You can’t just buy the gear outright but the cash shop contains a Battle Pass system that rewards Crests that can be used to earn a chance to unlock better gear which means you can ultimately get better gear by paying money.
This isn’t helped by the fact Crests will also be available for purchase outright, especially when the game includes a PvP mode where paying to win will very likely reign supreme.
Sad to see
edit: updated to add the guy who actually played it and saw these systems in use. You’re right that this could change prior to release but release is supposedly imminent.
Also to add that the very existence of cash shop gear lootboxes means that the grind will be made harder to drive players to the cash shop
h t t p s://www.androidpolice.com/2021/05/15/diablo-immortal-is-going-to-be-worth-playing-at-least-for-a-while/
Was there ever a doubt that any new “company who shall not be named” game would not be PTW?
Their most successful game is Candy Crush!
DI and D4 are PTW games.
Get your daddys credit card.
Do you have a source for that or just your opinion?
This is what they actually said.
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. - Blizzcon 2019, Diablo IV Systems and Features panel.
D:I definitely sounds like it is pay to win. Pretty damn sad.
Hopefully D4 is not. If it is, Blizzard should just be honest about it already. Then some of us could start working on erasing the games existence from our memory.
But really, I will give Blizzard the benefit of doubt here. I can’t imagine D4 will be pay to win. At most, it might have some grey area stuff like buying inventory space.
Do Crests get you the actual gear, or do they get you a CHANCE for gear. Like getting to roll the dice twice instead of once?
I think D:I is more MMO-ish, but what do you win from PvP there? What are the rewards that you can “buy”?
It is a free game, so I do expect some form of monetization, we all expected that.
I honestly think D:I is going to be an interesting deviation from their norm. We shall have to see how it works out and if it is less predatory than other games in that genre.
I really don’t think so. Blizz is pretty good about not selling actual gear or power in their paid games. They stick to cosmetics and such which don’t help anyone “win”.
Just dont allow trading. Problem solved. Trading is not available in D3. Sounds like it is somewhat available in D:I unfortunately. D4 remains to be seen.
Anyway, RMT is NOT pay to win. It is obviously still bad though.
D4 will have trading because they want the whales to feel good about skipping some parts of grinding. Whales will RMT what they need as a result.
Instead of this, we should have P2W and non-P2W servers (both having no trading). This way RMT will be dead and whales would buy the stuff directly from Blizzard.
Things can change many times before release.
Or they can end up with having “trading” in a way where it does not matter much. Like in WoW. Such as only allow blue items to be traded and literally nothing else (I am assuming blue items wont be particularly useful after lvl 5 or so).
So your solution to stopping RMT is to make Blizzard the RMT partner?
Instead of simply doing the obvious thing to stop RMT; not allowing trading.
If Blizzard makes the game pay to win, then it is no better than allowing RMT. Actually, a lot worse, since it changes the design incentives for Blizzard.
