Diablo IV Gold Immortal has been given an exceptionally rough ride for this model of business Perhaps disproportionately when you consider that other popular free-to play games such as Genshin Impact and Lost Ark have a lot of gacha mechanics that entice high-priced "whale" gamer. Diablo's renown and popularity with its core PC gaming population, built over a quarter of a century, is definitely an influence. It's also the case that this particular system is extremely problematic, and the very nature of Diablo games could have something to do.
If you buy legendary crests, it is not buying the dice as you do when purchasing the FIFA Ultimate Team card pack, say. It is a chance to play with the dice, to get into the game engine to tweak the drop rate (slightly) in your favor. Gambling mechanics that are addictive aren't distinct from the addictive gameplay mechanics, but rather tied directly to combat and loot drops that are part of the game. Diablo is perfectly positioned to achieve this. As my colleague Maddy Myers pointed out, these games with a lot of loot focus have always had a certain slot-machine-like quality, which Diablo Immortal's model of business makes an actual.
Blizzard has made it a point to highlight that the game's monetization system can be ignored up to the point of the endgame and it's true and they claim that the vast majority of players love the game without spending even a cent, which is possible. But it's disingenuous to suggest that the primary pleasure of Diablo games lies in playing through the story, rather than maximizing the power of your character. It's also deceitful to suggest the fact that these games have been designed to stimulate desire to reach the power cap in the players. People who have a tendency toward addiction to gambling, to the addictive aspects of Diablo's item gamesor, perhaps either of them -- the crest system of old is an abuser and could be extremely damaging.
For everyone else this makes Diablo more difficult to play.
There was a time when we were here, or somewhere like it. When Diablo 3 first came out in 2012, it had an auction house with real money in which players could purchase and sell their drops. In theory, this was to avoid the fraud and
buy Diablo IV Gold cheating that plagued the trade of items in Diablo 2. But in order to steer players toward this auction-house, Blizzard decreased the rate at which loot drops were made in the game to such an level that the process of equipping your character was a tedious task, and the game as was uninteresting to play.
