Diablo Immortal

Let me know when you have determined why the 2nd Diablo 3 expansion was cancelled-- over what amounted to a remnant of negative press from the Diablo 3 launch.

jayrebb said:

Purse strings are going to tighten up. The point is Genshin Impact was stroked off by the gaming press. Genshin might not be an established IP, but it has "mass appeal". Diablo, just the name alone, is squeezing it out of the candycrush crew. So rather than developers appeasing the masses and doing something to quell the backlash, execs @ Activision just close up the bag and call it a day. That's Blizzard's style.

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What is suprising is Genshin now is an established IP and it hasnt even been around for 2 years yet. Was listening to a podcast and the hosts went to MCM con in London which is basically England comic con, they were shocked that 1/3 of the cosplayers are Genshin characters. At this point there are probably more fans into Genshin then into Blizzard games.

AladainAF said:

What's shocking about this?

Bottom line: They knew their audience, and did character development that they knew full well would be attractive to that audience.

Blizzard, on the other hand, has a "Do you not have phones?" moment with theirs.

It's no surprise Genshin has the following it does. But it's not the game that is the appeal of the masses, it's the characters. Even I think genshin characters are extremely likable and I can't stand the game.

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If you told me 10 years ago that a Chinese developer that makes gacha games is more well received and like compared to Blizzard. I would not believe you. Now in 2022 this is the case, so it is shocking to me. Blizzard is now below Chinese gacha games in terms of goodwill.

Here is the clip from the podcast where they talk about how popular it is getting at conventions.

jayrebb said:

Let me know when you have determined why the 2nd Diablo 3 expansion was cancelled-- over what amounted to a remnant of negative press from the Diablo 3 launch.

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Its a controlled demolition of things that based nerdy dudes loved. I see them doing it to TW3 because it hit a certain level of greatness.

You dont go from this:



To this:



by accident or not realize how much of a turn off its going to be to actual enthusiasts.

Tuco said:

These are the words of a person deranged by loot boxes.

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They opened it up to 3-4 lootboxes a month, and 1 lootbox per week, instead of just 1 lootbox per month. Blizzard probably had to fight NetEase hard for it as they have final say on monetization.

An improvement for FTP but gem power remains fully paywalled.

Which was something that YouTube content creators missed in their reviews. You're guaranteed at least "some" gem power if you do choose to spend money, but the amount of gem power you get per dollar is nothing worth talking about. A creator could have done a spreadsheet using a 100 crests purchased and used the % chance for gems, then calculate how much gem power you could get at minimum if they wanted to expose the so-called "pay2win" system.

There isn't a lot of winning. Just paying. It was never about getting a 5 star gem. Even powering a 1 star gem costs quite a bit of money.

Glad you are getting caught up on the thread though. We learned Cheng can call shots on D4, which is relevant to your interests (D4).

Pay vs Pay is the reason they've raked in $100 million in 8 weeks.

To cross threads a bit, look at the phenomena and money involved in simps for thots and the revenue of onlyfans etc...... now apply that to young/old/women/ others that had at least some pride not to pay that much for nekkid pictures and upgrade it to the relative shameless paying for a video game mentality.

I hate how they stand on "Every aspect of the game is fully free to access" as a justification for whatever they do with the cash shop.

And there is no way to grind gem power in a normal MMO fashion. If gem power wasn't fully paywalled I'd let it slide.

They are slowly opening up to allowing FTP to grind Legendary crests.

However, they are NOWHERE NEAR addressing the gem power situation and the immense paywall on that aspect of the game. They need to boost player ability to obtain gem power by 50% over the current FTP rate.

All of Blizzard's mea culpas so far with Immortal have been "Oh alright, you guys can grind Legendary crests for a chance at 5 star gems for free. We are going to add more systems for players to grind these crests every week, including special events,, but not too significantly all at once. But it's going to be several".

Cool, keep it coming. Get it up to a dozen, two dozen crests a month for FTP.

Get some end game content in the game ASAP, meaningful POE style bosses, expand PvP system to include direct 4v4 competition queues without having to play a shitty event like Vault. Let shadow guilds queue to fight each other outside of the brackets during normal play. Add a reward system for the proposed shadow clan 4v4 skirmish arena grinds (Hilts is fine if they can expand the use of hilts) And then expand itemization somehow besides the current braindead leveling a gem to rank 10 and then having to get the wallet out for Awakens on gear. Then maybe you will make 200m instead of 100m in 8 weeks.

More than half the game isn't spending any money at all according to Ybarra. He won't disclose the exact amount of players that don't spend. But he cited it as "most of the players we have do not spend". Someone made a joke out of it and posted on the interview "Correction, most of your players no longer play the game." Both true. They could have made a system that isn't insulting players who actually do pay for things, and gotten those holdouts to spend the cost of a WoW mount. They just didn't care enough. Hypercompetitive whales will not carry this game out past 2 months.

jayrebb said:

More than half the game isn't spending any money at all according to Ybarra. He won't disclose the exact amount of players that don't spend. But he cited it as "most of the players we have do not spend". Someone made a joke out of it and posted on the interview "Correction, most of your players no longer play the game." Both true. They could have made a system that isn't insulting players who actually do pay for things, and gotten those holdouts to spend the cost of a WoW mount. They just didn't care enough. Hypercompetitive whales will not carry this game out past 2 months.

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You know there are multi-billion dollar gaming companies made that way on a 1-2% monetization rate of their users, right? FTP players are content for playing players. Content Blizzard is trying to monetize. You seem to have an insane expectation of the conversion rate, though.

If you can get a 50% conversion rate on a FTP mobile game, you'd be the next Elon Musk.

OneofOne said:

You know there are multi-billion dollar gaming companies made that way on a 1-2% monetization rate of their users, right? FTP players are content for playing players. Content Blizzard is trying to monetize. You seem to have an insane expectation of the conversion rate, though.

If you can get a 50% conversion rate on a FTP mobile game, you'd be the next Elon Musk.

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Ybarra won't release the numbers so it's all conjecture. "most" could mean 51% or it could mean 98-99%

Point being current Immortal players on this forum all know people who drop money on a WoW carry and WoW mounts, that can't justify any money on Immortal, despite playing both. They didn't go after existing spenders within the Blizzard sphere, and damaged brand goodwill in the process. It's been said, but if you see a Battlepass on D4-- it's an automatic no from the community since Immortal tipped their hand.

Prior they might have considered it. The insult runs deep is likely bad for business long term.

If you whale too much it breaks the game.