Diablo Immortal players think they've uncovered a problem with XP rewards.
Though not confirmed by Blizzard, a Reddit thread compiled by a handful of players who have been "looking at this on and off for the last month or so" states "there’s a bug that reduces the XP earned on a significant portion of kills and XP globes", consequently "reducing XP for everyone".
"We don’t fully understand why or when it will happen," writes staplepies on the Reddit thread (thanks, NME). "It seems to vary in frequency/impact from zone to zone, and possibly based on the time of day, but we’ve yet to be able to discern any reliable pattern or cause.
"But overall, it can cause a double-digit percent reduction in XP – sometimes seemingly as much as 50 per cent."
"Under 'normal' circumstances, you always get the same XP for every mob of a certain type," they add in the detailed post, which includes screenshots as evidence of the issue.
"In Shassar Oasis, there are three mob types – Dust Imps (54XP), Drubs (48XP), and Sand Golems (129XP)," staplepies explains. "When XP is unbugged, you can go hours and only ever see these three values (or whatever the corresponding values are for your current XP penalty) in this location for non-elite mobs. (I’m intentionally using just kills from non-elite mobs to keep things simple here, but the bug happens for elite mobs as well.)
"But then you might start to notice some odd entries."
They then note that screenshots captured an "obtained experience" reward of 1, 42, 28, and 107 - "When things are really bad, you can see runs of kills where every single one is bugged" - even in places where the players believe such figures aren't possible. They then carefully detail what may be causing the issue, listing "patterns/causes that might be of interest" for other players to test for themselves.
"Help bring this to Blizzard’s attention," they write at the end. "It's possible the bug is random enough that only the developers will have enough information to figure out why it's happening. And either way, this needs to be addressed/fixed."
Even before it had released, Blizzard was keen to let fans know that the game's microtransactions "never circumvent core gameplay", but just a few days later, the company announced the game wouldn't be launching in two European countries due to laws against loot boxes and gambling, and pay-to-win complaints began to surface.
Despite its controversial monetization techniques, though, Blizzard and its new boss, Mike Ybarra, have argued that most players aren't spending any money on Diablo Immortal and that its monetization only kicks in when it comes to "the end game".
That hasn't stopped it from being incredibly popular, though. In a little over two weeks after launch, Diablo Immortal had already secured over 8.5 million downloads, and had by mid-June generated $24 million for developer Blizzard, making it the developer's second-highest earner after Hearthstone. Consequently, Diablo Immortal has defied its microtransaction controversy to become the biggest global launch in series history and top over 20 million installs.
Diablo Immortal is out now on PC and mobile.
If you're ready to play then check out the best Diablo Immortal classes to help you pick your character.
