Your salt doesn’t do your point any favors.
It has been 1.5 years since GR150 was cleared, and it is still a limit that no one can reach in season.
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I’m concern about your number and I doubt about them. If the game is that great and so many people are playing and enjoying it. Then why are they creating D4 instead of doing some big expansion for D3 ? Creating an expansion is really easy compared to create a complete new game. Some new features and classes and you sell that 30-40$ to those 39 millions of satisfied players!
No salt bro, just the truth. I give a try to the last season and was like: “Wtf… that’s the exact same set, last timed I played, it gave 2 000% increased damage to WW, now it gives 10 000%.” Is it really a progression system? Boosting number in every season so people “feel” that something is new ?
I bet everyone who supports the paragon system is a fan of DBZ, because its over 9000… and keeps infinetely increasing beyond ultra instinct!
Are you serious when you ask why Blizz is working on D4? Because obviously D3 brings no more economic benefit to Blitzz, being a one time purchase game. A DLC costs $15 or $20 at most, and many won’t buy because they are fine with base game, just like not that many bought the necromancer pack.
D4 however, will easily earn Blizz $60-100 per copy sold, and that number can easily pass tens of millions of copies sold.
Simple economy, and I’m fed up with dealing with those people who have no basic understanding of economy.
P.S. I support finite leveling system actually. I’m a big fan of Grim Dawn.
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Lol… I guess you don’t understand economy at all… Do you know what is “Neat profit” and “Gross profit” ? Selling a game 60$ doesn’t mean you make twice the neat profit of a game you sell 30$. It depends of how much you paid to create that game. I’m pretty sure creating an xpac for D3 will cost a ridiculous fraction of the cost of D4. They could make a crazy big neat profit on an xpac for D3 but…
They are not creating any new content for Diablo 3 because it’s a fail and the sale will be crap and they know that. They are aware of that failure and that’s why they canceled the other expansions. They have the real number of sales for D3 classic, D3 xpac and Necro DLC and I’m pretty sure except D3 classic the rest were just going down to the ground. They know they need a Fresh start to bring back people to the game. They need a perfect game to regain their audience and regain their trust. I’m pretty sure the game will be great, they can’t afford to fail again. Not after Diablo 3 and Diablo immortal fail.
OK if taking a major in economics in university didn’t qualify me for understanding economy then I guess you win.
And why, tell me D2 only have 1 expansion and zero DLC despite being one of the most successful games in human history? Let Professor Vendetta speak for himself.
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Ok, let’s just dispel your concern through example.
https ://eu.diablo3.com/en/rankings/era/12/rift-barbarian
Here, we can see current D3 leaderboards for the last season. There are 10 leaderboards in total, each is fully filled up with 1000 players.
That is already 10 000 players in one region alone (Europe).
But it isn’t like ALL the players fit in the leaderboards. In fact, even to appear on it at all you have to play A LOT. If we conservatively suggest that top 10% of players ended up on the leaderboards - you have 100 000 players in one region alone (Europe).
I will go ahead and tell you, however, that the real number is greater, because those 1000 barbarians are not top 10%, but closer to top 3-5%.
We have 3 regions for Diablo 3 - namely Americas, Europe and Asia. I will make a wild guess that among those, Europe has the smallest player number, and Asia has much larger player counts. But let’s say they’re equal and that leaderboards are top 10% of the playerbase.
These calculations alone give you at least 300 000 players in the last season worldwide. This is not a small number for any game already, and it is BY FAR a conservative version.
In fact, even having 10K concurrent players alone per region - already counts as a very sucessful game.
This is also, AFAIK, leaderboards for PC only. Remember that PS3-4, XBox and Switch all have their own playerbases and leaderboards.
I think this logic of mine doesn’t really have flaws that you could argue against?
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- The goal is also to feel rewarded for more horizontal progression, quests, upgrading the gear, getting new abilities, upgrading the mounts and and trying social activities and pvp.
- The longevity of a game also relies in its replayability.
- Economy plays a role because all the items should be part of a recipe, to have a role in the economy. So a level 5 can trade with a level 35.
I also dislike the idea of shifting up the level cap for every extension, it feels artificial. I don’t think a reachable level cap is good in any case. It gives a bitter taste of completion while you start to feel the bore.
A level cap must have a logarithmic curve like in d2, making it impossible to reach, (a year if not a decade of farm)
Same for an infinite system progression, it should start proportional and be more and more logarithmic. And not linear like in d3.
If you make something reachable, you remove the feeling of accomplishment since everybody can have it with no effort. Satisfaction always come at a cost: dedication.
I’m also worried with the idea of multiple expansions. I think it’s sad to see characters toppled into the next extension. Achievements and the progress of older characters must retain value. An old character of an early version must not suddenly feel obsolete.
Keep verticalization minimal with expansions please. Horizontal, more DEPTH, not more POWER.
There is no difference between a finite system and an infinite system. Practically infinite systems do not exist because we do not have an infinite amount of time. Even in principle a hard level cap exists. If paragon level is an int64 then max level is 9,223,372,036,854,775,807. But I digress. There is, as was mentioned above, interesting systems and those that are not. D2’s system is effectively infinite in the sense of the D3 paragon system with a psychological cap at 99. I suppose D3 paragon levels could be capped at 10000, and it would make absolutely no discernible difference in current progression. As NINEGRAVES put it May 23, 2018:
“Well, to reach 8K Paragon you have to more or less live for the game without any obligations aside - this cant be reached by just dropping an hour or two into the game per day. This is focused extreme gaming performed over years; given it was reached legit without bots.”
So 10000 would be the new 99 in D3. Fine. Is it interesting though? I personally like the paragon system, though I’d argue many take issue with this specific system. Infinite vs non-infinite systems is a red herring.
Another point I’d like to make, and something that is often overlooked, is that the GR system is part of the progression system which itself is capped at 150. The fun for me in D3 is trying to climb through Greater Rifts solo. My paragon level is 1300 or so and I managed to finish a GR100 with difficulty with my mage. I’ve tried a few different classes and builds but between GR150 and my current position is a vast ocean of gameplay and experimentation. D3 truly ends, for me, when GR150 is conquered, legitimately through honest play.
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My bad if I wasn’t clear enough. I was refering to those numbers.
Your last post is pretty smart and well done. I can’t disagree with you. You are right.
I have absolutely no number, so it’s only my feeling and feedback from my friends and me, but if you ask to those 39 millions who tried the initial game: Did you enjoy the game ? Will you come back and play if we release a new xpac ? How would you rate the game ? I think the overall answers will be really disapointing and negative. Even if there is still a few hundred thousands (or some millions) or players, Blizzard feels that it is not worth to invest anymore in the game. Why? Only Blizzard knows the answer.
Just like how everyone can destroy Baal in D2 too, right?
Well, first we should remember that not all of 39 million played on launch. I was rather exaggerating with this number.
39 mil is total copies sold of D3 and ROS across all platforms. This means there is less actual players because if you own Ros - you count as two purchases. Furthermore, some people would buy it several times on different platforms, especially switch. If I had switch, I would totally buy D3 there.
Lastly, obviously, not all people would be satisfied with the game. This to natural.
Even if you make corrections for all of those, however, you still see just how damn popular and impressive Diablo 3 is. It is by right one of the best games of the last decade.
39 mil is also 2018 number. I honestly don’t know how many copies were sold between release and ROS that largely fixed a lot of things.
And you are right, many of those players would be disappointed. I myself got sick of the game and dropped it at act 3 NM. Never even levelled to 60.
But when I picked it up again 8 months later, I was very pleasantly surprised. And it kept surprising me for the next 2 years by just how well blizzard was improving it. I started enjoying the game even before ROS, and after it only got better and better.
So yeah, there is a place for disappointment with d3. But to those who dropped it during rough times and i can only say that it is now largely a different game.
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lol what is your point?
If something is bad in a game, let’s make it bad again or even worst in the next game?
I am not a D2 player and I absolutely don’t want a D2 remake. I guess that was your only point… I didn’t touch this game in the last 10-12 years. It was an incredible game back in that time, but it’s way too old for me. We are almost in 2020, we deserve a far better game then D2 and D3. Of course Blizz can re-use concept and stuff from previous Diablo, but they can do much better.
This is of course, pure speculation, and is motivated in part by this weird smear campaign against Diablo 3 which is one of the greatest and most successful games ever made. Blizzard makes it a point to point out distinctions between D4 (which doesn’t exist) and D3. I do not believe Diablo 3 (in its current state) is the game Blizzard wanted to make. I believe they wanted the RMAH to succeed for a revenue stream and for a connected community (i.e. live services), which they’re obsessed with because of the success of WoW and missed revenue opportunities in the early days of the original Starcraft. All of their modern games are live service games with the exception of Diablo 3. The RMAH was the live service component and it was a resounding failure, and in my opinion there is resentment at Josh Mosquiera, not directed at him personally or because he was not a spectacular game director but because he was an outsider, who rescued D3 by removing the RMAH and most importantly introducing Loot 2.0 which violated the Blizzard ethos of pure RNG. Hence this talk of “piñatas” when loot rains, as though that’s a bad thing, when Mosquiera’s reasoning for it was it is fun. It’s not fun to play for 100 hours to finally find a legendary for a class not your own. Then there’s the reason Josh was hired and that was for the console port, which I believe Vivendi insisted upon early and so Diablo 3 was streamlined for casual players and most importantly D3 is fully playable offline on console. This is not true of any of their modern games not even their remastered games where the originals are fully playable offline. (Starcraft Remastered requires an online connection at least once every 30 days otherwise it reverts to the original Starcraft. I suspect the same will be true of Warcraft Reforged.) In summary I believe they abandoned—to an extent—Diablo 3 because it is streamlined, has softened RNG, is fully playable offline on console, and is not a live service game.
this is Diablo 
infinite progression ofc.
just like the playerbase from D1, D2 and D3 hope.
take into account:
extensions/patches
the grinders
the fanboys, i play this franchise for 20 years or so. 
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If D4 does indeed carry over a paragon system it all depends on how it is done. You can control the power if it isn’t linear. Make diminishing returns where a soft cap that can easily be reached by all. Then a hard cap that will never be reached even by botters. Along with having other things that are not about power added to the infinite system.