People usually do come back when there’s a new Blizzard product, including expansions. They do it all the time whenever WoW releases an expansion and they even say they’ll play it until the main stuff is completed then quit again. I hear a lot of people saying they quit Diablo 4 but will probably come back with the expansion. So you are probably right.
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You implied Blizzard cares about players. I said Blizzard cares about making money. We aren’t saying they care about the same thing.
I never implied anything of the sort. In fact, I’m pretty sure I stated outright the reason why Blizzard cares about people leaving:
Are you intentionally misunderstanding what I’ve said? I don’t think I’ve been unclear. My point is that they don’t care how many people are playing the game, they care how much money they make. The two things are not connected in any sort of linear fashion, in fact they can make more money, with less players. What part of this do you disagree with?
While true, why do you assume players who buy mtx stay while those who don’t leave?
Was this intended to be a response to me? Not sure I’m following if it was.
And I’m telling you that the two correlate with one another. The more people play, the more money they make.
Do you actually think if Blizzard didn’t care about people playing, they would concern themselves with engagement metrics and skinner box progression systems designed to keep people playing forever? Why report on player retention and player engagement to shareholders if that’s not something they care about?
If you work with big data infrastructure, then you should know that your observations are highly misaligned with what C-suite executives value.
Yep. What the hardcore purists dont get is that most players arent interested in releveling characters every three months. They play thru the campaign or get to max level and then move on to the next game. When the expansion marketing hits full swing, most of those casuals who left will buy the expansion, play thru the new content and then move again until the next expansion.
How do you know what Blizzard’s success metrics for D4 are? Unless you can show me a shareholder filing with some data, I don’t believe you do.
Diablo 4 is not a traditional MMO, it is a seasonal live service game. The developers of the game have stated on at least one occasion I can recall that they don’t intend it to be something people play daily for months on end just to experience the content, so the business model isn’t even close to that of a MMO. The concepts you’re referring to like skinner boxes appear even in offline games, and aren’t indicative of engagement driving revenue.
The more people buy the game, the more money they make. That’s the business model. It’s not based upon player numbers. How can you not understand this? It’s not a subscription based game, and the MTX store is generating pennies. Player numbers mean nothing.
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Huh? Brother, they report the engagement metrics in every quarterly report they release. They make consumer-facing press releases highlighting “700 million hours played, 15 million characters created!” This is all public information and is listed directly on their website? You don’t think player engagement translates to more money for Blizzard?
Of course they aren’t. Blizzard isn’t going to outwardly state anything towards consumers that may be perceived as manipulative. That doesn’t mean their intent isn’t to keep you playing. They release FOMO systems like battle passes and AoZ because they know it convinces people to stick around. How do you not see that?
EDIT: Here’s a direct statement from Activision-Blizzard’s quarterly report at the time of Diablo IV’s release:
“As of the end of the second quarter, Diablo IV had sold-through more units than any other Blizzard title at an equivalent stage of release. Over 10 million players experienced Diablo IV in June, playing for over 700 million hours, and retention trends for the title are particularly strong.”
First off, most games that have endgame, seasons, or some form of continous content updates lose around 50% of all players after the main story is finished. Second, games with these cycles always bring players back with new content drops. Thridly, games like this will always lose a lot of players after the first 4 weeks of new content after the no lifers plow through everything ASAP leaving behind the more casual and core bases of the game. Lastly, unless you have any inside information about D4s numbers, you cannot make any credible claim about player numbers.
To recap, duh! This is normal for these games. If you think LE will keep the player counts it has now a month from now, you are smoking something. Just watch. Like clockwork, concurrent players will start to fall off quickly in the coming weeks. Only to rise up again when their new cycle starts.
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Blizzard publishes more than one type of game. I asked for specific data about Diablo 4. Are you going to provide any?
I see you saying all of this nonsense, but have you looked at the cost of the D4 Battlepass? At the cost to buy everything, literally everything, on the D4 cosmetic shop?
Have you compared this cost to what a real MTX driven game like Diablo:Immortal has? It is very obvious that the revenue of this game is not being primarily driven by MTX, but by game sales. Your own quote proves it. Very first line:
Know why that’s the first line in the quote? Because it’s the important one.
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I provided that data for you. If it’s not enough for you, then I’m not sure what else will convince you. Personally, I think the mention of “player retention” is a pretty clear indicator that Blizzard values more people playing their game, but if you want to stick your head in the sand then go for it.
Let me ask you a question: What exactly do you think individual game sales translates to for Blizzard?
Could it be, I don’t know, more people playing the game and thus more opportunities to sell microtransactions?
It’s a simple retail sales business model, the MTX shop in Diablo 4 isn’t contributing much to the operating cost or development of the game. Easy way to keep a few artists and animators on the payroll instead of laying them off and rehiring after every season.
For God’s sake, the opening page of the D4 store is a discarded Hearthstone asset. This isn’t something they put much effort into.
The players are going to come back. They always do, and because they always do, retention doesn’t matter. Ka-ching at the virtual cash register when the XP drops, that’s the only metric Blizzard cares about, and it’s driven far more by the marketing department than development.
D4 is not lacking endgame content. Newcomers are fooled that it doesnt exist. But it exist. The ones who really say that Endgame dont exist are those no-lifers. They overdid farming Ubers thru Multiplayer making them fully decked and facerolled the Endgame. They ended up with nothing to do after consuming the content in a week or few. Becoz they are not doing anything right now, they conclude that there is NO ENDGAME.
New and casual players should not listen to whatever no-lifer says. You have plenty of things to do. You are not like the No-Lifers who has nothing to do.
BTW, this game is a game of grind. If your friends dont have time to grind, this game might not be good for them. The game is Casual friendly. I am Casual with limited play time. I did some few grinds enough for me to beat the game including its endgame. The game doesnt require Uber Uniques that requires heavy grind to beat the game.
I dont think Eternal Server is the place where Blizz should put more of their effort. Players on Seasonal including the numerous no Lifers wants more and more and more stuffs on Seasonal Servers. Blizz has to continuously feed these consumers who play their game actively. Blizz should not focus on players who rarely plays. Those who rarely plays should play Seasonal. It’s not that bad. If they didnt finish the season. So be it. The game should not adjust to them. The players has to adjust to the game where majority plays.
I can’t make you understand this any more than I’ve already tried. The fundamentals of your points boil down to ignoring everything I’ve provided to you because you’re dead set on thinking that Blizzard only cares about box price even if there’s objective evidence to suggest otherwise. Blizzard implements FOMO systems, they trickle out content, and they implement skinner box progression systems that are clear indicators of them wanting people to keep playing, and still you think that somehow, they don’t place value on player engagement and retention.
It’s also just a nonsensical take to have that can easily be pulled apart by asking very simple questions about it. If Blizzard doesn’t care about player retention/engagement and believes that paying for the online infrastructure is expensive, then why wouldn’t they just give players the opportunity to play offline?
Probably because it being online is a ploy to get more players exposed to MTX systems, and the more people play, the more likely they are to spend money by being barraged with both direct and indirect advertisements of cosmetics.
At this point, it would be more productive to argue with a brick wall because at least the brick wall wouldn’t shoot back nonsensical talking points. I don’t think your points are innately incorrect in some capacity. Obviously, Blizzard places emphasis on selling and moving units, otherwise the game would just be F2P. Where you and I clearly divide on this issue is your belief that it’s the only thing they care about. I personally think I’ve proven why that’s a blatant mischaracterization, but it’s more than likely falling on deaf ears. We’ll just keep going in circles at this point.
This is wrong. World of WarCraft lived for 20 years and it is still alive and more awesome. Most of us keeps on coming back to it not becoz of its shop but becoz that game is massively super fun. And D4 is the same. Many players here dont pay attention to the shop but it’s there becoz modern games without a shop nowadays would be a failure to business standpoint.
Go create a game without a shop and look for someone to sponsor it, that game would not come to exist.
im not paying $140 totall money for a finished product
expansions are to enhance, not complete
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D4 is fun? Since when? Also final fantasy games have no shops with microtransactions. Despite it only coming out today, there are people plugging this in for goty. Still a little early to tell. D4 is great if you love 5/10 and 6/10 games. Its a perfect rental if you have a weekend off with nothing to do.
World of Warcraft is a subscription based game. Why in the world would I say things like ‘you guys don’t get it’, when people are dropping arguments like this? The world will never know.