It did, because Diablo 3 achieved its ultimate goal which was to bring a new audience to the genre and to the game. With this new audience, however, appetites changed which led a lot of the original fan base to wax poetic about what was. I think it’s no mistake that you get the gritty graphics back, some of the story beats that are a call back to 2 and 1, it’s clear to me playing the game that if the intention of 3 was to bring in new players the intention of 4 was to have a bit of everything from both sources and hopefully deliver a product that would merge the fan base. A tall order.
But on sales, just like in 1950 a house was 5000 and now it’s a half a million, there weren’t as many gamers back then to pull from. It’s not impressive that D2 or D1 sold 6 million copies or whatever, it’s impressive because comparitively both within its genre of RPGs and games as a whole it outsold everything. I think we can both be right in that D3 sold well initially based on the clout of its predecessor, lost a lot of that initial surge, then gained it back over time by becoming a good game that was worth playing. But I definitely stand firm that given the initial reaction it would have been hard to progress if it didn’t have the Diablo IP backing it because people would have dunked on it and moved on instead of giving something they love time to prove them wrong.
1 Like
This, season 4 is themed content, the stuff you listed is just base game content that everyone gets
D4 was meant to be a love letter to the loudest people angry at D3, absolutely. I’ve posted 1 to 1 comparisons of D3 complaints and how they did it in D4. But I’ve also posted in threads where the majority of people were complaining about this exact things they did to make D4 closer to D2. The big issues are directly tied to things D4 did to entice the D2 fans.
The constant cry of “lacks endgame” is a direct result of having a finite progression like D2 had. Because people expected post 100 endgame but like D2 your level cap was just grind the same thing hoping for the last rare rune you wanted. Baal runs were seconds long and that’s pretty much what D2 ended up as for most people. D4 actually gave more options for endgame repetition than Baal but that’s neither here nor there. Point being D4 ended up launching with max out and run stuff hoping for rare drop Ubers. But look how empty that feels, it’s not the right fit for right now. There have been people doing Baal for 20 years but it just doesn’t hold the weight for a modern audience.
As for sales, I always like to remind people that we can’t rely on things like inflation or population growth when a game that was touted as the D4 killer barely broke 2 million units. And D2R is a modern release that still didn’t attract the sales of D4, let alone D3. D2 was phenomenal at the time, no doubt. It was a monster of a hit and in my opinion was the true start of the subgenre. But that was then and this is now. Even PoE knows it’s time to copy D3.
1 Like
And yet without seasons, none of this content update would occur outside expansions.
Otherwise - they could release content at any time, outside of Seasonal release windows.
Seasonal powers that get added to the base game as Uniques or Aspects or soon Tempers are due to Seasons happening. They are by definition, Seasonal content transitioned to permanent content.
Which is exactly what I replied to.
Which I’ve given examples of D4 doing the same.
They can do massive updates to fix obvious problems without seasons, if there wasn’t seasons they would just do it in a patch when it was ready. But because there IS seasons it makes sense to release it with a season, since it would be a mess to do it mid season.
Then explain what I cited:
How do you arrive at Seasonal Powers added to the game as Uniques, Aspects, and Tempers (soon) without having Seasons?
These things get added because of Seasons.
Can Blizzard add major content updates without Seasons? Sure. But I assume you don’t work for free - why would you expect Blizzard to? The only two economics that make sense are either Season or Expansion.
I’ll take the Seasonal model, since it’s been well shown that Blizzard has added in significant content without players required to purchase anything additional.
The only reasons you got updates outside of seasonal content was because there were massive problems.
Without that looming issue being present, they would just roll all that content into an x-pac so they can recoup their investment on developer time.
Without seasons they’d like just have a regular battlepass honestly, not much would change except seasonal resets
I think we can all agree that despite our varied opinions we are all here because we have a profound love for this franchise. I just hope that they succeed in giving us the compelling gameplay experience we are all hoping for so we can argue in game and not on these forums. 
Edit: I think one thing we can all be thankful for is that despite problems facing this game (and past iterations) they have a reputation of tenaciously supporting their products until they get it right.
3 Likes
I feel like we forget that man, thanks for the reminder.
1 Like
They don’t have any other ideas. This game is still in the “pay 100 dollars to test our game for 3 years” phase.
No they don’t. When did they do this? 15 years ago in WoW before everyone left? You HAVE to work at Blizzard to say something this stupid.
Or until they get it even more wrong 
D3 style.
Lately, this seems to be the most common outcome unfortunately.
However, they are also abandoning games more these days;
Heroes of the Storm
Warcraft 3 Reforged
What’s the problem with temporary extra power related to seasonal contents ?
I see absolutely ZERO problem with that since they are easy to get. Almost you do just playing… ZERO Effort.
So leave it alone and as it is. If you don´t like them, always there´s the option to not use.
In season 3 you are not obligated to use the pet power, leave the slots empty.
Vampire Powers are currently the only actual system I’d like to stick around.
Not as aspects, but literally just as the vampiric power system, wholesale.
You don’t see a problem with that?
Anyway, the main problem is that Blizzard wasted work hours making these things.
Why was it a waste? It was fun, it could be remixed later like they are doing with D3 seasons.
The seasons team is different than the regular base-game team bro.
Seasons team 1 - 5 devs - $100k budget
Seasons team 2 - 5 devs - $100k budget
Expansion team - 20 devs - $500k budget
Base-game team 20 devs - $150k budget
Obviously these are all made up to illustrate the point.
You propose moving the budget from seasons to main game development.
Ok. So you allocate seasons team 1’s budget to the base-game team. However, none of those 5 devs are on the same page. So you’ll need to pay their salaries and catch them up, someone has to catch them up, 1/4 of your base-game team is now working on that, and the half the season 1 budget is eaten bringing them up to speed.
Plus you’ve lost 5 devs from the base-game team in the process. So the team is behind.
3 months later, you start crunch development to improve. Sadly as a consequence you only have 1/3 of your seasonal revenue coming in, and your single team is now doing double work, so they burn out, and you lose 3 devs.
You hire 3 devs. Now you have a year lag to bring them up to speed.
What do you do?
Things like this aren’t as easy just moving puzzle pieces from one bucket to another. It’s even more complicated IRL.
Hence, the sooner you stop doing things the wrong way, the sooner the team you transferred to doing something else will be up and running. Don’t get stuck in the sunk cost fallacy.
Yeah, it will take time, things dont magically improve in a day. But in the long run you will be in a better place.
Besides, the idea that 5 people would have to work full time on training other 5 to catch up is selling Blizzard employees short.
Based on experience, I don’t have much positive to say about Blizzard these days, but I don’t think they are that incompetent.
Most people in a professional business are not that bad at learning new things.
How is completely shutting down seasons going to end in a better place. When they are currently developing the content you want, under the expansion anyways?
I work in a very technical profession. Zero chance someone sits in my seat and does my job as efficiently as I do, in under a year. This isn’t plumbing where a pipe is a pipe.
They could develop more of that content. Or better content (as it definitely should not be quantity over quality, heck, that is part of the issue with season stuff)
Then release it sooner to the playerbase, so said playerbase would still care enough to buy that expansion when it turns up.
Hell, they could do what they originally claimed they would do; sell new content in smaller expansions (aka. DLC), if there was concerns about the monetization side of things. Not that it should be much of a concern tbh. The kind of people who buy cosmetics will buy them regardless.
They don’t have to do it as efficiently as you do, they merely need to reach a point where you don’t need to waste ALL your time training them (especially since your time is worth more than theirs).