage or survivability.
10 years is more generous handout than an expansion in my books.
Mechanized
Member
Without getting too into it I'll just say that this was a great game, but a horrible Diablo game. Diablo 3 should have lasted me the next 5-10 years. Not a few weeks.
Someone else said it best a few weeks ago. It feels more like a Diablo clone instead of the next game in the series.
Someone else said it best a few weeks ago. It feels more like a Diablo clone instead of the next game in the series.
The reason is simple: players either got frustrated at the difficult ramp up or got bored due to the lack of end game contents.
Even torchlight 1 has an endless dungeon that matches your level and random dungeon map drops.
Constantly nerfing things that people enjoy also doesn't help.
Good luck getting those players back. Time has changed and there are too many games than people have time for. Most people aren't coming back no matter what.
Even torchlight 1 has an endless dungeon that matches your level and random dungeon map drops.
Constantly nerfing things that people enjoy also doesn't help.
Good luck getting those players back. Time has changed and there are too many games than people have time for. Most people aren't coming back no matter what.
On the other hand, I've leveled 4 chars to 60 and have been farming Inferno for a few weeks now. Overall I probably spent a good 120-150 hours on the game. Until today, I've not had a single item drop that was actually an upgrade for me. Nor any item that was comparable. Not even an item that was an upgrade for one of my lower level chars (40-50). But today I finally had a weapon drop that was a 100 dps upgrade for my follower. yay.
So sure, there might be some people that expect every other drop to be an upgrade or sell-able. But I don't think my story is so unusual..
Then they should have adjusted it so you could still level at a good pace in boss runs. Even with 4x it still was slower than even CS runs in D2. They could have upped the experience and limited it to 1x collect. What harm would have come from that?
At least they're trying to innovate. It's better than no anti-cheat protection which is exactly what we're seeing in D3... even with the much better resources they have available.
@bold: what are you even talking about here? They didn't try any anti-cheat measures in open bnet since that wasn't a priority... now they're making it one.
wtf does it matter? metrics are metrics
AlimNassor
Banned
i didn't play Diablo 2 till last year. Nostalgia had nothing to do with it being better then Diablo 3.
Lyphen said:
I am sorry, but I will not argue with you about this: I have been spending 150+ hours in endgame with one class (wizard) and the skills are WILDLY different in application and in self-synergies and in usefulness in different scenarios. Wildly. Wave of Force is the exact opposite of useless, btw.
Lyphen said:
Except that this game has not been in development for 10 years. Half it, and even then it is a long shot.
Which it will but to automatically say that it didn't live up to the franchise full potential is not only insane, it's incorrect as well. In time with more patches and the expansion, I can absolutely see Diablo 3 being equal to Diablo 2 if not surpassing it especially since I feel that in some ways it already has.
I'm torn on the issue. I can see the point where people are saying the auction house has ruined high level play. I'm on inferno now and the AH really is a requirement to move forward. The drops aren't good enough to move forward on your own, and the blacksmith isn't good enough to create better items. So Blizzard has failed on two fronts already. If their plan is to make the AH a requirement to continue then high level play is going to dwindle. I'll give them the benefit that they'll patch loot drops in the near future. If not I'll play my characters up to Inferno and quit.
I've just reached Lvl 60 and people say it's a whole new game on Inferno. I've played through Act I and having a hard time going back to grind for more items. My DH dies so many times and repairing armor and weapons is very expensive.
Blizzard should've made us play the game twice and and the third time should've been Inferno.
Blizzard should've made us play the game twice and and the third time should've been Inferno.
I guess we have a different description of wildly, especially since I was mentioning something (wildly different) like Dota in my original post.
michaelius
Banned
Yes as we know automatic anti-cheat systems in all games have proven track record of stopping people from cheating in games
Treemonkeys
Member
I think a big difference is the gear grind for inferno not the AH. In D2 there was little gear grind required to beat hell, none at all really if you had a good coop. Then the gear grind was left to PVP and how quickly you want to roflstomp mobs which somehow seems more fun.
Right, I think the issue here is that most people literally cannot progress past Act 1 or 2 in Inferno. So it's not an issue of getting better gear to grind out enemies better/faster, it's an incredibly slow grind to maybe have a chance to barely progress.
Ploid 3.0
Member
I think I hit the, "It's time to give up on this game" moment last night when farming act 3. Still got trash and I already did some farming in Act 4 so it seems like there's nothing but trash there too. I'm better off going back to the old game Titan Quest or finishing off my Borderlands GOTY expansions that I didn't do yet. At least they deliver in keeping you going by dropping decent stuff. With D3 it's like I'm farming gold to save up for decent stuff from the AH (Good to great stuff is too expensive, amazing stuff is stupidly expensive).
They literally give you zero chance to progress. Enrage timer is one big fat gear check telling you that you need to go to the AH to buy better gears.
I was excited when people were saying how difficult inferno was. I was imagining all these epic battles against groups of impossible elites, working with a group of skillful players, running around the battlefield, dodging their attacks and finding ways to snipe at them.
Then reality set in and it's either you have the gears to tank them and just sit there until they die, or you run away. Forget about all pretence of skills since between server lag, input lag, rubberbanding, intentionally unavoidable hitbox and high repair cost, there's no room for player skills.
linko9
Member
I don't get it, this is a single player game, clearly it's not going to have the "retention rate" of an MMO or "e-sport" type of game. Obviously some people will be obsessed with it an keep playing due to the auction house, and will wait for PvP to be implemented, but for many players, they'll just beat the game and then stop playing, as is standard with single player games.
Schweinehund
Member
Itemization, crap witch doctor skills (only a few viable builds) did it for me.
One of my biggest games to look forward to turned into one of the biggest disappointments.
Such a single player game you have to play it online and by default are put into a chat room.
One of my biggest games to look forward to turned into one of the biggest disappointments.
blizzard's dragon age 2
Such a single player game you have to play it online and by default are put into a chat room.
What's an enrage timer?
I freaking hate it when charts with different scales are compared. Even worse they have no zero point on the bottom so the movements look more significant than it really is.
A 0 to 100 chart with movement from 80 to 85 is going to look enormously different than the same data on a 75 to 100 chart.
A 0 to 100 chart with movement from 80 to 85 is going to look enormously different than the same data on a 75 to 100 chart.
If you cannot defeat an elite or boss enemy after a few minutes, elite enemies will damage you continuously until they are back to full health. Boss will throw out some highly damaging attack that will almost guarantee to kill everybody.
Oh did I mention that in a recent patch, they made elite enemies reset to full health very quickily if you leave them alone just for a short time? Fun game.
Ploid 3.0
Member
Mister Zimbu
Member
I agree mostly to a certain extent. You absolutely do not need the auction house in any way, shape, or form before 60. The first time I actually used it seriously to look for an upgrade was at level 60 to gear myself up better to survive the Diablo fight on Hell.
Anyone says you don't need the AH for anything beyond that is full of shit. You might be able to get by Act 1 just by farming. Act 2 is hopeless in that respect, since the difficulty climb is still way too steep between the two. You can barely handle a single champion pack in Act 2 with gear that would normally crush Act 1, but the odds of getting usable gear in Act 1 that are upgrades that will work for you in Act 2 are astronomical.
It doesn't help that everything in Inferno is level 60, which means that the typical ilvl61 items that drop in Act 1 will universally sell for nothing no matter how well itemized they are, just because it's not i62 or i63.
Inferno Act 2 to me, is still not fun, but it's getting there. Kiting champion packs around dodging stuff can be entertaining, but it drags on way too long. The champion packs just have way too much health, and the enrage is just not a good mechanic when fights center around running around 90% of the time and only being able to rarely chip away at enemies.
The Lamonster
Member
I got bored with D3 because it is super repetitive and the loot isn't all that interesting. It also runs like shit on my computer. I will eventually level my character to 60 but not anytime soon. I've since gone back to WoW. It's a hell of a game
Fix what? Serious question.
D2 has/had a large, dedicated community for over a decade. It didn't really have as big a name to live up to as D3 does nor was Blizzard as big as it is now. D3 had some pretty big shoes to fill in the eyes of the dedicated community which is why a lot of us are frustrated and let down by it. Had this not been a summer game I probably wouldn't even be logging in anymore. Mostly now my logins consist of <5 goblin kills and a trip to the AH on average. No way was I incorrect in what I said and it'll show as people continue to quit.
The game now is incomplete and that's how it's being judged. I'm not going to give them any more of a pass than I would a random game by some noname company that promises future patches and expansions. Besides the AH, which some even believe is a step down, I can't think of any aspect that's better now that's not simply due to technology changes. Unless pvp is the greatest shit ever, no way in hell will it rival the replayability of 2.
Yes as we know automatic anti-cheat systems in all games have proven track record of stopping people from cheating in games
??? They never said it was perfect, they said it would hopefully help keep cheaters out of your experience. If you even suspect someone of cheating you can block them and therefore don't have to play with them again. How is this a bad thing?
The normal content in Act 2 is completely doable with absolutely no use of the AH.
It's pretty damn boring, however.
The only problem might be Belial but I'm not sure, I have yet to beat him but it may be just because I haven't touched the game in at least a week.
Mister Zimbu
Member
I've since gone back to WoW. It's a hell of a game
I can't go back to WoW because the endgame grind is even worse than D3, but for the opposite reason. You have all of your gear within a few lockouts and now you're just running Dragon Soul once a week for no reason.
Blizzard's dropped the ball a lot lately.
The champ packs are really my only complaint. Something's wrong when you absolutely run over any normal enemy without a problem but you get obliterated by a champ pack if you so much as get hit once. Running around in circles for 5 minutes and chipping away isn't fun. And god help me if one of the packs has a "Fast" affix because at that point it's pretty much impossible (depending on the mob type).
As a DH, something's wrong if I can pretty much facetank and solo most of a 4 player Act 1 inferno game but absolutely get destroyed playing Act 2 as intended.
Heh, its obvious whoever made this comic doesn't even play D3. The player base is having the EXACT opposite of what's going on in there.
Another thing I have to add is...playing with other people in Inferno seems more like a handicap than help.
Yeah if you farm Act I for 200+ hours maybe...
I can beat Belial just fine, but I still get raped by some of the Elite packs in Act II. So much for balancing.
Seriously, thank you for this clear and concise post. This explains exactly what was done wrong in D3.
The Lamonster
Member
Alts, son!
sazzy
Member
i think the point of the strip is that he got a super awesome drop *after* spending 300 bucks in the RMAH.
tin foil hat theory: imagine if your drop rate is dynamic and changes as you spend more money on the RMAH. we can't really know since the exact numbers are hidden behind a wall of randomness.