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[ciridesu]

I feel like D3 was Blizzard's first major misstep. Not that it sucked as the gameplay is still something many are glad with. The design however left much to be desired.

It seems as if Blizzard failed to satisfy the needs of both gaming populations in 'casual' and 'hardcore' design-wise. Story, itemization and other aspects are terrible and pale in comparison to their past CV pre-WotLK. The graphs are a lacklustre indicator, yet they do resemble the reality. D3 is not the addicting game people continue to play as it's predecessor.

Personally, my expectations were never set high as I'm one of those nerds who can't forgive Blizzard for their current direction with WoW in trying to appeal to a larger crowd, nerfing etc. Still I feel both WoW and SC2 excel, despite their numerous faults and are absolutely amazing games. D3 on the other hand, I think of as absolute garbage.

Sales of D3 lived on the hype set by it's previous installments and Blizzard's marketing and past credit. Next one though? I'm sure this won't affect the sales of Titan or whatever by all too much, yet Diablo's brand value is not the same it was two months back and that I feel is deserved.

 

[duckroll]

What's Xfire and how accurate are these stats? Do they really represent reality? I don't doubt some people are leaving because they're fed up, but do we actually have conclusive facts to back it up?

 

[Tildom]

That's what happened when you make a game around an Auction House and the % Blizzard gets in the real money one, not having in mind the level design or if playing a game is fun or not, if the challenges are well balanced...

They have made Diablo III thinking in "they will use de AH, they will sell their objects and we will have our 15%"

Well done Blizzard. You're game is dying before de PvP patch release but... you have sold over 6 million copies so I suppose you don't care.

 

[Link0080]

I'm not surprised, played the shit out of it for 2 weeks after it launched. I got to Act II inferno and couldn't do it because it was so hard. I did some butcher runs with my friends but that was just too boring so I made a new character and got it around 40 then gave up. The other day I logged in to play but I tried to stay interested, only lasted about 10 min.

I think my friends still play, I haven't been in vent because they only talk about Diablo -_-

I'll stick with Dota 2 <3

 

[Card Boy]

What's Xfire and how accurate are these stats? Do they really represent reality? I don't doubt some people are leaving because they're fed up, but do we actually have conclusive facts to back it up?

Basically a social networking thing for games acts like a fake Steam, you add your games manually to Xfire to be counted in the stats. If you don't have Xfire you don't get counted. The real numbers can be 10 times that because I know LoL has like 1.5 million concurrent users.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

I'll just say, somewhat misleading topic title? (Xfire users, hah!)

I'm not sure what you can say the data actually validates anyway, even though it is poor. Diablo III was the new hot shit, game of the moment. Of course it's going to spike and go down after people run through the campaign. Compared to an WoW (or any other MMO), it has significantly less actual content (a run of normal will take a new player 20 hours, give or take) compared to even just the leveling part of MMOs which can be counted in the days for inexperienced players.

The (enhanced) social aspect and hooks to grind make a good MMO much more intoxicating than Diablo or any ARPG could ever hope to be.

I'm not really sure what we're supposed to make out of the WoW graph though in comparison - it's very spiky and has a larger install base than Diablo anyway. Same goes for LoL, which in addition to that, is free. We'd need more data to make any reasonable conclusions.

What's Xfire and how accurate are these stats? Do they really represent reality? I don't doubt some people are leaving because they're fed up, but do we actually have conclusive facts to back it up?

I also, don't doubt that people are finished with Diablo (at least for the time being), but these stat are pretty much bunk. There is no conclusive evidence here one way or the other that the public will have access to (unless Blizzard releases it, which is unlikely).

 

[ElyrionX]

yup, played few weeks and dropped it. Now i play more Path of Exile or Diablo 2

I don't plan to go back. Easly the worst purchase in few years.

So much hyperbole in this thread

 

[sazzy]

What's Xfire and how accurate are these stats? Do they really represent reality? I don't doubt some people are leaving because they're fed up, but do we actually have conclusive facts to back it up?

Xfire (pronounced "X-Fire"[1]) is a proprietary freeware instant messaging service for gamers, that also serves as a game server browser and has various other features. It is currently available for Microsoft Windows. Xfire was originally developed by Ultimate Arena based in Menlo Park, California. Xfire currently has over 21 million registered users, with frequently over 250,000 users online.[2]

Xfire's Livestream (formerly known as Mogulus) allows users to broadcast live video streams of their current game to an audience. The website's Top 10 games has viewed World of Warcraft at the 1st place for many years but was recently surpassed by League of Legends on June 20, 2011. On May 16, 2012 Diablo III took the 1st place. A few days later League of Legends was back at the 1st place.

The stats are accurate in the sense that if you run the software while playing games, it counts the time you've spent on them accurately :\

edit- I was sad (and shocked) when Yoshichan quit a few weeks in

 

[Fredescu]

The stats are accurate

They may be accurate, but they're not enough to support the fact that players are decreasing because they're "fed up". Graphs for any major release with a single player component are going to look similar. Not saying people aren't fed up, but this data is pretty much irrelevant.

 

[Optimus Lime]

I liked it for the first few weeks, despite the problems with having to be always online.

But, I was amazed at how the game didn't end, so much as simply stopping - and my options from that point are to either stop playing, or to go back and play through it again as a different character. It's dull, and my second playthrough is becoming increasingly gruelling.

Path Of Exile is a far, far better game. Hopefully, Grinding Gears won't make any stupid mistakes prior to launch, because the game could make or break them, after Diablo 3's failure.

 

[SteveWD40]

People beat the game and moved on. I think it is that simple. I know a bunch of people hyped themselves up into believing they were never going to play another game after Diablo 3 came out or something, but most people probably got their fill after playing through it once. The game is not so fun that I want to play through it 4 times or more. I liked the game, but I couldn't even make myself play through it twice.
.

Good point, many people still play D2 now so it was thought that D3 was going to be a great 10 year game as well, up there with things like Dota and WoW as the sort of all consuming game, but the reason D2 held that mantle was due to so little competition now for game time imho.

Now we have Loot games / online FPS, MOBA's and MMO's coming out of our ears.

 

[sazzy]

They may be accurate, but they're not enough to support the fact that players are decreasing because they're "fed up". Graphs for any major release with a single player component are going to look similar. Not saying people aren't fed up, but this data is pretty much irrelevant.

Did you stop reading after the first 4 words of that sentence?

Why quote just that?

 

[V_Arnold]

Some of you might know me as that batshit insane Blizz-defender.
Some others might know me simply as crazy.

Diablo III was able to piss off a certain kind of gamer just as World of Warcraft was able to piss off a large amount of hardcore gamers when it launched instead of Warcraft4 or Diablo3 (ironically.). I still personally know a few people that got mad at Blizz back then, and never forgave them for "jumping into that crazy mmo'-thing."

Here is my take on this:
There are two things that is "wrong" with Diablo III.
One: the internal testing/QA team failed miserably. They designed these amazing ideas like resplendent chests, nephalem valor, Goblins, events (after 220 hours of gameplay, I still find brand new events that I did not see before. I mean, what the flying fuck?), and laid down the foundation of this without thinking about the players who will rush into this game with a single intent: to break it, to cheat it, to abuse it. To profit from it.

I cant believe that a huge development team like that did not hire a team of super "greedy" guys/girls whose job would have to be to simply try to abuse/exploit the system as much as possible. Yes, that includes the miserable "world first Inferno" kills where the players chainressed and ran through the content without being able to kill anything but the bosses. Yes, that includes those who got to Act3/Act4 through the public quest bug in Inferno and then kept chest farming there without a shed of remorse. Yes, that includes players who tried any kind of AH trick, exploit, dupe, etc.

The second thing that is wrong with Diablo III is that gameplay-wise, there is an elephant in the room: it is weapon DPS. It is a huge elephant in the room. It kills creativity (or tries to kill it anyway, once you have a big enough number there, you can be creative as much as you want.), it almost killed legendary items (it did, but patch is coming with the buff, somewhere in the near future), and EVERY SPELL SCALES WITH IT! It was an amazing idea in paper, but it is a very frustrating one in reality. It punishes you too much for not having a great item in that slot, and it rewards you too much if you get something insane. Weapons can be the centers of the game, but not like this. It is too much. There are several solutions, but I do not see how Blizzard can make any changes to this after RMAH has been launched, and several thousand players have spent $250 on top-end weapons. I just do not see it. Well, we shall see.

There are things that need repair.
There are things that need to be expanded upon.
There are things that are perfectly fine, though. Such is the gameplay. Such are the runes (even if they need to be adjusted, obviously.), such are the presence of AH (because if you think players do not trade outside of the game anyway, you close your eyes to something that exists, and exists BIG TIME.) Do not be mad at Blizzard for making you see the issue: thank them for the opportunity to see it. Those friends of yours with amazing gear in D2 with less playtime than you? Most likely they either duped, or bought it. Not luck. Deal with it. That is human nature.

I will continue playing the game. I could be mad, flip tables with 200+ hours of gametime, stating something is horribly wrong - but that would be crazy. If something is horribly wrong, I do not put that much amount of time into it, but stop after, what? 40 hours? And even that is a generous number.

There is one thing, that is, however, PERFECTLY CLEAR for me. Blizzard will improve this game tenfold. Anyone who says they won't/can't might just as well assume that the Sun will not come up tomorrow, even if it did for quite some time before. Because that is what Blizzard does. They sit down, they recognize their mistakes, and they learn from it, one way or another. They never stay in one place. For some, their direction might be worse, but overall, it is usually not. This game wont stay like this - it will expand. Whether we like it or not is a different matter entirely.

 

[Fredescu]

Did you stop reading after the first 4 words of that sentence?

Why quote just that?

How is the rest of that relevant or a defence of the terrible headline of the article, and your threadtitle?

 

[Heavy's Sandvich]

Just reinstalled the game, the lag was disgraceful, logged out.

Always online has been a disaster for me.

 

[Fallout-NL]

I've played Diablo II on and off for over a decade.

Diablo III lasted for three weeks. There's just something wrong with it.

 

[Slayer-33]

not a big shocker, i stopped playing after patch 1.03. This game became a joke after nerfing your character, stupid drop rates on inferno and high repair cost just to stabilize the gold economy. Game is just not fun anymore.

Bam.

Exactly the same reason why I completely stopped.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Simply put: I had fun for the first 3 difficulty levels. Ran into the bullshit that was Inferno Act 2 and eventually just moved on to other, much more stable and enjoyable games. Booted it up once in the last 3 weeks a couple days ago and was like....nope! Closed that shit right up. I've realized the value of games where the lag isn't as much an enemy as what's on screen. Where better visuals and gameplay can be found. Where stutter doesn't exist.

Either way, I got my monies worth despite being disappointed with their server issues. I just wish those hours were more enjoyable technical experiences than they were.

 

[Keasar]

Wait, so Diablo 2 and 3 drops in player count but World of Warcraft gains?

"Eh, I am tired of this grind for gear, I have already defeated Diablo like 4-5 times now. Time to return to World of Warcraft and grind more gear so we can do that raid again for the sixth time, daddy wants his ring for his paladin."

I am confused, but yeah, I stopped playing after completing the game only once. It wasn't fun, the constant lag and connection drops making me having to restart dungeons over and over was just too frustrating.

 

[Impeccable]

I feel like a lot of people expected the best loot handed to them on a plate and realized quickly that's not how Diablo and less specifically loot games work.

 

[zoukka]

There just isn't enough content for people who aren't willing to farm certain spots/gobs/chests. If you are addicted to AH, you have a reason to stay. If not, then this game will be just a hollow husk of an experience for you.

AH is the only thing keeping me in. It's way more fun than the basic gameplay and farming.

 

[Zaptruder]

Some of you might know me as that batshit insane Blizz-defender.
Some others might know me simply as crazy.

Diablo III was able to piss off a certain kind of gamer just as World of Warcraft was able to piss off a large amount of hardcore gamers when it launched instead of Warcraft4 or Diablo3 (ironically.). I still personally know a few people that got mad at Blizz back then, and never forgave them for "jumping into that crazy mmo'-thing."

Here is my take on this:
There are two things that is "wrong" with Diablo III.
One: the internal testing/QA team failed miserably. They designed these amazing ideas like resplendent chests, nephalem valor, Goblins, events (after 220 hours of gameplay, I still find brand new events that I did not see before. I mean, what the flying fuck?), and laid down the foundation of this without thinking about the players who will rush into this game with a single intent: to break it, to cheat it, to abuse it. To profit from it.

I cant believe that a huge development team like that did not hire a team of super "greedy" guys/girls whose job would have to be to simply try to abuse/exploit the system as much as possible. Yes, that includes the miserable "world first Inferno" kills where the players chainressed and ran through the content without being able to kill anything but the bosses. Yes, that includes those who got to Act3/Act4 through the public quest bug in Inferno and then kept chest farming there without a shed of remorse. Yes, that includes players who tried any kind of AH trick, exploit, dupe, etc.

The second thing that is wrong with Diablo III is that gameplay-wise, there is an elephant in the room: it is weapon DPS. It is a huge elephant in the room. It kills creativity (or tries to kill it anyway, once you have a big enough number there, you can be creative as much as you want.), it almost killed legendary items (it did, but patch is coming with the buff, somewhere in the near future), and EVERY SPELL SCALES WITH IT! It was an amazing idea in paper, but it is a very frustrating one in reality. It punishes you too much for not having a great item in that slot, and it rewards you too much if you get something insane. Weapons can be the centers of the game, but not like this. It is too much. There are several solutions, but I do not see how Blizzard can make any changes to this after RMAH has been launched, and several thousand players have spent $250 on top-end weapons. I just do not see it. Well, we shall see.

There are things that need repair.
There are things that need to be expanded upon.
There are things that are perfectly fine, though. Such is the gameplay. Such are the runes (even if they need to be adjusted, obviously.), such are the presence of AH (because if you think players do not trade outside of the game anyway, you close your eyes to something that exists, and exists BIG TIME.) Do not be mad at Blizzard for making you see the issue: thank them for the opportunity to see it. Those friends of yours with amazing gear in D2 with less playtime than you? Most likely they either duped, or bought it. Not luck. Deal with it. That is human nature.

I will continue playing the game. I could be mad, flip tables with 200+ hours of gametime, stating something is horribly wrong - but that would be crazy. If something is horribly wrong, I do not put that much amount of time into it, but stop after, what? 40 hours? And even that is a generous number.

There is one thing, that is, however, PERFECTLY CLEAR for me. Blizzard will improve this game tenfold. Anyone who says they won't/can't might just as well assume that the Sun will not come up tomorrow, even if it did for quite some time before. Because that is what Blizzard does. They sit down, they recognize their mistakes, and they learn from it, one way or another. They never stay in one place. For some, their direction might be worse, but overall, it is usually not. This game wont stay like this - it will expand. Whether we like it or not is a different matter entirely.

I totally respect Blizzard's continuous iteration of their game after launch. It's really why I believe the company and their games are as successful as it is in this day and age.

But I don't think any amount of iteration and patching and improvement can fix a fundamentally boring core gameplay. Maybe a change in control scheme - looking forward to that console launch so I can get my gamepad patch.

 

[Kyoufu]

I stopped playing Diablo 3 a few days ago.

 

[Card Boy]

I feel like a lot of people expect the best loot handed to them on a plate and realized quickly that's not how Diablo and less specifically loot games work.

The drop rates in Diablo 3 are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than Diablo 1+2, not sure why you're pointing the finger at players, I'm surprised you didn't call people entitled wankers while you where at it. It's clearly an obvious ploy for the auction house.

 

[Hoo-doo]

I feel like a lot of people expect the best loot handed to them on a plate and realized quickly that's not how Diablo and less specifically loot games work.

Loot is awesome when it looks unique and when you can use it to compare and compete with your friends.
Also, the premise of never-before-seen content that's only accessible with super high-end gear.

I have played WoW for close to 5 years, and there is tons and tons of content that I have never even seen because I don't have the gear required to tackle it. For me, that's a big driving force to want to get better items.

In D3 I can look forward to obtaining the best gear in the world that looks no different than the generic purple drops you find in normal mode, there is nothing to set it apart. And what can I do with it? The same shit, again. Alone.
Why should I invest my time in that? The game should have launched with PvP at least.

 

[FtHTiny]

Wait, so Diablo 2 and 3 drops in player count but World of Warcraft gains?

There is currently new content in wow. So the numbers going up is not surprising.

 

[michaelius]

But I don't think any amount of iteration and patching and improvement can fix a fundamentally boring core gameplay. Maybe a change in control scheme - looking forward to that console launch so I can get my gamepad patch.

All gamepad (or wsad movement) controlled Diablo clones sucked.

That control scheme is not universal and fast enough to mantain teleporting Wizard(D3)/Sorceress(D2) gameplay and attacks like Blizzard or most of DH skills.

 

[Impeccable]

The drop rates in Diablo 3 are SIGNIFICANTLY lower than Diablo 1+2, not sure why you're pointing the finger at players, I'm surprised you didn't call people entitled wankers while you where at it. It's clearly an obvious ploy for the auction house.

Is there any proof behind significantly lower?

Also, no need to get so defensive my post wasn't aimed at anyone in particular.

 

[SteveWD40]

Wait, so Diablo 2 and 3 drops in player count but World of Warcraft gains?

"Eh, I am tired of this grind for gear, I have already defeated Diablo like 4-5 times now. Time to return to World of Warcraft and grind more gear so we can do that raid again for the sixth time, daddy wants his ring for his paladin."

I am confused.

More to do in WoW (pvp for one thing), it's comfortable and the servers are far more stable.

I expect D3 will pick up again when they launch the arena, but I still never buying it.

 

[Cheech]

There just isn't enough content for people who aren't willing to farm certain spots/gobs/chests. If you are addicted to AH, you have a reason to stay. If not, then this game will be just a hollow husk of an experience for you.

AH is the only thing keeping me in. It's way more fun than the basic gameplay and farming.

Yeah, after beating the game on Nightmare with my Barbarian, I'm giving it a rest. I'll come back to the game at some point, but baseball and Game of Thrones beckons. Considering how many consecutive days of gaming I got out of Diablo 3, I can't say I didn't get my money's worth many times over.

Really don't get the bitching, especially from people who are complaining about loot drops on Inferno and whatnot. The game was $60. You want something manicured to perfection, WoW is always there.

 

[FtHTiny]

In D3 I can look forward to obtaining the best gear in the world that looks no different than the generic purple drops you find in normal mode, there is nothing to set it apart. And what can I do with it? The same shit, again. Alone.

That´s exactly what you are doing in WoW. Besides the alone which isn´t true for d3 aswell. Even if you clear Heroic your gear has just another color. Then you farm it every week until the next raid is launched.

 

[GhostRidah]

The game is a huge disappointment, and you can tell just off the few patches they have done so far that they really have no clue what to do to fix it or they are to stuburn to listen to the community and stick to their design philosophy. Yes I do know they did do a few things the community wanted but they implemented it very poorly.

Not to mention this is the sort of thing that happens when you dont have a beta test outside of your inside team, and beta testing to sk is not what I mean.

 

[Meatvillain]

I don't use Xfire, but I stopped playing when the new patch hit, I was already getting burnt out on it after having played 100+ hours the changes in the patch just pushed me off early. It's not even a matter of protest or being all "GRAAARGH I AM FED UP!NI AM CONSUMER HEAR ME ROAR" I just decided that I was done with the game until later. Felt like I got my money's worth anyway, even if the Auction House did negatively impact on the loot cycle I normally enjoy.

 

[Sophia]

Is there any proof behind significantly lower?

Not sure about the D2 rates, but the D3 rates are REALLY low, like 2-6% for item level 63 depending on the act. Even Blizzard thinks they're too low. :\

 

[ElyrionX]

No, I disagree that the drop rates in D3 are lower than in D2. In all my years of playing D3, I've never seen a rune higher than Mal drop, even after the drop rates for high runes were boosted. And you needed several of those runes just to make one end-game item.

 

[Hoo-doo]

That´s exactly what you are doing in WoW. Besides the alone which isn´t true for d3 aswell. Even if you clear Heroic your gear has just another color. Then you farm it every week until the next raid is launched.

I never got there in 5 years though, as it requires quite the time investment.
But what i'm saying is that in D3, the early-game is literally the exact same as the end-game.
I have already experienced it all, multiple times over. It's not hard to imagine people quitting for other games if they want to actually progress through something that hasn't grown stale yet.

Maybe my expectations for the game were set too high, but i simply expected a lot more from Blizzard.

 

[zoukka]

Not sure about the D2 rates, but the D3 rates are REALLY low, like 2-6% for item level 63 depending on the act. Even Blizzard thinks they're too low. :\

But the AH makes a huge difference. The items drop less frequently, but in turn are always available to everyone.

 

[Impeccable]

No, I disagree that the drop rates in D3 are lower than in D2. In all my years of playing D3, I've never seen a rune higher than Mal drop, even after the drop rates for high runes were boosted. And you needed several of those runes just to make one end-game item.

That's what I'm saying, I know Blizzard thinks it's low now, they're tweaking it though.

I'm just not sure people remember what the chase was like for the 'perfect' items in Diablo 2.

 

[Majine]

D3 was cool, but now I want Mists of Pandaria.

 

[michaelius]

I never got there in 5 years though, as it requires quite the time investment.
But what i'm saying is that in D3, the early-game is literally the exact same as the end-game.
I have already experienced it all, multiple times over. It's not hard to imagine people quitting for other games if they want to actually progress through something that hasn't grown stale yet.

Maybe my expectations for the game were set too high, but i simply expected a lot more from Blizzard.

Have you ever played Diablo 2 ?

In short Diablo 2 gameplay on battlenet looked like this:

1. High lvl friend pushes you through normal/nightmare/hell.
2. Enter public game of cow level and leech exp
3. Get some usable gear so you can kill a few things on cow level/do a meph run.
4a. Make cow level run
4b. Make mephisto or other boss run

Steps 2 and 4 repeat few thousands time or more...

 

[FlutterPuffs]

Players are decreasing not because they're fed up, but mainly because they've finished the game and isn't a loot whore.

 

[Maels]

Xfire is more common with some communities than others (fps players use it way more than MMO players).
Cute thread though.

 

[elfinke]

But the AH makes a huge difference. The items drop less frequently, but in turn are always available to everyone.

Yeah this gets overlooked by many. Note, this doesn't constitute as evidence for the drop rates being fine, as I think Blizzard have somewhat acknowledged that the drop rates (or at least areas for drops) needs further tweaking.

But as you rightly allude to, the AH is chock a block with excellent items, so the drop rates averaged out across the player base isn't too bad. However that of course feeds into the complaint that D3 is more about scavenging for good drops on the AH than it is about successive boss runs or whatever.

Those WoW numbers sure are interesting though.

 

[bill0527]

Players are decreasing not because they're fed up, but mainly because they've finished the game and isn't a loot whore.

That would be me.

I went from playing every day since launch until about 2 weeks ago and I've played maybe once or twice.

The drops are shit, I refuse to buy or sell anything at the RMAH, and I fucked up by sinking all my gold into JC and Smithing.

The game itself I started to find real boring after my 4th play through and I realized that 10 years ago, I may have found farming and grinding to be a fun waste of time, but not anymore.

 

[MrToughPants]

It seems like a fairly small sample size.

Nobody on my friends list plays anymore, 20+ people.

I played a bit this weekend but hadn't played in 3 weeks.

 

[SonicX_Zero]

When people say D2 are you they referring to just vanilla D2 or including LoD?

 

[Oni Link 666]

I wonder if that guy with the ridiculous setup with the candles and burnt paper and shit is still playing. I wonder if he cleaned that shit up.

 

[JCizzle]

I play on and off and should hit 60 soon (currently 57) and, to echo others in this thread, I'm pretty disappointed in the loot system so far. Since I've finished normal, I don't think I've found one piece of gear myself that my Wiz is currently using - everything has been purchased off the AH. I get that they want to keep good loot rare at 60 since gear turns into the treadmill at that point... but why would it hurt the game to get level appropriate gear as you level? Nothing annoyed me more than getting Act 4 Normal appropriate drops over and over as I progressed through Nightmare (and through Hell thus far). I'm not sure how long I'll be playing once I hit 60 if all my upgrades, or even a solid majority of them, keep coming from the AH. I play to get gear drops, not gold drops to spend on the AH - I don't find that very addicting.

 

[michaelius]

When people say D2 are you they referring to just vanilla D2 or including LoD?

Doesn't matter ? Core mechanic was the same even if you now had 2 or 3 spots to make a item/exp run to choose from.

 

[Tacitus_]

When people say D2 are you they referring to just vanilla D2 or including LoD?

Of course they're referring to LoD. Launch D2 wouldn't fit their argument.

Now while the game still has some problems, 1.0.3 improved things a lot. Too bad about Blizzs hardon for in-engine cutscenes since those won't be getting patched out.