The New Comic Thread for Monday 7/8/11

Dark Raven X

As someone has doubtless already said, Diablo 3 is basically an MMO anyway. So who cares?

Now, they pull this always online DRM shit with something like Half Life 3 or something, that'd be a ball bust.

...I'm still bummed about Starcraft II removing LAN play though. I like LANning Starcraft.

Cilla Black

Gaslight wrote:

Cilla Black wrote:

Druhim wrote:

Cilla Black wrote:

Also I really, really doubt that monetizing the playerbase is the reason for online only play. That is not blizzard's MO and never has been.

what? monetizing isn't Blizzard's MO? that's precisely their MO! I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, but yes they absolutely have and continue to find ways to monetize the player base.

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. What I'm saying here is coldly increasing the bottom line has never been Blizzard's primary reason for anything. Especially these days, when they've become a little insane about ensuring their games are fun and continue to be fun.

Double-post ahoy, and no offense, but has this post somehow managed, in defiance of all accepted science, to find its way to us from an alternate universe on the other side of a black hole?

Take Blizzard out of the equation and think of this as being done by Activision if it makes the reality of what's happening here more palatable.

Has there been any concrete evidence that Activision has anything to do with Blizzard's decision making since they purchased them? Because it has always seemed to me that they leave Blizzard the fuck alone and allow them to make money hand over fist and any theories to the contrary have just been people trying to justify a decision Blizz has made. And usually those people have no idea just how crazy Blizzard is about balance and improving the player experience in all their games, even if it's something that players think they don't want. Class balance in wow comes to mind. Not that this DRM decision is anything like class balance, or that people are wrong in not wanting it, but I've always had the suspicion that Activision has fuck all to do with Blizzard's decision making process.

Fandeathis

This thread sure is moving fast. I personally will only be playing the game with friends, so this is a total non-issue for me. I do see how it bothers some people who would like to play the game in a single player fashion. I just find that Diablo games are incredibly boring if I'm not playing with friends.

Quid

Hunter wrote:

Quid wrote:

JAEF wrote:

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.

Are they going to be advertising it as having a single player option? If a game does this, I know I personally expect the single player portion to not require being online. Because that is silly.

Your personal expectations amount to nothing in the grand scheme of things. I'm not trying to be offensive, I'm just a realistic person.

D3 has single player regardless of needing to be online or not. I can't reiterate that enough. Don't muddle the issue. You can play Diablo 3 with or without other people. What you can't do is play offline.

If playing offline is what you want, and it upsets you that you can't do that, that is a very valid complaint. However, that does not equal no single player.

Oh I agree. It's just something I find off putting and pointless for something meant to be single player (referring to the single player portion here).

Javen

Cilla Black wrote:

Gaslight wrote:

Cilla Black wrote:

Druhim wrote:

Cilla Black wrote:

Also I really, really doubt that monetizing the playerbase is the reason for online only play. That is not blizzard's MO and never has been.

what? monetizing isn't Blizzard's MO? that's precisely their MO! I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing, but yes they absolutely have and continue to find ways to monetize the player base.

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. What I'm saying here is coldly increasing the bottom line has never been Blizzard's primary reason for anything. Especially these days, when they've become a little insane about ensuring their games are fun and continue to be fun.

Double-post ahoy, and no offense, but has this post somehow managed, in defiance of all accepted science, to find its way to us from an alternate universe on the other side of a black hole?

Take Blizzard out of the equation and think of this as being done by Activision if it makes the reality of what's happening here more palatable.

Has there been any concrete evidence that Activision has anything to do with Blizzard's decision making since they purchased them? Because it has always seemed to me that they leave Blizzard the fuck alone and allow them to make money hand over fist and any theories to the contrary have just been people trying to justify a decision Blizz has made. And usually those people have no idea just how crazy Blizzard is about balance and improving the player experience in all their games, even if it's something that players think they don't want. Class balance in wow comes to mind. Not that this DRM decision is anything like class balance, or that people are wrong in not wanting it, but I've always had the suspicion that Activision has fuck all to do with Blizzard's decision making process.

Blizzard restructured about a year and a half ago that had Mike Morhaime (big guy at Blizzard) report pretty much directly to the CEO of Activision-Blizzard. It was his idea to make Starcraft 2 into a trilogy, and also his idea to make things like the RealID system, and to eventually make battle.net into a single Steam-like entity.

Cilla Black

Fair enough Javen, although to be Starcraft 2 being a trilogy hasn't really turned out like everyone was afraid it would. The sequels are essentially the same thing as expansions, which is something we'd get anyway. The only thing we're missing out on is having a completely self-contained story structure like Starcraft 1. And who even cares about the story of 2 considering how mediocre it was, the missions were insanely fun. All these decisions people have hated and claimed would ruin the games have turned out to be pretty small nitpicks considering the quality that Blizzard continues to push out. Current-day Blizzard is so much better at producing quality gameplay than it was even back in the Diablo 2 and Starcraft days.

For me that just gives a hell of a lot of leeway when it comes to annoying decisions like always online singeplayer.

Jasconius

Games are expensive to make.

The online thing is a way for Blizzard to justify its other plans to make money off of Diablo

I guess people are uncomfortable that, in a legal sense and the "right to do as I wish with the software", their freedom is being diminished.

But the game is also like fifty times better and the box price is basically unchanged.

So if you don't like it, install a game made in 2004 and leave everyone else alone.

Butters

Aneurhythmia wrote:

You can play TF2 with bots offline. It's just not the primary mode of play.

Bots weren't even introduced till 2 years after launch. They were never taken into consideration when it came to game design.

Aneurhythmia wrote:

Obviously, Diablo has more going on for the single player experience, but everything about their design approach seems to hold online play as the focus of the new game. They're not removing the single player component, but they're more than happy to inconvenience offline players as a shortcut to improving the online experience.

That is the new point of contention yes. But Bale's position of "You guys don't know Diablo!" if they've been playing it single player is ridiculous. There was plenty of room for solo play in D2.

Gaslight

Butters wrote:

Aneurhythmia wrote:

You can play TF2 with bots offline. It's just not the primary mode of play.

Bots weren't even introduced till 2 years after launch. They were never taken into consideration when it came to game design.

And they weren't really useful for anything for another year or more after that.

Butters

I'm certainly not surprised that Blizzard came up with an additional source of income for Diablo. Server space isn't getting any cheaper and the amount D3 online will need ought to dwarf D2.

Balefuego

Butters wrote:

Aneurhythmia wrote:

You can play TF2 with bots offline. It's just not the primary mode of play.

Bots weren't even introduced till 2 years after launch. They were never taken into consideration when it came to game design.

Aneurhythmia wrote:

Obviously, Diablo has more going on for the single player experience, but everything about their design approach seems to hold online play as the focus of the new game. They're not removing the single player component, but they're more than happy to inconvenience offline players as a shortcut to improving the online experience.

That is the new point of contention yes. But Bale's position of "You guys don't know Diablo!" if they've been playing it single player is ridiculous. There was plenty of room for solo play in D2.

My position was always and still is that it is a multiplayer game with single player elements.

Druhim

And that position is absurd.

Butters

I never misunderstood your position, Bale, and I don't think anyone else did either.

Balefuego

You clearly did if you thought my position was "you don't know Diablo"

Seriously

Really, do any of us know Diablo?

really know Diablo?

Butters

That characterization aside no one is misunderstanding you, Bale. A few of us just don't agree with you.

Gaslight

Seriously wrote:

Really, do any of us know Diablo?

really know Diablo?

Ours is purely a business relationship.

Balefuego

Butters wrote:

That characterization aside no one is misunderstanding you, Bale. A few of us just don't agree with you.

That's fine, I don't think my stance is "absurd" but we ain't all gotta agree, this is america

Jasconius

I've played Diablo for a grand total of 15 minutes, lifetime.

Dark Raven X

You're missing out Jas, it's great.

I'm told.

I'm also missing out.

I'm told.

Phyphor

Dark Raven X wrote:

As someone has doubtless already said, Diablo 3 is basically an MMO anyway. So who cares?

Now, they pull this always online DRM shit with something like Half Life 3 or something, that'd be a ball bust.

...I'm still bummed about Starcraft II removing LAN play though. I like LANning Starcraft.

I hate that they took that out. I was at a friends house and we were planning to play 4v4 with everyone there... except an hour later we figured out the exact combination of machines that would actually work together. So we ended up having 2 teams of three and 1 of two play random matches. Not as fun... His internet connection wasn't the greatest, but it just wouldn't work

vzryv

Jasconius wrote:

So if you don't like it, install a game made in 2004 and leave everyone else alone.

Actually I'm going to buy a game that doesn't lock up single players in order to extract more money from its players: http://www.torchlight2game.com

So why don't you shut the hell up instead of making the world dumber by spewing your stupidity on the internet for the world to see.

Hunter

Phyphor wrote:

Hunter wrote:

Noggin wrote:

It is surprising that they cut offline singleplayer. They've told us more than once, as recently as blizzcon, that we would have that option.

They were always clear that they wanted to discourage that, perhaps by limiting certain features such as shared stash, and instead encourage online co-op by giving you a companion for normal.

There's a massive difference between discouraging it and removing it.

They most likely ran into some logic jam with trying to include offline play and have all the functionality needed for an auction house with protection from the dubious folks that like to dupe and hack.

It seems the decision to keep the auction house won out. It sucks that a percentage of the community that would never and have never duped or haxxed the Gibson and will be inconvenienced due to this. Some might not be able to play at all. That's always a problem. The whole point of making a game is to get people to play it.

I can understand the perspective of both sides of the coin. Blizzard doesn't want their game pirated and they don't won't their community and game balanced butt fucked by those vile denizens of the intertrons that get off on that kind of thing. It's both a cash money business decision and a don't mess with my baby decision. On the other hand, they're penalizing people who want to legitimately pay them for their product and play the game in an offline fashion. Punishing those who want to do something the right way is never a good business practice. I hope there's some middle ground that can be reached without pushing off launch to 2013.

Except that really isn't an issue. D2 solved this. You have your online character, managed by Blizzard's servers and then you have your offline characters you can mess around with all you want. You can't import any offline generated data onto bnet anyway and if people are hacking the client to create items while on bnet, they're still going to do it

The simple answer again is D3 is different, it has an auction house. Using D2 as a reference is just not the best way to go about this whole thing. D2 didn't have an auction house. It also was 10 years ago. Also, different people are in charge now. Also the business model may have changed, server space may be more expensive, they may just hate people, or they're seriously pissed at hackers and pirates in general.

Also, duping and hacking is a secondary action item. The primary reason for their use of constant online connection DRM was the auction house. Pirating close second. Duping and hacking items probably 3rd, simply because it's primarily a PvE game and not an e-sport. I would put my money on the line to say it was a business decision, it's been analyzed on potential loss of sales vs increased income from the auction house, and that the decision has caused opinions similar to what we've seen in this thread on both sides. Making money is the primary reason for business though, and this will make money even if they lose a percentage of unit sales.

Balefuego

@vzryz

Don't get mad at video games

Aneurhythmia

Druhim wrote:

And that position is absurd.

Is it? Haven't all of their PC games essentially been multiplayer titles with single player components?

Jasconius

vzryv wrote:

Jasconius wrote:

So if you don't like it, install a game made in 2004 and leave everyone else alone.

Actually I'm going to buy a game that doesn't lock up single players in order to extract more money from its players: http://www.torchlight2game.com/[/ulr]

So why don't you shut the hell up instead of making the world dumber by spewing your stupidity on the internet for the world to see.

uhh

Hunter

vzryv wrote:

Jasconius wrote:

So if you don't like it, install a game made in 2004 and leave everyone else alone.

Actually I'm going to buy a game that doesn't lock up single players in order to extract more money from its players: http://www.torchlight2game.com/[/ulr]

So why don't you shut the hell up instead of making the world dumber by spewing your stupidity on the internet for the world to see.

It does not lock out single players. It locks out people who don't have a stable or fast enough internet connection.

You can still play single player if you want, it just has to be online. Please stop muddling these two very different things together.

Diablo 3 has single player. It's just like multiplayer, only you don't invite anyone to your game and lock it with a password.

Also, you do not have to use the auction house. It's not mandatory. It may be their reasoning for adding this style of constant connect DRM, but they won't erase your characters or cancel your account if you refuse to purchase a spiked demon helm of anal penetration once a month.

Aneurhythmia

vzryv wrote:

So why don't you shut the hell up instead of making the world dumber by spewing your stupidity on the internet for the world to see.

Hey there, tough guy. a/s/l?

Jasconius

vzryv is the guy from that youtube video

TheStig

Jasconius wrote:

vzryv is the guy from that youtube video

the guy from the comments section?

vzryv

Hunter wrote:

It does not lock out single players.

I never said it does. I said it locked UP single players, and the implication was locked up in their walled garden but I guess I need to spell that out.

I can't name my toons what I want, I can't use mods, I can't spawn items, I can't skip content. I can't play the game the way I want even though none of these things affect anyone else. I can't play without consuming metered bandwidth. Not an issue for me now but might be in the future and certainly is for many people.

Also, you do not have to use the auction house. It may be their reasoning for adding this style of constant connect DRM, but they won't erase your characters or cancel your account if you refuse to purchase a spiked demon helm of anal penetration once a month.

I never said anything about the auction house, I LOVE the idea of an auction house for bnet, real money or not. But using that an excuse to remove offline play is bullshit, and couching that in some complete word diarrhea marketing spew about "gameplay experience" is offensive to me and should be offensive to anyone who has two brain cells to rub together.

They should have been honest about it "We make more money when everyone is locked into playing only on our servers. This is also how we are attempting to decrease the rate of piracy." There was that so hard?

Jasconius

vzryv ultimately buys the game and never encounters a point in time where he felt the impulse to play Diablo 3 away from an active and stable internet connection

vzryv

Jasconius dies from syphilis contracted from 84 year old tranny prostitute because that was the only one he could afford

Hunter

vzryv wrote:

Jasconius dies from syphilis contracted from 84 year old tranny prostitute because that was the only one he could afford

Boom goes the dynamite.

Druhim

Just report him instead of arguing with him.

Langly

what the fuck happened in here

Balefuego

Langly wrote:

what the fuck happened in here

It's a song as old as time

People gettin mad at video games

Jasconius

He showed me.

I am going to go home and rethink my life.

Hunter

Druhim wrote:

Just report him instead of arguing with him.

He wasn't being that bad, but then BAM he kicks it up a notch.

Hunter

Balefuego wrote:

Langly wrote:

what the fuck happened in here

It's a song as old as time

People gettin mad at video games

We need Angela Lansbury to dress up like a tea pot and sing this song to us.