So, I haven’t played D3 in 4-5 years (basically since Necro release) and after the disaster known as Kalandra in PoE I was bored to find and play some new ARPG, gave Undecember a go, somewhat liked it despite the monetisation but it felt like it lacked something.
Fast forward to Sunday, I turn on D3. I was surprised to find somewhat of a more interesting season mechanic and some new things in the game and after a day of playing it, the joy of the game definitely stuck to me. The combat is just unmatched as well as various other polish elements that other ARPGs just don’t have.
This realisation actually made me extremely sad, because in a sense it was a realisation “This could have been the best ARPG in the world but it got killed by lack of content”.
So we all get it that D4 is coming out and I am rather hyped about it, but we can reasonably assume D3-Remake will also be a thing that will happen. This also makes me wonder what other people think about:
IF we get a guarantee for new content, new skills, more passives and better end game, say a version of Uber bosses you can summon like in PoE with some sort of a Rift System like Atlas and more interesting encounters inside rifts:
- Would you be willing to pay for a seasonal battle passes that give you cosmetic rewards?
- Would you be willing for blizzard to add Cosmetics you can buy such as cool sets and pets?
- Be able to buy an additional number of stash tabs up to some limit for say $10 per tab?
I was totally expecting a Druid DLC after the Necromancer, but we quickly saw that got reserved to D4. In a sense, I must say the negative backlash against the Necro DLC might have also caused the lack of content in D3. I still remember how hard people whined about having to pay for the Necromancer. Still, gaming has changed substantially and I feel this sort of monetisation is increasingly more accepted. I also cannot argue with the fact gaming companies need to pay salaries in order to provide new content.
The reason I am wondering is that after going from ARPG to ARPG I realised how undervalued D3 really is. Last Epoch has some promise but with the pace of development I am not holding my breath there. I would be fine with all of the above if it means D3 continues to evolve and improve, how realistic that is I don’t know.
I am curious to hear the community take on this.
A D3 remake? Not going to happen.
More stash tabs? Not going to happen due to technical limitations.
The rest, and the future of D3 after the release of D4, we’ll just have to wait and see.
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Edit: I found about the technical limitation of stash tabs and it does sound like a lack of development funds to be fixed but I also somewhat understand the “suck it up” aspect. Still the battlepass and cosmetic thing are probably achievable.
What are the technical limitations for stash tabs? I feel like that is probably a very solvable issue. I can think of some examples for example in other games like Lost Ark, where they claimed there were technical limitations for server transfers that weren’t really a thing as it was already implemented in KR.
Why are you saying the remake is unlikely?
The entire stash content from all players in the same session has to be synced with everyone. Since items aren’t simple static objects but do actually have a bunch of scripting associated with them (they’re “actors”, just like NPCs and other interactive objects), that puts a huge strain on the ancient engine. Even if the hardware could handle it, the engine likely not.
Other potential issue is serverwide. Every item has a unique ID number. This allows them to be separated from each other, even if there was multiple completely identical items. Larger stash means more ID numbers can get reserved,leaving less available for the drops for all players on the server. If the ID number has enough digits, this shouldn’t be too big of an issue but I’ve seen the limited ID number pool causing problems in other games so it should be taken into consideration.
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I believe we’ve learned over the years, more or less officially, that the coding behind D3 is so big, convoluted, “messy” and outdated (maybe not the best word?) that fundamental changes are near impossible.
This would also make a remake questionable. Besides: what would be the purpose of a remake? Graphics are fine, gameplay is smooth and fine, it runs well on the platforms. There may be problems with lag in some multiplayer and singleplayer games. But they are probably related to the powers from the season theme and will go away when season ends.
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A comment to this part: the necromancer dlc has been a huge success, as far as I know. It’s true that there has been a lot of whining, but that hasn’t stopped the majority from getting it (the majority of active players of course). Over the years, since 2012, there has been a lot of whining, but it has been from players already investing in D3, the LoD expansion and the DLC.
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I agree with this point. Which reasonably translates that if a remake happens it wont be for another 5 to 10 years realistically, lol. For stash tabs I did research the subject and I found that particular information that both of you shared and I know people have talked about “private stash tabs”, in any event, let’s say that is a non-possibility.
Still nobody is really giving any answers with regards to willingness to pay for cosmetics or battle passes on the premise of more content, which was the core of my question.
I personally believe Blizzard planned 4 expansions for D3 initially to have us go to Level 100 cap with more choices of passives / skills. 70 just feels off to me, but hey what do I know. All I know is that there was a 2nd expansion planned after RoS that got scrapped and from it was extracted the Necromancer DLC.
Still, purely objectively speaking, D3 has sold what 35-40mln copies + ? The revenue it pulled is no joke and its fair to say that while the playerbase is waiting for D4 with much much enthusiasm there will be a lot of people that don’t like the new MMO-style approach of D4 and will stick to D2 or D3 based on preference. I think PoE’s idea to combine PoE 1 & PoE 2 for the content that is available to both is somewhat brilliant and shows that even older games might have a reason “exist” and be maintained.
I wonder based on the fact they added that Echoing Nightmares thing how hard would it be to spawn random uber bosses much the same way in terms of development and add actual challenging content? Of course there is a limit to what can be pulled out of thin air but am I the only one that thinks its possible?
The Necro DLC was legitimately some of the most fun time I’ve had gaming since Classic WoW as a 16 year old kid, so to me it was a huge success and it was also a huge disappointment nothing more came after it.
I wouldn’t pay since I’m not a naive person who thinks profits from such things would mean more content.
Only 2 were planned and the second was canceled before the first one, RoS, was released. The second was barely in concept stage. The level caps mean nothing in regards what was planned or not.
Blizzard has confirmed over 65 million copies sold.
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Well that is why I said if we get a guarantee for more content.
I’m not totally against in-game buying. Don’t care about skins and other cosmetics but if stash tabs were available for cash I’d probably have a huge ten, twenty or more tabs (full of junk!). As I don’t play crazy much anymore (if I ever have) I wouldn’t mind having an option to upgrade my GR keys, so that when I sit down to play for an hour or so 75% of the maps wouldn’t be obnoxiously convoluted caves, keeps or corvuses. And I wouldn’t mind having an option to upgrade the number of runes in hard earned bounty caches (not hard but time consuming and a bit boring).
All at a very modest price, and I would still have to farm the keys and caches.
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I don’t think i understand the question.
Finally read the questions .
- Possibly
- Possibly
- No