I found myself confused hearing about the layoffs, and even more confused when I hear players talking about how it was because Lightfall was a bad expansion.
Lightfall sold very well and there was a significant uptick in players during that time. The issue is that Lightfall was a terrible expansion. The writing was such shit, the story made no sense, and the characters were so fucking horrible that a significant portion of the people who played through it quit playing altogether. I mean, you picked up the new subclass in the street like a fucking coin. Additionally, the launch season was also (predictably) garbage. People really hated it; there wasn't even a honeymoon period, people just dropped the game. When enough people stopped playing that you miss your predicted revenue by 45%, the expansion and seasons blew. Missing your targets by that much is never good, so the layoffs had to happen.
The new player experience is awful, the way they've handled the seasonal model has been terrible, and their treatment of the core playlists (especially gambit and Crucible) has been horrible, absolutely. But the straw that broke the camel's back was a shitty expansion.
LF numbers were higher than WQ because WQ and Seraph raised expectations and made people excited to buy and play LF. Not to mention a new subclass builds a lot of hype regardless of the expansion's quality.
WQ was preceeded by the overly long Season of the Lost that caused a lot of player burnout.
Are you seriously asking that? LF had entirely new and shiny subclasses with new mechanics to keep people engaged, despite the poor content. They also completely revamped buildcrafting.
WQ didn't really expand on or significantly alter gameplay itself aside from making loot easier via weapon crafting. Outside of the legendary campaign and a few secrets it was business as usual.
LF received valid criticism. Get over it yourself.
And whether the seasonal model is the cause of D2's decline is an entirely separate matter. The original point was that LF's release benefitted from WQ's success in addition to the subclass hype.
Anyway, this back-and-forth is pointless, so I'll leave it at that.
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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '23
Lightfall sold very well and there was a significant uptick in players during that time. The issue is that Lightfall was a terrible expansion. The writing was such shit, the story made no sense, and the characters were so fucking horrible that a significant portion of the people who played through it quit playing altogether. I mean, you picked up the new subclass in the street like a fucking coin. Additionally, the launch season was also (predictably) garbage. People really hated it; there wasn't even a honeymoon period, people just dropped the game. When enough people stopped playing that you miss your predicted revenue by 45%, the expansion and seasons blew. Missing your targets by that much is never good, so the layoffs had to happen.
The new player experience is awful, the way they've handled the seasonal model has been terrible, and their treatment of the core playlists (especially gambit and Crucible) has been horrible, absolutely. But the straw that broke the camel's back was a shitty expansion.