I'd be willing to bet that someone, somewhere at Blizzard HQ was thinking along these lines: "if we release the game like this, millions of "40-hour-people" will buy it. But don't worry: even if the fans of the franchise don't really like it at first, they'll wait for the stuff we'll release later. We'll get the best of both worlds". And that's not something I can stomach easily.
I'm 100% sure this was not the case. Have you ever developed and published a program? On AppStore, Google Play, WP8 store? If you screw up at at any time shit hits the fan. I've got an app with thousands of downloads that requests data from a web server. One day said server went down for a couple of hours and my app lost just a bit functionality. I could watch the installs go down along with my ratings. You never recover from that. These people never ever come back, even if your app gets praised as #1 cool stuff on every newspaper. As for D3, there are quite a few people who love the franchise, bought D3, were disappointed and left for good (remember that these long-term Diablo fans are 30+ years old and don't necessarily read gaming magazines every day to hear about the great patches or comeback of there formerly beloved game).
What you said remains as idiotic as it was when it was written: the game was shaped in such a way to please players that would play 40 hours and then drop it. That makes no sense, except from a financial point of view.
Com'on man, you just know that's not true.
Just to get to Inferno in the first weeks people spent about 80 hours, most spent even more (specially if they didn't use the AH). And then, I'm sure you remember this too, people proceeded to farm another 100-150 hours just to progress into Acts 2-3.
And you have to admit everything they added afterwards (monster power, ubers, new legendaries, demonic essences crafting) definitely added playtime too. It took me about 50 hours to craft my first Hellfire Ring (I never was Jaetch-lvl material). It took me about another 50 hours to get most of my characters to MP 5+ lvl.
While I disagree with maka that this was an intentional move by Blizzard (as in: screw the long term fans, let's just cater it to newcomers), I think you're generalizing a bit to much as for the entire player base. Actually, many of my friends never played Inferno; they just bought D3 as they're hardcore SC2 players (or were forced into buying it by me or others ;-)). They surely fall into the category of "40 hours and stop". Also, more people than you think don't have a Hellfire Ring TO DATE (we seem them occasionally on the class forums asking for help).
However, and in that point I fully agree with you to disagree with maka, Blizzard didn't aim to draw this people into the D3 franchise just to lose them immediately. As a company it's much better if you win new players for your games and keep them in your eco-system, be it D3, SC2, WoW, or whatever game - just make sure they play your stuff. Every hour a player plays your game, they can't go out to the store and buy that other game of your competitor. Despite all its flaws, D3 kept me interested for so long that I didn't get to try out TL2 before February.
But, and trying to bring this back to the initial point, the reason why Blizzard said over and over again "we need to make this game interesting for newcomers" is because many players that are an interesting target audience for Diablo 3 weren't even born or just infants when Diablo 1 hit the shelves. You can't create a PC game and just assume that everyone knows all the gameplay basics, the story and background from that other game 12 years ago. This is why it was absolutely necessary to make the game appealing to newcomers.
Yeah I agree with you. To be fair, I haven't even thought anything about casual or hardcore players.
My original point was that the developer team didn't "design" the game to cater to the players who would play "only 40 hours". Because most ilvl 63 gear wouldn't even drop at that time frame, Inferno was not even reachable at that time frame too; and Inferno (as part of the content) definitely wasn't being cleared in such time.
the game was shaped in such a way to please players that would play 40 hours and then drop it. That makes no sense, except from a financial point of view.
Most people back then didn't even have the skills or dedication to move to Act 2 Inferno, let alone clear it. And that's what was supposed to be the "hardcore" end-game content.
It would have been if 90%+ of the players didn't rush to the forums to complain how they were being "left out" of a huge part of the game. Something that would have probably happened to Uber Tristram if it was released nowadays
Wanting to please the majority of your playerbase doesn't have to be just about $$$. Maybe you want people to enjoy themselves for the 20-40 hours they do throw at your title, have some good memories and stories about it. I find it kind of strange attitude actually that one should exclusively design for the minority of your hardcore fans.
Diablo 1/2 had stories and world-class cinematics that were irrelevant past the first 25 hours. D2's nightmare/hell modes had a grand total of 2 months testing before initial release, and it's no coincidence that the skill tree ends pretty close to where the normal content does. This is not an MMO where they stagger actual content to make distant goals, instead they just let grinders grind away on old content, which isn't how you draw the biggest audience to your long-term. Emphasis on the short-term is not something new with D3, and the pace of hardcore-oriented changes we have been getting has been much greater than D2 ever received outside of their expansion.
That's cool. I still feel like they counted on us to stick around, so they didn't feel the need to please us 100% from the get-go, but there's no point in dragging the subject. I've said what I needed (more than wanted) to say.
Thanks for listening.
I would agree that they probably thought that anyone who played D2 understood what the development lifecycle was going to look like and might not be so... reactionary... about an imperfect game. Also the "mouthpiece" that people like Kripparian tend to be sorta thrived on the anti-Blizzard sentiment because it got the lunatic kiddies to go to their streams and YouTube channels which just acted as an amplifier. You know, something that's not THAT bad suddenly turns into a lynch mob.
I know that I fully expected flaws and for them to be addressed mostly in the manner that they're going about it, so I wasn't shocked or caught off-guard or anything and I'm very much able to just roll with the punches.
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ModeratorI'm 100% sure this was not the case. Have you ever developed and published a program? On AppStore, Google Play, WP8 store? If you screw up at at any time shit hits the fan. I've got an app with thousands of downloads that requests data from a web server. One day said server went down for a couple of hours and my app lost just a bit functionality. I could watch the installs go down along with my ratings. You never recover from that. These people never ever come back, even if your app gets praised as #1 cool stuff on every newspaper. As for D3, there are quite a few people who love the franchise, bought D3, were disappointed and left for good (remember that these long-term Diablo fans are 30+ years old and don't necessarily read gaming magazines every day to hear about the great patches or comeback of there formerly beloved game).
While I disagree with maka that this was an intentional move by Blizzard (as in: screw the long term fans, let's just cater it to newcomers), I think you're generalizing a bit to much as for the entire player base. Actually, many of my friends never played Inferno; they just bought D3 as they're hardcore SC2 players (or were forced into buying it by me or others ;-)). They surely fall into the category of "40 hours and stop". Also, more people than you think don't have a Hellfire Ring TO DATE (we seem them occasionally on the class forums asking for help).
However, and in that point I fully agree with you to disagree with maka, Blizzard didn't aim to draw this people into the D3 franchise just to lose them immediately. As a company it's much better if you win new players for your games and keep them in your eco-system, be it D3, SC2, WoW, or whatever game - just make sure they play your stuff. Every hour a player plays your game, they can't go out to the store and buy that other game of your competitor. Despite all its flaws, D3 kept me interested for so long that I didn't get to try out TL2 before February.
But, and trying to bring this back to the initial point, the reason why Blizzard said over and over again "we need to make this game interesting for newcomers" is because many players that are an interesting target audience for Diablo 3 weren't even born or just infants when Diablo 1 hit the shelves. You can't create a PC game and just assume that everyone knows all the gameplay basics, the story and background from that other game 12 years ago. This is why it was absolutely necessary to make the game appealing to newcomers.
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Wise ElderMy original point was that the developer team didn't "design" the game to cater to the players who would play "only 40 hours". Because most ilvl 63 gear wouldn't even drop at that time frame, Inferno was not even reachable at that time frame too; and Inferno (as part of the content) definitely wasn't being cleared in such time.
Most people back then didn't even have the skills or dedication to move to Act 2 Inferno, let alone clear it. And that's what was supposed to be the "hardcore" end-game content.
It would have been if 90%+ of the players didn't rush to the forums to complain how they were being "left out" of a huge part of the game. Something that would have probably happened to Uber Tristram if it was released nowadays
Diablo 1/2 had stories and world-class cinematics that were irrelevant past the first 25 hours. D2's nightmare/hell modes had a grand total of 2 months testing before initial release, and it's no coincidence that the skill tree ends pretty close to where the normal content does. This is not an MMO where they stagger actual content to make distant goals, instead they just let grinders grind away on old content, which isn't how you draw the biggest audience to your long-term. Emphasis on the short-term is not something new with D3, and the pace of hardcore-oriented changes we have been getting has been much greater than D2 ever received outside of their expansion.
I would agree that they probably thought that anyone who played D2 understood what the development lifecycle was going to look like and might not be so... reactionary... about an imperfect game. Also the "mouthpiece" that people like Kripparian tend to be sorta thrived on the anti-Blizzard sentiment because it got the lunatic kiddies to go to their streams and YouTube channels which just acted as an amplifier. You know, something that's not THAT bad suddenly turns into a lynch mob.
I know that I fully expected flaws and for them to be addressed mostly in the manner that they're going about it, so I wasn't shocked or caught off-guard or anything and I'm very much able to just roll with the punches.