Diablo: Immortal

[Lordnine]

Annnd I am fully out. At level 30 I received a notice that the only way I could proceed to the next story mission was to reach level 35, this despite the fact that I was already sleepwalking through all the fights.

My only way of leveling up is to complete repetitive kill and "collect 60 bear asses" quests that I thought the world had grown out of back when WoW was in its infancy.

[Butterknife]

I tried it last night but got disappointed really quickly. It was obvious from the start that the game was made for mobile instead of PC. That put me off, but I stuck it out for about an hour. Once I'd leveled up to about 13 or so (in only an hour?) I realized that my dream of playing a necromancer that actually just followed his minions around and let them do all the work was not even possible due to being forced to continuously auto-attack to do reasonable damage.

The nail in the coffin was that I couldn't make my minions more powerful -- the game auto-levels your skills at every point. Basically, there are no choices for the player to make beyond which class they choose at the very beginning of the game. I want to play a game, not an interactive movie.

[rittchard]

I tried it last night but got disappointed really quickly. It was obvious from the start that the game was made for mobile instead of PC. That put me off, but I stuck it out for about an hour. Once I'd leveled up to about 13 or so (in only an hour?) I realized that my dream of playing a necromancer that actually just followed his minions around and let them do all the work was not even possible due to being forced to continuously auto-attack to do reasonable damage.

The nail in the coffin was that I couldn't make my minions more powerful -- the game auto-levels your skills at every point. Basically, there are no choices for the player to make beyond which class they choose at the very beginning of the game. I want to play a game, not an interactive movie.

This likely won’t change your mind but you do unlock other usable skills at higher levels so at some point you decide from a pool of maybe 10-ish? My Necro is low so I haven’t unlocked the later skills yet but presumably there will be a golem and more minion focused stuff. It doesn’t seem like these have secondary modifications like D3 so that’s a bummer. I have seen skill modifications on Legendary items so maybe that’s the only place you get variation.

[Skinypupy]

I’m still messing around with it (mostly because I’m on vacation and only have the iPad/iPhone with me) and have kind of a love/hate thing going on. Just dinged level 37.

The core combat is very solid and quite fun. And it looks great on both my iPad and iPhone, even if it drains the battery like crazy. It doesn’t feel very stable though. It slows down to unplayable levels when I’m in highly populated areas and disconnects quite often. There also seem to be a truckload of bugs. I’ve had quests not triggering, tutorial messages that won’t go away, map screens that won’t close, etc.

It’s pretty fun in this early game stage where I can just get the usual dopamine hits with new gear, skills, achievements, etc. I’m always getting something new or some sort of reward, which keeps things interesting. There’s absolutely no chance I’ll stick with it for the end game grind that I can already see around the corner. As soon as I have to buy something or grind for a ton of hours to progress, I’m out. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.

[rittchard]

I’m still messing around with it (mostly because I’m on vacation and only have the iPad/iPhone with me) and have kind of a love/hate thing going on. Just dinged level 37.

The core combat is very solid and quite fun. And it looks great on both my iPad and iPhone, even if it drains the battery like crazy. It doesn’t feel very stable though. It slows down to unplayable levels when I’m in highly populated areas and disconnects quite often. There also seem to be a truckload of bugs. I’ve had quests not triggering, tutorial messages that won’t go away, map screens that won’t close, etc.

It’s pretty fun in this early game stage where I can just get the usual dopamine hits with new gear, skills, achievements, etc. I’m always getting something new or some sort of reward, which keeps things interesting. There’s absolutely no chance I’ll stick with it for the end game grind that I can already see around the corner. As soon as I have to buy something or grind for a ton of hours to progress, I’m out. Hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure it’s coming.

I’d agree with all of this, except I haven’t had any technical issues or run into the bugs mentioned. It is definitely cool to play the same game on my PC on a 55” screen, then pick it up on my iPad Mini while in bed, and then get some time in waiting for my parents on my iPhone. I know there have been a few other games that promised this kind of crossplay but I don’t think any of them are of this quality.

[Skinypupy]

I know there have been a few other games that promised this kind of crossplay but I don’t think any of them are of this quality.

Agreed, the cross-play is extremely well-implemented.

[Skinypupy]

I've been continuing to futz around with Diablo Immortal and am almost through the main story. My overall thoughts echo what was said in many of the reviews.

This is a incredibly well designed mobile game and captures the feeling of Diablo remarkably well. It looks and sounds amazing, the combat is fun, and it plays remarkably well on an iPhone. Gameplay-wise, it's exactly what I was hoping for from a mobile version of Diablo. If you just want to jump in to hack and slash your way through hordes of demons and have a 20-30 hour campaign experience without spending any $$, it's perfect.

However, if you want to min/max and continue developing an powerful character past the end game (which is what most players want), it is a complete and utter failure. The gacha mechanics and microtransactions are ridiculous and essentially prevent any progress without dropping significant amounts of cash. There are 22(!) different currencies that weave together (usually incomprehensibly) into upgrade paths and it's damn near impossible to keep track of what does what. There's at least five different types of upgrade tracks, all of which require doing a ton of different daily events to even make minimal progress. Unless you pay for them which will allow you to skip huge chunks of the grind, of course. Josh Strife Hayes did a great breakdown of the predatory pricing they use (long, but worth the watch), and it's simply absurd. One of the examples he highlights is how spending $22 for a specific pack will let you skip about 6 months of grinding in 5 minutes. Ridiculous.

In short, it's an awesome mobile experience...for about 20 hours. It's really fun, bosses are cool, it look amazing, loot is great, and it hits all the right hack n slash notes. After that, however, it is completely destroyed by insanely greedy and complex pay-to-win systems for anything past the base campaign.

Shame, as I think this really could have been something special.

[Sudy]

I often wonder about the good press that would be created by a well designed mobile game that had completely reasonable microtransactions, meaning that most users would naturally pay only the equivalent of a traditional paid game experience. But we can't have that because capitalism. That or these games already exist, but not enough people are passionate about them (or they can't stay in business). But trying to limit what people will need/want to spend almost directly contradicts the implementation of a cash shop as we know it. And it's just so frustrating because F2P isn't a bad model in itself. And the mobile market, even all these years later, is a wasteland of exploitative non-games... at least at the top end. Mobile gaming should have been gaming's coming out party. But mobile consumers are seemingly unwilling to pay more than pennies (if that) up front for a game, meaning that alternate monetization methods are the only option. Despite this, the mobile gaming platform is the biggest on the planet somehow.

I'm tempted to play D:I some more, but I'm trying to resist because I just know I'll be frustrated and disappointed in the end.

[gilraen]

I have no interest in playing the game but it's now super annoying because D:I cash shop is driving up the in-game cost of WoW token (that you buy with gold and convert into Blizzard balance). I pay for my WoW subscription and anything else (like expansions) with gold, and throwing a mobile P2W game into the mix is completely screwing up the gold economy in WoW.

[rittchard]

I often wonder about the good press that would be created by a well designed mobile game that had completely reasonable microtransactions, meaning that most users would naturally pay only the equivalent of a traditional paid game experience. But we can't have that because capitalism.

Me too - or how about a well designed mobile game WITHOUT micro transactions?!??! Blasphemy!!! I'm pretty sure there have been some successful games (mainly ports of old games) that just charged a single price, I'm not sure why that financial model doesn't seem to gel with the majority of mobile game companies. Or how about something kind of in-between, maybe a $10 entry price and then you pay like $1/month to play? I don't know, it just seems like there are plenty of ways to make money without following such bizarre and arcane multi-currency/gacha systems.

As skiny, they did a good job bringing the Diablo 3 experience onto a mobile/cross platform, with plenty of hours of FREE entertainment. So on the one hand I kind of feel odd bitching about the monetization because I got more than my (zero) money's worth compared to tons of other games. But on the other I do understand that many others play these games for hundreds or thousands of hours and are more demanding from what they want from a game. And then/ on the flip side again, if someone is really getting hundreds of hours of enjoyment, shouldn't the developer be rewarded with some sort of payment? I've always found the entire "free 2 play" system bizarre to begin with, but I guess I'm very old school.

[Daehawk]

Diablo Immortal's Microtransactions Have Made It $24 Million In Two Weeks

[Skinypupy]

I uninstalled it yesterday. Was fun for a blip, but I’m certainly not going to support that model with any $$.