Originally Posted by
Rainarch
Let's have a look at both the current situation, and the previous season of events for Diablo 3, HuD, and also a brief bit about the future.
Diablo 3, as a game, is slowly but surely dying off. Season 15 has been by far the most inactive season in the history of Diablo 3. EVER. The factors contributing to this is the simple fact the game is getting stale, but also the fact there has been absolutely no content releases or meta shakeups for 3 seasons, meaning people are sick of doing ~9months of the same meta and runs, in an already dying (or as most say, "dead" game)
On top of the inactivity of D3, there's also been some strong memory obfuscation attempts by blizzard to prevent bots, huds, and other 3rd party softwares from functioning correctly with diablo 3. These small patches only addressed MINOR bugs, and did nothing content wise, or balance wise.
Even with absolutely no balance or content releases coming out at all, blizzard is already putting strong pressure to dissuade 3rd party programs from working, even in a season with the all time lowest player activity.
Now we're about 3 weeks away from the season end; And blizzard has yet again put out another "does nothing" minor patch that once again breaks memory address of 3rd party tools.
Even if this patch didn't include any strong attempts to obfuscate memory, there is a MAJOR rebalancing patch coming out before the start of next season, less than a month away.
We can infer that if blizzard is obfuscating memory in non-gameplay changing patches during ~9 month old stale content seasons with the all time low player base in the history of D3, it is extremely likely that the influx of returning players for the new rebalance updates in Season 16 will only logically increase Blizzard's attempts to prevent bots and huds from working.
The amount of time and effort needed to get HuD working for the last 3 weeks of season, when the game is at an all-time low of players, just simply doesn't make too much sense with a new, MAJOR patch so close on the horizon.
And we know for a fact that the incoming Major rebalancing patch for Season 16 WILL definitely break HuDs and bots again.
After the embarrassing announcement of Diablo:Immortal, Blizzard needs to set an example, and improve their public view of the Diablo franchise, meaning they are under higher pressure than ever to improve the public image of Diablo 3, a game infamous for bots and botting. Whether this pressure correlates to extra memory obfuscation attempts remains to be seen, but logically speaking, seems quite likely to be the case.
To be perfectly honest, even the whole Season 16 re-balancing patch is just a bone thrown to try to pacify and keep the D3 community happy, it only includes braindead tweaks of multipliers and nothing innovative or new. Blizzard is DESPERATE to show that they are changing and maintaining Diablo 3. This likely means more updates, more banwaves, and more effort put into memory obfuscation and attempts to make the game more appealing to members outside of the D3 community, such that the Diablo 3 game reflects positively upon Blizzard's name.
All these factors simply make it more difficult, but also less rewarding, for a developer to maintain and update a 3rd party tool such as HuD.
THAT is the recent, current, and soon to be state of Diablo 3 as objectively as I can word it.
I've put over 3k hours into D3 over the past year, and all of it would not have been even marginally very enjoyable without HuD. The first time blizzard obfuscated D3 memory were some of the least enjoyable weeks in Diablo 3 for me, ever. But thanks to Enigma's help, KJ and the D3 community got through it and survived to the current day. Now Enigma is gone, but his contributions won't be forgotten.
THuD is the best thing to ever happen to D3. On behalf of the thousands of players who will never, and have never ever bothered to make an account to post on the forums, I'd like to thank KJ for all his hard work over the years, and having to deal with all the whiney non-appreciative posters who take it for granted.
I do hope there is a future for HuD, as without HuD, Diablo is once and for all truly dead. But I don't see it becoming worthwhile to maintain anytime soon, unless someone takes the place of Enigma.
If not, then I can reasonably understand if THuD as a project is laid to rest, until the day Enigma, or someone similar, rouses hud back to life