is D3 on pc popular or dead now?

[Coldkil]

It's stale because there's not much new stuff to keep people interessed, but also because balance is still bad. Meaning that a few fun builds/sets are dead in the water weak while others are massively more competitive.

If you happen to love a build that is top notch, great, if you happen to just love a few underpowered builds, than nothing to do because you know it's pointless and you can't go much higher.

That isn't the case at all. Balance is currently pretty good with a couple of exceptions and every patch a new build comes out - with any build you can clear the entire journey. Some builds are anyway extremely powerful. Current Tal Rasha/Manald Heal for example; though the issue is more about Archon being insane.

The whole issue resides in what the game has to offer. Since GRs are the only endgame, it's just natural that peoiple gravitate towards the builds that can make you go further; also worth noting that there's place for only one #1 build or 4man meta.
Even if a build is just 0.01% better, people will just focus on that because some youtuber has made a "NEW META GR703928572629586+" video guide.

If the issue is "i cannot find groups because people want all a Wizard", that's a players problem. It's players locking out other players because they don't have a meta build.

But WHY this happens? Because the only content is an infinitely scaling randomized dungeon, so sooner or later you have to swap builds/character, or stop playing entirely.
If there was other kind of content that has a fixed difficulty (example all on T13 level) you'll see many more builds being played. But this isn't the case.

Another example: look at PoE. There are meta builds that are extremely overpowered all over the place. Point is, that the endgame can be done with any build and the only difference is clearing maps faster or slower. And you definitely don't need it - there are no ladders tied to that; only the race to 99 (like D2) and labirynth clears (timed runs) which are both very specific activities that appeal only a portion of the playerbase.
TL;DR: you can do everything with any build and have no issues, because endgame has a very different structure.

[McFuu]

The whole issue resides in what the game has to offer. Since GRs are the only endgame, it's just natural that peoiple gravitate towards the builds that can make you go further; also worth noting that there's place for only one #1 build or 4man meta.

Another example: look at PoE. There are meta builds that are extremely overpowered all over the place. Point is, that the endgame can be done with any build and the only difference is clearing maps faster or slower. And you definitely don't need it - there are no ladders tied to that; only the race to 99 (like D2) and labirynth clears (timed runs) which are both very specific activities that appeal only a portion of the playerbase.
TL;DR: you can do everything with any build and have no issues, because endgame has a very different structure.

I think a good idea for the D3 team would be introduce Set-item leaderboards. This would completely alleviate the issue of some sets performing better than others by giving them their own board to focus on. Now you can pretty much get to GR60-70 with anyset, the higher GRs are reserved for the stronger sets + Ancient + Paragon Lvl. But at the end of the day a leaderboard for each set would take some strain off of people going to 1 set, they can play what they want.

[Coldkil]

I think a good idea for the D3 team would be introduce Set-item leaderboards. This would completely alleviate the issue of some sets performing better than others by giving them their own board to focus on. Now you can pretty much get to GR60-70 with anyset, the higher GRs are reserved for the stronger sets + Ancient + Paragon Lvl. But at the end of the day a leaderboard for each set would take some strain off of people going to 1 set, they can play what they want.

Imho leaderboards are pretty useless if there's no common ground for a timed runs system. Current ones are just a list of the few people who care about playing 100% efficently and basically more than other people who do the same.

[Eazy]

It's dead, at least for me.

I'd like to see D3 Exp with PvP(balanced) or D4...

[Mifuyne]

Path of Exile is the real D3

[MyndZero]

If they want to make the game relevant, and they aren't making another Diablo game to be released any time soon then a few things need to happen.

1) Expansion. This is the ONLY way to get even a shred of interest back into the game
2) Take it F2P.
3) Continuous content, seasons with big changes - I'd propose things like how Leagues work in POE.
4) Make it harder to reach the last 1% of the grind.

[Deleted]

It's dead, at least for me.

I'd like to see D3 Exp with PvP(balanced) or D4...

PvP balanced in a ARPG? Good one.

[draykorinee]

I find full groups any time of day easily. I don't know how anyone else can quantify a 'dead' game like this other than can you find groups, which you can. So no, not dead.

[Kokolums]

One of the best things I enjoyed in D2 was runeforge farming. You speedlevel a char to the hell hellforge and try to collect runes for high level runewords. It might take months to build a powerful runeword. I liked how it incorporated a lot of the game: you had to level up from level 1, played the game, and the prize was an endgame weapon.

Wow: Legion offers something similar to that: leveling alts to 110. Every alt you level to 110 gets access to the order hall missions. Once you do THAT and build up your followers to level 110 and ilvl 850, these big gold missions start popping. Every char getting those missions rakes into about 30k passive gold per month. Do that 10x and you are taking in 300k per month without really doing anything. That's crazy. But it requires playing the game to unlock that.

[Eazy]

PvP balanced in a ARPG? Good one.

They had different PvP templates for Legion, why not doing the same thing for D3? Like Armors only for the Arenas.

[Zeta333]

Dead and gone.
only D4 will revive the franchise, the Necromancer pack will get people going for abit and when they realize Its the same thing they did for the past seasons they willl quit again for good.

D4+RMAH will get this machine going.

the only thing that will revive this series is if they pull thier heads out of thier ass and make it true to diablo 2 and not this retarded shit they went with for d3.

[Super Kami Dende]

I always hit max on at least 1 character a season. Have rebirthed the same DH and Barb since it became a thing.

I lost interest after about 3 weeks of a new season since I don't have the time for the gear grind to push leader boards. Highest I think I got was like 670 or something in a Season when I was unemployed for a bit. Ancient legs kinda made it harder to compete.

[Deleted]

They had different PvP templates for Legion, why not doing the same thing for D3? Like Armors only for the Arenas.

Because of how powerful certain skills, abilities and items are?

- - - Updated - - -

If they want to make the game relevant, and they aren't making another Diablo game to be released any time soon then a few things need to happen.

1) Expansion. This is the ONLY way to get even a shred of interest back into the game
2) Take it F2P.
3) Continuous content, seasons with big changes - I'd propose things like how Leagues work in POE.
4) Make it harder to reach the last 1% of the grind.

So make D4 a new PoE? Why? Those who like PoE can continue playing PoE. And PoE doesnt care about casuals, Blizzard does a lot. So theyd never make a PoE clone.

[Tojara]

I play every season for a couple weeks, just like I do with the other ARPGs I play. Eventually you just reach a point where you get small gains for a lot of work (and that's true of all of these games), and unless you care about playing throughout the entire season, you're just gonna hang them up and wait for the next one.

The only thing that pisses me off is the quality of patches between each season. If every season, or every second season for that matter offered changes to the level of the cube patch, this game would be a lot more fun to play.

Part of me hopes the DLC content is actually good so they continue with it (as long as it's quality), but the other part of me wishes they didn't try and just build a new game from scratch.

The more I play PoE the more I see similarities between the games but Diablo falls flat in a lot of areas that could actually make the game more fun. I will say that Diablo runs well, responds well and has pretty UI elements. It's just a bit flat in the end game and I think in ARPG being a bit more complicated is probably better for the genre, and one of the problems with Diablo is that it's too simple, just for the sake of being simple (obvious design choice there). Equally though, I do hate having to do research to play a game properly and having things hidden from you, or not completely obvious how something works is just as frustrating, and that's something I take issue with on PoE.

I mean in the end all you really do in both games is grind endless maps. It's just that items and character building in PoE are far superior. Diablo just runs better and is reliable. It just won't climb walls, or turn on jets that allow you to fly in the air.

I'd never want them to turn Diablo into PoE though, I just want them to put some more difficult decisions in building your character, and/or the items that you find/build back into the game again. They took too much out of what made Diablo and Diablo 2 great when they made Diablo 3. They don't need to go full on PoE mode, but something between the two would be great. For me I don't like spamming flasks in PoE, leveling is even worse in that game (the next patch might fix it) and the UI is just awful that it makes me want to turn the game off (but to be fair, it's free to play so that's fine). I have item filters and all that, but I still feel like most of the game is a currency grind, where you're spending most of your time filtering through thousands of items that are dropping and then working your inventory and trading. One of Diablos greatest strengths is you just play the game. Whereas in PoE you're an auctioneer, junker and sometimes you go do dungeons. The cost of that simplicity is that there isn't much variety nor depth in item decisions, or character building.

[Aoyi]

Contrary to popular belief, those aren't the only two states a game can be in. I wouldn't say its anywhere near as popular as it was 5 years ago, but it's still got a decent user base, especially considering its age. New seasons are coming out every few months and Blizzard actively tweaks abilities. I can't seem to help coming back to it every couple months as smushing demons seems to always have an appeal.

[Eazy]

Because of how powerful certain skills, abilities and items are?

And they can't make it the same as in WoW? For example - Colossus Smash DMG/armor reduction was lower in PVP than in PVE, I can see them doing the same thing in D3, because why not?

[Zeta333]

You know whats funny is diablo 2 still has ladder seasons and still has a decent population.

[Binaris]

Contrary to popular belief, those aren't the only two states a game can be in. I wouldn't say its anywhere near as popular as it was 5 years ago, but it's still got a decent user base, especially considering its age. New seasons are coming out every few months and Blizzard actively tweaks abilities. I can't seem to help coming back to it every couple months as smushing demons seems to always have an appeal.

I'm in the same boat. Why is it always like this with gamers these days. It is even worse when they talk about mmos. Wow killer this, didnt kill wow so much be dead that. These people have a depressing way of looking at things in black and white.
Is D3 as active as it used to be? No

But much like Aoyi, many of us come back season after season, do our few weeks of slaughter, actually have fun until we hit w/e wall we personally set for ourselves and then quit until next season. Sad that many who do this sit on forums in thier offtime talking about how this game is shit forgetting they actually enjoyed the first 2-3 weeks of season.

Diablo 3 is a seasonal game made to work well with the idea of play for a bit, take a break till next season, repeat. It is a pleasant break from other games at times when content can be scarce. They would do really well to speed up wows smaller content patches and plan them WITH diablo seasons. Seasons could start a month before next content patch for wow to give people something to do other than bitch about nothing to do in thier mmo.

[Showtimes24]

Gonna play again this season, max out a few character, get paragon 800 and then stop. As usual But it still fun for the first few weeks

[Deleted]

They had different PvP templates for Legion, why not doing the same thing for D3? Like Armors only for the Arenas.

Because you'll never be able to scale it even decently when the numbers rise exponentially. PvP is a side feature in ARPG game, you don't balance around it