Interesting decline of players

General
101

I’m back playing D2R right now with some friends. It’s just fine for what it is. I’ve played waaaay too much D3 to really try that one again. Didn’t like D4 at all.

The two big reasons for us are Items and Crafting. We hate crafting, and we reaaaaly hate RNG in our crafting, but we love chasing items. In LE if I want to remove an affix from something, there’s a 75% chance I get eff’d and it removes an affix I don’t want. Then even if the one I want is removed, I have to contend with the chance that it just ate up 15 forge potential… LE doesn’t have crafting, it has a frustration simulator.

D2’s not perfect, it’s 25 years old now. But if a Tals Mask drops, it’s awesome out of the box. I don’t need an LP version and then brick it running a Julra dungeon. If I want to craft a spirit monarch, I need 4 open sockets and 4 runes…done. It WILL craft a usable item, it won’t have a 25% chance to destroy my Tal rune, or some 67% chance to rearrange the runes, bricking my item. It just works, and that’s a big part of why we still play today.

You have to be able to get items, and in LE I can’t. I have 110 hrs on my Necro, not one unique was found, it was all MG. I am however, wearing 3 exalted items that dropped naturally. But that much time and no usable uniques at all, let alone LP variants? In it’s current state, it’s just not enjoyable for me.

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102

Personally, I disagree with the stance they had regarding this. This is the first cycle, there is no seasonal content, the balance is all over the place, they should have just fixed things that were clearly overperforming even mid-cycle.
For further cycles, when the game is more stable, then they can adopt that policy.
But that’s just my opinion.

I don’t think there’s really a compromise. As I said before, D4 tried appealing to all players and failed. You can’t really make a system that appeals to both casuals and hardcore players because they want opposing things.

Most games these days try to appeal to newer generations. Even in ARPGs, though those aren’t the top ones in their genre. Not many try to appeal to older generations. Dark Souls is an exception in that it tries to target those players from the 80s/early 90s where almost all games were hard and QoL wasn’t even a thing yet.

I personally like LE a lot. It hits most of the right spots for me. If they didn’t change a thing from it I would still play for years to come regularly. I hope they continue to improve it and preferably find a way to attract more players. But if they start leaning too much into the QoL/easy mode that many players are asking for, I’ll probably leave.

Which is fine. I wouldn’t hold a grudge again EHG or anything. Ultimately, not all games are for all players. If I stop enjoying a game I just stop playing (and no, I wouldn’t make a “I’m leaving because” thread :laughing:).
I think this is the main difference regarding player types: some will play a game as long as it’s enjoyable and leave once it isn’t; others will try to change the game into something they enjoy.

I agree with almost everything you said, but when BiS for most builds is a 2/20, which is crafted, and when the most valuable gem is a PAmethyst, because of craft, this isn’t totally true.

Crafting in D2 was also used a lot for leveling, making blood/caster gear until you got the good uniques. And it was all RNG, so you usually ended up making a few until you got a decent one.
Likewise, in LE, you can use crafting as a tool for leveling/baseline gear. And you don’t need LP gear. You can simply use the uniques. LP gear is similar to 2/20s. BiS but not necessary.

You must have some real bad luck. By the time I had 150h into LE I had dozens of uniques. In fact, I had all of the non-boss uniques. Some even with LP1. Uniques drop a lot on LE, more than on D2. It’s just that most aren’t that good. Just like on D2.

Unless you mean you haven’t found the uniques for your build, in which case that depends on which uniques you need.

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I understand that’s there, I just didn’t use it. Never felt like I had to.

You’re correct, apologies, I’ll clarify. I had 3 pages of uniques in the stash at that time, and 1 page of Sets. However, none of them, boss drops included, were usable on my build. I’m sure this is not the case for everyone, but for me, it was extremely frustrating to see all that gear not for me.

Edit: and so help me, if I see ONE MORE PAIR of Falconers Fists or whatever that’s called lol…

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104

Created my own thread also but:

  1. Lacking end game content (bosses, interesting and complex gear)
  2. Skills system is great for end game but they are not fun for endgame cause ceiling is low
  3. Trading and economics are too simple
  4. Game is singleplayer (game having online, doesnt fix problem that game is designed for singleplayer)

LE is really great, mid game, where you still are discovering items, class(es), skills. Late game LE is just Diablo, just journey until end game is a bit better.

105

lol… thats not what this is. i still play, but lost so much interest as the list of frustrations grew bigger then the list of enjoyment.
i went from 10-15+ hours a day, to maybe 2 hours in a few days.

im genuinely interested to see peoples reasons for not enjoying it.

a huge part seems to fall on the crafting system (which includes LP)
then we have the people that are unhappy from pointless grinding because people are mainly grinding for higher LP items and not getting them.

as you can see, a crafting system is a real changer in player retention.
if they took half the time they spent on the stats systems and put it on the crafting system, it would be so much better.

less frustration means happier players.

106

I think this is just a problem with player expectations. Again, this is like getting a 2/20 on D2. It requires hundreds of crafts. The vast vast majority of players don’t have one and the vast vast majority of players aren’t even trying to get one. Because while it’s BiS, it’s not really necessary.
Players these days are “spoiled” (I use that in a good way, not in a insulting way) because in almost all games you can get the <insert name of top BiS gear here> in a relatively easy way. So they expect that they should be able to have 3-4LP gear in all slots. But that’s not what LE is aiming for at all.

I agree with the first sentence, I disagree with the second. As a player that really dislikes crafting, I love LE crafting. It’s easy to use, very deterministic (especially compared to D2 or even PoE) and, most importantly, it’s not required.

You can use it to make baseline gear easily, you can use it for augment drops a little, but you don’t actually need to use a lot of crafting to be able to do endgame. You just need it if you want to push it.
But you can easily reach empowered monos without crafting a single thing, with just drops. Even with all yellows.

Again, depends on the player. Some players like to beat against an attrition/grind/RNG wall until they break it. It’s the whole reason they play ARPGs. To them, ARPGs are an action version of slot machines.

Personally, while I do tend to fall into that category, I no longer have the will patience to grind eternally like I used to. I do enjoy some QoL. And LE feels great for me for that. It doesn’t prevent me from making builds and enjoying the game while making it grindy/very hard to get the chase items.

107

If you need to ask, you have missed out big time, there is a reason it still has a player base after 24yrs, its not because its garbage is it?

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108

LOL, I love this line. Every time I read it I start laughing again.

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109

I feel like you would. Let me elaborate.

If you were playing a game and there were annoyances that were increasingly making it harder and harder for you to enjoy the game, and you felt like some relatively obvious ‘fun-based’ changes (no definition of fun, just your gut feel) were made to the game, you’d go online to post those thoughts to see if you can influence the developer into improving/polishing out the rough spots to make the game better.

I mean, after all, you’re in this forum already, right? Posting in a forum is part of you being you. Are you saying if EHG added something that you just hated you wouldn’t come to this forum to state your opinion? You’d just leave?

110

There’s a difference between posting my opinion on the forum and making a thread called “I’m leaving because…”.
The first one is to make my opinion known and hope that it will be relevant.
The second one is just attention seeking.

If the devs made an announcement to implement instant loadouts, for example, I would comment that I really would dislike it and would leave if it went through, in the hopes they wouldn’t. But if they did, then I would just leave.

“I’m leaving because…” threads are kinda sad (for the OP), really. In the immortal words of Mötley Crüe: Girl, don’t go away mad. Girl, just go away. :rofl:

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111

this is determination.

once you have reached the breaking point, it is no longer interesting because you have conquered it. like killing a 10k corruption shade in 1-2 seconds is the same chance as LP4 red ring.

these are the people that show how truly broken a games mechanics are.

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Yes, but those are the people that will leave if you make a game easier because they’ll break the wall much sooner and it’s not as much fun. It’s all up to what type of player you are.

Personally, I’m no longer in that group. I play for fun, I play casually (mostly because I don’t have as much time to play as I used to) and when I do play I don’t really want to hit on walls. But the thing I like about LE is that I can have fun with it despite there being walls. The walls are there, but I can have all the fun I want without having to hit them. I just need to hit them if I want to min-max/chase BiS.

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113

What made me really stop playing is the crafting system. I understand RNG but you already have to be lucky dropping the right unique, well or at least decently rolled, with LP (2 or 3) and this already takes ages only to brick it trying to empower it turning to legendary.
This system, in my opinion, is just crazy and must be redisigned; I don’t know how (not my job anyway).
I stopped playing this game, I only run a couple of dungeons every now and then (every 2-3 days) and try to “brick” the legendary I’m eventually lucky to drop.
The reason that I sometimes run a couple of dungeons is that I don’t have nothing to play (or that I want to play) right now.
Unless they completely fix the crafting/empowering I don’t se me playing any season should they launch in the future.

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114

instead choose to lose possibly majority because of systems catering to hardcore.

hardcore is usually a minority in PvE games, if it had PvP, then there is actually a reason to cater for hardcore, since you dont want people to get too much of an advantage over someone else, without spending roughly the same amount of time.

if hardcore players are the ones they want, they can just be honest and say it.
but they wont, they will just keep quiet either out of fear of loosing so many players or because thats not actually the players they want.

i believe that if they dont have some serious changes to drop chances, crafting and skills, i dont see as many players coming back past cycle 2.

for me its more about the shared systems and skills.
i play with what ever items the game has, but if the skills are not working properly, whats the point in doing that.

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115

The parens in the sentence make that part an aside. So from my perspective, the sentence is,

That sentence is what I was responding to. Based upon your follow up, I think you agree. I wasn’t saying you were an, “I quit!” type of forum goer. I was saying you wouldn’t leave without giving your opinion.

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I think its also worth noting that d4 attracted quite a big number of players that arent familiar with these kind of Arpg games, as you can clearly see by people complaining about grind, repetitiveness etc etc. Many of those people went Last epoch when it had its small hype (god knows how many people advertised LE on the D4 Forums - selling it as a revolutionary kind of arpg).

The truth tho is, its not. neither is D4. They are just grindy Arpgs. You either like that, or you dont.

the same will pretty much happen once poe2 gets released by the way. exploding numbers and then itll cripple down. Not like it matters, these games arent mmorpgs that rely on a giant playerbase.

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I don’t think that’s actually true, though. PoE is more popular and had more regular players over the last 10 years than D3 did (except probably for launch/RoS launch), even though PoE is clearly targetted towards hardcore players and D3 is for casuals.
It’s usually hard to tell precisely because neither GGG nor Blizzard release numbers except when convenient, but that’s the general trend I’ve seen from interacting with both communities for a few years.

At the very least PoE rose to become the top ARPG around, which I don’t think is in dispute, since D3 never really had a chance. We’ll see how D4 progresses.

I don’t think they do, though. They have been trying to position themselves somewhere in between PoE and D3. While they do lean a bit more towards PoE on the spectrum, they do have a lot of systems that make the game more accessible to the casual player than PoE does. And they add a significant sprinkle of GD into the mix.

Ultimately, many D2 players like LE because of the nostalgia feeling LE brings. Even though there are very significant differences between both. And this is mostly because the endgame loop is reminiscent of D2. Including the fact that most drops are crap and/or for another class (which might make you roll a new character) and the good ones are gated with RNG/grind.

Well, yes and no. If/when I start having less fun, I would probably voice my concerns. Or if the devs announce something which I feel might lead to that. But if I simply stop having fun, I just stop playing. It’s what I did with PoE. The grind was getting to me, it felt like a job, I wasn’t enjoying it anymore, so I just left. I only let the clan members know because that’s the decent thing to do (especially because I was the main campaign carrier :stuck_out_tongue: ).

118

try endless Arena, that is the chellenge for me and indeed progressing to hogh waves feels difficult.

ya, support for end-game is terrible. e g. Arena jey of memory shall restart player from max reached wave -50, 10000 or even more entries in in-game leaderboards, group find…

119

Yeah, I hated the font. I’m so glad modern games have fixed that glaring issue, in their gameplay loop…

120

This is why the cash shop took priority over end game and bug fixes.