In case you hadn’t read my original post, I said I don’t want any changes implemented. I’ve already pre-ordered 9 copies of it for myself and various friends.
Stop being a @#$%^&*!@ and tell me why you’re so set against OPTIONAL alternative loot modes. It clearly has obvious benefits in preventing people from getting salty over getting no loot, and many people have already said they’re not going to buy the game if it doesn’t have personal loot. Why is adding a toggleable feature (like automatic gold pickup) upsetting you all so much?
There already are changes, such as automatic gold pickup and shared stash tabs. He also hasn’t said that there will be zero changes AFTER launch.
I have plenty of arguments against it, and I believe in my comment history, there are some and I have no reason to rehash stuff I’ve already said on another ctrl+c ctrl+v thread with no new ideas.
Something you DID touch on in the OP was about new players, I responded to that with my argument as I thought it would be interesting to discuss, you ignored it so there’s nothing else to say.
If you read the other countless threads on this, you can read plenty of people who are against it and their opinions, mine included.
So either you want attention or the argument, and I shouldn’t have given you the former for the sake of the latter.
Sorry, I didn’t see that in any replies to this thread. I just reviewed all your comments here and I still don’t see it, but I do want to discuss it.
The other 8 people I’ve pre-ordered the game for have all liked D3 but never played D2.
I’m worried about D3 players who haven’t played D2 going into multiplayer and getting salty about having no loot.
I’m worried about them getting upset about not being able to change specs, which D3 offers but D2 makes very challenging.
I’m worried about them reaching Hell difficulty and being completely stonewalled by monster immunities. I learned how to just go around them, but I can see them getting frustrated coming from D3.
Just curious how many Diablo 3 players would you speculate have never played Diablo 2? Are you essentially saying a bunch of WoW players just moved over to Diablo 3? If so I believe that’s nonsense.
Most of us here played a lot of Diablo 2 back in the day and even hated Diablo 3, and agree with some QoL changes.
According to Wikipedia’s list of best-selling PC games, there have been 4 million copies of Diablo 2 sold and 20 million copies of Diablo 3. So about 80%.
Changes or no changes, i just want this project to be successful for another 2 decades.
Look at W3:Reforged 1.5 years - no improvements.
In long run some QoL improvements must be added. Look at PoD bigger inventory (for charms), added few skills, improved/rebalanced items/skills. At the same time it feels fresh, but still same old experience.
It’s hard to please everybody, we need to stop being selfish, think about the long run.
Do we have a break down of the 20 million copies by platform? I would argue that number is a bit inflated with PC players buying consoles versions. The best metric I would argue is launch sales which were 6.3 million units, which is about on par with the number of total Diablo 2 sales within the margin of error.
And for that reason they should ruin the game experience for everyone else? They eighter like the game, or they don’t.
“This is not a remake,” says Rod Fergusson, who’s been in charge of all things Diablo at Blizzard since early 2020. “We’re not trying to reverse-engineer the game and build it from scratch to look like D2. This is D2. This is the same core gameplay, the same story and tone, even the same voices of the same actors.”
We’re not trying to fix Diablo 2. We’re not trying to make Diablo 2 a different game. We have other games if you want that.
Outside of what they determine to be QoL for a modern update that doesn’t break core systems and maybe some spell rebalancing in the future I don’t understand the changes crowd. This game has already been done before and the formula worked. Screaming to the moon about wanting changes didn’t help Wow recently. They lost a huge portion of their customer base by adding things like micros to TBC when their mission statement was not to bring micros to that project. You can have an authetic game with some minor QoL that don’t have cascading effects through other in game systems or you can have the clown version of Diablo, take your pick.
Changes for the sake of being flexible isn’t always good. Sometimes you ruin the product in the process. Look at the history of companies that have gone bankrupt because the quality of their products changed.
Also before you ask what I mean by “margin of error”; PC games back in 1999 usually had between a 20% and 30% piracy rate. So it makes sense to add that number on top of the Diablo 2 unit sales, which adds up to approx the same amount launch day sales for D3.
You mean the crowd that is looking for an environment where they actually monitor bots? Maybe you haven’t been paying attention to why many players go to those servers like PD2. I’ll give you a hint it isn’t just for the spell rebalancing.
First, I am not set on either no changes or changes, though changes for its own sake are less coveted.
If there are changes, and there are, they should be improvements. What that means is variable but should be generally a good thingtm. Shared stash, for me, is that as it lets me more easily keep the junk one character finds to give to someone else, especially if I have to play solo and don’t want to toss my things to the ground, potentially losing them.
Other stuff, like weapon swap glitch, I have no real opinion on as its really only for very specific things that I never plan to need - I don’t do PvP so it has no meaning to me.
So, in the end, I’ll just wait to see how it comes out in a whole; if the sum of the changes are detrimental to my pleasure, the game can mule itself. If they don’t enhance, but still keep the same minimum bar, I’ll play some - but, if they actually make things more gooderc then I’ll play more than I would have otherwise… and that’s universally true for everyone.
That was PC only. Wikipedia’s list of all-time best-selling games lists D3 as selling 30 million copies. Diablo 2 was only released on PC, so the actual ratio is more like 85% of D3 players have never played D2.
I assume you’re talking about WoW’s 2nd expansion, The Burning Crusade. From what data I’ve seen on WoW’s subscription numbers, they peaked in 2010 (Cataclysm) with 12 million subscribers. So I don’t think they lost a huge portion of their customer base. If anything, they gained players.
Agreed. But sometimes changes are for the better.
I think that adding optional loot modes and re-balancing some of the weaker builds to improve viability at end-game will make for an overall better product.
I’m glad you brought this up. Botting is literally the one thing that I hate more than anything else about D2.
All valid concerns, all of which can be boiled down to simply: it’s a new game to them and they would have to learn the system which is in place and stood the test of time (21yrs).
I played eve online for the better part of a decade. And it has an extremely high learning curve. That game alone is dying a very slow death as the players have convinced the devs that new player retention is impossible with such a difficult learning curve; so they dumbed it down. And all the high skilled, old guard left.
Player retention, in that game specifically, had nothing to do with ease of learning the game. And the game suffered for it, long term player retention suffered, daily logins became free loot boxes and IG currency, etc…
Sure, some will leave because they want an easier game; and there’s a game for that, but eve isn’t it.
Every dumbed down addition to a game walks a fine line of losing more and more of the older players who can absolutely stay around to teach the new blood for the sake of “ease of access”.
This is being advertised as a fresh coat of paint with QoL of a 21yr old game; that alone will keep the old bros who can and will (see YouTube and twitch) teach the new bros. But alienating that audience for the sake of people coming from other games is not the way.
It’s how you destroy the remnants of the community, which, the blizzard community alone has been suffering for years because of the reasons above. Everything is mashmellowed and handled with kiddy gloves.
You should check out Bellular’s latest videos for some figures on in game population and player retention. Their numbers are down drastically even when compared to other drop offs that normally occur with expansion releases.
The problem with certain changes is that they’re highly controversial. If you look at backlash in other games from highly controversial changes, lets say TBC where players were asking for micros to make things easier. Those changes brought about alienating a certain portion of the players and making their own effort in the game irrelevant. Many of those players left. So on one hand you might gain players new players but in the other hand you might cause others to lose interest.
What is the limiting factor on changes to begin with? If it isn’t highly controversial changes then the claim to authenticity loses all meaning. If there is no limiting factor then the game can turn into something else completely and unrecognizable to the core playerbase.
Changes that the majority of the customer base agree with and cause little to no backlash can be seen though. Almost no one had a problem with a modernized stash. So it goes to show the playerbase are willing to have changes that don’t have adverse side effects. I’m fairly certain most players like the idea of things like a skillbar for KMB controls also. They aren’t unwilling to allow the game to change in order to modernize it in some aspects. Others are seen as being too drastic as with PL. The loot system is one area a good portion of the players believes they did nearly perfect.
Imagine actually hoping blizzard destroys D2R by intentionally turning it into D3. The sheer irony is too much.
What makes me laugh the most is people who say this and act like a change such as personal loot would somehow increase sales numbers by a factor of 10. How? D2R is still D2 underneath. Changing something like ploot wouldn’t make D2 SO vastly different and “better” that millions of people who wouldn’t of played it are suddenly going to buy it?
The pure delusion on both sides of the aisle are hilarious but No D2R won’t “bomb” because of no changes and no D2R won’t become the “next big thing” because of some minor changes. Both arguments are exaggerated nonsense. D2 has a unique playstyle that will appeal to a certain type of gamer. It won’t be for everyone but its also not SO niche that ONLY the 5k hardcore veterans will buy it lol.
