Oh Blizzard, how you have fallen (Diablo Immortal).

[Mendzia]

This is a stupid assumption. People play f2p games because they don't want to spend alot of money. They spend maybe 5 or 20 dollars a month. But split across a million players that's still alot of revenue.

Yes - i pointed out it is only my assumption that can be horribly wrong.
I think we will learn some numbers on their next quarterly financial report.

[Dhrizzle]

There are plenty of character slots to play each class, and you don't have to pay to save different loadouts or access your stash. Also I seem to have some sort of 30 day battle pass going on, dunno if that's a "first one is free" deal or just what I should expect from the game.

Either way they've at least avoided some of the more annoying ways f2p games nickle-and-dime players.

[chiddie]

Yes - this is how it used to be.
You play more = you are higher rank or better geared.
Everything is totally closed just to the game.



In Diablo 2 you could gain advantage in 2 ways: you played alot and farmed great gear or you are more skilled in PvP duels.
In Diablo 3 you had an advantage by spending hours farming good rolled legendaries and high paragons.
In D:I case these are irrelevant as person who paid most will win regardless.

That is probably the case for PvP. But i have zero interest in PvP, so hopefully PvE will be enjoyable enough without paying that much.

Paying to skip part of the mindless grind is not bad per se. If I could pay 5 bucks every D3 season to have 2K gons for free I would probably do it. There is zero skill involved in that. Again I would like to highlight that having 10 hours a day to grind is not skill.

[Elim Garak]

Yes - i pointed out it is only my assumption that can be horribly wrong.
I think we will learn some numbers on their next quarterly financial report.

The majority of players will pay nothing. We already know this because that's how it always is. But their next financial report would be amazing.

[Lolites]

Funnyhow so many people are more than willing to excuse absolutely terrible and predatory practices by corporations, as if this won't escalate any further.

ah yeah, the good old slipery slope bullshit, remember when star pony came out in wrath? it was end of the world on forums, people talking about how since the very next day we start to buy everything on shop, gear, bufs, tickets to raids and so on, over a decade later and what is on shop? oh right, still just cosmetics...
plus ofc token, which allows people to play without paying

[Elim Garak]

That is probably the case for PvP. But i have zero interest in PvP, so hopefully PvE will be enjoyable enough without paying that much.

Paying to skip part of the mindless grind is not bad per se. If I could pay 5 bucks every D3 season to have 2K gons for free I would probably do it. There is zero skill involved in that. Again I would like to highlight that having 10 hours a day to grind is not skill.

Imagine the complaints about people being able to buy a train ticket instead of walking. Walking takes SO MUCH LONGER. It's pay to arrive I tell ya.

[Tojara]

Some of you are absolutely absurd in your assumptions about how people play these games. F2P games generally have a giant population of people who exclusively play these games for free, and/or might buy things like battle pass options until they're effectively done playing the game. If the game doesn't hold them these people vanish, much like I vanished from Lost Ark (and I'm assuming many more had this exact same behavior).

Claims like the majority of people paying north of 100 dollars on a game that's barely been released is actually absurd. At this juncture, that kind of spending would be absolutely in 'whale' status. I have over 2000 hours spent in PoE (spending 40 dollars), and over 200 in Lost Ark spending exactly 0 dollars. Regardless of how in your face the store is in this game, I don't think this is going to impact peoples overall spending habits on a game that's been out for what, less than a week?

Whales keep these games afloat long term, but if the game isn't fair the game will lose interest to whales as well. Some of the psychology behind these games is being better than other people, and those with lots of disposable income without necessarily having the time to invest will have absolutely zero problem shelling out money to either keep up or be better than the rest. When the 'rest' (F2P players, or those who spend very little on these type of games) decide the game is no longer fun or they get hard progression stuck, they leave which overtime will erode the whale player base because they can no longer 'lord' their characters over others.

This isn't me defending the practices in DI by the way. The store advertisements (especially when leveling) are indeed intrusive, but I'm also not the type of individual that bites on that sort of shit anyway.

The worst part about this whole thing is I haven't hit max level yet, but neither have most of the people who are giving their opinions on the monetization aspects via youtube/streaming as well. Why would I get the opinion of somebody who is crying on the internet after spending 15 minutes to 2 hours with the game? I'm having fun with the game (level 50), haven't spent a dime, and if my progress is stymied at some point I'll just drop the game with the possibility of coming back in the future if they have updates. When I realized I had to play half a dozen characters to feed my main in Lost Ark I stopped playing, because that seemed like the only way to advance aside from swiping a credit card. The thought of doing dailies on that many characters made me puke in my mouth.

At the end of the day I don't understand why people feel bad for whales. They have more money than they know what to do with and you should have enough control to stop yourself from spending money on shit you find predatory. If the gameplay loop sucks, don't play it. If you have kids and are worried about them running up your credit card, well.. that my friend is a parenting problem.

[Mendzia]

That is probably the case for PvP. But i have zero interest in PvP, so hopefully PvE will be enjoyable enough without paying that much.

In D2 duels - yes.
D3... did not have PvP.

Paying to skip part of the mindless grind is not bad per se. If I could pay 5 bucks every D3 season to have 2K gons for free I would probably do it. There is zero skill involved in that. Again I would like to highlight that having 10 hours a day to grind is not skill.

So you want to play seasonal game where you farm items and paragons... without farming gear and paragons?... and then farm even more items and paragons by your own?
What kind of logic is that?
What about play your old characters from previous seasons that are no longer seasonal?
You do not miss much... unless you want some dogshit transmog wings.

[Hctaz]

What non p2w elements are being criticized? because other than the price of the horn of plenty most complaints seem centered around the cost of legendary crests which help get legendary gems.

Sorry, we're talking about three different games in the same thread LOL

So I'm referring to Halo Infinite's non-p2w stuff. It's still being criticized despite the game being f2p and only offering cosmetic rewards via the battlepass and ingame store and suggesting that I don't think Battlefront 2 being F2P would have alleviated the concerns that many people had with the grind. There are some things that people except to be able to access in a reasonable amount of time and/or effort even from F2P games.

That being said, I do totally understand where you're coming from that the barrier for what is deemed acceptable is lower for a game that doesn't physically ask you to pay, it's just I think a lot of people would rather pay full retail price for a good game than be expected to pay hundreds of dollars in order to make the game actually fun to play. Like Diablo has always been pretty grindy, but the fact that you can only earn 1 Legendary Crest per month if you're free to play is a little absurd.

I also think the main issue isn't that it takes you X amount of time to grind F2P stuff, but rather it's the fact that you're strictly time-gated based on an arbitrary amount of real world time passing. It doesn't matter how many hours you play in that month time frame, the game still says you can only buy one Legendary Crest per month with Hilts. If you want any more, you'll have to fork over real money. You could play for 2 hours and then not touch the game for an entire month and still get the same amount of Legendary Crests as somebody who plays for 8 hours a day.

[everydaygamer]

Sorry, we're talking about three different games in the same thread LOL

So I'm referring to Halo Infinite's non-p2w stuff. It's still being criticized despite the game being f2p and only offering cosmetic rewards via the battlepass and ingame store and suggesting that I don't think Battlefront 2 being F2P would have alleviated the concerns that many people had with the grind. There are some things that people except to be able to access in a reasonable amount of time and/or effort even from F2P games.

That being said, I do totally understand where you're coming from that the barrier for what is deemed acceptable is lower for a game that doesn't physically ask you to pay, it's just I think a lot of people would rather pay full retail price for a good game than be expected to pay hundreds of dollars in order to make the game actually fun to play. Like Diablo has always been pretty grindy, but the fact that you can only earn 1 Legendary Crest per month if you're free to play is a little absurd.

I also think the main issue isn't that it takes you X amount of time to grind F2P stuff, but rather it's the fact that you're strictly time-gated based on an arbitrary amount of real world time passing. It doesn't matter how many hours you play in that month time frame, the game still says you can only buy one Legendary Crest per month with Hilts. If you want any more, you'll have to fork over real money. You could play for 2 hours and then not touch the game for an entire month and still get the same amount of Legendary Crests as somebody who plays for 8 hours a day.

It's possible the grind could be improved but I'm more concerned about what content I can do. I don't care how hard it is to get legendary gems as long as I'm not getting locked out of content because I don't have them.

[Hctaz]

It's possible the grind could be improved but I'm more concerned about what content I can do. I don't care how hard it is to get legendary gems as long as I'm not getting locked out of content because I don't have them.

It seems like you essentially are in some capacity, but it also seems like it sorta depends on what you consider content to be.
These gems are the main source of your power, and you can apparently socket gems into gems? I don't quite understand the specific nuances, but it basically sounds like these gems make up so much of your power that it would be impossible to complete the content at the highest difficult levels without them. Do you consider being able to access higher difficulty levels as content? I'm sure not everybody does.

[Linkedblade]

There are plenty of character slots to play each class, and you don't have to pay to save different loadouts or access your stash. Also I seem to have some sort of 30 day battle pass going on, dunno if that's a "first one is free" deal or just what I should expect from the game.

Either way they've at least avoided some of the more annoying ways f2p games nickle-and-dime players.

It's the same thing as CoD:Mobile's and Hearthstone's battle passes. You can progress on its levels and get rewards, but if you purchase the full pass you get more rewards more frequently.

[Lolites]

There are two sides in the lootbox predatory monetization debate:

yes, those who have their opinion, and know its nothing but opinion, and then morons who claim they are right about it, and whoever disagree with them is wrong

[Sinyc]

-It's not a predatory business model. There's nothing unethical about it.

Are you a real person? You can't be. The entire transaction model in mobile games (and quickly spreading to console/PC) is predatory, unethical, and illegal in some countries. There is a reason they don't tell you the odds of their loot boxes.

Why waste your time defending a soulless corporation and a crappy reskinned mobile game using Diablo IP?

[Lolites]

It is his stream and he can do whatever he wants with his time, audience or money.

so streamer can use psychology to pull money out of peoples pockets for doing nothing just playing the game and whining, but god forbid the company that actualy made the game did it...
hows the life in land of double standards?

- - - Updated - - -

Some people are. The problem exists for the people who aren't.

if they are not having fun they should turn the game off, and problem is over...

[Elim Garak]

What a stupid comparison.

Distances arent man made. Grinds are.

Roads are not man made? Wow. Have you even cared to look at the map, at how predatory the road design is compared to rails? And don't even get me started on airplanes!

It is of course your choice to go thru the untraversable wilderness, but don't complain.

[Skylarking]

so streamer can use psychology to pull money out of peoples pockets for doing nothing just playing the game and whining, but god forbid the company that actualy made the game did it...
hows the life in land of double standards?

The streamers are making a killing off of it too. It's hilarious seeing Asmon advocating for the ban of loot box games and going far as trying to bring influential people to the stream to lobby the government while at the same time balls deep in these games.

[crusadernero]

ah yeah, the good old slipery slope bullshit, remember when star pony came out in wrath? it was end of the world on forums, people talking about how since the very next day we start to buy everything on shop, gear, bufs, tickets to raids and so on, over a decade later and what is on shop? oh right, still just cosmetics...
plus ofc token, which allows people to play without paying

In wow shop theres;
1. Paid character transfer
2. Paid race & faction change
3. Sub
4. Gotta buy xpac
5. Several cool and good pets
6. Several great looking mounts. Mounts that in certain cases are much more unique than those in game.
7. Cosmetic gear is slowly being added. We can certainly expect alot more of it.
8. Wow Token. You say its for "people to play without playing", but we both know that only half(at best) of the truth. When knowing what having gold means in this game, I leave it to you to figure out the rest. Hint; This is the ticket to raid clears.
9. Buy lvl boost.

its been growing before the star pony in wrath and has certainly not slowed down since. Can we expect it to stop in the coming years? Highly doubt it.

[Mendzia]

so streamer can use psychology to pull money out of peoples pockets for doing nothing just playing the game and whining, but god forbid the company that actualy made the game did it...
hows the life in land of double standards?

If somebody is stupid enough to pay streamer... i guess yes. :P
I've never donated to anyone and never will as i think it is totally idiotic.

Also... you compare one person with 'multi-dollar company'.
Do you see the difference?

[Elim Garak]

The streamers are making a killing off of it too. It's hilarious seeing Asmon advocating for the ban of loot box games and going far as trying to bring influential people to the stream to lobby the government while at the same time balls deep in these games.

Well, he's a smart kid but even he seems to not realize that banning lootboxes will only make things worse. The monetization will find a way, and it will be even more predatory.

And if we keep banning things. We are not going to get better games. They will just make all games SUBSCRIPTION based. MS already does this with Game Pass on PC and Xbox, and Sony with its PSPlus.

If you go regulating be prepared to pay a sub to get the base game and then get charged $60 for each expansion, and a cash shop on top.

Never ask the government to regulate things you can regulate for yourself. if you are worrying about imaginary victims you don't even know - that's sus af.