Game legit dead?

Once it's 8 PM EST, everything stops. Can't buy anything. Nothing sells.

Seems to pick back up at about... 10 AM, honestly. Like a legit 14 hour blackout period every day.

A semi-active game is not like this.

I got bored of Harbinger League after three weeks. Currently playing Grim Dawn.

I think Fall of Oriath was a great expansion, and will do a lot of good for the game’s ability to pull new players and keep existing ones - but the game lives and dies by its challenge leagues. Harbinger was designed not to overwhelm the new players attracted by FoO - Chris didn’t want a mechanic which could be distracting and cause you to move around a lot (e.g. Breach League).

It succeeded at not interfering with the leveling experience, but at the cost of not really being compelling content in and of itself. People always ask this question and the answer is always the same. If you asked whether Harbinger was more short-lived than other recent challenge leagues, you might be onto something. But does one bad league mean the game is dead? No.

Except OP is a standard player, I have no idea how standard fares but I think it's even deader than the leagues.

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ShadyC wrote:

Once it's 8 PM EST, everything stops. Can't buy anything. Nothing sells.

Seems to pick back up at about... 10 AM, honestly. Like a legit 14 hour blackout period every day.

A semi-active game is not like this.

Are you trying to say that there's actually some life in standard? Or that there ever was? ;)

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DGTLDaemon wrote:

Are you trying to say that there's actually some life in standard? Or that there ever was? ;)

Sure, it has a lowish but consistent population and a pocket economy, not nearly as dead as HC. I don't think 3.0 helped, though, updating your skill points is such a hassle I haven't bothered doing that on any char yet and with the way standard was left with no league mod access recently without as much as a sorry (or any kind of comment) didn't make players very happy. Kinda gives you the impression the game is slowly chipping away at the dinosaurs, and by that I mean just the old players, not the I_NO kind of a dino.

A living fossil eh?

Meh... I tried Grim Dawn, got to level ~50. I really dislike the "Divine" skill tree, or whatever it was called. I also feel like gear doesn't come in for shit, as I was stuck wearing level 20-30 stuff still. Some of the combat was clunky too. I dunno. I was ready to like it, but just couldn't.

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I feel likkkkeeee... the game is dead, though.

I feel like laying out Harbinger's design, and blah blah blah - that's all just a deflect. I'm sure the last handful of Leagues you've had a similar response, and I'm sure the next few coming Leagues will be paired with 'em as well.

It's a weird concept to me that Standard would be more dead than Leagues, though. I do not like the idea that my characters delete. Maybe if I wanted to race or something, I'd play League, but that's the only reason I could see... And I know "different strokes for different folks," but the weird part to me is that I'd be in the minority to not want my character wiped???

I dunno.

Oh well.

Game's probablyyyyy dead, though. Isn't it best to face the music?

Maybe it's you. I was amazed at the numbers of maps generated in the last week on the Harbinger stats. Maybe trade is dying, but the game seems to be doing fine.

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ShadyC wrote:

I feel like laying out Harbinger's design, and blah blah blah - that's all just a deflect. I'm sure the last handful of Leagues you've had a similar response, and I'm sure the next few coming Leagues will be paired with 'em as well.

People come for the new content, level up and farm the endgame, then when they've done all there is to do - or all that they're interested in - they play other games for a bit. Diablo III is the same with new seasons. Lots of games are cyclical in nature.

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ShadyC wrote:

It's a weird concept to me that Standard would be more dead than Leagues, though.

But why? Harbinger isn't great, but it has everything Standard does - and more.

GGG adds free new content, most people choose to try it out. How is that weird?

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ShadyC wrote:

I do not like the idea that my characters delete. Maybe if I wanted to race or something, I'd play League, but that's the only reason I could see... And I know "different strokes for different folks," but the weird part to me is that I'd be in the minority to not want my character wiped???

Characters don't get deleted...

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here that I don't need to change my usage of the word "deleted".