Diablo III - It's official

[Grall]

TIt would be great if Blizzard made another type of ladder without real currency AH [like they'll do with hardcore mode]

I think what needs to be done is merge both auction houses so you HAVE to put a gold price for your item, always, even if you wish to sell for real money. If someone then buys your stuff for gold you can sell the gold for cash instead.

It also ensures there will always be stuff to buy for gold, so you won't be forced to use cash (which Blizzard will take an automatic cut out of) for that really rare super item you desire.

I really don't care about this - because I'm never going to buy clothes for my virtual doll for real money - but what surprises me about all this though is that it really opens the door for fraud, money laundering and tax evasion and other kinds of "underground economy" shady dealings or outright criminal activity. This auction house system is going to become hella exploited by credit card thieves, all kinds of fraudsters and drug dealers and other scumbags, and it's disappointing that Blizzard's opening this door for no other reason than greed. They're making money hand over fist already. They don't need shit like this.

The another problem is inflation, the are no gold/item sink mechanisms yet introduced

Sorry, wrong. There are many gold sinks in the game and Blizzard outlined some of them at last year's Blizzcon. Stuff like enchanting/transmuting items will cost gold, recovering gems from sockets, there may be gold costs associated with runing your skills, and so on.

if there wont be sink mechanisms, gold value will decrease really fast to the point where gold will so cheap that gold based AH will be completely worthless.

Blizzard thanks you for looking out for them, but they're already aware of this and have been since the D2 days where there was NO gold sink other than gambling (dying or ressing your mercenary doesn't really count, since it was a proportionally small cost, and gold being so incredibly plentiful.)

Its also strange that Blizzard hasnt said anything about guild/clan support

I guess they just don't have time to think/implement everything. After all, Diablo 2 didn't have a super unique monster called "Creeping Feature" for nothing, so I'm sure they wish to avoid repeating the same mistake again.

 

[KKRT]

Sorry, wrong. There are many gold sinks in the game and Blizzard outlined some of them at last year's Blizzcon. Stuff like enchanting/transmuting items will cost gold, recovering gems from sockets, there may be gold costs associated with runing your skills, and so on.

It not enough, economy like this needs somethings that will burn You gold and items all the time. Enchanting method from Torchlight is good base, but its not balanced, reprocessing good items should give really valuable crafting items/runes, crafting should be expensive and worthwhile and there should be something more, like potion/repair/teleport that will sink most of Your gold. I know how it works in EVE and CCP need too monitor ISK flow and prices all the time, they even have PhD Economist working full time on it and they modify drops, amounts of mining rocks, sov costs etc to make sure that ISK is stable - and all of this in economy, where there are many ISK/items/ships sinks.

Its really strange that Blizzard made 3 pages long FAQ about auction houses and didnt even mention gold/items sink methods.

 

[KimB]

Requiring a persistent online connection for a single-player game is just beyond the pale. What happens if, say, my router goes down and I lose my connection for five minutes? Or two hours? What happens if I'm traveling and don't have any internet?

Yeah, why the hell should I pay for a game that has such absurdly draconic DRM? This punishment of paying players has to stop, so yeah, there's no way in hell I'm going to pay for this game as long as it requires a persistent online connection.

 

[Man from Atlantis]

Gameplay footage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaXp1E0dVm8

http://translate.google.fr/translat....com/actu/zoom-diablo-iii-pc-A0000094868.html

 

[Grall]

This punishment of paying players has to stop, so yeah, there's no way in hell I'm going to pay for this game as long as it requires a persistent online connection.

I hear what you're saying, and I agree with you to a large extent. I can only assume Blizzard's rationalization for this requirement is that you're never actually playing offline even when you're playing single player - or so I believe anyway.

It would seem you're always on a game server from the time you log in to the time you exit the game, even if you never group up with other people. They say this is to limit the amount of cheating people can get up to, although the logical question is of course why the hell they should care wether people cheat in single player mode.


...Blizzard's preferred answer rather than pointing at this mechanic as an anti-piracy measure is of course that now you can seamlessly group up with others online at any time if you so choose, there's no longer any artificial disparity between offline single player mode and online multiplayer, which is a bit of a case of circular reasoning but I can see where they're coming from.

If you can transition between single player and multi at any time, and there's no protection against cheating in the single player portion of the game you run the risk of truly wrecking the game for all the multiplayers out there.

...Although this isn't really a sound and conclusive argument why there should not be a 100% offline-only single player version of the game. With always-online multiplay-capable single playing, modding goes out the window too along with cheating.

Pirates may still be able to crack and play the game offline though, we just don't know about that yet. Maybe there's a lot of obfuscated venus flytraps contained within the code that degrade the experience in subtle or not so subtle ways should someone try to circumvent the always-online DRM code...

 

[Dresden]

Gameplay footage

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaXp1E0dVm8

http://translate.google.fr/translat....com/actu/zoom-diablo-iii-pc-A0000094868.html

Fuck, that looks amazing. Especially those screenshots. As of now, it's not news to see a lot of the community complaining about the art direction. But I wonder, how many of those people will actually allow something like art direction impede their ability to actually play the game? It's been announced there will be no mod support, so any third party applications changing the lighting is no longer an option. So these people will have to deal. Or not play it. I'm an art major, although that may not be relevant in this scenario, and think the direction is amazing, albeit maybe not true to the first two games, but change can be good. One thing I've always admired is Blizzard's ability to produce fantastic level design and highly creative artistic direction, especially when utilizing color schemes.

 

[pcchen]

Pirates may still be able to crack and play the game offline though, we just don't know about that yet. Maybe there's a lot of obfuscated venus flytraps contained within the code that degrade the experience in subtle or not so subtle ways should someone try to circumvent the always-online DRM code...

I *guess* it's possible that some of the game logic are performed on the server. For example, it's quite possible that the server decides which random equipments drop from a monster. If you try to cheat with your own "equipment generator" you'll end up being caught because your local data would be inconsistent with server data.

Protection against a 100% offline mode would be much more difficult though, as there are even "fake" World of Warcraft server, so it shouldn't be that hard to make a "fake" Diablo 3 server.

 

[KimB]

I hear what you're saying, and I agree with you to a large extent. I can only assume Blizzard's rationalization for this requirement is that you're never actually playing offline even when you're playing single player - or so I believe anyway.

Yeah, that's pretty much a bullshit rationale. It's blatant copy protection. There is no value added here. It's simply Blizzard fucking paying players up the ass in an insane fear over piracy.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I personally don't mind the whole having to be connected to play thing, but understand that not all people can do that.

I think they should just put in an option where people can play single player offline mode but that absolutely NOTHING from offline mode can be imported into the online multiplayer/singleplayer.

So no trading, no auctions, no selling, etc. Reserve achievements, free DLC (other than patches to fix bugs etc.), special events, or whatever to online only mode. But at least allow people to dink around in vanilla single player if they don't have a connection.

And then periodically release free DLC that isn't available in offline mode to encourage people to go online.

Either way, this doesn't affect me one single bit so I'm not concerned.

Regards,
SB

 

[homerdog]

They say if you want to play the game while traveling, just play other games. But this is exactly the type of game I'd play if travelling.

 

[Man from Atlantis]

Blizzard Confirms No Eyefinity/Surround for Diablo III

It's a single-monitor only game, and that's because the game literally only pulls info from the servers for a specific distance away from the character for bandwidth reasons. The game is also built with those limitations in-mind: edges of maps don't extend way out.

Also, being able to see way out to the left or right of your character really wouldn't help that much. Triple monitor is cool for first/third person where you're getting a larger peripheral view, but in a fixed isometric camera it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

 

[spacemonkey]

Maybe there's a lot of obfuscated venus flytraps contained within the code that degrade the experience in subtle or not so subtle ways should someone try to circumvent the always-online DRM code...

That's interesting. Have there been games in the past that have done this?

 

[spacemonkey]

Yeah, that's pretty much a bullshit rationale. It's blatant copy protection. There is no value added here. It's simply Blizzard fucking paying players up the ass in an insane fear over piracy.

...and by doing so, encouraging piracy. I'd like to know their rationale for making a decision like this. Maybe they know that most gamers are sheep who will take whatever DRM is pushed down their throats. And those few who protest aren't worth the bother.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

That's interesting. Have there been games in the past that have done this?

There have, but it's worked very badly, because you end up with the internet forums full of people who loudly proclaim how buggy it is, putting off other buyers.

And in the end, the pirates manage to patch it out either straight away or after a couple of tries, so you just generate a lot of bad publicity without preventing piracy anyway.

It a nice idea to give people a taste of the game, but break it enough to encourage them to buy the genuine article, but the state of many buggy releases means that any bugs aren't assumed (by customers or try-before-you-buy downloaders), to be because of hacked exes, but bugs from the devs and pubs who push unfinished and buggy products out the door early, tarring the whole industry.

 

[KimB]

I personally don't mind the whole having to be connected to play thing, but understand that not all people can do that.

I think they should just put in an option where people can play single player offline mode but that absolutely NOTHING from offline mode can be imported into the online multiplayer/singleplayer.

This is exactly what they had for Diablo II. There just isn't any good reason to do it the way they are.

And then periodically release free DLC that isn't available in offline mode to encourage people to go online.

That's complete bullshit too. Although, granted, I'm not so much of a fan of DLC in general: it's almost invariably nothing but overpriced crap.

 

[green.pixel]

Back to ADoM I guess.

 

[Grall]

Blizzard Confirms No Eyefinity/Surround for Diablo III

I personally don't care for any surround type gaming since you must A: wear a set of stupid LCD glasses that dims the screen, wrecks the contrast, and for me as a person who wears glasses already it looks and feels ridiculous, and B: all 3D-compatible monitors I know of have crappy TN LCD panels. So there's several levels of bad stacked on top of each other just so I can get fake 3D that strains my eyesight...so, no thanks. I'd rather stick to standard 60Hz on a good IPS panel.

That's interesting. Have there been games in the past that have done this?

There was a game a couple years ago where you couldn't get past some obstacle if you had a pirated copy of the game (Batman Arkham Asylum?), so any time someone wrote in a forum to complain about that, everybody knew he was a pirate. Also, some military shooter some years ago screwed up the aim for pirates, leading you to miss quite a lot, but again I can't remember the name of the game.

 

[Dresden]

No traits have been confirmed. I guess Blizzard wants to leave character customization up to their Runestone system.

That's a fucking horrific idea.

From what I've read, players will receive "passive abilities" every six levels, or so, three of which you can use at one time. Depending on the level cap, there could potentially be a deadzone as your character reaches higher levels. I kinda liked the idea of traits, respeccing and so forth, giving the player more viable options to suit their gameplay style. Now, it seems as though every character will be cookie cutter with minor differences between players.

 

[Richard]

Either way, this doesn't affect me one single bit so I'm not concerned.

SB, this isn't directed at you, but at the sentiment you're expressing above.

Assuming you don't mean "it doesn't affect me because I don't care about Diablo 3", how are you going to feel when after vanquishing a particularly hard mob only to see a message that informs you that your game will reload to the start of the level because your internet connection missed a [strike]bit[/strike] beat along the way?

Although I was conscious about this, it wasn't until late last month when Steam screwed up a maintenance update and locked me and several others out of playing our single-player games that I fully realised just how preverse a system that is supported by a constant internet connection can really be. I went 19 days without being able to play games I purchased, that I was in the middle of, that were single-player because of a mistake by the content provider that can always wave in your face an EULA that says they are under no obligation to guarantee the availability of service.

My router (don't know if through my ISP or by firmware alone) resets every 24 hours, regardless of whether I'm in the middle of a videocall with Indonesia discussing a cure for cancer or downloading [strike]pr0n/warez[/strike] linux distros.

When I used to play MP Team games (BF2, ETQW, etc.) I'd forcebly disconnect the router before my play session exactly so I didn't have a reset in the middle of a match when I was about to rain a fiery death on someone's backside.

How about [strike]fools[/strike] people who play through a wireless connection which is proner to loss of packets, resets, whatever? You're playing in an internet cafe (do those still exist?) and suddenly the owner decides to boot everyone off and restart their domain server.

Again, their argument that this is to protect the integrity of online play is completely demolished by the fact they could always give players the choice at character creation of whether to keep a char always online if they wanted.

 

[KKRT]

No traits have been confirmed. I guess Blizzard wants to leave character customization up to their Runestone system.

That's a fucking horrific idea.

From what I've read, players will receive "passive abilities" every six levels, or so, three of which you can use at one time. Depending on the level cap, there could potentially be a deadzone as your character reaches higher levels. I kinda liked the idea of traits, respeccing and so forth, giving the player more viable options to suit their gameplay style. Now, it seems as though every character will be cookie cutter with minor differences between players.

I really like new system although i would rather have heavy customizable traits, but passives are still ok.
There are:
~24 active skills
20 passive skills
5 rune types
and You can use 6 actives and 3 passives to build You char.

List of skills btw
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/26508-the-passive-and-active-skills/