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

[Lovely Mixture]

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha,
This is just in time. I was mildly contemplating if I should buy RoS if it featured offline addition.

Go fuck yourself Blizzard, ever-ytime I think I've been too hard on you, I'm proven wrong.

"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."

This is how 10 years olds justify their decisions, "You probably-might-of-would-have-been mad then, so this decision is good now!"

You know how many people had shitty dial-up connections back then?
A lot.

You know what still exists today?
Internet connection problems.

You know how many people complained about online requirements then?
NONE, BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T EXIST FOR SINGLEPLAYER GAMES.

The saddest part? This is the norm for big name companies now, they don't listen to their customers.

Calling it now, Diablo IV is when they'll justify a full-time internet connection cause you'll have to buy your character, your items, and your skill trees all directly from Blizzard's servers.

 

[thatonedude11]

There was a way that Blizzard could have had people playing single player characters to convert to multiplayer without compromising the integrity of the online experience. It's called LAN mode. Oh wait, LAN goes against Blizzard's business philosophy [http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/08/21/starcraft-2-heart-of-the-swarm-designer-says-lack-of-lan-is-just-about-our-philosophy/] for some stupid reason.

"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."
Because people were a lot less mad when they couldn't play the game they payed for at launch.

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.

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.

 

[Skeleon]

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

I really, really don't. I remember how much fun I had in singleplayer and LAN with my buddies, though. And I remember that I only played one character above level 90 in closed Battlenet because I really didn't give a toss about multiplayer with strangers and flamers. Huh. I must just be remembering wrong, I guess.

This argument is particularly bullshit as friends and siblings typically start playing anew together. Or at least that's how we did it because nothing sucks more than having a level 50 character shuttling a level 1 character (or even more extreme examples). Yeah, you can twink items over, but where's the fun in that? People enjoy playing together! So, what did we do? We'd check who likes/wants to try which class and then we'd make new characters.

EDIT: Also, yeah, great job preventing hacking on closed Battlenet. This surely convinces me of the importance of always-online DRM. Hah.

Anyway, this just means I will continue not to play Diablo 3. *shrug*

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Again, it's the legitimate, paying customers who miss out. Undoubtedly there are likely dodgy versions abound which offer offline/LAN play. In fairness, unlicensed copies won't have online play, but I find it amusing that it's quite likely pirates have a better single-player experience.

How arrogant to come out with "We're not making that game". You bloody well did make that game, and then told customers they had to play it your way or no way. Just like EA and Sim City. It was a wrong move for both games. Saying that, Blizzard made a shitload of money so what do I know?

 

[Eldritch Warlord]

"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...

OOoooooOOohhh~, touchy Kevin! Why didn't he just hiss like a cat instead?

Not much else to say here; his answer is destroyed with just a finger pointed at the Playstation.

Standard Blizzard employee from the Diablo team. Arrogant, ignorant sack of shit.

His answer is actually not at all destroyed by pointing at any console. He says that the always-online requirement is there to prevent cheating and that they did not want to implement a segregated offline character pool because that was unpopular. However consoles inherently prevent cheating, achieving Blizzard's design goal in a different way.

Put some thought into your complaints next time, you might actually discover a valid criticism.

 

[Candidus]

His answer is actually not at all destroyed by pointing at any console. He says that the always-online requirement is there to prevent cheating and that they did not want to implement a segregated offline character pool because that was unpopular. However consoles inherently prevent cheating, achieving Blizzard's design goal in a different way.

Put some thought into your complaints next time, you might actually discover a valid criticism.

It's still a BS answer. I don't remember a single complaint about the split character pool during my time playing Diablo 2. And even if it were unpopular, if he'd poll the community today I'm pretty sure he'd find that always-online is universally the least popular decision he could possibly make.

But then he doesn't have to poll the community, because he already knows- as they have from the start- that it's an almost universally reviled policy.

 

[freedash22]

It must really be painful for someone with common sense to defend this crap. Nomatter, I am done with Diablo 3 and with great games like the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing (can play offline) working hard to earn my money, goodwill and respect, there is no reason for me to dwell in Diablo 3 and bear with the annoying issues Blizzard keeps throwing on their customers.

 

[Makabriel]

So amusing. Any time I read reactions to Blizzard posts, I immediately envision this:

Spoiler

Seriously, folks. The world is becoming always online, all the time. If I'm playing Diablo, it's on my main rig ... which is online all of the time. I don't see any kind of problem with this. If I'm on an offline machine I'm playing.. something else, or doing something else.

People are making a mountain out of a molehill, and beating a dead horse on top of it.

 

[black_knight1337]

It's called a "digital signature". If a file isn't signed by the digital signature of the game executable, the file is corrupted or hacked.

Which can also be hacked. No matter what method is implemented, if everything is available offline it will always be hackable because all of the information (keys, encrypted data etc) is all in one location.

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.

 

[runic knight]

Well, was thinking about giving D3 another shot with the expansion a while ago. Unfortunately this is just another in a list of issues that make me more then happy to not give them more of my money. Thanks Blizzard jackass, you spared me some cash by showing how out of touch Blizzard still is even after backtracking on some of its previous stupidity.

But yeah, like everyone else has said, you made the game for the playstation man, don't be dishonest.

 

[Iron Gix]

all the more reason to just buy it for the console and it is really naive to thinking this was nothing but having full control over diablo.

 

[WeepingAngels]

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.

My BS detector is ringing a bit here.

But then I do not "study games for a living" so I could be wrong, anyone else wanna weight in on this? Were people back in 2001 really incensed and foaming at the mouth that there was both an online and offline mode in d2?

This is just Blizzard trying to justify always online DRM by claiming that players really want it, despite players telling them the opposite.

 

[Psychobabble]

Wait excuse me. What? Sorry I'm having trouble hearing you over the sound of how awesome Grim Dawn is. Kevin Martens said what again? Oh. Okay. Don't really care. Personally feel that D3 is a shallow and crappy game that doesn't deserve to wear the Diablo name. All the added annoying features like always online are just icing on the giant turd masquerading as cake. Maybe if his team had spent more time trying to make D3 a good game rather than wasting time mindwanking with failed features like the auction house D3 would be a game worth playing.

Also I'm not sure why Martens is wasting his time attempting to justify his companies stupid policies when we know most of Blizzards lemming-like fans will happily lap every bit of festering dung that plops out of his companies diseased anus. Sure some of them might complain it tasted like shit after the fact, but since Blizzard already has their money they don't particularly care.

 

[SinisterGehe]

Don't worry blizzard you might not add offline functionality, but the horrible industry destroying pirates that are just there just to destroy people's live hodd for fun will add it.

Far as I recall none of my friends were dissapointed that there was offline and online, there was even online for offline characters and the proper B.net with unique characters to it.
IT WASN'T A ISSUE BACK THEN why would it be now?

 

[babinro]

Why don't they ever mention DRM as part of the reasoning?

BattleNet protects them from millions of dollars in lost sales. It has to play a role in the decision even if it's not the primary one. It's hard to take any of these PR answers seriously when they pretend that this is a complete non-factor.

I'm not angry mind you. I agree with their decision to go online only to protect themselves from thieves as best as possible. Any other reasoning for the decision is just gravy. Until gamers as a whole can be proven not to steal from a DRM free gaming company, we don't deserve the right to be trusted.

I'm praying that The Witcher 3 goes down among the least pirated AAA games in history as proof that having DRM isn't an important part your development time and effort. Only then will other major companies start to see things differently.

 

[Aeshi]

It's still a BS answer. I don't remember a single complaint about the split character pool during my time playing Diablo 2.

There may not have seen a single complaint about the Split Character pool, but there were boatloads of complaints about hacking, duped items vastly more powerful than anything that could drop normally, etc. And allowing/adding the former will allow for the latter.

Don't worry blizzard you might not add offline functionality, but the horrible industry destroying pirates that are just there just to destroy people's live hodd for fun will add it.

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!

 

[thatonedude11]

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.

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)

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.

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.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

But then I do not "study games for a living" so I could be wrong, anyone else wanna weight in on this? Were people back in 2001 really incensed and foaming at the mouth that there was both an online and offline mode in d2?

On a personal case, I met no one who found this bothersome, it was never ever mentioned in the discussions I had about the game. They played multiplayer and I didn't, so I asked questions about their experiences.

In short, the only people who I could see complaining about two-separate-characters-model are legitimate plaers who kept having to deal with hackers and exploits.

It wasn't that hard to hack the singleplayer game files, Blizzard likely foresaw the problems with this and used the separate-character-model to circumvent it. Of course, hackers find a way and there were still hacks and exploits that they could sneak through.

For legit players, this put all their hard work to nothing.

For legit players who got into the meta-economy, as in paying real money for rare items (which both me and my friends found incredibly silly), this was probably annoying because it meant risking bans and paying for hacked itemss.

For offline players, there was no problem.

So if we wanted to analyze what Blizzard saw. They saw that they could appeal to the players who liked spending more money than the initial price and attempt (mildly) to get rid of hackers at the same time.

In short, Blizzard saw the customers who would make them the most money and decided to eventually base the game around them as to force everyone to be a part of it.

 

[Epic_Bubble]

Phew its a good thing Blizzard doesn't need my money. Here I thought they would what with the whole WoW down to 7.3 milion subscribers now.

Atleast now I can spend my money on other things such as the Witcher 3 that has no online requirements.

 

[Sectan]

I can understand Blizz not wanting hackers and having Always Online when their "OH SO PRECIOUS AND TOTALLY NOT A GIMMICK RMAH" was being toted as a huge part of Diablo 3. But now that they're killing that what's the point? If some guy wants to cheat his character to be an uber god in a 4 player co-op game then then why should we care? I don't condone it and I think it's shitty, but this isn't an MMO or a F2P game. It's a coop game and all that's going to happen is some guy will faceroll mobs. People will either not want to play with him or just follow him around and pick up loot, which doesn't really do anything unless they pvp, but it'd be simple enough to put restrictions on PvPing characters.