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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

#241

Post by rapind »

lekevicius wrote: post #199

It's even more frustrating, because the game is good . I really enjoyed playing the first 30 levels or so. Good story, good controls, very satisfying gameplay. If I could pay $60 and just have a "classic" Diablo on my phone, I might. But I won't spend a cent on consumable in-app purchases. It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds…

> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".

I think the assumption that another model was even considered is what people are getting wrong. The game was made explicitly and intentionally for this p2w / gamble business model. There was never an attempt to make it anything else. Blizzard lent their IP to make a cash grab. They’re milking their IP while they can, and monitoring both back lash and revenue, and will be repeating it.

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

#242

Post by ClumsyPilot »

bsnal wrote: post #196
saiya-jin wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they steal their parents credit card, or somebody else's. Addicts tend to di desperate moves. Happened to friends, their son spent half of their montly salary in some stupid mobile game, took too long for them to find out

Why is that Blizzard’s problem?

Why do you go to jail for selling alcohol to kids?

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

#243

Post by elif »

supernes wrote: post #16

Fans have dubbed it "Diablo Immoral" and say that it goes far beyond what other mobile titles infamous for their monetization have done.

Lost Ark was really the "we don't give a shit anymore" moment. Blizzard is just following up behind them with a bigger bag.

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

#245

Post by elif »

INGELRII wrote: post #195

Regulation proposal: Set maximum spending limit/time tied to the purchase price. The limit is tied to account and player character. example: 1. free-to-play: $100/year. 2. other: 10×purchase price/year. For a $50 game the maximum spending is $500 per year. This would not set hard limit. It would only mandate up-front investment related to the amount of in-game spending. A Whale who spends $10k a year would have to pa…

How many accounts you got?

These are gamers... We've been trained to bypass arbitrary obstacles in the easiest way since birth.

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

#246

Post by ZeroGravitas »

elif wrote: post #220
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good question. Golf seems very similar to me. There's the random element. A friend described it as a feeling of continual frustration followed by a high when he hits a good shot. You similarly can buy your way to 'success' with gadgets and training or investing more time. There's the community of similar addicts that gather together and provide a social element and re-inforce each others addiction. People's…

Wait, what's the random element in golf? I play weekly and the only random element I can think of are maybe cars and animals distracting me? Golf is a game of 3D localization and mapping, wind analysis, projectile estimation, and fine-tune physique control... If you are treating those elements as "random" you are missing large aspects of the game.

I'm obviously not a golfer, but here's a write up from someone who is, that explores the topic in depth:

http://www.limitlessperformance.ca/blog/the-mental-patters-o...

> But the most accurate and refreshing response received to this day has been… addictive! And if you think about it clearly, what better one-word description encompasses all that we know of this exhilarating sport known as Golf. There is no description more encompassing of a sport such as golf!

> And this is best described by a psychological principle referred to as “intermittent reinforcement”. Intermittent reinforcement is the formula foundation for all forms of addition. Take gambling with a slot machine as an example. You lose, lose, lose, lose and suddenly you win! And yet, despite the guaranteed repetitive loss and the incidental win, people love to play slot machines for hours. Why is intermittent reinforcement so powerful? In its simplest translation, the reinforcement pattern that blooms into addiction must entail of high levels of reward and amusement without the predictability factors which can trigger boredom. It‟s the unpredictability of when the reward arrives that draws and engages people into the activity. The rewards that are distributed intermittently trigger and release significantly higher doses of a pleasure inducing hormone known as dopamine, than the same rewards distributed on a more consistent (predictable) basis.

> Can you think of another activity that features in more intermittent reinforcement than golf? No matter what level of golf you are playing, it is guaranteed that you are going to hit more shots that feel miss-struck than well-struck. Some may argue that the pros hit the ball well on almost every shot, but on the contrary the better you are the higher the standard to what constitutes a shot that delivers maximum satisfaction and reward. To a highly skilled golfer, maximum satisfaction is gained through a perfectly struck and executed shot. While by the same token, for the double-bogey player, a drive that is struck decently and stays in the fairway is also a cause for celebration.

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

#247

Post by ClumsyPilot »

bsnal wrote: post #77
tjpnz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to start regulating these games in the same way we regulate gambling. They shouldn't be sold to children. They're not Kinda eggs nor LOL Surprise and should never be brushed off as surprise mechanics. They're glorified slot machines, through and through.

That’s not a problem since children don’t have access to credit cards or any other means to pay for in-game items.

This is not only morally abhorrent, but also factually wrong - you can have a proper bank account with card from 16, and you can have pre-paid cards even earlier

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

#248

Post by xenator »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #68
AdvicePlz wrote: post #3

I knew someone who worked for EA as a UX researcher. He said that games like these are primarily targeting whales who will drop $10k on a game. They are the real money earners. The really sad part was the he said the most whales aren't super rich, they're just people with an addiction.

> 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…

When Facebook introduced games on their site I used to play one game. It was some stupid game with limited energy, but for me mechanics was pretty new. So I created Selenium bot that on schedule do some simple tasks. Since I was little addicted to game I created club and invite people to join it.

And I shared my bot with them. Reaction was very negative. People blame me for "hacking" and ruining game.

So I made my conclusion and never shared my bots

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

#249

Post by skohan »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #229
elif wrote: post #212

It's like, gaming used to have some gambling flavor elements to it, but since ~2020 they gave up moderating it and everyone decided to go all-in on gamba. CSGO skin cases were meme-ably game-able, and I'm sure some people lost their livelihood, but it certainly wasn't conditioning EVERY CHILD that played to casually walk that line deeper and deeper... What we have now is sickening. The stance of NL and belgium of jus…

They will just move on to countries with less regulation, which usually means poorer countries with less educated people. You can probably see where this is going. Banning rarely accomplishes anything, it just moves one appearance of the problem out of sight for a period of time.

You don’t think sparing hundreds of thousands of children from harm in the Netherlands accomplishes anything?

Is it useless to ban children from using cocaine and rocket-propelled grenade launchers in the US just because they’re not banned in Somalia?

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

#250

Post by gooses »

INGELRII wrote: post #195

Regulation proposal: Set maximum spending limit/time tied to the purchase price. The limit is tied to account and player character. example: 1. free-to-play: $100/year. 2. other: 10×purchase price/year. For a $50 game the maximum spending is $500 per year. This would not set hard limit. It would only mandate up-front investment related to the amount of in-game spending. A Whale who spends $10k a year would have to pa…

This just woundn't work unfortuantly. It's a known fact that the large majorirty of the player base will not spend any money. This has the knock-on effect that the whales have to be squeezed in order for the game to turn a profit.

People underestmate the UA costs on these games. It can cost >$10 to get a single player into the game through advertising. So right off the bat you need to make $10 back per player to make a profit. Say 95% dont spend anything, so then you need $200 off each paying player to cover the costs of acquiring everyone else. Thats why this situation has evolved and why the games build themselves around the whales.

Of course games do get some players for free via app store discovery but predonminatly it's through advertising.

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