Whos game is it anyway?
Not the D2 veterans’ game, that’s for sure. More like the D3 fanboys’ game.
Well sorry to hear of your relationship history, can’t image that would of been pleasant. My point is narcissism is different from selfishness fundamentally, but more often than not you will see a mix of both. A narcissist may think they’re doing what is best for them, but objectively it is self-destructive via the secondary social effects – namely isolation and a lack of will from others to meet their needs. In this way, their behavior can be either directly or indirectly self-destructive. I had an ex who was highly self-absorbed and selfish, but she certainly had an array of insecure complexes. Narcissist don’t have insecure complexes – they think they’re the best thing since sliced bread, and so deserving of special attention and authority. I can understand why you have interpreted my communication in this way, but I’m not demanding anything – I’m simply stating a different methodology to improve the game for all. Yes there is some ‘tone’ here too – I’m disappointed to see a great game miss the opportunity to really capitalize on growth and momentum.
I don’t work in clinical no longer – I’m a financial analyst and consultant. I see things more so from a business standpoint. Trends matter more than current state, its what shareholders track to try get ahead of anticipated swings. In all honestly, I don’t think this thread was even needed – Blizzard will come to the table anyway once they see revenue drying up.
To your point about the general pattern with games and retention – yes this is true, but specifically the point I made was within context of the season launch. That is, the complete absence of increased player count is not what you should expect from an opening launch day. The question I want you to try answer is; Why didnt the season launch result in more players coming back? We all know the answer to that – but not all are honest about it.
I would agree with you if it were not for the greater expectation to see an increase on season launch. Even after all the negative sentiment – i still expected to see an increase. It is a worry that things have flatlined during a time when you should see more traffic inflow coming back.
This point I agree with. But I don’t think we have the real numbers - only Blizzard does. We will see how things go over the next few months.
Thanks for the support man – appreciated 
Yeah I don’t think the average casual gamer understands concepts like zero-sum, vertical/linear progression, feature creep, ect. Its not my specialty either, but yes there is some cases where if the community can’t find consensus, then this is where the centralized party (blizzard) should take the initiative. However, when there is a large consensus on any particular changes – that is when they really need to honor that consensus.
To tolkien -
Ill update as we get more numbers coming in – I am willing to be wrong here and withdraw my criticism if new data shows otherwise.
Even if things don’t go in the direction I personally prefer, if it maintains appeal to the popular majority then that is a win.
Edit:
Have a quick look at the new thread posts under general – its ugly, really ugly. There is countless threads just like mine – albeit, mostly criticism without the constructive feedback.
New thread titles today;
“seasons already dull”
“I logged in and logged out”
“Can i use my bp in season 2”
“Just saying 10k players online is a joke”
“leveling up sucks, fix it”
“season already ruined”
“final warning on your upcoming campfire chat”
“F* this game, Im done”
“lowest player count in the games history”
“Cool patch, sorc and barb unplayable. it was miserable before and you doubled down”
so on and so on.
If i saw this as a company CEO, I would immediately try to address in within 24 hours – the longer you leave it, the worse it gets.
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Ya. I mean, we’re still a ways from where we could be, and sure, they could have done things a little differently, but in some respects what was needed was what this seems to be stepping towards. Bringing extremely broken things back in line with intended performance. I don’t mind their attitude that they want players to eventually find ways to feel a little broken, but one stat that is the difference between hitting for 30M instead of 300k is WAY beyond a little broken feeling, lmao. A signal that they are working to move away from an idea that a small number of must use “FoTM meta builds” each taking turns being Uber broken isn’t remotely how things are intended to be. A small number of what are perfectly praiseworthy experimenters find some cool but broken builds clearly not working as intended, then the word spreads, and a larger number of players adopt the builds and get so reliant on them their expectation gets set that they should be clearing the very toughest challenges with a face tank and button mash, lol. Then, when that’s taken away I get that it’s gonna make a few mad. But it seems like most ppl that are just playing and adapting to the game as it grows are enjoying it just fine. It’ll take more time to get a better idea, but trying to extricate the patching and tuning from the most knee jerky of the streamer noise isn’t exactly a dumb move.
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Up vote this post… Can’t agree more…
/Character
Its my game - I own it.
Get out of my house.
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Ya, groupthink circle jerking is pretty standard. when we see those threads getting tens of thousands of likes, then we really know consensus is forming up. Honestly, with legit respect, try to step back a little from searching for confirmation bias. No one is telling you you aren’t entitled to your opinion. I do think your stubbornness about it might be having a greater effect on your ability to enjoy the game than anything in the game itself, though.
Again, you keep bringing up that source but that source doesn’t have credible information. They even say that their information isn’t credible and shouldn’t be used in the manner that you’re using it.
Directly from the source:
All data presented by
ActivePlayer.ioare all estimated data and should NOT be used as factual reference.
And here you are trying to use it as a factual reference.
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While there’s some ppl to kneel n suck the frozen bliz balls being giant whales, it seem bliz doesn’t care about the majority of player base
OMG! People are leaving game that they finished and moved to another?
What do you think Diablo is? A fancy panty chinese MMO?
Casual players will go through campaign, some end game content and move to something else.
Not 100% of people need to be playing Diablo for the next 20 years.
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Logic does not work on these people.
They think because they threw a hissy fit people are “leaving” proving they are right.
It is the dumbest thing I have ever seen.
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This reminds me of Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Breakpoint release. They even had to have a shareholder’s meeting over that bomb. It won’t get to that extreme in this case as Diablo 4 has been so profitable. But everything from player perception, player retention, and developer relations with player base is all deja vu. And that game never recovered from it.
—It has experienced somewhat of a renaissance of sorts once the modding community got a hold of it…after Ubisoft stopped development.
6 million people paid for the game.
First season patch made lots of them mad and they quit.
Blizzard turned off a bunch of servers to save money.
Blizzard still has the money. They win.
Im a software engineer and just about every software house builds to a Scaled Agile framework.
The main plank of Agile is that we build for the customer you guys.
That means our product owners are working with player reps or player gameplay factions to shape the game.
Players should be the ones that sign off on user stories each sprint.
Sometimes there are conflicts.
Maybe durability has micro transactions that brings in revenue and players want it gone- likely that sort of change cant be delivered.
But for sure players should be able to request things and having a vote is ok.
Just from a list of 10 probably 4 cant be done. 2 might impact the bottom line and 2 might wreck game balance. But the other 6 could be fair game.
Maybe one is new end game content. Another might be more controller settings etc.
Anytime a software house breaks the fundamental design philosphy of scaled agile and builds for themselves even on a much loved franchise like Diablo its going to be a bad day for that software house.
The metacritic score of 2 out of 10 really highlights the disconnect from customer to software house.
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even if what you say is bs. It does not matter at the end of the day.
Blizzard already won no matter what the outrage people do. LMAO
In Ubisoft’s case ghost recon devotees kept telling devs through forums what they wanted. Devs didn’t listen. They attempted to come out with a new GR game, Frontline (most called flatline), loaded with features no one wanted. After 2 years of developer work. Once the concept was advertised on You Tube and within a week of beta testing, the player base trashed it back to the Stone Age. Rightfully so. The whole project, years of work, scrapped before it even got off the ground. Devs need to listen to their player base. Would’ve saved them a bunch of money in the end.
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Nice Research. Your first link shows how well D4 is apparently doing, right? Tbh I am a little bit surprised that it is THIS good but it went from 3.2m to 2.7m, that means over 80% of the players are still playing 
Those numbers are likely pre-patch. It will take some time for the metrics to reflect the anger post-patch.
No.
I compared the Active Player count at Launch (3.2m) to the active player count yesterday (2.7m)
Also when you look at the graph the daily active player count never drops below 2.5m
What tbh kind of surprised me because normale these games take a huge bump in their player count before a season