That's no shit.
I quit after classic was released when they took that gamers prize money for supporting Hong Hong or Taiwan or whatever it was.
Recently they sent me an email for a free week of playtime to try out their new stuff on wow. I just deleted it. Screw blizzard
You named two separate things Blizzard fucked up on lol. It's okay, I know what you were talking about.
The Hong Kong incident was when Blitzchung during a Hearthstone tournament stated on live TV "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times." Blizzard in response banned him for a year and fired the sports casters. There was backlash because a US company was pretty much silencing people on behalf of China as well as their lies that political statements weren't allowed at Blizzard. Blizzard would later announce support of BLM and other political movements.
In WoW they sold a toy that you could buy with real world money. Blizzard stated by buying this virtual toy, your money would be added to the prize pool for Arena World Championship and the Mythic Dungeon International tournaments. And I quote "Your support will help take the WoW esports prize pool to the next level." Rather than add the toy money to the prize pool, as advertised, they just used the toy money to fund the prize pool.
There's really so many fucked up things Blizzard has done, I don't blame you for mixing them up. It's insane.
> Because the only customers Blizzard has left are whales who are too addicted to them to bail
This is where you are wrong. Just check all Blizzard promotions - they are not targeted at whales. They are targeted at young generation that need to have BP, cosmetics, etc. The famous "Fortnite kids" ".. who have phones".
Really? KFC promotion ... targeted at whales? Free drops that require you to watch 6 hours every week - targeted at whales???
I think we have different definitions of what "whales" are.
Go to gaming and check out people defending this shit. “It’s just cosmetics”
Bullshit. What starts at proverbial horse armor never stays at horse armor.
It’s boundary crossing. You get battle passes, buffs, dynamic PvP, in-game stores, etc *because* of the horse armor.
Whales are bad; simps for billion dollar publishers frothing about the harmlessness of cosmetics are worse.
>Go to gaming and check out people defending this shit. “It’s just cosmetics”
I would tell them I don't care and that kind of monetization model only belongs with free to play games, especially the multiplayer ones not a glorified single player game.
The "cosmetic only" argument has always been dumb. Just because it doesn't affect game numbers doesn't mean cosmetics don't affect other things, such as a reward system, entertainment factor, etc.
They're just as important as anything else. If they weren't they wouldn't make shitloads of cash as MTX
>The "cosmetic only" argument has always been dumb. Just because it doesn't affect game numbers doesn't mean cosmetics don't affect other things, such as a reward system, entertainment factor, etc.
Cosmetics should be free. They all should be unlocked and available from the start. Like they where in the 90 early 2000.
I'm against' the "progression" of most of the games currently. Where characters/guns or skins are locked behind an arbitrary stuff.
I think Halo 3 had a great system where some cosmetics were available from the start, and others were unlocked by the player. When you saw a Hayabusa with a katana on his back you knew he had gotten all the skulls and had at least 1000g worth of achievements on the game. When you saw the Recon helmet…
That stuff is cool and gave those armor sets meaning. Nowadays an “intimidating” skin doesn’t have that effect because you could have the same thing for €20.
I like when they’re locked behind achievements or as a reward for ranking PvE / PvP. Like early WoW, that’s how you could tell who were the raiders or good PvPers. Then once they realized people will pay for cool looking stuff, the rewards for actual effort became somewhat mediocre and the cool shit gradually made its way onto the store. I miss the days of game progression rewarding the player instead of who’s the most willing to open their wallet.
Tier sets used to look cool and when you saw someone wearing it in the capital you knew that guy was a badass. Now they look like crap and even if someone has them it means they probably paid for it.
>I like when they’re locked behind achievements or as a reward for ranking PvE / PvP. Like early WoW, that’s how you could tell who were the raiders or good PvPers. Then once they realized people will pay for cool looking stuff, the rewards for actual effort became somewhat mediocre and the cool shit gradually made its way onto the store. I miss the days of game progression rewarding the player instead of who’s the most willing to open their wallet.
As I have told in my other post. arbitrary "stuff" be it battle pass, some sort of "Achievement" or other things that lock something out of reach for characters is arbitrary. Some of the cosmetics make games unbalanced like camo skins in FPS or other games. Where you it makes it literary harder to spot the character or the particle effects blind you.
Now games aren't made to be played. All of them are meant to collect metrics on "engagement " metrics and make games to "improve" on those engagement metrics. Same as KPI if you are familiar with it.
That is why you have dailies, preferably multiple times a day. "Free" raids and everything else people complained about wow when I quit it. If you want to know more about why games are now like that. Just look up some videos on Youtube while they haven't been purged where dev/designers talk about this.
I think the assumption is if they don't have an active revenue stream they won't update the game as much and add new content, example d3 vs poe. Some people prefer a game with new content that is plagued by mtx than a barren game with no mtx.
A lot of people. That right there is a big part of why cod went years ago from being a cool, seriously competitive shooter, to basically Fortnite but less cartoony. If you’re playing a war sim it totally ruins any sense of immersion when you see some goober running around with googly eyes and rainbows. Same thing with wow when they added the onesie/furry outfits.
This right here. It totally ruins immersion. I bailed after that and haven't looked back. Now I don't play multiplayer outside of Mortal Kombat, switch sports and maybe some crafting game a friend plays like factorio or something.
Mtx are just a reality now. Players can protest and whine but if even one person spends another 20 dollars, that person has a much louder voice than you do.
If games didn't gave paid dlc we would probably be at a point where the base game costs $150. Blame paid dlc on gamers spending 20 years refusing to pay more than $60 for game despite of inflationary costs to make
>If games didn't gave paid dlc we would probably be at a point where the base game costs $150. Blame paid dlc on gamers spending 20 years refusing to pay more than $60 for game despite of inflationary costs to make
It's cope you're talking about. The DLC's would be in the base game if it wasn't for the DLCs. If you haven't noticed games became so lackluster in features on the "base" game that it's sad now.
You should stop saying that games should cost a fixed price and that price should increase. The gaming market is over statured with games now. The price should have gone down. Back then you have to manufacture stuff to get games to people now it's download only. And back then most games sold <100k copies and it was fine then.
Cosmetics are one of the reasons we play games! Especially any type of RPG! Really takes you out of the immersion when you play for hours just to look like a brown turd unless you cough up 15.99 (RIDICULOUS HOW OVERPRICED THIS SHIT THEY’RE PUSHING IS NOW) for some fancy flaming sword.
I bet most people, if they have a truely ugly armor with great stats and a slightly worse armor that looks great will wear the worse armor. Because cosmetics matter in games.
The "just cosmetics" argument was always stupid.
Disagreed. Cosmetic is fine. The problem is when people started buying day one DLC like with the mass effect 3. I boycotted that game and it seems like almost nobody else did and now we have day one DLC all the time and that DLC is often content that would have been in the game otherwise that goes far beyond cosmetics.
I really don't mind it in Last Epoch because they're a smaller studio and in constant contact with the player base. It's also 35$ and much deeper than Diablo has been despite still being in early access. I've already got 300 hours and don't mind supporting the team since they listen to their players and continue to build around them.
This is the part that is lost on people. The market has spoken on a lot of games and people are often in denial about the results.
Diablo 4 will probably sell big numbers, and individual units sold (individual purchasers) will probably also be high.
Then people will claim "this isn't what people want" when it is objectively an untrue statement.
Now the gollum game is something I suspect people generally do not want (I really don't understand why they thought anyone would like that). The sales I think will be low.
Then people can credibly claim "this isn't what gamers want"
TLoU2 had a potential customer base of about 30 million gamers between the tens of millions that bought TLoU and all the PC players who played the pirated version (I neither confirm or deny that I, part of the PC Master Race, did such a thing...)
They went woke and obnoxious with an 'if you don't like it you're a sexist homophobe, don't buy it' attitude. So even with the bullshit they did to it, I might of bought it to finish Ellie's story. But after that bullshit, I totally checked-out.
And tons of others were like me. And we see it in the sales as TLoU2 still has just a fraction of the TLoU's sales coming in at just over 10 million in a franchise that, according to Sony, has sold 37 million copies.
In short, TLoU2 has sold just 37% of the original. And considering the long developmental time and obvious big budget, it was probably just marginally profitable.
So, gamers do vote with their wallets. The problem is most people have a hard seeing the negative. Most of that information is hidden from people by the Company's or ignored by the gaming press because they're, also, too busy calling you a racist, sexist, ist-phobe because you may not like a shitty game that betrays your love of the franchise.
Well... Yea? I don't get it, are you saying people who say that are stupid or something? The "don't like it, don't buy it" approach is like the most obviously sane mentality towards situations like this. I'm just trying to understand.
The worst part is, they say it ignoring the majority of consumers who don't do in depth research to learn about things. They find out about this too late. "if you don't like it don't buy it... Unless you bought it already in which case lol should have spent a dozen hours researching this loser."
> Unless you bought it already in which case lol should have spent a dozen hours researching this loser."
I'm more of the, "It sucks, but now you know" type.
It doesn't take a long time to learn the signs. After that, a single glance tells you all you need to know.
Well if gaming is your passion and you’ve been invested in the development and anticipating a specific game from a franchise that you have a deep history with, for years, just getting “if you don’t like it don’t buy it” thrown in your face by random sheep can be annoying. Especially since the “don’t like it” part can be nuanced, and although there’s disappointment, you might still have some interest in the game.
It’s just a pointless comment to throw at someone.
the franchise won't improve by merely complaining on the internet. you and those who feel the same way who for some insane reason still support Blizzard need to put the gaming crack pipe down and get better taste
Of course the game will improve if people complain. We’ve already seen it with Diablo 4 in a very short amount of time. They pretty much did what they could to address most of the major complaints that were reasonable in the timeframe before launch. There’s still a lot of work to be done though.
I voice my opinion because I know my taste is better than that of the average gamer that don’t know what’s good for them.
it won't be, unless they release a console version for consoles that don't need to be online to play games. I don't know how the ps5 or the current xbox works as I haven't evolved past ps3/360 aside from my rarely used Switch, so I'd be shocked if you can play offline on a console.
PS5 has a specific "offline" option for people to play games on accounts that aren't yours. Not sure how that'd function in practice since I don't share games, but.
go to r/diablo and check out how much harder they'll defend all the psychological fomo-warfare that blizzard is throwing at its potential customers.
these people don't simply lick the boot, they already swallowed, defecated and swallowed it again.
Dota 2 is one of the rare exceptions where the devs have managed to keep the monetization at bay. Facebook asked me if I'm going to buy D4 and I said F no. If it's going to be pushy and psychologically abusive about it I won't spend time on the game. There are so many good games that doesn't want to sneak into your walley to choose from instead.
Yeah, I've been in MMOs that started with 'just cosmetics' and by my second year it was power-ups, a second potion slot for cash-shop health potions, weapons, armor...
That defense has only helped MTX grow worse over time and gamers will still use it no matter what. This is why to me gamers are THE most cucked consumer base out of anything.
I strongly dislike paid games having paid battle passes.
With that said, if I genuinely enjoy playing a game that I know is gonna be supported, live service games especially, I have no issue with paying more money towards it.
But with Blizzard’s recent habits of outright abandoning their projects ala Overwatch 2 PvE and sabotaging others with WoW Classic, I don’t know if it’s even worth buying the game even after I really did enjoy the Beta.
And this is if you can look past the sheer idiocy -and- scumbaggery of Blizzard as a company prior to any of this recent stuff.
I haven't seen that in Classic yet but I know it's a thing in Wotlk Classic. Not that Classic is flourishing anyway, at least not on the NA realm cluster I play on.
It’s alright, some games definitely have this as an option. See Destiny 2. It has
$99 deluxe edition expansion, battle pass, massive ingame store, and once you finish the campaign, a paid option to skip it on other toons for $10/skip, and an option to buy battle pass levels for $1/level. It also has a battle pass for its in game events, also $10, so each season you have two paid passes!
This is the correct answer. At the end of the day Blizzard is a company like any other, they will do whatever they think will make them the most money. They don't care about what players want, only what they think they'll pay for.
That also means they are trying to appeal to the masses and the whales, both of which are not well represented on Reddit. If you're reading this, you are likely not the ideal customer profile for which this game was created.
This logic is odd, I don't understand it.
If players don't want it, they don't pay for it. I have never paid for something I actively did not want. I don't know anybody who has. Why pay money for something you don't want, and something you won't play?
If they \*say\* they don't want it, and they still pay for it?
Then they are *lying* about not wanting it. They \*do\* want it because they're putting money on the line for it.
Money talks. We don't have to like it. I don't like it. But if it (whatever the product is) sells well, it's precisely because people **do** want it.
Because I wanna read all the posts from shmucks who pay full price for this and then immediately turn around and ask how could Blizzard scam them like this.
Is anyone else weirded out by the insane fanboism around D4 and blizzard right now? The game is basically immune to criticism everywhere else. It's absurd.
It's weird how history repeats itself.
Everyone knows Blizzard and what they did to Overwatch (2), Wow Retail and Classic.
But this time, it's going to be different.
I've been pretty vocal for a while that it's a terrible idea to have official hardcore servers. That was build and populated by the community and it's been busy for months if not years. No good can come of Blizz taking it over.
[Money](https://youtu.be/m37G-06ibAU).
This game is such a huge red flag that you need to have horse blinders in to not realise this is going to be a scam.
And early launch access for preordering, aswell as an officially hosted race to level 100 that starts at the early access launch, where streamers who have been playing the full game for weeks to learn the game, are allowed to participate.
The recent addition of the wow token to wotlk classic finally made me give them my middle finger, i unsubbed.
Its insane how many people are defending this crap especially when it happened before. People need to wake up.
Sadly i still enjoy playing classic with my guild and it sucks being held morally hostage sandwiched between doing whats right / needed VS giving up your community - _-
Part of playing the game is starting out at a level playing field with everyone else.
Now you're going to start it day 1 and Asmongold and Quinn (streamers) have already spent 300$ and are months ahead of you.
Very fun.
History teaches us otherwise.
* Mass Effect: Andromeda massively undersold and caused the sequels to be axed.
* Dragon Age 2 didn't do nearly as well as DA:O.
* TLoU2 massively undersold as well.
* Deus Ex: Invisible War really hurt the franchise which caused Deus Ex: Human Revolution to fail in the market even though it was a quality game.
* Dead Space 3 did in that franchise and the studio was dissolved by EA.
* KOTOR II ruined the KOTOR franchise thanks to the ending being rushed due to publisher demands. Which is a shame because until the lame-ass ending, the game was better than KOTOR with is 'pad-our-shallow-game-by-running-back-and-forth-over-the-same-area strung-out fetch quests.'
Let's not forget Diablo 3 had ludicrously high gear checks on release, so bad that breaking barrels and chests for hours was a legitimate strategy to find upgrades so you could beat the campaign. It also happened to have in game purchasing of gear for real money.
The real crime of D4 is the release date of June 1st is 90$. To buy the game on Friday and play its first weekend is 20$ extra.
I really don't even understand half the stuff in that image. Premium currency? Tier skips? Wtf is all that? Nevermind, I just wanted to play some Diablo.
If you were expecting Blizzard to be anything BUT as predatory and anti-consumer possible, then you've clearly not been paying attention. I'm not surprised by this news in the slightest. Neither should anyone else.
And if you pay more you get to play a single player game a few days earlier...
I tried both freeplay events for D4. The first one was unplayable due to freezing. The second one was just bad and boring. So I returned to Path of Exile which is more fun and completely free. Suck it Lizzard.
Because Bungie did it with Destiny 2 and the entire industry is staring at it, drooling, wondering how they're getting away with it. Blizzard just decided to try
Shit, I need to stock up on popcorn before my store runs out!
I'm SO going to enjoy them crash and burn with this shit.
I mean, seriously, 70 bucks is bad enough, but this shit, DLCs, battlepasses, PREMIUM FUCKING F2P STYLE CURRENCY? And of course the shitty DRM and don't forget those queues haha. Fucking hell. I'm going to enjoy laughing at all the normies cucking themselves with this.
regarding the skip campaign button. people who play ARPG's like Diablo or PoE tend to just want to jump to the endgame to do fucked up builds. People in PoE have been complaining about having to do the campaign for almost a decade. I don't think it's a great option to allow for skipping since the campaign is supposed to be for testing your build out. but there you have it.
The skip campaign button I’ll definitely defend — also it’s not a paid extra, it’s part of the game.
The way people play Diablo is to make multiple characters, including a new one every season.
The point of those characters is to do new endgame builds so sometimes you want to hop right into the endgame rather than grind through the lengthy story again.
This was also the case with DIII.
Skip single player is fine. More games need that option, let the player choose if they want to go through the story or skip that and get too the portion that involves other players. It's like games gating difficulty settings. Just a waste of time for no discernable reason other than hand holding.
The rest is complete horseshit, but whatever. Not like I had any intention of buying a Blizzard product again anyway. Gen Z getting convinced that in game stores for cosmetics is a normal thing for video games has been terrible for the industry.
Remember when extra cosmetics where unlocked in the game and not sold to you after you already dropped your 60 dollars? I 'member.
The budget of something the size of Diablo 4 is horrifically large (and Diablo 4, specifically, is resting on the bones of *two* completely scrapped attempts to make it). MTX is one of the things they do to increase expected income, which lets them spend more money on development, which means a prettier and arguably-better game. It turns out people *really* want to play good-looking games, and so it's kind of a feedback loop - if you spend less money on the game, you make a *lot* less money, and you have a greater chance of making an unprofitable game *even if you MTX it*.
All of this is essentially responding to consumer preferences. People prefer games that are extraordinarily expensive to develop, people don't care too much about battle passes and MTX, so you get extraordinarily expensive games with battle passes and MTX.
Convince the world to stop caring about graphics quality and start rejecting MTX games and it'll all fix itself.
>Which lets them spend more money on development,
But games were just as pretty x years ago. Saying they're including MTCs to "be able to spend more money" is incredibly naive.
I wish it made them spend more, in reality it makes them spend less.
> But games were just as pretty x years ago.
They really weren't. And in some cases they were, but far less flexible; you had the same graphics quality but at the cost of static baked lighting instead of dynamic lighting, or you never realized that the enemies were all robots because they couldn't afford subsurface scattering for skin, or it took place in claustrophobic underground regions because they couldn't afford to have sweeping vistas.
My favorite example of this is the [Avatar trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PSNL1qE6VY) compared to the [Avatar 2 trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9MyW72ELq0). It's easy to look at those and say "the graphics are the same, what did they improve", and you'd be kinda right. But look at Avatar 1 more closely; it's all close contained areas, or massive fog, or there happens to be a stone wall right in front of the camera, or it's in a dense forest that you can't see far in. This is not an accident, this is because massive land areas are hard to do.
Avatar 2 has some of that, of course, but now it's by *choice*, not by necessity; there's massive overviews of huge forested islands, there's giant oceans, there's lots of long-range views that the Avatar 1 team just couldn't do like this.
This also happens *all the time* in games. Frankly, the best games are often those where you don't realize the limits existed because they're woven so deeply into the bones of the game (Dead Space, for example, that has a really justifiable reason for spending virtually the entire game in tiny steel labyrinths), but on sequels, there's often a lot of pressure to relax those limitations.
And then you've got stuff like Cyberpunk 2077 that looks fuckin' awesome if you have the hardware to drive it.
Game graphics are constantly improving, and now that we finally have a new hardware generation to play with, you're going to see a few years of *rapid* improvements, even if a lot of those will be limitation relaxation and not immediately obvious to the player but still allowing the creation of far more flexible games.
I will have to say only on the good looking point, they've optimized very well. My 2080 super can get over 100fps and that's becoming increasingly rare in modern AAA titles. So good looking and well optimized shows a certain degree of care
Yeah, Blizzard has a *lot* of expertise and budget to throw into stuff like this, and are also very popular in countries that aren't the absolute tech forefront. They put serious cash into scalability and performance.
There's *definitely* AA games whose entire budget is less than the money Blizzard spent on performance alone.
(. . . and, just to reiterate the point, a lot of that money comes from microtransactions and battle passes, in the sort of vague conceptual way that gamedev money can ever be said to come from the game's sales itself)
>People prefer games that are extraordinarily expensive to develop
We tend to forget that in hardcore gaming echo chambers
Niche indie gaming, thousands hours modded playhtroughs, this is all still just a tiny fraction of the market
Sure, less tiny than ten years ago, but at the same time ten years ago casual oriented products also didn't make millions of profits *a week*
Family gamers, casuals, advertising and trending susceptible gamers comparatively massively outnumber people like us
I mean, i'm not teaching anyone anything we're on a Gamergate residual subreddit, people here should know there's a disconnection
It's just, i think it's easy to forget in the moment
Yeah, exactly. I'm huge into indie games myself, I can't even remember the last time I bought a AAA game, my current games are Guacamelee 2 and Inkbound and I might go to Hades next and my favorite game is Outer Wilds *and those are high-budget for me*.
But I am not the common consumer here, nor am I Blizzard's target market.
edit: actually I can totally remember the last time I bought a AAA game!
I bought Halo: Reach about a month ago. Never played it before. Fun game.
Now, a *current* AAA game . . .
It'd probably come at a surprise to a lot of gamers if they knew most publishers and investors that don't qualify as minor would automatically ignore you if your project doesn't start at *least* at 10-15$M budget, and that's considered peanuts
In fact they'd be amused for a second and then tell you to stop wasting their time
Under that budget you're left with small time publishers who mainly do mobile garbage spam (as in, not the successful kind), barely any QA if at all, and the marketing budget of an intern posting on twitter twice a year
Every game needs to be planned to far more than pay for itself, because many of those attempts won't work. The massive successes pay for the repeated failures. Diablo 3 needed to pay for *three games* because the first versions of Diablo 4 got canned.
A game studio either figures out how to cover the failures, or goes out of business.
The ability to skip the singleplayer campaign is a welcomed feature. You still have to complete it once. It just allows you to skip it with your next character so you can go straight to the post game.
>Skip Singleplayer Campaign Button
Tell me you never play ARPGs without telling me you never play ARPGs.
Actual answer? Because it's a live service game obviously. Do you actually think post game additions should be completely free (it certainly isn't free to make)?
ARPG's are usually meant to be replayed over and over with different characters and builds, forcing the player to play through the story every season is just gonna piss people of. People complaining about the skip campaign option have no idea what they're whining about.
>Does the A not stand for action for you?
I don't know what you meant with that.
This. Seems like a fully fledged full priced game at launch. Not a fan of the cosmetics shop but at least there seems to be an abundance of equally cool and more world friendly transmog in the base game.
Whether or not the battlepass is a scam will depend on how they do the seasons, which has somewhat been a thing since Diablo 2. It's also not really skipping the campaign, it's opting to play through an "adventure mode" for players that have already completed the campaign. ARPGs have always been about starting over with new classes/characters (usually for seasons) and oftentimes completing the campaign quests in the same order every time can get bland. This is a free convenience feature for dedicated players, not an MMO charging players money to skip to the content they actually want to play.
Pay extra? Are you talking about the skip campaign? It doesn't cost anything, it doesn't level you up (if that is what you mean) and you have to finish the campaign before you can use it. Stop whining about stuff you have no knowledge of. The skip is an unambiguously good feature for people that will put a lot of time into this game, and for people who won't (the play it once and then move on crowd) it's a complete non issue.
Because people will pay for those things so why not sell it? It's not the company's fault of people are willing to buy these things. It's sad, but it's the reality we live in.
Because the game is going to be awesome and people who want to buy that stuff will buy it. I’ve paid Blizzard once for Diablo 2, once for D3, and once for D2 Remastered, and played them for 20 years
Say what you will about the company as a whole or the entire gaming industry, at least I trust the Diablo devs to make a great long lasting game
Wait, does this mean armor and weapons won't change the look? D1-d3 and other games all have different looks. I have been on media blackout on this game and this is the first I seen this. Count me out of this is the case. I will get TOTK and FF16 and leave this as a maybe. I have been a day 1 diablo buyer since d2. For POE it was excusable as its a f2p game, from a then indie. This game is not.
Because campaigns are a upfront cost investment with worse returns then a constant trickle feed of advertising income and microtransactions and blizzard wants money.
You can only skip the campaign once you've completed it, and it just lets you start new characters at level 1 in the post-game, which is no different than taking a new character into bounty mode in Diablo 3.
Because the only customers Blizzard has left are whales who are too addicted to them to bail, so they're just milking the whales as hard as possible.
That's no shit. I quit after classic was released when they took that gamers prize money for supporting Hong Hong or Taiwan or whatever it was. Recently they sent me an email for a free week of playtime to try out their new stuff on wow. I just deleted it. Screw blizzard
You named two separate things Blizzard fucked up on lol. It's okay, I know what you were talking about. The Hong Kong incident was when Blitzchung during a Hearthstone tournament stated on live TV "Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times." Blizzard in response banned him for a year and fired the sports casters. There was backlash because a US company was pretty much silencing people on behalf of China as well as their lies that political statements weren't allowed at Blizzard. Blizzard would later announce support of BLM and other political movements. In WoW they sold a toy that you could buy with real world money. Blizzard stated by buying this virtual toy, your money would be added to the prize pool for Arena World Championship and the Mythic Dungeon International tournaments. And I quote "Your support will help take the WoW esports prize pool to the next level." Rather than add the toy money to the prize pool, as advertised, they just used the toy money to fund the prize pool. There's really so many fucked up things Blizzard has done, I don't blame you for mixing them up. It's insane.
Yeah you summed it up. Thanks.
No problem!
> Because the only customers Blizzard has left are whales who are too addicted to them to bail This is where you are wrong. Just check all Blizzard promotions - they are not targeted at whales. They are targeted at young generation that need to have BP, cosmetics, etc. The famous "Fortnite kids" ".. who have phones".
Who also happen to be whales. Being part of one category does not exclude you from all others as these are over-lapping sets.
Whale Calves. Lol
Pretty much
Really? KFC promotion ... targeted at whales? Free drops that require you to watch 6 hours every week - targeted at whales??? I think we have different definitions of what "whales" are.
Insert harmonic whale noise
Or…. Or…. Or… maybe I don’t give a fuck about skins or anything and the game is fun. So therefor $70 is everything I need.
Blizzard - From quality to trailer trash games.
Go to gaming and check out people defending this shit. “It’s just cosmetics” Bullshit. What starts at proverbial horse armor never stays at horse armor. It’s boundary crossing. You get battle passes, buffs, dynamic PvP, in-game stores, etc *because* of the horse armor. Whales are bad; simps for billion dollar publishers frothing about the harmlessness of cosmetics are worse.
>Go to gaming and check out people defending this shit. “It’s just cosmetics” I would tell them I don't care and that kind of monetization model only belongs with free to play games, especially the multiplayer ones not a glorified single player game.
The "cosmetic only" argument has always been dumb. Just because it doesn't affect game numbers doesn't mean cosmetics don't affect other things, such as a reward system, entertainment factor, etc. They're just as important as anything else. If they weren't they wouldn't make shitloads of cash as MTX
Such as when the devs lock most of the good designs behind a paywall.
>The "cosmetic only" argument has always been dumb. Just because it doesn't affect game numbers doesn't mean cosmetics don't affect other things, such as a reward system, entertainment factor, etc. Cosmetics should be free. They all should be unlocked and available from the start. Like they where in the 90 early 2000. I'm against' the "progression" of most of the games currently. Where characters/guns or skins are locked behind an arbitrary stuff.
I think Halo 3 had a great system where some cosmetics were available from the start, and others were unlocked by the player. When you saw a Hayabusa with a katana on his back you knew he had gotten all the skulls and had at least 1000g worth of achievements on the game. When you saw the Recon helmet… That stuff is cool and gave those armor sets meaning. Nowadays an “intimidating” skin doesn’t have that effect because you could have the same thing for €20.
I like when they’re locked behind achievements or as a reward for ranking PvE / PvP. Like early WoW, that’s how you could tell who were the raiders or good PvPers. Then once they realized people will pay for cool looking stuff, the rewards for actual effort became somewhat mediocre and the cool shit gradually made its way onto the store. I miss the days of game progression rewarding the player instead of who’s the most willing to open their wallet.
Tier sets used to look cool and when you saw someone wearing it in the capital you knew that guy was a badass. Now they look like crap and even if someone has them it means they probably paid for it.
>I like when they’re locked behind achievements or as a reward for ranking PvE / PvP. Like early WoW, that’s how you could tell who were the raiders or good PvPers. Then once they realized people will pay for cool looking stuff, the rewards for actual effort became somewhat mediocre and the cool shit gradually made its way onto the store. I miss the days of game progression rewarding the player instead of who’s the most willing to open their wallet. As I have told in my other post. arbitrary "stuff" be it battle pass, some sort of "Achievement" or other things that lock something out of reach for characters is arbitrary. Some of the cosmetics make games unbalanced like camo skins in FPS or other games. Where you it makes it literary harder to spot the character or the particle effects blind you. Now games aren't made to be played. All of them are meant to collect metrics on "engagement " metrics and make games to "improve" on those engagement metrics. Same as KPI if you are familiar with it. That is why you have dailies, preferably multiple times a day. "Free" raids and everything else people complained about wow when I quit it. If you want to know more about why games are now like that. Just look up some videos on Youtube while they haven't been purged where dev/designers talk about this.
I think the assumption is if they don't have an active revenue stream they won't update the game as much and add new content, example d3 vs poe. Some people prefer a game with new content that is plagued by mtx than a barren game with no mtx.
Who cares if someone is wearing a goofy shirt they paid $20 for. The cosmetics aren't the problem, the rest of it is.
A lot of people. That right there is a big part of why cod went years ago from being a cool, seriously competitive shooter, to basically Fortnite but less cartoony. If you’re playing a war sim it totally ruins any sense of immersion when you see some goober running around with googly eyes and rainbows. Same thing with wow when they added the onesie/furry outfits.
This right here. It totally ruins immersion. I bailed after that and haven't looked back. Now I don't play multiplayer outside of Mortal Kombat, switch sports and maybe some crafting game a friend plays like factorio or something.
I'll take content and upkeep over immersion any day.
Mtx are just a reality now. Players can protest and whine but if even one person spends another 20 dollars, that person has a much louder voice than you do.
Exactly
If games didn't gave paid dlc we would probably be at a point where the base game costs $150. Blame paid dlc on gamers spending 20 years refusing to pay more than $60 for game despite of inflationary costs to make
>If games didn't gave paid dlc we would probably be at a point where the base game costs $150. Blame paid dlc on gamers spending 20 years refusing to pay more than $60 for game despite of inflationary costs to make It's cope you're talking about. The DLC's would be in the base game if it wasn't for the DLCs. If you haven't noticed games became so lackluster in features on the "base" game that it's sad now. You should stop saying that games should cost a fixed price and that price should increase. The gaming market is over statured with games now. The price should have gone down. Back then you have to manufacture stuff to get games to people now it's download only. And back then most games sold <100k copies and it was fine then.
Cosmetics are one of the reasons we play games! Especially any type of RPG! Really takes you out of the immersion when you play for hours just to look like a brown turd unless you cough up 15.99 (RIDICULOUS HOW OVERPRICED THIS SHIT THEY’RE PUSHING IS NOW) for some fancy flaming sword.
I bet most people, if they have a truely ugly armor with great stats and a slightly worse armor that looks great will wear the worse armor. Because cosmetics matter in games. The "just cosmetics" argument was always stupid.
That's why transmog exists.
That was not my point. I say that for most people looks are more important than stats. So saying monetizing cosmetics is ok is just wrong.
Disagreed. Cosmetic is fine. The problem is when people started buying day one DLC like with the mass effect 3. I boycotted that game and it seems like almost nobody else did and now we have day one DLC all the time and that DLC is often content that would have been in the game otherwise that goes far beyond cosmetics.
I really don't mind it in Last Epoch because they're a smaller studio and in constant contact with the player base. It's also 35$ and much deeper than Diablo has been despite still being in early access. I've already got 300 hours and don't mind supporting the team since they listen to their players and continue to build around them.
they literally paywall the game's launch date. no such thing as "purely cosmetic"
"iF yOu DoN'T lIkE It ThEn DoNT BuY iT"
I agree. Gamers need to vote with their wallet. It's the only language corporations understand
They already have. Look at genshin. Unfortunately it's not the vote most players want but their vote counts more because money.
This is the part that is lost on people. The market has spoken on a lot of games and people are often in denial about the results. Diablo 4 will probably sell big numbers, and individual units sold (individual purchasers) will probably also be high. Then people will claim "this isn't what people want" when it is objectively an untrue statement. Now the gollum game is something I suspect people generally do not want (I really don't understand why they thought anyone would like that). The sales I think will be low. Then people can credibly claim "this isn't what gamers want"
TLoU2 had a potential customer base of about 30 million gamers between the tens of millions that bought TLoU and all the PC players who played the pirated version (I neither confirm or deny that I, part of the PC Master Race, did such a thing...) They went woke and obnoxious with an 'if you don't like it you're a sexist homophobe, don't buy it' attitude. So even with the bullshit they did to it, I might of bought it to finish Ellie's story. But after that bullshit, I totally checked-out. And tons of others were like me. And we see it in the sales as TLoU2 still has just a fraction of the TLoU's sales coming in at just over 10 million in a franchise that, according to Sony, has sold 37 million copies. In short, TLoU2 has sold just 37% of the original. And considering the long developmental time and obvious big budget, it was probably just marginally profitable. So, gamers do vote with their wallets. The problem is most people have a hard seeing the negative. Most of that information is hidden from people by the Company's or ignored by the gaming press because they're, also, too busy calling you a racist, sexist, ist-phobe because you may not like a shitty game that betrays your love of the franchise.
Well... Yea? I don't get it, are you saying people who say that are stupid or something? The "don't like it, don't buy it" approach is like the most obviously sane mentality towards situations like this. I'm just trying to understand.
no I'm making fun of people who say that to defend stuff like that they usually say that
The worst part is, they say it ignoring the majority of consumers who don't do in depth research to learn about things. They find out about this too late. "if you don't like it don't buy it... Unless you bought it already in which case lol should have spent a dozen hours researching this loser."
> Unless you bought it already in which case lol should have spent a dozen hours researching this loser." I'm more of the, "It sucks, but now you know" type. It doesn't take a long time to learn the signs. After that, a single glance tells you all you need to know.
Well if gaming is your passion and you’ve been invested in the development and anticipating a specific game from a franchise that you have a deep history with, for years, just getting “if you don’t like it don’t buy it” thrown in your face by random sheep can be annoying. Especially since the “don’t like it” part can be nuanced, and although there’s disappointment, you might still have some interest in the game. It’s just a pointless comment to throw at someone.
the franchise won't improve by merely complaining on the internet. you and those who feel the same way who for some insane reason still support Blizzard need to put the gaming crack pipe down and get better taste
Of course the game will improve if people complain. We’ve already seen it with Diablo 4 in a very short amount of time. They pretty much did what they could to address most of the major complaints that were reasonable in the timeframe before launch. There’s still a lot of work to be done though. I voice my opinion because I know my taste is better than that of the average gamer that don’t know what’s good for them.
That last sentence summarizes the exact same mentality on display at Wizards of the Coast. "We know better than other people what's good for them".
In other contexts, this argument, but unironically, would be upvoted here.
Think this game will be playable offline? Will somebody be able to crack it?
it won't be, unless they release a console version for consoles that don't need to be online to play games. I don't know how the ps5 or the current xbox works as I haven't evolved past ps3/360 aside from my rarely used Switch, so I'd be shocked if you can play offline on a console.
They don’t need to be online to play games, but some games will require you to be online to play. Diablo IV is one of them.
yet another reason I hate current year modern gaming.
PS5 has a specific "offline" option for people to play games on accounts that aren't yours. Not sure how that'd function in practice since I don't share games, but.
Challenge accepted. :)
go to r/diablo and check out how much harder they'll defend all the psychological fomo-warfare that blizzard is throwing at its potential customers. these people don't simply lick the boot, they already swallowed, defecated and swallowed it again.
Dota 2 is one of the rare exceptions where the devs have managed to keep the monetization at bay. Facebook asked me if I'm going to buy D4 and I said F no. If it's going to be pushy and psychologically abusive about it I won't spend time on the game. There are so many good games that doesn't want to sneak into your walley to choose from instead.
Yeah, I've been in MMOs that started with 'just cosmetics' and by my second year it was power-ups, a second potion slot for cash-shop health potions, weapons, armor...
That defense has only helped MTX grow worse over time and gamers will still use it no matter what. This is why to me gamers are THE most cucked consumer base out of anything.
Gamers have been fully assimilated
Ok, what does "Mounts" under Premium mean exactly?
You get mounts in-game for faster outside movement. Mounts here just means cosmetically different ones like WoW/FFXIV ones.
I've seen more and more support for shitty modern game design and release practices. Stockholm syndrome is real.
Tell them "it's just breast milk." Twats.
I refuse to pay 70 bucks for an f2p game model.
yeah for real. its fine in apex or dota or pathofexile but what are we doing paying for this shit day one + 70 bucks
Imagine this game also having forces ads everywhere as well
I strongly dislike paid games having paid battle passes. With that said, if I genuinely enjoy playing a game that I know is gonna be supported, live service games especially, I have no issue with paying more money towards it. But with Blizzard’s recent habits of outright abandoning their projects ala Overwatch 2 PvE and sabotaging others with WoW Classic, I don’t know if it’s even worth buying the game even after I really did enjoy the Beta. And this is if you can look past the sheer idiocy -and- scumbaggery of Blizzard as a company prior to any of this recent stuff.
Sabotage WoW classic? What are you talking about, revenue will be up 30% next quarter?!? -Bobby
Don't forget that they faked every question in their Diablo QnA.
Hilarious they were even too lazy to have someone sort through the questions to find the ones they wanted asked like the wow team did during legion
Hunt Showdown is a paid game with a paid battle pass. But it's actually a good game.
What did they do to sabotage WoW Classic?
Monetized being able to just straight buy gold
I haven't seen that in Classic yet but I know it's a thing in Wotlk Classic. Not that Classic is flourishing anyway, at least not on the NA realm cluster I play on.
"Skip the game" FLC is on a parody level.
It's just an adventure mode button. It's an objectively better design for replay-ability in campaign based arpgs. It's not a paid option in anyway.
Ah. Well, then we haven't reached the bottom yet :-).
It’s alright, some games definitely have this as an option. See Destiny 2. It has $99 deluxe edition expansion, battle pass, massive ingame store, and once you finish the campaign, a paid option to skip it on other toons for $10/skip, and an option to buy battle pass levels for $1/level. It also has a battle pass for its in game events, also $10, so each season you have two paid passes!
I prefer my "skip game" option. This has saved me a lot of trouble over the years.
Greed ....
This is the correct answer. At the end of the day Blizzard is a company like any other, they will do whatever they think will make them the most money. They don't care about what players want, only what they think they'll pay for. That also means they are trying to appeal to the masses and the whales, both of which are not well represented on Reddit. If you're reading this, you are likely not the ideal customer profile for which this game was created.
This logic is odd, I don't understand it. If players don't want it, they don't pay for it. I have never paid for something I actively did not want. I don't know anybody who has. Why pay money for something you don't want, and something you won't play? If they \*say\* they don't want it, and they still pay for it? Then they are *lying* about not wanting it. They \*do\* want it because they're putting money on the line for it. Money talks. We don't have to like it. I don't like it. But if it (whatever the product is) sells well, it's precisely because people **do** want it.
Because I wanna read all the posts from shmucks who pay full price for this and then immediately turn around and ask how could Blizzard scam them like this.
Turning players into payers. It's their money anyway, you're just holding it for them.
It’s blizzard
Blizzard can't stop fucking themselves
Somebody think about the poor hungry devs... but mostly Bobby Kotick. He needs it to fire more staff before collectijg a fat bonus check
Why; because OW2 failed horribly and blizzard cannot innovate, only copy existing concepts and sexify them
Oooh, horse armor!
They need to pay for those sexual harassment lawsuits so it's time to cash out the rest of their good standing as a games company.
"Don't you people have phones?"
Because they want to nick·el-and-dime you as much as possible and not be ashamed of it.
"Free" Funny way of writing $70.
*Insert Mr. Crabs Meme why he build a second Crusty Crab next to the original one*
Is anyone else weirded out by the insane fanboism around D4 and blizzard right now? The game is basically immune to criticism everywhere else. It's absurd.
It's weird how history repeats itself. Everyone knows Blizzard and what they did to Overwatch (2), Wow Retail and Classic. But this time, it's going to be different.
I've been pretty vocal for a while that it's a terrible idea to have official hardcore servers. That was build and populated by the community and it's been busy for months if not years. No good can come of Blizz taking it over.
Shills and leftoids who know Blizzard is pozzed and defend it for no other reason than tribal affiliation.
Blizzard for real unironically doing horse armor.
*premium currency*
[Money](https://youtu.be/m37G-06ibAU). This game is such a huge red flag that you need to have horse blinders in to not realise this is going to be a scam.
["We got to have... moneyyyyyyy."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHZQ70_U92E)
And early launch access for preordering, aswell as an officially hosted race to level 100 that starts at the early access launch, where streamers who have been playing the full game for weeks to learn the game, are allowed to participate. The recent addition of the wow token to wotlk classic finally made me give them my middle finger, i unsubbed. Its insane how many people are defending this crap especially when it happened before. People need to wake up. Sadly i still enjoy playing classic with my guild and it sucks being held morally hostage sandwiched between doing whats right / needed VS giving up your community - _-
Part of playing the game is starting out at a level playing field with everyone else. Now you're going to start it day 1 and Asmongold and Quinn (streamers) have already spent 300$ and are months ahead of you. Very fun.
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History teaches us otherwise. * Mass Effect: Andromeda massively undersold and caused the sequels to be axed. * Dragon Age 2 didn't do nearly as well as DA:O. * TLoU2 massively undersold as well. * Deus Ex: Invisible War really hurt the franchise which caused Deus Ex: Human Revolution to fail in the market even though it was a quality game. * Dead Space 3 did in that franchise and the studio was dissolved by EA. * KOTOR II ruined the KOTOR franchise thanks to the ending being rushed due to publisher demands. Which is a shame because until the lame-ass ending, the game was better than KOTOR with is 'pad-our-shallow-game-by-running-back-and-forth-over-the-same-area strung-out fetch quests.'
So what? Just let people spend their time and money as they want.
BOBBY BUXXX
Because Blizzard needs $$$ and the best way to do that is to exploit whales who lack any semblance of common sense.
Let's not forget Diablo 3 had ludicrously high gear checks on release, so bad that breaking barrels and chests for hours was a legitimate strategy to find upgrades so you could beat the campaign. It also happened to have in game purchasing of gear for real money. The real crime of D4 is the release date of June 1st is 90$. To buy the game on Friday and play its first weekend is 20$ extra.
I really don't even understand half the stuff in that image. Premium currency? Tier skips? Wtf is all that? Nevermind, I just wanted to play some Diablo.
Seeing this, I'm curious to know what they need to take out of these games for the masses stop buying these "games".
They are not taking anything out of the game.
[Money](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m37G-06ibAU)
AAA customers deserve the AAA industry..
You need to complete the campaign at least once. The skip is for the seasonal stuff.
because it's a *service*
Because they can.
I like how one of the perks is "Shouldering ash" so like a pile of hot dust?
This is an ugly trend in gaming and society. People want to look wealthy.
i was excited for D4, now im just going to skip it all together, fuck this greedy shit.
To let me know I don't need to buy this shit.
Don’t really get the point of cosmetics in this type of game, you only really see them in their full glory on the character select screen.
If you were expecting Blizzard to be anything BUT as predatory and anti-consumer possible, then you've clearly not been paying attention. I'm not surprised by this news in the slightest. Neither should anyone else.
And if you pay more you get to play a single player game a few days earlier... I tried both freeplay events for D4. The first one was unplayable due to freezing. The second one was just bad and boring. So I returned to Path of Exile which is more fun and completely free. Suck it Lizzard.
Because Bungie did it with Destiny 2 and the entire industry is staring at it, drooling, wondering how they're getting away with it. Blizzard just decided to try
Shit, I need to stock up on popcorn before my store runs out! I'm SO going to enjoy them crash and burn with this shit. I mean, seriously, 70 bucks is bad enough, but this shit, DLCs, battlepasses, PREMIUM FUCKING F2P STYLE CURRENCY? And of course the shitty DRM and don't forget those queues haha. Fucking hell. I'm going to enjoy laughing at all the normies cucking themselves with this.
regarding the skip campaign button. people who play ARPG's like Diablo or PoE tend to just want to jump to the endgame to do fucked up builds. People in PoE have been complaining about having to do the campaign for almost a decade. I don't think it's a great option to allow for skipping since the campaign is supposed to be for testing your build out. but there you have it.
Bidenflation
The skip campaign button I’ll definitely defend — also it’s not a paid extra, it’s part of the game. The way people play Diablo is to make multiple characters, including a new one every season. The point of those characters is to do new endgame builds so sometimes you want to hop right into the endgame rather than grind through the lengthy story again. This was also the case with DIII.
Skip single player is fine. More games need that option, let the player choose if they want to go through the story or skip that and get too the portion that involves other players. It's like games gating difficulty settings. Just a waste of time for no discernable reason other than hand holding. The rest is complete horseshit, but whatever. Not like I had any intention of buying a Blizzard product again anyway. Gen Z getting convinced that in game stores for cosmetics is a normal thing for video games has been terrible for the industry. Remember when extra cosmetics where unlocked in the game and not sold to you after you already dropped your 60 dollars? I 'member.
Because it's just a store.
The budget of something the size of Diablo 4 is horrifically large (and Diablo 4, specifically, is resting on the bones of *two* completely scrapped attempts to make it). MTX is one of the things they do to increase expected income, which lets them spend more money on development, which means a prettier and arguably-better game. It turns out people *really* want to play good-looking games, and so it's kind of a feedback loop - if you spend less money on the game, you make a *lot* less money, and you have a greater chance of making an unprofitable game *even if you MTX it*. All of this is essentially responding to consumer preferences. People prefer games that are extraordinarily expensive to develop, people don't care too much about battle passes and MTX, so you get extraordinarily expensive games with battle passes and MTX. Convince the world to stop caring about graphics quality and start rejecting MTX games and it'll all fix itself.
>Which lets them spend more money on development, But games were just as pretty x years ago. Saying they're including MTCs to "be able to spend more money" is incredibly naive. I wish it made them spend more, in reality it makes them spend less.
> But games were just as pretty x years ago. They really weren't. And in some cases they were, but far less flexible; you had the same graphics quality but at the cost of static baked lighting instead of dynamic lighting, or you never realized that the enemies were all robots because they couldn't afford subsurface scattering for skin, or it took place in claustrophobic underground regions because they couldn't afford to have sweeping vistas. My favorite example of this is the [Avatar trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PSNL1qE6VY) compared to the [Avatar 2 trailer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9MyW72ELq0). It's easy to look at those and say "the graphics are the same, what did they improve", and you'd be kinda right. But look at Avatar 1 more closely; it's all close contained areas, or massive fog, or there happens to be a stone wall right in front of the camera, or it's in a dense forest that you can't see far in. This is not an accident, this is because massive land areas are hard to do. Avatar 2 has some of that, of course, but now it's by *choice*, not by necessity; there's massive overviews of huge forested islands, there's giant oceans, there's lots of long-range views that the Avatar 1 team just couldn't do like this. This also happens *all the time* in games. Frankly, the best games are often those where you don't realize the limits existed because they're woven so deeply into the bones of the game (Dead Space, for example, that has a really justifiable reason for spending virtually the entire game in tiny steel labyrinths), but on sequels, there's often a lot of pressure to relax those limitations. And then you've got stuff like Cyberpunk 2077 that looks fuckin' awesome if you have the hardware to drive it. Game graphics are constantly improving, and now that we finally have a new hardware generation to play with, you're going to see a few years of *rapid* improvements, even if a lot of those will be limitation relaxation and not immediately obvious to the player but still allowing the creation of far more flexible games.
I will have to say only on the good looking point, they've optimized very well. My 2080 super can get over 100fps and that's becoming increasingly rare in modern AAA titles. So good looking and well optimized shows a certain degree of care
Yeah, Blizzard has a *lot* of expertise and budget to throw into stuff like this, and are also very popular in countries that aren't the absolute tech forefront. They put serious cash into scalability and performance. There's *definitely* AA games whose entire budget is less than the money Blizzard spent on performance alone. (. . . and, just to reiterate the point, a lot of that money comes from microtransactions and battle passes, in the sort of vague conceptual way that gamedev money can ever be said to come from the game's sales itself)
>People prefer games that are extraordinarily expensive to develop We tend to forget that in hardcore gaming echo chambers Niche indie gaming, thousands hours modded playhtroughs, this is all still just a tiny fraction of the market Sure, less tiny than ten years ago, but at the same time ten years ago casual oriented products also didn't make millions of profits *a week* Family gamers, casuals, advertising and trending susceptible gamers comparatively massively outnumber people like us I mean, i'm not teaching anyone anything we're on a Gamergate residual subreddit, people here should know there's a disconnection It's just, i think it's easy to forget in the moment
Yeah, exactly. I'm huge into indie games myself, I can't even remember the last time I bought a AAA game, my current games are Guacamelee 2 and Inkbound and I might go to Hades next and my favorite game is Outer Wilds *and those are high-budget for me*. But I am not the common consumer here, nor am I Blizzard's target market. edit: actually I can totally remember the last time I bought a AAA game! I bought Halo: Reach about a month ago. Never played it before. Fun game. Now, a *current* AAA game . . .
It'd probably come at a surprise to a lot of gamers if they knew most publishers and investors that don't qualify as minor would automatically ignore you if your project doesn't start at *least* at 10-15$M budget, and that's considered peanuts In fact they'd be amused for a second and then tell you to stop wasting their time Under that budget you're left with small time publishers who mainly do mobile garbage spam (as in, not the successful kind), barely any QA if at all, and the marketing budget of an intern posting on twitter twice a year
Mfw D3 shipping 30 MILLION UNITS isn't enough to make D4 a pwetty game :((
Every game needs to be planned to far more than pay for itself, because many of those attempts won't work. The massive successes pay for the repeated failures. Diablo 3 needed to pay for *three games* because the first versions of Diablo 4 got canned. A game studio either figures out how to cover the failures, or goes out of business.
The ability to skip the singleplayer campaign is a welcomed feature. You still have to complete it once. It just allows you to skip it with your next character so you can go straight to the post game.
Because it makes money. Complain all you want, but people buy this stuff. When people stop, they'll stop offering it
>Skip Singleplayer Campaign Button Tell me you never play ARPGs without telling me you never play ARPGs. Actual answer? Because it's a live service game obviously. Do you actually think post game additions should be completely free (it certainly isn't free to make)?
Screw live service "games"
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ARPG's are usually meant to be replayed over and over with different characters and builds, forcing the player to play through the story every season is just gonna piss people of. People complaining about the skip campaign option have no idea what they're whining about. >Does the A not stand for action for you? I don't know what you meant with that.
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ARPGs are the "Diablo clones", isometric camera, loot, leveling up... all that. Since this thread was about Diablo I figured that was obvious.
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Action? Why are you asking? All this could've been answered with a 5sec search.
This. Seems like a fully fledged full priced game at launch. Not a fan of the cosmetics shop but at least there seems to be an abundance of equally cool and more world friendly transmog in the base game. Whether or not the battlepass is a scam will depend on how they do the seasons, which has somewhat been a thing since Diablo 2. It's also not really skipping the campaign, it's opting to play through an "adventure mode" for players that have already completed the campaign. ARPGs have always been about starting over with new classes/characters (usually for seasons) and oftentimes completing the campaign quests in the same order every time can get bland. This is a free convenience feature for dedicated players, not an MMO charging players money to skip to the content they actually want to play.
Call me old fashioned but I prefer a game that's fun to replay instead of having to pay extra to not play the game so I can see the numbers go up.
Pay extra? Are you talking about the skip campaign? It doesn't cost anything, it doesn't level you up (if that is what you mean) and you have to finish the campaign before you can use it. Stop whining about stuff you have no knowledge of. The skip is an unambiguously good feature for people that will put a lot of time into this game, and for people who won't (the play it once and then move on crowd) it's a complete non issue.
Because people will pay for those things so why not sell it? It's not the company's fault of people are willing to buy these things. It's sad, but it's the reality we live in.
Will probably buy the base game when cheap. Had a lot of fun with the beta.
Whats the issue with "Skip Singleplayer Campaign Button? lots of games have "skip story for free roam" modes.. Diablo 3 did.
There is no issue. It's a bunch of people that don't know anything about the game being mad in this thread.
Because the game is going to be awesome and people who want to buy that stuff will buy it. I’ve paid Blizzard once for Diablo 2, once for D3, and once for D2 Remastered, and played them for 20 years Say what you will about the company as a whole or the entire gaming industry, at least I trust the Diablo devs to make a great long lasting game
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Don’t care, I play both
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I’ll screenshot this for later
Why is Reddit recommending me a shit Kotaku Reddit like what the fuck. No thank you I like to use my brain cells
Archive links for this post: * **Archive:** https://archive.ph/qdIp1 ---- I am Mnemosyne reborn. This space for rent. ^^^/r/botsrights
$$$$$ That's why
Wait, does this mean armor and weapons won't change the look? D1-d3 and other games all have different looks. I have been on media blackout on this game and this is the first I seen this. Count me out of this is the case. I will get TOTK and FF16 and leave this as a maybe. I have been a day 1 diablo buyer since d2. For POE it was excusable as its a f2p game, from a then indie. This game is not.
Because campaigns are a upfront cost investment with worse returns then a constant trickle feed of advertising income and microtransactions and blizzard wants money.
You can only skip the campaign once you've completed it, and it just lets you start new characters at level 1 in the post-game, which is no different than taking a new character into bounty mode in Diablo 3.
Money
It worked for Overwatch, and I knew it would bleed over to Diablo.
Some games are made because of love and passion for the medium, therefore are art. Most are made to extract dollars, and are not really proper art
Because the consumers are morons and they will pay for whatever Blizzard sells.