Whether Blizzard does D4 or lets Diablo lie fallow for a few years while working on D4 or whether they never do another Diablo IP, they'll keep the servers up, and they'll keep changing seasons.
Why? Because Blizzard wisely values customer loyalty. There is a reason that you still see patches to D2 and SC and WC years after they were released.
They will also work on new content, whether or not it is Diablo content, but they will expend a small, reasonable, amount of resources keeping their old customers happy.
People need to stop saying, "there is a reason you see patches for D2 and SC etc...." because those patches are 1-2 codes changed that created server errors based on current tech. An intern can fix that in 3-4 hours, it is inconsequential.
And D2 got a patch to fall in line with the battle.net app (or whatever they are calling it now lmfao). It did not get any new content for the last 6.5 years now. That is more telling than anything really.
I agree they will spend small resources to keep people happy, seasons do not make people happy, not at all!
People need to stop saying, "there is a reason you see patches for D2 and SC etc...." because those patches are 1-2 codes changed that created server errors based on current tech. An intern can fix that in 3-4 hours, it is inconsequential.
I agree they will spend small resources to keep people happy, seasons do not make people happy, not at all!
Interns can start new season if there are no code changes, also. It's a pretty trivial process.
I'm pretty sure the start of seasons is the only time you see a lot of people playing D3. You rarely ever see anyone playing nonseason. Start of seasons is the best thing this game has going for it currently.
Right, that's why it took YEARS to happen. Stick to your business models
It took years to happen because nobody gave a damn about D2 anymore, it was a dead product that only the true diehards played. The content of the patches is completely different, completely....
People need to stop saying, "there is a reason you see patches for D2 and SC etc...." because those patches are 1-2 codes changed that created server errors based on current tech. An intern can fix that in 3-4 hours, it is inconsequential.
I agree they will spend small resources to keep people happy, seasons do not make people happy, not at all!
Interns can start new season if there are no code changes, also. It's a pretty trivial process.
I'm pretty sure the start of seasons is the only time you see a lot of people playing D3. You rarely ever see anyone playing nonseason. Start of seasons is the best thing this game has going for it currently.
I doubt it changes if we had Era's instead of seasons. You would then see a spike at the start of an era. And with a 6-12 month era length, it would fit better into your theory about potentially adding new things here and there.
The bottom line is that seasons are drab, they are about the 1% fab club that only play D3. That WILL NOT be enough of a reason to keep rolling them out.
Changing the era length was a huge indicator of the future of D3 imo, and it is a good one.
I'm convinced we play 2 different games. You'd be the first person I ever met who gave a shit about eras in any way, shape or form. Eras and nonseason play in general are pretty much completely irrelevant to everyone I know who plays D3. There is a reason that nonseason play is a complete ghost-town, and it is the lack of frequent DB wipes that seasons bring. Honestly, I could see them going to 6 seasons a year, because why not? The game is so devoid of real content that 2 months is more than enough to do it all. In fact people are often bored with the game after a week or two, so there is nothing wrong with monthly seasons.
ARPG games are about getting stuff. They aren't about having stuff. Seasonal play ends up with everybody having everything and not needing anything and not having any desire to play.
I'm convinced we play 2 different games. You'd be the first person I ever met who gave a shit about eras in any way, shape or form. Eras and nonseason play in general are pretty much completely irrelevant to everyone I know who plays D3. There is a reason that nonseason play is a complete ghost-town, and it is the lack of frequent DB wipes that seasons bring. Honestly, I could see them going to 6 seasons a year, because why not? The game is so devoid of real content that 2 months is more than enough to do it all. In fact people are often bored with the game after a week or two, so there is nothing wrong with monthly seasons.
ARPG games are about getting stuff. They aren't about having stuff. Seasonal play ends up with everybody having everything and not needing anything and not having any desire to play.
Then you've met two people who give a shit about eras.
Honestly, I don't understand why people who play seasons themselves assume that everyone else has to like the same things. Not everyone likes restarts in ARPGs. I personally hate this "reset button" and the only reason why I played seasons is because of the stash. I play the opening weekend, get stash, maybe Guardian, and then quit (and if I play every now and then it's non-season). If S9+ doesn't offer something similar I won't touch seasons anymore, maybe except for a fun opening weekend. But to higlight that NS isn't "dead", let's look at rank 1000 for each leaderboard in each region:
Class
Season-NA
Season-EU
Season-KR
NS-NA
NS-EU
NS-KR
Barbarian
75
77
76
75
78
80
Crusader
76
77
78
75
80
83
DH
79
80
82
79
80
84
Monk
80
84
85
77
81
85
WD
82
85
83
81
85
85
Wizard
81
85
83
77
83
82
2p
86
91
88
85
90
90
3p
90
95
91
88
94
95
4p
97
102
102
95
100
103
As you can see, on average NS is on par with season; in many cases even higher. I'm actually surprised about the numbers in NA - in past seasons NS-NA was a wasteland, but it seems even in NA people have moved to NS. And it's going to be more: many people don't want to give up on their gully-geared characters and run 500+ rifts just to re-gain all the augments they farmed in a previous season. If a season offers new items/a new "top set" that needs to be farmed again, one might be happy with the reset; but I can tell you that I know not a single LoN Bombardment crusader from S6 who tried to get the same stuff in S7. Unless you're in a top clan and a full-time streamer/player, you wouldn't really do that.
Again, if you say NS is irrelevant to anyone you know that's your circle of friends, but it's not the entire community. In general, I think people extrapolate too much from their personal experience. I really with Blizzard releases a new infographic or some numbers at Blizzcon.
Then you've met two people who give a shit about eras.
And it's going to be more: many people don't want to give up on their gully-geared characters and run 500+ rifts just to re-gain all the augments they farmed in a previous season. If a season offers new items/a new "top set" that needs to be farmed again, one might be happy with the reset;
This pretty much sums up why I am starting to dislike seasons. That and the game has become a grind for paragon instead of a hunt for gear, lets face it, in the current season format, it takes around 25-30 hours of gameplay to hit lvl 70, get all your gems, and complete your full set with bounty mats to cube the needed items as well.
That is just not fun.
Personally, what I would like is seasons to last 4 months, we have 3 in each year, or 3 in each era, meaning I also want era's to be 12 months in length. With this change, I would like drop rates to be lowered substantially to make the game about hunting for loot again instead of grinding for paragon. The current system makes 50% of the difficulty levels offered useless as well, so that needs to change. Items can be added to the game at the start of a new era, maybe 3 items for each class. Along with these new items every 12 months, it would offer new build concepts.
Really, what this game needs along with this is a complete soft reset of all data. This typically occurs during an expansion, but can we 100% rule out the possibility of them raising the level cap to 80, reworking/removing sets (or maybe adding the set bonus features as a cube option?) adding a few more zones, and adding a few more maps? I feel that they absolutely had a plan to release another Xpac, but at this point, I am not sure it makes sense. Instead, release the features in the current game via an extremely large patch, which will launch November 30th, giving season 8 around 6 weeks of game time, which is just right under the welfare seasonal system.
I have many things I can add, but this is becoming long enough the way it is haha.
Isn't it entirely possible that they have found a way to prevent data mining completely like they were saying? And season 8 could wind up having some small surprises?
Almost all the Youtube videos I've seen for some new tweak involve NS toons, as they have access to whatever goodie they need in order to explore the build. Most of the rest of Youtubes have been PTR toons, where the high drop rate also 'provides'. A handful of youtubes pop up about half-way thru the season about 'what I did'. With marketspeak Eras now being chanted by the coffee boy, unless you have a pressing need for a stash tab, or like ranking early, either you are gone, or in NS.
The Era concept dropped down from corporate awhile ago, explains why so many people have retired or left. The slow filling of posted jobs means nothing is coming in the near future, and it doesn't hurt to fish in the meantime. The only interest I have in S8 is related to either playing something new, getting into an active clan so I can see what the 1000+ paragon game is like, or seeing if I can zoom up faster repeating S7 final build. Otherwise, it's NS to polish/explore S7 build or the backburner. S7 broke my S6 final build, so I'm somewhat happy that S8 will not break S7.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Conversation enriches understanding....most of the time
Isn't it entirely possible that they have found a way to prevent data mining completely like they were saying? And season 8 could wind up having some small surprises?
A game always needs game data. As long as you can get your hands on that data, it can be datamined. Of course they can keep some stuff on their servers - stuff like drop rates, leaderboards, conquests, Haedrig Gifts, and so on is all server-side. That cannot be datamined. But stuff like the damage% on items and skills, any graphics you see, all of that is client-side. If they want to put anything of that on the server side, it would require a patch and *that* one would've shown up in datamining them (plus it's not something you do on the fly, the code change for this would be similar to an expansion and requires a looong PTR).
So technically they *could* prevent datamining entirely (by turning the game into something similar to On-Live where 100% of stuff goes on on the servers and you basically just "stream" your own game to your home computer). But practically that would be a new game is never going to happen with Diablo 3. In fact, the game already has so many connection issues with lags and stuff that putting even *more* data on the connection between players and server would make it unplayable, so datamining will not go down but actually go up. Plus, there's really no harm in datamining strings and changes as it's usually datamined just 2-3 days before PTR release and official patch notes anyways.
I think your metric is pretty terrible and very poorly thought out if trying to measure interest in the game. People can dust off an old set of gear, run NS once, make the top 1000 and never play in that era again. Since you have many seasons of Paragons accumulated, you probably should run higher GRs in Nonseason than Season. That really doesn't show much about how interested they are in actually playing the game.
In fact, even this late in the season the number of public T13 rift games is 50% higher in Season than nonseason on both EU and NA (no idea about Asia). When you check that metric at the beginning of seasons its often 300% or more.
Season servers take a lot more load than nonseason load, because it attracts more interest from more people.
Isn't it entirely possible that they have found a way to prevent data mining completely like they were saying? And season 8 could wind up having some small surprises?
A game always needs game data. As long as you can get your hands on that data, it can be datamined. Of course they can keep some stuff on their servers - stuff like drop rates, leaderboards, conquests, Haedrig Gifts, and so on is all server-side. That cannot be datamined. But stuff like the damage% on items and skills, any graphics you see, all of that is client-side. If they want to put anything of that on the server side, it would require a patch and *that* one would've shown up in datamining them (plus it's not something you do on the fly, the code change for this would be similar to an expansion and requires a looong PTR).
So technically they *could* prevent datamining entirely (by turning the game into something similar to On-Live where 100% of stuff goes on on the servers and you basically just "stream" your own game to your home computer). But practically that would be a new game is never going to happen with Diablo 3. In fact, the game already has so many connection issues with lags and stuff that putting even *more* data on the connection between players and server would make it unplayable, so datamining will not go down but actually go up. Plus, there's really no harm in datamining strings and changes as it's usually datamined just 2-3 days before PTR release and official patch notes anyways.
Didn't they recently block datamine access to several items? Or hint that they in fact feel they can secretly release content again without it being datamined? That is more of what I am referring to. And I do think there is something wrong with datamines, it ruins the surprise!
I think your metric is pretty terrible and very poorly thought out if trying to measure interest in the game. People can dust off an old set of gear, run NS once, make the top 1000 and never play in that era again. Since you have many seasons of Paragons accumulated, you probably should run higher GRs in Nonseason than Season. That really doesn't show much about how interested they are in actually playing the game.
In fact, even this late in the season the number of public T13 rift games is 50% higher in Season than nonseason on both EU and NA (no idea about Asia). When you check that metric at the beginning of seasons its often 300% or more.
Season servers take a lot more load than nonseason load, because it attracts more interest from more people.
Well, in my experience, most NS players play solo or with premade groups, they usually avoid public games entirely. Likely a preference thing with that playerbase.
The closer we get to the season end and season 7 start, the more my theory is being confirmed that they have indeed found ways to patch D3 without people datamining the information.
They WILL NOT have the same season journey, nor the same Haedrigs gift, both of which are usually tested for bugs, meaning they likely hired an inside party to do internal testing as the primary function.
On a side note, if season 8 is indeed the same as season 7, same journey, same gift, etc.... look for it to be a halloween focused season, which would honestly be pretty sweet!
PTR is down for maint currently, likely adding the tweaks for the season and allowing testing of gift and journey now that they announced each.
I don't think there will be a PTR. There might not even be a patch. Note that Nevalistis just wrote a few weeks ago that it's totally possible that they might start a new season without a patch. I don't think anything needs to be patched; the wings and portrait frames are already in the client data (there's enough portraits in our clients for a few seasons, has been datamined ages ago). So why have a patch? Even if there's a patch, they have enough time between patch day (Tuesday morning in US) and season start (Friday evening) to hotfix, as they have done last season.
PTR is down for maint currently, likely adding the tweaks for the season and allowing testing of gift and journey now that they announced each.
I don't think there will be a PTR. There might not even be a patch. Note that Nevalistis just wrote a few weeks ago that it's totally possible that they might start a new season without a patch. I don't think anything needs to be patched; the wings and portrait frames are already in the client data (there's enough portraits in our clients for a few seasons, has been datamined ages ago). So why have a patch? Even if there's a patch, they have enough time between patch day (Tuesday morning in US) and season start (Friday evening) to hotfix, as they have done last season.
Then what would be the point to open the PTR for 10 days and then close it again? Seems rather pointless doesn't it?
PTR isn't "open". They might just work on some PTR hardware or software on the server side. They might have started PTR for internal testing and just disabled login from any non-Blizzard IP. Or maybe prepare some stuff for whatever is coming to PTR after Blizzcon. Nobody knows
Sometimes they push random data on CDN that has absolutely no meaning and/or is just for internal tests. The Blizzard developers aren't just sitting in their offices for 6 weeks and doing nothing in between PTR downtime, and sometimes they push buttons here and there that for us (from the outside) makes no sense. But from a development point of view there's just absolutely zero evidence for a PTR, and it also wouldn't make any sense whatsoever.
And D2 got a patch to fall in line with the battle.net app (or whatever they are calling it now lmfao). It did not get any new content for the last 6.5 years now. That is more telling than anything really.
I agree they will spend small resources to keep people happy, seasons do not make people happy, not at all!
"it is inconsequential."
Right, that's why it took YEARS to happen. Stick to your business models
Interns can start new season if there are no code changes, also. It's a pretty trivial process.
I'm pretty sure the start of seasons is the only time you see a lot of people playing D3. You rarely ever see anyone playing nonseason. Start of seasons is the best thing this game has going for it currently.
The bottom line is that seasons are drab, they are about the 1% fab club that only play D3. That WILL NOT be enough of a reason to keep rolling them out.
Changing the era length was a huge indicator of the future of D3 imo, and it is a good one.
I'm convinced we play 2 different games. You'd be the first person I ever met who gave a shit about eras in any way, shape or form. Eras and nonseason play in general are pretty much completely irrelevant to everyone I know who plays D3. There is a reason that nonseason play is a complete ghost-town, and it is the lack of frequent DB wipes that seasons bring. Honestly, I could see them going to 6 seasons a year, because why not? The game is so devoid of real content that 2 months is more than enough to do it all. In fact people are often bored with the game after a week or two, so there is nothing wrong with monthly seasons.
ARPG games are about getting stuff. They aren't about having stuff. Seasonal play ends up with everybody having everything and not needing anything and not having any desire to play.
Honestly, I don't understand why people who play seasons themselves assume that everyone else has to like the same things. Not everyone likes restarts in ARPGs. I personally hate this "reset button" and the only reason why I played seasons is because of the stash. I play the opening weekend, get stash, maybe Guardian, and then quit (and if I play every now and then it's non-season). If S9+ doesn't offer something similar I won't touch seasons anymore, maybe except for a fun opening weekend. But to higlight that NS isn't "dead", let's look at rank 1000 for each leaderboard in each region:
As you can see, on average NS is on par with season; in many cases even higher. I'm actually surprised about the numbers in NA - in past seasons NS-NA was a wasteland, but it seems even in NA people have moved to NS. And it's going to be more: many people don't want to give up on their gully-geared characters and run 500+ rifts just to re-gain all the augments they farmed in a previous season. If a season offers new items/a new "top set" that needs to be farmed again, one might be happy with the reset; but I can tell you that I know not a single LoN Bombardment crusader from S6 who tried to get the same stuff in S7. Unless you're in a top clan and a full-time streamer/player, you wouldn't really do that.
Again, if you say NS is irrelevant to anyone you know that's your circle of friends, but it's not the entire community. In general, I think people extrapolate too much from their personal experience. I really with Blizzard releases a new infographic or some numbers at Blizzcon.
That is just not fun.
Personally, what I would like is seasons to last 4 months, we have 3 in each year, or 3 in each era, meaning I also want era's to be 12 months in length. With this change, I would like drop rates to be lowered substantially to make the game about hunting for loot again instead of grinding for paragon. The current system makes 50% of the difficulty levels offered useless as well, so that needs to change. Items can be added to the game at the start of a new era, maybe 3 items for each class. Along with these new items every 12 months, it would offer new build concepts.
Really, what this game needs along with this is a complete soft reset of all data. This typically occurs during an expansion, but can we 100% rule out the possibility of them raising the level cap to 80, reworking/removing sets (or maybe adding the set bonus features as a cube option?) adding a few more zones, and adding a few more maps? I feel that they absolutely had a plan to release another Xpac, but at this point, I am not sure it makes sense. Instead, release the features in the current game via an extremely large patch, which will launch November 30th, giving season 8 around 6 weeks of game time, which is just right under the welfare seasonal system.
I have many things I can add, but this is becoming long enough the way it is haha.
I also wanted to bring up one more thing.
Isn't it entirely possible that they have found a way to prevent data mining completely like they were saying? And season 8 could wind up having some small surprises?
Almost all the Youtube videos I've seen for some new tweak involve NS toons, as they have access to whatever goodie they need in order to explore the build. Most of the rest of Youtubes have been PTR toons, where the high drop rate also 'provides'. A handful of youtubes pop up about half-way thru the season about 'what I did'. With marketspeak Eras now being chanted by the coffee boy, unless you have a pressing need for a stash tab, or like ranking early, either you are gone, or in NS.
The Era concept dropped down from corporate awhile ago, explains why so many people have retired or left. The slow filling of posted jobs means nothing is coming in the near future, and it doesn't hurt to fish in the meantime. The only interest I have in S8 is related to either playing something new, getting into an active clan so I can see what the 1000+ paragon game is like, or seeing if I can zoom up faster repeating S7 final build. Otherwise, it's NS to polish/explore S7 build or the backburner. S7 broke my S6 final build, so I'm somewhat happy that S8 will not break S7.
So technically they *could* prevent datamining entirely (by turning the game into something similar to On-Live where 100% of stuff goes on on the servers and you basically just "stream" your own game to your home computer). But practically that would be a new game is never going to happen with Diablo 3. In fact, the game already has so many connection issues with lags and stuff that putting even *more* data on the connection between players and server would make it unplayable, so datamining will not go down but actually go up. Plus, there's really no harm in datamining strings and changes as it's usually datamined just 2-3 days before PTR release and official patch notes anyways.
I think your metric is pretty terrible and very poorly thought out if trying to measure interest in the game. People can dust off an old set of gear, run NS once, make the top 1000 and never play in that era again. Since you have many seasons of Paragons accumulated, you probably should run higher GRs in Nonseason than Season. That really doesn't show much about how interested they are in actually playing the game.
In fact, even this late in the season the number of public T13 rift games is 50% higher in Season than nonseason on both EU and NA (no idea about Asia). When you check that metric at the beginning of seasons its often 300% or more.
Season servers take a lot more load than nonseason load, because it attracts more interest from more people.
The closer we get to the season end and season 7 start, the more my theory is being confirmed that they have indeed found ways to patch D3 without people datamining the information.
They WILL NOT have the same season journey, nor the same Haedrigs gift, both of which are usually tested for bugs, meaning they likely hired an inside party to do internal testing as the primary function.
On a side note, if season 8 is indeed the same as season 7, same journey, same gift, etc.... look for it to be a halloween focused season, which would honestly be pretty sweet!
Lol. The most likely reason for no PTR is nothing to test because there are no changes that are worth testing.
PTR is down for maint currently, likely adding the tweaks for the season and allowing testing of gift and journey now that they announced each.
PTR isn't "open". They might just work on some PTR hardware or software on the server side. They might have started PTR for internal testing and just disabled login from any non-Blizzard IP. Or maybe prepare some stuff for whatever is coming to PTR after Blizzcon. Nobody knows
Sometimes they push random data on CDN that has absolutely no meaning and/or is just for internal tests. The Blizzard developers aren't just sitting in their offices for 6 weeks and doing nothing in between PTR downtime, and sometimes they push buttons here and there that for us (from the outside) makes no sense. But from a development point of view there's just absolutely zero evidence for a PTR, and it also wouldn't make any sense whatsoever.