There’s a concept out there called The Trust Thermocline. A normal thermocline is the point where the temperature in large bodies of water stops getting gradually colder, and just drops drastically when you go deep enough.
Similarly, a trust thermocline would be the point where a consumer is frustrated with a product or service enough times to disengage completely. Like, if you cancelled your Netflix subscription after the 10,000th price increase, that would be you getting past the trust thermocline for Netflix.
I think a very large portion of D4 players, myself included, have passed that thermocline.
I quit playing after season 2, but I’m curious what the Dev team has in store for future content. The reason I stopped playing is because I quickly noticed that character progression is based off a 3 month cycle, and it feels super easy and cheap. I know some of you go crazy for seasonal refreshes, but for me personally it just quite doesn’t do it for me. I feel like seasons is an outdated end game mechanic for ARPG’s because devs have not figured out a way to make fresh new content across one realm. I’m fine with a ladder realm that caters to the speed runners.
I like the game so I’m almost certain I’ll get the expansion at some point but the timing is up for grabs. There need to be some great improvements between now and launch to get me to preorder it, and or the expansion itself needs to be great for me to buy it at full price instead of waiting a bit for a sale (d4 went on sale quite fast).
S1 we got super op barb heart and dupes.
S2 we got fairly awesome blood power and zone and poorly designed but at least something to push your build AoZ and hey look more dupes. Lots of hope for game starting here.
S3 we got a top 10 worst choice of all time with traps and vaults. (vaults invalidated dungeons from being content) Construct is semi boring and just turned into a stat stick aurabot for most players. And yet more McDupes.
S1 and 3 did major damage to the brand.
S4 Itemization Update better be massive
Expansion better be epic with new paragon boards, new revamped skill trees, 10 pages of bug fixes, Snapshotting removed, All dupes prevented, new ubers, new uniques, ect.
Its time that they use some of the nearly 1B in profits from D4 and get it to working order instead of lining execs pockets.
Maximum profitability would be achieved by Blizzard if everyone bought the game on launch, played it for a month, and then uninstalled and didn’t touch it again till an XP came out.
Why do players think Blizzard cares about people leaving the game? They want people to leave the game, running these servers isn’t free. It’d be one thing if their MTX system was setup to really support the game, but it’s clearly not, at best it’s providing enough revenue to keep the lights on.
It’s the marketing department’s job to get players back when it’s time to milk them again, not the devs.
only real numbers steam has is the ones that bought the game from steam and ignores all the sales that were made before it was released and those that didn’t buy the game through steam
and the number of people who said they were buying Diablo 4 on steam just to put a negative review when they found out it was getting released on steam turns the whole real numbers on steam into a joke when they bought the game just to put a negative review on the game and had no intention to play the game
whats your excuse for thinking that the only people that bought the game bought it through steam and where did all those people come from that were playing the game when it hadn’t even been released on steam yet?
I started playing Diablo on my pc with Diablo in 2001. Then Diablo II and expansion packs, Diablo III and expansions, then Diablo Immortal. I have always enjoyed team play with friends, but have never been much on PvP. I usually just play by myself. I was excited that I got to do a Beta for Diablo IV, but didn’t get much time because I had to order a new pc to play it on. (Yes I still use a pc) The only other game that even piques my interest is Paths of Exile on Steam, and I don’t play it much at all.
I have enjoyed the seasons so far but am a little disappointed with Season of the Construct because of bugs. I can see the Braziers on the map but they do not appear at all in the game. I did get all 5 pages of Zoltan’s Journal. This has really cut down on leveling up and rewards. I would rather see them get the game right before coming out with expansion packs. From Diablo to Diablo IV I have seen a lot of change, some good, some bad, and I still enjoy killing monsters. To me bug free and a challenge is better than new and exciting that doesn’t work.
If Blizzard needs a full time PC Beta Tester I am up for the task. I rarely compete with anyone except myself and love to try new things to see if I can make them work. I don’t spend 12 hours a day playing the game, but I spend 15 - 20 hrs. a week at it.
yes, this was what the entire conversation is about, try to catch up.
Your entire post is based on a logical fallacy, i dont think you really read or understand anything i actually wrote. my stance on this thread is pretty clear that everything i argued for was on the premise of steam players only and not the entire playerbase.
Really wish you had a tldr. I do get what you’re saying about seasonal content. What they need to add to cater to that is a way to transfer your seasonal character from seasonal to eternal at any point in time and while you would be stuck there it opens the door for eternal players the chance to try seasons out and not have fomo for 3 months not that eternal has anything to offer anyway but if they ever do make the game good again there are so much QoL things that honestly I think if I was given a managerial role in that company (not a developer) I could turn D4 into a success in a season just on small changes alone that’s how bad they are so I think you’re probably asking for the impossible
Losing players is the price to pay for not listening.
They “PRETEND” they do…
gaming wise, the best teacher for a dev is an EMPTY SERVER.
They shall do something to avoid MICROSOFT’S WRATH…
and that is easy:
As a former Diablo 4 sorcerer, I better choose to play the last epoch or diablo 2… those are sorcerers, not this mediocre diablo 4 class that does 1/3 of damage of other classes in the game and has 1/3 stamina and vitality. Ridiculous.
on Diablo 2 and 3, a sorcerer is a sorcerer
On last Epcoh a Sorcerer or mage is super fun and does massive damage and is visually impressive…
but of course… with mediocre skills with low damage like INCINERATE… Who will play sorcerer?
Ahhh When Path of Exile 2 arrives… I will be a total apocalypse!..and I will LOVE IT!
The eternal kingdom of D4 has a big problem. In d3 it’s interesting, because at the end of each season we add paragon to our main character, we get primeval items that the main character doesn’t have. So it makes the eternal kingdom interesting. I like the ascent, playing with skill and little used aspects. We need items that make the ascent more interesting. On d2 it is extremely fun to perform the ascent, as an extremely foretell item can drop at any time. On d4 the non-ancestral and No 925 are useless, so it makes the climb a waste of time. There needs to be an adjustment to this, if we could sell materials from the beginning of the game or exchange them for other materials.
I believe that every season we should have something to take away from the season. If we could for example have several legendary ghifos in the eternal realm after each season. Now today the eternal kingdom is just a debuff, because we don’t have the powers of the season. It needs to be the opposite, outside of the season we have to be extremely strong. Then it would make the eternal kingdom interesting
Is this some sort of joke? Of course Blizzard cares about people leaving the game. People leaving the game means less people in their ecosystem, meaning less money injections into the game. Live-service games thrive on people staying with a game and playing it over prolonged periods. They feel committed to the game and are thus less compelled to leave when they spend money on it.
Also, “keep the lights on”? Blizzard isn’t going anywhere. Diablo IV isn’t even their cash cow. That title is reserved for WoW. Worst-case scenario, Diablo IV dies and the team moves onto Diablo V, hopefully with the hindsight necessary to not trip over their mistakes. However, I don’t anticipate that happening. Microsoft just spent a lot of money on Activision-Blizzard and they’re pushing Diablo IV onto Game Pass. It’s in their best interests right now to keep the game supported.
Not a joke, it’s an obvious extrapolation of their business model based upon the pricing of the game, the quantity and necessity of MTX they’ve added, and the cadence of their major releases.
They don’t care at all how many people are playing this game. They care about making money. You have assumed the two are related, but they’re really not. Blizzard has proven over the last 10 years they can sell milk to a dairy farmer, their marketing team is that dominant. You guys sitting down here griping with your GamerVision perspectives miss the plot entirely.
I work in a field where I’m exposed daily to the costs of big data infrastructure. It costs millions of dollars a month to run the sort of servers and bandwidth Blizzard would have needed for this game on launch. You really think they want to keep that level of expense forever? When all those people already bought the game?
It is a business model designed for peaks and valleys, the low periods between releases are baked in and important for reducing opex while the brand isn’t making as much money.
But this sort of business model is completely besides the point. A person leaving Diablo IV is an individual never to return to that ecosystem. Yes, it is normal for people to leave and return to games. Blizzard has even spoken in the past on it, suggesting that they anticipate a select number of people to leave the game. This is a very common cycle in most live-service games.
However, this sort of trend is completely separate from a person leaving that game and never returning to it. The peak and valley sustainability you’re speaking of are contingent on those peaks subsidizing the valleys. If a game continues to trend downwards, then Blizzard will continue to operate the game at a loss because less money is being spent on the game because less people are playing it.
Maybe they don’t care about people playing the game for months on end (I’d personally argue they do because engagement metrics and whatnot), but they certainly care about people revisiting the game. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous and would completely defeat the purpose of a live-service game to begin with. Corporations have capitalized on this model because it makes them loads of money. It’s that simple.
This is why I’m saying you guys don’t get it. The overwhelming majority of the people who left, are going to come back. They’ll see the ad, they’ll see Megan Fox, they’ll see Asmongold talking about it, they’ll see it during the F1 race, and they’ll buy the expansion.
That’s just the way it is. Companies spend millions on marketing because it works.
Okay, so what you’re saying is that they do care and will invest millions to bring these people back?
Your argument contradicts itself. I understand what you’re saying. I’m telling you that these investments are a sign of Blizzard caring. If they didn’t, they’d have abandoned the game already and moved to the next one.
