metacritic update the DI rating score is now at 0.2 how long do they think itll take before its at zero?
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A very long time indeed unless Metacritic allows negative numbers.
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Damn. That is pretty sad.
Do we get a notification when a message is removed?
I dont think anything I wrote was removed, and I sure have been critical. Obviously not more than the game deserve though.
Sigh. Blizzard. Stop hitting yourself.
Blizzard used every single, dirty tactic in D:I to manipulate their fan base
1.) Battle Pass right next to the free one, to show you āwhat you are missingā
2.) Limited-time offers to cause FOMO
3.) Forcing you to visit store for free rewards to trick you into spending money
4.) Bundles with X% extra value to make you feel like you outsmarted them
5.) Forcing extra grind with Boon of Plenty and Prodigyās Path to cause the āIKEA effectā
6.) adding extra SHINE to real-money-only currencies & items (compare them to f2p ones)
7.) 1$ bundles because spending 1$ multiple times flies over most peoplesā heads
Calling them predatory is an understatement.
Thatās the same company that made WotLK and later MoP 10+ years ago which, to this day, remain the best gaming era by light years for me.
Itās really fāing depressing, if you think about it. Sometimes maybe its just better to let go and move on.
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They do have to make a profit. This is the corporate imperative. A corporation only continues to exist so long as it makes money. The execs hired to work for publicly traded ones like Activi$ion and Micro$oft have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to make decisions that makes them profits. It is in fact illegal for them to do otherwise. They can, will, and must do things to maximize their profits. Thatās what the legal structure we call a corporation (regardless of specific structure) is.
If we donāt like this form of monetization, they need an alternative way to make money. That means that we, as fans, are going to have to pay our āfair shareā and offset what theyāre making off the whales. If we donāt, if we cheap out, and want to play for āfree,ā the choice weāre making is to accept this current broken and totally exploitative F2P/P2W system.
Real change involves looking for real solutions. A real solution must involve a discussion of how Blizzard is going to pay its programmers and artist, and show profit to its shareholders. The marketing exec is simply going to weigh how much money he thinks the corporation can earn with the various monetization schemes in front of him, because thatās what heās paid to do. So, real change also means that we collectively as an American, European, and Western market more broadly (canāt forget our Aussie or Brazilian friends) have to tell them how will pay and how we wonāt pay.
Ultimately, I suspect this is going to have to come from government (sadly, because itās a poor solution). Exploiting whales is very, very lucrative. Youād need a LOT of boycotting to offset the revenue they bring in. There are a lot of us who are angry right now, but Iām not sure the average player is going to resist the FOMO (fear of missing out) without a strict government rule like the Dutch and Belgians have banning exploitative gambling mechanisms (loot boxes).
I donāt know how it works in much depth. In all my years posting I have received two such notifications one for a post that got flagged and earned me a short-term ban and this one for a post that got flagged and was simply removed. If other posts of mine were removed, Iād have no idea. I donāt go back and check very often. I hope not though. I have a lot of stuff Iāve written hoping to make D4 better that Iād like the dev team to see, like the one about making all item qualities useful and exciting. Go run an elder rift with no crests. The 3 white and 3 blue items + smattering of gold (unless you pay for proper drops) is not exciting.
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Yes, they have done all the legal obligations that companies are required to do, same as tobacco and alcohol companies do.
They many indifferent on if kids play it, but I doubt they care who plays as long as money is entering the register. Look at how many of their games use heavy cartoon/anime art work. D3 had the gore toned down and the story line was written more as a Saturday morning cartoon. Coincidence, maybe, but their are a lot of teens and pre-teens that play their games and I am sure they are aware of it.
Might want to go revisit Wyattās D:I Blizzcon announcement. Count how many times he says Diablo is a game played by families, brings families together, is something the family can do together, etc. It will be far more than once or twice.
Are they specifically targeting games towards minors, probably not, but they know who plays their games and put elements in their games that will attract their entire playerbase.
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I hope they do make official D: I forums to move the discussions about the game and its future there. But as stated above, those who are on this supposed imaginary ācrusadeā to āsave gamingā who want to create echo chambers of echo chambers of echo chambers,ā¦etc need two things: Their threads removed, a kick in the butt to go outside and find better things to do 
.
oh yes how dare people speak their mind when dissatisfied with a product i guess you would prefer everyone to simply smile and be grateful even as we get treated with disrespecrt and outright contempt by the companies that turn out a subpar product or services
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You made your position clear you donāt like the product. Starting five, six, nth thread (by the same person) to say the same thing aināt going to change the position anymore than what you started with. You donāt like echo chambers; no need to create them.
āis not exactly a loot box, but is very very close. A person could spend tons of money and never see that RNG loot drop for the gear they wantā
Isnt that the pointā¦ most countries have created online gambling laws against ālootboxesā and similar forms of explotationā¦ reskinning and shrouding the process for the same (arguably more u ethical result) is still malicious. In fact if say its worse since Blizzard purposefully blurred the monetization of the game to pass the ālootboxā stress test. Someone thought it was genius. I think its abhorent.
Legal: hey we have a problem with lootboxes in DI, apparently theyāre not legal - countrys see them as gambling
Dev: dont worry weāve got this!
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More likely the legal said we got this, if you just design it like this so there is something between applying the key and dropping the loot that we at least can somewhat possibly defend it takes some skill. 
That is more legal thinking as dev thinking.
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Diablo immortal is proof of what happens when you let the shareholders and bean counters in the development studio
they want to make money but yet they dont understand this kind of negative press is detremental to long term profits but of course they arent long term thinkers they want money NOW
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I would say it is more when you let passers by like CEOās that have no real connection to the business make the decision. There is a reason why privately owned firms are often more insane risk averse and have a longer term view as companies directed by someone who will just find another job if things turn sour.
Also a reason why some of the bigger public companies that stay around for over a hundred years tend to prefer to have a least a few board members that have grown through the company and have a bond with it instead of all strangers to the company.
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Youād have a tough time with this one with Kotick. Heās been an institution at Blizzard for many, many years. Heās got a crystal clear and long-standing connection to the business. It is where he made his fortune. Heās making decisions because heās fully invested in the results.
In fact, most CEO pay structures are such that they have a strong personal incentive as well as their obligations as employees of the corporation and their legal responsibilities as CEOs. The idea that CEOs donāt care when they make critical business decisions is not valid at all. They absolutely do. These choices are deliberate.
This one in particular was made with the specific goal of tapping into the mobile market, particularly in China. Itās an enormously large market. Blizzard seems to think that mobile games are often cheap, fly-by-night games. Theyāre small games, often of very poor quality. So, if Blizzard drops a new game into the mix developed by a triple-A studio with all the quality that comes with it, that they can not only compete and make a truckload of money, but that they can also redefine that market with themselves as the model of how itās to be done.
If you ask Bobby Kotick, thatās the story heās going to tell you. Again, heās deeply connected to the game, to the company, and to the industry. Heās not a fly-by-night guy. His career and reputation rests on this project succeeding, in particular after the lawsuit heās been trying (poorly) to manage. This and later D4 are what he thinks are going to give big wins to the company and put it back on the right path.
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@Joat & @MissCheetah
Sorry for the late reply about your, Joat, thread removal.
Now if the thread was the one where you described how a game needs numbers of players no matter if some few whales carry the cost/ profit. Then it is a shame it was removed! You clearly explained and you do that often, that a gaming company has to create profit.
If it indeed was removed after some of our peers flagged it. All I have to say that you, the ones flagging it, should be ashamed of yourselfs.
No matter if you agree or not this person has some of the most elegant posts I have had the delight to read.
They are well articulated, his/ her thoughts are well founded to the contrary of many others that just wing it. (Including me!) A sidenote, thanks for the posts, as a non native speaker I appreciate your penmanship as it allows me to brush up my touch with English language. In many other cases I risk de-learning Englishā¦
I would suggest the moderators to take the time to revisit that thread and reassess whether it should be removed or not.
Thatās all, sorry for the wall of text though.
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well the scandals rocking Blizzard have even caused his reputation to come under fire in other ways as well
https://www.thegamer.com/bobby-kotick-will-step-down-from-coca-colas-board-of-directors/
True, but that is the same that also in privately owned companies you can have directors that like to take high aggressive risks and have little eye on a future beyond three years. The personality of the person always plays a roll as well, just as there are CEOās of public companies that do also think in ten year terms. Generalisations are just that and there are always exceptions that confirm the rule and besides no system is perfect or guarantees results except for exploitative f2p/p2w it seems.
I try to listen to both sides. Blizzard isnāt speaking much right now, but we generally know the argument. Itās just that we need a reminder of it. Real solutions require hearing what all sides with stakes in the solution have to say. Iām as angry about P2W as anyone else, but simply saying āno, I donāt want thatā isnāt enough. I have to offer a better option.
I practice my Spanish and French the same way! If you invest the time to learn it, you have to take time to listen, read, and speak it to maintain it, or we forget it! I get confused many times and Iāll be looking for a word, and the right word comes to mind, but in the wrong language =D
Yeah. My point was just that heās not a āfixerā or a āconsultantā. Mitt Romney famously made his fortune by taking over failing companies, making a bunch of decisions, and trying to fix them before getting out with a profit. They call it vulture capitalism. Kotickās not that. Heās got long connections to the company and heās got a big personal stake in these choices. Iām not a fan of the guy personally. I think heās a snake, but we do need to be honest about his stake in these decisions.
Thatās absolutely true. Especially when your stock prices are fluctuating based on quarterly earnings and your bonuses are paid on year-end profits, you have a very strong incentive to work for the short-term while sacrificing the long-term. There are often very few incentives to make investments in the long-term growth of a company.
Blizzard, I think has made some of them in the past, though. They invested something like 7 years into Starcraft: Ghost for example. They had years on a few othermajor projects that got cancelled. Weāre talking literally years of development time that they scrapped because they turned into concepts they didnāt think were workable. And when you gamble large amounts of time and money like that, eventually you need to come back with some big wins.
Blizzard has gone a long time without some big wins. D3 was a 2012 release. Hearthstone made them money. HotS made a little revenue, but never really competed in the MOBA market. OW never really caught on in the FPS market like they wanted. SC2 sort of filled and capped the RTS market. Theyāve been relying on WoW revenue.
If Iām in the board room looking at this track record, I tell my guys that I donāt care about your long-term project. I need to see tangible results on my desk ASAP. I want something deliverable with a solid revenue stream til we get another major release generating multi-year income. We have to have a WoW replacement in place, and we need the resources to get there. And after the lawsuit and fallout, I wouldāve had extra urgency to double and triple check everything to make sure it was scandal-free. I honestly think they thought D:I would be just that. When they dropped the PC client, I think they all thought they were about to have a big party June 2nd. I think the P2W backlash has blindsided them.
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True and D4 can be that for them easily, even after D:I which likely will be a financial success anyway.
Fans of the franchise are ready and willing to love it if just for old times sake, if Blizz is willing to give them what they want within reason. An experience and fun with a fair offer from their side where they are upfront on how they want to monetize and that monetization is not built within the game as needed. Just look at D2R, even if there is some pushing and especially some discontent over the servers, game itself is overall well received as were the changes even if some thought devs could have gone a little further and others would have liked even less.
Even look at the D4 trailer. Everyone says āthis might be good but thereās prolly gunna be p2wā. They have left all of us so jaded its incredible. I hate the company they have become.
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