521–530 of 769 posts
If that sounds appealing to you, but you're scared of getting arrested, you can just develop "free to play" games instead.
I have been playing and enjoying the game for the past few days. The P2W gem system can be ignore entirely by most players unless you want to become the best in leaderboard. Overall the monetization is on par with other mobile games. The only reason this gets so much attention is because Blizzard is a easy target to generate outrages and clicks these days.
Several of the reports I've read indicate some p2w mechanics don't even unlock until higher levels, and so are not immediately apparent. How far in are you?
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…
The issue is fundamentally that releasing a single game for a single fee yields linear growth, which is to say the amount your growing by is stagnant. Stagnant growth, to an investor, is essentially a signal that your company is currently failing. So unless you can grow your growth, you fail, and the only way to continue growing your growth is if new products remain cash generating indefinitely.
This is a culmination of a trend that has been going on for at least a decade: First it was the lootboxes that became widespread: ~2010 Steam Team Fortress 2, later Counter Strike 2012 EA's Mass Effect 3 2014 Call of Duty and Battlefield 2016 Overwatch After that it seemed lootboxes were everywhere. In 2017 there was some backlash for EA's Star Wars game and they removed lootboxes, but it did not change the situation…
Some of those games that you mentioned only contained cosmetic items in the lootboxes.
Gamers as a community have a much more visceral reaction to paying for power in the game, compared to paying for cosmetics.
I have been playing and enjoying the game for the past few days. The P2W gem system can be ignore entirely by most players unless you want to become the best in leaderboard. Overall the monetization is on par with other mobile games. The only reason this gets so much attention is because Blizzard is a easy target to generate outrages and clicks these days.
Are you saying that "pay not to grind" games should not get negative attention ?
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 am not a gamer, but I am fascinated by all manner of monetization. Is Diablo Immortal unique as a free-to-play game that has a microtransaction model to support continued development, or do other games do this? It seems the equivalent of the freemium model with web applications. Does buying the so-called Legendary Gems enhance "winning" or just game playing? And can "winning" result in a financial reward (like in L…
The model is extremely standard in mobile games, especially in Asia, where it has been the norm for almost a decade in gacha games, and where people are used to paying and gambling. They all have the same mechanics, or variations of them, Diablo doesn't really do anything innovative here, but it certainly is on the aggressive side. A lot of the outrage comes from the fact that 1. Diablo is originally a PC-based IP wi…
A better way to think about it is that these games are designed for - and paid for by - exactly the very few people who want to spend this much on winning a game. Everybody else gets to free-ride on this, and only pay what they want (mostly zero)
Still, we must consider that growth is what a company is after, and that growth happens at the margin, not the core.
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…
Even though I am refusing to spend money for gems, there is effectively always a “look at me” notification on the screen reminding me that the store is open. They’re gaming the fact that we have all been trained through habit to check those notifications, and it is really effective.