Diablo Immortal‘s free-to-play model has been lambasted by critics and players alike, although this hasn’t stopped the game being downloaded by millions of players. One particular bugbear among the community is that Legendary Crests, items which boosts players’ chances of receiving quality loot when running one of the game’s randomly generated Elder Rifts, are visually very similar to Eternal Legendary Crests. These are a more expensive version of the Legendary Crests exclusive to the in the in-game store. They enable players to trade any gems (which are socketed into equipment for stat bonuses) they find on the game’s gem market.
Incidentally, if all this sounds confusing, don’t worry, it’s supposed to. Such convoluted in-game economics helps obfuscate how much money players know they’re spending on free-to-play games.
Anyway, it seems the feedback (or perhaps that should be blowback) has been such that Blizzard has opted to make some changes. As reported by PCGamesN, an image of the game’s three crests appeared on Reddit, including what appeared to be a new, orange design for the standard Legendary Crest. Immortal’s lead game designer Wyatt Cheng confirmed this in a response to the post, stating “This is artwork that we’re working on to help differentiate the Legendary Crest (which will become to Orange one) [sic] from the Eternal Legendary Crest (which will remain the purple one in the middle).”
Cheng went on to explain the rationale behind the decision, stating “We want to make sure players know exactly what they’re getting when they make a purchase, view them in inventory, and use them at the Elder Rift entrance.” He also specified that “players should be able to distinguish the two quickly not only by colour but also by shape.”
These aren’t the only changes Cheng detailed in his response. Blizzard is adding the market icon to the Eternal Legendary Crest’s item description “to reinforce the difference” and is also altering the Elder Rift Entrance UI so players can choose which Crest they want to use “as well as easily see how many of each you own”.
The new design is definitely an improvement over the original, and any move toward greater transparency in a free-to-play game like Immortal should be recognised as such. However, the change hasn’t put an end to the community’s other concerns about the game, such as the rate at which Immortal supplies the standard Legendary Crests to users. “It would really help distinguish them better if we received 1 Legendary Crest every day for loggin as well,” says user Nasanhak. “So we can have at least 30 pulls a month… You know like every gacha game out there.”
