It will for sure, but that won’t mean it will be a success (see D3).
The truth is most people that are to buy D2R have forgotten how D2 was. They’ll play for a month and be done with the game. D2R could have been much more than that.
In D3 your progress doesn’t transfer from Season to Season too. You should look at Hades runs like mini-Seasons. That’s the future for aRPGs - shorter Seasons with total randomization.
D2R doesn’t look like a polished game at all. Don’t pre-order if you aren’t 100% sure you’ll play it.
Not when we talk D2 - a game that set new standards in gaming.
There’s no need to defend Blizzard here - we both know they don’t want to build up on D2R since that will take away from the D4 pie (one of the D2R devs said this indirectly). Just don’t throw more dust into the eyes of those who pre-order now.
D2R isn’t a great entertainment product. It’s a shiny version of a very outdated game with huge problems regarding online play.
Defending Blizzard is not exactly something I do
Just defending D2 and the concept of an accurately remastered game. Even when it means keeping all the bad stuff (and yeah, D2 is full of bad design imo). That is what a remaster is and should be. And D2R seems to be exceptionally, and surprisingly, well done in that regard. Probably thanks to Vicarious Visions rather than Blizzard.
It is always the best idea not to preorder anything. People who do take full responsibility.
D2R seems like an amazing entertainment product though. Might be one of the best games of the year. Definitely high on my wish list. Even though, yeah, no preorder.
The problem is it isn’t even accurately remastered - there are tons of issues with the gameplay we saw presented to us.
Another problem is the extremely high price, which is not adequate for a remaster that would still have the same known problems online with botting, jsp and RMT.
You’d expect a remaster done after 20 years to present the user with more safety online - that hasn’t been done.
No SSF mode where the user can detach himself from trading and botters.
No new LBs that measure clear speed or PvP kills.
Just a game that’s extremely outdated for a ridiculous price.
The lesson is “never go after the CoD audience”. Translation: Please your fanbase. Not casual “bandwagon” gamers, “game journalists”, focus testers, or the fanbase of some other game that will never have any interest in your product.
Shiny graphics sold for the value of a full modern game is outrageous.
They could have at least added some “cheap” mechanics so that the game has a real endgame.
What they should have done is offer that shiny upgrade for free to everyone having the old version of the game, then offer many new things on the new Battle.net servers as a paid alternative. This way players would have a choice:
Don’t spend a penny and play the improved version on old servers
Pay $20, $40, $100, $200 etc for the features you want to enjoy - QoL stuff, new content, anti-cheat measures etc
They decided to do a mix of the above to not build up further on D2R and to finish with it ASAP. Bad choice. Again. History repeats itself. The company continues to support the old shady practices of not enforcing measures against RMT.
If this same parody repeats for D4 and the game doesn’t offer a fair environment, I am out.
It isn’t full price.
New games these day cost up to $60-70.
D2 at its release cost around that too (and more if we factored in inflation).
Now that would be unreasonable.
Would be cool if Blizzard end up making balance changes and maybe even add some new items to the game after launch. As long as you can play in a Classic Mode too.
Completely sensible not to do such things at release however.
D4 is not a remaster and should indeed do better. Hopefully Blizzard will simply not allow any trading in D4.
They could have earned even more if they launched with such segregated monetization. Give the shiny version for free to build up hype among everyone and at the same time allow the players to have full control over their preferred features by allowing them to purchase what they need on the new Battle.net.
You want more stash space? Buy as much as you want.
You want SSF? Here’s the feature, that’s the price.
You want new act? No problem, prepare the money.
Needless to mention this way you offer more choice regarding purchases and end up with way more income due to people overbuying stuff and features they’ll use just once for example.
Their current strategy with fixed game price and potential free changes over time is outdated. A hype at something is built by making it free. Then you use that hype to monetize it properly. When people are given a choice they tend to spend more (see modern supermarket industry).
An important lesson in game design is that more choice is not always better. Also an important lesson in life in general. And certainly an important lesson here.
If you cut the Mona Lisa into tiny pieces, people are not getting a coherent experience. There is no vision, no art.
There is nothing outdated about quality, competence and coherence.
As problematic as PoEs stash tabs are, no they are not the same. Stash tabs are not content. Designing the game around promoting stash tabs is bad though, and PoE has suffered for that in the past.
Stash tabs, private servers (present in PoE), content in form of expansion packs/characters are ways for monetization.
When the people have the freedom to decide what to buy they tend to buy more. It’s a principle that made the whole supermarket industry boom since you enter in the shop to buy 1 thing and you often go out with 2+.
D2R is just a money grab in its current form. It’s a very unpolished game that most probably would be released prematurely to hit the Q4 window this year.
I know you, just as many others are excited about the new graphics, but the core game is the same. If you go and play D2 right now, you’ll leave it after a few hours. The game isn’t adequate as of 2021. A remaster was a very bad decision. There are many successful D2 mods that showed the potential of the game. This should have been used by Blizzard to further build up on D2R and deliver a proper aRPG game.
A game also shouldn’t be your groceries. Not at all comparable.
You are not buying 1 product. One.
You totally can get the supermarket experience with games. It is called Steam etc.
The monetization you describe is a money grab. Compromising on quality in an attempt to make some short term revenue.
Maybe you should look at the “amazing” game Hades. At least it has done its monetization the way it should be done. Selling a product… The end.
I tried replaying D2 some months ago. Didn’t leave it after a few hours.
It will probably be better than nearly all games released in 2021. Which to be fair might not say much. But still, it has a decent foundation. Quality game design does not age.
I already wrote you this is not how things in PoE are done, and PoE is a game that’s hot on the income scale.
I also expect D4 to have aggressive monetization too with character packs, expansions and other stuff. It won’t be a one time sell.
The reason they went this way with D2R is because they don’t want to cannibalize D4 gains, but that’s not the proper way to do things, especially in an outdated game that needs heavy fixing in all design aspects.
Hades is not PoE…
As for PoE, it has as far as I know sold exactly zero content in its entire existence.
Trying to be exactly like PoE also sounds like a pretty bad idea. While it does not sell piecemeal content, it still suffers from its monetization scheme. Both through its need to keep finding new ways to push people toward more stash space, and having to push out new season themes, regardless of their quality, at a constant pace.
