Diablo III: The best F2P game never made.

BENZOOKA

This is the most wittiest title
Oct 26, 2009
3,920
0
0
Real-money auction house...

Why do so many people have a huge problem with this? I haven't got the slightest desire to pay real money for an in-game item. In fact, finding all of your own gear is part of gameplay and a major hook for a Diablo-like game.

It's like an expensive restaurant nearby you don't like. Instead of bitching about it, just don't go there.

Constant online connection is a feature I'd rather not have, but I do have a steady connection and basically all of my games are already on Steam (& BF3 on Origin), and the system works fine. As long as they keep their servers up and hassle-free, it's just like playing a game offline. I don't even plan to play multiplayer, and Blizzard surely has enough resources to keep the game playable at practically all times.
 

Coldie

New member
Oct 13, 2009
467
0
0
Adam Jensen said:
Exactly. I have no interest in Diablo 3 whatsoever after all the horrible announcements. Still, it's probably going to be the best selling PC game ever. Which is a dangerous thing. Because if a game with always-on DRM sells well, those idiots from other game studios will take that as green light to implement always-on DRM in all PC titles, not realizing that the only reason it works for Diablo 3 is that people have been waiting for the game for 2 centuries, and that it is a polished well made PC title. I just that's where we're headed.
World of Warcraft (among countless others) has the exact same "always-on online DRM" as Diablo 3 and it sold pretty damn well. This 'dangerous thing' has been going on for many, many years, and I'm not seeing a lot of green-lit follow ups, outside of other online games (naturally), and UbiSoft.

Don't see a reason to panic here.
 

BENZOOKA

This is the most wittiest title
Oct 26, 2009
3,920
0
0
Silverfox99 said:
I feel this thread is a marketing scheme for torchlight 2.

Nah I would hate D3 if it was fp2. First of all f2p games have a sneaky way of taking more money from the player not less. It sounds like a good idea but in my experience everything has a price. I would rather that price be out in the open rather than be hidden. Also, I find I like the communities a bit better if the game is not f2p.
Hear hear. Free-To-Play does not work in the utopistic way it sounds like. Just to mention a couple of things:

There's constant in-your-face reminding and in-game advertising about additional content they want you to buy.

Often all of the purchasable Free-To-Play content adds up to way more than the price of a regular full version game.

It's free to make a new account, so stopping bots, cheaters and related unwanted players is more difficult.
 

Kordie

New member
Oct 6, 2011
295
0
0
Coldie said:
Adam Jensen said:
Exactly. I have no interest in Diablo 3 whatsoever after all the horrible announcements. Still, it's probably going to be the best selling PC game ever. Which is a dangerous thing. Because if a game with always-on DRM sells well, those idiots from other game studios will take that as green light to implement always-on DRM in all PC titles, not realizing that the only reason it works for Diablo 3 is that people have been waiting for the game for 2 centuries, and that it is a polished well made PC title. I just that's where we're headed.
World of Warcraft (among countless others) has the exact same "always-on online DRM" as Diablo 3 and it sold pretty damn well. This 'dangerous thing' has been going on for many, many years, and I'm not seeing a lot of green-lit follow ups, outside of other online games (naturally), and UbiSoft.

Don't see a reason to panic here.
Have to point out the ever so small difference of a massivly multiplayer online game requireing "always-on online DRM" with a game that is largely single player. It is too easy to make an offline mode.
 

Adam Jensen_v1legacy

I never asked for this
Sep 8, 2011
6,651
0
0
Coldie said:
Adam Jensen said:
Exactly. I have no interest in Diablo 3 whatsoever after all the horrible announcements. Still, it's probably going to be the best selling PC game ever. Which is a dangerous thing. Because if a game with always-on DRM sells well, those idiots from other game studios will take that as green light to implement always-on DRM in all PC titles, not realizing that the only reason it works for Diablo 3 is that people have been waiting for the game for 2 centuries, and that it is a polished well made PC title. I just that's where we're headed.
World of Warcraft (among countless others) has the exact same "always-on online DRM" as Diablo 3 and it sold pretty damn well. This 'dangerous thing' has been going on for many, many years, and I'm not seeing a lot of green-lit follow ups, outside of other online games (naturally), and UbiSoft.

Don't see a reason to panic here.
Are you fuckin' kidding me? WoW is an MMO! There is no single player. Diablo 3 has single player and therefore always-on DRM is completely unnecessary.
 

Kahunaburger

New member
May 6, 2011
4,141
0
0
DoomRL, man. You can kill demons and get loot without having to pay a cent. (Unless you want to donate.)
 

teebeeohh

New member
Jun 17, 2009
2,896
0
0
you know, it's fun.
that's all i have to say, no matter what i do Activisions policies won't change, so i might as well have fun with the game. I will still check out torchlight but i really didn't like the first one.
 

Lucyfer86

New member
Jun 30, 2011
447
0
0
Elamdri said:
Dendio said:
Torchlight 2 for 20 bucks. No online req, no pay to win auction house. Buy yourself a copy, then buy your friend a copy, then buy a pizza and have a lan party

Or pay $60 for D3
You know, I bought Torchlight a few days ago to see what all the fuss was about with people propping up Torchlight 2 over D3, and I gotta say, it's boring as all get out :( I was so disappointed. It's weird, cause it's such a straight Diablo clone, you'd think it would be good, but that magic just isn't there.
I kind felt the same, i mean sure i enjoyed Torchlight for a while, but soon after i just realized how subpar it was compared to Diablo 2.
 

Dryk

New member
Dec 4, 2011
981
0
0
teebeeohh said:
you know, it's fun.
that's all i have to say, no matter what i do Activisions policies won't change, so i might as well have fun with the game. I will still check out torchlight but i really didn't like the first one.
That attitude is exactly the reason why their policies won't change
 

Nimzabaat

New member
Feb 1, 2010
886
0
0
I haven't seen anything on Diablo III being pay to play. But if we're making up random lies then... I understand you have to give Blizzard your first born child and I am opposed to that! Just because I can't find the little bastard.

Off Topic: the phrase I had to enter was "love you". Thanks Escapist, but i'd rather just stay friends.
 

Coldie

New member
Oct 13, 2009
467
0
0
Kordie said:
Have to point out the ever so small difference of a massivly multiplayer online game requireing "always-on online DRM" with a game that is largely single player. It is too easy to make an offline mode.
Adam Jensen said:
Are you fuckin' kidding me? WoW is an MMO! There is no single player. Diablo 3 has single player and therefore always-on DRM is completely unnecessary.
Diablo 3 is not the same game as Diablo 2. Diablo 3 has no more "single player mode" than any MMO out there, because Diablo 3 works like one. The difference is that there is no persistent world (the 'Massively' part of 'MMO') where you can encounter other players in the wild and the entirety of the game is instanced for you and your party.

The world, monsters, loot, combat - are all controlled by the server, exactly like an MMO, your friends (and random strangers, if you allow them) can join your party and help you out at any time, like in an MMO, you can get murdered by a lagspike even when playing solo, just like in an MMO. I guess the difference is that you can pause the game while alone (it was added in the beta recently), but then again, Star Trek Online, an MMO, also allows that, so that's a wash.

The game cannot have an offline mode, because the game is just a client and the server is not included. I'm not super happy about having to play online and deal with lag, but I find that the game is definitely worth it, so I'll deal with it.
 

Kordie

New member
Oct 6, 2011
295
0
0
Coldie said:
Kordie said:
Have to point out the ever so small difference of a massivly multiplayer online game requireing "always-on online DRM" with a game that is largely single player. It is too easy to make an offline mode.
Adam Jensen said:
Are you fuckin' kidding me? WoW is an MMO! There is no single player. Diablo 3 has single player and therefore always-on DRM is completely unnecessary.
Diablo 3 is not the same game as Diablo 2. Diablo 3 has no more "single player mode" than any MMO out there, because Diablo 3 works like one. The difference is that there is no persistent world (the 'Massively' part of 'MMO') where you can encounter other players in the wild and the entirety of the game is instanced for you and your party.

The world, monsters, loot, combat - are all controlled by the server, exactly like an MMO, your friends (and random strangers, if you allow them) can join your party and help you out at any time, like in an MMO, you can get murdered by a lagspike even when playing solo, just like in an MMO. I guess the difference is that you can pause the game while alone (it was added in the beta recently), but then again, Star Trek Online, an MMO, also allows that, so that's a wash.

The game cannot have an offline mode, because the game is just a client and the server is not included. I'm not super happy about having to play online and deal with lag, but I find that the game is definitely worth it, so I'll deal with it.
The reason that Diablo 3 does this is purely by design. If blizzard wanted to, they could make an offline single player mode. They even have it in SC2. I understand that it would require certain actions to be taken from the server and put on the clients computer so that means more space taken up by the game... aside from that there should be no reason not to do this. You could argue file security and tampering, but again this would only affect single player play, as online everything is still controlled by the servers. Having an online component, and having the server control everything does not make it the same as an MMO. COD tracks online play, unlocks, rankings and much more and yet somehow they still have offline play with single player. If the first thing you think is thats a rediculous comparison because the single player is not the same, then congrats you should also see that the online play of D3 is not the same as WoW or other MMO's.

The point is that this always online DRM is not needed, and there are other options. It is a pure design choice by blizzard to have it in.
 

Sixcess

New member
Feb 27, 2010
2,719
0
0
Signa said:
All Blizz would have to do to get me to play D3 is make the full game downloadable for free, take a little more off the top of my transactions, and make my rare drops a little more rare. Not a lot, because players are going to need those carrots to keep playing, but enough to make the RMAH just a little more enticing.
It's this kind of attitude that gives F2P a bad name.

Diablo 3 is not F2P and never will be because enough people are willing to pay for it that Blizzard do not give one fuck about the people who are not.
 

Ascarus

New member
Feb 5, 2010
605
0
0
Toby Driver said:
Man, the direction they've taken with D3 really brings me down. Not only does it effectively epitomise everything that I hate about modern gaming from a business standpoint, but it's some kind of weird WoW/Diablo universe cross-over; I would go as far as to call D3 an 'almost' MMO, and it sickens me. The Diablo series should always be an over the top dungeon crawler hack and slash rpg with some solid lore to back it up. This retains that very minutely.
how do you know the game isn't still a "top dungeon crawler hack and slash rpg with some solid lore to back it up"? just because there is a now required online DRM and a real money auction house doesn't mean that blizzard ignored what made the first two games wildly popular. granted i didn't like D2 because i just didn't feel the story was any kind of an improvement on the first installment, but D3 might have the story that D2 missed. we shall see soon enough. and you needn't use the auction house ... in fact, i will assert that ANYONE who uses real money on imaginary items in a fictional world is a colossal idiot.

on a more general side note, i'd like to mention that the "always online DRM" is a direct result of players downloading free software from pirate sites. you can blame copyright until you are blue in the face but until either the laws are changed and / or players stop downloading games for free, draconian DRM will be the result. and two, are we really getting so lazy that we now type RMAH instead of "real money auction house"? i had no idea what RMAH meant until i read the phrase a few posts later and put two and two together.
 

teqrevisited

New member
Mar 17, 2010
2,343
0
0
Free to play is not a valid phrase in Blizzard's dictionary. It makes much more sense to them to charge for every trivial thing. It might have garnered my interest if it were at least free to try, though, and I do wonder just how many other people they're putting off.
 

Justank

New member
Nov 17, 2010
146
0
0
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/08/08

Really my feelings on the always online thing. I understand that in some places, internet isn't 100% stable, or you simply won't have it due to business travel etc, but I can't believe the backlash over this. It's always online because the client/server relations with their setup give them proper control over keeping items on the RMAH clean. Simple, effective, and unlikely to effect the vast majority of people playing. Save your download until after you're done playing, or if you're more interested in the download play something else while you wait. It's not a big deal.

People buying gear in Diablo 2 happened whether you liked it or not. I can understand being principally against Blizzard sanctioning this, but to sit there and say oh the game isn't fair now is ridiculous. Buying gear was very common in Diablo 2, your game experience is not going to be different at all. If your argument against either the DRM or the RMAH isn't purely against the principle of the idea, I can't help but believe you're fussing to fuss.

Edit:
teqrevisited said:
Free to play is not a valid phrase in Blizzard's dictionary. It makes much more sense to them to charge for every trivial thing. It might have garnered my interest if it were at least free to try, though, and I do wonder just how many other people they're putting off.
There will be a demo available post launch, if you missed the open beta weekend.

Captcha question everything >.>
 

suitepee7

I can smell sausage rolls
Dec 6, 2010
1,273
0
0
Von Strimmer said:
I dont understand how they can charge a monthly subscription AND charge consumers for using the auction house. Credit where credit is due its a brilliant way to make an extra dollar (or two), but it seems like Blizzard are asking too much of their community. One thing is for sure, they are going to make a quick return on their investment with this game.

It would be better as a F2P model with auction house charges OR with a monthly subscription but no profiteering from the auction house.
wait wut? o_0

i'll be honest, i haven't been keeping up to date with anything to do with D3, it kinda interests me but the cons outweigh the pros (mainly an unstable internet connection). but are they really charging a monthly sub?!

i thought they were just making it always online, not always online and pay... dayum

edit: forgot to reply to the actual OP. blizz, free, lol. that would never happen. i imagine they would rather just shut off wow servers than ever make their game fully free
 

Simeon Ivanov

New member
Jun 2, 2011
824
0
0
Well, I don't like the RMAH and the DRM either, but nothing I do will change that. The only solution is to ... oh, I don't know, maybe NOT USE the RMAH?

Besides, I'm more interested in the slaying and looting than the greed and stupid.