when is next league out? surely not in early april?

To be honest GGG giving Diablo the Voldemort treatment and not even speaking its name in reference to the June release is a big mistake imo. In fact, GGG has been very open that PoE was a spiritual successor to Diablo and a tremendous influence on their design and development. To avoid it now, even in so much as a whisper, speaks volumes.

Everyone in the entire gaming industry knows what's coming. Its not even an elephant in the room. It's the entire house where the room with the elephant is located.

Moving a release date to avoid direct competition is smart, well, financially at least. But it's not without downsides. It's a subtle admission they cannot compete directly. Which ego aside, this is absolutely true, its not a competition. D4 will be exponentially larger to a factor of ten or more.

Just own it GGG. Acknowledge it. Tell us the plan. Understand that perhaps half your playerbase will at a minimum be interested in it. How do you address this?

And maybe they will have details at Exilecon, but that's post D4 launch. Speaking of which that event might be supremely awkward timing wise. It's likely their player numbers and metrics will be at a level lower than they have seen in many years. They better hope PoE 4.0 is in a tremendous state to display with a very real next gen arpg already marketed.

Not to mention moving forward D4 will be live service. Will GGG continue to monitor and dodge all the D4 season windows? Are they really going to concede their development timelines on whatever Diablo is doing? It's an interesting strategy if so. Maybe this is an opportunity to get back to that niche market, with a smaller, yet more solid, playerbase?

Either way the remainder of 2023 for GGG is going to be an anxiety riddled nightmare. The pressure on PoE 4.0 development status and scope will be immense. The D4 shadow casting tension on Exilecon will be palpable. The revenue and metrics will be dramatically different than the last number of years. An absolute low point.

It's a time they should be talking more, not less. And by less I mean nothing at all besides a vague couple of paragraphs in a news post.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

Understand that perhaps half your playerbase will at a minimum be interested in it. How do you address this?

I dont think D4 is going to be a longterm competitor.
A couple of weeks, possibly months, yeah sure.
But then what? Players will run out of new content to interact with rather sooner than later since D4 wont be able to compete on that front at all.

Better graphics, sure.
Better story, why not.
Better this that and the other, yup why not.

Stuff to do? Nope.

I expect a massive launch and short-term success for D4 but I also expect many of those players coming right back to PoE once they are done with whatever content D4 has to offer, which isnt going to be much compared to PoE.


Besides: Both games can and will coexist just fine.
Plenty players will enjoy launches of any given league, keep playing for about 4-6 weeks and then hop over to the other game.

Time will tell.

d3 still has as much players on new leagues launch as poe and the only thing you can do in d3 is farm rifts the moral of story is blizzard could literally release a shit and they are gonnna sell milions of copies anyway becuz of the brand name and the fanboys they got so d4 will have definitely way more players every league launch even if that game will have 100x times less content to offer than poe

It's mid-April and we're better for it. Releases that are poor and rushed are never received well and a lot of people leave before the 2-3 weeks of fixes.

Four-month cycle is a lot more reasonable release cycle.

It may be a pre-emptive thing to get out of step with D4, which would also be a smart decision. There is no business reason to release at the same time as another game that will inevitably pull a notable number of players, and potentially cause some bitterness from others for not being able to experience both games at release. Even if POE overwhelmingly won the head-to-head release with something like 80/20 retention, that's still 20% of your players lost at release -- and there is no way they'll win with that kind of margin. The difference is that the Diablo franchise has a larger player base and losing a small number to POE isn't nearly as devastating to them as it would be to POE.

It's all conjecture and we have no clue if that is part of the calculus this time around. It's a smart path though, even if it wasn't originally intended. Either way, I'll take the extra development time to help with a cleaner release.

"

Orbaal wrote:

I dont think D4 is going to be a longterm competitor.
A couple of weeks, possibly months, yeah sure.
But then what? Players will run out of new content to interact with rather sooner than later since D4 wont be able to compete on that front at all.

Based on what though? Is it just like a gut feeling you have or feeling a certain way about Blizzard?

Everything I've seen and read so far up to this point has been mostly positive. Certainly nothing that would indicate a death in a few weeks or months post launch.

D2,D3, and D2R performed outstanding in nearly every measurable, category. I don't see a massive deviation here.

I dont know what the finished product will actually be of course, or how live service will pan out, but I sincerely doubt, based on past Diablo performance, the support it will be given, and what we know so far, that it will be a flash in the pan type of game.

Will will find out very soon however. Very soon.

d4 also gonna be pay to win obviously just not on the release they will wait first to sell milions of copies before making game pay to win

"

Gopstop22 wrote:

d4 also gonna be pay to win obviously just not on the release they will wait first to sell milions of copies before making game pay to win

Even if that's true, which I doubt, what does that even matter?

P2W games, whatever the fuck that means to you in a PvE game in the first place, do just fine market wise.

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

"

Gopstop22 wrote:

d4 also gonna be pay to win obviously just not on the release they will wait first to sell milions of copies before making game pay to win

Even if that's true, which I doubt, what does that even matter?

P2W games, whatever the fuck that means to you in a PvE game in the first place, do just fine market wise.

it matters alot for online multiplayer game and yes it will do fine becuz its blizzard game doesnt change the fact they will me extremely scummy about it just like they are with diablo immortal and its a succesfull game becuz people are stupid but path of exile is also pay to win but the difference is you only need spend like 40-50$ on stash tabs and not a penny more but d4 you will need spend money every month to get goodies wich helps you progress faster and easier

You will realize that the end of the next league is approximately around the same time as the exile con this year.
Probably means that we either get PoE 2 after the next league or a league after that cause they for sure want to keep up with D4.


D4 could have some potential but I highly doubt that they learned out of their mistakes in D3. Story is probably nice and the gameplay is going to be decent at first, if not already watered down right away. I mean the last wow expansion is somewhat a good indicator of how little effort they put into their games these days.

"

Gopstop22 wrote:

"

DarthSki44 wrote:

"

Gopstop22 wrote:

d4 also gonna be pay to win obviously just not on the release they will wait first to sell milions of copies before making game pay to win

Even if that's true, which I doubt, what does that even matter?

P2W games, whatever the fuck that means to you in a PvE game in the first place, do just fine market wise.

it matters alot for online multiplayer game and yes it will do fine becuz its blizzard game doesnt change the fact they will me extremely scummy about it just like they are with diablo immortal and its a succesfull game becuz people are stupid but path of exile is also pay to win but the difference is you only need spend like 40-50$ on stash tabs and not a penny more but d4 you will need spend money every month to get goodies wich helps you progress faster and easier

Again how does this matter in general? How does me buying tabs in PoE or whatever your worst fear might be in D4, impact how you play or enjoy the game?