Blizzard 'surprised' by reaction to Diablo 3 online announcement
Diablo 3's always-on internet requirement has gotten some criticism from fans, but Blizzard's Robert Bridenbecker says he's "surprised" at the reaction given the clear direction of the industry.
Blizzard's recent announcement that Diablo 3 would require a constant connection to the Internet has been met with some consternation from fans. The company has been caught off-guard by the reaction, at least according to online technologies VP Robert Bridenbecker. He says that Blizzard's history and the direction of online strategies in general shows the always-on requirement as a reasonable standard, given the benefits of it in this case.
"I'm actually kind of surprised in terms of there even being a question in today's age around online play and the requirement around that," Bridenbecker told MTV Multiplayer. "We've been doing online gameplay for 15 years now... it really is just the nature of how things are going, the nature of the industry. When you look at everything you get by having the persistent connection on the servers, you cannot ignore the power and the draw of that."
Bridenbecker claims that DRM wasn't the impetus for the decision, but rather the "feature set, the sanctity of the game systems like your characters. You're guaranteeing that there are no hacks, no dupes. ... I look at [DRM solutions] and say, 'Wow, those kind of suck.' But if there's a compelling reason for you to have that online connectivity that enhances gameplay, that doesn't suck. That's awesome."
He also suggests that offering a separate offline mode would create a "separate path" for players, and not many would use it anyway. He calls this solution more "clean." He also clarified that always-on doesn't mean you have to play with other people. "You'll still be able to have a private game. You'll still be able to go off and play the game solo and adventure solo. You an opt to bring other people to your world if you want, but that's up to you."
The rationale echoes comments from Blizzard game design VP Rob Pardo, who commented that increased security outweighs the benefit of offline play. "I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that."
The always-on requirement has been largely interpreted as a method of keeping hacks from impacting the game, especially ones like item-duplicating that would decimate the newly-announced real money auction house. We'll have to see if Bridenbecker's comments do anything to soothe the savage rage-beast that is the Internet.
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Steve Watts posted a new article, Blizzard 'surprised' by reaction to Diablo 3 online announcement.
Diablo 3's always-on internet requirement has gotten some criticism from fans, but Blizzard's Robert Bridenbecker says he's "surprised" at the reaction given the clear direction of the industry.-
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It's not that hard to design an interface to minimize the discrepancy. When you create a character, there's a checkbox for it being online. If you are logged in online when you make a character, the checkbox defaults to being checked.
Your character list shows all your characters and whether they're an online or offline character. Online characters are greyed out when you're starting a game offline.
You only earn achievements and similar things when playing with online characters.
The back end may or may not be harder to do, but the interface isn't that difficult or complicated. -
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Good point. There aren't a lot of good directions this industry is taking, at least when it comes to the major publishers. It seems like they basically said:
1. We're SO surprised people are upset, even though we were also really surprised when people complained about no LAN play in SC2. And online-only play went really smooth with Ubisoft, right?
2. Sure you might want to play offline, but there are other games for that. Hypocritical and facile given the earlier "direction of the industry" comment.
3. But look at all of the services we'll bring you with your always-on connection while you play singleplayer! Like? Why can't I just play my singleplayer game without wondering if my internet service will stay up? That sounds like a cool "service".
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To be honest, the backlash or e-outrage hasn't been THAT bad. Other companies got more crap then Blizzard did with this announcement.
That said, if this security measure actually assists in the security of the game from factors that don't affect me like piracy to factors that do affect me (item duping, hacks, etc.) then I support this action. I believe the industry will move in this direction anyway just like the world is moving towards more and easier connectivity.
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I'm sure they have given more thought into this than what it sounded like the first DRM for AC2 was about.
Btw, isn't it possible to play SC2 offline?
People would like to play this game when on the move (non Internet connection) - so surely with enough criticism they'll implement that for D3. Let it scan through things when online again and done?
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People get pissed every time a company announces connection requires. It's happened dozens of times in the past. There is no surprise. Also, no one believes them when they say that DRM wasn't the main consideration. Their "gameplay" reasons for the connection requirement don't preclude an offline mode.
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In what possible way could removing options be good, nevermind desirable to you?
If you don't want to play offline, THEN FUCKING DON'T.
Some of us may, even occasionally, want or need to be offline when we also happen to want or have a chance to play. How is removing that option from me in any way beneficial to you? Ignoring Schadenfreude.-
because instead of raging the moment something is taken away I actually think about why it was done and weigh what is lost vs what is gained. I look at how completely broken Diablo 2's online economy was due to dupes and hacks and wish that hadn't been the case. Then I look at WoW and how an always online system has none of those problems. Then I think about how rarely I will be in a position where I'm offline and just must must must play Diablo 3 right now because I have no other videogames to play and literally no other way to entertain myself. Then I think that sounds like a great trade off.
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You keep using that argument, "Must must must play Diablo 3" as if it is valid.
Of course there is virtually no instance where a person, "Must must must play Diablo 3," but that doesn't mean it can't and shouldn't weigh into their purchasing decision. There are many cases where a person may be without internet for days or weeks at a time through travel. And of course ISPs aren't exactly 100% uptime. Someone works 6 days a week, gets one day off to relax, internet happens to go out that day, guess who's fucked? Guess who can't play a single player game because some talking head decided that he doesn't matter?
Fuck that mindset, and fuck Blizzard. I'd expect this shit from Ubi, but I expected better of them.-
Someone works 6 days a week, gets one day off to relax, internet happens to go out that day, guess who's fucked? Guess who can't play a single player game because some talking head decided that he doesn't matter?
I would make the same decision. Sorry you didn't get to play my game for a day. If that feature means you won't buy it, so be it. I will not compromise the health of the online component where my most hardcore fans play for years to cater to the 1 day a year your internet is down and you just can't deal with not playing D3 that day.
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It's pretty obvious that the security model of D2 which allowed offline, online open bnet, and closed online bnet was insufficient for a number of reasons. Further, in addition to not being able to properly deal with 3rd party apps, hacks and dupes and exploits, then they did not have a system of tracking transactions to detect dupes after the fact because you weren't always online. Where as WoW does not have these problems because it is always online with Warden running, D2 with Warden running still suffered from numerous problems.
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You know, if you're going to call someone out as being a "pretty goddamn bad developer" for something, the least you could to is provide viable alternatives. Everyone is able to come up with ideas to fix something when one of the requirements is the fix doesn't have to actually work.
The only viable solution is a hard separation between online and offline characters, including completely different code-paths for item management and generation. Depending on their requirement/use cases, this might be more effort than it's really work.
One basic rule of security is any data that is stored on a unsecured machine is compromised. You cannot get around it. Allowing any mechanism for the client to influence item generation in the game world can and will be exploited. Your first two ideas would be broken within a few hours. In the first case, the client has to decrypt the data to use, and encrypt to transmit -- it's not hard to change those values before being encrypted/transmitted.
Your third idea is overly complicated. One character, with an online and offline set of items? Simply allowing you to play a cached version of the character that cannot be synced with the server will be less cumbersome, but even then you'll wind up with a number of users bitching about not having access to their character online. -
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There are not enough people like you to matter. The features of an online only game will probably help them gain a new audience that will make up for the small percentage of people who refuse to buy the game because of the lack of offline mode. In fact I bet the net gain in new people will far exceed the number of lost sales because of no offline mode.
Speaking of service industry, games as a service works much much better as an online only game. The constant revenue of either a monthly fee or taking a cut of item sales will help fund new content and customer support to help the game and the players.
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Uh first of all as a developer if you are allowing offline characters to magically go online and then sell shit you deserve all the bad things that happen because you are an idiot. Having an offline and online mode is totally fine and Blizzard could do it. Diablo 2 had hacks because the code was not that hot and Blizzard has only recently got better about hacking. Hell WoW had teleport hacks and other issues for years. Yes you read that right years before they got fixed.
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This all seems to be under the opinion we would still be able to take the offline character online. I see no reason they couldn't add an offline mode only option for those of us who may want to play while offline with a character with no intentions to ever go online with it. How would this harm the online portion of the game in any way?
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I would guess that all the loot-rolling and distributing code will take place on blizzard's servers(probably a legal reason for this, with the cash AH). So the reason a single-player offline mode cannot be easily implemented is that the code necessary for it to function would not actually exist on your computer.
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I could understand players being upset over this if it was 5 years ago, but it isn't. Getting online internet is, for the most part, dirt cheap for everyone now compared to 5 years ago. For example, Comcast offers cable internet for $29.99 a month at its lowest tier.
I personally would rather have Blizzard's system than any other form of "DRM" because it is the least intrusive. I didn't say it was completely void of intrusiveness, but it has the least hassles.
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so shit that you can't even maintain a basic connection for a couple of hours of gaming? you don't have to play multiplayer; you just need some sort of connection to the authorization servers
i understand the annoyance but at the same time don't think it's that big of a deal for anyone with any kind of internet connection
if you're dealing with a restrictive bandwidth cap point the ire at your service provider, not blizzard-
Yes, that shit. Just a couple of years ago my house couldn't even get high speed. It's not technically supposed to now, but we have a friend in the business who helped us a little.
However, before that there was dialup. And it would drop connection anywhere from once a day to once every 10 fucking minutes. Our DSL is a little more stable, but drops of every hour, or it not even working for an hour or two at a time are still fairly common. Being booted out of MY game because the internet hiccups and I have to reconnect would suck.
I get needing internet for Multiplayer, that makes absolute sense (duh), but what the fuck is with people against some kind of closed offline singleplayer that wouldn't affect online in the least? Seriously? Some of you people actually mean it when you say "fuck you" to those with crap internet or other problems out of their control.
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I'm glad they are acknowledging the issue anyways. I personally hate Ubiscum and their wretched DRM scheme but we have take Blizzards DRM with a different mind set. Yeah it makes sense that they want you to be online because Diablo is a franchise that thrives from online play but there should be no question about having an offline mode for the single player portion of the game. Possibly just have it sync with your battle.net account when you do decide to log in instead of ramming it down our throats like Ubiscum.
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I live in the UK and have ADSL yet spent most of last year with an intermittent net connection. I could download stuff and browse the web most of the time but I couldn't play games online or use streaming video. I had to download any video beforehand.
I have a high resistance fault on my line that's still not completely fixed. The worst of it was alleviated by convincing the fifth Openreach engineer I'd had out to install a new NTE5. The situation has also improved since my exchange has been upgraded for 21CN.
Unfortunately the root of the problem is the wiring in my town between the green boxes and the exchanges. That situation won't be resolved until FTTB arrives in a few years time.
As things are right now I have long periods of stability. I still have periods of unstable access though, mainly due to climatic conditions.
So, why are you laughing at me? My situation isn't unique. Until FTT{C,B} becomes widespread, flaky DSL will be a problem for these online single player schemes.
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I'm fine with it personally but I think it's a totally dumb move. When I had Time Warner I would drop all the time. I didn't like playing Starcraft 2 online because of it.
On FIOS now, so my connection is solid, but there's many thousands of players who will have disconnect issues all the time. I really hope Blizzard rethinks this and gives an offline option for those people. -
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It a platonic sense, taking out a server would remove the internet as we know it--because it would be replaced by an internet without said server.
Either way, my comment was more directed to the fact that hackers don't have to take down the internet, just a specific portion--which is entirely possible, and has already been done.
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gettin' right to it. I applaud them for not being floaty.
The rationale echoes comments from Blizzard game design VP Rob Pardo, who commented that increased security outweighs the benefit of offline play. "I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that."
there you have it.
the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few! for PC gaming to evolve, people need to accept and promote persistent online authentication.-
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At this point Blizzard is prob the only game designer that can actually make a statement like this (the original quote.. not your paraphrased version) and get away with it.
They have a license to print money with WoW. Do you think they REALLY care about the small percentage of people that will decide not to buy D3 because of this decision?
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Do you really care?
No, you don't.
Because you've already decided that only your use case matters, and your petty attempt to call me out is just trying to drag me further into a pissing match.
It's happened.
It's happened fairly recently.
It could, importantly, happen at any time, with or without notice.
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World of Goo about 2 weeks ago, but generally I've got the internet available, it won't effect me very much but that doesn't mean it's not a feature that's been around so long it seems asinine to take out, just make sure that playing it offline pops up a warning that you can't play with people online with that character.
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Last week, router was acting up and was offline for three hours during primetime. It was really compounded by the fact that the guy who had all the login stuff for our router is in Germany and he doesn't want to give anyone in our house the login credentials.
I mean the guy asked if he could remote desktop through my PC to configure the router. Um, no.
I ended up finishing Nimbus and EFLC when Steam went into offline mode -
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Here's a better way of gauging the impact.
1. When was the last time you were playing a multiplayer game and you or one of your friends had connection issues and couldn't play? (Frequent occurrence. Random things happen, only now you get exposed to that even when you're playing SP.)
2. How long was PSN down because Sony was under barrage from hackers? Did Sony really fix the problem or did the hackers just stop? What if every PS3 game required a PSN connection to be played?
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A year ago, I went about 11 months without cable/internet because I couldn't afford it. So during my off time (between looking for work and such) I played a lot of old single-player games that I hadn't touched in years. The Torchlight demo and Diablo 2 got the most use during that period. It was pretty much the only thing to keep me sane.
Things are okay for me now, but if I bought Diablo 3 and a few months or even a year later I lost my job again, the first thing I'd have to cut would be my cable/internet. At that point, I couldn't even play single-player portion of the game I paid $60 for.
Granted, what I described is a bit of an uncommon occasion, but even two months ago my cable crapped out and had to wait 3 days for Comcast to come out and fix it or even acknowledge that there was a problem.
Blizzard's argument is that they want to have a way to validate single-player characters so that they if they decide to play online, they are able to. I certainly don't see anything wrong with having the option to, but I'm completely certain that I don't want to play online. So why not allow users like me to opt out entirely so that I can play without an internet connection at all if needed? -
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Just last weekend actually, had a new landlord move in and I guess they fucked with some cabling on the side of the house installing a satellite dish, so I had to wait 5 days with out internet till a tech could come to the house. Thankfully I had just bought a smart phone, so I was able to tether my data just long enough to get into steam, and switch it too offline mode so I could play my games. P.S. Steam offline mode is retarded.
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All the time. My ISP is constantly going down from anything from 5 minutes to entire weeks at a time. I play more old Single Player games now then I ever have done. The option to switch to another provider won't help me and my connection speed is 0.5MB a second. Downloading 8-10GB games on Steam can take up to a month.
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You don't think so? Trading in D2 was the primary way to get a hold of the best weapons and items. Now think of the effect this will have on the game. Professional gold farmers will flood the market with items and gold, driving down the price. Soon everyone will be able to buy top-tier items for just a dollar or two.
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I think the fact that they claim to be "surprised" says more and more about their growing disconnect from their fan-base (or at least a decent portion of it).
I'm confused as to what benefits to always-on are so awesome compared to losing the ability to play off the grid? Sounds like marketing-speak to me.
I'm disappointed but they're probably at least partially right, no one should be surprised at some of this lame stuff they've been doing in recent years - after all, they're now under the reign of Kotick. :( -
Can I reality check some entitled gamers around here? I'm a prime example of someone that will be fucked over if all games required you to be online when playing. I travel for work, and spend most weeks on the road, in hotels. Not every hotel has an internet connection, and the mobile connections I have available to me are certainly not being used to download 700mb patches and updating background files. Something like this means I can only play a game whilst at home, which is basically the weekends.
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Why don't you go to...say...Athens, Tx and see if you can find a hotel with decent wireless, or see if your phone can handle any sort of tethering out there. If he's traveling, odds are he's going to new business markets which may or may not have a lot of amenities that college towns will prioritize, and cell phone coverage is spotty at best if your town has less than 50k people or is not off of a major highway. And good luck finding a hotel with an internet connection that's even remotely capable of constant activity. I've stayed at some of the best in both Europe and the states and it's very rare to find one that's capable of more than 100k/s.
In any event, not having a single player offline mode is just retarded. There's no valid reason for it. If you're going for DRM purposes, that's easily cracked. If you're doing it to control the auction market, separate offline and online characters completely with online characters stored server side.
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I suppose they don't realize that by having a "constant connection" and no offline mode means you will never actually own Diablo 3.
Yeah that could piss of a few people, not to say anything would happen to Blizz or the internet but I would like to go back in a few decades and play Diablo 3 and not care if Blizz is around or if there is no internet etc. Yes the chances of both are really low but still its the thought of not really owning the game, personally that I hate and I am dependent on two entities in order to play.
For instance I can play Diablo 2 for the rest of my life with out any issues, I own that game 100%.
Basically they are doing a DarkSpore to Diablo 3 where you will never own it or like MMOs and other "constant connection" games.
I really wish every game always had a permanent SP mode that allows you to always go back and re play your beloved game.
Say NO to "constant connection" and YES to both. Its a bullshit excuse they are only doing it for lost sales and piracy. I hate this --> "He also suggests that offering a separate offline mode would create a "separate path" for players, and not many would use it anyway. He calls this solution more "clean."" what ever man.
Ask you selves this, would you like it if eventually all your games where not on your hard drives/disks and you never actually own your games and it be like TV shows they come and go? Blahhh that fucking depressing if it ever happens :( -
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I would hope so and it would probably be true I am sure of it.
I guess I am looking more at the big picture if such a scheme is adapted it seems to encourages cloud gaming which I am hard core against. Maybe I am too paranoid, the modding argument however is true for sure you can kiss that good by not that it was something I was looking forward to. Who knows.
Please just tell them not to take valcan_s's games away :'(
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You are assuming that they even have it set up such that removing the online auth is possible without reworking major portions of the game. If they have no intention of allowing online play, the suckers who bought it will most likely just be screwed. (Not that I expect Blizzard to just fold up shop randomly)
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WHO THE HELL CARES.. seriously you play wow online constantly.. big deal... look at steam!
Blizzard is doing a great thing with this and I feel its best that they do it themselves rather then letting some other online source deal with it. These people complaining are nothing but a bunch of cry babies. -
i took d3 off my "buy" list when i heard about this requirement... ive logged thousands of hours in d2, its the first thing i install on any new pc, and i doubt theres been more than a month go by since it came out that i havent played it for at least a few hours, no matter what ive got going on... my anticipation for d2 was so high i actually took a full two weeks off when it released, the only time in my life ive taken that much time off at one time.
and out of all those thousands of hours of play, you know how many were online? two. maybe 3, if you add up the 5 minutes here and there over the last decade where i would log into battlenet, pop into a game, think "yep. still sucks." and log back out.
im not interested in playing "solo online" either. unfortunately, i have a shit internet connection that craps out every time it rains, or groundwater gets into the conduits. i dont need the lag and disconnects and rage that comes from "always online" requirements...
so, as much as it disappoints me, im just going to have to give it a pass... at least until someone comes up with a "fake" bnet server i can run locally to fool the game with. -
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I never had internet in my tent, or can when I deployed. I don't know who you deployed with, but my Rec Center limited internet time to 30min, and sure as hell wouldn't let connect my laptop to their lines. Yeah you can play your XBox/PS3, but the article was about having to be online to play Diablo 3. I guess if you work Comm you could get away with it. I ran convoys, and after my 3-7 day missions I did have some downtime to relax and play games.
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This makes perfect sense to me and after reading everyones reply I came to 2 conclusions.
1.) the people who aren't going to cheat don't care
2.) the people who were going to cheat are mad
The fact that high end items are going to be sold to players for money in microtransactions means you need to ALWAYS be connected in order to protect the PRODUCT. No one gives a shit if you're over your bandwidth limit and can't play the game on a sunday afternoon, you are not who this game is for. No one cares that now you can't load up a useless toon with hacked items and play an offline because you hate doing anything hard. This is a game that caters to 95% of the market and could give two shits about the other 5%.
Sure i think the direction that Blizzard is going with the microtransactions is a dangerous one, especially if it turns out to be successful, but they're going to make a killing doing it. You know they are.
Think about how up in arms people would be if they started doing this shit in WoW. Thats where the real shitstorm would be.-
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who are you to say it fundamentally does not need it? they evolve the game to add some features. to ensure validity of those features, online securing is the way to go.
kill two birds with one stone.
we're going into 2012. ubi called your bluff, and now blizzard is calling your bluff. enough bitching for nothing.-
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What do you mean "bluff?"
Are you implying that I won't not buy Diablo 3 out of protest? I assure you, it won't be the first time I've abstained from purchasing a high-profile game. I don't need D3 any more than Blizzard needs my $60.
But it's a horrible requirement and a terrible direction. One that I firmly (and obviously) disagree with.
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Its not artificial. you want it to be, you want the game you expected in your head but thats not the game they are making. play torchlight 2 instead and stop whining about it. you don't always get what you want, its a hard lesson blizzard is teaching you. you can teach them a lesson too by not giving them your money (but you will anyway).
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I'm not going to cheat, and I don't like that I can't play on my laptop when I don't have an internet connection (not really mad, it's just obnoxious). I have many layovers when I travel during which I'd quite happily play offline. Except I can't. I'll find something else to do, but again, it's obnoxious. I don't really understand why you can't agree that it's obnoxious, so that we can hold hands and become best friends.
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for most of the people complaining, it is about cheating. i am not talking about shackers, and i am not even necessarily talking about pirates. there was a huge community of cheaters, dupers, hackers, etc in Diablo 2 and that will be harder if not impossible to do with the closed B.net system.
I'd rather be protected from players like that and have a closed system, but then again I played almost all of the time on B.net when I played D2 and LoD.
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I rarely EVER played Diablo and Diablo 2 online with other people. I prefer the SP experience and not because I cheat so a big fuck you on that.
However with that being said I do understand Blizzards point, but it is a bit ridiculous to have this as a "requirement' to have a SP experience.
I also don't see Blizzard providing the entire world with an always on wireless internet connection to play their game, obviously thats retarded.
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There are two primary things that this is used for. Anti-piracy and anti-cheating.
For the former, a lease that expires and needs to be renewed allows for offline play in 99% of the cases. I think this is what he refers to as "direction of the industry". Think Zune pass.
For the latter, it's an implementation choice that they will have to decide if was the right one or not. -
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i read through the first portion of this thread and have not seen one person mention the reason D2 was so fucked with hacks was because of the way everything was saved locally to your system leaving you the option of doing as you pleased.
WoW is saved on servers.. (its not because its an always on connection n00bs) SC2 is saved on Servers, D3 im assuming.. will ALSO be saved on BNet 2 servers..
What does that have to do with offline / online?? just asking..
I would think playing single player i would have the option to "hack" all want whenever i want, you cant exactly "load" that onto a Bnet2 server.. so whats the problem here? Sounds like DRM to me.. -
I loved having a mule account back when I played, that was awesome. I also loved being able to choose between open/close battle.net, even though open battle.net usually meant a lot of dupers and broken items. Having multiple accounts was a plus too, and the fact that accounts expire after 6 months of inactivity always meant that I came back to play every few months because I didn't want to lose my things.
Finding loot was awesome, especially because some of the items had really low chances of dropping. Then, in the later patches when they introduced synergy to the game, it really changed the game around. No longer could you only put one point into prerequisites (unless you wanted a weaker spell), but now you could choose to put more points into them making your primarily spell that much more powerful.
Unfortunately, given the new direction Blizzard is taking with its games (leaning more towards the casual crowd and trying to streamline all their games to make it accessible for everyone), I'm not so sure I'll actually buy diablo 3 when it comes out. Theres nothing wrong with casual games, but it just doesn't fit into my game style. With their new rule of having one account tied to the purchase of the game, that also means that holding a stash of awesome treasures is going to be limited.
Being unable to choose skills and also being limited to one account means that I can't have multiple characters of the same class where they do different things. I know that runes are the response to this, but the increased inventory size doesn't seem large enough to hold all the items required for different builds. From the looks of the august 2010 inventory, it looks like the inventory is large enough to hold another set of gear before your inventory size is reduced by half. So what happens if you want a character to be able to mf, pvp, pve?-
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You basically only need 5 character slots, as you can swap skills around without a penalty (unless I misunderstood when I read about it). There's no need for several of the same type of character with different builds. Just switch to another build and swap out some of your gear with something you have in your stash.
And your account's stash will be huge, so you'll still have room to hoard lots and lots of items.
Personally, I'm on the fence about the whole easy skill-swapping thing. It might work out fine, but I'm worried it'll make things too convenient...
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Maybe you should modify your expectations? Anyone who was surprised by this hasn't been paying attention to the past five or more years of development in PC gaming. Anyone who expected stuff that worked 10+ years ago hasn't been paying attention to reality.
The industry has changed, substantially, since then.
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The first could be accomplished whether or not there's an offline component.
The second...I think people that want to play coop are going to play coop, the people that don't will play in their own private game and won't factor in to a greater coop pool.
So that leaves you with the ability to decrease piracy, which only benefits me in that Blizzard potentially gets more money. Okay...I get that, but it doesn't make me any happier that they're going that route. I don't think they'll be hurting in sales figures. -
Piracy.. you mean the DRM thing that Blizzard claims wasn't even part of their thought process? Interesting that that's the strongest of your three points.
And given the very clear attitude the PC community has for this sort of DRM.. that leaves you at maybe 0.5 for 3.
Cheating isn't a problem when you're playing offline single player.
Cheating isn't as big a problem if single player and multi-player/Battlenet characters are kept separate.
"The amount of coop" is subjective. By definition the people that want an offline single player mode are probably not going to be playing in public games on Battlenet. Furthermore - someone who doesn't buy D3 because they want the option of offline single player has 0% chance of actually becoming someone that does play on public Bnet servers.
Or are you saying that if an offline single player mode is included you *won't* buy the game? I'd be pretty interested in hearing from *that* contingent - assuming it actually exists. So far all I see are comments from people that fall into the category of "bitchers-about-bitchers".
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Anything more than what? It's called a precedent. Just because it has been 11 years since the last installment doesn't change that fact. (an installment that is still sold, and quite often revisited by any number of people, I might add).
You also ignored the point of my statement. Nobody raged at Guild Wars because it was never conceived as offline or single-player. The fact that you can (now) play through GW alone doesn't change that.
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And yet there was a patch for D2 released last year. Even after such a large gap of time there were enough D2 players to warrant another update. What I find laughable is how easily you dismiss D2's longevity. Is it as big as it was in 2002? Of course not - but very few other games can be so lucky.
Ironically (for you) this large gap of time between D2 and D3 is part of Blizzard's problem. If we were waiting on D4/5 right now it probably would be easier to accept a gradual shift to online-only.
You could *try* to play though Guild Wars alone at launch.. but some of those missions were a real bastard prior to the merc improvements/addition of heroes. Maybe not impossible - but frustrating to the point that most people probably partied up to make their life easier.
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You don't need online-only play for the increased security. You need two independent item generation, character behavior, and character storage code paths: One that is local, and one that is online.
If you're playing an offline-only character, the item generation and character data is all on the local machine. If you're playing an online-only character, all the item generation and character data is on the server. Hybrid characters that work in both places don't exist. You could probably create a local clone of an online character, but you couldn't go the other direction.-
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All the game files were available locally, however, making it fairly trivial to figure out weaknesses in the code. D2 might be the most exploited game of all time -- about a dozen dupe methods over the years, ith items, white rings, occy soj, town kill, chicken, auto pk, bots, auto lock / auto aim, and I'm sure quite a few more I'm forgetting.
Compare that to any game that is online only / keeps core components out of the reach of the gamer. What's the most hacked game in this category? How many exploits does it have compared to Diablo 2?
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Wow, just wow.... This really goes to show you that there really no longer is anyone working at Blizzard that is still in touch with gamers. It's like trying to get a 'rich' person to understand what and why a 'poor' person does what they do.
Not that gamers are poor, but it shows that the social and cultural gap is so huge they can't even begin to understand why something happens when it does, even when it is explained properly. Their brains simply cannot grasp the HOW and the WHY. Quite literally a case of the Ivory Tower.
They simply explain away how awesome their system is and how everyone should use it regardless of what people actually think. It's not just the constant internet connection thing... Blizzard has been doing it for years and it's even more clear with the real money AH. -
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After reading all the information on the subject that is available I have determined in my opinion that Blizzard doesn't want the user to have control of saves to avoid back hacking. They most likely believe that users would back hack the solo character files and find a way to screw with the online community. The only solution that I could think of is a totally different save system for single vs multi but I don't think Blizzard wants to put the time and effort into designing that.
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Blizzard's position is understandable. Duping and botting were huge, huge problems in D2. From what I've read, some engine stuff will be run entirely on the server to make it more difficult to create hacks. If you put the entire game on the disc, it makes it much easier to develop exploits.
I'd much rather have a dupe free economy than the ability to play single player.-
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Yes, it did work for WoW.
I think the exploits in WoW were far less egregios than what went on in Diablo 2. Things like infinite gold, item duping, instakilling other players were never issues in WoW. Most of the exploits centered around being able to automate tasks through the client, or content bugs that were blizzards fault. -
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It worked for WoW, the only real exploits were map exploits like getting to inaccessible areas, and mistakes that Bliz made, such as exploits for boss encounters using map dynamics that were corrected in patches.
I'm talking about hard decoding so that things like duping items and map hacks to expose entire map layouts can occur.
I dont think ppl can hack their servers and come up with those things in 2 days. -
There is (if you're talking about Blizzard detecting hacks) but there's always another new hack that isn't detected yet, just like we have anti-virus programs but they don't really work against a brand new virus that they don't have signatures for.
Making it several orders of magnitude more difficult to even create hacks is the most effective way of reducing / elminating them, not having a policy of enforcement after the fact.
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There is, from a security standpoint. Games that play online and offline both usually are architected to have a client and a server. When offline your computer boots up its own server and your client connects to it. That way when you go online, all you have to do is connect to a server over the internet instead. Same protocols, same data exchange, clean and relatively bug free switch (hoepfully)
Here is what a hacker might know about the game if they allowed offline play:
* Character storage format
* How items, stats and gold are stored in memory
* World config files (monster stats, drop rates, loot tables)
* Bot development/testing offline without detection since they have a local game server running on their computer
By not giving you the compiled version of the game server code, it makes it much much harder for a hacker to reverse engineer and exploit. Even though they wouldn't ship the source code they still tip a a good deal of their hand to the world by allowing offline play.-
If the server assumes the client is inherently untrustworthy (i.e., when it says "I have foo", the server says "bullshit, my record says you don't"), only the last of those matters. You can hack your memory all you want; it's the server that has the only record that matters.
If the server actually trusts the client, you're fucked anyway. Figuring out how to hack the client memory isn't all that hard, with or without the compiled files. Once that's done, if the server trusts the client, it's all over.-
It's pretty nice for clients to never even have the server code. It makes it just that much harder for clients to cheat. (or pirate the game for that matter)
It's also pretty nice to only have one code path which mandates a connection to battle.net. Supporting both single player and multiplayer isn't as simple as flipping a bit. As someone who would never play single player to begin with I am happy that those resources are being dedicated to things more useful to me, but I certainly understand the other side.
Frankly I'm surprised people are still raging over this. I figured the real money auction house would be a far bigger issue that b.net only. Who woulda guessed that?
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Whoah back the mother fuck uppppppp - are you saying I can't play Diablo 3 on my own? - because having to be online is a little bit shitty but surely one could play the game in 'single player mode' right?
(Also semi-on topic, if we're going online - BLIZZARD ADD THE FUCKING INVISIBLE OPTION TO THE FUCKING FRIENDS LIST YOU DUMB CUNTSSSSSSSSSSSS
CUNTTTTTTTTTTTTTS THINK YOU CUNTS THINK)-
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What else can I do man? what can I do? It has to be said - if I have to do it so be it. Same with this post.
http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=26416817#itemanchor_26416817
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"not many people would use it anyway" How does he know? I never heard that crap from come out of blizzards mouth before. I know blizzard as a company that tries to make there game as accessible as possible to every pc gamer. Plus just now being in the military and being a PC gamer is getting increasingly harder due to lack of internet and internet required games -_-...
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no, youre absolutely correct. they dont owe me a product i want, and i dont owe them a purchase for a game i dont want. im sure it will sell a billion, i just wont be one of them. id rather give my money to developers like crate and runic, as a thank you for not ignoring their customers.
seriously, everyone who hates the way this is shaking out, head over to http://www.grimdawn.com/ and put your money where your mouth is... -
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I hope you understand how utterly ridiculous and pointless this is to say. If Blizzard's customer base demands single player enough, then Blizzard essentially "owes" them the feature, or else they can choose to not buy Diablo III. Basic economics. You offer what consumers desire for maximum revenue.
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What's up with people acting like others are somehow obligated to buy Blizzard's games?
A lot of people deny there will be any lost sales over it. Yes, the money waterfall wont end this time for Blizzard. But a noticable minority isn't impressed with their choices, and are looking for alternatives. Thankfully the indie CRPG market has grown big enough to start generating more MP games, may get some with less awful netcode.
By failing to meet all the market's needs, they are thoughtfully providing comfortable large niches for competitors to leverage into turning into a real threat to them. -
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"caught off guard"??
are they fucking retarded?
no one's bitching that you have to be online to play online.
EVERYONE'S bitching that you can't play offline and solo without having to be online for no other goddamn fucking reason except to DRM check you.
the fact that they refuse to acknowledge that they understand that is a testament to how far they've got their head up their asses.
dumb shit hubris.
se la vie. -
Blizzard cut offline D3 to ship faster. NOT for DRM. They'll never say that, but that is why.
Wake the fuck up people! Blizzard's approach to DRM has always been: "make online play so compelling that most people buy it anyway." Diablo 3 with offline mode isn't going to cost them enough sales in piracy to be a major motivation in this, but it might cost them the 2011 holiday ship window. It is just a secondary benefit as they say.
Look at it from another perspective:
- They can add it in post-launch if there's sufficient financial motivation.
- Hundreds of man-hours (AT LEAST) to code, test, and ship a client-side portion that imitates Battle.nets server-side logic required for session data and character data persistance to play the game with a reduced feature-set. (Instead of investing those man-hours of related expertise in b.net 2.0 features which more customers care about.)
- Plenty of market research to indicate widespread availability of broadband internet.
- Over 11 million existing customers with reliable broadband internet. (Yes, that's WoW.)
- Players can choose to play alone even if online and it reduces player segmentation/segregation. (You can group up with friends later even if you started out alone.)
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You think they just made the decision to exclude it, now? o_O They probably said "lets cut offline mode and see if we can't release by the end of 2011" back in 2010.
Do you have even the slightest idea how much work it would take to translate a client/server game (with the server-side logic equivalent to that of an MMO) to a standalone client without dumping the keys to hacking b.net in our laps? Cutting offline-mode impacts the ship-date by entire months.
I assure you, they worked on multiplayer architecture first, and put offline mode into the "do that later" bin ever since development re-re-started back in 2005 when they closed Blizzard North. -
Sorry, i'm posting like a jerk. Internet arguments getting me riled up, go me! lol.
Anyway, my original post implies the decision was recent, not you, and that's an oversight on my part.
Also, I don't expect most gamers sit down and think about the scheduling impact of a particular feature, nor should they have to!
I wanted to bring my thoughts to the table but I'm not doing it in a very productive way and nor will it have much impact as a handful of posts amid the community of rage going on over Diablo 3's latest revelations.
Please don't take my posts personally! I'm just another jerk on the internet. =\
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"I want to play Diablo 3 on my laptop in a plane, but, well, there are other games to play for times like that."
This is exactly why people have a problem with it.
Of all the types of 'actual' games that gamers would play, as well on a mobile laptop as a stationary PC, the Diablo-style dungeon crawler is definitely one of the leaders. -
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