Hacker News Reader

Comment by jiggawatts | Hacker News Reader

What upsets me is that in exchange for that money you’re treated to a low quality game. You can just feel the disdain for the user/victim at every step.

While launching the game for the first time:

1) No sound!

2) Forced subtitles.

3) Visible tearing in the video because of a lack of vsync.

4) Two tracking and notification permission prompts, including one that lies to you: “Your game is better if we can target ads”.

5) Obnoxious tutorial that takes control away from the player. (If an adult spoke like this to me in real life I would slap them for their insolent patronising!)

6) Forced updates.

7) Etc…

At this point I deleted then game because I don’t want to be gamed by a mega corp. I’m not a money bag to be tracked and siphoned.

View on HN

I found most of your complains either false or non issue:

1. Ok, maybe a bug.

2. Given that is a mobile game and most people will no have the volume up, it is ok to have subtitles. Not to mention that games that start with subtitles are more accessible and the majority of players actually don't mind them and find them useful.

3. Fair, but given that this is a mobile game, V-sync can be a problem for lower end devices too.

4. False? I cleared the first mission and had no prompt for that and has not requested tracking at all. Android.

5. The hell you talking about? When you start you get a small cut scene and are given full control when they drop you off the ship.

6. The game is mostly online for what I can tell so updates are a given (and you can download areas separately)

Perhaps permission was not asked because permission was previously granted.

Example: every time I use Google maps it asks me to turn on location tracking, many people never encounter this because they leave location tracking on.

5. The hell you talking about?

The game literally removes the controls while you're being told how they work. They vanish. You can't do anything but sit there patiently while a game character lectures you about how a joystick works.

What next? "To use a key on your keyboard, apply sufficient downwards pressure that you hear a 'click'. Do this now!"

It's patronising to a level that I feel insulted and leave the game immediately.

Compare to the height of the PC game era -- which Blizzard games used to be the epitome of -- you get "dropped" into the game and you learn through discovery instead of an unskippable presentation.

The intro of Half Life is a classic example of how to do this well. This is the opposite of that.

>you’re treated to a low quality game

You're not only playing a modern Blizzard game, but a mobile one. This should go without saying. :p

>Two tracking and notification permission prompts

Is one of those the face tracking they put in there to satisfy Chinese government regulations?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com