Diablo III: The best F2P game never made.

[Ascarus]

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.

it is also way too cartoony. i had this same problem with WoWs visual aesthetic, although i stuck with WoW for a good while because it was engaging (to say the least). diablo blew me away. it was at the time exactly what was needed ... a pure hack 'n slash dungeon crawl with some reasonable mythology. D2 was way too much like the original for me to get into it the way many others did. i am hoping D3 will rekindle the kind of enjoyment i had with diablo because torchlight did not.

 

[Ascarus]

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

for the record: there is no monthly subscription for diablo 3. that is utter bullshit.

 

[suitepee7]

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

for the record: there is no monthly subscription for diablo 3. that is utter bullshit.

i did think it was a little retarded...

 

[Von Strimmer]

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

I think I may be getting all my MMO's mixed up Sorry for any confusion, I have been corrected that it is free.

 

[Coldie]

The reason that Diablo 3 does this is purely by design. If blizzard wanted to, they could make an offline single player mode.

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.

It is, indeed, by design. The intention behind the homogeneous design is "single-player character/play session can be seamlessly converted into multi-player and vice versa". There is absolutely no difference between playing Diablo 3 alone and playing it with other people, so they have succeeded in that respect. Same applies to any MMO, naturally, but not necessarily to a "plain" online game. As for StarCraft 2 - single-player campaign can be played offline, but the parts of it that affect multi-player (i.e. achievements) require you to play online. And multi-player had (still has? no idea) a monthly subscription in some regions.

Getting the inherent security that comes from requiring an account is, no doubt, a welcome bonus, although calling it "always online DRM" is delightfully redundant when discussing an online game. At this point, it's... fairly unlikely that Blizzard will re-structure the game to be playable offline, although it's technically not impossible. Fat chance of a meaningful discount anytime soon, too. They won't need to make Diablo 3 free-to-play - it'll sell anyway.

 

[MysticToast]

I don't know about you guys, but I'm just getting D3 because I need to see more Tyrael.

OT: Seriously, I wish we could stop getting these threads complaining about the auction house. Many posters in this thread have already made excellent points regarding it so I won't repeat what they said.

 

[TJ rock 101]

Oh no! an optional feature! and it even requires me to have a good internet connection!
what a bad game!

Sorry, i just feel that complaining about the always online thing doesn't carry much weight, and you can use the normal auction house instead of the real money one.
that doesn't seem like much a problem to me.

 

[Nimzabaat]

So a question for people who might actually know what they are talking about (i've seen a few of you here!). Is the "always-online DRM" going to function like Starcraft 2? As in, you have to be online for updates but don't have to be online to play the game? Because I really don't have an issue with that.

 

[Kahunaburger]

You know who won't have to be online all the time to play Diablo 3?

 

[targren]

You know who won't have to be online all the time to play Diablo 3?

Yo ho ho, mother f****r. XD

Screw it. The game isn't even worth pirating when I can reinstall D2 and get a superior experience.

 

[teebeeohh]

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

You know I tend to agree with you but the amount of childlike joy I have clicking things to death just can't be matched. And I already sold my soul when I agreed to the bnet2 crap with sc2

 

[Atmos Duality]

"Free2Play" to me just means "Free 2 grind", or "Player oppression", though mercifully that is (slowly) changing...sort of. Kind of.

Besides: Torchlight 2 has LAN. Diablo 3 doesn't.
Torchlight 2 wins by default.

 

[Hisshiss]

I think I can dig a valid point out of your post, but at the same time the biggest thing Im hearing is "I hate this game and all cus of (Insert grievance here), but ynow, if it was free I would totally play it."

FTP MMO's are successful because they give them away for free, and most of them wouldn't last a week if they had the balls to charge money for them.



Edit: This is funny to me, but I'm sure its gonna piss alot of people that share your feelings off.

I actually did get diablo 3 for free, even though I would have bought it cus I play WoW . So even if all the fear mongering people have been kicking up over it the past few months does have even a single valid point, I don't lose a dime.

 

[Hisshiss]

So a question for people who might actually know what they are talking about (i've seen a few of you here!). Is the "always-online DRM" going to function like Starcraft 2? As in, you have to be online for updates but don't have to be online to play the game? Because I really don't have an issue with that.

Its exactly like World of warcraft, the game has a launcher, which leads into a login page, you can't get to your characters or anything else without logging into your battle.net account.

Honestly it really is just an MMO with no subscription cost, the difference between an MMO and a "game that requires you to login to an account, be online the entire time, that you can play with other people over the internets" is slim, the only one I can really think of is 4 people in a game isnt exactly "massive".

Never played starcraft so Im not sure if its the same, but if the beta is a proper indication there isn't really anything at all you can do on D3 without a battle.net account and an internet connection. The nice flip side of that is since its literally 100% server side, you can download the game client, and play your characters from any computer available to you if it can handle the game, since nothing really saves to your hard drive.

Edit: Now that I think about it, Ive played games that refer to themselves as MMO's that were 100% lobby based (like D3) and only allowed around 4 or so people in a game at a time (Like D3), so I guess it really just comes down to what you wanna call yourself.

 

[Hisshiss]

Well, if it were free, I'd have much less problems with the game for sure.

I am of the unique and special opinion that when stuff is free it is like, better, man.

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.

Do keep in mind, the first Torchlight is broken beyond repair.

The monsters drop almost more potions than gold, the game itself is incredibly easy, you will become way overleveled if you even just follow the story missions. The fact that pets can be minion masters, and bosses can be mind controlled make it slightly easier as well.

And yes, while the first one is a straight up diablo clone, I personally believe the second one will be quite different.

Even if Torchlight 2 won't be much different from Diablo 3 (it will, I prefer Torchlight's art style), it's still a lot cheaper. I just hope it won't be as broken as the first game.

Edit: Oh yeah, the thread was actually about something else. Well, I wouldn't hesitate to play Diablo free, of course. It's free, after all. I believe many more people would play it, and a lot more people would invest in the real money AH, which in turn makes Blizzard more money. Whether it would be enough to cover up the fact that they released the game for free, I wouldn't know. They have been giving it for free to people who subscribed for a year to wow, I believe.

Also, Torchlight (and according to the devs Torchlight 2 as well) runs on pretty much everything (even your toaster), while Diablo 3 might not.

On the subject of the free copies, last I checked near 1.5 million people signed up for the annual pass too, so thats alot of units xD. Also yeah, Torchlight 1 runs at max settings 60fps on my heap, and they said number 2 will have about identical system reqs, which are clearly very low for a game that looks as good as it does (As you said, cool art style). The D3 beta on the other hand..I can push 26FPS on bare minimum settings >.<..so yeah, its a beast when it comes to computer stats. That alone is something I would consider a very valid reason to play torchlight 2 over D3, my computer is literally on the bleeding edge of fast enough for me to be willing to play D3, even a tick slower and I would say fuck it.

...And Im getting the game for free too. If I had ended up having to pay for it I may have skipped out altogether, which would suck, cus I LOVE the game, and have absolutely no problem with any of the things anyone else seems to hate about it. I would skip a game I adore purely because Im not gonna play it at fuckin 10FPS.

Edit: I doubt D3 would make nearly as much money as FTP as it stands to now, FTP games typically suck arse, and only turn a profit because they get so much more turnout than they deserve based on the quality of the game. D3 is more than good enough to sell as a full 60 retail title, even if it didnt have any multiplayer it would still be a worthy 60 dollar title.

For what its worth (Probly not much to most of us) some dude on the dev team for the game mentioned in a making of interview that the RMAH was projected to come out "about even", so as of the time of that interview (which was like 6 or 8 months ago) blizzard didn't actually expect to make any money from the RMAH, they just wanted to make sure they got back the cost of making it in the first place. If nothing else that means it would never have gone FTP, they clearly are looking to the initial purchases for income.

 

[Bad Jim]

Also, Torchlight (and according to the devs Torchlight 2 as well) runs on pretty much everything (even your toaster), while Diablo 3 might not.

As someone who actually tried running it on a netbook, which they claimed to have done, I'll say that's not quite true. Playing it on a real PC, I found Ordrak (the final boss) still lagged a little on my machine, although that may have been because I played on very hard and there was a crazy number of mooks I wasn't able to kill easily. Yes, it has a low polygon count and doesn't use elaborate pixel shaders, but throwing a million billion monsters onscreen at the end is still a problem for weak machines.

Something that really does run perfectly, even on a netbook, even with a lot of monsters onscreen, is Diablo 2. Which is also a much better game overall. Diablo 2 is also effectively DRM free, since if you patch it you can play without the CD check. And there a few good mods for it too.

 

[Torrasque]

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 played the demo for it because a bunch of friends of mine on WoW were saying how much fun it was, that it solved that Diablo fix that we all had. After playing the demo for about an hour, all I got was a really strong urge to find my D2 disc in my room and play it again; which translated into a week of D2 play which got me a frost mage at low 70s with really nice gear. I could have gotten to a higher level, but I was rusty after years away from D2, and wasn't joining grinds that often. Either way, TL seemed like a really shallow Diablo clone, and everything about it reminded me about how I enjoyed D2 so much more. TL2 seems like the exact same.

The last time I saw an argument similar to OP's argument, was someone explaining how Runescape was better than WoW because it didn't require a subscription, was free to play, and had more features. Yep. Thats why WoW is still regarded as the greatest MMO to ever be, and despite many failings (which I will happily point out since I quit about a year ago) still has millions of regular subscribers.

 

[Lunar Templar]

*see's Diablo 3 thread*

*peeks in*

eeyup, people still bitching about the same things, and still claim another game which is also not out yet is better, despite having not played the thing yet.

nothing new here

*exits thread*

 

[Signa]

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.

but my question then becomes how many more people are going to play it, and how many more would be willing to shell out cash on the RMAH. I know if I ended up with a free copy of D3 (such as gifted by a friend in my imaginary scenario, because I'm sure as hell not buying it) I'd be less willing to spend money on the AH because someone got charged $60 for the game. $60 + AH money most likely means more money than I think would be fair going to Blizz. If I was handed the game for free by Blizzard, I'd be more willing to spend, because Blizz gave me the game in good faith that I'd return some profits to them. And I would too, because a job well done deserves rewarding.

My question is how much would other gamers feel the same as I do? Just because it would be the dreaded free-to-play won't make it a shit game. Blizz is supposed to be better than that. I just see this potentially high revenue generating feature that could make more money on good will than just pocket gouging.