[D4] you guys think D4 is gonna turn into a money grab?

General Discussion
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With how terrible blizzard has been, according to player feedback, the last 5 years with game releases and content updates, i’ve got the sinking feeling D4 is also going to turn into a huge RMT nightmare moneygrab by Activi$ion completely ruining the game.

They are hemorrhaging users according to every media source, and their most recent release TBC classic has turned into a huge mess of RMT services obviously making them huge $$dollars$$, but with massive angry player feedback all over the forums.

If this trend keeps up i’m afraid my love and joy Diablo will also be ruined and that would be so depressing.

I really hope they understand that the gameplay comes first, the players will follow, and then the money flows, but with everything happening now it feels like they dont feel they can produce good gameplay anymore, and are gonna cash in before the players realize it.

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Seeing how TBC Classic has been handled does make things a little worrying. It felt like it was handled with little care, and even the paid services weren’t actually working properly. On top of that it’s full of bugs that are a result of them using the Shadowlands client instead of working off the Classic client.

I don’t know about Diablo 4, but it’s definitely put a damper on my excitement over TBC Classic. I’ve barely even logged in with the pre-patch, especially since farming honor is pretty much pointless now because they over-nerfed it.

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From Blizzcon 2019:

A lot of people want to know more about monetization, or business model, or how do I buy this game. So how do I buy Diablo IV? I will divert that one over to Joe Shely.

Joe: So, of course, it is very early days here, but what I can confirm is that we will sell a base game, and expansions; and I can also confirm that we will not sell power.

I believe they also said something about cosmetic MTX in one of the streamer interviews.

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Base game + future expansion is something blizz always charge for. So that is a given.
Cosmetic MTX will likely be in the game too. Probably in the form of Armor and weapon skins and other effects such as alternate skill effects and flasy glowy enchants on weapons armor/wings etc etc.

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100 percent D4 will not be a money grab game meaning in game purchases or cosmetics.

this is bc blizzard has a brand built, essentially eternally, over their late 90s early 2000s developers minds who made unreal games during those times, and a splash of cool around 2010 with hearthstone and i guess ow. after all that it was downhill completely.
so, its going to take idk 20 years of this for the brand to tank. keep in mind the internet wasn’t all in our face back then so making a good game was a bigger deal than now. we had attention spans back then too, not muted by cellphones. smart games avoid info share, like diablo 2, bc its about random loot drops, that can’t be buffed by watching youtube.

blizzard knows this, they have everyone (their customers) won over from those other devs who dont work there anymore, even jeff left, like, a handful do most don’t, and so they know they can make any game ever and it will sell to “check it out” not necessarily to “enjoy for a long time”. in this way blizz “Grabs money” by you “checking out their game”.

This is exactly why blizz doesnt offer “pay 5 bucks for one month of this game, 7.5 bucks for 2 months” so you can check it out for cheap. They make you pay the full price to check out a game, and if you don’t like it bc the good devs dont work there anymore AND youtube dominated our lives and severely endangered gaming bc no individuality or secrecy of info whatsoever, blizz wins every time until taht brand name tanks.

So, this is why d4 wont grab money later, it already grabbed our money preorder or day 1 to ‘check it out’ and if we leave, it still got our money for the 1 week of play or 1 month or so.

make sense?
in contrast a new or lessor company would have to make a banger game and prove that to sell, blizz has brand from 20 years ago, so it doesn’t, and, its artists are always on point so the game will always “look” good at worst, and amazing at best, so make a good appearing, but shallow game it sells ppl leave blizz wins we lose.

basically blizz has 2 weapons its old brand name and money artists, its hard to fail at selling a game, easy to fail at making a good game, but they dont have to make a good game to sell, bc of those 2 things artists and its old brand. this is why they should be thanking brevik and those old devs every day for giving them this brand, along w the old wow devs and w/e

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Some players seem ready to pay for “extras” …

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and some Dev said they were going to add legendary powers to all legendaries in D3. Dev’s say a lot. What they say has no meaning. What they do does have meaning. I am going to wait until D4 is released to purchase to see if what they say = what they do.

Currently, I am expecting them to sell base game, sell xpacs and probably DLC’s (which I am totally fine with), and sell cosmetics (which I am fine with as long as it is sell cosmetics for XXX and not gambling for cosmetics, i.e. loot boxes. If they stick to this model, I will buy. If not, probably pass.

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If they wanted to monetise Diablo, they would’ve started it whit D3.

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China D3 servers have micro-transaction shop for cosmetics and daily experience boosts, open to this day. This is one of the reasons that they chose to go with mobile gaming, if not the only one. Before that we had an Auction House in D3 classic for every server and game difficulty goaded players to buy something. Take your pick for the model of monetization.

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No
:upside_down_face:

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Yes, I do expect a lot of monetization and a lot of bugs. That’s normal nowadays, especially for F2P games.

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They did do so with the real money auction house (RMAH). The problem is the RMAH wasn’t implemented well, and so got removed in 2014.

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But D4 won’t be F2P it will require the buying the (lifetime) subscription.

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I would venture it will be more in lines with character customization, portraits, wings, pets, mounts/mount accessories, with armor/weapon skins being special release or holiday things. Doubtful they will go the route of PoE with any and all good looking(I know it’s subjective) gear on the shop. I see gear skins more like those WoW helms, and deluxe edition expansion transmog sets.

To the OP, I know what you mean by cash grab, but please tell me when Blizzard has ever done this? Sure they have had shops and MTX before but they have never gone full cheap mobile gaming that it’s only about spending money.

Plus, as I mentioned in another thread, Blizzard hired Rod Fergusson to head up the Diablo franchises. This is a dude that knows how to get projects completed and out the door to customers. You don’t hire this guy if you are planning to keep the old way too long development cycles.

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You got a source for that? I mean adding affixes to non affix legendaries is not even remotely close nor as important as saying no power MTX. One is a game design that may not ever make it to the top of a priority list and the other is a business decision made above the developers level. So I’m pretty sure if they are saying no power, they aren’t going to sell power.

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When did D4 become F2P. BTW, the first 19 patches over the first year of D2s life was fixing major and minor bugs. So don’t act as if older games weren’t riddled with them as well.

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Every AAA game in the past five years has been a bugware money grab. The gaming market is headed for a reckoning.

The first patch or two had some major crash fixes. It was at least functional for most players. After that it was a mixed bag of content and the normal sort of bug fixes most companies never get around to. I think half of the patches came after the expansion. Compared to the nearly complete makeovers most games get these days for unfinished, ill considered, and buggy content, like Diablo III for instance, Diablo II was much better.

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There were 19 patches in the first year for D2. That is before the expansion. Yes, more major patches came after LoD. But they fixed a ton of bugs in minor patches before LoD.

D3 was completely functional out the gate. Busy servers had nothing to do with functionality as the game worked just fine. But bugs were not something not found in old games. There are bugs found in every game. The difference is they can be patched where you just had a buggy game forever or hoped it got fixed with an addon(expansion).

You also know they game had to get that makeover in RoS due to the removal of the AHs. Which came with an expansion, where big changes typically happen.

I’m not trying to say D3 had no bugs, all games have them. People just seem to think older games, and D2 by some people here, never had any.

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Yupp i know a lot of people raged about it, that i don’t mind realy. But nothing is locked behind a paywall in the EU and Americans. I hope it stays this way, atleast for things that give you an advatage against others. Cosmetics is ok whit me, they don’t give you power for money.

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Really? For D3 Items which are in the chinese shop are completely unavailable to other regions

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