Where did i say ignore the last month?
I said the last 30 days that is the current month and some days for the previous month. Since we dont know how this site calculates this, and checking a few more games it seems that the calculation is weird since all games i checked show a last 30 days that always surpasses the previous month. I can be on the wrong here but checking a few games gave me the same result. Open to correction.
But August which was the full 1st month is the point of reference we need.
1st month vs 1st month.
And to be precise : 15 days of season 4 vs 22 days of season 5. And season 5 is behind.
Its fun watching people translate data, facts and words into their own conclusions trying to justify what they want. Even when they are so blatantly wrong.
All that would prove is that S4 has been crap at keeping players.
All that would prove is that all seasons have been crap at keeping players.
The current drop rates are too low, and will kill Season 6 for the majority of players. There is simply not enough time.
Season 5 gives too much loot, too quickly, and too easily.
Now the idea is to not be at either of these extremes, but to find a level between them where someone who puts a reasonable amount of time into the game, and knows exactly what they are doing, gets to highest levels of the Pit before the season ends.
With all honesty i fully support casuals being able to fully push as well.
Just not on 5 alts and 25 builds. 1-2 characters should be the target for players that play a few hours per day give or take. This is my time windows and i would like the game to be able to hold me a bit longer and not have me play 25 characters to enjoy a season.
The issues are much bigger than drop rates.
Builds should be able to function without needed 2-5 mythic uniques.
Its fun to run dressed up in purples but i kills way to many things:
locks the item slots the moment you get one and if you know what you are doing you will have some pretty fast.
along with normal uniques locks 80-90% of your items on things you cannot use aspects on to have a proper buildcrafting. You just slap what a basic build needs to function or some multiplier and call it a day.
along with normal uniques locks 80-90% of you upgrades behind bosses. To find better versions of your items you need to farm bosses. It locks you in that content. Boss material farm is one of the worst aspects of this game. And having to farm a boss you delete again and again becomes old pretty fast.
since now you are left with 2-3 legos only on your gear, item drops from other activities are not fun anymore. You are locked behind looking for 2-3 items with multi GAs.
mythics have turned into a balance reference. they expect you to have them. they are not the OP broken item anymore. they are the standard. Getting a multi GA unique is harder than getting a mythic. they can be renamed to normal and given a blue color at this point.
Other issues:
no armory ( under work )
no balance in boss material availability. living steel vs anything else
no balance in builds. this cannot be achieved but more builds should be able to function outside of 1 per class. this is disgusting and this season has been by far the worst in this aspect.
new ansectral items get you from zero to hero. a middle ground should be in place both in terms of item power and masterworks. e.g sacred get back at 7XX item power and allow 8 masterworks. They drop easier than T4 ancestrals. They are your upgrade goal to hit T4. Balance T4 accordingly and lock ancestrals there and maybe on T3 with a low drop rate. Make it a small journey that you can invest some resources in your drops and get a worthy and linear upgrade towards your endgoal.
And after you managed to go through all this, its for what? to farm the same boss faster? The pit is simply not fun at its current iteration. Even those that farm it dont like it as is. I am holding my hopes high for expansion content to improve the endgame activities. Hordes was an amazing addition.
So overall its not simply about the loot drops. But if this process is not balanced then you hit the point that i described above super fast and the game becomes stale and boring.
Yes. Ask yourself ‘‘why not?`’’ and try to answer yourself reasonably (if you can because I think you are too young to be reasonable after reading a couple of your comments now). You need to see players weaker than you so you can have a joy of your 6 dialy hours of gaming?
We should all get the items to make the builds work. At least what we’ve got now: being able to temper twice and MW to 12. If they want to add more power beyond that I don’t care, but they are taking away what is making viable for people playing 2 hours a day to get a powerfull build and enjoy the toon.
Those ‘‘2 hours’’ players won’t push pit past 101-111 because their (our) fun is to be able to beat the game with what we’ve gathered. Then there are 80 more tiers for people who wants a challenge.
They can not lock an entire Tier of the game behind the power of times that don’t drop that often if they are removing the only way to get there while having fun. So they keep the tempers and MW ranks the same for all and give extra juice to the new Ancestrals or they make them drop more. There is no other way around this.
You make a good point. In my opinion, and i’ve expressed this in my own post and others, I feel that if the game stays in the PTR state that this will absolutely kill the casual player base. The “blaster” and streamers will keep playing but the casual player will leave and wait for the next season in hopes of change.
You see how other people are pointing out that your data is wrong and you’re still yelling at people over the internet about a video game?
You ever hear the phrase, that if everyone is the problem then you’re the problem?
You are looking at a column that says, monthly average users…. But thats per month, so I read that column effectually as, the number of players that pressed login ONCE for the course of that 30 day period.
The metric that I was referring to was the daily average players per month…. Because thats the average number of players that pressed “login” EACH DAY in a 30 day period.
The daily average users is a much better measurement of long term engagement.
Regardless of all of this, you started this whole thing, by referencing steam data for Diablo IV… which represents 1% of the total player base, and also does NOT represent the core fanbase of the franchise. This, in combination with how you conduct yourself, is why your not getting much grace in this forum.
May 2024 1,165,879.00
August 2024 985,619.00
diff : 180,260
May 2024 1,165,879.00
Last 30 Days 1,039,436.00
diff: 126,443
In both cases the season you praise has less players.
Average. Daily.
And this is with this season being 1 month away from the expansion where the hype is climaxed.
Again you say “you read the data wrong”. The data are here. From the site you picked. The data say the same story and somehow you are trying to translate them in your favour while being in the negatives. How on earth are you still typing and keep coming back? Holy moly.
Assuming age and play time based on a few comments that i struggle to communicate with people that cant even read math in here is pretty naive, if anything. FYI the most i managed to play this season was 4 hours during days off. Usual play time is 2 hours at night, almost zero at weekend, except seasons start first weekend, where i can juice up some hours. Moving on.
Its a simple difference of opinions. I want to see replay ability value because i have a decent understanding of the diablo franchise. The devs never manage to make multiple builds viable or hit the endgame right. We still have no true endgame as the game is right now(pre expansion).
So, in my opinion, its much more worth to be able to choose and play 2 characters per season for 2 months with a couple of builds to each character(armory) instead of playing all available characters with the same builds that most will be meta the next season again, for a month.
Right now(and i repeat, right now, pre expansion) if you play two characters for 2 hours a day while having a descent grasp of the game, you are close to min/maxed in a few(week+) days.
For anyone good at the game, the game turns stale fast. Its not simply about the loot drops or the exp. Its the combination of multiple design choices. But if we want all RNG removed, all loot chase removed, all difficulty removed. Why are we even playing an ARPG that is known for these core values? Why dont we turn into MMOs for standard weekly goals and loots or single player games to play whenever we want? Stripping everything that makes an ARPG from an ARPG to make everyone happy and sell skins should have never been the direction.
And finally if i can do this with 2-3 hours of daily play, what are the hardcores supposed to do? Why do we cater ONLY for the casuals but totally ignore the “mid” players and the more hardcore community?
I am the OP, that was hosting really positive dialogue. Then you came along and started citing steam metrics for a blizzard title and yelling at people. Lol
Never mentioned 3 days did i? Never said couple of days. I said “few”.
Few can be 5 or 10 days.
For me it was literary ~13-15 hours across 2 weeks. Luck was absolutely involved due to getting the 2 uniques from seasonal boxes. But overall in 13hours i had a full geared 2 mythics, all uniques and legendary GAs items from hordes and glyphs on lvl15. This was not ok. The upgrades left for this character now were locked behind perfect masterworks(which are easy to get via hordes) and boss farming all day. The only break here is the material farm for bosses.
Which is why i advocate for how hurtful the design behind easy mythics is and how its destroying the loot chase alongside the boss material economy and the overall slots that the uniques+mythics take on most builds right now.
And you cited yours and failed elementary calculations or understanding of what you just pasted.
You made a comment and i brought an argument that you did not like.
You responded with stats from another site that i used to debunk you and your response is this.
Everytime you are in the corner and proven wrong, you go in the offence bringing out daddy issues, misery etc. You are the definition of the keyboard hero and the guy that goes in the attack when he is losing a verbal argument.
Someone who plays 2 hours a day should eventually get to T4, of course, but should in no way be equally geared to the crazy who plays 8 - 12 hours a day. No idea why that is even a debate.
Not keen on your fetish for wealth inequality and trade.
Find your suggested drop rate numbers appealing and reasonable.
I agree with you that there should be rankings and raise you one further that there is no reason not to copy the race leagues from poe.
The mount, oh god, the mount. If they SELL a fix just for the mount for 20 $ i would buy it. Imagine - faster base speed, much shorter cooldown on speed boost, no cooldown on dismount, no more getting stuck in narrow passages or on obstacles, what a dream that would be.
Agree on necks.
Really concerned about the state of channeling skills. LS as of now, from what i’ve managed to dig from the net:
Does not snapshot quickshift or resonance - only the first hit works.
Does not proc any lucky hit procs - only the first hit works.
Snapshots distance of all things - enemies struck from afar are considered forever distant as long as you channel.
The incredibly stupid aoe ramp up happens too fast and is really hard to get the 3 lightnings stage. You cannot get it with the LS storm gloves if you select the chance to immobilize upgade for LS
Makes AS irrelevant if you spam the skill. Which makes my wrist tired.
Movement during boss fights while doing damage is difficult and choppy.
Please give channeling damage reduction and a chance to resist cc while channeling and fix procs and snapshotting.
I am one, so ‘‘no one’’ is not valid anymore.
Give it another try because what you just said reads as: ‘‘I want to be the one wearing the best gear because I spend countless hours and I need to feel superior in a game. I play more hours not to get actual good gear but to feel that I am better than the others. And they should be geared with trash because this game needs to be so hard that I should be the only one playing it’’.
Do you even realize that the idea is that the players find an easy way to gear up with almost the same gear? Devs know what’s fun and what’s not and are just putting the same gear you have been wearing behind a new tier where you are getting a higher penalty. Ask for NEW powerfull items to chase there. Ask the people you paid for your game to work on it and stop punching the people around you that just want to play the game!
The harder the game gets the stricter the requirements and the more homogenized the equipment. If you do want people to experiment and use less optimal skills, aspects and uniques that would mean lowering the difficulty of the content that gives the highest level of reward. Note that they could always add more difficulty scaling with prestige rewards - titles , cosmetics and ladderboard rankings for people who want to push the best builds and play them in the absolute most efficient way, however unfun that might be.
I think I agree with you, but I am also on the side of, let everything be available at T1. Make the gap between the Torment tiers a bit wider, Make T4 very hard, and make T4 far more rewarding.
Couple of other questions I don’t think we have answers to:
Do we still get free sparks? Do sparks even really matter compared to the runes we need to get? I am guessing there are no more “free sparks”.
I had some others, but I will edit this post later.