Live data from Hacker News

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

gamerant.com

251–260 of 769 posts

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

#251
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.

> They will just move on to countries with less regulation

If there is worthwhile money to be made they'll already be going to those countries regardless what countries with regulation do.

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

#252
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.

You mean pay for loot box games? I ask because Diablo is one of the original grind for random drop games. At its core, Diablo has always been a gambling game even before micro transactions.

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

#253

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…

I've played to around level 30 or so also and it feels just like any other recent Diablo. So far it seems like I can pay to speed things up/improve the drop rate, or just keep playing without just fine. Is there some spot I'm going to hit that I can't progress without paying?

The article mentions that you can get the best gear for free but it will take you about 10 years. So I'm sure you can play it and have fun. If you try PVP however then you would be at a great advantage if you pay money for upgrades.

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

#254
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.

Maybe if it’s just two countries right now, but if this ban would become EU wide gaming companies would have to care.

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

#255
post #211

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 would pretty much kill the current industry (*as we know it). F2P/mobile games are monetized through Wales, but they're only willing to spend if there's enough incentive (e.g. prestige). That's not given if there's no F2P player base, because the base game would be too expensive. IMHO the best way to go about is to vote with your wallet. There are plenty of worthwhile games where you don't have to be a whale to…

It was thought that people would use less restaurants and bars if smoking was forbidden.

It's more likely that when incentives change, the whole customer base changes.

The current system of preying whales to pay for games has negative externalities for gamer's who don't have addiction. Playing is cheaper, but people play less games because addictive spending mechanics is affecting where the game development money goes.

Regulation would create incentives to make games that are expensive because they are so good.

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

#256

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…

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 co…

I never shared or published my bot either. Gaming communities will never understand. They wouldn't even entertain the notion that anti-cheating software could have false positives.

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

#257

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…

> I managed to cure myself of this addiction by... cheating. I reverse engineered the game and wrote a bot for it. All those silly tasks were now getting done automatically, my progression was assured and the game's hold over me was destroyed. This is absolutely fascinating. It's something I kinda missed from Digital Vegan, thinking that extrication would be a matter only of self-mastery and access to good informatio…

I agree regulation is needed. I think these situations are also partially due to a failure of anti-trust. In many of these cases, there is insufficient competition for these companies to be forced to act in the user’s best interest.

Addictive products are another case where the user is unable to choose in favor of their own self-interest, because the product is exploiting weak points in human psychology.

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

#258

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…

> I think this would effectively kill addictive impulse for people who can't afford it It would be nice if simply pricing out poor addicts worked as a deterrent, but it just doesn’t. We see this in sports betting all the time, young men are committing suicide in England after getting in too deep on the betting apps.

My proposal would work equally to everyone because the limit would be related to purchase price.

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

#259

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 works. But nowaday, you cannot just be profitable. You gotta make your investers very happy.

And no matter how well it does, investors will expect growth. So what further sliminess does Diablo Immortals 2 do to get growth? This behavior is unsustainable.

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Why?

Is it really a sickening issue? Like come on. I am not saying this predatory behavior isn't an issue but it is far from sickening in the grand scheme of things.
Post reply on HN