The Immoral Design of Diablo Immortal

in this video i'm going to show you a great game built on a terrible foundation i'll show you how you can spend 20 pounds to condense six months worth of free-to-play farming into three minutes and how even if you do buy the 30-day item pack you might not actually get the 30-day item pack i'll show you the secret mathematical and psychological tricks the game uses to get you to spend money including abusive pricing structures multiple layers of rng and the 22 different in-game currencies i'll explain how diablo immortal has got around the legal definition of lootbox by adding in a single gameplay step despite being functionally the same process i'll explain how diablo immortal is essentially a gacha game and has hidden whale mechanics you can't even find until you've invested enough money that they are sure they've got you and then i'll lament over how if you removed all of this it's actually a very good game let's start with the basics video game critique especially on the internet can be a difficult thing to balance fans of any game want you to praise it and can become angered when you point out flaws and people who dislike the game love it when you point at flaws and hate it when you praise it this is because video game communities contain very passionate people both for and against any game or company and both extreme sides are often reading reviews or watching videos looking for confirmation bias not actual critique most people want to be told what they already strongly believe is correct the for and against diablo immortal camps have already sprung up with some people focusing on the absurd cash shop and others saying you don't need to pay it's a free game just don't spend any money the cash shop critics point out the blatant pay for advantage systems and daily login rewards encouraging addictive gameplay patterns along with the loot box style gameplay so egregious it's already been pre-emptively banned in two countries for falling foul of the eu gambling laws and the game supporters reply with a well-rehearsed well i'm having fun it hasn't affected me i'll be discussing the damage this general attitude is doing to the gaming industry as a whole later the truth is diablo immortal is an excellent gameplay experience with solid moment-to-moment combat and super enjoyable hack and slash multiplayer moments absolutely overshadowed by a foundation level insidious monetization system designed to make every aspect of the game funnel the player towards spending an absolutely unacceptable amount of money but this goes deeper than just one game so in this video i'll not only deeply critique diablo immortal but also the behaviors of an industry and how we as players can set the boundaries for what we will and will not accept in relation to monetization i'll show you the deep psychological and mathematical tricks games companies are using to turn video games from products you purchase and enjoy because they're designed to be fun into processes they want you to become stuck within and then keep paying for because they're designed to be inviting and then addictive i'll also be contrasting the design decisions within diablo immortal to blizzard's own code of conduct and ethics on their own website and we'll see if diablo immortal as a game lives up to blizzard's own self-imposed standards grab a drink because this is quite a long video ladies and gentlemen welcome i'm josh drivas and today we're going to look at the diabolically immoral diablo immortal a big thank you to all the supporters on patreon and twitch who allow me to remain independent and make videos like this i'll be looking at the general gameplay plot and combat then into the absolute plethora of monetization tricks the game uses including gentle onboarding limited time offers causing fear of missing out abusive pricing structures multiple steps of conversion multiple stacking monthly subs cumulative login days being required for paid for rewards multiple progression tracks and just straight up locking the main aspects diablo is known for dopamine spiking loot fountains shooting out of a boss behind a paywall now diablo as a franchise is no stranger to monetization controversy when diablo 3 released it had an actual money in-game marketplace players could sell their drops or buy drops from other players for actual cash this was removed relatively quickly after extreme community backlash as players pointed out it was against the spirit of diablo the end game gameplay of diablo revolves around repeatedly killing high intensity bosses as they increase in difficulty for the chance of a rare drop if you could just buy the rare drop you'd be defeating the main gameplay loop and removing the sense of pride and accomplishment which comes with having those rare drops diablo 3 released on pc and console in may of 2012 and six years later in 2018 at blizzcon players were excited to hear news about diablo 4 but what they got was diablo immortal a mobile game and that gave us this absolute classic moment in gaming history is there any plans to make this playable on pc or is this a strictly mobile forever uh are there any uh yeah this the current plan is to be on mobile both uh android and ios uh we don't have any plans at moment to do a pc [Music] do you guys not have phones yeah you guys i think it's important to realize blizzcon is attended by blizzard's biggest fans mostly pc gamers warcraft world of warcraft starcraft diablo and overwatch have massive pc player bases so very few of these people were actively excited about a mobile game the people in that room wanted a game which would push their hardcore gaming pcs to the max and not be full of traditional mobile microtransactions and time gating mechanics in june of 2022 diablo immortal released on mobile and went into open beta on pc the pc version is a port of the mobile game and still features such lines as tap to play the game does feature cross platform play so mobile and pc players can adventure together provided they're on the same server because it does not have cross server play so i downloaded the game on pc and gave it a go the first warning cry from everyone said the game can track your face through your phone app or your webcam now this rumor began when the installation files were opened up and people found face detector and face analyzer.dll some people said the game has face tracking capabilities because it's required for release in china to conform to the strict gaming laws however the lead dev adam fletcher explains that actually leftover files from an early idea in diablo immortal's development originally the game would let you recreate your own facial expression on your character by using your own camera this idea has been abandoned because it was terrible the intro movie plays tyrial talks about the world stone some greater evil and then we get this absolute banger of a line if humanity is to survive they must stand together and face the rising darkness i find it beautifully ironic that diablo immortal opens with a call for players to rally together against a rising evil and the main thing it's inspired people to do is come together against its atrocious pricing model what a better way to succeed get told to tap the screen because porting mobile games to pc is hard and then choose a class six classes i'm going with my edgy boy the demon hunter the customization is actually really nice we move some sliders unfortunately these do not matter at all because you'll never look at your own face or any other character's face where then on a boat to worth them the game is fully voiced and it's not terribly acted gone through hell you say i'm in the right place then i follow the road and be on your guard unfortunate things happen to travelers in that forest movement is wasd or left click primary attacking is also left click but you'll only attack when your cursor is over an enemy this can mean clicking to move especially in a crowd of enemies is a bad idea because she'll end up attacking instead of moving it also means you'll frequently lose your cursor in the chaos of battle and end up randomly running around or attacking off to the side somewhere while you try and find it again it also means once you've killed whatever it was you were attacking if you continue holding down left leg you'll start running toward that location your other skills are bound to the two three and four keys we'll look at combat later because honestly it's great if you've never played a diablo game here's a basic rundown demons exist and you'd really rather they didn't you can realize your dream of a demon-free world through the power of friendship and incredible violence eventually angels get involved but the power of heaven is nothing compared to the power of one angry man with an axe or a moody guy with some crossbows one thing i do have to praise the game for is capturing the feeling of diablo while being made in a completely different engine diablo 3 was created in a customized version of the havoc engine while diablo immortal is made in nettie's own messiah engine they've managed to capture the feeling of movement skill use and attack impact spot on kill enemies and pick up loot annoying you can't click on an item's name plate you have to click on the item itself your inventory is the classic diablo style of a square grid with larger items taking up multiple grid slots as you fight on enemies will drop red health orbs or blue manor orbs sometimes power up orbs like increased speed or lightning damage along with this you have three health potions which recharge when you kill enemies this game design lends itself to fast aggressive combat encountered because you are rewarded for being aggressive so the energy is always high we make our way to the town of wertham get followed through a portal by some demon and told trust me mate once i explain the monetization you definitely will we head into the chapel and meet our old friend deckard kane so we decide to stay a while and listen my name is deckard kane i'm a bit of a traveling scholar one might say basically hell's coming back and we're going to prevent it with the power of crossbows fight some cultists to the west and discover sometimes the left mouse button gets stuck down even if you're not clicking making your character follow the cursor and other times it just doesn't register possibly lag but honestly in two days of near constant play i didn't experience that many connection issues kill a dragon thing and find a shard of the world stone magical mcguffins hell really wants and we need to destroy think of them like demonic batteries and like regular batteries you shouldn't throw them in the regular bin so we're on a quest to find a responsible way to dispose of them kane tells us the demon we're fighting is called scarn this means we're now at threat level midnight so we set off to destroy more of the shards of the world stone before hell can plug them into more demons quick intro video explains the map and we're sent off to help someone with something in the game asks hey you want to spend 89p for some orbs and a weapons skin i'm going to keep track of every time the game gives me the opportunity to spend money this is the first and i'm going to do a deep dive into the currencies and the systems they relate to later on in this video once you have a few quests you'll get the quest list on the left click on a quest to select it and you'll see a sparkling footstep path leading you to it if you're far enough into an area you'll unlock auto navigation within that area using auto navigate will either run or automatically teleport you to the nearest teleport point and then run the rest of the way i also discover the first kill of the day award so let's rip this band-aid off right now diablo immortal is a mobile game and is designed to build habits to create attachment and to encourage daily replay you have an oppressive number of tracked systems login rewards first kill awards advancement paths some free some paid some upgradable you have achievements and advancements through every single zone and rewards for killing enough monsters and doing enough dungeons and each of these systems is tracked on a different screen with a different ui and it's made this way by design you're not meant to be able to remember everything you have to do so the game can give you these little red gem icons to the top right of buttons to remind you you have something to collect and you'll often find yourself spending more time in endless menus collecting rewards than you will in an actual rift we chase down some mage we watch her throw a dude off a bridge and then meet this guard who says this on a day certainly didn't expect to get choked by some death mage when i left the stead this morning none of us wake up expecting to be choked by a death mage but sometimes you just get lucky and it happens to interact with another player hold alt and left click on them you can send messages friend requests and party invitations but you cannot directly trade player to player because trading is done via the auction house and requires the premium currency of platinum to do quick pc issue this is the salvage menu where you turn your unwanted equipment into scrap the mouse wheel does not move this window you need to click and drag if you're going to release on pc please let us use the scroll wheel also consider using right click because as it stands right click does absolutely nothing a free daily reward pack accessed via the shop menu this is a psychological marketing trick if you're going to give the player something for free make sure to claim it they have to access a place where there is paid stuff because then they will see the paid stuff every day and if they're returning to this screen for their free daily pack it's only a matter of time until someone gets tempted to spend money you're not putting this free pack here because it makes logistical sense you're putting it here because it's tempting i then get a free cosmetic set sent to me in the mail everyone gets this it's to celebrate 30 million pre-registrations 30 million pre-registrations if you ever wonder why mobile games are so pushed it's because the horrible truth is the mobile gaming market is bigger than the pc and console gaming market combined as you progress through the main story you'll unlock bounties an open world hunting system hunt down certain enemies and get increased rewards for killing them you can claim eight bounties a day from the bounty board my current bounty target is philip so the plan is grab mom kill phil go to the winchester have a nice cold pint and wait for all this to blow over i'm picking up new equipment every few minutes and on the inventory screen there's a handy dandy green arrow showing you if a new piece is better than an old piece many people will tell you that diablo begins at 60 because until then you'll be finding upgrades so quickly you won't even read the name or look at the stats of any individual bit you'll just do as the green arrow commands but if you're a free player i would argue the real game begins around level 35 when the leveling suddenly slows to a crawl but we'll see more of that later i unlock the extremely awesome grapple skill letting me blast around the battlefield like a more violent spider-man and global chat has descended into an argument about pay to win versus free to play so while i'm madly grappling around let me make my stance on this game rather clear no one has said they expect this game to be 100 free no one expects any video game to have no way to make money whatsoever indeed if it was a one-time paid game with a cosmetic only cash shop i'd be recommending this to everyone no one has an issue with diablo immortal attempting to make money we know that development time and server hosting costs money the issue i have is the way it is making it and the position it is putting players into if they don't pay the game is not a product because a product is usually released finished and then sold for the cost the company think it is worth if that cost is fair people will pay it and then that process is complete diablo immortal is a process itself of downloading playing and advancing and it wants players to stay within that process as long as possible because unlike a product which is sold once a process can contain many moments it encourages the player to pay and each individual payment may only be small but they very quickly add up to greater than the cost of a one-time purchase when i talk about the payment issues people respond with a well-rehearsed retort of well i'm having fun and i think it's vital if you do respond with while i'm having fun good we are all glad no one wants you to stop having fun what we want is the company to treat you better if your attitude is i don't care about the money i'm just focusing on the game then please understand we're actually advocating for the company to have the same attitude as you focus on making the game as fun as it can be and people will buy it because it's fun not because you've designed it to be as close to fun as possible so it keeps players around but not too much fun that they can enjoy it completely without paying blizzard's first what we stand for is gameplay first which literally says to make our games as fun as possible we're not saying diablo immortal shouldn't be monetized we're saying it shouldn't be abusively monetized we push on and go and kill the auric because it's not a real diablo game until you've killed leoric during this part i unlock the battle pass and the boon of plenty in the shot and when i finish the lyric dungeon i'm presented with the exciting opportunity to spend more money to buy the mad king's breech bundle a one-time reward specific to this dungeon your reward for finishing a dungeon is the opportunity to spend money this happens in every dungeon and you'll notice the costs of the pack slowly increase because it's only 89p when you finish one dungeon that's fine but once you've spent 89p you're invested which means they can make things more and more expensive until they stop giving you any real discount for buying the dungeon packs but you're still doing it because by then not buying it would be wasting the money you've previously spent this is effectively the sunk cost fallacy twitter user mr gm made this mock-up of a picture just imagine if finishing a dungeon for the first time in world of warcraft rewarded you with the opportunity to spend money to unlock extra rewards i'm going to come back to this later and fully explain the battle pass and boon of plenty because when you read the fine print it is even worse than it seems the demon effect under the glass floor however is awesome and the boss fight itself is great more story we kill left s but not really who's lethas you ask no one cares doesn't matter the story in a diablo game is background music it's set dressing many times you'll be introduced to a character go on a quest with them then watch them die in a heart-wrenching hero's death they'll sacrifice themselves for a greater cause and you're expected to care and i'm thinking mate i've known you 10 minutes the only reason i remember your name is because it's above your head while you're dying we now unlock legendary gem crafting and this is the system we'll be pouring most of our wallet into later we now learn about sockets gems elder rifts and crests so this is probably the time to talk about the game's main system the elder riffs and how they're going to cost you an incredible amount of money to do efficiently in fact if you complete one rift every 5 minutes and want the best loot from them you'll be spending around 240 pounds an hour to grind this game let me break that down for you while diablo immortal does have a main campaign storyline and indeed you are required to finish this to unlock the hell plus difficulty in rifts the majority of your gameplay both grinding and post story will be in an elder rift an elder rift is a procedurally generated dungeon you can enter solo or in a team of up to four there is a party finding mechanic but remember it's cross platform play not cross server as we discovered when callum upton a fellow youtuber and good friend of mine made a character currently there is no way to transfer your character from one server to another you just need to restart while in a rift you'll see a timer to the left the little hourglass symbol moves along the bar from left to right as you kill enemies the bar itself fills up when the bar is full the boss will spawn kill the boss before the timer runs out to get the loot leave and repeat this is the absolute core of the pve diablo experience grind enemies for better equipment to grind enemies better but before you start a rift you can choose to add in crests either normal or legendary adding crests increases the chance higher rarity loot will drop from the boss kill you can see the potential loot increase as you add crests now seeing as the crest screen shows three empty slots on the right hand side and shows zero out of three you'd assume that each player can add up to three crests well no they can add way more but it's hidden and we'll come to that later loot in diablo immortal is personal no other player can steal your rare or legendary loot now adding in legendary crests as a player always guarantees you a legendary item but it does also give a slight boost to the other players in your party and increases their chance to receive runestones or fading embers both intermediate upgrade currencies this has led to the rather toxic situation of parties kicking players who aren't using crest because they feel those non-cresting players are not paying their way using crests always benefits you and sometimes helps the party you cannot lose your drop potential to another player but to truly understand the absolute insidious nature of how powerful these legendary crests are and why they are considered pay to win and how much money you can end up spending on them we need to understand how the other currency systems work because the crests feed into almost everything else so we need to take a look at the very foundation of the monetization system for context now the game itself is a tangled web of interwoven systems which all relate to each other and it's designed that way to hide the actual monetary cost of any single system because of this spider web design it's very difficult to find a starting point so hold on because this might get complicated while i break it down i have so far experienced in diablo immortal 22 different currencies and raw materials used to feed into various shops and upgrade systems they are gold dropped from enemies used in upgrading equipment eternal orbs premium buyable currency used for buying things in the shop platinum used in the market board for posting and buying items player to player bought with eternal orbs battle points used to progress the battle pass and earn the battle pass rewards earned by completing rifts dungeons or bought directly with eternal orbs scrap materials used to upgrade items earned from salvaging unneeded equipment at the blacksmith hilts spend the hilt merchant on limited monthly or weekly stock earned by progressing the battle pass normal gems combines to upgrade non-legendary gems bought from the hilt merchant found in rifts when using normal crest and made by combining runes at the apprentice jewellers runes dropped in rifts when you are using crests or someone in your party is using a legendary crest i have so far found 21 different runes garnet sapphire and beryl three gems which all combine to upgrade the legacy of the haradrim a system which you unlock once you're level 49 and have completed 10 challenge rifts crests improve rift drops slightly you get one free a day bought from the hilt merchant sometimes earned on the battle pass legendary crests improve rift drops by a lot and guarantee a legendary bought from the cash shop for orbs or found in the premium shop dungeon chest unlocked after you finish that dungeon you can also buy one a month from the hilt merchant using in-game currency or earn two on the battle pass the sigil of dominance advances your immortal standing a higher level end game faction enchanted dust and upgrade material used on higher level item upgrades found by salvaging rare equipment reinforcing stones re-rolling attributes on equipment bought in the cash shop aspirant's keys unlock rare chests in dungeons earnable on the battle pass scoria found when fighting heliquery demons and refined into hellfire scoria at the blacksmith hellfire scoria upgrades the hella query a repository of demonic power you add to by defeating demons and provides you passive buffs legendary gem fragments which combine into legendary gems found in riffs when crests are used and also sometimes on the battle pass enigmatic crystals upgrades your secondary slot items found in challenge riffs and bought from the materials vendor for scrap pieces monster essence upgrades the heradoric altar dropped by monsters in the overworld randomly fading embers earned from riffs and used to buy basic gems at the merchants and echo crystals bought from the crystal merchant for 500 platinum and used to upgrade runes beyond level 5. so 22 currencies and upgrade materials most of them linked directly to the progression of the battle pass which itself requires battle points which are farmed most efficiently by completing rifts so now we can go back and look at legendary crests and this is where it gets both psychologically and mathematically abusive legendary crests are sold in the shop for orbs orbs are bought in specific pack sizes a legendary crashed costs 160 orbs the shop sells orbs in packs of 60 or 315. there are higher but let's look at these for now 60 is too few and 315 is only five orbs shy of 320 which is how many we need to afford two legendary crests this is by design when a player opens the shop and they've already committed to buying something the game doesn't want you to consider how much you're buying but how much you need for the next efficient purchase because that's always going to be a much lower number so a player won't think i'm buying 315 orbs they'll think i'm only five orbs short of two crests so they'll look into the larger 899 pack which has 630 orbs that may seem like a random number to add but it's remarkably specific because four legendary crests at 160 orbs each costs 640 orbs meaning even with that pack you're now 10 short but that's only 10 you may as well buy the bigger pack which only costs 22 pounds and gets you 1 650 orbs a player isn't thinking i've just bought 1650 they're thinking i only need five and then i only need 10. and once you've bought the 1650 wouldn't you know it there's actually a button on the legendary crest screen to buy 10 crests for 1 600 orbs super convenient it's almost like everything is designed to flow into buying that 22 pound orb pack and then spending that on ten legendary crests so now you have ten crests because you've been able to justify only needing five then only needing ten this is abusive pricing now adding a crest to a rift increases the drops a little and adding a legendary guarantees a decent drop the shop even explains adding a legendary is guaranteed to reward a legendary gem that can be sold on the market now you need platinum for the market but don't worry about that right now you've got ten crests you start to rift and you see three crest slots this means you'll be able to run three riffs on maxed crests and have one left over right well no because if you do put three legendary crests into those slots a new option appears an option you will never find until you do this it asks hey want to add another seven for the maxed enhanced elder rift experience there is no way to even find out that you can add 10 legendary crests in game until you add the first three and isn't it convenient that 10 crests can be added in a single run and the orb pack size that's most convenient psychologically was designed to make you buy 10 crests but what actually happens if you add 10 crests to a run callum upton and myself spent two days playing this game as free players seeing how far we could progress without spending any money and at around level 35 the experience required to level up increases sharply in the first day i went from level 1 to 40. and in a second day of nothing but endless grinding i went from 40 to 49. during a stream after two hours of elder rift runs averaging about five minutes per run and only seeing a few rare items a viewer donated callum 20 pounds on the agreement callum would spend it on 10 legendary crests and use them just to see the loot difference here's a compilation of boss drops without using any crests this is the average experience a free player will have when they finish a rift and here's what a boss kill looks like when you have 10 legendary crests active right nothing legendary yet but um what the [ __ ] how many two legendaries three what the four so what oh my god the average free player will be able to earn ten crests in about five to six months worth of casual play buying one a month from the hilt merchant and earning one from the free battle pass layer so what you have just seen using ten legendary crests on a single run is essentially six months worth of three player legendary crest loot potential condensed into a single chest diablo is known for dopamine spiking loot fountains like that killing a boss and watching loot explode is quintessential diablo design and that exact experience in diablo immortal will cost you 20 pounds a time that rift took us 5 minutes to complete meaning you can complete about 12 rifts an hour if you 10 crest every rift at 20 pounds each you are spending 240 pounds an hour and even if you were mad enough to do that you are not guaranteed the drop you actually want as this streamer discovered spending five thousand dollars and not ending up with a level five legendary gem quick update on that as writing the script and editing these videos takes a few days and that new story has since changed that streamer has now spent ten thousand dollars and still has no five star legendary gem but it gets even more insidious because there are laws requiring loot boxes in games to show the odds of any item received in that loot box what rifts are is essentially just loot boxes with some gameplay before the loot but that timer means that technically completing a rift does require a base level of skill and this skill requirement means it's not gambling per se and because of this very important distinction diablo immortal does not have to list the drop percent chance of any individual item from a boss drop if you could just put the legendary crests into a box they would have to tell you but if you put the crests into a rift attempt play the rift and then get the box that single step of intermediate gameplay means they can avoid the loot box label but if you do fail a rift while the crests are active those crests are returned to you you don't lose them meaning one crest will always ultimately open the effective loot box of a boss kill now it might seem a little bit strange to be able to put one two three or 10 crests in it's quite the jump but the 10 pull is a common trope in gacha games being able to draw one or draw 10 from a random gacha chance game is a classic design choice it can actually help to think of diablo immortal as a gacha game they've just replaced the animation of the opening of the box with five minutes worth of gameplay to really enhance the tension of that drop legendary crests are effectively keys to loot boxes the rift itself is the process of getting to the loot box and this process means it doesn't have to show you the drop rates but we're not even close to the final level of monetization and it's hidden in the awful fine print finishing a rift gets you battle points and these unlock the battle pass system this is a linear track with rewards unlocked as you advance through it there are two layers to this track advancing simultaneously the free and the empowered both run at the same time so whenever you unlock a free reward you're reminded of what's waiting for you if you were empowered unlocking the empowered track costs 4.99 and comes with some cosmetics or you can go for the collector's empowered unlock and get not only cosmetics but instantly boost 10 ranks ahead of where you are now the developers have repeatedly said you cannot buy power or items in diablo immortal directly this is because you have to buy orbs and then use the orbs to buy crests and then run riffs with the crest to get the drops there are steps between money and item and this is how they justify it however buying the empowered collector's battle pass costs 13 pounds and boosts you 10 ranks along now the rank 10 reward is a legendary offhand weapon so how is this not paying for equipment well because the legendary offhand weapon is the free track reward you can pay to boost to get it instantly but they will argue that's not what you're paying for that's the free player reward too but you still have to play the game to gain the battle orbs from rifts and dungeons to level up the battle pass right well no if you click rank up you can just spend orbs to instantly boost your battle pass to maximum unlocking all the rewards instantly i've managed to grind to battle pass rank 13 for free with 27 ranks left to go boosting to maximum would cost me 4 4050 orbs meaning i'd still need to spend over 65 pounds on orbs to skip the grind and remember all of this is battle pass season 1. so if you aren't able to finish the battle pass legitimately before season 2 releases you might be tempted to pay real money to boost to get the final rewards and when the second season comes out get ready to unlock and pay to skip again but the battle pass isn't the only paid for progression system there is a worse one this is the boon of plenty this advertises itself as a 30-day membership with daily login rewards and some mechanical boosts such as more inventory slots and being able to access the market board from anywhere it costs 8.99 but what i'm interested in is the way the login rewards are distributed the boon of plenty says that you get these total rewards over 30 days but let's read the fine print and see how it actually works the boon of plenty can be purchased multiple times stacking up to 90 days of daily gifts daily gifts can only be claimed while the boon of plenty is active otherwise they will be lost so if you have a boon of plenty active and you log in every day for seven days you'll get one regular crest a day for a total of seven but if you fail to log in for those days and you only log in on the seventh day you won't have a stack of crests waiting for you you'll just get the one for that day the missed days are effectively lost so paying 8.99 doesn't get you all of this stuff it gets you the chance to get all of this stuff provided you keep logging in but here's where it gets super scummy extra gifts can be claimed every five cumulative login days cumulative login days carry over to the next boon of plenty period and then it gives you a list of which gifts are handed out on cumulative days a single legendary crest at 5 10 and 15 a legendary and a legendary gem at 20 and 25 and then two legendary crests at 30. so things aren't evenly spaced being given two crests on 30 cumulative login days matters because if you miss a login day you effectively miss that reward and you will lose it until you buy more boons of plenty think of it like this if you have a boon of plenty active and you log in every day for 30 days on the 30th day you'll get two legendary crests but if you miss a single day in that 30 day period when you log in and the boon isn't active your two legendary crests from the first boon are held until you log in for one more day it's not consecutive it's cumulative meaning in total so if you miss a single day in the 30-day period you now need to buy another 30 days to make the boon active again and continue logging in to add days to the cumulative tracker don't think of the boon of plenty as the rewards it shows you think of it as you are paying for the privilege for your days to count toward cumulative rewards you are effectively paying to be involved in a fear of missing out process when i say diablo immortal is not a product to be sold it is a process to be involved in this is exactly what i mean this is why they sell them in sets of three stacking up to 90 days because they know people will miss a day and they won't realize hang on i've got rewards being held back until that 90 days is up this is why they lock two legendary crests on the 30th log in day if you spend 8.99 and then miss a single day you're now in a position of buy another 30 day boon or lose out on a valuable reward you've been working towards this is quite simply one of the most abusively designed systems i've ever seen in a game it is stunningly anti-player it looks like you pay 8.99 to get these things when you're actually paying 8.99 for the opportunity to have your login days count toward earning these things but we are still not done once you hit level 45 and have progressed through the main story enough you'll unlock another reward progression system the prodigy's path think of it like another battle pass but it doesn't have seasons with the prodigies path system you gain rewards every five levels then when you hit the max level of 60 you'll gain rewards every five paragon levels up to 85 but just as with the battle pass there is a free path and then the adjacent paid path and it costs 18 pounds to unlock the paid prodigies path reward side but we're still not done there is one final revelation by now you've probably seen the number one hundred and ten thousand dollars being thrown around this is the figure the gaming news wants you to believe that youtuber belyala arrived at when he tried to work out how much it would cost to max a diablo immortal character despite the fact he never actually arrived at that figure specifically he was discussing how much it could potentially cost to max out a character and the total cost of one hundred thousand dollars was mentioned as a potential bailout himself even tweets out we talked about a claim a redditer made eugeno's picked that up claimed we said it and then spread it across the internet whatever the final figure actually is leveling all six of your legendary gems up because you can only equip one of each type of gem will take a hell of a lot of reagents remember you need equal level gems to funnel into a single gem to level it up meaning it does get exponentially more expensive to do but the absolute worst design choice the most anti-player design possible in this monetization madness is that everything the battle pass your enhanced membership of it your progress along it your legendary gems your prodigies path your membership of that the haradric alter the monstrous essence stash your platinum for the market board and your collected gold the regular crests and legendary crests which remember cost 20 pounds a time to 10 crest a rift in fact every single thing except the abusively priced eternal orbs all of it is per character per account if you want to have multiple characters you will be paying for all of this for all of them and that includes cosmetics so if you spend 20 pounds to unlock a cosmetic outfit you only get it on the character you buy it for all of this has caused players to review bomb the game and drop its metacritic score down to 0.5 making it blizzard's lowest rated game of all time despite this it has so far made six million dollars in the first few days so now i've played for a few days and i've looked into the systems behind it what's the actual verdict the truth is that two seemingly contradictory things can both be equally valid diablo immortal is an extremely fun game to play the combat's great the bosses are flashy i enjoyed my time playing the battle system is great the synergy between the classes is nice and the set and legendary items affecting your skills makes for a wide selection of viable builds running solo is fun running in a group is super enjoyable but i am someone with a great deal of self-control when it comes to money it is indeed fun but it is also insidiously developed from the ground up to funnel every player action toward the cash shop someone said to me just turn your brain off and play and while i understand the sentiment of enjoy the flashing lights and loud noises i am someone who enjoys engaging their brain and solving the puzzle of the game the puzzle of min maxing the puzzle of build variety and team composition i enjoy having to engage my brain to beat a game but if you do that with diablo immortal you will ask yourself lots of questions and the answer to every question is the credit card and if you're still thinking well i've been having fun great so have i your fun is not invalid no one wants you to stop having fun we want the game industry to treat you better we want the game industry to put a little more focus into making the game fun and a little less into making it predatory i feel it's our responsibility as youtubers to hold these companies to account and maybe focus on making the game fun not spending time working out how you can get around the definition of lootbox and if you think diablo isn't gambling remember it's already been banned in belgium and the netherlands for falling foul of the eu gambling laws but has diablo immortal lived up to the expectations that blizzard have set for themselves on blizzard's website on the about section you can find eight what we stand for sections the two that i think stand out the most are gameplay first and lead responsibly in the gameplay first section it says it is our job to make our games as fun as possible for as many people as we can reach i do not believe diablo immortal is designed to be as fun as possible i believe it's been designed to be as fun as it needs to be to keep people playing and then monetized the next self-imposed standard is lead responsibly which at the bottom says we are committed to making ethical decisions always keeping our players in mind and setting a strong example of professionalism and excellence at all times i cannot believe that decisions were made in diablo immortal with the players in mind i believe they were made with the payers in mind paul tassie of forbes writes diablo immortal is 10 times worse than gentian impact in the article he says even compared to other mobile titles diablo immortal is going above and beyond with its microtransactions in a way that's far far worse than most other games in this genre diablo immortal is quite simply an excellent gameplay experience destroyed by being completely infested with predatory systems designed to make you spend more money than is acceptable it is the rotten corpse of diablo covered in good-looking clothes it deserves to make money but not like this it deserves praise for the good parts but you cannot ignore its anti-player design so i do actually agree with diablo immortals opening cut scene we as players do need to stand together against the rising evil that rising evil diablo is you thank you very much for watching another massive thank you to all the supporters on patreon and twitch who keep the channel alive you can support from only one pound a month check the video description for links to the patreon twitch twitter and our discord and as always have a great day

Channel: Josh Strife Hayes

Views: 2,693,570

Keywords: mmo podcast, mmo discussion, mmo design, mmorpg youtuber, mmo news

Id: o17lBUZgjTs

Length: 44min 22sec (2662 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 09 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/RennyNanaya]

his follow-up video about an even more insidious feature is a must watch as well. It elevates from "this is abusive" to bordering on "this is a straight attempt to scam people"

Edit: link to the follow-up. https://youtu.be/YF--ytWn8mU

[u/Yakassa]

Blizzard is just beyond salvation. The game seems to have been developed by the same amount of scumbag lawyers and (also scumbag) Psychologists as game devs.

As someone who has seen many younger adults completely and totally fall for these shit games and ruin their lives and future because of them. I wish nothing but pure misery to the execs of blizzard.

I have nothing but hatred for this Scum.

[u/ANiceWonder]

As a D2 veteran, it saddens me to see the game turn out like this. I really hope this game flops.

[u/akjvha]

As a gamer since the 80's it is so utterly depressing to see the direction gaming is evolving. I am actually speechless. What we are witnessing here is the death of gaming as we used to know it. Blizzard should be utterly utterly ashamed of themselves. They helped to develop the PC as a gaming platform, now they killed it.

[u/noahhmltn]

What I wouldn't give to hear TotalBiscuit's view on all this. He would have torn Blizzard apart.

[u/Entropy_5]

This Youtuber (Josh Strife Hayes) has great commentary on his channel. I especially love the stuff he does with Callum Upton.

[u/GoingMenthol]

Reject Diablo modernity, embrace Titan Quest tradition

[u/tututitlookslikerain]

All these videos keep saying things like "a good game is hiding under here" and having not played it, yeah it looks exactly like Diablo 3.

If you want to play Diablo Immortal, why not play diablo 3? It's the same game?

Maybe other people can explain why it's not. But ffs, it looks like D3, but with shittier graphics. I don't even understand why someone would want to play the game to begin with.

[u/Star_Tropic]

So sad that we can basically expect all of this to be on D4 as well.