Hello!

I Write this for myself as to remember this game and how it was. Also I've seen so many people talking mostly thrash about Diablo Immortal but haven't played it. Was it so bad, what was the game even about?

I would like to tell about my experience and game mechanics that were there so people can learn and maybe have different view of future Diablo games.


For Starters

I was in top guild of my server, crystal arch or something, can't even remember it anymore. Our guild got to be immortals and fight those end game bosses, other guilds and all, so I did pretty much everything there was. Except win, as I wasn't throwing money at the machine. I bought the first pass thing tho, complete waste of time, money but not dopamine (which ill get back to).

Here are good things about the game
+COMBAT, ANIMATIONS, SKILLS, it's a paint job on d3
+PVP, when it was balanced
+Multiplayer open map aka MOM worked quite well on first try with diablo.
+Leveling experience more dopamine filled than d3

This game is
DOPAMINE, GAMBLING, SUBSYSTEMS AND SHINY MENUS that eat your life. Not mellow like wow where there's flying and peace, no this is mania 24/7


Off To The Races

You start playing mostly story driven solo instances and don't see much of players, mostly couple noobs and high levels on their way in starting city.
Main quest goes trough every dungeon and you unlock your skills and gear up, but this is d3 gearing so you swap set's faster than you accumulate crafting materials.
You don't care much about stats, but there are one stats that is everything in this game. It is the Attack. You must always aim for higher Attack, what ever the stats are on item. If it's green it raises the attack. Good. There is something called Defense stat, but I won't get into that here.
If you get high attack you hit harder, skills hit harder, you are just more powerful. Everything is about attack, even higher difficulties need certain attack power level and suddenly you dont die and you can now play that difficulty.

As you get to max level game play loop consists mainly of daily quests, there are so many each day, they never run out. There are all kinds of quest like legendary kill 5 creatures in forest to pvp and running a dungeon with chance of getting a certain set piece. You have to do these quests to advance your power level, attack.
If you are in Immortal guild this is taken to the max as it is mandatory for every member to do these in order to "buy" chance at raid boss.
If you are not an immortal then you are a Shadow and you do Shadow dailies to get more power. These are not so many, but there's still plenty things you need to do to keep up with others.

First running dailies is kinda fun, but the thing becomes a daily chore, but as you do these bored and sleepy. You finish one, and then there's dropping items and you can check mark your achievement and collect that daily reward, so many menus and such a delightful color show. A real pat on the back and yeah so much dopamine.

Hang In There Buddy!

Keeping up with others is driving force behind everything in this game. If you don't exp you get extra exp to catch up on other's and vice versa if you are over general server level you get exp penalty.

From d3 we got the swapping legendary affixes and they are here too. Wardrope is very nice in this game as it remembers which powers you had equipped, so just suit up for pvp and then back to raid. You need these because you are always on the clock.

Anyway here you collect gems, gold exp and machine rolls forward rewarding feelings of joy and sorrow. Then you also collect those p2w imba gems if you are lucky or play multiple accounts and funnel money to main character. This is the jackpot of this casino machine. A gem that streamer spent 13k real money to get. I don't know what methods he used, but probably pretty weak ones as he was showing the predatory nature of this game.

Running these rifts you can pay 1-3 normal crest or legendary crest (ingame money/event or real money better ones) more you put in the higher the chance of gem at the end. Or you can freeload with very little chance of finding a gem at the end boss. Then you get diablo 3 like resource that you use to buy other resource, ugh rune that makes a gem. So with this grind one day you could build your very own 5 star rare gem. Sorry you can't really craft it right away, but you can try your luck getting one from random generator.

Still I liked this rift style more than Diablo 3 where you just get gamble money and then you gamble for a slot. Not enough rng, not enough that gamblers dopamine hit. Sincerely I like to have random gamble machine at the end, but when you buy those with real money I'd rather go casino. For future, keep the gamble, remove the real money (but let us trade, so remove a some of real money).

After Rifting it's probably time to check the time if it's time to run a world boss and maybe go kill one of the weekly bosses ( there was 2 when I was playing)

Now you have some free time so hope battlegrounds are open as they are only open 2h at a time, maybe 4 times a day. Now you check which dungeons are the daily dungeons and probably run those if you need the set pieces that drop from them. Nevermind you run them anyway, you get more resource. More power.

Then you need to progress your solo dungeon clear as there are certain levels that you need to clear for better gear to start drop. Even if you are super exp high level you needed to clear those solo dungeons.

Evening you probably have event where you stand 20 mins to get blessings and some free exp.

And there is one more daily randomizer that gives power and colors and sounds and picture, whole thing. There you have it! Well it had rocks as currency, now happy?


The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

PVP, oh the best and the worst part. There was clearly something off with matchmaking. First it was pretty fair, no notable whales and I did pretty good. Then I didn't really pvp other than 3 dailies when I was Immortal as it took a lot of time and already involved pvp.
After De-Immortalised I went back to pvp and there where just so many players with high power gems that I just couldn't keep up. It might be that matchmaking as there was this super whale player who had so high hidden rating that there where nobody to fight him.

Anyway even when losing pvp was the best part of Diablo Immortal. It is so strange that there was time restrictions on that and you could only practice with bots. So no way of training with your guild as you couldn't party up for normal battleground or practice. There wasn't even a duel option to know who really was good in pvp. Numbers you could see, like attack power, what rank you were in gauntlet of battleground ranks.

Anyway I quit soon after. It was the Immortal part that I wanted to experience, wasn't gonna keep playing this game.

Lastly let me tell one game mechanic so extreme I hope it will never again touch diablo in this form. Don't get me wrong Resource stealing from other guild and fighting over it is a good idea, but..

There was mechanic where Immortals had to be 3 times a day ready for a pvp raid event. Event ran for 2h so 6h total every day you needed guards that would jump in this instance dungeon where they would face other faction players who could steal your hard earned items from the bosses you paid to fight and also they could rob that currency you buy those raids. So it was a big deal.

You get alert and then you go to your HQ and just stay and click the que button as there was a feature found where when you solo que you would get in the games faster. So every player just clicking or running a macro. Shadows could form groups and que at their Hq, but they could always go in and even quit before 2 groups met, as it was couple of floors before final showdown, missing loot but still taking resource and time from those poor souls smashing the join button. And remember there was just fixed number of Immortals, everyone else over lvl 43 were shadow's.


What Next

Looking forward, how will next Diablo game do? Probably lower down the casino feel with the menus, buttons and daily rewards. But yeah immortal was a mobile game after all, even tho I played on pc. But the big thing still yet to be seen. Is it going to be about attack power again? Maybe time gated crafting materials might be on the menu. We shall see coming year 2023 what the n4xt Di4BLO 4 will hold.

Cheers
-rah


diablo 1, diablo 2, diablo 3, diablo immortal, diablo 4.
rah rah the Barbarian, Rogue.