The New Comic Thread for Monday 7/8/11

Ringo

End

edit: to be more topical

the only thing I hate more than always online drm is comcast

coincidentally, probably the only reason I really hate always online drm

Marth

Always on DRM is pretty stinky, though.

Dox the PI

DRM killed my family and raped my dog.

Huntera

Since 1999, eh?


That's gotta be a record.

Ringo

I wanted to say that this comic wasn't as strong as this one:

but then I reread the second one and realized they weren't actually the same joke. I still like that comic though. It makes me think of Knob and/or JohnnyCache.

Quid

I'm someone who's always online all the time and I still hate that kind of DRM because I don't want to be screwed out of playing my game when my shitty ISP shits itself.

Good comic though.

Melding

you can get off the internet?

Huh, somethign new ever day.

Poorochondriac

Quid wrote:

I'm someone who's always online all the time and I still hate that kind of DRM because I don't want to be screwed out of playing my game when my shitty ISP shits itself.

Good comic though.

Yeah, that's my main issue. Getting booted from my game because my cat tripped over the router or something may be a minor inconvenience, but it's an inconvenience nonetheless. I like to have as few of those as possible.

Blake T

Tie your cat up in a burlap sack and throw it in the river.

Problem solved.

Orikaeshigitae

i wouldn't know anything about being continuously online for twelve years

Centipede Damascus

didn't they make a comic a while ago about how stupid this kind of DRM is

Quid

But my problem's I have to live on a Pacific island.

Shit breaks here and then you just have to sit and wait.

And all the locals are on local time and you're fucked if you want the problem solved in the next half hour.

Quid

Centipede Damascus wrote:

didn't they make a comic a while ago about how stupid this kind of DRM is

Possibly! Like this one:

Blake T

Quid, to be fair, not being able to play a video game isn't really a problem that needs to be addressed with thirty minutes.

Centipede Damascus

I much prefer that comic to this one

I hope the newspost is a bit more even-handed

"Yeah it sucks but it's Blizzard so we'll take it"

Quid

Blake, my video gaming needs are super important.

Lives hang in the balance.

Blake T

Oh sorry man, my bad.

I thought that they were as only important as my own.

Which is not very.

End

I thought it was more normal to expect your isp to send someone in the next couple days, not the next 30 minutes

Whenever I have had issues, it's never been something that they've been able to fix because it's always been a temporary problem and by the time they can do diagnostics, the problem has gone away. Fortunately, I haven't had a lot of issues where I live now.

SabreMau

Oh, Diablo 3 comic.

I still have Diablo 1 and 2 and never played either.

Quid

In all honesty my interest in Diablo III is lukewarm so this is something that would turn me away. Which is to say that with a giant back log of games I likely wouldn't be playing it for some time, but given the large number available this is something that would personally put me off when deciding between it and everything I have on Steam.

Melding

i have never played a diablo. I might play this one. Maybe, i kinda don't want to buy it to continue the trend.

Quid

End wrote:

I thought it was more normal to expect your isp to send someone in the next couple days, not the next 30 minutes

Whenever I have had issues, it's never been something that they've been able to fix because it's always been a temporary problem and by the time they can do diagnostics, the problem has gone away. Fortunately, I haven't had a lot of issues where I live now.

I've had it die for a few hours. But yeah, if it's an actual problem that can't be fixed I have to wait days. But to even get someone on the phone usually takes 30-60 minutes.

JAEF

Quid wrote:

Centipede Damascus wrote:

didn't they make a comic a while ago about how stupid this kind of DRM is

Possibly! Like this one:

http://art.penny-arcade.com/photos/292008191_dQWUA-L-2.jpg

Always-on DRM for single player only games is stupid and pointless.

The complete removal of a single player off-line option for what has historically been a multiplayer focused game (Battle.net launched with Diablo!) is something else entirely, whatever your thoughts might be on how justified it is.

Centipede Damascus

SabreMau wrote:

Oh, Diablo 3 comic.

I still have Diablo 1 and 2 and never played either.

huh, why not?

Ringo

I'm confused by this. Does CD-Key Verification when logging into Bnet no longer stop pirates? It stops me. I haven't played D2 online since... uh... 2004? because I can't find my LoD CD key

SabreMau

Lack of motivation.

Ringo

Oh wait, the newspost puts this into context for me:

By their own admission, Diablo isn’t not really focused around a PVP experience; if you’re playing with someone who has duped items or whatever, all it means is that you will be more likely to defeat Satan. Without a means to gain advantage over another, “cheating” as a concept becomes substantially more opaque. Who is the cheated party, precisely? Satan the Devil? Fuck him, who cares.

Who is being cheated? This is the part of the movie where, in a series of retrospective realizations cut with you looking at your own face in the rearview mirror, you come bit by bit to the heart of it. The person you are cheating is Blizzard, Blizzard in the aggregate, with your attempts to interfere with their digital marketplace. You mustn’t play offline or goof around with your files or any other naughty business because they are endeavoring to transform your putative ownership into a revenue stream.

There, now don’t you feel better?

So, it's not about hackers logging into Bnet. It's about keeping people from circumventing the marketplace by playing offline in an unregulated manner. Well that fucking sucks.

Centipede Damascus

My brother is complaining that people are just going to buy the best gear off the marketplace anyways, making effort in the game pointless

End

wait, so this was actually only a recent announcement?

I guess I sort of assumed they were going to do the same thing they did with SC2.

#pipe

I hate always online DRM because I play video games on my laptop

my laptop which I take with me when I travel

and when I travel I don't take my house and my wireless network with me

I couldn't play any video games at AusPAX because we had no internet and I couldn't log onto steam. Seriously that is shitty. I own games and I want to be able to play them.

Blake T

Pipe you had your iPhone. You could have created a wireless network and logged on or just plugged your iPhone straight in and booted up iTunes.

Plus dom's phone was spewing out wifi the entire time. I logged onto tinychat one time at auspax raging drunk.

Melding

you can play games with steam offline.

I do it all the time.

End

it turns out even assbro (and asscreed2 I'm pretty sure) have an offline mode too

TheStig

Centipede Damascus wrote:

My brother is complaining that people are just going to buy the best gear off the marketplace anyways, making effort in the game pointless

Does he know that people actually have to find it and sell it before he can buy it?
Does he know he doesn't have to buy it?
Does he know that he can put forth this video game effort and find the best gear, then sell it?

I needed anime to post.

does he know that he can just buy the game then buy a character then buy the best gear for it then sit back and go "welp, i beat diablo 3!" and then never play it

Centipede Damascus

TheStig wrote:

Centipede Damascus wrote:

My brother is complaining that people are just going to buy the best gear off the marketplace anyways, making effort in the game pointless

Does he know that people actually have to find it and sell it before he can buy it?
Does he know he doesn't have to buy it?
Does he know that he can put forth this video game effort and find the best gear, then sell it?

Yeah, he just thinks there's going to be a bunch of rich guys ruining PvP for everyone

TheStig

and then he won't even need to login to battle.net!

edit: that's a dumb thing to think

I needed anime to post.

heh heh, diablo pvp

there's a thing worth caring about

strebalicious

Ringo wrote:

Oh wait, the newspost puts this into context for me:

By their own admission, Diablo isn’t not really focused around a PVP experience; if you’re playing with someone who has duped items or whatever, all it means is that you will be more likely to defeat Satan. Without a means to gain advantage over another, “cheating” as a concept becomes substantially more opaque. Who is the cheated party, precisely? Satan the Devil? Fuck him, who cares.

Who is being cheated? This is the part of the movie where, in a series of retrospective realizations cut with you looking at your own face in the rearview mirror, you come bit by bit to the heart of it. The person you are cheating is Blizzard, Blizzard in the aggregate, with your attempts to interfere with their digital marketplace. You mustn’t play offline or goof around with your files or any other naughty business because they are endeavoring to transform your putative ownership into a revenue stream.

There, now don’t you feel better?

So, it's not about hackers logging into Bnet. It's about keeping people from circumventing the marketplace by playing offline in an unregulated manner. Well that fucking sucks.

Exactly. It's about not having to worry about people selling duped or hacked items on their marketplace. I think they should come up with some sort of hybrid system. Don't want to/can't connect to the internet? Your single player character will stay on your computer and you will be unable to play online with that character or sell items on the marketplace, BUT you will be able to play single player. Want to play online and/or sell items? Connect and make an "online" character.

TheStig

This is from an interview and I sorta agree with this as a point for making the game online. I've done this a few times and it's lame :?

Gameplanet: Did you toy with the idea of allowing offline play, but locking the player out and requiring them to start again for online play?

Wilson: That was the Diablo II way, and what drove us to this was how bad of an experience we thought that was. It was so common in Diablo II for people to start up a game, finish it, get to normal difficulty and want to play with their friends online, then realise that they can't actually do that without starting over. We did have the offline Battle.Net experience, but if your friends are on Battle.Net, which is where most people were, you didn't really get to actually play with them, so that was one of the things that drove us to that decision.

http://www.gameplanet.co.nz/pc/games/156898.Diablo-III/features/137613.20110801.Blizzards-Jay-Wilson-on-Diablo-III/