An idea on how to make peace between online and offline

[Hodenkrieg]

Sorry, but the game is in a state that Blizzard deems appropriate to offer to the market. This is their concept. this is how they offer it too us, the customers.

Buy it or leave it. This is the only say you have in this to make any impact in how Blizzard will approach the market with their next product.

This is the internet, people feel entitled. Researching games prior to purchase is hard...

[DarkTZeratul]

Yeah ... Offline players can't access the RMAH - can't throw more cash at activision-blizzard (and even if you are like "PAH I'll never use this bullsquirt!" - there's always the temptation - "Woah just 3 bucks for a best-in-slot ring ... damn!" / "I don't need this super-rare legendary ... what should I do with it?" )

Only if someone else decides they're going to sell their best-in-slot ring for 3 bucks, and then Blizzard gets, what... 30 cents? Hardly a good argument for them being money-grubbing bastards.

[Hodenkrieg]

Only if someone else decides they're going to sell their best-in-slot ring for 3 bucks, and then Blizzard gets, what... 30 cents? Hardly a good argument for them being money-grubbing bastards.

I mean, a company wanting to make profit is the devil reincarnated, right? They could always just make everything they license free, and then when they finally run themselves out of business the same people would just cry they stopped making games.

[Grraarrgghh]

Ok, I'll start with the argument about WoW hackers. I quit WoW, but when I played I did a lot of battlegrounds. What did I see:
-speedhacking
-teleport hacks
and some other stuff. I remember the WSGs where the gate opened then 5 seconds later a flag was capped, I can remember some random player speeding past me at super speed, you can't call these legitimate stuff.
And yes, I've seen floating humans in SW and all that... but I've also seen people getting gold by hacking, and them teleporting all over, and the people that teleported underground a mine node to mine it so they wouldn't aggro mobs, and the level 1's getting to WG to get honour to buy gems before the level cap was put in etc. so trust me when I say, if people want to hack, they will find a way and do it, so Blizzard will still have to do something about them. The difference with Diablo 3 to WoW is that in D3 they can actually strip their D3 license for doing it (while in WoW sometimes they do not since then said people wouldn't pay anymore) since it benefits them more (since if said people want to play again, they'd have to rebuy the game).

Now, I'm sure Blizzard doesn't only want to know when you play and where and all that, they also want to try and limit the amount of people managing to play D3 on other sources, as in not theirs. That is understandable and ok, but... this is not the right way to do it. If you want, force people that when they sign in so to say to be online but then they can swich to offline or something, if you want you could embed in the game code some stuff that detects if it's a legitimate copy or not that actually ruins the gameplay if removed or have some special authenticator come with the game that makes it so you can't play without it. I don't know, these are just some ideas.

You realize this is an example of why the D3 model is needed?

WoW has a fuckton of client side files, all of which facilitated the type of hacking you were seeing.

D3 has a fraction of those files, which makes it much more difficult for hackers, and makes the rate of return smaller as Blizzard has a larger impact once a problem has been identified and hotfixed.

[Deleted]

Only if someone else decides they're going to sell their best-in-slot ring for 3 bucks, and then Blizzard gets, what... 30 cents? Hardly a good argument for them being money-grubbing bastards.

it's not only one person who sells stuff on the rmah, 30 cents multiplied by several thousands of sales per day/hour/minute is a lot of money ... and 3 bucks were just a random number, we all know for how much certain items from D2 were sold at it's peak times.

And if 30% of the players decide to play offline, thats 30% less possible "customers" of the rmah.

[Mowg]

Sorry, but the game is in a state that Blizzard deems appropriate to offer to the market. This is their concept. this is how they offer it too us, the customers.

Buy it or leave it. This is the only say you have in this to make any impact in how Blizzard will approach the market with their next product.

Now I really don't mean to offend, but I honestly think this is some really, really damaging advice. "Buy it or leave it" is not good for us and in the grand scheme of things, it's not good for the product or the business. Feedback is important, we consumers have every right to be vocal about anything that may be deemed a problem. If we were silent, it would create stagnation and not progression. It's a shame that the gaming world is one of very few industries where brand loyalty can blind consumers into attacking others that are vocal about their criticisms and ultimately want a better product. Unless you have substantial shares in Activision Blizzard, Inc. looking out for the financial well-being of a multi-billion profit company rather than the benefit of the consumer (i.e. us) is one of the silliest things you could do.

When people say "If you don't like X about the game, then don't play it", I'm often compelled to say, "If you don't like your favourite company being criticised, then don't play the internet".

[Chaotica]

i voted with,,, its a horrible idea because....

lets face it, anyone that played D2 knows exactly how bad the hacking and cheating went on. now that there is a AH, to hopefully have a viable market, and a real money AH. it needs to be more regulated to prevent the widescale hacks, cheats that happened in previous versions.

[Matchu]

No local files also slow the growth of private servers.

[jbombard]

i voted with,,, its a horrible idea because....

lets face it, anyone that played D2 knows exactly how bad the hacking and cheating went on. now that there is a AH, to hopefully have a viable market, and a real money AH. it needs to be more regulated to prevent the widescale hacks, cheats that happened in previous versions.

But since there is no longer a LAN mode, offline mode would be single player only. You would not have access to AH or RMAH, and you couldn't play with anyone else. The online mode would be exactly as it is today. While hacking and cheating may be possible in offline mode, it wouldn't be any more possible in online mode than it is today. Since offline characters couldn't be ever played online, whatever offline cheating anyone did would never affect another person.

Frankly online mode being to prevent cheating is just the cover story, it is DRM and was designed to be DRM. Protecting your game is fine, but now they can tell you when you get to play your single player game and cut you off at anytime even though you don't need any of the features being online provides you.

[SamR]

Now I really don't mean to offend, but I honestly think this is some really, really damaging advice. "Buy it or leave it" is not good for us and in the grand scheme of things, it's not good for the product or the business. Feedback is important, we consumers have every right to be vocal about anything that may be deemed a problem. If we were silent, it would create stagnation and not progression. It's a shame that the gaming world is one of very few industries where brand loyalty can blind consumers into attacking others that are vocal about their criticisms and ultimately want a better product. Unless you have substantial shares in Activision Blizzard, Inc. looking out for the financial well-being of a multi-billion profit company rather than the benefit of the consumer (i.e. us) is one of the silliest things you could do.

When people say "If you don't like X about the game, then don't play it", I'm often compelled to say, "If you don't like your favourite company being criticised, then don't play the internet".

The internet is full of people who don't like a product complaining. Not sure what good it's done. People have been complaining loudly about Apple's closed ecosystem for years. And yet some would say it's one of the reasons they've been so successful.

Apple is the best example of internet forums full of denunciations of their design choices not mattering a wit because their products keep selling.

You could make a perfect copy of this thread on the Apple forums.

"An idea on how to make to make peace between open and closed" - Apple, offer a model of the iPad with a USB port!

Not gonna happen, goes against their whole design philosophy for the product. Same can be said about D3 and offline mode.

[lockedout]

So, I won't lie, I am not happy about the online only thing. But ignoring if this is an online only or a single player with co-op mode that requires online connection... I stood while writing in another thread about what someone said, which is that the solo and multiplayer stuff is the same, so they can't separate it like some other game, think he/she said MW3 or something. And so I stood and thought, what if there would be a means to make peace between everyone?
Some people want to play solo whenever they want, in a plane, in Antarctica, in the middle of the Sahara desert, on top of mount Everest, etc, so why not let them? Now, you might say "Because then they could hack and get items and stuff they could then use in co-op/multiplayer mode". Correct, but there is a middle ground:
Letting people who want to play it offline play it offline... but not letting them play it in co-op/multiplayer mode with the characters they used to play offline and not letting any trade of items/gold/stuff happen between characters they use offline and characters they use while online. So overall, separating the two for good. This way, if someone does manage to get items as it was not intended offline, they couldn't use them while online. Sure, you might say, but they'll learn how to do this. Yes, they might, but isn't Blizzard's job to get rid of hackers and stuff? And you can't say that if the game will be online only it will instantly mean there are no hackers. WoW is online only, is it not? And yet, there are plenty of hackers.

Then the game will be pirated more than it already is.

[Deleted]

Jay Wilson answers why at the 5:11 mark:

[Fencers]

D2 scene was a bot/farming session. To play optimally you ran 2-3 bots nearly 24/7. I did. For 4 years or so.

D3 has a RMT auction house which is the MOST important feature of the game. Offline mode is a bad idea.

[dokilar]

i think it would have been fairly simple. the offline mode would only let you create characters that were useable offline and the online characters would only be useable online. i think this is how it worked in d2.

the only thing that bugs me really is the fact that the comcast internet in my area, is quite fast mind you, but really terrible about having outages. this weekend for instance my internet was out for almost 48 hours. it went out at about 7pm friday evening and didnt come back on til sunday mid-afternoon. this was the first time it was out longer than a day but its completely possible for it to be out a whole day every week.

[GG you got me]

So, I won't lie, I am not happy about the online only thing. But ignoring if this is an online only or a single player with co-op mode that requires online connection... I stood while writing in another thread about what someone said, which is that the solo and multiplayer stuff is the same, so they can't separate it like some other game, think he/she said MW3 or something. And so I stood and thought, what if there would be a means to make peace between everyone?
Some people want to play solo whenever they want, in a plane, in Antarctica, in the middle of the Sahara desert, on top of mount Everest, etc, so why not let them? Now, you might say "Because then they could hack and get items and stuff they could then use in co-op/multiplayer mode". Correct, but there is a middle ground:
Letting people who want to play it offline play it offline... but not letting them play it in co-op/multiplayer mode with the characters they used to play offline and not letting any trade of items/gold/stuff happen between characters they use offline and characters they use while online. So overall, separating the two for good. This way, if someone does manage to get items as it was not intended offline, they couldn't use them while online. Sure, you might say, but they'll learn how to do this. Yes, they might, but isn't Blizzard's job to get rid of hackers and stuff? And you can't say that if the game will be online only it will instantly mean there are no hackers. WoW is online only, is it not? And yet, there are plenty of hackers.

You seem to fail to understand that the reason for the game existing only online and on Blizzard servers, is to make it extremely hard to successfully pirate. Allowing an offline component undermines that goal entirely.

This might have flown if Blizzard hadn't introduced the RMT AH. Since they have, and by virtue of this fact successfully monetized their loot drops, there is no chance of a D3 offline component. Ever.

[Fencers]

Guys, that is how it worked in D2 and.... IT WAS TERRIBLE for the game.

Having access to character files made dupes, hacks, god weapons, homebrew servers, etc-- a trivial task. Blizz did not want this to be as easy as it is when files are sitting on C:. They also did not intend the game to Single Player.

Option to solo is not design intent. This is so clearly the case in every facet of design. Why do you think you have a town portal button instead of scrolls?

Come on now. Gaming has been here since the 70s. Have a small amount of savvy for actual design-- ya'know, that thing we are supposedly buying and playing them for.

[jbombard]

Guys, that is how it worked in D2 and.... IT WAS TERRIBLE for the game.

Having access to character files made dupes, hacks, god weapons, homebrew servers, etc-- a trivial task. Blizz did not want this to be as easy as it is when files are sitting on C:. They also did not intend the game to Single Player.

Option to solo is not design intent. This is so clearly the case in every facet of design. Why do you think you have a town portal button instead of scrolls?

Come on now. Gaming has been here since the 70s. Have a small amount of savvy for actual design-- ya'know, that thing we are supposedly buying and playing them for.

LMAO. what? Diabo 2 multiplayer mode being poorly designed and accessible to hacking doesn't mean in any way shape or form that it has to be that way. And lol, what the hell does town portal being a button have to do with multi player it is a general simplification that both single and multiplayer modes benefit from.

Also, if it is not designed to be a single player game why did they go through all the effort of designing followers? Yeah, because it is a single player game with a multiplayer mode.

[Ravenblade]

You yourself say, it would accelerate developing a non-battle.net server. Which means, that in best case, the online only idea only slows the creation of such servers, it doesn't stop them from coming into existance. Which is true. So from this point, merely delaying this at the expense of actual fair customers who bought the game and expect it to actually work when they want to play is something I don't find very good.

It's a matter of who holds the reins really, they didn't in the past. A mix between a lack of foresight and a lack of mechanisms. Also in the meantime the game and video industry as a whole had some pretty big changes going on in regards of content publishing and laws had been enacted on both sides of the pond allowing publisher, which Blizzard definitely is, to decide whether and how much they want to manage and control content.
There's also no telling how many licensed or patented technologies were involved - which is another topic but a serious one as well, if their server-side technologies are licensed they can't just go around and distribute it. And you will need a server to run with the client definitely.

Now, about your grey market, no. As I said, you couldn't trade items from offline played characters and online ones. You couldn't even play offline developed chars in the multiplayer or co-op mode at all or list their items on the auction house. So how would a grey market spawn? Throught hacking? Sure, quite possible, but are you telling me that just because it's online only the people won't do same thing? And about content being out traded out of Blizzard's grasp, I presume you're talking about items, but let's also talk about mods and maps someone might make. It would be extra content traded outside Blizzard's grasp. Are you telling me all mods are evil and that extra content, no matter by who it's made, is bad? Sure, if they sell it, it is, but if they give it for free? Then it's only bad for one... and that is Blizzard, while it's good for the customers since they get extra play.

I have already posted on these forums why Battle.Net 2.0 exists at all: Content control. In the past Blizzard had to watch their games being used as applications to host competitions, to generate and trade items, to the point that sponsoring companies would mod Blizzard maps and place their own company's logo as advertisement. Maps and mods are only a fraction of what they see as content and not exactly been the trademark of Diablo games anyway so it wouldn't really add to the argument here. But the gist of all is that yes Blizzard prefers to control what's being done with their games and they want a share now. They have gone to the courts over this and this has influenced the development of Battle.Net 2.0 and all games requiring connection to it. In the end it does not matter what I think, this is their strategy now and I can however understand where they are coming from.

[Caiada]

LMAO. what? Diabo 2 multiplayer mode being poorly designed and accessible to hacking doesn't mean in any way shape or form that it has to be that way. And lol, what the hell does town portal being a button have to do with multi player it is a general simplification that both single and multiplayer modes benefit from.

Also, if it is not designed to be a single player game why did they go through all the effort of designing followers? Yeah, because it is a single player game with a multiplayer mode.

Feel free to come up with a better technical solution for duping and hacks that still lets players play offline.

Also, followers is a horrible argument. That's, if anything, reinforcing that it's designed to be played with multiple people, by slowly easing wary players into the idea of cooperation with another person.

[jbombard]

Feel free to come up with a better technical solution for duping and hacks that still lets players play offline.

Also, followers is a horrible argument. That's, if anything, reinforcing that it's designed to be played with multiple people, by slowly easing wary players into the idea of cooperation with another person.

If the game's online mode is exactly as is today, and the offline mode is completely separate there is no need to come up with a better technical solution, because nothing done in offline mode will ever affect multiplayer in any way shape or form.

Diablo 1 and 2 were single player games, with multiplayer mode. At the time of their release multiplayer lan games were very much a niche(internet games even more so). Followers exist for the same reason mercenaries existed in diablo 2.(which no matter how you slice it was mainly a single player game) Followers/mercenaries exist to provide more options to how you want to play the game. Followers have nothing to do with getting the player used to cooperation, because you cannot cooperate with them in any way shape or form. They are more or less demon dogs for non witch doctors.