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

[NineSpine]

I've played enough of the game to know what's in the shop, and I don't actually see your point that everything is being throttled. I haven't seen any EXP boosts or ways to buy gear; the throttling is, as far as I can tell, just related to gems and the different ways to obtain them. And that is pretty much the crux of my confusion: the pathway from crests to player power is so incredibly inscrutable that it doesn't seem remotely worth the money. Even though I know that power is the ultimate purpose of crests, I can't wrap my head around why someone would see actual dollar value in them even if buying their way to perfect BiS was their goal. I didn't even know that legendary gems had star ratings until seeing the outrage about it, and I still don't know what their star ratings actually mean. I would actually be more inclined to spend money if I could just outright buy legendary gems—that would of course be more brazen and I don't think anyone would be happy about it, but it least it remotely makes sense as to what you'd be spending your money on.

The whole system of buying crests to modify a rift to get gems that are hopefully the right gems to maybe make your character more powerful is so indirect and obfuscated that I can't see why anyone other than outraged streamers would spend money in that particular system and how it was even something Blizzard thought was worth staking the reputation of the game on.

You are ignoring the absolutely insane volume of gear you get from using a Legendary Crest versus running without one.

[SunspotAnims]

You are ignoring the absolutely insane volume of gear you get from using a Legendary Crest versus running without one.

Nothing that I've seen in the game suggests that crests affect the drop rate of anything other than gems/runes. The shop itself describes crests as guaranteeing a legendary gem and nothing else.

[Darsyek]

you have to chose NOT to spend money. not the other way around.

Look, I agree that Diablo Immortal is overly monetized, but if you lack the self-control that you have to purposely fight yourself to not spend money, that honestly sounds like a you problem and I'd recommend you stay away from gambling.

[xenogear3]

Too embarrassing.

Additionally, I discovered that you need 377 keys or lots of platinum to get an item... 5 keys you can get from the vendor, 3-7 from a daily event and you can get also from pvp where the whales win every match.

This video explains why I cannot put my gems on the market place.

This is NOT normal in a gacha game.
Blizzard is even greedier than a Asian gacha game !

[NineSpine]

Nothing that I've seen in the game suggests that crests affect the drop rate of anything other than gems/runes. The shop itself describes crests as guaranteeing a legendary gem and nothing else.

They do.

https://youtu.be/o17lBUZgjTs?t=1633

[Witchblade77]

You act like it is a hard choice. I haven't felt the need to spend a single cent because I've played the game and earned what you say is super hard to do. The difference is you don't want to play the game to earn things so you feel like the "skip" is being forced upon you. The game has been out for a little over a week and you admit you don't play that much. Why is it that you also expect to have a ton of progress in the game at the same time?

All you keep doing is blaming the game design because of your choice to not play the game more.

dude... you sound like Blizzard is paying you - either that or you are so invested, you have to keep justifying your investment by trying to claim that the game is fine. couple of hours each day should be more then sufficient to keep up with a progress in a freaking mobile game. and yet.. it doesn't seem to be. I don't expect a ton of progress. I expect that for couple of hours of active game time (and by active I mean I'm either out in the zones, questing, or if I'm in a city, its to get some gear deconstructed and to pick up/drop off bounties, queue up for a rift, etc.) to keep me at a good pace with seasonal progress. if I'm playing every day, I should not only reach max level before season is done, but get a few of those post 40 boxes. but apparently its "hardly playing" whatever, dude.

and yes the distinction is absolutely important. the game is designed to keep pushing purchases on you trying to wear down the "no, thank you" the shop is not there as an addon, the shop IS what the game is built around. there is absolutely no way to play even a little bit without having a shop purchase shoved in your face. I'm blaming game design BECAUSE IT'S WHAT TO BLAME. this is not accidental. its deliberate and this is NOT. OK.

[rhorle]

dude... you sound like Blizzard is paying you - either that or you are so invested, you have to keep justifying your investment by trying to claim that the game is fine.

So since I'm saying you don't play the game enough I must be a Blizzard shill? Lmao. I haven't spent any money on DI so no investment but my time. You said you were rank 12 on the battle pass. The game has been out 10 days. So you are still getting more then a rank a day even playing as little as you do. Yet you still think that is to low and you should be getting more. You don't expect a ton of progress but you still aren't satisfied unless you get a lot of progress. Something doesn't add up there.

The game isn't designed poorly your expectations are. If you can't handle a little advertising for the shop then it is another thing that indicates a mobile game might not be for you.

[Bladesyphon]

Because all the initial youtube outrage hype videos focused on this projected "$10,000 to get a max gem" or whatever. So that shaped the whole argument.

Which honestly just reads as "I've never played a Gatcha game before, and now I'm OUTRAGED ABOUT IT BECAUSE NOW I HAVE!

God knows how much money you need to spend in games like Record Keeper or Brave Exvius to fully kit out a single character, to say nothing of a single party of five in Brave Exvius, or god help me, multiple parties in Record Keeper - one for each of the game's elements, one for each of the game's Realms (of which there's eighteen), and bonus points - You also need to have parties made up of Physical and Magical DPS to maximize the rewards for each of the end-game dungeon encounters.

Couple that with the fact that once a Relic or Character goes off banner in either game, the odds of drawing that particular item goes from a "generous" 1-2% to a sub .01% chance, and you can extrapolate out yourself how much it's going to cost in most Gatcha games to max out a single character.

I'm not going to deny that D:I isn't immune to criticisms with it's Legendary Crest pull rates, but to somehow argue that D:I is the most egregious of examples when you've got other games sitting there smiling and waving their giant Gatcha banners is just silly.

[SunspotAnims]

They do.

https://youtu.be/o17lBUZgjTs?t=1633

That wasn't gear that dropped in the clip, it was legendary gems, which is literally what crests are supposed to give. If you didn't catch that, then I urge you to be more aware of how these content creators are manipulating the reality of the game to generate outrage.

Again, I think that crests and the systems surrounding legendary gems are dumb for reasons regarding transparency and value and would prefer it be reworked or removed if not just for the increased clarity. Still, be aware that crests exist specifically for gems and there is no similar boost that I've seen for any other means of character progression.

[Dhrizzle]

sigh. believe what you will. I know that I've actualy TRIED to go for those daily tasks, doing variety of things. I did rifts. I did bounties. I even did helliquary raid. its still. leveling. slowly. excruciatingly slow. but I'm guessing you also have a very different concept of what playing casually can look like seeing as you are already max level and all.

the reality is, the game is absolutely unequivocally, not even up for debate - designed to encourage a player to spend as much money as they can stomach. it eases you into it and then ramps up once you are caught up and invested. by design. deliberately. can you refuse to participate and refuse to buy things? yes. yes you can. it does NOT change the design of the game in any way though. you have to chose NOT to spend money. not the other way around.

I disagree simply because nothing the shop has to offer really seems worth it. The Battle Pass thing was all I really fancied but if progression is as slow as you say then I don't see the value. For me this is looking more and more like a free game with a campaign and extra characters to play around with.

I do appreciate that usually gamers are channelled towards the most direct path to progression and having the option there ruins the fun of taking a different path, but for me at least the fact it takes a real-money transaction makes it easy to dismiss the easier path and just play the game with what it gives me.

[Cthulhu 2020]

It's hilarious that people are still defending this game.

[Ghost of Cow]

You said you were rank 12 on the battle pass. The game has been out 10 days. So you are still getting more then a rank a day even playing as little as you do. Yet you still think that is to low and you should be getting more. You don't expect a ton of progress but you still aren't satisfied unless you get a lot of progress. Something doesn't add up there.

The game isn't designed poorly your expectations are. If you can't handle a little advertising for the shop then it is another thing that indicates a mobile game might not be for you.

If the cash option weren't there, they wouldn't be saying a word about the BP being slow. But since it is, they're screaming bloody murder about how there's no way to keep from spending on it or something.

- - - Updated - - -

It's hilarious that people are still defending this game.

More of the "I got my opinions from youtubers" crowd, I see.

[uuuhname]

It's hilarious that people are still defending this game.

capitalism baybeee. it's peasant brain up and down with these people.

[Ghost of Cow]

capitalism baybeee. it's peasant brain up and down with these people.

Yes, I'm such a peasant for playing a game that costs me nothing. Dang, they really got me good this time.

Meanwhile you're all bowing and scraping at the feet of "content creators" that tell you what you want to hear while playing, paying, and giving shitloads of exposure to the game. But they're the enlightened ones.

[Jerot]

Which honestly just reads as "I've never played a Gatcha game before, and now I'm OUTRAGED ABOUT IT BECAUSE NOW I HAVE!

It isn't just the pull rates, it's everything else around them too. The prices are setup so you'll be 5 or 10 orbs short of the next breakpoint when buying packs to pressure you into getting the next pack up. The first "efficient" bundle is $25 so you get 1650 where 1,600 is 10 crests.

The game doesn't tell you from the start you can use 10 crests at once, it has 3 slots and once they are filled gives you the option of adding +7.

Throughout the process you would assume you only have 6 gem slots to work on, giving you a false sense of how progressed your character is through buying crests. But once you max rank a gem you are given the option to "awaken" your legendary item with a dawning echo for another 1,000 eternal orbs.

Each item slot you awaken immediately gives you a stat boost and either 10% increased damage or 10% cooldown reduction. It also unlocks resonance, which is powered up by adding more legendary gems. With higher star gems having more slots to fill. At 5-star you can equip 36 gems total. 6 of your choice and the 30 specific gems depending on which 6 you picked. None of this information is widely available, so you can't even plan ahead to have the right gems ranked up if you wanted to work towards it. It doesn't matter if you're going for perfect gear, just progressing past max rank 1 or 2-star gems has that $85 paywall for all the dawning echoes.

While ranking your gems up it auto fills materials for gem power, and it's possible the gem you spent thousands trying to get will get consumed if you aren't careful. You can't delete your 0.05% (1/9th of that if you target a specific one) banner pull so easily in most other gacha games. The best way to protect them is to keep them in your stash, but space is limited. And the only upgrade is temporary and requires you to constantly keep re-buying to keep the slots.


The boon of plenty being a reward for cumulative login days, with days you miss reducing the amount of rewards you get for your purchase. Even missing 1 day reduces your legendary crests gained from 7 to 5. With the only way to claim the last 2 being to purchase another 30 days of "benefits". From that point if you never miss a day, the first purchase will always be worth 2 nearly immediate crests. If you miss more and the threshold gets down to the 25 or 20 day rewards, you'll be "missing out" on a legendary gem if you don't buy another.

All crests that are in bundles, battle pass, prodigy's path give you bound gems you can't sell, while the crests bought directly in packs of 1 or 10 are "Eternal" and give sellable gems.

Everything being locked to the character it's purchased on, and being locked to a server you cannot change if you want to play with a friend. You have to re-roll and re-buy.

It also costs money to start a clan, but if you want to participate in endgame content involving the shadows vs immortals you have to join the shadows first which acts like a faction change kicking you out of your clan. Nowhere in the game does it mention this, and blizzard will not refund you. You would then have to pay more to start a Dark Clan. And once the cycle of strife is over, all the shadows who didn't make it into the immortals are kicked out and the cycle begins again.

The 10k or 100k numbers were early days, Shroud; who was all in on the monetization and said they were willing to spend 20-40k, recently updated the estimate to 300-500k to max out, depending on luck. You could probably spend upwards of 100k trying to fill out a 2-star gem build, let alone a full 5-star one. Nowhere near minmax levels, just standard endgame progression.

[uuuhname]

Meanwhile you're all bowing and scraping at the feet of "content creators" that tell you what you want to hear while playing, paying, and giving shitloads of exposure to the game. But they're the enlightened ones.

my dude, I was alive and breathing back in 2018 when they first announced this PoS and the only take away, until this thing's launch that anyone bothered to remember was: "you guys all have cell phones, right?" when the question was brought up that it was going to PC.

really cool how less than 5 years after this company told it's player base to it's face "this is the slop you peasants deserve" the peasants are eating it up.

also how dare we use people who went though the motions of investigating how the economy in this game works to make our point. maybe we can do what you're doing and not actually contribute anything at all.

[Bladesyphon]

The 10k or 100k numbers were early days, Shroud; who was all in on the monetization and said they were willing to spend 20-40k, recently updated the estimate to 300-500k to max out, depending on luck. You could probably spend upwards of 100k trying to fill out a 2-star gem build, let alone a full 5-star one. Nowhere near minmax levels, just standard endgame progression.

Neat, those numbers all reflect around what it takes to max out an account in Record Keeper, or a single party or two, in Record Keeper.

While I didn't know about the clan stuff, and I admit that is scummy, your cost point on the gacha elements remain pretty much consistent for the genre, as do your other points. Gacha games are predatory, anyone and everyone knows this. It's no different than how Casinos are predatory as well. That said - if you've an addictive nature, you ought not be playing Gacha games just as you shouldn't be going to Casinos.

I've played Record Keeper and Brave Exvius for years since the games launched - I've never spent more than a hundred dollars, if that, between the two games. I've made fuck all progress in the end game, usually finding myself well over a year if not more behind in Record Keeper, and basically gave up on progressing through Brave Exvius' more difficult trials and end-game content, yet I still enjoy playing them for the casual aspect, and in Exvius' case, the ridiculous anime story line, none of which requires me to actually do anything other than play the video game, and make due with whatever draws I get from the free currency I earn while playing them.

As far as I can tell from my time spent with Diablo Immortal, and from what others who have spent time with it and not spent money - that's basically the same deal here. No, I won't be maxing out my character, which means I won't be doing PvP or high-end challenge rifts, but I still will be able to do Normal mode dungeons, progress through the story-line, and otherwise treat it like a free to play MMO, and that's fine, and I think that's what a lot of these Youtubers and general posters are missing.

If you just play the video game, progress as far as you can as a free to play player, and just enjoy it for the ride, the game's fine. You don't have to engage with any of the premium stuff to my knowledge if all you're interested in is leveling a class to 60 and completing the story-line. If that's not enough for you, then play something else instead. I have zero intention to spend any money on D:I outside of possibly buying the super cheap bundles, and I'm still enjoying the game. Maybe that'll change, maybe I'll hit 60, get walled, and no longer have fun, at which point I'll just stop playing. What confuses me is why so many people seem to struggle with that concept, and feel the need to shit on everyone who is having fun with the game - free to play or otherwise - just because a bunch of Youtubers are making money about being angry over a game they don't even have a horse in the race about.

[Redroniksre]

It isn't just the pull rates, it's everything else around them too. The prices are setup so you'll be 5 or 10 orbs short of the next breakpoint when buying packs to pressure you into getting the next pack up. The first "efficient" bundle is $25 so you get 1650 where 1,600 is 10 crests...

Its normal Gacha garbage. I mean it is good people are giving it more exposure, but Immortal isn't doing anything new, its the same stuff other Gachas do. Best bet would be to try to get these practices banned in your country, cause boycotting the game won't do shit. Normal people are not the audience, it was not made for us.

[Ghost of Cow]

also how dare we use people who went though the motions of investigating how the economy in this game works to make our point. maybe we can do what you're doing and not actually contribute anything at all.

Yes, the "content creators" who contribute hot takes and click bait to get people like you all hot and bothered, while raking in money and still playing the game, giving Bobby all that money (which people here keep using as an insult, ironically), and making the game even more well-known.

It's actually pretty hilarious watching you guys try to get on this high horse about "bootlicking" and "peasants" while we play a game that's not costing us a dime and you're worshiping "content creators".

[RobertoCarlos]

Yes, I'm such a peasant for playing a game that costs me nothing. Dang, they really got me good this time.

Meanwhile you're all bowing and scraping at the feet of "content creators" that tell you what you want to hear while playing, paying, and giving shitloads of exposure to the game. But they're the enlightened ones.

Quick question do you know what the boon of plenty does and how it works