Diablo Immortal is POE killer

I checked out the WaPo article on DI. Funny that the AFK farming video actually got linked in the story. Zoltun Kulle's archive is full of people punching air 24/7. What else is there to do? Farming your first 2 set items is kind of cool, but then you can do literally nothing until paragon 30. Then you run maybe ~6 hours of dungeons to update your items and you have nothing to do until paragon 80.

There's not a single thing in the game you can farm that gives you power. Every 10 paragon levels you get a whopping 24 combat rating and your items can roll like 2% better for barely any increase to combat rating. Woo hoo. I'm just sitting back at paragon 18 getting my free half+level a day from the shadow assembly and running a few rifts. No one who plays 10 hours per day every day will be appreciably stronger than me a month from now. Hopefully in a month or two they add a free class change so I can switch to necromancer and I can try that in PvP.

I fully expect Diablo 4 to have an "optional" Battle Pass, priced somewhere between $9.99-19.99 per month, that offers significant pay to win. That is, it won't just be a few extra auction slots. It will include exp boosts/mats/gold and/or sellable MTX. Something that every power gamer would consider a mandatory investment. I would be astonished if they launched WITHOUT something like that.

The fear that Blizzard will just abandon the game and trickle out updates at a soon(tm) pace is legitimate. We'll have to wait and see.

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wjameschan wrote:

Blizzard can have their cake and eat it too here, and going by the lengths to which they're going to distance Diablo 4 from Diablo Immortal, to try to convince players that Diablo 4 will be everything Diablo Immortal is not (a buy to play premium product made for PC and console, supported by cosmetic mtxes and future expansions), I suspect they intend to.

Think of it this way: if they already have a fairly low effort game making them a lot of dirty money, they don't really need another one when they can then use some of that money to launder their long-stained image with a game 'worthy' of the Blizzard of old, of the Diablo legacy. Hence: having the cake and eating it too.

Will it turn out like this? No one knows. But I do believe that they're smart enough not to try to pull off the same trick twice. It's not Blizzard releasing another Diablo Immortal I fear; it's lesser studios trying to capture the same filthy lightning in lesser bottles.

Blizzard can charge $80 for the base D4 game and $40 for expansions. In addition, like POE, D4 can have paid comestic MTX, battle passes and cosmetic loot boxes. People will eat it up. They will say, "Wow, that's really cheap compared to DI!"

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zakalwe55 wrote:

Blizzard can charge $80 for the base D4 game and $40 for expansions. In addition, like POE, D4 can have paid comestic MTX, battle passes and cosmetic loot boxes. People will eat it up. They will say, "Wow, that's really cheap compared to DI!"

While this is possible, I don't believe it will happen, mainly because it's easy to forget in the current furore that the vast majority of people who will play Diablo 4 do not care about Diablo Immortal or its awful mtx scheme. They may have read a few articles, shaken their heads at the folly of it all and gone back to whatever it is they already play.

And Blizzard know this as well; they might be going to lengths to visibly declare what Diablo 4 will be (and leaving it what it won't be wisely implicit for Those Who Know And Care), but that's likely just as much because its planned blend of ARPG and MMO, of game as product and game as live service, is automatically ripe for accusations of pay to win trickery.

I may have said it here or elsewhere but the game to which Diablo 4 will likely be most compared isn't Diablo Immortal but Guild Wars 2. The similarities are quite distinct and unique, both in the financial model and in the general design of the world and how its elements interact. But eventually GW2 gained a free to play plan and that is when ArenaNet/NCSoft started to really veer towards more overt pay to win and pay for convenience: anything from unbreakable mining tools to instant level 80 tickets are now up for grabs. Despite that, the game isn't considered pay to win, perhaps because it has a separate pvp mode in which no amount of pve power matters at all.

Going by that, I wouldn't be surprised if Diablo 4 followed a similar trajectory: game as premium priced product to begin with, cosmetic mtxes available immediately after release, an expansion or two, and then a free to play model that gives players a barebones version of the game but supplements that with mtxes that skew closer to pay to win: storage at the very least, although that might be part of the original mtx deployment. Not necessarily a bad thing IF the standard storage is adequate. Clarification: in no universe is PoE's standard offering of 4 stash tabs 'adequate' if you want to do anything more than drag yourself through the core campaign, and if you're willing to put up with that much, you're already halfway to the mtx store to get that storage that the Atlas absolutely demands.

So the big question: if Diablo Immortal was never going to take even a slight bite out of the Exile population (and why should it? You can play DI when you can't play PoE, if you want), will Diablo 4? I think it'll be less a bite and more of a begrudging return. For years, Wraeclast served as an ironic sanctuary from Sanctuary, from what Blizzard allowed Sanctuary to become. But now I think the pants are on the other set of legs: look at what GGG allowed Wraeclast to become. People won't leave a long-term problematic game for an immediate replacement, but they will leave that game and find a replacement. In other words, Diablo 4 won't steal players from PoE; it will simply inherit ex-PoE players who, if not for D4, would just play something else anyway.

And since said people are no longer supporters of GGG, I doubt GGG even really care much about this fact. Their concern has gone through three distinct phases in my opinion: first they focused on attracting new supporters (beta and the first year or so of release), then on retaining loyal supporters (this lasted until not long after The Fall of Oriath) and now on catering to those who still support. You might think phases 2 and 3 are the same, but there's a subtle difference: to retain loyal supporters, you have to provide regular meaningful updates that keep them coming back; to cater to those who still support, you just have to keep providing more of the same. If Sentinel is anything to go by, that 'same' is a cruel spike in difficulty encouraging the ever-popular friction between the 'got gud' and the 'git gud'. Or, in Chris' terms, 'those for whom we thought 3.18 was perfectly balanced' and 'normal players'. I am, somewhat obviously, not a fan of the psychological malice behind this forced chasm. It portrays anyone who doesn't want to play PoE a certain way, a way they might find unappealing or boring, as a 'quitter', as 'not good enough'. It's repulsive and unhealthy and GGG should hang their heads in shame for facilitating such blatant elitism.

This is, eventually, self-defeating: elitism always needs a majority to exclude, and once it does so, it turns on itself to exclude even more. I suspect by the time this might be a problem for GGG, they'll have the much-vaunted Path of Exile '2' ready to go as a sort of reboot, a return to the roots. Nothing is stopping them from doing it now, but it's easier to sell a 'classic' reform when it's part of a large package than to just implement it at seeming random.

And as noted elsewhere, there's no way even Path of Exile '2' will compete with Diablo 4. What it will do, hopefully, is yank the hydra's reins about so that GGG return to phases 1 and 2 of their relationship to supporters: attracting new ones, and reminding loyal ones that they're supporting more than just a bad habit. In a way, Path of Exile '2' only has to compete with one game: Path of Exile '1'. If it can prove a more accessible, superior version of the game for all those people who walked away from an increasingly exclusive, demanding Wraeclast, then it wins. Then and only then might it actively stand toe-to-toe with not only Diablo 4 but any other game that might give its former supporters something it no longer does. So...in short: passive competition via notable self-improvement speaks for itself; active competition just looks desperate and weak.

(We all got a chuckle out of www.playdiablo4.com (which used to redirect...here), but now that Diablo 4 actually has a rough release date and Path of Exile '2' does not, it's not really all that funny anymore. And what it now redirects to is...kind of predictable and nowhere near as sharp. But probably more relevant to this thread, so that's something.)

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wjameschan wrote:

While this is possible, I don't believe it will happen, mainly because it's easy to forget in the current furore that the vast majority of people who will play Diablo 4 do not care about Diablo Immortal or its awful mtx scheme. They may have read a few articles, shaken their heads at the folly of it all and gone back to whatever it is they already play.

And as noted elsewhere, there's no way even Path of Exile '2' will compete with Diablo 4. What it will do, hopefully, is yank the hydra's reins about so that GGG return to phases 1 and 2 of their relationship to supporters: attracting new ones, and reminding loyal ones that they're supporting more than just a bad habit. In a way, Path of Exile '2' only has to compete with one game: Path of Exile '1'. If it can prove a more accessible, superior version of the game for all those people who walked away from an increasingly exclusive, demanding Wraeclast, then it wins. Then and only then might it actively stand toe-to-toe with not only Diablo 4 but any other game that might give its former supporters something it no longer does. So...in short: passive competition via notable self-improvement speaks for itself; active competition just looks desperate and weak.

Hmm, I think that the people who will play Diablo 4 paid more attention to Diablo Immortal when the PC port was announced. They might even have tried it out. I did. Even if they didn't play DI, they would have seen all the articles about DI's monetization when they googled for news about D4 and be concerned. Er, everyone is talking about DI vs D4 now. Some people are saying they won't play D4 because of DI. DiAbLO iMMortAL HaS dEStRoYEd tHe FrANcHiSe!

So Sirgog thinks POE 2 will launch 1st half of 2024. Could D4 have a year on POE 2?

https://youtu.be/80kVbswD5_c?t=55

Enjoying my time in DI (on PC) as FTP and taking it (very) slowly in the very first run.

It's very restricted in regards how much crafting materials i can get but i dont care that much at this time being, will finish campaign and then see.

Got a glimpse of a big part of the endgame activities that are already (mostly) available during leveling: PvP,Shadows,Bounties,Rifts (Elden+Challenge),exploration (very light),raids.

Camparing it to D3 it has more side activities but big bunch of them are time gated (like raids), so in the end i see me spamming rifts as in D3 as well.

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zakalwe55 wrote:

Some people are saying they won't play D4 because of DI. DiAbLO iMMortAL HaS dEStRoYEd tHe FrANcHiSe!

People say a lot of things. It is easy to be unnerved by how rarely their actions match these things. Or at least depressed at what seems like 'lying' but is really just a disconnect between what they feel they should do and what they really want to do. It is hypocrisy but I wouldn't put it on the same level of duplicity as, say, declaring the game's next update won't have any changes to balance and then introducing a slew of highly overtuned monsters throughout said game. ;)

As for PoE 2, I think it best not to speculate and just wait to see what GGG do next. Even though I don't believe D4 and PoE 2 are in any real direct competition, I certainly wouldn't be surprised if the declaration of a 12 month release period not even 12 months away lit a fire under GGG's fundament. Or perhaps said fire was already burning and this just encourages them to add fuel to it.

I do know that beyond the incoming new 7 act campaign, rebalancing the existing game for their planned skill gem change is not something they can just half-ass. To me it seems almost like replacing the foundation of an existing house but since they're unwilling to just build a new house for fear of losing all the current residents who have invested so much into making their room in that house 'special', this is how it has to be. I do not envy anyone at GGG involved in the process. The more you really think about it, the more impossible it starts to seem. Is there anything more uniquely, distinctly PoE than the 6L? Not even the Mirror of Kalandra is as iconic. The 6L is so intrinsic to the image of PoE, to what makes it so much better than any other ARPG in terms of skill flexibility, we even got a T-shirt with it.

And PoE 2 plans to replace it. A true PoE 2 would have no problems doing so: just make a new system, the way D2 implemented actual skill trees where D1 only had a few class 'tools' and a book of spells. Making something entirely new is MUCH easier than trying to replace something old, and this is only more and more true the more foundational that something is. For example, it's much easier to make a new skeleton by making a new person (i.e. having a baby) than completely replacing an existing person's skeleton...or their skin. Or their organs. Or their muscles.

To me that's how grotesque Path of Exile 2 seems sometimes. Instead of doing the (relatively) healthy thing and having another baby because their first one should DEFINITELY have moved out and gone to college by now, GGG are playing Victor Frankenstein with their only manchild as if giving it some new organs and skin and bones can somehow make it 'new'...and this, after subjecting it to ghoulish chimeric experiments for yours. If PoE were a person, what GGG have done to it would make Piety and Shavronne cry themselves to sleep.

Sure, PoE 2 might be ALLLIIIIVE, but...will GGG have done their best to give it the life it deserves? I think not. That would necessitate a truly new life unburdened by the unhealthy history of 'Path of Exile 1', and they're simply unwilling to commit to that.

Again, I must make this comparison: imagine how many amazing sequels we would not have if other developers decided that they could just sufficiently replace components of the first game, maybe graft on some more story...remove a troublesome limb or two...replace a few failing organs...and call it a sequel.

I've played Street Fighter 1. I've also played Dune 1. And Tekken 1. Ghosts 'n' Goblins. Castlevania/Akumajou 1. Legend of Zelda 1. And of course Diablo 1. NONE of them are as memorable or genre-defining as their sequels.

A game has to earn that '2' by being both a new thing and an evolution of the old, and Path of Exile '2' fails the former before it's even had a chance to prove itself, thanks purely to GGG's obstinacy.

By its very nature as a new game and clearly an evolution of the series, Diablo 4 is has already won in that regard. Not that it's even trying, although I'd be lying if I said I don't suspect Blizzard are tired of this upstart Diablo 2 clone being the current top ARPG when THEY own the name that almost everyone knows and associates with the finest ARPG ever made. And that's why I think they're actually going for respectability and prestige with D4 despite dragging the Diablo name through the mud to make a buck with Diablo Immortal. It's not enough to make bank when making bank is what you normally do.

Some are already calling Diablo 4 soulless but I actually think it's more personal for Blizzard than ever before. We know they can do profitable and soulless; what we don't know is whether they can do what PoE did while D3 almost choked on its own RMAH greed: profitable *and* passionate.

Diablo 4 is probably the only chance they have left to prove they have what it takes to make a game worthy of its storied legacy. They blew it with WoW; they blew it with Overwatch aka Project Titan's ADHD-fueled leftovers; they really blew it with their true legacy game, Heroes of the Storm (which I actually quite enjoyed, more's the pity); they blew it and then took a dump on the remains with Warcraft 3: Reforged. They assigned Diablo 2 Resurrected to a company known for its passionate remasters and it shows. And Diablo Immortal is a NetEase game given the old Blizzard polished-to-a-slippery-gleam treatment.

And while D3 is a perfectly fun game in Adventure Mode, its garbage-tier story, cartoonish defilement of Sanctuary, and conveyor-belt style character upgrades all ensure that it'll never be taken seriously as a Diablo game. Would that they'd released it as a new IP and pushed it as a highly accessible fantasy beat-em-up melding Diablo and World of Warcraft. Because honestly that's all it is.

And Diablo 4, wisely, abandons the WoW influences for the generally superior GW2, and aesthetically already looks like it wants to be taken a lot more seriously than Diablo 3.

As strange as it may be to say this as Blizzard are getting rightfully dragged for DI, right as they continue to struggle with their very tarnished workplace image...but I think this is their race to lose. They've learned a lot from Diablo 3 and what we've seen so far shows they're eager to leave most of its misbegotten sins behind. They know that people are hungry for a new high production ARPG but also that an 'ARPG' in the current gaming climate is a very different beast than it was ten years ago. The success of Elden Ring has likely shown them that a well-crafted handmade open world is still a huge winner if the action it hosts is true to the genre, and that people STILL like to be alone in that world if they choose to be (co-op events will almost certainly be optional participation a la FATEs in FFXIV or dynamic events in GW2). And of course, PoE has taught them everyone loves a huge skill grid as long as it's not full of red herrings and traps and the path they choose through it is rewarding and empowering.

Rather, these are some of the things Blizzard SHOULD know by now. If they don't, then D4 may be dead in the water already, no matter how nice they make it look in the trailers.

I said at the start of this that people say a lot of things, and I certainly am not exempt. Evidently. But when I say I'm far more interested in Diablo 4 than Path of Exile '2', I mean it. And I'd say that's true of most gamers who are familiar with the ARPG genre but either never became Exiles for one reason or another, or are firmly in 'ex-Exile' territory. How could it be otherwise? Sink or soar, Diablo 4 is a new game, very ambitious in its proposed scope, likely has the budget and resources to realise those ambitions, and the people making it have a huge, Diablo3-sized chip on their shoulders. They do not want their work associated with Diablo Immortal *at all*, and key to that distancing is delivering something so good Diablo Immortal isn't even brought up when people consider it.

Finally, when I look at the staff for Diablo 4, I see that two of the biggest positions (Game Director and Lead Designer) have been vacated by compromised individuals (Luis Barriga and Jesse McCree), and at least one (Game Director) has been filled by much younger blood (Joe Shely, who reportedly played D1 and D2 incessantly through college [we feel you bro] and worked on some of the better things about D3: Reaper of Souls, adventure mode, Rift tuning).

All this adds up to a very strange possibility:

I think Blizzard are genuinely hungry for once and they know what they want to devour, in somewhat the same way GGG were hungry in 2012 and knew what they wanted to devour. And devour it they did, and fat did they grow. Complacent. Hubristic. Nonchalant.

I never thought of all the hungry, wannabe ARPG devs out there gunning for PoE's long-held crown, possibly even poaching some of its staff, the contender might turn out to be Blizzard themselves.

If irony were a food, this would be a 3 Michelin star degustation.

I'm interested in Diablo 4 because hungry, talented wannabes with something to prove make interesting things. Complacent, talented veterans of being on top often don't. It's really that simple.

edit: that was just too much text. Threw in some highlighting for lack of a tl;dr/summary. Apologies.

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wjameschan wrote:

And while D3 is a perfectly fun game in Adventure Mode, its garbage-tier story, cartoonish defilement of Sanctuary, and conveyor-belt style character upgrades all ensure that it'll never be taken seriously as a Diablo game. Would that they'd released it as a new IP and pushed it as a highly accessible fantasy beat-em-up melding Diablo and World of Warcraft. Because honestly that's all it is.

And Diablo 4, wisely, abandons the WoW influences for the generally superior GW2, and aesthetically already looks like it wants to be taken a lot more seriously than Diablo 3.

Yes. Tone is very important for an ARPG. I like to measure it in terms of half torn corpses...on the ground, on the wall, hanging from the ceiling. The more half torn corpses the better.

Since POE and Grim Dawn has a lot of half torn corpses both games are more Diablo than Diablo 3. Diablo 3 is a Disney version of Diablo. I have higher hopes for Diablo 4 because the half torn corpses are back.

https://youtu.be/c_VkpXudWf4?t=23

Hmm, looking through the rest of the trailer, some mapping parts looks like it came right out of POE. Also, the paragon board looks like an attempt at a character tree.

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zakalwe55 wrote:

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wjameschan wrote:

And while D3 is a perfectly fun game in Adventure Mode, its garbage-tier story, cartoonish defilement of Sanctuary, and conveyor-belt style character upgrades all ensure that it'll never be taken seriously as a Diablo game. Would that they'd released it as a new IP and pushed it as a highly accessible fantasy beat-em-up melding Diablo and World of Warcraft. Because honestly that's all it is.

And Diablo 4, wisely, abandons the WoW influences for the generally superior GW2, and aesthetically already looks like it wants to be taken a lot more seriously than Diablo 3.

Yes. Tone is very important for an ARPG. I like to measure it in terms of half torn corpses...on the ground, on the wall, hanging from the ceiling. The more half torn corpses the better.

Since POE and Grim Dawn has a lot of half torn corpses both games are more Diablo than Diablo 3. Diablo 3 is a Disney version of Diablo. I have higher hopes for Diablo 4 because the half torn corpses are back.

https://youtu.be/c_VkpXudWf4?t=23

Hmm, looking through the rest of the trailer, some mapping parts looks like it came right out of POE. Also, the paragon board looks like an attempt at a character tree.

As I was googling about to confirm some of the assertions I made there regarding staff changes, I constantly saw two sentiments from D4 staff regarding tone, repeated and reworded. Over and again. If they can maintain these sentiments and infuse them into Diablo 4, they will be that much closer to redemption.

1. Diablo 2 is the true Diablo
2. 'Embrace the darkness'

But we are back at 'people say a lot of things' there. Find a grain of salt with which to take them. I find it easy to do that and still allow myself some hope that they're not just pandering and spinning. My brief attempt at enjoying Path of Exile as it is now revealed that while PoE definitely accords to that first sentiment, it has lost its way with the second. Diablo always had a certain type of darkness to it. Those drum beats as you enter Tristram's church. The sense that there is something extremely dangerous behind the next door, because you can see the light source moving around and you can hear their inhuman voices. The poorly-lit corridors in the Halls of the Blind. The terrifying charge of horned demons from off-screen...and of course, a 'Hell' full of naked succubi, hell knights, corrupted priests and big Daddy D himself, standing inside the biggest pentagram PC gaming had ever seen.

And Diablo 2, while it escaped the confines of a single dungeon, maintained this. Its woodlands were muted and sparse. its desert had a feeling that the winds might sweep all of that pathetic little town away at any moment. The jungle wasn't so much fertile as just plain thick with unseen threats (death does indeed have too many places to hide in a forest; PoE has some amazing dialogue describing other games). 'Hell' was as much a wasteland of lost souls as it was rivers of flame (both drawing clearly on Dante and Milton, because why not), and that surprising final act was in essence just one big mountain, and yet it never felt too long or too monotonous. Mountains can be dark too, as symbols of gargantuan spectacle full of almost otherworldly wonders. After all, we have 'At The Mountains of Madness' by Lovecraft as one of the greatest works exploring precisely that.

'Embrace the darkness' sounds tryhard and vague, but when you combine it with the other sentiment, it actually has quite concrete intention.

What 'embrace the darkness' doesn't mean is 'use excessive gore', 'mimic Holocaust imagery in a cheap and shallow fashion', 'put literal rivers of blood in your work', 'cut-and-paste torture devices', 'have towns full of garish mtxes that make you wish the game had a 'hide others' feature' or 'implement skill effects that make you wonder why the game doesn't have an EDM soundtrack and come with free disco biccies'. Path of Exile isn't 'dark' in the way Diablo is dark. If we say Diablo is a classic horror movie relying on well-timed jump scares, an unforgettable music motif and a pervading sense of dread, then Path of Exile is a cheesy over-the-top gore-fest that only understood the most superficial layers of what makes horror truly horrifying.

And if D1/D2 are classic horror, I am not expecting 'elevated horror' from Diablo 4. It'll have its share of excess and blood and slaughter. For certain. But if those trailers and that brief demo are anything to go by, we CAN expect to feel that the makers did 'embrace the darkness' (I do love a good hanging corpse swinging in the wind or an empty dungeon hall so soon to be filled with the minions of hell) and that Diablo 2 is The true Diablo (the desert scenes feel much more like D2's desolate act 2 than...whatever the heck D3 offered. I don't remember much about it only that it seemed to be 'Tang' coloured).

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wjameschan wrote:

As I was googling about to confirm some of the assertions I made there regarding staff changes, I constantly saw two sentiments from D4 staff regarding tone, repeated and reworded. Over and again. If they can maintain these sentiments and infuse them into Diablo 4, they will be that much closer to redemption.

1. Diablo 2 is the true Diablo
2. 'Embrace the darkness'

Well, that is good. I would think Blizzard would be sick and tired of hearing their competitors brag about how their games are the TRUE successor to Diablo 2. Hopefully, Blizzard will consider Diablo 4 their flagship product. They don't have a flagship product now.

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Phrazz wrote:

I'm starting to suspect that this whole Diablo Immortal thing was just Blizzard, trying to set the expectation bar of Diablo 4 as low as they possibly could.

Then I soon realize how much money they are going to make on Diablo Immortal, that even Diablo 4 will seem like an indie game in comparison.

They've banked 24 mil already, by comparison about half a mil of sales if price were ~50 bucks. But the revenue will just continue as people keep paying so this will probably be a big financial success.

pcgamesn source 24 mil (< not sure how valid)

Yea I think this will impact D4..