Stop there you criminal sc*m ! Last Epoch crafting system is streets ahead of PoE’s. For nothing i would love to see it in LE. Too random and expensive for “normal players” (the one who play 2h a day you know). Even with harvest it’s not deterministic (and cheap) enough to my taste.
What’s good about PoE are the possibilities of the build, the content and the diversity. The looting / crafting system in PoE are too archaic for me. It’s too grindy. I’m finally burnt out of the game after 3 years of playing it.
If spamming currency on an item to get random stats, from a random pool, for a random range of numbers, what every sane person would instantly declare as gambling, is “crafting” to you, then yes. PoE has the very best crafting system ever made.
I agree with you on these things, therefore you are correct & a good person.
This isn’t as interesting a question as one may thing. For a start, GGG have only a single game, therefore any figures in their statutory accounts can be related to PoE which makes things nice & easy. Secondly, they have a metric f***ton of cash.
New Zealand Companies Register for GGG, if you take the “documents” option & look for the “financial statements” (latest is the 10mb document), that’s their statutory accounts which will tell you everything you never wanted to know about their business & probably nothing you actually wanted to know.
Page 6 is their Profit & Loss (as was, current international financial standards suggests it be called a “Statement of Comprehensive Income”), that’ll give you their sales ($99.2m Kiwi dollars), costs & taxes. Needless to say, they are insanely profitable (48.6m profit after tax compared to 99.2m income = 49% which is redonculous, their gross margin is 71m / 99.2 = 71.6%, which is even more redonculous).
Page 7 is their Balance Sheet which is where the really “sexy stuff” happens (to an accountant). They have 85.7m cash, which is all the sales of MTX, supporter packs, etc that they’re deferring to recognise in the future as per their accounting policies (note 1 B (ii), revenue recognition of gaming revenue, page 11, sales of MTX is recognised over 3 months, sales of “account stuff” like stash tabs are recognised over 12 months, very sensible). 75% of their sales (99.2m) relates to MTX (& therefore recognised over the 3 month league cycle) with the rest being “long term” account stuff & recognised over 12 months.
Now, I’m lazy & going to take a bit of a shortcut & say that the cash they’re sitting on (85.7m) is roughly 2/3 related to long term (stash tabs) & 1/3 short term (MTX & supporter packs), which means they’re sitting on ~30m of cash from MTX & supporter packs and ~55m of cash from stash tabs. That’s quite a lot.
Page 8 is less interesting, but yes, they paid out 24.7m of dividends to their shareholders (~80% of which is Tencent).
Another thing to note, GGG are a good corporate citizen, they pay their taxes (effective tax rate of 18.1m tax / 66.7m profit before tax = 27%, NZ tax rate is 30%, they likely have some tax breaks for game development).
At no point in the stat accounts do GGG mention player numbers, which would probably be more interesting.
Now, Blizzard are owned by Activision Blizzard (here for their stat accounts) & their stat accounts cover way more than just D3. Plus US GAAP is a big steaming pile of ****. You’ll also notice that their stat accounts are a lot more “big corporate” & shiney with a lot more talk (spin) about how awesome they are, how they never mistreat anyone & #totes pay their taxes (hint, very little, pages 43 & 54, though it was more than 2018). They are also focussed a lot more on stock markets & how awesomely ActiBlizz outperformed a variety of stock indexes. Any numbers you might want to see re D2 will be consolidated into oblivion due to the relative size of D3 compared to ActiBlizz (or even just Blizzard)
All pages will be referenced to the PDF reader (ie, including the front page), not the number at the bottom of the page. So page 3 of the pdf is also page 1 'cause the first to pages are their shiney front page & a comment to their shareholders).
Diablo is mentioned on pages 3 (a list of their popular franchises), 4 (Diablo Immortal & a mention that “Last year, Blizzard unveiled more major content in its pipeline than ever before, including the eagerly anticipated next instalments for Overwatch and Diablo”, aka, Immortal), 11 (Diablo is a “key product franchise”), 42 (again, Diablo Immortal & how they are expanding their franchise to mobile after the acquisition of King) & 82 (again, “key product franchise” as part of their 3 lines of business, Activision, Blizzard & King).
The most granular details you can see (as far as I can tell) are at the Activision/Blizzard/King level (page 46).
If the above didn’t send you to sleep, maybe you should become an accountant.
And another reason to hate US corporate accounts, there’s no centralised register of company accounts (like there is for the UK & NZ) so it’s not as easy to just do a quick search for the company accounts to do some research on a company. If they’re a publicly traded company it won’t be too hard since they’ll be required to file with the SEC (& their system doesn’t seem too bad).
Diablo 3 had box sales, PoE doesn’t, you can’t compare the two on unit sales, they just aren’t comparable. You can compare them on numbers of players, though that’s a lot harder to do since Blizz doesn’t regularly release those numbers & the most easily obtainable numbers for PoE are from Steam & that ignores everyone who plays on console & the non-steam pc version.
@ManiaCCC can’t state it as a fact that PoE is beating D3 since our numbers for PoE are incomplete & we don’t have any comparable numbers for D3.
Yeah, 30m units @ £40 average price per unit (which is probably too high) = £1.2b (£30 per unit would give £900m). Taking PoE’s recognised revenue for 2019 (NZ $99m) with the ~37% growth they had from 2018 to 2019 (72.3m -> 99.2m) and extending that back to 2012 gets a total “sales” of ~NZ $337m which would be ~£167m (plus their cash of $87m = £44m. £167m + £44m = £210m).
That said, from the 2011 Blizzcon anyone who ponied up for an annual pass for WoW got a free copy of D3. How many was that? No idea, but it’ll be some of that 30m unit sales. Also, what has the average price of D3 been over it’s lifetime? How many of those sales were not at full price? Even if you assume the average price of D3 was only £10 to account for free copies, sales, etc (but not accounting for the higher prices on consoles) that gives £300m revenue compared to the likely overestimated £167m for PoE (£210m inc their cash).
So yes, D3 will have sold more than PoE. How much more? No idea, but probably more than a factor of 2 but less than a factor of 10. And don’t get me started with inflation, my brain hurts already.
TLDR: Yes, D3 sold more than PoE, probably somewhere in the region of x2 to x10.
Edit: Yes, I’m bored & no, I hadn’t done the maths before.
Yes, what was your point? Are you saying that we’re not allowed to have a (polite) argument on the internet? 'Cause there’s only one other thing that the internet is for. Well, 2 other things.
Edit: Besides, he’s been temp-banned, not perma-banned.
D3 sales don’t matter, at all. Vast majority of their sales were a product of D2’s success and the expectations D3 had, being the sequel to the greatest arpg ever made. That said…
The title of this thread is kind of silly. Nothing like d3/poe/gd would mean it’s not an isometric arpg, first and foremost. What would that even look like, first person turn-based RTS? Maybe a 2d side-scroll farming simulator?
Point being, you need to take the best of every game, best of the genre and build from that. To not take the best innovations from arpgs over the last 30 years is to extremely handicap you, not to mention alienate those that might expect those basic, genre defining and qol features.
Just stating a fact that this pointless discussion only continues due to people who didn’t start it in the first place. It’s gone off-topic and should probably be closed.
On top of that, considering the OP was temp-banned, I would call for a moderator to close this topic.
Sales are important, they just aren’t everything. They are a measure of economic success, but not necessarily of technical or artistic success. And if you don’t have enough sales then your company folds & you don’t get to keep on making games anymore (until you go & get employed by another company), and games are what we the game-playing public want.
Absolutely, to not see what other people did well & badly is foolish. To not be inspired by anything else in the genre (or other genres, just look at PoE’s leagues Blight was tower defence & Harvest is Farmville) is … disappointing? Means you’ve been living under a rock & not being influenced any anything else?
I think you misunderstand me. What you said is right, in a vacuum and generally should be applied to most products, but not very applicable to the case of D3. D3 initial sales were entirely based on D2. In fact, D3 gameplay previews and trailers likely detracted from the initial sales D3 could have had, had they shown nothing and only sold it based on it being D2’s sequel(for instance, right away people disliked that it was too bright, pastel, cartoony, unlike D2’s dark, gritty theme). Monetary success has no place in the conversation if the monetary success was not had based on the merits of the game in question itself. We’re talking about game design(what they did right/wrong), and citing how many sales they got based on the game’s predecessor makes very little sense. And to your secondary point, Blizzard was in no position to go under, they just came off of(arguably) their best wow expansion ever and also merged with Activision.
I think it’s probably extremely difficult to measure the success of the two games against each other because there are so many variables that don’t compare or can’t be ascertained. I’d venture to say each was wildly popular with their target demographic. And there will always be fans of each.
Maybe it’s sort of like comparing Star Trek and Star Wars (yeah, I’m opening that can of worms.) Their both sci-fi (and, again, yes, even that can be debated) and both are wildly successful, regardless of what bumps in the road that may have crossed. But to try and say one is more successful then the other is an attempt at trying to figure out some minutae that will never be unearthed.
Potentially the only thing ‘factual’ about what you said is:
And this is certainly even debatable given the conversation is still discussion PoE, D3 etc though to strictly in the game mechanics area, but even the title itself doesn’t specifically state game mechanics. So in other words it is opinion not fact. Which is completely fine but does open up the possibility for debate.
I would be totally fine with them moving the thread into the off-topic category. But simply because your opinion is that it is ‘useless’ doesn’t mean others don’t find it interesting/useful/entertaining.
But thankfully, the devs are fully capable (opinion?/fact?) and will police this how they see fit given it’s there house.
Imho the original topic itself is not really helpful in any kind. But this community is special. Not only do people not ignore the topic, but turn it into an interesting discussion.
This is what I really like about you guys.
I’m not always capable of doing this, but I learn things continuously.
Cool your jets. I said it has potential. I didn’t say it was good. Things like Essences and Fossils that give the player a little control can be helpful. Stuff like Chances or Alchs, less so. Had they gone with a system more…well, more like LE’s, I’d probably play a lot more PoE.
I believe this is GGG’s interpretation of crafting, not mine. As I said in my post, I think it has potential. I never said I loved the current state.
My point in making the statement is that the person whose post I was responding to has no grounds for the comment except their own bias.
I lurk (and occasionally dabble in) the communities of both games. In my personal experience, it is the PoE fans who are much more abrasive with the “my game is better than your game” rhetoric that they pass off as if it were fact.
I’m sick of it, honestly. From both sides.
EA’s sports games sell really well. By a commercial standard, they’re good games because they’re profitable. I, on the other hand, think sports games are hot garbage. I don’t run around on the FIFA forums trash talking that game just because I don’t like it. I hang out on the sites of games I like instead.
I am burnt the hell out on people passing off their opinion and bias as if it were fact. That’s all.
Diablo 3 is an amazing ARPG, it’s my favourite game of all time. The combat and skills feel amazing. The story, the music, the monster and level design, it was all perfect.
The itemisation is fantastic. You actually find upgrades frequently while levelling, unlike PoE where you have to trade for them, or LE where you basically have to build them yourself if you don’t want to be using level 1 items at end game.
I love the fact that there’s no trading so you actually have to farm things yourself. When you get an upgrade it actually feels good to have found it. And it’s so easy to see if something is an upgrade without having to get out your spreadsheets.
It takes a very long time to get a full set of primal ancient gear with augments so there’s always something to work towards.
Sets and uniques are build defining unlike PoE where sets don’t exist, or LE where they would be good but there’s always some negative effect that ruins it. I expect the people that complain about items in D3 haven’t played since it was entirely reworked.
People actually play multiplayer together unlike PoE which is just awful, or LE which doesn’t even have multiplayer yet. Greater rifts have endless difficulty and people actually have to work together using voice comms, sometimes synchronising their builds or running support characters. I haven’t seen this in any other ARPG.
The paragon system means that there is always some way to improve your character when you are getting unlucky with drops.
I can’t wait for Diablo 4, I am sure it’s going to sell better than Diablo 3 and show all the haters.
If Jason Schreier story is to be believed, blizzard was not happy with both of D3: RoS sale performance, and the perception from the community. Also necromancer pack had bad performance too. While you are sales are important to the point, the cashflow is the key here. Take a guess, which company has it better. Few hints - GGG started as 4 man company, during beta they had 25 people and before Tencent, they grew up to 120+ people. In D3 had same number of unique players in month as PoE - while PoE is heavily supported by mtx. In 2019 PoE playerbase increased in size even more.
Maybe it sounds as speculation to you, but I don’t feel that way. I think it’s actually pretty clear where the money is right now.
Sarno might get that, not sure about the rest of you non-Brits (assuming he’s from the north, not the south. **** this sounded better in my head).
Which bit did you like the most? Personally I thought Azmodean’s monologues during act 3 was definitely the most “perfect”.
I’m (seriously) glad you enjoyed the story though, it’s always sad when someone buys a game & is disappointed by it.
I did play it quite a bit after RoS & IMO, if you have to make a skill (or item/set/etc) competitive by adding a x1,000 multiplier on it, there’s something wrong with your itemisation.
You’re right, it is good that you find gear to use as you level up, it’s a bit disappointing that that all stops when you get to end-game & it’s either set-based or the legacy of dreams (set) + uniques. I’m glad as **** I don’t have to do balance in an aRPG, it seems like they can never get that “right”.
That doesn’t surprise me at all, capitalism seems to bring out the worst in people (& corporations are just big groups of people who often seem to forget that they’re people & that they’re ****ing over other people) with this being a prime example. Mahoosive sales & yet it’s still not enough. A company has significant growth & improvement over the last few years & then doesn’t for one year? Stock market is happy to tank your share price.
Yes, cash is king & GGG are sitting on both a metric & imperial ****ton of it. Being beholden to a stockmarket sucks. If you’re not doing great, you have to spin it in a positive way (done that) & if you are doing well, it’s not enough.
And that’s why PoE continues (& has to continue) to put out new stuff (leagues as well as MTX). If D3 had the “recurrent user spending” barf to support it, I’m sure Blizzard would be continuing to put out content for it (proper content, not just the minor tweaks & additions that D3 gets).
But that’s probably not actually true, if you have a look at the very quick & extremely dirty maths I did here. Blizz would have taken a massive amount of cash from people when it launched & over the subsequent years, and even taking inflation into account they’re still probably sitting on more cash (that was from D3 sales if you could ring-fence it rather than just dump it all into a Scrouge McDuck style swiming pool with all the rest of the Blizzard cash) than GGG.
The main problem is that there’s too much multiplayer bias and solo players get the shaft. I hope D4 has better solo vs group scaling. I don’t mind grouping being a little better, but it shouldn’t be orders of magnitude better to the point where you’re knowingly handicapping yourself by choosing to play solo.
I hope D4 either has capped Paragon or no Paragon. Having a finite end to character progression is a good thing because it allows for far easier balancing.
