Estimated revenue: 2 billion $ in first quarter (ex Bliz employee did the math). This game is a big scam. It is all focused around pulling you in and sucking you dry. Even community/server/leadboard mechanics.
"Only if you care about playing competitively". This vid is the only actual honest review of the game. It's only a money extraction system if you fall into the trap. I'm tired of this hypocritical attitude bc most of the highest viewed critics have been whaling to "protest the game" and all they're doing is strengthening this idea. They should have spent no money, and talked about how it's an OK Diablo game, not worth spending money on, but maybe worth playing a few mins a day. Say that competitive play is just a whale off and there's no reason to do it. The fact that you CAN spend money to speed up progress doesn't mean you HAVE to to have a moderate amount of fun... just don't care about being competitive.
You’ve been a champ for this game for a long time and you went out on a limb to bring the community with you. It’s honestly so sad to see how Blizz did all this, your story is a parable for all of us.
Managers dont care about anything but money, they will through you under the bus and let you die out crying for help. im sorry but thats the harsh reality. we either have to come together and stop these predatory game designs, or live with the fact that you cant hide in different realitys anymore, because everything is getting like real life - pay to win. i feel really sorry for the whole diablo team that they have to deal with this greedy company. and other companys will follow with even worse models now, so i dont have any hope for any future games. diablo 4 is gonna be the same shit show. i will go to grinding gear games and poe2 nothings holding me here anymore. and when chris wilson also decides to jump on this train, im probably gonna quit gaming entirely and maybe go back to my games from1990-2010. gameboy, gamecube, N-64, sega, super nintendo, x-box, playstaytion1,2 maybe even 3, the good old rts games like age of empires, starcraft, command & conquer, warcraft. roleplay games like final fantasy, elder scrolls, dragon age, zelda. so many games more(i dont wanna list everything i just named a few okay guys :D) with great replay-ability. i will just revisit every game that touched my heart and brought tears to my eyes, that made me emotionally invested and cared about the characters. im sorry for being so negative, im just so sad seing everything go downhill. not only in gaming but in life as well. everything is so horrible, nothings getting better, world war 3 will come, and these greedy people gonna tilt, press the red button and destroy the planet and everything that lives. alright im loosing it, sorry, i wish you all the best, spread love and peace, i hope you are doing well and keep your head up.
If anyone is still wondering why people aren't happy with Diablo Immortal, if anyone is still wondering whether or not these critics are actually giving Dibalo Immortal a fair shot: Listen to this man's voice. This man honestly truly put himself into this game for the time he played it. And he certainly cared. Listen to his voice. Does that sound like the sound of joy? It's impossible to ignore that sound, so unlike joy.
@@TheMasterOfShadows WRONG! People are just cry babies these days me and all my friends love this game and spend nothing. Grow up and play something else like roblox
@@kushking949 great, you and your friends enjoy a predatory game, that insentivises spending ludicrous money and logging in daily for rewards. Good for you, but bad game desighn is bad game design, they have taken what diablo is and monnitised it to hell, campaign is free, so have fun playing that, but never expect to be competitive or to be significantly rewarded for your effort.
It has to sting a little bit when you realize they used hardcore Diablo fans to test and provide feedback in alpha for a game that was not made for them. Immortal was designed for casuals and whales.
The way i see it they provided the data blizzard was looking for, how hardcore players advance and play the game, so they could make the "walls" to stop them.
@@linkincnt You are probably right. I keep wondering where all the development time went for this game. It's a mobile game that took 4 years+ to make, which seems insane to me since in that same time frame(or less)companies are putting out AAA games on console and PC alike, sometimes both at the same time. I would be so curious to see the data and the math behind why they did what they did, because it wasn't an accident the game was designed the way it is.
Great video. It sums up how I've felt about the game. I'm at p20 and can't be bothered already. Everything feels pointless by being capped the way it is.
Yeah it really slows down once battle pass is capped and it’s only dailies, you can’t make any meaningful progression unless you fork out some cash. I’d prefer just having a small chance to find random legendary crests in the world so you can still play around with the gem system a bit. Even if it just one a day, that would still be better then this hard paywall and caps
Thanks for this, Raxx. I find your take incredibly reasonable, thoughful, and honest. You have given this game your best efforts and have provided very helpful resources and perspectives for those of us newer to it. I've enjoyed a lot about my experience with the game so far but have grown sour to it almost solely due to the predatory and anti-generous development decisions. I recall playing Elden Ring earlier this year and leaving it feeling like the developers were passionate and generous in the experience they crafted and it was one of the best gaming experience of my life. I leave this one feeling lied to and preyed upon. A sad state of affairs! Will definitely tune in for whatever comes next for you and your channel :)
I'm here from Asmon, and I'm here to say that I, and we people who are watching, 100% agree and support what you are saying. Thank you for voicing out all of this. We appreciate you truly.
I've got to say, the D3 content creators (with you at the top of the list) are the most dedicated, knowledgeable, and mentally organized CCs I've come across in any game. Thanks for all you do. Hopefully they don't screw up D4. Diablo Immortal is fairly fun f2p if you just want to run through it initially with some friends and aren't planning on grinding. Kind of the opposite of a Diablo game but there you are.
This is the thing i love the most about d3,the community,creators and players alike. I've never played a multiplayer with no toxicity,be it in chat,yt drama,in game scammers or stuff like that. It's sad to see Activision don't see it,or see it and decided to take advantage of our good nature,wich is worse. That's why i still don't like the multiplayer part of D2,full of elitist and scammers.
diablo3 might be in a decent state nowadays, but ultimately, it's still an enormous disappointment if you look at the whole project, especially considering its the successor to diablo2 and how long it took to come out. The degeneration of blizzard is going on for over a decade now, it's sad it needs something like diablo immortal to get at least a part of the blizzard fanbase to actually look what the franchise they shill for has become. Critics of their beloved games have to deal with so much bullcrap from them because they feel attacked when you critizise something they like, leading to the mess we have now, most games released by triple A companies being garbage, and expensive on top of that as well. People that play games for decades now pay the price of naive, gullible, in large part dumb fanbases that reward companies for bad decisions, bad performances, no insight into what makes gaming fun and just dollar signs in their eyes. But its the same with capitalism as a whole, 90% of mankind dont profit from it, most of them will hard suffer from it (or their children, or their grandchildren), yet people that critizise this suicidal economic system get yelled at by the same kind of naive, gullible, in large part dumb part of mankind that thinks it has a clue about anything but they really dont, and turning life into shit for everyone. Sadly its either the majority, or a very loud minority, dont know.
You are extremely good at explaining information with great detail. This makes your story/situation even more sad. I know your not trying to get any pity or make a video just to complain. But damn, that must be a real kick in the nuts going from how things were in Alpha to now. Hope things change but seems unlikely. Wish you all the best with whatever game you choose to pursue in the future.
Hey Raxx, thanks for your honesty. I do...no we do really appriciate your hard work. Today, in the crazy world we live in we need more guys like you. Keep it up and never forget that we as a community are there for you.
You're absolutely right. I'm surprised you didn't touch up on how annoying dungeons are too. You basically fight 3 bosses that drop trash and the main boss drops junk too (most the time). Would it kill them to have some legendaries drop on the way up to the boss? Caps left and right too. Least they can do is remove the fading ember cap and 50 year crafting system. Way too many rules dude. As a clan leader of 100s of people it's hard to even find active shadow war soldiers who don't just quit around the level 50s because Blizzards capping battle pass xp
I stopped at 51. Didn't know that was a common thing. Xp slowed to a crawl and I can't play that much. I have a career, wife and 4 kids. I don't have that ķind of free time.
Just hit paragon 21, I have same thoughts as you. Caps are forcing me to stop playing. I find myself struggling to find meaningful things to do. So many restrictions that dont seem to have any logic. Not only did Blizzard ruin what could have been a great game, but they created a terrifying precedent that I fear could steer the entire gaming industry towards.
Got to paragon 21 too. Uninstalled the first time i saw whales on enemy team in battle ground. No matter how hard i try or time i spend there will be always a whales out there that will beat me to the ground.
Thanks for getting this info out there. It's important for someone with your experience in these types of games, both past and current, to voice your opinions and concerns. I have uninstalled it on both PC and mobile, which is a shame because the footage and reviews leading up to release were so promising :(. Upvoted
I just have to say this. For background: I'm a life-long gamer. I've been gaming since I was 4 years old, and I'm almost 30 now. I'm also a challenge runner, and a world-progression MMO guild raid leader. I have... a lot of experience with games in general, not just blizzard games. I've spent the past 2 weeks or so primarily playing free games. Mobile games. Free steam games. Fan games. Every form of free game. From "pointless" clickers and number growers, to rpgs, to MMOs, to hardcore competitive games. I couldn't find a single one that was a worse experience than Immortal that had any form of budget or gameplay to it. Even the games that realistically SHOULD be massively monetized because there's literally zero gameplay, like Adventure Capitalist... it's just non-existent in comparison. I reached rank 1 in an AdCap event without even playing for an entire day. Because nothing actually required me to spend anything to participate fully. SWGOH, a game I've played for many years now, and which I will VERY much say is P2W, and just had it's arguably most controversial update ever, I'd still very much say isn't as bad as Immortal. Sure, a whale will always perform way better than you, and you'll lose when matched against them... but you don't just randomly get matched against them. Your average F2P player isn't really competing with whales in any real regard. Warframe allows a free player to buy premium items from people that did buy them. So a whale can get non-premium items by selling premium currency (not even the items themselves, but literally the currency you buy premium items with) to free players that no-life grind the game away. SWTOR has an extensive F2P model that requires very minimal spending for anything other than ranked pvp and raids, as you only need to sub once per expansion, and provided you sub every once in a while, a F2P player isn't in any way at a disadvantage against a non-free player. Battlefront 2 back when it was released. Literally wasn't as bad as Immortal. I was there. I maxed out an entire character before they changed systems due to the overwhelming negative feedback. What was probably the single most negatively received game in the industry prior to Immortal. Wasn't. As. Bad. F:GO? FFBE? Dokkan? DB:L? Battle Cats? None of them are nearly as bad. They have issues, yeah. Especially Dokkan with it's weird single day availability grind fests and F:GO with it's absolutely horrendous 5* rate. But they're not.... nearly as bad as Immortal. Heck, that weird harry potter mobile game, I was LITERALLY the #1 player on launch week back when it launched and I barely even played it. I've played Infernum for years on and off. It's literally a mobile diablo-like. (more-so torchlight-like, but eh.) I haven't run into anywhere near the content issues Immortal has. I've never felt like there was quite literally zero point in playing. I keep seeing people claim "this is just the standard for mobile games" - No. It's not. I've been playing mobile games for the past like 10 years. Some of them very, very seriously. While yes, there's always going to be P2W issues... it's not the P2W issues that really make Immortal a "bad game". It's the fact there's literally zero reason to play it, EVEN IF you whale. Immortal isn't designed the same way a stamina-based game is. It's not designed to log in for 20 minutes, spend energy, claim dailies and then log off. It's designed to be a diablo game... that doesn't let you play it, despite being designed to be played non-stop like a normal diablo game. If you're one of those people that just keep saying "this is just the mobile game standard", I genuinely want to know what the [redacted] game you're referring to. Because I can't find it. I literally can't. Kemco's rpg series? Not even remotely as bad as Immortal. If you buy the 1-time no-ad purchases they're basically just mid-tier RPGmaker games that are actually surprisingly deep and interesting mechanically. The clickers and AdCap-like games? Nope. Yeah, you CAN pay to see a number raise faster. But like... you don't even remotely have to. And again, most of them are pretty easily "whaled" on by making a single $2-10 purchase that's usually $5 to remove ads. Tower Defense games? Most don't become "p2w" until EXTREME late-game, and even then it's not really the same scenario as Immortal, as it's just grinding until you finally get the upgrades you need, not "literally waiting weeks for the paragon level to increase by another 100". I've played Arknights seriously. I'm a huge player of Infinitode 1 and 2. I've checked out dozens of other smaller TD-like games. Puzzle games? ...nah. Like seriously, you're insane if you think there's any puzzle game out there that's as unplayable and P2W as Immortal. Or you really did find the absolute bottom of the barrel somehow. Most of them just suck. But considering I've 100%ed about 80 different Nonogram and Jigsaw puzzle games each, and regularly play other interesting puzzle games..... Collectors will always have a P2W element to them, but like I said. It's never to the extent of Immortal, as you actually gain stuff and have interesting and fun content to do. You might eventually hit a pay/grind wall, but like, at least you CAN pay to get past those. You really can't pay to get to paragon 500 in Immortal day 1 of a server because they just blatantly said "no.". Again: The [redacted] games are you people talking about that are "just as bad" as immortal? Bad? Yes. JUST AS bad? Not even close. Because Immortals issues aren't even that it's "p2w". It's that it's just arbitrarily walled literally everywhere. Even when you're a whale you have nothing to do aside from pvp past the first 10-20 minutes of logging in each day. Even the worst games I could find had more daily content than that. Diablo Immortal really is just a gigantic mess. The only games I could find that were as bad or worse were literal asset flips. Games that are so aggressively monetized you'd have to be on drugs to pay into them, and that are probably all used as money laundering schemes. And even some of those honestly felt more playable simply because of horrendous game design allowing you to break things stupidly easily.
Thank you for your insight and feedback. I am f2p and am not competitive and enjoyed the game for about a week and a half, then I couldn't ignore the 'Raid: Shadow legends' feel about this game. Raid, in my opinion, is the worst type of game and I warn everyone I know that it is gambling game thinly veiled. DI is not that, but is no less disgusting in that it hides all of the 'caps', 'gates', and other 'progression hindering' mechanics. Then using symantecs to decieve players saying that they were 'transparent' and 'honest' when they said 'We don't sell gear'. I will not tell anyone what to do with their money, but I will invest none in this game. I was sooooo looking forward to D4, but now, I don't even want to associate or support Activision Blizzard after this. i am truly heartbroken.
Thank you Raxx. I love your streams and videos. I have played Diablo Immortal as f2p and beat the story as well as leveled to paragon 2. It was actually pretty enjoyable, but the p2w is horrendous and I didn't believe ppl at first.... I m sorry my fellow Blizz fans. What goes up must come down, but what is down may one day rise again. I do hope Blizzard will deliver a truly great game again one day.
11:30 very simple. Game gives you power. Game stops giving you power and makes you wait for it. Conveniently, you can head to the cash shop now to get more power. It is *made* to ruin f2p/low spender's experiences
Listening to this man and reading all the comments I'm happy to say that I continued playing D2R. Thx Raxx for all your help and information you provide us.
You know what would help instead of everyone complaining? Do a video “How Blizzard Can Fix Immortal”. That would add value to the whole discussion. Especially from you since you know the game intimately.
Very interesting deep dive for the development of this game and I myself went into the game completely blind to check it out and came away disappointed/bored. It's as you said: there's nothing for F2P players to do at the end of the day. I hit para16 or so and all I do is log on daily to do some bounties and maybe the odd rift with my freebies. I don't feel compelled to play competitively and that's for the best as the game is just not built well for it regardless. I don't feel compelled to play at all really because the game has no carrot to chase, with there being no path for free players to engage in progression. I've played plenty of other cash shop games and I honestly spent more there on cosmetics because the game was fundamentally great and didn't focus on money as the only source of valid progression. Even while playing some of those games completely free, there felt like enough paths towards those cash shop items for free that I'd remain engaged and playing until I achieved what I wanted. Blizzard gets an F for failing to provide free paths towards progression and ultimately when people all quit and the whales are stuck only playing each other, it will normalize until they quit as well. They're trading years of good will for a quick cash grab and it will haunt them. Now that Diablo IV has been given a more solid release date, I'd imagine this game will die a slow painful death up until that release puts the final nail in the coffin.
Well said, I would add though that I think this game will die far before the release of Diablo IV if they don't even try to make more quality of life changes. That being said I'm continuing to play just to see if they will.
I'm 36 and have been a Diablo fanboy since the first game. I played some Diablo. I played Diablo II excessively and would occasionally skip school or do all nighters to blast - eventually moving into primarily doing high end pvp. I'm one of those people that was disappointed with Diablo III, but grew to appreciate what it did (within its limitations) and usually play a bit of every season (and if it's a good one, like the two previous ones I usually stick around for a month or two), but still talk smack about it - it's been mostly a love / hate relationship. I loved getting back to Diablo II: Resurrected and the nostalgia it provided in a beautiful new coating (I was that guy that watched your stream and was lucky enough to get two random Jah drops within the first week). While not necessarily a Blizzard fanboy (since I never played any of their other franchises to this extent), it is safe to say I am absolutely a Diablo fanboy. Through the entire Diablo Immortal development I stayed curious with a healthy doze of skepticism. Like a vast majority of us, I was kind of disappointed when I learned it was going to be a mobile game (we all instantly start to think pay to win when we hear mobile, that's how it usually goes), but I would stay up to date with the information the Maxroll team would provide and over time I started to think (especially after it became PC also), that this would still be a playable game for me, maybe even better than Diablo III - so I would check in on updates on the game on occasion and you guys kept talking good stuff about it, so I figured I'd give it a shot once it was released, but unlike previous installments I was in no rush to play it. I did install it, both on my phone and on PC, but I haven't played it yet other than booting the game up and login to my account. It didn't take long after release before we heard all the pay to win stories, which instantly killed my interest. Especially because I'm one of those people that once I reach the end game I move into pvp (if there's any worthwhile pvp scene) - and if I'm not gonna have a chance at all to compete with whales then it's an instant boner kill for me. Disappointed, yes. But I can't even say I'm surprised. That's the worst part of it all. I agree with all your statements here. I am not at all blaming it on the developers. Hell, barely even Blizzard. I'm sure Activision and probably Tencent pushed most of the monetary implementation into the game, to cater to the Asian market and there's probably also been some investors that kept pushing for it - we all know there's quite a bit of money the rake in from these kinds of games. It's safe to say, in the state the game is in now, I'm more inclined to uninstall the game and not look back unless the game get some fundamental changes to their monetary system. Thanks for your honest review, it's very clear your heart and time has been put into it, and it certainly helped me stay clear of this mess for now.
I'm almost in the same boat as you. But one thing I find funny about all this is that, I'm now in my 30s with a job and a life. I'm still trying to come to terms with the reality about me not being able to blast anywhere near as hard as school days. And what's worst is that, even if I did, I would stand little chance against whales. It's just a crappy reality that's making me consider stopping as well.
If im Blizzard and im watching this video, then ive got to panic. When one of the best Diablo content creators on YT has had enough of this BS, that should truly open their eyes...somehow I don't think they'll give a damn and laugh all the way to the bank, i feel bad now in retrospect wasting my time playing DI for the 4 hours or so i did. What a joke Blizzard.
Leo, Blizzard doesn't care. Diablow Immoral was NEVER made for free players, it's a mobile game that's designed to extract money out of people with excessive amounts of it or those that have a proclivity toward gambling addiction
Why would they care about content creators when they only marginally impact their income? It's not like many people watch these videos and I also don't think that many spenders (whales) quit because of them either.
I've been playing a couple of hours a day since launch, and when I hit around paragon 21, I started to feel the grind pretty hard. Top players were starting hell 2 and I figured it would get better once I hit p30 and got to jump in on those hell 2 raids. A while later, I'm paragon 33 with CR 1101 slowly grinding out my CR to reach the 1250 threshold for hell 2. I got one gear upgrade over the last 10 paragon levels or so. I cleared challenge rift 30 today, so I'm hoping for some upgrades via beastiary or gambling but this wall feels ridiculous - especially from a company that knows the ARPG formula so well.
The developers did a great job making a good-looking, fun (alpha) game. However, their "orders" were to make a mobile game for a reason. Now, after a month of extreme success in player numbers, the execs decided to adjust the fun and the spending to a degree where the playerbase will decrease drastically. However, the whales are too invested to stop playing, so this just means a great exodus for a chunk of the "freeloaders" while the profits keep coming in. It is disgusting.
Your 400 hours in the Alpha were a data-source for what a F2P mega-blaster can achieve, and they used it as a blueprint for defining the balance between free and paid players. That's how the caps and resonance were born, to keep the F2P's in line.
@@Jordan-qw7yw Not only do they not want them stronger, but in this case they severely crippled your ability to even approach the stratosphere of a paid player. There was a story of someone who spent 20k and did not get one, ONE, five star legendary gem from it. Even paying is a gamble, albeit a legal one for now.
it was my first experience with diablo and I didn`t like it at all. Got the BP at the start, hitted 60(20) and uninstalled yesterday. The game is pretty boring, immersion feeling was nonexistent to me.
@@markxv2267 if you are calling him kid i presume that means you think you are older than him, did you just never learn to have any manners growing up?
I'll wait and see if they'll take community feedback in the next update (battle pass), if not, goodbye DI. Good to point out that they already made 24 million dollars with this shit, most of it coming from South Korea, it's amazing how easterners don't mind lining the pockets of gacha game companies
Unfortunate that it's your first experience with Diablo. This is not a true Diablo experience. Even Diablo 3 is lacking to the feel and nostalgia of Diablo 2. Hopefully it's not your first ARPG and MMO experience either. Long story short, Blizzard isn't the same anymore. I can't even have real hype and hope for Diablo 4. It's smart that you uninstall instead of getting hooked into gambling and further supporting this "game".
It's almost like this game wasn't designed to be power played and blasted through in a couple of days by pro gamers on the toilet all day 🤔 I'm only level 52 and still having fun while also avoiding the cancerous monetization.
Great vid. My final thoughts are s27 can't come soon enough. I think a lot of new or returning players will be present at least for a bit and its gonna be time to blast!
Thank you for the honest, fair and very detailed assessment of your thoughts and experiences playing this game. Clearly you wanted this to be a great addition to the Diablo franchise, as did many of us. Nevertheless you effectively conveyed that it was a variety of decisions made post beta that favored revenue far more than the playing experience of those of us playing and wishing to embrace this newest entry. The only hope for this game is that decision makers at Blizzard recognize the consequences of their decisions and misdirection, then choose to implement some of these detailed recommendations mapped out solely to improve the over experience for gamers. Otherwise participation will likely continue to wane.
You're the most relatable wholesome content creator man! Love your videos and your takes on things. I look forward to more d3 seasonal stuff from you in the waiting room for d4. Keep up the good work
The thing is even if you're not trying to be competitive as f2p, you'll lose any incentive to keep playing after reaching the first big wall. That's the big difference between Diablo Immortal and any long term successful gacha game. A long term successful gacha game keeps f2p players engaged and allows for constant (meaningful) progress without spending a dime. Actually valuable rewards from events, login bonuses, social media milestones etc. and a f2p option to acquire the currency to make more pulls (of any rarity) are also the norm in those games. Not out of generosity but rather because these companies know damn well how important it is to keep a big f2p playerbase on board. Whales still have an advantage but the f2p player should never feel like they're out of reach for them (even though they'll be always out of reach). Every gacha game that died in the past did so because they lost their f2p playerbase. That's a fact. The vast majority of whales want to feel special and you can't feel special if everyone left on the server is also a whale. After playing the game, reading posts in forums and watching many videos about this game i came to the conclusion that Blizzard no longer has any intention to make this a long term project. Their lack of communication and updates (even though the game has some very serious bugs at least on IOS) also speaks volumes. No one in their right mind would act like Blizzard does right now if they wanted Diablo Immortal to be a long term successful game. The only reasonable explanation for this behavior is that they just want to get as much money as quick as possible and then leave the game to die.
Feeling the same as Barb Para30/CR1150 and without intention to pay in more the daily grind and continuation feels like waste of time. Also no motivation to start another character. So started the last two days to spend nearly all my game time again in the grind game i played before diablo immortal.
As a basically free to play player myself here are my thoughts. I say basically cost i bought the battle pass for $5 and a cosmetic set for $10. $15 spent total. I REALLY like the game! It has so many cool aspects from pve to pvp to the shadow wars the raids the events. It has a lot going for it. But thats where it stops. I been playing 8+ hours a day for nearly 2 weeks and have 5 characters 1 at paragon 24 and the other 5 at levels 40-58. My main gripe is it TAKES WAY TOO LONG TO PROGRESS!!! Before level 30 you would rank up fast and the game felt rewarding that way with new skills to obtain and much better gear. After 30 it takes way longer, after 40 even longer and after 50 an eternity. But after you hit paragon it takes FOREVER! Like you said i am running out of stuff to do and what i do do does not feel rewarding! I get on my main and have to run 6 elder rifts, 5 dungeons and a bunch of other stuff for 3-4 hours to RANK UP ONCE!. That is terrible! makes me not want to even try. They need to like HALVE the xp requirements per rank minimum when you reach paragon. Another thing i dont like is there are some skills that dont have any legendary bonus on legendary gear! For example IMpale for the demon hunter. But other skills have like 5 different legendary pieces some skills have NONE. The set bonus pieces are not that great at all. Especially for wearing 4-6 of a set they are just underwhelming. There needs to be more and be class specific like a 6 piece set only for wizards that only buffs and does different effects to lightning damage and skills, then one for fire, ice , etc. And dont even get me started on PVP. They need to disable ALL gems then it might be fair, right now its beyond broke. I have games where i see guys go 35-0 and i get killed in 1 second to everything and then inspect them and they have maxed gear and maxed gems. Anyway i do like the game alot. But the progression system once you hit end game just to gain ONE paragon rank is insane! Takes 4 hours of nonstop playing endgame content to go up 1 level and 90% of the time in that 4 hours i wont even find 1 legendary item. At least give battlepass members 3x xp or something. Unless they change something fast in the next 2-3 weeks i can see alot of people getting burnt out after they reach paragon level and feel like they have to play for 6 hours a day to maybe go up 1 level.
Immortal got me back into grinding d3, got me to purchase d2 and play it for the first time, and it got me watching your channel/streams Raxx. Its not all negative.
A year on, i would say that while some things have been done to fix the balance and improve quality of life for FTP players, and there are a lot more activities to do daily (so theres no longer such a thing as "I have nothing to do"), it requires a TON of grinding and platinum farming with alts, to get anywhere as FTP. I am still 100% FTP from day 1 and have managed to be an Immortal once, and battleground legend twice. Just last month i finally unlocked my 1k wings. I'm in a top 5 clan on my server and we're regularly in contention in Rite (though less often a winner). And I'm easily one of the weakest in my clan. But there are good people in this game who realize theres room for us minnows. My clanmates recognize that I don't have raw power but I have some ability in the strategic arena. There's more to the game than being a frontline combatant. And I would say that with the new areas and activities added, I never get bored. :) best zero dollars I've spent in years.
Omg I felt this so hard... I went into diablo immortal knowing about the ptw but wanting to see it for myself to try and push ftp as far as I can, considering I still play D3 hardcore I wanted check this out. Immortal has been ironically one of my best MMO social experiences ever I genuinely mean that, playing with the same people seeing them in the world, like legitimate doing the events grinding together and pushing as hard as we could. I'm well beyond 300 hrs para 30s like 1250 cr right now ftp and have been at the same wall as you for over a week now... the only actual way to get resonance ftp is to rat all common gems and charm stones for plat and maybe a month of grinding you could buy a 3* everything I have wanted out of this game and thought could make it better for everyone (even the whales) was how the alpha was??!?!....... The real problem is alot of us actually enjoy this game because it's good at being a very social MMO and we see some hidden potential for it to be great, like they could patch it and make it better but in reality they spent a year doing the exact opposite... It's extremely disappointing that they sucked the soul out of this and made it a slot machine.
Looking forward to your D3 Season 27 contents, D2R ladder race, and anything else you wanna play that's not predatory like DI - me and I'm sure some other viewers watch you for you, not just because you play Diablo games. Thanks for your content and dedication Raxx!
Largest offput is that the game punish you for grinding. This is unheard of in diablo. We are grinders! Im happy to wait for d4 beta testing or just grind d3 for another year before d4 comes online. Thx for thoughts Rax:)
Well made video. I normally don’t watch videos this long, but this one was well done. Hopefully Blizzard hears this, but sadly they probably won’t. I guess they are confident their reputation is big enough to not care 😞 I haven’t spent a single dime, and I’ll probably play until I feel forced to do it, and at that point if things are still the same (which probably will) I’ll just move on to another game.
hey Rax thanks for taking the time to elaborate on this. it's a shame that we didn't get the game that could have been. for me, as a 25-year fan of the Diablo series who is also a father of two toddlers, I'm happy just playing while I take walks on my lunch break. I do want to see where the story goes, not sure what I'll do when I finish it.
8:10 Same. Can't beat the f'ing worm because of it. The only way I could get the DH moving or primary attacking again is to use one of the secondary attacks, which is a big problem when they're all on cool downs.
More than one year later. I started playing 2 months ago, I am paragon 827 with 17000 combat rating, fully F2P. Not interested in PvP, just doing PvE and it is fully viable as free to play.
@Raxxanterax you are one of the most chill and best streamers i got to know the last weeks. it is a shame this played out for you like it did. hang in there, D4 will hopefully be YOUR time. if its anything like they say
Great video and honest feedback. Thanks. I quit playing after hitting my second cap. I refuse to give any of my hard earned money to Blizzard for game that is so blatantly a monetization scam. I would have preferred they stay with Alpha version and charge me $60 for the game. I will not pay to win, period.
my problems personally having reached paragon, being forced to team up for dungeons hence some bounties and contracts become lost, someone warned me and now I saw the pit of despair is impossible, I finally get the boss down to half strength, have to heal when I come back healed the boss is back to full. I'm glad to hear one of the "elites" accepting more casual and less/non competitive players, I sympathize even if i don't play the team compete thing
I know how you feel, i voiced my thoughts on Diablo Immortal trying to defend it because I wanted to try myself but was let down by my 3rd video. It sucks, because you want it to be awesome because it's an awesome genre, and lore, but damnit being handicapped in game sucks ass. (im just small channel atm) But dude I feel you, it's emotional for sure, but I respect you and your decision 100% because it's truth. Game on and stay true!
never seen any of your content before but i stumbled across this video and i have to say it's the most accurate and relatable review of this game that i've seen. earned a sub for being respectful, honest, and getting your point across without hyperbole or insults.
Thanks for speaking for the community, particularly other blizzard fans who had high hopes. I just wanted to say you're 1000% correct about the caps. When you force people to log off ("I've done my dailies, I'm good") then you remove the incentive for people to log on. And that's where I'm at with this game. They don't realize that putting hard caps is NEVER going to turn f2p players into p2p. never. They are two different groups of people. And the caps actually hurt everybody. I just hope d4 is better.
Honestly, while the game SEEMED ok at first, I actually got very bored with the game. I just don't find it fun to play. Also I never feel like I'm getting more powerful. Like in Diablo 3 it feels MASSIVE to get the 6 piece set, like you just feel like a god once you get those pieces. No matter what gear you get in Immortal, you just never feel more powerful.
I noticed the move problem and DH when I started and that made me go with Necro as first character. My gripe now is... I cant play any other class as they have no implemented the class change system and I am not wasting my time and resources on a whole separate character. I hate the PW2 system...for me this is a temp game until the next game. Not putting my heart, soul, or wallet into it. I VERY excited for D4 and hope they do not F it up. I wish they would hire you as a design consultant.
If you HAVEN'T yet, you should check out non-diablo ARPGs instead of putting any time into Immortal. TL2 and the LAO3 mod grant some hilariously fun times if you're interested in seeing how much you can break an ARPG, for example. PoE's always an option as well, etc. etc. I honestly can't actually say Diablo's the ARPG standard anymore. D3's fun and all, but there's so many fun options out there these days. Apparently Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance got a remaster and 2's getting a remaster this summer. They're both great fun for a run or 2 per class. Being "loyal to a company" just ends up resulting in, well, Immortal. It's why people need to stop being loyal to companies and instead be loyal to quality. Stop spending money on games before you know if the game's worth playing just because of who's releasing it. Stop ignoring games in genres you enjoy just because someone else released it. Sure, Blizzard had a great track record. But that doesn't mean other companies don't also release great games, or even release better games. There's so many great games out there that people just seem to not even know exist simply because they only focus on one developer or platform. There's no reason to play Immortal when you could just play something better from someone else instead. Heck, go check out Infernum if you want a free mobile ARPG experience.
@@AtomicArtumas Thanks for the advice. I have I do D3 each season for a few days. I bought D2R and thats nice. I was pissed at POE for many years for stealing my character names when I stopped playing for a bit but did try them again last year. So much added to it was a bit overwhelming learning all the various systems they added. Knowing the loot. Takes a lot of my time just learning it instead of playing. I need alot of free time to play that one... or a tutor on discord to bombard with 1000 questions, lol. Only two ARPG's I know about to look forward to are D4 and POE Mobil. Any others?
I already stopped, too many caps so there is no point to play, Blizzards designed their game to don’t play their game. You did great video btw thanks for this :)
You hit the nail on the head about becoming motivated to not login, I had surgury right as it came out so had plenty of time (all day every day) to play a lot of it basically casually as f2p, I like battleground but how by simply getting resonance pretty much makes the rest of the ways a f2p can get stronger a giant joke. Sometimes I can take a noob down in half a second but then a tank can run around with no skill, no control just firing from the hip like a movie and not even take half their health. . . It makes me not even want to log in. And I haven't for a few days now. After logging in and losing 4 straight battleground games back to back for not other reason then op'ed whales. Meh. Leaves a gross taste in your mouth especially since the whole rat race just starts right over again. That's not the kinda game I or most old school diablo players even liked diablo for. I can still log into old accounts year and years ago and remember the time I found my first shako. What other than the being on the leader board, or getting a kick from being top of every Battlegrounds game is there really to this game? The grind is unjustified and unnecessary when at the end of the grind you still will be a weak f2p player. I've paid subs to runescape from about 2002 to 2011 so it's not like I would pay money to play a game. But paying money to make the game playable.... ugh, I'd rather just have them give me a unfinished game that sucks then the idea and real possibility of a great game... but sold out to being almost evil in their implementation of the whole way they get money out of people.
Hey Raxx, I'm new to your channel since DI launch. I've really enjoyed your content so far and Im looking forward to watching you as you go back to true Diablo games.
I can answer a few of your questions and things you wonder about in the vid, summarized like this: The reason for caps is habit building. Yes, it might hurt some people's desire to mega-comit, but your expectations for their "player first" design are misplaced. It's monetization first - habits play into that. Hence they are priority
I feel bad for Raxx. These past couple weeks he’s been trying his best to enjoy DI, lol. I’m done playing- I played through the story and loved it. I don’t care about pvp nor collecting ALL the best gear like other ppl, so I doubt I’ll come back to it.
Put like this, it's kinda heartbreaking. I know how enthusiastic about the game Raxx was a few months ago, before it became what it now is. This had the bones of a great game, but Bliz took a sledgehammer to it, and poisoned the remains with excessive P2W. The tragedy isn't what the game could have been--the tragedy is how something which was already good came to be ruined by exploitation, dishonesty, and naked greed.
I stopped after 3 days. The worst aspect about this game is that a huge portion of the content is locked behind a giant wall that I will never have access to.
I feel the same, I've reached P41 and besides farming Mount Zavian or Libary for legendary items there isn't much which can be done once you've obtained the set items for that paragon level. I'm no stranger to P2W and have happily in the past spent thousands on mobile games but atleast I got a "decent" return in terms of their in-game currency or items. However I've spent about 400-500 in DI and what I have got in return is very luck luster to the point where I don't spend anymore because there is no point... the odds are honestly worst than Fate/Stay or Genshin. I'm on the verge of quitting as there really isn't any point playing unless your willing to spend thousands, it's a shame I was so keen for this game and waited 4 years even played the Beta but these odds are so unfair, I might aswell go and gamble atleast then I'll have a chance of getting something back.
How?? Ive spent 500 And I have maxed out ?/5 5 star, im GM in a immortal clan And nobody in it has Even better gear than me 😂😂you must de doing it wrong
The campaign, which is basically a tutorial is fun to play. It is an enjoyable experience without investing money. Visually the game is appealing. It strkes the players ego at every turn. That being said, issues with resonance and combat rating disparity will likely remain, meaning, every D2 Immortail player is being conditioned to think that without money there is no point to compete. Thank you for sharing this with us, Raxxanterax.
On my Demon Hunter I couldn’t shoot or heal. I found out it was because of the spinning ability that shoots in all directions glitching out my game so I switched abilities eventually super annoying.
Even spending a little bit doesn't really impact your character that much, its go big or go home. If the progress was structured better, it could even be rewarding enough to keep people playing and buying the BP 🤷🏻♂️ - this way, not so much
I spent a bit more than you did. I figured I would cover the cost of buying a retail game and server use for 3 months so I spent $100. I did the same thing for PoE. I don't blast the game like you and Maxroll did but I am at paragon 22 and a little under 1k CR. The game is fun but is starting to become more P2W as I continue. One thing that actually turned me off was the rest of our clan to adventurer and having to work to become shadow again and finding my rank back at Initiate. I expected this at the end of a season (or whatever they call it) but not weekly. This has made me lean to quitting Diablo Immortal - sort of the proverbial straw. I totally agree with your assessment and thanks for all the work you do for the community. By the way - like you - I have been playing Blizzard games since the origianl WarCraft and consider myself a loyal fan of Blizzard. That is starting to change.
With the thorough job you did as a tester in DI you should definitely get a spot on the D4 testing. Blizzard needs people like you for sure. Keep it up and stay safe out there bud.
While I agree to a certain extent, Blizzard didn't listen to 90% of what he said anyway it seems. They downgraded or nerfed so many things that he and his group liked, and we all would have liked. My view on D4 is becoming increasingly pessimistic, and I honestly want that game to be great. I just fear it won't be more and more.
Agree with allot of what's said here and allot for the comments! But the real question is, what are we all playing instead? What are we all looking forward to? What new games are on the horizon?
I genuinely enjoy Immortals gameplay. But at paragon 30+ I just feel like once I do my mandatory stuff of the day, I'd progress "faster" by waiting for tomorrow (read efficiently, I know I could be way higher paragon level), as one that loves the grind of Diablo, that just feels wrong. Haven't quit, still love having it on my phone and I enjoy the time I spend on it, but it's hard to make it a "main game"
I complitely agree with this thougths. When I heard about DI wasn't hiped to play it at all and haven't searched any info on it before. I changed my mind a bit when I watched all the nice videos you put on in YT about the game and actually got excited so I Installed BN, made an account, downloaded the game on my PC and my phone and started playing on launch. I lost all of my interest in it for about 2 weeks. I should say that except the battle pass haven't bought anything else, I never buy stuff in mobile games, did it to support the devs. In the beginning it was fun but as a solo F2P player I had no chance even to try all of the events in the game. I enjoy being a high paragon, well, in this game I don''t have the time and the ambition to grind it, it is slow and when I heard of the caps this was the begining of the end. As a diablo fan since D2 (I was like 10 yo) and a big fan of D3 (I play this game for trumendes amounts of hours just for fun - bought it twice, first for PS3 and then PS4, bought the necro pack cuz that was the only thing that I was missing and was happy to spent my money on D3) I think that anounsing and releasing a mobile Diablo game (with P2W mechanics) broke the hearts of Diablo franchise fans. I hope the commpany will correct their mistake with the D4 release, cuz if they don't do it I may quit playing games at all. My plans are to strat streaming D4 and If it is, even a little, as DI it will crush me and a lot of other diablo fans over the world.
As a somewhat active casual player, the bugs get me the most. "Tap to Play" crashes the game to desktop about half the time, which is pretty frustrating. Beyond that, I find my interest in ways to get stronger slowly dwindling. I haven't read much outside the game, but I guess combat rating and resonance are the key (much less intuitive than maximizing dex/str/int, crit damage and chance, legendary affixes, or skill levels, in previous Diablo games). Maximizing those two numbers just isn't that interesting.
I think the caps were implemented on everything except p2w things to keep players on an even playing field allowing whales (even inactive ones) to progress far beyond everyone else and never be beaten by blasters(p2w rifts are the only uncapped things). Players who grind and reach the caps are pressured to spend more as its all they can do to play and progress.
Yes and no. Cap is made because the studios are so lazy to Come up with quality content. And yes because the whales that can buy bonus things and outperform every free to play player.
Well, from my experience, so called whales still have same caps to deal with, as general play is considered. But that's not where the power in this game lies. The part that's so out of reach to f2p players is this incredibly expensive gem upgrading system, which is intentionally set to be a slot machine. Gems are true power, and ressonance lv10 gems give is the key to stomping f2p world. The non payers won't be able to upgrade their gems much in any reasonable amount of time, and even if lucky 5/5 drops, they won't be able to upgrade it at all. It's intended and it's wrongful, and to me, quite shameful system not fit for any game company out of Casino domain.
Very good analysis of the game 👍🏻 I already stopped playing DI and uninstalled the game and most likely I'm gonna stop WoW too after 17 years of playing. This monetization is so highly developed model that I just don't feel I can ever be supportive towards this game company again. It's just pure greed and I know I don't wanna play any part of supporting it. There are plenty of good games out there and in my eyes Blizzard can just rot away.
I'm someone who's never played any Diablo release before. I'm an FPS player but my pc broke down so I thought of playing Diablo Immortal on my phone as a pass time. I started playing from the day it was released. I'm a Paragon 34 as the time of writing this comment ( I didn't grind 24/7 but I think it's pretty decent for a casual player). My thoughts as of right now are: •Never to play Battlegrounds except for Shadow ranks, I have NEVER seen such unbalanced mode in any game in my life, I never seem to even stand a chance •There's nothing for me to do if I want to increase my combat rating for PvE except the 8 (+1 as a shadow) daily contracts for XP and I've stopped getting any better loot in anything except dungeons if I'm extremely lucky to get the final hit on boss. •I don't know if this has been normal for Diablo games but why do you NEED to have 4 player party to enter dungeons in Hell 2? I can't even enter a dungeon because there's either not many players online or no one wants to play that dungeon. •Charms are absolutely useless and a waste of resources •Theres are still multiple extremely sever bugs in the game, from falling off the map multiple times to game having literal Graphic Artifacting when reconnecting •As stated in the video, I'm rarely able to catch many of the zone events as they're not very frequent and hence I still have many empty crest slots in my Sanctum As of now, unless you go to a farming spawn spot in some zone such as the Library and leave your game open with attack pressed by something (just as hundreds of other players are doing) there's no way to level up efficiently.
I was still open to trying this game as a free player after hearing more about it, but then you of all people lay this out in clear detail, and I'll never think about it again. Your perspective as an alpha tester is something I haven't seen anywhere else and it's something I truly appreciate. Seeing how drastically different the game was made by the after-the-fact implementation of predatory monetization models has fundamentally put me off supporting this game in any way. I don't want to be another 1 of the millions to download. I won't support this in any way. Thank you As a final statement: this game might make me finally buy the necromancer expansion in D3
The fact is that even as a non competitive player the game becomes boring very fast. I reached paragon 31 and I can't for the sake of it to continue playing it. The builds are not important, you do not feel the rush when you find a legendary because it does not change anything at all. And as an almost free to play player, there is no hope to find 5 star gems (that also are not creating different interesting builds, it is all about resonance). Diablo is based in grinding efficiently and the rush of creating and testing different competitive builds with fairness in mind. This game is against the spirit of Diablo saga. I hope that Diablo 4 will not take the same steps as Diablo immortal.
raxx the ammount of thought time and effort you put into all your content has the be given a huge thumbs up I have not started to play immortal at all mainly due to lots of comments regarding the in game need ? to spend money and yes I realise this is an option all down to the players choice but being on a pension and not working I took the decision not to be tempted I play mainly solo on EU and with the help advice and video content for yourself and other great streamers I am now managing solo g/r 110 maybe not the highest but good for me keep up the good work Raxx thanks again for everything best wishes for the future
If they would make it more f2p friendly it would not change the pvp aspect of the game. Or just a sightly bit. But it would make more reason for f2p players to play. The feel of progression would be there. Still not on the p2w lvl but still would be incentives to log on and grind every day and not just quickly reach the daily limits and that's it. Honestly think the lack of progression, the feel that you reached something is a bigger issue than the whole p2w aspect.
same, the p2w part didnt deter me from playing, but the caps did. for the exact same reason. already able to see the caps only incentifies botting, and the only way to catch up is to pay sucks to see this and yea maybe time to see if those with copium will see this soon (lookong at stew)
Thanks for the only honest review I've seen of the game. You actually criticized what's wrong with the game in the current state, rather than just cry about how pay to win it is as you throw over $50k into the game (I'm looking at you asmongold/otk)
Thank you Rax,please point out to the people the biggest lie in the game whitch is written on the bottom off combat rating description...I clearly says against players the damage increase and reduction CANNOT exceed more than 10% and obviously its not the case in the game...Take care and huge respect for the work you have donne!!!
I can imagine the developer's faces when some corporate dude walked into the studio and told them "You guys made a great game, all the alpha players are loving it. Now turn it into a casino game."
Before ive seen this video, i took immortal as an actual Diablo. Grinding, hope for good gear, bless rng and so on. I even found a bloodsoaked jade with three stars. But i checked it how to upgrade it. There was it. I came to the same conclusion that grinding, play with friends or some clan members is not enough to keep up in a conpetitive way. But i definitely keep playing it. I cant afford to pay anything into the game besides the battle pass, which as a fact bacame obligate to f2p (COD, MTGA i.e.) games. And i'm sure if you keep in mind that it is still Diablo, the grind and loot heavy game we all love, and you don't give a damn about PvP or P2W you still preserve the soul of this game series and have a good time with it.
If I were at Blizzard I'd probably hire you as an advisor after that feedback. I do know the world does not work like that, but still. Imagine people put in 1/10 of the effort you put in in your work to their domains. As for my personal DI experience, I have zero time at the moment and played DI only for an hour in total I think. I don't PVP and I just want to do the campaign for the story once; so apart from the whales, I think I may be the only type of player to have fun in there, for a limited time. I guess I'm the "non-competitive" player you mentioned :)
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Rax you are so respectful and professional, moreso than blizzard deserves.
This is not a game. It is a money extraction system.
They change the Name. it's now:
Diablo Immoral - Billionaires Edition
Estimated revenue: 2 billion $ in first quarter (ex Bliz employee did the math). This game is a big scam. It is all focused around pulling you in and sucking you dry. Even community/server/leadboard mechanics.
Welcome to the new era...pull up a chair as it is no longer concealed behind a multitude of layers and also here to stay...
"Only if you care about playing competitively".
This vid is the only actual honest review of the game. It's only a money extraction system if you fall into the trap. I'm tired of this hypocritical attitude bc most of the highest viewed critics have been whaling to "protest the game" and all they're doing is strengthening this idea. They should have spent no money, and talked about how it's an OK Diablo game, not worth spending money on, but maybe worth playing a few mins a day. Say that competitive play is just a whale off and there's no reason to do it. The fact that you CAN spend money to speed up progress doesn't mean you HAVE to to have a moderate amount of fun... just don't care about being competitive.
th-cam.com/video/lDNL1uGSVeA/w-d-xo.html BOTt
You’ve been a champ for this game for a long time and you went out on a limb to bring the community with you. It’s honestly so sad to see how Blizz did all this, your story is a parable for all of us.
Managers dont care about anything but money, they will through you under the bus and let you die out crying for help. im sorry but thats the harsh reality. we either have to come together and stop these predatory game designs, or live with the fact that you cant hide in different realitys anymore, because everything is getting like real life - pay to win. i feel really sorry for the whole diablo team that they have to deal with this greedy company. and other companys will follow with even worse models now, so i dont have any hope for any future games. diablo 4 is gonna be the same shit show. i will go to grinding gear games and poe2 nothings holding me here anymore. and when chris wilson also decides to jump on this train, im probably gonna quit gaming entirely and maybe go back to my games from1990-2010. gameboy, gamecube, N-64, sega, super nintendo, x-box, playstaytion1,2 maybe even 3, the good old rts games like age of empires, starcraft, command & conquer, warcraft. roleplay games like final fantasy, elder scrolls, dragon age, zelda. so many games more(i dont wanna list everything i just named a few okay guys :D) with great replay-ability. i will just revisit every game that touched my heart and brought tears to my eyes, that made me emotionally invested and cared about the characters. im sorry for being so negative, im just so sad seing everything go downhill. not only in gaming but in life as well. everything is so horrible, nothings getting better, world war 3 will come, and these greedy people gonna tilt, press the red button and destroy the planet and everything that lives. alright im loosing it, sorry, i wish you all the best, spread love and peace, i hope you are doing well and keep your head up.
Dude you took the words right out of my mouth. Well said well said
th-cam.com/video/lDNL1uGSVeA/w-d-xo.html BOTt
If anyone is still wondering why people aren't happy with Diablo Immortal, if anyone is still wondering whether or not these critics are actually giving Dibalo Immortal a fair shot: Listen to this man's voice.
This man honestly truly put himself into this game for the time he played it. And he certainly cared. Listen to his voice. Does that sound like the sound of joy? It's impossible to ignore that sound, so unlike joy.
exactly
Very true!
This dude is a fanboy that has been playing diablo for a long time, he is a 100% Blizzard supporter. They just shit all over him and people like him.
@@TheMasterOfShadows WRONG! People are just cry babies these days me and all my friends love this game and spend nothing. Grow up and play something else like roblox
@@kushking949 great, you and your friends enjoy a predatory game, that insentivises spending ludicrous money and logging in daily for rewards. Good for you, but bad game desighn is bad game design, they have taken what diablo is and monnitised it to hell, campaign is free, so have fun playing that, but never expect to be competitive or to be significantly rewarded for your effort.
It has to sting a little bit when you realize they used hardcore Diablo fans to test and provide feedback in alpha for a game that was not made for them. Immortal was designed for casuals and whales.
Pretty much this.
real and true
The way i see it they provided the data blizzard was looking for, how hardcore players advance and play the game, so they could make the "walls" to stop them.
@@linkincnt You are probably right. I keep wondering where all the development time went for this game. It's a mobile game that took 4 years+ to make, which seems insane to me since in that same time frame(or less)companies are putting out AAA games on console and PC alike, sometimes both at the same time. I would be so curious to see the data and the math behind why they did what they did, because it wasn't an accident the game was designed the way it is.
Nailed it.
Great video. It sums up how I've felt about the game. I'm at p20 and can't be bothered already. Everything feels pointless by being capped the way it is.
Yeah, I basically just grind out the dailies then stop. Just no point past them.
Yeah it really slows down once battle pass is capped and it’s only dailies, you can’t make any meaningful progression unless you fork out some cash. I’d prefer just having a small chance to find random legendary crests in the world so you can still play around with the gem system a bit. Even if it just one a day, that would still be better then this hard paywall and caps
@@brunch. As a purely pve centric player, I've now gone back to D3 full time and honestly do not regret the decision...
Thanks for this, Raxx. I find your take incredibly reasonable, thoughful, and honest. You have given this game your best efforts and have provided very helpful resources and perspectives for those of us newer to it. I've enjoyed a lot about my experience with the game so far but have grown sour to it almost solely due to the predatory and anti-generous development decisions. I recall playing Elden Ring earlier this year and leaving it feeling like the developers were passionate and generous in the experience they crafted and it was one of the best gaming experience of my life. I leave this one feeling lied to and preyed upon. A sad state of affairs!
Will definitely tune in for whatever comes next for you and your channel :)
I'm here from Asmon, and I'm here to say that I, and we people who are watching, 100% agree and support what you are saying. Thank you for voicing out all of this. We appreciate you truly.
th-cam.com/video/lDNL1uGSVeA/w-d-xo.html BOTt
When Rax gets out MS Paint you know shit is real
I've got to say, the D3 content creators (with you at the top of the list) are the most dedicated, knowledgeable, and mentally organized CCs I've come across in any game. Thanks for all you do. Hopefully they don't screw up D4. Diablo Immortal is fairly fun f2p if you just want to run through it initially with some friends and aren't planning on grinding. Kind of the opposite of a Diablo game but there you are.
This is the thing i love the most about d3,the community,creators and players alike. I've never played a multiplayer with no toxicity,be it in chat,yt drama,in game scammers or stuff like that. It's sad to see Activision don't see it,or see it and decided to take advantage of our good nature,wich is worse. That's why i still don't like the multiplayer part of D2,full of elitist and scammers.
diablo3 might be in a decent state nowadays, but ultimately, it's still an enormous disappointment if you look at the whole project, especially considering its the successor to diablo2 and how long it took to come out. The degeneration of blizzard is going on for over a decade now, it's sad it needs something like diablo immortal to get at least a part of the blizzard fanbase to actually look what the franchise they shill for has become. Critics of their beloved games have to deal with so much bullcrap from them because they feel attacked when you critizise something they like, leading to the mess we have now, most games released by triple A companies being garbage, and expensive on top of that as well. People that play games for decades now pay the price of naive, gullible, in large part dumb fanbases that reward companies for bad decisions, bad performances, no insight into what makes gaming fun and just dollar signs in their eyes. But its the same with capitalism as a whole, 90% of mankind dont profit from it, most of them will hard suffer from it (or their children, or their grandchildren), yet people that critizise this suicidal economic system get yelled at by the same kind of naive, gullible, in large part dumb part of mankind that thinks it has a clue about anything but they really dont, and turning life into shit for everyone. Sadly its either the majority, or a very loud minority, dont know.
You are extremely good at explaining information with great detail. This makes your story/situation even more sad. I know your not trying to get any pity or make a video just to complain. But damn, that must be a real kick in the nuts going from how things were in Alpha to now. Hope things change but seems unlikely. Wish you all the best with whatever game you choose to pursue in the future.
th-cam.com/video/lDNL1uGSVeA/w-d-xo.html BOTt
Hey Raxx, thanks for your honesty. I do...no we do really appriciate your hard work. Today, in the crazy world we live in we need more guys like you. Keep it up and never forget that we as a community are there for you.
th-cam.com/video/lDNL1uGSVeA/w-d-xo.html BOTt
You're absolutely right. I'm surprised you didn't touch up on how annoying dungeons are too. You basically fight 3 bosses that drop trash and the main boss drops junk too (most the time). Would it kill them to have some legendaries drop on the way up to the boss? Caps left and right too. Least they can do is remove the fading ember cap and 50 year crafting system. Way too many rules dude. As a clan leader of 100s of people it's hard to even find active shadow war soldiers who don't just quit around the level 50s because Blizzards capping battle pass xp
I stopped at 51. Didn't know that was a common thing. Xp slowed to a crawl and I can't play that much. I have a career, wife and 4 kids. I don't have that ķind of free time.
Just hit paragon 21, I have same thoughts as you. Caps are forcing me to stop playing. I find myself struggling to find meaningful things to do. So many restrictions that dont seem to have any logic. Not only did Blizzard ruin what could have been a great game, but they created a terrifying precedent that I fear could steer the entire gaming industry towards.
The only logic they needed was boatloads of money. Follow the money trail when you want to question any system,wall, cap or anything in DI.
I reached Paragon 20 after 3 days and Stopped playing this piece of Shit.
You don't have anything meaningful to do to progress your character!? Well now you have time to have a look at the shop ;)
Go out side and play kid
Got to paragon 21 too.
Uninstalled the first time i saw whales on enemy team in battle ground.
No matter how hard i try or time i spend there will be always a whales out there that will beat me to the ground.
Thanks for getting this info out there. It's important for someone with your experience in these types of games, both past and current, to voice your opinions and concerns. I have uninstalled it on both PC and mobile, which is a shame because the footage and reviews leading up to release were so promising :(. Upvoted
I just have to say this. For background: I'm a life-long gamer. I've been gaming since I was 4 years old, and I'm almost 30 now. I'm also a challenge runner, and a world-progression MMO guild raid leader. I have... a lot of experience with games in general, not just blizzard games.
I've spent the past 2 weeks or so primarily playing free games. Mobile games. Free steam games. Fan games. Every form of free game. From "pointless" clickers and number growers, to rpgs, to MMOs, to hardcore competitive games.
I couldn't find a single one that was a worse experience than Immortal that had any form of budget or gameplay to it.
Even the games that realistically SHOULD be massively monetized because there's literally zero gameplay, like Adventure Capitalist... it's just non-existent in comparison.
I reached rank 1 in an AdCap event without even playing for an entire day. Because nothing actually required me to spend anything to participate fully.
SWGOH, a game I've played for many years now, and which I will VERY much say is P2W, and just had it's arguably most controversial update ever, I'd still very much say isn't as bad as Immortal. Sure, a whale will always perform way better than you, and you'll lose when matched against them... but you don't just randomly get matched against them. Your average F2P player isn't really competing with whales in any real regard.
Warframe allows a free player to buy premium items from people that did buy them. So a whale can get non-premium items by selling premium currency (not even the items themselves, but literally the currency you buy premium items with) to free players that no-life grind the game away.
SWTOR has an extensive F2P model that requires very minimal spending for anything other than ranked pvp and raids, as you only need to sub once per expansion, and provided you sub every once in a while, a F2P player isn't in any way at a disadvantage against a non-free player.
Battlefront 2 back when it was released. Literally wasn't as bad as Immortal. I was there. I maxed out an entire character before they changed systems due to the overwhelming negative feedback.
What was probably the single most negatively received game in the industry prior to Immortal. Wasn't. As. Bad.
F:GO? FFBE? Dokkan? DB:L? Battle Cats? None of them are nearly as bad. They have issues, yeah. Especially Dokkan with it's weird single day availability grind fests and F:GO with it's absolutely horrendous 5* rate. But they're not.... nearly as bad as Immortal.
Heck, that weird harry potter mobile game, I was LITERALLY the #1 player on launch week back when it launched and I barely even played it.
I've played Infernum for years on and off. It's literally a mobile diablo-like. (more-so torchlight-like, but eh.) I haven't run into anywhere near the content issues Immortal has. I've never felt like there was quite literally zero point in playing.
I keep seeing people claim "this is just the standard for mobile games" - No. It's not.
I've been playing mobile games for the past like 10 years. Some of them very, very seriously.
While yes, there's always going to be P2W issues... it's not the P2W issues that really make Immortal a "bad game". It's the fact there's literally zero reason to play it, EVEN IF you whale.
Immortal isn't designed the same way a stamina-based game is. It's not designed to log in for 20 minutes, spend energy, claim dailies and then log off.
It's designed to be a diablo game... that doesn't let you play it, despite being designed to be played non-stop like a normal diablo game.
If you're one of those people that just keep saying "this is just the mobile game standard", I genuinely want to know what the [redacted] game you're referring to.
Because I can't find it.
I literally can't.
Kemco's rpg series? Not even remotely as bad as Immortal. If you buy the 1-time no-ad purchases they're basically just mid-tier RPGmaker games that are actually surprisingly deep and interesting mechanically.
The clickers and AdCap-like games? Nope. Yeah, you CAN pay to see a number raise faster. But like... you don't even remotely have to. And again, most of them are pretty easily "whaled" on by making a single $2-10 purchase that's usually $5 to remove ads.
Tower Defense games? Most don't become "p2w" until EXTREME late-game, and even then it's not really the same scenario as Immortal, as it's just grinding until you finally get the upgrades you need, not "literally waiting weeks for the paragon level to increase by another 100". I've played Arknights seriously. I'm a huge player of Infinitode 1 and 2. I've checked out dozens of other smaller TD-like games.
Puzzle games? ...nah. Like seriously, you're insane if you think there's any puzzle game out there that's as unplayable and P2W as Immortal. Or you really did find the absolute bottom of the barrel somehow. Most of them just suck. But considering I've 100%ed about 80 different Nonogram and Jigsaw puzzle games each, and regularly play other interesting puzzle games.....
Collectors will always have a P2W element to them, but like I said. It's never to the extent of Immortal, as you actually gain stuff and have interesting and fun content to do. You might eventually hit a pay/grind wall, but like, at least you CAN pay to get past those. You really can't pay to get to paragon 500 in Immortal day 1 of a server because they just blatantly said "no.".
Again: The [redacted] games are you people talking about that are "just as bad" as immortal?
Bad? Yes. JUST AS bad? Not even close.
Because Immortals issues aren't even that it's "p2w". It's that it's just arbitrarily walled literally everywhere. Even when you're a whale you have nothing to do aside from pvp past the first 10-20 minutes of logging in each day. Even the worst games I could find had more daily content than that.
Diablo Immortal really is just a gigantic mess. The only games I could find that were as bad or worse were literal asset flips. Games that are so aggressively monetized you'd have to be on drugs to pay into them, and that are probably all used as money laundering schemes.
And even some of those honestly felt more playable simply because of horrendous game design allowing you to break things stupidly easily.
I read it all, it was worth it.
I to read all this and all I gotta say is I appreciate you taking your time to type all that out haha
Thanks for this post
This is actually the longest comment I've ever seen in my life
Thank you for your insight and feedback. I am f2p and am not competitive and enjoyed the game for about a week and a half, then I couldn't ignore the 'Raid: Shadow legends' feel about this game. Raid, in my opinion, is the worst type of game and I warn everyone I know that it is gambling game thinly veiled. DI is not that, but is no less disgusting in that it hides all of the 'caps', 'gates', and other 'progression hindering' mechanics. Then using symantecs to decieve players saying that they were 'transparent' and 'honest' when they said 'We don't sell gear'. I will not tell anyone what to do with their money, but I will invest none in this game. I was sooooo looking forward to D4, but now, I don't even want to associate or support Activision Blizzard after this. i am truly heartbroken.
Thank you Raxx. I love your streams and videos. I have played Diablo Immortal as f2p and beat the story as well as leveled to paragon 2. It was actually pretty enjoyable, but the p2w is horrendous and I didn't believe ppl at first.... I m sorry my fellow Blizz fans. What goes up must come down, but what is down may one day rise again. I do hope Blizzard will deliver a truly great game again one day.
11:30 very simple. Game gives you power. Game stops giving you power and makes you wait for it. Conveniently, you can head to the cash shop now to get more power. It is *made* to ruin f2p/low spender's experiences
That seems to be the wall I’ve hit right now. I’m 60/20 and my progress has completely anchored.
@@slavmagician2898 hows your credit rating?
They haven’t got to me yet broski, there’s a reason my names is Impoor in game lmao
Listening to this man and reading all the comments I'm happy to say that I continued playing D2R. Thx Raxx for all your help and information you provide us.
You know what would help instead of everyone complaining? Do a video “How Blizzard Can Fix Immortal”. That would add value to the whole discussion. Especially from you since you know the game intimately.
Very interesting deep dive for the development of this game and I myself went into the game completely blind to check it out and came away disappointed/bored. It's as you said: there's nothing for F2P players to do at the end of the day. I hit para16 or so and all I do is log on daily to do some bounties and maybe the odd rift with my freebies. I don't feel compelled to play competitively and that's for the best as the game is just not built well for it regardless. I don't feel compelled to play at all really because the game has no carrot to chase, with there being no path for free players to engage in progression. I've played plenty of other cash shop games and I honestly spent more there on cosmetics because the game was fundamentally great and didn't focus on money as the only source of valid progression.
Even while playing some of those games completely free, there felt like enough paths towards those cash shop items for free that I'd remain engaged and playing until I achieved what I wanted. Blizzard gets an F for failing to provide free paths towards progression and ultimately when people all quit and the whales are stuck only playing each other, it will normalize until they quit as well. They're trading years of good will for a quick cash grab and it will haunt them. Now that Diablo IV has been given a more solid release date, I'd imagine this game will die a slow painful death up until that release puts the final nail in the coffin.
Well said, I would add though that I think this game will die far before the release of Diablo IV if they don't even try to make more quality of life changes. That being said I'm continuing to play just to see if they will.
I'm 36 and have been a Diablo fanboy since the first game. I played some Diablo. I played Diablo II excessively and would occasionally skip school or do all nighters to blast - eventually moving into primarily doing high end pvp. I'm one of those people that was disappointed with Diablo III, but grew to appreciate what it did (within its limitations) and usually play a bit of every season (and if it's a good one, like the two previous ones I usually stick around for a month or two), but still talk smack about it - it's been mostly a love / hate relationship. I loved getting back to Diablo II: Resurrected and the nostalgia it provided in a beautiful new coating (I was that guy that watched your stream and was lucky enough to get two random Jah drops within the first week). While not necessarily a Blizzard fanboy (since I never played any of their other franchises to this extent), it is safe to say I am absolutely a Diablo fanboy.
Through the entire Diablo Immortal development I stayed curious with a healthy doze of skepticism. Like a vast majority of us, I was kind of disappointed when I learned it was going to be a mobile game (we all instantly start to think pay to win when we hear mobile, that's how it usually goes), but I would stay up to date with the information the Maxroll team would provide and over time I started to think (especially after it became PC also), that this would still be a playable game for me, maybe even better than Diablo III - so I would check in on updates on the game on occasion and you guys kept talking good stuff about it, so I figured I'd give it a shot once it was released, but unlike previous installments I was in no rush to play it. I did install it, both on my phone and on PC, but I haven't played it yet other than booting the game up and login to my account. It didn't take long after release before we heard all the pay to win stories, which instantly killed my interest. Especially because I'm one of those people that once I reach the end game I move into pvp (if there's any worthwhile pvp scene) - and if I'm not gonna have a chance at all to compete with whales then it's an instant boner kill for me. Disappointed, yes. But I can't even say I'm surprised. That's the worst part of it all.
I agree with all your statements here. I am not at all blaming it on the developers. Hell, barely even Blizzard. I'm sure Activision and probably Tencent pushed most of the monetary implementation into the game, to cater to the Asian market and there's probably also been some investors that kept pushing for it - we all know there's quite a bit of money the rake in from these kinds of games.
It's safe to say, in the state the game is in now, I'm more inclined to uninstall the game and not look back unless the game get some fundamental changes to their monetary system.
Thanks for your honest review, it's very clear your heart and time has been put into it, and it certainly helped me stay clear of this mess for now.
I'm almost in the same boat as you. But one thing I find funny about all this is that, I'm now in my 30s with a job and a life. I'm still trying to come to terms with the reality about me not being able to blast anywhere near as hard as school days. And what's worst is that, even if I did, I would stand little chance against whales. It's just a crappy reality that's making me consider stopping as well.
I'm a bit older than you but remember 1997 and Hellfire, still have it lol
If im Blizzard and im watching this video, then ive got to panic. When one of the best Diablo content creators on YT has had enough of this BS, that should truly open their eyes...somehow I don't think they'll give a damn and laugh all the way to the bank, i feel bad now in retrospect wasting my time playing DI for the 4 hours or so i did. What a joke Blizzard.
Leo, Blizzard doesn't care. Diablow Immoral was NEVER made for free players, it's a mobile game that's designed to extract money out of people with excessive amounts of it or those that have a proclivity toward gambling addiction
you make money by making money, not by making good games. I am sure the Blizzard execs eyes are wide open when they look at their bonus checks
Why would they care about content creators when they only marginally impact their income? It's not like many people watch these videos and I also don't think that many spenders (whales) quit because of them either.
I've been playing a couple of hours a day since launch, and when I hit around paragon 21, I started to feel the grind pretty hard. Top players were starting hell 2 and I figured it would get better once I hit p30 and got to jump in on those hell 2 raids. A while later, I'm paragon 33 with CR 1101 slowly grinding out my CR to reach the 1250 threshold for hell 2. I got one gear upgrade over the last 10 paragon levels or so. I cleared challenge rift 30 today, so I'm hoping for some upgrades via beastiary or gambling but this wall feels ridiculous - especially from a company that knows the ARPG formula so well.
The developers did a great job making a good-looking, fun (alpha) game. However, their "orders" were to make a mobile game for a reason.
Now, after a month of extreme success in player numbers, the execs decided to adjust the fun and the spending to a degree where the playerbase will decrease drastically. However, the whales are too invested to stop playing, so this just means a great exodus for a chunk of the "freeloaders" while the profits keep coming in. It is disgusting.
It will be a hard time for whales with no f2p players to smash. They will have to compete with other whales, aka, swipe more xD
@@KittyMcFurball the cash cow lives till the last few whales swim on out lol..... wtf has this world come to?
Your 400 hours in the Alpha were a data-source for what a F2P mega-blaster can achieve, and they used it as a blueprint for defining the balance between free and paid players.
That's how the caps and resonance were born, to keep the F2P's in line.
Nailed it!
Is that because they don’t want F2P players that play very often to become stronger than the p2w players?
@@Jordan-qw7yw Not only do they not want them stronger, but in this case they severely crippled your ability to even approach the stratosphere of a paid player. There was a story of someone who spent 20k and did not get one, ONE, five star legendary gem from it. Even paying is a gamble, albeit a legal one for now.
it was my first experience with diablo and I didn`t like it at all. Got the BP at the start, hitted 60(20) and uninstalled yesterday. The game is pretty boring, immersion feeling was nonexistent to me.
@@markxv2267 if you are calling him kid i presume that means you think you are older than him, did you just never learn to have any manners growing up?
I'll wait and see if they'll take community feedback in the next update (battle pass), if not, goodbye DI. Good to point out that they already made 24 million dollars with this shit, most of it coming from South Korea, it's amazing how easterners don't mind lining the pockets of gacha game companies
Unfortunate that it's your first experience with Diablo. This is not a true Diablo experience. Even Diablo 3 is lacking to the feel and nostalgia of Diablo 2. Hopefully it's not your first ARPG and MMO experience either. Long story short, Blizzard isn't the same anymore. I can't even have real hype and hope for Diablo 4. It's smart that you uninstall instead of getting hooked into gambling and further supporting this "game".
I wouldn't judge diablo on this. this is more mobile game than diablo
It's almost like this game wasn't designed to be power played and blasted through in a couple of days by pro gamers on the toilet all day 🤔
I'm only level 52 and still having fun while also avoiding the cancerous monetization.
Great vid. My final thoughts are s27 can't come soon enough. I think a lot of new or returning players will be present at least for a bit and its gonna be time to blast!
3 days after immortal came out i went straight back to d3 and d2.
I enjoyed upgrading my gems for free while everyone else is paying thousands.
Gratz for 100k subscribers! You‘ve really earned it!
Excellent video, Informative and easy to understand.
I don't speak English but still I can get your point, thanks for all the info, helps a lot.
Thank you for the honest, fair and very detailed assessment of your thoughts and experiences playing this game. Clearly you wanted this to be a great addition to the Diablo franchise, as did many of us. Nevertheless you effectively conveyed that it was a variety of decisions made post beta that favored revenue far more than the playing experience of those of us playing and wishing to embrace this newest entry. The only hope for this game is that decision makers at Blizzard recognize the consequences of their decisions and misdirection, then choose to implement some of these detailed recommendations mapped out solely to improve the over experience for gamers. Otherwise participation will likely continue to wane.
th-cam.com/video/lDNL1uGSVeA/w-d-xo.html BOTt
Thanks for the work you put in. I have enjoyed your guides and take on the game. Again, thank you.
You're the most relatable wholesome content creator man! Love your videos and your takes on things. I look forward to more d3 seasonal stuff from you in the waiting room for d4. Keep up the good work
The thing is even if you're not trying to be competitive as f2p, you'll lose any incentive to keep playing after reaching the first big wall.
That's the big difference between Diablo Immortal and any long term successful gacha game.
A long term successful gacha game keeps f2p players engaged and allows for constant (meaningful) progress without spending a dime.
Actually valuable rewards from events, login bonuses, social media milestones etc. and a f2p option to acquire the currency to make more pulls (of any rarity) are also the norm in those games.
Not out of generosity but rather because these companies know damn well how important it is to keep a big f2p playerbase on board.
Whales still have an advantage but the f2p player should never feel like they're out of reach for them (even though they'll be always out of reach).
Every gacha game that died in the past did so because they lost their f2p playerbase. That's a fact.
The vast majority of whales want to feel special and you can't feel special if everyone left on the server is also a whale.
After playing the game, reading posts in forums and watching many videos about this game i came to the conclusion that Blizzard no longer has any intention to make this a long term project.
Their lack of communication and updates (even though the game has some very serious bugs at least on IOS) also speaks volumes.
No one in their right mind would act like Blizzard does right now if they wanted Diablo Immortal to be a long term successful game.
The only reasonable explanation for this behavior is that they just want to get as much money as quick as possible and then leave the game to die.
Feeling the same as Barb Para30/CR1150 and without intention to pay in more the daily grind and continuation feels like waste of time. Also no motivation to start another character. So started the last two days to spend nearly all my game time again in the grind game i played before diablo immortal.
As a basically free to play player myself here are my thoughts. I say basically cost i bought the battle pass for $5 and a cosmetic set for $10. $15 spent total.
I REALLY like the game! It has so many cool aspects from pve to pvp to the shadow wars the raids the events. It has a lot going for it.
But thats where it stops.
I been playing 8+ hours a day for nearly 2 weeks and have 5 characters 1 at paragon 24 and the other 5 at levels 40-58.
My main gripe is it TAKES WAY TOO LONG TO PROGRESS!!!
Before level 30 you would rank up fast and the game felt rewarding that way with new skills to obtain and much better gear.
After 30 it takes way longer, after 40 even longer and after 50 an eternity.
But after you hit paragon it takes FOREVER!
Like you said i am running out of stuff to do and what i do do does not feel rewarding!
I get on my main and have to run 6 elder rifts, 5 dungeons and a bunch of other stuff for 3-4 hours to RANK UP ONCE!.
That is terrible! makes me not want to even try. They need to like HALVE the xp requirements per rank minimum when you reach paragon.
Another thing i dont like is there are some skills that dont have any legendary bonus on legendary gear! For example IMpale for the demon hunter. But other skills have like 5 different legendary pieces some skills have NONE.
The set bonus pieces are not that great at all. Especially for wearing 4-6 of a set they are just underwhelming.
There needs to be more and be class specific like a 6 piece set only for wizards that only buffs and does different effects to lightning damage and skills, then one for fire, ice , etc.
And dont even get me started on PVP. They need to disable ALL gems then it might be fair, right now its beyond broke. I have games where i see guys go 35-0 and i get killed in 1 second to everything and then inspect them and they have maxed gear and maxed gems.
Anyway i do like the game alot. But the progression system once you hit end game just to gain ONE paragon rank is insane! Takes 4 hours of nonstop playing endgame content to go up 1 level and 90% of the time in that 4 hours i wont even find 1 legendary item. At least give battlepass members 3x xp or something.
Unless they change something fast in the next 2-3 weeks i can see alot of people getting burnt out after they reach paragon level and feel like they have to play for 6 hours a day to maybe go up 1 level.
There's still quite a bit of space and love left for you in the Path of Exile community ma man.
Immortal got me back into grinding d3, got me to purchase d2 and play it for the first time, and it got me watching your channel/streams Raxx.
Its not all negative.
A year on, i would say that while some things have been done to fix the balance and improve quality of life for FTP players, and there are a lot more activities to do daily (so theres no longer such a thing as "I have nothing to do"), it requires a TON of grinding and platinum farming with alts, to get anywhere as FTP. I am still 100% FTP from day 1 and have managed to be an Immortal once, and battleground legend twice. Just last month i finally unlocked my 1k wings. I'm in a top 5 clan on my server and we're regularly in contention in Rite (though less often a winner). And I'm easily one of the weakest in my clan. But there are good people in this game who realize theres room for us minnows. My clanmates recognize that I don't have raw power but I have some ability in the strategic arena. There's more to the game than being a frontline combatant. And I would say that with the new areas and activities added, I never get bored. :) best zero dollars I've spent in years.
Omg I felt this so hard... I went into diablo immortal knowing about the ptw but wanting to see it for myself to try and push ftp as far as I can, considering I still play D3 hardcore I wanted check this out. Immortal has been ironically one of my best MMO social experiences ever I genuinely mean that, playing with the same people seeing them in the world, like legitimate doing the events grinding together and pushing as hard as we could. I'm well beyond 300 hrs para 30s like 1250 cr right now ftp and have been at the same wall as you for over a week now... the only actual way to get resonance ftp is to rat all common gems and charm stones for plat and maybe a month of grinding you could buy a 3* everything I have wanted out of this game and thought could make it better for everyone (even the whales) was how the alpha was??!?!....... The real problem is alot of us actually enjoy this game because it's good at being a very social MMO and we see some hidden potential for it to be great, like they could patch it and make it better but in reality they spent a year doing the exact opposite... It's extremely disappointing that they sucked the soul out of this and made it a slot machine.
Looking forward to your D3 Season 27 contents, D2R ladder race, and anything else you wanna play that's not predatory like DI - me and I'm sure some other viewers watch you for you, not just because you play Diablo games. Thanks for your content and dedication Raxx!
Largest offput is that the game punish you for grinding. This is unheard of in diablo. We are grinders! Im happy to wait for d4 beta testing or just grind d3 for another year before d4 comes online. Thx for thoughts Rax:)
Well made video. I normally don’t watch videos this long, but this one was well done. Hopefully Blizzard hears this, but sadly they probably won’t. I guess they are confident their reputation is big enough to not care 😞
I haven’t spent a single dime, and I’ll probably play until I feel forced to do it, and at that point if things are still the same (which probably will) I’ll just move on to another game.
hey Rax thanks for taking the time to elaborate on this. it's a shame that we didn't get the game that could have been.
for me, as a 25-year fan of the Diablo series who is also a father of two toddlers, I'm happy just playing while I take walks on my lunch break. I do want to see where the story goes, not sure what I'll do when I finish it.
Just found you from the Asmon reaction
8:10 Same. Can't beat the f'ing worm because of it. The only way I could get the DH moving or primary attacking again is to use one of the secondary attacks, which is a big problem when they're all on cool downs.
I was going crazy when for no reason at all I can't hit any gold elite mobs as Monk for 3 challenge rifts in a row wtf is that....
100K Baby! Gratz you got some of that Asmon rub!
Grats on 100k subs raxx, you deserve it!!
More than one year later.
I started playing 2 months ago, I am paragon 827 with 17000 combat rating, fully F2P. Not interested in PvP, just doing PvE and it is fully viable as free to play.
Thanks for the beautiful video. And congrats on the 100k subs.
@Raxxanterax you are one of the most chill and best streamers i got to know the last weeks. it is a shame this played out for you like it did.
hang in there, D4 will hopefully be YOUR time. if its anything like they say
Great video and honest feedback. Thanks. I quit playing after hitting my second cap. I refuse to give any of my hard earned money to Blizzard for game that is so blatantly a monetization scam. I would have preferred they stay with Alpha version and charge me $60 for the game. I will not pay to win, period.
my problems personally having reached paragon, being forced to team up for dungeons hence some bounties and contracts become lost, someone warned me and now I saw the pit of despair is impossible, I finally get the boss down to half strength, have to heal when I come back healed the boss is back to full.
I'm glad to hear one of the "elites" accepting more casual and less/non competitive players, I sympathize even if i don't play the team compete thing
I know how you feel, i voiced my thoughts on Diablo Immortal trying to defend it because I wanted to try myself but was let down by my 3rd video. It sucks, because you want it to be awesome because it's an awesome genre, and lore, but damnit being handicapped in game sucks ass. (im just small channel atm) But dude I feel you, it's emotional for sure, but I respect you and your decision 100% because it's truth. Game on and stay true!
hero siege does paragon levels so well, blizzard should take some notes
never seen any of your content before but i stumbled across this video and i have to say it's the most accurate and relatable review of this game that i've seen. earned a sub for being respectful, honest, and getting your point across without hyperbole or insults.
Thanks for speaking for the community, particularly other blizzard fans who had high hopes.
I just wanted to say you're 1000% correct about the caps. When you force people to log off ("I've done my dailies, I'm good") then you remove the incentive for people to log on. And that's where I'm at with this game.
They don't realize that putting hard caps is NEVER going to turn f2p players into p2p. never. They are two different groups of people. And the caps actually hurt everybody.
I just hope d4 is better.
Good for you, I quit this game too, it' honestly just sad what this game is
Honestly, while the game SEEMED ok at first, I actually got very bored with the game. I just don't find it fun to play. Also I never feel like I'm getting more powerful. Like in Diablo 3 it feels MASSIVE to get the 6 piece set, like you just feel like a god once you get those pieces. No matter what gear you get in Immortal, you just never feel more powerful.
I think the last 20 items I’ve identified were considerably worse that what I have, like wtf am I farming for if it’s all such trash tier gear
At paragon lvl 20 I feel as strong as I did as lvl 1
I noticed the move problem and DH when I started and that made me go with Necro as first character. My gripe now is... I cant play any other class as they have no implemented the class change system and I am not wasting my time and resources on a whole separate character. I hate the PW2 system...for me this is a temp game until the next game. Not putting my heart, soul, or wallet into it. I VERY excited for D4 and hope they do not F it up. I wish they would hire you as a design consultant.
If you HAVEN'T yet, you should check out non-diablo ARPGs instead of putting any time into Immortal.
TL2 and the LAO3 mod grant some hilariously fun times if you're interested in seeing how much you can break an ARPG, for example.
PoE's always an option as well, etc. etc.
I honestly can't actually say Diablo's the ARPG standard anymore. D3's fun and all, but there's so many fun options out there these days.
Apparently Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance got a remaster and 2's getting a remaster this summer. They're both great fun for a run or 2 per class.
Being "loyal to a company" just ends up resulting in, well, Immortal.
It's why people need to stop being loyal to companies and instead be loyal to quality.
Stop spending money on games before you know if the game's worth playing just because of who's releasing it. Stop ignoring games in genres you enjoy just because someone else released it.
Sure, Blizzard had a great track record.
But that doesn't mean other companies don't also release great games, or even release better games.
There's so many great games out there that people just seem to not even know exist simply because they only focus on one developer or platform.
There's no reason to play Immortal when you could just play something better from someone else instead. Heck, go check out Infernum if you want a free mobile ARPG experience.
@@AtomicArtumas Thanks for the advice. I have I do D3 each season for a few days. I bought D2R and thats nice. I was pissed at POE for many years for stealing my character names when I stopped playing for a bit but did try them again last year. So much added to it was a bit overwhelming learning all the various systems they added. Knowing the loot. Takes a lot of my time just learning it instead of playing. I need alot of free time to play that one... or a tutor on discord to bombard with 1000 questions, lol. Only two ARPG's I know about to look forward to are D4 and POE Mobil. Any others?
I already stopped, too many caps so there is no point to play, Blizzards designed their game to don’t play their game.
You did great video btw thanks for this :)
You hit the nail on the head about becoming motivated to not login, I had surgury right as it came out so had plenty of time (all day every day) to play a lot of it basically casually as f2p, I like battleground but how by simply getting resonance pretty much makes the rest of the ways a f2p can get stronger a giant joke. Sometimes I can take a noob down in half a second but then a tank can run around with no skill, no control just firing from the hip like a movie and not even take half their health. . . It makes me not even want to log in. And I haven't for a few days now. After logging in and losing 4 straight battleground games back to back for not other reason then op'ed whales. Meh. Leaves a gross taste in your mouth especially since the whole rat race just starts right over again. That's not the kinda game I or most old school diablo players even liked diablo for. I can still log into old accounts year and years ago and remember the time I found my first shako. What other than the being on the leader board, or getting a kick from being top of every Battlegrounds game is there really to this game? The grind is unjustified and unnecessary when at the end of the grind you still will be a weak f2p player. I've paid subs to runescape from about 2002 to 2011 so it's not like I would pay money to play a game. But paying money to make the game playable.... ugh, I'd rather just have them give me a unfinished game that sucks then the idea and real possibility of a great game... but sold out to being almost evil in their implementation of the whole way they get money out of people.
Gratz for the 100k subs my friends, they are all deserverd. I really hope you'll be able to try D4 Beta.
Hey Raxx, I'm new to your channel since DI launch. I've really enjoyed your content so far and Im looking forward to watching you as you go back to true Diablo games.
I can answer a few of your questions and things you wonder about in the vid, summarized like this: The reason for caps is habit building.
Yes, it might hurt some people's desire to mega-comit, but your expectations for their "player first" design are misplaced.
It's monetization first - habits play into that. Hence they are priority
I feel bad for Raxx. These past couple weeks he’s been trying his best to enjoy DI, lol. I’m done playing- I played through the story and loved it. I don’t care about pvp nor collecting ALL the best gear like other ppl, so I doubt I’ll come back to it.
Put like this, it's kinda heartbreaking.
I know how enthusiastic about the game Raxx was a few months ago, before it became what it now is. This had the bones of a great game, but Bliz took a sledgehammer to it, and poisoned the remains with excessive P2W. The tragedy isn't what the game could have been--the tragedy is how something which was already good came to be ruined by exploitation, dishonesty, and naked greed.
I stopped after 3 days. The worst aspect about this game is that a huge portion of the content is locked behind a giant wall that I will never have access to.
I feel the same, I've reached P41 and besides farming Mount Zavian or Libary for legendary items there isn't much which can be done once you've obtained the set items for that paragon level. I'm no stranger to P2W and have happily in the past spent thousands on mobile games but atleast I got a "decent" return in terms of their in-game currency or items. However I've spent about 400-500 in DI and what I have got in return is very luck luster to the point where I don't spend anymore because there is no point... the odds are honestly worst than Fate/Stay or Genshin. I'm on the verge of quitting as there really isn't any point playing unless your willing to spend thousands, it's a shame I was so keen for this game and waited 4 years even played the Beta but these odds are so unfair, I might aswell go and gamble atleast then I'll have a chance of getting something back.
How?? Ive spent 500 And I have maxed out ?/5 5 star, im GM in a immortal clan And nobody in it has Even better gear than me 😂😂you must de doing it wrong
@@ElevatedLevetator you do realize that the average amount of money needed to get a 5 star gem is somwhere between 2000 and 10000 dollars?
@@dom1040I SAID ?/5 not 5/5, nobody needs a 5/5 star gem and ive only met a few that has one. I have gotten 3 4/5 stars though
Lol k
The campaign, which is basically a tutorial is fun to play. It is an enjoyable experience without investing money. Visually the game is appealing. It strkes the players ego at every turn. That being said, issues with resonance and combat rating disparity will likely remain, meaning, every D2 Immortail player is being conditioned to think that without money there is no point to compete. Thank you for sharing this with us, Raxxanterax.
On my Demon Hunter I couldn’t shoot or heal. I found out it was because of the spinning ability that shoots in all directions glitching out my game so I switched abilities eventually super annoying.
Will you be playing Undecember when it comes out?
Even spending a little bit doesn't really impact your character that much, its go big or go home. If the progress was structured better, it could even be rewarding enough to keep people playing and buying the BP 🤷🏻♂️ - this way, not so much
IMO this is a very valid and well-thought-out review... Blizzard should pay attention to these kinds of reviews...
I spent a bit more than you did. I figured I would cover the cost of buying a retail game and server use for 3 months so I spent $100. I did the same thing for PoE. I don't blast the game like you and Maxroll did but I am at paragon 22 and a little under 1k CR. The game is fun but is starting to become more P2W as I continue. One thing that actually turned me off was the rest of our clan to adventurer and having to work to become shadow again and finding my rank back at Initiate. I expected this at the end of a season (or whatever they call it) but not weekly. This has made me lean to quitting Diablo Immortal - sort of the proverbial straw. I totally agree with your assessment and thanks for all the work you do for the community. By the way - like you - I have been playing Blizzard games since the origianl WarCraft and consider myself a loyal fan of Blizzard. That is starting to change.
With the thorough job you did as a tester in DI you should definitely get a spot on the D4 testing. Blizzard needs people like you for sure. Keep it up and stay safe out there bud.
While I agree to a certain extent, Blizzard didn't listen to 90% of what he said anyway it seems. They downgraded or nerfed so many things that he and his group liked, and we all would have liked. My view on D4 is becoming increasingly pessimistic, and I honestly want that game to be great. I just fear it won't be more and more.
Agree with allot of what's said here and allot for the comments! But the real question is, what are we all playing instead? What are we all looking forward to? What new games are on the horizon?
I quit after hitting a wall with the caps. I did enjoy playing as a sader. But once i started the cap grind, I just couldn't anymore.
I genuinely enjoy Immortals gameplay. But at paragon 30+ I just feel like once I do my mandatory stuff of the day, I'd progress "faster" by waiting for tomorrow (read efficiently, I know I could be way higher paragon level), as one that loves the grind of Diablo, that just feels wrong. Haven't quit, still love having it on my phone and I enjoy the time I spend on it, but it's hard to make it a "main game"
They don’t want a good game. They want your money. It’s that simple.
Its been a long time wince I tuned into your Diablo 3 content. I missed your smooth easy listening voice.
I complitely agree with this thougths. When I heard about DI wasn't hiped to play it at all and haven't searched any info on it before. I changed my mind a bit when I watched all the nice videos you put on in YT about the game and actually got excited so I Installed BN, made an account, downloaded the game on my PC and my phone and started playing on launch. I lost all of my interest in it for about 2 weeks. I should say that except the battle pass haven't bought anything else, I never buy stuff in mobile games, did it to support the devs. In the beginning it was fun but as a solo F2P player I had no chance even to try all of the events in the game. I enjoy being a high paragon, well, in this game I don''t have the time and the ambition to grind it, it is slow and when I heard of the caps this was the begining of the end. As a diablo fan since D2 (I was like 10 yo) and a big fan of D3 (I play this game for trumendes amounts of hours just for fun - bought it twice, first for PS3 and then PS4, bought the necro pack cuz that was the only thing that I was missing and was happy to spent my money on D3) I think that anounsing and releasing a mobile Diablo game (with P2W mechanics) broke the hearts of Diablo franchise fans. I hope the commpany will correct their mistake with the D4 release, cuz if they don't do it I may quit playing games at all. My plans are to strat streaming D4 and If it is, even a little, as DI it will crush me and a lot of other diablo fans over the world.
As a somewhat active casual player, the bugs get me the most. "Tap to Play" crashes the game to desktop about half the time, which is pretty frustrating. Beyond that, I find my interest in ways to get stronger slowly dwindling. I haven't read much outside the game, but I guess combat rating and resonance are the key (much less intuitive than maximizing dex/str/int, crit damage and chance, legendary affixes, or skill levels, in previous Diablo games). Maximizing those two numbers just isn't that interesting.
I think the caps were implemented on everything except p2w things to keep players on an even playing field allowing whales (even inactive ones) to progress far beyond everyone else and never be beaten by blasters(p2w rifts are the only uncapped things). Players who grind and reach the caps are pressured to spend more as its all they can do to play and progress.
Yes and no.
Cap is made because the studios are so lazy to Come up with quality content.
And yes because the whales that can buy bonus things and outperform every free to play player.
Well, from my experience, so called whales still have same caps to deal with, as general play is considered. But that's not where the power in this game lies. The part that's so out of reach to f2p players is this incredibly expensive gem upgrading system, which is intentionally set to be a slot machine. Gems are true power, and ressonance lv10 gems give is the key to stomping f2p world. The non payers won't be able to upgrade their gems much in any reasonable amount of time, and even if lucky 5/5 drops, they won't be able to upgrade it at all. It's intended and it's wrongful, and to me, quite shameful system not fit for any game company out of Casino domain.
Very good analysis of the game 👍🏻 I already stopped playing DI and uninstalled the game and most likely I'm gonna stop WoW too after 17 years of playing. This monetization is so highly developed model that I just don't feel I can ever be supportive towards this game company again. It's just pure greed and I know I don't wanna play any part of supporting it. There are plenty of good games out there and in my eyes Blizzard can just rot away.
I'm someone who's never played any Diablo release before. I'm an FPS player but my pc broke down so I thought of playing Diablo Immortal on my phone as a pass time. I started playing from the day it was released. I'm a Paragon 34 as the time of writing this comment ( I didn't grind 24/7 but I think it's pretty decent for a casual player). My thoughts as of right now are:
•Never to play Battlegrounds except for Shadow ranks, I have NEVER seen such unbalanced mode in any game in my life, I never seem to even stand a chance
•There's nothing for me to do if I want to increase my combat rating for PvE except the 8 (+1 as a shadow) daily contracts for XP and I've stopped getting any better loot in anything except dungeons if I'm extremely lucky to get the final hit on boss.
•I don't know if this has been normal for Diablo games but why do you NEED to have 4 player party to enter dungeons in Hell 2? I can't even enter a dungeon because there's either not many players online or no one wants to play that dungeon.
•Charms are absolutely useless and a waste of resources
•Theres are still multiple extremely sever bugs in the game, from falling off the map multiple times to game having literal Graphic Artifacting when reconnecting
•As stated in the video, I'm rarely able to catch many of the zone events as they're not very frequent and hence I still have many empty crest slots in my Sanctum
As of now, unless you go to a farming spawn spot in some zone such as the Library and leave your game open with attack pressed by something (just as hundreds of other players are doing) there's no way to level up efficiently.
I was still open to trying this game as a free player after hearing more about it, but then you of all people lay this out in clear detail, and I'll never think about it again. Your perspective as an alpha tester is something I haven't seen anywhere else and it's something I truly appreciate. Seeing how drastically different the game was made by the after-the-fact implementation of predatory monetization models has fundamentally put me off supporting this game in any way. I don't want to be another 1 of the millions to download. I won't support this in any way. Thank you
As a final statement: this game might make me finally buy the necromancer expansion in D3
I literally just said to myself that I might not buy anything from Blizzard again after this including D4 or even D2R.
Well spoken and great points. Always respect your perspective.
The fact is that even as a non competitive player the game becomes boring very fast. I reached paragon 31 and I can't for the sake of it to continue playing it. The builds are not important, you do not feel the rush when you find a legendary because it does not change anything at all. And as an almost free to play player, there is no hope to find 5 star gems (that also are not creating different interesting builds, it is all about resonance). Diablo is based in grinding efficiently and the rush of creating and testing different competitive builds with fairness in mind. This game is against the spirit of Diablo saga. I hope that Diablo 4 will not take the same steps as Diablo immortal.
raxx the ammount of thought time and effort you put into all your content has the be given a huge thumbs up I have not started to play immortal at all mainly due to lots of comments regarding the in game need ? to spend money and yes I realise this is an option all down to the players choice but being on a pension and not working I took the decision not to be tempted I play mainly solo on EU and with the help advice and video content for yourself and other great streamers I am now managing solo g/r 110 maybe not the highest but good for me keep up the good work Raxx thanks again for everything best wishes for the future
I didn't know about you until now, but I will definitely hear what you have to say about Diablo IV before buying it when the time comes.
Great video Raxx. Was interesting to see how they changed the game this much over the last year of dev.
If they would make it more f2p friendly it would not change the pvp aspect of the game. Or just a sightly bit. But it would make more reason for f2p players to play. The feel of progression would be there. Still not on the p2w lvl but still would be incentives to log on and grind every day and not just quickly reach the daily limits and that's it.
Honestly think the lack of progression, the feel that you reached something is a bigger issue than the whole p2w aspect.
same, the p2w part didnt deter me from playing, but the caps did. for the exact same reason. already able to see the caps only incentifies botting, and the only way to catch up is to pay
sucks to see this
and yea maybe time to see if those with copium will see this soon
(lookong at stew)
Thanks for the only honest review I've seen of the game. You actually criticized what's wrong with the game in the current state, rather than just cry about how pay to win it is as you throw over $50k into the game (I'm looking at you asmongold/otk)
Thank you Rax,please point out to the people the biggest lie in the game whitch is written on the bottom off combat rating description...I clearly says against players the damage increase and reduction CANNOT exceed more than 10% and obviously its not the case in the game...Take care and huge respect for the work you have donne!!!
you're so on point, there's literally no argument against your points! thumbs up!
I can imagine the developer's faces when some corporate dude walked into the studio and told them "You guys made a great game, all the alpha players are loving it. Now turn it into a casino game."
Before ive seen this video, i took immortal as an actual Diablo. Grinding, hope for good gear, bless rng and so on. I even found a bloodsoaked jade with three stars. But i checked it how to upgrade it. There was it. I came to the same conclusion that grinding, play with friends or some clan members is not enough to keep up in a conpetitive way. But i definitely keep playing it. I cant afford to pay anything into the game besides the battle pass, which as a fact bacame obligate to f2p (COD, MTGA i.e.) games. And i'm sure if you keep in mind that it is still Diablo, the grind and loot heavy game we all love, and you don't give a damn about PvP or P2W you still preserve the soul of this game series and have a good time with it.
If I were at Blizzard I'd probably hire you as an advisor after that feedback. I do know the world does not work like that, but still. Imagine people put in 1/10 of the effort you put in in your work to their domains.
As for my personal DI experience, I have zero time at the moment and played DI only for an hour in total I think. I don't PVP and I just want to do the campaign for the story once; so apart from the whales, I think I may be the only type of player to have fun in there, for a limited time. I guess I'm the "non-competitive" player you mentioned :)
Just another one of the 'sad day for Blizz game fans' that we seem to be getting so used to. Sadly