Are people leaving the game?

I found that the number of users here haven't been growing anymore.
So the less people that open accounts here, i suspect people are either leaving the game or just no desire to trade/play anymore?

I also found the number of open games are decreasing. Now i usually see 1 player public games and rarely see

Baal/cow games open anymore.
I also notice trades aren't going as fast anymore, so both buyers/sellers aren't as active.

So i assume people just stop playing the game until ladder hits?
And even so, i think that would only briefly bring people back, after about 2-3 weeks, I think the game will just see diminishing player base as DR2,
even with it's updated graphics, is still an outdated game. Compared to what's out there, its hard to stay in this game when there's so much competition available.

Seems people don't need items. runes and bases and craft materials are selling better then weapons and armour.

I think people are holding off until Ladder starts. I considered doing Ladder but realistically I won't have time to git good until the Ladder resets.

Most people playing this game are old bastards like me who played the original back in the days, no?

im personally waiting for 2.4 and ladder to drop. i think itll bring back a shit ton of people as well as new ones. Since they are finally balancing the game after so many years!!!! wooot! cant wait to try out all the new builds, new runewords and all the other Mercenaries. sorry emilio, you gotta go.

I don’t think d2r is an outdated game it may not be as appealing for young folks but I think we have a dedicated 30-40 average player base.

Miroslav wrote: 2 years ago

I think people are holding off until Ladder starts. I considered doing Ladder but realistically I won't have time to git good until the Ladder resets.

Most people playing this game are old bastards like me who played the original back in the days, no?

Lol. +1 from my side!!!
The problem is still being the same as 2 decades ago: The path to get the best items or runewords in the game it's way too long, the investment of time needed is too high for keeping it along in time.
Yes, I'm an old bastard like you who played many years ago, and I like it now as much as then. The problem is that I'm over 40s right now, and with my job and family agenda it's nearly impossible to farm for 5 or 6 hours only to get a

Shako (being very lucky).
So at the end, you feel after few weeks or months that the ROI it's not good enough to keep playing anymore. Don't get me wrong, I always liked that the drop rate was not so easy to get the feel very lucky when a good item dropos, but after surpassed a high amount of hours or level with a char, the drop rate should be enhanced significantly as a reward for that investment. In this game, even you are in higher char levels, you can get the same junk of items for days as when you are in level 62... It has no sense for me.

These are my two cents...

I can only comment on data that I have for diablo2.io and what Google says.

Here's a graph of worldwide interest over time in search terms containing the keyword 'Diablo 2':
So you can see the spike when things were getting hyped in August, the incredible peak in interest on/around launch in late September, and then a rapid decline after that. This has to be taken with a pinch of salt, as by the 2nd week into launch many people would stop executing searches like this as they'd already found the sources of info they'd need etc. but it's still a strong indicator of interest worldwide, and it's back to levels it was before the game was even launched.

Here's a graph of d2io's search impressions/clicks for all keyword terms worldwide:
Again, you can see the huge spike around release with about 400k impressions per day, which has since

Fallen to about 150-200k impressions a day. The 'position' ranking not drawn on this chart is fairly steady, so whilst the 'performance' of the site has remained level, the external interest has definitely significantly dropped during that time.

Does this mean the game is dying? Not necessarily. After all, most people search for information with Google, and there's a point where people get educated enough that they stop searching so much because they either 1. Already know most things, or 2. Have found consistently good resources and visit those pages directly.

When Ladder/2.4/PTR was announced to be coming 'early' this year, I saw a significant drop in traffic to the site. Some people came on the forums to say that they'd be taking a break until all the new updates/ladder etc. 'launch', and I think that, certainly with the hardcore audience here on d2io, that this is the case for a lot of players. They feel that continuing to play non-ladder characters now is less rewarding, knowing that the ladder will be starting up with new Runewords and balance changes etc.

If Blizzard continue to invest development time into this game, with regular, solid Ladder season starts and more QoL/balance changes, then I think they stand a good chance of retaining players and/or getting new players to return at the commencement of each ladder season. My forecast is that overall interest will still decline steadily over time (newer players), with spikes happening at each ladder season start as experienced core players return for the rush.

At it's peak, the trade market here on diablo2.io had about 34k active trades at any one time - now it stands at around 28k active trades at any one time. Still a decline, but not as significant as the other data sources might suggest. So actually the active trade volume on the site is still very high relative to the other data showing declines. The impression of armors/weapons not selling as quickly is merely symptomatic of how the game economy organically favours uniques/sets etc. less as time goes on and towards the end of a season, they are almost worthless.

I too have been being very chill waiting for ladder. I still play but not as aggressive. just random farming and playing. little trading

Yeah makes sense. And I do actually like the 3 month ladder seasons. Mainly since the game would feel "exciting" for sure for the first month after launch. Then after that phase some players would leave. The remaining ones would be willing to do optimisations to their builds. That would be 2/3 weeks as well. Then say another 2/3 weeks of playing "for fun" and the 3 months are almost done. Enough for the casual and decided players to have given up on playing in this ladder but not long enough to lose the player base. Likely at this point we'd be getting next ladder announcements with the new rune words to keep everyone hyped. At the same time there would still be a few weeks left for the hardcore d2 fans to keep grinding that rush towards 99. Is 99 possible in 3 months? Unlikely unless you grind d2 all the time, but hey that also makes it better since people would actually get different positions at the end of the ladder. So everyone complaining about the 3 months season change. I think we all need to experience it before really seeing if it works or not. I for one am happy with the change bcs as many of the people here said, most of the fan base (me included) is 30+ y.o.s and we just can't really dedicate that time to get 99 in a ladder season. Sure maybe we have it as our own goal but that would be a milestone for the whole year, not a ladder thing lol.

My 2 cents

I mean once you get a couple of characters to end-game build and have a stash with several HRs, it’s vastly diminishing returns on entertainment to keep playing for most people.

Like I’m not really going to keep grinding Chaos runs over and over and over so that I can get an Anni with higher resists.

I haven’t logged in for three days - I just continue posting here because the community is just as fun as the game itself (and less tedious and time consuming)

zaken520 wrote: 2 years ago

So i assume people just stop playing the game until ladder hits?
And even so, i think that would only briefly bring people back, after about 2-3 weeks, I think the game will just see diminishing player base as DR2,
even with it's updated graphics, is still an outdated game.

That's just how this genre works, most involved players play for hours every day and they're achieving their goals after 2-5 weeks so they quit. That part of playerbase is what keeps trading and services alive.

For example Path of Exile loses around half of players within 4 weeks after league start and most of them comes back when new "ladder" starts... and that's game with much bigger endgame, itemization and number of viable builds.

People got lured by nostalgia but game offers nothing but improved graphics compared to classic D2. The social aspects are even worse than it had 15 years ago... 2-3 chats per game which makes it impossible to communicate when you're in same game? Not switchable public channels that happen to have a

Cap of what 30-50? players and on top of that custom ones aren't possible to create.

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

I mean once you get a couple of characters to end-game build and have a stash with several HRs, it’s vastly diminishing returns on entertainment to keep playing for most people.

Like I’m not really going to keep grinding Chaos runs over and over and over so that I can get an Anni with higher resists.

I haven’t logged in for three days - I just continue posting here because the community is just as fun as the game itself (and less tedious and time consuming)

I've never played in BNet. Back in the day, because i simply couldn't and, currently, because of all the server problems at launch.
So I've been playing Solo Self-Found on Single Player a lot since launch and never got anything above

Mal.

Is trading really that big of a deall for getting stuff fast? Rarest items i've got is probably an

Mara's Kaleidoscope or a

Nosferatu's Coil. I'm not even close to Enigma. I feel like i'll probably play for years before reaching that point.

crocorinho wrote: 2 years ago

sonnytai331 wrote: 2 years ago

I mean once you get a couple of characters to end-game build and have a stash with several HRs, it’s vastly diminishing returns on entertainment to keep playing for most people.

Like I’m not really going to keep grinding Chaos runs over and over and over so that I can get an Anni with higher resists.

I haven’t logged in for three days - I just continue posting here because the community is just as fun as the game itself (and less tedious and time consuming)

I've never played in BNet. Back in the day, because i simply couldn't and, currently, because of all the server problems at launch.
So I've been playing Solo Self-Found on Single Player a lot since launch and never got anything above

Mal.

Is trading really that big of a deall for getting stuff fast? Rarest items i've got is probably an

Mara's Kaleidoscope or a

Nosferatu's Coil. I'm not even close to Enigma. I feel like i'll probably play for years before reaching that point.

I think so. Especially for runewords - even if you find really rare runes, if you don’t find the right ones, you won’t be able to make the most powerful items.

I’ve simply never ever found a

Jah, but I’ve found rarer runes like

Ber,

Cham, and

Zod.

Without trading I wouldn’t be able to make the stuff I wanted.

I totally agree with the original poster.

There's been a huge drop off in the number of active games.

I have to beg people to stay in my cow runs so that I'm not alone.



I wish BLizz would tweak the game in the upcoming rollouts and make things a little harder, while adding new items. I feel like things are too easy and mundane.

Before you jump down my throat, yea, I get it, D2R was not supposed to be a new game, only a re-make.

But at this point, everyone has experienced the "re-make" and we're ready for something new.

zaken520 wrote: 2 years ago

... see diminishing player base as DR2,
even with it's updated graphics, is still an outdated game. Compared to what's out there, its hard to stay in this game when there's so much competition available.

Wouldn't say that, quite the contrary, I almost forgot how brilliant and deep this game is. I loved Titan Quest and Grim Dawn, at least for a little while, only to get remembered how shallow these "new" games are.

But I feel a certain staleness kicking in, after playing several builds and getting almost all uniques and round about in reach of Fortitude - so I'm not certain I will grind to Infinity or Enigma, just don't feel like it's really worth it.

I'm quite excited for patch 2.4 though.

@Raymon4180 LOL +1 btw

Miroslav wrote: 2 years ago

Most people playing this game are old bastards like me who played the original back in the days, no?

Yes,I’ve been playing since Diablo 1 released in 96 when griswolds blacksmith was still operating selling the finest swords in all the lands.

Would love some new content...WoW does this well, continues to stretch the end game. Or at least did that well through Pandaria.

Game is dead as far as I am concerned. As predecessors already posted, doing cs,

Baal, etc again and again to get the last 1% to perfectionism gets quite boring eventually.
And I don’t think ladder or new runeword or anything else will significantly change this long term. At least not for me.

It’s not dead to me. I mainly play bnet single player a handful of hours a week (30’s, family, job, hobbies etc.) but still find a lot of enjoyment when I do get to log in even though my friends quit.

The trade game has enabled me to get a lot of mid level stuff through my self found items and am working my way up towards those high powered runewords, slowly but surely. Highest rune I’ve found is a

Vex but I probably have somewhere around 25

Ist of value in runes and items. Not huge but couldn’t have been possible without trades from this site for me anyways.

I would say for people that absolutely grind the game for hours on end, sure it will get stale a LOT faster then for someone like me. I do wish there were more active games though, as well as a good in game chat interface. I log in on mornings and it doesn’t matter whether I use US, EURO, or ASIA, there may be like 25 total games going and sometimes less.

Looking forward to 2.4 but I won’t be playing ladder.