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  1. #1

    Angry Blizz dissappoints again -no 3-4p couch co-op in D4

    By PS Store page Blizzard stated that Diablo IV game will allow to play only 1-2 players locally. WTF? This game is nuts for couch co-op and we with friend had plans to play this game and pass through campaign by first weekend on console like we did for Diablo III once it was released on consoles. Now you are talking we will be able to play at maximum of 2 player locally? That's a major downgrade. It won't make it any better then Diablo III for this kind of experience. What is the reason of that? Why putting effort in designing experience and UI for local co-p once you are going to support maximum of 2 players only? Basically this makes us not wanting to play this game if this will be released that way. I know couch coop players may be minority and people usually plays Diablo like single player experience, even casually, but 4-player experience was one of the main factors why console edition of D3 was such well rated. What do you think about it?

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by i3ackero View Post
    What is the reason of that?
    It takes a lot extra work, and there's are VERY few people overall who'd actually use it.

    Features don't just pop into existence for free. They all cost time and money. Catering to the 100 people on the planet who want to play 4-player couch co-op is not a good use of development resources. It sucks for those people, but that's life.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Biomega View Post
    It takes a lot extra work (...)
    It will be done for 2 players. What additional work would it be for adding 3rd and 4th option. Copy-paste UI on two other corners of the screen? Especially while almost all even indie games on consoles have it featured. I would say more of a balance would be an issue, but still same may be done on online party.

    Quote Originally Posted by Biomega View Post
    (...) there's are VERY few people overall who'd actually use it.
    Not such very as you think. When D3 was first released on consoles, one of its most appreciated features was local coop, which was often stated as being super fun and one of factors why this port has received such much popularity as the rest was just a gameplay feeling compared to PC version.

    I just can't imagine scenario when cost/profit ratio is so low in this case. Some people will buy this game only for this feature, even if it's a minor thing. The profit would still

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by i3ackero View Post
    I just can't imagine scenario when cost/profit ratio is so low in this case. Some people will buy this game only for this feature, even if it's a minor thing. The profit would still
    That's cool if you can't imagine it.

    The people who work in professional teams doing nothing but determining what is and isn't worth doing apparently CAN imagine it.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Biomega View Post
    That's cool if you can't imagine it.

    The people who work in professional teams doing nothing but determining what is and isn't worth doing apparently CAN imagine it.
    I mean, I wouldn't say so if I wouldn't have knowledge and experience about it, but I have and I know how the process looks like, so I think the reason why they decided to cut the game is different: performance on older generation (as amount of inputs from 1 client on open world instance is increased then devices usually are used to), feature split on newer generation, stress test not taking place yet to make promises, multiboxing protection... but not cost effort vs profit. If it is, then somebody made profit estimation wrong, as cost estimation is really low compared to whole local coop architecture being designed anyway.

  6. #6
    There's at least 8 people disappointed by this.

    Without knowing anything about the gameplay mechanics or UI it's very difficult to say how easy to make it would be and how coherent the game would look in a single screen.

  7. #7
    I thought about it and I think they could decide that it would be more profitable for them to limit this, because that fact is, that you would need only 1 copy of the game for 4 players. And by limiting this, players would be more forced to play online, they will buy 4 copies for each of them that would give Blizzard much more profit in this way. They will lose the audience of couch coop players, which usually aren't hardcore players anyway, but earn more by forcing them to buy several copies.

    Also it may be also a situation (very likely) where every distinct player would have to have Diablo IV purchased on their Bnet account and Bnet account would be required to add new player to local ccop even for second player, as it could be impossible to play multiple characters on the same Bnet account. It shouldn't work also dor D3, but D3 account were based on Xbox/PS accounts which HAD TO be different. Now because of crossplay, it will be required. So I think during game release we will face another big scandal related to this, but so far nobody even thinks about it.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by i3ackero View Post
    So I think during game release we will face another big scandal related to this, but so far nobody even thinks about it.
    A big scandal that everyone who wants to play the game needs to buy the game?

  9. #9
    In case of local multiplayer games it is unusual. Imagine like you'd need a multiple copies to play hot-seat in turn-based strategy games like Heroes of Might & Magic, Civilization, Worms, Mortal Kombat or Divinity. In those case you just need to always run the game from perspective of the game owner. If they would ever make a new game from any of those series with that limit, it would be a scandal in the audience.

  10. #10
    It's because it's releasing on prev gen systems and the last generation systems aren't powerful enough to do 4 players split and they're not gonna spend the money to make separate versions since they very likely have cross progression/crossplay between all the versions.
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  11. #11
    Herald of the Titans bloodwulf's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by i3ackero View Post
    In case of local multiplayer games it is unusual. Imagine like you'd need a multiple copies to play hot-seat in turn-based strategy games like Heroes of Might & Magic, Civilization, Worms, Mortal Kombat or Divinity. In those case you just need to always run the game from perspective of the game owner. If they would ever make a new game from any of those series with that limit, it would be a scandal in the audience.
    So you are fabricating controversy by coming up with a hypothetical situation involving games from an entirely different genre?

    Couch coop is so rarely used now a days its a miracle its getting any support. Id rather play with my entire screen for me and my friend having their entire screen, and we just talk through Disc\Voice Chat. This is literally a none issue that will affect probably less than 1% of use cases.
    We live in an era of "me versus them", an era where something is done that you don't like means you are personally attacked. People whine too much.
    Let us play video games and be happy.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by i3ackero View Post
    I thought about it and I think they could decide that it would be more profitable for them to limit this, because that fact is, that you would need only 1 copy of the game for 4 players. And by limiting this, players would be more forced to play online, they will buy 4 copies for each of them that would give Blizzard much more profit in this way.
    And there it is... the big conspiracy theory that it's all about selling licenses. Surprised it wasn't in the original post.

  13. #13
    You sound like a Kotaku ""journalist"" lmao.

  14. #14
    I'm just looking for reasons. So far the one with old gen limitations is the best from engineering perspective, but account organization is also very possible and reasonable, you can't disagree.

  15. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by bloodwulf View Post
    So you are fabricating controversy by coming up with a hypothetical situation involving games from an entirely different genre?

    Couch coop is so rarely used now a days its a miracle its getting any support. Id rather play with my entire screen for me and my friend having their entire screen, and we just talk through Disc\Voice Chat. This is literally a none issue that will affect probably less than 1% of use cases.
    Overall, and not to really take the OPs side because I think he definately has old man yelling at the clouds vibe, but Blizzard did say they were surprised by the amount of couch co-op games made in D3 console. But yeah the dozens that this effects isn't worth the resources to implement.

    - - - Updated - - -

    Quote Originally Posted by i3ackero View Post
    I'm just looking for reasons. So far the one with old gen limitations is the best from engineering perspective, but account organization is also very possible and reasonable, you can't disagree.
    The reason is quite simple. People just don't get together to game like this anymore.

  16. #16
    Herald of the Titans bloodwulf's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Beefhammer View Post
    Overall, and not to really take the OPs side because I think he definately has old man yelling at the clouds vibe, but Blizzard did say they were surprised by the amount of couch co-op games made in D3 console. But yeah the dozens that this effects isn't worth the resources to implement.

    - - - Updated - - -



    The reason is quite simple. People just don't get together to game like this anymore.
    O i dont doubt that people used the feature, though id be willing to go out on a limb and say it was largely 2 people co-op sessions (play with spouse\child etc) than 4 people sessions. But OP is just someone who wants to find a thing to shout at for sure.
    We live in an era of "me versus them", an era where something is done that you don't like means you are personally attacked. People whine too much.
    Let us play video games and be happy.

  17. #17
    Pandaren Monk Demsi's Avatar
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    it's probably not a priority at the moment i'm guessing, it could always be added in the future

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Demsi View Post
    it's probably not a priority at the moment i'm guessing, it could always be added in the future
    This is possible and I hope so New Wonderlands game also was max 2 local player game at the beginning and just later after player response and requests they decided to add 3rd and 4th. But for split screen it in fact required more resources and raised performance issues (more to render). So it may have similar scenario.

  19. #19
    Blizz not taking a ton of resources to focus on a feature that a very tiny fraction of the playerbase would actually use...is a good business decision. I think you underestimate the amount of work it would take to implement something like this.

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by bloodwulf View Post
    O i dont doubt that people used the feature, though id be willing to go out on a limb and say it was largely 2 people co-op sessions (play with spouse\child etc) than 4 people sessions. But OP is just someone who wants to find a thing to shout at for sure.
    Exactly. People seem to forget just how much data Blizzard actually collects. They have their own in-house data analysis department. They can tell you what you wrote in WoW's guild chat at least six months prior as we saw demonstrated to hilarious effect in the original Customer Service forum back in the day. They know what people are doing, what content is getting the eyeballs, what features are being used, etc.

    They cannot justify adding in features just to have them that no one is really using. Especially if it is going to cost a lot of money (both in time and actual money) to develop it. Especially since they'd have to do it twice for each generation of console they support since XBox and PlayStation have different implementations.

    And it is not like World of WarCraft where they can develop something that makes the feature more accessible like LFR did for raids in WoW.

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