Diablo Immortal

[Sly Reflex]

Almost certainly Diablo Immortal will be crammed with them. I'd be astonished if it didn't. This is the way things are now.

 

This isn't the last time this will kick up a furore. In fact I don't think it'll be the case of a well known IP kicking up backlash over in mobile world. Be them spin offs or otherwise, it's a widely available market that can be exploited with ease for maximum profits versus minimum efforts. Doesn't matter if the game is good or bad representation of Diablo, I'm sure it'll be a fair representation with some really shitty caveats.

 

For the very little it's worth, I'm not totally against mobile games. It was brought up a few posts ago, but something like a traditional Pokemon game would be the perfect fit. But if something like that was to happen it wouldn't just a be a one of cost and then it's yours. It'd be full of MTX nonsense and P2W stuff. That's the reason I've got bugger all time for it right now. It used to be so promising too before to went down the road it went.

[Duck]

The Diablo guy was super nervous too but I would be the same after I announced a remaster of the companies best game (W3)

[mmmark]

19 hours ago, Hendo said:

Super Mario Run only came out on phones and it did just fine and no-one went mental about it.

 

They specifically made a Mario game no one would want to play on the tv, that’s why. The same will go for kart. 

 

 

Its like if when they announced GoW pop they ended it there. 

[HandsomeDead]

Blizzcon as a thing is dumb.  It's this intersection of fandom and marketing.  It's a specialised trade show, with emphasis on the trade.  Maybe Blizzard were always setting themselves up for a fall even founding Blizzcon. 

 

That's what the visitors are part of, it's not a house party. 

 

I like the work of some of these big companies too, and creative and passionate teams are within them, but most of these folk clearly lose sight of them being companies first and foremost. 

 

So they had no big announcement this year and ended on the only new thing they had.  Why would they not want to promote it? 

They're not just gonna quietly slide it into the Play Store when they have their own trade show.  God forbid these computer gamers have to acknowledge other kinds of gamers exist. 

[Rikzilla]

Looking at Sly's arguments I find it hilarious and ironic that this was published yesterday. 

 

https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/next-nintendo-mobile-games-zelda-donkey-kong/

[Sly Reflex]

If that's the game I think it is it makes perfect sense to put it on a touch screen device, since it's basically Nintendo flavoured Lemmings. The Zelda game is pushing it though, not a great fit.

[DisturbedSwan]

 

[Sly Reflex]

So I've been researching this for next weeks news episode and I don't get this at all. Apparently it's a reskin of a previous NetEase game which I think is 梦幻西游 (Fantasy Westward Journey) down to a T. I'm not entirely sure because I can't read Chinese and the translation stuff acts a bit dippy with broken English when translating. It is one of their games though, a really popular one, like  in excess 20 million people registered for it. It's massive.

 

However, I can read that Diablo is very big in China, ridiculously so. There was a whole meme thing going on when D3 released there on one of China's social medias that described unfortunate spouses being Diablo III Widows. I can't find any of these images because I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for, but a few separate sources have flagged this occurrence up, as well as Pineapple which was some sort of work around for buying Diablo III digitally from Taiwan. In short the Chinese are willing to break Chinese laws to play Diablo games. They love it.

 

So that must mean they're chomping at the bit for Diablo Immortal then? You'd think that, but their reception is just as lukewarm as the West. I'm sure the Diablo link will pull some players in, but a lot of Chinese players have already played this game to death.

 

So to me that suggests that this is aimed primarily at Western audiences with a bonus that they might pull in some Chinese that can stomach a game they've already played into the ground with a new lick of paint. Surely if it was specifically for the Chinese audience they wouldn't have repurposed an old game, they would have built a fresh game from the ground up. I don't know if the Chinese market is savvy enough to realise that nor do I know if they care. It seems misguided for the West and a bit cut and shut for the Chinese.

 

I find this stuff genuinely interesting. I also wish Googles translate page was a bit better because trying to look deeper into this has thrown some right gibberish out. Seen some right old Chinglish trying to research this.

[HandsomeDead]

You gotta do some mental gymnastics to come to the conclusion this game is primarily aimed at the West.  It's a game made by a Chinese company, in the style that is already massively successful there, on a prominent platform there.

 

It's that simple.  20 million is a lot of subscribers but I'll bring up Arena of Valor again: it has 200 million, with a 70 million concurrent player base at it's peak.  They obviously think there is room to expand within China with a known series.  And the idea that Blizzard wouldn't aim a game that has a spiritual predecessor that is already popular in China because they can't stomach it anymore is mad.  This is the games industry, remember.  They do it all the time, and for games that have been running much longer.

[Sly Reflex]

Nowhere did I say they couldn't stomach any more Diablo. I said they couldn't stomach the other game reskinned. The games industry has been running the same games out the gate for decades in some instances, but there's been changes other than the graphics changing art style.

[HandsomeDead]

I know which game you were talking about.   Fantasy Westward Journey is just over 15 years old.  There are loads of western games older than that that haven't changed much.  Diablo being one of them! 

 

You don't know its just a re-skin.  Blizzard says they've done their own work on it I'm willing to bet the vast majority of those calling it a re-skin are fanboys who haven't even played the previous NetEase game, and certainly not Diablo Immortal. 

 

The only thing you can take away from it is it uses a tried and tested control and UI system, that we all know is not easy to make intuative on a touch screen, so why wouldn't the same developer carry it over? 

 

It's fanboy shrieking over an innocuous game with a totally understandable existence.  I don't know why you're against it. 

 

I just found out about the Chinese screen time law and that explains why they're trying to sell it a bit more globally, and why a few of these Big in China games are trickling out. 

[Sly Reflex]

Again, I'm not actually against it. Who's doing the mental gymnastics now?  

[Hendo]

On 04/11/2018 at 15:18, Sly Reflex said:

Look. Mobile games should be things where you can play them between 1 and 5 minutes and jump off without having the jump in point being too harsh. Diablo is not suited to that at all.

 

Also a concern is controls. Controlling all that with touchscreens accurately? Can't be done.

 

I get it. Mobile games make bank. That's why we see so many of them and publishers are eager to ruin franchises by throwing them to the cellphone lions, but they need to stop with this stuff.

Sounds fairly clear that you're against it here.

 

To be clear, it could end up being total rubbish. But I don't understand the negativity.

You brought up From earlier - if they announced a Bloodborne mobile spin-off I'd just shrug it off. Their previous games are still available. I'm a 40 year old man, I haven't got it in me to nerd rage over a game I didn't want.

[Sly Reflex]

I'm making points that make mobile games successful and lining them up against how a general Diablo games works. That's not me being against it, that's me going "Hey, these things don't line up". You're misinterpreting for the sake of having a foundation for your argument.

 

I don't think it'll be complete crap, I just don't think it's a good fit. When I think of these dungeon crawling games I think of hour sessions and hundreds of enemies being cleaved through per room. It's that experience that I think will badly translate.It'd be akin to putting a very complex game that requires mouse and keyboard inputs on a console. Sure you can smash that square peg through a round hole, but eventually something has to give.

 

And to be clear, this isn't as you put it 'nerd rage', not for me. This to me is similar to when MS did the One reveal and eyebrows were being raised because they were making extremely stupid decisions that tarred them in the eyes of many. Same with EA and the many decisions they've made that have put a lot of people off. Throw Konami in there with the driving former franchises credibility by turning them into pachinko machines. It's generally a wanting to put minimum effort in for maximum return.

 

I am sure people have thrown their toys out of the pram and have vowed never to buy a Acti-Bliz game ever again. That's not me though, when Diablo IV does arrive quality dependant I'll be on it. Diablo Immortal is inconsequential to me, If it turns out amazing, then great. If not, then whatever.

[mmmark]

3 minutes ago, Sly Reflex said:

Diablo Immortal is inconsequential to me, If it turns out amazing, then great. If not, then whatever.

 

You could have just posted that days ago tbh  

 

Fortnite and PubG mobile do well enough and people like both. Take the experience away with them.

[Sly Reflex]

That's not looking at the bigger picture though, is it? Life would be very boring if people were so binary.

[Hendo]

Quote

Diablo is not suited to that at all.

 

 

Can't be done.

 

they need to stop with this stuff.

 

 

That is absolutely you being against it.

Also, Diablo is a clicker game. I’ve played Diablo clones on phones before (although this is supposed to be more MMO) and they work fine. Not the ideal control method, but fine.

Diablo is not exactly a super complicated controller game. You click buttons and things die.

[DANGERMAN]

yeah, I don't have a lot to say about all this, but they've already made Diablo work on controllers, there's no argument that it needs to be especially precise. The spells and skills should work well on touch, you'll be looking directly at the cooldown on them

[Sly Reflex]

44 minutes ago, Hendo said:

That is absolutely you being against it.

 

So stating facts is me being against something. OK.

 

Diablo is not suited to touch screen. You need to be able to see what you're doing as well as being precise with button presses. When you have your fingers all over the screen you're not going to be able to do that. This is why I say it can't be done. Diablo can get pretty hectic on a full sized screen, but when you shrink that screen down to 5 inch and then have it so that you have to be covering part of the screen to control it? Nah mate.

 

Some thing do not work at all. Who in their right mind would go "Hey, you know what I want? I want to play the game I've played on PC or console on my phone as well". That goes for all the big games too, I'm not specifically singling Immortal out here. I'm using a catch all for everything that breaks the rules of to what we should expect from a mobile game.

 

Sure, there's a novelty of playing something like Fortnite on your phone, but do you really want to invest in that? Do you really want to spend hours and hours playing something like Fortnite on a phone. If it's you only access to the game, then maybe? But as a whole? Hell no. Being "Fine" as you put it isn't good enough. Being sufficient isn't the way to go. You have this platform that has a load of things it could be doing really well that other platforms can't do but for some reason we're insistent on crow barring substandard versions of bigger versions of games so we can play them on the go. It makes fuck all sense.

 

If they were to actually make something that made sense for a mobile game then yeah. That would be awesome. What I'm seeing isn't that.

 

You guys can think what you want. I know my mind and my stance on this. To try and tell me what I think is dumb. Sure, provide arguments to convince me, but don't tell me what to think, because that's going to end up in me telling you to fuck off.

[Hendo]

Wow!

You came out saying it was a terrible idea, wouldn’t work and shouldn’t be made. Everyone disagrees with you, you say you never said you were against it.

Where am I wrong in that summary?