I don’t mind multiplayer for Diablo. My first experience with Diablo was at a cybercafe in Virginia in 1996. Multiplayer was only LAN. No TCP/IP.
I’ve played every Diablo game since, including the latest Diablo Immortal. Multiplayer is fine when it’s optional. What I hate is forced parties. Dungeons where I have to have 2+ more players to even participate despite my 9,000 combat rating.
Forced multiplayer is bad. Developers shouldn’t assume every player has 7 friends who also play. “Always Online” is also bad. What if I want to play during a flight or traveling where I have a few days down time? What if I want to play when I don’t have access to the internet? Sucks to be you…
The vast majority of my experience playing D2 was solo, single player. The vast majority of my experience with D3 was solo, single-player. Even in DI, I run around ignoring party requests and playing how I want to play but there’s tons of content I can’t enjoy because I don’t have a party of 8 and refuse to party up with random 14 year old kids.
I like how some MMO’s just threw you into a raid group if you were in the area. GW2 (requires a little bit of effort) and old Warhammer Online had this. When done right it was great. Run to area event, get roped into the raid group, beat the big bad boss creature, get rewards, leave raid group.
Very few forced mplayer games really really work well to avoid toxic communities. Deep Rock Galactic seems to be a magical game where everyone comes together. But the reality is that most games end up with toxic people.
My fiance definitely prefers SPGs over mplayer, mainly because she never has to consider dealing with this BS or playing on someone else's time. And she gets sadder and sadder every time she is forced into some mplayer experience when she just wants to enjoy a game alone. And I can completely empathize.
I've gone mostly single player as I got older. Even stuff like Monster Hunter World I will struggle against Behemoth instead of just teaming up. Other people are just added complexity I don't want to deal with.
That said game design and moderation can help alleviate the toxicity. FFXIV is fairly decent for this, as raids tend to have zero setup so at worst you just waste time attempting them. Contrast with other MMOs where you have to earn entry or face significant costs to attempt, then more costs when you fail, that's understandably a recipe for toxicity even in a supposedly cooperative game.
They're technically not forced multiplayer (though they're intended to be played as such), but games like Journey and Death Stranding seem to show that limiting actual interaction between players can really foster positive qualities in people.
> Deep Rock Galactic seems to be a magical game where everyone comes together.
I do continue to see this mentioned on Reddit. I've got hundreds and hundreds of hours in DRG and it's all solo aside from literally 5-10 games I played with friends-only (but none of them play regularly). I'm so glad DRG support single player, gives you a bonus (Bosco), scales the game, and lets you pause. I'm glad the multiplayer is good, I'm happier that I don't have to deal with it at all if I don't want to.
It's been really sad to see my favorite franchises slowly go online/multiplayer (Elder Scrolls/Fallout) and I constantly worry that the games I've been playing for over a decade (like Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3, FO:LV, FO4, ME1, ME2, ME3) are the last of their breed. For me even having multiplayer/online (more specifically, a recurring revenue stream) taints a game in the same way that IAP taints mobile games (with the exception of "remove ads", "full unlock", or "unlock level pack", if I see "500 gems" I run in the other direction). It skews incentives and ruins games. No matter how much you swear up one side and down the other that it doesn't, it's not true. PvZ 2+ was ruined by IAP and EA even went back and ruined PvZ 1 (even for people who bought it). "Where's The Water?" was also a great game that was littered with IAP in the second version, Angry Birds as well has fallen. It makes me incredibly mad and sad that there are so few good single player games and the ones that do exist aren't coming from AAA studios/big names. DRG is a good example, so is something like Factorio (which does have multiplayer, but don't monetize it). Cosmetic-only DLC/IAP seems to be pretty safe overall but I still worry how much longer it can last when assholes like the CEO of Unity thinks anyone not prioritizing monetization are "Fucking Idiots" (His "apology" is meaningless, he meant what he said and fully believes it).
It just feels like we will never see something as pure, wonderful, and buggy :) as Skyrim again. Even that game has the shitty "Creation Club" or whatever they called it trying to monetize mods. ES:O/FO:76 are garbage compared to their predecessors. Indie games are great and seem to be the only place you see a real desire to create something fun, not just something that will print money, but I yearn for the kinds of games we just don't see from indies (again, ES/FO/ME to name a few I've loved, if you know of any like this please let me know).
I desperately hope I'm wrong and we see a resurgence of games that try to be fun instead of casinos in disguise. Until then I'll keep playing my old games and the few indies that make me happy instead of feeling like a second job.
Nintendo has mostly not fallen into this problem, at least on their consoles (their mobile games are a different story...). Some of them have paid DLC, but I haven't seen any Switch games with IAP or required multiplayer.
I'm actually worried about the look of the new Fire Emblem announced yesterday. Looks like it's perfectly made to be gacha, collecting the old heroes. Hopefully I'm wrong, or if it's gatcha it's in-game only (.i. you can't pay for it), with DLC just adding more heroes. But I'm worried they're taking way too much from FE Heroes, which has, apparently, outsold the rest of the series combined.
God that's depressing. I haven't touched the new Fable game (that was in beta, I stopped following it after I saw what it was like) for the same reasons. I loved FE growing up but FE Heroes had zero interest for me.
IAP ruins basically every app it touches, with the exceptions of the sort of functionality you mention. This goes far beyond games. I’m sure others have said it better but I miss the days of simple freemium models.
IMHO, Paid upgrades are better than IAP or subscription models from a user perspective. Moreover, they encourage innovation rather than revenue stream cultivation.
Out and out capitalism does not optimize for the value to the consumer - that is merely a constraint to be minimized in the name of cost control and revenue maximization, I would contend.
Greed ruins a lot of things, as does the notion that everything can be sacrificed for growth; the logical conclusion of quantity over quality is everything sucks.
I'm more or less the same. If i wanted to deal with people I'd be out doing something, not playing a video game.
my exception is dark souls, where I happen to really enjoy the pvp approach, and doesn't really give players much of a way to be toxic other than literally throwing dung at each other.
But usually there's other options if you want to be specific about who you invite. Clans/Guilds are moderated (require approval) and parties are (accept invite) so a raid group is just a lump of parties together for a goal. This, I support. Having to "lfrg bleh bleh" sucks and is never an effective use of your time in a game. Raid Finders (like Party Finders) promised to deliver a better experience but failed for the most part as people continue to restrict who they play with.
How would you solve raid groups NOT being pointless while also making sure that players who want to participate, can, without having to play the "pick me for your team" game?
I would just do NPCs if you want to imply you're part of a group. This has the added advantage of making everyone unique even if there's a boring 3 unit meta amongst a giant roster of classes or characters or whatever.
Most co-op gameplay in MMO types of games is really bad. Consisting of either mindless support roles that just cast buffs or heals on a recurring timer without too much consideration of anything else; or of brutally picky metas that require specific movement patterns that you're just screwed on if you don't know them. Especially if there's no communication features.
If you just meet some randoms, don't really talk to them, and just kind of hope they don't kill the run, then forget about them, that's a bad experience. Good multiplayer requires you to interact with other people. Carefully orchestrated raid team crafting is an option without much mass appeal but it is an option. Since it's not really possible to expect coordination among strangers, and there's a high demand for gameplay with strangers, I would say the game needs to be highly reactive. That is to say, your optimal gameplay can't be pre determined. It depends on what they do, and randomness.
The general idea that its ok to just drop into a random group and give it a try implies that the content has to be really easy otherwise people will get frustrated. It depends on the game.
I briefly did top tier raiding and even that doesn’t expect actual coordination among players beyond hitting the correct meta. It all ends up as everyone playing slightly different mini games as people eventually memorize whatever line dance is needed to get the loot piñata to pop. Swap people between different parties or even equivalent guilds and there’s basically zero learning curve.
I don’t think this is an issue with MMO games, I think it’s a problem where teamwork is hard. Even just consistently getting a large group together at the same time and not breaking down due to interpersonal conflict is a heavy hurdle. Expecting people to then follow complex plans while also filling the basic roles of the game and not standing in fire is just more than most groups could do.
> Expecting people to then follow complex plans while also filling the basic roles of the game and not standing in fire is just more than most groups could do.
But it is interesting, and I would say your experience described was not. Large complex team plans are probably not a great model for most games.
I would like to see a situation that required tight coordination among a very small group of 2-3 and light coordination across these groups. Even sweeter if there's only communication between group leaders and intra group.
The top is extremely challenging which is it’s own kind of fun. People don’t fail raids 50 times in a row because they are playing around. Everyone is trying their best and doing micro optimizations to get just a tiny bit better until finally you succeed.
> How would you solve raid groups NOT being pointless while also making sure that players who want to participate, can, without having to play the "pick me for your team" game?
Allow someone to create a raid/party and define filters on who is allowed. Ideally there would be an LFR system they're exposed to, as well as a filter on who is allowed to join the raid so that anyone can invite anyone. If you meet the criteria, you can join the raid without asking.
I think the underlying issue is trying to be inclusive of everyone (hardcore people don't want to play with casual people, and often vice versa), and exposing simplistic interfaces to people who are okay with complexity.
I think TradeSkill Master is a good example for WoW. People love that. Give two interfaces; one is a casual interface with basic but useful options, and the other is a complicated "whatever you need" interface. Let the hardcore people use advanced filters with complicated interactions, and let the casual people use a basic "I just want people with enough gear to theoretically clear it" interface.
The problem is the balance though. If no coordination is viable then what's the purpose of coordination? Higher difficulties aren't a great solution. People always want to do the hardest and will complain if their typical strat of joining randos doesn't work
Pay-to-win mechanics only work in multiplayer, so expect a lot more pressure for settings where conspicuous consumption flourishes. The worm will eventually turn, but not until there is a pretty massive shift in the public consciousness - which would have a far greater impact than just wiping out loot crates and $1.99 cosmetic reskins.
Both kinds of games are good. When forced cooperation works, such as in early WoW and even more so with early Everquest, it can be a very magical thing. The combination of high time investment to get things done, often needing other classes to do those things, and no cross-server play builds a server community in a very special way. Other classes needing skills only yours has also means you have other people coming to you for help often, you can sell your skills, and your class feels more fun and unique.
Of course, these games have other massive issues. Particularly the leveling experience on servers past the initial rush.
There are plenty of hack and slash games out there, no need to keep feeding the soulless, dehumanizing machine that is Activision Blizzard, just so Bobby Kotick could ruin more lives. Every dollar you send in their direction ends up covering up more abuse and financing political extremism. He is way worst than your average slimy executive, he is a very sick person.
Diablo is dead, the people that know how to make Diablo games left a long time ago.
They can't even remaster Diablo 2 without fucking it up. You can't even play single player offline without signing into a "Blizzard account" that fucks up and won't update and has to be reinstalled and then maybe, if you're lucky, they might let you play the game you paid for.
I bought that for my wife after quite some discussion of what a pile of shit Blizzard is.
After that experience, I can't imagine giving them any money for "Diablo" 4, especially considering how much I failed to enjoy "Diablo" 3 (which I bought on Playstation since once again, the computer version doesn't work offline).
I prefer to spend money on Dark Souls now, it has that melancholy feeling that Diablo 1 had, and that sense of danger, that dark atmosphere.
As a person who never played D1 or D2, I picked up D3 on the Switch last year and it’s been one of my favorite games. Not sure what I’m missing out on from the other two games but D3 scratched an itch for me that was lacking from the games I played in my free time.
Accessibility. It was by far the most accessible Diablo game. You didn’t have to go find some complicated build to feel strong. You could literally play anything.
Making a Cast-on-crit automated character that could cause recursive explosions of knives and fireballs as long as it stayed within range of enemies was so satisfying.
Theorycrafting is fun. I want a PoE that allows and encourages botting so I can play it like an incremental game more than an ARPG.
Eh, I'm more into gameplay than theorycrafting personally.
Optimisation is something I do only at work, not in my gaming hours.
When the common advice for new PoE players is "follow a newbie friendly build for your first couple runs", it explains why I have such a hard time enjoying the experience.
It is though their recent direction is concerning. I quit this league within a week or two. Don't really want to unpack all the drama here and the game is still very good, I just need to wait and see what they do next time around.
Yeah, the addition of the constellation system on top of the dual skill trees was huge for me too. Brings the depth to a level where you can spend ages theorycrafting, while not being nearly as immediately daunting to new players as PoEs skill tree can be.
Tencent is present in almost every game dev company, including blizzard. they own almost half of epic too, so half of unreal engine is owned by them too. you will be playin a very narrow selection of games if u go down that road.
Also check out Grim Dawn. Feels a bit less cartoony than Torchlight which I appreciated, and has a lot of nice solutions for quality of life problems from D2.
Grim Dawn is also great, though you'll only be able to squeeze a few hundred hours of greatness compared to the thousands of hours of greatness you can get out of PoE.
There is a mode where you create the character separated from the global server, so u play alone, or you can pay GGG for a private server to play only with friends. but is always online.
I'm surprised and somewhat doubtful the process for online vs offline is materially different. I wonder if some of the reluctance/delay on single player is to keep the data miners at bay. The moment loot and drop rates go into a local data pack, that information will go out to all the min-maxers who will bring that info back into ladder play.
While single player is a big part of Diablo, the difference between Diablo and the RPGs the author compares it to is that those other RPGs don't have a thriving multiplayer scene (From games being the exception, but doesn't materially change the point). You can't treat them the same.
Also from what I hear at least, exploiting was rampant in at least classic Diablo 2 because the client was trusted (haven't paid attention to the remaster to see if they did anything about it there). My understanding is Diablo 3 was ostensibly online-only to try to address this (especially since it originally shipped with a real-money auction house which would have been even more dead on arrival than it already was had exploits been straightforward)
Alternatively, the original Dungeon Defenders game addressed this by building a wall between singleplayer and multiplayer sessions. You were welcome to get up to cheaty shenanigans with singleplayer characters locally, but those characters could never be used in online sessions, which were more tightly controlled to give players a more fair impression of character progression. I forget if there was some kind of direct connect option to let other players join you in local cheaty shenanigans if they wanted.
It may also be that many players mostly play "single player" but on the multiplayer closed servers. That is how I played back in the day. Occasionally with friends or randoms but also quite a bit alone. After the hack fest that Diablo 1 became, closed servers seemed like a good idea...
This is what I see for a vast majority of Diablo3 players. We are all forced to play online, but nearly everyone plays alone most of the time from what I've seen.
Diablo 1 local friends multiplayer was amazing because nobody was super amazing, nobody knew everything and there were still dark corners to explore and items to discover.
Diablo 2 and onwards felt so much worse for me because once you get online you’re among a community that has “figured out the game” and the mystique is all but gone.
Playing Elden Ring totally blind concurrently with friends who all committed not to look anything up brought that original Diablo 1 feeling back, decades later. It was an incredible experience. Messaging the group with a “holy crap I found an entire secret area inside a secret area inside a secret area!” was powerful.
I plan on playing Diablo 4 completely isolated from the online community.
I feel like Diablo is the wrong game to be asking this about, and OP is making some assumptions that don't really ring true to me. I'd be kinda surprised if multiplayer wasn't what the vast majority of the Diablo 2 playerbase was interested in - it's basically an mmo-lite.
It would be nice if Diablo 4 supported offline play but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Not surprised - most of the core hack and slash gameplay is generally done solo. The multiplayer comes in with talking to other players in towns, trading items, and competing with people/showing off over character progression while knowing that everyone's character data is stored in a centralized server and probably hasn't been hacked.
I only get that from D3, which I''ll note wasn't mentioned - D3 to me personally was hugely disappointing as to me it had a marginal storyline and all real character skill progression or good equipment was tied to online BS.
I'm not sure how they could act on the request to have a better storyline, other than just hire better writers. Blizzard always had... serviceable but not great plotlines (and well-loved characters, but IMO more as a result of character design and that kind of stuff, rather than plot).
The D2 community is small but very vocal. Truth is, if the community got to design a game it would be absolutely horrible. They basically want to design a slot machine that you have to pull 5,000, so that you can then compare against other people who have also pulled the same slot machine 5,000 times. You get cred for both having pulled the slot machine the most times, as well as the least times, before getting a jackpot. But the jackpot isn't that impressive. It's like playing free slots for days on end to win $5 in virtual currency.
That's the Diablo 2 experience that the fanbase wants.
You don't need to imagine what would happen. Path of Exile was designed by hardcore Diablo 2 fans.
If you really don't like content past the main story it does still have a great regular first playthrough campaign.
It even replaces the Diablo 2 "play through the same 5 acts 3 times on increasingly higher difficulties" thing with a single 10 act long campaign, although the second half is revisiting altered versions of the same areas from the first half with different plot.
But they also weave a bunch of cool lore into the postgame in a way that Diablo 2 didn't really do[0], and make it much more interesting than just killing the same handful of endgame bosses over and over again for loot.
[0] At one point the main postgame big bads were canonically characters that used to be the good guys in there fighting the old bad guys, but got driven insane in what was basically a giant meta reference to hardcore players that spend thousands of hours in the postgame.
I agree 100%. Diablo 2 was a good game, the part of it that was actually Diablo 2. The multiplayer post-endgame was just a community of addicts playing a game that was already over endlessly.
See also the community saying that Diablo 3 starts after you play all the content. Yes, the game you are playing doesn't get good until it is finished.
The proper comparison would be to Path of Exile. That's an on-line ARPG with a "Solo self-found" mode. But I'd much prefer single player. There's no one in single player out to ruin or game the economy.
Diablo 2's got a semi-vibrant modding community that has done a fair amount with the game that would not have been possible without single-player/open multiplayer. I agree with you that the vast majority of players probably will only want closed, online multiplayer but it's hard to imagine it having the same legs as D2 without.
They seem well aware that most people don't want to play the multiplayer of most of these games, as they've previously discussed most people buying Starcraft games for the campaigns.
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what people want to play, but what they think will make the most money. People have gotten really good at extracting money from online games. Although, Blizzard has had its failures there (see Diablo 3 auction house).
“Most” people wouldn’t buy Diablo if it was single player only. Despite your opinion on it, people generally regard Diablo as a great game to play with 1-3 other people.
And I made a comment about the attitude of the studio that makes it, rather than about Diablo specifically. Your comments, unfortunately, don't make any real sense.
What’s going on in game dev? I’m seeing a ton of companies, big and small pump out what seems to be the opposite of what their fans want.
The other day, I clicked on a video ranting about one of the latest Battlefield games. I used to play BF4 years ago. I enjoyed it, and remember plenty of CoD vs BF debates. As I was watching the guys rant, I couldn’t help but agree with everything. Everything shown in the video, was exactly the opposite of why BF built a great franchise. It seemed more like the company tried to be every shooter game that’s been popular in the past decade at once, and seemed more like a cheesy Fortnite ripoff than the tactical arcade shooter I remember.
I can name numerous other games (mostly in shooter/strategy genres because that’s what I mostly play) with similar stories of games starting to flop because the companies ignore their customers, usually so they can ripoff some recently successful games.
FWIW, there are some great companies making amazing games (this year has been awesome for Paradox, for example), it’s just odd that many franchises I remember being quite good take such odd direction that people will hate.
This. The video game industry has grown by such huge amounts over the past 10-15 years that fans of old franchises are a small minority of the total demographic developers want and need to justify pumping the budgets they do into games now. Most of the new market consumers are fine with microtransactions, season passes, cosmetics, loot boxes and other types of monetization and gameplay that is way more profitable. If you sell a game d2 fans want, you are making serious monetization concessions to appeal to a tiny sliver of the overall userbase of the next diablo so it doesn't make sense.
When a game like Genshin Impact does 1 billion in revenue every 6 months it is only a matter of time before the rest of the market moves in that direction.
> What’s going on in game dev? I’m seeing a ton of companies, big and small pump out what seems to be the opposite of what their fans want.
A lot of companies are chasing what they have determined to be bigger revenue generators - seasonal content, micro transactions, mobile-first etc. In some cases this has proved successful despite backlash from fans (Diablo Immortal) and in others it's been an unmitigated disaster (Battlefield 2042).
AAA games these days are not about creating a great game any more, they're about creating a highly profitable one.
I have a feeling the 'fans' are getting pretty old and/or stay a minority.
In my case, I was the only 'old gamer' parent in my daughter's entourage that actually bought games. The rest had to make do with whatever they could pirate/play for free. And outside the techie audience they may not even have a gaming computer to play pirated games on. They will have a phone though, and mobile games are all free to play predatory.
Even the daughter plays free to play abominations because they're all social and most youngsters do not understand disconnecting.
Seriously, I understand that minimal storyline is cheaper to produce, and online only solves "piracy" and allows monetization of basic gameplay through gambling, etc, but I am so sick of it. D3 was wretched as the drops were always useless, and everything was geared towards online play outside the storyline if you ever wanted to have "good" equipment. This was offset by having an absurdly out of balance normal character, especially by the latter half of the story game.
I hate online play - if I wanted be to treated to a bunch of varyingly spelled curse words I'd just go create a twitter account where I pretended to be a woman in tech. It would be cheaper and just as unpleasant.
[edit: or SC2, which I used to do PVP until the adoption of a free to play PVP model resulting in a dramatic increase in the amount of abuse and shitty behaviour of other people. Presumably because getting your account banned simply means creating another one. Honestly I wish they had a "play vs people who paid only" mode.]
Yeah, "online only" equals "hard no" for me for that and "can I play this in 3 years" reasons. Online-only is just a shorter way to say "unavailable soon".
> D3 was wretched as the drops were always useless, and everything was geared towards online play outside the storyline if you ever wanted to have "good" equipment.
Key word "was". It's not like that at all today. At release with the AH, D3 was a complete disaster. Now, it's 50-100 hours of spinning, twirling, mob slaughtering fun every 3 months or so.
They aren't making online mode by pleasure: it's much harder to make than offline single player. Piracy (no need to put it in quotes) is 100% to blame.
> Piracy (no need to put it in quotes) is 100% to blame.
I think you mean corporate greed. It's true that pirates fight against corporate greed, but let's not pretend these companies are short on money to make good games.
Activision Blizzard, the one that makes Diablo, has a yearly net revenue of 8 billion $. They are getting bought out by Microsoft. I don't think they're running out of $$$ anytime soon.
They also do exactly what was being talked about in the comment I replied to. Do you think their refine would be that high if they didn’t? Blizzard is also far from the only game studio in the world. Look into how the Cyberpunk launch hurt that established studio.
Activision/Blizzard is not interested in making games anymore. They have settled on well-known formulas -- World of Warcraft, Diablo, loot systems, Call of Duties, etc -- and constantly rehash them for the big bucks. They don't give two shits about players or open letters. The Diablos are online because the DRM is just too good. The best thing a Diablo fan can do at this point is to turn away and not buy any of their shit anymore.
I bought diablo 2 for the Xbox series x and couldn't get it to pass the first screen. I wanted to play it offline. It insisted that it could not connect to the servers. Couldn't find support either with Microsoft or Blizzard so I asked for my money back. I really wanted to play this, since I couldn't when I was a kid. Sad thing that they think they every game should be online or multiplayer.
I’ve played every Diablo game since, including the latest Diablo Immortal. Multiplayer is fine when it’s optional. What I hate is forced parties. Dungeons where I have to have 2+ more players to even participate despite my 9,000 combat rating.
Forced multiplayer is bad. Developers shouldn’t assume every player has 7 friends who also play. “Always Online” is also bad. What if I want to play during a flight or traveling where I have a few days down time? What if I want to play when I don’t have access to the internet? Sucks to be you…
The vast majority of my experience playing D2 was solo, single player. The vast majority of my experience with D3 was solo, single-player. Even in DI, I run around ignoring party requests and playing how I want to play but there’s tons of content I can’t enjoy because I don’t have a party of 8 and refuse to party up with random 14 year old kids.
I like how some MMO’s just threw you into a raid group if you were in the area. GW2 (requires a little bit of effort) and old Warhammer Online had this. When done right it was great. Run to area event, get roped into the raid group, beat the big bad boss creature, get rewards, leave raid group.