Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

gamerant.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 769 posts

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

#561

Post by mmmmmbop »

ayngg wrote: post #544
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…

Blizzard is close to being a zombie company, the last game with true Blizzard pedigree was probably around 15 years ago, their last decent game was almost 10 years ago, they are milking the last few drops from the geriatric cash cow that is WoW, they have completely failed to capitalize on competitive games with Overwatch, Heroes of the Storm or even WoW arena, and they are all languishing, Diablo Immortal is a mobil…

I don't think it's true that their last decent game was almost 10 years ago. Overwatch is a really great game and it came out 6 years ago.

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

#562

Post by peanut_worm »

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…

Elden Ring was exactly "make good game, sell it" and it sold very well.

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

#563

Post by jstummbillig »

Timshel wrote: post #503
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". What I find really sad is that multiple games have proven that there is a middle ground and that making a f2p while making enormous amount of money is possible (League of Legend ...) and using such predatory system that are so prevalent on mobile is not the onl…

If you need to reference LoL/Fortnite to make a point, you are not making a point.

In fact, there are very few games that have done the f2p walk successfully, sustainably, and all of them pale in comparison to the few extraordinary exceptions.

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

#564

Post by remram »

Timshel wrote: post #492
remram wrote: post #487

Isn't that a good thing? The fact that there is so much content that getting the best version of every item cannot happen, even if you spend some money? Is a game fair only if you can acquire the best gear in the game (for real money)?

Probably depends of your definition of content and tie with the discussion around Gacha game. The part discussed here with the gem system looks more like a slot machine than anything I would describe as game content.

Well for sure I don't know much about the game. If it's bad or uses predatory tactics to get people's money then that is awful. This specific point though, summed up in the title, seems kind of weird.

Like imagine if someone said the same thing about EVE Online, how much does a "fully geared up" space station cost? How much is the combined cost of Team Fortress 2's (cosmetic) items?

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

#565

Post by mensetmanusman »

djhworld wrote: post #341
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…

Eh, the gaming industry and the amount of games you can play is so vast these days you can still play games without having to invest further amounts to progress. Yes there are loot box games and so on, but in reality they're a small subset. Admittedly if you primarily play mobile games then that subset is quite large. Stick with console/PC, be suspicious of free to play and you'll be fine.

Something about the paradox of choice makes me wonder whether it’s a worse situation because more fragmentation means fewer shared experiences…

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

#566

Post by Hemospectrum »

peanut_worm wrote: post #562
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…

Elden Ring was exactly "make good game, sell it" and it sold very well.

The "no longer works" comment clearly refers to the business model, ie. ignoring the quality or popularity of the product itself and just looking at the balance sheet. The gambling (microtransaction) model is enormously more profitable than the classical "just sell a game" model.

Elden Ring was spectacularly well received and has sold millions of units, but it's "only" a game. There's no casino in the back, and therefore no gambling-related revenue stream.

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

#567

Post by lithos »

uejfiweun wrote: post #540

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…

Anthem would have been great if it was finished. Core movement systems were good, and theming of power armor was great.

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

#568

Post by swampthinker »

peanut_worm wrote: post #562
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…

Elden Ring was exactly "make good game, sell it" and it sold very well.

The cynical response there is “It would’ve performed even better if it was a subscription”

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

#569

Post by bckr »

Plasmoid wrote: post #559
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…

Yatzhee posted a video on how the mobile gaming space is basically dead because of this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q30qZSEnI9Q

you know, this helped me realize why I rage-quit C&C Rivals. I was having a lot of fun, thinking I'm good at the game, going on 40-game win streaks.... then suddenly I am facing opponents with characters 2 levels above mine, getting creamed 90% of games and coming nowhere near being able to upgrade my characters... unless I spend and unknown amount of money on crates.

So, I'm not just a quitter, I ran into the trap.

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

#570

Post by jnovek »

dmix wrote: post #284
Beltalowda wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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". What makes you say that? I mostly play single-player games where I just buy a game and then play it. There are loads of those out there, with more released every week. Even with my underpowered Linux laptop I have plenty to choose from.

Diablo 4 will probably just be a normal PC game too. Those freemium mobile games are always scammy but that doesn't mean there aren't endless classic business model games.

Perhaps.

I still plays Diablo 2 and 3 quite a bit. I don’t think I’d call myself a “hardcore” player — I’m not very good — but I’m definitely in the Diablo 4 launch demographic.

I’ve been keeping an eye on Diablo Immortal as sort of a canary. I can say with absolute confidence that I won’t be buying D4 at launch if Blizzard doesn’t fix the DI mess.

Among longtime players of the franchise, I can’t imagine that I’m alone.

Post reply on HN