It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal • Hacker News Board

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

#391

Post by gonzo41 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

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…

It's kind of sad really, because the generation that's talking about this here are the same the people that had the best, and least adulterated versions of gaming growing up. So the grew up and ruined games going forward by making them only about money.

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

#392

Post by VerminOctopus1 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

wincy wrote: post #363

moomin wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being funny, but I won’t buy my kids LOL surprise and they know exactly why. Whether or not this choice of mine is useful is hard to tell.

You have to be vigilant as a parent. I didn’t realize until my late 20s that Diablo 2 primed me to love slot machines and gambling. It’s something I have to avoid.

Funny you say this. I’ve been playing a bunch of D2:R lately and it is honestly pretty miserable. It is full stop gambling. Grinding out mephisto runs over and over again, hoping for that nice drop, getting a minor rush of excitement when an unidentified ring drops or whatever. Just totally mindless nonsense.

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

#393

Post by bo1024 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

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 is very intriguing. I would love to hear a take based on research in psychology of addiction and gambling. I think the reason it would work is forcing people to decide to play with the analytical part of their brain, ahead of time, rather than with the addiction part in the moment.

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

#394

Post by nabla9 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:50 PM UTC

Aerroon wrote: post #381

INGELRII wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 goe…

Regulation would create an incentive to region lock out the areas that regulate it. Now you have people from the regulating country use VPNs to play the game in another region instead.

Diablo Immortal is not available in Belgium and the Netherlands.

It's not about the VPN, it's the payment method and App store setup that determines if you can install the game. Regulation does not have to be watertight. It just needs to work well enough to drastically reduce harm.

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

#395

Post by elif » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:50 PM UTC

FreezerburnV wrote: post #387

elif wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The funny part about that statement, is my understanding of the international release of Lost Ark is that it's actually a lot friendlier than the original Korean version. You should really look into how Asian MMOs (especially Korean ones, and I think I've heard Chinese ones can be pretty bad too) work with monetization. This stuff is hardly new, and what we see internationally is generally tame in comparison. I remem…

i spent $10k on a kickstarter game as far back as 2013, but i viewed it as an investment at the time. investing in the developers of the game being able to continue, as well as the assets maintained ~60-80% resale value for a time period. Sure it gave advantages in the game, but the game wasn't /designed/ around those advantages.

I think the part that's a relatively recent phenomenon is that games are designed with "free play" as an afterthought or even the game designed to push you away from it, instead of "free play" being the main design focus.

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

#396

Post by Aerroon » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:50 PM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #366

Aerroon wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The stance of NL and belgium of just banning all games that have gambling elements, is truly the only path forward. It means that you, the user, don't get to play the games you want to play or it will have no effect. Publishers will figure out ways around it and you're never going to stamp it out as long as there is demand for it. I don't like Diablo Immortal's monetization, so I don't play it. I suggest everyone e…

This is obviously not going to work. You'd have to be thoroughly conditioned against government intervention to even briefly entertain the notion that it might. "Well, if I just don't buy any drugs, that'll take care of the problem." Obviously, government interventions can have negative impacts (see drugs parallel again) but the answer is encouraging sensible regulation, not pretending, against all evidence, that it…

What is "all the evidence that it can work"? Drugs are a perfect example where governments have spent a century destroying people's lives with harebrained regulation. And yet all that it has done is empowered bloodthirsty cartels in developing countries. It hasn't improved the drug situation at all, regardless how much money we've poured into it.

As far as I can tell, gambling laws don't stop gambling either. In fact, it's usually the government that's the biggest provider of gambling services (the lottery). It seems like it's more about eliminating competition than anything else.

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

#397

Post by baby » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

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.

I think it depends, I know a lot of rich people who spend a lot on skins and others. Like, a lot.

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

#398

Post by wincy » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:51 PM UTC

mensetmanusman wrote: post #309

I feel sorry for today’s gamers. When I was a gamer during the Quaje2 era, my “addiction” was in trying to be the best. Immediately after school, I would practice various maps to understand their jumping kinetics and would spend time studying and understanding all the weapon shots/kill zones to the pixel level. No money was spent on the ‘addiction for excellence’. These days, I actually miss this type of addiction, t…

My introduction to coding was making Quake engine maps for the Jedi Knight game as a young teenager. It was super fun and I guess Minecraft or Roblox is similar to this but adding money to it kind of makes the whole thing icky and exploitative.

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

#399

Post by chucknelson » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

aclelland wrote: post #315

discardable_dan wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, honestly, why I'm focusing my children on Nintendo products. They do sometimes charge for skins, but by and large they don't succumb to the same "pay me to play" traps as other platforms.

Amazon Kids+ is also a really good option for younger kids. Got a large number of games for a few pounds a month. All the games are ad free and IAP free.

Yeah, we tried going to iPad for our kids but it’s so full of free to play junk.

Even with Amazon Kids, though, the games are still their free to play selves without purchases, so I still see these games where dopamine hits (get coins!) are a main mechanic :(

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

#400

Post by jakogut » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 1:53 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #249

eurasiantiger wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Rocket propelled grenade launchers are federally legal [0] in the United States. Furthermore, there are no federal restrictions on children using legal firearms under adult supervision.

I don't think it affects the point you're making, I just thought it might be interesting to share.

[0] https://otbfirearms.com/airtronics-llc-rpg-live-dd-modernize...