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What's The Deal With Diablo Immortals' Monetization Model?
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Member UncommonPosts: 12,599
Post edited by StevenWeber on
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It's Quin69 last time I checked it was 16k and no gem. Kekw
mmorpg junkie since 1999
Yep, that's who I mentioned in the article. There is a conversion since he spends NZD, but he is still over 10k usd. There are others doing the same thing.
Yep, that's who I mentioned in the article. There is a conversion since he spends NZD, but he is still over 10k usd. There are others doing the same thing.
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
In case the system wasn't convoluted enough, there are 2 different types of Legendary crests:
The ones you get from the Battle Pass, free or paid, the ones you get from the Boon of Plenty ($), the ones you get from those "one time only" dungeon completion deals ($) or any other method paid or not (except see below) are called Legendary Crests and they have a chance to drop an ACCOUNT BOUND ?/5 legendary gem. These crests do not stack with the ones below for the 50 crest pity system.
The other type of legendary crest are called Eternal Legendary Crests and you can only get those when you purchase them directly using the main cash shop currency, Eternal Orbs. They're virtually identical to the other legendary crests except for one thing: gem drops when you use these are not ACCOUNT BOUND. You can sell those gems in the player market for platinum. I just checked and there's a 5/5 star gem listed right now on my server (Burning Hell) for 640,000 platinum... that's 64,000 Eternal Orbs.
The largest quantity of Eternal Orbs you can buy for a better "deal" is 6,000 for $140 CDN so that gem is selling for essentially $1,500.
The platinum though, as far as I know, is game bound with no way to cash it out for $ - it's different from D3's RMAH in that way... well at least through official means you can't cash out
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
It wasnt until later in development Blizzard caved to PC players asking for PC port. So they did.
Guess what folks, you got a mobile game on PC. You got what you asked for.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Pretty much. I hate mobile games for the most part. Hate p2W too. But within the past couple years mobile games have really become very popular. Dont ask me why.
And to add to how big this market is. Activisions Call of Duty Mobile game was earning $5million a day in 2021. That was nearly $1.8 billion that year
1) Yes, the game's monetization is awful and will ruin the game, but the publisher is trying to conceal this from you until you get far enough into the game that you're hooked.
2) No, the game's monetization is fine, but the publisher is trying to make it look much worse than it is.
Which if those two do you think seems more likely? (2) does occasionally happen, as LotRO demonstrates. But if you can't tell if a game is in situation (1) or (2), it's a fairly safe bet that it's (1), and you really should just skip the game and move on.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
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2024: 47 years on the Net.
Ideally it is because some are unwilling to engage in predatory monetization, but it probably more likely those less so aren't confident they can push it as far without losing enough players that profits will decrease rather than rise.
But it isn't all at the extreme. Those that enjoy the game enough to put a bit of cash into it do have more reasonable options, such as getting the basic season pass and calling it a day.
https://biturl.top/rU7bY3
Beyond the shadows there's always light
But let's not expect that regulations can fix this problem. Regulations can (and should) temper it some, but that's about it.
Should games have to publish the full drop table of every mob in the game, with full odds? I'd say no. That's part of gameplay, not gambling.
But what about lockboxes, where a locked box drops from mobs, but you can buy keys with real money? In games where the lockboxes sell in large numbers on the auction house for a trivial sum, those are basically indistinguishable from loot boxes that are directly purchased for real money.
But what about games where the keys are also available as mob drops, but merely drop half as often as the locked boxes? Should games have to publish loot odds on those lockboxes?
What if the lockbox keys are crafted and one of the crafting reagents can be purchased with real money? What if one of the crafting reagents comes from a traditional lootbox that is purchased with real money? What if that crafting reagent is abundant from other sources and getting it from the lootbox is the consolation prize of "you didn't get anything valuable"?
And what if some of those details change in next week's patch?
One fundamental problem here is that game developers have inside knowledge about what their games do and can adapt to regulations far more quickly than regulations can adapt to games. If every predatory revenue model gets banned a year after it goes live, that's too late, as the game that used it has already pulled the plug and the publisher has moved on to a different but equally predatory model.
Another problem is that sloppy or overbroad regulations can do a tremendous amount of harm. We don't want to accidentally ban indie games with revenue models that gamers thought were reasonable. We don't want tiny indie studios to have to spend a considerable fraction of their budgets on lawyers to figure out if their game is legal or not. Simple and clear regulations won't do that, but at least in America, regulatory agencies seem to struggle with making things simple and clear.
My understanding is that slot machines don't change very often. I don't know if they're hardware that gets shipped as is and never changes, or if they push software updates that change odds. But even if the latter, I doubt that it's very often. Computer games, in contrast, have to push a whole lot of updates just to fix bugs, let alone adding new content.
That is a perfectly valid regulatory goal. It's obfuscation in the market monetization methods being peeled away.
Every bit of the headache you just described for studios can be avoided in your hypothetical quite easily.... By just avoiding selling chance items at all in a cash shop.