Popular aarpgs commiting seppuku? Conspiracy theory discussion thread

Looking at the two most poplar games and their current state the pattern seems to unravel that they are both trying to end their own existence. Who could be behind this? who benefits? any ideas?

wut u mean

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TreeOfDead wrote:

wut u mean

i mean its like they are trying to decimate their player base... d4 patches, poe patches... something is brewing man

Why beat around the bush?

This is Blizzard's standard practice of giving its paying users crap games and trying to implement QoL changes through seasonal patches. When they, quite frankly, should have been in the game since Beta.

I have a strong feeling Blizzard has been trying to take back market share from PoE, but the more Blizzard tries to make new engaging content, the more they push their loyal users (like me) away.

No conspiracy theories needed, both are just treating their games a bit roughly due to lack of connection to what actually user base wants, probably some higher up stuff happening as usual

Poe is likely power creep in many ways reaching what the devs percieve a very bad point that might affect the overall game's life expectancy and is worsening a few old problems(like the ever-increasing chasm between the 1% and the casuals, that has, among other effects, the tendency of shooing new players). They likely have figured, among other things, that they will need to slow down the game to make it more acessible, but their own design for years have been around speed, so it kinda got ingrated into the game's identity. You can replace speed with many other aspects of powercreep, like growing pool of truly retarded possible gear combos, increasingly harsh content affixes to combat the increasingly stronger players, ever-growing craft system that becomes increasingly harder to keep up with(and is reflected by increasing number of currencies and fragments-really the current currency tab is intimidating to just look at for newcomers)
They see the iceberg coming and probably feel its already impacting the game image as a quite bloated thing. Its one thing to be complex, challenging and dynamic, but poe has crossed a bunch of lines at this point, but devs are stuck with having to steer away from the iceberg but also not dramatically change the historical course that worked so far wich would mean cuting aspects of the game that turned iconic, wich would alienate the players and risk sinking the ship

The way i see it, poe is kinda in a similar spot marvel heroes found itself before it turned catastrophically belly up with a certain very unfortunate huge patch


As for D4... well, blizzard have been cathering to the lowest denominator for a long while now. Hoping they release another smashing hit is missing a writing that is on the wall for over a decade by now. I can sorta see that the D team in particular is looking at the big money on the eastern mobile market, but they are reluctant to leave their traditional western market. D3 made an experience with mobile microtransactions with the RMAH, DI IS a gacha and everything i read about D4 reminds me more of wow than a D title, either way, i woudnt consider smart to expect anything resembling the 2 first D titles from them, the writting is on the wall they dont think the model is profitable enough and they are focusing on making(trying to...) mobile or wow-styles finantial hits

Believe it or not, there are tons of people out there that actually think D3 is a very good game. There are also tons of people out there that think D1 and D2 are very good games. Creating one one game to please all of them is probably impossible. D4 is in "no man's land", and doesn't really know what game it's supposed to be; a hardcore ARPG? A casual ARPG? An MMO? As it stands now, it seems to fall short on all three.

PoE, on the other hand, suffers from years of spoiling their players with power creep and quantity. It also suffers from an upcoming sequel that they seemingly need to brace players for, and are using PoE 1 as a laboratory rat, both when it comes to content and performance.