The Diablo 4 pre-order bundles, and their supposed cost

[Nymrohd]

have you played hearsthone?it plays like shit and literaly every patch brings new crazy bugs,some even game breaking,a better comparison is poe and d3,and yeah d3's combat feels more smooth,but thats a small price to pay when the content is astronomicaly more diverse

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well,the question was if the only way to have cosmetics will be by buying them,like in poe,but if so,that would be really scumy considering one is free and the other has a ''mythic'' version

I play Hearthstone a lot. The game looks great. Bugs exist but are rare and get fixed fairly fast. I've personally encountered only a few in the many years I've played Hearthstone; ofc they look many when there is a small industry of streamers whose work is to target big studio games and show every little bug (often coming from some obscure interaction) as if it is a catastrophe that will melt your PC. But hey, outrage sells.

D3 was largely abandoned more than a decade ago so I have no idea why you are comparing it with PoE. Necro and the 2-3 extra zones we got post launch were the second expac content that could be implemented and since then it's been operating on a skeleton crew. I would hope any game that is actively been developed can have more variety than a dead game.

[deenman]

It all feels pretty lame when diablo series is among the best selling franchises of all time and doesnt need to rely on cosmetic hand outs at the least to warrant its creation.

diablo sold good based on borrowed good will from d1 and d2,also if they sell cosmetics for money,you really think their best work wont go in to designing those?just like with wow mounts or the unique transmog

[Drench]

There we go.


A decent chunk of change.

But also interesting - Platinum, an ingame currency used for buying - you guessed it, ingame cosmetics.

"Cosmetics" so it doesn't effect gameplay...

Yeah besides the fact that they pump all the cool stuff into MTX, spend way more dev time on it, you will look badass from lvl 1 so there is no look progression, everyone ends up wearing nearly the same sets the day they come out. It ruins gameplay built around earning rewards.

Goodtimes.

[RobertoCarlos]

diablo sold good based on borrowed good will from d1 and d2,also if they sell cosmetics for money,you really think their best work wont go in to designing those?just like with wow mounts or the unique transmog

I mean yeah Diablo name combined with the wait from D2 to D3 helped immensely with pre orders and hype for D3 but overall after the changes and its expansion it was a fairly solid game for its time.

And I agree totally, I dont like when they sell cosmetics because cosmetics do matter. Especially in a gear driven RPG.

I dont like it when people hand wave cosmetic selling as fine in a $50+ game Its just corporate greed and the game ultimately suffers because they focus the game design around said predatory tactics

[Kikazz]

I mean, literally every option in the survey about gear, currency and even season passes was prefaced with a blurb about how its for cosmetics only.

I totally get the skepticism with Blizzard, but really at this point theirs not reason to assume D4 is P2W unless they announce otherwise.

i bet you also agree with Wyatt cheng when he said you couldnt buy player power with real money, for Diablo Immortal.

[deenman]

I play Hearthstone a lot. The game looks great. Bugs exist but are rare and get fixed fairly fast. I've personally encountered only a few in the many years I've played Hearthstone; ofc they look many when there is a small industry of streamers whose work is to target big studio games and show every little bug (often coming from some obscure interaction) as if it is a catastrophe that will melt your PC. But hey, outrage sells.

D3 was largely abandoned more than a decade ago so I have no idea why you are comparing it with PoE. Necro and the 2-3 extra zones we got post launch were the second expac content that could be implemented and since then it's been operating on a skeleton crew. I would hope any game that is actively been developed can have more variety than a dead game.

im comparing it with poe in the smoothness of its combat feel,that is irelevant to it being abandoned or not,and i gave that to d3 as being better

also i have to call you out on the hs thing,the game has bugs that dont get fixed for many many patches,sometimes even game breaking ones,like the interaction with the warlock legend spell that copies deathrattles not working with the warlock prime legendery,took them months to fix it,also if you challenge a friend and swap decks with them the game kicks you out,so you have to challenge again,the bug with double spell dmg that made the shaman epic spell give them double dmg,not fixed for a long time etc etc

[Nymrohd]

It all feels pretty lame when diablo series is among the best selling franchises of all time and doesnt need to rely on cosmetic hand outs at the least to warrant its creation.

From an accounting perspective I can tell you that ANY product that requires long term support needs guaranteed cash inflows over the same term to be considered viable. Anything less means you cannot adjust to changes in cost structure (and the last few years have proven that changes in cost structure can happen and can be very volatile). It doesn't help that you'd have to account for a full decade of support for a game like D4 (since you are not retiring it for a new version in anything less than that).

Now ofc that can happen in many ways. A subscription service (and a battle pass is effectively that), a cosmetics cash shop, frequent cheap DLC, infrequent expansions, all can help support the product long term.

And bear in mind that every projects needs to have a RoI that justifies its existence in a very competitive industry with shareholders having high expectations for margins.

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I mean yeah Diablo name combined with the wait from D2 to D3 helped immensely with pre orders and hype for D3 but overall after the changes and its expansion it was a fairly solid game for its time.

And I agree totally, I dont like when they sell cosmetics because cosmetics do matter. Especially in a gear driven RPG.

I dont like it when people hand wave cosmetic selling as fine in a $50+ game Its just corporate greed and the game ultimately suffers because they focus the game design around said predatory tactics

I don't know about Cosmetics on an ARPG. I get their value in a game like WoW because we spend so much time looking at our characters doing nothing or spend time being social or just hanging around in lobby areas. I tried transmog in D3 and it really did not make a difference; my character is lost in the sea of mobs for it to matter as much. If I am wasting my time in lobby areas in an ARPG then the game has far bigger issues than Cosmetics.

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diablo sold good based on borrowed good will from d1 and d2,also if they sell cosmetics for money,you really think their best work wont go in to designing those?just like with wow mounts or the unique transmog

And what did Reaper of SOuls sell on?

[RobertoCarlos]

From an accounting perspective I can tell you that ANY product that requires long term support needs guaranteed cash inflows over the same term to be considered viable. Anything less means you cannot adjust to changes in cost structure (and the last few years have proven that changes in cost structure can happen and can be very volatile). It doesn't help that you'd have to account for a full decade of support for a game like D4 (since you are not retiring it for a new version in anything less than that).

Now ofc that can happen in many ways. A subscription service (and a battle pass is effectively that), a cosmetics cash shop, frequent cheap DLC, infrequent expansions, all can help support the product long term.

And bear in mind that every projects needs to have a RoI that justifies its existence in a very competitive industry with shareholders having high expectations for margins.

Thats fine when said cash flow injection is leading to directly more content from the game, thats the idea in principal right? Support a game you like leads to a higher chance you get more of the game you like.

Look at the track record of the company you're talking about. Diablo 3 made record profits and only offered an expansion you had to buy. And ultimately the game play loop remained the same thing the entire time. Grind rifts and bounties, that was it. No pvp even though it was promoted early on. It never had pvp. So even though it made record breaking profits selling the game, players got jackshit outside of buying reapers of souls and the necromancer pack.

Same shit with WoW. It makes more money than ever on server transfers and name changes and race changes every time they update character models or introduced a new race that have OP racials. WoW has less content than ever and is stagnate. But its making money.

So yeah save me the accounting pitch. Its just pure corporate greed nothing else.

[deenman]

And what did Reaper of SOuls sell on?

hopium i would guess,also the numbers for ros are kinda sketchy,all i can find is a 2.7m in first week,the rest is combined sales with base game

[Nymrohd]

Thats fine when said cash flow injection is leading to directly more content from the game, thats the idea in principal right? Support a game you like leads to a higher chance you get more of the game you like.

So yeah save me the accounting pitch. Its just pure corporate greed nothing else.

Nope support doesn't just mean more content. It's paying for maintenance and server costs over the long term and who knows how many other minor costs that accrue that you and I will never know about (that heck most devs don't know about unless they have time in operations or cost accounting). Further development is its own thing.

And the corporate greed spiel is tired. Yes corporations are greedy. That's why they exist. Shareholders will flock to the best returns. Companies with middling returns only keep public interest if they are good diversification targets. Capital mobility is insane. If you want to address that issue, ask for harsher corporate governance, for less efficiency in capital mobility (via direct or indirect taxation) and for more taxation in general to tame greed. I know I do. But we judge products in the environment they are created. AAA games have insane budgets.

[Raven]

Wait a second.

Literally 40 seconds in says this is from a Korean site and hasn't been verified yet nor seems like it can be.

And...yet it's being taken as fact? Like, in fairness, there's no surprise to multiple versions that come with more cosmetics, that's nothing new to Blizzard and is pretty harmless. But something like a survey should be pretty easy to ya know, give proof that it exists. And yet there seems to be big ol' nothing.

Even if its a true form, its still only a survey not a list to show the prices.

So if people dont like the prices just say so if they happen to get a survey to answer.

[Razorice]

The only reason I'm planning on buying D4 is because I'm invested in the franchise (not Immortal), but I'll have to see what's the box price of the base game + if Blizzard isn't adding too much emphasis on MTX. if I don't like where D4 is going I'm skipping it and sticking to PoE.

[Nymrohd]

hopium i would guess,also the numbers for ros are kinda sketchy,all i can find is a 2.7m in first week,the rest is combined sales with base game

Best I can find: https://www.polygon.com/2015/8/4/909...-million-units

[deenman]

Best I can find: https://www.polygon.com/2015/8/4/909...-million-units

yeah,i found that also,it doesnt say ros total sales,just the week 1 and then lumps em

[Nymrohd]

yeah,i found that also,it doesnt say ros total sales,just the week 1 and then lumps em

Still, between 8/14 and 6/15, in a 10month period a year after RoS was released, combined D3 sales increased by at least 10 million.

[Orby]

I think as long as you can get to point A to point B in the story it will be fine, at least for me. I am hoping there isn't a grind that takes you out of the story. I played Diablo and Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 from the start until I beat the campaign and then put the game down, I don't care for the modes or the activities, never have really. Except for Diablo 2 where me and my sister used to play a lot on battlenet back in the day. But generally I wanna just see the story through that's all I care about.

Diablo has always been a semi single player game to me.

[Ghost of Cow]

Wait a second.

Literally 40 seconds in says this is from a Korean site and hasn't been verified yet nor seems like it can be.

And...yet it's being taken as fact? Like, in fairness, there's no surprise to multiple versions that come with more cosmetics, that's nothing new to Blizzard and is pretty harmless. But something like a survey should be pretty easy to ya know, give proof that it exists. And yet there seems to be big ol' nothing.

I mean, this is the same group of people (no, literally, lots of the same exact people) who took the "Diablo banned in China!!!" Reddit post as gospel because it agreed with their frothing rage.

[Chaotic1962]

It really saddens me to see people say "Well other games have the battlepasse so its ok." Sure, it exists, but that doesn't make it right. D2R doesn't have a battle pass, and it doesn't need one and it was well received, I'm sure they recouped the dev costs and made money as well because it was good and sold well. It still has servers that requires maintenance. Hell even D2 has servers that require maintenance and power to run. I don't see the justification in shelling out full price for a game and then be bombarded with battle passes, cosmetics and so on. Especially since they added this... "mmo" component, just to incentivize spending on cosmetics so you can look cool in front of everyone. I wouldn't care if they made D4 a full fledged mmo and slapped a sub cost on it like wow. Then it would excuse the price tag and you would know what to expect on a regular basis, everything would hopefully be unlocked to you without additional cost. If a game is good, it will sell well and it will thrive, if its shit it wont. Blizzard adding all this stuff from the get go doesn't inspire confidence to me. The more information leaked about D4 the worse it looks to me personally. I get that its all still in alpha, and its a korean survey and all that, but the thing is Blizzard spent a ton of goodwill on Diablo (gems are not gear) Immortal, and hoping they would not monetize everything they can in D4 is just that... hoping.

[Khaza-R]

i bet you also agree with Wyatt cheng when he said you couldnt buy player power with real money, for Diablo Immortal.

Ultimately we will have to see. But no, I wouldn't believe him.

The demos between mobile gamers and PC gamers are very different despite them both failing under the same umbrella term of "gamers". Most companies realize that and that's why they market these products differently.

[DeltrusDisc]

Nah I'm not poor. Idc if d4 has some cosmetics on the shop I'll be buying it.

I'm not poor either, I'm just also not willing to waste money on a company who has scorned me so many times in recent years.

See: WC3: R'd, WoW BfA + SL, Diablo: I.
And others seem very unhappy with Overwatch, but I don't care at all about that game.

I just want Blizzard to prove themselves before I give them another cent. Other companies have done far better in recent years with quality games and I feel they deserve it where Blizzard needs to get out of the hole they've dug, so to speak.