Hello, I come from the harcore WoW raiding scene, but I also play Diablo3 seasonally. I am the type of player who will play if I’m having fun, and I do not do activities that interest me. If I don’t feel like running Elder Rifts, I’m not running Elder Rifts. If I’m tired of farming Library, I’ll move to Demon or Tundra routes instead.
If you’re somewhat of a similar player to me, and you want some honest opinions about the state of the game.
To summarize my experience:
The Good: The gameplay and class design is smooth and legitimately fun. It’s a great experience for free, and you can spend some money if you feel it’s worth your cash. (Bugs happen, so be it. I’m looking past it.)
The Bad: I want to be seen as a player in your (Blizzard’s) game community, and not just as a customer to line the shareholder’s pockets.
Reaction to Content Creators: They are focusing on non-issues and it’s actively making it harder to address issues. Only a few actually mention rewards/tuning issues. The rest are bandwagon’ing–these people are just spending money for clout.
TL;DR:
Is the game Pay-To-Win?
No. And it’s really not even borderline, it’s simply not P2W.
There are some issues, surely. But it’s nowhere near the doomsaying from content creators.
Why is not Pay-to-Win?
it’s absolutely noticeable when you start off at lower levels. To use WoW as an example, let’s use the Fiery enchant. It’s very good at lower levels and gets balanced out over time as creatures get stronger. P2W levels faster in the same sense that you 2-shot enemies, where I 3-shot them. It didn’t matter.
In PVP, it’s a bit more noticeable, but it’s generally not that bad. I have a 70% winrate, albeit with not that many games played. But I have an insane KDA score, so oh well.
Major Issues with Free-to-Play tuning:
The Hilt vendor has some items with Monthly cooldowns. Not going to sugarcoat it–this is the type of rewards design that fits in a spreadsheet, but not into player psyches. It’s anti-fun. The lead developers need to reevaluate their rewards structure to fit around Core Value #2: “Commitment to quality.” This is not good.
Legendary Gems effectively cannot be earned through dedicated play. You are given SOME legendary gem crests, but it’s so few you actually cannot qualify this is reasonable. The lead developers need to reevaluate their rewards structure to fit around Core Value #1: “Gameplay first.”
Legendary Gem crafting is abysmal. You need “Crests” but that are heavily throttled too. Most of them can be purchased from the “Hilt” vendor.
Premium currency is required to “Awaken” gear at endgame levels.
Experience for the Battle Pass is capped. Stop throttling my ability to enjoy the game and we’re fine.
PC client degrades due to some memory leak on the GPU, I think. A 970 should be able to play on max settings for a phone game. I had to restart my client every 2hrs or so because the degrading FPS (60 fps, vsync enabled) dropped to ~15-20fps.
Notable Issues with Free-to-Play tuning:
Too much emphasis on Social Interaction. Forcing groups to run dungeons is very restricting to a casual playerbase. Matchmaking does not change my opinion on this matter. I feel the server’s average Paragon level should determine when dungeons no longer require groups.
Non-legendary gems drop rather infrequently due to low Magic Find. Requiring a 4-player group to really see anything is a bit rough.
Battle Pass (Free) is not very rewarding.
Answering comments from various places:
The game asks you constantly to spend money. → It does not. You get a popup every new dungeon clear, but just once. I haven’t had been asked to spend money since Day 1.
Endgame is pay-to-win → We all farm at the same speed and, honestly, I’m not even bothered by the folks who swiped $1000 just to keep up to me. They still need the proper gear to drop and to farm the Paragon levels just to even get a chance relative gear. For reference: My Combat Rating is over 1220 and I’m currently Paragon 30+. I am among the top geared players on my server when you exclude the power of legendary gem ranks.
The cash shop is horribly expensive. → Yes, it is. I do not see a good value for my money. I do not mind players who whale for their own enjoyment. My ability to enjoy Diablo Immortal is not influenced by whales because the game is actually fun.
Should you play Diablo Immortal?:
Yes. I think you’ll have about 40 hours of legitimately great casual gameplay. If you want more than that, you can probably get another 20hrs if you play with friends. If you want to play A LOT, then you certainly can.
If you enjoy your time, there’s nothing wrong with the Battle Pass system (if you arent trying to be competitive). You can easily have 40-100hrs of casual Diablo gameplay every season and not spend anything on it.
If you want to play competitively, you will need to spend A LOT of money. That is true. But it’s certainly fine to be F2P.
what about battleground and people already having legendary gems level 4?
what about Shadows War when 13 players take out Immortal Crown faster than 30+ ppl of same level?
jeez you must have dumped a lot of money into this game and are worried stiff that people are quitting faster than the kenobi ratings are dropping. That chase scene, my lord, momma throw me from the train.
OK so trying to avoid semantics of what pay to win actually means according to each person, the generally accepted (as far as I know) usage for the term is whenever you can only get something by paying or only realistically get something by paying or get a significant advantage through it.
It is very clear that this is the case, we normal folk can just ignore 5 star gems because it is not going to happen. I mean I saw more than one game walkthrough video where the person got to that part and just said “I am not getting into this because I am going f2p so I don’t care about them”. And that is just one example.
And when a full time streamer who grinds the game for 10 hours a day is already falling behind after a week. In PvP and PvE.
Look I don’t care as much, I despise the fact that there is any pay to win in the game but as a game itself I am having lots of fun and I see it as there is this power level I will never reach and will just stop playing sooner than if everything was available. But it is definitely there.
I do feel the competitive nature of the game is P2W. But generally, PVE is simply not that competitive in nature. (Could be difference in philosophy). As noted, I think the game is good until you get to endgame. A lot of my feedback is railing on the F2P elements feeling awful, as I barely get to interact with the endgame systems.
Also, I’m 1400 CR now, because I’ve gotten to farm H2 a lot.
The game itself is fun. The PVE is a genuine Diablo experience. PVP is a different beast.
Anyways, here’s my proof of F2P and my status on the leaderboards for challenge rifts.
But I generally define pay to win as “Use real money to effectively bypass an issue that prevents you from progress.” Very hand-wavy, and my definition applies to PVE content only. There’s a lot of grey area, and I do not contest that PVP is the most heavily-impacted system when it comes to this.
PVP is largely a mini game. PVP is considered a hardcore system. Aside from a few unicorns, most casual players will never set foot in PVP. So my focus in the OP is generally a PVE point of view.
To that note:
PVE is genuinely a “self-imposed challenge.”
PVP is genuinely a standard competition.
Casual players will have a good experience from 1-60 if they stick to the story content.
Casual players will likely not enjoy the endgame progression, especially if they need to catch up with respect to raw materials.
Hence, the game is generally a good Diablo experience for F2P players for 40-100hrs.
It’s not you and a bunch of scrubs that are f2p against whales with 5 star gems. You do know you all get groupped together and there is no 1v1 PvP. I’ve played in 55 BGs, I’ve won 29 and lost 26. I’m a free player.
I believe he’s a free guy but that CR pic is obviously photoshopped. That is how it looks when you are not in the top 5. You can see the start of the 6th place players portrait above his. But he is clearly below 6th.
I feel a bit proud of my graphic design skills in identifying photoshopped images without a reference. This was the first time seeing the CR screen and I knew something was not right.
And yeah it looks photoshopped, but it’s not. That’s just how the UI looks when you scroll to the top. So, unless you think I photoshopped these images too, including a QR code, by all means…
Not trying to knock your achievment as I can tell you have put some time into the game. It looks like your server is lacking whales though if a 48 rift puts you on top. My server has some real whales that are pushign 60+ rifts. No F2P is going to be able to keep up with that. They all have lower CR than you too but have 3k+ resonance.
I have no idea what you’re doing to take the screenshots and why all of them are cropped in some way. Are you hiding personal information? How many hours have you played? The QR code sends you to their website. There are no leaderboards on the internet. Only within the game.
I define P2W like this: You pay to speed something up where if you didn’t pay you won’t be able to earn normally in-game in a reasonable amount of time. Whether it be power, time spent, items earned, experience gained, glamour, modes, characters, etc. (Subject to change without notice)
I gave up on getting the Butterfly wings in D3 because it took much too long to find, even with a guide. If Blizz decided to let you buy the wings for real money, then it went pay to win. When I first started playing FFXIV, someone invited me to their guild and was answering all my questions and showing off all the kool stuff I can eventually do myself. At the time, I wasn’t even aware that there is a service to buy a level boost, but it was all outside of the game in a separate website. Not in-game like D:I showing you, “Buy More” on every single thing.
Regardless of your achievements in D:I, you still shouldn’t be defending it.
F2P can be potential payers. P2W are already sending a message that this is ok. It’s not ok. You may be immune to not spending, but I’m sure you don’t have the power and looks compared to those who do spend. They force you into groups so that you can see all the cool looking gear and power you don’t have.
HOTS has the EXP Boost where it counts down even if you aren’t playing and lootboxes.
OW has lootboxes and special skins only available for a limited time (same in HOTS).
HS is straight up P2W.
D:I has an obscene amount of slimy tactics to have the player spend money. Uneven currency purchases, 20+ types of “currency” / materials that all interconnect to you spending money, a stark difference in F2P and P2W, a hilarious attempt to bypass the law, and pop-ups urging you to spend.
Blizz is boasting the pre-register numbers like those matter. People want to see what it is like. Once they see, they will uninstall it. Show the numbers after the honeymoon phase. Why did Blizz put the QR code there? So you can share with your pals to make more money. I thought it would take you to the leaderboards.
