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Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

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Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#131

Post by the_biot »

ddtaylor wrote: post #125
proc0 wrote: post #117

It's so sad to see a company throw away its IPs like this. Diablo 1 and 2 are works of art, and they will be remembered as such. I mean D1 & D2 are not even comparable to Immortal. It might feel like the same franchise, but Immortal is basically like going to Las Vegas and playing a Diablo slot machine. D1 & D2 were self-consistent worlds, where the player is rewarded for killing enemies, and the rewards scale with d…

IMO this is another example of a company taking established trust in a franchise and exploiting it for a cash grab. The problem is that while players are upset right now they will forget and when Diablo 4 releases everyone will promptly pull out their wallets. There isn't much risk in companies doing these kinds of things because of consumer apathy. In this specific case it's a "meh" from me because I think Diablo 3…

> IMO this is another example of a company taking established trust in a franchise and exploiting it for a cash grab.

It's a franchise. There is no aspect of this which is not a cash grab.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#132

Post by falcolas »

ddtaylor wrote: post #126
smolder wrote: post #114

This is beating a dead horse, but pay-to-win "games" are disgustingly user hostile, and deserve nobodies money. Please, be principled and keep your money. Blizzard was a respectable company around the time StarCraft 1 came out, but it started downhill with WoW and only accelerated with the Activision merger. Support smaller studios that are daring enough to still focus on making things purely fun as opposed to contin…

I agree with you, but for every hundred or thousand of us that refrain it can be dwarfed by a few whales that get "duped" into enabling these kinds of games. > Support smaller studios In the ARPG space this probably means supporting Eleventh Hour Games and their Last Epoch series. Path of Exile by Grinding Gear Games is a fantastic game, but they are 90% owned by Tencent now, so they probably don't qualify as a "smal…

By simply playing the game (even without paying), we are helping to support the whaling. After all, not even whales want to play a game that has no players in it. Nobody to show off to; nobody to beat into the ground with the equipment they've purchased.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#133

Post by lijogdfljk »

fxtentacle wrote: post #108
lijogdfljk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I've often thought of this, with respect to MMOs, and RPGs/etc with drop rates. Inherently games are all just dopamine drivers. Some are of course based on physical skills (coordination/timing/etc), others on knowledge as a skill (exploiting game mechanics/etc). Where it gets fuzzy fast for me is very basic MMOs, RPGs, etc - RNG based mechanics. The fact that i completed the dungeon with a skill (knowledge/et…

I fully agree that we're training future addicts. And it's not like people don't know. There will be a deliberate sequence of hook, time sink, random reward because that's most addictive. But I find balancing this very difficult. We want fun games and fun things are addictive. But we don't want addict-creating games. So how do you measure which amount of addiction is the correct amount?

I suspect we're unable to do anything until we understand the brain better, what defines addiction (at a very measurable, concrete way), etc.

The one thing that does scare me about addiction + money is that, like Diablo, the companies incentive seems aligned with getting players to spend vast quantities of hours and money. Regardless of what it is right now or what value it offers for free, that seems to be their incentive.

Simple buy models without MTX seem an easier model to keep company incentives aligned with player incentives.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#134

Post by ryathal »

lpcvoid wrote: post #119
fendy3002 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And my golden rule of thumb, you either spend 0 in microtransaction, or at least 1000$, almost never in between since usually this game is designed with additional content that will dangling your carrot further and further, needing more and more money.

Isn't spending "at least $1000" already whale territory?

Maybe if you spend that in a month and only play for a month. Whale territory isn't even affordable for average people.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#135

Post by proc0 »

the_biot wrote: post #131
ddtaylor wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO this is another example of a company taking established trust in a franchise and exploiting it for a cash grab. The problem is that while players are upset right now they will forget and when Diablo 4 releases everyone will promptly pull out their wallets. There isn't much risk in companies doing these kinds of things because of consumer apathy. In this specific case it's a "meh" from me because I think Diablo 3…

> IMO this is another example of a company taking established trust in a franchise and exploiting it for a cash grab. It's a franchise. There is no aspect of this which is not a cash grab.

Correct, although the profit is coming from substantially different places and that influences the end product. It's like the difference between an artist selling a painting, and an artist selling parts of his painting by chopping it up and offering different pieces at different prices. In the latter example you end up with something that is less cohesive and a different experience.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#136

Post by ASalazarMX »

proc0 wrote: post #117

It's so sad to see a company throw away its IPs like this. Diablo 1 and 2 are works of art, and they will be remembered as such. I mean D1 & D2 are not even comparable to Immortal. It might feel like the same franchise, but Immortal is basically like going to Las Vegas and playing a Diablo slot machine. D1 & D2 were self-consistent worlds, where the player is rewarded for killing enemies, and the rewards scale with d…

"Diablo Immortal: The search for more money"

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#137

Post by ASalazarMX »

TomSwirly wrote: post #122
proc0 wrote: post #117

It's so sad to see a company throw away its IPs like this. Diablo 1 and 2 are works of art, and they will be remembered as such. I mean D1 & D2 are not even comparable to Immortal. It might feel like the same franchise, but Immortal is basically like going to Las Vegas and playing a Diablo slot machine. D1 & D2 were self-consistent worlds, where the player is rewarded for killing enemies, and the rewards scale with d…

> Diablo 1 and 2 are works of art, [...] > the player is rewarded for killing enemies, and the rewards scale with difficulty. Diablo 1 and 2 were good video games. They weren't intended as works of art, and they aren't. A game where you go around killing increasingly strong enemies isn't really anything new.

I feel like you have a point somewhere, but knowing the history of games where you go around killing increasingly strong enemies, like the original Doom, makes me doubt the universality of your statement.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#138

Post by wincy »

hoseja wrote: post #109
Madmallard wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe people are even playing devil's advocate here. The level of quality has dropped so far the company should go bankrupt over games like this in a world not driven by perverse incentives.

These US-based companies that made a couple good games really have too much goodwill going for them. Same with Bethesda. Imagine if CDProject did something like this, the snarky anglo hate would be infinite.

I mean a lot of US companies are like this. Some grifter VC firm buys the face of your favorite thing then starts pumping out garbage and gaslights you for noticing. The people who worked on Diablo 2 or even the original World of Warcraft are long since gone.

I’ve even noticed it with Cocomelon, the YouTube toddler show, funny enough. Then I looked it up and realized it had been bought by a kids show corporation. I could just tell! The episodes are just different and weird somehow. Like the lessons they’re teaching seem off. Before it was just an enterprising mom and dad running a YouTube channel teaching wholesome values.

It also explains all the new toys and marketing around it.

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#139

Post by rizzaxc »

Jensson wrote: post #115
rizzaxc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the "free trial" is still a great deal though. you get around 10 hours of gameplay per class if you're new (I'm aware the actual way to play the campaign takes only 5-6 hours) also, there's a cap on how much you can spend on inventory tabs. and even then you don't "win", you still have to grind and be smart about what you do

To you it is a good deal where you save some dollars but at expense of the poor people with addiction disorders who get ruined by this. This isn't a good deal for society as a whole which is why such practices ought to be illegal. I think free to play is fine when they employ less predatory practices, like for example league of legends. Some spent a lot of money in that game, so it works as a business strategy, but i…

are you assuming I'm talking about D:I? I'm talking about PoE. To the average "gamers", they're not getting addicted to the campaign because it's so god damned hard for the uninitiated. If you get past the campaign and you still want more, obviously you gotta pay for the game, like any other serious game. There's a hard cap on how spending money influences your gameplay (iirc around $40-50), so it's not fair to compare this practice to what D:I (and countless other mobile games) do

Re: Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law

#140

Post by rizzaxc »

rvba wrote: post #113
rizzaxc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the "free trial" is still a great deal though. you get around 10 hours of gameplay per class if you're new (I'm aware the actual way to play the campaign takes only 5-6 hours) also, there's a cap on how much you can spend on inventory tabs. and even then you don't "win", you still have to grind and be smart about what you do

The problem with Path of Exile's campaign is that it is dated, frustrating and unfun. It pushes away new players with difficult instead of convincing them to play. Maybe the pshchologists hired by the company that makes the game made a psychological profile of whales - and this allows good conversion. However they also wfite thwt they dont use data for decisions (just vibes) so it is not clear. They seem to be lucky…

If you treat the campaign as a separate single player game that expects you to finish in 10-15 hours and never have to run it again, it's less bad. That's how new players should feel about it. If they like the game to the point to repeat the campaign, obviously they're the target audience for the game (those like to play RPG with cheatsheets on the side) and can deal with the campaign the "proper" way. I'm not saying they shouldn't fix the campaign though, but anything that we do 100 times over will be boring so I'm not sure what they can do
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