Diablo's Still Always Online Despite Auction House Removal

[archvile93]

I'm afraid you'll have to explain to me how adding an offline mode would affect the integrity of the online mode.

Adding offline mode would involve adding the code that is kept on the servers (like Loot Data) to the clients the users run. This would mean that said "offline client" would contain all of the games code (as opposed to now, when a few key bits are missing), which would be a lot easier to develop hacks for.

I admit I don't know the precise methods of getting said hacks onto the online servers, but a quick look at Diablo II (minus the nostalgia filters) shows it's clearly possible, since even on Battlenet/Ladder games/servers you're never more than a few minutes searching from somebody who has a charm that gives them every Paladin aura at once, maxes out all their stats, allows them to use other classes abilities and/or something else along those lines.

And if you're lucky they might even be nice enough to not either 1-shot you and camp by your corpse so you can't get your gear back or join your game and THEN 1-shot you and camp by your corpse so you can't get your gear back.

You know a lot of games with multiplayer don't have always online drm, and I don't recall often hearing people say they would like the single player to require a constant connection and risk lag and even outright unplayability so they didn't have to change servers due to hackers on occassion. How exactly is someone who wants the single player that they paid for to work selfish anyway? Isn't it more selfish to screw them over just so you don't have to put up with what is at its worst an inconvienience? And before you ask, no, I didn't buy it for that very reason, I'm just working off what I've been told by friends that have.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

We do not have plans to implement an offline mode. While the always-online requirement made the auction house possible, the auction house was never the driving factor in our decision to make the PC version of Diablo III require an Internet connection. The game was built from the ground up to take full advantage of Battle.net, which provides a number of important benefits, including persistent server-side character saves, a seamless PC multiplayer experience, cheat prevention, and Real ID and BattleTag social features.

LITERALLY NONE OF THOSE THINGS REQUIRE AN ALWAYS ONLINE GAME.

How fucking stupid do they think we are?

 

[RicoADF]

You can have all those Real ID and social functions while still having offline.

You might say it is jarring for a player to try and go from offline single player to having no character in the online portion, but you know what else is jarring?

Having lag in a single player game! Or trying to play when there's a server maintenance. Or when the servers get congested and you can't log in to play single player.

The ONLY valid argument here is cheat prevention. Which, that's just punishing the whole for what a few people do. And it isn't really worth it.

And you know what? We MIGHT be able to give the benefit of the doubt had you not REMOVED LAN play from Starcraft 2 JUST to make more money. Adding lag to tournaments.

So how do we know this isn't because you want to prevent piracy, hmmm?

Thats exactly what it's there for, piracy. And guess what it's got them, future lost sales. I for one won't be buying more of their always online junk.

 

[tzimize]

Diablo's Still Always Online Despite Auction House Removal

The auction house was never the reason for always online, says Blizzard.

Yes, the Diablo III [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/127881-Diablo-III-Auction-House-Closing-Down] auction house is no more, but does that mean the game will drop its always online policy? No, Blizzard tells Rock Paper Shotgun, dashing the hopes of those eager for a single player offline experience. In fact, the auction house wasn't the reason why Diablo III had to be always online; there were other compelling arguments, like Real ID and BattleTag social features.

The full statement reads:

We do not have plans to implement an offline mode. While the always-online requirement made the auction house possible, the auction house was never the driving factor in our decision to make the PC version of Diablo III require an Internet connection. The game was built from the ground up to take full advantage of Battle.net, which provides a number of important benefits, including persistent server-side character saves, a seamless PC multiplayer experience, cheat prevention, and Real ID and BattleTag social features.

So there you have it: the seamless PC multiplayer experience, cheat prevention and other fascinating bits and bobs is why always online is your lot in life, PC gamers. Never mind; at least the console crowd can play without a constant internet connection.

Source: Rock Paper Shotgun [http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/09/18/despite-auction-house-removal-diablo-staying-online-only/]


Permalink

Lame potshot is lame.

You got me to reply, which is even lamer.

Arent posters supposed to not incite flame wars? Do those rules not apply to news room guys?

 

[Skeleon]

Awesome. Because I want to do the equivalent of writing on twitter while playing on my own. The sooner we get off this forced social media nonsense in games (nothing against options for people who do care about such crap), the better. As for the cheating? Well, why was that so important to prevent? Oh, right, because of the multiplayer focus and the real money auction house! Cheating would break the virtual economy! An economy that doesn't even exist in singleplayer! Now it all makes sense! Meh, no loss. I didn't buy Diablo 3 and didn't plan to later, either. Guess it doesn't really affect anything for me, eh?

 

[Skeleon]

You either have better luck or better servers for your country than I do then, I admit the +9999 to every stat & skill may have been a tad hyperbole, but I doubt I have even half the time on D2 you claim to and I have seen plenty of hacks like at least one Paladin with multiple (if not all of the) different auras on at once, Numerous magic items on par with uniques thanks to having about 4 different Prefixes/Suffixes/Both (Grinding Grandmaster Vulpine Colossus Sword of Evisceration (of) Transcendence (of the) Lamprey anyone?) and the aforementioned MapHack, might be more that I just forgot about, too.

And you saw all that on Closed Battle.net? Where you'd go if you'd want that "always online, cheat-protected experience"? Or on Open Battle.net? Because those cheated items sound more like something from the latter.
...I think the way they did it back then made sense.
Just separate the two groups. Let us play damn singleplayer and LAN if we want to. Sure, prohibit us entrance to the "awesome realm of ladder-based social media gameplay" or whatever; I wouldn't care about that.
I think the other posters got it right: The things they mention are just rationalizations. In reality it's about piracy-protection. And when a company make honest customers suffer to prevent piracy for two weeks longer and won't even undo it later in the game's lifespan, they certainly lose me as a buyer.

 

[Psychobabble]

No plans for offline mode? Fine by me. Means I still have no intention of giving Blizzard any more of my money EVER.

 

[Schmeiser]

You either have better luck or better servers for your country than I do then, I admit the +9999 to every stat & skill may have been a tad hyperbole, but I doubt I have even half the time on D2 you claim to and I have seen plenty of hacks like at least one Paladin with multiple (if not all of the) different auras on at once, Numerous magic items on par with uniques thanks to having about 4 different Prefixes/Suffixes/Both (Grinding Grandmaster Vulpine Colossus Sword of Evisceration (of) Transcendence (of the) Lamprey anyone?) and the aforementioned MapHack, might be more that I just forgot about, too.

And you saw all that on Closed Battle.net? Where you'd go if you'd want that "always online, cheat-protected experience"? Or on Open Battle.net? Because those cheated items sound more like something from the latter.
...I think the way they did it back then made sense.
Just separate the two groups. Let us play damn singleplayer and LAN if we want to. Sure, prohibit us entrance to the "awesome realm of ladder-based social media gameplay" or whatever; I wouldn't care about that.
I think the other posters got it right: The things they mention are just rationalizations. In reality it's about piracy-protection. And when a company make honest customers suffer to prevent piracy for two weeks longer and won't even undo it later in the game's lifespan, they certainly lose me as a buyer.

THIS, just fuckin don't let offline chars online. Is that so fuckin hard to do? So what if some random dude generates epic items that can one shot diablo, it's just him. He can't go online anyway. Oh god i remember using floppies to copy my friends char to my folder so i can try theirs out.

I don't know how anyone who had a deep "relationship" (it sounds kinda stupid but i loved the first 2 games) can say that this is OK. Not to mention the PC version being a test version for consoles and then they make the console version superior. It's just a slap in the face, god damnit blizzard WHY?

Then i remember all the shitty hacks in their own fuckin MMO game and exploits people used that took them half a year to rectify. GCD hacks anyone?

 

[Aeshi]

All the mice want the Cat to wear a bell so he'll be easier to hear, but none of them want to be the one who risks death by actually putting the bell on him.

Wuuuuuut?

It's just one of those little stories like "the Ant and the Grasshopper", basically it boils down to "People want good things, but not the bad things that make those good things possible"

People want electricity, but not the big noisy turbines or big polluting power plants that generate it, for instance.

And personally? I think that given a choice between happy singleplayers and happy multiplayers I'd pick the latter, because the latter can do far more damage if you irk them.

And how would the multiplayer crowd "Do far more damage" than the single player crowd? I'm not sure I follow that logic.

Personal experience has taught me that an unhappy multi-player community usually generates waaaay more bad PR than an unhappy single-player community, mostly because the latter tends to stop complaining due to not caring anymore past the first month or so, while the former usually doesn't

 

[Vigormortis]

<Quote from some Blizzard mouth-breather>

The game was built from the ground up to take full advantage of Battle.net, which provides a number of important benefits,

Sure. Okay. Mind listing 'em, Blizzard?

...including persistent server-side character saves

So cloud saves? Boy that's handy. Can't say anyone else out there let's us do that. No sir.

Glad too that Blizzard has decided to not trust us lowly, ignorant PC gamers to be responsible enough to keep any local save files safe.

....a seamless PC multiplayer experience

So then I take it Error 37, Error 3003, etc, are a part of that seamless experience?

Phew, that's a relief. I was worried those things were unintended problems.

...cheat prevention

Because we clearly wouldn't want anyone to muck about in a solo-run of the campaign. No sir. Any fun that's not Blizzard approved is strictly verboten!

...and Real ID and BattleTag social features.

Ah yes. The BattleTag social features. Those sure are amazing things aren't they? So handy and so crucial to the core Diablo experience. No wonder we need to be online the entire time!

Sure wouldn't be a fun game without them.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I sure do feel sorry for all those lowly, peasant plebians who're stuck playing that awful thing that shall not be named. [http://www.torchlight2game.com/] They'll never know the joys of not having a choice in how, when, or where they play their game. And don't even get me started on their ridiculous and pointless "modding" or whatever it is. They just don't know how bad they have it!

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

Firstly, I like how you accuse Blizzard of "screwing you over by taking their problem and making it the consumers problem" when your solution (remove the always-on) is basically "make it the problem of the consumers who AREN'T me, I'm ok with them being screwed over"

It wasn't a choice between:
"screw/mildly inconvenience the singleplayers by requiring a constant connection OR don't screw/mildly inconvenience the singleplayers"
It was a choice between:
"screw/mildly inconvenience the singleplayers by requiring a constant connection OR screw over the multiplayers by allowing their gameplay experience to be reduced to hack-dominated garbage"

And personally? I think that given a choice between happy singleplayers and happy multiplayers I'd pick the latter, because the latter can do far more damage if you irk them. Although if you have some sort of magic solution that renders Always-Online unnecessary without screwing over people who play Multiplayer in the process, I'm sure we'd all love to hear it.

Secondly, expecting you to read the system requirements isn't punishing you, it's just expecting you to have basic competence. If you're not happy with being always online, then why did you buy a game that explicitly says it requires that to play? It's like buying a retail game when you have no DVD drive and then saying the devs are "punishing" you by expecting everyone to have a DVD drive.

This is less them "taking their problem and making it the consumers" as much as it is "taking their problem and solving it in a way (some of) the consumers doesn't like"

All the mice want the Cat to wear a bell so he'll be easier to hear, but none of them want to be the one who risks death by actually putting the bell on him.

they still haven't stopped hackers because if you don't go their way with the "authenticator" BS your account is basically unprotected. I had my account hacked and my stuff stolen and when I contacted blizzard about it they acted like it was MY FAULT for not having their 4$ extra POS authenticator tied to my account.

I don't have an authenticator and I haven't been hacked once in the decade or so I've had a Blizzard/Battlenet account, but then I don't bother paying attention to the "Free XP & Gold only at Virus.com" emails from "Blizz@dTechSupp0rt"

i'm not suggesting they screw over either of us. i'm saying it's up to them to solve the problem not inconvenience either single player or multiplayers. their choice to screw one OR the other is still a choice to screw someone they are making. there's tons of games out there with active single player and multiplayer communities where no one gets "screwed" Dungeon defenders allows mods in non ranked matches but if you want to play ranked they turn it all off. torchlight does the same they have a separate place for mods or non-mods. this is not a new problem and for the most part it's been solved without inconveniencing the consumer at all. so yeah they took their problems and made them my problems for no reason. they actively chose to screw us, period. the lesser of two evils is still evil.

see this is another reason I stopped playing. the response from the fanbase has been "OMG GTFO!!!!!!!" to any critizism from other players. I posed the question of is it possible to auto-cast the monks aura abilities like the paladin had in d2. I got accused of "boting" and wanting to not play the game and let my cpu play it for me. dickholes like you are why I am happy to never play d3 multiplayer. you're why I prefer single player. i'm happy you've never had a bad experience with blizzard and they suck your dick at night but there's plenty of proof and valid information that their security is objectively shit. and the customer service response I got after someone broke their shit security was to try and sell me their little add on 3-4 times while wagging their finger at me "see if you had this this wouldn't have happened." it's the most annoyed I've ever been at a customer service response. so blizzard can go fuck themselves.

I was given d3 as a gift. if it had been my purchase I would have returned it.

 

[loa]

How the hell do cheats harm anyone in singleplayer games?
God forbid we have, you know, mods or anything.
And I'm sure everyone will love the server sided character saves and online functionality when said servers are down or when blizzard is no more due to pants on head retarded things like this.
Diablo 3: truly built to last.
Brilliant.

 

[Hagi]

Adding offline mode would involve adding the code that is kept on the servers (like Loot Data) to the clients the users run. This would mean that said "offline client" would contain all of the games code (as opposed to now, when a few key bits are missing), which would be a lot easier to develop hacks for.

I admit I don't know the precise methods of getting said hacks onto the online servers, but a quick look at Diablo II (minus the nostalgia filters) shows it's clearly possible, since even on Battlenet/Ladder games/servers you're never more than a few minutes searching from somebody who has a charm that gives them every Paladin aura at once, maxes out all their stats, allows them to use other classes abilities and/or something else along those lines.

And if you're lucky they might even be nice enough to not either 1-shot you and camp by your corpse so you can't get your gear back or join your game and THEN 1-shot you and camp by your corpse so you can't get your gear back.

It doesn't work like that.

If Diablo II's online mode was hacked then that means the code or save files involved in those hacks was already client-side.

A game with an offline mode running all critical code locally and an online mode running all critical code on the server is exactly as safe as a game without the offline mode and only the online mode. As long as it's not possible to transfer local characters online then there's no increased risk.

It's completely irrelevant that local code is exposed to potential hackers. Security should never ever rely on obscurity. That is one of the most basic principles in security. If Blizzard's server security relies on hackers not knowing said code then it will fail and it will be hacked sooner rather than later, just like every major security measure that relied on keeping important bits of code from hackers has failed.

Implementing a separate offline mode would impose no negative consequences whatsoever to those who play multiplayer.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Offline or no buy.....and even then its not as good as D2 anyway.

 

[klaynexas3]

Yet no one would lose anything if they implemented an optional offline mode that didn't come with all those listed features. They'd just have to make it so that offline characters couldn't be used online, except maybe in a special "open" online mode.

Just like in Diablo II.

*gasp*

Well, except for all the people who play multiplayer and would have their gameplay suffer as a result because adding an offline mode would make it pretty easy to develop hacks for the game (Just like in Diablo II *gasp*) because it'd be giving them the game code on a platter.

But hey, who cares about multi-players? Screwing them over is a-ok, amirite?

So because of a few bad apples, now the people that loved Diablo II but don't have a solid internet connection must suffer to the extent that they can't even play the game, versus the inconvenience of not being as good as someone else in a game that is predominantly co-op anyway. I'm pretty sure the single player lovers are the ones that would get more screwed over in those two situations. I could understand the use of Always-Online with the RMAH, that made sense, but with it gone, it is screwing over far more people in a much worse way than if they got rid of it. Instead of other players screwing over other players, it is Blizzard screwing over other players in such a way that people can't even play the game at all.

Excuse me if I lack empathy for those poor multi-players that would still be perfectly capable of playing the game.

 

[Eric the Orange]

I bought that the reason for always online was the AH. They wanted everyone to use it so they could make more money off of it. And sense only online characters could use it, it makes sense to make everyone online from a business perspective.

But I do not understand this reasoning. It sound like "we want to give you the most fun experience, and we know what is more fun for you than you do."

 

[WeepingAngels]

I knew they weren't going to drop the always online. Starcraft II has it and there is no auction house. Fact is, always online is Blizzards DRM and they aren't dropping it for any PC title, present of future.

 

[Warachia]

And just like that any chance of me getting D3 was brutally murdered and dumped in a back alley.

What was the point of removing the RMAH if they are still keeping the Always Online bullshit?

Needing to be online doesn't effect anything related to the drop rate.

I'm sorry but what does the drop rate have to do with my post?

The auction house affected drop rates. In order to keep rare things rare, they couldn't have a typical offline single player type of drop rate otherwise the AH would be flooded with items in no time, thus it's inclusion was responsible for the lower drop rates of equipment.

Removing the auction house allows them to possibly alter the rates, bringing them up more. This benefit can be had without the game needing to be offline. (I personally would like for it to be made offline as well)

That doesn't have anything to do with their post though. they're complaining that the game is still always online for unspecified reasons, maybe they're like me where they don't have a reliable internet connection and so playing the game is literally impossible.

 

[piinyouri]

And just like that any chance of me getting D3 was brutally murdered and dumped in a back alley.

What was the point of removing the RMAH if they are still keeping the Always Online bullshit?

Needing to be online doesn't effect anything related to the drop rate.

I'm sorry but what does the drop rate have to do with my post?

The auction house affected drop rates. In order to keep rare things rare, they couldn't have a typical offline single player type of drop rate otherwise the AH would be flooded with items in no time, thus it's inclusion was responsible for the lower drop rates of equipment.

Removing the auction house allows them to possibly alter the rates, bringing them up more. This benefit can be had without the game needing to be offline. (I personally would like for it to be made offline as well)

That doesn't have anything to do with their post though. they're complaining that the game is still always online for unspecified reasons, maybe they're like me where they don't have a reliable internet connection and so playing the game is literally impossible.

Apologies, that is true. My statement was along the lines of "small victories".