The biggest complaint in HotS was that they were constantly releasing new overpowered characters so often the average player couldn’t possibly earn them before the next one came out. HS had the same issues but you can bet your tuchus people were stomping other people the first day with cards they bought. It was a very short term advantage but it was there. Like I said they were skirting quite near a fine line. A few times they ended up nerfing things that were too much. Yes compared to Ubisoft and EA they were angels but those guys are flat out abusive.
Yep. Blizzard has always had a habit of making their new stuff overpowered. In pay to win games like HotS and HS that is only much much worse. It makes good business sense to make your new stuff OP in those games, to sell more stuff to players.
However, Blizzard also often do it in WoW with new classes, and Diablo 3 with new/revamped sets, so it genuinely might not happen only because they want to sell more power. Not that the alternative explanation is that much better (Flavor of the Month balancing)
It’s very rare for anything to happen only because. It’s also very rare for anything a company does to have a single explanation. Life just isn’t that simple.
I bet POE2 is gonna be as craptastic as Magic Legends.
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Is it because they can’t come up with any new ideas so they’re going back to two decades old ones?
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Clearly, only quality comments are being made, I’m surprised “derpers” wasn’t used again. Ahhhh, the joys of unmoderated forums.
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What was there to do after you did beat inferno, which btw I did with far less than BiS gear. Try different builds, done that.
What get to new shines faster, if true then those ones wouldn’t have stayed much longer anyway so it doesn’t matter. Those ones would’ve went to those other games even without BiS gear anyway.
Unless a person works almost 24/7, which btw means he has no time to play games. How much money does a person make when they are not working or running a business (their downtime)? Unless they have investment income or royalties. But even those can make money for you while you are playing a game.
If you have a life outside of playing games then that should take priority over gaming anyway.
It gets interesting if you make money playing games like those that make content on youtube or twitch. Ones that have sponsors that pay them to do what they do. So they will still get money even if they don’t have all BiS gear. As long as they are still making content and doing what their sponsors are wanting them to do in order to keep them as sponsors they are fine.
Some actually wanted that gear faster not because they wanted to do the content faster. No instead they wanted it because it was BiS gear.
To be perfectly honest how many players really cared how fast anyone could clear the content.
Please see the above reply so I do have to type it out again.
You know that by that token the gold AH was just as much pay to win. Why because you could use real money to buy gold. Then on the gold AH us it to purchase the gear you wanted.
Since Blizz didn’t have an in game vendor like the Blood Shard vendor in the PTR that sold the following items for real money.
Mempo of Twilight, Lacuni Prowlers, The Witching Hour, Inna’s pants, Tal Rasha’s chest, Nat’s ring, Vile Ward (IIRC was BiS shoulders), and then either The Furnace or Echoing Fury as the weapon were BiS for all classes and all builds since the orange text didn’t exist back then.
If Blizz done that and had all of the above with all of the right affixes then it would be truly Pay to Win because of the fact that the items are being generated in the game without anyone finding them.
We know that someone had to find them. So that point is not important.
Okay I will tell you want we can do. From now on I can call all AH’s in all games that support them pay to win. After all players in those games have a way of buying currency for real money. So the trading system designed by the devs to give the players what they need was designed by that company. When the company turns a profit from the game they are making money off of those sales. So it is pay to win.
We need to make a campaign to have all AH’s removed from all games that support them (which are MMOs).
Next on the chopping block is cash shops that sell anything. Yes even cosmetics are pay to win as well. If you have more money than me it means you can customize your character better than me and that is an advantage so pay to win. That means that we need to have a campaign to end all free to play games and make them paid to play with paid expansions and downloadable content.
Without a way of proving that D2’s original price was around thirteen bucks I would find that hard to believe. I think you are another one that wants D2R to be either free or five bucks at most.
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A lot clearly. Since they keep paying to make it faster.
Blizzard gets no commission on those sales. GAH is not pay to win.
Again, RMT is not pay to win. The game company making money on power being sold, is pay to win.
Pay to win is pay to win. Sure, if Blizzard created the items that were sold, it would be more pay to win. But 50%, or 10%, pay to win is still pay to win.
Blizzard is in control of all parts of the supply chain here. Their game generate the items people find, and can then sell to others, and then Blizzard get some profit from that sale.
See above. RMT is not pay to win.
Sigh 
Quite a few apparently. It’s anecdotal but there massive amount of complaints on the issue. Your rambling wall of text serves to confirm that you too believe there are benefits to buying gear.
They were missing on the forums. I seen no threads complaining about player x clearing content x or act x faster than they did. No, instead it was that player x had better gear than they did. Those threads were small in comparison to the threads of hatred on the RMAH.
I am trying to show you that I can stretch things to fit my definition much like how you are stretching things. If players didn’t need to find the gear that was posted. If Blizz did item generation and posted the best items on both AHs then you would have a point about pay to win. But since they didn’t you have to stretch it to make it fit.
This proves that you know you are stretching what you are saying to make it fit.
Since you can see that I can stretch things just as good as you can to make them fit some crazy definition of my own making. Then the logical thing to do is drop this line of discussion.
The only complaints that I saw on the older forums were ones that stated player x had way better gear than they did. They didn’t complain about time at all. That is due to the fact that nothing was timed.
When you don’t have any timed content and players are immersed into the game. Players then can spend a lot of hours if they don’t watch the clock all without even noticing it.
The only ones that would know how long anyone took to clear an act would be ones that watched streamers. Most streamers would have better gear than the rest of the players due to their supporters and maybe sponsor.
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Why would those happy with pay to win be complaining on the forum that they can pay to win?
Because that gear makes them more powerful. Aka. clear faster/further.
That is indeed something you often do
Blizzard don’t need to post the items, when they can get the players to do it for them. The result is basically the same.
What exactly do you think better gear do?
Of Course they did, constantly. They complained about how hard to get gear it was and how long it took to get it. Bad drops, bad itemization, on and on. While the auction house was up they complained how hard it was to farm gold. Like I said time is the only real currency in gaming the rest is imaginary. Player time not timed content.
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So if complaints about other players that are able to clear content faster than others due to better gear on the older official forums Diablo 3 forums ( I guess I have to treat you like a computer now). Or you are getting nit picky again.
No, instead the gear complaints were not based on time but on quality. This is not an all or nothing fallacy. Where if one exist then the rest exist with that one complaint.
No, it isn’t because if it were then I still say that the GAH as well would be pay to win due to some of the gold being bought with real money from RMT. So that is stretching things to make them fit your definition and I showed you earlier that I can do the same quiet easily.
Again another all or nothing fallacy. If any one makes a complaint about gear then they are complaining about everything under the sun concerning gear.
I never seen a thread on the older Diablo 3 official forums that said player x cleared either a quest or a whole act faster than another player. The reason was the content wasn’t timed content. Mr. Clock wasn’t a thing until GRs along with leader boards were introduced.
Unless you and Shadout are saying that the majority of players back then played with stop watches to time how long it took them to complete content. Then others would brag about it clearing it faster than others. Nothing I saw on the older official Diablo 3 forums ever talked about it.
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You are the one bringing up (imaginary) forum complaints here.
It is against the EULA. The RMAH was made by Blizzard. Not even a little comparable.
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Wow you’re just completely off the page aren’t you? No we aren’t saying that at all. Give your strawman a rest he looks plumb tuckered out.
Read it and keep reading it until you understand it.
To the both of you: The only way to truly end any possibility of pay to win in the extreme case is to have games remove trading of any kind. That means no player to player trading or AHs. Along with no free to play with a cash shop either. They need to be buy to play with DLCs and expansions like the rest or a sub with DLCs and expansions.
When you have zero trade you have no trades that can be traced backed to being bought with real money. Not even RMTs would exist anymore. Sure it would mean the end of all trading in all games but that is the price of ensuring zero pay to win. That is the logical conclusion taken to the extreme that I have taken it.
Now if both of you are willing to agree to disagree then I can keep looking at things the way that I look at them. But if you want to force the issue then all trading is payed to win when I am discussing the subject with either of you, and maybe others as well.
Would be a good idea.
Just not related to pay to win.
You must be having an entirely different conversation with someone else.
Whats the point of this post that D3 sold copies im not following why this is getting posted what’s your opinion behind all this? I see one takeaway, d3 sold in 2013 not just in 2012 and that almost everyone who bought D3 liked the previous two games so they figured D3 would be on that quality level, and we all know how that went.
Unlike D3 we can see because of D3 the mistakes D4 is making prior to purchase which means we still buy the game to check it out but with skepticism and some hope, not tons of hope and no skepticism which was the case for many with D3. You shouldnt see any complaining on the D4 forums, only, “yes, unfortunately the mistakes we saw are real” not “omg there are mistakes”. They could correct those mistakes too like right now if they’d listen and/or natively value what d2 did so well at.
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Some relevant points and a little more detail:
People often blame devs, creative staff and community managers for the lack of large seasonal changes and/or the lack of extensive balancing and set/items rework. I believe senior management is to blame instead because the current D3 team is in maintenance mode with few resources because of decisions above them. Senior management abandoned Diablo 3 in late 2013 - early 2014. They canceled the 2nd expansion that was going to follow ROS. They did this cancellation BEFORE ROS even released. It was an awful game-killing decision because ROS ended up doing tremendously well. It turned a corner with the game - sales were big, confidence coming back, ROS was the star of the 2014 investor report. Josh M and crew had some momentum going. Senior management killed all of that before even knowing how ROS would do. All they had to do was wait a few months for sales numbers and reception to come in etc. but they didn’t. Point: blame senior mgmt, not the creatives and CMs for state of the game.
So we know the 2nd expansion was axed but if Josh and crew were allowed to finish and it was of the same quality as ROS, it likely would have done well just like ROS. And then another expansion would likely have followed and so on. That model of expansion release for $$$ would have funded large feature changes in future seasons, new content obviously in the expansions, and so on. But again, Sr Management made a true blunder in not waiting a few months to see how ROS would do - they essentially pulled the plug on the game 6+ years ago, losing $100’s of millions in the process per projected sales number of 2 xpacs etc based on ROS sales and playerbase numbers decay. Point: As D3 gamers there’s no question we would have had substantially more content and features at this point compared to what we got. All due to that decision made by sr mgmt in late 2013 - 2014.
In 2015, a year after RMAH was shut down, we had one more chance on D3 to have recurring revenue and perhaps drive a larger creative staff through recurring revenue model. Mtx was released in China region. They did not give the D3 community in NA or EU a chance to fund new features and content through COSMETIC-ONLY mtx. That would have succeeded in my opinion. Pay2Win would not have succeeded imo. We were never even given the opportunity because of a long story I’ve gone into elsewhere. Once again, I feel the blame is squarely on senior management on how they handled that situation.
It’s hard to know how Blizzard handles internal budgeting but it’s likely that it follows some form of the investor reports - new games get carte blanche from corporate buckets, existing game budgeting is more from their own revenue stream. So even if Blizzard as a whole is making record profits, if the franchise or game has no recurring revenue, it’s much less likely they will get funded for new content and larger staff. From that angle, games need to be somewhat self-sustaining as they go along - recurring revenue is crucial. And as we know, D3 hasn’t had any solid revenue (w/ necro pack as small exception) in 6+ years.
So my final summary would be that they had 30 million copies sold by 2015 - failing to capitalize on that was a truly astonishing failure by sr management and we, as players, were deprived of what I believe would have been some quite decent expansions, seasonal changes, etc. Some people have the misguided notion that D3 became financially dead because of it’s quality or other factors - but it was just a handful of Sr managers that essentially pulled the plug 6+ years ago without even waiting to see the excellent sales numbers and positive reception of ROS.
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