Well, I think you get back to the point of online-only vs. singleplayer. They claim that their creation of an Online-Only Diablo 3 has magically converted it into a brand-new, super-amazo game, but we keep finding little areas where it’s very evident that the new way of thinking also presents significant design and technical limitations. Goodbye modding, goodbye playing on the go, goodbye, well, pausing. I’m angry about the lack of pausing in the context of a larger swell of anger in general; Blizzard made a conscious decision that actively made the game worse than its predecessor.
There is absolutely nothing preventing them from adding a disconnected single-player element identical to what was in D2 aside from a desire to avoid the costs (both immediate, in dev time, and long-term, in lost RMT AH revenue), and I’m not exactly going to be sympathetic toward a company who are actively making one of my favorite game series worse so they can move a bigger profit margin.
Don’t misunderstand me: I get that they’re a company and that they’re not in the business of charity. But it doesn’t mean that I have to like, respect, or, sure as hell not, praise their decisions in that direction :)
I can definitely get behind reasoning like that. It was simply people moaning about the same issue over and over again, just for the sake of it, that was starting to grate on me :)
I do know that offline single player should be practically impossible with the engine they are using, given that a lot of the information is given to you/handled by the server rather then on your end ála an MMO (as far as I’m aware anyway, from anecdotal evidence gathered about the Beta. I could be completely wrong on that assumption). So yea, pretty much all your points about it are pretty valid.
Online in D2 is functionally equivalent. And that’s all I played. It does suck badly if all you want is to play offline single player, in which case you shouldn’t buy the game unless you’re willing to deal with it.
Yeah. It also seems to have moved towards a Guild Wars style skill system which had even less customization that early. But both games pick up a lot in that department mid and late game.
Gems can be found at levels 1-5, and with a maximum level of 14, the process of upgrading a gem all the way to the top should be a very long term project. If the current 3>1 upgrading ratio remains unchanged, then it would require 1,594,323 level 1 gems to make a single level 14 gem (3^(14 - 1)). To give you an idea how long this would take, just upgrading the gems that many times would take 1328 hours of nonstop clicking, assuming you could complete one upgrade per two seconds, that’s 55 days folks…
It does and I’m not defending the lack of pause. It’s stupid considering I’ve done nothing in my playthrough that needed online access (except DRM).
This is just stupid.
I hope you go to every thread in the Games forum where people discuss design decisions and post “Just don’t buy the game PROBLEM SOLVED” since that works equally well on every issue.
What’s more tiresome is people trying to defend this as if it’s not only necessary but also to be expected. It’s kind of quaint that you find pause antiquated, but the fact that pretty much every single player game includes pause suggests that it is traditional convenience that works well.
I played Dialog 2 single player, and funnily enough, pause seemed to work quite well. I don’t expect pause in multiplayer , so bringing it up is either irrelevant or disingenuous. I also played a recent Blizzard game called Starcraft 2 that allowed me to pause in single player and not do so in multiplayer.
No pause on itself wouldn’t necessarily be a reason to not buy the game, but it certainly points to a set of assumptions and expectations about the game experience that seem at best narrow, and at worst rather obnoxious.
I want to cheat the life of me in D3, because I like having an uber-character. It’s just my sort of fun. I have a god complex.
But if I try to do any sort of memory editing b.net is going to ban me for life and then I can’t play my single player that I paid full price for.
Because some dunce decided that achievements are the godly relic of the precursors or something that everyone should care about, right?
Here’s where Blizzard’s games are headed: Massive Piracy, rogue authentication servers.
Rest in peace.
Actually I threw that as an example.
I don’t have a god complex, I simply enjoy god mode for the benefits of letting me do everything the game has to offer, see everything the game has to offer and not have to be bothered by chugging pots and not getting cornered and what not.
I understand that for some people the ‘tactics’ aspect is fun. But not for me, not in a dungeon crawler. I came to break skulls and wear sunglasses, and my shotgun is set to “fry alien scum”.
I play these games to consume the content and hoard sets, funny artifacts, combine clothing pieces onto cool looking attire and what not.
I guess there is kind of an off-hand dev quote about that, but I really hope they are not going to be that extreme. If there is any sanity in the world, at least a few higher levels should drop at higher difficulties.
The rogue servers will have to provide a lot more than authentication.
Is this a free-roaming Pirates!-style spinoff of the Mass Effect games?
Isn’t sitting and doing nothing, that is, a boycott, exactly what you want us to do? Or are you suggesting a proletariat uprising that storms the decadent bourgeois hive of Blizzard’s offices and indiscriminately slaughters innocent and guilty alike til Kotick’s head, still blinking and twitching, is raised high above us on your pitchfork?
Anyway, when you get to the top of that clock tower, be sure to Tweet us before taking your first shot.
Nope. What I am talking about is to both boycott and actively propagate all the negatives they create and the horror scenarios they’re bound to bring given the time to roam free and fester until their next stage(s) of commercial-control-dominance evolution.
No, it’s about having your rights to own a game you pay $100 or whatever denied.
Software as Service at a level whereas you’re paying premium price for a sub-premium LICENSE to use something SO LONG THEY"RE WILLING to let you use it.
Barred singleplayer experience and ability to tinker or reverse engineer (by the by, for USA this is anchored in law as your right).
And then some on top of that which is implied. These kind of draconian restrictions would’ve had killed the modding scene long ago were they there from the beginning, for instance.
Where there’s high demand there’ll be those who bear the flag.
