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

[Edge-]

The game isn't going anywhere.

Whales will keep it a nice money earner for a long time similar to other mobile games that continue to grow in size post release

Depends on if it releases in China or not. Either way, they're working on their first update - https://www.reddit.com/r/DiabloImmor...dates/idc3dih/

Unsurprisingly, focused on the BP.

For context on the importance of the Chinese market: D:I generated around $24M in revenue in its first two weeks of release on mobile (not including PC). Genshin Impact, in its first week after its mobile launch (apparently not including PC/console sales) generated $60M in revenue. Twice as much in half the time.

[Elim Garak]

For context on the importance of the Chinese market: D:I generated around $24M in revenue in its first two weeks of release on mobile (not including PC). Genshin Impact, in its first week after its mobile launch (apparently not including PC/console sales) generated $60M in revenue. Twice as much in half the time.

For additional context, it was released worldwide (primarily in China), and like any Asian game it had preregistrations - a.k.a. hype train. And it's an Anime game - that market is bigger than dark Diablo niche.

[Edge-]

For additional context, it was released worldwide (primarily in China), and like any Asian game it had preregistrations - a.k.a. hype train. And it's an Anime game - that market is bigger than dark Diablo niche.

Diablo had pre-registration to the tune of 30M users - despite only 10M installs happening so far (not 10M users, 10M installs).

I specifically cited the lack of a Chinese release as the source of its financial weakness. Though Diablo is hardly "niche" in its overall appeal, nor is that style of "darker" ARPG remotely uncommon. While not consistently as "dark", games like Lineage (choose your version, there are multiple including a more straight up port of oldschool Lineage via Lineage M) or the MU titles extist and are hugely popular in Asia.

Also worth noting: Genshin Impact, while using a lot of familiar styles and themes from MiHoYo's other games, is still a new IP - generally harder to market and get folks to check out - vs. Diablo: Immortal, which is using an extremely popular and well known IP. IP's do a huge amount of the heavy lifting in terms of attracting users and lower the cost of acquiring new users vs. new/unknown IP's.

[Jerot]

Yes, the game raking $25m in two weeks mostly in Western market (mostly US) is abandonware.

Diablo 3 made over $200m in 24 hours, and the PC gaming market is less than a quarter of the size of the mobile gaming market.

It's doing extremely poor, but that's not surprising given how badly monetized it is.

[Elim Garak]

Diablo had pre-registration to the tune of 30M users - despite only 10M installs happening so far (not 10M users, 10M installs).

I specifically cited the lack of a Chinese release as the source of its financial weakness. Though Diablo is hardly "niche" in its overall appeal, nor is that style of "darker" ARPG remotely uncommon. While not consistently as "dark", games like Lineage (choose your version, there are multiple including a more straight up port of oldschool Lineage via Lineage M) or the MU titles extist and are hugely popular in Asia.

Also worth noting: Genshin Impact, while using a lot of familiar styles and themes from MiHoYo's other games, is still a new IP - generally harder to market and get folks to check out - vs. Diablo: Immortal, which is using an extremely popular and well known IP. IP's do a huge amount of the heavy lifting in terms of attracting users and lower the cost of acquiring new users vs. new/unknown IP's.

Asian pre-regestrations are real compared to western ones. It's how they roll there in WeChat. Needless to say Genshin had 10M preregs and 23M downloads in the first week, Diablo had 30M preregs and 10M downloads in 2 weeks. So that also in tune with the money - more players more money.

Genshin Impact was not the first mobile game from that studio that made waves on mobile, the previous one Honkai Impact 3rd (emphasis in Impact) was in similar style and even gameplay, sans the open world. Characters from that game are reused in Genshin.

So it's not really valid to say that Genshin is a new IP. It was EXTREMELY easy to market in China. They do things differently there. They didn't even need to do any heavy lifting.

[Edge-]

Asian pre-regestrations are real compared to western ones.

Pre-registrations were global, I believe.

Needless to say Genshin had 10M preregs and 23M downloads in the first week, Diablo had 30M preregs and 10M downloads in 2 weeks. So that also in tune with the money - more players more money.

Yes, again, the whole point was highlighting how much Blizzard was banking on the Chinese market for this release, and how the current ban on its hurting them.

Genshin Impact was not the first mobile game from that studio that made waves on mobile, the previous one Honkai Impact 3rd (emphasis in Impact) was in similar style and even gameplay, sans the open world. Characters from that game are reused in Genshin.

New IP is new IP, and I already addressed that MiHoYo was an existing, known quantity with good games. That's not enough though, as we've seen countless new IP's struggle to get traction despite coming from popular. You're basically repeating everything I'm saying, but slightly different lol.

So it's not really valid to say that Genshin is a new IP. It was EXTREMELY easy to market in China. They do things differently there. They didn't even need to do any heavy lifting.

Easy to market =|= existing IP.

[Witchblade77]

well.... having reached hell 2 (in theory - in practice it is far FAR too punishing at my level of gear 1058 vs 1200 recommended and before anyone asks, yes I switched over and tried it anyways, it was... rough to put it mildly while the drops I got were equivalent to hell 1) - I have to agree with those who said that this is where f2p REALLY becomes painful. I now have very few ways of getting hilts which significantly slows down both my acquisition of keys AND crests even the lower end ones, let alone gems etc (the way they set up the system of joining shadows where you are at a mercy of the clan leader EVEN if you won the lottery and did all of the prerequisite quests, but at the same time not being part of the clan has its own issues - is just... so great >_> /s) it takes more and more scraps to upgrade my gear, but the boost I get from those upgrades is marginal. and even then - I can only really reliably upgrade my right side, as left side requires mats from challenge rifts and you get those 5 at a time, with 25 every few levels so you run out of mats before you catch up on power to keep doing more difficult rifts.

you are basically stuck grinding regular rifts, often times without any crests, while excruciatingly slowly building up your supply of runes to craft gems to upgrade what rank 1 and 2 legendary gems you managed to get. keep hoping that you get those hidden lairs for regular gems and maybe you might even get lucky and get a few dungeons in and they will drop something better then a bunch of decon blues (I've yet to see ANY set items from dungeons on hell 1, haven't tried hell 2 as I literally just hit paragon 30) (and yes, I know there are bounties, they also tend to drop junk mostly and you only get 8 per day)

world boss event type thingies can also be a crapshoot. the ones that have better drop rates are on long cooldown timers and if your schedule doesn't allow you to just pop in when they spawn... no wb thingie for you... except for blood rose. that one seems to be available a lot... but also its the one I gave up on after getting my horadric thingie because there is always ALWAYS at least one person that doesn't understand "RUN OUT OF HER RED CIRCLE" and keeps healing her over and over......

even to deconstruct, gear drops are not great, have fun farming legendary upgrades, or set items.....

I think I'm honestly about done. at this point I'm starting to thing that maybe i should just roll a new character in d3 and replay THAT instead.

[kamuimac]

why do you need 5 star gems?

you dont. people just love to parrot their favourite streamers opinons because they dont have their one and they feel they belong somewhere when they donate their faviourite streamers who capitialise on them the same way blizzard does on whales

- - - Updated - - -

well.... having reached hell 2 (in theory - in practice it is far FAR too punishing at my level of gear 1058 vs 1200 recommended and before anyone asks, yes I switched over and tried it anyways, it was... rough to put it mildly while the drops I got were equivalent to hell 1) - I have to agree with those who said that this is where f2p REALLY becomes painful. I now have very few ways of getting hilts which significantly slows down both my acquisition of keys AND crests even the lower end ones, let alone gems etc (the way they set up the system of joining shadows where you are at a mercy of the clan leader EVEN if you won the lottery and did all of the prerequisite quests, but at the same time not being part of the clan has its own issues - is just... so great >_> /s) it takes more and more scraps to upgrade my gear, but the boost I get from those upgrades is marginal. and even then - I can only really reliably upgrade my right side, as left side requires mats from challenge rifts and you get those 5 at a time, with 25 every few levels so you run out of mats before you catch up on power to keep doing more difficult rifts.

you are basically stuck grinding regular rifts, often times without any crests, while excruciatingly slowly building up your supply of runes to craft gems to upgrade what rank 1 and 2 legendary gems you managed to get. keep hoping that you get those hidden lairs for regular gems and maybe you might even get lucky and get a few dungeons in and they will drop something better then a bunch of decon blues (I've yet to see ANY set items from dungeons on hell 1, haven't tried hell 2 as I literally just hit paragon 30) (and yes, I know there are bounties, they also tend to drop junk mostly and you only get 8 per day)

world boss event type thingies can also be a crapshoot. the ones that have better drop rates are on long cooldown timers and if your schedule doesn't allow you to just pop in when they spawn... no wb thingie for you... except for blood rose. that one seems to be available a lot... but also its the one I gave up on after getting my horadric thingie because there is always ALWAYS at least one person that doesn't understand "RUN OUT OF HER RED CIRCLE" and keeps healing her over and over......

even to deconstruct, gear drops are not great, have fun farming legendary upgrades, or set items.....

I think I'm honestly about done. at this point I'm starting to thing that maybe i should just roll a new character in d3 and replay THAT instead.

so... exackly like every diablo before it when done below recomended gear or without someone boosting you ?

[KrayZ33]

so... exackly like every diablo before it when done below recomended gear or without someone boosting you ?

Didn't know the older diablos had cooldown timers, limited amount of drops per day and all that kind of jazz.
He basically said that even if he keeps playing, he won't be getting upgrades for a long time even though he is nowhere near a level of where optimizing gear is important (like.. what ancient legendaries were in D3). He is artificially held back (to obviously promote paid consumables)

The fact that Paragon is gated already means it's quite a bit different to D3 ways of boosting your character power.

[RobertoCarlos]

you dont. people just love to parrot their favourite streamers opinons because they dont have their one and they feel they belong somewhere when they donate their faviourite streamers who capitialise on them the same way blizzard does on whales

- - - Updated - - -



so... exackly like every diablo before it when done below recomended gear or without someone boosting you ?

Yeah I remember trying to cram in as many baal runs as I could when his portal was open between 8am and 10am

[Witchblade77]

you dont. people just love to parrot their favourite streamers opinons because they dont have their one and they feel they belong somewhere when they donate their faviourite streamers who capitialise on them the same way blizzard does on whales

- - - Updated - - -



so... exackly like every diablo before it when done below recomended gear or without someone boosting you ?

two replies above me already said this, but Diablo immortal is the first diablo that I'm playing with other people, the others I did entirely solo, was able to do entirely solo and the only reason I stopped playing is not because the game was blocking me from progression in any way, but because I played enough that I wanted to play something else. I never ONCE needed to be boosted in order to be viable on my own without obsessive grinding of previous difficulties. I may not have been optimized to the gills, but previous games never made me feel severely throttled the way immortal does.

[Elim Garak]

That's a predatory technique of putting you in the social environment so you can compare yourself to your peers and feel so insecure that you even blabber your credit card details to strangers. Instead of, you know, growing as a person. Therapy is more expensive.

[Paperfox]

Earlier this week I was on Xbox live and looking at games on sale. All the expansion packs for The SIMS were on sale, so if you bought them all they would cost you about $800 CAD, which I always thought was an insane amount of money - for a game. However DI is making that seem oh so reasonable - which is even more insane.

[Delekii]

you dont. people just love to parrot their favourite streamers opinons because they dont have their one and they feel they belong somewhere when they donate their faviourite streamers who capitialise on them the same way blizzard does on whales

You're right, when two people agree on a fact, one of them is clearly a sheep and the other is a parrot. It's not just that a clearly bullshit practice is clearly a bullshit practice and so many people simply agree.



Pretending people don't have agency because they don't agree with you is the lowest form of argument.

Youtube videos tend to represent popular opinion, first and foremost because popular opinion is, by definition, popular. The ones that represent unpopular opinion, generally, don't garner traction. You've got your chicken and your egg back to front. Generally speaking, people know what their own opinion is, and then go looking for affirmation of that opinion. They don't go "duuuh... what do I think about this.. better go watch Bellular to find out!".

[Jerot]

Earlier this week I was on Xbox live and looking at games on sale. All the expansion packs for The SIMS were on sale, so if you bought them all they would cost you about $800 CAD, which I always thought was an insane amount of money - for a game. However DI is making that seem oh so reasonable - which is even more insane.

You can buy train simulator and all of it's DLC for roughly the cost of 2 gems at ~$10k.

If you're a completionism and want to finish one of each class? It's much cheaper to buy every single game on steam.

Pretending people don't have agency because they don't agree with you is the lowest form of argument.

Hey, don't take that away from them. They won't have anything left to reply with.

[Skildar]

That's a predatory technique of putting you in the social environment so you can compare yourself to your peers and feel so insecure that you even blabber your credit card details to strangers. Instead of, you know, growing as a person. Therapy is more expensive.

you must be fun at parties if that's your way of thinking...

[Thelxi]

Earlier this week I was on Xbox live and looking at games on sale. All the expansion packs for The SIMS were on sale, so if you bought them all they would cost you about $800 CAD, which I always thought was an insane amount of money - for a game. However DI is making that seem oh so reasonable - which is even more insane.

This is not the first time I've seen people bring up EA's Sims games trying to defend this, and it has to be said that is is nothing short of idiotic to compared the accumulated total cost of an entire game franchise that has been in development for more than 20 years, and released its first expansion pack more than 20 years ago, to any contemporary gacha game. You might as well add up every single month of WoW subscription since launch and compare it to that for a similarly effective argument.

But to really tackle this stupidity, Sims games were initially designed and are still largely designed, for children. Not min/maxing Texas whales living in their mother's basement armed with a few thousand welfare dollars, children who might get an expansion pack here and there for Christmas and birthdays. The Sims games are famously the most pirated game ever, with EA not going to great lengths to stop this with DRM. If anything, the pirating is part of their marketing at this point.

Apples and oranges. The dishonesty and stupidity of comparing them, especially to rationalize whale spending and whale hunting design, shall be pointed out.

[Nymrohd]

well.... having reached hell 2 (in theory - in practice it is far FAR too punishing at my level of gear 1058 vs 1200 recommended and before anyone asks, yes I switched over and tried it anyways, it was... rough to put it mildly while the drops I got were equivalent to hell 1) - I have to agree with those who said that this is where f2p REALLY becomes painful. I now have very few ways of getting hilts which significantly slows down both my acquisition of keys AND crests even the lower end ones, let alone gems etc (the way they set up the system of joining shadows where you are at a mercy of the clan leader EVEN if you won the lottery and did all of the prerequisite quests, but at the same time not being part of the clan has its own issues - is just... so great >_> /s) it takes more and more scraps to upgrade my gear, but the boost I get from those upgrades is marginal. and even then - I can only really reliably upgrade my right side, as left side requires mats from challenge rifts and you get those 5 at a time, with 25 every few levels so you run out of mats before you catch up on power to keep doing more difficult rifts.

you are basically stuck grinding regular rifts, often times without any crests, while excruciatingly slowly building up your supply of runes to craft gems to upgrade what rank 1 and 2 legendary gems you managed to get. keep hoping that you get those hidden lairs for regular gems and maybe you might even get lucky and get a few dungeons in and they will drop something better then a bunch of decon blues (I've yet to see ANY set items from dungeons on hell 1, haven't tried hell 2 as I literally just hit paragon 30) (and yes, I know there are bounties, they also tend to drop junk mostly and you only get 8 per day)

world boss event type thingies can also be a crapshoot. the ones that have better drop rates are on long cooldown timers and if your schedule doesn't allow you to just pop in when they spawn... no wb thingie for you... except for blood rose. that one seems to be available a lot... but also its the one I gave up on after getting my horadric thingie because there is always ALWAYS at least one person that doesn't understand "RUN OUT OF HER RED CIRCLE" and keeps healing her over and over......

even to deconstruct, gear drops are not great, have fun farming legendary upgrades, or set items.....

I think I'm honestly about done. at this point I'm starting to thing that maybe i should just roll a new character in d3 and replay THAT instead.

One thing to say; you need to clear Challenge Rifts up to a certain level to unlock Hell 2 loot, not just change the difficulty. I think it was CR 30? Which is hard since you likely have a CR penalty.
Also your best bet for gear at this point is imo to spam dungeons. Make sure you get your 2p.

And yes Blood Rose is a mistake. The rest are not at all problematic though.

- - - Updated - - -

Didn't know the older diablos had cooldown timers, limited amount of drops per day and all that kind of jazz.
He basically said that even if he keeps playing, he won't be getting upgrades for a long time even though he is nowhere near a level of where optimizing gear is important (like.. what ancient legendaries were in D3). He is artificially held back (to obviously promote paid consumables)

The fact that Paragon is gated already means it's quite a bit different to D3 ways of boosting your character power.

That's not even the problem. The main issue is the penalty. If you are doing content below the intended CR you get a massive penalty to damage done and increased damage taken. SO it's not enough you don't have the intended gear which should make it more challenging by itself, the gear you have is also significantly devalued.

[KrayZ33]

That's not even the problem. The main issue is the penalty. If you are doing content below the intended CR you get a massive penalty to damage done and increased damage taken. SO it's not enough you don't have the intended gear which should make it more challenging by itself, the gear you have is also significantly devalued.

I figured people would just see it as "negative scaling" (or whatever you can call it, when not only enemies get harder, but you get weaker, like in Destiny 2 for example) and hand-wave it away and not even bother with the other points, like the drones have been doing all this time up until now. So I didn't even bother mentioning it, even though it's fucking awful to deal less damage as well as taking increased damage in a progression game (where it's not about the challenge)
And it's not even fair.
I'm using random numbers here but you deal like 20% increased damage and take 15% less damage if your powerlevel is like 600 over the required stuff,
but you already deal 50% less damage and take 100% more damage if you are missing 100 powerlevel.

Obviously this is by design, can't have any player agency in this game, only the illusion of it, otherwise, how would you get them into the shop.

[Nymrohd]

I figured people would just see it as "negative scaling" (or whatever you can call it, when not only enemies get harder, but you get weaker, like in Destiny 2 for example) and hand-wave it away and not even bother with the other points, like the drones have been doing all this time up until now. So I didn't even bother mentioning it, even though it's fucking awful to deal less damage as well as taking increased damage in a progression game (where it's not about the challenge)
And it's not even fair.
I'm using random numbers here but you deal like 20% increased damage and take 15% less damage if your powerlevel is like 600 over the required stuff,
but you already deal 50% less damage and take 100% more damage if you are missing 100 powerlevel.

Obviously this is by design, can't have any player agency in this game, only the illusion of it, otherwise, how would you get them into the shop.

I think in part it's because without it, people would be able to switch to Hell 3 etc much earlier and would also completely destroy things like Challenge Rifts and Path of Blood. I've been consistently able to clear Challenge Rifts that are 100+ Combat Rating above mine (as long as I don't get the Fallen Shaman boss from Kikura's and even that can be killed if I got lucky with rares and have the time to kite). It effectively makes it so they don't have to balance the game around player skill (and I'm just better than average), just gated player power.

I'll say this. I still like the game. It plays well, the lore is actually much better than D3, even PvP is good as long as you don't luck out and run into whales. Also looking forward to more elite quests and more story being revealed; Tabri's arc is just good world building. Again for me the entire thing is more sad than maddening; if this had been a D3 second expansion it would have been a massive success. And if the Chinese decide to play hard, the game actually can end up a real failure for Blizzard. And that is very much probable.