The New Comic Thread for Monday 7/8/11

TheStig

I wish they would just announce the beta so we could know when we will find out exactly how it works.

Javen

TheStig wrote:

I think it should retain the gold fee, because you can never have enough gold sinks in diablo.

As for posting stuff no one wants, that will probably take a while to figure out for the community as a whole.

I'd actually bet against them worrying about stuff like that. They've clearly stated they want Diablo to be a player vs computer endeavor, so I don't think you'll see much in the way of regulation or balance. If anything, deliberately placing gold sinks in the game you also announce two giant, region encompassing marketplaces for digital items seems kind of counter-productive.

Burden of Proof

i imagine this fellow not smelling very nice

TheStig

Well gold still is the currency for in game vendors, gambling (is gambling in?), repairs, and possible rune resets. I don't see why they wouldn't want to keep it from becoming trivial.

JAEF

Jaunty wrote:

wait why isn't there corpse explode?
avoiding trouble with censors?

Hardly. The game is gory as hell. The real reason is that they didn't want corpses to be manipulable so they could make really cool death animations, whether it's gory explosions or bodies flying around everywhere. Corpse explosion will never be in the game.

TheStig

Ugh, I hate being excited for games. News always comes out way slower than I can consume it.

Blake T

Am I the only one that thinks it will add to single player?

I mean it will give you access to the auction house. Something I found frustrating about playing single player in D2 is that you would constantly find this cool shit, but for other builds and you couldn't use it.

Now when you find this cool stuff you can trade it for something else which will be useful.

I think that's neat!

TheStig

Yeah I think it's pretty great for all players.

For april fools they should switch the currency label from gold to SoJs

This podcast has some new news, and some footage that I somehow missed.



Also it notes that if you haven't updated your beta opt-in settings since they changed their software last week, you should really do that.

FTV

We need many more strips exposing fake outrage. Many more.

Dizzen

Javen wrote:

That seems to mirror most peoples attitude. Lots of people planning to sell stuff, hardly anyone mentions they plan on buying, though.

Which sucks all the more that they plan on collecting a fee even if an item doesn't sell. The thought that someone could end up incurring a net loss just by posting an item they found in-game on their auction house kinda sucks.

People may plan to try and sell stuff, but I do not imagine many folks will be able to compete with the cutthroat rates of Chinese prison labor.

TheStig

Don't forget north korean state ran farming operations.

Blake T

I want to trade and buy things with in game gold, I'm not too interested in selling and buying with real cash.

Realistically I can see the bottom falling out of the lower tier stuff really quickly which would he neat I suppose.

Wrench N Rockets

Have they made it easy to send stuff to other toons? Or is that still somehow frowned upon?

TheStig

You have a shared stash for all your characters. I don't know about a mail system.

Wrench N Rockets

Shared stash is all I need. Unless it's like 9 tiles of space or something. Always hated finding a sweet bow or staff while on my melee dudes.

Henroid

Houk wrote:

Fandeathis wrote:

It blows my mind that some people are getting mad about something they can choose to not buy or play!

It blows my mind that you've been on the internet for longer than a week and something like that could blow your mind

Let's all blow each other's minds

You never blow my mind anymore Houk. What happened to us?

Wandering Idiot

Pony wrote:

besides, do you really think they'd institute a system where if your connection is lost it IMMEDIATELY SHUTS DOWN EVERYTHING and it can't possibly save oh god my three hours of work

I'm sorry no

Well yes, it's a possibility, given that that exact thing has been done before.

Cilla Black wrote:

They want to make money like any other business but a gameplay decision like this is going to happen because they legitimately think it will provide benefits for the playbase, not because they coldly want to increase the bottom line.

I don't even care about the issue that much, but I had to laugh for like a minute straight at this. Blizzard is owned by Activision/Vivendi. Regardless of the opinions of the actual developers, this move is primarily about not allowing players to hack things into the game that could be monetized instead, with some anti-piracy thrown in. It seems like you're just being willfully ignorant.

rhylith

Look, every single holdout here will last 2 weeks before your friends talking about how great the game is combined with your love of the old games leads you to buy it. You all know it.

Hunter

rhylith wrote:

Look, every single holdout here will last 2 weeks before your friends talking about how great the game is combined with your love of the old games leads you to buy it. You all know it.

They'll hold out until the collector's edition is detailed and the hold out their credit cards to preorder it.

geekoid

People seemed to have missed the point. It isn't about constantly online, it's about principle. Not being trusted as a default position is contrary to a free society. This is about being controlled. It's about a company having an implied threat with every thing you do, it's about having your golden leash shortened yet again.
Even if it came with a free 3G connection that was only used for DRM checking it would still be a bad thing from the point of a free society. The Greeks wrote a little about this, I suggest you read up.

Druhim

Information just wants to be free

man

Aneurhythmia

The Greeks wrote about a lot of things and were wrong about plenty of them. Throwing out the vaguest allusions doesn't do shit to prove your poorly formed argument.

rhylith

Ahahahaha a free society?

It's a fucking video game, not a government. They're free to do whatever they want with their game and their servers, and you're free to not buy it.

Except you will, because it's Diablo. Anyone who enjoys video games at all knows you'll get your money's worth if you buy it.

God forbid a company try to circumvent piracy and shady online gold farms literally run by prison labor. My FREEDOM is at stake because I will be minorly inconvenienced!

Dizzen

rhylith wrote:

Look, every single holdout here will last 2 weeks before your friends talking about how great the game is combined with your love of the old games leads you to buy it. You all know it.

That does seem to be a common take on the matter, but by no means is it quite that ubiquitous . Yes, many folks who are complaining about this move will still buy the game. But there are others for whom this is a significant deterrent (for whatever reason, whether it directly impacts them or is more abstract). And for them the determining factor will likely be the quality and variety of alternative and comparable new game experiences that are available around the time of its launch, not the month or so of hype from friends before they beat the game and move on.

Calya

I can't buy games that don't allow offline play. I work on a research ship at sea almost a third of the year. I can get online on dedicated public internet computers, but we can't get internet access on personal computers or consoles.

I know we get spoiled these days, but there are a lot of people whose access is spotty at best and it's sad because Mariners have a ton of time on their hands off watch and most of them love to play killer games. I hate to see games take a direction that requires being online. This isn't the first. It won't be the last.

On my last trip out I bought Patapon for my PSP and saved it for the ship. Only to get onboard and find out I had paid for a key and had to be online to download the game. /sadsailoress

Rolo

geekoid wrote:

People seemed to have missed the point. It isn't about constantly online, it's about principle. Not being trusted as a default position is contrary to a free society. This is about being controlled. It's about a company having an implied threat with every thing you do, it's about having your golden leash shortened yet again.
Even if it came with a free 3G connection that was only used for DRM checking it would still be a bad thing from the point of a free society. The Greeks wrote a little about this, I suggest you read up.

SMASH.
THE.
STATE.

Rolo

Rolo wrote:

geekoid wrote:

People seemed to have missed the point. It isn't about constantly online, it's about principle. Not being trusted as a default position is contrary to a free society. This is about being controlled. It's about a company having an implied threat with every thing you do, it's about having your golden leash shortened yet again.
Even if it came with a free 3G connection that was only used for DRM checking it would still be a bad thing from the point of a free society. The Greeks wrote a little about this, I suggest you read up.

SMASH.
THE.
STATE.

OF.
VIDEOGAME.
RESTRICTIONS.
ON.
REQUIREMENTS.
FOR.
ALWAYS.
ON.
INTERNET.
CONNECTIONS.

Seriously

Guys I bet you $100 I will never play Diablo 3 let's say it's because of this

Seriously

any

takers

Rolo

Well Seriously you only have four days left to live anyway!

And only two days until your doctor tells you about your condition, so after that you'd be way too panicked and mopey to think about playing Diablo 3 anyway!

Hunter

geekoid wrote:

People seemed to have missed the point. It isn't about constantly online, it's about principle. Not being trusted as a default position is contrary to a free society. This is about being controlled. It's about a company having an implied threat with every thing you do, it's about having your golden leash shortened yet again.
Even if it came with a free 3G connection that was only used for DRM checking it would still be a bad thing from the point of a free society. The Greeks wrote a little about this, I suggest you read up.

You had me at principle and then I was blown away by your line about the Greeks.

Put it in my ass, stud.

Fandeathis

geekoid wrote:

People seemed to have missed the point. It isn't about constantly online, it's about principle. Not being trusted as a default position is contrary to a free society. This is about being controlled. It's about a company having an implied threat with every thing you do, it's about having your golden leash shortened yet again.
Even if it came with a free 3G connection that was only used for DRM checking it would still be a bad thing from the point of a free society. The Greeks wrote a little about this, I suggest you read up.

Ahahahaha, this is my new favorite response in the thread.

Rankenphile

Well, he's got a point. We've certainly proven ourselves to be a trustworthy lot. His surprise is entirely justified.

Hunter

Blizzard is treading on my rights to buy their luxury product and play it in the manner I want regardless of their decisions on what they feel like doing with their non-mandatory intellectual property.

HOW DARE THEY!

Aneurhythmia

Rankenphile wrote:

Well, he's got a point. We've certainly proven ourselves to be a trustworthy lot. His surprise is entirely justified.

Reported for trolling.

Jars

wouldn't it be more prudent to get upset at the people that make companies take more drastic measures to protect their products?

Druhim

Look, first they taxed us without representation and our forefathers didn't stand for it. They revolted! Then the government told us where we can and can't smoke, and the people rolled over on their backs and took it like the whipped dogs they are. Now is it any surprise that Blizzard is taking away our gaming liberties?

That_Guy

Web comics general?

Aneurhythmia

There are other threads for both regular and edited webcomics.

Quid

rhylith wrote:

Ahahahaha a free society?

It's a fucking video game, not a government. They're free to do whatever they want with their game and their servers, and you're free to not buy it.

Except you will, because it's Diablo. Anyone who enjoys video games at all knows you'll get your money's worth if you buy it.

God forbid a company try to circumvent piracy and shady online gold farms literally run by prison labor. My FREEDOM is at stake because I will be minorly inconvenienced!

I won't be buying it. Because being online all the time isn't always an option for me. Which makes the single player portion, really the entire game, completely useless for me. Of course, they could easily provide the single player portion without any of the evils that you seem concerned about, but they've opted not to.