Originally posted by Aori

Originally posted by //\\//\\oo

Let's be honest here: You defend online only, because it makes other people upset i.e. you're trolling.

I beg to differ, most people arguing against D3 online only supposedly won't buy the game. Why should they be upset? They've lost nothing.

My topic may be controversial, however it is my opinion and nothing I said in my OP was stated as FACT.

yes they have. i know plenty of people, myself included, who would be willing to buy it if not for the online only. obviously we're the minority, but still. blizzard has alienated a significant number of people with this idiotic idea of theirs. no they've got a few hundred thousand players who would have bought, but are now waiting for an illegal offline crack. so yeah. good job on avoiding piracy, blizzard.

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Originally posted by Creslin321

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Originally posted by Nirrtix

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Originally posted by rexzshadow

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Originally posted by Boreil So your telling me that if i went out and bought the game that i could not play it offline in any form ?

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Yep, must be conntect to BNet to play at all time. And yes you will lag and DC when playing by yourself.

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I have not lagged enough to matter or disconnected once. MAybe you jsut need a better internet connection.

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 I have FIOS 35/35Mb, I DL'd the diablo client at like 3MB/s or so...and yet I still have some lag issues when playing SP.  Note some lag issues, not many.  Maybe like once every 2 hours I will rubberband or something.  Also, the game considers 300ms ping to be "green" which I think is a load of crap.

It may not seem like a big deal, but it can be HUGE if you are playing hardcore.  One rubberband at an inopportune time can totally wipe your character.

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Even if Blizzard has their servers ticking away 100% and your machine is ticking away 100%, some router between you and Blizzard can still hiccup, giving you a half second of dead time no matter how much bandwidth you have available.

Which means sometime, somewhere, some group of hardcore players is going to curse Blizzard for this choice. Then they're going to start over again, and then buy the expansion for D3 when it releases next May.

Originally posted by Aori

Originally posted by Paradigm68

Originally posted by Aori

Alright i'm going to start off by saying, my only intention of playing Diablo 3 is multiplayer. I find singleplayer games a waste of money for what I personally get out of them. Irrelevant

How is this irrelevant? I'm letting people know where I am coming from. Sorry, I was addressing it as irrelevant as a defense for online only since the only peoeple who would have a problem with the online only are singleplayer people. So in the context of this discussion its irrelevant. Its like someone who hates chocolate defending vanilla.

Now the big argument right now is that Diablo 3 is a singleplayer game with an online requirement. Personally I missed the memo, Diablo 3 is a multiplayer game with a singleplaying option. Incorrect. D3 is a game with singleplayer and multiplayer modes. The original Diablo was only singleplayer.

Blizzard has been toting Diablo 3 a great multiplayer experience with the option of running by yourself if you're an antisocial misfit or just want the story.  Naturally they want to defend their decision to go online only so their phrasing is as helpful to them as possible.  Nonetheless the game is is both singleplayer and multiplayer. "the option of running by yourself if you're an antisocial misfit or just want the story" = singleplayer.

People think that the "DRM" is to prevent piracy. It may help, however I do know that it will eventually be emulated. The online only thing is to prevent corruption of a persistant online game. The DRM serves two roles, anti-piracy is definitely a big one. Since a large portion of even the single player game is server based, the only way to pirate the game successfully would be to create and then configure/install server emulation, basically like private servers for MMO's. This are not something the average gamer/pirate can or is willing to do. Your argument doesn't make sense since D3 isn't persistent.

Diablo 3 is quite persistent why do you think it isn't? So my argument stands until you can tell me otherwise. When I come back to the game things revert to the last checkpoint. Nothing happens in the game world when I'm not playing. D3 is not persistent.

We have some big things in Diablo 3. First one being the RMAH and while some people don't like this system it is there. Now if Blizzard can prevent this from being flooded with illegal items then I want them to do what they can. If online only is one of the best measures to prevent most of the problems that plagued Diablo 2 then i'm all for it. Seperate the singleplayer chars from multiplayer and this is not a problem. Start the game, get prompted, single or multi. You select single, the game starts and you play, offline, locally. Select multi and you get the login screen. The forced account creation and logging in (aside from DRM) is to promote as much as possible the use of the AH and RMT by forcing players who would have never encountered it with an offline singleplayer option to have access to it.  That Blizz takes a cut of AH sales makes this obvious.

I'll be honest on this one, I don't know if online only will prevent what I fear and quite honestly no one else does either. No one can truely make an informed reponse unless they work for blizzard. Everything else is speculation at this point. The point is though that the prevention of what you fear has nothing to do with singleplayer and it doesn't need to be.  The online only for singleplayer is purely DRM and profit based. Which is fine if that is how Blizz wants to roll, I'm just going to point out their BS when I see it.

The next one which isn't there yet is PvP. Now I personally don't want to play against people who hack, dupe and cheat. Again if online only helps prevent this then I want it to work. This can be done without impacting the singleplayer game.  I know people said it couldn't be done in D2 but that was because they built D2 before they knew it would be a problem.

What can be done without impacting the singleplayer game and how? Making 2 seperate client with 2 sets of code? Like I said: Start the game, get prompted, single or multi. You select single, the game starts and you play, offline, locally. Select multi and you get the login screen. The bg defense for the online for singleplayer has been that it can't be done another way. It can be done, they chose not to for profit driven reasons (anti-piracy/RMT) which again is fine if that is how they want to roll, but its just not true to say it had to be done this way to protect the integrity of multiplayer.

Now when cheats do appear and i'm sure some may rear their heads eventually, I hope blizzard will handle it. More or less I know it isn't a sure fire way to stop cheating, piracy and the like. However if it can keep an epidemic far more contained, i'm happy its there.

I'll stop defending it if Diablo 3 starts showing the corruption that plagues Diablo 2.

 

Thanks for dissecting my opinion, I appreciate it.

 

 

If you can in no way modify your character locally without the game detecting it, including because no character data is stored locally, then all that would have been needed would be a offline option (could even include LAN, could even include online play ironically - it would just have to be a different set of servers. Like Valve with VAC).

Don't allow transfering characters from unsecured play to secure play, done. Other way is fine.

Secure servers would store the characters on the server, unsecure would be stored locally.

Secure servers would never look locally, and you can't modify them more then you can do with Blizzards servers right now.

Ironically, Blizzard already employs literally excactly this system right now, with European/Asian/American servers having seperated character databases.

The only thing that could be a problem would be pirating, but, as there are already servers available at least for the beta, if not for the released game, this is a no issue.

Pirated before release vs pirated before release

Everyone's happy (offline play and secure online play) vs many people not being happy.

Right now, yes, it would be some effort to introduce offline play. Though not that much, see emulated servers.

And Blizzard hat 12 years, several hundred people and millions of dollars.

Btw - Starcraft 2 has an offline play option, and it was heavily pirated, even before release. Did it hurt sales? It hit 4.5 Million in half a year.

I didn't buy Diablo III not because of the always-on policy, but because the game itself didn't convince me, but that doesn't make the policy (and defending it) better.

You may not care about always on - good for you. But many people do. So, does it help? Not really. Is it inconvenient/does it cause trouble? It sure does.

Fact is they could have easily had an option at the character creation screen that allows you to select an offline option, this would mean your offline character could never go online or use the RWAH,  Test Drive unlimited 2 have this type of thing.

I have never pirated a game in my life, I have a vast collection of game boxes right next to me as I type but D3 is not one of them and never will be as long as the DRM is present. 

My friend who also buys all his games has a different opinion.  He has already told me that he will be downloading the cracked copy of D3 when it comes out.  He said it's always the paying customer that has to put up with the shit.  Pirates don't have any toubles playing games on trains or other offline places, it's the honest gamers like me that suffer.

It's ironic that DRM's are actually turning honest gamers into pirates instead of preventing people from being pirates, I am 100% certain that Blizzard in the long run will actually lose money over the DRM.  If I were a publisher I would be making my games as attractive as possible to prevent piracy, I would lower the price and scrap all DRM.

It's probably mention 100 times before in this thread, but your arguments are invalid. Because they should have the online part as it is now, but there is no good argument for not having an offline mode. They could be completely seperate and you would still have your beloved online mode without hacking. How do people not see that? 

I cannot defend online only if the game isn't ready for it.  I am very tolerant, but being disconnected 3 times during act 4 and having to repeat large sections of it has soured the gameplay experience for me.  I'm one of the rare birds that like to get into the story and repeatedly being kicked is terrible.

This is the worst case scenario for Blizzard and a company that releases a game with content removed AND cannot sustain quality servers - you have to wonder where there priorites really are.

Again, I'm an extremely tolerant person, but I cannot tolerate poor quality, and this is what we are experiencing right now.  This isn't about qqing that I can't play ... it's about causing the gameplay itself to be poor with constant interruptions in the middle of gameplay.  Imagine watching a movie and having the reel break multiple times with several minutes before they can restart the film.  This is like what I'm experiencing right now.

The main problem I am having with the online only is that 500+ latency I'm getting in peak times that is making the game very difficult to play.

Not to mention the constant server restarts and downtime that is forcing me to repeat parts of the game.  I've been stuck in this blasted desert in Act II all morning now.

Originally posted by Mackeh

If I were a publisher I would be making my games as attractive as possible to prevent piracy, I would lower the price and scrap all DRM.

That would be down-right logical.

 

As a side note, I just finished Act III. It took me around an hour to destroy all the Sin Hearts and beat the two bosses. Afterward, I made it into about thirty minutes of Act IV, and the servers went down. Now that I'm logging back in? Oh, cool, I have to destroy the fucking Sin Hearts again and repeat those two god damn bosses. Awesome.

Originally posted by Paradigm68

Originally posted by Aori

Alright i'm going to start off by saying, my only intention of playing Diablo 3 is multiplayer. I find singleplayer games a waste of money for what I personally get out of them. Irrelevant

Now the big argument right now is that Diablo 3 is a singleplayer game with an online requirement. Personally I missed the memo, Diablo 3 is a multiplayer game with a singleplaying option. Incorrect. D3 is a game with singleplayer and multiplayer modes. The original Diablo was only singleplayer.

People think that the "DRM" is to prevent piracy. It may help, however I do know that it will eventually be emulated. The online only thing is to prevent corruption of a persistant online game. The DRM serves two roles, anti-piracy is definitely a big one. Since a large portion of even the single player game is server based, the only way to pirate the game successfully would be to create and then configure/install server emulation, basically like private servers for MMO's. This are not something the average gamer/pirate can or is willing to do. Your argument doesn't make sense since D3 isn't persistent.

We have some big things in Diablo 3. First one being the RMAH and while some people don't like this system it is there. Now if Blizzard can prevent this from being flooded with illegal items then I want them to do what they can. If online only is one of the best measures to prevent most of the problems that plagued Diablo 2 then i'm all for it. Seperate the singleplayer chars from multiplayer and this is not a problem. Start the game, get prompted, single or multi. You select single, the game starts and you play, offline, locally. Select multi and you get the login screen. The forced account creation and logging in (aside from DRM) is to promote as much as possible the use of the AH and RMT by forcing players who would have never encountered it with an offline singleplayer option to have access to it.  That Blizz takes a cut of AH sales makes this obvious.

The next one which isn't there yet is PvP. Now I personally don't want to play against people who hack, dupe and cheat. Again if online only helps prevent this then I want it to work. This can be done without impacting the singleplayer game.  I know people said it couldn't be done in D2 but that was because they built D2 before they knew it would be a problem.

Now when cheats do appear and i'm sure some may rear their heads eventually, I hope blizzard will handle it. More or less I know it isn't a sure fire way to stop cheating, piracy and the like. However if it can keep an epidemic far more contained, i'm happy its there.

I'll stop defending it if Diablo 3 starts showing the corruption that plagues Diablo 2.

 Did you say the original Diablo was singleplayer only? Thanks, I can now ignore everything you say as you obviously don't have a clue what you're talking about. Diablo has been all about the multiplayer aspect since it was created, anyone who says differently is just trolling...

I think there are a couple of things that should be considered in this debate.


First, Diablo 3 is not a single player game. You can play it by yourself if you want, but it is an online game. There are many things that factor into this. For example, people on your friends list can join your game at any time regardless of if you want to play alone. Also, this game has an economy. Every drop, mat, piece of gold, etc are potentially part of the multiplayer experience.

Again, not a single player game.


Second, the online drm as it's being called is not simply DRM. This is not an offline game that requires you to be online to play. The game is structured like an mmo. Things like drop rates, mob spawns, character data, item database, and more are hosted entirely on blizzards servers. This is more than a simple drm design. The game is designed from the ground up to provide a single player experience.

It may have a similar effect as drm, but it is actually not a drm scheme. This game truly is an online game. Like I said, even if you wantto play solo in a private game, there are multiplayer aspects. There is not a mode of this game that has no multiplayer aspects to it.


Third (and this is just my own personal opinion) Diablo is 10x better as a multiplayer game. I have played through all of normal and the first 3 acts of nightmare. I have been grouped for every second of it. If my guildmates aren't online, I group with randoms. I have no desire to solo in this game. Not as fun to me (I am an mmo player after all).

In fact, this game provides a better group environment then most recent themepark MMOs. It has systems in place that facilitate good group gameplay that many MMOs could learn from.



All that being said, I understand why people that wanted a single player game are upset with downtime and the online nature of the game. I think that they are upset at what they perceive as drm, when they should be upset that a series that used to be single player no longer is.

If you want an offline single player game, you should not purchase Diablo 3. Vote with your dollars. Personally, I heavily prefer multiplayer games to single player games. This is an mmo site we are on after all.


What's funny is people around here are often bashing MMOs for being too single player, but this game is not single player enough for you? What-the-crap-ever.

Originally posted by dubyahite


What's funny is people around here are often bashing MMOs for being too single player, but this game is not single player enough for you? What-the-crap-ever.

It is much harder to make hacks for a game that is online only. Why? Because the company doesn't share a lot of the game files with the general public. That's the main difference between Diablo 2 and Diablo 3. You can't be sure that you will definitely see cracked servers etc. Guild Wars was released in 2005 as an online only game and there was not a single cracked servers. Online only is great for keeping the game more secure. 

I've never had any problems with the game after the day 1. I have experienced 0 lag since Wednesday. Maybe your internet connections are horrible?

I would have happily bought it, as I had tons of un with 1 & 2, but forcing an online connection for single player has lost them a customer.

Although, I will admit, that it does make pirating it much more attractive once there's a viable crack.

Originally posted by gilgamesh9

I would have happily bought it, as I had tons of un with 1 & 2, but forcing an online connection for single player has lost them a customer.

Although, I will admit, that it does make pirating it much more attractive once there's a viable crack.

Oh yes lets just promote pirating, if you don't want to pay for it that is fine. Stealing is stealing though, it should never been an attractive avenue.

Originally posted by Corehaven

Originally posted by feroshus

Originally posted by kLipsiS

Some of these posts are simply ridiculous . "DEPR DEPR WAHT IF IM IN A VILLAGE WITH NO INTERNETZ?" Are you fucking kidding? If you're at a computer that has no internet chances are you shouldn't be playing fucking diablo. I can't for the life of me understand why offline play should be a requirement? hackers RUINED diablo 2, why the hell would blizz want anyone to do the same to their new title? Allowing offline play could make bots and hacks much easier to develop, so why even offer it? There are plenty of other offline games...

 

 

 

If anyone is missing out on this amazing game because of some nonsense protest for a feature that's seriously unnecessary is a loser. Have fun with torchlight 2 ROFL

 

This says it all really. Having the full game code offline makes it easier to code bots and hacks.

Time will tell if this strategy will work, we'll see in a year or so if theres duped items and hacks available. Until then the haters are just talking out their asses. Period.

 

Great minds thing alike.    heh.....hahaha.......BWA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Oh man....okay......Im good. 

Yeah tell me about it. Those two posters have clearly never left the comfort of their internet-connected homes and/or businesses ever.

How about people who travel for their work? I am not talking about just businessmen, military personnel or diplomats who have more chance of having some sort of wifi connection at hotels, but even so those sorts of connections are not ideal for gaming purposes (that is if the hotel even looks kindly upon people using their wifi for gaming since it does hog up huge bandwidth). How about construction workers, geologists, ecologists, archaeologists, and all of the professions who work on large infrastructure projects, (or how about oil riggers?) and end up having to live away from home during the week? Very, very, very often the places where they are put up have absolutely no internet.

Considering that a lot of away workers have lots of boredom during the weekday evenings and therefore time on their hands to game and have a good amount of expendable income, I find that pretty stupid on Blizzard's part to force them to buy a different hack and slash game that is playable at all times. Those two posters can scoff all they want at TL2, but Runic is going to be making at least SOME money for that very basic reason not to mention all of the folks who find Blizzard's stance on offline play unacceptable.

By the way, I was just at a conference this holiday weekend. My hotel's wifi was not good enough to play D3. Now that I am back home, I still can't play D3 because bnet is down. I guess I will go play some TL1 :P

Originally posted by dubyahite
I think there are a couple of things that should be considered in this debate.


First, Diablo 3 is not a single player game. You can play it by yourself if you want, but it is an online game. There are many things that factor into this. For example, people on your friends list can join your game at any time regardless of if you want to play alone. Also, this game has an economy. Every drop, mat, piece of gold, etc are potentially part of the multiplayer experience.

Again, not a single player game.


Second, the online drm as it's being called is not simply DRM. This is not an offline game that requires you to be online to play. The game is structured like an mmo. Things like drop rates, mob spawns, character data, item database, and more are hosted entirely on blizzards servers. This is more than a simple drm design. The game is designed from the ground up to provide a single player experience.

It may have a similar effect as drm, but it is actually not a drm scheme. This game truly is an online game. Like I said, even if you wantto play solo in a private game, there are multiplayer aspects. There is not a mode of this game that has no multiplayer aspects to it.


Third (and this is just my own personal opinion) Diablo is 10x better as a multiplayer game. I have played through all of normal and the first 3 acts of nightmare. I have been grouped for every second of it. If my guildmates aren't online, I group with randoms. I have no desire to solo in this game. Not as fun to me (I am an mmo player after all).

In fact, this game provides a better group environment then most recent themepark MMOs. It has systems in place that facilitate good group gameplay that many MMOs could learn from.



All that being said, I understand why people that wanted a single player game are upset with downtime and the online nature of the game. I think that they are upset at what they perceive as drm, when they should be upset that a series that used to be single player no longer is.

If you want an offline single player game, you should not purchase Diablo 3. Vote with your dollars. Personally, I heavily prefer multiplayer games to single player games. This is an mmo site we are on after all.


What's funny is people around here are often bashing MMOs for being too single player, but this game is not single player enough for you? What-the-crap-ever.

This post from Dubyahite and the posts from Uhwop (to lazy to quote them all) pretty much align with my own opinion about the online only play from Diablo 3. Basicly, if Blizzard is in any way seriously about the RMAH, then they have no choice to do this. Fact is, offline singleplayer is impossible because all the crucial data is on the server. The client is not much more then textures, CG movies and audio. This makes tempering with the game a whole lot harder. That's a fact. That it also functions as a kind of DRM, is nice for the higherups at Blizzard/Activision, but I don't believe it's the main reason.

Secondly, the game has clearly been build around Co-Op. Like Uhwop said, this is noticeable directly from the login. Social button, you can see how full the parties of your friends are, what they are playing. you can easily join their game (if they allow it) and instantly teleport to them. Then there're all the public games that you can join. All accessible from the main screen. The AH is also nicely incorporated. Posters here say that it was also the case with Diablo 2, but that game made it a lot harder to join a game then Diablo 3. Every game you make in Diablo 3 is in the end, a multiplayer game. Even if you don't allow people to just hop in.

Then there's the crap about Blizzard wanting "to turn everyone into goldfarmers". Right. I won't deny that the RMAH can make a nice profit for them, but I can hardly believe that the normal AH won't be used after the implementation of the RMAH. Only the best items will be sold for cash, the subpar ones will go to the AH (I think at least), where I will happily buy them

I didn't like the downtime (for example yesterday afternoon, when it was down in Europe), but if they fix the minor problems they've now and if the RMAH won't be flooded with dupes and the likes, then I just can't be buggered with the "online only" bit.

Personally I think it is a good thing that Diablo 3 went online only.

Clearly, just making it online in itself  won't help much against cheating, as closed battlenet in Diablo 2 showed us.

However it just may be the incentive for Blizzard to step up and invest more time and money in protecting and updating Diablo 3, and add expansions to it.

Blizzard will get more money in 2 ways because of going online only  :

- There won't be any piracy, they have a good product and tons of people are playing it, there will be definatly a bunch of pirates going legit.

- They have the RMAH, where they will get their percentage, of course this only works if people play online.

So when Blizzard gets money from it, they will be more inclined to keep supporting it.

People claiming "It is only because of the RMAH" and "to prevent Piracy", well duh, stating the obvious.

 

Some other nice features that are linked to online only and/or RMAH :

- Characters are saved on the server.

- Characters won't expire ( like they did in D2 ).

- Gold based Auction House, for this to work, again, people have to play online.

- The RMAH keeps more players legit, who would otherwise may try Illegal and potentially dangerous alternatives.

 

Of course there are 2 mistakes they made already :

Releasing the Gold AH before the RMAH, I suspect many players will stick to just the Gold AH, there is tons of good deals to be found right there, and because the RMAH is comming in later, people might not make the step towards the RMAH.

And taking 15% for selling and another 15% for cashing in, seems too much for me, this may leave enough room for the illegal sellers to gain market share.

 

Other than that, I see only positves about this, besides the sunday peaks and the connection issues that come with them, which Blizzard must get under control asap.

 

Originally posted by Aori

Alright i'm going to start off by saying, my only intention of playing Diablo 3 is multiplayer. I find singleplayer games a waste of money for what I personally get out of them.

Now the big argument right now is that Diablo 3 is a singleplayer game with an online requirement. Personally I missed the memo, Diablo 3 is a multiplayer game with a singleplaying option.

People think that the "DRM" is to prevent piracy. It may help, however I do know that it will eventually be emulated. The online only thing is to prevent corruption of a persistant online game.

We have some big things in Diablo 3. First one being the RMAH and while some people don't like this system it is there. Now if Blizzard can prevent this from being flooded with illegal items then I want them to do what they can. If online only is one of the best measures to prevent most of the problems that plagued Diablo 2 then i'm all for it.

The next one which isn't there yet is PvP. Now I personally don't want to play against people who hack, dupe and cheat. Again if online only helps prevent this then I want it to work.

Now when cheats do appear and i'm sure some may rear their heads eventually, I hope blizzard will handle it. More or less I know it isn't a sure fire way to stop cheating, piracy and the like. However if it can keep an epidemic far more contained, i'm happy its there.

I'll stop defending it if Diablo 3 starts showing the corruption that plagues Diablo 2.

Utter tripe.

 

It's there so people may be tempted to use the RWAH, simple and greedy as that.  If Blizzard give a crap about their customers they would have added a off line mode, it's very easy to do.

Originally posted by Mackeh

Originally posted by Aori

Alright i'm going to start off by saying, my only intention of playing Diablo 3 is multiplayer. I find singleplayer games a waste of money for what I personally get out of them.

Now the big argument right now is that Diablo 3 is a singleplayer game with an online requirement. Personally I missed the memo, Diablo 3 is a multiplayer game with a singleplaying option.

People think that the "DRM" is to prevent piracy. It may help, however I do know that it will eventually be emulated. The online only thing is to prevent corruption of a persistant online game.

We have some big things in Diablo 3. First one being the RMAH and while some people don't like this system it is there. Now if Blizzard can prevent this from being flooded with illegal items then I want them to do what they can. If online only is one of the best measures to prevent most of the problems that plagued Diablo 2 then i'm all for it.

The next one which isn't there yet is PvP. Now I personally don't want to play against people who hack, dupe and cheat. Again if online only helps prevent this then I want it to work.

Now when cheats do appear and i'm sure some may rear their heads eventually, I hope blizzard will handle it. More or less I know it isn't a sure fire way to stop cheating, piracy and the like. However if it can keep an epidemic far more contained, i'm happy its there.

I'll stop defending it if Diablo 3 starts showing the corruption that plagues Diablo 2.

Utter tripe.

 

It's there so people may be tempted to use the RWAH, simple and greedy as that.  If Blizzard give a crap about their customers they would have added a off line mode, it's very easy to do.

Wonder how long until there's a priated version that allows you to play offline?