How would you want to pay for Diablo 4?

[Coldkil]

Ah yes, forgot of the 12 months offer and get D2 for free. How could I after all, this forum was full of people who felt "cheated". Fixed that misplaced D3 as well

Wonder if people would have been happier if D3 had exactly the same system as D2? Was it too complicated with all the talents and builds? Story decisions? Can't say the AH turned me off, I hardly used that. The different classes? (that disappointed me, I wanted an Amazon again). Personally hard to pinpoint, never even fully levelled a character, started in RoS, stopped at lv 46. Then again, I am too invested in WoW. Quit D2 for WoW and never looked back. Wouldn't do the same for a Diablo game anymore...then again..hmmm...World of Diablo? But...Oh no..that would be WoD...the horror

Excluding the bad launch period where perfomance was all over the place, the thing that broke the thing can be separated in two factors mainly (and i'm talking about Vanilla and later on, ignoring all the improvement of RoS which were very good in the short term but bad on the long term and not really effective due to people having left already to never return).

First point was the "transfer hype" i mentioned before. A lot of players were the ones that came from WoW and not from D2 - way too many of them believed the game was simply "something different", was "too repetitive" or similar reasoning; they jumped the ship pretty soon just because they were mislead by other people's hype and they just didn't like the classic ARPG formula, which is totally fine and only natural from my point of view.

The second, that hurt the late game more, was the AH - in the sense that all the itemization and difficulty system was tailored on the AH existance and the caveat that people would have bought gear instead of farming it (very likely to reap dollars from the RMAH). Most items were totally useless due to total random rolls (like skill bonuses on a weapon that class couldn't equip) and the fact only a few stats were valuable. Playing the game was useless as most of the time hitting Inferno you could do quite comfortably the first act (when difficulties were only doing 4 times the main story, there was no Torment levels/adventure mode and monster power came out only after a while aswell as paragon) but you were totally wrecked by act 2 literal first fucking bees. And i mean LITERALLY.
Act 1 inferno monsters were level 60, so they could drop up to ilvl 60 whith an abysmal chance of dropping 61. Monsters in act two were lvl 61 and they just wrecked the shit out of you until you cheesed the whole game with some fancy perma invulnerable glass cannon build.

It turned out totally awful, especially for old school fand that were used to the D2 system where you could trade, but it was complementary. In D3 you played the AH and that drove most players oput of it immediately. They did improve the situation but it was all "too little, too late" and as Kotaku has reported, the second D3 expansion was canned the day RoS released without even seeing if it was a good thing or not - all the stuff that came out shortly after were things already developed for the second xpack (including the Necro) but salvaged to avoid having them just thrown in the trash.

[crono14]

Follow PoE's model and release cosmetic MTX's. I don't know they would release the game F2P and I highly doubt it. If the game looks like something worth playing actually, I would be fine buying the game and then it's free forever with the MTX options.

[alturic]

The absolute only way Diablo could ever remotely try working with a subscription is if there was continuous updates and it was basically an MMO. I would definitely be interested in a Diablo like that, however I could see it being a huge problem to Blizzards bottom-line almost making it a non-existent discussion inside Blizzard.

- - - Updated - - -

Follow PoE's model and release cosmetic MTX's. I don't know they would release the game F2P and I highly doubt it. If the game looks like something worth playing actually, I would be fine buying the game and then it's free forever with the MTX options.

PoE's model is microtransactions funding on-going development of every facet of the game that literally has zero bearing on said cosmetic items? Or do you mean PoE is free, and it's funded (and of course made well more money than if people bought it once for $50) entirely via cosmetic's?

- - - Updated - - -

Excluding the bad launch period where perfomance was all over the place, the thing that broke the thing can be separated in two factors mainly (and i'm talking about Vanilla and later on, ignoring all the improvement of RoS which were very good in the short term but bad on the long term and not really effective due to people having left already to never return).

First point was the "transfer hype" i mentioned before. A lot of players were the ones that came from WoW and not from D2 - way too many of them believed the game was simply "something different", was "too repetitive" or similar reasoning; they jumped the ship pretty soon just because they were mislead by other people's hype and they just didn't like the classic ARPG formula, which is totally fine and only natural from my point of view.

The second, that hurt the late game more, was the AH - in the sense that all the itemization and difficulty system was tailored on the AH existance and the caveat that people would have bought gear instead of farming it (very likely to reap dollars from the RMAH). Most items were totally useless due to total random rolls (like skill bonuses on a weapon that class couldn't equip) and the fact only a few stats were valuable. Playing the game was useless as most of the time hitting Inferno you could do quite comfortably the first act (when difficulties were only doing 4 times the main story, there was no Torment levels/adventure mode and monster power came out only after a while aswell as paragon) but you were totally wrecked by act 2 literal first fucking bees. And i mean LITERALLY.
Act 1 inferno monsters were level 60, so they could drop up to ilvl 60 whith an abysmal chance of dropping 61. Monsters in act two were lvl 61 and they just wrecked the shit out of you until you cheesed the whole game with some fancy perma invulnerable glass cannon build.

It turned out totally awful, especially for old school fand that were used to the D2 system where you could trade, but it was complementary. In D3 you played the AH and that drove most players oput of it immediately. They did improve the situation but it was all "too little, too late" and as Kotaku has reported, the second D3 expansion was canned the day RoS released without even seeing if it was a good thing or not - all the stuff that came out shortly after were things already developed for the second xpack (including the Necro) but salvaged to avoid having them just thrown in the trash.

Really? That was one of the things I liked about D3. I suppose it's because the only other thing was running the same things over and over and over hoping for better RNG the next time I ran it.

I despise games (and my success) being reliant on a good roll of the RNG dice.

[crono14]

- - - Updated - - -



PoE's model is microtransactions funding on-going development of every facet of the game that literally has zero bearing on said cosmetic items? Or do you mean PoE is free, and it's funded (and of course made well more money than if people bought it once for $50) entirely via cosmetic's?

- - - Updated - - -
.

PoE is completely F2P and yes is funded by cosmetics purchased form players. This was at least for the first 5 years. Tencent has acquired a majority stake in the company though so they have investors now, but you can read the below link for more info. PoE still has creative control over their game and no interference in the game and their monetization.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2147313

[alturic]

PoE is completely F2P and yes is funded by cosmetics purchased form players. This was at least for the first 5 years. Tencent has acquired a majority stake in the company though so they have investors now, but you can read the below link for more info. PoE still has creative control over their game and no interference in the game and their monetization.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2147313

Hmm, have they said what an investor was needed for? Usually that’s a sign of needing capital (could just be a POE 2 but still) for something you don’t have the capital to get through.

Didn’t/doesn’t Blizzard say they are completely separate from Activision as well? The point being, you now have more than just the customer needing to be kept happy.

[arandomuser]

i already know how its going to work
theres going to be a kadala but shes going to offer you to gamble for real money

[Aggrophobic]

Can we have an option to get it free with the StarCraft shooter?
Oh, thats right. Shame, really.

[Lochton]

I have played every other Diablo-like game. From western to Asian. And not even its biggest competitors like Path of Exile and Grim Dawn can compete because one is F2P with some really idiotic decisions and the other one is missing that visual appeal with animations and different characters. You can play a necro, a mage or a warrior and you basically look the same.
Torchlight 2 is the most Diablo game I have played, but still not quite there.

Diablo 3 is simply the best ARPG out there. What bothers me about Diablo 3 however, is that it's buy once game and it's not getting that steady cash income to give a bigger support for the game.

I am obviously very against F2P games. I mean, PoE is content wise, great. Everything else about it sucks, but the worst part is the armor customization. It's nearly non existent just like in Black Desert. And it's all because both games are F2P that are heavily dependant on costume sales. Your character and drops are not varied enough and look like shit unless you shell out money.
That ruins the gameplay for me.

I don't want Diablo 4 to be buy once game. Historically, it has been so. But times change. Diablo 2 was released way before mmorpg and dlc time.
Diablo 3 tried with real money auction house. We all know how that ended. The only reason why it's still being supported is because it has a legacy and a big following. Blizzard won't let it die, but let's face it, we're not getting any content because everyone who wanted to buy the game already bought it and the game is not generating much income, while the server and personell upkeep costs every month.

I don't want Diablo 4 to be buy once. I don't want Diablo 4 to be F2P with micro transactions. I don't want it to have tons of low quality DLCs.
I would however gladly pay $15/month to play it. I want to support the game I love, and I love Diablo very much.

How would you prefer to pay for Diablo 4?

How I've paid for all the others? Buy 2 Play. Well, D3 was with a subscription plan and mount for me.

[Nymfomania]

WTB World of Diablo... I have d3 for PC and Xbox. I got it for xbox due to my son wanting to play it... turns out i enjoy it more.

[Clozer]

Its ez you pay once and then you get to buy microTrans for cool looks that will provide more new fresh content regularly. Just like OW, anyone thinking otherwise is kinda stupid.

Besides that who wants to have the same shit that d3 got? One expansion every 3 years that you play for 1 month and then never login again.

[dope_danny]

Realistically i probably wouldn't. Blizzard is a another company going the way of Valve and i'm not the audience for that kind of monster. I love Diablo but my expectations for the company have reached record lows this year and i dont know what could sell me when i expect a EA level nightmare as baseline for future releases.

[Coldkil]

Really? That was one of the things I liked about D3. I suppose it's because the only other thing was running the same things over and over and over hoping for better RNG the next time I ran it.

I despise games (and my success) being reliant on a good roll of the RNG dice.

Then ARPGs are not the thing for you. It's literally all about farming - trading may or not be included, but if the best way to get better gear is buying it, then something's wrong. Then, there are games where farming is good and then like in D3 itemization was shit and the consequence was the AH being predominant.

Especially since once you have bought all your gear, what are you gonna play for? Virtual money? RMAH was obscene both in existance and implementation, and that's one olf the main reasons why the game bombed immediately.

EDIT: not saying trading/ah in games is inherently bad. But since gearing is the main drive, you cannot have a system that makes gearing just a matter of swiping a credit card (which was in D3). In Poe there's trading, but given how difficult is to farm currencies, you cannot simply get in game, buy everything and be successful.

[Allatar]

I think some sort of microtransaction was planned for D3 along the way and got dropped when further development after RoS was cancelled. Seems unfortunately likely to be a future feature.

The reason I think this is because the bit of the game that holds all your cosmetic items like pets, portraits and wings was originally called the Wardrobe and at some point that got changed to Diablo Shop and has been like that ever since, even though you cannot buy anything in it.

[Coldkil]

I think some sort of microtransaction was planned for D3 along the way and got dropped when further development after RoS was cancelled. Seems unfortunately likely to be a future feature.

The reason I think this is because the bit of the game that holds all your cosmetic items like pets, portraits and wings was originally called the Wardrobe and at some point that got changed to Diablo Shop and has been like that ever since, even though you cannot buy anything in it.

In fact all that stuff is actually a shop that has been released for China where you can buy cosmetics and XP boosts. It was something never meant for the western market.

[Glitter]

Initially I was extremely negative and believed Diablo 4 would not launch, but now that it seems to come to fruition I will play it. I would prefer paying for the game once and no monthly sub, but if it's a lot of fun I might subscribe if that's how it goes.

[EntertainmentNihilist]

I pay for the game and can play forever. Games should not be services, they are products. The modern games as a service model should be illegal IMO.

[EntertainmentNihilist]

That would require a game you host locally.

Or they could just give players the option to host it locally or set up private servers when they don't feel like paying to keep the servers running. Or just don't make the game depend on a central server at all, like Warcraft 1-3, Starcraft 1, Diablo 1 & 2, Diablo 3 on consoles, and almost every other game before the past few years. You realize that the way games are now is done mainly just to prevent losing a small portion of their revenue to piracy? I don't think it would be the end of the world if we made this practice illegal and companies had to just accept losing a portion of their revenue to piracy.

I don't really care how, but this current business model in an abomination that needs to be stopped.

[dmiiceuk]

I would to pay
In Diablo I always play as wizard
In Black Desert too

[Aleax]

Alternatively they could go the EA/Bethesda path and just spam us with DLC every 6 months that costs $20-$40.

I like. (+1)

But they will probably add micro-transactions anyway...like for additional stash (at your heart content now, at the opposite of Diablo 3) for example

[Thrif]

F2p with micro as it's the only way to guarantee they maintain the game properly.