Good Morning Friends. Confession time… I have continued to play Diablo Immortal in spite of how I currently feel about Blizzard and this game’s monetization scheme. In part, the game actually has its fun moments, and in part, I wanted to see just how deep and twisted this rabbit hole gets. There is quite a bit of sensationalism flying around about this game… some of which were mischaracterized or misquoted. I figured the only way I would find out for certain was to push through and as a result, I have been spending a few hours a day over the last several days working through the game’s systems. As of last night before I went to bed I had just dinged 56 which puts me a stone’s throw away from the level cap of 60 and the beginning of the paragon system. I cannot comment about the true end game, but I do feel like I have a wealth of knowledge now about how the day-to-day functionality of this game works, since the key criticism from the monetization apologists has been that those folks reviewing the game have not really played all of the game.
I will say that the game does get considerably more enjoyable as more systems open up. One of my key complaints was that the class structure did not really feel very much like Diablo, in that there was the little interplay between abilities. This changes as you introduce Legendary Gear and Legendary Gems, which combined give you the specialization structure that Runes provided in Diablo 3. I am using a specific set of gear that gives me traits associated with the abilities that I use, which in turn is reinforced by the legendary gems that I have managed to acquire on the “free” track. I am functional but a good chunk of this game is going to be grinding repetitive content in search of the right piece of gear for the right slot/ Given the anemic drops that occur from general content runs as seen above, it takes a lot of time before you see anything that is not immediately scrapped.
You can however pay your way to the dopamine hits that we are used to from running literally any content in Diablo 3. A maxed-out Elder Rift requires you to spend 10 Legendary Crests, which costs roughly $25 in real-world currency. Paul Tassi released a video that shows the difference in feel between a “Free” run and a “Paid” run and it is significant. The truth is nothing I have been able to complete so far has given me the almost seizure-inducing cavalcade of loot that I am expecting from a Diablo game. What you do get a lot of even at 56 is white and blue trash drops, which are effectively useless. If you watch any farming videos you will notice folks not even bothering to pick up half of the loot because it has no value at all even from a materials standpoint. If it is not yellow or higher it is not worth even a moment of your time.
The one thing that I have noticed however in my time playing is that there are three distinct tiers of players in this game, which provide a sort of financial-based caste system. Before I dive into this I think it is important that we set some guidelines for costs. Everything in Diablo Immortal drives you towards the $24.99 pack of Orbs, because that allows you to purchase a 10 pack of Eternal Legendary Crests and that also allows you to run a maxed-out Elder Rift. As such I am going to set this pack as our baseline and then calculate the costs of everything else in the game from that point. Since Diablo Immortal does the thing that every mobile game does… and tries to divorce your understanding from the actual dollar amount I am going to bring that back in focus. There are two currencies that matter for cash transactions, Eternal Orbs and Platnium and each of these has a real-world conversion cost.
Eternal Orbs cost 1.6 cents each
Platinum cost .16 cents each
These numbers will come into focus later on in this discussion, but for now, let me talk to you about the three castes of players in Diablo Immortal.
Free to Play – The Poor
I feel like it is important to understand that I have not spent a single dime on Diablo Immortal and I do not plan on doing so. The monetization scheme with this game is truly egregious as you will see as I dive into this discussion. That said normally speaking I am a player that does not think twice about microtransactions. If you have a cool outfit on the cash shop, or a quality of life item… like the boss summon stone thing from GW2… I am going to snap that puppy up and swipe my credit card. Mobile games and Gacha games, in particular, are just a bit too greedy to ensnare me in their web. I’ve spent a truly staggering amount of money over the years on Magic the Gathering packs because they are only $3-$5 at a time. It is a low enough amount of money for me to feel like I am not really spending much of anything… until you realize that you bought 300 at that price. Gacha games love to make you spend $20 and $40 at a time… which considering my age still feels like “real money”.
As a free player, the system that is hardest for you to engage in is that of the Legendary Gem. I have a full set of 6 legendary gems, all but one are “One Star” gems. This means they are the weakest gems that you can possibly get, and most of what someone might see when running a rift with the “free” quality of crests. As a free player, I received one Legendary Quest for the first time I ran an Elder Rift, and unlocked that system… which I think rewards the same predictable Legendary Gem to every player that runs it. After that, I will be able to unlock a grand total of two Legendary Crests per month. One is purchased from the Hilt vendor, and one is unlocked at rank 20 on the free path of the Battle Pass. That means it is highly unlikely I will ever see a gem drop that is higher than two stars because I will be spending almost all of my time running Rare Crest rifts which are capped at a maximum of two-star gems.
If I complete the daily activity rewards track by getting 120 battle points, the final chest will reward me 300 platinum, which can in theory be used to purchase items on the in-game auction house. Every transaction between players uses platinum as an exchange currency. So if you go back to the conversion rate I have a possibility of earning roughly 50 cents worth of platinum each day that I can then put towards buying Legendary Gems that folks are selling on the marketplace. We will dive further into this as I talk about the other Financial Castes, but for now, know that the Auction House exists and uses platinum. One of the talking points that has been used to deflect this truly evil monetization scheme is that the free players are given platinum, that they can in theory save up to buy gems.
Bargain Spenders – The Middle Class
Diablo Immortal has more unique ways to spend money than I am honestly used to from mobile monetization. It keeps popping up special offers, that are discounted in order to entice you to take a bite. For the Bargain Spender path, I am going to theorize that this is a player who has purchased everything that is presented as a “massive savings” and is not actively engaged with purchasing Eternal Orbs directly. This starts with the Boon of Plenty which is a “buff” that gives you a login reward each day, but you also have to keep logging in each day in order to qualify for the bigger rewards like Legendary Gems. For this privilege of being chained to daily rewards you are asked to spend $10 and can stack it for up to 90 days worth of use. On top of that, there are two different battlepass paid tracks and something that opens later called the prodigy’s path which gives you “rewards” as you level up. Here is a quick rundown of each of these “bonus” purchases and the cost associated with them.
Empowered Battle Pass – $4.99
Collectors Edition Empowered Battle Pass – $14.99
Boon of Plenty – $9.99
Prodigy’s Path – $19.99
Beginner’s Pack – $.99
Mad King’s Breach Trove – $.99
Forgotten Tower Trove – $1.99
Tomb of Fahir Trove – $4.99
Destruction’s End Trove – $6.99
Kikuras Rapids Trove – $9.99
Cavern of Echoes Trove – $19.99
Essentially each time I complete a dungeon I am offered a trove as my “reward” for completing that dungeon. I believe that I have one more dungeon left in the game, the Pit of Anguish and at the end of that, I will very likely be offered another trove. Notice how each trove goes up in price as a way of psychologically priming you for that $25 Legendary Crest pack in the future. So remember that on the free track I had the potential of getting 3 Legendary Crests in my first month. As this hypothetical “Bargain” gamer that has purchased everything that has been offered to them, it would have cost $95.89, and at my current level, I would have received the following.
3 Legendary Crests from the Battlepass
5 Legendary Crests from the Prodigy’s Path
7 potential Legendary Crests from Boon of Plenty
pending you logged in every day for 30 days
24 Legendary Crests from all of the Troves
This would give you a grand total of 39 Legendary Crests and enough Eternal Orbs to purchase 23 more, giving you access to 46 Legendary Gems and quite possibly some of those being higher than the 2 stars you can get for free. At this point, you are probably thinking “Hey! You could sell some of those gems on the Auction House to earn the platinum to get the gems you really need!”. NOPE! That is not a thing you can do… or at least not a thing you can do for 39 of the 62 gems you just got access to, which leads us to the upper class of Diablo Immortal and the next discussion group.
The Whales – The Wealthy or Addicts Going Bankrupt
So we know that a “10 Pull” Elder Rift costs $25 or 10 Legendary Crests. However, what is not well explained in the game is that there are two classifications of Legendary Crests. There are the ones that the game doles out to you for “free” through the bargain packs and two a month for just playing the game, and then there are the REAL Legendary Crests called Eternal Legendary Crests that are only available from the cash shop for Eternal Orbs. There is no difference in the appearance of a Legendary Crest and an Eternal Legendary Crest, but mechanically they function very differently. Anything you get with the Legendary Crest for “the poors” is bound to your character, meaning it cannot be sold on the in-game Auction House.
So when you go and look at the Auction House, every single gem that you see over 2 Stars is being placed there by someone who has whaled hard on this game in order to get it. Remember when I said that you could early 300 platinum per day if you worked really hard and did all of your daily activities? Blood-Soaked Jade is one of the gems I would need for the build I am working towards, and currently, it is being sold for 276,000 Platinum and is only available in a maximum with 4 Stars filled out. If we convert that to real money, that single gem would cost you $44,160. If I wanted to save up platinum in order to purchase that as a free player it would take me 921 days of completing dailies or just a little over two and a half years.
That is expecting that prices stay stable… when in truth over time they are likely to increase not go down in price given that the ONLY people feeding into this auction house system are the whales. Once the whales move on to the next game, the market is going to dry up, and very quickly there will be no gems over 2 stars available for purchase. This entire house of cards is entirely unsustainable in its current state. I cannot imagine a future where this monetization scheme stands for long, and where the game is actually successful. It is my personal opinion that Blizzard is trying to extract as much money as possible while this game is new and hot before they eventually have to reconcile the reality of the situation. The problem there however is that by the time we reach that point, the damage to Diablo as a brand will already be done. This entire experiment has given me serious fucking pause about what Diablo 4 is going to look like.
It Is Actually a Fun Game
The truth is that I could not have gone this far in this little experiment were it not for the fact that the game is actually pretty fun. Once you factor in the Legendary Gear and Gems, the builds that you can create are extremely satisfying. I would go so far as to say were it not for the extremely evil monetization, that this would be a highly praised sequel to Diablo 3, and very worthy of the Diablo name. However, the sheer evil greed that has been exhibited here is causing the opposite effect, and making players question what the hell happened to Blizzard. I’ve said it before… Genshin Impact has its share of predatory monetization, but this game makes it look like the most benevolent experience out there in comparison.
So there you go. I have put in the work. I have nearly reached the end game, and I can say without a doubt that the experience while enjoyable… there is no truly viable path forward for the free player. If you don’t want to take my word for it, I present to you the experience of Ranxxanterax, one of the most seasoned Diablo 3 YouTubers out there, who has essentially broken this system wide open and maxed things out since launch. He talks about reaching a point where he can only do a few things each day to actually progress his free characters. I have this feeling that given a few more days of playtime, I would be arriving at the same shore. I’ve not even gotten into the “Server Paragon” system which is designed to speed up lagging players and grind to a halt the highest progressed.
Ultimately unless there are some serious fucking changes in Diablo Immortal, I expect this to be yet another flash in the pan that the zeitgeist talks about for a month or two and then moves on to greener pastures. The damage this stunt will have caused to the Diablo brand and Blizzard as a company however will likely be unrepairable.
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Yesterday was a monumentous day my friends. Not only did we get a new episode of Kenobi, but we also got the premiere of the Ms. Marvel series on Disney+. This is probably the show I have been most anxiously waiting for because I genuinely love the character of Ms. Marvel. If you have never had a chance to read the original limited series run of the comic, then I highly suggest you do so. On second thought if you are not a comic reader maybe don’t because I have this feeling that the television show will follow it pretty closely. I am going to do my best to praise Ms. Marvel in as spoiler-free a manner as I can because I really want folks to go out and watch this show.
There are some characters in the Marvel universe that act as a stand-in for the public. Deadpool for example is every cynic, the person sitting with their friends cracking jokes as the movie is playing out on the screen. Deadpool is the embodiment of MST3k and Rifftrax, and the fans love them for this fourth wall-breaking nonsense. Kamala Khan is every fan. She is the embodiment of good-natured fan obsession with their heroes and the purveyor of fan fiction surrounding their potential actions. If you ever theorized about improbable connections between heroes and comic book runs, then you have a little Kamala in you. As a result, she has also been a fan favorite for a long while and has some of the more interestingly nuanced stories about how this fan obsession slams straight into a brick wall that is her conservative Pakistani upbringing.
I am legitimately uncertain that there exists a more perfect real-life representation of Kamala Khan than Iman Vellani. There is this joyous exuberance that she has nailed that is key to the character of Ms. Marvel. While we have not seen a ton of it yet, she also seems to be able to nail the comedic timing required for the character. I think part of the reason why I have always loved this character is it reminds me so much of my good friend Rae. Some of you who have been around for a while might know her from the AggroChat podcast or from the original Belghast Chibi character that used to adorn the banner of this site. She gets so extremely wrapped up in her fan obsessions and squirrels out of control into daydream land, planning cosplays and fan art. I think we probably all know a “Kamala” in our lives or might even be one ourselves, and I think that is part of what makes the character so potent.
One of the things that I think the show does phenomenally well is this “doodlemation” style of animatic. This is shown at the very beginning of the episode as we get a glimpse of the Sloth Baby productions Youtube page. I love the use of doodles to represent the vibrant daydream universe of Kamala, and I think it plays out pretty well on screen as well. One of the overriding characteristics of Kamala in pretty much every media is her love of superheroes, and more importantly her fan worship of Captain Marvel… specifically the Carol Danvers version we are familiar with in the MCU. Kamala wants to be Captain Marvel, and in the comics, this manifests into an origin story. So far this version appears to be following a theme more closely related to the Avengers video game variant of the Ms. Marvel origin story.
In the comics, Kamala was part of a wave of Inhuman characters brought in by the terrigen mist. This was all part of a nonsense side plot to create mutants that were tactically different from the mutants that Marvel was a dumdum and sold the exclusive rights to Fox. I say this as a way of illustrating that this origin story was sort of fraught from the start, and really doesn’t have much to do with the core of who Kamala Khan is. In the television series and therefore the MCU, Ms. Marvel seems to have powers stepping from either a mystic or cosmic origin. I think this shift happened for purely financial reasons because it would be extremely costly to create a believable version of “embiggening”. Cosmic crystalline not-human-looking nonsense is way easier and cheaper to animate than photorealistic gigantism. I mean I feel like the Avengers game did a pretty good job with her power and it still looked deeply uncanny valley at times.
Basically, I am asking you to go out and watch this show. There is already a wall of negative hype surrounding it because it is a story that is not featuring a white male in the pilot seat. Just like we saw with Reeva/Third Sister in the Kenobi series, public fandom for these properties has a serious problem with being a little racist. Folks are going to hedge their opinions in all sorts of ways to try and make them sound like they are educated and taking all views into account when in reality it often equates back to “person of color bad in my white show”. Ms. Marvel so far is a phenomenally comic accurate portrayal of this character, and I am hoping that more people will discover the great comic run as a result. This is legitimately maybe one of the most comic-accurate characters in the entire MCU.
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Good Morning Friends! Over the weekend I wrapped up the series Only Murders in the Building and I thought this morning I would talk a bit about it. I used to talk about the media I consume quite a bit but have not really in a while. I have to be honest, I am very late to the punch here because this is a show that was the talk of the town… last year. It is one of those shows that I filed away in my brain not by name, but by the cast of actors. Instead of remembering it was called Only Murders in the Building, I remembered it as “That Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez show”. So when my wife was hunting for suggestions of things to watch, and a friend of hers suggested this show… I had no recollection of it. A quick google produced a flood of “oh yeah I wanted to watch that” feelings however and here we are having consumed it over a few nights.
I would not exactly call my wife and me true crime junkies, but we do consume quite a bit of it. I think in part this is due to the fact that our taste patterns do not have a ton of overlap, and true crime is one of those topics we can always both agree on. When we take a long trip it is often our entertainment to throw on a podcast as we drive and have absolutely consumed shows like Serial and S Town while doing this. I actually got bit by Serial when I co-worker suggested the show, and caught up about halfway through the original run. We’ve also been drawn into a number of Netflix series like Making a Murderer or The Staircase. I think honestly the attraction to these shows is less about the experience of watching them, but more about the experience of having the conversations for months after the fact positing our theories.
What makes Only Murders in the Building interesting is it has a self-aware quality to it. Instead of being a mystery, a dark comedy, a crime drama, or a documentary on the creation of a podcast… it is all of these wrapped up into a quirky package. It is both a show for fans of the true-crime podcast genre, but also a show that pokes gentle fun at those same fans. The entire show centers around an unlikely trio of characters played expertly by Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, and Martin Short. The latter two of those are extremely foundational characters in the mythology of my childhood. The Jerk is still to this day one of my favorite movies, and for whatever reason, as kids, we latched onto The Three Amigos as an epic film that we parroted lines from constantly. The thread that brings these characters together is their shared love of a podcast set in Oklahoma that seems to be referencing S Town. When a murder takes place in their building, they get the idea of turning it into a podcast.
Charles-Haden Savage
Steve Martin plays Charles-Haden Savage a washed-up actor whose major claim to fame is playing a hard-boiled detective character named Brazzos. I did not realize until I actually looked up the character that the hyphen was in the wrong place on his name. He lives alone in his apartment and laments the loss of love as well as a general loss of relevancy. The universally likable character that you end up feeling a bit sorry for over the course of the show.
Oliver Putnam
Then you have the Martin Short character of Oliver Putnam who is a failed Broadway producer. I always associate Martin Short with these deeply manic characters, but while highly neurotic this is actually a subdued portrayal. Oliver is most well known for a series of failed musicals including Splash!… where he got the grand idea of converting the stage into a giant pool which caused many injuries. He is a man looking for the next big thing, so when the podcast idea comes along he grabs hold with both hands for dear life.
Mabel Mora
Then we have Selena Gomez’s character of Mabel Mora, who is in the building refurbishing the apartment of her aunt. Mabel is really the centerpiece of the show and is the character that changes the most over the course of the entire experience. Additionally, she is the most nuanced character, and to talk much about this… would give away way too many plot points. The portrayal of the character by Selena is phenomenal and her dry wit effortlessly upstages the more physical comedy styles of Steve Martin and Martin Short.
The entire show centers around the idea of trying to solve a murder that happened in the building, while at the same time recording a podcast. This plays with the notion of the true-crime podcast nature being a slow reveal of details when the producers understood the conclusion from the very start. Serial doled out information in pieces specifically to build tension, but I clearly feel like all of the evidence had already been gathered well before the first episode was released. Only Murders in the Building also plays with the notion of super fans, who end up being camped out in front of the building hoping for a glimpse of the cast of characters set forth in the show. I am being purposefully vague in talking about this show because it takes some turns, and I wouldn’t want to spoil the experience.
I seem to have chosen the ideal time to get into this series. On June 28th the second season of the show is premiering on Hulu, and I am certain that my wife and I will be tuning in. The first season runs 10 episodes with runtime for each episode of roughly thirty minutes. I am largely throwing this out there in case anyone else missed this show so that they might have time to catch up before the next season hits.
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Good Morning Friends! I had a rather busy weekend and I am still sorta feeling out of it as a result. I had to run up and help my dad with a few things, including getting several items that are too heavy to lift solo off to the city dump. The last few times I have been up there I have made friends with Fang. Either through battle damage or birth defect, Fang has a permanently exposed canine too and snarled lip. It makes him look rather fearsome but he is one of the sweetest cats. He now follows me around because he knows that eventually, I will stop to give him head scratches. This makes actually doing work with my dad a little challenging because the last thing I want to do is kick him when we are carrying something heavy and my visibility is limited.
I am pretty sure that Fang is the evolved form of one of these three pokemon taken from 2016. The problem with barn cats is that they sorta come and go over time and we have no clue what happened to two of the three. Fang however has grown up to be my dad’s buddy. He apparently comes into the shop with him and hangs out while my dad putters around tinkering on things. He also occasionally comes into the house but from the sound of it, he doesn’t really like being indoors. During the winter months, dad leaves the heater on in his shop so I think Fang more or less lives there. I’ve not gotten a picture of it but apparently, my dad also has a pet turtle that sometimes keeps him company. Driving down the dirt lane I had to carefully straddle a few massive terapins, which were more or less a common order growing up as well.
Lately, I have not consumed media as fast as I used to, and there was a time when I would have ravenously consumed Stranger Things as soon as it was released. This weekend I finally got around to starting the season and only made it four episodes in before taking a quick break. One of the problems of being “of” the era pictured in the show is that sometimes an anachronism stands out. For example, this bag was zoomed in close during an airport scene… and we very much did not have these in 1986. My wife was the first to notice it and this led to doing some research. Sure enough, this style of bag was invented in 1987 but did not really reach mass market adoption until the mid to late 90s. I know we did not really have fancy luggage like this until the 2000s, but mostly because we had to wait for it to get cheap. Season 4 is set in March of 1986, and I would have been 9 years old at that point, so I deeply remember some aspects of the show but was quite a bit younger than the cast of characters.
As far as gaming goes this weekend, I ended up missing Tequatl both Saturday and Sunday because life was happening. I did get in some co-op gaming with my friend Grace and we played some Gunfire Reborn. The game is very much Borderlands 2 meets Roguelike experience with really interesting weapons and some fun powers for your classes. Over time you unlock more of a cast of anthropomorphic animal friends. This is honestly the only complaint I would have for the game is that maybe it would have been better to just let players pick from a wide cast of characters, rather than having to unlock them through grinding it out.
Some of the weapons are deeply entertaining. Grace found this weapon that was essentially a firebreathing lizard and in order to reload the game you had to sort of smack it. I am running around with an exploding kunai. There are times when the runs go extremely smoothly and you get good picks from the additional perks. Then there were runs where everything went wrong and you might as well just start over. Regardless of your choice, you want to finish the run because this gives you experience points that you can then spend on a talent tree system that carries over between runs. Definitely a fun little game and extremely cheap if you are looking for some co-op nonsense with friends.
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