Diablo III Wild Speculation and Rumor Mongering Abounds

[Margalis]

Bias red flag which eliminates his objectivity.

No. Having a viewpoint is not bias or a lack of objectivity. Wanting to play single-player is no more "biased" than wanting to play multiplayer or wanting to do equal amounts of both.

[Amaron]

Ok I've been not paying as much attention but the blizz page has items up now.  Am I confused or did they mostly switch to a gay WoW style item system with a lot less randomness where ilvl = power?   Does this game even count as a diablo game anymore?

Edit: NM I was looking at "legendaries" which I guess are uniques.

[LK]

I don't see how it's stupid for Blizzard to take steps to prevent third party exploitation and control of its products while balancing the interests of its customers. They've been pretty firm in their stance that if you want to play with Blizzard's ball you need to do it their way because it is their servers, software, and information you are accessing. The alternative opens exploitable loopholes that is a step backward for the direction the games industry is heading towards. Let's put piracy aside, how about gold farmers, hackers, and other elements whose power in the game can disrupt the environment for everyone else? Unfortunately DRM and Always On is the future for persistent online economies like Diablo, something everyone is going to have to accept, but so is (hopefully) improved internet access for all, a futurist stance Blizzard has also adopted. Blizzard also takes great pains to make these types of necessary changes as painless to the end consumer as possible, unlike say Ubisoft and others. I'm still mad how shitty Dawn of Discovery's DRM was. Battle.net is light years beyond that.

Pause button may happen? That all depends if their engine and networks can support it. But as it stands the game was also pushed back to next year. For me I would rather Blizzard release the damn game first before I start bitching about what additional features a minority segment will benefit from and bloat the development time even further.

It boils down to control of experience and interaction. Blizzard is asserting far more, thereby reducing the consumers and their options for what they can do with the product.

[Amaron]

What?  Always-on DRM is going to stop hackers and gold farmers? 

[LK]

No... Always On will assist Blizzard with identifying and stopping abuse of its system. Yeah, it's going into Big Brother territory. I'd ask you: how they could monitor and police their userbase for misconduct?

I'm bored, preachy, and upset. So that means I should stop posting.

[Amaron]

No... Always On will assist Blizzard with identifying and stopping abuse of its system.

Abuse of what system?  Always on only matters in single player.  There is no system to abuse.

[Velorath]

Personally, hackers and gold farmers were a non-issue to me since I only played with people I knew.  Generally, outside of competitive games, I don't really give a shit if people are hacking to get better equipment, or buying gold from gold farmers.

[LK]

I think there may be some confusion that only playing the Beta could rectify. A player's data is on Battle.net, not saved locally. There is no seperate single player mode. You create a game with 1-4 players on Battle.net. Any action that takes place in that game updates the player's saved data on the network, which is subject to interaction with the global economy through the Auction House or other players, because everyone is on Battle.net: the Always On part.

[Amaron]

I think there may be some confusion that only playing the Beta could rectify. A player's data is on Battle.net, not saved locally. There is no seperate single player mode. You create a game with 1-4 players on Battle.net. Any action that takes place in that game updates the player's saved data on the network, which is subject to interaction with the global economy through the Auction House or other players, because everyone is on Battle.net: the Always On part.

No I know what always on is.   I don't understand how you think this has anything to do with gold farming or hackers.   If the option was someone playing by themselves with their data on their own hard drive and no internet then it wouldn't matter if they gold farmed and nobody would hack them for their single player save files.

[Ingmar]

It's a circular argument. The connection is always on because 'single player' still participates in the AH so you have to have the connection always on to stop them from duping and getting that stuff into the AH.

Ultimately it comes down to a design decision, not an anti-hacking decision. They decided there would be no separate single-player mode, it all stems from that.

[Amaron]

Let's be more clear:

The alternative opens exploitable loopholes that is a step backward for the direction the games industry is heading towards. Let's put piracy aside, how about gold farmers, hackers, and other elements whose power in the game can disrupt the environment for everyone else?

I'm talking about this.  First lets define the actual alternative:  A person playing the game in single player mode with no interaction in MP at all.   I want to know what Lorekeep thinks the alternative is where we enter some weird situation where Blizzard's property is abused.  He makes it sound like they're only being "fair" for protecting themselves (from things besides piracy).

From what?  People haxoring their single player game?   That would only be a problem if people could play single player and then go online with the data.   Which is a problem they solved in diablo 2 over a decade ago!

[Malakili]

Let's be more clear:

The alternative opens exploitable loopholes that is a step backward for the direction the games industry is heading towards. Let's put piracy aside, how about gold farmers, hackers, and other elements whose power in the game can disrupt the environment for everyone else?

I'm talking about this.  First lets define the actual alternative:  A person playing the game in single player mode with no interaction in MP at all.   I want to know what Lorekeep thinks the alternative is where we enter some weird situation where Blizzard's property is abused.  He makes it sound like they're only being "fair" for protecting themselves (from things besides piracy).

From what?  People haxoring their single player game?   That would only be a problem if people could play single player and then go online with the data.   Which is a problem they solved in diablo 2 over a decade ago!

I think he is arguing that the more data is stored locally, the easier it is to hack the multiplayer regardless of whether or not the single and multiplayer modes are "separate."  Everyone knows D2 multiplayer (even closed) was chock full of hacked and duped items, if this is a way to limit that problem, I don't have a huge problem with it.

[Quinton]

It's a circular argument. The connection is always on because 'single player' still participates in the AH so you have to have the connection always on to stop them from duping and getting that stuff into the AH.

Ultimately it comes down to a design decision, not an anti-hacking decision. They decided there would be no separate single-player mode, it all stems from that.

I'd suspect it's more of a decision to leave even a good chunk of the single player game server-side as an anti-piracy measure.  Because, really, that's the most logical argument for requiring an Internet connection to play single-player -- anything else sounds like hand-waving to me.  And it's just about the most effective anti-piracy measure out there -- never give the "bad guys" the code that implements a meaningful chunk of gameplay and they don't have anything to copy.

[Rendakor]

Honestly, the "always on" system will do more to encourage gold farming, not discourage it. If there was a separate single player mode and someone wanted to cheat* they would just download a trainer/mod and do it, harming no one in the process. However since there is only an online mode, if someone wants to cheat they need to either pay on the RMT AH (for gold/items) or pay a third party site (for powerleveling). This creates a much higher demand for gold farmers, and a greater incentive to bot/exploit since the market is much larger than it would have been in a D2 style system.

The main reason Blizzard is doing it all online is so that they make the most of their cut of that RMT action.



*get more gold than they earned, level up faster, get a specific item, etc.

[Fabricated]

I'm just wondering how bulletproof Blizz's backend is. I mean, you're not playing Diablo 3 via your webbrowser - the client is in the hands of the enemy. What happens to legit players when Blizzard has to take the servers offline on a regular basis to fix exploits, or do rollbacks, etc?

[Maledict]

Um, surely the same as it happens with WoW and every other MMO? You'll probably have weekly maintanence to battle net and downtime announced across all games.

[Lantyssa]

Only moreso as the economic incentive is even higher.

[K9]

The manage to do it with Starcraft without any problems or complaints. I'm sure Diablo 3 will be fine.

[K9]

No release till 2012. 

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/3002244#blog

Ploy to get SWTOR to announce a date.

if it was, then it worked

I think they're taking Town Portal out of D3.

Yeah, no TP in D3.  I'm still kind of hoping they have a change of heart though, it'd be a big change to make at this point, ubt hell, if you are going to push the game back to 2012, give me a TP.

I saw a TP-like item called a portal stone in a beta video, is that relevant?

[Malakili]

No release till 2012. 

http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/blog/3002244#blog

Ploy to get SWTOR to announce a date.

if it was, then it worked

I think they're taking Town Portal out of D3.

Yeah, no TP in D3.  I'm still kind of hoping they have a change of heart though, it'd be a big change to make at this point, ubt hell, if you are going to push the game back to 2012, give me a TP.

I saw a TP-like item called a portal stone in a beta video, is that relevant?

If I understand correctly those are closer to hearthstones than town portal, but I'm not 100% sure.

[LK]

That's right, it's a design decision, one made to encourage certain things, one that helps prevent or fight certain others, and one that doesn't accommodate every potential customer out there, which is tragic but necessary. There's a lot of factors that go into their decision for Always On, good and bad, but that's the way it is.

Blizzard appears to be crafting the game to deliver a consistent game experience for all players with no distinction being made in the feature set between those that play solo and those that play with friends. A player has the right, at any time, to determine whether they want to play solo or with other players, which is an extremely important option to give to the player, and whose ability informs whether certain features are included or not.

For example I would consider complaints about the lack of modding in Diablo III to be completely unreasonable and stupid to an extreme.

[Azuredream]

Who cares about always on, they took away TP scrolls?  How am I supposed to sell my excess loot mid-dungeon?

[LK]

Stone of Recall replaces Town Portal. There's your "I need to idle someplace safe" feature.

Also: Cauldron of Jordan and Nephalem Cube.

Blizzard's got you covered, yo.

[Yegolev]

Who cares about always on, they took away TP scrolls?  How am I supposed to sell my excess loot mid-dungeon?

Item grinder?

[Azuredream]

I am at ease. Sorry, I need to catch up on all my D3 infos.

[Hawkbit]

I forgot about the Stone of Recall, thanks for keeping me sane.  That fixes my bitch about no pause. 

[Amaron]

I think he is arguing that the more data is stored locally, the easier it is to hack the multiplayer regardless of whether or not the single and multiplayer modes are "separate."  Everyone knows D2 multiplayer (even closed) was chock full of hacked and duped items, if this is a way to limit that problem, I don't have a huge problem with it.

Obviously I've no insider info but I think any competent coder would rate that possibility as extremely low.   The local system would need to be totally different.   The stuff they will use for client/server isn't going to be replicated on a players computer.   They'll have MP hooked up to professional database software and make sure every transaction passes ACID.   There is no need for any of that complexity on a system where security doesn't matter.  They would just write a normal save system for local and write a mini server meant for just one computer.

Closed.net was chock full of problems because they didn't know what they were doing from a security standpoint really.   Same problem UO had.  It'll still have problems but "always on" isn't going to prevent any of them.

That's right, it's a design decision, one made to encourage certain things, one that helps prevent or fight certain others, and one that doesn't accommodate every potential customer out there, which is tragic but necessary.

Again how about you give some actual examples of things it helps "prevent or fight".   I agree it's a valid design decision to allow SP people to go into MP no matter what.   Everything else you say sounds like a PR release to confuse the issue for the non professionals.

[LK]

Ok, I see what you're arguing.

Blizzard decided not to seperate the player base. They did not create an offline portion of the game for players who want to intentionally isolate themselves from the game network for whatever reason. Everyone is connected and subject to the same standards and rules as everyone else.

If someone was offline, not connected to the network, etc, they can do whatever they want. But I would be uneasy if I were Blizzard if someone was trying to reverse-engineer my product, regardless of their intentions.

[Fabricated]

Um, surely the same as it happens with WoW and every other MMO? You'll probably have weekly maintanence to battle net and downtime announced across all games.

Uh, there's no official real money AH in WoW. You don't wait to fix major exploits on the regular patch day when it can be used to mess up a real-money economy.

And since items can be worth real money; if people figure out an exploit to get rare items or mats and then SELL them by the boatload; what does Blizzard do? Rollback and deal with rolling back item purchases? Or just let it fuck up the economy?

[koro]

Um, surely the same as it happens with WoW and every other MMO? You'll probably have weekly maintanence to battle net and downtime announced across all games.

Uh, there's no official real money AH in WoW. You don't wait to fix major exploits on the regular patch day when it can be used to mess up a real-money economy.

And since items can be worth real money; if people figure out an exploit to get rare items or mats and then SELL them by the boatload; what does Blizzard do? Rollback and deal with rolling back item purchases? Or just let it fuck up the economy?

Ban everyone who ever bought or sold a version of the duped item, legit or not, and have Paypal steal the money freeze the accounts of everyone affected.  

[Lantyssa]

Cool idea.  Won't be long before no one can play D3.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

So what do you think: do you purposefully invite known hackers into the beta, in the hopes that they will find exploits for you in advance of release, or do you assume they would just sit on them until things go live anyways, and attempt to reduce their access to your game?

Because "I would be uneasy if I were Blizzard if someone was trying to reverse-engineer my product..." I don't think there is a version of reality in which someone is not trying to hack this game, online-only or otherwise. Blizzard is presumably already as uneasy as they are going to be.

[Azazel]

The manage to do it with Starcraft without any problems or complaints. I'm sure Diablo 3 will be fine.

So.. does Starcraft 2 use "always on" DRM?

[Rendakor]

Starcraft 2 allows you to play the campaign without being online, you just can't earn achievements.

[caladein]

The manage to do it with Starcraft without any problems or complaints. I'm sure Diablo 3 will be fine.

And the other advantage of not having a local server-equivalent is that you can just hotfix things server-side without requiring a maintenance downtime or client patch.