Post Activity, Composition, and Frequency are in an Asymptotic Phase

PC General Discussion
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There was such excitement when these forums first launched. And for good reason: all of us had been waiting for 10 years for the next installment in our beloved childhood game series, Diablo.

The anticipation was palpable. The fanboy exuberance was writ large. Nothing could go wrong.

Until it did.

And here we are, now, experiencing three features of the forum exhibiting asymptotic declining behavior towards the corresponding axis. Those features are post activity, post composition, and post frequency.

Go back to March 2023. Peruse this particular forum’s historical posts pre-launch. Then peruse just post-launch in early June and compare them to the last week or so. You’ll see what I mean. An honest, objective assessment reveals this reduction in all three features.

nota bene: What I can’t share with you are statistics for these things, so, if there is one caveat in my premise, it is that. I acknowlege that right now.

1. Post activity

A quick search of engagement during forum birth reveals that it was high. Unique posters were here in droves. Questions, answers, requests, and wishes were all thrown out, like pearls before swine. Even in July, the activity was still high:

Note the wishful thinking: “This game is going to live forever…”

Unique activity has reduced across the board in new threads and posts, as posts become echo chambers of activity or digressions off topic (guilty as charged) of many of the same posters (again, guilty).

2. Post Composition

Posts have veered away from constructive criticism and suggestions and wishes to complaints, anger, and disdain. This is, again, an objective decline in the type of content that is shared and consumed here.

Frankly, I would much rather spend time reading a well thought out post with gameplay recommendations, QoL amendments, and ideas. To wit, I put this little thread together to showcase the community drive to make D4 great…which I sincerely still want to do:

3. Post Frequency:

Both threads and posts were showing up rapid fire pre- and post-launch. So many never got any response because they moved down the queue so fast.

Post and thread frequency does go through cycles of high and low levels - on weekends and on weeknights it is high and during weekdays and overnight (EST) it is low. But now, over the past few weeks compared to pre- and post-launch, frequency has trended down.

Anyone with half a neuron can deduce why decline has happened: lack of QoL features, exploits, endgame lacuna, leveling slog, affix dilution, 1.1.0, dev interviews and videos, competing titles, the list goes on.

Will the forums return to the love-fest and agora of ideas that it once was? I hope. I miss being able to talk about the game rather than what the game could have been — or not talk about the game at all.

3 Likes
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Here’s the problem with these forums - D4 is doing well despite the haters. The haters double down when their whining doesn’t get them what they want, and then D4 keeps doing well, and then they double down again hoping it will shake Blizzard… its just absurd. I’ve never seen such NPC behavior out of haters of a game before. Like they just can’t acknowledge they’re caught in a loop, I dunno.

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YAAAAAAAWN. Kid trying to regurgitate words obviously outside his wheelhouse and used in the wrong context.

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Are you sure it’s not all the miserable and psychotic posters that drove all the moderate players away and made them realize posting here is a waste of time?

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What exactly are you on about? Hypocritical nonsense again i see. What would you like me to say about the game? I gave the story of act 1 10/10. Then i decided to take a long break because i was lied to. If i wasn’t lied to then it was :ox: :poop: skills that clearly weren’t tested. I still say the games alright though, you won’t see me crying and asking for a refund though :troll:… honestly, moaning about moaners moaning over incompetence.

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It’s clear peeps are still playing the game…and enjoying it. I’m just lamenting on the state of the forum. And then, like clockwork…that forum state rears its head unceremoniously.

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This. Name-calling, condescension, demeaning language. Yup. Just like what’s happening in this very thread. How ironic.

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Kudo’s out to you Parousia. But I’m afraid this a sickness of modern times. Times where Profit(single)minded leadership refuses to meet their consumerbase halfway.
It results into situations such as these and will continue to until lawmakers have finally caught up and enforce proper consumer protection.
Then we can go back to normalized (note “norm”) discussions of the games we play.

And between you and me. I miss it too.

1 Like
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Most folks have moved on to greater pastures when they realized that their feedback is largely ignored.

I’ve written up thoughtful posts that just simply don’t get responses, but maybe a few “likes”. I’ve written up borderline troll posts that get too many responses. Folks here don’t really want thoughtful discussion - they are just trolls trolling and only feed off of those posts.

Game was dead on arrival, and it is blatantly clear what the modus operandi of the devs is: season passes & cash shop take priority. Nothing else matters.

They are seriously tone deaf to implement nerfs like longer cooldowns or longer teleporting times. Then, they offer “buffs” later on in the 1-3% range, or a new unique that teleports you to a random location. A bunch of clowns, those devs.

Nah, Blizzard deserves the flack they are getting. I’m sure they are staring at abysmal player counts similar to the status of Diablo 3. This game was doomed from the start because of its console-first philosophical guidance.

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For what it’s worth, I’ve noticed this in other long standing avenues for game discussion as well. I’m going to date myself here and say I remember when GameFAQs was THE website. You had FAQs obviously, but also cheats, pics, videos, forums. It was a BFD.

And somewhere along the last 20 years or so, it has very much deteriorated. Not quite as bad as here, but it’s very obvious something changed for the worse.

Could be the gaming culture has changed, but I’m more inclined to believe it’s the gaming industry. Most companies don’t respect us anymore. So we take their lead and WE disrespect us.

There are places where the “old school” feel good vibe still shines. But it’s mostly on discord or other small-knit microcosms and usually on indie games to boot. I don’t think humanity has gotten worse overall, I just think nobody’s willing to step up and TRY to be the better person, dev-wise. It shouldn’t be the exception to have a BG3-like game come out. That was the norm, once.

And even if that’s unrealistic, at least meet us halfway. You’re more likely to hear “you don’t know what you really want” from a dev these days, than you are to hear “WE don’t know what you really want.”

1 Like
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Add to the list, the internet is also full of haters trying to bring a ship down,I saw it on streamers, trolling them into playing a bad way etc.

Add the new existence of next level noise from the “content creator” army that never existed when D3 Launched, they would do the same thing…

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I was in my 40’s when Diablo 1 launched.

The difference can be explained when reality meets expectations, Blizzard presented a gifted horse in the beta after launch we looked at the horses teeth.