Blizzard Defends Always-Online For Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

[Steven Bogos]

Blizzard Defends Always-Online For Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

Lead designer Kevin Martens says people don't remember "how mad they were" that Diablo II had both an online and offline mode.

"If someone has no Internet access, then yeah, Diablo III is not the game for them," Diablo III's lead designer Kevin Martens told Rock, Paper, Shotgun [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11/13/blizzard-talks-diablo-iiis-new-path-defends-online-req/] in an interview at Blizzcon. Always-online has been the second most controversial feature of the game, and after Blizzard made the decision to remove the most controversial feature (the Auction House), people assumed that always-online may follow. But, Martens again puts his foot down, stating that people don't remember "how mad they were" that Diablo II had both an online and offline mode.

"I don't think people necessarily remember how mad they themselves were that they had an offline mode and online mode in Diablo II. This will probably be controversial for me to say. People will be like, "I wasn't mad!" But I was there at the time, and then I studied this for a living."

"It sucks when your friend or brother is online and he wants to join this game, but you realize you're an offline character and he's an online character, and there's no way to transfer over because offline characters can be hacked and hex-edited to hell and back, right?" continued Martens, explaining that the company still feels that forcing Diablo III to be online was the right choice.

However, the RPS interviewer continues to press Martens, asking why even an option to play offline isn't made available to those who just want to play by themselves, away from the rest of the community. Martens quite curtly answers "We didn't make that game. That's the straight-up answer. We did not make that game, and we're not going to turn this game into that game."

So there you have it. Always-online is here to stay, like it or not. As my PC is connected to the internet roughly 99.99% of the time, it's not really a big deal for me, but I can see how people who can't afford good internet, or live in an area with an unstable connection may be peeved.

Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/11/13/blizzard-talks-diablo-iiis-new-path-defends-online-req/]

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[RicoADF]

Well I guess this isn't the game for me then. Shame they put DRM over customers, ah well. And before someone says it's not about DRM, the guy just admitted it's about preventing hacking with DRM. He's admitted it, DRM isn't just about piracy. It's about control of the game.

 

[Ferisar]

Meeeeehhh. I'm not really that convinced. I don't think as an option it had that much value (yay it's so much fun farming for gear with no trading opportunities alone hoping you can actually beat Hell without crying into your keyboard ON YOUR OWN WHY ARE YOU ALONE OH MY GOD AHHH[yes I know mods existed]), but this response is a bit... absolutist? I guess is the word. What exactly do players lose if they play without others? "That game" implies the "being online" is such a core and central feature of the game that there's exactly zero ways around it, when in reality it's usually just... a button.

I'm guessing the majority of this is due to the fact that there is a lot of code that works server-side when someone's playing the game, but consoles somehow managed, so why can't PC's?

You can encourage people all day to "play with others" and "have social times" and "display emoshen" but it's really alienating to those who don't want to be online in a game where the community presence is only really felt through them joining your game/you joining their game. It's not an MMO where there is actual value in having players everywhere because it gives the world some life. It's a game where you're some dude slaughtering the legions of Hell. Sometimes you want to take that journey alone.

MEH I SAY.

 

[piinyouri]

Good thing I'll be waiting for it on PS3.

 

[Jack Nief]

"We didn't make that game. That's the straight-up answer. We did not make that game, and we're not going to turn this game into that game."

And yet, the console versions exist...

 

[Nilanius]

Lets see... there was one other company that tried putting DRM on a high pedestal and saying it is mandatory... and over the corporations that pollute, defraud people, and steal, EA had won the worse company in america award. Since then, they worked towards removing DRM. Buuut here is Activision Blizzard, their console version has an offline mode. But they are pushing DRM like it is mandatory on a game that feels like it is a single player game.

I seriously hope Activision Blizzard gets the worse company in america award next year. They totally deserve it.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

They couldn't have made two buttons on the menu, one that said "Online" and another that said "Offline." That would have been too hard. It would have been too hard to allow people to level up on the single player content than allow them to jump in to online mode. It would have been too hard. Nah, they were just lazy, and in love with DRM.

 

[Grimh]

Yeah and that game you made was great.
Especially when it automatically connected me to the US servers without telling me, making me play through half the game as it was laggy as hell, only to finally realize what was wrong and then having to find the buried option to change server location.
Oh and would you look at that, I had to start over with a whole new character after doing so.

 

[black_knight1337]

Meh, I'd rather have a little bit of lag now and then rather than having a hack-fest like it was for D2. There haven't been any proper hacks made so far so at least it's actually working. Unlike pretty much every other form of DRM that devs have used.

 

[Callate]

"Because I said so?" Gee- thanks, Dad.

This is the kind of crap that makes not buying certain games feel like the responsible move.

 

[Nazulu]

I'll add this to the 'absolutely fucking stupid excuse' wagon as Blizzard South made my shit list awhile ago.

Yeah, they didn't make this game, a game that provided more options to make more people happy, because who the hell would ever want that? I miss Blizzard North, the one that actually kept trying to improve with each new game instead of raping the hell out of it.

 

[Tiamattt]

Heh, I actually had the whole "I can't play with my friend cause he was online and I wasn't" moment way back then. It annoyed me for a bit before I just started a character online, gee that was hard. Lately with all the bind of account news and now this it's really feels like Blizzard is dictating how the game must be played and that it's fans/customers don't know what's good and fun, only the all knowing Blizzard knows that and if you think differently then you must be wrong.

 

[Tiamattt]

They couldn't have made two buttons on the menu, one that said "Online" and another that said "Offline." That would have been too hard. It would have been too hard to allow people to level up on the single player content than allow them to jump in to online mode. It would have been too hard. Nah, they were just lazy, and in love with DRM.

To be fair they probably can't do the whole "transfer offline character to online mode" thing since people would just load their single player characters full of hacked items and just flood the online game with them. Sure Blizzard can deleted the hacked items/ban the people that do it, but that sounds like a giant plan in the ass and I don't blame them for not wanting to deal with a massive headache like that.

Why they can't just do the 2 buttons idea I have no clue, maybe they think their fans are so dumb they can't figure it? Or more likely it's their fancy excuse for the DRM.

 

[loa]

Yes indeed "you didn't make that game".
I hope you will remember how mad people were about diablo "error 37" 3.

I'm so glad I didn't buy diablo 3 headfirst back then when hearing that idiot trying to tell me what I like now.

 

[Scorpid]

Why are company's so dismissive of their customers "Oh you want to play diablo but can't connect to the internet? TOUGHSHIT we don't want your business you pauper." I mean seriously Diablo is a big franchise and blizzard a successful company and they're pleading that they can't get it done... Like how the AH in the game was too integral to the game... sigh. Statements like this make me bitter with this company I have alot of respect for.

Reminds me of BioWare...

 

[Jadak]

"We didn't make that game. That's the straight-up answer. We did not make that game, and we're not going to turn this game into that game."

And yet, the console versions exist...

To be fair, a different team did the console conversion so he may not view it as the same game as the one he's working on.

Still, from an outside perspective it's still laughable as the exact opposite of what he's saying is indeed a reality in the console version, and I love the console version for it.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

"We didn't make that game. That's the straight-up answer. We did not make that game, and we're not going to turn this game into that game."

And yet, the console versions exist...

Well obviously the console version team *did* make that game. Which was nice of them.

 

[black_knight1337]

People being mad at them for including an off-line mode for Diablo 2, FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!

Actually this is true, at least indirectly. While people weren't really that mad about an offline mode outside of what you mentioned, people were mad about the prevalence of hacking, even on closed bnet. The thing is, having an offline mode puts all of the game's code on your pc. This means that hackers don't have to do any guess work, they can see how they game handles everything and because of that can more easily make a variety of hacks.

You could just make a system that checks if the character has been tempered with, that then allows for transfers between the two modes.

And I suppose you have some sort of solution for this? Afaik, this isn't possible without any form of network connection. For the game to be able to detect tampering there would need to be either a backup somewhere for a comparison or an event log to make sure it all adds up. Problem with that though is that you can just go and edit those as well.