Is GGG still making the game THEY want to play?

Title.

There are countless examples of GGG changing their game against their own tastes to meet the needs of increasingly sizeable market segments. "We found out that players like to feel powerful," they say. "It turns out players don't really like {passive tree} decision pain," they say. And of course their original plans for the game never, ever involved Permanent Allocation.

Now, meta builds have reached the power level where T15 Core Malachai is pretty much considered easy by forum-goers, and in fact if it takes you 10 minutes to clear T15 Core you are not considered viable, rather the opposite, that your build is not viable if it takes you 10 minutes to clear what used to be the hardest content the game had to offer. This could caused by power creep, which GGG has once said they want to do tastefully, to paraphrase. Or it could be caused by shift in player perspective, where people pretty much "go meta or go home," and set all their power expectations around meta builds.

I'm posting this thread in General Discussion because I don't intend it to be a judgment of whether all this is good or bad, but instead as speculation as to how much GGG is going to "cave in" to the players - or not. Or even just retrospectively as to how much they have caved or not. Just to let you all know, at least for starting this discussion.

EDIT: I nearly forgot. The issue that currently worries me the most is something they have not explicitly stated is their belief - but it seems to me that a core part of their game design, dating back to Vaal Oversoul in Act 2 in Closed Beta - is that all characters should need to move aside from dangerous situations or face the consequences. With CI facetank and the chorus of "buff life, buff life, buff melee, buff melee" it seems that players do not want this to be true for their endgame builds - once fully geared, they want to be able to facetank the vast majority of, if not all, dangerous situations simply by standing in place and holding down right click. Do you think GGG will do this? Or will they rather go in the direction of "nerf CI, nerf CI, nerf ranged, nerf ranged" so that all builds are required to dance a little bit when faced with extreme danger? I'd definitely prefer the latter general approach, but I dunno what GGG will do.

dont expect an honest point of view from GGG on this, all that will come out is preaching in favor of the game

To answer the question, pretty sure its NO

I've been there since 2011 and from what i heard Chris saying in the early years, the direction went from Diablo 2 successor to Diablo 3 dethroner

Why don't you ask them and not us?

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Mythabril wrote:

Why don't you ask them and not us?

You think I'd get an honest answer that they would share with everyone else by their own initiative?

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adghar wrote:

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Mythabril wrote:

Why don't you ask them and not us?

You think I'd get an honest answer that they would share with everyone else by their own initiative?

Well, then let me just wildly speculate into the blue and simply proclaim "Yes!". Here's your answer from a source of authority.

Beforehand tier 14 was conisdered easy + tier 15 was hard. Now tier 15 is easy and tier 16 are hard. Next powercreep update tier 16 gets easy but tier 17 will be hard.
Do you recognice the pattern? :)

Do they really play though

I mean end game not like level 50 and in Cruel etc

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_Saranghaeyo_ wrote:

Do they really play though

I mean end game not like level 50 and in Cruel etc

Here's the problem with what you're saying: For many full time supporters, non-supporters and likely some GGG people, "like level 50 and in Cruel" is really playing.

Park the elitism at the curb.

(Charan beat me to it)

man, my friend is a real noob at computer game ( his words) and he had no problem getting level 80 in a week casually

90% of the game happens once the Lore is completed, his point in partly valid