Diablo Immortal

I think Immortal actually has a better end game than D4; if it wasn't for the predatory monetization scheme I think it would've been a good game (once you get to the end game you basically serve as algae to be fed on by the whales that have spent tens of thousands on the game). They did a much, much better job turning Immortal into an mmo-lite experience than they did with D4

I'm almost loathe to admit this, but I was playing DI right up until D4 launched. The social hooks of the game are pretty good. I can give a pretty decent rundown of the game as a low (by DI standards) spender.

They "fixed" a lot of the issues people have brought up in this thread. The raids no longer require a full 8 man team, they can even be solo'ed. They added a lot of raids as well; most of them are pretty decent. Gear progression and what not has basically been fixed, it's quite easy to hit the CR requirements at every difficulty. Early on the game had big issues with getting groups together (and even with the issues they had, this was a million times better than the nothing in D4), but they also fixed that with an easy to use party finder system as well as the fact that dungeons can also be done with any number of members rather than only with a full party. Generally speaking, if you are only interested in PvE, there is nothing in the game that can't be done f2p. There are some extreme differences between the efficiency of f2p vs whales, think something like 4-5 min dungeon clears vs 1:30 dungeon clears, but nothing PvE wise is out of reach for f2p players at this point.

The accessibility of the PvE content is great, however, it is also deeply flawed and shallow. Basically, gear all has a "combat rating" stat on it (and this mechanism recently changed from being the total of all stats on a piece of gear to being a completely unrelated new stat. If you used to have say a chest piece with 200 strength and 200 fortitude, that piece would be 400 combat rating regardless of the magic effects and what not on it. In a patch that came out right about the time D4 released, they changed combat rating to an independent stat. Now some random 130 strength 140 fortitude item could have higher combat rating than your old 200/200 piece). PvE content in the game is heavily gated behind this combat rating mechanic. If you are below the combat rating for a given fight, you have absolutely huge damage done and damage taken penalties that make the encounters basically unwinnable. Conversely, if you are over the CR requirement, you can basically just stand still and hold your basic attack and win. The PvE content is thus pretty unrewarding even if the combat and some of the mechanics (if you choose to even bother dealing with them instead of just standing still or whatever) are pretty fun.

PvP, on the other hand, is absolute garbage. It is completely pay to win with a ludicrous ceiling on how much you can spend. Generally speaking I would say it costs the following to get to each respective resonance "tier":

1k: f2p accessible
2k: f2p accessible with a lot of time or luck, or around $200-300 depending on how long you've been playing (I was personally at around 2460 resonance)
3k: $2000-$3000
4k: $3000-$5000
5k: $8000-$10000
6k: $15000-$25000
7k: $30000-$40000
8k: $50000-$70000
9k: $60000-$80000
10k: $80000+

Now there's a little bit of luck involved as well. You could be completely f2p and get a lucky drop of a 5/5 quality blood soaked jade, which you can then sell for 640k platinum. That much platinum can get you pretty far in the game; just that 1 drop alone can probably buy you enough resonance to hit 1.5k or 2k. The higher your resonance gets, the less you get for your money, however. If you're already at like 3k, that might only get you another 200 resonance or so. There are a shocking number of whales as well. My server had 50+ players over 5k resonance. To give you an idea of the power of the top players, in an 8v8 battleground, if 1 team had 1 10k resonance player and 7 0 resonance players, that 10k could 1v8 the other team if they did not have multiple 7k+ players.

What finally got me to quit was the patch they released right around when D4 came out. The max resonance used to be 7560 (6 gems equipped at a max of 1260 resonance per gem). While I was pretty weak against a 7k player, I could on occasion catch them in a bad position and kill them if they were distracted by someone else and already weak. If I saw a 7k resonance player at 15% hp with no cooldowns and I was full hp with all my cool downs AND I got the jump on them, I had about a 50/50 chance of killing them (and yes it's dumb that it was 50/50 considering the circumstances of the engagement in that given scenario). The new patch introduced 2 new item slots, and thus 2 more gem slots. They also changed the resonance power curve, making the middle tiers (people that had spent upwards of $25000) much weaker (relatively) while making the top tier players basically walking gods. In a battleground post patch, I could literally die instantly just by being near a 10k player. They wouldn't even have to engage me, their passive or automatic skills would kill me from more than a full screen away.

All that PvP content is basically the end game, sadly. PvE is relatively meaningless. The end game is shadow wars and the immortals vs shadows conflict, which is all PvP.

Why did I play the game for so long? I got got basically. The FOMO and the thought of letting my clan down etc all made me keep playing, and got me to spend more money than I ever thought I would on a game. The social aspects of the game with the dailies and the clan content etc is a pretty good hook. The game is actually pretty fun as well if you don't care about being at the top. I was (I suppose unfortunately?) in a top clan on my server, so I was constantly inundated with whales in all directions.

They actually had a limited time event recently that was PvP with normalized stats; everyone got all rank 10 gems and the same gear upgrades etc. It was unbelievably fun, probably the most fun I've had in a game in many years. Unfortunately it only ran for 2 weeks, and then it was back to the whale infested waters of the normal end game. It's a shame, I think DI is a great game with a ridiculous monetization system that unfortunately breaks it. If you've never played DI, I would actually recommend playing the campaign at least. Just don't spend any money and stop playing as soon as the campaign is finished.