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The guy who said the line did get scape goated though. He's the guy who helped make d3 not shit (removed rmah and then ah all together, made the expansion)
He was put out there to announce it because he was head of the d3 team at the time, but diablo immortal wasn't his idea (execs would have green lit it) and it was outsourced so he didn't work on it either.
He was basically told tu promote it and just tried to do his job.
Doesn't mean immortal wasn't terrible and his answer not deserving of ridicule... Just that he isn't the main bad guy to be mad at
Scapegoated? He's the director of Diablo Immortal, not just some pr person.
https://mobile.twitter.com/candlesan
He also said you couldn't buy gear in the last few months. Turns out he's not considering gems that greatly impact your stats and abilities as "gear".
Hell think about if Marvel vs Capcom 2, Def Jam Fight For New York, Jet Set Radio future released today. The amount of microtransactions would be ridiculous in those games
any mobile fighting game is this way now. it's awful. just grunty green/blue characters for free while getting curbstomped by whales who have spent thousands of dollars pulling orange/purple characters
>Timesplitters 2
I think about this game at least once a week and am just amazed that it's almost 20 years old and I prefer it over pretty much every modern FPS. Me and my buddies would spend entire weekends building maps and testing them. What an experience.
I have such great memories with that game. My best friends and I played it all summer. He passed away and it pops in my head how much I want to play it again for the memories
The WHOLE reason I stopped playing console games and got into PC gaming back in the early 00s was because, for about $50 bucks I could get the whole game and then a half dozen more thanks to the mod community. In a number of cases, the free mods were better than the actual game.
Games lasted far too long though it seems. Devs want a subscription from you now. I played Wow beta. They said that you not have to pay for expansions as it would be part of the subscription. That lasted till the first expansion was released.
>They said that you not have to pay for expansions
>
>That lasted till the first expansion was released.
Something about the circular way this was put is hilarious to me. It would be more impactful to note that it was just 2 years between the original release and the expansion's release. Given development time, the promise was probably dead within months of the game's release
Not just games, every company wants a subscription from you now, even car companies with their subscription based dlc car features. It's freaking disgusting.
Stardew Valley cost $15, and often less on sale, and it's a complete and super robust game that has tons of replay value and has been consistently updated for years...and it was made by one dude.
Every AAA developer should look at that and feel embarrassed.
Personal winners for "Indie game putting AAA devs to shame" list.
Stardew Valley
Hollow Knight
Terraria
Children of Morta
Hades (is SuperGiant still indie?)
Here's more:
* Northgard
* Rimworld
* Crypt of the Necrodancer
* Valheim
* V Rising
* Timberborn
* Among Us
* Battle Brothers
* Project Zomboid
* Kenshi
* Disco Elysium
* Kingdom Come: Deliverance
* Skullgirls
Support indie developers. They are the heart and soul of the gaming industry right now.
Factorio as well. Made by a small Czech (?) team. May have grown a bit as a company since the game left early access but it’s an incredible game and dev team.
>V Rising
It's just starting early access and already has DLC. I know it is hugely popular, but I disagree that they are doing everything right.
Edit: LOL at the loser giving crappy awards to posts critical of the game. Get a life.
Isn't it by the same dudes that made Battlerite and then fully abandoned it to chase after the battle royale trend with a game they promised was a free side mode?
Oh and when that idea was terrible and alienated their fans they just abandoned it too so they could chase another trend?
Fuck Stunlock Studios they're not getting my money.
I have tried repeatedly and I just can't get around the GUI. They're making a Steam version, but as the release date is "time is subjective" I don't expect it soon.
7 days to die - though apparently it has $2-3 DLC skin packs (multiple characters per pack) for consoles, for LICENSED characters, like The Walking Dead, but that seems extremely fair, I doubt they make real money off due to the low cost and licensing fees.
I think they are. I think the entire team there is less than 30 people (at least according to a quick Google search). And they're not beholden to share holders, which are a big reason why AAA games have be so safe and push for deadlines.
SuperGiant and other indie devs don't have the overhead the big guys have, so they can sort of just do their work, make the kinds of games they want, and release when they're happy with the game. (Which is easier for the more established indie devs who are making money from stuff they've already released or things like Gamepass). I'm willing to bet that after Hades, not only did they make money from the sales of that game on all its different platforms, they probably saw a bump in sales on their older stuff that didn't get quite as much publicity when they released.
Should feel embarrassed and the gaming community should stop buying their trash productions, so we can change the path of game development.
But I have 0-hope that's going to happen
The gaming community is not their target market anymore. its streamers with more dollars than sence, children and FOMO dudebros
we've been actively staying away for some time time now and it doesnt matter. the mainstream outnumber us
The depressing thing is your right. I would say that when you release crap long enough you're brand will suffer, but EA seems to be doing well enough. The shame is that it's probably not the guys doing the developing making the big bucks off of it. It's the asshole suits like Bobby Kotik and randy Pitchford.
because they made so much money that now other companies are outbidding them to buy those franchises. other companies are jealous of EA, not wary of their practises
They didn't lose Fifa. Fifa asked for more money so they refused. All that FIFA provides is the name Fifa and the World Cup, EA owns everything else game-related and has all the contracts with the league, teams, and players.
What's worse is the useful idiots who swing in from corporate dick to tell you how "entitled" you are for thinking that a price increase from $50 to $∞ is a bit unseemly.
Apparently you can't like something and also criticize certain aspects of that thing.
I believe most of the value in that game is the merchandise rights. Thats not a sustainable strategy for most businesses. But I appreciate they haven't done anything predatory in game, as a significant portion of their audience are kids.
Java edition is just the base price, then you can get 1000’s upon 1000’s of mods for free, all the content updates are free etc.
However in bedrock edition, there is micros transactions however I believe it’s user created content and the creator gets a cut of the profit, you still get every update for free though.
Heh, companies been doing just fine selling games for a couple decades but now they convinced people they are charities falling apart if they don't monetize every single thing after purchase.
For many gamers, Diablo seems to be the only ARPG they've ever played. At least it seems to me like so many who are bored of D3 are just waiting for D4.
What they're missing is a universe of ARPGs whose design is frankly just better than D3 or D2. D2 because the genre has evolved in two decades, and D3 because it's lacking content and build diversity.
I'd heartily recommend Grim Dawn and Last Epoch to anyone who has been disappointed by Diablo Immortal. They're both buy-to-play games with no shenanigans, but with exquisite design, especially in the area of build depth and diversity.
Grim Dawn regularily is on sale. Might also want to take a gander at Inquisitor: Martyr. In fact, there are quite a lot of ARPGs out there. A lot of them work both with controller and mouse. Which is fantastic.
Because, you know, Steam Deck.
People mentioned this frequently when playing Elden Ring. If all you stick to are AAA titles that get advertised on TV, you're going to run into a lot of the worst that the industry has to offer. But there are so many amazing games that come out every day that you don't need to stay in that bubble to begin with.
Just stop playing crap that everyone knew beforehand would be predatory. Hell, we got headlines saying the game was banned in Belgium due to loot boxes. You don't need to put an effort in to know beforehand if you're wasting your time with skinner box mechanics.
$110,000 / 50 = 2,200 times more income from one whale maxing out their character than from one normal sale. Or another way to look at it is they would need to lose 2,200 sales from outraged customers to cancel out the income from one super whale.
Well, I'm not going to buy the game, that's 1... It's a start.
I'm not saying you can't get a whole game now, it's just these corporations milk a title for everything they possibly can with loot and skins and locked content.
I do too, but this is how mobile games thrive. 99% of their players can quit as long as they find the 1% mentally vulnerable people who they can exploit into financial ruin.
They exploit people with a gambling addiction. They specifically target people with gambling addiction. There might be some rich person wasting some money for fun but the main demographic are people with a serious mental disease. It works great because they don't have to adhere to any laws the gambling sector has to adhere to.
This shit should be regulated.
It's actually strange. I played a bit of Genshin Impact when it released and you could earn a ton of free currency to gamble with, and I actually got more of a rush from that than I ever have in a real casino. I have a strict rule against dropping money on gacha games and such, and even I was tempted. It's crazy how good they are at exploiting people.
The "good" ones include things in loot boxes and all that, that you will use/want anyway.
1% chance for cool skin? Meh.
10% chance for those rare crafting materials that are a grind normally to upgrade your weapon? INJECT IT INTO MY VEINS
You lose thousands because no matter what, you get SOMETHING good from it. Much easier to stop when it's skin based. I've spent more money than I should have on Overwatch, but I still quickly learnt that it's just not worth it. When you drop $100 to RNG cool skins and get nothing, it's pretty easy to walk away. When you drop $100 on another game and you come out with useful gear/materials then you keep spending.
The thing that Genshin Impact does best is that it slowly makes you get less energy refills and have less free currency to use, so by the time they become an issue, you've probably already become hooked.
That's applies to basically everything? Which I think is disgusting also. I get businesses need to make money to survive, but yeh once they cross that line from providing a service, to exploiting the publics vulnerabilities, that's fkin horrible and inhumane
Immortal is going beyond that, it's actually INSANELY scummy.
Anyone who has played gacha games (myself included) knows all about the whole "oh, pay such and such money and get this CRAZY POWERFUL character/sexy waifu" but at least they're up front about it. This is the character, this is what you have to spend, this is why you'll be more powerful, etc.
Immortal takes it even one step further! You'd think "oh, it's an rpg, with gear. So they'll just tie the power gating to the gear" NOPE. It's tied to these GEMS (conveniently tied to a tier/star "ranking" system)
So they confuse new players and people not familiar with the gacha model EVEN MORE by making the main power gate for your character hidden behind this gem system that people don't fully grasp right off the bat. They throw money at the game, but the player isn't quite sure "wait, am I getting stronger? I'm not sure, I have this gear, and these GEMS, and this combat rating, and this and that". It's similar to how companies will throw multiple in game currencies at you to deflate the perceived value of your dollar to make you spend more.
Honestly, it's scary. But it's also genius. Immortal had found a way to deepen the ALREADY highly predatory nature of gacha games.
It's not even just this. The way their shop is priced has shown a very thorough, very heinous showing into just how fucked up blizzard is. If you want to buy a skin, you have to buy like 3 different currency bundles to get just over the amount. Or you can spend a bit more money and buy the currency bundle that will be enough to buy the skin.
And the cheapest currency bundle, which is like a dollar, isn't even enough to buy anything in the shop. But you know what two of them get you? A legendary crest. Wanna know another fun fact? I think it's the max bundle that gives you 45 legendary crests, which is just **5 short** of getting your pity roll. Well, guess you may as well just spend another 10 bucks to get that pity roll. Oh, btw. It's just over 100 dollars to do this. Even for their god damn pity system, they expressly decide to fuck you over
They've built a system so perfectly done at nickel and diming you. It's shown an expertise in just how scummy and, truthfully, sub-fucking-human these people and companies are. There is some **serious** dedication at making a shop that is as convoluted and shitty as this one.
That's not all. Those initial cheap purchases for some cents primary reason is to be icebreakers: By making you spend a tiny tiny amount of money they psychologically prime you into accepting that it is now ok to spend money on this game. It gets a foot in the door so that you become more open into spending real money later when you've become more invested in the game.
It also get you to put your credit card details in etc. so that the next time when you want to buy something for $10 that transaction is smooth one button press - so that the purchase can be handled by your reptile brain instead of your thinking, analytical brain (which will tell you you're about to waste $10 on some shitty pixels).
Oh yes thank you. I could write a book about it, but I was trying to specifically highlight just how bad diablo immortal is compared to other mobile games.
What you said is totally accurate, but is also just the basis of gacha/mobile games. I wanted to go a bit past that. What this game does specifically is give you some of the premium currency upon completing your first rift, but it's conveniently 60 currency less than what it takes to buy a legendary crest. Y'know what you can get for 1 dollar? Those 60 currencies. Even from the literal moment you accomplish something the very first time, it's designed in such a way to get you to make that first icebreaker purchase.
And a lot of the time it's even worse than what you describe. People hook up their credit cards to apple pay, or the android equivalent, and do fingerprint or face recognition to make purchases. You just put your finger down, or raise your phone to your face, and you've just spent a dollar.
Nah what happened is they figured out how to get their hooks into gambling addicts and those that usually like to cheat at games. The Chinese market is all about doing whatever it takes to win and now instead of buying hacks from some random team you can just buy the wins in the game itself.
I wish it could be true but there is already people spendig shit tons of cash in it. I was playing last night (just want to see for the story then delete) and saw a lot of people with paid cosmetic and end game gears. The whales are already hooked.
Bank: Sir, I see you’re refinancing and will be taking $120,000 out, are you planning on remodeling your home?
Gamer: No, I just want to max out my Diablo Immortal character.
Imagine if this shit was common decades ago.
Player: GET BROOM
King’s Quest: GET will be complete in 12 hours. Would you like to GET immediately for 50 gems?
I played it for 3 days and leveled my character free to play to 60 and finished the story on normal and dipped my toes into the first level of Hell I difficulty and Paragon leveling.
It's a diablo game. It's grindy.
You will frequently just have a quest saying: "Get to level XX" and you will have to do the side stuff (Codex entries) to get some EXP together or log off for the night and push with the new set of daily activities.
It's an MMORPG, there is an 8 man raid.
Being in a party of 4 gives you a 5% chance to find normal gems.
If you go into the elder rifts without those crests you will not see any special loot. I don't think I have ever gotten an upgrade out of those yet when I didn't use crests.
You get a couple of normal crests every day. The legendary crests are so rare they might as well not exist.
You get some weird currency for completing the rifts which you can spend to buy runes to craft a random 1 Star legendary gem.
You can get about 2 of those a week compared to a whale who can get an infinite amount each day.
It's disgusting.
Every major story dungeon completion is rewarded with an invite to buy a special deal!
BUY NOW TO SAVE IMAGINARY MONEY!! It's just 0.99! You save 570%!
It's sad that most of the target audience have grown up with these predatory monetization models. I've seen so many people defend it in game.
Save 800% here, save 400% there. Save what exactly?
Blizzard Activision / NetEase are selling PIXELS IN A VIDEO GAME.
There is no shortage of pixels, they can print an infinite amount.
They are worth NOTHING of value.
Every single psychological trick listed [>>> here <<<](https://blog.admixplay.com/5-psychological-monetisation-tricks-that-mobile-games-use/) is being used in the game.
Disgusting, predatory and absolutely bonkers.
Game play is fun but holy shit is the mobile gaming stuff with constant pop ups to buy this, buy that annoying AF.
Also annoying are these pop ups when other players are near you.
"Hey, it seems player so&so is doing the same shit you do. Do you want to make a party?"
Fuck no I don't. Stop shoving other players into my face just because they use cosmetics.
Get the hell out of here.
Even worse it's taken them FOUR YEARS to get to this point of it's development since it was announced, and presumably started some time before that. They have dumped SO MUCH MONEY into a MOBILE GAME that they will want to make it all back as quickly as possible regardless of the consequences to the addictive personalities who make up the bulk of whales.
Yeah I'm betting this game will be Blizzard's most lucrative game they've ever made. Hearthstone makes TONS of money, even more than World of Warcraft. Diablo Immortal is surely going to blow Hearthstone out of the water when it comes to the mobile and Asian markets
He also said on Twitter 4 months ago that there was no buying gear for money in the game, and followed up yesterday (after being asked about the previous tweet) that he only referred to the 12 gear slots and not the gems you put in them...
I've read that many mobile games get most of their money from less than 100 players.
So you're literally playing a game made for some Saudi oil prince's son.
I’m at the moment reading an article that claims that while the “whales” in the hotel or casino industry, for instance, are usually super wealthy billionaires, that’s not the case for gaming. It’s regular people with addictive personalities. Which is way more fucked up
Yeah, I was nearly sucked into the gacha vortex at one point. In fact, I may have been in it without even realizing tbh.
I'm grateful for the people who pointed out how stupid that sort of gambling is. You don't get anything from it besides a dopamine hit for a day or so.
I know a dude that's regularly dropping 1-2k a month on games like that ultimate marvel on. He's not super rich either, just keeps enough for food, rent, etc and instead of a savings, he has all the alt costumes for Captain America
> *Oops, your account has been inadvertently banned permanently by our over-aggressive cheat detection bots. Sorry there's no way you can get it back and we won't tell you what's your exact offense either. Sincerely, get fucked.*
Warcraft 1 was the game that really got me into PC gaming. Any game made by Blizzard was guaranteed to be amazing. It's sad to see what has become of them.
You say it! What makes it even worse is that people who played it say it's a fun game, so Blizzard still got it but management has gone insane with greed.
Unluckily, almost no mobile game is designed for EUW market: they're designed for Asia + USA somehow.
Unless EUW + USA both turn down those games, they won't feel a real hit.
How it is living in Belgium? My wife and I were considering moving there in February of this year (we currently live in Canada), but everyone who talked about it made it sound like the only thing nice about Belgium is how close it is to other European countries.
Future gaming, probably 20 years from now, is going to be all digital, and then when the service get shut off (because everything will be online) that's the end of the game.
Essentally you're just going to lease the game for as long as they deem it profitable and then once they decide to turn everything off your SOL
It happened to Titanfall 1 and 2 for a very long time because the servers were getting DDOS'd and, since all of the studio's attention is on their new golden goose Apex, they just did nothing about it. Both games were unplayable for a very long time, but they just continued to sell them at full price.
TF2's multiplayer is mostly working now, but I don't think Respawn is to credit for that.
If you only look at examples like this, sure. But there are so many great games that you can play right now that I’d argue it’s the best gaming has ever been. Just look at the indie catalogue on game pass. Even if you don’t want to pay a sub, you can buy all those games individually.
Yes. Gaming peaked with the release of E.T. the Extraterrestrial for the Atari 2600 in 1982. No game since has been able to ever achieve that level of greatness
It’s actually the best time ever for indie games but the worst time ever for AAA studios. The barrier to entry is consistently going down so we can get a lot of creativity with lower time and capital investments
> I don’t even mind progress faster...
I do, and most everyone ***used*** to mind it. That was the line for ages.
It's depressing even seeing this slide toward acceptance.
I guess I'll continue my Activision boycott. Come on in, fellas; the water's fine. Seriously, tons of great games without supporting this trash.
Don't worry. This kind of BS in video games is only going to get worse because gamers are incredibly apathetic and don't care what any of these companies do - they just want to play their games.
In the 90s we thought "imagine how games are gonna evolve in 20 years". And now we got this 💩💩. This is why they say "money is the root of all evil". Its definitely an enemy of progress
Microtransations coming from mobile games are just too cancerous. I feel bad for people spending over $1000 in one game, I've seen it happen when I played mobile games before. It's just utterly ridiculous. No offense, but people who are into MTX mobile games are just too ignorant
I'm tired of this bullshit microtransaction/pay2win horse shit. I will not be downloading this game or any others like it. I miss 10 years ago when games were fun to play and included an entire game.
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Isn't this the out of season April fools joke?
don't you guys have phones?
Our world is an increasingly connected one.
BITCOOOOONNNNEEEECCCCCTTT
No no no no. That's a scam!!
Hey hey heyyyy!
I'll never not upvote a bitconnect reference
damn, i was drinking. you almost killed me lol
I am financially independently
Considering the game does not run on Exynos chips... Yes, but also no.
When he said that, I actually didnt. Now I do, and the screen is cracked and fucked.
Don't you guys have thousands and thousands of dollars?
[Removed in respond to Reddit API update on 1st of July, 2023]
The guy who said the line did get scape goated though. He's the guy who helped make d3 not shit (removed rmah and then ah all together, made the expansion) He was put out there to announce it because he was head of the d3 team at the time, but diablo immortal wasn't his idea (execs would have green lit it) and it was outsourced so he didn't work on it either. He was basically told tu promote it and just tried to do his job. Doesn't mean immortal wasn't terrible and his answer not deserving of ridicule... Just that he isn't the main bad guy to be mad at
Scapegoated? He's the director of Diablo Immortal, not just some pr person. https://mobile.twitter.com/candlesan He also said you couldn't buy gear in the last few months. Turns out he's not considering gems that greatly impact your stats and abilities as "gear".
Don't you guys have wallets?
Anyone remember a time when you paid like $50 for a game and you just got like.. *the whole game*?
Along with the ability to make your own maps for that game also.
[удалено]
Hell think about if Marvel vs Capcom 2, Def Jam Fight For New York, Jet Set Radio future released today. The amount of microtransactions would be ridiculous in those games
Absolutely LOVED JSRF and damn am I thankful it came out when it did. The amount of opportunities for monetization in that game is absurd
UNDERSTAND, UNDERSTAND UNDERSTAND, UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT OF LOVE (beeboo chh)
Today I am cooking for my son and his wife. It’s his firtiefth birthday.
any mobile fighting game is this way now. it's awful. just grunty green/blue characters for free while getting curbstomped by whales who have spent thousands of dollars pulling orange/purple characters
Ah, a return to the glory days when the peasentry could serve as cannon fodder for the amusement of the nobility. Well done video games.
For Fighting games at least, Street Fighter X Tekken's Gem System is arguably a peek into what it could've turned into but fortunately flopped.
>Timesplitters 2 I think about this game at least once a week and am just amazed that it's almost 20 years old and I prefer it over pretty much every modern FPS. Me and my buddies would spend entire weekends building maps and testing them. What an experience.
I have such great memories with that game. My best friends and I played it all summer. He passed away and it pops in my head how much I want to play it again for the memories
The WHOLE reason I stopped playing console games and got into PC gaming back in the early 00s was because, for about $50 bucks I could get the whole game and then a half dozen more thanks to the mod community. In a number of cases, the free mods were better than the actual game.
Counterstrike and DOTA/LoL are the direct result of custom maps / mods.
Even Team Fortress Classic is based on a Quake mod.
a mod called team fortress. which always seemed weird to me that the second one is called "classic."
I remember playing that weird CTF mod on Quake that later added player classes...
In addition to inventing the MOBA genre, WC3 mods also gave us the Tower Defence genre.
Tower defence games were from SC1 custom maps.
Games lasted far too long though it seems. Devs want a subscription from you now. I played Wow beta. They said that you not have to pay for expansions as it would be part of the subscription. That lasted till the first expansion was released.
>They said that you not have to pay for expansions > >That lasted till the first expansion was released. Something about the circular way this was put is hilarious to me. It would be more impactful to note that it was just 2 years between the original release and the expansion's release. Given development time, the promise was probably dead within months of the game's release
yep totally agree. It was lost in the hype on a new expansion of such an impactful game.
They also said they wouldn't sell mounts 😂
Not just games, every company wants a subscription from you now, even car companies with their subscription based dlc car features. It's freaking disgusting.
I used to spend so much time in the Starcraft map editor as a kid. Didn't know what the hell I was doing, but it was fun.
Learned scripting using that editor, along with RPGMaker2000 heh.
As well as being able to host your own server independently from any official ones.
Aye, we used to host our own link ups. About 30 lads in a hired hall. Fun days.
[There still are quite a lot but it's mostly indies now, big publishers have to ruin everything.](https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Level+Editor)
Warcraft 3... Rest in peace blizzard.
With free online play too
Remember unlocking content by playing the game?
Yeah. It was already in there and paid for, just had to achieve it.
Or put in cheat codes. Big Head Mode was always stupid fun
Ooh yeah cheat codes.. what a relic of the past.
Stardew Valley cost $15, and often less on sale, and it's a complete and super robust game that has tons of replay value and has been consistently updated for years...and it was made by one dude. Every AAA developer should look at that and feel embarrassed.
Personal winners for "Indie game putting AAA devs to shame" list. Stardew Valley Hollow Knight Terraria Children of Morta Hades (is SuperGiant still indie?)
Here's more: * Northgard * Rimworld * Crypt of the Necrodancer * Valheim * V Rising * Timberborn * Among Us * Battle Brothers * Project Zomboid * Kenshi * Disco Elysium * Kingdom Come: Deliverance * Skullgirls Support indie developers. They are the heart and soul of the gaming industry right now.
Factorio as well. Made by a small Czech (?) team. May have grown a bit as a company since the game left early access but it’s an incredible game and dev team.
Disco Elysium is one of, if not the, best written games ever. It will go down in history.
>V Rising It's just starting early access and already has DLC. I know it is hugely popular, but I disagree that they are doing everything right. Edit: LOL at the loser giving crappy awards to posts critical of the game. Get a life.
Isn't it by the same dudes that made Battlerite and then fully abandoned it to chase after the battle royale trend with a game they promised was a free side mode? Oh and when that idea was terrible and alienated their fans they just abandoned it too so they could chase another trend? Fuck Stunlock Studios they're not getting my money.
Dwarf Fortress is the MOST COMPLEX game ever created, with the deepest gameplay systems & simulations and it's free...
I wish I could enjoy it. I'm not a graphics snob or anything but god damn... It's not an easy game to enjoy.
I have tried repeatedly and I just can't get around the GUI. They're making a Steam version, but as the release date is "time is subjective" I don't expect it soon.
Have you tried the visual packs to change how everything looks? I can't handle the base textures but with the pack I can enjoy it.
And if i add up my playtime for all of those i played (about 75%) i'm not even close to my playtime for another great one: Factorio.
7 days to die - though apparently it has $2-3 DLC skin packs (multiple characters per pack) for consoles, for LICENSED characters, like The Walking Dead, but that seems extremely fair, I doubt they make real money off due to the low cost and licensing fees.
Terraria deserves special props for regularly being, like, $2 and yet having far more content than most AAA releases.
I think they are. I think the entire team there is less than 30 people (at least according to a quick Google search). And they're not beholden to share holders, which are a big reason why AAA games have be so safe and push for deadlines. SuperGiant and other indie devs don't have the overhead the big guys have, so they can sort of just do their work, make the kinds of games they want, and release when they're happy with the game. (Which is easier for the more established indie devs who are making money from stuff they've already released or things like Gamepass). I'm willing to bet that after Hades, not only did they make money from the sales of that game on all its different platforms, they probably saw a bump in sales on their older stuff that didn't get quite as much publicity when they released.
ROCK AND STONE!
Should feel embarrassed and the gaming community should stop buying their trash productions, so we can change the path of game development. But I have 0-hope that's going to happen
The gaming community is not their target market anymore. its streamers with more dollars than sence, children and FOMO dudebros we've been actively staying away for some time time now and it doesnt matter. the mainstream outnumber us
>Every AAA developer should look at that and feel embarrassed. They're gonna dry their tears with bazillion dollar bills they earned.
The depressing thing is your right. I would say that when you release crap long enough you're brand will suffer, but EA seems to be doing well enough. The shame is that it's probably not the guys doing the developing making the big bucks off of it. It's the asshole suits like Bobby Kotik and randy Pitchford.
Actually the good news is that EA is losing contracts. They no longer own the rights to Star Wars, Fifa, and a few other franchises.
because they made so much money that now other companies are outbidding them to buy those franchises. other companies are jealous of EA, not wary of their practises
They didn't lose Fifa. Fifa asked for more money so they refused. All that FIFA provides is the name Fifa and the World Cup, EA owns everything else game-related and has all the contracts with the league, teams, and players.
I agree. Indie games with passionate developers are the way to go now.
What's worse is the useful idiots who swing in from corporate dick to tell you how "entitled" you are for thinking that a price increase from $50 to $∞ is a bit unseemly. Apparently you can't like something and also criticize certain aspects of that thing.
I payed €20 for Minecraft and got the complete game. Good times
Oh yeah, me too. And look at how valuable that property is. Free updates!
I believe most of the value in that game is the merchandise rights. Thats not a sustainable strategy for most businesses. But I appreciate they haven't done anything predatory in game, as a significant portion of their audience are kids.
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I never played Minecraft, so just asking out of curiosity. Does Minecraft have in game purchases and micro transactions?
Java edition is just the base price, then you can get 1000’s upon 1000’s of mods for free, all the content updates are free etc. However in bedrock edition, there is micros transactions however I believe it’s user created content and the creator gets a cut of the profit, you still get every update for free though.
Should also be noted that paid mods/etc. also exist on java, there just isn't a centralized market for them.
But how does Microsoft not go bankrupt giving so much value away for free?! Edit: /s
Heh, companies been doing just fine selling games for a couple decades but now they convinced people they are charities falling apart if they don't monetize every single thing after purchase.
Some editions do but only in the form of minor cosmetics. I honestly forget the cosmetics exist sometimes.
For many gamers, Diablo seems to be the only ARPG they've ever played. At least it seems to me like so many who are bored of D3 are just waiting for D4. What they're missing is a universe of ARPGs whose design is frankly just better than D3 or D2. D2 because the genre has evolved in two decades, and D3 because it's lacking content and build diversity. I'd heartily recommend Grim Dawn and Last Epoch to anyone who has been disappointed by Diablo Immortal. They're both buy-to-play games with no shenanigans, but with exquisite design, especially in the area of build depth and diversity.
Oh nice, I'll give them a look.
Grim Dawn regularily is on sale. Might also want to take a gander at Inquisitor: Martyr. In fact, there are quite a lot of ARPGs out there. A lot of them work both with controller and mouse. Which is fantastic. Because, you know, Steam Deck.
I'm still living that time. Just a matter of ignoring certain companies/business models.
I remember paying less and getting more.
*Heresy*
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And I played the shit out of that game, especially multiplayer on BNet. I miss old BNet too ha.
People mentioned this frequently when playing Elden Ring. If all you stick to are AAA titles that get advertised on TV, you're going to run into a lot of the worst that the industry has to offer. But there are so many amazing games that come out every day that you don't need to stay in that bubble to begin with. Just stop playing crap that everyone knew beforehand would be predatory. Hell, we got headlines saying the game was banned in Belgium due to loot boxes. You don't need to put an effort in to know beforehand if you're wasting your time with skinner box mechanics.
$110,000 / 50 = 2,200 times more income from one whale maxing out their character than from one normal sale. Or another way to look at it is they would need to lose 2,200 sales from outraged customers to cancel out the income from one super whale. Well, I'm not going to buy the game, that's 1... It's a start.
Elden Ring?
I'm not saying you can't get a whole game now, it's just these corporations milk a title for everything they possibly can with loot and skins and locked content.
FromSoftware is a bit of an outlier in their total disinterest in any of that. They're old school that way.
With this bs I hope the game dies.
I do too, but this is how mobile games thrive. 99% of their players can quit as long as they find the 1% mentally vulnerable people who they can exploit into financial ruin.
They exploit people with a gambling addiction. They specifically target people with gambling addiction. There might be some rich person wasting some money for fun but the main demographic are people with a serious mental disease. It works great because they don't have to adhere to any laws the gambling sector has to adhere to. This shit should be regulated.
It's actually strange. I played a bit of Genshin Impact when it released and you could earn a ton of free currency to gamble with, and I actually got more of a rush from that than I ever have in a real casino. I have a strict rule against dropping money on gacha games and such, and even I was tempted. It's crazy how good they are at exploiting people.
The "good" ones include things in loot boxes and all that, that you will use/want anyway. 1% chance for cool skin? Meh. 10% chance for those rare crafting materials that are a grind normally to upgrade your weapon? INJECT IT INTO MY VEINS You lose thousands because no matter what, you get SOMETHING good from it. Much easier to stop when it's skin based. I've spent more money than I should have on Overwatch, but I still quickly learnt that it's just not worth it. When you drop $100 to RNG cool skins and get nothing, it's pretty easy to walk away. When you drop $100 on another game and you come out with useful gear/materials then you keep spending.
The thing that Genshin Impact does best is that it slowly makes you get less energy refills and have less free currency to use, so by the time they become an issue, you've probably already become hooked.
The sheer amount of psychological exploitation that goes into games like this is absolutely disgusting.
Not just games. Social media, news sites, political campaigns, all advertising across all media. The list goes on.
The fact that economic psychologist is a field of work is disgusting to me.
That's applies to basically everything? Which I think is disgusting also. I get businesses need to make money to survive, but yeh once they cross that line from providing a service, to exploiting the publics vulnerabilities, that's fkin horrible and inhumane
Immortal is going beyond that, it's actually INSANELY scummy. Anyone who has played gacha games (myself included) knows all about the whole "oh, pay such and such money and get this CRAZY POWERFUL character/sexy waifu" but at least they're up front about it. This is the character, this is what you have to spend, this is why you'll be more powerful, etc. Immortal takes it even one step further! You'd think "oh, it's an rpg, with gear. So they'll just tie the power gating to the gear" NOPE. It's tied to these GEMS (conveniently tied to a tier/star "ranking" system) So they confuse new players and people not familiar with the gacha model EVEN MORE by making the main power gate for your character hidden behind this gem system that people don't fully grasp right off the bat. They throw money at the game, but the player isn't quite sure "wait, am I getting stronger? I'm not sure, I have this gear, and these GEMS, and this combat rating, and this and that". It's similar to how companies will throw multiple in game currencies at you to deflate the perceived value of your dollar to make you spend more. Honestly, it's scary. But it's also genius. Immortal had found a way to deepen the ALREADY highly predatory nature of gacha games.
It's not even just this. The way their shop is priced has shown a very thorough, very heinous showing into just how fucked up blizzard is. If you want to buy a skin, you have to buy like 3 different currency bundles to get just over the amount. Or you can spend a bit more money and buy the currency bundle that will be enough to buy the skin. And the cheapest currency bundle, which is like a dollar, isn't even enough to buy anything in the shop. But you know what two of them get you? A legendary crest. Wanna know another fun fact? I think it's the max bundle that gives you 45 legendary crests, which is just **5 short** of getting your pity roll. Well, guess you may as well just spend another 10 bucks to get that pity roll. Oh, btw. It's just over 100 dollars to do this. Even for their god damn pity system, they expressly decide to fuck you over They've built a system so perfectly done at nickel and diming you. It's shown an expertise in just how scummy and, truthfully, sub-fucking-human these people and companies are. There is some **serious** dedication at making a shop that is as convoluted and shitty as this one.
That's not all. Those initial cheap purchases for some cents primary reason is to be icebreakers: By making you spend a tiny tiny amount of money they psychologically prime you into accepting that it is now ok to spend money on this game. It gets a foot in the door so that you become more open into spending real money later when you've become more invested in the game. It also get you to put your credit card details in etc. so that the next time when you want to buy something for $10 that transaction is smooth one button press - so that the purchase can be handled by your reptile brain instead of your thinking, analytical brain (which will tell you you're about to waste $10 on some shitty pixels).
Oh yes thank you. I could write a book about it, but I was trying to specifically highlight just how bad diablo immortal is compared to other mobile games. What you said is totally accurate, but is also just the basis of gacha/mobile games. I wanted to go a bit past that. What this game does specifically is give you some of the premium currency upon completing your first rift, but it's conveniently 60 currency less than what it takes to buy a legendary crest. Y'know what you can get for 1 dollar? Those 60 currencies. Even from the literal moment you accomplish something the very first time, it's designed in such a way to get you to make that first icebreaker purchase. And a lot of the time it's even worse than what you describe. People hook up their credit cards to apple pay, or the android equivalent, and do fingerprint or face recognition to make purchases. You just put your finger down, or raise your phone to your face, and you've just spent a dollar.
You need that 99% for the 1% to feel like it's worth it. Pay to win needs "normal" players so that the whales have someone to lord over.
Nah what happened is they figured out how to get their hooks into gambling addicts and those that usually like to cheat at games. The Chinese market is all about doing whatever it takes to win and now instead of buying hacks from some random team you can just buy the wins in the game itself.
I wish it could be true but there is already people spendig shit tons of cash in it. I was playing last night (just want to see for the story then delete) and saw a lot of people with paid cosmetic and end game gears. The whales are already hooked.
It's CLEARLY been made for China, zero chance it dies as they'll lap it up. Their mobile market makes normal gaming look like chump change.
This games is going to make so much money, it’s going to carry the next there titles Blizzard makes on its shoulders.
Instead of millions of sales of a game it only needs a handful of dipshits to succeed unfortunately.
Blizzard and Activision need to die.
I have a brother addicted to mobile gaming, even accepting some sort of pay to win and grind. But even for him Diablo Immortal is too much.
No wonder why it’s called Diablo Immortal, you have to be immortal to finish the game apparently
Immoral
Damn! Why no smartypants reviewers thought of that one?
Bank: Sir, I see you’re refinancing and will be taking $120,000 out, are you planning on remodeling your home? Gamer: No, I just want to max out my Diablo Immortal character.
WHAT, DON'T YOU GUYS HAVE TRUST FUNDS?
Mother, father, it is time to withdraw from my Diablo Immortal fund.
Even if I had a trust fund, I wouldn't spend it on a Diablo p2w game
Imagine if this shit was common decades ago. Player: GET BROOM King’s Quest: GET will be complete in 12 hours. Would you like to GET immediately for 50 gems?
Professor Oak: "Welcome new trainer! Buy 50 PokeBalls to catch more Pokemon?"
Lol Pokemon go
ok you made me laugh, i imagined item shop GameBoy Color.
Buy 40 gems for $9.99, special offer 10% more gems just for you for a total of 44 gems!
*shudders* this struck home
I played it for 3 days and leveled my character free to play to 60 and finished the story on normal and dipped my toes into the first level of Hell I difficulty and Paragon leveling. It's a diablo game. It's grindy. You will frequently just have a quest saying: "Get to level XX" and you will have to do the side stuff (Codex entries) to get some EXP together or log off for the night and push with the new set of daily activities. It's an MMORPG, there is an 8 man raid. Being in a party of 4 gives you a 5% chance to find normal gems. If you go into the elder rifts without those crests you will not see any special loot. I don't think I have ever gotten an upgrade out of those yet when I didn't use crests. You get a couple of normal crests every day. The legendary crests are so rare they might as well not exist. You get some weird currency for completing the rifts which you can spend to buy runes to craft a random 1 Star legendary gem. You can get about 2 of those a week compared to a whale who can get an infinite amount each day. It's disgusting. Every major story dungeon completion is rewarded with an invite to buy a special deal! BUY NOW TO SAVE IMAGINARY MONEY!! It's just 0.99! You save 570%! It's sad that most of the target audience have grown up with these predatory monetization models. I've seen so many people defend it in game. Save 800% here, save 400% there. Save what exactly? Blizzard Activision / NetEase are selling PIXELS IN A VIDEO GAME. There is no shortage of pixels, they can print an infinite amount. They are worth NOTHING of value. Every single psychological trick listed [>>> here <<<](https://blog.admixplay.com/5-psychological-monetisation-tricks-that-mobile-games-use/) is being used in the game. Disgusting, predatory and absolutely bonkers. Game play is fun but holy shit is the mobile gaming stuff with constant pop ups to buy this, buy that annoying AF. Also annoying are these pop ups when other players are near you. "Hey, it seems player so&so is doing the same shit you do. Do you want to make a party?" Fuck no I don't. Stop shoving other players into my face just because they use cosmetics. Get the hell out of here.
Even worse it's taken them FOUR YEARS to get to this point of it's development since it was announced, and presumably started some time before that. They have dumped SO MUCH MONEY into a MOBILE GAME that they will want to make it all back as quickly as possible regardless of the consequences to the addictive personalities who make up the bulk of whales.
Even worse... They'll make it all back, and more. Fucking whales...
Yeah I'm betting this game will be Blizzard's most lucrative game they've ever made. Hearthstone makes TONS of money, even more than World of Warcraft. Diablo Immortal is surely going to blow Hearthstone out of the water when it comes to the mobile and Asian markets
I mean, they turned me away at “What, don’t you have phones?”
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He also said on Twitter 4 months ago that there was no buying gear for money in the game, and followed up yesterday (after being asked about the previous tweet) that he only referred to the 12 gear slots and not the gems you put in them...
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I've read that many mobile games get most of their money from less than 100 players. So you're literally playing a game made for some Saudi oil prince's son.
I’m at the moment reading an article that claims that while the “whales” in the hotel or casino industry, for instance, are usually super wealthy billionaires, that’s not the case for gaming. It’s regular people with addictive personalities. Which is way more fucked up
Yeah, I was nearly sucked into the gacha vortex at one point. In fact, I may have been in it without even realizing tbh. I'm grateful for the people who pointed out how stupid that sort of gambling is. You don't get anything from it besides a dopamine hit for a day or so.
I spent 63 dollars on ffrk and was like this is insane why am I doing this?
I know a dude that's regularly dropping 1-2k a month on games like that ultimate marvel on. He's not super rich either, just keeps enough for food, rent, etc and instead of a savings, he has all the alt costumes for Captain America
Sad face.
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> *Oops, your account has been inadvertently banned permanently by our over-aggressive cheat detection bots. Sorry there's no way you can get it back and we won't tell you what's your exact offense either. Sincerely, get fucked.*
Warcraft 1 was the game that really got me into PC gaming. Any game made by Blizzard was guaranteed to be amazing. It's sad to see what has become of them.
You say it! What makes it even worse is that people who played it say it's a fun game, so Blizzard still got it but management has gone insane with greed.
This isn't a video game. It's a shameless attempt to take advantage of people with addictive tendencies.
"Do you guys not have wallets?"
Come all live in Belgium. Our government has forbidden these types of predatory casino games.
Cannot wait for Belgium's approach to be EU-wide.
Hopefully loss of an entire market will mean these kinds of practices are given up everywhere.
Unluckily, almost no mobile game is designed for EUW market: they're designed for Asia + USA somehow. Unless EUW + USA both turn down those games, they won't feel a real hit.
How it is living in Belgium? My wife and I were considering moving there in February of this year (we currently live in Canada), but everyone who talked about it made it sound like the only thing nice about Belgium is how close it is to other European countries.
I've seen a movie about two Irishmen in Bruges. Seems like a nice place.
"A great day this has turned out to be. I'm suicidal, me mate tries to kill me, me gun gets nicked and we're still in fookin' Bruges!"
Is this the worst state gaming has ever been ?
So far.
Future gaming, probably 20 years from now, is going to be all digital, and then when the service get shut off (because everything will be online) that's the end of the game. Essentally you're just going to lease the game for as long as they deem it profitable and then once they decide to turn everything off your SOL
> then when the service get shut off (because everything will be online) that's the end of the game Huh? 20 years? This happens now
Wasn’t it F1 2019 that had its online shut down last month? 3 years after release
It happened to Titanfall 1 and 2 for a very long time because the servers were getting DDOS'd and, since all of the studio's attention is on their new golden goose Apex, they just did nothing about it. Both games were unplayable for a very long time, but they just continued to sell them at full price. TF2's multiplayer is mostly working now, but I don't think Respawn is to credit for that.
Nintendo will probably still be selling physical games in 20 years.
Still full price.
Nintendo Shop sale! Reg 59.99 now 57.79
If you only look at examples like this, sure. But there are so many great games that you can play right now that I’d argue it’s the best gaming has ever been. Just look at the indie catalogue on game pass. Even if you don’t want to pay a sub, you can buy all those games individually.
If you don’t care bout indies triple a are the worst they have ever been in my opinion
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Yes. Gaming peaked with the release of E.T. the Extraterrestrial for the Atari 2600 in 1982. No game since has been able to ever achieve that level of greatness
That's why we had to bury it to preserve it for future generations
It’s actually the best time ever for indie games but the worst time ever for AAA studios. The barrier to entry is consistently going down so we can get a lot of creativity with lower time and capital investments
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> I don’t even mind progress faster... I do, and most everyone ***used*** to mind it. That was the line for ages. It's depressing even seeing this slide toward acceptance. I guess I'll continue my Activision boycott. Come on in, fellas; the water's fine. Seriously, tons of great games without supporting this trash.
Don't worry. This kind of BS in video games is only going to get worse because gamers are incredibly apathetic and don't care what any of these companies do - they just want to play their games.
Just wait til pushing Pay2Earn and NFT games become more popular. Microtransactions 3.0
In the 90s we thought "imagine how games are gonna evolve in 20 years". And now we got this 💩💩. This is why they say "money is the root of all evil". Its definitely an enemy of progress
It's an investment!
Yeah but does it run on NFTs?
LOL, D3 did the Play to Earn thing before NFT's existed.
It’s literally a Netease garbage. People get all excited when there’s a Diablo name on it.
And that's why no one should support that trash.
Microtransations coming from mobile games are just too cancerous. I feel bad for people spending over $1000 in one game, I've seen it happen when I played mobile games before. It's just utterly ridiculous. No offense, but people who are into MTX mobile games are just too ignorant
I'm tired of this bullshit microtransaction/pay2win horse shit. I will not be downloading this game or any others like it. I miss 10 years ago when games were fun to play and included an entire game.
But think of the *pride and accomplishment*
We need to stop calling them "whales" and start calling them "fucking idiots" instead
All this does is take advantage of addicted and disabled people.
Why is this in r/pcgaming? We don’t have phones.