That’s fair enough & I definitely agree that when there’s a sniff of money around it’s a good idea to take things with a pinch of salt. I guess I trust Ziz in this & he was quite clear on his stance on pay 2 win (he mentioned it several times) & I then watched a few other videos from other people on the matter.
Yeah. For me it depends on how the subject is presented. Imho it is possible to judge if an opinion is biased by what arguments there are and how they are voiced. And important: I don’t base my opinions on single people. I have several streamers I follow for my information about the gaming world and I extract and compile all the infos on a certain matter from all that sources.
Sometimes my favourite guy turns out to have an opinion that not matches my expectations. Sometimes I get surprised by people I usually don’t like that much or disagree with in most cases by matching my view on a topic. And sometimes I change my initial view on the topic.
Ziz’ opinion about DI is legit an viable from my point of view. So no matter if I like him or not, I usually follow him or not, it’s ok.
I prefer basing my opinion on the topics on the arguments and not the streamer that presents them. This way I think I can prevent being spammed by opinions the algorithm wants me to see (as they propably match my average behaviour).
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Ditto.
First alarm bell: these guys are commonly called “influencers”. That’s seriously dangerous.
Second alarm bell: they choose video as a support, which is much harder to analise and judge objectively than a text.
So no, I never watch streamers, and never will. I only read written reviews. Read this morning an interesting review of Diablo Immortal on MassivelyOP (love this site), I guess I like it because the writers generally share my point of view, being more RPers than Competitors (the writer specifically mentions the Pay-to-Win aspect but says he personally doesn’t care, feels like me).
Plus, seriously, in this specific case, Zizaran actually named his video “Don’t play this game”!
Really???
Who do you think you are, sir?
For a start, nobody tells me what to play.
And honestly, advising people NOT to try a free game for themselves and make their own opinion is incredibly presumptious (and utterly stupid).
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But if it had been a written review that came to the conclusion that D:I’s monetisation was obscene, offensive and egregious and suggested that you didn’t play it you’d have been totally OK with that opinion?
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Depends. 
I would be perfectly ok with saying that DI monetisation is excessive, and I would respect your opinion that it is obscene, offensive and egregious (I would pretty much respect any opinion, even if I don’t share it, as long as it worded as an opinion, not an absolute truth).
You would have said that in a written review, giving me time to go through your arguments at my own pace and weigh them.
I wouldn’t be ok with you telling me not to play it, because
- What I play is none of your business.
- The game is FREE. The only sensible advice is something along the lines of “It is free, do try it and see for yourself, but be very careful before you spend any money on it”.
What a proper review should be: giving your opinion, to HELP people make up their own. NOT to try and influence them into thinking like you.
The Zizarans and Asmongolds of this world should try and remember that.
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Yeah, that’s fair & why I like to have written guides as much as video guides.
Yeah, not picking on Ziz in particular but modern “influencers”, media, papers etc etc; this is another example of what I hate about things today.
The title said it all “Don’t play this game”. That is not an opinion, that is an instruction. All media seems to do this now, they all want to tell you how to think or what to do.
Titles I would have preferred are “I won’t play this game”, or “I don’t like this game”, or even “I think this game sucks”. Opinions on why could have then been expressed, but no, it’s all in the form of an instruction. Again, this is not Ziz alone, this is media in general.
The media are even worse in the way they show “news”. After maybe a few scant actual facts, they don’t even bother saying their editorials in the form of “we think”, instead they shove out their OPINIONS on the events in the guise of additional facts; and people are so gullible they can no longer distinguish the difference between fact & opinion.
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It’s called click-baiting. In today’s world, sensationalism rules the nest. Hate the game, not the player. Ziz’s income is determined by the amount of clicks he gets, so he’s going to do everything he can to get people to click. Having an alarming title such as “DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME, OR YOUR FAMILY WILL DIE!!!” gets clicks. One like “I would personally not recommend this game, but go ahead and try it anyhow if you want” does not. It’s really that simple. But if you choose to be offended because he is “instructing” you, then that’s on you, really.
What upsets me, personally, is when the thumbnail has a hot girl in a bikini, but that doesn’t exist anywhere in the video… :\
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That’s ridiculous! How can people be so sadistic!
That’s almost the same as showing a nice looking casual puzzle game, but when you download that game it turns out to be a totally different town builder! I mean, wtf!! Who thinks this is funny???!!
I was already aware of your initial comments, the explanation of “click baiting” was not news, nor was it really related to what I posted.
If that is what you got from reading my post, I would suggest you didn’t really read it all, but merely skimmed it and guessed at what I was posting, which ties in with my above comment on click baiting. In fact, one could argue that you “click baited” a reply to my post 
Actually, literally no one “cares” if there are or are not “cash shops” because “cash shop” is such a broad concept that you can define it pretty much any way you want to.
What just about everyone hates (and this is proven by other games, especially the giant kerfuffle about Diablo) is being able to “Swipe” (a credit card) for power. Even without PvP at all, people hate that. Virtually to a person. Like, I’d estimate like 99% of people hate “pay to win”, aka pay for power, pay for advancement, pay for gear, pay for anything which mechanically affects the game.
But character slots, cosmetics, non-combat pets, new emotes, particle effects for weapons or spells, more storage space for packrats, etc. is not “pay to win/power/advancement/gear/anything mechanical” and are just fine in a cash shop, so therefore, no one “cares” about those things.
Yeah. If you look at the outrage that Diablo Immortal caused, it seems this way. But the Outrage comes from the “normal” PC gaming community that is biased against these predatory models. People are shocked because for the first time this community is confronted with such a mobile game pay model. But from the perspective of the mobile games market community this monetization model is the standard.
And so I fear that the profit this game is making still outweighs the amount of pc players that are disgusted by Blizzards methods. And even in the PC gaming community there are sadly very many people that are like “But it’s all optional. You see the price upfront and so every sane person can choose if he wants to pay something or play this game for free. It’s a free game and somehow they have to get revenue for the dev time they invested.” I’ve seen this argument a lot. And I’m shocked that these people don’t see the bigger picture and the harm they cause to the gaming community with just accepting this bullshit, mind manipulating, predatory, addiction fostering type of monetization.
If not enough people stand up against this, we will see this a lot more on the pc market. Blizz is acting like an ice breaker in that regard, looting out how far they can go. And enough people might be dumb enough to not care as they feel superior and in full control and think they would never pay for this but just play for free. I wonder how many people really stick to this game, that not pay and just play for free. You get trained to pay from the first minute and this stuff of psychological manipulation works. Its been proven by the mobile gaming market that has overtaken everything else.
https://www.giffgaff.com/blog/mobile-gaming-overtakes-pc-and-console-for-the-first-time/
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I can “hold my nose” and ignore a shop if it is for cosmetics only, although I prefer no shops at all. I am buying games, not stores disguised as games. If there is “more” to do with a shop in LE, the game gets uninstalled and spend my time and future money elsewhere.
Some very good points made there.
It is, and sadly has been ever since mobile games started.
And I believe in this specific case, it explains everything: Diablo Immortal was always supposed to be the mobile version of Diablo. And nothing more.
It was only ported to PC afterwards, under pressure from the players who wanted “something to do” while waiting for Diablo 4. And it brought with it the monetisation system.
The big question to me is, what is going to happen for Diablo 4?
Diablo Immortal is not a proper PC game, and was never meant to be. But Diablo 4 is. We will see how they decide to monetise it…
Can’t be bothered doing the research, but it sounds very hard to believe?
I would have thought this kind of monetisation existed long before Diablo Immortal? Maybe Lost Ark, to name only the most famous and recent?
And pretty much every MMO in the last decade or so? Except WoW, strangely.
Some “recent” players’ behaviours I still find puzzling (I tend to consider recent anything happening after 2005 or so). Encouraged (somewhat involuntarily) by streamers and other medias. And I believe they fuel these financial models.
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A game is supposed to be played for life, and beyond. Leaving is a drama. I just don’t get it. Even if I stopped working and played full time, I would never be able to play ALL the interesting games ever published. Why stick to just one for years? Play the story. Fight the bosses. And move on to some other stories and other bosses… On this one, I blame the developpers. They do just one game, and that’s it, they try to keep it going for as long as possible.
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You are supposed to get the highest possible level, and the best possible gear, super fast. Preferrably skipping all intermediate steps. Another thing I don’t get (I blame the streamers on that one, showcasing gears that would take years for a normal player to get without paying). What I like best in a RPG is evolving my character slowly, be it in levels or gear, and see him/her improve step by step. Any skipping entirely ruins the fun, and only brings closer the moment I will move to another game (when I play a MMO, I make sure to log off outside cities to avoid the horrible “rested xp”).
Using these two seemingly completely opposite bias, developpers have a field day over-charging for services that should be considered useless.
The community happily spreads out the Pay-to-Win legend, people think they have to “win”, and they pay…
Yeah, new generations are being so exposed to those scummy practices, many just accept them as a necessary evil as so many game have those schemes…
To me are clear red lines to P2W, basically if there’s RNG involved (loot boxes), I’m usually out, also if there’s something that affect gameplay power and is locked exclusively behind a paywall, or the F2P way is unrealistic.
I’m not talking about free to play monetization models. There are already a lot of games with season pass, loot boxes and stuff. But it’s the level of implementation. DI is way above 99% of other games. Lost Ark is very similar but DI is just a few levels on top. Maybe Lost Ark is the ice breaker. It’s one of the first massively successful games that use this model.
I agree, every gamigo or gameforge game has a ridiculous cash shop. But those games remain kind of niche, because they are already dying games that got bought by a predatory publisher to squeeze the juice out of it before throwing them into the trash.
But I think that many companies are watching Blizz currently and how the DI model works out to decide how they set their own models.
So most of those that posted here early don’t like PvP. The competitive PvP’r ‘hardcore’ type are a minority.
No one gave a good reason why cash shops effect PvE in any way… There is a ‘minority’ of people that like doing speed run competitions too:
Instance dungeons that track solo/team fastest clear times with a leaderboard is something a ‘hardcore’ PvE player should want. Those leaderboards are competitive but PvE…speed runner stuff. It’s competitive PvE/PvP hybrid. And I’m sure lots of people don’t care this kind of PvE competition either.
It is certainly smart to design a game for the ‘hardcore minority’; the majority of people, concerning games, don’t know what’s best for them.
People will play what game is considered cool, they can’t often think for themselves.
Other than all that, the time allowed ‘24 hours a day’ is an uncommon issue, but it was brought up. IDK why a game can’t just limit each character to 8 hours of PvE plus 8 hours of PvP per day. Has a game ever even tried that? It’s smart.
Personally, I play almost only RPGs (OK, the occasional point-and-click adventure, but not very often). Because I grew up with table top RPGs, then moved to computer RPGs, and I love them.
Ever since Gary Gygax was playing in his dad’s garage with his friends, RPGs are by nature personal (you build up your character) and co-operative (you work as a team).
If we were on a football (soccer for our friends across the pond) game, or a shooter, PvPers would probably be a majority. On a RPG, they almost always are a small minority. So are PvE competitors.
There again,
maybe I am a huge football fan deep inside, but I just never noticed.
[PS: I do hope Gary Gygax was playing in his dad’s garage. If I learn he was playing in the living-room, I would be sorely disappointed.]
Topic discussed, points made, 5 days silence, everyone moved on, OP wants to resurrect/stay relevant, pointless post made to resurrect.
Yup, nothing to see here for me any more, moving on. I don’t do OP Necro’s…
You are so wrong on this one buddy.
The majority of people are exactly the type of players that actually know what they want. They want fluid and fun gameplay without too many overwhelming things on the line to disrupt their chilling gaming hours. Sure make game harder, but don’t overwhelm with useless things that only <1% of the playerbase would ever care about.
In any game ever existed this “hardcore minority” that you mentioned is always <5% of all ( that’s in most cases even exaggerated ), most are <1-2% of total player base. Given that in mind every strictly focused mechanic for the hardcore minority it may or may not affect the majority. In often cases is the first - we have seen that in PoE as well over the years when they started prioritizing for racing in SSF leagues and implement mechanics with new leagues that makes trading league unplayable for the sake of giving unique choices for those on SSF. And yet despite PoE solo self-found player base to be Big - it’s still far smaller than the actual non-SSF player base ( e.g. Harvest league mechanic ).
However do I care about Cashshop’s? Well the right answer would be “What kind of cashshop?” - because there is many different designs saw throughout the years in gaming.
Note : Not all pvp games with cashshop’s were terrible. ArcheAge was one hell of a great PvP game despite cashshop’s - they just went too far on the greedy aspect because Korean’s hired some small company to be the Western publisher who obviously never saw that much Cash in their life and they took full advantage of it to squeeze as much as they can as fast as they could ( - They injected harvestable items that needed time to grow in the mmo world Directly through the cash shop — BAD! It caused massive inflation, don’t need to continue explaining it’s like imagine if there was some Aliens on Venus just sending Petrol to some private company on Earth for “free” basically – Ohh boi can’t even imagine what would happen to our economy) . However I played the game for more than an Year not spending more than 150 bucks ( just optional sub ) in total over that year and I had crazy amount of FUN especially in PvP simply because the game core wasn’t allowing you to continuously get linear progression off of spending money. Yes the game fell apart and while most say it’s because of P2W i personally disagree - they fell apart because of they Implemented Design Updates to the game that favourited P2W heavily.
There is always 2 sides of the coin - P2W is P2W itself, but if you put P2W in a game that is designed to not have linear progression - p2w itself isn’t really a problem, more or less just Annoying for some players but it does not ruin the game completely for others.