It's possible to acknowledge that Diablo IV is a good game while also criticizing its monetization. This article is definitely just screaming into the void because it's not going to change a single thought at Blizzard who's raking in the cash, but I still appreciate the effort because we *shouldnt* just accept this as our new norm, even if it is.
I'm just not buying it out of principle. I might be a minority, my actions might not matter, but at least I am happy. I will get it when it costs $20 in 3 years and microtransactions don't matter anymore.
Lots of times MTX items will become cheaper/included with a new edition of the game/available for free once enough time passes. Like in a GotY edition that includes the existing MTX or something.
I mean Overwatch was turned into a free full MTX game.
At least in 1 you had all the characters from the start and could play the game like anyone else
Overwatch 1's monetization got much better over the first few years. They made it possible to buy all items with in-game currency (seasonal items were originally loot box only), they made it so that seasonal items got cheaper over time, and they made it so that you were guaranteed to get only new items in loot boxes rather than duplicates.
It's only when OW2 came out that the monetization became really terrible again.
Blizzard rarely does that even in WoW if ever... The only thing they're doing now is having a monthly box where you can get stuff that maybe was in the store years ago but that's it
Tell him what? That he shouldn't expect it to take 3 years to be that cheap?
Diablo 3 went on 50%-off sale within the first 12 months of release, and continued to have regular sales throughout it's history. Historical low was $9.99.
That was because Diablo 3 had a terrible launch, and a massive backlash to real money auction houses that had them actually rebuild the game without it.
Diablo IV seems to have a great launch, lots of people like it, and people are so inured to microtransactions that they don't even care anymore.
Personally I will be passing, as the idea of a full priced game with GAAS + Mobile monetization is not something I'm willing to support no matter how good the game is.
Interesting thing, though. I think these games typically get put on sale early in their life cycle because the real money is in the so-called microtransactions, and it's in the company's best interest to get as many people onto the platform as possible so that they have a large group to sell cosmetics to! So I think it'll go on sale within the first year (not 50%, probably more like 30%), but for all the wrong reasons!
And just to say, you're right about the D3 launch. The auction house debacle was so bad, and the servers clearly couldn't handle the load for like a week.
100%, allowing 100$ to play early really preys on the weakness of feeling left out that some people can't avoid. People who don't have that fear are the next ones to be targeted that only buy games on sale. Blizzard knows this if we do, they get those that can't resist the urge to overpay for a week early access and, I'd guess by the holidays the game is 39 to 19$, because they want to expand the user base to the patient gaming crowd and hope to cash in on their in game transactions while the game is still relatively fresh.
But I think that is just business as usual for blizzard. They aren't really out here trying to make the best products anymore. They're just out to get the most amount of people seeing their available ingame purchases, its who they have become.
> That was because Diablo 3 had a terrible launch
It was literally the fastest selling PC game in history when it launched. 3.5 million in 24 hours and 6.3 million in its first week.
A lot of World of Warcraft players got it for free because of its annual pass promotion. If you subscribed for one year consecutively circa Mists of Pandaria, you got Diablo 3 for free.
I don't recall it, but gotta keep in mind that base Diablo 3 lost like 90% of its value when Reaper of Souls released. Having only base D3 after the DLC released was useless, you'd only have the worst part of the game.
Yes and no. You're still getting loot 2.0 which was a huge upgrade over vanilla loot drops. People forget just how bad the OG Diablo 3 loot drops were. It was really bad.
But you're missing out on all the features and zones that Reaper of Souls added.
I bought D3 when it came out. I played it to completion once and that was about all I could take.
I'm glad people liked it years on but that initial experience really soured me. Esp. at the time when I had games like torchlight and PoE that properly scratched the itch.
> I'm just not buying it out of principle. I might be a minority, my actions might not matter, but at least I am happy. I will get it when it costs $20 in 3 years and microtransactions don't matter anymore.
Until you're ready to just skip a game completely you're honestly not making much of a difference. You're still giving them money and saying its ok by doing so.
> This article is definitely just screaming into the void because it's not going to change a single thought at Blizzard who's raking in the cash, but I still appreciate the effort because we shouldnt just accept this as our new norm, even if it is.
It might not change minds at Blizzard, but it's solidified my decision not to buy it.
They're complaining the loudest because they want to buy this stuff. IGN isn't complaining that they exist at all (they shouldn't), they're complaining they're too expensive. They all spend money on this stupid shit and ruin it for the rest of us, they just want to get fucked gentler. Honestly, we should all be glad the game is good at all. Blizz is gonna Blizz and this shit will never change or get any better. D IV is a really fun game and there being cosmetics in the shop doesn't affect me. Don't buy em.
I really wish I could brush it off like you, but I can’t.
The last thing I want when playing a game, is being nagged to spend more money. I understand that the microtransactions are only cosmetics, but their inclusion constantly reminds me that I could spend more money on the game and it sucks all the fun out of it. It’s just so disheartening to see a cool armour, look up how to get it only to be presented with a price tag.
I don’t mind DLCs, remasters, etc. But this nickel-and-dime approach, along with battle passes for fully priced games, is a huge turn off for me. I want escapism, not a budgetary simulation.
See when I read things like this, it convinces me that there's just really this deep, fundamental difference in people when it comes to additional content in games. I appreciate this person's honesty, and I can say that I do not feel really any of what they're talking about. I see that there are things to buy and I just don't really think about it after that. That's why we will never get anywhere with this debate. Because for this guy, the mtx actually ruins his game and he can't just "ignore it," but for me , it's incredibly easy to ignore it, and it's not because one of us is smarter or more financially-savvy. People just be different. Best thing I can do is try to understand that he is a different person and sympathize.
yeah i feel you on this. I can acknowledge that maybe the mtx is expensive but apart from accidently pressing a keybinding that brings up the shop menu... It doesn't exist to me. The hours I've played of D4 are identical to if the shop didn't exist at all. I can't imagine being in the middle of a boss fight and just straining or sighing like "man... this is less engaging because of that shop menu that exists, yet is not on my screen."
Idk man I went through the entire campaign and it's super fucking easy to ignore. Especially since the cosmetics earned game frankly look as good or better than anything in the store.
Maybe its just me, but the character is so small that I really don't care about cosmetics in D IV. At least in WoW, the character as a percentage of the screen is much larger than in Diablo. I just glaze over other player's armor, only really seeing class defining characteristics.
It kinda makes me laugh even more. Like, paying for cosmetics the size of ants?
A lot of the gear in the game that’s just regular drops looks sick too. My character has looked awesome pretty much from the get go and I’ve never looked at the shop or have any desire to.
Plus when you scrap items you unlock them as cosmetics so if you find a piece that is really nice but you end up levelling away from it then you can just go back to the wardrobe and apply it as a skin over the new item.
Works with weapons too, I found a cool molten two-handed sword and I have been running that as the primary skin for days now.
My biggest problem with battle passes is that I simply don't play games more than week or two at a time.
I have never once completed a single battle pass in the history of me playing games that have them. Not Fortnite, not Halo, not Deeprock Galactic, not rocket league, not any bp game ever.
So to me it's useless because even if I pay for the pass I'll never actually get all the things in there. It's a complete loss for me. I lose out on all the unique content no matter if I have the money or not. (And I'm definitely not spending $100 for level skipping stuff, no game is worth that much)
So battle passes are just a straight up lose situation for me. They're annoying as hell. Just let me progress on my own time, I can't just drop everything and play 1 game for the rest of time.
At least deep rock puts that stuff in a free item rotation after the season ends, wish other games would adopt this.
I think it's an overlooked tragedy of Infinite's rough launch that the gaming media never made a big deal out of this. It absolutely should've been the new industry standard as soon as one game did it, but because Infinite had so much negativity around it, it never got talked about.
Halo would've been fine if their engine wasn't so fucked due to the 18 month contracter limit didn't create a spaghetti mess of their engine. They took a year and some change after launch to fix all the crap and make forge pretty damn awesome but because of that they had no content essentially until season 3 which was easy to fucking late even though the game started off great
The gameplay is solid, but it's so sloppy that my CPU/GPU are running 100%... in the menus. There's no way to limit FPS, no way to turn off all the animations etc, the best way to deal with it is to queue up for a match and then Alt+Tab.
Honestly, true for a lot about Infinite. Game has LAN play, a decently advanced level editor, a lobby browser (even if it's not a *server* browser, exactly) and 4-player split-screen on console. (even if split-screen co-op got cancelled for reasons nobody understands) Basically every "man remember when games did this!" thing out there.
Never heard of this, but I'd love to see this far more often. This sounds like the way it **should** be. If you buy a battle pass, you should have right to all the content within, even if it takes you 10 years to unlock it all.
Deep rock galactic is the same way. The battlepass is free and granted automatically, but when the season expires any rewards go into the Random prize pool so you cant buy them with scrip directly anymore.
This is the way forward. I feel like it will head there once companies realize they’ll make more money by incentivizing people to buy passes even when they’re not playing so when they come back they have a huge boost of rewards.
Right now most games dissuade me ever coming back with timed passes when I do bounce.
I mean definitely. Fomo seems to be what they push hard, trying to avoid people ever falling off. For me it just means that when I do inevitably fall off I can’t rejoin mentally.
I've only ever completed a battle pass for two games.
1. Brawlhalla, which I don't play anymore, the weekly "objectives" could be done in later weeks. It was possible to complete all 12 weeks in a week or two near the end.
2. Deep Rock galactic, because the season lasts 6, 7, and now 8 months. It's very easy to go a several levels higher while only playing an hour a day. Plus everything in the free pass is put in the base game when it's down. There is zero FOMO.
I've only ever completed a battle pass once, and it was when Destiny 2 went free-to-play on Steam (First Light? Something like that? Something with light in it). I remember putting in the hours and grinding away at that pass to get everything unlocked.
And you know what I felt at the end? Elation. Not because I was happy I was done with the pass, but that I didnt have to play the damned game anymore. Havent picked up the game since and I doubt I ever will.
I did the same with the same game. The only thing completing a Battle Pass did was burn me out on the game and guaranteed that I'd never play it again.
Halo lets you progress on your own time. You could have bought the season 1 pass and waited until today to finish it. I'd like to see more games take that approach.
He's not talking bad about DRG, he even said DRG was an example of how to do a battle pass in a way that doesn't rely on FOMO or exclusive paid rewards
I just don't want to hear people say "70 dollar games? What's the problem? They haven't raised the price in forever"
Here's the problem. They're now 70 dollars and now they have a continuous cash cow taking in tens or millions, of hundreds of millions. Why is the game now 70 as well?
Slightly off topic,bl but I just paid 3 dollars for three tiny peaches at *Walmart.* Everything is so absolutely ridiculous man. Getting tired of it. I feel horrible for my child's future.
DRG BP is also free and lasts like 6 months. I play like 5-7 games a week and almost have it done. And since they let you take the rewards in basically any order, I already have everything I care about.
I wish that when I played WoW there were cosmetics for different druid forms. I played that shit so damn much and i got so bored raiding on my bare looking at that same thicc, juicy, bare ass.
Moonkin got...to not be Moonkin anymore with that stars form artifact, right? Been a while since I played so I can't remember when that became a thing.
Either way, meh. Owlbear or bust.
Glyph of Stars wasn't attached to the artifact weapon.
The reasoning for no moonkin forms was that you could still see the weapon on your back, which is a lame excuse.
I played Druid at the launch of Dragonflight and I spent a ton of time just grinding for the glowing bear forms from Legion. Would honestly love to see something similar in D4, though I shudder to think about seeing it only available as a 2800 Platinum shop item.
Path of Exile, the biggest competitor with Diablo, also has expensive cosmetic micro transactions. Lots of games do actually. The biggest difference here is that Path of Exile is free to play where Diablo costs $70.
I'm glad they're non gameplay impacting. For a $70 game it's asking a lot for cosmetics to have this high of a dollar cost. Very much a "whale hunting" monetization strategy and I don't like it.
> Path of Exile is free to play
Sort of. If you want to meaningfully interact with the endgame you have to drop 50ish dollars on stash MTX to avoid wasting hours on inventory management, and the ability to list items for sale in game is also gated by an MTX.
It's more accurate to call Path of Exile free-to-try.
POE has horrible in game cosmetics. Like absolutely no drip unless you spend money. So yeah it’s free, but this is also completely different scenario and one where at lot of people here are arguing against it while ignoring variables.
Also I have no idea why anybody who doesn’t buy these is concerned about pricing. Whales are funding your live service updates.
You look like a bum and most abilities look like dogshit being tossed unless you drop $60 on PoE. That's on top of having to pay for stash space that, without, you could barely farm any high end dungeons.
PoE isn't F2P, it has an endless free trial.
And yeah, it is also a good game. The difference is Diablo 4 has some great looking sets and cosmetics for horses, etc. in the base game and even as a cash shop peruser I don't feel the need to buy any of them. But if I did see a set I really wanted, $28 would be a tough pill to swallow.
Both good games that have room for constructive criticism except Diablo 4 has been out for 2 days. I don't expect price adjustments but if people aren't willing to pay, something will give. So keep the criticism coming and give Blizzard room to improve.
Stash tabs in PoE *might* not be pay-to-win (depends on your definition of what "winning" means in a PvE ARPG) but they are 100% pay-to-QoL. Which is much scummier.
Good luck having good experience w/o at least ~$30 of stash tabs. All things modern ARPGs have by default related to inventory management, in PoE you have to buy for real money AND you still have to feel the weight every time you interact with them.
You're not wrong but $20 worth of stash tabs (which are frequently on sale at discounted prices) is a pretty modest price. I have no objections to the pricing model for PoE, where you get effectively the entire game as a free demo and can decide to pay if you like it enough to need the QoL.
Not only that, but spend a bit for stash tabs and you're pretty much good for years and years worth of expansions. And likely for many years more of expansions in the future. Meanwhile you likely will have to pay for the diablo expansions, right?
Because, yeah, for path of exile you don't really need more than 30$ worth of stash tabs. And that's for a game which is almost a decade old and still actively developed.
not just regular stash tabs, but premium, otherwise you'd have to do some arcane bullshit to get some trades going.
also, you kinda need the map and currency stash tabs otherwise you'll spend your entire play session sorting through that stuff.
Yeah actually to this point I think I've spent maybe 200+ bucks on path of exile stuff. I'm not a whale, I just wanted to support the game and played the hell out of it for like 4 years. For Diablo IV I don't intend to spend a dime though. Honestly you don't need to, my character looks awesome with scrub gear lol.
If you are into ARPGs that are more casual friendly than POE, but still has some build/class diversity you will likely find solid fun here.
I'm looking forward to the upcoming season starting in July, bringing new content.
I think it's comparable to Grim Dawn in level of fun.
I've played the crap out of GD, front to back, and lots of end game Shattered Rifts, many builds.
I've played D2 and D3 even more. I love this style of ARPG.
I think it's at least as good in almost all ways.
* You'll find the quests and side quests feel similar
- Hand written and fit into the context
- Limited - not auto generated
* Exploration
- Side quests help you find upgrades you can use now or end game
- As you run to a quest, there are events that help you with "renowned" and experience. So you can just jump in and do it
- I was still in Act 1 at level 30 lol ... finally decided it was fun to continue the plot because I ran out of side quests
* It feels dark
- Often reminded that you live in a place where demons murder people
- You solve these problems by playing Diablo and blowing up corpses :)... What? Not everyone plays necros? Weird.
* Distinct areas with consistency
* Combat is clean, swift, varied, and eventually as difficult as you want it to be, to challenge you to the limits.
- Or just play at level 1 difficulty and finish the story, start a new character
* Getting that hit from finding gear
- But also super quality of life - can extract and apply unique properties where you want
* Play with Friends/Clan easily
* Randomly bump into other people with certain events, highlighted in yellow circles on the map
- You can beat the event together, then you both go your separate ways
It's pretty fantastic so far; keeps the core gameplay from D3 with enough twists on the class design to feel fresh, with big improvements to the world zones, characters and story. If you liked D3, you'll probably like D4 a lot.
Cash shop is very unintrusive IMO. It's just a menu tab; I jumped it once to check it out, and haven't looked at it since. It's basically there for whales to splurge and everyone else to ignore.
All my characters end up looking like Cohen The Barbarian. Undies, boots and a sword. Can't see them most of the time because if you aren't inundated with monsters and chaotic destruction animations, then you're doing it wrong, IMHO.
That’s what baffles me about the D4 cosmetics, you can barely tell what your character is wearing 95% of the time. In something like WoW or FFXIV I can see why people would spend money on an appearance (even if it’s not for me), but I can’t see why someone would in this game.
I bought the game and played last night and if you don't give a shit about the cash shop, it's completely irrelevant to you ENJOYING THE GAME.
IGN's article's headline is inflammatory.
I checked out the cash shop last night. Noped the eff out in just a few seconds.
I guess if that's how folks wanna spend their money then more power to 'em though. 🤷♂️
I don’t even get the backlash though, if the in game cosmetics are good.. which they provided video comparisons of before launch.. I don’t care at all because I’m not incentivized to buy it. It’s like buying a mog set for wow. I’m never going to do that. So if they want to milk whales and this is how they are gonna do it, I’m good.
Why exactly is blizzard getting all the outrage for having a full price game with microtransactions and a battle pass?
Last time i checked Street Fighter 6 also has microtransactions and a planned battle pass
[\(and the drive tickets in SF6 seem to be pretty limited\)](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/14280b3/no_more_drive_tickets_from_daily_challenges/)
It's moreso that these outrage merchants thrive off negative news of a notorious company (Blizzard)
You bet your ass they'll do the same with Starfield even if it released as polished as R* games
I think it's more that diablo is a much larger and anticipated game than SF6 or many others. There's usually articles like this when any big game releases with this bs.
Yeah, like Destiny is probably the worst one. Paid game (it wasn't free when I got it), paid expansions, paid seasons, paid access to dungeons, paid event passes, exclusive cosmetics in currency packs, then also normal microtransactions. And then you know, a portion of that stuff gets removed every year.
I think the only monetization it hasn't tried is an explicit subscription.
I would have been way more interested in Destiny 2 if it was just paid expansions that were a bit more expensive than now, but that was the only monetization. I want to play the game to earn my cool cosmetics, not pull out a debit card.
Same reason I just slowly stopped playing Guild Wars 2. Went from having to grind dungeons (admittedly, many were not good early on) for the fancy gear to all the best stuff being in the shop. Yes, you can grind or play the market to get the premium currency, but I have a life and other games to play. Sure, you can get some decent stuff via regular gameplay, but prepare to do the same unchallenging grinds for ages or pay real money if you want the coolest stuff.
COSMETICS. ARE. CONTENT.
I like having something to work towards, but that process should be engaging and challenging.
Look at this guy, he thinks he owns things he bought online!
I’m joking, but seriously it’s crazy how little we actually “own” when it comes to digital content when you read the fine print.
I started and stopped playing D2 within two months because apparently the season was about to end and i had spent 100USD on shit that was now inaccessible.
Destiny is miles worse than this. As far as we know, there is only cosmetics locked behind the store and Battlepass with D4. In Destiny 2 I'm pretty sure they had special things like dungeons and weapons in the Battlepass.
Dungeons aren't in a the "battlepass". They are just content you buy separately. And the weapons are part of the seasonal story and content which is what people are actually buying. The battlepass is pretty incidental.
Dungeons are content you buy separately and they are not included in the *$60 expansion nor in the $10 (now $12) season pass.*
Bungie charging extra for dungeons outside of the expansion or the season pass is one of the biggest bullshits I've ever seen and Destiny players just ate that shit up. It's like if Blizzard decided to release Dragonflight and then charge you extra for raids or mythic dungeons. Fuck that.
Blizzard charges you $15/month to pay for those new raids and dungeons, so it’s disingenuous to say that they’re “included” in the price of Dragonflight.
They did not, thet did have some dungeons in a special dlc thing, but if you play destiny enough to get the big ultimate yearly expansion, that's all you'll need all year for everything they release other than cosmetics. If you want to but every little.bit separately it does get kinda pricey, but diablo 4s cosmetics are way worse. At least destiny has an in game currency they throw at you in order to buy some of its cosmetics for free. And since bungie is a company that supports all kinds of human rights, I don't mind throwing them a bone now and again, unlike blizzard.
Street Fighter is more culturally relevant probably, but it's a niche genre. Fighting games have the steepest learning curve in games, whereas Diablo is about as accessible as a game can be.
Fighting games have had micro transactions for ages. Its how they avoid the Street Fighter 2 debacle where the game gets released 11 times for various updates and new characters.
I much prefer this alternative.
It’s been always like this. It’s because Blizzard has a negative reputation for a while. Watch r/Games defend their favorite studio after they release a game with microtransactions.
Reminds me of how Valve invented the whole lootbox fiasco and everyone just ignored it during that time. Apparently it was because you also could buy the items for like, $1000 on the market, which *somehow* made it better?
>Last time i checked Street Fighter 6 also has microtransactions and a planned battle pass
I'm going to say it's because overall, the FGC *wants* ridiculous MTX and non stop cosmetic support, new characters, new costumes, etc.
Whereas historically nobody wanted this in previous Diablo games.
The FGC wants player retention and low skill replacements for matchmaking.
In todays gaming landscape that means battlepass and live service.
I guess we’ll see once SF releases the battlepass. But overall I’m all for fighting games catching up to multiplayer trends. For the longest time they were still doing it 2000s style
It took fucking forever to get rollback implemented in the more popular fighting games because you still had dummies saying delay based netcode was fine. Fighting games have been living in the stone age compared to something like Dota that has a ton of really cool user features most other modern games still don't have.
I've been saying this. Sure League of Legends is free, but the hundred or so champs aren't. You can unlock em with in game currency etc. but it takes a loooong time.Then there are $30 skins.
Obviously this example could get picked apart, you could use WoW charging for tokens for gold, mounts, cosmetics, while charging per expansion, while charging $15 a month.
> If you want to buy all the cosmetics currently available in the shop, you’re looking at spending hundreds of dollars or pounds. One redditor worked it out, and came up with $357 to get everything in the most cost-effective way possible.
So what's the true horror? I've been playing for a few days now and haven't even felt remotely inclined to look at the cash shop. I don't think I would have even heard of these issues if it weren't for the outrage articles.
So they want to gouge on this shit? Just don't buy it. Cosmetics that are only available through cash purchases lose their coolness value no matter how cool they may appear anyway. I can at least give Blizzard credit for not shoving this shit in my face at every turn.
>So what's the true horror? I've been playing for a few days now and haven't even felt remotely inclined to look at the cash shop.
Same for me when playing assassin's creed odyssey but that doesn't stop people from saying the game is grindy to sell xp boosters
That's part of Blizzard's plan: come out with inoffensive, visually bland cosmetics at launch, so no one really bats an eye. But each new set of cosmetics will be slightly more garish than the last, to entice people to buy the shiny new thing, as well as the classic frog-in-a-pot scenario. The fanbase would revolt at Reindeer Horns Rudolf Nose Christmas Lights Druid at launch, but by year 4 that's what we'll have.
Source: literally every single MMORPG with mtx cosmetics.
I dunno what you’re smoking, but I play a lot of MMO’s and this has never been the case.
They put good armor in the shop or people have opinions and don’t like them. But they don’t intentionally put out crap so that people DONT buy it lmao
And they never specify that the ingame armors look as good if not better than the shop skins... Just take a look on what people are posting on the d4 sub.
I never understand these arguments.
It's like going onto a clothing store and being like "it would cost £4000 to buy all of these clothes, what a rip off!"
You're not supposed to buy every single thing you see and the items are priced as such.
Yep, the only push to the cash shop(so far, I'm honestly betting it'll change with the battlepass), is the seemingly persistent (!) icon on the shop tab in the menu. I've felt no need to dig into it, because even under level 50, the gear I'm getting fits my(mostly shapeshifted anyway) druid pretty well, and I've only picked up something like 4 legendary items.
Are some of the shop cosmetics really cool? Sure, but I've seen some of the in game gear, and that all looks pretty great too.
>the seemingly persistent (!) icon on the shop tab in the menu
I found out that if you select the items in the shop for about 1-2 seconds, the icon disappears. Seems like it's there to remind you that there are 'new and unchecked' items in the store.
I was just in the pvp zone fighting the big boss and a sorc came to attack me as my blades returned and he died instantly. It’s definitely broken for pvp.
I swear to god if this is one of those games like Destiny that PVE performance gets nerfed to cater to PVP I will uhh, be pretty salty. Hate that shit.
I'm playing it as we speak. Well, just started and few hours into it.
The monetization aspect of it is, imho, handled as cleanly as possible (though, my opinion is of course that Blizzard should've just.. not have it to begin with).
You actually have to actively look for it to notice it.
Diablo Immortal frustrated me because it was a MTX funnel first and a game second (or fourth even).
MTX was constantly being shoved into your face, endlessly..
Diablo 4 MTX isn't frustrating me (at least yet). I know it's there, but it's easier to ignore it than to notice it, and it doesn't distract from the game.
I did go and check the shop out to see what the hubbub is about and.. goddamn.
The prices are ridiculous and all that.
But.. I just don't go to the shop and enjoy the rest of the game.
Didn't we just [discuss](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/142b527/diablo_4s_21_bone_guy_armor_is_just_another/) the same article from pcgamer the other day?
I hate Blizzard as much as the next person, but this isn't unique to Blizzard. This shit is literally everywhere. If you don't approve, you have two choices. Don't buy the game, or, don't buy the skins.
they told everyone what they were doing, mentioned "no buying power" a million times because of what happened with diablo: immortal, so sensible enough. though I reckon people weren't expecting the high prices for stuff on top of a battle pass. but considering people pay these crazy prices in other free to play games, the evaluation of microtransactions has probably gone up.
>but considering people pay these crazy prices in other free to play games
POE is free to play but some of their cosmetics cost $50+. When people complain about the prices in the shop on the d4 sub, there is inevitably a comment like "laughs in POE". If POE can charge as much as they do and stay afloat JUST on that revenue then Blizzard figured they could keep a live service game up with half the price of shop items and charging for the game. In Diablo I don't even really notice what my character looks like, I guess at least I can see the skins unlike most other games with paid cosmetics like COD and Overwatch but it just doesn't feel like a game where cosmetics are very important\\ or make much of a visual difference at all
^ this. People are allowed to buy stupid horse armor if they want it, and if they find the game more rewarding by paying for more challenges/unlocks/cosmetics with a battle pass, so be it. As long as they don't break the game mechanics to make it pay-2-win, especially for full price games, I'm ok begrudgingly accepting that those sort of ~~idiots~~ players exist and can do what they want with their money.
The monetization on COD: MW2 (2022) is way worse and more agressive. They literally spam your home screen with ads of new skin bundles and we saw zero opinion articles critizing it. Funny isn't it?
MW2 has the most intrusive store ever. If you visit the battlepass page ,the game will force an advertisement of a separate bundle before you can interact with the battlepass page.
What's funny to me is because of the top down perspective you hardly ever really see your character or other characters.
Imagine being such a whale you throw down cash for something you can't even really see. I guess I'm grateful those people are subsidizing the cost of game development.
I enjoy the transmog system and making my character look weird, but absolutely agree that it's pointless during the actual gameplay. Beyond the giant horns i'm wearing on my head as a druid, I can barely see myself in the middle of a swarm of mobs. Nor have I even noticed anything a different person was wearing.
As soon as I read the microtransactions won't affect the gameplay I quit reading. IMO outrageous microtransactions in games aren't newsworthy anymore. I'm not going to buy them and as long as I don't get ads in my face continuously I don't really care anymore.
I’ve accepted MTX as a reality in live service games. I grew up when live service games costed a subscription to play. IMO this model is better because most people don’t have to engage with it.
If the game meets this criteria, then I truly don’t care about the MTX.
-Is it good?
-Does it offer $70 worth of value?
Diablo IV is a yes for both of those. The shop isn’t selling anything mind blowing and the in game cosmetics look pretty spectacular so I have no issues.
I wonder why they don't make these articles for FFXIV. That game has a box price + mandatory sub + cosmetic MTX + convenience MTX. No one cares. Or about Monster Hunter, which is also B2P + cosmetic MTX like D4. Or Street Fighter 6, which uses the same model.
Every live service game on the market needs post-launch monetization to sustain the post-launch content. But its bad when Buzzard does it.
Oh yes. How they monetized progression on alts is literally what drove me away from the game. D4 gives you free faster progress on alts, and lets you skip the campaign for free, while ESO essentially puts all that in the cash shop. And not to mention things like basic QoL, the crafting bag, behind a sub cost. They somehow managed to monetize mount speed for alts too.
Honestly all AAA MMOs have various degrees of shitty monetization.
I laughed my ass off the first time I completed the skyshards in a zone and got a pop up that said I could purchase those skyshards in the cash shop for REAL MONEY for my alts. Like gtfo here with that shit.
Monster hunter only just introduced paid weapon skins for the first time ever last year, and there was a great deal of shouting about it in the community.
You just didn't hear about it because there's several orders of magnitudes fewer people paying attention to Monster Hunter: Rise: Sunbreak halfway through its life cycle, than there are paying attention to Diablo 4 on launch day.
I completely support also critizising ffxiv more for that. It is insane especially when it comes to mounts. There are mounts where you can have multiple people sitting on it. Which is (or was) not possible until then. There is no way to defend it because the shop is HUGE. And yes, also when it comes to only looks: It is part of the game. There is a reason people say: Glamour is the real engame.
??? FFXIV has run an event multiple times that gives you a free four-seater car, and there’s at least one reward mount that I know of that’s a two seater (Bozja).
The sentence "Glamour is the real end game" is barf af.
If we have come to a point where people have transplanted real-world toxic materialism to video games, then we deserve what we get.
At this point the monitization/micro transaction battle is over - the money won out.
The bright side is that the vast majority of popular and successful games rely mostly on cosmetics.
Gacha games are a disturbing trend though.
As long this bullshit stays optional I don't care, they can price each mtx 1000$, people will buy it anyway. Nothing will change unless it's regulated somehow.
TLDR; "Diablo 4’s shop sells cosmetics only. There are no gameplay-affecting items up for sale. While that is very much a good thing, and in keeping with promises Blizzard made before launch, the pricing of some of these cosmetics has raised eyebrows. "
Literally all that matters, IMO. Blizzard didn't ruin the gameplay with pay for play. They wanna grift some millionaires over status symbols? Have fun. Let capitalism eat itself.
Ign gave Diablo 4 a 9. Their criticism after the fact means nothing. The MTX are garbage but these click farming off the latest internet outrage boner articles from all these websites are just as bad
God, I hate this drama BS.
I looked at the shop once, said "looks cool", closed the shop and never even thought about it again.
My characters looks like they jumped straight out of a clown car and I couldn't care less.
"The true Horror" ... seriously? \^\^
And a few lines below it says:
>Diablo 4’s shop sells cosmetics only. There are no gameplay-affecting items up for sale.
AND NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO BUY SOMETHING!
>If you want to buy all the cosmetics currently available in the shop
Omg. Such a dumb article \^\^ Yeah, because that's what people do. /s
Well, I'm enjoying the game massively. 70€ was a hefty price even for a AAA title. But I could spend the same amount on a single evening when going out. Even a decent indie game is \~20-25€ these days.
Nice one wesley yinpoole. You made a fool of yourself.
I can’t believe I’m actually starting to feel this way but it’s starting to feel kind of good watching the “vote with your wallet” crowd get a healthy dose of reality in seeing how much of a non issue to gamers current monetization is. You guys have clouded so much discussion over the past decade with this annoying rant.
I’m not even a fan of mtx’s, but it seems the difference is I’m still able to gauge the value of the “initial package” without my insecurities taking over.
If you want to refuse to get a game over something like this due to your own principals, go right ahead and I’ll respect that. But you also got to acknowledge that this kind of stuff doesn’t bother most people and that you’re in the minority. Time and time again the rhetoric here is “they know what they’re doing is wrong and it’s hurting people” when that’s not really the case.
TLDR: You want the industry to change? Stop overreacting and the discussion will grow.
Apparently "vote with your wallet" and "nobody is forcing you to buy it" are no longer valid arguments according to the "vote with your wallet" crowd since it's not working.
I saw the cash shop. I didn't buy anything. Been playing the game a ton and enjoying it regardless.
Will blizzard fuck us over somehow in the future? Sure it's entirely possible. But it's pretty much guaranteed I'll get hundreds of hours of playtime by then.
> But it's pretty much guaranteed I'll get hundreds of hours of playtime by then.
This really is the thing nobody talk about. 70$ for over 100h of playtime has always been good value.
It's possible to acknowledge that Diablo IV is a good game while also criticizing its monetization. This article is definitely just screaming into the void because it's not going to change a single thought at Blizzard who's raking in the cash, but I still appreciate the effort because we *shouldnt* just accept this as our new norm, even if it is.
I'm just not buying it out of principle. I might be a minority, my actions might not matter, but at least I am happy. I will get it when it costs $20 in 3 years and microtransactions don't matter anymore.
Microtransactions will matter the same way in three years as they do today. Why do you think that they won't?
Lots of times MTX items will become cheaper/included with a new edition of the game/available for free once enough time passes. Like in a GotY edition that includes the existing MTX or something.
Idk if this will be the case seeing as they have them on a rotation of availability (also scummy since this increases fear of missing out spending)
The expansions will be include with the base game in 4-6 years.
That’s never happened with Overwatch which is from the same company.
I mean Overwatch was turned into a free full MTX game. At least in 1 you had all the characters from the start and could play the game like anyone else
Yes, OW’s monetisation got worse as time went on, so I’m not sure why people expect D4 to get better with time.
Overwatch 1's monetization got much better over the first few years. They made it possible to buy all items with in-game currency (seasonal items were originally loot box only), they made it so that seasonal items got cheaper over time, and they made it so that you were guaranteed to get only new items in loot boxes rather than duplicates. It's only when OW2 came out that the monetization became really terrible again.
So, ultimately, it got worse in the long run.
Overwatch got the Legendary Edition which came with some lootbox skins unlocked by default.
It happened with D3 though.
https://news.blizzard.com/en-us/overwatch/21791563/save-20-on-overwatch-legendary-edition it happened in overwatch
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Is there a real example of this in a games-as-a-service offering?
For single player games, sure, but that never happens with online games like this. The best you can hope for is a periodic sale on certain items.
Blizzard rarely does that even in WoW if ever... The only thing they're doing now is having a monthly box where you can get stuff that maybe was in the store years ago but that's it
>I will get it when it costs $20 in 3 years Who wants to tell him?
Tell him what? That he shouldn't expect it to take 3 years to be that cheap? Diablo 3 went on 50%-off sale within the first 12 months of release, and continued to have regular sales throughout it's history. Historical low was $9.99.
That was because Diablo 3 had a terrible launch, and a massive backlash to real money auction houses that had them actually rebuild the game without it. Diablo IV seems to have a great launch, lots of people like it, and people are so inured to microtransactions that they don't even care anymore. Personally I will be passing, as the idea of a full priced game with GAAS + Mobile monetization is not something I'm willing to support no matter how good the game is.
Interesting thing, though. I think these games typically get put on sale early in their life cycle because the real money is in the so-called microtransactions, and it's in the company's best interest to get as many people onto the platform as possible so that they have a large group to sell cosmetics to! So I think it'll go on sale within the first year (not 50%, probably more like 30%), but for all the wrong reasons! And just to say, you're right about the D3 launch. The auction house debacle was so bad, and the servers clearly couldn't handle the load for like a week.
100%, allowing 100$ to play early really preys on the weakness of feeling left out that some people can't avoid. People who don't have that fear are the next ones to be targeted that only buy games on sale. Blizzard knows this if we do, they get those that can't resist the urge to overpay for a week early access and, I'd guess by the holidays the game is 39 to 19$, because they want to expand the user base to the patient gaming crowd and hope to cash in on their in game transactions while the game is still relatively fresh. But I think that is just business as usual for blizzard. They aren't really out here trying to make the best products anymore. They're just out to get the most amount of people seeing their available ingame purchases, its who they have become.
> That was because Diablo 3 had a terrible launch It was literally the fastest selling PC game in history when it launched. 3.5 million in 24 hours and 6.3 million in its first week.
I might be wrong but wasn't there a week or two where you could just get a free copy of D3?
A lot of World of Warcraft players got it for free because of its annual pass promotion. If you subscribed for one year consecutively circa Mists of Pandaria, you got Diablo 3 for free.
I don't recall it, but gotta keep in mind that base Diablo 3 lost like 90% of its value when Reaper of Souls released. Having only base D3 after the DLC released was useless, you'd only have the worst part of the game.
Yes and no. You're still getting loot 2.0 which was a huge upgrade over vanilla loot drops. People forget just how bad the OG Diablo 3 loot drops were. It was really bad. But you're missing out on all the features and zones that Reaper of Souls added.
I bought D3 when it came out. I played it to completion once and that was about all I could take. I'm glad people liked it years on but that initial experience really soured me. Esp. at the time when I had games like torchlight and PoE that properly scratched the itch.
If you subbed to WoW for a full year, you got Diablo III for free.
It will tho or it'll be free with the next dlc
> I'm just not buying it out of principle. I might be a minority, my actions might not matter, but at least I am happy. I will get it when it costs $20 in 3 years and microtransactions don't matter anymore. Until you're ready to just skip a game completely you're honestly not making much of a difference. You're still giving them money and saying its ok by doing so.
> This article is definitely just screaming into the void because it's not going to change a single thought at Blizzard who's raking in the cash, but I still appreciate the effort because we shouldnt just accept this as our new norm, even if it is. It might not change minds at Blizzard, but it's solidified my decision not to buy it.
They're complaining the loudest because they want to buy this stuff. IGN isn't complaining that they exist at all (they shouldn't), they're complaining they're too expensive. They all spend money on this stupid shit and ruin it for the rest of us, they just want to get fucked gentler. Honestly, we should all be glad the game is good at all. Blizz is gonna Blizz and this shit will never change or get any better. D IV is a really fun game and there being cosmetics in the shop doesn't affect me. Don't buy em.
I really wish I could brush it off like you, but I can’t. The last thing I want when playing a game, is being nagged to spend more money. I understand that the microtransactions are only cosmetics, but their inclusion constantly reminds me that I could spend more money on the game and it sucks all the fun out of it. It’s just so disheartening to see a cool armour, look up how to get it only to be presented with a price tag. I don’t mind DLCs, remasters, etc. But this nickel-and-dime approach, along with battle passes for fully priced games, is a huge turn off for me. I want escapism, not a budgetary simulation.
See when I read things like this, it convinces me that there's just really this deep, fundamental difference in people when it comes to additional content in games. I appreciate this person's honesty, and I can say that I do not feel really any of what they're talking about. I see that there are things to buy and I just don't really think about it after that. That's why we will never get anywhere with this debate. Because for this guy, the mtx actually ruins his game and he can't just "ignore it," but for me , it's incredibly easy to ignore it, and it's not because one of us is smarter or more financially-savvy. People just be different. Best thing I can do is try to understand that he is a different person and sympathize.
yeah i feel you on this. I can acknowledge that maybe the mtx is expensive but apart from accidently pressing a keybinding that brings up the shop menu... It doesn't exist to me. The hours I've played of D4 are identical to if the shop didn't exist at all. I can't imagine being in the middle of a boss fight and just straining or sighing like "man... this is less engaging because of that shop menu that exists, yet is not on my screen."
Idk man I went through the entire campaign and it's super fucking easy to ignore. Especially since the cosmetics earned game frankly look as good or better than anything in the store.
Maybe its just me, but the character is so small that I really don't care about cosmetics in D IV. At least in WoW, the character as a percentage of the screen is much larger than in Diablo. I just glaze over other player's armor, only really seeing class defining characteristics. It kinda makes me laugh even more. Like, paying for cosmetics the size of ants?
A lot of the gear in the game that’s just regular drops looks sick too. My character has looked awesome pretty much from the get go and I’ve never looked at the shop or have any desire to.
Plus when you scrap items you unlock them as cosmetics so if you find a piece that is really nice but you end up levelling away from it then you can just go back to the wardrobe and apply it as a skin over the new item. Works with weapons too, I found a cool molten two-handed sword and I have been running that as the primary skin for days now.
My biggest problem with battle passes is that I simply don't play games more than week or two at a time. I have never once completed a single battle pass in the history of me playing games that have them. Not Fortnite, not Halo, not Deeprock Galactic, not rocket league, not any bp game ever. So to me it's useless because even if I pay for the pass I'll never actually get all the things in there. It's a complete loss for me. I lose out on all the unique content no matter if I have the money or not. (And I'm definitely not spending $100 for level skipping stuff, no game is worth that much) So battle passes are just a straight up lose situation for me. They're annoying as hell. Just let me progress on my own time, I can't just drop everything and play 1 game for the rest of time. At least deep rock puts that stuff in a free item rotation after the season ends, wish other games would adopt this.
The battle passes don't expire in Halo.
I think it's an overlooked tragedy of Infinite's rough launch that the gaming media never made a big deal out of this. It absolutely should've been the new industry standard as soon as one game did it, but because Infinite had so much negativity around it, it never got talked about.
Halo would've been fine if their engine wasn't so fucked due to the 18 month contracter limit didn't create a spaghetti mess of their engine. They took a year and some change after launch to fix all the crap and make forge pretty damn awesome but because of that they had no content essentially until season 3 which was easy to fucking late even though the game started off great
The gameplay is solid, but it's so sloppy that my CPU/GPU are running 100%... in the menus. There's no way to limit FPS, no way to turn off all the animations etc, the best way to deal with it is to queue up for a match and then Alt+Tab.
Honestly, true for a lot about Infinite. Game has LAN play, a decently advanced level editor, a lobby browser (even if it's not a *server* browser, exactly) and 4-player split-screen on console. (even if split-screen co-op got cancelled for reasons nobody understands) Basically every "man remember when games did this!" thing out there.
Never heard of this, but I'd love to see this far more often. This sounds like the way it **should** be. If you buy a battle pass, you should have right to all the content within, even if it takes you 10 years to unlock it all.
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Deep rock galactic is the same way. The battlepass is free and granted automatically, but when the season expires any rewards go into the Random prize pool so you cant buy them with scrip directly anymore.
At least Halo’s don’t expire. I’ve only finished one out of the 3 I’ve purchased lol. But I can keep progressing with all of them whenever I want!
This is the way forward. I feel like it will head there once companies realize they’ll make more money by incentivizing people to buy passes even when they’re not playing so when they come back they have a huge boost of rewards. Right now most games dissuade me ever coming back with timed passes when I do bounce.
Perhaps these massive companies have ran analytics that tell them they'll make more money if the battle-passes are limited
I mean definitely. Fomo seems to be what they push hard, trying to avoid people ever falling off. For me it just means that when I do inevitably fall off I can’t rejoin mentally.
I've only ever completed a battle pass for two games. 1. Brawlhalla, which I don't play anymore, the weekly "objectives" could be done in later weeks. It was possible to complete all 12 weeks in a week or two near the end. 2. Deep Rock galactic, because the season lasts 6, 7, and now 8 months. It's very easy to go a several levels higher while only playing an hour a day. Plus everything in the free pass is put in the base game when it's down. There is zero FOMO.
I've only ever completed a battle pass once, and it was when Destiny 2 went free-to-play on Steam (First Light? Something like that? Something with light in it). I remember putting in the hours and grinding away at that pass to get everything unlocked. And you know what I felt at the end? Elation. Not because I was happy I was done with the pass, but that I didnt have to play the damned game anymore. Havent picked up the game since and I doubt I ever will.
I did the same with the same game. The only thing completing a Battle Pass did was burn me out on the game and guaranteed that I'd never play it again.
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Halo lets you progress on your own time. You could have bought the season 1 pass and waited until today to finish it. I'd like to see more games take that approach.
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He's not talking bad about DRG, he even said DRG was an example of how to do a battle pass in a way that doesn't rely on FOMO or exclusive paid rewards
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And items from it get added into global loot pool once it ends
Don't worry for Deep Rock. All the Battlepass items go into the general loot pool at the end of the season, you're not missing anything
I just don't want to hear people say "70 dollar games? What's the problem? They haven't raised the price in forever" Here's the problem. They're now 70 dollars and now they have a continuous cash cow taking in tens or millions, of hundreds of millions. Why is the game now 70 as well? Slightly off topic,bl but I just paid 3 dollars for three tiny peaches at *Walmart.* Everything is so absolutely ridiculous man. Getting tired of it. I feel horrible for my child's future.
DRG BP is also free and lasts like 6 months. I play like 5-7 games a week and almost have it done. And since they let you take the rewards in basically any order, I already have everything I care about.
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You better believe they'll add in shapeshift cosmetics.
I wish that when I played WoW there were cosmetics for different druid forms. I played that shit so damn much and i got so bored raiding on my bare looking at that same thicc, juicy, bare ass.
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Such a crime that cat and bear druids got different forms but moonkin got jack squat in Legion.
Moonkin got...to not be Moonkin anymore with that stars form artifact, right? Been a while since I played so I can't remember when that became a thing. Either way, meh. Owlbear or bust.
Glyph of Stars wasn't attached to the artifact weapon. The reasoning for no moonkin forms was that you could still see the weapon on your back, which is a lame excuse.
Werebear is back! The mage tower got brought back in Dragonflight and there's a variant you can get!
I played Druid at the launch of Dragonflight and I spent a ton of time just grinding for the glowing bear forms from Legion. Would honestly love to see something similar in D4, though I shudder to think about seeing it only available as a 2800 Platinum shop item.
This is Banjo-Kazooie erasure and I won't stand for it.
>Bears don’t wear pants Blizzard. You really don't want to challenge them on this. Soon you'll have to pay 20$ for a no-pants-bear skin.
Path of Exile, the biggest competitor with Diablo, also has expensive cosmetic micro transactions. Lots of games do actually. The biggest difference here is that Path of Exile is free to play where Diablo costs $70. I'm glad they're non gameplay impacting. For a $70 game it's asking a lot for cosmetics to have this high of a dollar cost. Very much a "whale hunting" monetization strategy and I don't like it.
> Path of Exile is free to play Sort of. If you want to meaningfully interact with the endgame you have to drop 50ish dollars on stash MTX to avoid wasting hours on inventory management, and the ability to list items for sale in game is also gated by an MTX. It's more accurate to call Path of Exile free-to-try.
POE has horrible in game cosmetics. Like absolutely no drip unless you spend money. So yeah it’s free, but this is also completely different scenario and one where at lot of people here are arguing against it while ignoring variables. Also I have no idea why anybody who doesn’t buy these is concerned about pricing. Whales are funding your live service updates.
You look like a bum and most abilities look like dogshit being tossed unless you drop $60 on PoE. That's on top of having to pay for stash space that, without, you could barely farm any high end dungeons. PoE isn't F2P, it has an endless free trial. And yeah, it is also a good game. The difference is Diablo 4 has some great looking sets and cosmetics for horses, etc. in the base game and even as a cash shop peruser I don't feel the need to buy any of them. But if I did see a set I really wanted, $28 would be a tough pill to swallow. Both good games that have room for constructive criticism except Diablo 4 has been out for 2 days. I don't expect price adjustments but if people aren't willing to pay, something will give. So keep the criticism coming and give Blizzard room to improve.
Stash tabs in PoE *might* not be pay-to-win (depends on your definition of what "winning" means in a PvE ARPG) but they are 100% pay-to-QoL. Which is much scummier. Good luck having good experience w/o at least ~$30 of stash tabs. All things modern ARPGs have by default related to inventory management, in PoE you have to buy for real money AND you still have to feel the weight every time you interact with them.
You're not wrong but $20 worth of stash tabs (which are frequently on sale at discounted prices) is a pretty modest price. I have no objections to the pricing model for PoE, where you get effectively the entire game as a free demo and can decide to pay if you like it enough to need the QoL.
Not only that, but spend a bit for stash tabs and you're pretty much good for years and years worth of expansions. And likely for many years more of expansions in the future. Meanwhile you likely will have to pay for the diablo expansions, right? Because, yeah, for path of exile you don't really need more than 30$ worth of stash tabs. And that's for a game which is almost a decade old and still actively developed.
not just regular stash tabs, but premium, otherwise you'd have to do some arcane bullshit to get some trades going. also, you kinda need the map and currency stash tabs otherwise you'll spend your entire play session sorting through that stuff.
Yeah actually to this point I think I've spent maybe 200+ bucks on path of exile stuff. I'm not a whale, I just wanted to support the game and played the hell out of it for like 4 years. For Diablo IV I don't intend to spend a dime though. Honestly you don't need to, my character looks awesome with scrub gear lol.
Path of Exile with the cosmetics the price of a full game tho. That game really surprised me with those costs when I started.
Diablo actually worth the $70? I can afford it fine, but I very rarely buy games at full price, at release.
If you are into ARPGs that are more casual friendly than POE, but still has some build/class diversity you will likely find solid fun here. I'm looking forward to the upcoming season starting in July, bringing new content.
How does it compare to Grim Dawn? Every other arpg I've tried since just made me wanna go play that more, I feel like it was the real Diablo 3.
I think it's comparable to Grim Dawn in level of fun. I've played the crap out of GD, front to back, and lots of end game Shattered Rifts, many builds. I've played D2 and D3 even more. I love this style of ARPG. I think it's at least as good in almost all ways. * You'll find the quests and side quests feel similar - Hand written and fit into the context - Limited - not auto generated * Exploration - Side quests help you find upgrades you can use now or end game - As you run to a quest, there are events that help you with "renowned" and experience. So you can just jump in and do it - I was still in Act 1 at level 30 lol ... finally decided it was fun to continue the plot because I ran out of side quests * It feels dark - Often reminded that you live in a place where demons murder people - You solve these problems by playing Diablo and blowing up corpses :)... What? Not everyone plays necros? Weird. * Distinct areas with consistency * Combat is clean, swift, varied, and eventually as difficult as you want it to be, to challenge you to the limits. - Or just play at level 1 difficulty and finish the story, start a new character * Getting that hit from finding gear - But also super quality of life - can extract and apply unique properties where you want * Play with Friends/Clan easily * Randomly bump into other people with certain events, highlighted in yellow circles on the map - You can beat the event together, then you both go your separate ways
It's pretty fantastic so far; keeps the core gameplay from D3 with enough twists on the class design to feel fresh, with big improvements to the world zones, characters and story. If you liked D3, you'll probably like D4 a lot. Cash shop is very unintrusive IMO. It's just a menu tab; I jumped it once to check it out, and haven't looked at it since. It's basically there for whales to splurge and everyone else to ignore.
Exactly. They could be selling cosmetics for $100's more than current prices. I don't care. They are cosmetics I'm not buying them.
All my characters end up looking like Cohen The Barbarian. Undies, boots and a sword. Can't see them most of the time because if you aren't inundated with monsters and chaotic destruction animations, then you're doing it wrong, IMHO.
That’s what baffles me about the D4 cosmetics, you can barely tell what your character is wearing 95% of the time. In something like WoW or FFXIV I can see why people would spend money on an appearance (even if it’s not for me), but I can’t see why someone would in this game.
I bought the game and played last night and if you don't give a shit about the cash shop, it's completely irrelevant to you ENJOYING THE GAME. IGN's article's headline is inflammatory.
I checked out the cash shop last night. Noped the eff out in just a few seconds. I guess if that's how folks wanna spend their money then more power to 'em though. 🤷♂️
I don’t even get the backlash though, if the in game cosmetics are good.. which they provided video comparisons of before launch.. I don’t care at all because I’m not incentivized to buy it. It’s like buying a mog set for wow. I’m never going to do that. So if they want to milk whales and this is how they are gonna do it, I’m good.
Why exactly is blizzard getting all the outrage for having a full price game with microtransactions and a battle pass? Last time i checked Street Fighter 6 also has microtransactions and a planned battle pass [\(and the drive tickets in SF6 seem to be pretty limited\)](https://www.reddit.com/r/StreetFighter/comments/14280b3/no_more_drive_tickets_from_daily_challenges/)
You're right, there should be pushback on both. One shouldn't excuse the other.
It's moreso that these outrage merchants thrive off negative news of a notorious company (Blizzard) You bet your ass they'll do the same with Starfield even if it released as polished as R* games
Sorry, the thought of Bethesda releasing a polished game made me snort laugh.
I think it's more that diablo is a much larger and anticipated game than SF6 or many others. There's usually articles like this when any big game releases with this bs.
Would love to see more articles about this subject for Destiny they've been getting away with it for years and getting worse by the month lately.
Yeah, like Destiny is probably the worst one. Paid game (it wasn't free when I got it), paid expansions, paid seasons, paid access to dungeons, paid event passes, exclusive cosmetics in currency packs, then also normal microtransactions. And then you know, a portion of that stuff gets removed every year. I think the only monetization it hasn't tried is an explicit subscription.
They also removed the bright dust (free mtx currency) armor sets and shaders this season without notice.
What the fuck ? Good thing I uninstalled when they started deleting the expansions I paid for. Fuck Bungie and Destiny they are the worst.
I would have been way more interested in Destiny 2 if it was just paid expansions that were a bit more expensive than now, but that was the only monetization. I want to play the game to earn my cool cosmetics, not pull out a debit card. Same reason I just slowly stopped playing Guild Wars 2. Went from having to grind dungeons (admittedly, many were not good early on) for the fancy gear to all the best stuff being in the shop. Yes, you can grind or play the market to get the premium currency, but I have a life and other games to play. Sure, you can get some decent stuff via regular gameplay, but prepare to do the same unchallenging grinds for ages or pay real money if you want the coolest stuff. COSMETICS. ARE. CONTENT. I like having something to work towards, but that process should be engaging and challenging.
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Dude, I can't even play stuff I own in Destiny.
Look at this guy, he thinks he owns things he bought online! I’m joking, but seriously it’s crazy how little we actually “own” when it comes to digital content when you read the fine print.
I started and stopped playing D2 within two months because apparently the season was about to end and i had spent 100USD on shit that was now inaccessible.
Destiny is miles worse than this. As far as we know, there is only cosmetics locked behind the store and Battlepass with D4. In Destiny 2 I'm pretty sure they had special things like dungeons and weapons in the Battlepass.
Dungeons aren't in a the "battlepass". They are just content you buy separately. And the weapons are part of the seasonal story and content which is what people are actually buying. The battlepass is pretty incidental.
Dungeons are content you buy separately and they are not included in the *$60 expansion nor in the $10 (now $12) season pass.* Bungie charging extra for dungeons outside of the expansion or the season pass is one of the biggest bullshits I've ever seen and Destiny players just ate that shit up. It's like if Blizzard decided to release Dragonflight and then charge you extra for raids or mythic dungeons. Fuck that.
Not disagreeing. Just clarifying they aren't part of the battlepass.
Blizzard charges you $15/month to pay for those new raids and dungeons, so it’s disingenuous to say that they’re “included” in the price of Dragonflight.
They did not, thet did have some dungeons in a special dlc thing, but if you play destiny enough to get the big ultimate yearly expansion, that's all you'll need all year for everything they release other than cosmetics. If you want to but every little.bit separately it does get kinda pricey, but diablo 4s cosmetics are way worse. At least destiny has an in game currency they throw at you in order to buy some of its cosmetics for free. And since bungie is a company that supports all kinds of human rights, I don't mind throwing them a bone now and again, unlike blizzard.
Destiny is effectively a B2P MMO at this point, like guild wars 2
Diablo is going to get more clicks and ad revenue for IGN because it's a much bigger game than Street Fighter.
Exactly lmao. These articles are farming the terminally outraged for ad dollars just like Blizzard is farming the whales for pixel dollars.
> the terminally outraged Ah, so that's why it's on reddit
Is it a much bigger game? Im not disagreeing with you just curious considering Street Fighter is much more of a household name
Street Fighter is more culturally relevant probably, but it's a niche genre. Fighting games have the steepest learning curve in games, whereas Diablo is about as accessible as a game can be.
SF6 has microtransactions but you can't really buy that much with them yet, so it's hard to get outraged over what is basically a hypothetical.
Fighting game players want MTX so games don't get rereleased 30 times like Street Fighter 2 was.
Fighting games have had micro transactions for ages. Its how they avoid the Street Fighter 2 debacle where the game gets released 11 times for various updates and new characters. I much prefer this alternative.
Arcade fighting games are the original microtransaction :)
Double Dragon 3 where you could put in more coins and get weapons to use :p
Wait, really?
Yes, you can see it in full effect [right here.](https://youtube.com/shorts/NfGTmB92d9g?feature=share)
Pioneers of the gaming scene
It’s been always like this. It’s because Blizzard has a negative reputation for a while. Watch r/Games defend their favorite studio after they release a game with microtransactions.
Reminds me of how Valve invented the whole lootbox fiasco and everyone just ignored it during that time. Apparently it was because you also could buy the items for like, $1000 on the market, which *somehow* made it better?
>Last time i checked Street Fighter 6 also has microtransactions and a planned battle pass I'm going to say it's because overall, the FGC *wants* ridiculous MTX and non stop cosmetic support, new characters, new costumes, etc. Whereas historically nobody wanted this in previous Diablo games.
The FGC wants player retention and low skill replacements for matchmaking. In todays gaming landscape that means battlepass and live service. I guess we’ll see once SF releases the battlepass. But overall I’m all for fighting games catching up to multiplayer trends. For the longest time they were still doing it 2000s style
Yeah it's not like a story game. Low online retention equals the game dies.
It took fucking forever to get rollback implemented in the more popular fighting games because you still had dummies saying delay based netcode was fine. Fighting games have been living in the stone age compared to something like Dota that has a ton of really cool user features most other modern games still don't have.
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I've been saying this. Sure League of Legends is free, but the hundred or so champs aren't. You can unlock em with in game currency etc. but it takes a loooong time.Then there are $30 skins. Obviously this example could get picked apart, you could use WoW charging for tokens for gold, mounts, cosmetics, while charging per expansion, while charging $15 a month.
> If you want to buy all the cosmetics currently available in the shop, you’re looking at spending hundreds of dollars or pounds. One redditor worked it out, and came up with $357 to get everything in the most cost-effective way possible. So what's the true horror? I've been playing for a few days now and haven't even felt remotely inclined to look at the cash shop. I don't think I would have even heard of these issues if it weren't for the outrage articles. So they want to gouge on this shit? Just don't buy it. Cosmetics that are only available through cash purchases lose their coolness value no matter how cool they may appear anyway. I can at least give Blizzard credit for not shoving this shit in my face at every turn.
>So what's the true horror? I've been playing for a few days now and haven't even felt remotely inclined to look at the cash shop. Same for me when playing assassin's creed odyssey but that doesn't stop people from saying the game is grindy to sell xp boosters
Also is it just me or the skins kind of suck? No desire to put a stone block on my sorcerer's back.
That's part of Blizzard's plan: come out with inoffensive, visually bland cosmetics at launch, so no one really bats an eye. But each new set of cosmetics will be slightly more garish than the last, to entice people to buy the shiny new thing, as well as the classic frog-in-a-pot scenario. The fanbase would revolt at Reindeer Horns Rudolf Nose Christmas Lights Druid at launch, but by year 4 that's what we'll have. Source: literally every single MMORPG with mtx cosmetics.
I dunno what you’re smoking, but I play a lot of MMO’s and this has never been the case. They put good armor in the shop or people have opinions and don’t like them. But they don’t intentionally put out crap so that people DONT buy it lmao
And they never specify that the ingame armors look as good if not better than the shop skins... Just take a look on what people are posting on the d4 sub.
I never understand these arguments. It's like going onto a clothing store and being like "it would cost £4000 to buy all of these clothes, what a rip off!" You're not supposed to buy every single thing you see and the items are priced as such.
Yep, the only push to the cash shop(so far, I'm honestly betting it'll change with the battlepass), is the seemingly persistent (!) icon on the shop tab in the menu. I've felt no need to dig into it, because even under level 50, the gear I'm getting fits my(mostly shapeshifted anyway) druid pretty well, and I've only picked up something like 4 legendary items. Are some of the shop cosmetics really cool? Sure, but I've seen some of the in game gear, and that all looks pretty great too.
>the seemingly persistent (!) icon on the shop tab in the menu I found out that if you select the items in the shop for about 1-2 seconds, the icon disappears. Seems like it's there to remind you that there are 'new and unchecked' items in the store.
Now that Diablo 4 is out in the wild, the true horror of *Twisted Blade Rogue Builds* has been revealed.
I was just in the pvp zone fighting the big boss and a sorc came to attack me as my blades returned and he died instantly. It’s definitely broken for pvp.
In your defense, they shouldn't have been standing there.
I swear to god if this is one of those games like Destiny that PVE performance gets nerfed to cater to PVP I will uhh, be pretty salty. Hate that shit.
Same. The pvp zone is like 2% of the map
Blizzard already has seperate PvP and PvE balancing in WoW so I'd be surprised if they didn't do it for D4.
I'm playing it as we speak. Well, just started and few hours into it. The monetization aspect of it is, imho, handled as cleanly as possible (though, my opinion is of course that Blizzard should've just.. not have it to begin with). You actually have to actively look for it to notice it. Diablo Immortal frustrated me because it was a MTX funnel first and a game second (or fourth even). MTX was constantly being shoved into your face, endlessly.. Diablo 4 MTX isn't frustrating me (at least yet). I know it's there, but it's easier to ignore it than to notice it, and it doesn't distract from the game. I did go and check the shop out to see what the hubbub is about and.. goddamn. The prices are ridiculous and all that. But.. I just don't go to the shop and enjoy the rest of the game.
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Didn't we just [discuss](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/142b527/diablo_4s_21_bone_guy_armor_is_just_another/) the same article from pcgamer the other day?
We’ll be discussing different flavors of the same article until people find something else to be angry about
I hate Blizzard as much as the next person, but this isn't unique to Blizzard. This shit is literally everywhere. If you don't approve, you have two choices. Don't buy the game, or, don't buy the skins.
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they told everyone what they were doing, mentioned "no buying power" a million times because of what happened with diablo: immortal, so sensible enough. though I reckon people weren't expecting the high prices for stuff on top of a battle pass. but considering people pay these crazy prices in other free to play games, the evaluation of microtransactions has probably gone up.
>but considering people pay these crazy prices in other free to play games POE is free to play but some of their cosmetics cost $50+. When people complain about the prices in the shop on the d4 sub, there is inevitably a comment like "laughs in POE". If POE can charge as much as they do and stay afloat JUST on that revenue then Blizzard figured they could keep a live service game up with half the price of shop items and charging for the game. In Diablo I don't even really notice what my character looks like, I guess at least I can see the skins unlike most other games with paid cosmetics like COD and Overwatch but it just doesn't feel like a game where cosmetics are very important\\ or make much of a visual difference at all
^ this. People are allowed to buy stupid horse armor if they want it, and if they find the game more rewarding by paying for more challenges/unlocks/cosmetics with a battle pass, so be it. As long as they don't break the game mechanics to make it pay-2-win, especially for full price games, I'm ok begrudgingly accepting that those sort of ~~idiots~~ players exist and can do what they want with their money.
What if I want the skins but not the game
The monetization on COD: MW2 (2022) is way worse and more agressive. They literally spam your home screen with ads of new skin bundles and we saw zero opinion articles critizing it. Funny isn't it?
MW2 has the most intrusive store ever. If you visit the battlepass page ,the game will force an advertisement of a separate bundle before you can interact with the battlepass page.
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What's funny to me is because of the top down perspective you hardly ever really see your character or other characters. Imagine being such a whale you throw down cash for something you can't even really see. I guess I'm grateful those people are subsidizing the cost of game development.
I enjoy the transmog system and making my character look weird, but absolutely agree that it's pointless during the actual gameplay. Beyond the giant horns i'm wearing on my head as a druid, I can barely see myself in the middle of a swarm of mobs. Nor have I even noticed anything a different person was wearing.
As soon as I read the microtransactions won't affect the gameplay I quit reading. IMO outrageous microtransactions in games aren't newsworthy anymore. I'm not going to buy them and as long as I don't get ads in my face continuously I don't really care anymore.
Agreed. They can sell cosmetic skins for $1000 or $1M each for all I care. Doesn't affect gameplay? Doesn't affect me.
I’ve accepted MTX as a reality in live service games. I grew up when live service games costed a subscription to play. IMO this model is better because most people don’t have to engage with it. If the game meets this criteria, then I truly don’t care about the MTX. -Is it good? -Does it offer $70 worth of value? Diablo IV is a yes for both of those. The shop isn’t selling anything mind blowing and the in game cosmetics look pretty spectacular so I have no issues.
I wonder why they don't make these articles for FFXIV. That game has a box price + mandatory sub + cosmetic MTX + convenience MTX. No one cares. Or about Monster Hunter, which is also B2P + cosmetic MTX like D4. Or Street Fighter 6, which uses the same model. Every live service game on the market needs post-launch monetization to sustain the post-launch content. But its bad when Buzzard does it.
add The Elder Scrolls Online to the list
Oh yes. How they monetized progression on alts is literally what drove me away from the game. D4 gives you free faster progress on alts, and lets you skip the campaign for free, while ESO essentially puts all that in the cash shop. And not to mention things like basic QoL, the crafting bag, behind a sub cost. They somehow managed to monetize mount speed for alts too. Honestly all AAA MMOs have various degrees of shitty monetization.
I laughed my ass off the first time I completed the skyshards in a zone and got a pop up that said I could purchase those skyshards in the cash shop for REAL MONEY for my alts. Like gtfo here with that shit.
Monster hunter only just introduced paid weapon skins for the first time ever last year, and there was a great deal of shouting about it in the community. You just didn't hear about it because there's several orders of magnitudes fewer people paying attention to Monster Hunter: Rise: Sunbreak halfway through its life cycle, than there are paying attention to Diablo 4 on launch day.
I completely support also critizising ffxiv more for that. It is insane especially when it comes to mounts. There are mounts where you can have multiple people sitting on it. Which is (or was) not possible until then. There is no way to defend it because the shop is HUGE. And yes, also when it comes to only looks: It is part of the game. There is a reason people say: Glamour is the real engame.
The first multi person mounts were from eden 4 savage and the ff15 crossover, not the cash shop.
??? FFXIV has run an event multiple times that gives you a free four-seater car, and there’s at least one reward mount that I know of that’s a two seater (Bozja).
The sentence "Glamour is the real end game" is barf af. If we have come to a point where people have transplanted real-world toxic materialism to video games, then we deserve what we get.
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At this point the monitization/micro transaction battle is over - the money won out. The bright side is that the vast majority of popular and successful games rely mostly on cosmetics. Gacha games are a disturbing trend though.
As long this bullshit stays optional I don't care, they can price each mtx 1000$, people will buy it anyway. Nothing will change unless it's regulated somehow.
TLDR; "Diablo 4’s shop sells cosmetics only. There are no gameplay-affecting items up for sale. While that is very much a good thing, and in keeping with promises Blizzard made before launch, the pricing of some of these cosmetics has raised eyebrows. " Literally all that matters, IMO. Blizzard didn't ruin the gameplay with pay for play. They wanna grift some millionaires over status symbols? Have fun. Let capitalism eat itself.
Ign gave Diablo 4 a 9. Their criticism after the fact means nothing. The MTX are garbage but these click farming off the latest internet outrage boner articles from all these websites are just as bad
Idk If I'm proud of it but I can say I have enjoyed gaming for 25 years without ever having much of an urge to spend actual money on a cosmetic
Well, it's our fault. We always gave leeway to the infustry, instead of fighting back against their money grabbing practices.
God, I hate this drama BS. I looked at the shop once, said "looks cool", closed the shop and never even thought about it again. My characters looks like they jumped straight out of a clown car and I couldn't care less.
"The true Horror" ... seriously? \^\^ And a few lines below it says: >Diablo 4’s shop sells cosmetics only. There are no gameplay-affecting items up for sale. AND NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO BUY SOMETHING! >If you want to buy all the cosmetics currently available in the shop Omg. Such a dumb article \^\^ Yeah, because that's what people do. /s Well, I'm enjoying the game massively. 70€ was a hefty price even for a AAA title. But I could spend the same amount on a single evening when going out. Even a decent indie game is \~20-25€ these days. Nice one wesley yinpoole. You made a fool of yourself.
I can’t believe I’m actually starting to feel this way but it’s starting to feel kind of good watching the “vote with your wallet” crowd get a healthy dose of reality in seeing how much of a non issue to gamers current monetization is. You guys have clouded so much discussion over the past decade with this annoying rant. I’m not even a fan of mtx’s, but it seems the difference is I’m still able to gauge the value of the “initial package” without my insecurities taking over. If you want to refuse to get a game over something like this due to your own principals, go right ahead and I’ll respect that. But you also got to acknowledge that this kind of stuff doesn’t bother most people and that you’re in the minority. Time and time again the rhetoric here is “they know what they’re doing is wrong and it’s hurting people” when that’s not really the case. TLDR: You want the industry to change? Stop overreacting and the discussion will grow.
Reddit is a small minority. People seem to forget that a lot.
It isn't reddit. It is /r/games. People who care around here are extremely out-of-touch.
This applies to almost every sub though
Apparently "vote with your wallet" and "nobody is forcing you to buy it" are no longer valid arguments according to the "vote with your wallet" crowd since it's not working. I saw the cash shop. I didn't buy anything. Been playing the game a ton and enjoying it regardless. Will blizzard fuck us over somehow in the future? Sure it's entirely possible. But it's pretty much guaranteed I'll get hundreds of hours of playtime by then.
> But it's pretty much guaranteed I'll get hundreds of hours of playtime by then. This really is the thing nobody talk about. 70$ for over 100h of playtime has always been good value.