I think you misunderstand me. What you said is right, in a vacuum and generally should be applied to most products, but not very applicable to the case of D3. D3 initial sales were entirely based on D2. In fact, D3 gameplay previews and trailers likely detracted from the initial sales D3 could have had, had they shown nothing and only sold it based on it being D2’s sequel(for instance, right away people disliked that it was too bright, pastel, cartoony, unlike D2’s dark, gritty theme). Monetary success has no place in the conversation if the monetary success was not had based on the merits of the game in question itself. We’re talking about game design(what they did right/wrong), and citing how many sales they got based on the game’s predecessor makes very little sense. And to your secondary point, Blizzard was in no position to go under, they just came off of(arguably) their best wow expansion ever and also merged with Activision.
I think it’s probably extremely difficult to measure the success of the two games against each other because there are so many variables that don’t compare or can’t be ascertained. I’d venture to say each was wildly popular with their target demographic. And there will always be fans of each.
Maybe it’s sort of like comparing Star Trek and Star Wars (yeah, I’m opening that can of worms.) Their both sci-fi (and, again, yes, even that can be debated) and both are wildly successful, regardless of what bumps in the road that may have crossed. But to try and say one is more successful then the other is an attempt at trying to figure out some minutae that will never be unearthed. 
Potentially the only thing ‘factual’ about what you said is:
And this is certainly even debatable given the conversation is still discussion PoE, D3 etc though to strictly in the game mechanics area, but even the title itself doesn’t specifically state game mechanics. So in other words it is opinion not fact. Which is completely fine but does open up the possibility for debate.
I would be totally fine with them moving the thread into the off-topic category. But simply because your opinion is that it is ‘useless’ doesn’t mean others don’t find it interesting/useful/entertaining.
But thankfully, the devs are fully capable (opinion?/fact?) and will police this how they see fit given it’s there house.
Imho the original topic itself is not really helpful in any kind. But this community is special. Not only do people not ignore the topic, but turn it into an interesting discussion. 
This is what I really like about you guys. 
I’m not always capable of doing this, but I learn things continuously.
Cool your jets. I said it has potential. I didn’t say it was good. Things like Essences and Fossils that give the player a little control can be helpful. Stuff like Chances or Alchs, less so. Had they gone with a system more…well, more like LE’s, I’d probably play a lot more PoE.
I believe this is GGG’s interpretation of crafting, not mine. As I said in my post, I think it has potential. I never said I loved the current state.
My point in making the statement is that the person whose post I was responding to has no grounds for the comment except their own bias.
I lurk (and occasionally dabble in) the communities of both games. In my personal experience, it is the PoE fans who are much more abrasive with the “my game is better than your game” rhetoric that they pass off as if it were fact.
I’m sick of it, honestly. From both sides.
EA’s sports games sell really well. By a commercial standard, they’re good games because they’re profitable. I, on the other hand, think sports games are hot garbage. I don’t run around on the FIFA forums trash talking that game just because I don’t like it. I hang out on the sites of games I like instead.
I am burnt the hell out on people passing off their opinion and bias as if it were fact. That’s all.
Diablo 3 is an amazing ARPG, it’s my favourite game of all time. The combat and skills feel amazing. The story, the music, the monster and level design, it was all perfect.
The itemisation is fantastic. You actually find upgrades frequently while levelling, unlike PoE where you have to trade for them, or LE where you basically have to build them yourself if you don’t want to be using level 1 items at end game.
I love the fact that there’s no trading so you actually have to farm things yourself. When you get an upgrade it actually feels good to have found it. And it’s so easy to see if something is an upgrade without having to get out your spreadsheets.
It takes a very long time to get a full set of primal ancient gear with augments so there’s always something to work towards.
Sets and uniques are build defining unlike PoE where sets don’t exist, or LE where they would be good but there’s always some negative effect that ruins it. I expect the people that complain about items in D3 haven’t played since it was entirely reworked.
People actually play multiplayer together unlike PoE which is just awful, or LE which doesn’t even have multiplayer yet. Greater rifts have endless difficulty and people actually have to work together using voice comms, sometimes synchronising their builds or running support characters. I haven’t seen this in any other ARPG.
The paragon system means that there is always some way to improve your character when you are getting unlucky with drops.
I can’t wait for Diablo 4, I am sure it’s going to sell better than Diablo 3 and show all the haters.
If Jason Schreier story is to be believed, blizzard was not happy with both of D3: RoS sale performance, and the perception from the community. Also necromancer pack had bad performance too. While you are sales are important to the point, the cashflow is the key here. Take a guess, which company has it better. Few hints - GGG started as 4 man company, during beta they had 25 people and before Tencent, they grew up to 120+ people. In D3 had same number of unique players in month as PoE - while PoE is heavily supported by mtx. In 2019 PoE playerbase increased in size even more.
Maybe it sounds as speculation to you, but I don’t feel that way. I think it’s actually pretty clear where the money is right now.
Yup, this community’s real special…
Sarno might get that, not sure about the rest of you non-Brits (assuming he’s from the north, not the south. **** this sounded better in my head).
Which bit did you like the most? Personally I thought Azmodean’s monologues during act 3 was definitely the most “perfect”.
I’m (seriously) glad you enjoyed the story though, it’s always sad when someone buys a game & is disappointed by it.
I did play it quite a bit after RoS & IMO, if you have to make a skill (or item/set/etc) competitive by adding a x1,000 multiplier on it, there’s something wrong with your itemisation.
You’re right, it is good that you find gear to use as you level up, it’s a bit disappointing that that all stops when you get to end-game & it’s either set-based or the legacy of dreams (set) + uniques. I’m glad as **** I don’t have to do balance in an aRPG, it seems like they can never get that “right”.
That doesn’t surprise me at all, capitalism seems to bring out the worst in people (& corporations are just big groups of people who often seem to forget that they’re people & that they’re ****ing over other people) with this being a prime example. Mahoosive sales & yet it’s still not enough. A company has significant growth & improvement over the last few years & then doesn’t for one year? Stock market is happy to tank your share price.
Yes, cash is king & GGG are sitting on both a metric & imperial ****ton of it. Being beholden to a stockmarket sucks. If you’re not doing great, you have to spin it in a positive way (done that) & if you are doing well, it’s not enough.
And that’s why PoE continues (& has to continue) to put out new stuff (leagues as well as MTX). If D3 had the “recurrent user spending” barf to support it, I’m sure Blizzard would be continuing to put out content for it (proper content, not just the minor tweaks & additions that D3 gets).
But that’s probably not actually true, if you have a look at the very quick & extremely dirty maths I did here. Blizz would have taken a massive amount of cash from people when it launched & over the subsequent years, and even taking inflation into account they’re still probably sitting on more cash (that was from D3 sales if you could ring-fence it rather than just dump it all into a Scrouge McDuck style swiming pool with all the rest of the Blizzard cash) than GGG.
The main problem is that there’s too much multiplayer bias and solo players get the shaft. I hope D4 has better solo vs group scaling. I don’t mind grouping being a little better, but it shouldn’t be orders of magnitude better to the point where you’re knowingly handicapping yourself by choosing to play solo.
I hope D4 either has capped Paragon or no Paragon. Having a finite end to character progression is a good thing because it allows for far easier balancing.
D3 is a successful game. PoE is a successful game. Both games have huge communities and provide a huge amount of money to the companies that own them.
It’s just not necessary to know the exact numbers and compare them. GGG doesn’t care if it’s no. 1 or 2 given the money they earn.
Blizzard may be a bit disappointed because the game was not received as good as they might have expected. They lost a lot of potential customers to their skill system and comic graphics. On the other side they may also have gotten new players to the franchise that outweigh that fact. Who knows if D3 would be more successful than it was with a more restrictive skill system and darker graphics?
You can go on and debate on this. But even Blizzard and GGG might not know who’s more successful.
I find it refreshing that different games in the genre play different. This diversity is good for the genre and people can switch between games if they want.
I see many people that seem to have the feeling they have to side with one game and hate the other. This is not necessary.
Wholeheartedly I hope that EHG is at least successful enough to pay the salaries of their employees and create an IP that generates a save income for a long period of time. LE does not need to have the largest community of all ARPGs. It has not to be better or convince people to not play D3 or PoE. I hope it finds the place between those games to establish itself. If LE ever manages to compete with the big players (what I hope) this defenitely won’t be possible right from the start with 1.0. It’s a long road and we first need to build a solid foundation before we could reach for the stars.
This is only possible if you somehow can manage the following competing goals:
- Have unique features that are fun and make the game outstanding
- But also use known and well established mechanics that are already fun in other games
- Evolve established mechanics to solve issues these mechanics have in other games
- Don’t screw up the release!
hahahahahaha dumbest post Ive ever read man. Diablo 2 is still top of the genre for 100s of reasons. If you think nostalgia has anything to do with it it is VERY obvious you have never played the game.
This is your opinion, mine is different. Just because I disagree with you does not mean that I haven’t played the game or that I’m dumb.
Really mature, you’re attacking my username now. Maybe I didn’t want to copy it exactly so I changed it, or maybe it has nothing to do with Karate Kid and I got it from a Lost Prophets song?
You have made it clear that it doesn’t matter what anyone says, your opinion is the only valid one and everybody else is wrong. I see no point continuing to reply to you while you are behaving like an autistic child.
It’s not a deflection, he’s just trying to get you to understand that there are other opinions out there & that they are valid. I don’t have any problem with you holding the opinion that D2 was the best game ever & that it’s impossible to best. What I (& many others apparently) have a problem with is your presenting a subjective opinion as objective fact & the constant denigration of other people who hold a differing opinion.
Their opinions aren’t an attack against you personally, so you probably shouldn’t attack others as vehemently as you do, which is probably why you got banned.
I actually have arguments for mine, you just go no yours is nostalgia without giving any points on why Diablo 2 would not be at the top of the food chain anymore. (even though any new arpg still gets compared to D2 which should already tell you all you need to know)
It is factual that diablo 2 is the best. If you people actually would come with some points as to why it is not then I could actually counter those points but you people dont know how to argue.
Your new generation is brainwashed with “just say that is your opinion and then the discussion is over.” Thats not how it works though XD Opinions are actually based on arguments and point for us normal people.
Not planning on being around much longer, huh?
No, that’s just your opinion.
We do, you just don’t like them, and like Flat Earthers, you then claim any points you don’t like are “factually” wrong & ignore them before segueing into personal attacks.
You’re assuming I’m younger than you. I know you can have a discussion without having to attack the person, something you may wish to learn.
I have this weird feeling another thread will be locked soon 
Yeah in 2000 ^^. Diablo 2 is eye cancer, clunky af, user unfriendly, badly balanced, there are still cookie cutter builds after 20 years of messed up balancing, the itemisation is blunt, useless attributes because if you want to shine you go for equipment prerequisits and dump everything else in Vit, borderline boring classes with borderline boring skills, no gameplay depth for real because it all comes down to math and grind for gear without skills changing at all and always do the same stuff.
I like D2 a lot but I’m realisitc and D2s sold copys are a joke vs D3. D3 is simply a game for the grey mass of silent players who play the game and don’t visit forums. It’s glorious from a company point of view because it printed a lot of money and a lot of people still play it on and of. D2 might shine if there will be a remastered version of it but so far even the GD mod is superior to vanilla D2 or D2 with the addon.
So I’m eager to see real arguments now from a 2020 point of view that speak for D2 outside of nostalgia and runewords ^^.
You guys are getting trolled by the way.