Who cares. Yes, Twitch is free advertisement. Which translates to money. Certainly not unimportant. But also not a thing that matters on its own. A publisher wont care if they sell 20 million copies while being the “king of Twitch”, or sells 20 million copies while not registering on Twitch at all.
Not to mention huge differences in gameplay. The two are nearly nothing alike, except some weak claim to both having RPG roots (hopefully Cuberpunk will have really strong RPG roots, but it is very unlikely that Cyberpunk Online will have it).
Is is basically like arguing that Candy Crush will hurt D4s sales. Yeah sure, it might be true in a very technical sense, where you can find a person, maybe even two, that wont buy Diablo 4 because Candy Crush/Cyberpunk Online just released a new expansion. But that is nitpicking.
People. Play. More. Than. One. Game. (a lesson I wish game publishers would learn too )
People. Play. Different. Kinds. Of. Games.
Why would non-season players cry at a level cap increase (I mean when RoS was released, hardly anyone complained at the level cap increase), especially when it doesn’t negatively affect their gear? Btw, having new gear to get doesn’t count as a negative effect.
It’s like Hades (not an aRPG for you) and Diablo, right? Not quite. Go put a poll on reddit Diablo whether they’ll play Cyberpunk Online and reevaluate after.
If you are a serious grinder it always counts since it resets your gear progress (when your long term grinded gear becomes not-BIS after the patch). Make a thread here about resetting paragon and the NS botters would riot.
It doesn’t, especially if you’re a serious grinder. A level cap boost doesn’t affect currently existing builds negatively in anyway, your gear still works and you can use it to find new gear as you level up. A major change to itemization does negatively affect currently existing builds, as your gear no longer works and you can’t use it to find new gear.
Unless there’s a major paragon revamp that’s in the works to explain the reason for resetting Paragon, Non-seasonal and Seasonal players would both riot if you talk about resetting Paragon.
I don’t think so. Sell a bad product will be the definitive suicide, it’s better delay a game to sell it in a good state that sell betas like they did with D3.
The game is already in a good state. It has enough systems, features and content to keep the majority of players there for a few Seasons when more stuff is added. The mentality to make a perfect game and then release it doesn’t work good in today’s world.
Whether you think I’m a “real grinder” is irrelevant.
If Diablo 3 were to have a new update today that increased the level cap, hardly anyone would complain about needing to level up and find new gear.
On the other hand, if Diablo 3 were to have a new update today that changed the itemization, for example removed critical damage, elemental damage, and area damage from gear, and instead added slash damage, blunt damage, piercing damage, and magic damage, and the change isn’t retroactive to existing items. Then you will have players complained because their existing gear (ancient and/or primals) would be rendered useless.
No one said anything of the sort. What was said however was that if Blizzard were to have an update today that reset the paragon level of both non-seasonal players and seasonal players, while season was still going btw, then you’re going to have both sides complain.
In short: If you reset seasonal paragon while season is still going, then seasonal players are also going to complain just as much as non-seasonal players.
Not true. If new items offer more main stat allowing you to hit way more than the 20k paragon cap gives you that would be the same as a paragon reset.
It seems to me you have trouble understanding the basic philosophy behind why grinders hate power creep. Gabynator left D3 because of the insane power creep invalidating his previous efforts. It’s the same with level cap increase or paragon reset, but you have to have the mindset of a grinder to understand this, otherwise you’ll continue the discussion forever without realizing what’s the point here.
The idea was building up D4 itemization Season after Season (when the patch hits) won’t be bad for the game as many of you here think. This won’t be a problem for the majority of D4 players who’ll play Seasons.
Yeah no. Players don’t always hate powercreep. Powercreep is only hated when there’s no new content, that’ll warrant the powercreep, added as well to go with it. So if Diablo 3 had an expansion that increased the level cap along and added new zones and content, then players aren’t going to complain about new items added in.
Look no further than Diablo 3. When loot 2.0 dropped, you had player complaint because it made some existing items useless and players had to grind again in order to get them. However when RoS launched along with the level cap increase and new content, barely no one complained about needing to get better items.
So in short: Changing the itemization and potentially ruining builds isn’t the same as increasing the level cap.
It will be. Firstly it goes against the philosophy that Blizzard has which is “Easy to Learn, Hard to Master” as the game is constantly changing. How are you supposed to learn something that changes fundamentally in a number of months, let alone master it.
Secondly all players, including seasonal players, expect a form of familiarity whenever they log back in even after taking some time off. Your suggestion of changing the itemization after every season would prevent that and leaves players stumped.
If you want a simple game that requires little to no character building, then I suggest you look elsewhere. Blizzard thus far is intent on adding complexity and depth into many aspects on the game and plan on having it ready at the game’s launch. And that is something that will take time to get done, so I’m not expecting an early release. Nor will the game faced ruination from releasing later than what you want as it will still pull in a great number of players on it’s release date.
Even in this era of patches (but PC games have been there since the 20th century), it’s actually super-important as ever that a game “hits the ground running” with its launch (maybe not for initial sales, but definitely if you want to keep your players). There’s a huge swath of players that will judge the game on first impressions and never look back, for all the alternatives they have. If you make sweeping changes post-launch, apart from potentially undoing players’ hard work, the game loses its “mystique” and its “authoritative” quality, and becomes totally naked & transparent as players themselves are invited to inspect and pick-apart various individual elements…in other words, it becomes the polar opposite of something “greater than the sum of its parts”.
The only long-term negative aspect to delaying a game that I see is that hype & expectations slowly accumulate with each additional delay. As long as fans don’t have direct confirmation that the game a waste of time, they can give “the benefit of the doubt” and have something to look forward to. Also D4 does not have the issue that D2 had of using “ancient tech” (ie. 2D sprites), and only the most unforgiving technophile would fault D4 for being “outdated” even five years from now. We are well-past the point where hardware can carry the visuals of a game and there’s nothing like good ol’ artistry and talent.
Enough for a launch. Check how PoE looked in the beginning:
They released PoE with 5% of what it has now. And the game is still not perfect. By your logic they should have kept the game unreleased until PoE 2 appears.
I disagree. I played the very first beta of PoE and didn’t like it. Then I returned for some Season two years ago and still didn’t like it. I will return for PoE 2 again.
The majority of aRPG players are exactly that way - when there is something new they go and check it out. That makes Seasons such a good marketing solution since many players return for the start of these to check and farm the new stuff. D3 population is always biggest at Seasons launch.
Free to play or not doesn’t change the fact that the player base of PoE made GGG a wealthy company. More wealthy than what would it be if the game releases first as PoE 2. And if PoE 2 comes after D4 it would have been a DISASTER for them profits wise. Just as it would be for D4 if it releases after Cyberpunk Online.
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