PVP? Whoever has higher level and better items wins. Why would you PVP? Maybe if I click on you fast enough and push the potion button faster, I can win?
I never understood why anyone would be upset about item hacks and cheats in Diablo. It's not WoW. It's a single player game. So what if I have max everything? I think there was a Penny Arcade about this, but I can't find it.
"Who am I cheating, satan? Fuck him!"
Isn't a lot of Diablo, the PVP/Griefing and playing multiplayer? If I get the game it will probably be solely to play with other people..
So only play with those people. You can ignore the rest of the people.
PVP? Whoever has higher level and better items wins. Why would you PVP? Maybe if I click on you fast enough and push the potion button faster, I can win?
Eh, there's a lot more to it than that if you're playing in a relatively balanced game. RPG PvP can actually get a little sport-like at the high end, especially as you aproach the point where the best players all have access to all of the classes and all of the gear they could possibly want at the highest level.
Yea, I never understood PVP in D2, like Scott says, it was mostly who ever had the highest gear. Skill really didn't have much to do with it.
I'm with Scott on the "cheating" in a single player game. What does it matter? If I'm playing Skyrim and use god mode to clear it, how does that affect in any way your enjoyment of the game?
So only play with those people. You can ignore the rest of the people.
The always-online DRM is a dealbreaker for me.
In D2 at least, some of the items were rare enough that an individual player may never see them drop. And they might be critical to a build. If there was a working economy, you could trade things you don't need for things you want. In D2, that wasn't realistic because the "haves" had a billion everything, and the "have-nots" had nothing of relative value to trade to them.
Certainly, the most fun I ever had in the game was isolated from the world economy playing with my friends. But the economy could be a fun and cool thing too, potentially.
The always on DRM doesn't really mean much to me as I see the game as an inherently multiplayer game that you can potentially play solo (same as WoW really).
PVP? Whoever has higher level and better items wins. Why would you PVP? Maybe if I click on you fast enough and push the potion button faster, I can win?
In D2 at least, some of the items were rare enough that an individual player may never see them drop. And they might be critical to a build. If there was a working economy, you could trade things you don't need for things you want. In D2, that wasn't realistic because the "haves" had a billion everything, and the "have-nots" had nothing of relative value to trade to them.
Then just cheat the same way and get the item you want. The very idea of an economy in a primarily single-player or localized multiplayer game is ludicrous.
... By their own admission, Diablo isn’t not really focused around a PVP experience; if you’re playing with someone who has duped items or whatever, all it means is that you will be more likely to defeat Satan. Without a means to gain advantage over another, “cheating” as a concept becomes substantially more opaque. Who is the cheated party, precisely? Satan the Devil? Fuck him, who cares.
Who is being cheated? This is the part of the movie where, in a series of retrospective realizations cut with you looking at your own face in the rearview mirror, you come bit by bit to the heart of it. The person you are cheating is Blizzard, Blizzard in the aggregate, with your attempts to interfere with their digital marketplace. You mustn’t play offline or goof around with your files or any other naughty business because they are endeavoring to transform your putative ownership into a revenue stream. ...
See, you keep calling Diablo 2 a single player/localized multiplayer game. But Battle.net wasn't really. The game involved both the instances of the game, and the huge number of people you could potentially instance with for a game.
As for why to not cheat, being a poor middle-school kid, if I had cheated I likely would have been easy to spot and been banned. And when I was banned, I likely would not have had the money to buy another CD key. Ad-nauseum.
I still insist, Diablo I was a single-player game with the ability to go online and play it with people. Diablo II was a multi-player game with the ability to go offline and play it alone. The difference is simply one of perspective, but if you genuinely did not participate in the Battle.net version of the game then you didn't get to see the game within the same scope I did.
I think Rym summed it up well. All they other crap is just an excuse to slap shitty DRM on the game, and then act like they are doing you a favor. A perfect example of pissing down your back and telling you its raining.
It also occurred to me that everyone here is talking about open battle.net, not closed battle.net. Did none of you actually play Diablo II on battle.net?
Your characters are not stored locally on closed battle.net play. They are stored on Blizzards servers. There was actually a persistent in-game economy.
The game was still very trivially hacked for a long time (eventually they got it down to where the primary remaining issue was duping via latency issues).
Diablo 2 at least had Battle.net and Open Battle.net You would only get banned from real battle.net You could do whatever you wanted in open battle.net.
You guys are also probably too young to remember bnetd.
The problem with open battle.net is there was no risk for all the reward, removing a certain element of the interest in the game. And eventually, no access to various closed bnet bosses and such.
I was aware of Bnetd, but playing on a server with (for example) hundreds of players was vastly different from being on a server with tens of thousands.
See, you keep calling Diablo 2 a single player/localized multiplayer game. But Battle.net wasn't really. The game involved both the instances of the game, and the huge number of people you could potentially instance with for a game.
The vast majority of players played only with friends or cheated and ran around with other cheaters. There was almsot no reason to ever talk to another person unless you were already friends with them, so the cheating could NEVER affect you unless you went out of your way to play with strangers. Almost no one cared, then or now, about cheating.
The difference is simply one of perspective, but if you genuinely did not participate in the Battle.net version of the game then you didn't get to see the game within the same scope I did.
Most people who did cheated. Openly. That was more fun than grinding. You'd solo the game locally, and then rip around with duped items publicly. Those two modes of play probably accounted for 99% of the playerbase. The tiny minority who cared about "cheating" just played on the closed realms.
As for why to not cheat, being a poor middle-school kid, if I had cheated I likely would have been easy to spot and been banned.
On the open realms? Yeah, right. On the closed realms? Why didn't you just play there? How did cheating actually affect you?
I did play on the closed realms. I was under the assumption everyone played on the closed realms. Who wouldn't? But there was still rampant cheating and hacking of things involved for a very long time.
The problem with open battle.net is there was no risk for all the reward, removing a certain element of the interest in the game. And eventually, no access to various closed bnet bosses and such.
Here's what you just said.
"The problem with owning a Game Genie is there was no risk for all the reward, removing a certain element of interest in the game."
I did play on the closed realms. I was under the assumption everyone played on the closed realms. Who wouldn't? But there was still rampant cheating and hacking of things involved for a very long time.
Most people played on open realms because they didn't give a fuck if people cheated and had no interested in grinding anything out.
Most people played on open realms because they didn't give a fuck if people cheated and had no interested in grinding anything out.
Cite?
You are the first person I've encountered that has said that, and the first person I've met that didn't play closed preferentially actually.
You are the first person I've met that didn't play open.
I would actually wager that most Diablo 1 and 2 players back in the day didn't play closed or open. They played offline because they didn't have Internets.
Diablo I didn't have a closed. Playing offline because you can't play online would be another category. Of those that played online, I always recall the closed servers being packed with people at all times. There was no ladder on open.
All of the optional content blizzard created later in the games lifecycle was closed only. Who were they building that content for exactly?
What were all the item sellers doing? They weren't selling to players on open (lol). The millions of dollars of real money wasn't spent on open bnet items.
Most people played on open realms because they didn't give a fuck if people cheated and had no interested in grinding anything out.
Cite?
You are the first person I've encountered that has said that, and the first person I've met that didn't play closed preferentially actually.
Personal anecdotes entirely. ;^) I never knew anyone who "cared" about advancement or fairness or anything in Diablo II. The game was a single player game, and you'd go online to, at best, dick around for a few hours with people you already knew. If you wanted anything more than that, you played an MUD or an MMO instead.
Yes and no. Most of the time the ladders were a joke. A few specific ladders at certain era's were competitive. Did you know that they moved to a second level of player segregation for ladder characters? They operate in an economy of their own for ~6 months, then the ladder characters get moved to generic battle.net and a new ladder is created. Were you even aware of that mechanic? It sounds like Scrym didn't actually play the game during any of those stages.
I played on the closed bnet, did it for years. But I could have cared less if you or anyone else cheated, it didn't affect my game play one bit. If you had 100 dupped stones of jordan, didn't affect me. I keep hearing you act like D2 was an MMO, and I just never saw it like that.
Like I said earlier, the constant online isn't for our protection, its for them. Just another way to slip in shitty DRM and act like they are doing us favor by doing it.
Look at the hate they're getting from all the people who just want to solo the game or cheat. They'll monetize the latter.
What subscriptions?
Give it time. Watch their other games. They have two basic models now: subscription forever or free to play with DRM lockdown to force purchases. They need to extend both, and this is one step in a long road of acclimating players to the models.
Comments
The always-online DRM is a dealbreaker for me.
I'm with Scott on the "cheating" in a single player game. What does it matter? If I'm playing Skyrim and use god mode to clear it, how does that affect in any way your enjoyment of the game?
Certainly, the most fun I ever had in the game was isolated from the world economy playing with my friends. But the economy could be a fun and cool thing too, potentially.
The always on DRM doesn't really mean much to me as I see the game as an inherently multiplayer game that you can potentially play solo (same as WoW really).
As for why to not cheat, being a poor middle-school kid, if I had cheated I likely would have been easy to spot and been banned. And when I was banned, I likely would not have had the money to buy another CD key. Ad-nauseum.
I still insist, Diablo I was a single-player game with the ability to go online and play it with people. Diablo II was a multi-player game with the ability to go offline and play it alone. The difference is simply one of perspective, but if you genuinely did not participate in the Battle.net version of the game then you didn't get to see the game within the same scope I did.
Your characters are not stored locally on closed battle.net play. They are stored on Blizzards servers. There was actually a persistent in-game economy.
The game was still very trivially hacked for a long time (eventually they got it down to where the primary remaining issue was duping via latency issues).
You guys are also probably too young to remember bnetd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd
I was aware of Bnetd, but playing on a server with (for example) hundreds of players was vastly different from being on a server with tens of thousands.
"The problem with owning a Game Genie is there was no risk for all the reward, removing a certain element of interest in the game."
You are the first person I've encountered that has said that, and the first person I've met that didn't play closed preferentially actually.
I would actually wager that most Diablo 1 and 2 players back in the day didn't play closed or open. They played offline because they didn't have Internets.
All of the optional content blizzard created later in the games lifecycle was closed only. Who were they building that content for exactly?
What were all the item sellers doing? They weren't selling to players on open (lol). The millions of dollars of real money wasn't spent on open bnet items.
Look at the hate they're getting from all the people who just want to solo the game or cheat. They'll monetize the latter.
Like I said earlier, the constant online isn't for our protection, its for them. Just another way to slip in shitty DRM and act like they are doing us favor by doing it.