Why Diablo went mobile

Thankfully the most gifted smartasses play PoE.

World's safe.

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People make an effort to offer suggestions, player ignores most.
Player continues to struggle and blames game and quits.

The feedback section in a nutshell.

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ghamadvar wrote:

You mean the same younger crowd that specialises in gaming, becoming pros, playing and training 8-10 hours a day? Or the same younger crowd that buys hard games like dark souls or insanely time consuming games like ff14, etc.? The young crowd that made shadow tactics or xcom 2 so successful? There are young crowds trying to do exactly what you say they don't: striving to be able to do what others (their gaming heroes) do. Or where do the new e-sports gamers come from? I've not seen so many 30+ year old dudes and girls rocking the great tournaments. You? And to say POE is as complex as d2 is just not correct, sorry. POE is the USS Nimitz. D2 is a fishing boat. And in the last 17 years there also changed a lot of other things. I could only dream of a gaming situation in terms of offer, range and accessibility when i was playing d2.

And i would dare to say that especially the older players (like me) are not willing any more to get into the complexity and time consuming character of games like POE. Just because time is short(er) and reflexes and brains got slower and fully loaded with shit like taxes ;)
Things in gaming become more casual because there is so much to play and so little time. But this is not about the age or generation of gamers. Some expect to have success without any investments. But this is also not a problem of age. Just of commitment.

@topic: Diablo immortal is there for money.Period.

The money aspect is a given, but there's clearly a trend away from "depth".

As far as the professional gamers go, they do tend to be players that "grew up" with those games, but that's not odd.

Thresh won the 97 Quake tournament and received a Ferrari he had to sell off because he couldn't afford the taxes. He wasn't later competing in Halo tourneys or Call of Duty etc.

And you're right, older folks are less likely to commit to time-consuming games when they have so much more to be concerned with.

But D2 did have more complexity than I think you're giving it credit for, though I really didn't explore those avenues till solo hunting ubers and pvp, where builds needed to place every point as optimal as possible - and unlike PoE there was no real means to respec to make adjustments short of a brand new character. In fact, it was the lack of complexity in D3 that pushed me towards PoE. D2 was too rigid, but D3 basically felt like it had training wheels on permanently with little room to explore potential.

But I do think its become a generational thing. People who watch gymnastics don't generally think they can magically be able to do the same thing as people who have trained for years.

Inversely, it's becoming more common for players to feel a sense of entitlement, thinking they should be able to play at the same level as people they see on stream. I had to call out my own teenage cousin for his rage and racial slurs yet he's from an otherwise Christian household. You could say that the bad behavior they see from streamers also emboldens those who watch them to do the same.

But I do want to point out its not that the generation specifically so much as the tech they grew up with. When I was their age the worst I got into was the Anarchist Cookbook and scrambled porn. In comparison they have access to a wealth of information across the globe and end up being bombarded by porn pop up ads.

You can't just fault the parents as they often lack the tools to navigate the new tech they didn't grow up with. But as you said there are a number who expect success without commitment. I would simply argue that its become a trend. Most folks are wise enough not to attempt to consume tide pods, yet there were enough people doing it for attention to make headline news.

Yeah, they misread the target audience quite a bit. But its definitely possible to create more tactical depth even with simpler controls. The negative attention will probably provoke more criticism than praise, even where praise would normally be earned.

Kinda makes me nostalgic for the days of Interplay and Rare. Oddly enough I just looked Rare up and its still up albeit not quite the same.

I dont know about that im 22 and mde like 6 build guides here first year or so. I like complex. The main thing is everyone has a fucking phone and few have PCs. They are catering to where population is at and parlaying the brand everyone knows into dollars. Nothing wrong with that you just have to not buy it if you see the clear money grab which it is.

I can appreciate money grabs but wont be a victim of one.

Bottom line - Can't knock the Hustle.

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ghamadvar wrote:

You mean the same younger crowd that specialises in gaming, becoming pros, playing and training 8-10 hours a day? Or the same younger crowd that buys hard games like dark souls or insanely time consuming games like ff14, etc.? The young crowd that made shadow tactics or xcom 2 so successful? There are young crowds trying to do exactly what you say they don't: striving to be able to do what others (their gaming heroes) do. Or where do the new e-sports gamers come from? I've not seen so many 30+ year old dudes and girls rocking the great tournaments. You? And to say POE is as complex as d2 is just not correct, sorry. POE is the USS Nimitz. D2 is a fishing boat. And in the last 17 years there also changed a lot of other things. I could only dream of a gaming situation in terms of offer, range and accessibility when i was playing d2.

youre talking about a very small segment SPECIFICALLY designed for these purposes, and mostly peer vs peer games. a lot of games try to become e-sports because $. dark souls MARKETED ITSELF on it being hard

the average game complexity and average audience age PC games were made for, took a HUGE nosedive with consoles introduced

old games didnt market themselves as being hard. they just WERE hard and complex and challenging

take a complex noncompetitive game from 80s and 90s. take average gamer of today.

they would quit in 5 hours TOPS. most would quit in 1 hour or under.

old pc games were designed for mature, I would say logically thinking audience who could afford computers at that day and age. they werent designed for an average rockbrain

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Things in gaming become more casual because there is so much to play and so little time.

nonsense, time was ticking with same constant rate 20 years ago. the 'I have little time' excuse is just that - excuse for people to say why they dont like complex or time investment-based games.

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But this is also not a problem of age. Just of commitment.

nonsense again. pc games were and ARE viewed by many, myself included as problems to solve. today, an average pc game (and by extension console games) are viewed are some time to kill while chewing popcorn.

has nothing with commitment. the average attention span of a modern gamer is that of an add patient. instead of concerning how to problem solve, he/she are just concerned with getting the most entertainment possible, is intolerant of any failure, and sheer availability of games - if you think game a is too hard you can just switch to game b, not giving game a another chance. people nowadays HATE to be stuck, and use the 'too little time' as a bullshit excuse. I LOVE getting stuck in games, because that means I have to use my fucking brain. Just like I LOVE debugging code.

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鬼殺し wrote:

Broadly speaking, you're right.

But then you can argue that after enough trading/gearing up/video research (strategic planning), PoE is little more than Clicker Heroes itself.

I'm willing to bet that Diablo Immortal will have more tactical depth than PoE. Because it already has one very tactical function that PoE doesn't: skill effect interaction. This is a very tactical concept, such as firing an arrow through a wall of fire igniting that arrow. I don't know if DI will have that specific example, but it definitely has spells and skills interacting after usage.

As for the monetisation, I think Blizzard are going to be very careful there. They've already copped enough backlash just for announcing the game at the wrong time and wrong place. Diablo Immortal is now on a lot more critical radars than I think they anticipated. So...I'm actually quite fascinated to see how they monetise it. It won't be as obvious as other Korean mobile ARPGs...

The funny thing is, I think Diablo Immortal is a fantastic idea. And I bet it would have went over glowingly had they already announced a new PC Diablo. The issue is D3 is so old at this point that sequel is a given, and they announce a mobile version before they announce a new PC Diablo game. They put the cart before the horse, pretty much.

I'm gonna try it if its new content. It better not be D3 mobile. If its new content, its fun, I have no problem playing it on my phone or on emulators.

It is kinda sad how out of touch they were with their playerbase though, to actually think announcing a mobile Diablo game before a PC game was gonna go over well. Hell, all they had to do was say they were working on D4, but heres Diablo Immortal to tide you over until D4 drops.

here's a fun little experiment

take a game in a genere that is well understood even today

so we'll take FPS and one of my favorites, Hexen: Beyond Heretic. Not really a super hard game, but definitely challenging.


no cheating, play it blind, no map, no guide, no walkthrough

how many levels do you think an average player will last before he tries to look up shit in a guide?

I GUARANTEE you a modern gamer will get LOST in a maze with lots of backtracking.

Because...wait for it...most modern FPS games are either giant open space with cover or linear railroaded levels.

Average modern gamers dont want to orient themselves in a maze solving puzzles and get stuck. They want to chew popcorn, have the game deepthroat them nonstop and get dopamine for doing shit theyre supposed to do. They hate failures and not being able to solve this.

What appealed to old school players is solving problems. That was when old school players were 'geeks'. Modern average players who are basically non-logically inclined folks, dont like to solve problems.

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鬼殺し wrote:

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Destructodave wrote:

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鬼殺し wrote:

Broadly speaking, you're right.

But then you can argue that after enough trading/gearing up/video research (strategic planning), PoE is little more than Clicker Heroes itself.

I'm willing to bet that Diablo Immortal will have more tactical depth than PoE. Because it already has one very tactical function that PoE doesn't: skill effect interaction. This is a very tactical concept, such as firing an arrow through a wall of fire igniting that arrow. I don't know if DI will have that specific example, but it definitely has spells and skills interacting after usage.

As for the monetisation, I think Blizzard are going to be very careful there. They've already copped enough backlash just for announcing the game at the wrong time and wrong place. Diablo Immortal is now on a lot more critical radars than I think they anticipated. So...I'm actually quite fascinated to see how they monetise it. It won't be as obvious as other Korean mobile ARPGs...

The funny thing is, I think Diablo Immortal is a fantastic idea. And I bet it would have went over glowingly had they already announced a new PC Diablo. The issue is D3 is so old at this point that sequel is a given, and they announce a mobile version before they announce a new PC Diablo game. They put the cart before the horse, pretty much.

I'm gonna try it if its new content. It better not be D3 mobile. If its new content, its fun, I have no problem playing it on my phone or on emulators.

It is kinda sad how out of touch they were with their playerbase though, to actually think announcing a mobile Diablo game before a PC game was gonna go over well. Hell, all they had to do was say they were working on D4, but heres Diablo Immortal to tide you over until D4 drops.

DI is confirmed as new content. It bridges D2 and D3.

Sweet. I'll play it then. People seem up in arms about mobile but thats the way the industry is going; just gonna have to accept it. I understand; I'm an older gamer, grew up playing intellivision/atari/nintendo.

I tried a few mobile games awhile back and there are some fun ones.

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Destructodave wrote:

but thats the way the industry is going; just gonna have to accept it.

"thats just the way x is going, just gonna have to accept it" = the most passive way to engage things, ever ?