Revenge of the Metacritics: Diablo III Getting Review-Bombed

[Bat Vader]

No it's not. There's no real argument here, you're just simply wrong.

If there's a single player function, and the levels are designed around single players, it's a single player game. That makes always-online inexcusable.

Funny thing Diablo 3 isnt any of that though. Diablo 3 is a multiplayer game that was designed to be a multiplayer game. You can deny it, well you can but you would have to be a complete moron to do so.

Except it's not though. It's a single player game. single. player. As in, designed to be played by one person, with the option of more people coming in.

I really don't know how I can make this any simpler for you.

Wow, Das Boot is right, you are completely ignoring the fact that it is a multiplayer game with a singleplayer option...
I'll spell it out for you: It. Has. A. Option. In. The. Settings. Where. You. Click. A. Box. Stopping. People. From. Joining. You.
An. OPTION.

Sheesh, thick as a brick indeed.
The other Diablo games though, were singleplayer games with multiplayer options.
This game is not, saying otherwise is simply stupid.
I look forward to your reply by the way, will be interesting to see what kind of bullshit you'll sput this time.

This is what I don't understand about it. If the game is always online why give people the option to have solo-play? Blizzard should have just made the game multiplayer only and been done with it.

I don't agree with people review bombing the game. If people wanted to make an impact they should vote with their wallets. The game got a bad rating but in the end Blizzard got money and that was all they cared about getting. When I found out that Diablo III was going to be always online I cancelled my pre-order. It may have not have done anything but at least I know Blizzard got none of my money. That is all I care about.

 

[Use_Imagination_here]

I think it's sad that the zeroes will probably be deleted even though people have a right to be angry about not being able to play a single-player game offline. They warned about this before release! I don't care, people should be able to use whatever they purchased.

This does not justify a zero score. Especially since it is NOT news. Especially since D3 is obviously NOT an offline game.

Game doesn't work = 0

I don't have a problem with the score, honestly. I do wonder if all the real issues about the actual game are real too. I've never been very clicky, so I don't know much about the legacy.

...But the game does work. This is a temporary issue. If the game actually didn't work at all than yes that would = 0, but server issues hardly mean a broken game.

 

[Aeshi]

I think you're selling the "kill a monster" part a little short. Your last statement is not clear to me but OK, you're still more-or-less saying collecting loot sucks ass. I'm saying the RMAH ruins the fun of collecting loot and you're saying collecting loot is not fun anyway. I don't really know how we proceed from this point. I mean are we... done?

I guess now we go review-bomb Diablo III.

I'm not saying that collecting loot isn't fun or that it's bad (it is and isn't, respectively), but trying to make it out as being somehow 'better' than buying said gear is elitist at best (and stuck-up at worst.)

 

[UrieHusky]

Diablo 3 felt like Diablo 2 again just with shinier graphics and simplified. So if I could go back in time I'd walk right past Diablo 3 and get Diablo 2.

The 3.3 isn't warrented by any stretch.. It's a good game, but it's just good. More of the same in a nicer dress.

Personally I'd give it a 7/10 not a 3. Like I said, not a bad game Server issues and DRM aside but not particularly great either.

Plus I have pretty big gripes about how I have to beat the game to get a challenge and that if I'm playing with team mates they can progress the story while I'm nowhere near them so I missed a lot of story through the first few quests. Oh well, at least I get to re-run it in the harder difficulties to get a big portion of the content! (laced with sarcasm and bitterness)

 

[Ushiromiya Battler]

No it's not. There's no real argument here, you're just simply wrong.

If there's a single player function, and the levels are designed around single players, it's a single player game. That makes always-online inexcusable.

Funny thing Diablo 3 isnt any of that though. Diablo 3 is a multiplayer game that was designed to be a multiplayer game. You can deny it, well you can but you would have to be a complete moron to do so.

Except it's not though. It's a single player game. single. player. As in, designed to be played by one person, with the option of more people coming in.

I really don't know how I can make this any simpler for you.

Wow, Das Boot is right, you are completely ignoring the fact that it is a multiplayer game with a singleplayer option...
I'll spell it out for you: It. Has. A. Option. In. The. Settings. Where. You. Click. A. Box. Stopping. People. From. Joining. You.
An. OPTION.

Sheesh, thick as a brick indeed.
The other Diablo games though, were singleplayer games with multiplayer options.
This game is not, saying otherwise is simply stupid.
I look forward to your reply by the way, will be interesting to see what kind of bullshit you'll sput this time.

This is what I don't understand about it. If the game is always online why give people the option to have solo-play? Blizzard should have just made the game multiplayer only and been done with it.

I don't agree with people review bombing the game. If people wanted to make an impact they should vote with their wallets. The game got a bad rating but in the end Blizzard got money and that was all they cared about getting. When I found out that Diablo III was going to be always online I cancelled my pre-order. It may have not have done anything but at least I know Blizzard got none of my money. That is all I care about.

And there's absolutely no problem with that, you noticed it would be always online and cancelled the preorder, nothing wrong with that.
Thank you for coming with something reasonable.

Still, saying this is a singleplayer game with multiplayer options is wrong because of the always online aspect.

 

[Eggbert]

And it is minor. You're going to have this game forever. You can play it for years. One day's worth of server crashes is beyond miniscule in comparison.

No, you won't. You can play it until blizzard/activision decides that maintaining the servers is too costly and shuts them down.

At which point it becomes a coaster. Or, if you bought digitally, a chunk of unusable data. So, yeah. Not all that minor.

 

[Madkipz]

It's a user review site. Users reviewed the game.

Them reviewing it poorly reflects negatively on the people who made the game, and no one else.

If they reviewed it and that was the response then fine, but what that currently shows is many people are massively whiney about one flaw in a game.

A 1/100 is unplayable, not just situationally, across the board software wouldn't be functional, no good plot, no good music, terrible graphics and modelling, horrible net code, unenjoyable experience.

The only thing d3 has against it is the online thing, and even that isn't earth shatteringly bad. (despite first day surge which would always happen, no sympathy here for that)

This is the fault of the industry itself. Giving 9/10`s to every game that comes out. They have no other outlet to express grief with the systems so they bomb metacritic. It might not be worth a 0 or a 1 out of 10 but if giving games that obviously ARE NOT perfect 9-10 out of 10 is accepted. Then giving games 0-1 out of 10 should be accepted on the same grounds.

 

[Aeshi]

And it is minor. You're going to have this game forever. You can play it for years. One day's worth of server crashes is beyond miniscule in comparison.

No, you won't. You can play it until blizzard/activision decides that maintaining the servers is too costly and shuts them down.

At which point it becomes a coaster. Or, if you bought digitally, a chunk of unusable data. So, yeah. Not all that minor.

The Starcraft and both the previous Diablos have their servers running after about a decade or so.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

I think you're selling the "kill a monster" part a little short. Your last statement is not clear to me but OK, you're still more-or-less saying collecting loot sucks ass. I'm saying the RMAH ruins the fun of collecting loot and you're saying collecting loot is not fun anyway. I don't really know how we proceed from this point. I mean are we... done?

I guess now we go review-bomb Diablo III.

I'm not saying that collecting loot isn't fun or that it's bad (it is and isn't, respectively), but trying to make it out as being somehow 'better' than buying said gear is elitist at best (and stuck-up at worst.)

Ad hominim? Really? It's not that my argument is bad, it's that I'm bad for making it? Well I guess I shouldn't be surprised when a red herring is followed by a personal attack. But I did think we were getting along.

If you're going to call me elitist and stuck up you could at least explain why. And are you going to say anything in defense of the real money auction house or just denigrate other stuff including Diablo III and me? While it's true I think anyone who buys items in Diablo III is a sucker, that makes me neither elitist nor stuck up. It's also not what you said. Forget about Diablo III for a moment. Your argument implies to me that anyone who doesn't like pay-to-win in any context "is elitist at best (and stuck-up at worst)". Would you have resorted to that argument before you knew about Diablo III's RMAH? Everyone would have thought you were a troll. This highlights the absurdity of the contrivances that are increasingly necessary to make Blizzard not appear unscrupulous and their games appear much better and their terms more reasonable than they are.

If you don't find my arguments a compelling reason to dislike the RMAH you could just say so. We are in pretty subjective territory after all. Or if you still like the RMAH but you're not sure how to articulate why you could just say that. Anything is better than getting nasty.

 

[Madkipz]

It's a user review site. Users reviewed the game.

Them reviewing it poorly reflects negatively on the people who made the game, and no one else.

If they reviewed it and that was the response then fine, but what that currently shows is many people are massively whiney about one flaw in a game.

A 1/100 is unplayable, not just situationally, across the board software wouldn't be functional, no good plot, no good music, terrible graphics and modelling, horrible net code, unenjoyable experience.

The only thing d3 has against it is the online thing, and even that isn't earth shatteringly bad. (despite first day surge which would always happen, no sympathy here for that)

This is the fault of the industry itself. Giving 9/10`s to every game that comes out. They have no other outlet to express grief with the systems so they bomb metacritic. It might not be worth a 0 or a 1 out of 10 but if giving games that obviously ARE NOT perfect 9-10 out of 10 is accepted. Then giving games 0-1 out of 10 should be accepted on the same grounds.

good reviewers don't

like angryjoe
who is also annoying as hell, but his judgements are logical

Yea, but he is not a representative for gaming media as a whole, and while his scores tend to follow logic and reason. Thats one guy out of the massive amount of industry apologists. You need to see this from a century of trends. ;p

 

[Spearmaster]

The game works great now, saying its a failure because of a rocky first few hours is like cancelling your internet/cable for good because it doesn't magically hook its self up the split second you order it, people don't do that, why do it with D3...maybe the DRM issue? Having to be online to play a game is nothing new. Heard of an MMO? What about all the multiplayer games people enjoy online only? Those must be horrible to, go bomb them. I do feel for the people out in the sticks that don't have reliable internet, I was one of them for years it sucks but to all the other people complaining about the always online when they are always online anyway...Dig in your pockets and actually buy a PC game for once in your life.

I say that because I personally know people like that, they do exist and will bash a game because they cant DL it and play for free, sorry for outing all you pirates out there (not really)

I have no problem with a game company requiring authentication to play a game, I also don't have a problem if you refuse to buy it on those grounds. I DO have a problem with people that are whining about having to be online that say they wont support the game giving it bad reviews based on that or any false reason they can come up with, Especially when a lot of those people are gonna be playing and enjoying the game in a few weeks anyway when it stops being "cool" to bash D3 for being online.

The difference is Diablo is a single player game with a multiplayer component. So, why should I be always online for a function I will never use? Why should I have to restart my single player campaign three times just because their servers are shitty? There is no justification good enough to excuse it. It is an inherently broken aspect of the game.

Anyway, I see two good things coming out of this. One is that more people will be aware of the broken aspects of Diablo III before they consider dropping 60-100 nonrefundable dollars on it. Knowledge is the best weapon against consumer-hating tactics like this.

Two, is that it will most likely weaken the strong publisher support of Metacritic, so then hard-working developers don't get cheated out of bonuses for getting an 84 instead of an 85.

Sorry I would have replied to your reply sooner but I was busy playing Diablo 3 in which I haven't had any of the problems people are complaining about and I am enjoying the hell out of it. The only consumer hating tactics are the ones performed by the people unfairly bombing this game and and trying keep people from enjoying a good fun Diablo experience.

The always online only seems to be more of a game feature than a problem for me because it makes joining games or friends joining my game easy plus the auction house can only function online to sell and buy items from other players without spamming in the server room chat or creating the "trading perfect skulls for perfect rubys" games and standing in town for 3 hours waiting like in Diablo 2 but nobody wants to look at the benefit of having all the online stuff.

"It's not a problem, it's a feature!"

It's still shackling to the people who have no interest in being online in their single player game. I'm happy for you that you've had no problems, but when so many people have and for no reason, it still makes the always-online impossible to justify.

And while review bombing is most of the time pointless and all of the time childish, I'm sure there are plenty of people giving it a legitimate bad review. What score would you give a game that you cant play? If you dropped 60 bucks on something (That you cannot return or get a refund on) that did not function, what score would you think it deserves?

Now I'm not saying even most of the review bombings are cases of this. Review bombs are in vogue now and it's going to happen to every big release in the foreseeable future, but there are probably a good number that are genuine dissatisfaction. And they deserve to be heard.

"What score would you give a game that you cant play?"

why cant you play it at all? If you don't have internet why would you buy an online game at all and if you did not buy it you have no right giving a review. If you have internet and don't want to be online to play than you DON'T want to play Diablo 3.

"If you dropped 60 bucks on something (That you cannot return or get a refund on) that did not function, what score would you think it deserves?"

How long and why did it not function? If it functions as intended it would be based on the gameplay, which it does for me because the publisher was nice enough to warn me beforehand so I bought the game on day 2 like an informed consumer. I'm doing nothing special to make the game playable, or should I give a car a bad review because its not a helicopter?

I would probably give diablo 3 a solid 8.2-8.5 based on the minor server difficulty at the start and some animation glitches, other than that the game works as advertized.

I might go on metacritic and give every Xbox 360 game a 0 because I don't own a 360 and refuse to get one and thus cant play the games which means they are broken somehow...JK

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

I might go on metacritic and give every Xbox 360 game a 0 because I don't own a 360 and refuse to get one and thus cant play the games which means they are broken somehow...JK

If you think the requirement to own an Xbox is totally unreasonable and unnecessary and ruins any potential for you to enjoy the game at your convenience in ways simply expected among consumers and standard among competitors, you probably should. That doesn't sound totally reasonable to me, but neither does Blizzard's ridiculous DRM.

 

[LeeHarveyO]

Ok, yes the servers suck and are pissing me off, yes they removed some stuff that was in D2 that I would have liked to see, but the game is fun and enjoyable. Also the cutscenes are fucking awesome.

 

[Atmos Duality]

I might go on metacritic and give every Xbox 360 game a 0 because I don't own a 360 and refuse to get one and thus cant play the games which means they are broken somehow...JK

Most modern proprietary systems offer little added value to the customer compared to where they can get elsewhere for free, unless the system essentially has a monopoly in practice (oh hai Adobe).

Which near the heart of the controversy for Diablo 3.
Bnet 2.0 offers ABSOLUTELY NOTHING you can't get elsewhere, so there's no logical reason (beyond paranoia and greed) to force everyone onto their system to begin with.

There's no practical, objective reason (from the customer's perspective) to do that. None.
But that's what happened, and that's why this stupid topic even exists to begin with.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

I'm saying the RMAH ruins the fun of collecting loot and you're saying collecting loot is not fun anyway.

So... The presence of a single button labeled "Auction House" in the main menu's interface is enough to totally destroy your experience?

No, that's not what I'm saying. I was talking about the impact of a real money auction house in a multiplayer environment built around collecting loot as the central challenge.

If that's how you feel, then alright, but forgive me for saying that you're reacting a little harshly. I don't agree with the auction system, real money or otherwise - but that doesn't stop me from having fun.

I would probably still eek some enjoyment out of it, but the introduction of real money in this form as well as other factors makes me hesitant to try.

Personally I would probably enjoy a normal auction house. Trading with players is fun in the context of the game, and an auction house could make it both more convenient and more sophisticated. It's the 'money' part that has me rolling my eyes. I'm glad you are still able to have a good time, but I don't want to play games like that.

See, the sixty bucks got you two separate entities: the game itself, and the auction house. It's up to you to decide if you'd rather ignore one of these entities or not. Just going "Oh, phooey, other people are going to buy their way to success and that ruins it for me!" equals forgetting the fact that this is YOUR copy of the game.

It's a multiplayer game. This isn't Skyrim. If I only intended to play single player, you would be right. The real money auction house isn't on mars or something, it's integrated into the game.

Hate the RMAH? Don't use it.

What other people do impacts your experience in a multiplayer game. I have already answered this objection several times. Rather than copy-pasting it again, would you please go back and read those answers (you know, if you're interested)? To sum up, I think it's a convenient deflection, not a serious solution.

Hate the auction house? Don't use it. Blizzard isn't about to put a little icon on top of other players alerting you to the presence of auction users in your public game, and the idea of kicking people who chickened out and bought their way to success is pretty excessive.

Why the hell not? Not necessarily that exactly, but isolating the people who don't want to play in a pay-to-win environment is a great idea. It's win-win from the players' perspective. There may be reasons this approach would be impractical, but if it works then great.

This would be as cheap as back when Team Fortress 2 went free-to-play and idiots started using special kick commands to keep F2P players away from certain servers. Shit, some particularly inconsiderate morons even slapped a hovering title on top of F2P-ers.

You'll never be able to tell the "Pay to Win" types apart from the "Play" types.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience in Team Fortress 2, but my objection to the RMAH isn't built around my contempt for item purchasers. I think they're suckers but I'm not going to be mean about it. Well, not more mean than saying so, I suppose.

It's seriously best to just accept it and have fun with what you have.

Fuck that. I don't like it and I'm not going to put up with it. You make it sound like Diablo III is some harsh fate I'm doomed to and I just have to make the best of it. Fortunately I don't have to settle for that. Heck, I'm playing through Titan Quest again. I'm playing it offline and nobody's trading fucking money.

 

[w00tage]

The game works great now, saying its a failure because of a rocky first few hours is like cancelling your internet/cable for good because it doesn't magically hook its self up the split second you order it, people don't do that, why do it with D3...maybe the DRM issue? Having to be online to play a game is nothing new. Heard of an MMO? What about all the multiplayer games people enjoy online only? Those must be horrible to, go bomb them. I do feel for the people out in the sticks that don't have reliable internet, I was one of them for years it sucks but to all the other people complaining about the always online when they are always online anyway...Dig in your pockets and actually buy a PC game for once in your life.

I say that because I personally know people like that, they do exist and will bash a game because they cant DL it and play for free, sorry for outing all you pirates out there (not really)

I have no problem with a game company requiring authentication to play a game, I also don't have a problem if you refuse to buy it on those grounds. I DO have a problem with people that are whining about having to be online that say they wont support the game giving it bad reviews based on that or any false reason they can come up with, Especially when a lot of those people are gonna be playing and enjoying the game in a few weeks anyway when it stops being "cool" to bash D3 for being online.

The difference is Diablo is a single player game with a multiplayer component. So, why should I be always online for a function I will never use? Why should I have to restart my single player campaign three times just because their servers are shitty? There is no justification good enough to excuse it. It is an inherently broken aspect of the game.

Anyway, I see two good things coming out of this. One is that more people will be aware of the broken aspects of Diablo III before they consider dropping 60-100 nonrefundable dollars on it. Knowledge is the best weapon against consumer-hating tactics like this.

Two, is that it will most likely weaken the strong publisher support of Metacritic, so then hard-working developers don't get cheated out of bonuses for getting an 84 instead of an 85.

Sorry I would have replied to your reply sooner but I was busy playing Diablo 3 in which I haven't had any of the problems people are complaining about and I am enjoying the hell out of it. The only consumer hating tactics are the ones performed by the people unfairly bombing this game and and trying keep people from enjoying a good fun Diablo experience.

The always online only seems to be more of a game feature than a problem for me because it makes joining games or friends joining my game easy plus the auction house can only function online to sell and buy items from other players without spamming in the server room chat or creating the "trading perfect skulls for perfect rubys" games and standing in town for 3 hours waiting like in Diablo 2 but nobody wants to look at the benefit of having all the online stuff.

"It's not a problem, it's a feature!"

It's still shackling to the people who have no interest in being online in their single player game. I'm happy for you that you've had no problems, but when so many people have and for no reason, it still makes the always-online impossible to justify.

And while review bombing is most of the time pointless and all of the time childish, I'm sure there are plenty of people giving it a legitimate bad review. What score would you give a game that you cant play? If you dropped 60 bucks on something (That you cannot return or get a refund on) that did not function, what score would you think it deserves?

Now I'm not saying even most of the review bombings are cases of this. Review bombs are in vogue now and it's going to happen to every big release in the foreseeable future, but there are probably a good number that are genuine dissatisfaction. And they deserve to be heard.

"What score would you give a game that you cant play?"

why cant you play it at all? If you don't have internet why would you buy an online game at all and if you did not buy it you have no right giving a review. If you have internet and don't want to be online to play than you DON'T want to play Diablo 3.

"If you dropped 60 bucks on something (That you cannot return or get a refund on) that did not function, what score would you think it deserves?"

How long and why did it not function? If it functions as intended it would be based on the gameplay, which it does for me because the publisher was nice enough to warn me beforehand so I bought the game on day 2 like an informed consumer. I'm doing nothing special to make the game playable, or should I give a car a bad review because its not a helicopter?

I would probably give diablo 3 a solid 8.2-8.5 based on the minor server difficulty at the start and some animation glitches, other than that the game works as advertized.

I might go on metacritic and give every Xbox 360 game a 0 because I don't own a 360 and refuse to get one and thus cant play the games which means they are broken somehow...JK

I don't get always get reliable wireless in my bedroom - too many competing routers in the apartment building and mine has two angled walls to go through.

Therefore, I can't play Diablo 3 on my laptop in my bedroom so that other people can have the main rooms for whatever. Not because of server issues, not because the laptop can't handle the game, but because the wireless connection can get spotty due to circumstances beyond my control.

Were this a dedicated multiplayer or MMO game, that's completely on MY head, and I take that into consideration. If I join a multiplayer game under those conditions, I call a warning that my connection might drop, and I don't go into raids and such where this may affect other people's game.

But Blizzard's demarc (the point at which responsibility transfers) for the single-player mode of the game is not the online server, it's the operation of the game on the computer. Putting "oh and constant internet connection" in the system requirements *for reasons that benefit only themselves, and not me as the player* is not an excuse for single-player mode not working.

Other systems (Steam for one) support offline play for when you don't have an internet connection. For example, I can play Left 4 Dead 2 all day long using offline and local server modes, no problem. I just need to let Steam know I want it that way, and they're cool with it.

tl;dr there are valid reasons for blaming any failure of the game to operate because of the always-connected requirement on Blizzard, so giving a 0/10 is a fair-play response by people who paid for the game.

*minor edit for clarity*