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

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

#81

Post by ValentinPearce » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 9:29 AM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #54

The thing is - is it necessary to have the best gear to enjoy the game? As a different example - I'm sure it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to max out your characters and gear in Genshin Impact, but I've played very enjoyable 100h+ and it's perfectly fine even if you don't have the max ascended characters and gear, I have a feeling those are there basically for the wales to spend money on but aren't necessar…

A big part of Diablo (or at least of Diablo 3) once the story is finished is to go as far as possible in the post game features.

Most people I know who have played Diablo would tell me their rift tier, paragon level (might be a different term in English but they play in french so that's the term I know).

So for new players, it might not be that big of a deal, but for players wanting to play more Diablo the game is telling them to cough up as much as they can

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

#82

Post by chii » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 9:30 AM UTC

Hermel wrote: post #74

Grollicus wrote: post #60

The 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.

it would make sense to scrape the data, and create an alternative search engine with such filters imho...

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

#83

Post by einrealist » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 9:30 AM UTC

If Microsoft wouldn't buy ATVI (at a higher price than the current stock price), I would have sold my shares months ago. I don't have any hope for ATVI anymore. Instead of providing value to their customers - the gamers, they squeeze it for shareholders. I doubt, Diablo 4 will be any different.

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

#84

Post by languageserver » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 9:31 AM UTC

Grollicus wrote: post #60

The 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.

This is made by the company that gave us Warcraft III reforged. A money grab that made the game worse and ruined the already existing game. they have no goodwill.

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

#85

Post by chii » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 9:32 AM UTC

solar-ice wrote: post #61

jack_pp wrote: post #2

I've watched a lot of discussions about this from twitch streamers and I'm not sure where I stand.. On the one hand I'm amazed at how good this game looks on mobile and if you're just the type to casually play a game not really caring about being the best at it you could have fun playing it for free or for very cheap. On the other hand this game is clearly exploitative and while other games like Hearthstone or Clash…

Casinos and machine-based gambling are fairly heavily regulated in a lot of places, requiring a license with auditing, with rules on everything you can possibly think of. The mobile gaming industry has so far avoided this body of law by never providing anything of value in return.

> by never providing anything of value in return.

you could argue they provided entertainment in return.

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

#86

Post by Karrot_Kream » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 9:32 AM UTC

j_4 wrote: post #47

jiggawatts wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen similar comments by several game devs, but at least some of them said that they make most of their money from the kids of the ultra-wealthy. Think of some oil Sheik's son bored to death at home because it's too hot to go outside. But yeah, the "loot boxes" that are mostly gambling have been banned in many countries because they're targeted at young children.

To me this "ultra-wealthy" thing has always sounded like a convenient lie whale-game devs tell themselves to sleep soundly at night. These dark pattern black holes are made purely to form an addiction and turn it into profit, they don't care about who's on the receiving end. There's an increasing number of players who expect that either a) a game will take unlimited money and feed them dopamines in return, or b) they…

It's hard for a person in the throes of addiction to last as a whale for long. Most long lived whales are likely to be from wealthy families, or the fun side addiction for a very wealthy individual. That doesn't change the fact that there are addicted people who spend a large percentage of their income on a game. Whales are one thing and addicted players are another.

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

#87

Post by tomwilson » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 9:33 AM UTC

Grollicus wrote: post #60

The 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.

It's a huge chunk of their "services revenue". It's their dirty little secret.

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

#88

Post by matheusmoreira » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 9:33 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #75

matheusmoreira wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're just people with an addiction Yes. These games are straight up designed to be habit forming and should be regarded as equivalent to gambling and addictive drugs. I've been down that rabbit hole myself. Daily tasks and rewards offer positive reinforcement. Timers create a schedule for players, place a cap on their progression and establish negative reinforcement by punishing days of inactivity. Player groups…

so the question becomes whether people should be allowed to spend money any way they see fit, even if that spending isn't great for themselves. Like someone who's very invested in their hobby, they could be dropping tens of thousands of dollars into it (depending on the hobby of course). Why are those not considered the same as wasting money on mobile games?

Hey, I love video games. They've given me thousands and thousands of hours of fun. Awesome games like Subnautica can bring joy to the world.

The problem is the one time I tried mobile games I eventually started waking up at 3 AM because that's when some timer resets. At some point I started wondering where my life went so wrong.

Then I started studying the design of these games and I realized they are designed to cause this sort of addiction and harm. They employ the same strategies as casinos and drug dealers. They straight up subvert the reward center of people's brains to the point they harm themselves and even destroy their own lives.

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

#89

Post by martinko » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 9:34 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #75

matheusmoreira wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're just people with an addiction Yes. These games are straight up designed to be habit forming and should be regarded as equivalent to gambling and addictive drugs. I've been down that rabbit hole myself. Daily tasks and rewards offer positive reinforcement. Timers create a schedule for players, place a cap on their progression and establish negative reinforcement by punishing days of inactivity. Player groups…

so the question becomes whether people should be allowed to spend money any way they see fit, even if that spending isn't great for themselves. Like someone who's very invested in their hobby, they could be dropping tens of thousands of dollars into it (depending on the hobby of course). Why are those not considered the same as wasting money on mobile games?

> so the question becomes whether people should be allowed to spend money any way they see fit

Cant believe you actually want to debate this.

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

#90

Post by michaelmrose » Sun, Jun 05, 2022, 9:35 AM UTC

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…

You can run the same kind of analysis on different game mechanics and strategies on games not designed to rip you off. They actually tend to be far more interesting because gambling games rarely have any meaningful degree of complexity and the singular strategy you are actually optimizing for is how much you have to sink into the game to succeed something you can probably figure out for a given game in about 30 seconds of analysis.

Basically you have a bad habit not that far off from smoking cigarettes that will probably eventually lead to dangerous overspending the first time you have an economic downturn at the same time as emotional stress. Despite such games being in general tasteless and boring you have convinced yourself its "fun" because you have trained your brain to release dopamine when you do it and can't tell the difference being joy and dopamine the same way a crack addict can't tell the difference between chemical stimulation and actual joy.