Thanks for doing this! Years of grinding in Diablo 2 and reading about the psychology of intermittent rewards has made me able to see through any game with a grinding mechanic and not play it. So naming and explaining the dark pattern can help.
I don't think anything has pushed me towards low-key single player indie gaming more than the industry's relentless endeavour to blur the lines between gaming and gambling.
Multiplayer? I loved the asymmetrical co-op ones like It Takes Two, The Past Within, Tick Tock: A Tale For Two.
Give me an experience that is thoughtful and enjoyable over one that is intended to frustrate any day. The Seance of Black Manor, The Return of the Obra Dinn, The Outer Wilds, Star of Providence, Disco Elysium, etc. etc.
You mean the new diablo 2 right? I doubt the original Diablo 2 grinding was money-earning focused. I mean the old games (as they appeared to me) were focused on "do it, sell it, make people fall in love with it while we prepare the new game". The new games are more like "make people hooked on it, while we prepare another DLC" - I've never played the new Diablo 2 so I am asking. However I used to grind Diablo 1 (and still do it sometimes with devilutionx) and while I am grinding they do not earn anything, so I feel that it's only to my guilty pleasure...
I didn't know there was a new diablo 2? I mean the original one from two decades ago. I agree its not bad compared to modern games since the grinding just wasted your time rather than money (there was a secondary market for items that was worth some money but you didn't need to participate). I feel like it was one of the prototypical games of this kind of grind.
There's a remastered version - Diablo 2 Resurrected. It's very similar, with some QoL changes but mostly it's the same game, so of course the same grind.
Diablo and all the RPG is all about grind. But I'd say, in a positive way. You know what they say... don't go to PvP if you don't kill enough boars... (watch?v=TBmG7eRjZ2g)
Since they mentioned intermittent reward, I take that comment to mean that they prefer to play skill-based games rather than time-sink-for-variable-reward games.
I agree with you that Blizzard didn't stand to directly earn from the D2 grind, but it's valid to not want to participate in a time-sink.
