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

[thatonedude11]

Seriously, folks. The world is becoming always online, all the time.

Except Blizzard's servers, which still experience regular maintenance, and let's not forget about error 37.

Some might say that it is unreasonable to expect Blizzard's servers to be functional 100% of the time, to which I respond "Fuck that!". If I pay $60 for an experience that I have been able to get at any time in the past (single-player), than I should continue to expect to get that experience at any time. If I am unable to do that, it represents a complete failure from the company who made that product.

 

[Vylox]

I believe me and this Kevin Martens guy are familiar with different games called Diablo 2.
I bought it at launch, I was an active member of the community forums (on Blizzards website) and I don't recall folks being upset about the offline/online divergence system that was used. As a matter of fact, the blizzard forums archive (dating back to 1997) doesn't seem to have anything regarding that either.....

If you want to play an always online single player game, fine you have that right. But for a finished product that you need to pay for up front, it shouldn't require me to jump through hoops to actually play at my leisure.

Always online DRM is not what it is claimed to be. It is touted as a thing to prevent software piracy, and for the most part doesn't work. It is used to prevent cheating and for the most part it doesn't work. Don't believe me about it not stopping cheating ? Look up the reason that the auction house in D3 was shut down and removed.

If a company wants me to play online (and I play a lot of different online only games, all on my tablet) then you don't need to charge me a fee to purchase the game itself. Publish it for free, and after that you can require a subscription or use a micro transaction system of added perks/benefits in order to get money out of my wallet. There are thousands upon thousands of games that do business in this manner, and they are very profitable. In this day and age, the business strategy that is being used by Blizzard in regards to their games is outdated.

 

[Lunar Templar]

love how he's lieing to our faces about not 'making that game' when the consoles version exsists and is that game.

 

[black_knight1337]

First off, you could do what Torchlight 2 did and just not give a shit if people cheat. I'm guessing most people play these games with their friends anyway (correct me if I'm wrong), so who cares if someone that you're not playing with is cheating? (This isn't exactly hack-free, but it is a possible solution to the hacking problem)

Pub games are very common too, you know socialising and all that. And that isn't a solution to hacking at all. Torchlight 2 pretty much says "hey guys, we'll let you hack whatever you like". Sure they have an anti-cheat system in place but it does shit all. It takes all of 5 minutes and you can have all your stats at whatever you want. It's alright enough for Torchlight 2 though as it's just pure co-op. When you add competitive elements like pvp and ladders(upcoming for Diablo 3) you have a responsibility to make it at least somewhat fair.

Another possible solution is to keep the online working like it does now (with most calculations done server-side), and then have the offline work like Diablo 2 or the console versions (with all calculations done client-side). This would require a lot of work, but Blizzard has a lot of money, and I don't doubt that they could make it work.

The only way that would turn out any way other than what happened in Diablo 2 would be to code the offline version completely different to the online version. Which in turn makes the production costs skyrocket, but we'd all be happy to pay $120-160 for the base game right?

Look, I'm no expert, and I don't know the ins and outs of how Diablo works (I've never played any of those games). All I really know is that while the system Blizzard implemented does prevent cheating, it does so in a way that hurts the customers that don't cheat, and have no intention of cheating.

I know, same as any form of drm. But at least it's actually working and provides some benefits.

So someone cheating and ruining their own gaming experience is SO important to you that you'd rather others have their game unplayable. Yep you've got your priorities straight..... /Sarcasm.

No that isn't what bothers me with hacks. People can do what they like in their single player games because it has no effect on me. It's when this gets transferred into the closed competitive systems(ie. ladder) that it becomes a problem. This is exactly what happened in Diablo 2.

And before you say "get a better net connection" I have 100mb/s cable, speed isn't the issue, it always being down when I go to play it after work for 'maintinance' because I have the hide to live outside the US and thus they don't care about taking the game down during our peak hours of play. Blizzard can get fucked for all I care I'm not getting another shitty BZ game again if this is how they treat me, like a 3rd class citizen on the Titanic. Oh and I also suppose losing the game when the servers are turned off is also not as important as stopping cheaters too? I got this game to play with mates and only got the chance once due to their stupid system.

I wouldn't tell anyone to "get a better net connection", well unless they are still on dial-up or something. The thing is, I play regularly on mobile broadband that chugs along at a massive 10kB/s and yes I get a bit of lag every now and then which usually only happens when there's a bunch of cm wizards in my party(ie. huge clusterfuck on screen). And it "always being down when I go to play" is bs. The only way that can be true is if the only time you want to play is within their weekly scheduled maintenance because outside of that there is very little down time. And yes, I live outside of the US, more specifically Australia. We're supposed to have one of the worst connections around to Blizzard's servers. Also, fun fact: The biggest contributor to latency issues on Blizzard's server is AT&T. And I'd presume, because it's Blizzard, that when they eventually drop support(probably a good 10+ years uptime) they will patch the game to make you run a local server.

Simple solution, have a off line mode and a online mode. Make it so YOU CAN NOT TAKE YOUR OFF LINE PLAYER ONLINE, that way there is a barrier preventing the two to mix will not tainiting the online.

Diablo 2 did this, it was also filled with hacks. The hacks I'm talking about aren't hex editors and the like that edit you character's stats. They are stuff like map hacks, making your movement become teleports, duping, forcing people to drop their gear etc.

 

[Nazulu]

snip, blip, ship and flip

I just have to say, I've played Diablo 2 for a very long time and I hardly ran into hackers. In fact, I didn't see any of the hacks you mentioned in your last paragraph. Then again, I usually made my own game for people to join, mostly friends. I hardly encountered any problems and there was always a way to work around them. So are ladders and what not really that important to make it that much more restricted?

You make it sound like it is hopeless. Yeah, with any online game people will find a way to cheat through the system, but they can make that very risky by making everybody able to report those who break the rules, especially when you can record games easily now as evidence. I've played many MMO's and they had their ways to track bots and hackers, and these people were eventually caught. Even the farmers in L2 who took very careful precautions making money by selling in game money were found at some point, the patterns of how certain people played made it obvious over time as well.

Just deleting something that has been a part of the series because of whatever, even like a holy excuse 'we want to make it a safer experience' is still ridiculous. So they have to choose between putting up with some pricks that like to hack the game and annoy some people, or piss of a whole lot of people by not adding the original single player experience at all. This lowers the value of the product as well.

This is for everybody, not just you.

 

[Stryc9]

So I guess they don't want my money then. Also, I don't EVER remember a time where I wished that Diablo II was online all the time because I played the game entirely single-player. I've never once played the game in any for of multiplayer mode.

 

[likalaruku]

If they had just named it "Diablo Online" or "Diablo MMO" instead of Diablo III, no one would have cared. But by calling it Diablo 3, they're implying that it's a sequel in a series of singleplayer offline games. Same thing for the last Sim City.

 

[black_knight1337]

I just have to say, I've played Diablo 2 for a very long time and I hardly ran into hackers. In fact, I didn't see any of the hacks you mentioned in your last paragraph. Then again, I usually made my own game for people to join, mostly friends. I hardly encountered any problems and there was always a way to work around them. So are ladders and what not really that important to make it that much more restricted?

Mhmm, I've played Diablo 2 for a long time as well. Probably 10 years or so. Mostly playing with friends is probably why you didn't encounter those kind of things. A quick google search will tell you all about them. And yes, if you introduce competitive elements then you have a responsibility to do what you can to make it "fair".

You make it sound like it is hopeless. Yeah, with any online game people will find a way to cheat through the system, but they can make that very risky by making everybody able to report those who break the rules, especially when you can record games easily now as evidence. I've played many MMO's and they had their ways to track bots and hackers, and these people were eventually caught. Even the farmers in L2 who took very careful precautions making money by selling in game money were found at some point, the patterns of how certain people played made it obvious over time as well.

Stopping hackers is hopeless really, at least with a full offline version available. It's all just a matter of time. Always online, at least the way it's done in Diablo 3, makes it significantly harder. It's still possible and will eventually happen, but if they can keep it secure for 5 - 10 years then I'd say they've been successful. And Blizzard do that as well, going through reports and having Warden keeping players honest.

Just deleting something that has been a part of the series because of whatever, even like a holy excuse 'we want to make it a safer experience' is still ridiculous. So they have to choose between putting up with some pricks that like to hack the game and annoy some people, or piss of a whole lot of people by not adding the original single player experience at all. This lowers the value of the product as well.

This is for everybody, not just you.

There's no winning when it comes to this. You have offline mode and online becomes covered in hacks so people get shitty. You have it all online and people get shitty because of not being able to play offline. Either way Blizzard get screwed over. And, for me, when it comes to DRM as long as the benefits of the system outweigh the drawbacks then I'm "fine" with it. And the "deleting something that has been a part of the series" holds no weight whatsoever. A good sequel is one that "innovates" on the concepts of it's predecessors and brings new ideas to the table. A bad sequel is one that just does whatever it's predecessor does while wearing a new costume.

 

[Dajmin]

I've only played D3 online a handful of times (because I found it totally pointless and frustrating), so for me having it always-online is pointless. Likewise, I had to suffer the launch problems with login servers falling over. Which as a single-player gamer isn't fair. I shouldn't have paid my money just to suffer because of a feature I'm not using.

In addition to that, for a game I primarily bought for single-player, my account has been hacked and recovered twice. The last time was a while ago now, but again this is a potential problem with any game which forces you to create an online account even if you don't want to play online. So although the account hacking problems might be partly my fault for not choosing a secure enough password or whatever, I was forced into that position for a feature I didn't want. Again, not fair.

And those are only two of the many reasons I'll fight against any always-online single player stuff.

 

[beez]

Diablo One by Microsoft, coming next fall for the holiday season

 

[Easton Dark]

Oh, okay. So, it's not a matter that people were promised things that didn't happen, it's just that they BOUGHT THE WRONG GAME. Sorry, folks! Should have just gotten something else. Maybe Path of Exile? Torchlight?

Mystery solved! Everybody go home now.

Don't both those games also require internet? They may not be the best examples

No, Torchlight doesn't require internet.

That's why people recommend it as the Diablo successor.

 

[spartandude]

Ok so people are talking about how being online is a good way to stop hackers and yes it is but i still dont get why you cant have on online work just as it does now and also and offline/LAN (if blizzard get over their hatred of LAN, could someone explain it to me?). But why cant they have an online version thats works just as it does right now, so you have to go through the servers to play and as such they can make sure everything is as its supposed to be and block any thing hacked, but then also have an offline version where they just say "ok ruin it for yourself if you want."

 

[Nazulu]

Snap for quickness

I don't know what you mean by hopeless because the punishments do reach those people and effect their gaming. Yeah, they'll keep on coming and other people will keep making it more difficult for them, it's always been like that. So you're saying they should just give up and make more restrictions? That's a really pathetic way to go about it, really.

It has nothing to do with winning, just providing the best experience you can, and shutting people out of a classic franchise is a dick head move. They should have come up with something else and not rely on the damn title if they want to focus on online only. How many classic games are you not considering that had both single player and online play? I had amazing experiences with all of them and not once did someone say "I wish these games didn't have a single player option".

the "deleting something that has been a part of the series" holds no weight whatsoever. A good sequel is one that "innovates" on the concepts of it's predecessors and brings new ideas to the table. A bad sequel is one that just does whatever it's predecessor does while wearing a new costume.

YOU find no weight in it, and it pretty makes your point weightless as well. Also, your description of a good sequel doesn't make any sense. All those classic games did innovate and really expanded, but I'm guessing you mean adding more restrictions counts as innovation. Also, not every sequel needs to innovate, and that's because some things were close to perfect already, so changing how the system works is not exactly innovation either.

 

[llubtoille]

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.

If you mean that it would have been to hard for them to let you take that offline character and play it in online mode without utterly destroying the online economy, then yes it would have been all but impossible.

However if you mean it would have been to hard for them to allow you to play a character offline, then hop online and play your 'online only' characters - like D2, then no it wouldn't have been too hard for a company of their caliber.

I don't know whether it was their 'love of drm' (to prevent piracy) that inspires them, or perhaps they truly do believe that it's better for the consumer to make all their games connected through battle.net, but in either case it seems they've made their decision and are sticking with it.
Another thought is, perhaps this is their way of selling more console copies for those who have it on PC but are willing to pay again for the offline experience.

 

[Strazdas]

There has to have been a better solution than forcing everyone to be online all the time though. I find it hard to believe that in the many years Diablo 3 was in development they couldn't have come up with something that allowed offline play and a hack free online play.

Well, if you find that solution, I'm sure Blizz would love to know. The thing is though, there isn't a comparable game out there that has both an offline mode and a hack free online mode. Hell, you could probably go as far as to apply that to the video games industry as a whole.

do calcualtion online. servers can handle mahematics now.

You can't though, not if you want to give people a purely offline mode.

No comparable game? How about every single game with an multiplayer excluding the "hacked" ones? there are plenty of ways to prevent hacking in multiplayer without restricting singleplayer.
Yes, you can do server calcualtions and give people offline mode. When you play offline, everything is calcualted locally. When you go online, a different version of client starts that do calcualtion on the server. If a person cracks that client, he will see it differently, however the server will still only accept correct calcualtion steps and broadcast the results to everyone else, thus the only game the hacker changes is his own, and since server still takes the upper hand - likely make it worse. Meanwhile for everyone else he looks like albeit strange acting another player.
A good example of how this works is World of Tanks. There are no hackers, because server calculates everything. how it calculates is KNOWN, however they can do nothing about it since they would need to hack the main server for it. Worst they can do is change colors in their games via mod engine, which makes enemies more visible or highlights their bullet paths, ect.

BattleNet protects them from millions of dollars in lost sales.

Does it?
How.

Well you weren't writing in to tell him that you appreciated it. It's easy to see how a person whose job it was was to study the negative response that the company got for a feature would be forgiven for forgetting that they're only looking at the negative responses.

So i should write in to a company prasiing it to include basic functionality that should be a standart given thing in any game? we really gone that far now?

Yeah, let's ignore the fact that it's been what -several months?- and the pirates haven't even gotten a cracked version working that isn't based off the old beta. I'm sure they'll add that feature to the crack they haven't made annnnyyy day now!

Do tell me how does one crack a MMO? Because make no mistake, Diablo 3 is a MMO.

I believe you're missing the idea of how offline manipulating of characters works. Either you can create impossible situations (characters/items that could not have the stats they claim to) or improbable situations (you have all of the best gear and every slot in your inventory is also the best gear).

Impossible just requires validation. Improbable is the task we are trying to solve.

Digital signatures by themselves would not be good enough for the stated reason: you just need to find the private key in the game which has to be on ones computer to actually sign the file.

And? I dont see whats bad about people creating impsosible chracters in thier offline game. Online? Yeah, server will just still act like their character is what they actually are and the only change will be on thier own screens.
I never said digital signature is a solution, that was another person, and i agree that digital signatures are not enough. However id love digital signatures and their ban to be the new IP ban thing, because IP is too easy to fake and you get same guy joining the server every 5 minuets getting banned for spamming hacklinks or something. At least with digital signature it would take much more effort to do that.

And yet, the console versions exist...

That's different. Because...Ummm...Reasons.

COnsole version was made by different studio so technically "not them".

Don't both those games also require internet? They may not be the best examples

I dont know about paths of exhile, but i know torchlight definitely has an offline mode.

A friend of mine was trying to login, and every error he got he immediatly tried to login again and again and again and I said to him "You know you're only making the problem worse when you do that, right?"

They let you do that? Oh my.....
The games i played where a daily restart would make 50.000 logins right after it happen or their organized "Test servers" that gives people sneak peak into new version that would have half the community on at once, those had a different system.
failed to login, try again. failed again, you cannot try for 30 seconds. the more tries, the longer the time. thing is, those things dont really happen anymore because they got faster servers now, but they wouldnt let themselves be spammed. the client would hold for half a minute at least. of course you can hack the client to not do that, but then you may just as well LOIC the thing and youll have better results.

The only way that would turn out any way other than what happened in Diablo 2 would be to code the offline version completely different to the online version. Which in turn makes the production costs skyrocket, but we'd all be happy to pay $120-160 for the base game right?

Except that it wont. all you need is to insert a minimalistic calculation response server and trick the offline mode into "connecting" back to the actual offline files. you dont even need to register a server with the OS really, jut run a secondary exe.

Diablo 2 did this, it was also filled with hacks. The hacks I'm talking about aren't hex editors and the like that edit you character's stats. They are stuff like map hacks, making your movement become teleports, duping, forcing people to drop their gear etc.

Which shows poor implementation of online mode and smells more like "multiplayer mod" for san andreas games that did all calculations locally rather than anything else. BUt that was 2001 and online gaming was in its infancy so thats kinda understandable. they wouldnt be doing it similarly nowadays anyway. I mean back then servers couldnt handle all the calculations probably anyway, now they can.

Yeah, with any online game people will find a way to cheat through the system, but they can make that very risky by making everybody able to report those who break the rules, especially when you can record games easily now as evidence.

Competetive + ability to report = lets report people we dont like.
replay recordings are of course better solution, but you still need manpower to deal with it.

I've played many MMO's and they had their ways to track bots and hackers, and these people were eventually caught. Even the farmers in L2 who took very careful precautions making money by selling in game money were found at some point, the patterns of how certain people played made it obvious over time as well.

Ive played many MMOs and the only ones that had no hackers were those that made all calculations server-based. yes, if you make 20 money farmers run on your background and one of them gets caught once in 6 months and recieve a 1 month ban after which you just create new character and you call that "all geting caught eventually", then yes they do. but not in any timely fashion.

To be honest the only way to stop online gold sellers is to make the game not be pay to win.

I don't know what you mean by hopeless because the punishments do reach those people and effect their gaming. Yeah, they'll keep on coming and other people will keep making it more difficult for them, it's always been like that. So you're saying they should just give up and make more restrictions? That's a really pathetic way to go about it, really.

I will not name character or game for obviuos reasons but i was botting in one game for over 4 years, never been caught even though multiple people claimed to have reported me. as long as the botter has basic common sense (like not bot 24/7) he wont get caught. I never sold the chracter or anything, the game was very grindy and i just watched movies while it grinded on its own and only played the fun parts.

 

[Nazulu]

Hope you don't mind the snip. It's for all three quotes.

Your right, there will always be people who will abuse any system, but it can work out. I know someone that botted only once in a certain MMO and he was banned straight away, we don't even know how he was caught. Hell, there was a popular money trading site for Lineage 2 once and it was torn down eventually and most if not all their accounts were banned, some of these characters going up to level 70 which took forever to get to. Also, if they forgot to cover up their IP Address, it was even worse for them.

I'm not sure why you're telling me this, but no matter what, I still had a great 'fair' time with many people even knowing there were cheaters, and so I still don't care for Kevin's 'excuse'.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

If you mean that it would have been to hard for them to let you take that offline character and play it in online mode without utterly destroying the online economy, then yes it would have been all but impossible.

The online economy destroyed itself without any help from my suggestion.

 

[Aeshi]

there are plenty of ways to prevent hacking in multiplayer without restricting singleplayer.

Yeah, too bad none of them work for more than a week (feeling generous)

Yes, you can do server calcualtions and give people offline mode. When you play offline, everything is calcualted locally. When you go online, a different version of client starts that do calcualtion on the server. If a person cracks that client, he will see it differently, however the server will still only accept correct calcualtion steps and broadcast the results to everyone else, thus the only game the hacker changes is his own, and since server still takes the upper hand - likely make it worse. Meanwhile for everyone else he looks like albeit strange acting another player.

A good example of how this works is World of Tanks. There are no hackers, because server calculates everything. how it calculates is KNOWN, however they can do nothing about it since they would need to hack the main server for it. Worst they can do is change colors in their games via mod engine, which makes enemies more visible or highlights their bullet paths, ect.

Yeah, WoT has no hackers, and you can go singleplayer with if you-Oh wait. No you can't!

WoT has no hackers, it also happens to be always-online by virtue of having no singleplayer. Kind of like D3 in that regard. I'm willing to bet that altering either to allow for offline mode would cause their "hack-free" position to last for 5 seconds after making said change.

Do tell me how does one crack a MMO? Because make no mistake, Diablo 3 is a MMO.

That was my point. I was saying that Pirates haven't managed to crack it yet, so expecting a single-player crack is deluding yourself by this point. Can you not detect sarcasm or something?

Competetive + ability to report = lets report people we dont like.
replay recordings are of course better solution, but you still need manpower to deal with it.

Because DOTA2 proved that sort of feature nnnnneeever gets exploited by sore losers, right?

 

[Strazdas]

Hope you don't mind the snip. It's for all three quotes.

Your right, there will always be people who will abuse any system, but it can work out. I know someone that botted only once in a certain MMO and he was banned straight away, we don't even know how he was caught. Hell, there was a popular money trading site for Lineage 2 once and it was torn down eventually and most if not all their accounts were banned, some of these characters going up to level 70 which took forever to get to. Also, if they forgot to cover up their IP Address, it was even worse for them.

I'm not sure why you're telling me this, but no matter what, I still had a great 'fair' time with many people even knowing there were cheaters, and so I still don't care for Kevin's 'excuse'.

theres definitely a fair time to be had in MMO. but that does not mean that system is self regulatory. Lt it run lnog enough and you will end up with Tibia - over 95% of population is using a bot and not even hiding it.
I guess your somone got really unlucky or od like to know the name of that game.

Thing with money sites are, those are actually illegal. Botting is not illegal, hence worse they can do is ban your account. Now i havent played L2 in forever, but i didnt remember it being hard to level. If anything levels came faster than i expected and i ended up killing too low level monsters jsut by trying to finnish a quest most of the time.

Yeah, too bad none of them work for more than a week (feeling generous)

Except they do. There are games that dont have hackers you know.

Yeah, WoT has no hackers, and you can go singleplayer with if you-Oh wait. No you can't!

WoT has no hackers, it also happens to be always-online by virtue of having no singleplayer. Kind of like D3 in that regard. I'm willing to bet that altering either to allow for offline mode would cause their "hack-free" position to last for 5 seconds after making said change.

WoT is an example of well executed online mode. Which is what i was pointing to. It would not have hackers of there was a singleplayer mode due to virtue of how multiplayer works. nothing you do locally can affect the actual gameplay for anyone but you.

That was my point. I was saying that Pirates haven't managed to crack it yet, so expecting a single-player crack is deluding yourself by this point. Can you not detect sarcasm or something?

So then all games have to be MMOs. yeah, thats unworkable.

Because DOTA2 proved that sort of feature nnnnneeever gets exploited by sore losers, right?

I never said it doesnt get expoited, quite the opposite.

 

[Nazulu]

I can't believe I'm finally talking to someone who's played Lineage 2 here. Were you there at the beginning before chronicle 1? It was really crazy then. Especially when I first died by 2 guys named Fuck and You. lol

I didn't bot in Lineage 2 so maybe that's why it felt like a long time to level sometimes. I mostly worked with a big clan and sometimes it took them awhile to get there shit together.

Hope you don't mind the snip. It's for all three quotes.

Your right, there will always be people who will abuse any system, but it can work out. I know someone that botted only once in a certain MMO and he was banned straight away, we don't even know how he was caught. Hell, there was a popular money trading site for Lineage 2 once and it was torn down eventually and most if not all their accounts were banned, some of these characters going up to level 70 which took forever to get to. Also, if they forgot to cover up their IP Address, it was even worse for them.

I'm not sure why you're telling me this, but no matter what, I still had a great 'fair' time with many people even knowing there were cheaters, and so I still don't care for Kevin's 'excuse'.

theres definitely a fair time to be had in MMO. but that does not mean that system is self regulatory. Lt it run lnog enough and you will end up with Tibia - over 95% of population is using a bot and not even hiding it.
I guess your somone got really unlucky or od like to know the name of that game.

Thing with money sites are, those are actually illegal. Botting is not illegal, hence worse they can do is ban your account. Now i havent played L2 in forever, but i didnt remember it being hard to level. If anything levels came faster than i expected and i ended up killing too low level monsters jsut by trying to finnish a quest most of the time.

I get the gist of your post, just some little things I don't understand. What is Lt and Tibia?

I guess your somone got really unlucky or od like to know the name of that game.

I don't completely get this either.