This is episode 54.
I have hit record.
This is 54.
100% I believe this to be 54.
What is it?
Yes, 54.
Look at me with the knowledge.
It's almost like I run this podcast.
Isn't that great?
Isn't that fantastic?
Do I have any gaming orientated stuff to talk about?
Not really.
It's been a bit of a...
Saying that, no.
It hasn't been a lax of days of call week.
One of the biggest things that I can probably pinpoint
that's happened is Microsoft putting all of the Call of Duty
servers back online.
Oh wow.
All of them.
I honestly thought you were gonna say rear ended.
Being rear ended.
No, not about my car crash.
If you wanna hear about that, subscribe.
I spoke about that.
Put the juice behind the paywall.
On the Patreon episode.
So if you want those juicy, juicy details
with the pictures to follow,
then you have to pay for that motherfuckers.
But this COD stuff,
they essentially fixed the servers.
So people just in their droves have been going to
like Black Ops 2 and all that time.
And then old COD lobbies are back where everyone's being
like extremely racist.
It's just a...
Nostalgia.
It's a great time.
Not the racism, the COD coming back is a great time.
Let's not get that twisted.
My people have returned.
But I've seen like so many memes and shit of
current war zone players as teenagers or older children.
Where it's like, there's that scene from The Lion King
where little Simba's on the bottom of the hill
when the Wildebeest are running down.
And above it, it says like a 14 year old kid
playing Call of Duty and then like the Wildebeest
are like 30 year old,
like people that haven't been online for 10 years
and like storming them.
So yeah, it's cool to see that kind of shit.
Probably another big win for Microsoft
in the whole like Xbox, PlayStation debate.
Because that's such a cool thing to be able to do
rather than like coming out with like,
we're gonna put this time and effort into remastering it
or remaking it and then you've got to pay another fucking
500 quid to play it, blah, blah, blah.
Just to say, here's the servers back, off you pop.
Have some fun.
No nothing, nothing added, no updates, no patches,
none of that shit.
Just there you go, play those games, fuck off,
have some fun.
Which I think is really good, especially with-
Do you want me to load it up?
No, no, no, no, no, I'm fine.
I'm all right, I'm all right.
Yeah, because I don't think it's on the PC.
I think it is purely like Xbox console.
Oh yeah, you're welcome if you wanna have a go.
No, I myself am not that interested.
I'd rather keep the nostalgia than return to it.
I'd rather just leave it alone.
But it does look very entertaining.
Obviously things like Warzone have become very stale
from what I've seen, especially since they introduced
the like stuff with the boys in.
So you've essentially got like fucking Superman in it.
It's sort of like, it's turned into Fortnite
and kind of spoiled that whole vibe from what I'm seeing.
And then speaking of games that have just collapsed,
Diablo 4, it's gone.
What do you mean?
It's done, it's done.
People have fucking pulled away from it.
It's basically dead.
A recent patch, are you Googling it?
No, it's still there, it's gone.
A recent patch come out where they essentially
nerfed everything, but not like how normal nerfs work.
So like reduce this spell by 5%,
damage now does this rather than this.
You're talking about a couple of percentages
is when nerfs come in place.
Or you get heavy nerfs where it's like reduced overall damage
of this thing by 10% and stuff like that.
The patch notes on this, 40%, 30% here,
reduced by 50%.
I think there's one where it's reduced by 65%.
They reduced the amount of experience points
that you gain, so it now takes even longer
to level up on a game that was already incredibly grindy.
They released items or an item that only basically
the top 1% will be able to obtain.
So it's like, right, that's great.
But yeah, they basically just hit everything
with these incredible, incredible damage reductions
and nerfs, which meant that when people started playing
like playing after this patch,
their characters just felt like dog shit, extremely squishy,
made the game a lot more harder than it used to be.
Not that I feel like there was nerfs
that were definitely needed 100%, as there always is.
This is how these types of games work,
especially live service games,
there's always gonna be nerfs coming in play.
And the way that it works best
is by nerfing rather than buffing.
Yeah, well, just reading here,
people are saying it's like,
they don't seem to realize the problem isn't
there's nothing left to do after two weeks.
It's the problem that after two weeks
there's nothing really fun to do anymore.
With these patch notes,
they just have actively made it even less fun.
There's so many things they could have done
to alleviate the issue that people are having,
and they've just done the exact opposite.
And as I said, this clearest cut example
of a bad game design I've ever seen.
Instead of addressing the problem of not enough content,
they've just padded out the current gameplay,
which is already ridiculously padded out.
And this game will be a ghost town by season two
without a serious shift in direction.
I told, I predicted that this type of shit would happen.
I said this would happen.
Experience bonus for killing monsters of higher levels
and nerfed by around 90%.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they really fucking hit it
with a nerf hammer.
Because that comment's right.
They, Blizzard are so notorious for this shit now.
We've been kind of lucky with it in Dragonfly
where the stream of content has been quite decent.
It's been quite high up and it has been very steady.
So you're not really getting too bored
with playing it at the moment.
Unlike Shadowlands where it was extremely time gated.
So it was so fucking boring,
but you were forced to play it.
Otherwise you'd fall too far behind.
With Diablo 4, I knew instantly after playing it,
I was like, it's just not gonna survive.
I don't see this surviving
because it's so unbelievably grindy.
And then obviously that's nothing new
when it comes to Diablo.
But obviously with like the world of TikTok
and Instagram reels and stuff like that,
the intake of media and how easy it is to create videos
to do with gaming and information and stuff like that.
The amount of videos that I showed you
and showed other people of most efficient way
to get all the Lilith things
and what dungeons you should be doing and in what order.
And here's the best way to level 100 or to get to level 50.
Everything's as quick as possible.
Gotta do it as quick as possible.
Which for a game like this
where it is completely gated by seasons
where everything resets back into a season,
fucking reset for season two.
That's how the game works.
That rushing and getting everything done
as quick as possible was always gonna be a killer
for this game 100% because you're also battling the fact
that the same people that were playing Diablo one,
two and three are the same people playing Diablo four.
And the only difference has happened is they've grown up.
So now they have even less time
to play these grindy games.
So you do need the faster routes.
If you want to be able to keep up and enjoy the game.
And the issue of that is you end up with a game
where you have to wait four months
for a fucking season to come out for anything new to do
but you've got everything done in two weeks.
So it's like, what are you supposed to do?
They've already, the content is coming in season one.
So.
Isn't that happening?
That's already happened. I believe so, yeah.
So what are you supposed to do when people rinse the game?
You can't do anything and it don't get me wrong.
It happens in World of Warcraft as well.
People rinse it and then you sit there and you're like,
right, well I'm done.
The only difference being is that I don't have
to completely restart my fucking account
to do something new.
I can just make another character.
Everything's on the same platform.
Whereas with Diablo, obviously the seasons,
we spoke about it multiple times, how that works.
And with those excruciating nerfs,
it does feel like lazy development,
but I don't know what they're supposed to do.
Because what are you supposed to do?
Anything that they throw in that game
is going to get rinsed 100% straight away.
You could create any content that's designed to last you
on average three months, it's going to get done in a week.
Because that's what people are like at the moment.
And I feel like after all those patch notes
and the stuff that's happened, it's not looking good.
It's really not looking good for them.
It's a bit dirty.
I haven't seen Ash talk about it for a while.
This is going to be my next,
like it's going to take over from Destiny.
And I told him, and I know he'll be listening.
I told you, you're talking shit.
I knew, I just know that the longevity of it is not there.
It's not there for these types of games.
It's too, yeah.
Yeah.
It's Connor playing it at all?
No, no.
He was, wasn't it?
He was, he was playing it.
Yeah, I don't know.
I am kind of glad that I never got involved with it.
Obviously I played it for a little bit.
And I was like, yeah, this just isn't for me.
Because I would be pissed off if I had like invested
this time making a cool character, getting the gear,
getting the rotations down and blah, blah, blah.
Feeling nice and powerful.
And then you log in and then boom,
you're fucking gaining 90% less XP than you normally would.
And then you're hitting fucking 50% less harder
than you normally would.
I feel like making a game harder
through just straight up damage reduction
isn't making the game harder.
It's not the right way to do it.
No, you're just making it more tedious and less satisfying.
Yeah, especially-
Oh, I mean, go on, no go on.
Especially when it's a bunch of enemies
that you have already tackled and you know how to kill them
and you've killed them multiple times.
And now nothing's changed.
It's just that you don't hit as hard as you used to.
So you already know there's no mystery here.
These aren't new characters.
There isn't new abilities.
There isn't new mechanics.
It is just straight up.
You used to hit a hundred damage, now you do 40.
So where's the fun in that?
Because you remember what it was like,
mowing them down.
Yeah.
So it's not even a skill-based thing.
You've just made me fucking useless.
Yeah, basically.
Not looking good.
I can't remember what I was gonna say now.
My thoughts gone.
I just don't know.
No.
Don't know.
Are you smug?
I wouldn't say it's smugness
because I don't massively care.
However, I just, I feel kind of bad for the,
like the people in my guild, obviously on the discord,
like for ages, it's all Diablo, not touching well.
And I feel like they've invested so much time
into like rinsing Diablo.
And now it's just, nope, no point.
Because I sent a message in and I just said like,
Diablo four, like the eyes emoji.
And they were like, don't talk about it.
Oh no.
Don't go there.
So, all right, oh, not looking good then.
No, no it's not.
And is that because they wanna go?
They don't wanna play it?
They've run out of stuff or just-
Yeah, they just got nothing to do.
In a game where I just can't understand it.
If you've done all the content
that the game can offer you,
or most of the content that the games offer you,
making you hit a lot less than you used to
isn't gonna be an entertaining way to like tide you over
because you've already done the content.
So it's like, so what is the point?
What have you done this for?
I do believe nerfs are a simple way to balance everything,
to get some scaling involved,
because you can't just keep buffing everything,
because then you've got to keep buffing the enemies.
Yeah.
It can only go one or two ways.
So if you slightly nerf stuff
where it makes it a little bit more difficult,
not on fucking general mobs,
but when you're in dungeons and stuff like that,
it makes it that little bit more of an actual play,
then that makes perfect sense.
But what they've done,
I can only imagine it must be like,
shit, Diablo 4 is in jeopardy.
Let's make it, here's a quick fix
so that people don't go through the game
as quickly as they have,
so that any new people that buy it
are gonna be attached to us for even longer,
rather than actually fucking looking at it decently.
Yeah, the quick way out.
Yeah, it just seems-
Which might be the downfall of it, which is great.
I just miss when that good like two weeks
when Diablo Mortal was fun.
Yeah, then they fucked it with a paywall.
Because I was really enjoying that.
That game played really good on the mobile.
Yeah.
On the mobile, on the phone.
On a mobile device.
Yeah, and like-
Really fun, the controls of it were great.
Yeah.
They were so good.
And then they just went and fucking ruined it.
We still haven't finished our little joint quest.
No, cause what's the fucking point?
Neither of us have deleted it off our phone though.
I think I have.
No, you haven't.
I think I have.
Pause for Ruth's checking his phone.
I've gotta find the settings.
I'm almost sure that I did.
I don't think you did.
Truly not.
Maybe it's one of those ones where I haven't used it
in so long that it's just been like put to sleep.
So like I can't-
Can you not just search for it?
Yeah, I am.
No, it's not there.
I did delete it.
No, you know what was really annoying about that is-
Why the fuck is Apex Legends on there?
Oh.
Oh no, it is still here.
Yeah, I knew it.
It is still here.
Diablo, Diablo Immortal, Snap.
Remember when Ash was fucking all over that.
Oh my God.
Marvel Snap.
Throwdown.
Whoa, you said that a lot of your dollar.
Remember that one.
That had a lot of money spent on that.
Fucking hell.
Jesus Christ.
You'll be into that tonight then.
Fucking hell.
But yeah, like I do wish,
like I would have happily paid for that game
if it meant that.
It's kind of what I say about like Dreamlight.
Just don't make it freeze play.
Don't fuck about with all the shit
that they've ruined it like day by day.
If that was on Play Store or Apple Store
and yeah, it was like a 15 quid price tag
and you could have it on your phone.
Yeah, I would have fucking paid it.
But it was cross platform anyway.
So you could, I could play it on the laptop, which I did.
So even if they, like said, 40 quid,
but if they sold it as 40 quid,
but you can also play it on your phone.
So then I would have actually paid it
because I liked playing it on my phone.
And then even better with the fucking Steam Deck,
I would have been all over that shit.
If they had that on the Steam Deck, oh my God,
because the controls would have been the same
just with joy icons rather than fucking
your thumbs on the screen.
Copyright, yeah.
So much fun.
I loved it.
And then to the point where we spent
an entire holiday playing it,
completely ignored the fucking sun
and the area that we was in.
We fucking stayed in the hotel room playing Diablo.
That's making it sound bad.
For reference, there was literally nothing around.
It was Lanzarote, you agree.
We picked a hotel in the middle of nowhere.
Don't ever go to Lanzarote, it's fucking a waste of time.
No, it's not, it's not, come on.
It weren't for us.
It was, no, we ended up,
it ended up clashing with a different family holiday.
We were out, we were outholidayed.
We'd been on too many holidays too quickly.
So we won't be doing that again.
It'll be at least a month's worth of a gap.
It felt so awful to say it, but it was literally like,
we've done this too close together.
Isn't that funny?
And we missed the dog.
Yeah, no, it's unbearable.
But no, that, and I mean, it was only a short,
let's not forget, it was only a short trip as well.
For four days, it's not like that.
Well, whatever, we turned up.
No, tell you what.
It's so fucking ill.
That it's not, don't go Lanzarote,
it's don't fucking fly with Jet Two.
Oh, sorry if there's any Jet Two fans listening.
I will be happy to never hear Jess Glynn ever again.
Can you imagine if the plane's actually gone down,
that'd be the last thing you hit.
Standing in a crowded room.
I can see your face.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
Oh, so sick of it.
No, there was this great moment as well
where we got the bus transfer thing.
And the first time, when we got there,
we were sat on the bus for about an hour and a half
with the first ones on the bus.
We were indeed. And then we were actually
the last ones off of the bus.
Yep. Which took another hour.
And then when we were coming home,
we were the first ones on the bus.
We were the first pick up.
And then when we got to the airport,
Reece was really stressful because our plane
was like an hour away from taking off.
And we weren't even like at the airport yet.
And I was like, don't panic.
We're on a Jet Two bus, getting on a Jet Two plane.
Like I'm sure they won't leave without us.
And they didn't, but we understandably
champing up the bit to get off the bus.
That's because it was absolutely bollocks
because when the coach fucking picked us up,
we were the last cunts that they picked up.
No, we were the first people they picked up
on the way home.
That was it.
We were the last ones that got dropped off
on the way out.
We were the first ones picked up
and we went all around fucking Lanzarote,
picking every motherfucker up.
People that were late, people that think.
And then not only was my case in the end,
Reece went on the round the other side of the bus
because they'd left my case, not on it.
But this was a great moment where we were about
to disembark the vehicle and a Jet Two lady
pushed Reece back onto the bus just to stand there
and say, thank you for choosing Jet Two holidays.
This is what happened.
They stopped, music starts playing.
I jumped straight out of my seat
because I was like, I'm getting off of this coach
and I'm getting our stuff off of this fucking coach.
And I'm pretty sure I had one foot on the ground
off the coach and she literally put her hand on my chest
and pushed me back up and says, nope, you can't go yet.
And I literally looked at her and went, what the fuck?
And then she pushed me back and then said, thank you.
I was like, what a waste of fucking time that was.
Get out of my way.
We had a blessing.
I think if you were going for like two weeks,
it might make more sense, but we literally turned up.
There was a welcome pack saying hello.
And then the next day there was a letter on our table
going, you're leaving tomorrow.
I hope you've had a lovely holiday with Jet Two.
You're like, I'm getting a whiplash.
But no, but anyway, back to the original point is that,
yeah, we played a lot of Diablo on the holiday.
And it was great.
Like that, I actually had like a really, really nice time.
I really liked it.
We were sitting at a fucking buffet
and we're both looking at each other and stuff.
It's like, you're thinking what I'm thinking.
Oh yeah, we're gonna go back and play Diablo Immortal.
100%.
Oh my God.
Because it was just so nice, man.
We just put on some British TV
and then just sat there playing Diablo Immortal.
It was great.
With snacks.
Oh, should we go away?
Well no, actually though, do you not think our little,
when we went away at Christmas for a couple of days
and we took the dog, I actually unknowingly had COVID.
Then I very, very much knew I had COVID
about three or four hours later.
But that was great because we did an Airbnb
and I know there's a little bit going on with them
at the minute where like basically it's taking the piss
with the pricing and actually people are being filmed,
people are being harassed.
Well, the geezer was kind of taking the piss
with the fucking cleaning service
when he didn't he found like 60 quid to him.
No, that wasn't him.
That was when we didn't stay in
because that took the piss.
No, but this guy had like 13 fucking properties
in a tiny, tiny little coastal town.
Nuts.
Anyway, good for him.
Happy for him.
Really actually am.
But no, like we, and it was perfect though
because there was a telly with H.J. Meyer.
So I brought my switch and was playing that.
And then there was a little desk with a little light
just behind where the chair was and Reese had his laptop.
And it was amazing.
Like it was really great.
We had a taste of what it'd be like to have our own gaff
and it felt so great.
It was in like some little like, not even little,
just a three bedroom house.
Two, yeah.
No, it was three.
Two.
Three.
Two.
Three.
Think about it, top of the stairs,
there was a double bedroom there
and then there was a double bed in that one
and then a bathroom and that was it.
No.
It described me the third bedroom then kid.
Right, upstairs.
Yep.
Up the stairs.
Yep.
So I've come up the stairs directly there
is the one with two beds.
No, it was off to the left.
Yes, which is where I've come up the stairs.
I'm now facing this way.
Oh right, yep.
There's a bedroom there.
Yep.
Two beds.
Two beds with the window looking into the garden.
Yep.
And then there was-
Now remember it's a terrace
so you've only got two walls with windows.
Yep.
Okay.
And then there was a-
So which bedroom had no windows?
And then there was a corridor.
Yep.
Yeah.
With our bedroom and the toilet.
Yep.
I swear there was another room
in between that corridor.
No, cause think about it, it's a terrace.
So you only had two walls.
I know technically if it doesn't have a window
it can't be a bedroom.
No, there was no room.
Did you know that?
Cause the wardrobe-
Connor was explaining that to me.
If it doesn't have a window
it technically can't be classed as a bedroom.
Yeah, makes sense.
It's more of a closet, I suppose.
No, it will-
So anyway, now two lovely two bed house.
Two bed then.
It's a two bed house.
Really nice.
What would become?
It was a lovely house.
Two bed, two bathrooms.
Yeah.
Was it two bathrooms?
It was like, yeah.
There was, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, no, it was nice, man.
It was all right.
It was decent.
We had a little-
Yeah, I liked it.
It was really nice.
Fucking little like fake fire.
Yeah.
Oh, it was crusty.
What you put on cause I was having, you know.
Cause you was dying.
Dying, yeah.
And yeah, and then we just fucking gamed all night.
It's a shame about Diablo Immortal though, man.
Once I-
Oh no.
Once I hit that paywall,
I was just instantly like, no, fuck this.
It's so strange because I was always like
three or four levels just behind you, wasn't I?
Cause I played a couple of days later.
And what got me was I never actually hit the paywall
because when you hit the paywall and immediately stopped,
I kind of stopped.
Which kind of has that weird like back of closure
where I believe you and I believe everyone that did hit it.
But like having not hit it myself,
there's like this tiny bit of hope
that maybe if I were to hit it, it'd be all right.
Sure.
I'd still enjoy it,
but I know that that's just not gonna be the case.
And yeah, it is.
I did have a little dabble actually a little while ago,
didn't I?
Cause I just miss her.
And actually like all of the textures
and everything had like deleted itself.
Yeah, mine's the same.
So you have to re-download it.
And yeah, and like there was quite a few,
like for some reason,
Jermyn Bourne originally did it.
My phone just wouldn't like it.
Yeah, yeah.
Trying to do it.
And like, I only have very few,
like when I had a little dabble that was there.
And it did feel good.
It felt so nice,
but it is pretty dead compared to what it was
when we played it obviously.
There's still a couple of people about,
but hardly any compared to,
but oh, it just could have been so good.
It could have been so, so good.
So versatile.
I imagine in the extent where,
if that was, excuse me,
if it was successful and if it was not, you know,
how it actually was with Payone, whatever.
Like I reckon to the extent
where you might have never bought a Steam Deck.
If your phone was cutting that mustard for you,
there's, you know what I mean?
Like there really is something there with
making it accessible to something that everyone already has.
Everyone has a smartphone.
There is a high possibility that if it had taken off
and actually sustained its flight,
then I would have gone down the route
of getting a Lenovo Legion,
as opposed to getting a Steam Deck
or would have got a gaming phone.
And that was your toss up, wasn't it, really?
Which is what I was,
what we've been planning on for years
is to get hold of a gaming phone.
And...
You used to look at the Razer ones, didn't you?
Yeah, and I really thought it was a,
it was a Razer One when they first come out
and then a Razer Two.
And then I set my sights on a Lenovo Legion.
And then it was the Asus ROG
that was the one that I was gonna get
because it just tipped the point above everything else.
And there's just nothing, there's nothing out there.
I can see exactly...
So you wouldn't wanna play on the console instead.
Yeah, I can see exactly why so many companies
are trying to break into that mobile gaming world
because that is such a, like you say,
the accessibility of that.
With today's day and age, the way that phones are now,
almost every single person,
obviously I understand if you can't quite afford it,
if you're not in the same position,
but let's say majority of people have a decent phone.
They just have one.
Because much like the PS5, the Series X and the S,
PC is slightly different, but let's take those two examples.
We've spoken about it before, hitting that hardware ceiling.
There's only so high you can go
and then you've got to look at other avenues.
And it's the same with phones.
Most phones nowadays are heavy hitters.
Even the fucking wanky ones you see on TikTok shop
where it's like fucking 90 quid.
Just for a time, they're still decent.
So that versatility of having something
that you use every single day
for the majority of your day,
whether it's fucking flicking through TikTok
or you're like me where you're constantly using Google Maps.
There's, everyone's on their phone all day, every day.
And yet the gaming side of it, there's nothing there.
Obviously you've got things like Call of Duty Mobile
and then Diablo Immortal, Need for Speed.
But they're not, they are not the same.
It almost seems to be like,
even if these games that come out
are just so intensely successful in their first run,
you know, even let's say first six months,
there's, I feel little longevity at the moment.
Like if you think like the summer of Pokemon Go,
will go down in the history books.
I've never been so active in my life.
I was going up to the fucking Olympic Stadium
just because that's where all the good Pokemon were.
Like all the once.
Coming out clubbing at like fucking three in the morning
and there's like hundreds of people,
like it's middle of the fucking day.
Like everyone's on Pokemon Go.
We were never so healthy.
You know what I mean?
And you know, even-
People have never felt safer to go outside.
Obviously I know there was a spout
of like people getting their phones rubbed up
because everyone's on their phones.
Yeah, like getting hit by cars and shit.
Yeah, but ultimately there was never been
so many people out in a night.
It was so great.
Yeah, and you could just tell,
you could tell who was Pokemon Go.
You know, and like even going back to like really early on
like Angry Birds and you can't even get
like a just normal bog standard Angry Birds anymore.
Which I find sad.
You know what I mean?
Like some things, I thought it was nice
like going right back to start the fact that, you know,
like some of the cod servers are back online
because people I think do want that.
And I think like with Nintendo Switch,
obviously with the online membership,
there's loads and loads of emulated games
and they're bringing new ones all the time.
And like that, there is a, now I know
we've had the conversation before where you especially,
but also me to quite a significant extent,
we don't necessarily go in for the replay
and the old games exactly what we just said earlier.
I can't remember if it was on this or the Patreon,
if you'd like to have a look.
For five pounds a month.
About kind of keeping that, oh no, it wasn't the start.
Keeping that nostalgia for yourself
and not kind of replaying it now.
Yeah.
But I do think that, yeah,
they've yet to break into something that stays around.
It's the corporate greed of it.
The fucking ads as well, like I know.
Well, Diablo didn't.
No, not the ads, but like for Diablo,
but there are games where,
like there are a couple where I have,
it'll be like two pound 49 to get it back.
I did the same thing with Frodown.
Yeah, I did the same thing.
And that's why they do it.
It's why they do it with YouTube, Spotify.
When you think about it, so we're here saying,
oh, you know, if you'd have put,
if you'd have made Diablo Immortal available for 30 quid,
and okay, yeah, 30 quid,
and still have shit that you can buy,
much like anything, ESO, WoW, whatever.
But ultimately, if Diablo Immortal had taken off
and the pay, you know, everyone was okay
with it being, having the fat fucking paywall,
per customer, they would make so much more because.
Of course they would.
You know, so they obviously, you know, I think
there must've been a point where they made that decision
and went, nah, we'll risk it
and hope that we get fucking lows.
What they did is they made it pay to win,
but masked it as they, they were clever with it,
but not at the same time because people are smart.
They made it pay to win without making it pay to win.
So technically you can access everything
within the game for free.
Yeah, if you grind your life away.
Yeah, much like every single fucking mobile game,
there is Clash of Clans, you know what I mean?
Stuff like that, Throwdown.
You can play them all for free.
You can gain absolutely everything for free,
but it takes you fucking forever.
And people did the maths and the monetary maths
for Diablo Immortal, and it was thousands of pounds,
thousands and thousands to be able to get
the top tier quality gear.
And the hours that would have had to be put in,
it was hundreds of years to be put in,
to reach that level without spending any money.
So people were doing that.
Obviously it's all RNG based, so it's completely random.
So it's like, say there's a crest that you need.
There might be a one in 1000 chance of you getting it.
So you might get it on the first fucking try.
You might get it on the 55th try,
but the majority of people are gonna get it
somewhere near the thousand range.
So that means that in order for me to get that,
say we put it into hours,
I might get it in my first hour of gameplay,
but majority of people, it's gonna be a thousand hours.
So you go with the average of that.
And that's how they got away with it by saying,
well, you can get everything,
but they're also the people that are in charge of the RNG.
So they can tweak it down whenever they want.
World of Warcraft have done that before.
Loads of games with that kind of loot system
have done that before, where they go,
all right, well, this has a 5% drop chance.
Let's just tweak that down a little bit,
or let's bump that up now
because it's been out for X amount of time.
And yeah, with Diablo Immortal,
it was so much money that you would have needed.
And because of that, there was a significant skill gap
in that.
Obviously, places like China,
where mobile gaming is massive,
a lot of like the 1% player base of Diablo Immortal
was in countries like that,
where it's already an integrated thing.
Mobile gaming in the continent of Asia
is massive compared to the Western side.
And it was very, very noticeable
that once you hit a certain point,
you weren't getting any form of progression,
but there were people that had paid that were above you
that could fuck you up instantaneously.
So it's like, right, so I'm not even being given the chance
to get to your level for free.
I'm never gonna get it without paying.
And I think that spoiled it
because I genuinely think that Diablo Immortal
could have been the game that paved the way
for mobile gaming because it played so well
and it ran so well and it was so fun.
I loved it so much.
It was such a good game and it was free.
It was free, which it shouldn't have been.
I should have made it pay.
And I think it's interesting as well,
like the further thing to that.
So you've got like, like you say,
either the monetary investment or the time investment,
but also the third thing is like,
like I was just saying,
I didn't bugger off for any other reason
other than you didn't know what should you do it
and knowing the gamer you are.
And I think kind of potentially what's happening
with Diablo 4 now is word spreads that
it's kind of dead in the water.
More people are gonna go fuck.
Because even like you've just said there,
it's gone from hyping it up and playing together
and doing this to like, oh yeah, no,
I don't think Connor is playing it
and I don't know Ash is either.
Like it drops off in your circles as well.
And that is just such a killer.
And it also kind of feels like they don't give a fuck.
They didn't give a fuck.
They got their money, they cashed out and off they went.
Yeah, and I still get push notifications.
Like the other day I was at work
and my little watch went,
you have a letter from the sanctuary.
Of course.
You know, they're like, the letter says, please come back.
But again, it harps back to that corporate greed point
I made earlier in that they don't look
at the fucking longevity of it.
It's so ridiculous.
You look at something like Diablo Immortal
and Blizzard would have been presented with right.
You can either have a million players now
and then they might spend X amount of money in your shop
for all the shit that you're putting on it.
But in six months time, that might drop down
to a hundred thousand concurrent players
for the next 10 years.
Or you can charge people for the game
and have 500,000 people start playing your game.
But in the next six months, it's gonna be 600,000.
And then it will stay consistent at around four to 500,000
for the next 10 years.
With a shop implemented into that as well.
It just seems so crazy.
I find that so, it's so short-sighted.
Let me quickly grab some cash off of you
and then fucking spend it elsewhere
and then leave this fucking dine in the water.
Because obviously they brought in a new class, didn't they?
The, I think it's like a vampire or something.
It was a vampire type.
And everyone was really hyped for it
and they announced it.
And then at the end of the fucking announcement,
Diablo Immortal.
And everyone's like, fucking hell.
Not interesting, cause everyone thought it was Diablo 4.
Shit.
I was like, you cock teasers.
Cause they knew exactly what they were doing there.
But fucking Apex Legends did the same thing.
They did the same thing.
They had, they made it mobile.
Made you have to pay for fucking everything.
And then brought out these really cool operators
that were only exclusive to the mobile.
Which you know exactly why they do that
because it's trying to entice you back to mobile gaming
rather than the console version of it.
Yeah.
Cause they've got like,
I can't even remember what one it was,
but it was a really cool fucking operator there.
I remember Ash talking about it.
It looked fucking sick,
but you could only get it on the mobile version of it.
And you can imagine it being something as simple as,
you know, a bit of market research that shows
more people pay for extra shit on mobile versus console.
So like, brilliant, let's push that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's do a load of shit like that.
It makes you feel like a little like,
little like mouse in a little experiment.
Do you know what I mean?
Being sort of played with.
That they don't actually really.
Move it closer to you, man.
Oh, sorry.
Sorry about that.
Do you know what I mean?
Like it's,
it makes me sad that they may have been presented
with the scenario you just said and chose a nah,
we'll just get the money in.
Yeah, let's get some quick cash going.
Or nah, that won't happen.
Why is it?
Well, I suppose the developers might not be in charge
of that, but you know, it just seems crazy that,
you know, a lot of these people are so incredibly passionate
about making something decent and that they can just,
you know, sort of be.
I don't believe it's a developer thing that,
I believe it's much higher up.
It's the corporate side of it that fuck a lot of stuff up
because even now when there's a lot of like a gameplay
reveals and stuff like that,
and you see the developers talking,
you can see half of them are reading from a fucking script.
They've been told exactly what to say
rather than speak their mind,
even though they're the ones that have made the fucking game
because they're not the ones that have the deep pockets
to fund it.
They're being told what to say.
And people know that, gamers know that.
And I just feel like a lot of the shit that goes wrong
with gaming has nothing to do with gamers.
It has everything to do with people sitting in an office
upstairs that probably aren't even fucking gamers themselves.
They just like the money.
That Tetris film we watched,
which is just like kind of encompasses exactly what it was.
It was who can get the rights to this game.
Who can make the most money.
Who can make the most money out of this
as quickly as possible.
And I feel like that is such a shit way to run gaming
because that is not what gaming is about.
It's not about fucking making the most money.
It's about being able to play with your friends
and living in that fantasy world
that you can't do in real life and being able to escape.
And I feel like once you,
yes, I understand that it's a business
and it has to make fucking money and it's very cutthroat.
Look at the fucking studio that made Gollum, gone.
Fucking useless now, but you can't just be greedy
with everything, even with things like The Last of Us.
Why are we making remakes for both of these games?
They're making a part two.
It's either a remaster or a remake.
Why?
Literally why?
It was only a couple of years old.
It does not fucking need it.
It looked fantastic on the PS5.
What the fuck are you gonna do to it?
I mean, you played on the PS4, but.
Yeah, but it looks great on the PS5.
So why, what more?
What more?
I haven't played it on the PS5.
No, but I've definitely seen bits of it on the PS5.
Either way, it doesn't need to be fucking.
Yeah, no, not at all.
Nothing needs to be done to it.
But so it's just a clear cash grab
because I feel like people look at it
as you're sitting in a business meeting and it's right.
Well, we can either invest X amount of money
and try and make a new game and it potentially flop
or we can take this game that's already massively popular,
put it in a different fucking skin
and then resell it to the same idiots that bought it.
Let's see how many people buy it.
And they always go for option two.
Well, yeah, and it's like looking at someone
who has like tweeted and said,
you know, I saw one the other week
and he'd played it like,
I think it's like 18 times all the way through.
And again, how depressing that they might look at someone
and they go, yeah, fuck it, right, all right then.
We'll make it again, cause it's not bad.
Who's played it 18 times,
he'll definitely play it if we make it a bit shinier.
That's so depressing.
But then you have the massive games
that people are screaming to be remade
that do not get touched.
You've got Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.
People fucking go ballistic wanting that to be redone
and yet it's not here, it's just not here.
And then you've got the likes of fucking Prince of Persia.
Again, people screaming for that to be fucking remade.
Even the early Ratchet and Clank's do that.
Simpsons Hit and Run, the old Lord of the Rings game.
Where, what, all these, this massive catalogue
of these fucking incredible games
that just get completely ignored
for shit that's either not even old enough to be considered
for a fucking remake or a remaster
or were so popular that it's just a clear grab for money.
You know what I mean?
Why, I don't understand why the, I don't know.
And I feel like with game showcases and stuff like that,
there's so much stuff that you see now where it's like,
well, who asked for this?
Who wanted this game to happen?
And then they flop and then you don't see of them ever again.
It's, I don't know.
I feel like gaming's on that slippery slope
of being something absolutely incredible,
but at the same time, it only takes one thing
for it to be absolutely shit.
And I think gaming, games in themselves
are very much like that.
It really doesn't take much now
for people to be switched off from a game
and then that potentially ruin the entire game.
Diablo 4 prime example here.
I'm not, that game might not be absolutely ruined,
but it's fucking reputation has definitely been tarnished
by one set of fucking patch notes.
That's all it's taken.
Yeah, well, and actually I think I would like to think
a little bit of karma based on some stuff
like Diablo Immortal in that, you know,
I hope that they do, you know,
I wonder had that game been amazing,
people might have a little bit more tolerance
for what's happening now with Diablo 4,
whether they were into that or not.
Like I think hearing about it and thinking,
shit, that takes a piss.
You know, and it's, it is frustrating
and you are, the industry has massively changed.
Like even with between, like you say,
mobile is becoming as powerful as they are,
but also our attention span is completely changing.
The world being shit and you're yearning for nostalgic things,
you know, there's so many different elements
that it must be very, very difficult to get that right.
Even when you think, like I often think
when a game gets released and if it's like buggy as fuck,
you think, what have you been doing then?
I don't want to be hard,
but like what have you been doing?
You know, even something like Tears of the Kingdom,
those glitches shouldn't have happened.
They shouldn't have happened the way they did,
but you know, and perhaps that's just luck, I don't know,
but, or people, you know what I mean?
But like, is that not the point?
Here is the top 10 list on the Play Store of games.
Oh yeah, go on.
The top of the top charts.
Number one, Pokemon Sleep.
Again, cause it's new.
It's literally a sleeping app.
Yeah.
All right.
Monopoly Go.
Okay.
Royal Match, Roblox, Burger Please, Begging Life,
the picture of a homeless geezer on it saying help.
Block Blast, which is just a blatant rip off of Tetris.
Life Bubble, Chrome Valley Customs and Subway Surfers.
The fuck?
What is that?
I'm going to keep scrolling until I eventually find a game.
I mean, Roblox is a given.
That's actually a fucking game.
Roblox, yes, but that's just fucking children
that are running that shit.
Yeah, and I think Subway Surfers is the same.
Subway Surfers has been around for fucking ages.
FIFA Football is any game that I've seen that had Tetris.
Tetris on 48th.
Other than that, there ain't actually anything.
Mario Kart Tour 57th.
There's nothing on here that is screaming fucking mobile games.
These are all just little games that you jump on
for five minutes every day because they fucking lock you
out of everything after that.
I don't understand where,
like, I just,
I'm going to have to pay for that now.
Which is what an unexplored,
but at the same time must be so difficult
thing to break into.
Yeah.
Which is what I, I don't know.
I just don't know.
I think I'm just extremely butthurt about fucking
Diablo Immortal, man.
Such a shame.
Oh my God, Pokemon Sleep is actually 15th in the Apple Store.
Oh, is it?
Probably because I think it came out slightly later.
Diablo Immortal, 10 plus million downloads.
That's what I was trying to look for, but it came out.
I haven't been on it in so long
that it's disabled it on my phone.
That's why nothing's popping up before.
It just disables it.
So it's still downloaded,
but it just stops it from doing anything on your phone
until I re-enable it
because you just haven't used it in that long.
Yeah, fair enough.
That's quite clever.
But I just find it,
let me see some of the reviews on it.
It's a good game,
maybe a little bit repetitive at times,
but the updates are insufferable.
Every time they drop an update or event,
it seems like you have to download and reinstall
all the game resources,
even with a super fast broadband connection.
This is an exceedingly painful experience.
Grim.
Overall, love the app, however,
since the most recent updates were on that,
the quality of the game has rapidly just decreased.
It glitches really bad.
It had a freeze and lockup,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, it's...
A lot of people saying the same shit that we're saying,
that they love the game, but they just fucked it.
Yeah.
They just completely fucked it.
Yeah, on here,
out of nearly 18,000 ratings,
it's literally about 80% five star.
But then there's one here,
it just says, yeah, lowest point in Blizzard history.
Sorry, am I too loud?
No, you're too quiet.
Too quiet, sorry.
I can't sit back.
That's why you haven't got the headphones on.
Oh, sorry.
Just can't hear.
Yeah, well, I don't want to mess up my curls, okay?
Sorry.
No, it's okay.
But yeah, just as I've been playing Blizzard games
since the 80s for perspective,
appreciate the graphics,
it's literally exactly what we've just said.
I appreciate the graphical quality
and the gameplay is smooth,
but it's a hollow shell gacha game.
Once you reach max level,
there is no end game at all worth a penny.
Yeah, literally.
Which is just a shame.
There'd be a massive uproar if it weren't mobile games.
If it was PlayStation, Xbox, fucking laptop switch,
whatever, Steam Deck,
if it was anything like that.
But again, those are games that you pay for.
Most people look at it and go,
well, it's free, what'd you expect?
It doesn't cost you anything.
But when it's a game like that,
when it was so good on the phone,
yeah, I don't know, man.
I know.
Well, let's be optimistic for the future.
Maybe someone will cotton on eventually.
And we'll leave it on that somber thought.
Yeah.
I don't know, make it a positive one.
Positives, any positives here.
I've got some hard stacks.
I've got a lot of hard stacks
from my mystery boxes from PopFigures.
So that's decent.
What was your choice between leaving Sauron out?
At least Famous?
I suppose so, yeah, I suppose.
Have you had to take them out of the plastic ones
to put them in there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So the plastic ones are somewhere.
I think they're in that box.
Funny enough, I've got to give Mark the fucking boxes.
You know, they come with the Funko boxes.
I'm gonna give them to Mark
because he sold a load of Funkos,
but he hasn't got any boxes to send them off in.
What, them little ones?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That might be a little bit,
it's not massively protecting.
You almost need something there.
Well, they turn up in them once.
No, they turn up in a box in a box.
Yeah, that's true.
Because you won't be able to pad it out at all.
That is very true.
But what he could do is put a little bit
of rubber wrap around that and then put it in a box.
And then put it in a bigger box.
Yeah.
Or you could just buy your own fucking boxes.
Stop thieving from me, you bitch.
Yeah, I still haven't got that Squidward.
What Squidward?
That's signed Squidward by Roger Bumpass.
Yeah.
They still won't fucking.
Oh man, let go.
I hate to say it.
Oh, please.
It's great.
Right, see you later everyone.
We're fucking off.
Uro.