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

[Schmeiser]

Am i missing something here? I mean im really confused. People are talking about people hacking their SP game then transfering that hacked char into online and ruining everyone's experience. I'm not a tech wizard or a game dev but what's wrong with making an offline mode and a online mode, THEN not allowing offline chars to be played online and THEN not allowing online chars played offline aswell. Is that possible? Because i sure as hell do think it is possible, so hack your own game who gives a fuck, you can only play solo anyway. So we make both communities happy, i would buy d3 instantly if it had a offline mode, i couldn't give a rats ass if i can't play my offline char online. It's not hard to lvl multiple chars.

So much drama in this thread

 

[spartandude]

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

Don't know about Path of Exile (never heard of it til now) but i can safely say that you dont need to be connected to play Torchlight 1 or 2 at all.

Am i missing something here? I mean im really confused. People are talking about people hacking their SP game then transfering that hacked char into online and ruining everyone's experience. I'm not a tech wizard or a game dev but what's wrong with making an offline mode and a online mode, THEN not allowing offline chars to be played online and THEN not allowing online chars played offline aswell. Is that possible? Because i sure as hell do think it is possible, so hack your own game who gives a fuck, you can only play solo anyway. So we make both communities happy, i would buy d3 instantly if it had a offline mode, i couldn't give a rats ass if i can't play my offline char online. It's not hard to lvl multiple chars.

So much drama in this thread

I completely agree with this post

 

[Nemu]

Blizzard, this time around, sure knew us better than we know ourselves.
They were asked about offline D3 and a Vanilla WoW server and in both cases, THEY knew what the fans wanted, not the thousands (millions?) of folks clamoring for gaming days gone by.

I daresay that the devs were more smug than usual this year, which is curious, considering how D3 is considered a misstep and they are down five million active accounts since it's peak a handful of years ago (my two accounts included, I played for nearly nine years). WoD had better be a hit, because the past two expansions have been BIG disappointments.

 

[Weaver]

Glad I didn't buy diablo 3.

Why can the console version be offline but the PC version can't if being online is the most important thing in the world, by the way?

 

[black_knight1337]

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.

By hopeless I was referring to the fact that it's impossible to just outright stop hackers. Given enough time and effort they can work their way into anything. And no, I'm not saying they should "give up and make more restrictions", that's just silly. What I'm saying is that Blizzard saw a problem with the way it was done in Diablo 2 and they wanted to provide a solution. They saw always online as both the cheapest and most effective solution so they went with it. Of course they could have spent years and years researching and developing other solutions for it but that would kill their profit margins. And they are a business after all, just like everyone else.

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".

Yes, it's about providing a good experience for users and hackers diminish that experience. And what? Just because of a change in the drm they have to create a whole new IP? "Hey guys we're working on a new arpg that works much like our much loved title, Diablo 2, but because of a change in the way the content is going to be delivered we can't call it a sequel but rather a spiritual successor." Whelp, I guess you have to go after countless other titles now spouting that same nonsense.

I really don't think you're getting it. It's not "lets remove the offline mode" but rather "lets do what we can to stop hackers". There are other reasons but that's the one relevant to this discussion.

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.

I never said they didn't, never even touched upon the quality of "those classic games". Your argument was 'it's in this game so it has to be in it's sequel' which is just bs reasoning. Sequels need to stick to their roots of course but there's no reason why they can't remove, change, expand or add to it. In fact, sequels should be doing this, otherwise everything will end up like CoD but that's what you want isn't it. And "changing how the systems works" is pretty much the definition of innovation ("make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products").

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.

So name some?

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.

Like I said to someone before, those are not the kind of hacks I'm talking about. Simply storing the characters online prevents that kind of thing. The hacks I'm talking about include things like duping and map hacks. If you provide players with an offline mode without recoding the entire thing(forcing production costs skyward) then these kind of things will always happen.

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.

Big problem with your example. It's a mmo. Mmos are purely online, hence why that kind of security is possible. Diablo 3 employs the same kind of methods.

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.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, care to clarify? Is this for the online variant or the offline one? I'm thinking it's the offline one. If so you aren't solving any of the issues. You're still giving the player access to code which compromises the security of the online variant. To keep the online variant secure it needs to be significantly different from the offline variant. At the very least the programming team would pretty much double which of course pushes up development costs forcing higher prices or lower margins per copy.

 

[Nazulu]

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.

By hopeless I was referring to the fact that it's impossible to just outright stop hackers. Given enough time and effort they can work their way into anything. And no, I'm not saying they should "give up and make more restrictions", that's just silly. What I'm saying is that Blizzard saw a problem with the way it was done in Diablo 2 and they wanted to provide a solution. They saw always online as both the cheapest and most effective solution so they went with it. Of course they could have spent years and years researching and developing other solutions for it but that would kill their profit margins. And they are a business after all, just like everyone else.

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".

Yes, it's about providing a good experience for users and hackers diminish that experience. And what? Just because of a change in the drm they have to create a whole new IP? "Hey guys we're working on a new arpg that works much like our much loved title, Diablo 2, but because of a change in the way the content is going to be delivered we can't call it a sequel but rather a spiritual successor." Whelp, I guess you have to go after countless other titles now spouting that same nonsense.

I really don't think you're getting it. It's not "lets remove the offline mode" but rather "lets do what we can to stop hackers". There are other reasons but that's the one relevant to this discussion.

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.

I never said they didn't, never even touched upon the quality of "those classic games". Your argument was 'it's in this game so it has to be in it's sequel' which is just bs reasoning. Sequels need to stick to their roots of course but there's no reason why they can't remove, change, expand or add to it. In fact, sequels should be doing this, otherwise everything will end up like CoD but that's what you want isn't it. And "changing how the systems works" is pretty much the definition of innovation ("make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products").

Yeah, we're just going in circles now, and I'm sure we could keep this up for awhile.

Also you keep saying that is 'bullshit reasoning' and 'nonsense' yet it's not to me at all, so you can see where I see there is no point in you telling me that. It's not like you prove anything by saying that and that's why this is useless.

I'll leave it at this. I can avoid hackers and usually I won't see them either. I can not work around the DRM though, so if my internet or their servers are not doing so well... you've already heard how that's turned out for some games. It's very clear to me after all the games I've played with both options that hackers shouldn't result in restrictions, they aren't the end of the world.

Also, if you're going to continue a franchise with many fans that loved the previous games, you can bet your ass that removing options or drastically changing it to another game is a shallow move, usually to follow trends to make a quick money grab. Fuck this new Blizzard, I bet they'd get nothing if they started a new franchise.

 

[black_knight1337]

Yeah, we're just going in circles now, and I'm sure we could keep this up for awhile.

Also you keep saying that is 'bullshit reasoning' and 'nonsense' yet it's not to me at all, so you can see where I see there is no point in you telling me that. It's not like you prove anything by saying that and that's why this is useless.

Yeah. And fair enough, although there are a number of other points there.

I'll leave it at this. I can avoid hackers and usually I won't see them either. I can not work around the DRM though, so if my internet or their servers are not doing so well... you've already heard how that's turned out for some games. It's very clear to me after all the games I've played with both options that hackers shouldn't result in restrictions, they aren't the end of the world.

I'll leave it at this. Hackers are a detriment to any online game. If you want to protect people from the harm caused by them and at the same time stop them profiting, you all but have to use always online drm. Other methods are probably achievable but not without causing costs to head skyward. Thankfully though, Blizzard have done a pretty good job with their implementation keeping latency as low as they can(It's AT&T that's the problem), providing a solid integration and keeping the game hack free.

Also, if you're going to continue a franchise with many fans that loved the previous games, you can bet your ass that removing options or drastically changing it to another game is a shallow move, usually to follow trends to make a quick money grab. Fuck this new Blizzard, I bet they'd get nothing if they started a new franchise.

I agree although I don't agree that that is what Blizzard have done with Diablo 3. It is still the same PvE loot-driven arpg it has always been. The changes made have been a mixed bag but overall(and what's been shown of upcoming content) it has been good and is heading in the right direction.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I'll leave it at this. Hackers are a detriment to any online game. If you want to protect people from the harm caused by them and at the same time stop them profiting, you all but have to use always online drm. Other methods are probably achievable but not without causing costs to head skyward.

You need online security for when you play online. Anything other than that is stupid and inconvenient.

 

[black_knight1337]

You need online security for when you play online. Anything other than that is stupid and inconvenient.

Yes, and an offline mode in the way it is handled in, I'm pretty sure, every other game is detrimental to that security. All you need is in the rest of the thread but I'll give you the gist of it. Basically, giving a would-be hacker access to the whole game(ie. offline mode) allows them to understand how the game works much faster than if they didn't have it. Keeping all that stuff on a secure server means that they are doing guesswork and by the time they stumble upon anything worthwhile the banhammer would be incoming. So all in all always online is much more secure than having an offline mode as well. It keeps legitimate players in a hack-free environment and it stops hackers making absurd profits from cheating. I won't say there's no negatives involved but the positives of just this line of reasoning outweighs them. If you want more, go read the rest of the thread.

 

[Nazulu]

Just quoting for attention

Hey, I was just thinking about the offline Diablo 3 on console. Couldn't they use the files on that disk or console for hacking? Or do you have to download some of it first before playing the console version? I only just heard about it because of this thread so I don't know much on that.

This is for everyone, not just black knight

 

[Nurb]

Pirates once again win out over paying customers.

 

[weirdee]

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

well, path of exile is free, and their release crunch was resolved within a few days, and torchlight 2 gives you the choice between offline, internet, and lan play(torchlight is a loner exclusive affair), so

i guess it's up to personal preference

 

[black_knight1337]

Hey, I was just thinking about the offline Diablo 3 on console. Couldn't they use the files on that disk or console for hacking? Or do you have to download some of it first before playing the console version? I only just heard about it because of this thread so I don't know much on that.

This is for everyone, not just black knight

Doubt it. Both the ps3 and 360 haven't got emulators yet so I doubt there is enough known yet to create any decent hacks. And then because of the differences in architecture and processes I doubt there'd be that much that could apply to the PC version anyway.

 

[Do4600]

Again. It doesn't matter to me, because I would never play Diablo offline anyway. I remember the Diablo 2 launch, I played with a character offline for five hours and decided to try multiplayer, and I never went back to offline play again.

 

[Strazdas]

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.

snipping myself, what sorcery is this!

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.

To be honest i really dont remmeber the subtitle of the versions i played. it was long ago. It was 2005 give or take a few years so i hope you can dissect it from the date more. I know i had to download some sort of "Expansion" thingy while playing it though back then i wasnt smart enough to really understand what it was that i downloaded there.
Yeah musht have been experience. I havent seen Fuck and You yet, but the Your mom thing is popular, especially when game has mechanics to tell you what killed you and it ends up "You have been killed by Your Mom" or "Your mom just got fried".

Lt should have been "let". Its missing and e.
Tibia is the name of the oldest graphical MMO in existence. It is still running. It is also a game i played the most of all.

That last line your quoted was in response to the story you told about person being caught instantly after cheating. Either it got really unlucky or i would like to know name of a game that has such effective system.

Am i missing something here? I mean im really confused. People are talking about people hacking their SP game then transfering that hacked char into online and ruining everyone's experience. I'm not a tech wizard or a game dev but what's wrong with making an offline mode and a online mode, THEN not allowing offline chars to be played online and THEN not allowing online chars played offline aswell. Is that possible? Because i sure as hell do think it is possible, so hack your own game who gives a fuck, you can only play solo anyway. So we make both communities happy, i would buy d3 instantly if it had a offline mode, i couldn't give a rats ass if i can't play my offline char online. It's not hard to lvl multiple chars.

So much drama in this thread

Some people here, including the game devs, seem t think that then answer is no.

Like I said to someone before, those are not the kind of hacks I'm talking about. Simply storing the characters online prevents that kind of thing. The hacks I'm talking about include things like duping and map hacks. If you provide players with an offline mode without recoding the entire thing(forcing production costs skyward) then these kind of things will always happen.

Duping is impossible in online game if loot is determined on the server. And if players dupe in offline mode - let them. the characters are serperate. You would have to clarify about map hacks and what is meant there. ability to see whole map? that should have been a basic feature to begin with.
You dont need to recode offline mode, all you need os simulate the same server responses locally. that is coding a bit, but not skyward production costs level. and you would also sell a lot more copies, which means your income will also raise.

Big problem with your example. It's a mmo. Mmos are purely online, hence why that kind of security is possible. Diablo 3 employs the same kind of methods.

And yet you can make MMO play offline (think: private servers, server emulation done by pirates). I have the example of easy to see good way of controlling online game agaisnt hackers while all game mechanics are publicly known.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, care to clarify? Is this for the online variant or the offline one? I'm thinking it's the offline one. If so you aren't solving any of the issues. You're still giving the player access to code which compromises the security of the online variant. To keep the online variant secure it needs to be significantly different from the offline variant. At the very least the programming team would pretty much double which of course pushes up development costs forcing higher prices or lower margins per copy.

It is for offline mode. It does not conmpromise security of online mode, because in order to modify such code they would need to hack into the main server, which would give them acess to said code anyway. It does not need to be different, it needs to be online.

Yes, and an offline mode in the way it is handled in, I'm pretty sure, every other game is detrimental to that security. All you need is in the rest of the thread but I'll give you the gist of it. Basically, giving a would-be hacker access to the whole game(ie. offline mode) allows them to understand how the game works much faster than if they didn't have it. Keeping all that stuff on a secure server means that they are doing guesswork and by the time they stumble upon anything worthwhile the banhammer would be incoming. So all in all always online is much more secure than having an offline mode as well. It keeps legitimate players in a hack-free environment and it stops hackers making absurd profits from cheating. I won't say there's no negatives involved but the positives of just this line of reasoning outweighs them. If you want more, go read the rest of the thread.

To simplify, your claiming that knowing the process locally would help hackers to hack into the mainframe?

 

[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.

snipping myself, what sorcery is this!

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.

To be honest i really dont remmeber the subtitle of the versions i played. it was long ago. It was 2005 give or take a few years so i hope you can dissect it from the date more. I know i had to download some sort of "Expansion" thingy while playing it though back then i wasnt smart enough to really understand what it was that i downloaded there.
Yeah musht have been experience. I havent seen Fuck and You yet, but the Your mom thing is popular, especially when game has mechanics to tell you what killed you and it ends up "You have been killed by Your Mom" or "Your mom just got fried".

Lt should have been "let". Its missing and e.
Tibia is the name of the oldest graphical MMO in existence. It is still running. It is also a game i played the most of all.

That last line your quoted was in response to the story you told about person being caught instantly after cheating. Either it got really unlucky or i would like to know name of a game that has such effective system.

Ah, Ok. Yeah, it sounds like a different game, though Lineage 2 did have some big expansions come out every year.

Strange how I missed Tibia, I thought you were just talking about a server or something. I know of Meridian, Ultima Online and Mu Online, but it seems there was a lot more that I missed out on.

Anyway, that story goes for 2 games and one was Mu Online (after they had a hack crisis) and the other was an early hack and slash back in 2005, I think. It just had a one word title. I thought it was called Vanguard or Ragnarok, but that's not it at all. I'm still looking for it.

They did have a very effective system but Mu Online is nothing like it used to be.

 

[Strazdas]

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.

snipping myself, what sorcery is this!

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.

To be honest i really dont remmeber the subtitle of the versions i played. it was long ago. It was 2005 give or take a few years so i hope you can dissect it from the date more. I know i had to download some sort of "Expansion" thingy while playing it though back then i wasnt smart enough to really understand what it was that i downloaded there.
Yeah musht have been experience. I havent seen Fuck and You yet, but the Your mom thing is popular, especially when game has mechanics to tell you what killed you and it ends up "You have been killed by Your Mom" or "Your mom just got fried".

Lt should have been "let". Its missing and e.
Tibia is the name of the oldest graphical MMO in existence. It is still running. It is also a game i played the most of all.

That last line your quoted was in response to the story you told about person being caught instantly after cheating. Either it got really unlucky or i would like to know name of a game that has such effective system.

Ah, Ok. Yeah, it sounds like a different game, though Lineage 2 did have some big expansions come out every year.

Strange how I missed Tibia, I thought you were just talking about a server or something. I know of Meridian, Ultima Online and Mu Online, but it seems there was a lot more that I missed out on.

Anyway, that story goes for 2 games and one was Mu Online (after they had a hack crisis) and the other was an early hack and slash back in 2005, I think. It just had a one word title. I thought it was called Vanguard or Ragnarok, but that's not it at all. I'm still looking for it.

They did have a very effective system but Mu Online is nothing like it used to be.

Yeah, many people missed tibia. At its peak it had a record of less than 65.000 players online at the same time so it wasnt that known. Ultima is much more famous, and msot people think that is the first graphical MMO, when in fact Tibia has beat it by couple months.
I have heard good things about Mu but never tried myself.

 

[Nazulu]

Yeah, many people missed tibia. At its peak it had a record of less than 65.000 players online at the same time so it wasnt that known. Ultima is much more famous, and msot people think that is the first graphical MMO, when in fact Tibia has beat it by couple months.
I have heard good things about Mu but never tried myself.

It was a very pretty MMO at the time, and it had a good range of skills, mounts and wings to choose from. The only thing is the game only had a couple of quests and it was centered around team work and shopping. It took me ages to get to level 200.

Anyway, after the first year they were hacked completely and unfortunately many peoples accounts were broken into and lost a fair amount of items. After that though, they really made the rules strict as hell and my friend was just trying to use this basic hack to triple his damage and they cut him after 2 hours! I was the only one with him so I don't how it happened. I noticed some other people trying to dupe and what not, but it just all disappeared after that and I never saw any hackers again.

 

[black_knight1337]

Duping is impossible in online game if loot is determined on the server. And if players dupe in offline mode - let them. the characters are serperate. You would have to clarify about map hacks and what is meant there. ability to see whole map? that should have been a basic feature to begin with.

Yes, at it's most basic that is what a map hack is but they typically include more features like enemy locations, chest locations etc. But no, that shouldn't be a basic feature. One of the cornerstones of the genre is the way it randomises the environment which keeps you on your toes because you don't know what is around each corner. Having the whole map revealed all the time removes this almost completely.

You dont need to recode offline mode, all you need os simulate the same server responses locally. that is coding a bit, but not skyward production costs level. and you would also sell a lot more copies, which means your income will also raise.

You're right, that wouldn't affect production costs that much. However, that compromises security for the online portion because a copy of the server is stored locally.

And yet you can make MMO play offline (think: private servers, server emulation done by pirates). I have the example of easy to see good way of controlling online game agaisnt hackers while all game mechanics are publicly known.

So you bring pirating in which isn't all that relevant. If you need to cite hacks to provide evidence of hack-free games then you're doing something wrong.

It is for offline mode. It does not conmpromise security of online mode, because in order to modify such code they would need to hack into the main server, which would give them acess to said code anyway. It does not need to be different, it needs to be online.

Modifying server code isn't the only way you can hack and is in fact one of the rarer forms. I don't think the mods would appreciate it if I went into to much detail so I'll just point you towards packets.

To simplify, your claiming that knowing the process locally would help hackers to hack into the mainframe?

Not into, because there would be different security measures there. But I'll point you at the bit above, that's the main thing. And it's a simple concept, if you have easy access to the software then it becomes significantly easier to hack. This is because you can test different methods and immediately see what they do with no risks whatsoever. If they don't have it locally then they have to do all that online. By doing it online, the developers of the software will be aware of what they are doing and before they can make significant headway they can cut off their access.

This stuff doesn't just apply to games, it applies to all forms of computer security. The more you can hide from would-be hackers, the securer your system will be.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

Man, Blizzard is on fire.

"Hearthstone won't have trading because sometimes people make bad trades and then they're sad."

"RoS won't have offline play because 10+ years ago a handful of people were confused when D2 segregated offline and online characters."

Apparently I'm six years old. And stupid.

I'd have a LOT more respect for them if they had just said "we want people to buy card packs" and "we don't want anyone to pirate our game".