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It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

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Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#141

Post by hombre_fatal »

chii wrote: post #75
matheusmoreira wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're just people with an addiction Yes. These games are straight up designed to be habit forming and should be regarded as equivalent to gambling and addictive drugs. I've been down that rabbit hole myself. Daily tasks and rewards offer positive reinforcement. Timers create a schedule for players, place a cap on their progression and establish negative reinforcement by punishing days of inactivity. Player groups…

so the question becomes whether people should be allowed to spend money any way they see fit, even if that spending isn't great for themselves. Like someone who's very invested in their hobby, they could be dropping tens of thousands of dollars into it (depending on the hobby of course). Why are those not considered the same as wasting money on mobile games?

Even if you thought that being addicted to gaming or gambling is no different for the creature than any other hobby, like kayaking, it might help you to look at the other side of the question:

How much should we allow others to enrich themselves off the addictions/compulsions of others?

I always thought that was a compelling point even when I was a libertarian for one year as a uni freshman. That people should be able to consume what they want doesn't finish answering the question.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#142

Post by algorias »

b112 wrote: post #124
bobnamob wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That phenomenon probably has more to do with wealth being spread increasingly thin across ever-larger generations

Maybe? Certainly more offspring was normal, the further back you go. So wealth division could more easily happen. But most cultures had the idea of the "first born", the official heir... for this very reason! Most of the loot, holdings, tended to go the eldest.

This is no longer legal in many jurisdictions. Family members often have a minimum allocation of the inheritance (e.g. 25% must be equally split among all children)

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#143

Post by creakingstairs »

languageserver wrote: post #84
Grollicus wrote: post #60

The worst thing (for me) about this is that whenever I go to the Apple App store I get bombarded will all these "games" that just try to make my life actively worse. I don't understand why they pollute their brand like that.

This is made by the company that gave us Warcraft III reforged. A money grab that made the game worse and ruined the already existing game. they have no goodwill.

It was very surprising how bad reforged was when brood war remake was excellent. Even Diablo 2 remake was great.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#144

Post by phpisthebest »

algorias wrote: post #138
phpisthebest wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deflection point for me on Regulation is purchases vs loot boxes If the game is implimenting direct purchases, where you buy Item X for Y price then I feel regulation is unwarranted even in the context of harmful levels of purchasing However if the game is using a loot box system where the play buy a "chance" to "win" an item they desire, then I think that should be considered a "game of chance" like a lottery or…

To be fair, many such games do disclose the odds. The difference to older tech like mechanical slot machines is that the game records everything the player does, and can then drop a "discounted" special offer at the right time to maximize the likelihood of keeping the player hooked.

While some games do, the few that do those odds are not predominantly displayed nor they are externally validated as being accurate.

There is also no disclosure as to if the odds are manipulated on a per player basis, which I believe there are a few patents related to changing the "drop" rate based on player behavior, this is similar and can be combined with your comment about monitoring to drop a discount at the right time

In the context of Diablo, I can not find the Odds of their loot boxes anywhere published.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#145

Post by taurath »

felipelemos wrote: post #136
taurath wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then they exploit workers and customers because they choose to rather than being forced to, which sorta makes it worse.

They do because they enrich themselves, but not because of any 'duty' whatsoever.

End result is you still have a society run by sociopaths then.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#146

Post by KingMachiavelli »

kybernetyk wrote: post #116
michaelmrose wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sociopathy is the only way that businesses are allowed to conduct themselves. It would be great if we could stop spreading this misunderstanding. Fiduciary duty is a duty not to deliberately destroy shareholder value. Basically you can't set it on fire or loot it. It is not and has never been a duty to do absolutely anything anyone can possibly conceive of that will enrich the shareholders. Leaders are free morally…

> It is not and has never been a duty to do absolutely anything anyone can possibly conceive of that will enrich the shareholders. This. Otherwise Apple and Disney would be forced to sell porn. But they don't because of their moral (one could argue prude) stance which makes less money for the investor.

Both companies target demographics that would oppose that.

Also the PR storm of such a reversal would significantly damage their stock prices. More importantly, stockholders suing either company to force them to reverse the policy would be an even bigger story.

It's not a fiduciary responsibility to make as much money as possible, it's to maximize value for shareholders which means stock price rivals revenue.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#147

Post by cycomanic »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #86
j_4 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this "ultra-wealthy" thing has always sounded like a convenient lie whale-game devs tell themselves to sleep soundly at night. These dark pattern black holes are made purely to form an addiction and turn it into profit, they don't care about who's on the receiving end. There's an increasing number of players who expect that either a) a game will take unlimited money and feed them dopamines in return, or b) they…

It's hard for a person in the throes of addiction to last as a whale for long. Most long lived whales are likely to be from wealthy families, or the fun side addiction for a very wealthy individual. That doesn't change the fact that there are addicted people who spend a large percentage of their income on a game. Whales are one thing and addicted players are another.

Why do you think the mechanics of nonchemical addiction are different to chemical addiction? I certainly see plenty of nonrich people being addicted to drugs and essentially spend everything they have on drugs (the proximity to crime is obviously an additional factor)

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#148

Post by doctor_eval »

taurath wrote: post #122
michaelmrose wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sociopathy is the only way that businesses are allowed to conduct themselves. It would be great if we could stop spreading this misunderstanding. Fiduciary duty is a duty not to deliberately destroy shareholder value. Basically you can't set it on fire or loot it. It is not and has never been a duty to do absolutely anything anyone can possibly conceive of that will enrich the shareholders. Leaders are free morally…

So then they exploit workers and customers because they choose to rather than being forced to, which sorta makes it worse.

Yep, definitely this.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#149

Post by usrusr »

bobnamob wrote: post #64
lozenge wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese proverb “rags to rags in three generations” says that family wealth does not last for three generations. The first generation makes the money, the second spends it and the third sees none of the wealth.

That phenomenon probably has more to do with wealth being spread increasingly thin across ever-larger generations

Another element is how ambition to have your own achievement can team up with risk taking. It's usually not the humble playboy who consumes away the fortune, it's one who tries to step out of the shadow cart by inheritance by growing the fortune through a series off get-richer-quickly schemes.

Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal

#150

Post by snikeris »

holoduke wrote: post #4

Lootbox games: I don't understand why these kind of games are not getting banned or heavily restricted. There is absolutely not a single positive thing about these games. Moral doesn't matter.

If you walk around a low income area in the US, you’ll find loot boxes littered on the ground. We call them scratch off tickets. Getting the okay from the government to prey on your fellow citizens has precedent here.
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