The Immoral Design of Diablo Immortal

Josh Strife Hayes

AI-assisted summary of The Immoral Design of Diablo Immortal — original source. Check the original for full context.

Source published: 2022-06-10

Key ideas

Diablo Immortal is built on an aggressive monetization architecture that converts 6 months of free-to-play grinding into a single 3-minute, £20 spend. (0:00)
The game was preemptively banned in Belgium and the Netherlands for violating European statutory gambling regulations. (0:00)
The in-game economy employs 22 distinct currencies and materials deliberately engineered to obscure the real-world cash cost of character power. (20:00)
Elder Rifts utilize a thin layer of gameplay to legally bypass loot box transparency mandates, despite costing up to £240 per hour to run at maximum reward efficiency. (30:00)
Despite a Metacritic user score dropping to 0.5—the lowest in Blizzard history—the game generated $6,000,000 in revenue within days of launch. (40:00)

Detailed notes

## Background Published on June 10, 2022, by Josh Strife Hayes on YouTube, this video critiques the design and microtransactions of Blizzard's free-to-play mobile and PC title, Diablo Immortal. According to the description, the video frames the game as an undeniably fun gacha experience wrapped in a Diablo skin, but takes aim at its monetization and asks viewers the infamous BlizzCon question, 'Don't you guys have phones?'

## TL;DR Josh Strife Hayes delivers an in-depth dissection of Diablo Immortal, contrasting its responsive action-RPG combat with an aggressive web of exploitative systems. Hayes maps out how 22 distinct currencies, multi-tiered cash shop packs, daily login requirements, and Elder Rifts work together to funnel players toward spending real money. He illustrates how the rift structure acts as a skill-buffered legal loophole to evade statutory loot-box regulations while costing roughly £240 per hour to optimize. Concluding with Blizzard's corporate values, Hayes argues that the publisher subordinated genuine fun and ethical design to build an abusive monetization process, making corporate greed the real 'rising darkness' facing players.

## Atmosphere & style The presentation carries the deliberate, measured tone of a consumer advocate methodically building a case against an exploitative business model. Hayes balances dry British sarcasm and theatrical disbelief with sharp, sober mathematical teardowns of the game's psychological traps. Watching the video feels like an escalating journey from an enjoyable hack-and-slash showcase into a labyrinthine casino floor, culminating in righteous indignation as Blizzard's own corporate ethics are held up against its predatory monetization practices.

## Bulletin - [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=0s) Diablo Immortal is built on an aggressive monetization architecture that converts 6 months of free-to-play grinding into a single 3-minute, £20 spend. - [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=0s) The game was preemptively banned in Belgium and the Netherlands for violating European statutory gambling regulations. - [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1200s) The in-game economy employs 22 distinct currencies and materials deliberately engineered to obscure the real-world cash cost of character power. - [30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1800s) Elder Rifts utilize a thin layer of gameplay to legally bypass loot box transparency mandates, despite costing up to £240 per hour to run at maximum reward efficiency. - [40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2400s) Despite a Metacritic user score dropping to 0.5—the lowest in Blizzard history—the game generated $6,000,000 in revenue within days of launch.

## Key takeaways - [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=0s) Diablo Immortal pairs mechanically solid action RPG combat with an exploitative monetization system designed to convert gameplay friction into direct spending. - [14:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=848s) The title marks an industry shift from delivering finished 'products' sold for fair value to running perpetual 'processes' engineered to retain players and monetize their habits. - [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=600s) Daily checklists, bounties, and disparate reward menus with red notification pips create cognitive overload that herds users into habitual daily play patterns. - [15:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=935s) Dungeon completions and major milestones trigger tailored, escalating bundle offers that exploit the sunk cost fallacy starting at low price points. - [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1200s) An economy fragmented across 22 separate currencies and materials deliberately obscures the monetary value of upgrades and bottlenecks character progression. - [22:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1362s) Eternal Orb shop tiers are intentionally sized to leave buyers just short of the cost of Legendary Crests, nudging them into higher spending brackets. - [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1500s) The Elder Rift interface conceals an option to insert 10 Legendary Crests at once, turning a 5-minute run into a £20 gamble that burns £240 an hour at peak efficiency. - [30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1800s) By inserting a timed combat sequence between spending a crest and claiming loot, Blizzard legally evades disclosing loot box drop percentages despite crests never being lost on failure. - [31:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1897s) The Battle Pass contradicts developer claims that power cannot be purchased directly, allowing players to buy rank skips that instantly grant high-tier legendary gear. - [34:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2050s) The Boon of Plenty pass requires cumulative daily logins, meaning missing a single day during the 30-day window locks the final high-value rewards behind repurchasing another subscription. - [36:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2205s) Major progression systems, passes, currencies, and expensive cosmetics are strictly locked to individual characters rather than account-wide. - [40:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2457s) While casual players can ignore monetization by 'turning their brains off,' engaging with build optimization and endgame systems invariably reveals the credit card as the only solution. - [42:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2527s) The game's predatory structure directly contradicts Blizzard's corporate values of 'Gameplay First' and 'Lead Responsibly,' making the company itself the adversary players must confront.

## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=0s) A Great Game Built on a Terrible Foundation

Josh Strife Hayes opens the critique by framing *Diablo Immortal* as a fundamentally compelling action RPG built atop a deeply exploitative foundation. The title employs aggressive monetization mechanics designed to convert time into direct spending: paying £20 allows a player to condense six months of free-to-play grinding into just three minutes. Meanwhile, even paid purchases carry caveats, such as a 30-day item pack that might not deliver its promised rewards unless the player logs in cumulatively every single day. Josh sets out to unpack the mathematical and psychological traps engineered into the title, encompassing 22 separate in-game currencies, multi-layered RNG systems, abusive pricing tiers, and a deliberate circumvention of legal loot-box definitions achieved by forcing the player to take a single gameplay step before receiving their randomized payout. Josh reflects on the tragedy of this design: “And then I'll lament over how if you removed all of this it's actually a very good game.”

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Free-to-Play Progression Funnel in Diablo Immortal accDescr: Diagram showing how gameplay friction funnels players into multi-layered monetization and hidden whale systems.

subgraph CoreLoop ["Core Gameplay Loop"] A["Standard F2P Farming"] -->|"6 Months of Grinding"| B["Endgame Bosses & Rifts"] end

subgraph Conversion ["Monetization Shortcut"] C["£20 Cash Spend"] -->|"3 Minutes"| B C --> D["22 In-Game Currencies"] D --> E["Multi-Layered RNG"] end

subgraph Retention ["Entrapment Loop"] E --> F["Daily Cumulative Login Packs"] F --> G["Hidden Whale Mechanics"] end ```

The broader landscape of video game critique makes balanced discussion difficult, because audiences online often split into defensive extremes. Josh notes: “This is because video game communities contain very passionate people both for and against any game or company and both extreme sides are often reading reviews or watching videos looking for confirmation bias, not actual critique.” On one side, critics highlight blatant pay-for-advantage systems, habit-forming daily login structures, and gambling mechanics so egregious that the game was preemptively banned in Belgium and the Netherlands under EU gambling legislation. On the other side, defenders lean on the familiar refrain of *"Well, I'm having fun, it hasn't affected me."*

- **Key structural issues exposed:** - Condensing 6 months of free farming into a 3-minute, £20 spend. - 22 distinct currencies designed to obscure real-world monetary value. - Technical workarounds used to bypass statutory loot box definitions. - Hidden "whale mechanics" gated behind significant prior financial investment. - Preemptive bans in two EU nations due to local gambling regulations.

[01:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=101s) Confirmation Bias, Industry Shifts, and Blizzard’s Standards

Josh argues that the dismissive attitude of casual players actively harms the broader gaming landscape. Beneath its engaging hack-and-slash multiplayer action, *Diablo Immortal* is constructed around an insidious foundation that funnels every element of play toward spending exorbitant sums of money. The issue extends far beyond a single release; it reflects a broader industry shift where publishers abandon traditional products designed to be fun, replacing them with manipulative processes meant to entrap players and foster addiction. Josh states his intent to measure the game against Blizzard Entertainment's own publicly posted code of conduct and ethics to see if the company honors its self-proclaimed standards of player-first game design.

The analysis is structured to cover the core gameplay, story, and combat before conducting an exhaustive teardown of the predatory monetization pipeline: gentle onboarding to build false comfort, limited-time offers manufacturing fear of missing out (FOMO), deceptive conversion pricing, stacked monthly subscriptions, and the locking of Diablo's iconic dopamine-inducing loot fountains behind rigid paywalls.

- **Monetization tactics planned for dissection:** - Gentle onboarding masking aggressive upsells. - Limited-time FOMO bundles. - Multi-tier currency conversion designed to confuse valuations. - Overlapping, stackable monthly subscriptions. - Cumulative daily login requirements attached to paid item packages. - Traditional action RPG loot drops locked behind cash barriers.

[03:41](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=221s) The Ghost of the Real-Money Auction House and BlizzCon 2018

The *Diablo* series has courted monetization backlash before. When *Diablo III* launched in May 2012 on PC and consoles, it included a Real-Money Auction House (RMAH) that allowed players to buy and sell gear drops for real cash. Players immediately rejected the feature, pointing out that buying equipment bypassed the entire endgame loop—repeatedly tackling scaling bosses to earn rare loot through perseverance—thereby destroying the intrinsic sense of accomplishment. Blizzard eventually bowed to intense community outrage and completely removed the auction house to salvage the game's core integrity.

Six years later, at BlizzCon 2018, fans packed the auditorium expecting an announcement for *Diablo IV*. Instead, Blizzard announced *Diablo Immortal*, a mobile-exclusive title developed in partnership with NetEase. During the live Q&A, a developer confirmed there were no plans for a PC release, prompting widespread groans and boos from the audience. When game designer Wyatt Cheng attempted to defuse the hostile reaction with the infamous line, “Do you guys not have phones?”, it instantly became one of the most ridiculed moments in gaming history. BlizzCon was primarily attended by dedicated PC enthusiasts who invested heavily in high-end hardware for franchises like *Warcraft*, *StarCraft*, and *Diablo*, making a mobile game heavy with time-gating and microtransactions an unwelcome prospect.

```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Diablo Monetization Controversy Timeline accDescr: Timeline showing the progression from Diablo 3's auction house to BlizzCon 2018 and the 2022 launch of Diablo Immortal.

[05:22](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=322s) PC Port Quiddities and the Face-Tracking Controversy

In June 2022, *Diablo Immortal* launched on mobile devices alongside an open beta release on PC. The PC build is an unvarnished mobile port that still displays mobile UI artifacts, including prompts commanding PC users to "tap to play." The game supports cross-platform play, allowing mobile and PC adventurers to group up, though it restricts players strictly to their chosen server without cross-server matchmaking.

Upon release, community rumors alleged that the client was secretly using webcams and phone cameras to track user faces. This panic originated from datamined installation files containing `face_detector.dll` and `face_analyzer.dll`. Speculation spread that these files were surveillance tools implemented to comply with facial recognition and playtime restrictions under Chinese gaming regulations. However, lead game designer Adam Fletcher clarified that these were abandoned development assets from an experimental feature that attempted to mirror a player's real-world facial expressions onto their character model—an idea scrapped during production because it was terrible.

- **Technical and platform details:** - Released June 2022 on iOS, Android, and PC (as an open beta). - Cross-platform play supported between PC and mobile clients. - Server-locked progression with no cross-server grouping. - Unrefined PC interface retaining touch-screen instructions like "tap to play." - Datamined face-tracking DLLs confirmed by Blizzard to be abandoned expression-matching experiments rather than spyware.

[06:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=398s) Entering Wortham: Combat Feel, Controls, and Deckard Cain

The game begins with an intro cinematic featuring the archangel Tyrael recounting the shattering of the Worldstone and warning of an encroaching evil: “If humanity is to survive, they must stand together and face the rising darkness.” Josh highlights the bitter irony of this line, noting that the only darkness players actually united against was Blizzard's predatory monetization model. Character creation offers six standard classes; Josh chooses the Demon Hunter. While the visual sliders offer detailed facial customization, the feature is ultimately pointless because the fixed isometric camera angle means players will never look at their character's face again.

Players arrive by boat on the outskirts of the plagued town of Wortham. The PC control scheme maps movement to WASD or left-click, with primary attacks also bound to left-click. This creates frequent mechanical problems: left-clicking an enemy initiates an attack, but clicking open ground moves the character. In dense hordes, clicking to reposition often accidentally triggers basic attacks instead of movement, or causes the player to lose track of the mouse cursor entirely in the visual clutter. Once an enemy dies under a held click, the character abruptly paths toward that position. Skill hotkeys are mapped to keys 1 through 4 (with standard bindings on 2, 3, and 4).

Despite using NetEase's proprietary Messiah engine instead of the customized Havok engine that powered *Diablo III*, the combat feel, movement weight, and skill impacts are remarkably well-replicated. Combat is fast, aggressive, and rewarding: - Enemies burst with red health globes, blue mana globes, and temporary power-up orbs grant speed boosts or lightning strikes. - Healing potions are capped at three charges, replenishing automatically as enemies are slain, which actively incentivizes forward momentum. - Defeated foes drop loot across the ground, though picking it up requires manually clicking the item model rather than its text nameplate. - Inventory management retains the classic grid system, with larger equipment consuming multiple inventory tiles.

Reaching Wortham, the player is confronted by a demonic entity through a portal snarling, “My eyes upon you. Weep and despair.” Josh dryly retorts: “Trust me, mate, once I explain the monetization, you definitely will.” Inside the town chapel, the player reunites with series icon Deckard Cain to learn that Hell's forces are mounting another invasion. Outside, during combat against cultists, Josh notes occasional input bugs where the left mouse button locks down, pulling the character along with the cursor—though overall connection stability remained solid across two days of continuous testing.

[10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=600s) The Worldstone, Skarn, and the Habit-Forming Menu Trap

After defeating a dragon-like monstrosity, the player retrieves a shard of the shattered Worldstone. Deckard Cain explains that these demonic batteries are coveted by Hell and must be destroyed before they can power further horrors, identifying the primary threat as a demon named Skarn. As the player is dispatched to track down and dispose of the remaining shards, Diablo Immortal immediately serves its very first microtransaction prompt: an offer to spend 89p for a handful of premium orbs and a weapon cosmetic. This initiates a running tally of every time the software invites the player to open their wallet. Questing introduces standard mobile pathfinding, providing sparkling trails on the ground and an auto-navigation feature that teleports the character to the nearest waypoint and walks them directly to objectives.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Mobile Engagement Loop accDescr: Diagram showing how disparate reward screens and red-dot notifications funnel players into repetitive menu navigation instead of gameplay. subgraph Retention["Retention & Daily Habit Triggers"] A["Login Rewards"] B["First Kill of the Day"] C["Zone Achievements"] D["Bounties & Dungeon Tasks"] end subgraph UI_Funnel["The Menu Labyrinth"] E["Disparate, Segmented UI Screens"] F["Red Gem Notification Icons"] end Retention --> E E --> F F --> G["Endless Menu Claiming Loop"] ```

The game quickly reveals its mobile retention architecture through the "First Kill of the Day" reward and an overwhelming collection of disparate progression tracks. Players are inundated with login incentives, zone exploration checklists, monster-slaying tallies, and dual-track free and paid battle passes, each deliberately sequestered into its own distinct user interface screen. Josh Strife Hayes argues that this cognitive overload is deliberate: “Diablo Immortal is a mobile game and is designed to build habits to create attachment and to encourage daily replay.” By ensuring players cannot easily hold every checklist in their heads, the game relies on persistent red notification pips to herd players from menu to menu, often causing them to spend more time claiming mundane rewards than fighting inside rifts.

Interactions and basic controls also reveal awkward mobile-to-PC translation quirks. Player-to-player communication is initiated via Alt + Left Click to send direct messages or party invites, but direct item trading is prohibited; all exchanges are routed through the auction house and strictly mediated by the premium currency Platinum. On PC, basic interface affordances are missing entirely: the salvage interface cannot be scrolled with a mouse wheel, requiring awkward click-and-drag gestures, while the right mouse button has no assigned functionality whatsoever.

- The narrative premise casts Worldstone shards as toxic demonic batteries that require responsible ecological disposal rather than being tossed in a regular bin. - Cain’s warning places the realm at “threat level midnight” against Skarn. - Auto-navigation automates transit by pathing or teleporting directly to destination markers. - Rescuing a guard from a bridge-throwing death mage elicits a dry NPC line: “Oh, what a day. Certainly didn't expect to get choked by some death mage when I left the stead this morning.”

---

[12:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=750s) The Free Daily Pack Psychological Trick and the Mobile Market Reality

Navigating the store interface reveals a "Free Daily Reward Pack," a placement Josh highlights as an intentional retail manipulation strategy. Housing a free reward inside the premium storefront forces players to gaze at paid bundles and currency tiers every single day just to retrieve their complimentary handout. Josh points out that this design choice is entirely cynical: “You're not putting this free pack here because it makes logistical sense. You're putting it here because it's tempting.” A mail delivery also grants a complimentary cosmetic outfit to mark 30 million global pre-registrations, underscoring the commercial reality of why publishers push mobile titles so aggressively—the mobile gaming sector generates more revenue than the PC and home console markets combined.

Progression through the main narrative unlocks daily Bounties, tasking players with hunting down specific open-world targets from a board up to eight times per day (cueing a *Shaun of the Dead* joke when a bounty target turns out to be named Philip). The gear loop in this early phase requires zero cognitive engagement: equipment drops constantly, and an automated green upward arrow flags anything with superior attributes. Players are encouraged to follow the instruction of the green arrow blindly without reading item names or stats. While conventional wisdom suggests Diablo games truly begin at the level 60 endgame, Josh contends that for non-paying users, Diablo Immortal actually begins around level 35, where the leveling curve suddenly hits a severe wall and grinds to an agonizing crawl.

- The free daily bundle functions as foot-in-the-door psychological bait to expose users to microtransactions. - 30 million pre-registrations illustrate the massive financial scale of mobile gaming relative to traditional platforms. - The bounty board allows players to complete up to eight hunting assignments per day. - The green-arrow equipment interface trivializes low-level decision-making until progression throttles around level 35.

---

[14:08](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=848s) Product vs. Process: The Philosophy of Abusive Monetization

After unlocking a grapple skill that lets his character swing violently around combat encounters like an armed Spider-Man, Josh takes a moment to address heated debates flaring up in global chat regarding free-to-play versus pay-to-win mechanics. He draws a firm distinction between expecting software to be entirely free of charge and objecting to predatory financial extraction. Monetization in itself is not the problem, as hosting servers and compensating development staff obviously requires income; a one-time box price paired with optional cosmetic microtransactions would have earned his full endorsement. The fundamental conflict lies in how the game transforms from a finished artistic work into an endless, coercive psychological loop.

```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: Product vs Process Monetization accDescr: Comparison between buying a finished, one-time product versus an indefinite monetized process. subgraph Traditional["Traditional Product"] P1["Game Developed"] --> P2["Priced at Perceived Value"] P2 --> P3["One-Time Purchase"] P3 --> P4["Transaction Complete"] end subgraph Immortal["Immortal: Monetized Process"] R1["Free Download"] --> R2["Habitual Engagement"] R2 --> R3["Micro-Payment Gates"] R3 --> R4["Escalating Sunk Cost"] R4 --> R2 end ```

Josh details the economic philosophy underpinning live-service mobile designs: “The game is not a product because a product is usually released, finished, and then sold for the cost the company think it is worth.” Instead, Diablo Immortal operates as an ongoing process designed to retain the user indefinitely, puncturing the gameplay loop with numerous minor financial prompts that compound over time into sums far exceeding a standard full-price video game. Responding to the common player defense of "I'm just having fun," Josh notes that critics are not trying to invalidate personal enjoyment, but rather demanding that companies treat their customers with basic respect:

> “Focus on making the game as fun as it can be and people will buy it because it's fun. Not because you've designed it to be as close to fun as possible so it keeps players around but not too much fun that they can enjoy it completely without paying.”

- The core objection is not the presence of monetization, but the predatory implementation of abusive monetization systems. - A "product" is a completed work traded once for fair value, whereas a "process" is engineered to trap players in perpetual spending cycles. - Game design is intentionally tuned to hover near the threshold of fun to maximize retention while intentionally denying complete fulfillment without spending cash.

---

[15:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=935s) The Mad King's Breach and Dungeon-Completion Paywalls

The journey continues into the Mad King's Breach to slay King Leoric, an obligatory milestone for any Diablo title. Upon clearing the dungeon, the game unlocks both the Battle Pass and the "Boon of Plenty" subscription in the shop, but pairs this victory with an immediate, tailored pop-up advertisement: the Mad King's Breach Bundle. Rather than granting purely in-game rewards for conquering a major story boss, the game presents a paid bundle framed as a one-time, exclusive post-dungeon opportunity. Josh warns that this tactic leverages the sunk cost fallacy by starting with an unassuming 89p price point to break spending resistance, before steadily ratcheting up bundle costs across subsequent dungeons while phasing out meaningful discounts.

Referencing a community mock-up by Twitter user MrGM, Josh asks players to imagine the outrage if World of Warcraft interrupted player triumphs by demanding real-world currency to claim loot chests after a dungeon boss. While the environmental presentation of the Leoric encounter—complete with a giant demon writhing beneath a transparent glass floor—earns genuine praise, the surrounding story beats fall entirely flat. Josh dismisses the disposable cast and over-dramatized narrative sacrifices, noting that characters appear, deliver brief exposition, and perish within a ten-minute span, leaving the player with no emotional investment beyond reading their floating nameplates during their death animations.

- Clearing King Leoric unlocks both the Battle Pass and the Boon of Plenty subscription systems. - Every completed dungeon triggers a tailored, limited-time bundle offer that gradually escalates in cost across the campaign. - The post-dungeon monetization model exploits the sunk cost fallacy, priming users with low initial prices so they feel compelled to keep buying. - The narrative uses melodrama with short-lived NPCs whose names are barely registered before they sacrifice themselves.

---

[17:05](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1025s) Elder Rifts and the £240-an-Hour Grind Loop

After unlocking Legendary Gem crafting, the walkthrough pivots to the central engine of Diablo Immortal’s endgame: the Elder Rift. While the narrative campaign must be completed to unlock the higher "Hell Plus" difficulty settings, the procedural Elder Rifts form the baseline PvE grind. Players enter either solo or in parties of up to four. However, despite supporting cross-platform play between PC and mobile, the game does not support cross-server play or character transfers; discovering this the hard way, Josh notes that his friend and fellow YouTuber Callum Upton was forced to abandon his character and start completely over after creating an avatar on a different server.

Inside the Elder Rift, an hourglass icon steadily tracks time along an interface gauge while player kills fill a progress bar. Once filled, the rift boss spawns; defeating it before the countdown expires yields equipment and resources. The monetization mechanism is tied directly to socketing Crests into the rift entrance, which artificially increases the drop rate and rarity of boss loot. At full efficiency, grinding an Elder Rift every five minutes while maximizing legendary rewards demands approximately £240 per hour. Furthermore, Josh flags an initial visual deception built into the UI: the interface displays only three slots marked "0/3," tricking players into believing three crests is the maximum limit, whereas the system secretly allows players to insert significantly more to accelerate their spending.

- Elder Rifts can be run solo or with up to four players via matchmaking. - Cross-platform play is supported across PC and mobile devices, but characters are strictly locked to individual servers with zero transfer options. - Grinding Elder Rifts at optimal legendary loot drop rates costs roughly £240 per hour assuming a five-minute completion pace. - The rift modification menu visually presents three crest slots (displaying 0/3), hiding the fact that players can stack far more crests per run.

[20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1200s) The Toxic Social Pressure and the Tangled Spiderweb of 22 Currencies

Using crests in an Elder Rift confers benefits to other party members by boosting their chances of receiving runestones or fading embers—both of which act as intermediate upgrade currencies. However, this communal mechanic introduces a deeply toxic social dynamic. Parties routinely kick players who do not slot crests, viewing non-cresting participants as freeloaders who refuse to pay their way. While a player cannot lose their personal drop potential to someone else, the pressure to spend remains immense.

To grasp how profoundly pay-to-win Diablo Immortal is, one must examine its economic foundation. The game constructs a deliberately convoluted spiderweb of interwoven systems designed specifically to obscure the real-world monetary value of any single upgrade path. Josh Strife Hayes identifies twenty-two distinct currencies and raw materials required across various upgrade loops and merchants:

- **Gold:** Dropped by enemies; used for upgrading basic equipment. - **Eternal Orbs:** Premium buyable cash-shop currency; used to purchase shop items. - **Platinum:** Used for trading on the player-to-player market board; purchased with Eternal Orbs. - **Battle Points:** Used to advance the Battle Pass; acquired via gameplay or bypassed with Eternal Orbs. - **Scrap Materials:** Salvaged from unwanted gear at the blacksmith; used for upgrading items. - **Hilts:** Earned through the Battle Pass; spent on limited weekly/monthly stock at the Hilt Merchant. - **Normal Gems:** Slotted into gear, upgraded by combining lower tiers, bought from the Hilt Merchant, farmed in rifts via normal crests, or crafted at apprentice jewelers. - **Runes:** Dropped in rifts when crests are utilized; Josh notes encountering 21 different rune varieties. - **Garnet, Sapphire, and Beryl:** Three specific gems combined to upgrade the Legacy of the Horadrim (unlocked at level 49 after beating 10 Challenge Rifts). - **Crests:** Minor rift drop enhancers; one free crest is awarded daily, with more available via the Hilt Merchant or Battle Pass. - **Legendary Crests:** Guarantee high-tier drops; free players can purchase only one per month from the Hilt Merchant using in-game currency or earn two via the Battle Pass. - **Sigil of Dominance:** Advances standing within the Immortals endgame faction. - **Enchanted Dust:** Upgrades higher-level items; obtained by salvaging rare equipment. - **Reforging Stones:** Reroll equipment attributes; purchased in the cash shop. - **Aspirant's Keys:** Unlock chests in dungeon sanctums; earned on the Battle Pass. - **Hellfire Scoria:** Refined at the blacksmith to upgrade the Helliquary, granting passive demonic combat buffs. - **Legendary Gem Fragments:** Formed to craft and upgrade legendary gems; acquired from rift runs using crests or the Battle Pass. - **Enigmatic Crystals:** Upgrade secondary slot equipment; acquired from Challenge Rifts and the materials vendor. - **Monster Essence:** Upgrades the Bestiary / Horadric Altar; dropped by monsters in the open world. - **Fading Embers:** Earned by running rifts; used to purchase basic gems and runes. - **Echo Crystals:** Purchased for 500 Platinum each from the crystal merchant; required to rank up high-level normal gems beyond rank 5.

Nearly every one of these twenty-two materials ties back into the Battle Pass, which in turn demands Battle Points, most efficiently farmed through repetitive rift running.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Diablo Immortal Currency Flow accDescr: Diagram illustrating how Eternal Orbs flow through Crests and Rifts into secondary materials and character power.

subgraph CashGate ["Real-Money Entry"] Cash["Real Money (£ / $)"] --> Orbs["Eternal Orbs"] end

subgraph RiftEngine ["Rift Mechanics"] Orbs --> LCrests["Legendary Crests"] LCrests --> ERift["Enhanced Elder Rift"] end

subgraph UpgradeWeb ["Character Progression Web"] ERift --> LGems["Legendary Gems"] ERift --> Embers["Fading Embers & Runes"] ERift --> BPoints["Battle Points / Battle Pass"] BPoints --> Mats["Scrap, Dust & Keys"] LGems --> Power["Character Power"] Mats --> Power Embers --> Power end ```

[22:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1362s) The Psychology of Predatory Pack Sizing

Once the economy establishes Legendary Crests as the primary bottleneck, the cash shop employs manipulative pricing psychology to nudge players into large purchases. A single Legendary Crest costs 160 Eternal Orbs, but Blizzard deliberately avoids selling orbs in clean multiples of 160.

The shop offers a baseline pack of 60 orbs (too small for even one crest) and a subsequent tier of 315 orbs. Two Legendary Crests cost 320 orbs, leaving the buyer precisely 5 orbs short. When consumers enter a purchase funnel, they do not weigh the total outlay; they calculate the marginal shortfall required to make the transaction viable. Rather than buying another small pack and ending up with awkward surpluses, players look to the next tier: an 899-orb pack containing 630 orbs. Four Legendary Crests cost 640 orbs, intentionally stranding the player 10 orbs short.

Inevitably, the friction pushes players toward the £22 bundle providing 1,650 orbs. Once in possession of 1,650 orbs, the interface conveniently surfaces a dedicated button allowing players to purchase exactly 10 Legendary Crests for 1,600 orbs in a single click. As Josh Strife Hayes observes of the manipulative sales design: “It's almost like everything is designed to flow into buying that 22 pound orb pack and then spending that on 10 legendary crests.”

[25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1500s) The Hidden 10-Crest Slot and the £240-an-Hour Slot Machine

After purchasing 10 crests, a player entering an Elder Rift initially encounters an interface with only three crest sockets, giving the impression that they can run three fully loaded rifts with one crest remaining. However, the game conceals a monetization trap: the moment three Legendary Crests are inserted, a previously invisible option appears asking if the player wants to add another seven crests for the "maxed Enhanced Elder Rift experience." This feature is entirely hidden until the initial three crests are committed.

Josh Strife Hayes recounts testing the game alongside streamer Callum Upton as entirely free-to-play characters over two days. Progression ground to an excruciating halt around level 35 and worsened approaching level 49. After streaming two straight hours of five-minute Elder Rifts that yielded virtually nothing beyond common gear and a trickle of rare drops, a viewer donated £20 on the condition that Upton purchase and burn 10 Legendary Crests simultaneously.

The contrast was shocking: - A free rift boss kill leaves behind a nearly empty floor with mundane gold, a few white items, and scrap. - The 10-crest run detonates an explosion of loot, showering the ground with multiple Legendary Gems and equipment while Callum and Josh react in genuine disbelief on stream: “What the fuck? How many... Two legendaries. Three. What the... Four. So what? Oh my god!”

For a free player, acquiring 10 Legendary Crests requires roughly five to six months of daily, disciplined engagement (redeeming one per month from the Hilt Merchant and securing the trickle from the free Battle Pass track). Running a 10-crest rift compresses half a year of free-to-play reward potential into a single five-minute run.

Because an Elder Rift takes roughly five minutes, a player can run twelve rifts an hour. Feeding the machine 10 crests every run costs £20 per rift, burning £240 per hour. Despite that astronomical burn rate, top-tier power remains pure RNG. Josh highlights a high-profile streamer who spent $5,000 without receiving a single 5-star Legendary Gem—a figure Josh updates mid-script because the situation deteriorated so quickly: “That streamer has now spent $10,000 and still has no five-star legendary gem.”

[30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1800s) Rifts as Gacha Loot Boxes and the Legal Loophole

Josh explains that many jurisdictions have passed laws requiring games with loot boxes to disclose the exact probability odds of receiving any item inside them. Blizzard neatly sidesteps these transparency mandates through the design of Elder Rifts. An Elder Rift is functionally a loot box wrapped in a brief layer of combat. Because rifts feature a completion timer, clearing one technically demands a baseline level of player skill. That thin veneer of gameplay means the rift does not legally qualify as pure gambling, exempting *Diablo Immortal* from having to publish the drop percentage chances of individual items from boss kills.

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: Rift Loophole Flow accDescr: Diagram showing how Elder Rifts function as an indirect loot box to bypass legal disclosure laws. subgraph Direct ["Direct Loot Box (Legal Disclosure Required)"] A["Pay Real Money / Crest"] --> B["Open Loot Box"] B --> C["Drop Odds Must Be Shown By Law"] end subgraph Immortal ["Diablo Immortal Rift Loophole"] D["Insert 1 to 10 Legendary Crests"] --> E["Timed Rift Gameplay (Skill Buffer)"] E --> F["Boss Defeated / Guaranteed Drop"] F --> G["Odds Hidden Behind Gameplay Step"] E -.->|"Rift Fails"| H["Crests Returned (Never Lost)"] end ```

The presence of gameplay is merely an illusion to dodge regulation. If a player fails a rift while crests are active, the game returns those crests; players never lose their investment on a failed run, guaranteeing that every crest inevitably yields an item drop. The system allows players to insert one, three, or ten crests at once—a design choice borrowed directly from standard gacha mechanics, where pulling single items or batches of ten is an industry staple. Josh stresses that instead of a traditional opening animation, Blizzard has simply substituted five minutes of mob-clearing gameplay to prolong anticipation and heighten the emotional rush of the drop.

> “If you could just put the legendary crests into a box, they would have to tell you.”

- Crests serve as literal keys to loot boxes, while the rift functions as the process of unlocking them. - Because a gameplay layer sits between the payment and the reward, *Diablo Immortal* legally avoids classifying rifts as loot boxes or publishing individual drop rates. - Failing a rift refunds all active crests, ensuring that a paid crest always translates directly into a guaranteed reward drop.

---

[31:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1897s) The Battle Pass and the Illusion of "Not Buying Power"

Finishing rifts awards Battle Points, feeding directly into *Diablo Immortal*’s Battle Pass. This feature presents two simultaneous tracks: the Free track and the paid Empowered track. By displaying both side by side, every free milestone achieved serves as an active visual reminder of the premium rewards being left on the table. The basic Empowered Battle Pass costs £4.99 and includes cosmetics, while the Collector’s Empowered Battle Pass costs £13, granting additional cosmetics alongside an immediate 10-rank skip.

Blizzard developers have repeatedly asserted that players cannot directly buy character power or gear in *Diablo Immortal*, relying on technicalities like inserting intermediate currencies (such as buying Eternal Orbs to purchase Legendary Crests to run rifts). Josh points out the absurdity of this claim through the Battle Pass: the reward at Rank 10 is a Legendary off-hand weapon. Purchasing the Collector’s pass skips the player straight to Rank 10, delivering the Legendary weapon immediately. Blizzard can claim this is not paying for gear because the off-hand weapon also sits on the free track, arguing players are merely paying for a boost to an item available to everyone.

Furthermore, players do not even need to earn Battle Points naturally. By clicking "rank up," anyone can pour real-money Eternal Orbs into the pass to skip directly to maximum level. Looking at his own account, Josh notes that with 27 ranks left to finish Season 1, maxing out the pass instantly would require 4,050 orbs—equating to an expenditure of over £65 just to bypass the remaining grind before the season expires and FOMO sets in.

> “You can pay to boost to get it instantly, but they will argue that's not what you're paying for.”

- **Empowered Battle Pass:** £4.99; unlocks the secondary reward track and cosmetic items. - **Collector’s Empowered Pass:** £13; includes cosmetic perks and skips 10 ranks instantly, granting the Rank 10 Legendary off-hand weapon on day one. - **Direct Tier Buying:** Players can purchase Battle Pass ranks directly with Eternal Orbs; skipping 27 ranks requires 4,050 orbs (over £65).

---

[34:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2050s) The Boon of Plenty: Exploitative Cumulative Logins

The monetization deepens with the Boon of Plenty, a 30-day subscription pass priced at £8.99 ($8.99). Marketed as a daily login reward system with quality-of-life perks—such as expanded inventory slots and remote market board access—the true malice lies in its fine print. Players can stack up to three purchases (90 days) at once. Daily gifts can only be claimed on the specific day a player logs in while the boon is active; if a player skips logging in during the week, those missed rewards do not accumulate in a queue and are permanently forfeited.

The most predatory mechanic involves the extra cumulative login rewards. The game distributes these tier milestones at intervals of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 cumulative login days. Instead of spacing rewards evenly, Blizzard placed a single Legendary Crest at days 5, 10, and 15, a Legendary item and Legendary Gem at days 20 and 25, and two Legendary Crests at the final milestone: Day 30. Crucially, this tracker relies on cumulative days, not consecutive days, but rewards can only be collected while a Boon of Plenty remains actively running.

If a player buys a 30-day Boon and misses even a single login day, they will reach day 29 of the tracker when their 30-day subscription timer expires. The high-value Day 30 reward—the two Legendary Crests—is frozen just out of reach. To log in one more time and claim the final reward they already paid for, the player is forced to spend another £8.99 on a fresh 30-day Boon of Plenty. Josh breaks down how this system transforms a transaction into an ongoing psychological trap.

> “When I say Diablo Immortal is not a product to be sold, it is a process to be involved in, this is exactly what I mean.”

> “Don't think of the Boon of Plenty as the rewards it shows you. Think of it as you are paying for the privilege for your days to count toward cumulative rewards.”

> “This is quite simply one of the most abusively designed systems I've ever seen in a game.”

---

[36:45](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2205s) Prodigy's Path, the $110k Narrative, and Per-Character Locking

Reaching character level 45 unlocks yet another monetization track known as Prodigy's Path. Structured like a permanent Battle Pass tied to account progression, it grants rewards every five character levels up to level 60, after which it pays out every five Paragon levels up to Paragon 85. Just like the seasonal Battle Pass, it contains an adjacent paid premium path, costing £18 to unlock.

Josh turns his attention to the widely circulated claim that maxing out a single character in *Diablo Immortal* costs $110,000. Gaming news publications attributed this figure to YouTuber Bellular, sensationalizing the number across headlines. In reality, Bellular never claimed to have definitively calculated the exact price tag; his video merely discussed a theoretical mathematical model originally posted by a Reddit user. Josh quotes Bellular’s own response to the media frenzy:

> “We talked about a claim a redditor made, you journos picked that up, claimed we said it and then spread it across the internet.”

Regardless of whether the true maximum figure lands slightly above or below that estimate, upgrading all six equipped Legendary Gems requires an astronomical amount of resources. Because upgrading high-tier gems demands sacrificing duplicate gems of equivalent rank, the material requirements and associated financial costs scale exponentially.

The final insult in *Diablo Immortal*’s monetization architecture is that virtually every system is character-bound rather than account-wide. The Battle Pass, the premium Empowered upgrade, battle pass rank progress, Prodigy's Path, the Horadric Altar progression, the Monstrous Essence stash, market board Platinum, in-game Gold, and regular and Legendary Crests are locked exclusively to the single character that earned or bought them. Even cosmetic outfits—often costing £20 or more—are character-bound. An account with alternate characters must purchase each system, pass, and cosmetic entirely from scratch.

> “If you want to have multiple characters, you will be paying for all of this for all of them, and that includes cosmetics.”

- **Prodigy's Path:** Unlocks at level 45; awards prizes every 5 levels and every 5 Paragon levels up to Paragon 85, with an £18 premium track. - **The $110,000 Figure:** Sourced from a Reddit thread analyzing gem upgrade mathematics, not originated as a factual claim by Bellular as gaming journalists reported. - **Per-Character Restrictions:** The Battle Pass, Prodigy’s Path, Legendary Crests, currencies, and cosmetics must be repurchased separately on every individual character.

[40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2400s) The Core Contradiction: Fun Gameplay Versus Insidious Monetization

Frustrated players responded to the game's aggressive systems by review-bombing it across aggregator sites, dragging its Metacritic user score down to a rock-bottom 0.5 and cementing it as the lowest-rated title in Blizzard's entire history. Yet consumer outrage proved completely divorced from financial reality, as the game pulled in six million dollars within its first few days on the market. Reflecting on his own hands-on time and deep dive into the underlying architecture, Josh Strife Hayes observes that two seemingly irreconcilable realities coexist in the title. On a mechanical level, the moment-to-moment experience is legitimately a blast: combat is snappy, boss encounters are visually spectacular, class synergies feel rewarding, and the way legendary gear and item sets mutate individual skills allows for an impressive array of viable, interesting builds. Both solo runs and cooperative party play are thoroughly entertaining for someone equipped with enough financial discipline to resist the paywalls.

Beneath that polished surface, however, sits an experience engineered from its very foundation to exploit the user base. Hayes stresses that acknowledging the core mechanical competence of the game does not diminish how deeply compromised its business model is.

As Josh Strife Hayes observes: > “Diablo Immortal is an extremely fun game to play.”

Yet he immediately qualifies that compliment by noting: > “It is indeed fun, but it is also insidiously developed from the ground up.”

- Metacritic user score plunged to 0.5, marking Blizzard's lowest-rated game of all time. - Generated $6,000,000 in revenue in just its first few days of launch despite community backlash. - Delivers strong combat mechanics, stylish boss encounters, rewarding class synergies, and deep build variety via skill-altering legendary items.

---

[40:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2457s) Turning Your Brain Off and the Role of Gaming Creators

When critics highlight these predatory mechanics, a frequent counterargument from casual players is that one should simply "turn your brain off and play." While Hayes understands the appeal of relaxing to sensory stimulation like flashy visuals and crunching sound effects, he explains that for many players, the real joy of an action RPG lies specifically in engaging their intellect. Deep satisfaction comes from dissecting the puzzle of build variety, optimizing gear synergies, experimenting with group team compositions, and min-maxing stats. In *Diablo Immortal*, however, attempting to solve that mechanical puzzle logically inevitably exposes the game's trapdoor: no matter what gameplay question you ask about how to progress, refine, or optimize your character, the ultimate solution is invariably swiping your credit card.

Hayes clarifies that calling out this architecture is not an attack on the everyday players who are genuinely enjoying the title. Validating their enjoyment, he stresses that no critic wants players to stop having fun; the outrage exists because players deserve far better treatment from the industry. The responsibility of game creators and commentators is to hold multi-billion-dollar publishers accountable so that development priorities shift back toward creative fun rather than legal acrobatics aimed at evading statutory definitions of gambling.

Josh Strife Hayes summarizes the underlying design reality: > “I enjoy having to engage my brain to beat a game, but if you do that with Diablo Immortal, you will ask yourself lots of questions, and the answer to every question is the credit card.”

Speaking directly to the audience about why critics speak up, he adds: > “We want the game industry to treat you better.”

```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: The Diablo Immortal Progression Trap accDescr: Flowchart illustrating how engaging with character optimization leads directly to monetization.

subgraph Gameplay ["Player Engagement"] A["Engage Brain & Analyze Game Systems"] --> B["Explore Min-Maxing & Build Synergies"] B --> C["Encounter Progression & Stat Hurdles"] end

subgraph Solution ["The Built-in Answer"] C --> D["Ask How to Maximize Power"] D --> E["The Credit Card"] end ```

---

[42:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2527s) Blizzard's Broken Values and the Real "Rising Evil"

The regulatory consequences of these design choices are already tangible, with the game banned outright in Belgium and the Netherlands for violating European gambling statutes. Looking past statutory law to Blizzard’s own internal standards, Hayes scrutinizes the company's public "What We Stand For" mission statements on their corporate website, focusing on two specific core pillars: *Gameplay First* and *Lead Responsibly*. While *Gameplay First* pledges that Blizzard's job is to make games as fun as possible for the widest possible audience, Hayes argues the game was calculated only to be as fun as strictly necessary to retain players before funneling them into monetization channels. Similarly, the *Lead Responsibly* pledge claims a commitment to making ethical decisions with players always kept in mind.

Quoting gaming journalist Paul Tassie from *Forbes*, Hayes highlights that *Diablo Immortal* is arguably ten times worse than *Genshin Impact*, pushing microtransactions beyond the already aggressive norms of the mobile space. Hayes concludes that the title is fundamentally a premier gameplay experience ruined by an infestation of predatory financial hooks wrapped in attractive graphics. Echoing the dramatic narrative warning delivered during the game's prologue cutscene about rallying against a looming threat, Hayes turns the camera back on the publisher itself, framing corporate greed as the real adversary players must confront together.

Scrutinizing Blizzard's corporate motto, Josh Strife Hayes states: > “I do not believe Diablo Immortal is designed to be as fun as possible; I believe it's been designed to be as fun as it needs to be to keep people playing and then monetized.”

Calling out the subversion of Blizzard's ethical claims, he notes: > “I cannot believe that decisions were made with the players in mind—unless you replace the 'L' with a silent dollar sign.”

Delivering his concluding verdict, Hayes reflects on the story's introductory warning: > “We as players do need to stand together against the rising evil... that rising evil, Blizzard, is you.”

- Blocked from release in Belgium and the Netherlands due to national anti-gambling legislation. - *Forbes* critic Paul Tassie concluded that the game's monetization is ten times worse than *Genshin Impact*, exceeding conventional mobile industry exploitation. - Directly breaches Blizzard’s public corporate values of "Gameplay First" and "Lead Responsibly."

## Notable quotes > [40:57](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2457s) I enjoy having to engage my brain to beat a game, but if you do that with Diablo Immortal, you will ask yourself lots of questions, and the answer to every question is the credit card. — Josh Strife Hayes

> [42:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2527s) I do not believe Diablo Immortal is designed to be as fun as possible; I believe it's been designed to be as fun as it needs to be to keep people playing and then monetized. — Josh Strife Hayes

> [42:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2527s) We as players do need to stand together against the rising evil... that rising evil, Blizzard, is you. — Josh Strife Hayes

> [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=600s) Diablo Immortal is a mobile game and is designed to build habits to create attachment and to encourage daily replay. — Josh Strife Hayes

## Mentioned Diablo Immortal, Blizzard Entertainment, NetEase, Josh Strife Hayes, Callum Upton, Bellular, Paul Tassie, Wyatt Cheng, Adam Fletcher, MrGM, Diablo III, Diablo IV, Genshin Impact, World of Warcraft, Forbes, Metacritic, Messiah engine, Havok engine

## Video description Addendum: Legendary Crests are even worse than we thought: https://youtu.be/YF--ytWn8mU

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/joshstrifehayes Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/joshstrifehayes Discord: https://discord.gg/GM2sCUX Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/joshstrifehayes Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/joshstrifehayes

#####

Hello friend, stay a while and listen.

Diablo Immortal is a mobile and PC game based on Blizzard's long running Diablo series, it's basically a gacha game with a Diablo skin, it's undeniably fun, but the monetisation, is something else.

If you're not playing it, why not? Don't you guys have phones?

Thanks to the Patreon supporters and Twitch subs who keep the channel alive.

[Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs)

中文简报

《暗黑破坏神：不朽》的不道德设计 Josh Strife Hayes 对《暗黑破坏神：不朽》进行了深入剖析，将其反应灵敏的动作角色扮演战斗与极具侵略性、剥削性的系统网络进行了对比。Hayes 详述了 22 种各异的货币、多层级的现金商城礼包、每日登录要求以及不朽秘境如何相互配合，将玩家一步步引向真实货币消费。他阐明，秘境结构犹如一个带有操作缓冲的法律漏洞，旨在规避法定的开箱监管，而要达到最佳效率，每小时大约需要花费 240 英镑。在谈及暴雪的企业价值观时，Hayes 认为该发行商将真正的乐趣和道德设计置于次要地位，打造出了具有侵害性的变现流程，使企业的贪婪成为了玩家所面临的真正“升腾的黑暗”。《暗黑破坏神：不朽》建立在一套极具侵略性的变现架构之上，可将免费玩家长达 6 个月的苦练转化为一次仅耗时 3 分钟、价值 20 英镑的消费。 (0:00) 因违反欧洲法定赌博监管规定，该游戏在比利时和荷兰遭到了先发制人的禁售。 (0:00) 游戏内经济采用了 22 种各异的货币和材料，蓄意用于掩盖提升角色战力所需的真实法币成本。 (20:00) 不朽秘境利用浅层的玩法操作在法律层面绕过开箱透明度法规，尽管若要以最高奖励效率运行，每小时的开销可高达 240 英镑。 (30:00) 尽管 Metacritic 用户评分跌至 0.5 分——创下暴雪历史新低——该游戏仍在上线后数天内斩获了 600 万美元的收入。 (40:00)

Reading summary

Josh Strife Hayes argues that Diablo Immortal is a mechanically engaging action RPG undermined by an aggressively exploitative monetization architecture designed to manipulate player psychology and extract continuous spending. Mechanical Competence Clouded by Deliberate Progression Walls (40:00) On a moment-to-moment gameplay level, Diablo Immortal offers responsive combat, impactful skill customization, and engaging multiplayer encounters. The title replicates the weight and feel of Diablo III despite running on NetEase's proprietary Messiah engine, featuring rewarding class synergies and varied build options enabled by legendary gear. However, this polished gameplay serves to hook players before confronting them with severe structural friction. While early progression is brisk and automated, progression slows dramatically around level 35 and hits another steep wall approaching level 49. Hayes observes that while casual engagement offers sensory fun, attempting to solve character progression analytically reveals that optimization is fundamentally gated behind real-money transactions. Obfuscation and Currency Traps in Elder Rifts (20:00) To obscure the real-world value of character upgrades, the game implements a convoluted economy spanning twenty-two distinct currencies and materials. Character progression relies heavily on socketing Legendary Crests into Elder Rifts to modify drop tables. When five-minute rifts are run at maximum efficiency with ten crests, the spending burn rate reaches approximately £240 per hour. Blizzard further deploys pack-sizing friction to push spending upward. Because Legendary Crests cost 160 Eternal Orbs each, bundles are sized in awkward tiers—such as 315 or 630 orbs—leaving buyers intentionally short of buying two or four crests. This friction steers users toward the £22 bundle of 1,650 orbs. Furthermore, the rift interface initially displays only three crest slots, hiding an option to insert an additional seven crests until the first three are already committed. Gacha Mechanics and Legal Workarounds (30:00) Hayes contends that Elder Rifts operate functionally as loot boxes engineered to circumvent statutory transparency mandates. In jurisdictions requiring disclosure of item drop rates for paid loot containers, Diablo Immortal avoids compliance because players must complete a timed combat challenge to claim their rewards. Hayes notes this gameplay barrier is purely technical: failing a rift refunds all inserted crests, guaranteeing that paid investments are never lost and will inevitably produce a randomized payout. Despite heavy spending, high-tier rewards remain constrained by low probability. Hayes highlights a content creator who invested $10,000 into the system without receiving a single 5-star Legendary Gem. While media outlets sensationalized a claim that fully maxing a character costs $110,000, Hayes clarifies that YouTuber Bellular was referencing a third-party theoretical Reddit calculation rather than an established empirical maximum. Exploitative Retention Loops and Character Locking (34:10) Beyond randomized drops, the monetization framework relies on coercive subscription structures and character-bound purchases. The Boon of Plenty, a 30-day pass priced at £8.99, requires cumulative daily logins to earn rewards. If a player misses a single day, the 30-day subscription expires on cumulative day 29, leaving the final high-value milestone—two Legendary Crests—unreachable unless the user purchases a second 30-day pass to continue counting days. This friction is compounded by strict character restrictions. Battle passes, the £18 Prodigy's Path progression track, crests, basic currencies, and cosmetics costing £20 or more do not carry across an entire account. Players creating alternate character classes must purchase every system and pass from scratch. Diablo Immortal earned $6 million within its first few days despite crashing to a 0.5 Metacritic user score, while also facing bans in Belgium and the Netherlands under European gambling statutes. Comparing these designs to Blizzard’s corporate pledges of 'Gameplay First' and 'Lead Responsibly,' Hayes concludes that the publisher tailored the game only to be as fun as necessary to retain users while subordinating ethical design to aggressive financial extraction.

精炼阅读摘要

Josh Strife Hayes 认为，《暗黑破坏神：不朽》（Diablo Immortal）虽然拥有扎实有趣的动作角色扮演核心玩法，但其底层却完全建立在极具掠夺性的变现体系之上，通过多层货币、心理诱导与机制规避将游戏体验转变为无休止的消费流程。爽快战斗与移动端移植的体验落差 (5:22) 从纯粹的战斗与操作手感来看，该作在 NetEase 的 Messiah 引擎支持下成功还原了《暗黑破坏神》系列的打击质感，怪物掉落生命球、充能药水与经典装备反馈维持了高节奏的正向激励，职业技能联动与传奇装备改变技能形态的设计也具备足够的构筑深度。然而，与出色的底层玩法相对立的是粗糙的跨平台适配：2022 年 6 月上线的 PC 公测版本保留了大量移动端触控提示（例如“点击屏幕开始”），且存在左键移动与攻击绑定的冲突、滚轮无法滚动分解界面等缺陷。虽然解包发现的脸部追踪相关文件被官方澄清为废弃的表情镜像实验，但诸如无法跨服联机等限制仍显著损害了玩家的基础体验。 22种货币与精细操控的付费漏斗 (20:00) 为了掩盖角色养成的真实金钱成本，游戏设计了错综复杂的经济网络，涵盖金币、永恒之石（Eternal Orbs）、白金币（Platinum）、荣誉（Hilts）以及各类强化材料等共计 22 种专属货币与代币。核心付费卡点集中在强化不朽秘境（Elder Rift）的传奇徽记（Legendary Crests）上。商店在定价包装上刻意制造非对称缺口：单枚传奇徽记售价 160 永恒之石，但基础充值档位为 60 与 315 之石，购买两枚差 5 颗，购买四枚差 10 颗，通过人为制造的边际不足迫使玩家转向 22 英镑（1,650 永恒之石）的高阶礼包以直接兑换 10 枚徽记。以玩法掩盖概率的不朽秘境与博彩质疑 (30:00) 不朽秘境本质上是被战斗包装的抽奖箱（Loot Box），暴雪借此绕过了多国要求公示掉落概率的博彩监管法规。由于秘境包含倒计时和怪物击杀要求，通关在形式上需要微量技巧，因而在法律定义上被剥离了纯粹赌博的属性；即便通关失败，系统也会如数退还消耗的徽记，确保付费必然转化为随机装备。在秘境界面中，系统初始仅展示 3 个徽记槽位，但在玩家镶嵌 3 枚后便会触发隐藏的 7 槽位选项。零氪玩家需要约 5 至 6 个月才能通过日常与通行证积累 10 枚传奇徽记，而付费玩家只需 20 英镑即可在 5 分钟内完成一次满载运行，换算成最高效率的刷本成本高达每小时 240 英镑。即便投入巨资，高阶 5 星传奇宝石的掉落依然受制于纯粹概率，曾有主播投入上万美元仍未获得顶级宝石。捆绑与沉没成本构筑的心理陷阱 (12:30) 游戏将传统买断制“产品”异化为持续索取金钱的“过程”，广泛运用心理诱导维持玩家在线与付费意愿。每日免费礼包被刻意陈列在付费商店深处，强制玩家每天浏览充值条目；通关地下城李奥瑞克入侵后弹出的限时礼包，则利用低门槛破除消费阻力。此外，售价 8.99 英镑的“丰泽恩惠”（Boon of Plenty）月卡机制尤为苛刻：该特权虽提供累计登录奖励，但要求玩家必须在订阅有效期内才能领取对应档位。若玩家在 30 天内漏登 1 天，第 30 天最具价值的双传奇徽记奖励将被冻结，迫使玩家为了挽回已付出的沉没成本而续费下一期月卡。同时，战斗通行证、先驱之路以及耗资昂贵的外观装扮均被锁定在单角色上，同账号小号必须完全重新付费。偏离核心准则与社区评价的两极分化 (40:00) 面对高压的变现设计，玩家社区与评测体系呈现出极端分裂。游戏在 Metacritic 上的用户评分跌至 0.5 分的历史低点，因触犯欧洲博彩法律而在比利时与荷兰被直接禁止发行；但与此同时，该作上线数日内便斩获 600 万美元收入。《福布斯》评论员 Paul Tassie 甚至直言其变现机制比《原神》（Genshin Impact）严重十倍。针对休闲玩家“不花钱也能玩得开心”的辩护，Hayes 指出角色扮演游戏的核心乐趣在于调动心智去钻研属性搭配与构筑优化，而在本作中，任何提升实力的终极答案最终都指向刷信用卡。这种将盈利凌驾于体验之上的做法，被认为直接背离了暴雪官方公开宣称的“游戏第一”（Gameplay First）与“负责任地领导”（Lead Responsibly）的企业核心价值观。 Josh Strife Hayes 总结指出，《暗黑破坏神：不朽》的悲剧在于它本质上是一款底子优秀的好游戏，却被彻底包裹在掠夺性的变现牢笼之中。批评这款游戏并非否定普通玩家获得的乐趣，而是要求行业巨头停止将游戏设计为恰好维持留存却无法彻底尽兴的消费陷阱，真正回归以玩家为本的创作轨道。

Detailed notes — zh

## Background 该视频由游戏博主 Josh Strife Hayes 于 2022 年 6 月 10 日发布在 YouTube 平台。视频简介将其描述为暴雪经典《暗黑破坏神》系列的手游与 PC 衍生作，直言其本质就是一款套着暗黑皮的抽卡（Gacha）游戏，并指出尽管其核心玩法不可否认十分有趣，但其商业变现模式却极其恶劣，同时用那句著名的“你们难道没有手机吗？”调侃了广大玩家。 ## TL;DR Josh Strife Hayes 深度拆解了《暗黑破坏神：不朽》中极具掠夺性的商业变现设计。游戏虽然具备扎实的战斗手感与职业构筑等优秀底子，却被 22 种令人眼花缭乱的货币、刻意诱导消费的定价陷阱以及利用错失恐惧（FOMO）的机制所绑架。暴雪通过在开箱机制前强塞一段 5 分钟的秘境玩法来规避各国的赌博监管，甚至将单次秘境能塞入 10 颗传奇钥石（相当于免费玩家半年的积累，折合每小时狂烧 240 英镑）的设定隐藏在充值深处。作者深刻批判了暴雪背弃自身“游戏性第一”核心价值观的贪婪行径，呼吁玩家群体联合起来抵制这种反玩家的服务型变现套路。 ## Atmosphere & style 全片充斥着 Josh 标志性的英式幽默、辛辣讽刺与严肃说理相结合的风格。从开场拆解“你们没有手机吗”黑历史时的调侃，到层层扒开复杂货币网与数学陷阱时的冷静严谨，情绪随着不断揭露的恶劣商业策略而逐渐走向沉重与愤怒。观看体验既像是一场酣畅淋漓的消费者权益调查，又带有一种目睹经典厂商道德沦丧的由衷叹息与痛心疾首。 ## Bulletin - [30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1800s) 《暗黑破坏神：不朽》通过在开箱流程前加入约 5 分钟的游戏玩法门槛，在法律层面上规避战利品箱的监管与概率公示，但因触犯欧盟反赌博法规仍在比利时与荷兰遭禁售。 - [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1200s) 游戏构筑了多达 22 种相互嵌套的货币与材料体系，并配合刁钻的礼包定价缺口，彻底掩盖单一系统的实际付费成本，满配秘境单刷成本折合每小时高达 240 英镑。 - [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1500s) 零氪玩家需要积累 5 至 6 个月才能攒齐的 10 枚传奇钥石，付费玩家花费 20 英镑即可在 3 分钟内消耗完毕并触发全屏顶级掉落，将暗黑核心乐趣直接明码标价。 - [36:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2198s) 除永恒之石外，战令、月卡特权、先驱者之路及单套售价 20 英镑的时装全部严格绑定单个角色，玩家切换职业小号必须全额重复购买全部商业化内容。 ## Key takeaways - [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=0s) 现代微交易服务型游戏正在从“一次性付费并提供纯粹乐趣的产品”蜕变为以建立成瘾循环、制造时间门槛和诱导持续课金为核心的“流水线过程”。 - [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=600s) 游戏巧妙利用分散在各界面的红点提示、每日首杀与签到系统，将玩家训练成不断点击菜单领奖的习惯性机器，以此增加接触付费商城的频率。 - [15:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=924s) 地下城通关奖励被异化为“花钱购买专属限时特惠礼包的特权”，通过逐步抬升的礼包价格梯队利用玩家的沉没成本心理诱导持续消费。 - [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1200s) 游戏内设置了多达 22 种货币与原材料，通过环环相扣的网状流向彻底模糊单一系统的真实金钱成本，使玩家无法清晰计算整体支出。 - [22:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1350s) 永恒之石礼包的面额被故意设计成精准缺少 5 颗或 10 颗即可兑换目标钥石的额度，迫使玩家不断向更高档位的充值礼包妥协。 - [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1500s) 不朽秘境在界面初始隐瞒了可以一次性投入 10 枚钥石的机制，直至玩家填满 3 枚后才弹出隐藏选项，与 22 英镑礼包形成闭环诱导。 - [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1500s) 免费玩家与满钥石氪金玩家击杀秘境 Boss 时的爆装差距呈断崖式对比，游戏将暗黑系列最具代表性的全屏爆装快感直接锁死在付费门槛之后。 - [30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1800s) 不朽秘境通过引入必须通关的操作门槛规避了许多国家关于战利品箱公示掉率的法律定义，本质上是换汤不换药的抽卡博彩机制。 - [31:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1897s) 战斗通行证不仅允许直接花钱购买等级，还在特定等级赠送传奇副手武器，直接打破了暴雪宣称“无法花钱直接购买数值装备”的承诺。 - [33:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2023s) “丰饶恩赐”月卡将最为关键的 2 枚传奇钥石放在第 30 天，且仅按有效天数累计；一旦漏签一天导致第 30 天无法领奖，玩家将被迫再续费一个月来赎回奖励。 - [36:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2198s) 游戏内战令、月卡、时装与培养进度均与单一角色死锁，账号内完全不互通，切换小号意味着先前的巨额金钱投入彻底归零。 - [40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2400s) 本作呈现出极度割裂的双重现实：一方面手感与战斗设计扎实有趣，另一方面所有深度数值追求和流派探索的终极解法全部指向了信用卡付费。 - [41:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2490s) 暴雪官方倡导的“游戏性第一”与“负责任地引领”准则在本作的变现设计面前彻底崩塌，其研发重心并非“尽可能好玩”，而是“好玩程度刚好足以留住玩家变现”。 ## Detailed walkthrough ### [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=0s) 暗黑破坏神与微交易：从经典到陷阱的演变《暗黑破坏神：不朽》（Diablo Immortal）呈现出一种极度撕裂的形态：一款建立在可怕根基之上的优秀游戏。玩家只需花费 20 英镑，就能将免费玩家需要辛苦刷怪 6 个月的进度直接浓缩在短短 3 分钟内；甚至即便购买了 30 天的物品礼包，也可能因为机制限制而无法真正拿到所有奖励。游戏内置了 22 种令人眼花缭乱的游戏内货币、多层随机数生成机制（RNG）以及极其严苛的价格结构。更恶劣的是，制作组通过在流程中生硬地塞入一个普通玩法步骤，试图在法律层面上规避关于“开箱”（Loot Box）的监管定义，但其本质与赌博机制完全一致。本作实际上是一款披着《暗黑破坏神》外皮的抽卡（Gacha）游戏，甚至藏有极深的“大户捕鲸”机制（Whale Mechanics）——只有当玩家投入了足够多的金钱、系统确认你已深陷其中时，这套体系才会浮出水面。网络上的游戏评测往往很难做到客观平衡。粉丝渴望赞赏，指出缺陷便会激怒他们；而厌恶者只想看批评，夸奖一句便会招致反感。双方都在寻找印证自身立场的“确认偏误”，而非真正的理性分析。围绕本作的舆论迅速分裂为两大阵营：一方强烈声讨其掠夺性的商城与逼氪手段，指出其因为违反欧盟赌博法规而已在两个国家被预先禁售；另一方则搬出那套老调重弹的说辞：“我玩得很开心，这并没有影响到我。” 游戏行业正经历危险的转变：公司不再把游戏打造成依靠纯粹乐趣吸引玩家购买的产品，而是将其重构为一个让玩家深陷其中、不断付费的成瘾性流水线。《暗黑破坏神》系列对商业化争议并不陌生。当年《暗黑破坏神3》首发时内置了真实现金拍卖行（RMAH），允许玩家用法币交易掉落物。这一举措遭遇了玩家社区的强烈抵制，因为暗黑的核心驱动力就是反复击杀高难度 Boss 追求极品装备，直接花钱买装彻底摧毁了游戏的核心玩法循环以及获得稀有掉落时的成就感，暴雪随后不得不将其移除。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 游戏设计理念的演变对比 accDescr: 对比传统买断制单机游戏与现代微交易服务型游戏的运作机制 subgraph TRAD ["传统买断制游戏模式"] A["一次性购买产品"] --> B["体验趣味核心玩法"] B --> C["获得成就感与满足离开"] end subgraph GAAS ["微交易服务型套路"] D["免费或低门槛准入"] --> E["建立成瘾循环与时间卡点"] E --> F["诱导持续课金/利用FOMO情绪"] F --> E end ``` - 评测中针对该作指出的核心硬伤包括：破坏平衡的付费换取优势（Pay-for-advantage）、鼓励成瘾的每日登录打卡，以及换汤不换药的开箱博彩玩法。 - 视频将深入剖析温和诱导入门（Gentle Onboarding）、限时特惠制造的错失恐惧（FOMO）、多层货币兑换陷阱、可叠加的月卡体系，以及将暗黑核心乐趣——击杀 Boss 爆出满屏暗金装备的快感——直接锁在付费墙后的手段。 - 针对玩家群体中事不关己的冷漠态度，Josh Strife Hayes 尖锐地批评道：“The game supporters reply with a well-rehearsed, well I'm having fun, it hasn't affected me.” - 暴雪自身官网上公开倡导的行为守则和道德准则，在本作处处诱导消费的实际设计面前显得尤为讽刺。 --- ### [05:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=300s) 从“你们没有手机吗”到 PC 移植版的实际体验《暗黑破坏神：不朽》的诞生伴随着游戏史上最著名的灾难公关之一。在 2018 年的暴雪嘉年华（BlizzCon）上，满心期待《暗黑破坏神4》消息的忠实 PC 玩家们，等来的却是一款宣称“完全针对移动端、暂无任何 PC 计划”的手游。台下随之爆发出阵阵嘘声，并引出了主讲人 Wyatt Cheng 那句载入史册的名言：“Do you guys not have phones?”。暴雪嘉年华的受众主要由狂热的 PC 玩家构成，他们花费昂贵门票来到现场，希望看到的是能榨干高端 PC 硬件机能的大作，而不是充斥着移动端微交易和时间门槛的手游套水之作。直到 2022 年 6 月，暴雪终于在移动端推出该作的同时，于 PC 端开启了公开测试。然而 PC 版仅仅是一个粗糙的手游移植版，屏幕上甚至堂而皇之地残留着“点击屏幕开始游戏”（Tap to Play）这类手游 UI 提示。游戏虽然支持跨平台联机，却不支持跨服务器互通。游戏刚发售时，安装包内被玩家挖掘出名为 `face detector.dll` 和 `face analyzer.dll` 的动态链接库文件，一度引发了全网关于游戏会通过手机前置镜头或电脑摄像头追踪面部数据的恐慌。虽然有传言称这是为了满足特定地区的防沉迷人脸识别监管，但首席开发者 Adam Fletcher 澄清道，这只是早期废弃方案的开发残留代码——原本的构想是允许玩家利用摄像头把自己的真实表情映射到角色脸上，后因效果极差而被放弃。游戏的开场过场动画中，泰瑞尔大谈世界石与复苏的邪恶，并宣告：“如果人类想要生存，就必须团结一致直面崛起的黑暗。”然而极具讽刺意味的是，现实中玩家们唯一被激励着团结起来去抗争的，反而是暴雪为这款游戏定制的恶劣定价机制。 - 移植细节十分敷衍，进入游戏选择死灵法师、猎魔人（Demon Hunter）等六大职业后，捏脸滑块虽然丰富，但在实际游玩俯视角下根本看不到角色面部细节。 - PC 端的控制手感暴露出严重的操作逻辑冲突：移动与普通攻击共用鼠标左键，导致玩家在密集的怪堆中试图走位时，经常误触变成站在原地攻击敌人；一旦失去光标位置，角色还会不受控地乱跑。 - 引擎技术转换：正统续作《暗黑破坏神3》采用基于 Havok 定制的自研引擎，而《暗黑破坏神：不朽》则由网易的 Messiah 引擎开发。出人意料的是，网易在打击感、位移手感和技能反馈上还原得相当到位。 - 战斗循环维持了高强度的动态节奏：敌人击杀后会掉落红色的生命宝珠、蓝色的法力宝珠以及提高移速或闪电伤害的增益光球，搭配击杀即可充能的 3 瓶生命药剂，鼓励玩家持续进行高进攻性的砍杀。 - 当玩家跟随主线推进至沃萨姆（Wertham）小镇并踏入教堂，重逢老朋友狄卡·凯恩（Deckard Cain）时，那句熟悉的台词让老玩家感慨万千；但恶魔低语的威吓却敌不过微交易机制带来的绝望感。针对恶魔在传送门后那句“在绝望中哭泣吧”，Josh Strife Hayes 调侃道：“Trust me, mate, once I explain the monetization, you definitely will.” ### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=600s) 首次付费诱惑与手游的“习惯养成”设计陷阱在击败恶魔守卫后，玩家找到了世界之石碎片（Worldstone Shard）。Josh Strife Hayes 戏称这些碎片是地狱极度渴求的“魔法国王麦高芬（MacGuffins）”，功能就像恶魔电池一样，而鉴于常规电池不能随手扔进普通垃圾桶，主角一行人必须踏上寻找负责任方式销毁它们的旅程。迪卡·凯恩（Deckard Cain）此时告知众人，幕后黑手正是恶魔斯卡恩（Skarn）。随着地图引导教程结束，游戏立刻跳出了第一次氪金提示：“嘿，想花 89 便士买点永恒宝珠（Orbs）和一个武器皮肤吗？”Josh 决定全程记录游戏给玩家提供花钱机会的每一次弹窗，而这正是第一起。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 手游习惯养成与多重奖励追踪机制 accDescr: 展示各种每日签到、首杀与区域成就如何分散在不同UI并通过红点强迫玩家不断点开菜单领奖 subgraph S1["每日激励与追踪系统"] A["每日首杀奖励"] B["每日签到礼包"] C["悬赏任务 (8次/天)"] end subgraph S2["进度与成就追踪"] D["区域成就与图鉴"] E["战令与晋升路径"] F["副本与击杀里程碑"] end subgraph S3["行为闭环"] G["各异的独立UI界面"] H["右上方小红点提示"] I["陷入无尽的点菜单循环"] end S1 --> G S2 --> G G --> H H --> I ``` 随后玩家接取任务，界面左侧会出现任务列表，点击即可生成一条闪烁的脚印路径提供指引；当探索进度达到一定程度时，还会解锁自动寻路系统，角色会自动奔跑或传送至最近传送点再跑向目标。紧接着，Josh 发现了“每日首杀奖励”，并借此剖析了《暗黑破坏神：不朽》核心的手游化设计： - 游戏充斥着令人窒息的追踪系统：登录奖励、每日首杀、多条晋级路径（部分免费、部分付费、部分可升级）、各区域成就、怪兽图鉴与地下城通关奖励。 - 所有系统全部分散在截然不同的界面与独立 UI 中。Josh 指出这种混乱完全是有意为之：“你的大脑根本不可能记住所有必须领取的项目，所以游戏会利用按钮右上角闪烁的红宝石小红点提醒你，结果你花在层层菜单里点红点领奖的时间，往往比你在秘境里刷怪的时间还要长。” 在任务途中追赶一名死亡女法师并目睹她将一名平民扔下桥后，Josh 遇到了一名心有余悸的守卫，并幽默地附和守卫的台词：“我们谁在早晨出门时也不会预料到自己会被死亡法师掐住脖子，但有时候你就是运气好碰上了。” 在社交与交互系统方面，PC 端的问题暴露无遗： - 玩家之间无法直接面对面交易，所有交易强制走拍卖行，且必须消耗高级货币“白金币”（Platinum）。 - PC 端的铁匠分解（Salvage）菜单竟然不支持鼠标滚轮上下滚动，玩家必须按住鼠标左键拖拽窗口；同时鼠标右键在当前界面下完全没有任何功能映射。 - 商店界面里塞进了一个“每日免费礼包”。Josh 揭穿这是一种极其阴险的心理营销诡计：“如果你打算给玩家免费的东西，一定要确保他们必须进入有付费道具的货架去领取。这样他们每天都能看到明码标价的充值商品；既然每天都得来这个界面报到，某一天忍不住掏出钱包就只是时间问题。” - 游戏通过邮箱向全员发放了庆祝 3000 万预约的免费外观套装。Josh 直言，手游之所以被各大厂商疯狂推崇，残酷的真相在于“移动游戏市场的体量比 PC 和主机游戏市场加起来还要庞大”。 --- ### [13:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=797s) 绿箭头的奴隶、沉没成本与“服务型过程”的剥削本质主线推进到解锁野外猎杀悬赏（Bounties）系统，玩家每天可从悬赏榜接取 8 个悬赏任务。随着装备掉落频率极高，背包界面引入了标志性的“绿色向上箭头”来提示属性提升。许多老玩家常说“《暗黑破坏神》60 级才刚刚开始”，因为在此之前玩家根本无需阅读装备名称或具体词条，闭着眼睛服从绿色箭头的指令换装即可。然而 Josh 犀利地反驳道：对于零氪免费玩家而言，真正的游戏在 35 级左右就开始了——因为届时升级节奏会突然断崖式下跌，卡住你的进度。在操控武僧解锁极为酷炫的抓钩技能（像个暴力的蜘蛛侠一样在战场横冲直撞）时，游戏内的公共世界频道陷入了 Pay-to-Win（花钱变强）与免费游玩的激烈对喷。Josh 就此全面阐明了自己的立场与批判框架： > “没有人在指望这款游戏必须百分之百免费，也没有人指望任何电子游戏完全不做商业化变现。我们绝不是在声讨《暗黑破坏神：不朽》试图盈利这件事；我们真正抗议的，是它攫取利益的恶劣手段，以及它将不付费玩家逼入的屈辱境地。” ```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: 传统买断制产品与沉浸式内购过程的对比 accDescr: 比较传统买断制产品与暗黑不朽作为持续消费过程在支付模式上的根本区别 subgraph P1["传统游戏产品 (Product)"] direction TB A1["研发完成并发布"] --> B1["单次公平标价售卖"] B1 --> C1["交易彻底终结"] end subgraph P2["不朽设计模型 (Process)"] direction TB A2["下载与持续推进流程"] --> B2["人为设置阻碍与诱导卡点"] B2 --> C2["密集的微交易弹窗"] C2 --> D2["累积金额远超买断单机"] end ``` Josh 对“产品”与“过程”进行了深刻的商业模型辨析： 1. **产品（Product）**：通常制作完成并一次性售出，厂商定下一个自认为合理的价值，玩家买单后交易即告达成。 2. **过程（Process）**：本作将游戏变成了一种“下载、游玩、推进”的循环过程，目的是把玩家尽可能长久地扣留在系统内。单次购买变成了无数个碎片化的微交易节点，每一笔开销看似微不足道，加总起来却会以惊人的速度超越任何全价 3A 大作。 3. **针对“我玩得很开心，管它氪不氪金”言论的反击**：Josh 强调，大家并不反对任何人享受游戏，核心诉求是希望厂商善待玩家。“如果你的态度是‘我不在乎钱，我只在乎游戏本身’，那么请明白，我们正是在呼吁暴雪采取和你一样的态度：把精力放在把游戏做得尽可能有趣上，让玩家因为好玩而自愿掏钱；而不是处心积虑地把趣味度精准控制在‘刚好能留住玩家、但又绝不让你免费玩得太爽’的恶心临界点上。” --- ### [15:24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=924s) 骷髅王副本、沉没成本陷阱与每小时 240 英镑的不朽秘境账单主线杀入经典副本击败李奥瑞克王（King Leoric）后，伴随着“不杀李奥瑞克就不算真正的暗黑”这句名梗，商城正式解锁了战斗通行证（Battle Pass）与丰裕赐福（Boon of Plenty）。在副本通关结算的瞬间，屏幕上赫然弹出了“疯王裂隙礼包”（Mad King's Breach bundle）的专属限时特惠。 Josh 揭露了地下城通关礼包背后的沉没成本陷阱（Sunk Cost Fallacy）： - 玩家通关地下城的“奖励”，居然是“花钱购买礼包的特权”。 - 几乎每一个地下城打完都会弹出一个专属礼包，且价格梯队逐步抬高。打完第一个本可能只需要 89 便士，一旦玩家花了这 89 便士，就踏入了心理层面的投资陷阱。后续礼包不仅越来越贵，打折力度也大幅缩水，但由于此前已经投了钱，玩家为了不让前面的投入“贬值”，往往会硬着头皮继续买单。 - 借用推特用户 MrGM 的讽刺梗图：试想一下，如果玩家第一次打完《魔兽世界》的地下城，系统给你的通关奖励是“付费解锁额外装备的权利”，玩家群体会掀起怎样的风暴？打完随后毫无记忆点的女巫莱瑟斯（Lethes）后，Josh 吐槽暗黑的故事早已退化成了背景噪音和舞台布景：“游戏总是让你结识一个 NPC，一起做 10 分钟任务，然后看他为了大义悲壮牺牲。剧情逼着你感动流泪，而我心里只有一句：哥们儿，我总共才认识你十分钟，我能记住你的名字唯一的原因就是它现在正顶在你垂死的脑门上。” 游戏随后解锁了传奇宝石打造与核心玩法——不朽秘境（Elder Rifts），这也是本作最大的吞金黑洞。Josh 给出了残酷的成本数学模型： | 秘境参数 | 机制与具体数值指标 | |:--- |:--- | | **单局耗时** | 约 5 分钟完成一次通关与重置循环 | | **最高效率刷宝成本** | 若追求顶级掉落收益，折合每小时需花费约 **£240 英镑** | | **跨服限制** | 仅支持跨平台联机（PC/移动端），**不支持跨服务器联机与角色转移**（好友选错服务器只能彻底重练） | | **核心循环机制** | 倒计时沙漏从左向右移动，击杀小怪积攒进度条，填满后召唤秘境 Boss，限时击杀收割战利品 | | **不朽钥石（Crests）界面假象** | 界面初始仅显示 3 个空白插槽（0/3），极具误导性地让玩家以为单人上限是 3 枚，但后续其实藏有允许塞入更多钥石的深层充值暗格 | 不朽钥石不仅能确保为玩家兜底掉落传奇宝石，还会为整个小队提供微量属性加成，而这正是暴雪构筑整个数值变现帝国最核心的基石。 ### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1200s) 22 种货币与材料编织的“蜘蛛网” 不朽秘境中使用不朽钥石不仅能提升个人收益，还会惠及组队队友，增加他们获取符文或渐熄之烬（用于兑换中级强化材料）的几率。然而，这种机制在玩家群体中催生了一种极为恶劣的恶性风气：部分队伍会直接踢出不使用钥石的玩家，因为队友认为这些“不带钥石”的白嫖玩家是在白蹭队伍福利、没有尽到付出成本的义务。为了让人理解这种 Pay-to-Win（花钱变强）机制究竟有多阴险，Josh 深入拆解了支撑起整套付费体系的地基——一个错综复杂、相互咬合的系统之网。整套经济系统被设计得像一张巨大的蜘蛛网，其核心目的就是彻底掩盖任何单一系统的真实金钱成本。玩家根本找不到清晰的起点。Josh 梳理了自己在《暗黑破坏神：不朽》中亲身体验到的整整 22 种不同的货币与原材料： ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 复杂货币网络与钥石消耗流向 accDescr: 展示现实金钱如何通过多层货币包装流向不朽秘境并反哺战令系统 subgraph CashIn ["真实付费转化"] Cash["真实货币 (£ / $)"] --> Orbs["永恒之石 (Eternal Orbs)"] Orbs --> Plat["白金币 (Platinum)"] Orbs --> Crests["传奇钥石 (Legendary Crests)"] end subgraph Loop ["核心循环与材料产出"] Crests --> Rift["不朽秘境 (Elder Rift)"] Rift --> Gems["传奇宝石 / 宝石碎片"] Rift --> Runes["符文 (21种) / 渐熄之烬"] Rift --> BP["战斗点数 (Battle Points)"] BP --> Pass["先祖之路 (Battle Pass)"] Pass --> Hilts["荣誉 (Hilts)"] end ``` - **金币（Gold）**：击杀敌人掉落，用于装备的基础强化。 - **永恒之石（Eternal Orbs）**：付费充值货币，用于在商城购买各类道具。 - **白金币（Platinum）**：用于集市中玩家之间的交易上架与购买，可用永恒之石兑换。 - **战斗点数（Battle Points）**：用于推进先祖之路进度，也可通过永恒之石直接购买战令等级。 - **废弃材料（Scrap Materials）**：铁匠处分解多余装备获得，用于装备升级。 - **荣誉（Hilts）**：通过推进先祖之路获得，在荣誉商人处兑换每月/每周限购道具。 - **普通宝石（Normal Gems）**：镶嵌并升级非传奇装备插槽，可在荣誉商人处购买、秘境掉落或在学徒珠宝匠处合成。 - **符文（Runes）**：使用钥石通关秘境掉落，目前游戏内多达 21 种不同符文。 - **石榴石、蓝宝石、绿柱石（Garnet, Sapphire, Beryl）**：用于升级赫拉迪姆遗志系统（角色达 49 级且通关挑战秘境 10 层解锁）。 - **普通钥石（Crests）**：略微提升秘境掉落，每天免费赠送 1 颗，荣誉商人处可兑换，战令亦有奖励。 - **传奇钥石（Legendary Crests）**：必定掉落传奇宝石，每月可在荣誉商人处用游戏币兑换 1 颗，战令免费路线赠送。 - **统治印记（Sigil of Dominance）**：提升不朽者阵营的地位与声望。 - **万用材料 / 亡魂之息（Enchanted Dust）**：分解稀有装备获得，用于装备的高阶强化。 - **洗炼石（Reinforcing / Reforge Stones）**：商城购买，用于洗炼重铸装备属性。 - **噬月之钥 / 志士之钥（Aspirant's Keys）**：用于开启宝藏库与地牢中的稀有宝箱，战令中可获取。 - **地狱火熔渣（Hellfire Scoria）**：由铁匠精炼，用于升级地狱魔匣（提供被动数值加成）。 - **传奇宝石碎片（Legendary Gem Fragments）**：秘境掉落或战令获取，用于升级传奇宝石。 - **神秘水晶（Enigmatic Crystals）**：挑战秘境首次通关获得或材料商人处兑换，升级次要装备槽位。 - **怪物精华（Monster Essence）**：野外击杀怪物掉落，用于赫拉迪姆图鉴献祭。 - **回音水晶（Echo Crystals）**：在晶石商人处花费 500 白金币购买，用于突破 5 级以上宝石/符文强化。这 22 种货币和原材料绝大多数都直接与“先祖之路”绑定，而推进先祖之路最有效率的方式正是刷秘境。正如 Josh 所指出的那样：“Now the game itself is a tangled web of interwoven systems which all relate to each other and it's designed that way to hide the actual monetary cost of any single system.”（游戏本身就是一张将各种系统相互交织缠绕的网络，它被设计成这种形态，正是为了掩盖任何单一系统的实际货币成本。） ### [22:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1350s) 定价心理陷阱：永远差几枚的永恒之石当玩家回过头审视传奇钥石的商城定价时，会发现其背后的数学逻辑充满了心理学操控与折磨。在游戏商城中，单颗传奇钥石的固定售价为 160 枚永恒之石。然而，商城所售卖的永恒之石礼包面额却经过了极其阴险的微调：最基础的礼包提供 60 颗宝珠，这显然不够买一颗钥石；下一档是售价 315 颗宝珠的礼包——这个数字极其刁钻，距离购买两颗传奇钥石所需的 320 颗仅仅差了整整 5 颗。游戏设计利用了玩家的沉没成本与心理账户：当玩家决定掏钱时，他们不会去考虑“我总共买了多少”，而是满脑子想着“离下一次最高性价比的购买还差多少”。面对只差 5 颗就能买两枚钥石的窘境，玩家自然会看向下一档包含 630 颗宝珠的 8.99 英镑礼包。表面上看 630 是个随意的数字，但买四颗钥石（160 × 4）恰恰需要 640 颗宝珠，该礼包又偏偏精准地差了 10 颗。 | 礼包价格 / 档位 | 提供永恒之石数量 | 目标钥石购买量 (160石/颗) | 实际缺口 | 心理诱导后果 | |:--- |:--- |:--- |:--- |:--- | | **基础档** | 60 颗 | 1 颗 (需 160) | 差 100 颗 | 无法单次购买，逼迫看更高档 | | **进阶档** | 315 颗 | 2 颗 (需 320) | **仅差 5 颗** | 感觉“只亏一点”，诱导升档 | | **中档 (£8.99)** | 630 颗 | 4 颗 (需 640) | **仅差 10 颗** | 持续挫败，促成一次性购买大包 | | **核心推荐档 (£22)** | 1,650 颗 | 10 颗 (需 1,600) | 多余 50 颗 | 刚好激活一键购买 10 连抽按钮 | 于是，玩家的心理防线一步步被蚕食，最终目光落在了售价 22 英镑、包含 1,650 颗宝珠的礼包上。此时玩家的脑回路已被重构，他们不再觉得自己是一口气花了 22 英镑，而是觉得“我刚才只差 5 颗，后来只差 10 颗”。而一旦玩家充值了这 1,650 颗宝珠，钥石界面会无比贴心地恰好亮起一个“花费 1,600 宝珠购买 10 颗传奇钥石”的一键按钮。这种环环相扣的定价正是被精心策划的掠夺式定价。 ### [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1500s) 隐藏的“拉满10连”与一秒喷射的六个月进度手握 10 颗传奇钥石进入不朽秘境时，玩家最先看到的插槽界面只有 3 个钥石孔位。常规思维会让人以为需要分四次刷完（前三次每次放 3 颗，留 1 颗剩余）。然而，一旦玩家将前 3 个孔位填满传奇钥石，屏幕上会瞬间弹出一个此前从未以任何形式告知过的隐藏选项：“想要额外添加 7 颗钥石以获得极致的强化不朽秘境体验吗？”在这之前，普通玩家根本无法从游戏界面得知单次秘境竟然能够塞进整整 10 颗传奇钥石。这种设定与 22 英镑礼包刚好买 10 颗钥石形成了完美的闭环诱导。 Josh 提到，他和主播 Callum Upton 曾花了两天时间完全以免费玩家（Free-to-Play）的身份测试进度。游戏在 35 级左右升级曲线骤然陡峭，卡级现象极其严重。在一次长达两小时的直播测试中，两人反复刷秘境，平均每把耗时 5 分钟，通关后掉落的只有稀松平常的几件蓝白装和少量稀有黄装。此时有观众通过打赏给 Callum 赠送了 20 英镑，条件是必须用这笔钱购买 10 颗传奇钥石打一把秘境，看看掉落差距究竟有多大。 ```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: 免费玩家与十连氪金秘境单次掉落对比 accDescr: 对比零氪玩家与单次消耗十颗传奇钥石击杀秘境BOSS后的战利品差异 subgraph FreeRun ["免费玩家常规掉落"] direction TB F1["蓝白垃圾装备"] F2["极微量稀有装备 (黄色)"] F3["零传奇宝石"] end subgraph WhaleRun ["10颗传奇钥石单次爆发 (£20)"] direction TB W1["满地高阶装备光柱"] W2["连爆数件传奇装备"] W3["必定产出多颗传奇宝石"] W4["相当于免费玩家 5~6 个月的攒石积累"] end ``` 视频中对比了两种情况下的击杀掉落画面： - **无钥石击杀**：BOSS 倒地后只有可怜巴巴的几件普通垃圾装备，场面冷清。 - **10 传奇钥石击杀**：BOSS 倒地的刹那，装备和传奇光柱如同火山爆发般铺满整个屏幕。直播间里的主播目瞪口呆，爆发出连连惊呼：“两件传奇……三件……等等，第四件？！我的天哪！” Josh 算了一笔极为残酷的时间账：一名普通免费玩家通过每月在荣誉商人处兑换 1 颗、外加免费战令提供 1 颗的极限速度，要攒齐 10 颗传奇钥石需要整整 5 到 6 个月的日常游戏时间。也就是说，这耗资 20 英镑、耗时 5 分钟的一把秘境，瞬间榨取并浓缩了一名免费玩家半年的积累潜力。击杀 BOSS 后的全屏爆装本是《暗黑破坏神》系列的招牌乐趣，但在《暗黑破坏神：不朽》中，这种乐趣每一次的标价是 20 英镑。按 5 分钟通关一把计算，一名玩家每小时能刷 12 把秘境。如果每把都拉满 10 颗钥石，玩家每小时的纯消耗是 240 英镑。更讽刺的是，即便是如此疯狂地氪金，依然无法保证获得心仪的顶级掉落。Josh 援引了当时一位海外主播的真实遭遇：该主播砸了 5,000 美元仍未抽出一颗五星传奇宝石；而在视频剪辑制作的几天后，这个数字已经被刷新到了整整 10,000 美元，依然一无所获。Josh 强调道：“Diablo is known for killing a boss and watching loot explode is quintessential Diablo design, and that exact experience in Diablo Immortal will cost you £20 a time.”（《暗黑破坏神》向来以击杀首领后目睹战利品大喷发而闻名，这是其精髓设计；而在《暗黑破坏神：不朽》中，这同一种体验一次就要耗费你 20 英镑。） - 一场耗时 5 分钟的 10 钥石极限秘境成本为 £20。 - 按每小时刷 12 场计算，持续满钥石秘境的氪金速度高达 £240/小时。 - 某实况主播在实测抽取顶级五星传奇宝石的过程中，累计投入达到 $10,000 仍未出货。 ### [30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1800s) 不朽秘境：巧妙规避开箱管制的“抽卡换皮”机制很多国家和地区的法律均明确规定，电子游戏中的战利品箱（Loot Box）必须明示获取各类物品的概率。然而，《暗黑破坏神：不朽》（Diablo Immortal）通过在开箱动作前插入一段游戏玩法，成功钻了法律漏洞。不朽秘境（Elder Rifts）本质上就是披着玩法外皮的开箱：秘境设有倒计时，玩家需要具备一定的基础操作才能通关。正是这一点“技能门槛”，让游戏在法律层面上摆脱了“纯粹赌博”的定性，因而无需在 Boss 掉落界面公示具体物品的掉率。 ```mermaid flowchart LR accTitle: 不朽秘境与传统开箱对比 accDescr: 对比传统战利品箱与暗黑破坏神不朽中不朽秘境的法律定性差异及运作逻辑。 subgraph Legal["传统战利品箱模式（需公示概率）"] A["充值购买钥匙"] --> B["开启战利品箱"] --> C["直接获得随机物品"] end subgraph Rift["不朽秘境模式（规避开箱标签）"] D["传奇不朽钥石"] --> E["投入秘境通关<br/>（5分钟玩法门槛）"] --> F["Boss掉落奖励"] end ``` 这种机制的狡黠之处在于过程设计：玩家如果直接把传奇钥石塞进箱子里，暴雪就必须公布概率；但只要把钥石放进秘境挑战，打通秘境再拿奖励，这一步操作就足以规避审查。即使秘境挑战失败，系统也会原样退还钥石，意味着每一枚钥石最终都必然对应一次开箱。游戏允许玩家单次投入 1 枚、2 枚、3 枚乃至 10 枚钥石，这完全照搬了抽卡游戏（Gacha）中经典的单抽与十连抽机制。正如 Josh Strife Hayes 所评价的那样：“传奇不朽钥石实际上就是战利品箱的钥匙。秘境本身只是走向战利品箱的过程，而这个过程让他们免于公布掉率。”暴雪只是用 5 分钟的游戏流程替换了传统的开箱动画，以此拉长期待感并规避法律责任。 --- ### [31:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1897s) 战令陷阱：付费跳级与“不能花钱买装备”的谎言秘境结算提供的战斗点数（Battle Points）直接与战斗通行证（Battle Pass）挂钩。游戏采用了免费轨与强化轨（Empowered Track）并行的双轨设计，每次玩家领取免费奖励时，旁边未解锁的强化奖励都在时刻制造诱惑。强化版战令售价 4.99 英镑；更昂贵的典藏强化版（Collector's Empowered）售价 13 英镑，购买后可直接提升 10 级进度。暴雪开发团队曾多次信誓旦旦地保证“无法在游戏中直接花钱购买强度或装备”，辩称现实货币只能买到永恒宝珠（Eternal Orbs），再用宝珠买钥石、打秘境获得掉落。但典藏强化战令在升到第 10 级时会奖励一件传奇副手武器，这在事实上构成了花钱买数值。面对质疑，官方又有一套托词：这件传奇武器在免费轨道上同样存在，付费只是“跳过了时间”。更严重的是，战令等级完全允许玩家一键氪金拉满。Josh 亲自展示时，战令等级已经肝到 13 级，还剩 27 级未完成；如果选择直接补满等级，需要消耗 4050 枚永恒宝珠，折合约 65 英镑。第一赛季一旦截止，未达标的玩家面临着沉没成本与即将绝版的焦虑，极易被迫掏出真金白银买等级。 - 强化战斗通行证售价：4.99 英镑（附带部分外观）。 - 典藏强化战斗通行证售价：13 英镑（附带外观并立即直升 10 级）。 - 战令第 10 级核心奖励：传奇副手武器。 - 补满剩余 27 级战令费用：4050 枚永恒宝珠（折合超过 65 英镑）。 --- ### [33:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2023s) 丰饶恩赐：利用 FOMO 机制的恶意契约除战斗通行证外，游戏中还存在另一项更为恶劣的付费进度服务——丰饶恩赐（Boon of Plenty）。这项售价 8.99 英镑的服务表面上是为期 30 天的特权月卡，提供扩充背包栏位、随时随地访问集市等便利，并承诺在 30 天内发放大量每日登录奖励。然而，其细则条款中隐藏着极具掠夺性的设计。该服务最多可一次性叠购 90 天，但其每日赠礼并非自动累积。如果玩家购买后某天未登录，当天的普通钥石直接作废，后续登录绝不会补发。更阴险的是“累计登录天数”（Cumulative Login Days）奖励。系统在第 5、10、15 天奖励单枚传奇钥石，第 20、25 天赠送传奇装备与传奇宝石，而最为丰厚的 2 枚传奇钥石被故意放在第 30 天。这一机制并非连续登录，而是“有效月卡期内的累计天数”。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 丰饶恩赐防断签锁死机制 accDescr: 展示丰饶恩赐如何在第30天奖励处利用累计天数强迫玩家续费月卡。 A["购买 30 天丰饶恩赐 (£8.99)"] --> B{"30 天内是否全勤登录？"} B -- 是 --> C["第 30 天领到 2 枚传奇钥石"] B -- 缺勤 1 天 --> D["月卡到期时仅累计 29 天"] D --> E["最后 2 枚传奇钥石被扣押锁死"] E --> F["必须再充值 £8.99 续费 30 天"] F --> G["次日登录达成第 30 天累计并解锁奖励"] ``` 如果玩家在 30 天的有效期内仅仅漏签了一天，当第 30 天到来时，累计天数只有 29 天。此时月卡到期，第 30 天的那 2 枚传奇钥石便会被系统扣留封存，无法直接领取。若想拿到辛辛苦苦打了 29 天才等来的大奖，玩家唯一的选择就是再花 8.99 英镑续费一个月，激活恩赐状态后再登录一天来凑满第 30 天累计。Josh 对此发出了极为严厉的声讨：“不要把丰饶恩赐看作是它展示给你的那些奖励，而要想成是你花钱购买了一种特权，让你的登录天数能计入累计奖励。你实际上是在花钱让自己卷入一场错失恐惧（FOMO）的运作之中。”这一系统用沉没成本逼迫玩家无限期续约，是极度反玩家的流氓条款。 --- ### [36:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2198s) 先驱者之路与全角色绑定的付费深渊当角色升至 45 级并推进主线后，系统又会弹出另一套付费轨道——先驱者之路（Prodigy's Path）。这实际上是一张没有赛季倒计时的常驻战令：在 60 级满级前每升 5 级提供一次奖励，达到 60 级后则每提升 5 个巅峰等级（Paragon Levels）发放一次奖励。与战令类似，它同样分为免费轨与标价 18 英镑的付费轨。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 角色数据与付费项隔离图 accDescr: 展示暗黑破坏神不朽中各付费系统与角色绑定的隔离关系。 subgraph AccountLevel["战网账号层面"] X["永恒宝珠（唯二通用的付费货币）"] end subgraph CharacterA["角色 A（全部独立充值）"] A1["战斗通行证 / 强化等级"] A2["先驱者之路 (£18)"] A3["传奇宝石 / 宝石升阶素材"] A4["赫拉迪姆图鉴 / 怪物精华"] A5["白金币 / 金币 / 钥石"] A6["已购买的外观时装 (£20)"] end subgraph CharacterB["角色 B（无法继承任何进度）"] B1["需重新购买强化通行证"] B2["需重新购买先驱者之路"] B3["宝石进度从零开始"] B4["无时装共享，需再次全价购买"] end AccountLevel -.-> CharacterA AccountLevel -.-> CharacterB ``` 围绕满级角色的高昂培养成本，网络上曾盛传“需要 11 万美元才能拉满一个角色”的数字。Josh 澄清这一数字是媒体对主播 Bellular 讨论内容的断章取义，Bellular 随后公开推特澄清那只是引述 Reddit 论坛玩家的假说推演。但无论具体数字是几万还是十万美元，角色养成的无底洞本质是无可争议的：全身 6 个传奇宝石槽位互不重复，高星级宝石升阶需要消耗同星级的宝石作为材料，消耗呈指数级暴增。更具毁灭性的是，整套商业化体系中除永恒宝珠外，没有任何资产账号互通。强化通行证、先驱者之路、传奇宝石养成、赫拉迪姆图鉴（Horadric Altar）、怪物精华（Monstrous Essence）、用于集市交易的白金币、常规钥石与传奇钥石，乃至单套售价 20 英镑的外观时装，全部严格限定在单一角色身上。玩家若想练一个新职业小号，所有已经购买的特权、数值和时装必须全额重新付费再买一遍。在这个精心设计的金钱绞肉机里，暴雪把商业变现的贪婪推向了极端。 ### [40:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2400s) 评价崩盘与巨额收益：好玩与险恶并存的双重现实玩家对《暗黑破坏神：不朽》（Diablo Immortal）各种限制和微交易（例如购买的内容仅绑定单个角色）的愤怒，直接引发了大规模的差评轰炸（review-bombing）。该作在 Metacritic 上的玩家评分暴跌至 0.5 分，一举沦为暴雪有史以来评分最低的游戏。然而，商业层面的数据却走向了另一个极端：该游戏在上线短短几天内便斩获了 600 万美元的收入。在亲自体验了几天并深入剖析其底层系统后，Josh Strife Hayes 给出了最终结论：看似截然相反的两件事，在本作身上却完全能够同时成立。从纯粹的游戏性来看，《暗黑破坏神：不朽》确实是一款极具吸引力且好玩的作品。它的战斗手感扎实，Boss 战华丽绚烂，职业之间的技能协同十分契合，传奇装备与套装对技能效果的改动也提供了丰富的流派（build）构筑空间，无论是单刷还是组队刷本都极具乐趣。然而，这种好玩背后却潜藏着巨大的隐患。对于具备极强金钱自控力的人来说尚且可以单纯享受游戏，但该作本质上是从骨子里被险恶设计（insidiously developed）出来的产物。有人劝说“别动脑子、只管玩就行”，去享受声光特效；但对于热衷于钻研数值极限（min-maxing）、构筑多样性与团队搭配的硬核玩家而言，一旦动起脑筋去解构游戏难题，就会发现所有疑问的最终解法都指向了同一件事——刷信用卡。 ```mermaid flowchart TD accTitle: 游戏体验与商业变现的矛盾回路 accDescr: 展示了从优秀玩法吸引玩家，到遭遇深度阻碍，最终指向氪金解锁的循环机制。 subgraph CoreLoop["核心玩法循环"] A["优秀的基础手感与战斗"] --> B["丰富的技能构筑与组队"] B --> C["沉浸于极致数值(Min-Maxing)"] end subgraph Monetization["变现转化设计"] C --> D["遭遇解构难题与深度瓶颈"] D --> E["终极解决方案：信用卡付费"] E --> F["产生巨额营收但口碑崩塌"] end ``` - 该作在 Metacritic 上的玩家评分跌至 0.5 分，成为暴雪历史最差评分游戏。 - 尽管差评如潮，游戏上线最初数日内仍创下了超过 600 万美元的惊人收益。 - 玩家的快乐并非毫无价值，但游戏深层逻辑将所有提升最终归结为现金支付。 ### [41:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2490s) 创作者的责任与暴雪价值观的崩塌面对“我觉得这游戏挺好玩”的玩家辩护，Josh 强调这种快乐完全成立，也没有任何人想要剥夺玩家的乐趣；创作者们发声的根本目的，是希望游戏行业能够善待玩家，把精力投入到提升游戏趣味上，而不是挖空心思去钻法律漏洞、规避关于战利品箱（loot box）的监管定义。该作因为触犯了欧盟的赌博法规，已经在比利时和荷兰遭到禁售。这引出了一个核心叩问：暴雪是否达成了他们自己立下的准则？在暴雪官网的“关于我们”页面列有八项核心价值观，其中最引人注目的两条是“游戏性第一”（Gameplay First）与“负责任地引领”（Lead Responsibly）。在“游戏性第一”一栏中，暴雪写道其职责是“尽可能为更多人打造尽可能好玩的游戏”。但 Josh 指出，本作的设计初衷根本不是“尽可能好玩”，而是“好玩程度刚好足以留住玩家，随后立刻进行变现榨取”。而在“负责任地引领”一栏中，暴雪声称“致力于做出符合商业道德的决定，始终将玩家放在心上，并时刻树立专业与卓越的楷模”。显然，暴雪在本作中的决策并非以“玩家”（players）为中心，而是完全以“付费者”（payers）为导向。 > “我们希望游戏行业能善待你们。我们希望游戏行业能把更多精力放在让游戏变得有趣上，少花点心思去研究如何规避战利品箱的定义。”——Josh Strife Hayes - 游戏因涉嫌违反欧盟反赌博法律，在比利时和荷兰被直接禁止上线。 - 暴雪官方宣言强调“Gameplay First”，但实际产品呈现的是“以盈利为导向的克制型好玩”。 - 官方承诺的“Lead Responsibly”与道德决策，在实际推行的高额微交易面前显得苍白无力。 ### [42:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2567s) 抵御真正的邪恶：玩家群体的共同反抗《福布斯》（Forbes）撰稿人 Paul Tassie 在其专栏文章中直言，“《暗黑破坏神：不朽》比《原神》（Genshin Impact）恶劣十倍”。他在文中指出，即便是横向对比市场上其他移动端游戏，《暗黑破坏神：不朽》在微交易上的激进与贪婪程度也远远超出了同类竞品，性质极其恶劣。归根结底，《暗黑破坏神：不朽》拥有极其出色的底层游玩体验，却被彻底寄生于其上的掠夺性付费系统所摧毁。这些吸血系统披着光鲜亮丽的画皮，不择手段地引诱玩家掏空钱包。 Josh 总结道，一款优秀的游戏理应获得丰厚的商业回报，但绝不该是通过这种无底线的掠夺手段。人们可以赞赏它优秀的部分，但绝不能对这种反玩家的机制视而不见。回顾游戏开场的过场动画，里面呼吁勇士们团结起来抵抗正在崛起的邪恶。Josh 借用这句台词作为全片的收尾与讽刺：玩家们确实需要团结一致，抵抗那股不断蔓延的恶念——而在现实中，那个崛起的恶魔并不是迪亚波罗，而是暴雪自己。 > “《暗黑破坏神：不朽》简而言之就是一个被掠夺性系统彻底寄生并摧毁的优秀游戏体验，这些系统披着光鲜的外衣，专门设计用来引诱你掏出更多金钱。”——Josh Strife Hayes > “所以，我其实非常赞同《暗黑破坏神：不朽》开场动画里的那句话：我们作为玩家，确实需要团结一致，共同对抗那正在崛起的邪恶。而那个崛起的邪恶……暗黑破坏神！正是你们自己。”——Josh Strife Hayes - Paul Tassie（Forbes 撰稿人）评价该作的微交易模型比《原神》还要糟糕十倍。 - 游戏的本质被定性为：被重度掠夺性商业套路绑架的优质游戏骨架。 - 结尾借用游戏叙事发出号召，呼吁玩家群体联合抵制游戏公司日益恶化的反玩家变现设计。 ## Notable quotes > [42:47](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2567s) 《暗黑破坏神：不朽》简而言之就是一个被掠夺性系统彻底寄生并摧毁的优秀游戏体验，这些系统披着光鲜的外衣，专门设计用来引诱你掏出更多金钱。 — Josh Strife Hayes > [13:17](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=797s) 我们绝不是在声讨《暗黑破坏神：不朽》试图盈利这件事；我们真正抗议的，是它攫取利益的恶劣手段，以及它将不付费玩家逼入的屈辱境地。 — Josh Strife Hayes > [41:30](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2490s) 我们希望游戏行业能善待你们。我们希望游戏行业能把更多精力放在让游戏变得有趣上，少花点心思去研究如何规避战利品箱的定义。 — Josh Strife Hayes > [30:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=1800s) 传奇不朽钥石实际上就是战利品箱的钥匙。秘境本身只是走向战利品箱的过程，而这个过程让他们免于公布掉率。 — Josh Strife Hayes > [33:43](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs&t=2023s) 不要把丰饶恩赐看作是它展示给你的那些奖励，而要想成是你花钱购买了一种特权，让你的登录天数能计入累计奖励。你实际上是在花钱让自己卷入一场错失恐惧（FOMO）的运作之中。 — Josh Strife Hayes ## Mentioned Diablo Immortal, Blizzard, NetEase, Josh Strife Hayes, Wyatt Cheng, Adam Fletcher, Callum Upton, Bellular, Paul Tassie, Forbes, Metacritic, Diablo III, Diablo IV, Genshin Impact, World of Warcraft, Tyrael, Deckard Cain, Skarn, King Leoric, Lethes ## Video description Addendum: Legendary Crests are even worse than we thought: https://youtu.be/YF--ytWn8mU Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/joshstrifehayes Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/joshstrifehayes Discord: https://discord.gg/GM2sCUX Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/joshstrifehayes Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/joshstrifehayes ##### Hello friend, stay a while and listen. Diablo Immortal is a mobile and PC game based on Blizzard's long running Diablo series, it's basically a gacha game with a Diablo skin, it's undeniably fun, but the monetisation, is something else. If you're not playing it, why not? Don't you guys have phones? Thanks to the Patreon supporters and Twitch subs who keep the channel alive. [Source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o17lBUZgjTs)

Source quotes

[42:47] Josh Strife Hayes: 《暗黑破坏神：不朽》简而言之就是一个被掠夺性系统彻底寄生并摧毁的优秀游戏体验，这些系统披着光鲜的外衣，专门设计用来引诱你掏出更多金钱。 [13:17] Josh Strife Hayes: 我们绝不是在声讨《暗黑破坏神：不朽》试图盈利这件事；我们真正抗议的，是它攫取利益的恶劣手段，以及它将不付费玩家逼入的屈辱境地。 [41:30] Josh Strife Hayes: 我们希望游戏行业能善待你们。我们希望游戏行业能把更多精力放在让游戏变得有趣上，少花点心思去研究如何规避战利品箱的定义。 [30:00] Josh Strife Hayes: 传奇不朽钥石实际上就是战利品箱的钥匙。秘境本身只是走向战利品箱的过程，而这个过程让他们免于公布掉率。 [33:43] Josh Strife Hayes: 不要把丰饶恩赐看作是它展示给你的那些奖励，而要想成是你花钱购买了一种特权，让你的登录天数能计入累计奖励。你实际上是在花钱让自己卷入一场错失恐惧（FOMO）的运作之中。

Source quotes

[40:57] Josh Strife Hayes: I enjoy having to engage my brain to beat a game, but if you do that with Diablo Immortal, you will ask yourself lots of questions, and the answer to every question is the credit card. [42:07] Josh Strife Hayes: I do not believe Diablo Immortal is designed to be as fun as possible; I believe it's been designed to be as fun as it needs to be to keep people playing and then monetized. [42:07] Josh Strife Hayes: We as players do need to stand together against the rising evil... that rising evil, Blizzard, is you. [10:00] Josh Strife Hayes: Diablo Immortal is a mobile game and is designed to build habits to create attachment and to encourage daily replay.

Original transcript

[0:00] In this video I'm going to show you a great game built on a terrible foundation. I'll show you how you can spend £20 to condense six months' worth of free-to-play farming into three minutes, and how even if you do buy the 30-day item pack, you might not actually get the 30-day item pack. I'll show you the secret mathematical and psychological tricks the game uses to get you to spend money, including abusive pricing structures, multiple layers of RNG, and the 22 different in-game currencies. definition of loot box by adding in a single gameplay step despite being functionally the same process. I'll explain how Diablo Immortal is essentially a gacha game and has hidden whale mechanics you can't even find until you've invested enough money that they are sure they've got you. And then I'll lament over how if you removed all of this it's actually a very good game. Let's start with the basics. Video game critique, especially on the internet, can be a difficult thing to balance. Fans of any game want you to praise it and can become angered when you point out flaws. And people who dislike the game love it when you point out flaws and hate it when you praise it. This is because video game communities contain very passionate people both for and against any game or company and both extreme sides are often reading reviews or watching videos looking for confirmation bias, not actual critique. Most people want to be told what they already strongly believe is correct. The for and against Diablo Immortal camps have already sprung up with some people focusing on the absurd cash shop and others saying you don't need to pay, it's a free game, just don't spend The cash shop critics point out the blatant pay-for-advantage systems and daily login rewards encouraging addictive gameplay patterns, along with the loot box style gameplay so egregious it's already been preemptively banned in two countries for falling foul of the EU gambling laws, and the game supporters reply with a well-rehearsed, well I'm having fun, it hasn't affected me. I'll be discussing the damage this general attitude is doing to the gaming industry as a whole later. hack and slash multiplayer moments absolutely overshadowed by a foundation level insidious monetization system designed to make every aspect of the game funnel the player towards spending an absolutely unacceptable amount of money. But this goes deeper than just one game. So in this video, I'll not only deeply critique Diablo Immortal, but also the behaviors of an industry and how we as players can set the boundaries for what we will and will not accept in relation to monetization. companies are using to turn video games from products you purchase and enjoy because they're designed to be fun into processes they want you to become stuck within and then keep paying for because they're designed to be inviting and then addictive. I'll also be contrasting the design decisions within Diablo Immortal to Blizzard's own code of conduct and ethics on their own website, and we'll see if Diablo Immortal as a game lives up to Blizzard's own self-imposed standards. Grab a drink because this is quite a long video. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. I'm Josh Streifays, and today we're going Immortal. A big thank you to all the supporters on Patreon and Twitch who allow me to remain independent and make videos like this. I'll be looking at the general gameplay, plot, and combat, then into the absolute plethora of monetization tricks the game uses, including gentle onboarding, limited time offers causing fear of missing out, abusive pricing structures, multiple steps of conversion, multiple stacking monthly subs, cumulative login days being required for paid-for rewards, multiple progression tracks, and just straight-up locking the main aspects Diablo is dopamine-spiking loot fountains shooting out of a boss behind a paywall. Now Diablo as a franchise is no stranger to monetization controversy. When Diablo 3 released it had an actual money in-game marketplace. Players could sell their drops or buy drops from other players for actual cash. This was removed relatively quickly after extreme community backlash as players pointed out it was against the spirit of Diablo. The end-game gameplay of Diablo revolves around repeatedly killing high-intensity bosses as they increase in you'd be defeating the main gameplay loop and removing the sense of pride and accomplishment which comes with having those rare drops. Diablo 3 released on PC and console in May of 2012 and six years later in 2018 at Blizzcon players were excited to hear news about Diablo 4. But what they got was Diablo Immortal, a mobile game, and that gave us this absolute classic moment in gaming strictly mobile forever. Are there any-- yeah, the current plan is to be on mobile both Android-- and iOS. We don't have any plans at the moment to do PC. . [5:00] "Do you guys not have phones?" "Yeah, you guys all have." I think it's important to realise BlizzCon is attended by Blizzard's biggest fans, mostly PC gamers. Warcraft, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo and Overwatch have massive PC player bases, so very few of these people were actively excited about a mobile game. The people in that room wanted a game which would push their hardcore gaming PCs to the max, and not be full of traditional mobile microtransactions and time-gating mechanics. In June of 2022, Diablo Immortal released on mobile and went into open beta on PC. The PC version is a port of the mobile game and still features such lines as tap to play. The game does feature cross-platform play, so mobile and PC players can adventure together, provided they're on the same server because it does not have cross-server play. So I downloaded the game on PC and gave it a go. The first warning cry from everyone said, the game can track your face through your phone app or your webcam. Now this rumor began when the installation files were opened up and people found face detector and face analyzer dot DLL. Some people said the game has face tracking capabilities because it's required for release in China to conform to the strict gaming laws. However, the lead dev Adam Fletcher explains there actually leftover files development. Originally, the game would let you recreate your own facial expression on your character by using your own camera. This idea has been abandoned because it was terrible. The intro movie plays, Tyriel talks about the World Stone, some greater evil, and then we get this absolute banger of a line. If humanity is to survive, they must stand together and face the rising darkness. ironic that Diablo Immortal opens with a call for players to rally together against a rising evil, and the main thing it's inspired people to do is come together against its atrocious pricing model. What a meta way to succeed. Get told to tap the screen, because porting mobile games to PC is hard, and then choose a class. Six classes, I'm going with my edgy boy, the Demon Hunter. The customization is actually really nice. We move some sliders. Unfortunately, these do not matter at all, because you'll never look at your own face or any other character's face. We're then on a boat to and it's not terribly acted. "Hm. Gone through hell, you say? I'm in the right place then." "Aye. Follow the road and be on your guard." Unfortunate things happen to travelers in that forest. Movement is WASD or left click. Primary attacking is also left click, but you'll only attack when your cursor is over an enemy. This can mean clicking to move, especially in a crowd of enemies, is a bad idea because you'll end up attacking instead of moving. It also means you'll frequently lose your cursor in the chaos of battle and end up randomly running around or attacking off to the side somewhere while you try and find it again. It also means once you've killed whatever it was you were attacking, running toward that location. Your other skills are bound to the 2, 3 and 4 keys. We'll look at combat later because honestly it's great. If you've never played a Diablo game here's a basic rundown. Demons exist and you'd really rather they didn't. You can realise your dream of a demon free world through the power of friendship and incredible violence. Eventually angels get involved but the power of heaven is nothing compared to the power of one angry man with an axe or a moody guy with some crossbows. One thing I do have to praise the game for is capturing the feeling of created in a customised version of the Havoc engine, while Diablo Immortal is made in NetEase's own Messiah engine. They've managed to capture the feeling of movement, skill use and attack impact spot on. Kill enemies and pick up loot. Annoying, you can't click on an item's nameplate, you have to click on the item itself. Your inventory is the classic Diablo style of a square grid with larger items taking up multiple grid slots. As you fight on, enemies will drop red health orbs or blue mana orbs, sometimes power up orbs like increased speed or lightning damage. Along with three health potions which recharge when you kill enemies. This game design lends itself to fast aggressive combat encountered because you are rewarded for being aggressive so the energy is always high. We make our way to the town of Wertham, get followed through a portal by some demon and told: "My eyes upon you. Weep and despair." Trust me, mate, once I explain the monetization, you definitely will. We head into the chapel and meet our old friend Deckard Cain, so we decide to stay a while and listen. My name is Deckard Cain. I'm a bit of a traveling scholar, one might say. Basically, hell's coming back and we're going to prevent it with the power of crossbows. Fight some cultists to the west and discover sometimes the left mouse button gets stuck down, even if you're not clicking, making your character follow the cursor, possibly lag, but honestly in two days of near constant play, I didn't experience that many connection issues. [10:00] Dragon thing and find a shard of the world stone, magical MacGuffins hell really wants and we need to destroy. Think of them like demonic batteries, and like regular batteries, you shouldn't throw them in the regular bin, so we're on a quest to find a responsible way to dispose of them. Cain tells us the demon we're fighting is called Skarn. This means we're now at threat level midnight, so we set off to destroy more of the shards of the world stone before hell can plug them into more demons. Quick intro video explains the map, and we're sent off to help someone with something, and the game asks, hey, want to spend 89p for some orbs and a weapon skin? I'm going to keep track of every time the game gives me the opportunity to spend money. This is the first. And I'm going to do a deep dive into the currencies and the systems they relate to later on in this video. Once you have a few quests, you'll get the quest list on the left. Click on a quest to select it and you'll see a sparkling footstep path leading you to it. If you're far enough into an area, you'll unlock auto navigation within that area. Using auto navigate will either run or automatically teleport you to the nearest teleport point and then run the rest of the way. I also discover the first kill of the day award so let's rip this band-aid off right now. Diablo Immortal is a mobile game and is designed to build habits to create attachment and to encourage daily replay You have an oppressive number of tracked systems login rewards first kill awards advancement paths some free some paid some upgradable You have achievements and advancements through every single zone and rewards for killing enough monsters and doing enough dungeons And each of these systems is tracked on a different screen with a different UI. And it's made this way by design. You're not meant to be able to remember everything you have to do, so the game can give you these little red gem icons to the top right of buttons to remind you you have something to collect, and you'll often find yourself spending more time in endless menus collecting rewards than you will in an actual rift. We chase down some mage, we watch her throw a dude off a bridge, and then meet this guard who says this. Oh, what a day. Certainly didn't expect to get choked by some death mage when I left the stead this morning. None of us wake up expecting to be choked by a death mage, but sometimes you just get lucky and it happens. To interact with another player, hold Alt and Left Click on them. You can send messages, friend requests, and party invitations, but you cannot directly trade player to player, because trading is done via the auction house and requires the premium currency of platinum to do. Quick PC issue. This is the salvage menu where you turn your unwanted equipment into scrap. The mouse wheel does not move this window. You need to click and drag If you going to release on PC please let us use the scroll wheel Also consider using right click because as it stands right click does absolutely nothing A free daily reward pack accessed via the shop menu. This is a psychological marketing trick. If you're going to give the player something for free, make sure to claim it. They have to access a place where there is paid stuff, because then they will see the paid stuff every day. And if they're returning to this screen for their free daily pack, it's only a matter of time until someone gets tempted to spend money. You're not putting this free pack here because it makes logistical sense. You're putting it here because it's tempting. I then get a free cosmetic set sent to me in the mail. Everyone gets this. It's to celebrate 30 million pre-registrations. 30 million pre-registrations. If you ever wonder why mobile games are so pushed, it's because the horrible truth is the mobile gaming market is bigger than the PC and console gaming market combined. As you progress through the main story you'll unlock Bounties, an open world hunting system. Hunt down certain enemies and get increased rewards for killing them. You can claim eight bounties a day from the bounty board. My current bounty target is Philip so the plan is grab mum kill Phil go to the Winchester have a nice cold pint and wait for all this to blow over I picking up new equipment every few minutes and on the inventory screen there a handy dandy green arrow showing you if a new piece is better than an old piece Many people will tell you that Diablo begins at 60 because until then you'll be finding upgrades so quickly you won't even read the name or look at the stats of any individual bit. You'll just do as the green arrow commands. But if you're a free player I would argue the real game begins around level 35 when the leveling suddenly slows to a crawl, but we'll see more of that later. I unlock the extremely awesome grapple skill, letting me blast around the battlefield like a more violent Spider-Man, and global chat has descended into an argument about pay-to-win versus free-to-play. So while I'm madly grappling around, let me make my stance on this game rather clear. No one has said they expect this game to be 100% free. No one expects any video game to have no way to make money whatsoever. Indeed, if it was a one-time paid game with a cosmetic-only cash shop, I'd be recommending this to everyone. No one has an issue with Diablo Immortal attempting to make money. We know that development time and server hosting costs money. The issue I have is the way it is making it and the position it is putting players into if they don't pay. The game is not a product because a product is usually released, finished, and then sold for the cost the company think it is worth. If that cost is fair, people will pay it and then that process [15:00] is complete. Diablo Immortal is a process itself of downloading, playing and advancing, and it wants players to stay within that process as long as possible, because unlike a product which is sold once, a process can contain many moments it encourages the player to pay. And each individual payment may only be small, but they very quickly add up to greater than the cost of a one-time purchase. When I talk about the payment issues, people respond with a well-rehearsed retort of respond with while I'm having fun Good. We are all glad. No one wants you to stop having fun. What we want is the company to treat you better. If your attitude is "I don't care about the money, I'm just focusing on the game" then please understand we're actually advocating for the company to have the same attitude as you. Focus on making the game as fun as it can be and people will buy it because it's fun. Not because you've designed it to be as close to fun as possible so it keeps players around but not too much fun that they can enjoy it completely without paying. make our games as fun as possible. We're not saying Diablo Immortal shouldn't be monetized. We're saying it shouldn't be abusively monetized. We push on and go and kill Leoric, because it's not a real Diablo game until you've killed Leoric. During this part, I unlock the Battle Pass and the Boon of Plenty in the shop, and when I finish the Leoric dungeon, I'm presented with the exciting opportunity to spend more money to buy the Mad King's Breach bundle. a one-time reward specific to this dungeon. Your reward for finishing a dungeon is the opportunity to spend money. This happens in every dungeon, and you'll notice the costs of the pack slowly increase. Because it's only 89p when you finish one dungeon, that's fine. But once you've spent 89p, you're invested. Which means they can make things more and more expensive until they stop giving you any real discount for buying the dungeon packs. But you're still doing it, because by then, not buying it would be wasting the money you've previously spent. This is effectively the sunk cost fallacy. Twitter user MrGM made this mock-up of a picture. Just imagine if finishing a dungeon for the first time in World of Warcraft rewarded you with the opportunity to spend money to unlock extra rewards. I'm going to come back to this later and fully explain the Battle Pass and Boon of Plenty because when you read the fine print it is even worse than it seems. The demon effect under the glass floor however is awesome and the boss fight itself is great. More story, we kill Lethes, but not really. Who's left, S.U.S.? No one cares, doesn't matter. The story in a Diablo game is background music, it's set dressing. Many times you'll be introduced to a character, go on a quest with them, then watch them die in a heart-wrenching hero's death. They'll sacrifice themselves for a greater cause. And you're expected to care, and I'm thinking, "Mate, I've known you 10 minutes. The only reason I remember your name is because it's above your head while you're dying." We now unlock legendary gem crafting, and this is the system we'll be pouring most of our wallet into later. We now learn about is probably the time to talk about the game's main system, the Elder Rifts, and how they're going to cost you an incredible amount of money to do efficiently. In fact, if you complete one Rift every five minutes and want the best loot from them, you'll be spending around £240 an hour to grind this game. Let me break that down for you. While Diablo Immortal does have a main campaign storyline, and indeed you are required to finish this to unlock the Hell Plus difficulty Elder Rift. An Elder Rift is a procedurally generated dungeon you can enter solo or in a team of up to four. There is a party finding mechanic, but remember, it's cross-platform play, not cross-server. As we discovered when Callum Upton, a fellow YouTuber and good friend of mine, made a character. Currently there is no way to transfer your character from one server to another. You just need to restart. While in a rift you'll see a timer to the left. The little hourglass symbol moves along the bar from left to right. As you kill enemies the bar itself fills up. When the bar is full the boss will spawn. Kill the boss before the timer runs out, get the loot, leave and repeat. This is the absolute core of the PvE Diablo experience. Grind enemies for better equipment to grind enemies better. Adding crests increases the chance higher rarity loot will drop from the boss kill. You can see the potential loot increase as you add crests. Now, seeing as the crest screen shows three empty slots on the right-hand side and shows zero out of three, you'd assume that each player can add up to three crests. Well, no, they can add way more, but it's hidden, and we'll come to that later. as a player always guarantees you a legendary item but it does also give a slight boost to the [20:00] players in your party and increases their chance to receive runestones or fading embers, both intermediate upgrade currencies. This has led to the rather toxic situation of parties kicking players who aren't using crests because they feel those non-cresting players are not paying their way. Using crests always benefits you and sometimes helps the party. You cannot lose your drop potential to another player, but to truly understand the absolute insidious nature of how powerful these pay to win and how much money you can end up spending on them, we need to understand how the other currency systems work because the crests feed into almost everything else. So we need to take a look at the very foundation of the monetization system for context. Now the game itself is a tangled web of interwoven systems which all relate to each other and it's designed that way to hide the actual monetary cost of any single system. Because of this spiderweb design, it's very difficult to find a starting point. So hold on, because this might get complicated, I break it down. I have so far experienced in Diablo Immortal 22 different currencies and raw materials used to feed into various shops and upgrade systems. They are: Gold, dropped from enemies, used in upgrading equipment. Eternal Orbs, premium buyable currency, used for buying things in the shop. Platinum, used in the market board for posting and buying items player to player, bought with Eternal Orbs. Battle Points, used to progress the Battle Pass and earn the Battle Pass or bought directly with Eternal Orbs. Scrap materials used to upgrade items earned from salvaging unneeded equipment at the blacksmith. Hilts spend at the Hilt Merchant on limited monthly or weekly stock earned by progressing the battle pass. Normal gems combined to upgrade non-legendary gems bought from the Hilt Merchant found in rifts when using normal crests and made by combining runes at the apprentice jewellers. Runes dropped in rifts when you are using crests I have so far found 21 different runes. Garnet, Sapphire and Beryl, three gems which all combine to upgrade the legacy of the Haradrim, a system which you unlock once you're level 49 and have completed 10 challenge rifts. Crests improve rift drops slightly. You get one free a day bought from the Hilt Merchant, sometimes earned on the battle pass. buy one a month from the Hilt Merchant using in-game currency or earn two on the battle pass. The Sigil of Dominance advances your Immortal Standing, a higher level endgame faction. Enchanted Dust, an upgrade material used on higher level item upgrades found by salvaging rare equipment. Reinforcing Stones, rerolling attributes on equipment bought in the cash shop. Aspirant's Keys unlock rare chests in dungeons earnable on the battle pass. at the blacksmith. Hellfire Scoria upgrades the Heliquary, a repository of demonic power you add to by defeating demons and provides you passive buffs. Legendary gem fragments which combine into legendary gems found in rifts when crests are used and also sometimes on the battle pass. Enigmatic Crystals upgrades your secondary slot items found in challenge rifts and bought from the materials vendor for scrap pieces. Monster Essence upgrades the Heredric Altar dropped by and used to buy basic gems at the merchants, and echo crystals, bought from the crystal merchant for 500 platinum and used to upgrade runes beyond level 5. So, 22 currencies and upgrade materials, most of them linked directly to the progression of the battle pass, which itself requires battle points, which are farmed most efficiently by completing rifts. So now we can go back and look at legendary crests, and this is where it gets both psychologically and mathematically abusive. are bought in specific pack sizes. A legendary crest costs 160 orbs. The shop sells orbs in packs of 60, or 315. there are higher but let's look at these for now 60 is too few and 315 is only five orbs shy of 320, which is how many we need to afford two legendary crests. This is by design. When a player opens the shop and they've already committed to buying something, the game doesn't want you to consider how much you're buying, but how much you need for the next efficient purchase, because that's always going to be a much lower number. So a player won't only five orbs short of two crests. So they'll look into the larger 899 pack, which has 630 orbs. That may seem like a random number to add, but it's remarkably specific because four legendary crests at 160 orbs [25:00] Each costs 640 orbs, meaning even with that pack you're now 10 short. But that's only 10. You may as well buy the bigger pack, which only costs £22 and gets you 1650 orbs. A player isn't thinking, I just bought 1650. They're thinking, I only need five, and then I only need 10. And once you've bought the 1,650, wouldn't you know it? There's actually a button on the legendary crest screen to buy 10 crests for 1,600 orbs. Super convenient. It's almost like everything is designed to flow into buying that 22 pound orb pack and then spending that on 10 legendary crests. So now you have 10 crests, . This is abusive pricing. Now adding a crest to a rift increases the drops a little and adding a legendary guarantees a decent drop. The shop even explains: "Adding a legendary is guaranteed to reward a legendary gem that can be sold on the market." Now you need platinum for the market but don't worry about that right now. You've got 10 crests. You start a rift and you see three crest slots. This means you'll be able to run three rifts on maxed crests and have one left over, right? Well, no, because if you do put three legendary crests into those slots, a new option appears. An option you will never find until you do this. It asks, hey, Want to add another 7 for the maxed Enhanced Elder Rift experience? There is no way to even find out that you can add 10 legendary crests in-game until you add the first 3. And isn't it convenient that 10 crests can be added in a single run, and the orb pack size that's most convenient psychologically was designed to make you buy 10 crests? But what actually happens if you add 10 crests to a run? Callum Upton and myself spent two days playing this game as free players, seeing how far we could progress without spending any money. And at around level 35, the experience required to level up increases sharply. 49. During a stream, after two hours of Elder Rift runs, averaging about five minutes per run and only seeing a few rare items, a viewer donated Callum £20 on the agreement Callum would spend it on 10 legendary crests and use them. just to see the loot difference. Here's a compilation of boss drops without using any crests. This is the average experience a free player will have when they finish a rift. I'm out. Thank you. And here's what a boss kill looks like when you have 10 legendary crests active. All right, nothing legendary yet, but... What the fuck? How many... Two legendaries. Three. What the... Four. So what? Oh my god! The average free player will be able to earn 10 crests in about five to six months worth of casual play, buying one a month from the Hilt Merchant and earning one from the Free Battle Pass layer. So what you have just seen, using 10 legendary crests on a single run, is essentially six months worth of free player legendary crest loot potential condensed into a single chest. Diablo is known for killing a boss and watching loot explode is quintessential Diablo design, and that exact experience in Diablo Immortal will cost you £20 a time. That rift took us five minutes to complete, meaning you can complete about 12 rifts an hour. If you 10 crest every rift at £20 each, you are spending £240 an hour. And even if you were mad enough to do that, you are not guaranteed the drop you actually want, as this streamer discovered, spending £5 thousand dollars and not ending up with a level five legendary gem. Quick update on that, as writing the script and editing these videos takes a few days and that new story has since changed. That streamer has now spent $10,000 $10,000 and still has no five-star legendary gem. But it gets even more insidious. [30:00] There are laws requiring loot boxes in games to show the odds of any item received in that loot box. What rifts are is essentially just loot boxes with some gameplay before the loot. but that timer means that technically completing a rift does require a base level of skill, and this skill requirement means it's not gambling per se. And because of this very important distinction, Diablo Immortal does not have to list the drop percent chance of any individual item from a boss drop. If you could just put the legendary crests into a box, they would have to tell you. But if you put the crests into a rift attempt, play the rift and then get the box, that single step of intermediate gameplay means they can avoid the loot box label. But if you do fail a rift while the crests are active, those crests are returned to you. You don't lose them, meaning one crest will always ultimately open the effective loot box of a boss kill. Now, it might seem a little bit strange to be able to put one, two, three or ten crests in. is a common trope in gacha games. Being able to draw one or draw ten from a random gacha chance game is a classic design choice. It can actually help to think of Diablo Immortal as a gacha game. They've just replaced the animation of the opening of the box with the five minutes worth of gameplay to really enhance the tension of that drop. Legendary crests are effectively keys to loot boxes. The rift itself is the process of getting to the loot box, and this process means it doesn't have to show you the drop rates. But we're not even close to the final level of monetization, and it's hidden in the awful fine print. Finishing a rift gets you battle points, and these unlock the battle pass system. This is a linear track with rewards unlocked as you advance simultaneously. The Free and the Empowered. Both run at the same time, so whenever you unlock a free reward, you're reminded of what's waiting for you if you were empowered. Unlocking the Empowered track costs £4.99 and comes with some cosmetics. Or you can go for the Collector's Empowered unlock and get not only cosmetics, but instantly boost 10 ranks ahead of where you are. Now, the developers have repeatedly said you cannot buy power or items in Diablo Immortal orbs to buy crests and then run rifts with the crests to get the drops. There are steps between money and item and this is how they justify it. However, buying the empowered collector's battle pass costs £13 and boosts you 10 ranks along. Now the rank 10 reward is a legendary offhand weapon. So how is this not paying for equipment? Well, because... The legendary offhand weapon is the free track reward. You can pay to boost to get it instantly, but they will argue that's not what you're paying for. That's the free player reward too. But you still have to play the game to gain the battle orbs from rifts and dungeons to level up the battle pass, right? Well, no. If you click rank up, you can just spend orbs to instantly boost your battle pass to maximum, unlocking all the rewards instantly. I've managed to grind to battle with 27 ranks left to go. Boosting to maximum would cost me 4,050 orbs, meaning I'd still need to spend over £65 on orbs to skip the grind. And remember, all of this is Battle Pass Season 1, so if you aren't able to finish the Battle Pass legitimately before Season 2 releases, you might be tempted to pay real money to boost to get the final rewards, and when the second Battle Pass isn't the only paid-for progression system. There is a worse one. This is the Boon of Plenty. This advertises itself as a 30-day membership with daily login rewards and some mechanical boosts, such as more inventory slots and being able to access the market board from anywhere. It costs £8.99, but what I'm interested in is the way the login rewards are distributed. The Boon of Plenty says that you get these total rewards over 30 days, but let's read the fine and see how it actually works. The Boon of Plenty can be purchased multiple times, stacking up to 90 days of daily gifts. Daily gifts can only be claimed while the Boon of Plenty is active, otherwise they will be lost. So if you have a Boon of Plenty active and you log in every day for seven days, you'll get one regular crest a day for a total of seven. But if you fail to log in for those days and you only log in on the seventh day, you won't have a stack of crests waiting for paying $8.99 doesn't get you all of this stuff, it gets you the chance to get all of this stuff provided you keep logging in. But here's where it gets super scummy. Extra gifts can [35:00] be claimed every five cumulative login days. Cumulative login days carry over to the next boon of plenty period. And then it gives you a list of which gifts are handed out on cumulative days. A single legendary crest at 5, 10 and 15, a legendary and a legendary gem at 20 and 25, and then two legendary crests at 30. So things aren't evenly spaced. Being given two crests on Immulative login days matters. because if you miss a login day you effectively miss that reward and you will lose it until you buy more boons of plenty. Think of it like this. If you have a boon of plenty active and you log in every day for 30 days, on the 30th day, you'll get two legendary crests. But if you miss a single day in that 30-day period, when you log in and the boon isn't active, "Your two legendary crests from the first boon are held... until you log in for one more day. It's not consecutive, it's cumulative, meaning in total. So if you miss a single day in the 30-day period, you now need to buy another 30 days to make the boon active again and continue logging in to add days to the cumulative tracker. Don't think of the boon of plenty as the rewards it shows you. Think of it as you are paying for the privilege for your days to count toward cumulative rewards. You are effectively paying to be involved in a fear of missing out process. When I say Diablo Immortal is not a product to be sold, it is a process to be involved in, this is exactly what I mean. This is why they sell them in sets of three, stacking up to 90 days. Hang on, I've got rewards being held back. until that 90 days is up. This is why they lock two legendary crests on the 30th login day. If you spend £8.99 and then miss a single day, you're now in a position of buy another 30-day boon or lose out on a valuable reward you've been working towards. This is quite simply one of the most abusively designed systems I've ever seen in a game. It is stunningly anti-player. It looks like paying $8.99 for the opportunity to have your login days count toward earning these things. But we are still not done. Once you hit level 45 and have progressed through the main story enough, you'll unlock another reward progression system, the Prodigy's Path. Think of it like another battle pass, but it doesn't have seasons. With the Prodigy's Path system, you gain rewards every five levels. Then when you hit the max level of 60, you'll gain rewards every five Paragon levels battle pass there is a free path and then the adjacent paid path and it costs £18 to unlock the paid prodigies path reward side. but we're still not done. There is one final revelation. By now, you've probably seen the number $110,000 being thrown around. This is the figure the Gaming News wants you to believe that YouTuber Belialar arrived at when he tried to work out how much it would cost to max a Diablo Immortal character. Despite the fact he never actually arrived at that figure specifically. He was discussing how much it could potentially cost to max out a character. And the total cost of $100,000 was mentioned. a potential. Belialar himself even tweets out: "We talked about a claim a redditor made, you journos picked that up, claimed we said it and then spread it across the internet." Whatever the final figure actually is, levelling all six of your legendary gems up, because you can only equip one of each type of gem, will take a hell of a lot of reagents. Remember, you need equal level gems to funnel into a single gem to level it up, meaning it does get exponentially player design possible in this monetization madness is that everything, the battle pass, your enhanced membership of it, your progress along it, your legendary gems, your prodigy's path, your membership of that, the horaduric altar, the monstrous essence stash, your platinum for the market board, and your collected gold, the regular crests, and legendary crests, which remember cost 20 pounds a time to 10 crest a rift. In fact, every single thing except the abusively priced Thank you. is per character. not per account. If you want to have multiple characters, you will be paying for all of this for all of them, and that includes cosmetics. So if you spend £20 to unlock a cosmetic outfit, [40:00] only get it on the character you buy it for. All of this has caused players to review-bomb the game and drop its Metacritic score down to 0.5, making it Blizzard's lowest-rated game of all time. Despite this, it has so far made six million dollars in the first few days. So now I've played for a few days and I've looked into the systems behind it. What's the actual verdict? The truth is that two seemingly contradictory things can both be equally valid. Diablo Immortal is an extremely fun game to play. The combat's great, the bosses are flashy. I enjoyed my time playing. The battle system is great, the synergy between the classes is nice, and the set and legendary items affecting your skills makes for a wide selection of viable builds. Running solo is fun, running in a group is super enjoyable. But I am someone with a great deal of self-control when it comes to money. It is indeed fun, but it is also insidiously developed from the ground up Someone said to me, just turn your brain off and play. And while I understand the sentiment of enjoy the flashing lights and loud noises, I am someone who enjoys engaging their brain and solving the puzzle of the game, the puzzle of min-maxing, the puzzle of build variety and team composition. I enjoy having to engage my brain to beat a game. But if you do that with Diablo Immortal, you will ask yourself lots of questions. And the answer to every question is... the credit card. And if you're still thinking, "Well, I've been having fun." Great, so have I. Your fun is not invalid. No one wants you to stop having fun. We want the game industry to treat you better. We want the game industry to put a little more focus into making the game fun and a little less into making it predatory. I feel it's our responsibility as YouTubers to hold these companies to account and maybe focus on making the game fun, not spending time working out how you can get around the definition of loot box. And if you think Diablo banned in Belgium and the Netherlands for falling foul of the EU gambling laws. But has Diablo Immortal lived up to the expectations that Blizzard have set for themselves? On Blizzard's website on the About section, you can find eight What We Stand For sections. The two that I think stand out the most are are Gameplay First and Lead Responsibly. In the Gameplay First section, it says, it is our job to make our games as fun as possible for as many people as we can reach. I do not believe Diablo Immortal is designed to be as fun as possible. I believe it's been designed to be as fun as it needs to be to keep people playing and then monetized. The next self-imposed standard is Lead Responsibly, which at the bottom says, we are committed to making ethical decisions, always keeping our players in mind and setting a strong example of professionalism and excellence at all times. I cannot believe that decisions were with the payers in mind. Paul Tassie of Forbes writes Diablo Immortal is 10 times worse than Genshin Impact. In the article he says even compared to other mobile titles Diablo Immortal is going above and beyond with its microtransactions in a way that's far far worse than most other games in this genre. Diablo Immortal is quite simply an excellent gameplay experience destroyed by being completely infested with predatory systems designed to make you spend more money covered in good-looking clothes. It deserves to make money, but not like this. It deserves praise for the good parts, but you cannot ignore its anti-player design. So I do actually agree with Diablo Immortal's opening cutscene. We as players do need to stand together against the rising evil. That rising evil Diablo! is you. Thank you very much for watching. Another massive thank you to all the supporters on Patreon and Twitch who keep the channel alive. You can support from only £1 a month. Check the video description for links to the Patreon, Twitch, Twitter and our Discord. And as always... Have a great day.