Are you done? Why?

[Xanthippe]

I beg to differ.

It will take a huge turnaround on Blizzard's part for me to buy any game from them in the future. This was not the case a few years ago, when I'd pre-order Blizzard collector's versions as soon as they became available. I haven't changed; Blizzard has. They no longer deliver the quality they used to be known for.

[Paelos]

They already have your money.

And when they bring out the next release/expansion/game you'll give it to them again.  Just go back and read over the last few years of hope and teeth-gnashing that comprises theses forum and you'll be hard pressed to come up with a different view.  Blizzard gave customers exactly what they've been giving customers for years.  For all the talk of voting with wallets, well, folks have and will probably continue to.  They'll get largely the same sell-through on the D3 xpac that they got for D2, this game has hardly been a flop despite any local teeth-gnashing and twice-bitten regrets.

Well for one thing, you're ignoring the fact that many people voted with their wallets in Cataclysm and it cost them huge amounts in revenues. On top that that, you're ignoring that the Blizzard expansions even in WoW only sold at a 60% adopter rate from the original box sales. And that was with positive responses back in prior years. Oh and that in the Q1 financials from this year, WoW's sub rates dropped $139M over the prior year's quarter, hitting their lowest revenue numbers in subscriptions since 2007.

Add in the fact that D3 has been burned in the forums and even in the Forbes press, as well as investor sites, and you get the picture that Blizzard has actually damaged their brand in the last year and a half. So, the idea that Blizzard is just saying fuck the consumer until xpac time is frankly laughable. They maybe make $30M a year in RMAH stuff at 100,000 transactions a day. They would make $120M on a $40 expansion pack that sold to even half of their initial buyers. So you're trying to convince me that they care that much about RMAH income to fuck up their big payday? Or that they don't know that people are losing faith in Blizzard's product and not participating?

[Ingmar]

I beg to differ.

It will take a huge turnaround on Blizzard's part for me to buy any game from them in the future. This was not the case a few years ago, when I'd pre-order Blizzard collector's versions as soon as they became available. I haven't changed; Blizzard has. They no longer deliver the quality they used to be known for.

Not to pick on you specifically, but I have a couple questions, and you're the most conveniently located of the "Blizzard is no longer a buy at release company" people. How many hours of D3 have you played? Of those hours, for how many of them would you say you were having fun?

------

Paelos: Essentially what you're suggesting is that Blizzard should make major changes that might piss off a large portion of the customer base that they've *kept* (people who are playing right now, using the RMAH, etc.) in the interest of *maybe* getting back some portion of people who will allegedly not buy the expansion later. That would be a pretty crazy choice. Prior examples of companies doing that: SWG NGE, and uh...

[Kail]

Well for one thing, you're ignoring the fact that many people voted with their wallets in Cataclysm and it cost them huge amounts in revenues.

Followed almost immediately by everyone jumping back in the boat for Diablo 3, making it the most successful game launch ever.  I want to believe that ignoring your customers is bad business, but every year EA continues to exist proves it a lie.  This game has always on DRM, RMT for in game power, and everyone bought it anyways.

I mean, I'm sure you can come up with a lot of valid criticisms of Diablo 3, but in terms of sales, I'm not convinced that we're looking at a financial disaster here.  The game is one of the best selling titles ever, you'd have to SERIOUSLY tank the expansion to turn it into a financial loss.

[Paelos]

I didn't say it was a financial disaster. I said that they have damaged their brand, and that continually ignoring the customers in this game will not sell it further in the expansion department, nor will it inspire confidence on other releases.

Also, EA's stock is at it's lowest point in over a decade. These practices are catching up with the businesses. The numbers are there for all to see.

The key thing is to not let the company BECOME a financial disaster (like EA is becoming - take a look at their books), by ignoring your customers the way they have.

[Paelos]

Paelos: Essentially what you're suggesting is that Blizzard should make major changes that might piss off a large portion of the customer base that they've *kept* (people who are playing right now, using the RMAH, etc.) in the interest of *maybe* getting back some portion of people who will allegedly not buy the expansion later. That would be a pretty crazy choice. Prior examples of companies doing that: SWG NGE, and uh...

No I'm not. The problems and why people left are well documented, and most of them stem around the loot being complete ass. At bare minimum, you fix that and you've suddenly got a functional product. Go even further with some flavor stuff, balance changes, and better economic controls, and you've got a game that people want to play.

Nothing about the fundamental game changes. It's still whacking stuff to get loot the same way you've always whacked stuff to get loot. Except the loot is good now.

[Malakili]

It's still whacking stuff to get loot the same way you've always whacked stuff to get loot. Except the loot is good now.

Yea, I don't think us folks that have stuck around so far are going to complain about the loot suddenly getting better.

[Xanthippe]

I beg to differ.

It will take a huge turnaround on Blizzard's part for me to buy any game from them in the future. This was not the case a few years ago, when I'd pre-order Blizzard collector's versions as soon as they became available. I haven't changed; Blizzard has. They no longer deliver the quality they used to be known for.

Not to pick on you specifically, but I have a couple questions, and you're the most conveniently located of the "Blizzard is no longer a buy at release company" people. How many hours of D3 have you played? Of those hours, for how many of them would you say you were having fun?

Scads of hours. I got my $60 worth. I had fun right up until it wasn't (inferno level) so I went back with a different character and got to the not fun part again. And again. Now? I have played a little since, and stop because I'm not finding it fun. Perhaps I need another character.

Even though I have gotten my money's worth, Blizzard is disappointing to me, and my opinion of them has fallen a great deal. I also got my money's worth from World of Warcraft, but I no longer play that game either, and don't anticipate buying any more expansions.

[Rokal]

Not to pick on you specifically, but I have a couple questions, and you're the most conveniently located of the "Blizzard is no longer a buy at release company" people. How many hours of D3 have you played? Of those hours, for how many of them would you say you were having fun?

I think looking at total gametime is a bit misleading. The game is structured in such a way that you need to invest dozens of hours before you gain access to major parts of the loot system that the series is known for. It would be like trying to evaluate Rift's soul system while leveling if you couldn't invest points in multiple trees until 50. You'd tell yourself that the class system felt rigid, but you'd wonder if it would be fixed at the level cap. In my case, I played ~100 hours between two characters but I'd say I was only really having fun for ~10 of those (first time through normal with a friend was pretty fun). All time spent after that was me waiting for the addictive item game I was expecting to start. Once I got to Inferno the item hunt finally found some footing (I was finding items at-level, bosses dropped expected amounts of loot with NV buff) but I realized the loot system was still fundamentally flawed even with those improvements and that no matter how many hours I invested in the game I wasn't going to get the experience I wanted.

Will I buy the expansion for Diablo 3? I don't know, I'll probably wait for community impressions. "Game journalists" mostly only had glowing things to say about Diablo 3 so I'm not sure they'd be able or willing to call out flaws if the expansion is also a dud. I expect that the feature list for the expansion will be a bullet list of improvements addressing major complaints about the game, but I'm just not sure that they actually *get it*. How can I trust a company to fix the item hunt in their game when they seem so oblivious to what made it fun in the first place?

[Llyse]

Pretty much the posts from Rekal and Xanthippe sum it up.

I clocked 200+ hours have 2 60s but am overall disappointed with Blizzard, money's worth sure but the way I parted with Diablo3 leaves a bad taste in my mouth compared to games which I remember the good times. The fact that I still visit this forum means I had invested a lot of faith that it would be robot jesus, not bot, grinding, nut punching frustration.

[Margalis]

Diablo has always been the kind of game where you can play for 50 hours, then look back at 49 of those and think "man, why the hell did I do that?"

It's also not a series with a high amount of fun per minute. It's highly addictive, which is not the same thing. You sort of zone out and keep playing because of that addictive quality but that may be punctuated by only moments of genuine intense fun. And Diablo is hardly unique in this regard.

If someone cannot look back fondly on their time spent in a game how many hours they played is in the end sort of irrelevant. (cough cough ME3)

Blizzard has definitely lost some of it's shine in recent years. SC2 was maintaining a holding pattern at best, while Cata and D3 have both hurt to some degree. Sales figures will take a while to catch up to that. I mean I have a lot of friends who I didn't think even played games who were looking forward to D3 because they fondly remembered D2. They may very well be less likely to buy a D4.

[Ingmar]

Pretty much the posts from Rekal and Xanthippe sum it up.

I clocked 200+ hours have 2 60s but am overall disappointed with Blizzard, money's worth sure but the way I parted with Diablo3 leaves a bad taste in my mouth compared to games which I remember the good times. The fact that I still visit this forum means I had invested a lot of faith that it would be robot jesus, not bot, grinding, nut punching frustration.

Well where I was going with this, isn't actually about getting your money's worth. It's about how much work Blizzard should really put into making someone happy when they're already willing to play for 200+ hours while not enjoying themselves.

I would posit this hypothesis: there's really nothing they could have done to make people in that category happy in the long run. If I'm running the studio, the problems those people see are going to be really damn low on my list of problems to fix, because if the problems were really that big they would have quit long before 200 hours.

If I'm Blizzard, I'm looking for the Ironwoods of the world, the ones who barely made it through normal, and fixing their problems, because those are the big ones.

EDIT: I mean yes, I question the logic of "I totally got my money's worth, but the game wasn't worth buying at release." If you got your money's worth then by definition it was worth the price you paid, but that's kind of beside the point.

[Rendakor]

Compared to what most companies release these days, D3 was easily worth the $60. The big change for me though is that Blizzard games have always been games that I can play hardcore for months without feeling "done": Warcraft 2 and 3, Diablo 1 & 2, Starcraft, WoW and all of its expansions served as my game of choice for a good chunk of time. With D3 however, I lost interest in less than two months and barring major, sweeping changes I don't expect to go back. For me, this is the third disappointment in a row (after SC2 and to a lesser extent, Cata), and it's changed my attitude from "shut up and take my money" to "cautiously optimistic".

[Lightstalker]

I expect that the feature list for the expansion will be a bullet list of improvements addressing major complaints about the game, but I'm just not sure that they actually *get it*. How can I trust a company to fix the item hunt in their game when they seem so oblivious to what made it fun in the first place?

You can't trust them to do that.  You can trust them to provide a nostalgic experience that mostly doesn't crash and mostly just works on whatever hardware you happen to be running at home.  Especially for a title like Diablo, they just want your box sale and for you to bugger off.  This isn't about innovation and they probably don't have a staff of worker drones who were even out of HS when the originals shipped.  They'll release the xpac after enough time has passed that the itch has built up again (D3 12 years after D2, really?) and they'll get their similar sell through (volume which crushes most normal game releases in any given year), and there will be much rejoicing inside the walls.

A more significant problem, probably, is that these games aren't made for you (us, me, whatever) anymore.  In 1996 I resisted playing Diablo because it was "obviously an unfun RNG grind and I can't believe you all are spending so much time on it."  Needless to say, I played the shit out of it.  I'm not in the appropriate demographic anymore, they really don't have to please me.  Though I have far more disposable income than I did 16 years ago every year that passes fewer and fewer of my peers play games at all.  Happy Dancing Monkey, you've also been here too long to be in the target demographic.  Your concerns really just prove the point that someone is playing the shit out of D3, inflating items on the AH and flooding the market with crap. 

As to the decline in subs for WoW, in its 8th year in a lame-duck pre-expansion period where the target demographic is suffering unemployment at the highest rates in our lifetimes, I'm not sure what that has to do with this game and this production staff.  From the outside it may all look like a monolith at Blizzard, but there is no reason to assume any of those guys know what their peers are doing any more than we do.  Big companies tend to cut themselves up into private fiefs and domains, if they actually worked together and shared information that would be uncharacteristic for an industry famous for standing on the feet of the those who came before us.

[Typhon]

[...]they just want your box sale and for you to bugger off.  [...]

Blizzard games used to feel like they were created by people who wanted to play games.  Now they feel like they are created by people who want to drive sales.

[Lantyssa]

Compared to what most companies release these days, D3 was easily worth the $60. The big change for me though is that Blizzard games have always been games that I can play hardcore for months without feeling "done": Warcraft 2 and 3, Diablo 1 & 2, Starcraft, WoW and all of its expansions served as my game of choice for a good chunk of time. With D3 however, I lost interest in less than two months and barring major, sweeping changes I don't expect to go back. For me, this is the third disappointment in a row (after SC2 and to a lesser extent, Cata), and it's changed my attitude from "shut up and take my money" to "cautiously optimistic".

D3 strikes me as having an "endgame" while neither of the previous ones did.  You just kept going in them.  (I suppose some people hit max level, but for even fairly long-time players we never did.)

There's item progression, but we all know the general consensus on loot.   The change from "level - level - level - 60 - item grind only" is quite dramatic.

[waffel]

If I'm Blizzard, I'm looking for the Ironwoods of the world, the ones who barely made it through normal, and fixing their problems, because those are the big ones.

Why? If they could barely make it through normal then it was clear they didn't play beta, didn't do any form of research into the game prior to playing, and realized the game wasn't for them. Why go after those customers? Those are by far the hardest to get back because they already wrote the game off before the hooks even sank in. The odds of turning one of those players around into a player for years is slim to none.

I say no, look at those that enjoyed the game. Look at those that at least beat a few difficulty levels, leveled a character or two, actually explored the game, and are sticking around to give opinions and criticisms. THOSE are the real customers of your game.

[Tebonas]

But those are also your customers, no matter what.

[waffel]

D3 strikes me as having an "endgame" while neither of the previous ones did. 

I'm sorry, what?
What's the end game of D3? Getting 60, beating a hard difficulty and collecting items.
What's the end game of D2? Beating a hard difficulty, getting 99, collecting items, PvP.

And don't even get started on rolling different characters to try different playstyles and specs, many that synergize with items you found on other characters. In D3 you're never going to reroll a barbarian once you get one to 60.

Sounds a lot like an "endgame" to me.

But those are also your customers, no matter what.

They're customers that got very little if any enjoyment out of the title. You don't try to sell baseball tickets to someone who can't even make it through the 1st inning of a baseball game.

[Tebonas]

Really, elitism about something as mindless as Diablo 3?

[Ironwood]

If I'm Blizzard, I'm looking for the Ironwoods of the world, the ones who barely made it through normal, and fixing their problems, because those are the big ones.

Wait, what ?

I got further than that.  I just didn't really enjoy doing so.  I gave up at 'Heaven' on the 2nd difficulty.  Not because it was particularly difficult, but because I wasn't getting rewarded for my efforts at all.

At.  All.

[Paelos]

They're customers that got very little if any enjoyment out of the title. You don't try to sell baseball tickets to someone who can't even make it through the 1st inning of a baseball game.

You're not selling them anything. There is no barrier to reentry for those players in it's current state.

In your analogy, you sold people tickets to an MLB game, and then put the minor league team on the field for the first inning. So, people started to walk out. If you put the major league team on the field in the second inning, there's a solid chance those people leaving will come back to their seats, and the people sitting there aren't suddenly going to get pissed off at a better product on the field.

[KallDrexx]

... and the people sitting there aren't suddenly going to get pissed off at a better product on the field.

You must be new to the internet 

[Lantyssa]

Sounds a lot like an "endgame" to me.

It's a psychological thing.

Beating the game isn't the point.  People will do various boss runs day in and out.

But how many people hit 99 in D2?  It slowed down dramatically, but you were always advancing.  Hitting 99 wasn't the point though.  There was some desire to get enough points to get all the skills you wanted, but advancement continued.  By 40-50 you could pretty much hop into anywhere in the game and do fine.  You're looking for loot, but character advancement continues.

In D3 you just have to not get bored and you'll hit 60.  Yet we're conditioned that the game begins at 60.  And that's where most hit a difficulty wall.  Progression just ends, effectively.  There's absolutely nothing to look forward to except a loot drops that never come.

It 'feels' different, even if they look about the same on paper.

(If you actually hit 99, then congrats.  You reached the same point.  That's not something most people who enjoyed D2 ever did.)

[waffel]

So your definition of "endgame" is simply hitting level cap? And by that definition D2 has no real endgame because you could never hit the level cap?

Not trying to be snarky, just trying to understand your view.

[waffel]

Really, elitism about something as mindless as Diablo 3?

I don't want someone who didn't even hit the level cap, didn't finish the 2nd difficulty, and quit because the game isn't fun to be who Blizzard is focusing on RIGHT NOW. Nobody should want that. Those players have already moved on. They were never hooked by the game and are going to be the hardest to lure back.

Blizzard is better off keeping their current customers happy, while inciting back those that let the hooks sink in, quit, but keep checking for positive changes. This would generally mean fleshing out endgame along with progression through Hell and Inferno. Once they're comfortable that they're not hemorrhaging players at this stage, then they can focus on bringing in new players while also ironing out issues to hook players more on initial playthroughs.

It has nothing to do with elitism, it has to do with focusing efforts on what matters most right now.

[murdoc]

I will never understand 200+ hours into something you don't really enjoy. That just baffles me beyond words.

[01101010]

I will never understand 200+ hours into something you don't really enjoy. That just baffles me beyond words.

Not Catholic are you? 

[Mrbloodworth]

I will never understand 200+ hours into something you don't really enjoy. That just baffles me beyond words.

Not Catholic are you? 

 

[Lantyssa]

So your definition of "endgame" is simply hitting level cap? And by that definition D2 has no real endgame because you could never hit the level cap?

No.  It's mainly about the Wall blocking progression.

Level is much more important in D3 than D2, so the level cap in it just happens to correspond to the Wall.  A gentle curve versus a gentle curve bounded by a cliff.

[Ingmar]

If I'm Blizzard, I'm looking for the Ironwoods of the world, the ones who barely made it through normal, and fixing their problems, because those are the big ones.

Wait, what ?

I got further than that.  I just didn't really enjoy doing so.  I gave up at 'Heaven' on the 2nd difficulty.  Not because it was particularly difficult, but because I wasn't getting rewarded for my efforts at all.

At.  All.

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that it was because of a difficulty issue. My point was just, the problems you were having with rewards/fun should be the focus, not the minutia of Inferno grinding stuff.

[Lightstalker]

[...]they just want your box sale and for you to bugger off.  [...]

Blizzard games used to feel like they were created by people who wanted to play games.  Now they feel like they are created by people who want to drive sales.

I agree, but this is probably just an organizational maturity problem and not a deliberate move by Blizzard.  Guys who just wanted to play games made enough money that they could stop working and just play games full time, or jump into their own start-ups without all the hassle of corporate life (e.g. Torchlight).  Those that were left are likely to be motivated by something else - like producing the top selling PC game of all time. 

It is hard to suggest Blizzard is failing with the fastest selling PC game of all time, taking the title from another Blizzard game.  But this does look a little like the opposite extreme of 38 studios where the <-- play and make cool games --- monetize the plebes --> axis is out of balance.  Ok, Zygna is perhaps the opposite extreme, Blizzard is just off center.

I'm still playing, working on replacing my HC Inferno character, but less frequently right now.  The itch has largely been scratched and I foresee other titles taking up more time.

[Rokal]

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that it was because of a difficulty issue. My point was just, the problems you were having with rewards/fun should be the focus, not the minutia of Inferno grinding stuff.

Even as someone who played up to Inferno, the item reward system in the rest of the game is my primary complaint. The only difference between Ironwood and me (and I suspect most players that quit within the first month, regardless of how far they were in the game) is how much patience they had waiting for the game to become rewarding.

If the rest of the game had been rewarding before 60 people may have happily rolled new characters instead of throwing themselves at Inferno. I don't need a compelling "end-game" in Diablo 3 to make the game worth playing, just as I didn't in Diablo 2. Given that the legendary/item-level tuning Blizzard is doing all appears to be focused on level 60, this is still not something they understand.

[Xanthippe]

Pretty much the posts from Rekal and Xanthippe sum it up.

I clocked 200+ hours have 2 60s but am overall disappointed with Blizzard, money's worth sure but the way I parted with Diablo3 leaves a bad taste in my mouth compared to games which I remember the good times. The fact that I still visit this forum means I had invested a lot of faith that it would be robot jesus, not bot, grinding, nut punching frustration.

Well where I was going with this, isn't actually about getting your money's worth. It's about how much work Blizzard should really put into making someone happy when they're already willing to play for 200+ hours while not enjoying themselves.

I would posit this hypothesis: there's really nothing they could have done to make people in that category happy in the long run. If I'm running the studio, the problems those people see are going to be really damn low on my list of problems to fix, because if the problems were really that big they would have quit long before 200 hours.

If I'm Blizzard, I'm looking for the Ironwoods of the world, the ones who barely made it through normal, and fixing their problems, because those are the big ones.

EDIT: I mean yes, I question the logic of "I totally got my money's worth, but the game wasn't worth buying at release." If you got your money's worth then by definition it was worth the price you paid, but that's kind of beside the point.

Well, ok, but disagree about which problems to fix.

I looked forward to scratching a loot itch forever with D3. I was disappointed that the drops I received were almost all lower level and worthless, but I thought it would be different, somehow - largely based upon my previous experience with Blizzard. I mean, I was pretty much a fangirl through the first several years of WoW, particularly because of how responsive the company seemed to make customers happy and rectify mistakes. But I was enjoying myself up to Inferno level on my characters because I was making progress. And because I could smash jars and get stuff. (Don't underestimate how that change affected my enjoyment of the game. It's a little thing but it's not, you know?).

I stopped being a fangirl for Blizzard with Cataclysm, but I was hoping that it was merely WoW Blizzard who I was disappointed with, not the entire Blizzard company. I was overly optimistic for D3.

Do I think Blizzard will at some point rectify the problems of D3? Yes. Is that point near off or far off? I suspect it's far off. Because this is now my 2nd experience with this company, though, and also indicative of how different the corporate philosophy has come, I will no longer automatically buy Blizzard games. They have damaged their brand.

[Ratman_tf]

Well, I haven't played in weeks. There's a lot to like about D3, and I'm happy with my purchase. But it's no Diablo, or even Diablo 2.