Gaming

Absolutely detest them. I still consistently play old games because they're a blast and make me remember when I was a kid. That won't happen for my kids with their games, as the servers will be long gone and close to zero companies are going to spend more time updating the game to not need a server. I'm an old man yelling at my lawn, but games went from trying to entertain to trying to suck every cent they can out of you.

One of my biggest enjoyments is hacking games up as well. You can learn about coding (set ammo to -1 - is it unlimited, 0, or game crashing). Sometimes it's fun to be a god after a stressful day. Sometimes my kids play with me and I don't want to have to tell them no, worry about them dying every couple seconds and getting frustrated, or having to drop it altogether.

I just want to buy a damn game and play it how it entertains me the most - not have to deal with server errors, not have to deal with 12 year olds screaming, not have to deal with people who have far more time than I do being 1000x better.

In the case of Diablo IV, I really think it needs to do more to earn its always online status. I’m hoping that future updates and things will bring more MMO-like features as I think it would be a perfect fit

In case of Diablo IV in my opinion Blizzard has a good track record of keeping game servers online for years and years.

That being said, the game does have some weird server hopping mechanic that you can't turn off, meaning it seems to switch servers while you're playing, which isn't always as seamless as you'd hope it would be. Also, at least for me, it sometimes selects servers with >100ms latency, which is quite noticeable of course.

Ironically I think GTAV did a pretty decent job of this - you can pause at any time during the single player, however I don't remember if it requires a connection to play single player mode.

Imo if a game has a single player mode, being online for it should never be a requirement.

I don't buy always online games. Period.

Very bad idea and I don't understand why it is becoming the norm. Let's say you want to play again Diablo 4 in a few years (probably because you will be taking care of your kid) but all the player base has disappeared. If Blizzard cuts the servers to save some money, you will not be able to play the game on an official instance, even if it is only single player. Let's say the servers won't shut down down, another issue remains. Users who want to play in public areas or when travelling won't be able to launch the game (rip steam deck users).

Personally it's never effected me but it feels like a really dumb decision made by ignorant suits. The fact that pirates get a better product than paying customers is pretty sad.

I try to avoid games with always online as much as possible but sometimes you don't have choice. If you want to play Diablo IV there's not much else you could do. But at least Diablo has some form of multiplayer. If you have a solely single player experience with always online, it's just bullshit. The DRM is only punishing players that pay for the game. If you insist to implement this kind of DRM then please go ahead but then you also have to run the servers forever. If you don't then why should I buy your game?

So I have a very specific dog in this fight. I am currently working on an RTS game for the recoil engine. One of my big requirements is the ability for direct hosting without the need of a central server. My biggest argument for this is the fact that if the server ever goes down or I get hit by a truck or anything like that, people can still directly host games.

Also I don't think lan parties should require a trip to a third party server just in order to have games with each other. I feel sometimes like I'm the only person who remembers back in the old days when we had giant lan parties and in a lot of cases there wasn't even really much in the way of internet access to them.

In my personal opinion, I feel like games as a service have done end users a disservice. There are so many games that I would love to go back and play but I can't because the servers don't exist or the developers made it so difficult to host your own servers that you need to jump through a million modding hoops just to make it so that you can actually play a game online with others.

What is really bad though is single player games that require an online connection. Witafits?

Concerning gaming with a newborn, you should also look for games that you can play with one hand, so you can hold the baby with the other. Europa Universalis 4 is a great game if you've got a kid who will only fall sleep while being held.

I almost exclusively play single-player games. I'm not sure I own one that is always online, since I pretty much always have WiFi on and wouldn't notice the difference, but I don't see why any of my games would have to be always online.

Doesn't matter to me one way or another, and it doesn't affect my purchasing decisions.

It has no place in single player games and turns me off from playing them. There's no real reason they exist other than removing the ability to use cheats (which should be allowed in single players games imo) to obtain items or boosts that are only available on their cash shop. It also ties in to the Game As a Service model which i've come to detest; usually because they have a constant stream of updates that tries to monopolize your free time, whereas i am the kind of player that can say "ok this is done".

Games that offer multiplayer in addition to single player, such as D4, should allow you to have a single player save that's offline, can be paused and anything goes.

I don’t love it, but I’ve found that it’s been less intrusive than I thought. Generally only feel it when the internet goes out. That said, I’ve got fairly good fiber internet, so I’m a bit privileged in this regard. We used to have absolutely horrendous rural internet and it sucked.

I started playing D4 two days ago and constantly try to pause the game when I need to give something else attention. It should also be easy to do when you’re alone in a dungeon. There are games that are online but let you pause when you’re alone (though I can’t remember which game I am thinking of right now)

My firewall is configured to block all programs by default. If a game refuses to open or function without internet and I can't find any workarounds it gets angry looks from me and I let it through. I get anxious when playing anything multiplayer so doing so saves me from having to interact with people if I accidentally trigger a multiplayer event or something. Also generally makes games launch faster.

Is there an offline crack yet? I would have assumed piratws would have for sure gotten that done