134 replies to this topic

[zeroRooter]

Nodnarb, on 12 January 2013 - 02:52 PM, said:

I am happy with these changes.  They were deff. necessary.  That being said...  my expectations were low for any nice big changes b/c as I have said b4 :  Blizzard = Business .... We will get nothing special until there is a way for them to make money off of it.
( I.E. Expansion )

Until then expect minor game changes only.

if they don't fix their game before expansion time, i doubt many people will buy it... i certainly wont be buying it

[gran0ls]

Litheum, on 12 January 2013 - 06:33 PM, said:

gran0ls, on 12 January 2013 - 05:09 PM, said:

Well i impressed by the patch in way, that they still working on the game. I mean, right now it feels like subscription based mmo, since in about every patch blizz add some content. I wonder how long will this going.

You must not play too many games with real-money store/commodity sales. Their are plenty of games that continue to provide content when they include some form of real-money transactions. Even PS3/Xbox games get steady content updates with map packs, cosmetic items, etc.

I'm not sure why people are acting like D3 should recieve no changes when we are steadily giving them money through the RMAH. It is very, very common in todays industry to continually improve games, and provide content.....many times even without a commodity store. But when a game includes any sort of real-money investment, even when it is only cosmetic, I think it is expected to get steady patches and content.

Especially when the intitial product fell so short of gamers expectations.

off-topic:
I not playing many games in overall. Last before D3 was Rift, i buy it, but can't even get past free content.

[Litheum]

overneathe, on 13 January 2013 - 02:04 AM, said:

Ok, Blizzard made billions from the RMAH, they're rolling in cash and laughing at the community. 1.0.7 sux. Carry on.

Don't need to be a smartass.

Make your point (what everit is) about the actual sales Blizzard is making, and we'll talk about it.
You're flame-baiting by asking a question you know we don't have any way of knowing the answer, then trolling/flaming us when we give you an answer. If you want to make a point about revenue, make your point. Don't ask a baited question, than be snide about the answer you know is impossible to give.

Not sure what you were tring to accomplish with your question, but it didnt work.

Edited by Litheum, 13 January 2013 - 03:01 PM.

[Crashhh1]

Blizzard made billions from the RMAH? Don't make me laugh lol. Not even close.

Think of it this way: Let's say theres 6million ppl still playing (not likely)

if each person spent $100 dollars on the game (they haven't), then thats only $600million. Blizz gets, what, 15%? so $90million in that case.

In reality I might say theres 1million ppl playing, and less than half have ever used the RMAH. A lot who have, probably have only used like $10-20 tops. That puts profits very low lol. The game wasn't succesful so it didn't generate a lot of profit after launch, so theyre not going to add much content.

Edited by Crashhh1, 13 January 2013 - 02:43 PM.

[overneathe]

Litheum, on 13 January 2013 - 02:36 PM, said:

overneathe, on 13 January 2013 - 02:04 AM, said:

Ok, Blizzard made billions from the RMAH, they're rolling in cash and laughing at the community. 1.0.7 sux. Carry on.

Don't need to be a smartass.

Make your point (what everit is) about the actual sales Blizzard is making, and we'll talk about it.
You're flame-baiting by asking a question you know we don't have any way of knowing the answer, then trolling/flaming us when we give you an answer. If you want to make a point about revenue, make your point. Don't ask a baited question, than be snide about the answer you know is impossible to give.

Not sure what you were tring to accomplish with your question, but it didnt work.

I'm sorry, I wasn't making a point. It was just easier to agree with the angry bunch of people instead of writing incredibly lengthy posts. But I agree I was derailing the thread, so a short post should've been enough to stop it.

To be quite honest I tend to almost fully agree with Crashhh1, even if our opinions on a lot of things are generally opposite.

Don't call me names by the way.

[SoAmazin]

I bet the XP bonus will upset people. At least highlvls.

[Lord_Jaroh]

I'm guessing that Blizzard has made far less money than the suits wanted to see from the "RMAH" experiment.  

Loss of players, little to no public games, damage control from the head of state, little to no developer involvement in conversations, and many changes that reverse their positions on the DIIIs' original development ideas and are adding in features from the "incorrect way to play DII"...

All this points to things are not all rosy at the DIII headquarters and know the devs are scrambling trying to stem the bleeding.  But they won't be able to fix the core problems of the game without acknowledging that it was the auction house that screwed it all up to begin with.

[Crashhh1]

When I look at current diablo 3 I look at it as being about half completed from what I expected.

Half!

For me, the game just lacks a huge, huge amount of content that just isn't there.

Just to name a few..

-Sidequests are very lacking and need full revamps
-Mechancis are boring
-Itemization is boring
-No stats allocate/skills tree is an awful choice
-Most of the classes for me are very boring to play. Example: The witch doctor's design is some kind of a joke compared to the necro, why not just bring back what the fans want instead of dangling a bad version of it in front of them?
-Much of the game's maps and dungeons need revamping
-Nepalem's valor needs to be deleted so the game isn't flooded with so many rares, and we need to go back to boss farming as the main way of playing the game
-The game needs heavy bot control and should consider being split into many small servers
-Should've started off with 6 classes
-Entire story and graphics should be revamped to feel more like diablo
-More endgame content and more items than we currently have
-Full ranked pvp and ladder at launch

Essentially I am very unhappy with the whole game and I don't play it (haven't since first month), whenever I try to play it I get uber bored within 30 minutes and log out.

I am probably one of the harsher critics since I've followed the game from 2008 on the forums and kept up with a lot of promises and ideas that were supposed to be in the game.

I would call it the most disappointing game, and one of the longest waits to be disappointed ever.
Basically, it should've been amazing at launch and around just now (8 months after launch) we should just start to get bored and maybe get a few new content patches. Instead we get an 8 month extended open beta and no one is hapyp.

Edited by Crashhh1, 13 January 2013 - 06:16 PM.

[Speaker]

Crashhh1, on 13 January 2013 - 02:41 PM, said:

Blizzard made billions from the RMAH? Don't make me laugh lol. Not even close.

Think of it this way: Let's say theres 6million ppl still playing (not likely)

if each person spent $100 dollars on the game (they haven't), then thats only $600million. Blizz gets, what, 15%? so $90million in that case.

In reality I might say theres 1million ppl playing, and less than half have ever used the RMAH. A lot who have, probably have only used like $10-20 tops. That puts profits very low lol. The game wasn't succesful so it didn't generate a lot of profit after launch, so theyre not going to add much content.

Isn't it like 1.25 + 15% or +30% if they send it to their paypal per item?  So, it could easily be much higher than what you are saying.

[IgnatiusReilly]

Quote

Loss of players, little to no public games, damage control from the head of state, little to no developer involvement in conversations, and many changes that reverse their positions on the DIIIs' original development ideas and are adding in features from the "incorrect way to play DII"...

It's funny because every patch, they further make the AH useless which gives me the idea they're well aware of how much of a disaster it actually is. Increasing drop rates, BoA ring, now BoA craftables, and I remember all those interviews with Rob Pardo where he has so much trouble giving a big thumbs up to the AH, skirting around the major issues it's caused for the game. Then you have Wyatt taking time to mention it in the latest blog and how they're needing to make design decisions to further make the AH obsolete.

Kind of funny, mostly sad.

Though I doubt they ever had any real expectations that the RMAH would be a cash cow. Extra income definitely, but to think it'd bring in hundreds of millions... ha!

Edited by IgnatiusReilly, 13 January 2013 - 09:46 PM.

[Crashhh1]

Speaker, on 13 January 2013 - 08:48 PM, said:

Crashhh1, on 13 January 2013 - 02:41 PM, said:

Blizzard made billions from the RMAH? Don't make me laugh lol. Not even close.

Think of it this way: Let's say theres 6million ppl still playing (not likely)

if each person spent $100 dollars on the game (they haven't), then thats only $600million. Blizz gets, what, 15%? so $90million in that case.

In reality I might say theres 1million ppl playing, and less than half have ever used the RMAH. A lot who have, probably have only used like $10-20 tops. That puts profits very low lol. The game wasn't succesful so it didn't generate a lot of profit after launch, so theyre not going to add much content.

Isn't it like 1.25 + 15% or +30% if they send it to their paypal per item?  So, it could easily be much higher than what you are saying.

FEES


Before you post your auction, you’ll see any fees that apply to your listing displayed in the center section of the Sell tab. These fees will only be charged if your auction successfully sells, and will automatically be deducted from the item’s final selling price.
For Equipment (weapons, armor, accessories, and other unique items)

• Transaction Fee (Gold Auction House): 15% of final sale price
  
• Transaction Fee (Real-Money Auction House): $1.00 USD per item / $1.00 AUD per item
  
• Transfer Fee (when sending proceeds to PayPal or other authorized payment-service provider): 15% of amount being transferred

For Commodities (gems, materials, dyes, pages, recipes, and other non-unique items)

• Transaction Fee (Gold Auction House): 15% of final sale price
  
• Transaction Fee (Real-Money Auction House): 15% of final sale price
  
• Transfer Fee (when sending proceeds to PayPal or other authorized payment-service provider): 15% of amount being transferred

A dollar per item is so little; they would have to sell a million individual items to make $1mil.
I would estimate from the RMAH's release to now they've made under $3 million for sure, and it's probably nearly a zero income now. This makes it a great time for them to try to put gold sinks in the game to slowly phase the AH out after making some final money off gold buyers.

I believe they've made a lot of money the first 3 months or so of launch, as I know I personally made a lot of money off of it... but at this point, the game has become very very easy, and something like 2mil can provide you with 100k+ dps which is enough to farm even moderate levels of Monster Power. Since 2mil is about 60 cents, they'd make about a dime off of that transaction.

mp0 can be done in blues.

The economy now is at a point where only very very high end rolls (top 1%) sell quickly, and a lot of people have large surpluses of gold and items.

Gold will still sell probably, since it's a universal currency.. but, in the end, with a dwindled playerbase and decreased difficulty, and with excess gear being so powerful (i can buy a 1k dps weapon for 20k gold lol) only people who are really stupid would buy a really powerful character.

On top of that, if you have a top end item you want to sell, why bother selling it on the AH and take a tax, when you can just post it on the forums and let other people come to you? Sell outside the AH if it's top end, and recieve full profit.

Edited by Crashhh1, 13 January 2013 - 09:48 PM.

[m4st0d0n]

My billion dollar estimate was a joke. But your 3 million $ is too low. Remember that 3-4 weeks after 1.04 gold prices were steadily above 1 eur, peaking at 1.5! That means demand was huge for a long period of time. Calculating in $ for sake of easiness. 3m $ in transfer fees (15%commodity+15#transfer) means 10m $ worth of gold (or 10x10^12 gold) purchased at 1$/10^6 gold (note that the actual price was higher). There are over 3 million players in Europe. Calculating with a rather casual 100k gold/hour farming speed it takes only 33.33 hours of playtime of the European playerbase to farm that amount of gold. I hope that this puts in perspective how little that 3m $ is compared to the gross gold producion of diablo players.

Blizzard made way more than 3m in transaction fees just from gold sells and just in Europe.

[axeman87]

All the patches in the world wont actually change the fundamentals of D3, which IMO are not even vaqually comparable to D2 and LBH, D2 is the reason we all bought D3 in the first place.

After all, (hyperthetcially), unless Blizzaard say somthing like "..We totally fucked things up and are going back to what worked in D2"... how sales will D4 see? Not near as much as D3 did from the success of D2 I would guess.

Dont get me wrong, I've hade plenty of fun with it and figure I've got my $70 worth, but I'm slowly but surely getting very bored with it and sure as hell wont be playing it for years like I did with D2.

I wont go into the reasons why as they've all been said before, but in a nutshell D3 is a 6-12 month quick hack and slash game. Nothing more or less. Expecting it to become something it isnt (Diablo 2.5?) will only lead to disapointment.

[yoshiboi]

Litheum, on 12 January 2013 - 01:02 PM, said:

Not sure about anybody else, but I feel completely let down by the new patch.

Dueling:
They added dueling, cool. Only issue I have with this is you can't just turn it on in a public game. They could have easily just made a hostile flag for your character, so when your waiting for your friends, or at the end of the run you just turn it on and fight each other. If you don't turn your flag on, you dont die, so not sure why we need a whole new zone to keep characters safe. New zone does look pretty fun though......

Craft Recipes:
Again they added a very short-sighted answer to adding new content. Farming recipes is a reason to farm bosses, great! But once you get that recipe, that content dies. And you will never return, just like the A4 recipe, it was easy to get, you got it, and never returned to A4. This will give a month or 2 of farming bosses, then everyone will be back in A3.

Crafting mats: More incentive to farm A3 at max efficiency.

New Gems: More incentive to farm A3, 20 million gold plus the gold you spent on your 3 RS gems.

New gear effects: The high price and time investment means this only increases the need for only 1 high-powered character to run A3 with to further improve that character. It gives no incentive at all to have more then 1 character. Especially since they gave no reason to make gear with vitality (it's still all about super-farming with high-dps mains). So this amounts to running A3 endlessly and along the way having a chance for a new item. If its anything like Hellfires, they will just end up sitting in your bank unused. Especially for high-end characters with good items in those slots already.

Things that the developers made no attempt to change:
99% of rare drops are vendor trash (actually made this worse w/ the crafted recipes in the few slots rares still had potential)
Way too many rares overall, meaning only legendaries and recipes are worth picking up for high-tier players
AH is still the best way to gear alts and even your main until you get lucky with a recipe.
No incentive whatsoever for more than 1 charcter.
No reason to farm anything but A3. (Other than to get your recipes, once you get it, no reason to do it again)
Still favors MP0-2 farming meaning less diversity in gear choices, we will continue to just increase DPS stats.
No end-game content, End-game = A3.
No items are leaving the economy.

At the end of the day, the only change they made (outside of duels) is along your perpetual A3 runs, you will get some mats you can use to forge a new item. Most of these will end up in your bank rotting.

So far, I see no reason for me to come back at this time.

Well said! This game has so much potential...and we see Blizzard doing some changes....but very slowly. Would be nice if they focused on some main issues at hand like "loot" for the next patches to come.

[yoshiboi]

axeman87, on 13 January 2013 - 10:48 PM, said:

All the patches in the world wont actually change the fundamentals of D3, which IMO are not even vaqually comparable to D2 and LBH, D2 is the reason we all bought D3 in the first place.

After all, (hyperthetcially), unless Blizzaard say somthing like "..We totally fucked things up and are going back to what worked in D2"... how sales will D4 see? Not near as much as D3 did from the success of D2 I would guess.

Dont get me wrong, I've hade plenty of fun with it and figure I've got my $70 worth, but I'm slowly but surely getting very bored with it and sure as hell wont be playing it for years like I did with D2.

I wont go into the reasons why as they've all been said before, but in a nutshell D3 is a 6-12 month quick hack and slash game. Nothing more or less. Expecting it to become something it isnt (Diablo 2.5?) will only lead to disapointment.

Another great post! Lovers and haters of Diablo 3 will truly find out what direction this game has gone when they release the xpac. Sales predictions.......much much much...........much lower then Diablo 3 original. Blizzard fail.

[Sagathiest]

I would describe the patch as underwhelming, but my expectations were not that high. Allot of people including me would like to the fundamental issues addressed. Items, skills and multi-player. Basically i would like to see what was done well in D2 be done at least as well or better in D3. but maybe its for the best. At least this way Diablo 3 wont consume a large portion of my life the way that D2 did..

[brentulrich]

I'd like to be able to use waypoints to teleport to other acts instead of logging in and out... Why hasn't this been done yet?

[Bourrelle]

I hate complainers... The OP is definitely one. IMO, the patch is a very good step in the right direction and its content is amazing. They basically listened to the community and implemented alot of things we wanted. I specially like the new crafting recipes GJ

Bleu42, on 12 January 2013 - 09:24 PM, said:

TLDR; OP, you're being a baby.

I agree with you sir:)
OP, Move on, find another game if you're not happy.. The D3 community is flooded with complainers like you and I think this is hurting the game more than the game itself.

Edited by Bourrelle, 14 January 2013 - 04:14 AM.

[Bourrelle]

brentulrich, on 14 January 2013 - 03:26 AM, said:

I'd like to be able to use waypoints to teleport to other acts instead of logging in and out... Why hasn't this been done yet?

I'm not sure but I think they said that they would like to implement that in the futur. Can't find the official link tought. If I find it, will post it.

[Tsukishima]

Satisfied with the changes. Blizzard continues to impress me with their constant improving of d3. The launch was terrible and full of incompetence but the recovery operation since has exceeded my expectations. I doubt any other game would have redesigned their endgame paradigm after launch like d3 did for inferno.