Quote (CallMeFresh @ Aug 8 2014 04:48pm)

Wolfenstein the new order

Quote (TheDutchMan1443 @ Aug 7 2014 08:10pm)

Going to play some poker as a filler until Halo Anniversary comes out, then finally get around to picking up an XBOne to play some Halo 2 & 3 multiplayer competitively again

I really do miss pre-RoS Diablo, such a shame.



Keep in mind that sales don't mean much. Blizzard toted RoS to be the "Saviour of the Diablo franchise", claiming that it had everything the people who rage quit D3's original release we're looking for. It's easy to sell copies of something when no one has their hands on the actual testing.

Even PTR for most of the RoS related content didn't really inform people of the direction the game was heading.



A good example is to think of Elder Scrolls Online.

-> Skyrim is arguably one of the biggest console releases in the last decade, if not THE biggest. The internet wave it created was insane. I mean, really, think about it. There was a point where almost everything that was being posted on the net was a Skyrim pun/joke/meme.
--> ESO sold a literal SHIT TON of copies riding off Skyrim's coattail... but in reality the games are nothing alike. The E3 displays and company branding made the game seem essentially like a co-op skyrim. Everyone knew what MMOs entailed but the way they PRESENTED the game was different from how it actually performed.
----> Like 5 people still play ESO.... And it's only just recently been launched for console... So it had months and months and a double launch to gain popularity after great opening sales and it's already a ghost.

RoS may have sold a few copies, and in reality I feel Blizzard really and truly thought they were reviving the game... But the fact of it all is that no one plays anymore. The game is dead content.

To put a rough estimate on it.. If 500,000 unique players were logging on May 2013 (A year after game release), I would say you have 1/10th of that currently logging in daily. You have people with thousands and thousands of hours of D3 gameplay dropping the game like a hot potato.


Removing trade from Diablo III was a bad move.
Making the game entirely self found and polarizing the drops so that everyone is a winner was a bad move.
Making the jump between complete noob and 99% end game take 1 week, and that final 1% taking 2 years was a bad move.

Trade was a cornerstone of the franchise. You didn't see games like Need For Speed or Gran Turismo removing car tuning from their franchise... Because that was the whole damn point. What is the point of grinding D3 if the reward has since been removed.


And for what it's worth, as it stands now, there is no going back. They would have to revert the entire drop system just to re-implement trade.

No one is going to be lining up to buy 500/500 stat Depth Diggers when 95% of them roll within 30-50 net stats of that. The key to trade was a large variety of possible rolls on items. Meaning 25% of the IK chests you found were absolutely god awful, 60% were good to great, and 15% were "Holy shit this is worth some money".

Now 1% are awful, 98% are good-great, and 1% are "Holy shit if I put this on my character and update D Prog I might get a compliment if someone happens to notice me in game when I'm running Pubs cuz none of my friends play anymore"

Weapons aren't much different. 95% of them will never be usable. Ever.

Much like the complaints that some of the crybabies had pre-RoS before they tricked Blizzard into nuking their own game, so many items right now are insta-salvage. Exactly the OPPOSITE of what the entire premise of their game changes was supposed to be about.

They nerfed class specs, removed popular character builds all together, nerfed items, buffed items, introduced new items, all with the intent to broaden build diversity... And what did we get?

Each class has 1-2 "Must-Run" builds.

Pet Doc + Jade Doc
Conflag Wiz + Archon Wiz
Shotgun Sader + What ever that other one is
Leap Barb + Leap Barb 2.0
Turret DH + Pet DH
Zdps Monk

Now they're going to nuke a few more of those in the new patch/ladders. More generic builds will emerge.

And overall less item diversity than pre-RoS. Scroll down your friends list... go ahead.... Tell me how many people aren't using Thunderfury or the one OP weapon for each class (WoW, Star, Flail).

Quote (The_Carlton @ Aug 8 2014 01:21am)

TL;DR Blizzard doesn't update Diablo 3 enough to keep people interested, so PoE GOGOGO


Hate to be one of those guys, but yeah, Path of Exile.

Like the problem with RoS for me was that, while RoS was a huge change from vanilla D3, it just wasn't enough to keep you going for long. It was good for like a month, yeah.. But what really changed with RoS? Numbers got bigger. You deal more damage/have more life, monsters deal more damage/have more life.. It's still the same amount of hits to kill a monster. Maybe you see some different graphics when you press your skill buttons, but it's all the same shit at the end of the day. And yeah the mystics brought in the endless quest for perfection, but the difference between say 98% CHD on your amulet and 100% isn't going to make or break your character.

But since launch, what has really changed with D3? I haven't kept up, but to my knowledge, the hot topic is still patch 2.x.. Which it was when I stopped playing roughly 3 months ago.


Path of Exile is fun because of the leagues. There's a set of (nearly) constantly going ladders, with a little downtime between. They were 4 month ladders, now they're moving to 3 month ladders. And we just had a one-month race. The first set of these ladders/leagues brought in rogue NPCs, that were pretty much little bosses that walked around and kicked peoples asses. It also brought in a mod called 'onslaught', which is used on some items. The next set of these leagues brought in Shrines, which while taken directly from D2, are cool as fuck regardless.  It also brought in 'Nemesis', which are just a pool of more difficult than normal rare monster affixes. They're something to watch out for though - if you don't, they definitely can kill you. (Which is actually a negative in PoE (10% XP loss), not just a lol cya 5k gold RIP) After that, the next set of leagues brought in 'strongboxes', which are just like super-duper chests. They have basic themes - armor, weapons, jewelery, gems, etc.. That can spawn with, or have rolled onto them, mods which affect what they drop and what monsters come out of them. Typically, it's hit a box, a fuckload of mobs spawn around you, and you fight them. As with everything in PoE, there's always some bullshit combination to look out for. (For example, if the chest freezes you when activated and has 3 additional rare (champion) packs guarding it, you can get fucked pretty quickly if you don't have a way to thaw your ass out quick) And it also brought in Invaders, which are just fucking off da railz asshole bosses that sometimes appear. Lots of 'oh fuck's were had on their behalf.

And those are just the updates from the leagues, let alone game patches. The game changes very, very often.. And that's what keeps it fresh. Unlike Blizzard, GGG has their shit together and takes less than one year per content patch.

PoE also runs on an expansion system, I think they're aiming for 3 major expansions per year.  So far this year, we've had Sacrifice of the Vaal, which is basically an introduction to a new currency item, which can either fuck up your gear or make it great, and a new endgame boss. With that, her like 8 different uniques, a line of Vaal skills, the currency item, (http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Vaal_Orb) and the leagues that launched at the same time. With the next coming leagues (Just under 2 weeks) we'll be seeing a Mystic-like feature, and a system like Diablo 3's massacre bonuses. Instead of a massacre bonus, you'll earn a 'killstreak' (CoD ripoff obv shit game 0/10) reward per X monsters killed without 5 seconds of downtime, growing in power each time. It's shit like X% Movement speed, then X% attack speed, then some crazy powerful shit I.E. corpse explosions going off everywhere, all this crazy shit.


And in that time, Diablo.. Nerfed the furance, I guess. PoE isn't perfect, but as someone who played a lot of Diablo, it's fucking miles ahead of Diablo 3. And it'll stay that way, due to the nature of their updates. The core of the game changes every 4 months, ontop of regular content patches.  If you're not a ladder player, there is a standard league that has no time limit on it. Even there, the economy is far from stale.

Quote (Hildegard @ Aug 8 2014 07:53am)

Dont listen to this player killer. Cruel person. Very scary man.

Quote (The_Carlton @ Aug 8 2014 08:24am)

Yeah, fuckin' PoE with their unoriginal currency/crafting system, their unoriginal passive allocation system, their unoriginal skill gems system. Can you show me an ARPG that actually has a playerbase, and receives updates more than once a year?

Again, PoE isn't perfect, it's far from it. But the game is progressing, that's the whole point. Where is D3 going? It's stale as can be, has been since RoS. And before RoS?.. The fuck kind of gameplay is 'wait 2 years, and the game will get a little better'