Diablo: Immortal (PC/Android/iOS) - June 2, 2022

[Jaybar]

I remember playing Stronghold Kingdoms (basically Clash of Clans) back in the early 2010s. It took me a couple hundred hours to realize I could not advance any further because of the whales and dolphins. The only way to compete was to buy support packs basically daily. Miss one microtransaction and someone with more cash steamrolls over your kingdom.

[Kachiko]

Well this is rather unfortunate, but also not at all unexpected from modern Blizzard.

Not that Asmongold knows what F2P means, when he's showered with 10's of thousands of in-game cash equivalent assets (Lost Ark), but yes, any mobile game is going to let people pay to get ahead, especially in the PvP setting because that's how the players that actually finance the game, flex, which is their enjoyment. F2P never paid a dev's salary, and I'm sure there's plenty to do without paying a dime; just don't expect to "compete" with people who are willing to depart with their cash.

[Gokulo]

Apparently the game is already out on mobile

[Aelfinn]

Apparently the game is already out on mobile

any good? may have to try it... will see how good it is without having to spend.

[Gokulo]

Don't have enough space to install it on my phone, lol. Too lazy to clean up, so I'm just waiting for the PC version to drop in a couple of hours to check the game out.

[Prothescar]

If you have any intention of playing it like a diablo game, aka grinding for marginal power increases over a long period of time, then no it's not worth touching. 99% of the power is backloaded into gems which are primarily earned via a pay to win gacha system.

There's several rarities of gems 1* to 5* and the 5* gems can be 2/5* (3.75%), 3/5* (1%), 4/5* (0.2%), OR 5/5* (0.05%) and you can only get them more than 4 or 5 per month at a time via the premium currency, and you need to combine several of them into each other to unlock all the stats... yeah). $100 for 45 gems and you need to pull 50 to guarantee a 5* gem, and that guaranteed 5* gem can be 2/5* ~ 5/5* as well.

Even the cotsumes that you pay real money for aren't fully unlocked when you buy them, you need to cap your Resonance (aka the system that requires you to have a ton of 5* gems melded into each other) to unlock the full armor. Oh yeah and when you beat a boss you get a popup telling you to buy a cosmetic weapon for that boss instead of the boss dropping the weapon.

if you just want a playable ARPG on your phone that you don't intend to play or take seriously when you've exhausted the story content then sure, I guess. Honestly supporting the game with so much as a download would be telling Blizzard we're OK with this bullshit though.

[carlweathers]

I thought this is surprisingly well polished and fun. The business model is pretty exploitative though. Really annoying to get ads for once-in-a-lifetime bundles when I complete any dungeon, lol.

The monster designs are really cool, and some of the MMO-elements are good. I like the MMO-style zones instead of the D3-lobbies.

[Mayareira]

30 minutes into the game on IOS and I like it so far. It looks and feels well optimized. I wish it had a price tag so I could be sure that I won’t be asked for microtransactions.

Anyways, I don’t care about cool looking gear or whatever, only in it for gameplay and some fun. I’ll drop it if pay to play starts getting annoying.

I can see that this is going to be a huge commercial success though.

Edit: it is a demanding game though. 10 minutes of gameplay with charger and iphone gets into cooldown mode and dim the screen. Gonna try playing unplugged to see if it can handle.

Edit 2: yeah much better unplugged.

[Mayareira]

Double

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/PaulTassi/status...14015237971968
https://twitter.com/VGC_News/status/1533426080446664704

[Mayareira]

90% of the revenue made by the free to play games come from the 10% of the playerbase. Rest of the gamers (other 90%) are there to entertain said 10%.

I've been very distant to free to play stuff, until now it has always been a straight "pass" for me. Its really sad that the game looks and plays very solid on IOS, I wish there was a 30-40 bucks or whatever charge on it so that I could enjoy the game knowing that I won't be hitting a paywall at some point. I'll definitely delete it now at said point, not going to grind for days and definitely not going to pay for microtransactions.

lol@ Wyatt Cheng, he is insulting the intelligence of the games player base.

[Mrbeansman]

Also worth mentioning that Blizzard probably gives 0 shits about how this does in the west since it clearly exists to thrive in the Chinese market.

[6souls]

https://twitter.com/PaulTassi/status...14015237971968
https://twitter.com/VGC_News/status/1533426080446664704

More like $224k

[Mayareira]

There should always be an higher level with a pay to win design. If $70 was all it took to max a character the profitability would be low as it would be quite common and undesirable from the perspective of the paying crowd. You would't get millions of people paying $70, you'd simply be stuck with a mostly non-paying crowd.

But with an ever increasing cash requirement you'll create rarity, a "Rolex" and some Louis Vuitton's, etc. There will be someone, maybe 2-3 people paying for it and they'll enjoy the popularity. The rest of the paying crowd will look to spend as much as they can for the max. rarity they can achieve.

[arus2001]

There should always be an higher level with a pay to win design. If $70 was all it took to max a character the profitability would be low as it would be quite common and undesirable from the perspective of the paying crowd. You would't get millions of people paying $70, you'd simply be stuck with a mostly non-paying crowd.

But with an ever increasing cash requirement you'll create rarity, a "Rolex" and some Louis Vuitton's, etc. There will be someone, maybe 2-3 people paying for it and they'll enjoy the popularity. The rest of the paying crowd will look to spend as much as they can for the max. rarity they can achieve.

Man, fuck off with any attempt to justify this shit.

These are video games inherently meant for distraction and escapism from the daily blah. When this shit starts pointing at you and laughing that you're poor and no reasonable amount of skill and knowledge will bridge that gap in capability, there's a problem. But I also get a lot of us are coming from the XI background where RMT and botting was a thing, with the ability to pay for multiple accounts also being a advantage. So, I can get where some might be groomed into believing such is an okay standard, especially if they think they were sticking it to SE for not designing the game however they personally wanted it and tricked themselves into thinking they're immune from the ban hammer because it'd kill the game.

There was a time when games launched more or less complete without even DLC being a thought. Expansions were fine. Sequels were often better. Games can and have existed without all this predatory cash shop garbage. And this is before even getting into the consumer's rights argument about pointing out how someone's investment can just one day go poof with the servers or access can be denied for reasons outside their control. I've been ringing this bell for years now, and while I'm sure some folks quietly agreed it was all a problem, the rest just shrugged thinking it'd never hit this point. Yet, here we are, perhaps even worse off than EA and its Battlefront drama a few years back. And I only see it getting worse without actual regulatory intervention because, as the last vid 6 noted, 0.15% of players are pumping out 50% of a game's income while 20% jumps to 80%. Very much a case of the minority ruining things for the majority. Licking the corporate boot certainly won't do us any favors, as all those salaried or mercenary grunts making the things certainly aren't coming out of this multi-millionaires or getting performance bonuses while Kotick bribes right-wing politicians to presumably turn a blind eye to it all.

It's all just opportunistic greed.

[Kachiko]

Then don't fucking pay, but don't bitch at the people who do enjoy paying for it. And no, games were never released "complete"; they were released with a bunch of cut content that would never get into the game but now can be seen because people want to pay game companies, who then release more content that couldn't make it in time for release date.

Either don't pay and play content for free or do pay for as much as you enjoy something but ffs, the bitching and virtue signalling is pathetic.

[Mayareira]

I am not fond of the design myself at all and being the "product" itself, I don't even play online games. Just describing how it works.

Some people like paying more than average and the overall sense of instant gratification, others set a budget to themselves and play in a controlled manner and some simply play the content for free. Its their decision. For me D:I was all about a time killer while I was waiting for an hour in car.

Regarding the overall gaming industry, looking at the recent games I've played like Elden Ring, Gran Turismo, Horizon, Uncharted these are rather complete and very well designed stuff. They don't directly compete with mobile pay to win games at all.

[Gokulo]

Then don't fucking pay, but don't bitch at the people who do enjoy paying for it. And no, games were never released "complete"; they were released with a bunch of cut content that would never get into the game but now can be seen because people want to pay game companies, who then release more content that couldn't make it in time for release date.

Either don't pay and play content for free or do pay for as much as you enjoy something but ffs, the bitching and virtue signalling is pathetic.

Gtfo with that. People are allowed to bitch that their hobby is basically turning into a gambling scheme. At least in Europe we're finally seeing a movement to ban or restrict such predatory practices and loot box games are already being banned in certain countries. Hopefully more countries will follow. Not like it will change anything though, these games are usually made to milk Chinese players first and foremost and I doubt their law is going to change anything soon.

[Elcura]

Then don't fucking pay, but don't bitch at the people who do enjoy paying for it. And no, games were never released "complete"; they were released with a bunch of cut content that would never get into the game but now can be seen because people want to pay game companies, who then release more content that couldn't make it in time for release date.

Either don't pay and play content for free or do pay for as much as you enjoy something but ffs, the bitching and virtue signalling is pathetic.

"I'm OK with bad faith practices as long as they don't affect me." is all I'm reading from this. Accepting a shitty product because complaining about companies ruining your game with P2W design is somehow worse?

Weird.

[Koul]

I think people are okay with F2P games having bundles or whatever if it's reasonable. I've spent money on mobile games and I don't mind it but when it's so fucking obnoxious like Diablo Immortal. That's the issue people are having. The fact that you can eventually socket gems INTO GEMS but the only way to get to that point is if you spend money is a problem.

There's also been so many fucking videos explaining the predatory and addictive methods used to hook people to spend money in these games that I'm blown away that some people are still giving the companies a pass