Chapter 220 - Revenue (1/2)

Many industry professionals had their eyes on Reaper of Souls as well.

Everybody knew about Diablo’s crippling decline. Players and designers alike were trying to figure out how to reverse the process and extend Diablo’s life, but nothing conclusive was reached.

Many suggestions pitched by players or designers were quickly shut down by others. These suggestions would always entail changing the core of Diablo or make it decline faster.

As a hack and slash game, it was natural that people would get bored of it quickly.

And in the eyes of many designers, there was nothing that could be done as in order to solve the problem, the core of the game must be changed, which would obviously affect how fun the game was.

The pros and cons of a game like this were two sides of the same coin, and improvements difficult to implement.

But nobody expected Chen Mo to double down on the hack and slash element of the game.

You think grinding is boring?

Alright, I’ll just add more ways to make you grind. Are you still bored?

Many players realised that it wasn’t boring, but was actually quite fun!

It was like reverse psychology. Although the game seemed to be even more grindy after the release of ranked seasons and the leaderboards, people gained more enjoyment out of it.

There were even articles analyzing how Reaper of Souls managed to save Diablo’s post game.

“As someone who got bored of Diablo, it’s hard to imagine that Reaper of Souls had made such a big change in the game.

“First it increased the content.

“The expansion pack continued to maintain its unique atmosphere with mountains of corpses, feeling townspeople, and demons all over the place. This was maintained all the way, and you could feel the world calling.

“The best part was the confrontation between the main character and Adria. It was so satisfying to be able to kill that horrible witch again and again!

“What’s most surprising was the Nephalem Rift mechanic. Different maps and random elements are joined together, making it so every level after being teleported into the realm feels like a crazy fever dream.

“And when you kill the last boss, the ground is positively littered with loot, and ancient equipment would drop almost every single time. Chen Mo created a simple yet effective system, launch the game, kill bosses, get rewards, quit the game. The players can skip over all the convoluted steps and enjoy the best of hacking and slashing.

“In truth, through the expansion pack, Chen Mo let us know that the core of the game is still grinding. Chen Mo used a few new game modes that suited Diablo really well to revive this game.

“The pros of this game: Dark atmosphere, adventures, long-lasting satisfaction, and amazing visual effects.

“If you like games where you kill hordes upon hordes of mobs, then without a shadow of a doubt, Diablo: Reaper of Souls is your best pick”

—

Diablo’s expansion pack, Reaper of Souls, gave a new life to the game, extending its lifespan, solidifying Diablo’s position in this genre.

And its unique art style and game play became a popular branch under the RPG tree as video game designers look into it again and again.

And the designer who was most inspired by Reaper of Souls was probably Yan Zhenyuan.

Reaper of Souls arrived after he decided on the post game of this new project, and even started working on the design documents of the game.

After investigating the features of Reaper of Souls, Yan Zhenyuan spent three days making huge changes to the design of the game.

Although this meant that a lot of work had to be redone, dramatically increasing the workload, Yan Zhenyuan was sure that it would be worth it in the end.