1721

and the rune, since rune change skills.

1722

“You can play it by yourself” is the very definition of “not a multiplayer game.” And “market and chat and trading” are not gameplay. They are ancillary functionality that are only important if you are playing with other people.

Well we can certainly agree that you, and other gamers only interested in playing a single-player game, did not ask for Blizzard to make Diablo into a multiplayer game (albeit one in which they won’t stop you from never interacting with another soul). But game developers are not required to make the game you “ask for.” God, if that was the case, they’d have stopped making Call of Duty about four versions ago because I sure as hell don’t want another one.

Yes, but the people who bought the last four Call of Duty games did ask for them to keep making more Call of Duty games. Blizzard certainly is not required to listen to their customers, existing or potential. But taking customer feedback into account is a winning strategy, even if they ultimately decide not to go with it. Since they just announced this particular item two days ago, I’m not sure that they had that feedback on this issue beforehand.

Yes. There are games that have single-player offline modes and also online multiplayer functionality. What I’m saying, the argument I’m trying to make here, is that Blizzard chose not to make one of those. That is as opposed to saying “they made one of those, and then required you to be online for DRM reasons.” That’s what the Ubisoft DRM is - offline games that require you to be online just to make sure you don’t pirate it. Blizzard is requiring you to be online because the game is architected like an MMO (all the character storage, item transactions, and other important interactions are handled on their server and the client is untrustworthy).

Nobody is suggesting in any way that they could not have made it with a separate offline-playable single player mode. They chose not to. They made it an online multiplayer-only game, because in their view, the full enjoyment of the game can only come from those features which require persistent access to the game and other players.

You disagree, and that’s totally fine. But it doesn’t mean that what they implemented is a base DRM ploy, like requiring you to be online to play Assassin’s Creed or Driver. They built a legitimate online game - which just happens to not be what you wanted them to make.

Well, first of all, the Ubisoft DRM came packaged with a service called UPlay, which does a bunch of functional things like cloud saving and…um…stuff that I ignored because none of it requires the always on connection to implement nor justifies requiring it. Similarly, Blizzard has not as far as I know implemented anything that could not have existed independently of an offline singleplayer mode, so they do not justify the always-online requirement.

Secondly, I will acknowledge that there is a difference in construction between Ubisoft’s DRM (which is a separate wrapper around a fundamentally offline game), and Blizzard’s assumed methods with Diablo III, where it’s safe to guess that a lot of game code will be executed remotely. In practical end-user terms, however, they have a virtually identical effect, and it could and should be avoided. Their motives don’t matter, because the result is the same either way.

1723

6 active skills and 3 passives.

Runes are where people are going to differentiate themselves, I think.

1724

Yeah, I had forgot about the runes, but the active skills can only be swapped out of combat and in combat you can only use 3 skills (the ones on your action bar).

1725

I’d expect additional classes to come with a major expansion. Five at launch is quite okay, I think, with the boost of a couple more 12-18 months later. Considering it’s the differentiation between characters that gets me to replay, I’m all for more class variety. Loot differences (along with their runes) are a given, but character abilities are what set them apart.

1726

So Guild Wars is not, then, a multiplayer game.

1727

Guild Wars is a multiplayer game that happens to have bots that substitute for other people if you’re desperate. I don’t think it’s actually possible to accomplish anything with a single character for more than a zone or two at the very most. And they only introduced bots that were even halfway competent in the third major boxed release.

1728

So whether it’s single or multiplayer depends on a difficulty factor?

Quake 3 is a multiplayer game. You can play it by yourself, against bots, but that’s not really the design intent. I did that quite a lot, so I can understand the Diablo fans that want to play Diablo by themselves, even though I think that’s kind of crazy because it’s so much more fun with friends.

If, back in the day, Quake 3 was the exact same game (multiplayer with optional bots) but iD software had integrated a friends list, with drop-in drop-out to their games, and cross-game chat with other iD software games, and the ability to look up your player stats and achievements and stuff on the web and build on those from any computer you have Quake 3 installed on, and to install Quake 3 on as many PCs as you feel like (because hey, you’re logging in), and so on and so forth… would it be okay if they required a persistent internet connection? Would we say “that’s just DRM” or would we say “they made an online-only multiplayer game, but they’re not going to stop me from logging in and playing it by myself.”

How about Quake Live? It’s just Quake 3, really. The same game we played offline (if we wanted) years ago. But it’s played in a browser and requires a persistent connection. Is that just DRM? Or is an online-only multiplayer game, that you can choose to play by yourself?

Functionally, Diablo 3 works like WoW, from all appearances. You have a dumb client. All your characters, and every shred of gold it picks up and every skill it earns and every monster it kills and so on…all handled on the server. Your client software is there to paint pretty pictures and make neat sounds and stuff.

This is a lot different than, say, Assassin’s Creed. It had “cloud saves” in that the game played entirely on your PC, the game was saved to your PC, and then that saved game was copied up to a cloud server.

I fully understand the complaint of “they didn’t make a single-player offline mode!” but I think that is quite distinct from saying “they just made the same game with always-connected DRM!”

1729

I beaten all 3 expansions with bot companion.

You can use a skill that rebound damage to beat the last boss in eye of the north, super easy.

Also League of legend is a single player game since you can technically play bot games 24/7.

1730

Just an FYI: There is a new version of the system survey program that Blizzard wants you to download, run, and submit so they get your system specs. You have to run the new version to be eligible for the Diablo beta.

1731

Is fun, because that was exactly the idea of Carmack for his “Quake World”.
QuakeWorld was released as much less than that, but was still very good, with user made mods like CTF and Team Fortress.

1732

It’s not about difficulty. Guild Wars is a game that’s clearly designed with one player per character in mind, and similarly designed (in the PvE sections) with multiple characters required for progression. (The PvP is obviously multiplayer.) The fact that you can substitute AI-controlled characters for players doesn’t make the design a singleplayer one. Similarly, Quake 3 is a clearly and explicitly PvP-based game that happens to allow you to substitute AI for human players. Insofar as it supports play exclusively with bots, it should probably allow that mode to run offline. (And did, I’m sure.) But ultimately, it’s a multiplayer game and most of the reasons a forcible online requirement is bad for singleplayer don’t apply to multiplayer, which already has most of those drawbacks simply inherent to the multiplayer model.

Diablo 3, on the other hand, if it is anything like the past Diablo games, and especially given that the developers specifically assure us that it can be played by oneself, is almost certainly not designed around multiple PCs, but rather scales to accept them when they are present.

I understand the difference between Diablo 3’s architecture and the Ubisoft version of affairs. I even brought it up myself. But my point is, was, and remains that whatever technical behind the scenes differences they may have, the negative end result is the same. And they did not need to do it that way.

1733

I never said it wasn’t possible to beat the game with bots. Just that they are substituting for human players in the design. Same goes for League of Legends.

1734

Which by your definition, is, in fact, a single player game. We can also say “Diablo 3 is a multiplayer game where you can shun all other people on the server if you’re desperate”, which is the same as what Diablo 2 closed battlenet was. It was, btw, because of immunities, difficult to beat Diablo 2 Hell going solo, and incredibly hard to hit level 99.

The PvP is obviously multiplayer.

It is here too.

Are you basically crafting your definition of “Multiplayer game” based on the end goal of proving your point?

1735

I really liked this quote, and I thought you should know that.

1736

I would disagree with that. The market and trading is gameplay. Is it a large enough proportion of the gameplay to make Diablo primarily a multiplayer game if you play single player? Probably not. Will the market and trading be so integral as to put the single player gamer at a significant disadvantage such that they will have trouble playing the game without it? Probably not.

However, I agree with what it seems like you’re trying to get it. Games have a focus and the focus tends to drive the design. League of Legends probably had to take into consideration bots when designing their abilities, but the driving assumption overall, is that people will be playing with human players as it’s advertised as a competitive online game.

What’s the “focus” of Diablo 3? Blizzard has generally targeted broader audiences with their games so the game itself is flexible enough to work in a variety of setups. My guess is Blizzard has spent as much time refining the scaling of gameplay for one player as with small group play which would make Diablo 3 both a single player and multiplayer game.

Because of that, any claims to the “pure” or “true” experience of Diablo 3 is mostly rhetoric because it will have been designed to work roughly as well alone as with a group.

1737

This is something that’s changed over time with Guild Wars. At launch, the bots had ok AI and alright abilities. I don’t think you could fill a party with bots either at launch. Each player was limited to bringing two bots iirc. Party size is 6 right? You might have been able to complete the game with bots, but groups of human players were the primary design consideration given the state of the bots and their functionality.

As the game progressed, bots got overhauled with the PVE experience (Nightfall) and they became much more competent with better abilities (Heroes +later patches). Now, with improved AI, you can pay (or at least I think you can) to use any of your own leveled characters as bots and I believe you can fill your party with bots (unlike at launch).

Clearly, Guild Wars has seen an evolution of its focus and what role bots (basically single player gameplay) plays in their game. So regardless of what you personally could achieve in the game, there can still be an overall focus or thrust to design in such a way to assume other human players will more likely be present.

Edit: Here’s Nightfall, which introduced Heroes via the wiki

The addition of Heroes has also made the game similar to single player RPGs, as each Hero has their own side quests the player can complete if they choose. Depending on which Hero you bring on quests, they make different comments on the current situation, whether remarking about ease of enemies during battle or random comments while standing around. Heroes also allow more freedom when playing as a single player with only computer controlled party members since they can be given more commands than ordinary henchmen and their skills can be tailored to specific situations. The addition of commands and customization makes many challenges that would have required other human players without Heroes possible. However, although the maximum party size is eight, the maximum number of heroes that each player may have in the party at any one time is three[citation needed]. This helps to ensure that the game is not made too easy for more experienced players who could otherwise have been able to create an unbeatable all-hero party. The hero system has also led to many Guild Wars players highly recommending Nightfall as a good starter campaign for newcomers to the game, as it encourages more strategic thinking and also makes playing PvE more straightforward (as especially in the earlier stages of the game, heroes may be of a higher level than henchmen and offer a better degree of survivability).

I know Prophecies had AI party members at launch, and it looks like party size is 8 not 6. I mis-rememebred. I’m pretty sure there was a limit to AI party members at launch, but perhaps I’m mis-remembering that too. But the bolded section implies that Prophecies was originally designed with human players in mind in groups and Heroes (evolving the hencmen system) changed that focus.

1738

GW these days is an excellent massively singleplayer game. You can literally do everything in PvE with the bots. Okay, some of the endgame content might be tricky, especially in hard mode, but ppl have actually done it. Kinda lacks the headroom afforded by dozens of levels and hundreds of magic items, though.

1739

Thats the most convincing argument I’ve heard yet on this subject. Its chilling to think what might happen if this kind of DRM becomes industry standard.

Yes I know, its just super-good-guys Blizzard doing it, not an industry standard. But Half Life 2 has already demonstrated how a popular title by a respected developer can set a new DRM standard that gets picked up by many others once its proven that the community will swallow it.

Tony

1740

MMOs get shut down because their playerbase has declined to a fraction of what it once was, and there aren’t enough ppl to justify the effort/cost/time to keep the server going. IOW, you’re only affected if you’re one of the small number of diehards who refuse to move on like everybody else.