Earlier quoted context omitted.
>average for a pay-to-win game What games are above this average?
They're incredibly popular in east asia in general. It's practically taken over the game markets over there.
Why the downvotes?
It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
611–620 of 769 posts
Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
#612Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure I understand what you mean. The core mechanic is that rewards are randomly distributed - the namesake “gacha” machines dispense a capsule with a random toy. Think of it as a slot machine where if it hits you get an item you wanted / needed for gameplay and if it doesn’t it just took your money and gave you something useless.
Perhaps I need to play to understand, but it sounds like “gacha” machines behave like in-game vending machines where the player can purchase "features" to enhance their avatar etc.? Or do I have that wrong? I just assumed that those “gacha” machines are code libraries in gaming engines (Unity, Godot, GameMaker: Studio, etc), and that maybe a “gacha” machine code library is available open source or in some other fashi…
The machine is a metaphor for gameplay mechanics where you purchase a random chance for a reward. They are not something I can see related to libraries, but a kind of gameplay, in the same way that “leveling up” in an rpg wouldn’t really make sense to me as a library.
Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
#613Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
A publisher that has tasted fast cheap low value entries has a hard time justifying risky quality entries when the risk of failure is much higher. We're seeing the reality-tv moment in video games with mobile freemiums and it's frightening. I feel like Square-Enix is the perfect nexus if these market forces. I'm not even sure they'll bother with AAAs after making so much money off their low effort mobile cash cows.
Not only that, but many studios are one bad selling title away from closing up permanently. They can't afford to take risks. Check out "Press Reset" by Jason Schreier for multiple examples.
Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
#614It'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…
What limitations do you run into if you don’t pay that stop it from being fun after the first 30 levels?
Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
#615Earlier 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". 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 wi…
The SaaS pricing model doesn't mean just one thing, so you should probably define what you mean.
As commonly practiced, if you stop subscribing, you lose all access to the software (or get bumped down to the functionality of some free version). This moves a large portion of the risk of developing a new version from the developers to the customers. If the customers don't like the new version, it's not easy for them to switch; and as commonly practiced, they often can't continue using the old version.
I do agree that the JetBrains model aligns both developer and consumer interests. JetBrains carries the risk of developing the new version. If customers don't like it, they can unsubscribe and continue using their existing software.
Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
#616Earlier 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 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.
There are a _ton_ of successful f2p games with reasonable monetization models - Valorant, CSGO, Warzone, Dota, Path of Exile, Lost Ark, Hearthstone, etc. It's just that games in general are a power law industry - I don't think monetization model is really what will prevent a game from being successful. In fact, much of the discourse around Immortal is that the gameplay itself is in fact top notch. Blizzard has the dedicated fanbase to make a healthy profit and more with a reasonable cash shop - they don't _need_ to resort to these extremely cash-grabby mechanics.
Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
#617It'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.
Elden Ring shouldn't be even treated as the same sort of thing as an addiction focused mobile game.
Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
#618Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Compared to the kind of games that made Blizzard iconic like SCBW, TFT, D2, and early WoW which were basically pillars in the gaming world, the game, while polished, was a fairly mediocre Team Fortress variant in comparison. It also had lofty ambitions of sustaining a large e-sports scene to the point where investors were paying tens of millions to have the right of owning a team. That never materialized and the game…
Are you arguing that Overwatch should be F2P like Valorant / Apex?
Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
#619The worst thing (for me) about this is that whenever I go to the Apple App store I get bombarded will all these "games" that just try to make my life actively worse. I don't understand why they pollute their brand like that.
That's the key! The Play Store and the App Store do not even have a search filter for games without in-app purchases. I'm sure that is on purpose.
Usually paid games don’t have in-app purchases. This site is also helpful: https://nobsgames.stavros.io/
Re: It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal
#620Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I feel you. I don't think I was whataboutism-ing. The parent comment said PoE is fine because it's just cosmetics in game that you can buy. I guess I should have said you could spend thousands of dollars on PoE on cosmetics, but I'm just stating that one isn't better than the other. The main topic to me is that people are saying they don't like p2w games, and it feels like a weak argument if you say you don't li…
MTX are not inherently evil, for example I fully support one-time unlocks with MTX. It's a fair business model. (Although in these cases they might not be called MTX at all; probably "expansions" or "DLCs".) And the thing with cosmetics is that they're opt-in; whoever decides to never buy will also never be negatively affected -- which is not true for pay-to-win. I guess that's why there's this "evilest, eviler, evil…
You might not be negatively affected by not having cosmetics but evidently lots of players are.