Diablo Immortal Rift Simulator
dimi777.github.io
dimi777.github.io
I can’t believe how good the Diablo 4 release vids looked last week but they’ve been incredibly tainted in my mind by all the shitty stories I’ve been reading about Immortal.
Bums me out as Blizzard IP always has a special place in my heart.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/23171133/overwatch-2-loot...
Being free + bp they can lock all cosmetings behind $$$ and push even more fomo tactings to your face
This is what they're financializing. It's a cash out, private equity style.
Just resign yourself that the Diablo series and the rest are gone.
Their whole pitch on 4 seemed to be "look we're making it HARDCORE again!", which the trailer demo'd to mean "LOTS OF GORE + Marvel movie humor".
It's hard to even articulate what made D1 and D2 as "gritty" as they seem to this day, but it involves politically incorrect and demographically-exclusionary themes that people of a whole different generation made for a PC market that was regarded as "for adults" (kids were supposed to be in the console ghetto).
It's an entirely different world, and Blizzard is a bloated zombie whaling ship.
Also, the genres they're still trying to squeeze money out of (except for Overwatch's) are very outdated: non-4X basic RTS, isometric RPG, MMO. One of those is okay on a phone, but these are all relics of a bygone age of technical limitations (in MMOs' case, then-recently-conquered bandwidth limitations that made a shitty game format interesting because playing with many people was novel at the time).
"You're a brave soul! I'd sooner thrust my sacred scepter into the foulest, carbuncular trull than set one boot into that cave." https://diablo.fandom.com/wiki/Gheed
Don't really know if that's considered PC but I suspect there are worse examples that I can't recall well enough to articulate.
Another possible example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo_2_Resurrected/comments/pchu8...
I just clicked on skeletons until they died and then picked up the shiny things they dropped over and over.
You're really overthinking the game man.
The parent (like you) didn't see how D2 could be interpreted as politically incorrect. The parent's parent did. I was trying to bridge the gap.
Basically, expansion of made-up lore and a loss of mystique about connections to the real world ruined the sense of being in an unwieldy no-hope situation. The story instead felt like it was written by a teenager with a power fantasy.
Can you elaborate on this at all? I played both on release and while I can think of a lot of gaps between the originals (1+2+LoD) and more modern takes, those differences don't sound similar to what you're thinking of.
Blizzard games are just bad now because Blizzard lost its creativity a long time ago. It's basically an entirely different company than it once was.
If you're talking about Starcraft 2 as being a "basic" RTS, it's not the same game it was at launch in 2010. There's so much content for it with a whole bunch of new Co-op commanders and the Arcade custom modes made by the community are stacking so many mechanics on top of each other it actually gets a bit too much sometimes.
-Infinite upgrades and blasting out the vanilla sc2 game mechanics by upgrading the abilities so many times that it breaks the gameplay, with added zombies which are usually jacked up to insane difficulty, on a tiny rush map with extra income.
-Hero maps that have a good 12-13 systems of powering up the hero.
-Some chill out maps that have you memorizing so many different unit combinations that automatically send in waves across the map and having to finely interpret massive unit battles with different many units and abilities and weekly changing bonuses clashing all at once. There's many more.
Totally agree Blizzard is dead in the water. The old "gritty" vibe in D2 really hinged on being able to unearth core, adult, western values and challenge them with scary demons. It was presented the evil on such a self-evident surface level too, it was great, you didn't have to interpret fine intricate characters, it just presented hateable figures to wrestle with. The narrative kept moving and getting bigger as you got deeper into the "East".
The pixelated look was so good. Like you could pick out individual spots on the map and the resolution was small enough that you could see the exact start and end to most game mechanics and animations. You could do pixel-perfect moves relatively easily and understand the world pieces intuitively, mostly from just looking at it. The late 90s and early 2000s had that sand-like pixelated look to all the monitors and low-res video games. CRTs helped blur it out, but you could still appreciate the grainy-ness and feel like you were in something a bit more concrete and grounded cause you could almost count the pixels on 640x480 (lol).
Ah nostalghia, thanks for the trip!
The soundtrack did an amazing job to cement the movement of narrative. Act 2 in particular, because it’s the first time in the game (from Diablo 1 perspective) that we see a completely different environment within the game.
An all around work of art.
Being classic gothic horrors. It had very minimal story, strong visuals and music, and minimal dialogue that didn't gave away too much which made you imagine. Its roots lied in books with engraved illustrations, rather than other products of the modern entertainment industry. This was a common trait of early RPG games.
Diablo 3 was a high-resolution affair, through and through, which meant it relied on textures much more. It also kept the late Blizzard trick of making everything a bit cartoony to emulate their biggest success, World of Warcraft.
Back when we could have blockbuster games with worldbuilding/fantasy narratives that didn’t involve shoehorning whatever currently trendy topics are flying about.
See also: baldurs gate remaster
Cartoon is a very apt description, especially after the ambiance of D1/2.
It was released as a fuck you from the devs to fans, as fans were so disappointed upon release with the game in general, and the lack of a secret cow level.
The game was garbage upon release, it took years to get decent. D3 re-release isn't bad. I'm still playing the re-release of D2 rather than play D3 or Immoral.
Meanwhile, it was very playable and I don't remember any issues aside for error 43 (or what was the number)
Why does this need to be repeated every time someone has valid criticism of something. Just because it worked for you or you had fun doesn't invalidate criticism.
Here[1] is an article from 2015 (replaced article with reddit list) just listing some of the issues. If you'd google this you'd see all you need, rather than continuing to defend a position with a single anecdote. (added with 2nd edit- and here [2] is an article detailing the things that had to be fixed to make D3 'good'.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/diablo3/comments/vfvkh/diablo_3_and...
[2] https://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-diablo-3-went-from-dis...
Edit 1-removed article as it was a fluff piece. Replaced with a chronological list via reddit.
Apologies for the shitty article.
Edit 2- added article listing the ways it was fixed from release to now.
I played the last season of it on Switch, was OK, but not worth the repurchase. Especially not 10 years later.
I was able to beat Hell with my first Hardcore character and it took under two weeks. I did use some AH, as it was there and a part of overall experience.
I can see people can't find meaning in the gameplay on softcore mode. That's expected.
I never used the AH because I was that against it, but it was pretty necessary on SC.
Sorry for the repeated edits above.
As a side note, D2 HC on switch is nigh impossible due to the lags and rubber-banding. But i take it as thw trade-off for portability.
That's the key part. That was an important part of gameplay after all.
Imagine you would be a mac user and would be against right click and never use it. You will not beat hell as well :)
it was made specifically to piss you off, and I am 100% in favor of that. you played yourself with this opinion.
and yes, I have spend MANY Saturday mornings watching cartoons, spread across five decades, and I know what cartoons are like.
your problem is that you believe you are owed the games you want. no one owes you anything! want the D1 or D2 experience again? then play those games! you're an insufferable fart of a human if this thread is anything to go by. I hope you never get to play the games you want to play and I genuinely mean that.
For the sibling commenter, the Microsoft acquisition hasn't changed anything that matters. They’re getting the IP, but the minds behind it, the caring about their customers, is long gone.
Anchoring. There’s nothing that excludes other MTX in that wording.
Even though new gameplay mechanics open up by the time you hit 60, by the time you've hit Paragon ~15 you've probably seen everything and gameplay starts to get more repetitive with gear upgrades under multiple layers of RNG. Note that paying real money for Legendary Gems doesn't alleviate this grind except for faster clear.
And they have been unusually stingy with player rewards for milestones/daily logins compared to other F2P games, which isn't a good sign on relenting on some of these decisions. I am very curious to see how retention will be if nothing substantial changes.
It's a mmorpg with a skin of Diablo on top of it. In every Diablo game you could tackle every challenge alone, which is important because at 37 your friends don't play as much as before. In this game the presence of raids and having to group up has made me drop it after hitting the end of the campaign
No point chasing the Diablo 2 dragon. The series needs to move on to something more.
Diablo Immortal won't release in the Netherlands and Belgium due to loot box law - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31662430 - June 2022 (129 comments)
It costs $110k to fully gear up in Diablo Immortal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31628848 - June 2022 (735 comments)
11 days ago, 129 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31662430
14 days ago, 745 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31628848
also, the number of people in this thread who are obliviously repeating things which have been proven wrong is just as egregious.
people find something that matches their opinion and they never look closer. ever.
this is just further proof that people who know what they're talking about do not visit HN.
Some countries are starting to change their laws to factor in that these digital prizes are perceived to be valuable by players despite not turning into money.
This is how MtG gets around the rules as well.
User pays money > User gets premium currency > User presses button > User gets random reward(s)
Here's DI's version:
User pays money > User gets premium currency > User "uses" item before rift > User plays rift > User gets random reward(s)
That extra step means that instead of simply playing a slot machine with real money, you're playing a (very very easy) game segment that gives you (exponentially better) rewards, since you used real money.
Also this is assuming that the system isn't rigged which most likely is.
Technically it doesn't account for the 50 gem pity, which doesn't change that much EV-wise for getting a 5/5 gem.
To answer the adjacent replies, they are indeed disclosed in game, just not in an obvious place. (press the [i] button at the Crest Vendor)
Screenshot proof: https://imgur.com/a/0NoSUut
Also great how you have a 4.5% chance of dropping a legendary, only to roll the dice again on getting a "good quality" one. Blech.
There's several streamers that are running rifts till they get 5/5 gems, they're in the thousands of dollars spent.
A community-created estimate from data supplied by players puts the 5/5 gem odds at 1/2000.
Edit: above poster has rates in their copy of the game that seem to line up with the community-calculated ones. They definitely didn't use to be there where I live in the US, so those are either a recent addition or region-locked.
It hasn't made a difference legally, and they are probably losing potential impulse sales due to friction.
const gem_types = [1, 2, 5];
const gem_probabilities = [0.754, 0.201, 0.045];
const five_star_gem_types = [2, 3, 4, 5]
const five_star_probabilities = [0.75, 0.2, 0.04, 0.01];
EDIT: After more searching, it looks like these are community guesses at numbers, Blizzard has not published official drop rates.
The Rare Crests you get more easily and have a chance to drop a Legendary Gem, but never a 5-star gem.
[1] https://reddit.com/r/DiabloImmortal/comments/v9v96i/til_ther...
USD SPENT: $6200