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

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

#531

Post by Ruthalas » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

mdavis6890 wrote: post #525

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)

The problem with this is that games designed to be monetized this way are going to build their progression, reward-systems, cosmetic systems, grind balance, etc. around it.

So the players who are "paying what they want (mostly zero)" aren't getting a normal but free Diablo game, they are getting version of that game balanced and prioritized around the whales that /will/ be spending the money. The actual customers.

I'd rather pay than "free-ride", because I don't want incessant popups telling me how how I can skip the grind (that is tuned to irritate me) by buying a gems with my credit card.

I'm not as valuable to Blizzard/Activision/NetEase with my one-time-purchase though, and they know it.

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

#532

Post by rapind » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 4:57 PM UTC

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #513

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…

Indeed. I'm personally not a victim of loot boxes and exploitative P2W tactics because I just don't buy them. But I just want to pay some amount once and have a good game in my Android phone, without ads and without constantly nagging me to spend more! I'll pay $60 also if the game is good, I just don't want to be put into a Skinner box constantly trying to milk my "engagement" and my pockets. Is that so much to ask?…

It sucks that the model of pay once ($60) or subscription doesn’t gel with the in-app purchase or advertising models.

For example YouTube premium is a worse product than it could be because the entire platform has been designed with advertising and engagement in mind.

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

#533

Post by erulabs » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 4:58 PM UTC

jordan801 wrote: post #505

Here's the problem with this game: - Blizzards slew of beloved franchises makes it easy to entrap nostalgia addicted masses to a number of pay to win clones. Or slowly implement these types of features into existing games. - Half of the assets are from a 10 year old prequel. This game was cheap to make and will have an insanely high profit margin. Leading to perpetuation of this model. - Scummy mobile pay to win is a…

I don't think its inevitable and I don't think it's a good long term monetization strategy. It's just short term planning with complete disregard for the long term health of the company. How the board of directors doesn't see this is shocking. Maybe they do and also want to milk it today instead of tomorrow just like the C-suite. Yes, exploitative mobile gaming is profitable as hell - but in the current world is alienating your extremely loyal (and higher earning) fan-base worth it?

Either way, it's a shame and a waste of a lot of really great IP that will be buried alive when the coffin that is Blizzard is lowered into the ground.

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

#534

Post by csa » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

hw wrote: post #499

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". Same can be said for software. Now it’s all SaaS where you have to pay monthly and choose from different pricing tiers or ala carte feature options to ‘win’ in a business sense.

> Now it’s all SaaS where you have to pay monthly and choose from different pricing tiers or ala carte feature options to ‘win’ in a business sense.

While some businesses abuse SaaS pricing (e.g., MS office for very basic uses, acrobat pro for basic uses, etc.), I think the SaaS pricing model has aligned the interests of developers and consumers (esp. smaller devs and smaller consumers) in a way that has allowed a wider market to have access to a wider range of affordable software and ongoing support/updates than would be possible under the previous system.

There are definitely folks, often a small niche, who really just need an old version of a piece of software for one or two small functions, and maybe those folks should be built in to the SaaS pricing model somehow, but overall I think that the merits of SaaS pricing almost always outweigh the demerits by quite a bit.

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

#535

Post by rightbyte » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

jack_pp wrote: post #34

rightbyte wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casinos are banned in many places and also banned for kids in most places. Clash royale is sad, becouse it is a extremely good game if it were not for the pay to win leveling mechanics. I used to play it alot but it became too frustrating meeting bad players with low ELO but high level cards that you essentially couldn't win over unless they messed up bad. Edit: To level up all cards in Clash Royale you also have to…

I just started playing it after a long break. I remember you used to need to upgrade your cards to challenge level in order to be competitive in challenges but now they give you all cards in challenge mode at the standard level, even cards you haven't found yet It costs 10 gems to play a challenge and you can buy 500 gems for 5$ so that's 50 challenges, say you get at least 7 games per challenge so 350 games for 5$ w…

Oh ok. Sounds like a good play mode. Maybe they themself realized how silly it was.

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

#536

Post by balaji1 » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 5:05 PM UTC

It's similar to TAM of a customer's wallet within a game - how much max value a user is to the company. Like LTV, "max customer value".

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

#537

Post by Ralfp » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 5:08 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #520

Ralfp wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way those games are designed most of time there is a way to get good gear for free, but its usually behind hundreds of hours of same monotous gameplay. I’ve played Homeworld mobile recently. The progress is great for first 15 hours but then game drops at you timegates. Wanna spaceship strong enough for later content? You can do god know how many missions hoping you get ship design, or you can do god knows how man…

I mean, it's been like this since the first Diablo. Even the sounds and animations when killing major bosses sounded and looked like a slot machine. It's nice that people are upset about it as they should, but this is not a new phenomenon and I'm puzzled why the hate is directed at DI specifically. At the end of the day a grizzled old-school gamer could not play multiplayer, ignore all paid options, and end up with t…

DI is high profile release, which is why the uproar is large enough to reach the mainstream. But its nothing new and happens in every fandom when favorite brand enters the mobile gaming.

It’s rumored that EA lost exclusivity on Star Wars games because of their mishandling of license and time-gating legendary Star Wars characters behind hours of gameplay (it took 42h of grind to unlock Darth Vader, but you could just pay extra on in-game roulette to unlock him sooner). This also caused uproar that reached mainstream media and commentary from members of state governments.

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

#538

Post by erulabs » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 5:09 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #50

mywaifuismeta wrote: post #43

I regularly play games with gambling (gacha) mechanics and I love them. The short bursts of fun are exactly what I'm looking for in my current busy life. I have nothing against this model of monetization. Gambling is fun. Casinos are fun. I am not a big spender by any means, but I've probably spent ~$2k on these kind of games over the past two years or so. I don't regret it, and for me the fun is in figuring out how…

Heroin is fun too, at least at first. The problem with gambling is that it taps into the dopamine system in ways that people are not aware of, even if they know about probabilities. The effect is cumulative, and the more the person gambles, the more they will gamble, take risks, create unbalance and spend money. Now, just like with anything related to dopamine, many people will only have a mild effect. E.G: I've play…

How do you stack up this opinion (ban 'immoral' video games) with the idea that drug prohibition is widely considered a spectacular failure?

Banning games like this will only drive the whales into black markets, which are more expensive, more dangerous, and benefit criminal enterprises by definition.

Many of the deaths from heroin, for example, are due to contamination with fentanyl (which boosts the potency). A company who was liable to their customers (ie: not a criminal enterprise) would be much less incentivized to lace their product, and if they did, there would be someone to prosecute instead of an entire black market to wag a finger at.

Anyways, I agree, this is an extremely exploitative design. What I don't agree on is using legal regulation to shape society into something moral. Historically, that's only made things worse.

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

#539

Post by VHRanger » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 5:10 PM UTC

erulabs wrote: post #533

jordan801 wrote: post #505

Here's the problem with this game: - Blizzards slew of beloved franchises makes it easy to entrap nostalgia addicted masses to a number of pay to win clones. Or slowly implement these types of features into existing games. - Half of the assets are from a 10 year old prequel. This game was cheap to make and will have an insanely high profit margin. Leading to perpetuation of this model. - Scummy mobile pay to win is a…

I don't think its inevitable and I don't think it's a good long term monetization strategy. It's just short term planning with complete disregard for the long term health of the company. How the board of directors doesn't see this is shocking. Maybe they do and also want to milk it today instead of tomorrow just like the C-suite. Yes, exploitative mobile gaming is profitable as hell - but in the current world is alie…

> I don't think it's a good long term monetization strategy

You can look at plenty of games that have lived for a long time on this:

- Supercell games (Clash Royale, Clash of Clans, Hay Day, etc.)

- Genshin Impact

- Heartstone and Magic Arena

- Rainbow 6 The Division (most profitable Ubisoft game)

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

#540

Post by uejfiweun » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

I put this game in the same category as Anthem, Fallout 76, and unfortunately many others. No fans wanted it, no developers wanted to make it, nobody cares about it. The only people excited about this are the executives who saw how much money other Mobile / Co-op Multiplayer / Arena shooter / Battle Royale / etc games were making, and are hopeful they can get a piece of the pie. This sort of thing never seems to end well for the game companies that push it.

Sometimes though, companies seem to learn from their mistakes on these. EA went from a straight awful company to producing one of my favorite games, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, with no forced multiplayer, no microtransactions, no DLC, just a great game out of the box. So although Blizzard franchises are certainly hurting right now, sometimes the night is darkest just before the dawn, so to speak.