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

[Mamut]

Check wow's free mounts versus the paid ones. Don't pretend to be this stupid.

And my favourite one is a golem from Mythic Guldan. So whats your point? Theres alot more great mounts ingame than in the store.

[chiddie]

Thanks for linking that video, made it obvious isnt the game for me. Predatory microtransactions everywhere in a game thats not f2p is a no no for me.

Didn’t see the video yet but I can hardly believe it’s full of shop advertising since shop is only for cosmetics.

[Nefastus]

Didn’t see the video yet but I can hardly believe it’s full of shop advertising since shop is only for cosmetics.

To me cosmetics selling isnt reasonable for bought games. Okay for f2p but definitly not for 40 plus dollars games.

[Stormwolf64]

And my favourite one is a golem from Mythic Guldan. So whats your point? Theres alot more great mounts ingame than in the store.

My point right now is that you dont understand my point. Come back once you do

t's truly scary how little people understand when you write things out plainly in black and white. If i say the sky is blue, someone will bicker and argue that i said it was yellow. This is the internet today, or the diminishing of peoples understanding of the written word.

[Mamut]

My point right now is that you dont understand my point. Come back once you do

t's truly scary how little people understand when you write things out plainly in black and white. If i say the sky is blue, someone will bicker and argue that i said it was yellow. This is the internet today, or the diminishing of peoples understanding of the written word.

There are more than 700 mounts ingame and around 25 in the store. Theres is alot of them who look way better than the ones in the store. Some people prefer different mounts and skins and thats understandable. But claiming that every free mount is way worse than the ones in the store is just a pure lie and you know this.

[chiddie]

To me cosmetics selling isnt reasonable for bought games. Okay for f2p but definitly not for 40 plus dollars games.

This is a fair point (I don’t care but that’s me) but has little to do with being constantly told to look at the shop while you play as you said in the previous post I quoted.

WoW ingame shop does exist since ages and has been advertised something like 3/4 times A YEAR when there’s the 6 months mount or discounts.

Also nowadays 99% of games have a shop, regardless being f2p or p2p.

Honestly it seems to me that whatever excuse is right to blame Blizzard nowadays.

[Stormwolf64]

There are more than 700 mounts ingame and around 25 in the store. Theres is alot of them who look way better than the ones in the store. Some people prefer different mounts and skins and thats understandable. But claiming that every free mount is way worse than the ones in the store is just a pure lie and you know this.

I have never, not once said there aren't fantastic free mounts in the game. I have no clue why you're harping on about this still.

[Edge-]

To me cosmetics selling isnt reasonable for bought games. Okay for f2p but definitly not for 40 plus dollars games.

It's how they'll fund ongoing development with free content updates each season. So instead of D2 seasons where it's just a fresh start and maybe some balance tweaks, it's a fresh start with balance tweaks, but also new content or skills added to the game.

And that's all free, you don't need to spend a penny on cosmetics if you don't want to. You just get to enjoy all the free post-launch content released. Will it be a ton? Probably not, but new free stuff to keep the endgame interesting and engaging is nice all the same.

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I have never, not once said there aren't fantastic free mounts in the game. I have no clue why you're harping on about this still.

Check wow's free mounts versus the paid ones. Don't pretend to be this stupid.

That's a pretty explicit post implying that the free mounts are of lower quality than the paid ones. I'm not sure what else it's intended to mean or how it communicates anything akin to there being fantastic free and paid mounts in the game?

[Stormwolf64]

of course they're of lower quality, but that doesn't mean that they're all bad.

[Edge-]

of course they're of lower quality

Which, again, many people here disagree with. Some of the paid mounts in WoW, for example, look like absolutely hilarious dogshit to me.

but that doesn't mean that they're all bad.

Conversely, doesn't mean paid cosmetics all good, either. So you have the same situation: Plenty of good/bad in-game cosmetics, and also some good/bad paid cosmetics.

[BeepBoo]

It's how they'll fund ongoing development with free content updates each season. So instead of D2 seasons where it's just a fresh start and maybe some balance tweaks, it's a fresh start with balance tweaks, but also new content or skills added to the game.

And that's all free, you don't need to spend a penny on cosmetics if you don't want to. You just get to enjoy all the free post-launch content released. Will it be a ton? Probably not, but new free stuff to keep the endgame interesting and engaging is nice all the same.

I'd rather just spend 20-60 dollars every 6 months and get a commensurate amount of content while also feeling like I have complete access to absolutely everything everyone else does and be done with it.

[chiddie]

I'd rather just spend 20-60 dollars every 6 months and get a commensurate amount of content while also feeling like I have complete access to absolutely everything everyone else does and be done with it.

Since I care sub zero about cosmetics in an arpg, I like more enjoying new content spending zero money thanks to the people addicted to cosmetics.

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I'd rather just spend 20-60 dollars every 6 months and get a commensurate amount of content while also feeling like I have complete access to absolutely everything everyone else does and be done with it.

Since I care sub zero about cosmetics in an arpg, I like more enjoying new content spending zero money thanks to the people addicted to cosmetics.

[BeepBoo]

Since I care sub zero about cosmetics in an arpg, I like more enjoying new content spending zero money thanks to the people addicted to cosmetics.

As if the cash shop doesn't have other implications to game design than just cosmetics. I get it, though. People like different things in gameplay than I do. I like full products for my money and I don't mind shelling out for full products. I hate SAAS or any other nickle/dime scheme where I'm always left wanting and feeling incomplete, which most MTX games have. Gotta keep people hooked and playing your shitty grindfest!

[Hotmail]

https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diab...eta-draws-near

Despite the recent leak(s), Blizzard is going to invite random players to their Closed Beta and put them under NDA. Like that's going to go over well

[Edge-]

I'd rather just spend 20-60 dollars every 6 months and get a commensurate amount of content while also feeling like I have complete access to absolutely everything everyone else does and be done with it.

A lot of folks would, but that business model doesn't work as well as it used to so this is what we have. Arguably this is better since we're getting tons of free playable content, we're just missing out on some cosmetics.

As if the cash shop doesn't have other implications to game design than just cosmetics. I get it, though. People like different things in gameplay than I do. I like full products for my money and I don't mind shelling out for full products. I hate SAAS or any other nickle/dime scheme where I'm always left wanting and feeling incomplete, which most MTX games have. Gotta keep people hooked and playing your shitty grindfest!

Inherently? It doesn't.

Will it in D4? Maybe, but so far we've seen nothing indicating that it will.

Though like...grindfest? Grinding is legit the core gameplay loop of ARPG's so I hope there's a lot of excellent grinding.

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https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/diab...eta-draws-near

Despite the recent leak(s), Blizzard is going to invite random players to their Closed Beta and put them under NDA. Like that's going to go over well

Planned before the leaks, and the expectation of leaks (given that this isn't the first big leak) is likely baked in. They're not gonna can an important gameplay test just because someone leaked, they remove the leaker and that's that. Ideally they won't have leaks, but it's a risk any time you let the general public into your game before it's ready for prime-time.

And that's good. They need all the testing and feedback they can get heading into launch to improve the game and check the, "You think you do, but you don't." type mentality at Blizzard.

[Hotmail]

Planned before the leaks, and the expectation of leaks (given that this isn't the first big leak) is likely baked in. They're not gonna can an important gameplay test just because someone leaked, they remove the leaker and that's that. Ideally they won't have leaks, but it's a risk any time you let the general public into your game before it's ready for prime-time.

And that's good. They need all the testing and feedback they can get heading into launch to improve the game and check the, "You think you do, but you don't." type mentality at Blizzard.

That's a rather optimistic outlook. Usually they don't make any big changes based on community feedback, only small changes that were planned along the way anyway.

As for the leaks, Blizzard doesn't have to can their big plans; they could just do what any other company (like Ubisoft) does, which is rely on in-house testing labs until the open beta is ready.

[chiddie]

As if the cash shop doesn't have other implications to game design than just cosmetics. I get it, though. People like different things in gameplay than I do. I like full products for my money and I don't mind shelling out for full products. I hate SAAS or any other nickle/dime scheme where I'm always left wanting and feeling incomplete, which most MTX games have. Gotta keep people hooked and playing your shitty grindfest!

What other implications should it have? Of course they can add other things (mounts? Pets? Wings?) in the store but in the last quarterly update they were quite hammering with the fact that you won’t be able to buy char power or “speed up things” in D4.

For me it’s more than enough. I think we just have to accept that times changed and it’s very difficult to sustain an arpg for a decade without some extra income.

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That's a rather optimistic outlook. Usually they don't make any big changes based on community feedback, only small changes that were planned along the way anyway.

As for the leaks, Blizzard doesn't have to can their big plans; they could just do what any other company (like Ubisoft) does, which is rely on in-house testing labs until the open beta is ready.

Which company makes big changes to a game after it enters closed beta, unless feedbacks are totally underwhelming?

Big changes mean delay the game and the more you delay, the more it costs.

[Edge-]

That's a rather optimistic outlook. Usually they don't make any big changes based on community feedback, only small changes that were planned along the way anyway.

I doubt they'll make huge changes, but it will likely give them some additional feedback/perspective on the endgame and where they can make tweaks to improve it before launch. The game still only has a 2023 launch date though, so it's quite possible they don't have a launch target locked in quite yet (though they have a window) and will use this feedback to help them better estimate that date.

they could just do what any other company (like Ubisoft) does, which is rely on in-house testing labs until the open beta is ready.

Ubisoft doesn't do this as much with their online games, no? I know Division 2 has a public test server for its updates (at least on PC) and IIRC they have similar test servers for other games.

In-house testing only gets you so far, even contracting to a third party QA company. Sometimes you just need earlier pre-open beta masses of players playing the game and providing both direct feedback and mountains of in-game data for developers that internal testing or virtualized testing simply can't do.

[Nefastus]

This is a fair point (I don’t care but that’s me) but has little to do with being constantly told to look at the shop while you play as you said in the previous post I quoted.

WoW ingame shop does exist since ages and has been advertised something like 3/4 times A YEAR when there’s the 6 months mount or discounts.

Also nowadays 99% of games have a shop, regardless being f2p or p2p.

Honestly it seems to me that whatever excuse is right to blame Blizzard nowadays.

I just avoid buying games that are filled with microtransactions. This isnt blaming Blizzard but gaming companies as a whole. Financing this will only make it worse.

[Naoto]

I just avoid buying games that are filled with microtransactions. This isnt blaming Blizzard but gaming companies as a whole. Financing this will only make it worse.

And not financing gaming companies will only make them better? yes because I'm sure Blizzard will try even harder to make D5 the best game possible if nobody gives them money for D4 because it had cosmetic items you could buy.

Being a developer must be one of the hardest jobs in the world, people want f2p yet don't want micro-transactions, people want constant end-game content but don't want micro-transactions, people want all the content for free because they paid for the base game. So in other words you want companies to rely 100% on initial game sales to fund it for the next 6 years while not giving them a single penny for items in a game that don't influence the game in any way shape or form?

Gaming is a give and take type of thing, if you ain't willing to give them money you ain't getting shit in return. People happily pay monthly fees left and right yet spend the same $10 on a game you play and we act like the developers have committed a crime, what's the difference?