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

[Biomega]

They're a PC gaming audience. Why would they be happy that a game in their favorite series was going to be mobile-only? If you foster a PC gaming community for 20 years, then suddenly announce a mobile title which no one asked for, people are obviously going to be annoyed. I don't think people were even mad that there was going to be a mobile component, just that there was initially not going to be a PC one.

Exactly.

It's like having a big announcement at a motorcycle convention and Harley Davidson comes out with a new tricycle, going "What, don't you guys have feet?". Wrong place. Wrong product.

[Elim Garak]

They're a PC gaming audience. Why would they be happy that a game in their favorite series was going to be mobile-only?

Plenty of PC gamers play on mobile.

No. They were Blizzcon attendies. That's the primary differentiator. Not that they are PC gamers. Most of them probably played Hearthstone. On iPhone.

[crusadernero]

or ... crazy idea - people dont mind not farming absolutely ultra imba bis gear and dont mind being done with game ? then they either quit or try out different classes - like most of people didnt since diablo 1 .

only this time we can enjoy it for free. so no idea why others are complaining really unless its a case of peopel with severe OCD.

i owuld compare it to farming actively VP in wow - yes im sure there are hundreds of people who farm hundreds of dungeons to be geared in 272 instantly but normal people dont do that . same like with buyting stuff in DI

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the reason is simple - its a fun way of killing time.

there is no other reason - unless you are a streamer who is making his living out of streaming it. or out of whinign about it so his simps sponsor him $$$$ and dont see absolutely any irony in doing that

Its not the same. Farming VP in wow requires you to play the game. Progressing in DI is having you buy the things you need without playing. If you want them to be equal, there has to be a buy option for VP in wow.

Your argument about "killing time" works perfectly fine with Diablo 1, 2 & 3. That is, if you play on PC. If you are on mobile, thats fine. Thats why I dont understand why they even bothered porting this to PC, when D4 is coming.

[Elim Garak]

Its not the same. Farming VP in wow requires you to play the game.

But you have to pay to play the game.

[crusadernero]

But you have to pay to play the game.

If you mean playing the game is logging in and buying materials required, then sure.

[Elim Garak]

If you mean playing the game is logging in and buying materials required, then sure.

Why would you buy anything in the game if there's no "play" in it?

[crusadernero]

Why would you buy anything in the game if there's no "play" in it?

With all the comments you have made in this thread, you are probably the one who are most qualified to answer that question. Why would anyone spend real money on digital goods in a forgettable mobile game?


You perfectly understand (or, you should) the difference between playing wow for VP and the insane grinds(that makes you buy materials) in DI. The OBVIOUS one is that in wow you cant buy VP.

[Elim Garak]

With all the comments you have made in this thread, you are probably the one who are most qualified to answer that question. Why would anyone spend real money on digital goods in a forgettable mobile game?

Why would anyone spend money on anything? Your entire existence is forgettable.

Seriously though. The answer is very simple. People spend money on things they want. If you don't understand why they want it - that's a YOU problem. Not THEM.

You perfectly understand (or, you should) the difference between playing wow for VP and the insane grinds(that makes you buy materials) in DI. The OBVIOUS one is that in wow you cant buy VP.

The difference is in wow you pay upfront for a very capped VP. It's a predatory technique to make you play longer and pay more sub. It is predatorily designed for the cap to not be enough to buy everything you want and to leave a remainder of VP so that you feel bad for not spending it all.

In DI you can get everything for free - but you will have to grind for a long time.

[Anzen]

In DI you can get everything for free - but you will have to grind for a long time.

I've played my fair share of gacha games, but I've never seen 'Pay to speed up progress' to this level.

The obvious gate being legendary gems, with which an active F2P receives 2 per month.

In one year, an active F2P player (reaching level 32 of the battle pass every time, no small feat) will receive 24 legendary crests. Alternatively, you can pay £52.80 for a years worth of progress.

Now considering that £528 buys you a decades worth of progress, and looking at estimates that the drop rate of a 5* gem is around 1 in 2000-2500, the average player would either need to spend about £4,950 on average for a five star gem, or just grind for 94 years.

I'd say while it's not technically impossible to get everything for free, legendary gems above 2* are unobtainable for F2P players (and light spenders).

[Elim Garak]

I've played my fair share of gacha games, but I've never seen 'Pay to speed up progress' to this level.

The obvious gate being legendary gems, with which an active F2P receives 2 per month.

In one year, an active F2P player .

That's your mistake. You assume the game stays the same for the whole year. if you played your share of gacha games - then you should know that's never the case.

[Beefhammer]

All of your crafted gems can be sold BTW.

Which leads to the next problem in the game. Soft/Hard caps on grinding in an ARPG. Regardless of how inefficient grinding rifts would be to sell them on the AH, it should be a viable option, but it isn't because of hard caps.

There absolutely should be better distinction between legendary and eternal legendary crests. They are both eerily similar with small distinctions in the frame (and obviously text until you reach the end of the text blurb). If the eternal ones were like RED or something I doubt there would be any confusion as people would probably read the pretty similar text blurb to find the difference between the two. I was actually incredibly lucky as a F2P player and found a 5 star seeping bile gem using one of the few legendary crests awarded to me, and while it's incredibly good, I thought it might be better served on the AH to buy gems that are better suited to my playstyle. This is what led me to research a bit more on why some gems are bound, and some gems are unbound.

Personally I think the biggest faux pas of DI is just the caps that are thrown at you in the game. Just feels weird to have them in an ARPG, regardless of whether it has the distinction of being a mobile game or not. The D2 equivalency would be telling you that act bosses are cut off for loot today after you kill 10 of them a day.

Pretty sure it's just the random crafted. The random option is the only one that has the market scales logo on it. Unless there is a paying option to allow you that I am unaware of. Only gems I've crafted from the random option allow me to sell in the market.

[Magical Mudcrab]

Plenty of PC gamers play on mobile.

No. They were Blizzcon attendies. That's the primary differentiator. Not that they are PC gamers. Most of them probably played Hearthstone. On iPhone.

What kind of pretzel logic is this? It doesn't matter if PC gamers also play mobile games, that's totally besides the point. Hearthstone and Diablo are different franchises with different target audiences and different expected experiences. Expecting there to be total overlap between these two audiences is stupid, and further inferring that Diablo players would want a Diablo mobile-only title because they might possibly play Hearthstone on a mobile device doesn't even logically follow, especially considering that Hearthstone does not force you to play on mobile. It's clear from the live Blizzcon reaction that people weren't happy about the mobile-only announcement, and the subsequent outrage on the forums (incl. both official and third-party) shows pretty clearly that people weren't happy with it being mobile-only in general. You're contesting things that no one else would try to contest because it's fundamentally wrong, even Allen Adham, one of the co-founders of Blizzard, said after the 2018 backlash that Blizzard's audience generally, and the Diablo audience more specifically, are PC- and console-focused.

[Powerogue]

On the sliding scale of "actual video game" to "Mobile Dungeon Keeper", where does this fall? For all the people talking about it I haven't seen gameplay footage yet.

[Jerot]

That's your mistake. You assume the game stays the same for the whole year. if you played your share of gacha games - then you should know that's never the case.

Safe bet with blizzard, the only game that gets multiple content updates per year is Hearthstone, and its a genre that came with built-in paid gambling. WoW has gone more than a year without updates before and it's subscription based...

If anything DI is designed to go for long periods without updates because character progression is time gated over multiple decades. Even WoWs weekly lockouts and reward systems didn't take that long to progress through.

You're also assuming if things change they will get better (Adding more free sources of gear/materials) and not worse (Adding more things to buy).

Your whole argument boils down to we can't critique the game as it exists now because it could change. Pretty weak defense. You're basically saying we can't be critical of anything capable of changing. When the opposite is true, theres no point in arguing for changes to be made where no change is possible.

On the sliding scale of "actual video game" to "Mobile Dungeon Keeper", where does this fall? For all the people talking about it I haven't seen gameplay footage yet.

It's a game up until you run out of stuff to do at max level, then every meaningful progression system is daily/weekly/monthly capped unless you pull out a credit card. Buying progress in uncapped, and you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars min-maxing one character.

Paragon level is tied to the servers progression, going above it gives diminishing returns until a whole days worth of grinding won't level you up. Ranking up your gear and finding better base pieces is locked behind paragon/hell level.

The only uncapped source of power is legendary gems and they can easily make your character twice as strong as someone who isn't as far along in gem progression.

It takes thousands of gems to upgrade through the ranks and it's nearly impossible to get higher rank gems as a free player. You'll get a handful a month, or you can spend $25 and run one 2-5 minute dungeon for several months worth of F2P progression all at once.

Once you max out a gem you have to spend money to awaken the piece of gear it's socketed into, which gives it up to 5 additional gem slots for bonus stats. This isn't available to free players.

Some content is locked behind becoming an immortal, which involves a bunch of PvP progression and fighting against players who are spending money to stay ahead of you. Making it extremely hard if not impossible to achieve as a F2P. Depending on the state of your server, which you cannot switch without rerolling. And everything you earn/buy is locked to one character.

The gameplay looks flashy and the controls on mobile are good. But its very shallow, you don't actually have to dodge those flashy boss attacks, you can AFK most fights. The rest of the game is basically just D3 but with caps. And bounties in a shared map where everyone is fighting for spawns.

[Powerogue]

It's a game up until you run out of stuff to do at max level, then every meaningful progression system is daily/weekly/monthly capped unless you pull out a credit card. Buying progress in uncapped, and you can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars min-maxing one character.

Yikes. That's somehow even worse than "Mobile Dungeon Keeper", where you at least get to know the game is shit after about 50 seconds, instead of getting invested first and them trying to trick you with sunk cost fallacy.



(Disclaimer every time I post this: The actual original Dungeon Keeper games are great and some of my favorite classic PC video games.)

[Alroxas]

It's a mobile game, what did you expect? Seriously. I am not even trying to troll, it's just a fact.

I expect a company that has the supposed values of:

• Gameplay first
• commitment to quality
• play nice; play fair
• embracing inner geek
• respecting everyone
• thinking globally
• leading responsibly
• learn and grow

To do better than the shit that is Diablo Immortal. Maybe it's the Activision influence (or NetEase influence) but Blizzard (for me) used to hold a higher spot above other developers because they do the right thing even when it's not the most profitable thing or industry status quo.

Don't get me wrong, the gameplay itself is fine for DI but the excessive monetization is just down right horrible.

Nobody is saying that ABK shouldn't make a mobile game and make some of the money that's out there for the mobile game market (which is larger than PC and Console game market as of 2021), but to make one so predatory and so Gacha is something I would expect from other companies like EA.

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you ain't going to get that 5 star top quality gem, they state the chances and you ain't getting it - you can calculate the end chance yourself, the % are given in store.

Wait where is the %? Because my understanding is that since Crests go into a Rift (which has to be completed by the player in time) that % don't need to be reported by Blizzard. It's not like Crest directly yield loot box but rather yields access to loot piñata. That small difference seems to keep some of the EU lawyers/regulators at bay (for now)

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I mean, their "fans" were frothing at the mouth the second a "stupid mobile game for stupid kids and girls and non-gamers" was announced.

Pretty sure "good will" was never on the table.

To be fair, someone at Blizzard wasn't thinking very well to introduce a mobile-only (remember it was originally mobile only at announcement) Diablo game to a crowd of the most dedicated Blizzard PC players.

At the very least, it should have been a PC AND mobile game but what we've got so far is a mobile-ported-to-PC game which has very low PC functionality. And that's before we even go into the MTX stuff....

At the very least, Blizzard could have (and should have) done better.

[Gaidax]

Yikes. That's somehow even worse than "Mobile Dungeon Keeper", where you at least get to know the game is shit after about 50 seconds, instead of getting invested first and them trying to trick you with sunk cost fallacy.



(Disclaimer every time I post this: The actual original Dungeon Keeper games are great and some of my favorite classic PC video games.)

While I am all for bashing D:I's predatory MTX setup, don't jump to conclusions based on one post.

The game has plenty free progression - you still have paragon levels just like in D3 and drops you get depend on your paragon level + difficulty you run content in. And there is A LOT of content types.



The gems issue is big, but it's not AS big as people make it out to be. It is true that a character that literally WHALES the shit out the game will be about 2x powerful (as long as they keep up paragon level - important point), but the base power actually comes from gear you grind out like in every game.

Gem resonance (which is what gems give besides base stuff) is a multiplier on top of gear you found - for example my multiplier is at around 30% now, while F2P player would probably have like 5-10% from gems they do get (you can craft them and such too). In my case I tossed about 100 bucks in game. Resonance cap is 400%, but nobody can get it because there are no gems to support it yet. One of the top whales has like ~250% resonance and the guy spent few hundred thousands.


My take is this: if they'd remove all this gem resonance and P2W gem upgrades from the game - it would be down right better Diablo 3 right there, as far as game itself is concerned. Simply because there is so much different stuff to do there in-between PvP, Raids and Shadow/Immortal game mode, that on top everything D3 got now like bounties, dungeons and rifts.

Quite frankly, I am almost shocked they did not introduce D:I game modes to Diablo 3, that'd be nothing short of expansion worthy there and would make it a much better game.

[Nymrohd]

Welp, hit Paragon and I'm done. The game is far too aggressively monetized at that point and it really kills any motivation to start on proper "gear" (gem) progression.

Shame, there's a wonderful mobile game, and pretty good game overall, buried beneath the layers of gross, exploitative monetization.

I'm at paragon 27. Still just empowered battle pass is the only thing I bought. I did luck into a decent gem (3/5 Howler's Call) but I can't say it does THAT much damage.
I am always on the higher end of leaderboards for challenge rifts. In battlegrounds I am usually top 3 (was MVP three times in a row today). Yes whales have an advantage but so far it does not seem insurmountable. Now I will be going Hell 2 this weekend most likely (I average 2,5 levels per day) so I'll see how different things are when you get there.
I'd say the endgame loop is strictly better than D3. There is much more variety in meaningful activities. If this had been a second xpac for D3 and did not have this aggressive monetization (a battle pass would be ok) I think I'd probably shift most of my WoW time to that game. It's sad because the game is actually great and would have been so much greater if there was some reasonable path to grinding for 5 star gems and awakening was not at rank 10.

[Gaidax]

I'd say the endgame loop is strictly better than D3. There is much more variety in meaningful activities. If this had been a second xpac for D3 and did not have this aggressive monetization (a battle pass would be ok) I think I'd probably shift most of my WoW time to that game. It's sad because the game is actually great and would have been so much greater if there was some reasonable path to grinding for 5 star gems and awakening was not at rank 10.

My thoughts exactly. As far as gameplay and game modes offered go - D:I is plain and simple a better D3.

Which makes it sad on two fronts:

1. If Blizz would not go full out greed there - it would be a great game. The base stuff you do is better than any Diablo game before ever.
2. Why the hell Blizzard could not do that for Diablo 3? It's mind-boggling.

[Farora]

Blizzard has already been at the bottom for a decade. So they can't really fall.