Oh cool, we're just doing completely overt oil and auto industry propaganda. I guess the DoD has to do something about Not Just Bikes waking people up on urbanism.

Star Citizen and bored apes works much better.

Hardline Mike wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 19:54:

You're right that bad press can get corpos to change things up, but that's when you're talking about things like "Our company is full of rapists" or "Oops we accidentally all the baby formula." coupled with simultaneous state and Federal investigations. When some people see a low user review score on Metacritic they just assume it's a bunch of people upset that there's a Black character or something since that's typically why it happens, and pay-to-win whales are just going to see the complaining about the business model and laugh at the "butthurt poors" or whatever.

Because of review bombing being so common now, when I'm looking at whether or not I'm going to enjoy playing a game, the Metacritic user review score sits right above a Ouija board and a Magic 8-Ball in usefulness.

People generally aren't going to spend *more* on games when they think information about their quality is unreliable. The people who are most prone to disregard this as "more internet bullshit" without looking into it are people who don't buy *any* games to begin with. This kind of noise will reach the ears of those whose opinions actually matter to Blizzard. Given that there are places where regulatory action against gacha mechanics has already been taken, it's a kind of heat Blizzard has an interest in reducing, no matter how stupid it seems to the uninvolved.

Orogogus wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 18:48:

That doesn't sound like a review to me, which normally I'd consider something like, "I played this for a while and this is what I thought about it." Political or not, this comes across more as a product of the Internet outrage machine, mostly useful for knowing what the Internet thinks about the game. I wouldn't give any credence to good reviews from people who haven't played a game, so it doesn't seem reasonable to just let the bad ones through.

It's a weird question to begin with because there are so many equally valid but mutually exclusive framings. If we were talking about drugs, you would not be able to predict my stance on the issue by starting from what I've said about gambling addiction in this thread.

I come at this from a perspective that I know very few other people do, and I do so because I spend lots of time trying to imagine how The People can have a healthier relationship with the power structures we're stuck in, both public and private.

Modern consumerism has shaped our society in ways that are contrary to previous economic thought, and as a result, I often approach buying decisions and consumer feedback with a logic and aesthetic more similar to how one would talk about labor unionization. This results in a rhetoric where any fork in the eye of the seller is probably a good thing, because we're dealing with large moneyed interests that are both incapable and unwilling to respond to what is normally considered reasonable, whereas history shows a significant amount of even sloppily directed public anger can improve things.

Orogogus wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 17:42:
It sounds like people are spending 0 minutes on it; there's at least one person below saying people should be leaving bad reviews even if they haven't played it.

That's not quite what I'm saying, or I'd have done it myself. It's more that I get why it's happening, and if there's anyone that deserves it, it's Blizzard.

I personally am a little bit more tolerant of the business model, because here and there I've found less-abusive examples where I can enjoy the game mechanics that were molded by it without paying, or for the best ones that deserve it, without paying through the nose. But you have to have some familiarity with how they work to make that kind of decision, and Blizzard decided to market the game to a playerbase that not only avoids that ecosystem, but which openly mocks it and considers it a cancer encroaching on their hobby. That is a mostly fair thing to believe about it, and to make matters worse, Blizzard previously joined its customers in mocking it. They sowed the wind and are reaping the whirlwind.

I'm probably not even going to try the game, because I've got all the idle I need lately, and I feel like I know Blizzard well enough to expect that the prices are going to be too damn high, even if MrLlamaSC hadn't given me that $110k figure to be shocked at. But since I haven't actually checked myself, and unlike most of the people coming in from the rest of the Diablo series, I do have the "sophistication" to discern between what I think of as good and bad F2P, I feel a responsibility to not review the game.

But those other people? Even if they've only seen videos of the game, they do know what D:I was pitched to them as, and they can tell from those videos that the pitch was bullshit. They don't tolerate this kind of industry chicanery as much as I've come to, and that's a perfectly valid standard to judge the product by. If they think they know enough to post a review, that's fine. They're talking about things that are actually part of the game, whether they played it or not. It's not a political hit squad.

Hardline Mike wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 16:55:
A hyperbolic enraged version of "I don't like this business model." from someone who was never going to play the game anyway is not going to make this type of business model go away. The only way it goes away is if people stop giving them money. Which they won't, because as you said, addicts.

I understand why, given how much of it they blatantly ignore, but you seriously undervalue how effective bad press can be against large corporations. That vitriol is the seed that occasionally rouses regulators and legislators from their stupor, and the corps will bend over backwards to avoid that. Lobbying only works when it's actually cheaper than doing right. Scream enough, and it won't be anymore.

Huzsar wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 16:49:

RedEye9 wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 13:07:

Huzsar wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 12:47:
I think review bombing is usually when people score the game low for something that does not have much to do with the quality of the actual game. I do not see this as review bombing, and more of reviewing the poor quality of the game due to mechanics Blizzard implemented.

https://www.metacritic.com/game/ios/diablo-immortal/user-reviews?dist=negative
The Zero (0) reviews do not agree with your hypothesis that it's due to "the poor quality of the game."
This is quintessential review bombing.

After a quick look though some of the reviews in your link I see only one review related to the Blizzard scandal which if those were all of them I would agree that they are review bombing as it does not have have to do with the games quality. But the rest of them deal pretty much with the poor implementation of the monetization systems that make the game crappy for those people, so how are they not valid reviews?

This right here. If you are familiar with the business model, you don't have to play it to know it sucks. I do play some of these, and I have paid for a tiny proportion of them, and I still think it sucks. Lots of games that would be decent get wrecked by this business model because it's difficult to calibrate it for a winning value proposition, and you only get the big money if you decide to actively not do that and chase whales instead. There are whole genres that were born or popularized on mobile that are unfairly seen as dumb trash for latchkey kindergartners because it's almost entirely split between heavily-advertised cash grabs and a few actually-free games made by real artists that therefore have no advertising budget.

Hardline Mike wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 16:41:

phinn wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 13:40:
Probably the most valid review bombing of all time. Game is a horrible predatorial gambling fest. This franchise has fallen very far from the masterpiece of Diablo 2.

There are no valid review bombs. If you haven't played the game, don't fucking review it, period.

Generally, yes. When it comes to predatory business practices that are known to be problematic, nah. "Just don't buy/play the game" isn't good enough to get devs to stop this trash. People mostly don't, after all. These things persist because the genre conventions were molded by psychologists teaching unscrupulous devs to wring small playerbases full of addicts (not enthusiasts, actual addicts) like sponges. It's a dirty tactic, and dirty tactics are called for in opposing it.

Sepharo wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 16:10:

Quinn wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 12:57:
The problem is ppl (read idiots) rate a mobile game as a pc game. Ppl say the game is "too much like D3" and have it in their mind that's a bad thing.

I have 5 hours into DI, haven't paid one cent yet, didn't hit any paywalls yet and got my third legendary dropped today.

As long as you're okay with never coming close to max gear... but some people play these grindy games specifically to max out... and apparently playing without spending money, that will take two lifetimes... and spending it will cost north of $80,000.

Yeah, that dude really needs to come back when he's five days in. Five hours is a demo, of course it's free.

People that compare D:I to D3 are silly, but it's mostly Blizzard's fault they're doing that. They were told D:I would be a fully articulated mobile ARPG, and that's really not what it is, at least not in the way they knew fans of the franchise would understand it. Although it's not an entirely fair assessment, Diablo III is broadly considered where the franchise started going rotten; partly because of the AH shenanigans at launch, and partly because the gameplay was really streamlined in ways that most players felt drastically reduced the game's depth. I actually felt the same way, during the campaign, but once I got to the endgame, I found the depth. With Kanai's Cube, particularly the thing where you extract the unique qualities of unique items, D3 actually delivers on some things that I had literal dreams about years before it existed, so it's fair to say I really liked it. I'm still not playing it anymore, because D2R exists and I ultimately want Coca-Cola Classic, not New Coke. But I like what it did, and I may get back to it occasionally someday. The point I'm making in all this is that mostly D3 is seen (not completely inaccurately) as the dumbing-down of the franchise. If you go into D:I expecting an actual Diablo game, of course you think it's an extension of that trend.

It should never have been sold as that. It clearly isn't even how the actual devs thought of it, and I've only watched it being played. It's obvious to me that this is following a completely different set of genre conventions. It should've been sold as what it actually appears to be: a Diablo-themed idler. I'd love that if I weren't also aware that, since Blizzard expected people to believe it was a real ARPG, they're also expecting them to shell out completely stupid amounts of money that aren't remotely competitive with many other titles in the genre, despite the genre being mostly defined by exactly these predatory practices.

The volume of criticism they're getting is due to player misconceptions. The content of that criticism is still ultimately fair.

Steele Johnson wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 15:01:
pay2win is historically a way to allow players to buy better gear or to make better items, giving you an unfair advantage over players who haven’t purchased these microtransactions. Making microtransactions to actually “finish” the game (i.e., even just the single-player mode) is not the same thing. Anyhow, after reading this thread, I don’t think anyone knows the actual details, including me. And I don’t really give a rat’s ass. If a game sounds like a scam, then don’t buy it. 😂

I know where the term comes from. I'm saying that it's more useful to us, as consumers trying to advocate for our interests, to generalize it. What you want to call "pay to finish" and P2W are expressions of the same irresponsibly greedy intent, which will always try to find a place to do what it does outside your definitions, and then claim you're being immature and unreasonable when you complain. Define your terms broadly and it's harder to do that.

I'd say P2W is best understood as abusive F2P, regardless of what the game actually is. When a game makes progress painful without paying significantly more than you would for a game you just buy, you're definitely not winning it.

Kxmode wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 14:54:
Most of the core gameplay, including the story campaign, is free. Immortal pushes people to buy things, including the monthly "Battle Pass" subscription, but it doesn't affect gameplay. Where the P2W stuff happens is after the campaign with the end-game progression to reach the top-tier stuff.

This is a pretty succinct explanation of how Blizzard failed to understand what the target of this product should be. The fanbase of the Diablo franchise is made almost entirely out of people for whom the post-game is the *real* game. Some of us do care about the lore, and I'm sure that every game in the series has been bought, played, and forgotten by a significant number of people who don't care about mechanical theorycrafting at all, because every game in existence has that "90% don't pass the second major milestone" thing going on. But Diablo is the original gangster of a genre that makes most of its money off the network effects of people who want to play the game the way it is after you beat it: people that try to get the numbers as high as they can, or do things faster than everyone else, or get rich in the trading ecosystem, or express an aesthetic through their choice of powers and limitations.

There *is* an overlap between that kind of player and the ones that play F2P idle games, but it's small. Blizzard really should've marketed this game to that other market; I'm in it, and the first time I ever had a positive feeling about D:I was when I was watching MrLlamaSC make fun of it on YouTube recently. This is because I realized what it was, and Llama, having no interest in that sort of thing, could only see it as something that failed to be a real ARPG, which is what Blizzard stupidly told people it was.

Steele Johnson wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 14:18:

007Bistromath wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 14:08:

Steele Johnson wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 13:24:
How do you pay2win single-player and co-op? I think we need a new acronym 😂

Not really. $110k to actually finish the game means that's what it is. "Winning" doesn't have to be relative to other players when it's that bad.

Ok, so it’s not pay2win, it’s pay2finish. Welp, sounds like we’ve got our new acronym

What for? When you play against a game, finishing is winning. Not every solo game has that kind of adversarial experience, but it is overwhelmingly normal even in traditional "you bought it, it's yours" games. It's definitely present in the case of a game that aggressively tries to get you to quit if you're not at least on a $10/wk sub. (No idea if D:I has a price structure like that specifically, but I've seen that and worse before.)

Claiming that P2W is only a thing in a PVP competitive context is part of why devs have weaseled their way into a situation where you're suggesting we need a new acronym. Don't give them another place to play their stupid word games if you want them to stop.

phinn wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 13:40:
Probably the most valid review bombing of all time. Game is a horrible predatorial gambling fest. This franchise has fallen very far from the masterpiece of Diablo 2.

I think the business model is egregious, but from what I've seen of the gameplay, this wasn't originally intended to be a full-fledged part of the franchise. It's at least in part an idle game with extravagantly animated progress bars. If they'd *marketed* it as such, I probably would've tried it during the initial release. The problem was when they (probably actually only their marketing execs) insisted on telling everyone it was actually a Diablo game, and not a fun spin-off targeted to people (me) who like idle games.

Put in this context, even the business model is somewhat forgivable. They're definitely squeezing too much, because they're Blizzard and they suck like that. Good examples exist, though: a well-calibrated F2P idle can give you a fun little activity for a few days for free, a chill time-sink for a few weeks for $5-10, and a months or years-long obsession if you like it enough to actually whale out. (And can afford it, obvs. I usually can't. In the years I've had a phone, I think there's three mobile games ever I spent more than $20 on, and I've never gone over $100. I've played dozens of these things, most get a few ad plays if they're lucky.)

Of course, as noticed, I'm not the target market. I just like gambling a little. I don't have a serious, life-altering gambling *problem.* And whether or not the devs of these games consciously think of it that way, (some of these are made by just one guy who's probably just going along with how the market works, not a team of black hat psychologists) the problem gamblers are their main target. That's a problem, and people are right to be upset about it. But I do think it's worth noticing that even within this filthy ecosystem, some products that are a genuinely winning value proposition exist for people who can be responsible about how much they like number go up.

Steele Johnson wrote on Jun 7, 2022, 13:24:
How do you pay2win single-player and co-op? I think we need a new acronym 😂

Not really. $110k to actually finish the game means that's what it is. "Winning" doesn't have to be relative to other players when it's that bad.

The Half Elf wrote on Apr 18, 2022, 13:44:
Can SOMEONE please explain to me the purpose of these games? Do they not have access to Pornhub or something?

Can SOMEONE please explain to me the purpose of this website? Do you people not have access to IGN or something?

"This time around it's the allure of the bl-" oh fuck, of course it is

Eighths are plummeting, sell sell sell

If your design goal is a price point, you're not making art anymore. Retro styles are cheaper to make too, so it's a wash. If you're chasing a higher price that way, you're literally dumping some players just for the sake of the tech.

Hated it when this happened to RoR, hate it even more here. RoR2 is still a good game, but the art simply does not have the same personality or readability. I have a feeling Hyper Light moving to 3D is going to have an even stronger negative impact on the gameplay than it did in RoR. HLD expected much more precision from the player than RoR, so the reduction in readability that almost always happens in 3D will require either significantly reducing the difficulty or just abandoning players who can't adapt. Because of all its visual noise, I almost never know what's happening in RoR2 beyond "most of them are over there, backpedal and keep firing." That's mostly okay in RoR2. It won't be in HLB. Trying to recreate the visual cues in HLD in 3D is not going to work.

Addendum: I will say there is precedent for something 3D that feels like HLB should: Ninja Gaiden Black. That's a hard thing to do right, as evidenced by the fact that most people think Team Ninja gets it wrong half the time.

Overall, I'm just really disappointed that indie devs, once they get success and therefore a budget, fall into the same traps of ambition that AAA devs did when the tech available to them was making the same shift in the 90s. You don't need to make it 3D! That's not always better or even good! Indies making retro pixel stuff is a thing because we learned that.

This comment was edited on Apr 1, 2022, 21:29.

Bodolza wrote on Feb 7, 2022, 15:30:

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Feb 7, 2022, 15:26:
You can find plenty of stories online of artists getting copyright striked on their OWN artwork, by random people who bought (illegitimate) NFTs of their work, and now the burden of proof is on the original artist.

I'd be curious to hear more about this. NFTs should make proving ownership trivial. The timestamp on the block should clearly show which NFT was created first. You could also easily trace the history back to the address of the creator.

Your position begins with the assumption that the artist minted the NFT. You can't possibly actually believe that; you must be aware of the staggering number of artists who refuse to engage with this technology. You are therefore arguing in bad faith, because the value of your tokens relies on people being unaware of NFT being used as a protection racket by exactly this method.

Bodolza wrote on Feb 7, 2022, 14:39:
I very much disagree with their tweet. NFTs are just a technology, and it has legitimate uses. This is like saying e-mail is a scam because it used by spammers.

It isn't like that at all, because e-mail wasn't an extension of a previous shitty technology. In the most charitable possible accounting, NFTs can only be as legitimate as crypto itself.

Crypto has good use cases in theory, but only in theory. In practice, it's a bunch of people with enough money to build server farms tricking a bunch of people who don't into buying stock in the heroin trade so that the CIA can launder money through it more efficiently. Because that's what it is now, it will never be anything else, because everyone that hasn't been caught in the scam knows it's filthy. Crypto is and will remain a collection of good ideas that died of its early adopters' rapacious greed.