I'm familiar with this we'll see I've notified them that I'm taking a trip down to their corporate headquarters next Wednesday and talk about this face-to-face because their customer service over the internet is trying to bully me.... They think that human beings have endless patients for this nonsense when we know the people that are directly involved... All it's going to take is one all they have to do is piss off the right guy... Histories just chock full of all that but they never learn. Doesn't everybody have phones isn't everybody a hopeless attic with excessive compulsive disorder paranoid schizophrenia spending the last drop of money that they saved for years yeah somebody's got to teach him a lesson.
So if you're wondering while playing Diablo mortal what's wrong with it is this for years they trained us to be addicted to the grind and we did it with our friends and we had fun and we just knew it was part of the process so instead of changing it in a fun way what they done was spinning around and put XP caps on so you can't grind like we've been trained to and what we're being trained to do right now just spend money on a virtual game that's created by people that obviously used to work for the opioid industry or the drug cartels I'm going to say this once twice three times in as many times as I have to they are not going to get away with it this time maybe next time but not this time.
100% true, people believing D4 will be good is like saying "I really hope my girlfriend won't cheat on me for the xx time, I love her and I still have hope"
I like you Rax, been following your content for a few years but i gotta agree with some people man, you work way too hard for Blizzard for free and constantly give them the benefit of the doubt when they reach out to you to make you feel better before screwing you and everyone over. You gotta wake up and realize its no longer the company we all once knew and liked.
@RECREVNT Just be done now. They've already proven they don't give a single shit with their track record. Stop giving this company benefit of the doubt. If the product is shit/probably going to be shit, don't buy it, don't play it. People that give benefit of the doubt/look at the company through rose tinted glasses are the reason why they keep getting away with this shit.
The man who is willing to give will receive in a way that surpasses any kind of earning. It's a core ability of human loving nature. Don't worry for him =)
Missing the mark with legendary gems is understatement of the century. Even if they buffed the rate you get crests by 10x it wouldn't do anything against the whales. A 100x increase, wouldn't do anything against the megawhales. This was done by design. Anyone with simple grasp of mathematics could've calculated it quite easily that 100 crests get you nowhere, even if you are lucky and get a 5/5 star gem in those 100 crests, you don't have the gem power to increase it's level. They can defend all they want with half-assed excuses, but it was designed for F2P have no chance at all on purpose.
I know right. It's like the murdere, that strangled the vitim, then stabbed it two dozen times, poisoned it, shot it with a round of bullets just to then come out and say. Yes, totally sorry, that was a mistake. I might have missed the mark.
There is a throttle mechanic, where if a F2P *does* get a lucky streak of drops the game will 'force' an average making the next legendary gem drop that much harder. This was a mobile game that took 4 years after announcement to come out and had been in development for an unspecified amount of time before. Nothing about this game hasn't been deliberated over for a long time.
Exactly. I must admit... I love Raxx but I stopped playing the video there. It's like a girlfriend that cheated 10000 times saying she missed the mark and should have stopped cheating after the first time. Seriously? It's over Blizzard, you FUCKED UP.
I haven't made my way through the entire video yet, but as far as Im concerned, Im done with the game. The reason is that all of this predatory behavior was done intentionally. It shows how they really feel about their player base and that kind of disrespect is unacceptable. Blizzard changing things to fix the mistakes they made intentionally doesn't earn them good will in my book. Ive played Diablo games for 25 years, and although its going to kill me, I will be waiting for a week after D4 launch before I decide to get the game or not. Look forward to more of your videos Raxx
This, entirely this. Everything is made to predate the player base and abuse addictions etc, all while hiding what they're doing and having hidden caps etc. Screw blizzard
I did watch the all video, guess you need some guy to stay positive but when he talk about "they listened my feedback about xp problems in elder rifts and fixed it" he knows that the f2p being miles away from catching up with a whale IS NOT A BUG they could fix, it's intentional like you said. IN NO CIRCOMSTANCES you can trust them to change the monetisation schemes, they may loose a bit and remove an 1inch of C*CK in the salad but you will still have a bad salad with a c*ck in the middle.
I'm also done with blizzard.... uninstalled almost everything in the past year (hearthstone, wow retail, wow clasic, diablo immortal....etc) Only thing I kept is StarCraft I...and honestly I'm never going back, it's just too much.... I'm done
This is the exact same phenomenon that asmongold described as you mentioned earlier. It's a psychological trick, acknowledging there's a problem after milking all that money.
Exactly. They are just barking out "No no we "pay attention" " > say something arbitrary to appease you. Continue milking. They aren't going to stop the predatory P2W schemes. DO NOT help them. They are playing on your nostalgia for the company they used to be. They're not admitting anything.
@@kkent3815 yeah but people are too much addicted and ruined by the game and compagny right now to fking think about a riot lol or even just about all the bad things ad behaviors.
While I agree with most of what you said, I don't see any difference between their response and the predatory practices of Lost Ark. They claim they are sorry about it, but come on - they knew exactly what they were doing in releasing Immortal this way. Apologizing now is hollow, and sadly it just continues to the downward spiral of Blizzard's reputation.
Yeah this is exactly what they'll do. Hollow apology. Even if they start giving like 100 free legendary crests a month, if the monetization system and everything associated with it (UI, wording of offers, how you're trained to get your reward from the store) does not change, the underlying problem will still remain. The only thing that changes is that naive people think it's now ok and they will forgive Blizzard, but essentially Blizzard loses almost nothing.
When a company says they "missed the mark", they are actually saying "two steps forward, one step back, if someone complains". Was a huge fan of blizz back in the day, but havent touched anything they put out after war3 reforged.
When they gutted Bnet for SC2 i saw the writing on the wall and decided that was it. Tho i did play HotS for a few hours, it just confirmed it was already over. POE is the true successor to D2.
@@tyty8484 amazing how they can't bring back a good battle net, even after years of experience. It wasn't just a space to game, it was a place do chat with friends, host clan events, brag etc.
Dude, this is clearly the bargaining stage of grief; and the fact you think D:I was a "mistake" is just heartbreaking. The gaming industry has been circling the bowl for years; and instead of being the good guys blizzard has been leading the charge down the drain. Blizzard doesn't deserve your loyalty; play some legit games like Vampire Survivors, Elden Ring, or even something like Valheim or Subnautica. There are legit gaming experiences out there, you just have to value your own time more then this. I know what you're going through, I went through the same thing with Bioware. Once that name meant everything they put out was an A++ experience, now I dread their releases, because I fear what new destruction they'll drop on my favorite titles. Blizzard lost me with D3, never bought another Blizzard title after that demolition of one of the greatest gaming brands in the world.
Seeing your spreadsheet made me admire you and Maxroll even more. I always wondered where some of the information from Maxroll resource tutorials were sourced from, like why and how you guys determined that the Mad King was recommended for leveling up during main quest level gates. Seeing your spreadsheet made me realize how thoroughly you guys tested everything. I always believed you and took you for your word, but seeing the data you collected was awesome. Thanks for taking us behind the scenes!
@@richardred4396 you missed the point. Who gives a shit about the actual compilation. It's the fact that their team went through the trouble of even doing it that impresses. It gives credibility to Maxroll guides.
I appreciate your honesty and sincerity; you're a true gamer at heart. I've been play video games for 40 years and have played every major franchise that's been released since the early 80's. I don't mind paying $60 for a game or $25 or $30 for DLCs, but I will never pay for a game that is P2W, NEVER. I'd rather play another 2000 hours of modded Fallout 4 or Skyrim before giving Activision/Blizzard another penny. They are no longer game developers, they're creators of predatory monetization scams; nothing more.
I hope you know the actual developers of the game have no control over pay to win or monetization tactics of their game- its the company, most developers actually pour love into the game, its the company that implements all these scummy tactics into their games
@@gulag_sender2123 Looking at Diablo 3 and how little it's been updated since Reaper of Souls came out other than rotating from one season to the next and then looking at a game like Path of Exile, I have a real hard time accepting that this is just a Activision/Blizzard being scummy as usual issue. A better way of proving this though will be if Diablo Immortal ends up with overall more content/updates than D3 had in a comparable amount of time. In regards to Bethesda, they have a continuous track record of intentionally releasing something that could barely be called a early beta version of the game(Fallout 76 is a prime example of this) with the intent to fix it later and slapping a triple A price tag on it which is part of what led to them getting sued previously.
I really appreciate your dedication to the community and wanting to help find a solution. It takes a combination of extreme outrage and people who patiently stay the course of calmer feedback. HOWEVER. For your own sake, please make sure you're not letting yourself be lulled into a false sense of security. Their track record of changing after an apology isn't great, and an apology without change is just manipulation or trying to avoid someone being upset with them. Take care of yourself, and thanks for taking care of the people who want good games with fair practices.
Elden Ring was fun out the gate. I played in for three months and loved it almost every minute. I grew up with blizzard and I want them to succeed. I just wish the suits would stop being so damn greedy.
@@simony9611 no the goal is money the driving force is not greed. Its control. the goal of the capitalists economy is to siphon money from the middle class so that they stay middle class and poor
I miss the days when a game releases & you have so much fun playing & get so lost in it, that before you know it, a week has passed and you don't even realise. It hasn't been like that for me for a very, very long time. I'm hoping it will happen again though, it's just a case of when
A case of when and a case of that NOT happening on a mobile game. Ever. Never has and never will. That's not a stab at ya, lass. That's just fact. It's what makes mobile fun-ish is taking a bit out of your day then closing out till the next day.
@@sarahchan-reeves8829 You're talking in a vid regarding mobile game though. I think most people never stop to think about that fact, that D:I IS a mobile game in the end, due to being able to play on PC.
I disagree; They are Obligated to Reach out when the response to the game state is such a trash fire and one of the most well known Diablo Content Creator makes a very civil point by point breakdown of the issues and how it got worse from alpha to launch. Its literally the Bare Minimum they could do.
The bare minimum is what they were obligated to do in this case, which is nothing. That is what makes their reaching out remarkable. Your expectations for their conduct aren't their literal requirements to satisfy. People have become way too extravagant in their contrivances of what companies must do.
What annoys me is they went full on mobile game but they aren't doing the mobile game new updates every week or 2 thing Honestly there should be events every week new bosses new helliquery bosses ways to earn crests from events etc. You can't have all stick no carrot that just drives the players away
@Raxxanterax I gotta say, I feel for you man. I feel that mental struggle that you went through when you came to the realization of what Blizzard did. I think the worst part is knowing that they literally used your alpha and beta effort's data to implement those 'redundant' caps that were intentionally designed to hold the f2p player back. I hope they do fix it, because it is a great game...but the monetization feels down-right criminal to me. Blizzard has lost a lot of trust from me.
@@mcshannon02 The better question is why do you like Blizzard? Is it the terrible game releases in recent years, the horrendous work conditions (e.g. sexual harassment), the absurdly wealthy CEO who makes death threats to employees, the predatory monetization, or what? Is it the avarice that you admire?
Great video Raxx. If you ever get to test D4, you should maybe do a similar process as your spreadsheet but do it before hand. Try and give the devs a spreadsheet of numbers they can agree on FIRST, and then they create the content based on those numbers. Basically get balanced numbers on a spreadsheet for all the different variables, and then hand it to the devs so they can create the dungeons or quests or bosses or loot tables etc, based on those numbers.
What I think: We need a tab for world event activities so you could track/fast travel to them from anywhere. We also need in-depth notification settings both on mobile and PC to know when these things are happening and if we want specific out-of-game notifications. Lastly, we need a normalized stats PvP game mode. Lots of ways to do it but the simplest can just be a copy of ARAM from league of legends; 5 v 5 (Maybe even 4 v 4 or 3 v 3), one lane, normalized stats, with the difference-maker being the choice of abilities. If they wanna be fancy maybe you get trash mobs spawning on each side as you push farther down.
Totally agree on the PVP. When I started playing I would be top 3 almost every battle. As my rank went up, I suddenly was teamed with and against whales and I was instantly whale fodder. Even if they just adjusted your rank based on your battle stats instead of you were teamed with bigger whales so you got the W. That would give players the ability to play like players. You do well, you bounce up get slapped by some whales then move back down and actually have a shot.
They don’t want to normalize PvP they want f2p and light spenders to feel like they have a chance while whales don’t feel threatened by them at all. The entire game system was designed with legendary gems in mind, and how to effectively use that to create big spenders. If they wanted PvP to be skill based it would have been normalized from the beginning. The game is a mobile Gacha game but instead of pictures of anime characters you roll for rocks that make you deal 3-4 times more damage than players with less stars on their rocks.
Thanks Raxx, awesome feedback and I'm glad Blizz reached out. Seems like they're putting all the eggs in one basket, but I really hope D4 is good! Otherwise, in the words of a wise sage, "rip season, brb installing poe".
Thank you for the content you make raxx. I would also like to thank everyone at max roll for their guides that I continue to use everyday. Keep up the good work guys. Blizzard would be lucky to have you guys test Diablo 4. I hope you guys are thinking that your lucky to be able to test it because you guys know your shit and blizzard should be thanking you at every turn.
I don't think you give yourself enough credit. Back when I played Diablo 3 I watched you, blood and rykker. So you're definitely an important diablo players imo.
Thank you for making this Raxx. Your efforts on this, and all that you do for the gaming community are extremely admireable. I hope Blizzard continues to ask for your input. You are a tremendous resource. Thanks again for all that you do. Have a great upcoming weekend.
I have had no desire to play Immortal based on videos from you and Wudi most specifically, but I REALLY hope the Blizzard brings you on to test D4 and let you stream it for community feedback. I cannot think of anything that would help D4 and Blizzard more than that. Thanks Raxx!
U rock as always man! With u on our side, us as the players u have all our respect! Btw ur not dumb, u just want what we want! A game to play either by ourselves or with friends that is fun and worth playing on a daily basis!!
I liked the spreadsheet bit. Was informative and really made me feel like you did research rather than just going off of generalizations/personal experience (which are valid but I don't put as much weight behind.)
Rax I really enjoy following along with you in D3 Lost Ark and D2. Your content is very "matter of fact" and easy to understand. Thanks for all your effort. Looking forward to the new season of D3 this week and getting into that first challenge rift. Will keep an eye out for that guide
I dont think i will ever play immortal. But i do intent on grinding d4 and i really hope you will get to help them balance it out because you are doing an incredible job.. Your testing work is worth so much $$ thx for the content!
Hey rax I want to say…thank you ! Thank you for being so nice. Every video every content is gold. I hope u stream the rest of you’re life ;) Greetings from Germany ;) You are legend !!!!
i dont agree that developers had nothing to do with the monetization schemes the game has. on the contrary the whole gameplay experience is tailored to funnel players into cash shop and incentivize spending money on the game. from finish to start, every aspect of the game...
Watching now, this should be interesting! :O Holy shit it was Wyatt?? I never really had a problem with him and as far as Immortal goes, I do enjoy the game a lot, just not all of the gates and p2w aspect. If they removed all of that and slapped a monthly sub it instead, with no gated content and no way to P2W, I'd pay it without question. When you say "Essence", you can't possibly mean monstrous essence right? Because it doesn't drop in dungeons or rifts. Is there some other kind of essence I don't know about? I'd feel like a potato considering i'm P50. Perhaps that spreadsheet was made during the Alpha testing and they removed the ability of essence to drop in dungeons / rifts since then? Cuz I've never seen it.
Wyatt’s job is basically to pacify content streamers against saying negative things about the game. They offer them free beta gameplay and say a few nice things, and the content creators get on their knees for it and release a video like this. This is why they did it to this guy and not Asmongold. Asmongold wouldn’t fall for this snake tactic.
From what I've understood, Blizzard just aknowledged that they limited too much the f2p and did almost nothing to improve that. Did they promise to do better? Using the word "redundant", as fantastic as it can be, doesn't solve a damn thing.
I did the same thing in a mobile game to craft the best core sets to use in wars. I used excel and added ranges and even normalized stats and included bonus hidden attributes to maximize the set values. I would even specifically build around certain layouts and use my base and understanding of gear to make counter measures.
Guys, you must see the bigger picture here! The way that computer games are produced, marketed, monetarized and played have changed drastically - and will continue to do so. The more a market grows, the more evil it becomes. Like it or not. Companies will do ANYTHING to have you the gamer invest as much time, dedication and ultimately money into their product. Your only choice is to resist the bait and not play at all.
The way they explained the endgame of d4, you cant really max your hourly gains the way you can in immortal. Cause they say you cant choose what dungeons you are able to turn into nightmare(endgame) dungeons, as that depends on what keys drop for you. And also the dungeons layouts are randomly generated, which probably creates a pretty big range in how much you can get out of it per hour. But its great that someone like you, who obviously really cares, will be able to test it.
As I said before. YOU have influence and Blizzard knows that. When you first complained about the P2W they tweaked your drop rate so you would be more positive. People said that you didn't have that much pull. Well as you can see Blizzard reached out to YOU! They are not stupid. They know who has a following and can influence trends about their game. Good on you for being able to have your voice and by extension our voice heard.
Arguably, it's not even necessarily that Raxx has "influence". For years I was the top player on SWTOR - Was #1 on leaderboards of half the classes, consistently had server and world first raid clears, etc. At the time, I wasn't a content creator in any way. I wasn't an E-celeb in any way. Just about no one outside of my server really knew who I was, and I only posted a few times a month in the theorycrafting threads on the forums, to help push high-level play further. I still got direct messages from the devs asking me about my thoughts on stuff. I got special preview build access. My thoughts on stuff were considered for many things, especially balance-wise. Why? Because I fully understood the ins and outs of how the live game worked better than even they did. I was playing 16 hours/day 7 days/week. I did operations (raids) on up to 6 characters/week. At the time this was like 40+ hours/week of JUST raiding. I crafted to the point I was in the top 10 richest people on my server. I was co-leader and raid leader of the most prestigious guild on the server. I knew just about every single thing about the game, and could identify exactly where different classes were overpowered or underpowered, could identify how, where and why different classes performed better at different content, etc. I had a direct line of communication with the dev team in essence, because I basically understood the game better than even the people that made the game. A dev team can only do so much playtesting. And QA, Testing divisions, etc. don't often have "literally the best gamers in the world" in them. If you have access to a resource that can give you a perfect overview AND in-depth analysis of every part of your product... you'd honestly be a fool to not even attempt to utilize it.
What I want to know is if Raxx discussed the keyboard/mouse issue with the PC Beta version with Wyatt? I am so tired of my character being stuck/frozen at a boss and dying from it. I agree with your assessment concerning Wyatt Cheng. He is just another human doing his job in, stuck in a corporate environment that may dictate differently than what he wants. Anyone that has ever worked in management, understands that statement. Otherwise, THANK YOU for sharing the conversation with your followers!
There’s a difference between being stuck in the “system” and blatantly lying. He lied, period. He knew what he was saying wasn’t true and still tried to defend it, he doesn’t get a cookie and Pat on the back for trying to save face.
100k!!! WOOOOT and this LONG GAME of predatory design is insane - it's been happening EVERYWHERE for a LONG TIME!!! Thanks man for pointing this out and cheers to Asmon for pointing this BULLSHIT OUT!!!
I'm not buying the whole "we're missing the mark" shpiel from Blizzard. It's blatantly obvious it's all intentional design. It's all part of the monetization machine. It keeps the whales happy and the free players pressured to pay. One of my biggest gripes with the game that I haven't heard anyone discuss is how at the market when you sell an item, there's a "transaction fee" listed in gold, but deducted in platinum! It's fkin absurd! Even for a p2w player. You spend cash to buy orbs to buy platinum, and the game taxes your profit. Like...what!?
The Lost Ark team not only apologized, but also changed their approach for future patches (with mixed results, but still). At the same time Blizzard did not apologize to the community as far as I know, but tried to gaslighting people with "you can't buy gear with money" half-truths. That's a major difference to me.
I still reckon PVP should be "everything in the build temporarily set to max" so you can get the crappy 5 star gems and crappy 3 stat gear but with the correct type of stats, and then go into PVP and everything is set to like Primal levels. And that way, it's not about getting the highest ranks of everything, it's about getting all the CORRECT stats and then PVP ranking everything up to max. That way, you farm for the build items, get the correct types of stats, get those 5 star gems (2 stars active) you need for the build, and boom you are in PVP and using skill to win. Might take a couple of months to get the build completed or close but the difference won't be huge. Maybe the charm might not be perfect or a couple of stats might not be perfect types. But then there are things to work towards. Getting gems to sell for platinum to buy charm stones to try to get that last 2% damage increase. Or forge stones. Or hunting for that 3 stat helm you need.
They don’t want it to be balanced, they want people to be able to buy power, if they wanted it to be balanced it would have been designed that way from the ground up
I saw this video on asmonds channel. I felt the same way you did a long time ago, yet I can say I can longer can I give them a sub every month. I played wow for 15 yrs and it hurt to give it up after so many years and paid soo much money on every expansion! In either case I gave ya a follow and can't wait for your next video!! Gg my dude!!!
Dude, 21 minutes to say Blizzard reached out you and apparently apologised to you. No other information, no plans to fix or change anything. 21 mins of you thanking Asmogold and Blizzard.
Man he made clear in the first few minutes of the video that this video isn't about solutions, he just made a video to share his experience and conversation with Blizzard Devs and them acknowledging things aren't right in it self is a step forward in improving a f2p players experiences in the game.
I think if they let you stream content in a box, it may be good. However, most of the fun is exploring and looking at new areas. If you stream it i think this will provide negative reactions on day one since the exploration period has already passed. The box could be dungeon, rift, pvp. Something like that. Or gate you to streaming it only a few hours a week.
I'd still say that each Elder Rift should start with a legendary crest and only by purchasing more through the store you can run up to 10 per rift. That way the whales only have an efficiency advantage.
Wow man, i see and feel with him the grief and desolation hittin Raxx Its like a ballon slowly loosing air. I really hope for you and the rest of us the rapidpy deminishing blizz players it gets better but we all know that is a fable. They got you to, same as me a f2p player hooked and give us just enough to stay hooked ontill we hit rockbottom and bail out. Im not there yet, same as you but i allready realise its coming sooner or later. Eventho i know and see it comming it wil still be hard. I admire and love your content and devotion and offcourse all the amazing maxxroll people. Greetings from the Netherlands.
Raxx, this is classic Stockholm Syndrome man. They have you captive whether you know it or not. Just see the big picture, that this was a dumpster fire from day one. Turn around and walk away without looking back. Stop running back to your captor just because they gave a slight nod on your direction.
I’ve seen so many players show an xp per hour gain without the time coefficient. Without this coefficient, time will play too much of a factor in generating a normalized result. This is why I watch you for guides more than anyone else.
They somehow need to make it competitive between some of the best free to play players and people that spend lots of money. Spending money should be a short cut for grinding not basically elevating you on another level that cannot be reached without spending money
You've put so much work into this game. Work that Blizzard developers should be doing. Instead they have you working this hard for free. The work you've done is amazing but you deserve better than this. I think they are being as predatory to you as they are to everyone in the game.
Uncap fading embers and it solves SOOOO much, its so simple and so easy and will NOT disincentivize or stop the paying players because its still a grind and you would only be paying to skip the grinding for gems. Thats all they had/have to do.
Hey Raxx, im pretty sure D4 will be real good, and im looking forward to the content you will create for it :) I mean i enjoy the diablo franchise for nearly 25 years now :DI skipped Immortal, im not into mobile games, but ofc i will buy D4, and i bet it will be an awesome game.
Cheers Raxx, love the work you put into your content and I hope the Blizzard see the error of their ways...but money talks and they're making a fucking ton right now exploiting whales and I don't think they'll stop doing that until these predatory practices are clamped down. Again, thanks for all your vids. Much respect mate.
I'm alot like you. I love crunching numbers and using spreadsheets to do so. That all being said, I'm glad your on the somewhat inside to gather this Intel before releases and help them create a better game. I'm very impressed and happy that you choose to do this without compensation and falsifying the data to promote it, but are strict factual data and info. keep up your great work! and hope they choose you for upcoming blizzard updates and games in producing and managing the games. I wish you the best of luck, and really hope your data can make a difference in the f2p world in this p2w world they seem to lean on in the future. 💪👌💯 keep being the frontman, and I hope you can be the general public's voice in the future! you do it perfectly! -Cheers 🍻
If you are willing to help Blizzard to test their games then yes, you are stup..ly optimistic man. Do you see the bigger picture? A streamer helping test a game to fix it? Are you familiar with QA Teams? If a company does not have good testers is whether because they dont care about the quality of the product, or cause the final users are so dumb they will buy the product no matter the quality.
the dude loves the Diablo franchise. I think Raxx knows what hes doing... despite the cautiously optimistic approach. But, yea blizzard doesn't care. Mike Morhaime already left. I would like to see Raxx's test on Diablo 4.
Raxx, there's something I need to correct, that you keep getting wrong. You ARE gods gift to the world. I enjoy D3, I have on-off enjoyed it for like a decade and your content has helped me massively to enjoy it more. Your guides, tips and your random gameplay videos bring me far more enjoyment than 90% of bullshit Hollywood blockbusters. I am absolutely confident, that your content helps countless people like me to enjoy these games more, which means it makes people enjoy their limited time more. Honestly, the only reason I went to even try Diablo: Immortal was you and Rhykker. Never stop man! I am really happy to see Blizzard understanding at least some of the value you bring to these games and I hope they are smart enough to keep their eyes and ears open for the future. Raxx for president!
Raxx sir, thank you! I really appreciate your coverage, giving props to your other sources, and your suggestions. As a F2P Sader I'm enjoying the nostalgic feeling of a dungeon crawling looter game. With that being said, I'm noticing the shift in the population of Immortal. I've got to say, I feel like I'm back in the toxic era of D2 when it first came out. Here are a few things I noticed, I hope this helps coming from a casual player. Which I feel is a silent majority that is overlooked for whales. 1: Player griefing: As a Sader I am experiencing Sorcs & DH who trail melee toons and pilfer kills, blue packs, yellows, uniques, treasure goblins, shrines, chests...you name it! This is something they need to fix, if a (preferred) solo player is being stalked by range classes where they can't get anything, or are being griefed it's going to kill the game and the population. 2: SOLO PLAY! I don't like the fact that as soon as I switch to Hell1 I have to do everything with randoms. I don't have a guild, or a warband. I am a casual gamer, I can't invest hours upon hours into playing with others. I literally created my own warband to be left alone from being telling me to join their tribes. I love that in D3 I can go to what ever difficulty I want and not be forced to play with randoms. Namely now when in a dungeon people run off kill who they want to kill and leave. I want to be able to play what difficulty I want, and be able to play by myself if I choose to. 3: I love the whole "community building." You play with friends/guild mates, randoms and you get nice rewards for playing with people. However, they have to serve a purpose. I hate the fact that I can't be squat unless I'm a whale pod, joined the "right guild", or know what events to run, how to run them and rinse and repeat. If this games is going to stagnate like to this...then I'm done, and will HAPPILY review bomb this game and blizzard! 4: I've heard that D4 MIGHT be more like this, and I really hope not! If this is the future of Diablo then to me as a long time D1 player...I'm done with Blizzard and can only hope it goes under quickly and does not pass quietly into the night. I do remember and miss the days where a new game was coming out and I was excited to play it! I want a game to be what it should be, entertainment. A new media of story interactions/puzzles/friendly competition. We the people are NOT cash cows for greedy corps to squeeze and extort for their profit margins. I really appreciate and respect what you do. I remember when I first turned into your D3 season guides and how it rekindled my enjoyment in D3. I would like to know your thoughts on my observations. Whether they are relevant or if I just sound "whiny." What I want to know is do you believe D4 will be a good game, or will corporate politics and revenue projections ruin yet another franchise? It doesn't sit right with me that D4 is coming out so soon. I was hoping they put time into Immortal while working on D4. It's giving me the "rush it to keep the masses happy!" Vibe...which we all know how well that worked with so many other titles. Thank you again Raxx, and keep it up good sir!
19:58 What happened is devs gained the ability to patch games after launch and advertising is a lot more prevalent now making hype far more effective for sales, so the entire model has become: Hype game for pre-order, ship asap for max profits, and finish the game later if it's still worthwhile to do so, otherwise work on the next one.
Had to uninstall last night, which sucks. Game is REALLY well done but the monetization is disgusting, and the limits placed on actual play rewards are annoying. Had about 4 PvP matches in a row where the team was just destroyed by multiple 1500-3000 resonance characters. I personally did relatively well against the power mismatch, as I've grinded some gear etc. But ultimately there's nothing you can do against that.
Even gear doesn't do much against the sheer power of the gems. I got my stuff pretty much as Raxx, I got 700 resonance and it doesn't even make a dent and I've meticulously synergized every single aspect of the gear.
@@edgarsantos3034 Same. Got a couple of the early cheap packs, stopped there. About 500 resonance. Set pieces, high stat (not triple, but 50+ stat doubles), and nothing you can do against the power difference. And that not even mentioning the 5* gem abilities which I won't have.
I'm on the verge of quitting too as a f2p Battle pass payment only. I do indeed wait for the first patch they make and if they improve things I might put more time in. The only thing I hope is that they mean mean it when they spoke with you about the issues. Many thanks for such a good video and your view at it 💪🏼👍🏾
I just recently found out about you and have been watching your content, I think you do have a lot of valid points. Diablo immortal gets alot of hate for being Pay 2 Win, and I certainly agree that the monetization in this game is disgusting. However you’ve talked about how you were top during the alpha, and been quite successful in other games as a free 2 play, even competing with pay 2 play players. But it sounds like you must’ve committed a substantial amount time in order to achieve that status. I feel as though even if diablo immortal was not pay 2 play at all, As a fellow free 2 play player it likely wouldn’t change the game for me at all. Id still be fighting whales in pvp and be behind alot of players because I don’t have all the free time in the world to dedicate towards playing the game. It feels like this situation only affects players who want to be the top by dedicating time, or by dedicating money. Regardless I know personally That I don’t have enough of either to be even close to competing with other players, so I feel like this whole situation just doesn’t affect someone like me. To be honest all I’m seeing from the constant debates regarding diablo immortal is: Players what the game to change from spending tens of thousands of dollars to be on top, to spending tens of thousands of hours to be on top. I feel like we’re all forgetting that regardless there’s ZERO SKILL involved. Even if the game wasn’t pay 2 win it would be time spent 2 win. People who can’t afford to whale in the current game, would still just quit their jobs and live from their life savings for several months to be on top, I don’t really understand stand how that equals a healthier situation for the players, they’re either wasting their money or wasting their life away.
There aren't only two options. There are other options. Well, at least one. No whales at all, either of time or money. Just an enjoyable game from the get-go, or a hard cap that's easily obtainable. Most FPS games are enjoyable from the get go and there's little you have to grind or whale for and anything that is unlocked by time or money is ideally sideways progression. I'm thinking of COD games, BF, PS2. Also you could make a game like GW2 where everyone can reach an equal power level quite easily and the most high end armor, legendary in GW2, is only marginally better and doesn't even effect PvP. It's dumb to think there are only two options and they have to be some type of whale. Even a game that I could label whale of time, EVE, is easy for people tonget into and not get crushed by whales, skill/experience matters.
You are missing the point of this type of game here. This type of game is designed to be grindy. The game is literally designed to reward dedication in time. I find it silly to complain that "people who play more wins". The way you're parallelizing time and money to be equal in terms of it being currency to buy greatness is also silly. It is literally unfair for people who play these kinds of games to be matched by players who spend less time to play. It's like saying that your tenure and free overtimes at work should not matter when a newbie who just casually goes to work everyday gets equal or better pay than you. If you want to be better, you spend time in it, as everything is designed in life. Time is free, money is not. There's a very, VERY huge difference between the two, and your argument is just silly at its very core.
Rax! I'm loving your recent content, keeping it real. I didn't waste my time with immortal as I was grinding with DH on D2R, but I fully follow your sentiment about the direction games are going in. I remember being SUPER PUMPED for D3 on release. I played for 10's of hours with some close friends before realizing how broken the auction house was. It entirely killed the experience for me. What was initially fun got monetized to such an extent that it felt like playing slot machines. D2R has been great because it brought back that feeling of buying a game that is complete, although it has its problems and is a 20 year old game. I just pray D4 will be more like D2. Make the grind worth it. Keep the auction houses out and get the full game on the initial purchase. I'd rather spend $100 on the box version than spend $0.99 on micro transactions. Obviously the companies do it this way because it's astronomically more profitable but at what point is the reputation and making the best game in the world a factor to the money?
Thanks for sharing the conversation - I hope Blizzard can be the ones to break the mould of mobile games being an app with heavy monetisation into a GAME with heavy monetisation. Its great that Asmon's looking at your content so hope you see a boost from that because Maxroll is awesome.
Thx for the Vid. This is very good to see that they listen to their people, so we can have hope. But you aren‘t dump you are PASSIONATED, there is always a small Line between passoin and dumpness. So let us have all high hopes
From what I've seen Asmon is a great guy. Rip to his mother, my thoughts and prayers to him n his family. He goes into great depths on the psychology of how it's designed to make you want to spend money.
I watched about 1/3 of the video, but I have to say, man, I think you're too pragmatic. Usually, that's a good thing, but... For example, Cheng isn't some junior dude fixing polygons on Barbarian's leg in D2 remaster. His position at Blizzard isn't THAT low. Yes, he's in a certain department, that's true, but then again, let's not forget about things he said and about his recent defense of the systems and doubling down (even in an aggressive way, which is kinda hilarious) on "can't buy gear" crap. Do you really think he's either 1-completely delusional about what he's making or 2-held at gunpoint to defend the bullshit? That's what many people like to think, but that's also unrealistic. What, they're going to shoot him in the head? No. Even in the case his actual job at Blizzard was at stake if he didn't defend gems and shit on twitter or reddit, even then (which isn't true, but let's go with the exaggeration), I am sure he's not exactly in a position to fret about his career in general. So, you respect him, why? I don't mean that in a combative sense, I mean that as an inquiry because you mentioned you respect HIM, not his approach to design or his legacy etc. I can't respect him after the guy like quadrupled down on... whatever diablo immortal should be called lol. Second point would be, Blizzard as a company, let's observe them as an entity, they didn't implement things on accident. Them agreeing with you might be damage control, might be whatever, but these systems are so deep, so meticulous and so carefully crafted that I really, really don't think any kind of correspondence or willingness to change the game or anything like that, shows any steps in right direction. Those too, are meticulous and calculated, like you pointed out with Amazon. Second, even if things "get better" - and this is the part with me seeing you as being too pragmatic - I don't think anyone should extend their hand to that company anymore. Now, I am one of those who was on the fence a long time ago, that's true, I started the "journey" around the time D3 was being developed, because I had some insights and I saw what was happening in general. Most people started that journey a few years later, with the people that "never use internet", chiming in in the last several years. But, still, how many times and how low should Blizzard go and do shit like this before people go to a clinic for addicts, to put it in a bit of a blunt way? And don't get me wrong, because I am pretty sure I played and adored their games long time before you and praised them and all that and they marked certain periods of my life etc. But, that's the reason IN FAVOR of... just stopping giving them any emotional currency. Lastly, any boiling down to appeal to humanity and the "working man" is fallacious - I am not saying you're doing that, but a lot of people are. "if company goes down, what will happen with Jimmy, the junior asset recolorer" - hopefully, he'll find a job in another company or freelance etc. I don't think that's a good argument. And I especially don't think anything tied to (relatively) higher tier people such as Cheng is an argument at all. The line is constantly being redrawn and people are getting used to the new line and this goes in circles. Why settle down for anything being sold except cosmetics? I'll go even further: why settle down even for cosmetics, if they're being offered in a predatory way? Now, I assume a lot of people would react to this like "what lol that's too much" - and that's exactly my point. The crux of conversation has shifted into a completely crazy territory. Let's, at least on individual levels, start to reeling it back in. Hell, a game like Apex Legends shouldn't exist, as it ticks like 95% of predatory boxes even if it's "just cosmetics", let alone something like Diablo Immortal. "mobile game" notion also doesn't mean anything. it's an artificial categorization, it's an appeal to status quo. edit: I watched the video. I think we can go back to the atmosphere you were describing with video games, but I don't think we should even try to go back to that with any of the current "problematic" companies. The industry is too decadent for too long, nuke it, let some indie devs grow into AAA devs with time. The cycle will repeat, we will end up with some new atrocious Blizzards 20 years from now, but we'll have 10 years of goodness. And then, after those 20 years, nuke it again. At some point, that's the only thing that can happen and actually accomplish something. Let's not Stockholm ourselves any longer.
Hi Raxx, "long" time follower, long time watcher of Asmon, longer time fan of Diablo and (was) fan of Bliz, but first time writer here. first off, your content is rock solid, you and Maxroll is pretty much #1 source of my Diablo fix... well, MrLlamaSC is ^ there too, but you know... I look forward for your posts. (shoutout to all the rest of maxroll guys). For all what you've done, I felt that this is a time as good as any to give back to you Raxx! 2 steps forward and 1 step back: Ohhh, this is a doucie, "let's milk as much as we can" and then "oh we're sorry" statement. Unfortunately this has become the "norm" the last 10 years. This is of course not exclusive to Diablo Immortal but, TOO MANY games with MTX, and EVERYONE has this excuse. It's a sad excuse since they 110% knew what they were designing (sure, don't blame the creators but they had to put in those systems in their game and they know very well how predatory it is, there is no denying about that). Blizz reaching out to you: That is respect TO Wyatt Cheng, even though me personally have lost much respect/credibility for him. I do acknowledge he reaching out to you, he could have just stayed hidden, so cudos there. Credits where credit are due! Thank you Wyatt Cheng. Hunting the Whales: This is of course intensional, this is their sole goal of the game. There is no other way to put this, with hidden caps, the "milky way afar from F2P", rare crests, legendary, epic whatever, etc etc... one can make any excuse in the world, but in the end this is what they intended. Hunt the whales and reel them in. "Missed the mark" How many times have we heard this? Really? A famous quote from Asmongold for WoW is... "do the devs even play their own game themselves anymore?" Honestly, this shouldn't even be a topic, comon! EVERYONE in the dev team knew this from the beginning, not least Wyatt. "we missed the mark", that sentence has lost its meaning the last 10 years IMO. Sure, the publisher is the one with the paycheck, so they decide what to do... I miss the days when the studios were their own hardest critics and got to make the game THEY wanted to... not the "Penny squeezers that the publishers shareholders and execs are". F2P/P2W: This topic is kind of a balance on the edge of a knife and can go on for ages, but I will try to keep it short. I think it has much more than a one answer. 1. Why F2P model?: Well, to reach out to as much people as possible, and this IMO can be a good thing. 2. Not all can affoard a $59.99 or $69.99, not least if they want to buy multiple games a month for example. But then, the $ must come from somewhere, and I do agree with that. 3. Devs must get their money from somewhere, of course! So MTX... I am as many other acceptable with cosmetic MTX, not FRIKKIN BLUEEEE for $15 (Angry Joe (tm))! But acceptable pricing for whatever cosmetics, or season/battlepass, mappack, contentpack that only includes non-"power-gaining-features" in the game. You will never ever ever in a blue moon, be able to compete with whales as long as there is BFP (buy for power), period! I hate to see you headbutt yourself to a concrete wall for countless of hrs just to be the "plancton of the whales". It saddens me truly. Predatory: Well, everyone in Blizz knew this, we knew it, EVERYONE knew this to be this bad? Well, I expected it 4 years ago... As soon as Wyatt said "don't you guys have phones". That was when my Diablo heart was crushed into peaces. Did I try to convince myself otherwise? Well of course! Diablo is if not my most favorite franchise in the gaming world. Of course there was a spark of the "soul stone" in me that this wouldn't be as I feared. Oh boy that spark was drenched the day Immortal was released. Now, as a "pure" mobile game I am not surprised, well maybe a little since it's probably the most predatory game in the world. But as you said Raxx, many ppl are not happy with Blizz today and honestly I am not surpised they did how they did. But, when they released this to PC, I had to step up and make this post. Keep this predatory crap OUTTA my platform. In a perfect world, no platform should suffer this level of predatory MTX behavior, but don't fu*k PC/Console! Nostalgia: When I was in high-school in 7th grade, my dream job was to work at Blizzard one day... this was back in 1996 I think... I am glad that it did not happen. Feedback from you and your team/fellow friends: From what I've seen and as you stated, you are a nr's guy! I do hone (that a word? not native english, so correct me there) but I do respect your nr crunching and theorycrafting etc in the various games that you comver. A shout out for you there and I hope that you keep up the hard work that I know goes into this and I truly hope that the devs for the games that you do this for apprichiate the effort, time and data that you give them... for FREE. That is dedication and I can only lift my hat and say: Salut! And I belive if devs says "we did not know that", since I bet my left testicle that, when you Raxx are invited to a alpha/beta, that you will crunch/test/twist and turn the game more than most of the dev team members themselves together. I call that passion! :) D4: I am so fakking scared now of how they can ruin this game. When it was revealed, I litteraly cried! Lilith! Oh my god I could not believe what I saw. Am I more calm if you are in the alpha / beta for the game? Well, honestly... no! You said earlier when you were beta testing Immortal, but you did it without the MTX implemented, since you did not obvilously did not get to play "the core game". You only got to test the "fun part", but not "the game"... who knows, will they do alpha/beta with "smokes and mirrors" again? That's what they basically did with you testers, apart from that you balanced some "optimal runs" for them... they kept you with smokes and mirrors... And I am terrified! The Future: I agree with you, when you say that devs don't have control of the P2W. I will not go in to what I've read on the internet about Wyatts Twitter posts of "missinformation", since hey kidz... not everything is true on internet, and 99% of things are "out of context" or missinterpetrated (spelling, I am tired now). But the mistakes thing, it starts to get worn out, really... "oh we did not intend to X or Y". Don't treat players idiots! I hate to say this but, "test the waters" and "2 steps forward, 1 step back"... that has become the industry standard... Games are not as they used to be, let's be honest. They were used to be created with a passion and dedication without "corp execs" deciding the end product. Almost last thing: I would LOVE to hear from ANY of the devs on the Immortal team that have kids, if they let their kids play the game and toss $25 on an Elder Rift each run. Who is this game for? is it: Gameplay First. ... Commit to Quality. ... Play Nice; Play Fair. ... Embrace Your Inner Geek. ... Every Voice Matters. ... Learn & Grow. ... Think Globally. ... Lead Responsibly. Answer: No to all of above. Why aren't Videogames fun anymore: Simple answer in my opinion... Devs are not allowed to create their games of their dream, or vision. Unfortunately big publishers that pay their paycheck has other dreams... "nickle and dime". This does of course, does not go for just Immortal, but other companies and franchies aswell. Some do good, others not so... unfortunately I see a trend where more and more franchises goes to the "dark side", and what hurts most are the franchises that I care of, that I grew up with and that I hold close to the heart. They get butchered by tactics and schemes that ruins my passion. Last thing: I hope this wasn't 19 pages long. If you've come here to the end, that is a huge achievement for you. But I think Raxx is such a good content creator, that if he takes his time to enlighten me... I can equally set a side of my time to give Raxx and you my opinion... and that is what it is, my opinion. I do not claim that I am right or that my opinions are the "correct" ones, it is what it is... my opinion. Thank you! Cheers and take care of each other.
Someday you'll look back at this and see how you were holding up hope for a completely abusive relationship. Being a Blizzard fan right now is just the definition of a toxic relationship, only it's with a corporation instead of a person. People are being literally manipulated and lied to, and they still believe them because they still think this is the blizzard from the 90s and early 2000s. We didn't go to the funeral but that company is 100% dead. Wyatt Cheng is as fake as a 2 dollar bill. I have no idea how people can't see this. Guess that's what love does.
I do agree that a public mea culpa is in order. Even though I would like it to go further than that. Because it means that the changes that come in Immortal will only change things going forward. I will illustrate, let's say a player that really wanted to go entirely free to play hits all of the walls and decides to start paying money. He starts to get things that he should've been able to do without paying a cent. Then Blizz steps in and makes changes going forward. But don't do much to reimburse the ones like that player. Now he will feel like why did I bother to play this game when it came out. I should've waited till it got better. The same philosophy you were talking about earlier where Blizz wold be like Amazon where they got a ton of money but really didn't truly reimburse the ones that actually paid real money to advance. So they milked them for all they were worth. Then made the changes they needed to make. It is more like a forced kick starter than a real free to play game. I want to say that I still hope the best for D4. But I am still concerned that Blizz might put pay to win in it due to Immortal. I will still test it though if they do pick me to be one of the testers. Also I would like to reach out to you if I am picked to test. Because I think you could help me be a better tester. That is because you are a good tester and it shows. That is of course along with being on fine person, I like you as a person. That is why I can end with saying have a great day whatever game you play or whatever you do in life.
And ppl wonder why AAA companies don't test their games before release anymore: because crazy MF'ers will do this amount of spreadsheet testing on A FLARKING MOBILE CASH GRAB game for them for free... 😂🤑😂
Raxx, first of all I need to say this. I appreciate how level headed, mature and humble you are when addressing the problems you see in the game. I wish there were more content like yours instead of the pure hatred and vitriol we get in youtube. And it could be that Blizzard reached out to you because you got noticed on a bigger channel, but dont sell yourself short. Why did they reach YOU and not the bigger guy? I believe it is because they know they can actually have a productive conversation with you about the game instead of just being spat on by ragers. So congratulations for being so dissonant amidst the ocean of hate and being the level headed voice of reason that builds a bridge between what the gamers want and what is being delivered. Second of all, just come to server Gorgothra. It is a mostly brazilians server and we brazilians dont have the money to become huge whales lol So I believe you will have more fun with PVP here. Good gaming and keep bringing us good content like this.
Raxx, I know you're getting a lot of comments, but I really hope you read this one. I care about you. You have a good heart but your naivete makes you a force for evil. If it wasn't for people like you and your friends, Blizz would need to hire someone to balance dungeon rewards. It's NOT that they're bad at it; it's that they never even tried in the first place. They knew that they never needed to try in the first place. They knew that the alpha testing community is full of absolute simps who will do all of that detail work for free. Of course they listened to your feedback. Of course they want to remind you that they listened to it. Because if they can count on you doing it for them again, that's another job they don't need to pay anyone to do for Diablo 4. I'm not going to say that if you don't do it for Diablo 4, someone at Blizzard will be paid to do an equally good job. There are probably plenty of simps waiting in line. I think the true reason Blizzard responded to you was NOT Asmongold, but the fact that you and your team "provided better feedback" - that is, did a better unpaid job - than anyone else. If you don't do it for Diablo 4, some other team will provide a lower quality version of the same work, and Blizzard will adjust encounters based off their data, rather than paying someone in-house. But you're enabling the greed. The core of what you and your team do is: you develop Blizzard games for free, so they can lower development costs and maximize profits. That's it. I get that you love the work. But there's so many game developers out there. If you're going to help a game for free, do it for a company that deserves it. If you're going to help develop a game for Blizzard, at least stop being an unpaid volunteer for Evil Corp and sell out good and proper. But please, stop doing what you're doing. You're the "good" one in an abusive relationship, you're the enabler that allows the cycle to perpetuate. Blizzard is nowhere close to deserving you.
Scrotie: What you're forgetting is that he likes the games that Blizzard makes. So do I. So does the vast majority. It's because they already have a model that works, is fun, and can be exploited. If Blizzard doesn't make money(even, at the expense of some players), they will go broke. They need the money. With all of the litigation going on, it's a miracle they've survived this long!
Bro you/Asmongold hit the nail on the head don't think for a second that the big game companies don't know EXACTLY what they are doing when they make a "mistake" draw the max amount of money they can and then "apologize" to make it go away, rinse repeat.
The psychology thing you talking about at 3:19, I can confirm that's how the mobile/MMO game doing their business right now, especially in China region sever or made in China games (you know DI is also made by NetEase which is a Chinese company). They already prepared the good stuff for the game but released a bad one first. Most of the old/veteran free to play players in China already know this trick. They just keep waiting without spending any money. We have a funny nick name for those free-to-play player, even their call themselves as "wait wait party"
Blizzard also has a history of apologizing and not actually doing much with it.
That sucks
or nothing at all
Then investigate the maker and find they didn’t do anything wrong.
I'm familiar with this we'll see I've notified them that I'm taking a trip down to their corporate headquarters next Wednesday and talk about this face-to-face because their customer service over the internet is trying to bully me.... They think that human beings have endless patients for this nonsense when we know the people that are directly involved... All it's going to take is one all they have to do is piss off the right guy... Histories just chock full of all that but they never learn. Doesn't everybody have phones isn't everybody a hopeless attic with excessive compulsive disorder paranoid schizophrenia spending the last drop of money that they saved for years yeah somebody's got to teach him a lesson.
So if you're wondering while playing Diablo mortal what's wrong with it is this for years they trained us to be addicted to the grind and we did it with our friends and we had fun and we just knew it was part of the process so instead of changing it in a fun way what they done was spinning around and put XP caps on so you can't grind like we've been trained to and what we're being trained to do right now just spend money on a virtual game that's created by people that obviously used to work for the opioid industry or the drug cartels I'm going to say this once twice three times in as many times as I have to they are not going to get away with it this time maybe next time but not this time.
It is literally the same pattern of behavior that exists in abusive relationships.
100% true, people believing D4 will be good is like saying "I really hope my girlfriend won't cheat on me for the xx time, I love her and I still have hope"
@@tony.sorete If I donate a little more to this streamer she will really be my waifu 😂
Which is even worse than milking whales with the ordinary psychological tricks.
FACTS
I wish we had a multiple like button. I'd smash it over and over for this insight
I like you Rax, been following your content for a few years but i gotta agree with some people man, you work way too hard for Blizzard for free and constantly give them the benefit of the doubt when they reach out to you to make you feel better before screwing you and everyone over. You gotta wake up and realize its no longer the company we all once knew and liked.
100%!
And it is just sad
Apparently you have no idea of the revenue he is making from videos and streaming he does.
@RECREVNT Just be done now. They've already proven they don't give a single shit with their track record. Stop giving this company benefit of the doubt. If the product is shit/probably going to be shit, don't buy it, don't play it. People that give benefit of the doubt/look at the company through rose tinted glasses are the reason why they keep getting away with this shit.
The man who is willing to give will receive in a way that surpasses any kind of earning. It's a core ability of human loving nature. Don't worry for him =)
Missing the mark with legendary gems is understatement of the century. Even if they buffed the rate you get crests by 10x it wouldn't do anything against the whales. A 100x increase, wouldn't do anything against the megawhales. This was done by design. Anyone with simple grasp of mathematics could've calculated it quite easily that 100 crests get you nowhere, even if you are lucky and get a 5/5 star gem in those 100 crests, you don't have the gem power to increase it's level. They can defend all they want with half-assed excuses, but it was designed for F2P have no chance at all on purpose.
I know right. It's like the murdere, that strangled the vitim, then stabbed it two dozen times, poisoned it, shot it with a round of bullets just to then come out and say. Yes, totally sorry, that was a mistake. I might have missed the mark.
There is a throttle mechanic, where if a F2P *does* get a lucky streak of drops the game will 'force' an average making the next legendary gem drop that much harder. This was a mobile game that took 4 years after announcement to come out and had been in development for an unspecified amount of time before. Nothing about this game hasn't been deliberated over for a long time.
Exactly. I must admit... I love Raxx but I stopped playing the video there. It's like a girlfriend that cheated 10000 times saying she missed the mark and should have stopped cheating after the first time. Seriously? It's over Blizzard, you FUCKED UP.
I haven't made my way through the entire video yet, but as far as Im concerned, Im done with the game. The reason is that all of this predatory behavior was done intentionally. It shows how they really feel about their player base and that kind of disrespect is unacceptable. Blizzard changing things to fix the mistakes they made intentionally doesn't earn them good will in my book. Ive played Diablo games for 25 years, and although its going to kill me, I will be waiting for a week after D4 launch before I decide to get the game or not. Look forward to more of your videos Raxx
This, entirely this. Everything is made to predate the player base and abuse addictions etc, all while hiding what they're doing and having hidden caps etc.
Screw blizzard
I did watch the all video, guess you need some guy to stay positive but when he talk about "they listened my feedback about xp problems in elder rifts and fixed it" he knows that the f2p being miles away from catching up with a whale IS NOT A BUG they could fix, it's intentional like you said.
IN NO CIRCOMSTANCES you can trust them to change the monetisation schemes, they may loose a bit and remove an 1inch of C*CK in the salad but you will still have a bad salad with a c*ck in the middle.
"Wait a week" geez HAHA
D:I is just a worse version of diablo 3, why would you play it?
I'm also done with blizzard.... uninstalled almost everything in the past year (hearthstone, wow retail, wow clasic, diablo immortal....etc)
Only thing I kept is StarCraft I...and honestly I'm never going back, it's just too much.... I'm done
This is the exact same phenomenon that asmongold described as you mentioned earlier. It's a psychological trick, acknowledging there's a problem after milking all that money.
Exactly. They are just barking out "No no we "pay attention" " > say something arbitrary to appease you. Continue milking. They aren't going to stop the predatory P2W schemes. DO NOT help them. They are playing on your nostalgia for the company they used to be. They're not admitting anything.
Yep. They need to do more than just reply for PR sake. They need better ethical habits in their game design.
Yeah, and it's ironic he's literally saying he agrees with it, but literally falling for that very trick.
Pretty Sure Riot Games(league of legends) still utilizes this method, every new champion release. Unapologetically.
@@kkent3815 yeah but people are too much addicted and ruined by the game and compagny right now to fking think about
a riot lol or even just about all the bad things ad behaviors.
While I agree with most of what you said, I don't see any difference between their response and the predatory practices of Lost Ark. They claim they are sorry about it, but come on - they knew exactly what they were doing in releasing Immortal this way. Apologizing now is hollow, and sadly it just continues to the downward spiral of Blizzard's reputation.
They collected already all the money from the whales.
Yeah this is exactly what they'll do. Hollow apology. Even if they start giving like 100 free legendary crests a month, if the monetization system and everything associated with it (UI, wording of offers, how you're trained to get your reward from the store) does not change, the underlying problem will still remain. The only thing that changes is that naive people think it's now ok and they will forgive Blizzard, but essentially Blizzard loses almost nothing.
I didn't hear them say they were sorry. They said they missed their goals. That wasn't an apology.
@@kaakrepwhatever Andthey lied when they said that. They've hit their goal very accurately.
@@whatsuphelp not only the whale lmao
When a company says they "missed the mark", they are actually saying "two steps forward, one step back, if someone complains". Was a huge fan of blizz back in the day, but havent touched anything they put out after war3 reforged.
When they gutted Bnet for SC2 i saw the writing on the wall and decided that was it. Tho i did play HotS for a few hours, it just confirmed it was already over. POE is the true successor to D2.
When wow launched they had class. 5-6 years later it started to crumble.
@@tyty8484 amazing how they can't bring back a good battle net, even after years of experience. It wasn't just a space to game, it was a place do chat with friends, host clan events, brag etc.
@@thed3638 They designed bnet2.0 that way intentionally. There was literally zero reason for them to not use bnet 1.0. It was 100% a down grade.
Dude, this is clearly the bargaining stage of grief; and the fact you think D:I was a "mistake" is just heartbreaking. The gaming industry has been circling the bowl for years; and instead of being the good guys blizzard has been leading the charge down the drain. Blizzard doesn't deserve your loyalty; play some legit games like Vampire Survivors, Elden Ring, or even something like Valheim or Subnautica. There are legit gaming experiences out there, you just have to value your own time more then this.
I know what you're going through, I went through the same thing with Bioware. Once that name meant everything they put out was an A++ experience, now I dread their releases, because I fear what new destruction they'll drop on my favorite titles. Blizzard lost me with D3, never bought another Blizzard title after that demolition of one of the greatest gaming brands in the world.
Seeing your spreadsheet made me admire you and Maxroll even more. I always wondered where some of the information from Maxroll resource tutorials were sourced from, like why and how you guys determined that the Mad King was recommended for leveling up during main quest level gates. Seeing your spreadsheet made me realize how thoroughly you guys tested everything. I always believed you and took you for your word, but seeing the data you collected was awesome. Thanks for taking us behind the scenes!
its basic maths, relax
@@richardred4396 you missed the point. Who gives a shit about the actual compilation. It's the fact that their team went through the trouble of even doing it that impresses. It gives credibility to Maxroll guides.
This man is so deep that blizzard has given him the highest purest quality of copium conceived my mankind.
that 99% pure copium; hottest stuff on the market
I appreciate your honesty and sincerity; you're a true gamer at heart. I've been play video games for 40 years and have played every major franchise that's been released since the early 80's. I don't mind paying $60 for a game or $25 or $30 for DLCs, but I will never pay for a game that is P2W, NEVER. I'd rather play another 2000 hours of modded Fallout 4 or Skyrim before giving Activision/Blizzard another penny. They are no longer game developers, they're creators of predatory monetization scams; nothing more.
While I agree with the intent of your message, supporting Todd Howard's company seems equally as scummy after what they did with Fallout 76.
I hope you know the actual developers of the game have no control over pay to win or monetization tactics of their game- its the company, most developers actually pour love into the game, its the company that implements all these scummy tactics into their games
@@gulag_sender2123 Looking at Diablo 3 and how little it's been updated since Reaper of Souls came out other than rotating from one season to the next and then looking at a game like Path of Exile, I have a real hard time accepting that this is just a Activision/Blizzard being scummy as usual issue. A better way of proving this though will be if Diablo Immortal ends up with overall more content/updates than D3 had in a comparable amount of time. In regards to Bethesda, they have a continuous track record of intentionally releasing something that could barely be called a early beta version of the game(Fallout 76 is a prime example of this) with the intent to fix it later and slapping a triple A price tag on it which is part of what led to them getting sued previously.
Blizzard: "We're having no issues. Therefore, the problem must be on your end."
I really appreciate your dedication to the community and wanting to help find a solution. It takes a combination of extreme outrage and people who patiently stay the course of calmer feedback. HOWEVER. For your own sake, please make sure you're not letting yourself be lulled into a false sense of security. Their track record of changing after an apology isn't great, and an apology without change is just manipulation or trying to avoid someone being upset with them. Take care of yourself, and thanks for taking care of the people who want good games with fair practices.
Elden Ring was fun out the gate. I played in for three months and loved it almost every minute.
I grew up with blizzard and I want them to succeed. I just wish the suits would stop being so damn greedy.
Its not greed that drives them
@@goon009 of course it’s greed lmao. Money money money nothin else matters.
@@simony9611 no the goal is money the driving force is not greed. Its control. the goal of the capitalists economy is to siphon money from the middle class so that they stay middle class and poor
@@simony9611 Lol
I miss the days when a game releases & you have so much fun playing & get so lost in it, that before you know it, a week has passed and you don't even realise. It hasn't been like that for me for a very, very long time. I'm hoping it will happen again though, it's just a case of when
A case of when and a case of that NOT happening on a mobile game. Ever. Never has and never will.
That's not a stab at ya, lass. That's just fact. It's what makes mobile fun-ish is taking a bit out of your day then closing out till the next day.
@@yeeN4W yeah, I wasn't talking about mobile games. Just video games in general. Sorry dude, never thought I said mobile games, my bad
It's you, not the Games. You just got older...
This might not ever happen again. Just because of the psychology around it.
@@sarahchan-reeves8829
You're talking in a vid regarding mobile game though. I think most people never stop to think about that fact, that D:I IS a mobile game in the end, due to being able to play on PC.
I disagree; They are Obligated to Reach out when the response to the game state is such a trash fire and one of the most well known Diablo Content Creator makes a very civil point by point breakdown of the issues and how it got worse from alpha to launch. Its literally the Bare Minimum they could do.
The bare minimum is what they were obligated to do in this case, which is nothing. That is what makes their reaching out remarkable. Your expectations for their conduct aren't their literal requirements to satisfy. People have become way too extravagant in their contrivances of what companies must do.
Nothing remarkable about what they did at all.
What annoys me is they went full on mobile game but they aren't doing the mobile game new updates every week or 2 thing
Honestly there should be events every week new bosses new helliquery bosses ways to earn crests from events etc.
You can't have all stick no carrot that just drives the players away
If they have any hope of player retention, whether whale or F2P they have to add more content
@Raxxanterax I gotta say, I feel for you man. I feel that mental struggle that you went through when you came to the realization of what Blizzard did. I think the worst part is knowing that they literally used your alpha and beta effort's data to implement those 'redundant' caps that were intentionally designed to hold the f2p player back. I hope they do fix it, because it is a great game...but the monetization feels down-right criminal to me. Blizzard has lost a lot of trust from me.
It took you till now to not like blizzard?
The China stuff is gross, I hate Activision blizzard for siding with china
@@Guitar-Dog why are you still on this channel if you like nothing Blizzard, Raxx content is basically all Blizzard that I can see?
How is it a great game though? It’s a D3 port to mobile. People’s standards have fallen so far it’s unbelievable
All.. blizzard lost ALL of my trust..
@@mcshannon02 The better question is why do you like Blizzard? Is it the terrible game releases in recent years, the horrendous work conditions (e.g. sexual harassment), the absurdly wealthy CEO who makes death threats to employees, the predatory monetization, or what? Is it the avarice that you admire?
You are the only one that I would love to see stream Diablo 4. You have straight vision to the problems and a good reason you can build great guides.
Thank you so much. Its nice having a TH-cam/ streamer, that does what he enjoys - instead of only for the money/subs/ sponsers.
Great video Raxx. If you ever get to test D4, you should maybe do a similar process as your spreadsheet but do it before hand. Try and give the devs a spreadsheet of numbers they can agree on FIRST, and then they create the content based on those numbers. Basically get balanced numbers on a spreadsheet for all the different variables, and then hand it to the devs so they can create the dungeons or quests or bosses or loot tables etc, based on those numbers.
What I think: We need a tab for world event activities so you could track/fast travel to them from anywhere. We also need in-depth notification settings both on mobile and PC to know when these things are happening and if we want specific out-of-game notifications. Lastly, we need a normalized stats PvP game mode. Lots of ways to do it but the simplest can just be a copy of ARAM from league of legends; 5 v 5 (Maybe even 4 v 4 or 3 v 3), one lane, normalized stats, with the difference-maker being the choice of abilities. If they wanna be fancy maybe you get trash mobs spawning on each side as you push farther down.
Totally agree on the PVP. When I started playing I would be top 3 almost every battle. As my rank went up, I suddenly was teamed with and against whales and I was instantly whale fodder. Even if they just adjusted your rank based on your battle stats instead of you were teamed with bigger whales so you got the W. That would give players the ability to play like players. You do well, you bounce up get slapped by some whales then move back down and actually have a shot.
They don’t want to normalize PvP they want f2p and light spenders to feel like they have a chance while whales don’t feel threatened by them at all. The entire game system was designed with legendary gems in mind, and how to effectively use that to create big spenders. If they wanted PvP to be skill based it would have been normalized from the beginning. The game is a mobile Gacha game but instead of pictures of anime characters you roll for rocks that make you deal 3-4 times more damage than players with less stars on their rocks.
Thanks Raxx, awesome feedback and I'm glad Blizz reached out. Seems like they're putting all the eggs in one basket, but I really hope D4 is good! Otherwise, in the words of a wise sage, "rip season, brb installing poe".
Thank you for the content you make raxx. I would also like to thank everyone at max roll for their guides that I continue to use everyday. Keep up the good work guys. Blizzard would be lucky to have you guys test Diablo 4. I hope you guys are thinking that your lucky to be able to test it because you guys know your shit and blizzard should be thanking you at every turn.
I don't think you give yourself enough credit. Back when I played Diablo 3 I watched you, blood and rykker. So you're definitely an important diablo players imo.
Thank you for making this Raxx. Your efforts on this, and all that you do for the gaming community are extremely admireable. I hope Blizzard continues to ask for your input. You are a tremendous resource. Thanks again for all that you do. Have a great upcoming weekend.
I have had no desire to play Immortal based on videos from you and Wudi most specifically, but I REALLY hope the Blizzard brings you on to test D4 and let you stream it for community feedback. I cannot think of anything that would help D4 and Blizzard more than that. Thanks Raxx!
U rock as always man! With u on our side, us as the players u have all our respect! Btw ur not dumb, u just want what we want! A game to play either by ourselves or with friends that is fun and worth playing on a daily basis!!
there is a thin line between naive and dumb.
I liked the spreadsheet bit. Was informative and really made me feel like you did research rather than just going off of generalizations/personal experience (which are valid but I don't put as much weight behind.)
Found you because of Asmon, good stuff
Rax I really enjoy following along with you in D3 Lost Ark and D2. Your content is very "matter of fact" and easy to understand. Thanks for all your effort. Looking forward to the new season of D3 this week and getting into that first challenge rift. Will keep an eye out for that guide
Your passion for the game is inspiring . Keep up the good work
I dont think i will ever play immortal. But i do intent on grinding d4 and i really hope you will get to help them balance it out because you are doing an incredible job.. Your testing work is worth so much $$ thx for the content!
Hey rax I want to say…thank you !
Thank you for being so nice. Every video every content is gold.
I hope u stream the rest of you’re life ;)
Greetings from Germany ;)
You are legend !!!!
i dont agree that developers had nothing to do with the monetization schemes the game has. on the contrary the whole gameplay experience is tailored to funnel players into cash shop and incentivize spending money on the game. from finish to start, every aspect of the game...
"Lets do better in D4".. That's all we can ask.. I hope they take you up on your open challenge. :)
Watching now, this should be interesting! :O
Holy shit it was Wyatt?? I never really had a problem with him and as far as Immortal goes, I do enjoy the game a lot, just not all of the gates and p2w aspect. If they removed all of that and slapped a monthly sub it instead, with no gated content and no way to P2W, I'd pay it without question.
When you say "Essence", you can't possibly mean monstrous essence right? Because it doesn't drop in dungeons or rifts. Is there some other kind of essence I don't know about? I'd feel like a potato considering i'm P50. Perhaps that spreadsheet was made during the Alpha testing and they removed the ability of essence to drop in dungeons / rifts since then? Cuz I've never seen it.
Wyatt’s job is basically to pacify content streamers against saying negative things about the game. They offer them free beta gameplay and say a few nice things, and the content creators get on their knees for it and release a video like this. This is why they did it to this guy and not Asmongold. Asmongold wouldn’t fall for this snake tactic.
Exactly, not to mention that he has gone dark after everybody saw through his bs regarding gear, and now this.
This cannot be overstated enough Patrick. With you 100% on this.
you lost me at "I like wyatt cheng." he deliberately mislead people on "oh you can't buy gear" that should ahve been a red flag.
From what I've understood, Blizzard just aknowledged that they limited too much the f2p and did almost nothing to improve that. Did they promise to do better? Using the word "redundant", as fantastic as it can be, doesn't solve a damn thing.
1:23 I thought oof how could he say 'resonated' and was so happy you caught it hahaha
Good vid Rax. Love your optimism, and the detail you take your testing to. I also love the spread sheets!
I did the same thing in a mobile game to craft the best core sets to use in wars. I used excel and added ranges and even normalized stats and included bonus hidden attributes to maximize the set values. I would even specifically build around certain layouts and use my base and understanding of gear to make counter measures.
Honestly, your dedication to creating great and fair games is quite moving.
Guys, you must see the bigger picture here!
The way that computer games are produced, marketed, monetarized and played have changed drastically - and will continue to do so. The more a market grows, the more evil it becomes. Like it or not. Companies will do ANYTHING to have you the gamer invest as much time, dedication and ultimately money into their product. Your only choice is to resist the bait and not play at all.
Honestly, blizzard does not deserve you and your team. You guys are literal champs
The way they explained the endgame of d4, you cant really max your hourly gains the way you can in immortal.
Cause they say you cant choose what dungeons you are able to turn into nightmare(endgame) dungeons, as that depends on what keys drop for you. And also the dungeons layouts are randomly generated, which probably creates a pretty big range in how much you can get out of it per hour. But its great that someone like you, who obviously really cares, will be able to test it.
As I said before. YOU have influence and Blizzard knows that. When you first complained about the P2W they tweaked your drop rate so you would be more positive. People said that you didn't have that much pull. Well as you can see Blizzard reached out to YOU! They are not stupid. They know who has a following and can influence trends about their game. Good on you for being able to have your voice and by extension our voice heard.
Arguably, it's not even necessarily that Raxx has "influence".
For years I was the top player on SWTOR - Was #1 on leaderboards of half the classes, consistently had server and world first raid clears, etc.
At the time, I wasn't a content creator in any way. I wasn't an E-celeb in any way.
Just about no one outside of my server really knew who I was, and I only posted a few times a month in the theorycrafting threads on the forums, to help push high-level play further.
I still got direct messages from the devs asking me about my thoughts on stuff.
I got special preview build access.
My thoughts on stuff were considered for many things, especially balance-wise.
Why?
Because I fully understood the ins and outs of how the live game worked better than even they did.
I was playing 16 hours/day 7 days/week. I did operations (raids) on up to 6 characters/week. At the time this was like 40+ hours/week of JUST raiding.
I crafted to the point I was in the top 10 richest people on my server. I was co-leader and raid leader of the most prestigious guild on the server.
I knew just about every single thing about the game, and could identify exactly where different classes were overpowered or underpowered, could identify how, where and why different classes performed better at different content, etc.
I had a direct line of communication with the dev team in essence, because I basically understood the game better than even the people that made the game.
A dev team can only do so much playtesting. And QA, Testing divisions, etc. don't often have "literally the best gamers in the world" in them.
If you have access to a resource that can give you a perfect overview AND in-depth analysis of every part of your product... you'd honestly be a fool to not even attempt to utilize it.
I love how adamant some are when they say "wait a bit and F2P will be good and they'll stop sapping wallets".
NOT THE CASE.
What I want to know is if Raxx discussed the keyboard/mouse issue with the PC Beta version with Wyatt? I am so tired of my character being stuck/frozen at a boss and dying from it. I agree with your assessment concerning Wyatt Cheng. He is just another human doing his job in, stuck in a corporate environment that may dictate differently than what he wants. Anyone that has ever worked in management, understands that statement. Otherwise, THANK YOU for sharing the conversation with your followers!
Every time Wyatt cheng speaks, I recall the "don't you have phones" answer to theyr fans. That was an answer from an asshole of a human being.
There’s a difference between being stuck in the “system” and blatantly lying.
He lied, period. He knew what he was saying wasn’t true and still tried to defend it, he doesn’t get a cookie and Pat on the back for trying to save face.
100k!!! WOOOOT
and this LONG GAME of predatory design is insane - it's been happening EVERYWHERE for a LONG TIME!!! Thanks man for pointing this out and cheers to Asmon for pointing this BULLSHIT OUT!!!
I'm not buying the whole "we're missing the mark" shpiel from Blizzard. It's blatantly obvious it's all intentional design. It's all part of the monetization machine. It keeps the whales happy and the free players pressured to pay. One of my biggest gripes with the game that I haven't heard anyone discuss is how at the market when you sell an item, there's a "transaction fee" listed in gold, but deducted in platinum! It's fkin absurd! Even for a p2w player. You spend cash to buy orbs to buy platinum, and the game taxes your profit. Like...what!?
The Lost Ark team not only apologized, but also changed their approach for future patches (with mixed results, but still). At the same time Blizzard did not apologize to the community as far as I know, but tried to gaslighting people with "you can't buy gear with money" half-truths. That's a major difference to me.
I still reckon PVP should be "everything in the build temporarily set to max" so you can get the crappy 5 star gems and crappy 3 stat gear but with the correct type of stats, and then go into PVP and everything is set to like Primal levels. And that way, it's not about getting the highest ranks of everything, it's about getting all the CORRECT stats and then PVP ranking everything up to max. That way, you farm for the build items, get the correct types of stats, get those 5 star gems (2 stars active) you need for the build, and boom you are in PVP and using skill to win. Might take a couple of months to get the build completed or close but the difference won't be huge. Maybe the charm might not be perfect or a couple of stats might not be perfect types. But then there are things to work towards. Getting gems to sell for platinum to buy charm stones to try to get that last 2% damage increase. Or forge stones. Or hunting for that 3 stat helm you need.
I’ve also said this. It would change the game in so many ways.
This makes way too much sense for Blizzard to ever implement.
They don’t want it to be balanced, they want people to be able to buy power, if they wanted it to be balanced it would have been designed that way from the ground up
I saw this video on asmonds channel. I felt the same way you did a long time ago, yet I can say I can longer can I give them a sub every month. I played wow for 15 yrs and it hurt to give it up after so many years and paid soo much money on every expansion! In either case I gave ya a follow and can't wait for your next video!! Gg my dude!!!
F2P refugee here, love your content Raxx. You are a reasonable man. Great video. Thank you for your time and presence on these subjects.
Here from A's channel watched two of your videos. Awesome content dude. Great job~
Dude, 21 minutes to say Blizzard reached out you and apparently apologised to you.
No other information, no plans to fix or change anything. 21 mins of you thanking Asmogold and Blizzard.
Man he made clear in the first few minutes of the video that this video isn't about solutions, he just made a video to share his experience and conversation with Blizzard Devs and them acknowledging things aren't right in it self is a step forward in improving a f2p players experiences in the game.
I think if they let you stream content in a box, it may be good. However, most of the fun is exploring and looking at new areas. If you stream it i think this will provide negative reactions on day one since the exploration period has already passed.
The box could be dungeon, rift, pvp. Something like that. Or gate you to streaming it only a few hours a week.
I'd still say that each Elder Rift should start with a legendary crest and only by purchasing more through the store you can run up to 10 per rift. That way the whales only have an efficiency advantage.
Or even a rare crest percentage. At least something decently grindable
Wow man, i see and feel with him the grief and desolation hittin Raxx
Its like a ballon slowly loosing air.
I really hope for you and the rest of us the rapidpy deminishing blizz players it gets better but we all know that is a fable. They got you to, same as me a f2p player hooked and give us just enough to stay hooked ontill we hit rockbottom and bail out.
Im not there yet, same as you but i allready realise its coming sooner or later.
Eventho i know and see it comming it wil still be hard.
I admire and love your content and devotion and offcourse all the amazing maxxroll people.
Greetings from the Netherlands.
Raxx, this is classic Stockholm Syndrome man. They have you captive whether you know it or not. Just see the big picture, that this was a dumpster fire from day one. Turn around and walk away without looking back. Stop running back to your captor just because they gave a slight nod on your direction.
I’ve seen so many players show an xp per hour gain without the time coefficient. Without this coefficient, time will play too much of a factor in generating a normalized result. This is why I watch you for guides more than anyone else.
They somehow need to make it competitive between some of the best free to play players and people that spend lots of money. Spending money should be a short cut for grinding not basically elevating you on another level that cannot be reached without spending money
Yep but in their mind f2p are just whale food to keep the whales entertained as they curb stomp them.
@@MrTheanimekiller yep, imagine spending 50k on your character just to get your ass wooped by a ftp guy 🤣🤣
Yo Rax, we're all very gratefull for all the testing and brieffing you've been giving us. keep up the goodwork!
Rax I respect you keeping a level head and staying positive man. It makes a huge difference.
saw this on asmons channel - great vid mate - hope D4 is great!
You've put so much work into this game. Work that Blizzard developers should be doing. Instead they have you working this hard for free. The work you've done is amazing but you deserve better than this. I think they are being as predatory to you as they are to everyone in the game.
Crowd sourcing the testing of D4 is one of the best suggestions that I have heard. D4 would be unstoppable if the suggestions are listened to.
Uncap fading embers and it solves SOOOO much, its so simple and so easy and will NOT disincentivize or stop the paying players because its still a grind and you would only be paying to skip the grinding for gems. Thats all they had/have to do.
lol
Hey Raxx, im pretty sure D4 will be real good, and im looking forward to the content you will create for it :)
I mean i enjoy the diablo franchise for nearly 25 years now :DI skipped Immortal, im not into mobile games, but ofc i will buy D4, and i bet it will be an awesome game.
Cheers Raxx, love the work you put into your content and I hope the Blizzard see the error of their ways...but money talks and they're making a fucking ton right now exploiting whales and I don't think they'll stop doing that until these predatory practices are clamped down.
Again, thanks for all your vids. Much respect mate.
I'm alot like you. I love crunching numbers and using spreadsheets to do so. That all being said, I'm glad your on the somewhat inside to gather this Intel before releases and help them create a better game. I'm very impressed and happy that you choose to do this without compensation and falsifying the data to promote it, but are strict factual data and info. keep up your great work! and hope they choose you for upcoming blizzard updates and games in producing and managing the games. I wish you the best of luck, and really hope your data can make a difference in the f2p world in this p2w world they seem to lean on in the future. 💪👌💯
keep being the frontman, and I hope you can be the general public's voice in the future! you do it perfectly!
-Cheers 🍻
If you are willing to help Blizzard to test their games then yes, you are stup..ly optimistic man. Do you see the bigger picture? A streamer helping test a game to fix it? Are you familiar with QA Teams? If a company does not have good testers is whether because they dont care about the quality of the product, or cause the final users are so dumb they will buy the product no matter the quality.
the dude loves the Diablo franchise. I think Raxx knows what hes doing... despite the cautiously optimistic approach. But, yea blizzard doesn't care. Mike Morhaime already left. I would like to see Raxx's test on Diablo 4.
@@insideurgirl We all loved it at some point. He just needs a reality check that shouldve happened in season 234 of Diablo 3.
@@LiquidSun62 he really is puting himself out there. I felt heart-felted for him as he represent the gamer inside of me whom loved Diablo 2. Legit
@@insideurgirl Totally. Gaming isnt what it used to be. We just gotta accept it and be more mindful of who and what were supporting.
Raxx, there's something I need to correct, that you keep getting wrong.
You ARE gods gift to the world.
I enjoy D3, I have on-off enjoyed it for like a decade and your content has helped me massively to enjoy it more. Your guides, tips and your random gameplay videos bring me far more enjoyment than 90% of bullshit Hollywood blockbusters.
I am absolutely confident, that your content helps countless people like me to enjoy these games more, which means it makes people enjoy their limited time more.
Honestly, the only reason I went to even try Diablo: Immortal was you and Rhykker.
Never stop man!
I am really happy to see Blizzard understanding at least some of the value you bring to these games and I hope they are smart enough to keep their eyes and ears open for the future.
Raxx for president!
Raxx sir, thank you! I really appreciate your coverage, giving props to your other sources, and your suggestions.
As a F2P Sader I'm enjoying the nostalgic feeling of a dungeon crawling looter game. With that being said, I'm noticing the shift in the population of Immortal. I've got to say, I feel like I'm back in the toxic era of D2 when it first came out. Here are a few things I noticed, I hope this helps coming from a casual player. Which I feel is a silent majority that is overlooked for whales.
1: Player griefing: As a Sader I am experiencing Sorcs & DH who trail melee toons and pilfer kills, blue packs, yellows, uniques, treasure goblins, shrines, chests...you name it! This is something they need to fix, if a (preferred) solo player is being stalked by range classes where they can't get anything, or are being griefed it's going to kill the game and the population.
2: SOLO PLAY! I don't like the fact that as soon as I switch to Hell1 I have to do everything with randoms. I don't have a guild, or a warband. I am a casual gamer, I can't invest hours upon hours into playing with others. I literally created my own warband to be left alone from being telling me to join their tribes. I love that in D3 I can go to what ever difficulty I want and not be forced to play with randoms. Namely now when in a dungeon people run off kill who they want to kill and leave. I want to be able to play what difficulty I want, and be able to play by myself if I choose to.
3: I love the whole "community building." You play with friends/guild mates, randoms and you get nice rewards for playing with people. However, they have to serve a purpose. I hate the fact that I can't be squat unless I'm a whale pod, joined the "right guild", or know what events to run, how to run them and rinse and repeat. If this games is going to stagnate like to this...then I'm done, and will HAPPILY review bomb this game and blizzard!
4: I've heard that D4 MIGHT be more like this, and I really hope not! If this is the future of Diablo then to me as a long time D1 player...I'm done with Blizzard and can only hope it goes under quickly and does not pass quietly into the night. I do remember and miss the days where a new game was coming out and I was excited to play it! I want a game to be what it should be, entertainment. A new media of story interactions/puzzles/friendly competition. We the people are NOT cash cows for greedy corps to squeeze and extort for their profit margins.
I really appreciate and respect what you do. I remember when I first turned into your D3 season guides and how it rekindled my enjoyment in D3.
I would like to know your thoughts on my observations. Whether they are relevant or if I just sound "whiny." What I want to know is do you believe D4 will be a good game, or will corporate politics and revenue projections ruin yet another franchise? It doesn't sit right with me that D4 is coming out so soon. I was hoping they put time into Immortal while working on D4. It's giving me the "rush it to keep the masses happy!" Vibe...which we all know how well that worked with so many other titles.
Thank you again Raxx, and keep it up good sir!
19:58 What happened is devs gained the ability to patch games after launch and advertising is a lot more prevalent now making hype far more effective for sales, so the entire model has become: Hype game for pre-order, ship asap for max profits, and finish the game later if it's still worthwhile to do so, otherwise work on the next one.
Had to uninstall last night, which sucks. Game is REALLY well done but the monetization is disgusting, and the limits placed on actual play rewards are annoying.
Had about 4 PvP matches in a row where the team was just destroyed by multiple 1500-3000 resonance characters. I personally did relatively well against the power mismatch, as I've grinded some gear etc. But ultimately there's nothing you can do against that.
Even gear doesn't do much against the sheer power of the gems. I got my stuff pretty much as Raxx, I got 700 resonance and it doesn't even make a dent and I've meticulously synergized every single aspect of the gear.
@@edgarsantos3034 Same. Got a couple of the early cheap packs, stopped there. About 500 resonance. Set pieces, high stat (not triple, but 50+ stat doubles), and nothing you can do against the power difference. And that not even mentioning the 5* gem abilities which I won't have.
I'm on the verge of quitting too as a f2p Battle pass payment only. I do indeed wait for the first patch they make and if they improve things I might put more time in. The only thing I hope is that they mean mean it when they spoke with you about the issues. Many thanks for such a good video and your view at it 💪🏼👍🏾
I just recently found out about you and have been watching your content, I think you do have a lot of valid points.
Diablo immortal gets alot of hate for being Pay 2 Win, and I certainly agree that the monetization in this game is disgusting.
However you’ve talked about how you were top during the alpha, and been quite successful in other games as a free 2 play, even competing with pay 2 play players.
But it sounds like you must’ve committed a substantial amount time in order to achieve that status. I feel as though even if diablo immortal was not pay 2 play at all, As a fellow free 2 play player it likely wouldn’t change the game for me at all. Id still be fighting whales in pvp and be behind alot of players because I don’t have all the free time in the world to dedicate towards playing the game.
It feels like this situation only affects players who want to be the top by dedicating time, or by dedicating money. Regardless I know personally That I don’t have enough of either to be even close to competing with other players, so I feel like this whole situation just doesn’t affect someone like me.
To be honest all I’m seeing from the constant debates regarding diablo immortal is:
Players what the game to change from spending tens of thousands of dollars to be on top, to spending tens of thousands of hours to be on top.
I feel like we’re all forgetting that regardless there’s ZERO SKILL involved. Even if the game wasn’t pay 2 win it would be time spent 2 win. People who can’t afford to whale in the current game, would still just quit their jobs and live from their life savings for several months to be on top, I don’t really understand stand how that equals a healthier situation for the players, they’re either wasting their money or wasting their life away.
There aren't only two options. There are other options. Well, at least one. No whales at all, either of time or money. Just an enjoyable game from the get-go, or a hard cap that's easily obtainable. Most FPS games are enjoyable from the get go and there's little you have to grind or whale for and anything that is unlocked by time or money is ideally sideways progression. I'm thinking of COD games, BF, PS2. Also you could make a game like GW2 where everyone can reach an equal power level quite easily and the most high end armor, legendary in GW2, is only marginally better and doesn't even effect PvP. It's dumb to think there are only two options and they have to be some type of whale. Even a game that I could label whale of time, EVE, is easy for people tonget into and not get crushed by whales, skill/experience matters.
You are missing the point of this type of game here. This type of game is designed to be grindy. The game is literally designed to reward dedication in time. I find it silly to complain that "people who play more wins". The way you're parallelizing time and money to be equal in terms of it being currency to buy greatness is also silly.
It is literally unfair for people who play these kinds of games to be matched by players who spend less time to play. It's like saying that your tenure and free overtimes at work should not matter when a newbie who just casually goes to work everyday gets equal or better pay than you. If you want to be better, you spend time in it, as everything is designed in life.
Time is free, money is not. There's a very, VERY huge difference between the two, and your argument is just silly at its very core.
Rax! I'm loving your recent content, keeping it real. I didn't waste my time with immortal as I was grinding with DH on D2R, but I fully follow your sentiment about the direction games are going in. I remember being SUPER PUMPED for D3 on release. I played for 10's of hours with some close friends before realizing how broken the auction house was. It entirely killed the experience for me. What was initially fun got monetized to such an extent that it felt like playing slot machines. D2R has been great because it brought back that feeling of buying a game that is complete, although it has its problems and is a 20 year old game.
I just pray D4 will be more like D2. Make the grind worth it. Keep the auction houses out and get the full game on the initial purchase. I'd rather spend $100 on the box version than spend $0.99 on micro transactions. Obviously the companies do it this way because it's astronomically more profitable but at what point is the reputation and making the best game in the world a factor to the money?
Thanks for sharing the conversation - I hope Blizzard can be the ones to break the mould of mobile games being an app with heavy monetisation into a GAME with heavy monetisation. Its great that Asmon's looking at your content so hope you see a boost from that because Maxroll is awesome.
Thx for the Vid. This is very good to see that they listen to their people, so we can have hope.
But you aren‘t dump you are PASSIONATED, there is always a small Line between passoin and dumpness. So let us have all high hopes
From what I've seen Asmon is a great guy. Rip to his mother, my thoughts and prayers to him n his family. He goes into great depths on the psychology of how it's designed to make you want to spend money.
Saw you on ass mouth gold. You deserve more subs. Love that gamers are all finally speaking up about this b.s.
I watched about 1/3 of the video, but I have to say, man, I think you're too pragmatic. Usually, that's a good thing, but... For example, Cheng isn't some junior dude fixing polygons on Barbarian's leg in D2 remaster. His position at Blizzard isn't THAT low. Yes, he's in a certain department, that's true, but then again, let's not forget about things he said and about his recent defense of the systems and doubling down (even in an aggressive way, which is kinda hilarious) on "can't buy gear" crap. Do you really think he's either 1-completely delusional about what he's making or 2-held at gunpoint to defend the bullshit? That's what many people like to think, but that's also unrealistic. What, they're going to shoot him in the head? No. Even in the case his actual job at Blizzard was at stake if he didn't defend gems and shit on twitter or reddit, even then (which isn't true, but let's go with the exaggeration), I am sure he's not exactly in a position to fret about his career in general.
So, you respect him, why? I don't mean that in a combative sense, I mean that as an inquiry because you mentioned you respect HIM, not his approach to design or his legacy etc. I can't respect him after the guy like quadrupled down on... whatever diablo immortal should be called lol.
Second point would be, Blizzard as a company, let's observe them as an entity, they didn't implement things on accident. Them agreeing with you might be damage control, might be whatever, but these systems are so deep, so meticulous and so carefully crafted that I really, really don't think any kind of correspondence or willingness to change the game or anything like that, shows any steps in right direction. Those too, are meticulous and calculated, like you pointed out with Amazon. Second, even if things "get better" - and this is the part with me seeing you as being too pragmatic - I don't think anyone should extend their hand to that company anymore. Now, I am one of those who was on the fence a long time ago, that's true, I started the "journey" around the time D3 was being developed, because I had some insights and I saw what was happening in general. Most people started that journey a few years later, with the people that "never use internet", chiming in in the last several years. But, still, how many times and how low should Blizzard go and do shit like this before people go to a clinic for addicts, to put it in a bit of a blunt way?
And don't get me wrong, because I am pretty sure I played and adored their games long time before you and praised them and all that and they marked certain periods of my life etc. But, that's the reason IN FAVOR of... just stopping giving them any emotional currency.
Lastly, any boiling down to appeal to humanity and the "working man" is fallacious - I am not saying you're doing that, but a lot of people are. "if company goes down, what will happen with Jimmy, the junior asset recolorer" - hopefully, he'll find a job in another company or freelance etc. I don't think that's a good argument.
And I especially don't think anything tied to (relatively) higher tier people such as Cheng is an argument at all.
The line is constantly being redrawn and people are getting used to the new line and this goes in circles. Why settle down for anything being sold except cosmetics? I'll go even further: why settle down even for cosmetics, if they're being offered in a predatory way? Now, I assume a lot of people would react to this like "what lol that's too much" - and that's exactly my point. The crux of conversation has shifted into a completely crazy territory. Let's, at least on individual levels, start to reeling it back in.
Hell, a game like Apex Legends shouldn't exist, as it ticks like 95% of predatory boxes even if it's "just cosmetics", let alone something like Diablo Immortal. "mobile game" notion also doesn't mean anything. it's an artificial categorization, it's an appeal to status quo.
edit: I watched the video. I think we can go back to the atmosphere you were describing with video games, but I don't think we should even try to go back to that with any of the current "problematic" companies. The industry is too decadent for too long, nuke it, let some indie devs grow into AAA devs with time. The cycle will repeat, we will end up with some new atrocious Blizzards 20 years from now, but we'll have 10 years of goodness. And then, after those 20 years, nuke it again. At some point, that's the only thing that can happen and actually accomplish something. Let's not Stockholm ourselves any longer.
Hi Raxx, "long" time follower, long time watcher of Asmon, longer time fan of Diablo and (was) fan of Bliz, but first time writer here.
first off, your content is rock solid, you and Maxroll is pretty much #1 source of my Diablo fix... well, MrLlamaSC is ^ there too, but you know... I look forward for your posts. (shoutout to all the rest of maxroll guys). For all what you've done, I felt that this is a time as good as any to give back to you Raxx!
2 steps forward and 1 step back:
Ohhh, this is a doucie, "let's milk as much as we can" and then "oh we're sorry" statement. Unfortunately this has become the "norm" the last 10 years. This is of course not exclusive to Diablo Immortal but, TOO MANY games with MTX, and EVERYONE has this excuse. It's a sad excuse since they 110% knew what they were designing (sure, don't blame the creators but they had to put in those systems in their game and they know very well how predatory it is, there is no denying about that).
Blizz reaching out to you:
That is respect TO Wyatt Cheng, even though me personally have lost much respect/credibility for him. I do acknowledge he reaching out to you, he could have just stayed hidden, so cudos there. Credits where credit are due! Thank you Wyatt Cheng.
Hunting the Whales:
This is of course intensional, this is their sole goal of the game. There is no other way to put this, with hidden caps, the "milky way afar from F2P", rare crests, legendary, epic whatever, etc etc... one can make any excuse in the world, but in the end this is what they intended. Hunt the whales and reel them in.
"Missed the mark"
How many times have we heard this? Really? A famous quote from Asmongold for WoW is... "do the devs even play their own game themselves anymore?" Honestly, this shouldn't even be a topic, comon! EVERYONE in the dev team knew this from the beginning, not least Wyatt. "we missed the mark", that sentence has lost its meaning the last 10 years IMO. Sure, the publisher is the one with the paycheck, so they decide what to do... I miss the days when the studios were their own hardest critics and got to make the game THEY wanted to... not the "Penny squeezers that the publishers shareholders and execs are".
F2P/P2W:
This topic is kind of a balance on the edge of a knife and can go on for ages, but I will try to keep it short. I think it has much more than a one answer.
1. Why F2P model?: Well, to reach out to as much people as possible, and this IMO can be a good thing.
2. Not all can affoard a $59.99 or $69.99, not least if they want to buy multiple games a month for example. But then, the $ must come from somewhere, and I do agree with that.
3. Devs must get their money from somewhere, of course! So MTX... I am as many other acceptable with cosmetic MTX, not FRIKKIN BLUEEEE for $15 (Angry Joe (tm))! But acceptable pricing for whatever cosmetics, or season/battlepass, mappack, contentpack that only includes non-"power-gaining-features" in the game.
You will never ever ever in a blue moon, be able to compete with whales as long as there is BFP (buy for power), period! I hate to see you headbutt yourself to a concrete wall for countless of hrs just to be the "plancton of the whales". It saddens me truly.
Predatory:
Well, everyone in Blizz knew this, we knew it, EVERYONE knew this to be this bad? Well, I expected it 4 years ago... As soon as Wyatt said "don't you guys have phones". That was when my Diablo heart was crushed into peaces. Did I try to convince myself otherwise? Well of course! Diablo is if not my most favorite franchise in the gaming world. Of course there was a spark of the "soul stone" in me that this wouldn't be as I feared. Oh boy that spark was drenched the day Immortal was released. Now, as a "pure" mobile game I am not surprised, well maybe a little since it's probably the most predatory game in the world. But as you said Raxx, many ppl are not happy with Blizz today and honestly I am not surpised they did how they did.
But, when they released this to PC, I had to step up and make this post. Keep this predatory crap OUTTA my platform. In a perfect world, no platform should suffer this level of predatory MTX behavior, but don't fu*k PC/Console!
Nostalgia:
When I was in high-school in 7th grade, my dream job was to work at Blizzard one day... this was back in 1996 I think... I am glad that it did not happen.
Feedback from you and your team/fellow friends:
From what I've seen and as you stated, you are a nr's guy! I do hone (that a word? not native english, so correct me there) but I do respect your nr crunching and theorycrafting etc in the various games that you comver. A shout out for you there and I hope that you keep up the hard work that I know goes into this and I truly hope that the devs for the games that you do this for apprichiate the effort, time and data that you give them... for FREE. That is dedication and I can only lift my hat and say: Salut!
And I belive if devs says "we did not know that", since I bet my left testicle that, when you Raxx are invited to a alpha/beta, that you will crunch/test/twist and turn the game more than most of the dev team members themselves together. I call that passion! :)
D4:
I am so fakking scared now of how they can ruin this game. When it was revealed, I litteraly cried! Lilith! Oh my god I could not believe what I saw. Am I more calm if you are in the alpha / beta for the game? Well, honestly... no! You said earlier when you were beta testing Immortal, but you did it without the MTX implemented, since you did not obvilously did not get to play "the core game". You only got to test the "fun part", but not "the game"... who knows, will they do alpha/beta with "smokes and mirrors" again? That's what they basically did with you testers, apart from that you balanced some "optimal runs" for them... they kept you with smokes and mirrors... And I am terrified!
The Future:
I agree with you, when you say that devs don't have control of the P2W. I will not go in to what I've read on the internet about Wyatts Twitter posts of "missinformation", since hey kidz... not everything is true on internet, and 99% of things are "out of context" or missinterpetrated (spelling, I am tired now).
But the mistakes thing, it starts to get worn out, really... "oh we did not intend to X or Y". Don't treat players idiots!
I hate to say this but, "test the waters" and "2 steps forward, 1 step back"... that has become the industry standard... Games are not as they used to be, let's be honest. They were used to be created with a passion and dedication without "corp execs" deciding the end product.
Almost last thing:
I would LOVE to hear from ANY of the devs on the Immortal team that have kids, if they let their kids play the game and toss $25 on an Elder Rift each run. Who is this game for? is it:
Gameplay First. ...
Commit to Quality. ...
Play Nice; Play Fair. ...
Embrace Your Inner Geek. ...
Every Voice Matters. ...
Learn & Grow. ...
Think Globally. ...
Lead Responsibly.
Answer: No to all of above.
Why aren't Videogames fun anymore:
Simple answer in my opinion... Devs are not allowed to create their games of their dream, or vision. Unfortunately big publishers that pay their paycheck has other dreams... "nickle and dime". This does of course, does not go for just Immortal, but other companies and franchies aswell. Some do good, others not so... unfortunately I see a trend where more and more franchises goes to the "dark side", and what hurts most are the franchises that I care of, that I grew up with and that I hold close to the heart. They get butchered by tactics and schemes that ruins my passion.
Last thing:
I hope this wasn't 19 pages long. If you've come here to the end, that is a huge achievement for you. But I think Raxx is such a good content creator, that if he takes his time to enlighten me... I can equally set a side of my time to give Raxx and you my opinion... and that is what it is, my opinion. I do not claim that I am right or that my opinions are the "correct" ones, it is what it is... my opinion.
Thank you!
Cheers and take care of each other.
Someday you'll look back at this and see how you were holding up hope for a completely abusive relationship. Being a Blizzard fan right now is just the definition of a toxic relationship, only it's with a corporation instead of a person.
People are being literally manipulated and lied to, and they still believe them because they still think this is the blizzard from the 90s and early 2000s.
We didn't go to the funeral but that company is 100% dead.
Wyatt Cheng is as fake as a 2 dollar bill. I have no idea how people can't see this. Guess that's what love does.
I do agree that a public mea culpa is in order. Even though I would like it to go further than that. Because it means that the changes that come in Immortal will only change things going forward.
I will illustrate, let's say a player that really wanted to go entirely free to play hits all of the walls and decides to start paying money. He starts to get things that he should've been able to do without paying a cent. Then Blizz steps in and makes changes going forward. But don't do much to reimburse the ones like that player. Now he will feel like why did I bother to play this game when it came out. I should've waited till it got better.
The same philosophy you were talking about earlier where Blizz wold be like Amazon where they got a ton of money but really didn't truly reimburse the ones that actually paid real money to advance. So they milked them for all they were worth. Then made the changes they needed to make. It is more like a forced kick starter than a real free to play game.
I want to say that I still hope the best for D4. But I am still concerned that Blizz might put pay to win in it due to Immortal. I will still test it though if they do pick me to be one of the testers. Also I would like to reach out to you if I am picked to test. Because I think you could help me be a better tester. That is because you are a good tester and it shows. That is of course along with being on fine person, I like you as a person. That is why I can end with saying have a great day whatever game you play or whatever you do in life.
And ppl wonder why AAA companies don't test their games before release anymore: because crazy MF'ers will do this amount of spreadsheet testing on A FLARKING MOBILE CASH GRAB game for them for free... 😂🤑😂
Recognizing passion for something is what people lack these days, you have a passion for this on the scale I like to see.
Keep up the good work man.
Me and my friends uninstalled the game 🎯
Me too and my friends to
Gotta say, of all the things I see in your video…your clarity and honest rise to the top. Stay classy. You earned a subscribe click today.
Raxx, first of all I need to say this. I appreciate how level headed, mature and humble you are when addressing the problems you see in the game. I wish there were more content like yours instead of the pure hatred and vitriol we get in youtube. And it could be that Blizzard reached out to you because you got noticed on a bigger channel, but dont sell yourself short. Why did they reach YOU and not the bigger guy? I believe it is because they know they can actually have a productive conversation with you about the game instead of just being spat on by ragers. So congratulations for being so dissonant amidst the ocean of hate and being the level headed voice of reason that builds a bridge between what the gamers want and what is being delivered.
Second of all, just come to server Gorgothra. It is a mostly brazilians server and we brazilians dont have the money to become huge whales lol So I believe you will have more fun with PVP here. Good gaming and keep bringing us good content like this.
Glad to see that you are getting acknowledgement for the work and time you put in testing these. Congratulations!
Raxx, I know you're getting a lot of comments, but I really hope you read this one. I care about you.
You have a good heart but your naivete makes you a force for evil. If it wasn't for people like you and your friends, Blizz would need to hire someone to balance dungeon rewards. It's NOT that they're bad at it; it's that they never even tried in the first place. They knew that they never needed to try in the first place. They knew that the alpha testing community is full of absolute simps who will do all of that detail work for free. Of course they listened to your feedback. Of course they want to remind you that they listened to it. Because if they can count on you doing it for them again, that's another job they don't need to pay anyone to do for Diablo 4.
I'm not going to say that if you don't do it for Diablo 4, someone at Blizzard will be paid to do an equally good job. There are probably plenty of simps waiting in line. I think the true reason Blizzard responded to you was NOT Asmongold, but the fact that you and your team "provided better feedback" - that is, did a better unpaid job - than anyone else. If you don't do it for Diablo 4, some other team will provide a lower quality version of the same work, and Blizzard will adjust encounters based off their data, rather than paying someone in-house.
But you're enabling the greed. The core of what you and your team do is: you develop Blizzard games for free, so they can lower development costs and maximize profits. That's it.
I get that you love the work. But there's so many game developers out there. If you're going to help a game for free, do it for a company that deserves it. If you're going to help develop a game for Blizzard, at least stop being an unpaid volunteer for Evil Corp and sell out good and proper. But please, stop doing what you're doing. You're the "good" one in an abusive relationship, you're the enabler that allows the cycle to perpetuate. Blizzard is nowhere close to deserving you.
Scrotie: What you're forgetting is that he likes the games that Blizzard makes. So do I. So does the vast majority. It's because they already have a model that works, is fun, and can be exploited.
If Blizzard doesn't make money(even, at the expense of some players), they will go broke. They need the money. With all of the litigation going on, it's a miracle they've survived this long!
Solid video man! If it wasnt for the clan/community aspect of Immortal i would be right there with ya.
Bro you/Asmongold hit the nail on the head don't think for a second that the big game companies don't know EXACTLY what they are doing when they make a "mistake" draw the max amount of money they can and then "apologize" to make it go away, rinse repeat.
The psychology thing you talking about at 3:19, I can confirm that's how the mobile/MMO game doing their business right now, especially in China region sever or made in China games (you know DI is also made by NetEase which is a Chinese company). They already prepared the good stuff for the game but released a bad one first. Most of the old/veteran free to play players in China already know this trick. They just keep waiting without spending any money. We have a funny nick name for those free-to-play player, even their call themselves as "wait wait party"