Diablo 3 news. It's an MMO.

[Sharp-kun]

Ultimately for me it comes down to "will I get a better game out of it". Given I have a decent connection (not that I think I need it given I played SC2 on a tethered phone while waiting to get the net in the new house) and the fact that this will reduce cheating I think I will. Even if not I'm really not fussed about needing to log in to a game that has lots of online functionality.

Now if the game was SP only and had nothing online based I might be a bit peeved, but this isn't such a game.

[Slacker]

Who's going to play Diablo 3 and not play with their mates, either co-op through the campaign or in the PVP mode?

My wife, actually, for one. 95% of her Diablo 2 time (and she still plays semi-regularly) is single player, and she uses one of those mod tool thingers to manage her characters and all of the items they have. Will she still play D3? Probably. Will she enjoy it as much as she does Diablo 2? Probably not. As it is, I have to keep an XP machine in the house so she can fulfill her addiction, and given the capabilities of our two computers, it's actually starting to have an impact on performance.

Mind you, she just likes this genre-she plays Titan Quest, Torchlight, and the like as well. But I don't think she's going to be thrilled by what's happening here.

[RazorOutlaw]

Even if not I'm really not fussed about needing to log in to a game that has lots of online functionality.

This. I was annoyed at first about having to login to play Starcraft but I was impressed with the new Battle.net features. Selecting matches, keeping people's accounts "straight" (no good players with new accounts to fool new players, although I suppose it could be done), as well as a "party" system for joining matches as a team. It's almost like they took a page from WoW/other MMORPGs on how to get groups of people to communicate easily with one another.

[Thanas]

Even if not I'm really not fussed about needing to log in to a game that has lots of online functionality.

This. I was annoyed at first about having to login to play Starcraft but I was impressed with the new Battle.net features. Selecting matches, keeping people's accounts "straight" (no good players with new accounts to fool new players, although I suppose it could be done),

Nearly every progamer out there has at least one smurf. Google NaNiWa and MeatyOwlLegs for one rather famous example.

[RazorOutlaw]

*sigh* That was an assumption I had made at my start of playing SC2 a year ago or so, because of the CD key and requirement for email. I figured it wouldn't have happened at all, or a great deal less, compared to the first Battle.net used in Starcraft. I spoke in ignorance, my bad.

[Thanas]

You are partially correct though, people who want to smurf have to buy a new game.

[Darmalus]

Unless the game gives extra/new content for multiplayer (like Portal 2 did with coop maps) I don't really see any reason to treat it as anything but a single player game. If it has actual levels or bosses that require 2 or more people working together to beat, and not just single player with the same bad guys with more HP, I'll give multi a shot.

No real opinion on real money auction houses, I don't normally participate in in-game economies to any significant degree anyway.

[Stark]

Hahaha, SP-only players won't enjoy D3 because of things that happen invisibly in the background! Let's not forget the actual play elements or anything. D2 is so superannuated it's defeated on featureset by indie games, so Blizzard would have to try pretty hard to fuck D3 up from a play perspective. Hyperventilating about how silent online features will ruin someone's enjoyment is nothing but an example of why Blizzard ignores you.

As far as I know, D3 steals a great many q diabl genre updates and contributes several of it's own. People expecting a re-skinned D2 will probably be disappointed.

[Argosh]

Well looks like another game I was interested in that I won't be playing... sigh.

Seconded or whatever ...

[weemadando]

OK. Stuff that I have heard that makes me WAY more excited.

No more attribute points. No more skill points. No more trees etc.

As you level, you unlock skills. You can choose to have a certain amount of active skills on your character and you can re-spec at any time apparently. There's a lot of detail about it out there, but it sounds like a way fucking better system than the previous style.

[Stofsk]

I'm sorry but it's not an rpg unless I can game the system's stats to create a min/max monster.

[weemadando]

I'm sorry but it's not an rpg unless I can game the system's stats to create a min/max monster.

But this allows you to follow min/max munchkining as patches nerf/buff various skills for your class.

[bilateralrope]

Looks like they aren't charging for multiplayer. Good. Big sigh of relief here. Must be connected to the internet to play singleplayer though? Bad move. Terrible move. What about those of us that get random drops in connectivity a couple times an hour? Oh well sucks to be me? I'd definitely get the crack to "fix" that issue as soon as it came out.

Cracking it sounds like it will be a lot of work because there will be lots of server side processing. Blizzard has been running WoW for long enough to know that any processing done on the client machine will be hacked if it's worth hacking. If the client does anything beyond telling the server what to attempt and displaying the results the server gives it, then it is an opening for people to farm stuff faster than by botting alone.

This won't be a quickly cracked game, as there is too much code running on the server that will need to be reverse engineered from the output the server gives, then duplicated.

[weemadando]

Also stuff like not going - Woo! MAD LOOT FOR MY CLASS! Wait, no it buffs a different skill...

And apparently there'll be item, skill and skill augment (runes or similar) combinations which will allow for a lot more synergies, even in a solo character. Not sure what to make of that tidbit yet, but it sounds interesting.

[Executor32]

Depends if it can be easily cracked if the character data etc is being stored server side. It likely won't be a simple case of disabling the "online check", you'd need to duplicate the BNet functionality locally.

Other games snag the authentication traffic (in this case, it'd need to be the character data too, depending on how they do it) and re-route it to a service on the local machine. If its doable it'll be done. I'm pretty sure (as Blizzard clearly is) that losing a few fatties who insist on being able to play on a laptop in a basement during a nuclear war is worth the far more robust DRM and the percentage they doubtless take off AH sales. Those that buy it will get a game that isn't horribly ruined by cheaters and lets you game with whoever you want without having your shit ruined; oh no, the humanity.

I thought some Steam games kept saves etc online anyway?

Every Steam game I have that supports saves on Steam Cloud stores the savegames locally, then syncs them to the Steam servers when you exit the game. It also syncs them to your PC when launching the game, first checking timestamps so (for example) your local savegame isn't overwritten by an older cloud save if the sync failed on last exit.

Also, regarding Ubi Soft games: I hated the idea at first, almost to the point that I would boycott them, but I really liked AssCreed so I bought 2 and AssBro anyway. I hasn't been as bothersome as I had expected, with disconnects being almost nonexistent. I still think it would have been better to just use Steam instead of creating their own mediocre online service like every publisher is trying to do these days.

[weemadando]

From beta details given by Rock Paper Shotgun, it has been determined that I won't be playing Diablo 3.

Why? No ability to pause, even in singleplayer as it acts like a MMO even when no one else is connected to your game.

Kids don't respect gaming time and will often have great timing (as anyone who's played BC2 multi with me will attest). And so, without being able to pause, especially in a Diablo game where dying holds some serious penalties usually - playing this just got a lot more aggravating.

Pity, as the more I read about the skill/progression system the more I want to play.

[weemadando]

From beta details given by Rock Paper Shotgun, it has been determined that I won't be playing Diablo 3.

Why? No ability to pause, even in singleplayer as it acts like a MMO even when no one else is connected to your game.

Kids don't respect gaming time and will often have great timing (as anyone who's played BC2 multi with me will attest). And so, without being able to pause, especially in a Diablo game where dying holds some serious penalties usually - playing this just got a lot more aggravating.

Pity, as the more I read about the skill/progression system the more I want to play.

[Lord Baal]

Crappies decision ever ever!

It's really sad. A friend of mine will certainly try to jump out of his third floor window as soon he hears this (if he hasn't already), I'll have to check out on him when I get out of work. I never was really into Diablo. I think Diablo 2 was fine but not my thing. Both of them plus expansions where my buddy's life however. For Diablo 3 he showed me several videos and talked about it not end until convincing me to buy a copy and play with him, now that would happen only if hell freeze over.

[wautd]

Is that set in stone though? It's beta after all. It would suck if they implemented that shit in the final game.

[Stofsk]

Starcraft 2 has a pause function for games. Granted that your opponent can always unpause without your cooperation. But you can also play multiplayer games against nobody except the AI, and the AI won't unpause on you. So a game like Starcraft that's 90% multiplayer still has a pause function, and it won't log you out if you're idle, while a game like Diablo that has a strong solo presence doesn't? It makes no sense. Hopefully Blizzard fixes this. I think a lot of fans also just want an offline mode, with offline characters. The more I think about it, the more I think having such a mode would make a lot of sense.

Plus the visual style and gameplay that I've seen hasn't really grabbed me.

[Stark]

Other q diabls have had no pausing, but they also had robust autosaving and drop in/out stuff, so it didn't matter.

[weemadando]

I guess we'll see how D3 ends up handling it.

If I have to deal with a kid who's just had a nightmare in the middle of a big encounter where I stand to have a gold/XP penalty for dying, not to mention the inconvenience of an otherwise avoidable corpse-run, then that's a disincentive.

[Stark]

It'll depend on how it handles re-entering the game. Even if you don't lose anything, having to lose all your progress into a dungeon would be captain lame.

[Molyneux]

I love how game companies today love to ignore people with spotty Internet connections, because apparently we don't exist, or don't buy games or something.

Well, fuck Blizzard. I didn't buy SC2, and I won't buy D3. Requiring an internet connection for a single-player game is absolutely a deal-breaker for me.

[Vendetta]

I guess we'll see how D3 ends up handling it.

If you can town portal as easily as you can pause, it probably won't matter, you just TP to a safe location if you need to step away.
Sacred 2 had no pausing, and it was quite easy to just zone to somewhere safe by teleporting there if you had to.