While I don't condone DDoS attacks, the only reason for D4 to be online-only is monetization IMO: Blizzard wants to sell cosmetics, so people have to see other people wearing them. There is little gameplay benefit from being an MMO-lite.
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Probably all sorts of datamining regarding the way people play also. Can't do that so easily if people are playing offline.
Brilliant insight. They probably are tracking metrics on what will encourage people to buy stuff the most too
Activision owns patents on the following:
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A system that tracks what store items you might be interested in, and places you in matches with high-skilled players who own that item, making you associate the item with high skill
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A system that places you against lower-skilled opponents immediately after you bought an item, making you associate making a purchase with being better.
From here to "they want you to look at other players and how expensive their shit is" is only one step. Honestly at this point I'm even surprised they're not faking it entirely, making other players just happen to be wearing expensive skins on your screen even if the actual account hasn't bought that. It's not like you can check anyway.
Bloody hell this is some nefarious brain hacking type stuff.
Indeed. It also has the inherent side effect of making the game pay to win, because if you don't pay you get put in hard matches against the skilled people who paid, and if you do it puts you against weaker opponents. This is why micro transactions should be banned straight up, even if they do not impact gameplay. Belgium had the right idea.
I experienced this first hand playing wow. The team will straight up send out email surveys asking if players would be willing to pay x for y service with different people getting different prices. They calculate these things to extract as much money from the dedicated fans as possible. I went back to playing the private servers.
I came to the same conclusion as you: why would people buy their stuff if they could just run an unlocker script or edit a config file to give that stuff to them? It's basically malicious DRM
All DRM is malicious, and DRM is why not to buy. Plenty of other games that you can buy and also own.
This one is hard for me to have an opinion on.
Loot rolls need to be controlled by the server, or else people will just exploit all that stuff.
Diablo doesn't have a lot of mechanics that really need players to interact with each other, but games like that and WOW are entirely based around gear grind. All accomplishment requires players to have a level playing field or players just won't want to play. It's just wierd like that.
If people want an offline game, they should buy an offline game. It's not that smart to buy an always-online game and then complain about it.
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That was probably the intention of the DDoS attack. Screw always-online singleplayer games.
Do you know if there's any statement or if it's known who did this?
I'm a bit wary of their DDoS claims. This happened during their Battle.net sale (which would increase traffic) and during the outage their CS was telling people to try multiple times (which is a great way to hammer the servers).
It's likely they just couldn't handle the load, or ran into the thundering herd problem, and just claimed ddos because they didn't know better.
People are still buying games from Blizzard? It's like everybody forgot what a terrible company it is.
Doesn't matter. You can rape children and murder an entire bus of puppies. If you're releasing a new version of everyone's favorite thing, you're immediately forgiven.
That's the society we live in. "my entertainment and desires above all else!"
Look, it's a shitty version of a game I loved 20 years ago. Rape all the kids you want, just please let me have diablo 4!!!
This sadly works for people these days.
A mix between lower expectations and "I have better things to do than (trying to) destroy a company because of a single-player mode that does not exist."
Forced online is literally the only reason my husband and I didn't buy this game. We can't be the only ones and they're definitely missing out on a good chunk of money
I actually bought Diablo 4 during the downtime, and refunded it the next day when their support page was back up.
I find their claim of DDoS a bit dubious, and it's not like there aren't playbooks against DDoS. A 12 hour outage is insane either way.
Even if it was a DDoS, they're the ones that decided to make the game vulnerable to such attacks in the first place. Even if they had valid reasons (which I find suspect), actions have consequences.
Forced online is literally the only reason my husband and I didn't buy this game. We can't be the only ones and they're definitely missing out on a good chunk of money
If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend Grim Dawn.
This has never been a problem for Path Of Exile, but that is free to play.
I quit everything Blizzard after Starcraft 2, that game had so much down time, and although it did have an offline option, you couldn't get new technologies as rewards in the campaign, when servers were down. Making it kind of redundant to have the offline mode IMO.
You can call it a boycott, but a company gone bad, rarely turns back to good again.
Fool me once and all that.
Blizzard died for me when they started killing Hearthstone. I haven't regretted it since.
Blizzard died for me when Activision bought them and they became another victim to capitalism.
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Online requirement for single player content is insane.
It’s a dealbreaker for me, personally. I just won’t buy a game like that, no matter how much I want to play it.
Yup. Unless it's a multiplayer-only game, there's no reason to require an always-on Internet connection except to data mine you.
That's why I don't buy a bilzzard game until like 6-12 months after. its cheaper and actually finished. D3 launch was a fuckfest too.
I'm not exactly a fan of forced online games, but I decided a long time ago that any game that I couldn't download the server for wasn't worth 10¢ let alone how ever much they charge for it
Between always online games, and Starfield confirmed not having a physical disc release, I am weary for the future of gaming.
Don't worry.
At the end of the day, a good piece of art will always be the one thing that stays in people's minds.
Sure, "triple A" gaming might crash and burn if it's built on endless growth and monetization, but indie games will always be there.
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I don't buy games that don't have an offline mode.
I would not be surprised if they tried to make this a subscription offer.
but if they did that, how would they try and tempt you into buying Mtx by showing other whales with all the cash shop gear?
They spent money patenting for this shit after all.
an offline mode being available... would mean offline only characters that cannot be in seasons etc. i'd like the option.
but based on a lot of "hotfixes" they've applied so far..
it seems like a lot of the game is run purely server-side. so i guess its not possible without a large overhaul of some code.. which of course, i'm fine with. it just means more work from blizzard, and thus i doubt it'll happen anytime soon.
i got the game with a new gpu otherwise i wouldn't buy it. its not bad but requiring an internet connection is so stupid..
id much rather play anytime/place vs being able to see other players in town or whatever..
games like this (and rdr2) really need to add a single player mode that doesn't require internet, its really stupid that you can be locked out of basically a single player game because u don't have internet..
Path of Exile is online only as well. Diablo 3 however many years ago was online only too. This genre has been this way for a LONG time now. I understand people would like an offline mode but that fight should have happened 12 years ago if they really cared.
Simple solution, wait for someone to crack the game if it's not already and bam. Offline mode for your single player game
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