Diablo Immortal

[DisturbedSwan]

 

 

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"Diablo Immortal" (Mobile MMORPG) announced. (Developed by NetEase Games. Takes place w Diablo 2 and 3).

www.diabloimmortal.com
 
Diablo® Immortal™ is a mobile Massively Multiplayer Online Action RPG(MMOARPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment in partnership with NetEase, coming exclusively to Android, iPhone and iPad.

Experience the world of Sanctuary in a persistent, always-online adventure anywhere, anytime.

Join a worldwide community as you battle side by side to vanquish ancient evils, explore perilous dungeons, and of course, get legendary loot.

 

Source

[Hendo]

Not gone down very well, that. Maybe wouldn’t have been so bad had they not ended Blizzcon with it.

[HandsomeDead]

I'll try it. 

 

It's looks to me like Blizzard want something to get that Chinese money. 

[Duck]

14 hours ago, Hendo said:

Not gone down very well, that. Maybe wouldn’t have been so bad had they not ended Blizzcon with it.

Did you see the fan questions after?

 

" Is this an out of season April fool's?"

 

A bit harsh. I think a lot of people were expecting D4.

 

 

[HandsomeDead]

Didn't they say at some point to temper expectations?  I've not been following this at all but I think I saw something to that idea. 

[Hendo]

I reckon it’ll be good but maybe not the thing you close the opening day with.

[Middle_Class_Hero]

1 hour ago, Hendo said:

I reckon it’ll be good but maybe not the thing you close the opening day with.

 

Yeah, they should’ve known better really. Huge mistake to make that the main announcement to an audience which are predominantly PC owners. It was never going to end well.

[Sly Reflex]

Oh, Blizzard. What are you doing?

 

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. Rendering big titles down to put them on phones isn't pleasing anyone. It didn't please the Dungeon Keeper fans. It didn't please the Command and Conquer fans. TES mobile won't sate Elder Scrolls fans and this won't make any Diablo fans content.

 

Best bet is if you want to make games like this, do them completely detached and build them from the ground up with no connections to the other versions, by doing that you're not throwing an IP under the bus. All those games I mentioned in the last paragraph would have gone down better if they hadn't done what they'd done (and also let up on micropayments too). If they insist on doing this types of games, then build them from the ground up and let them stand on their own merits, don't build them on shoulders of giants, because they've a long way to drop when they get unseated by players expecting whatever the full fat versions do.

[Whiskey_chaser]

To be fair, if they'd have announce it mid way through the conference, no one would be talking about it. 

[Sly Reflex]

https://imgur.com/gallery/e4zwzM4

[HandsomeDead]

I couldn't disagree more with @Sly Reflex.

 

I've played the Paladins MOBA on mobile and the controls aren't a problem since you can balance around it.  It's not gonna be the same as traditional controls but you can have a fun time.

 

I don't think we should be using the failures of past games to completely write this off.  Dungeon Keeper by all intents and purposes should have been a perfect fit for mobile.  You can easily play tile based strategy games on a touchscreen.  The problem with Dungeon Keeper is how the balance of the monetising was done making it woefully unplayable without paying too much money.  We don't know how C&C is yet since it's still not out.  I don't even like Elder Scrolls at the best of times so I don't think a mobile version will ruin it.  I think gamers need to stop being so precious about brands.

 

Arena of Valor on mobile is a huge deal in mainland Asia which controls like something like Diablo, and I think PUBG Mobile is big too, and while I don't want to play action games on a touchscreen there are clearly many that are fine with it that aren't within western gamer culture that are making all this noise.  I don't think Diablo Immortal will be a big deal here and in the States but outside of that it probably will be.

 

And I think that's the thing.  I don't think we're the audience for it... Diablo is a global thing and tailoring it to the ways other gamers play games isn't a bad thing.  Presenting the Diablo world and lore to game cultures that play games in different ways.

 

Oh yeah, and as usual, this is another reason why fandom needs to get a grip.

[Craymen Edge]

They probably should have just held an event in China to announce it, it seems like thats the market they're aiming for with this.

 

A hall full of your biggest fans, who've paid money to be there isn't the best place to announce a re-skinned mobile only mmo. Kind of a tone deaf move from Blizzard, there. The rest of it is your typical gamer reaction when they don't like something.

[Hendo]

I’ve played MMO type games and Diablo type games on phones before and they work fine.

[Sly Reflex]

I don't agree @DifferentClass. 

 

Balancing around the controls is a positive spin of saying we're dumbing it down or bastardising it to a point where you've menus and all sorts of work arounds to get stuff working. PUBG might be on mobile, but it's shite. Virtual sticks and buttons in place of a tactile input are never good. Diablo works on keys and mouse because you've lots of options that all provide a feedback. It works on controller because you can cram everything that's important onto the various buttons. Doing that on a touchscreen is next to impossible unless it's the slowest moving game in the world. Vibrations and sounds will only get you so far, it's not sufficient.

 

Ironically TES looks to be the most similar out of all the games mentioned in that it doesn't look too stripped back whilst playing to a phones strength. Like Dungeon Keeper, I reckon it'll be completely fucked by wait times and payments.

 

Gamers need to stop being so precious about brands? How do you think people would react if Nintendo came out and said the next Zelda or Mario would be phone only? You should put the brands where they make sense, and this isn't one of those occasions. If you read my post you would have seen that I said it should have been a new IP of some sort instead of trying to launch it off the back of a big name.

 

Maybe the Eastern market are fine with it. But they're also fine with many things being a bit shit. In the West we've grown accustomed to a higher standard and hearing that the thing these people have spent hundreds of hours of their lives enjoying suddenly take a route that's not where it should have progressed.

 

This whole thing should have just been a China only deal. The West isn't interested. They don't want to take steps back.

 

The other thing is if this is being made for an Asian audience, then it's going to have all the things that made Diablo Diablo. All the blood, guts, violence, the satanic imagery and aesthetic feel those games carry is going to be butchered. If you're going to gut a game like that then there's no point in trying to sell a  game under that name.

 

The main reason for this existing is that it is cheaper to make and will make the biggest profits as it will reach the most people.

[Hendo]

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

[HandsomeDead]

They did make a mobile Mario game.  It was alright. 

 

And its not like this is Diablo 4, it's a side project, a spin-off if you like.  Like with something like Pokemon I don't give two shits about most of the stuff adjacent to the mainline games but I've never got my knickers in a twist about the Mystery Dungeon spin-off.  I honestly don't get it. 

 

When a series gets big enough it's gonna start expanding into new areas.  If you don't like it you don't get it.  You're not entitled to a large series serving you all the time. 

 

And why make it China only when there is a possibility of picking up a comparatively small audience that brings in some money in the West? 

 

It's just another day in shitty, elitist gamer culture.

[Rikzilla]

I agree with DC.

 

I think the fan entitlement on display since the announcement has been embarrassing to say the least. That bloke who asked the April Fools question needs to check himself.

 

ActiBlizzard are free to do what they want with their own IP, and at the end of the day it is just a spin-off.

 

I don’t play mobile games so probably won’t ay this either.

 

[Sly Reflex]

13 minutes ago, Hendo said:

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

 

I mean the next big one. Or the next big instalment of any game, especially if it's quite speedy or needs extreme dexterity to get the most from it on anything other than mobile. For example, if FROM said the next souls like was mobile only, the fans would lose their minds, they'd be furious.

 

This whole Diablo Immortal thing doesn't bother me. I won't be playing it. Aside from games that were built specifically to the strengths of phones I've little to no time for them.

 

12 minutes ago, DifferentClass said:

It's just another day in shitty, elitist gamer culture.

 

That didn't stop people pointing and laughing at the POP Gears of War thing. Some things are just best left alone. Bad ideas are bad ideas.

 

Not specific to Diablo, but when things pivot and revenue goes through the roof because of it, then the things they came from get pushed to one side. Look at Steam, they're making all the money in the world so games coming from them are unlikely. Same for Konami with Pachinko. They're more money for less effort and the focus shift, while good for their own bank accounts it's bad overall. It only takes one part of the industry to start shitting the place up but making mad cash for the others to follow suite. That's how we ended up with lootboxes in almost everything AAA with design being focused around the games to push people into buying them.

 

Think about the long run.

[Hendo]

But this is not the next big Diablo game. It’s a spin-off.

 

I’d like to be a fly on the wall of the shareholders meeting where they announce that they’re only bringing a Diablo spin-off to China and not bothering to release it anywhere else. That would be a wise move.

[HandsomeDead]

6 minutes ago, Sly Reflex said:

That didn't stop people pointing and laughing at the POP Gears of War thing. Some things are just best left alone. Bad ideas are bad ideas.

 

Personally I was making fun of the POP aspect, not the idea of a mobile Gears game.

 

If those in power want to focus on maximising profit then the problem is shitty capitalism, not mobile games.

 

I think games should reverse how much is invested in them, at least then we wouldn't get a situation like Rockstar went through with workers doing 100 hour weeks.  It is said that mobile devs are a bit more pleasant to work for because they have a more sustainable financial stream.

 

The ills of the industry are not the fault of the platform.  I'm for making a stink about predatory MTXs.  Will Diablo Immortal have them?  Maybe; NetEase are apparently known for it historically but maybe with this having more of a global release Blizzard will adjust the maths.  We'll find out.

 

I'm for calling out shit if it happens, not just complaining about the existence of mobile games, which is what the fandom is doing.