I’m currently playing Diablo IV (and having a blast with it) but finding one small gripe which I only think is going to get worse and probably stop me playing it completely in the long run.
My girlfriend is currently pregnant. This means in 6 months time we’ll have a newborn. With this in mind I’m expecting to only be able to grab a few minutes at a time to game and even when I think I’ll have longer I may end up jumping off at short notice. This means I’ll almost certainly come to rely on games which I can pause. Unfortunately this isn’t possible with Diablo IV since it requires an always online connection even though I’m essentially playing it as a single player game.
What are other people’s thoughts?
If a single player game requires online connection im not buying it.
This. If I’m gonna gave to get a pirate version in order for it to work, I’m donating to the crackers that fixed it, not the publishers that deliberately broke it.
Singleplayer games have no reason to require an internet connection to be able to play the game.
If it’s a strictly multiplayer game, fine.
If not, that’s just DRM, and it should die in a fire.
If it’s single player games, there should be ZERO reasons to have it requiring online connectivity 24/7. No buy for me. There will be times where your internet goes offline for ISP related issues or Xbox Live or PSN experiencing server issues. How am I going to play those games?
It depends on the game. Like if it’s an online only game, then of course that makes sense. But a single player game, or even a game with a single player mode requiring always online is and will always be dumb.
Diablo 4 not being designed for offline solo play as well (like D2 and I think even D3 was) is annoying though.
There seem to be two Diablo IV games.
One is a single player or co-op offline RPG where you’re running around killing monsters and collecting loot so that you personally can save the world. Seeing other players running around just breaks the illusion.
The other is some online multi-player thing where you can run around and team up with other people in the quest to min-max your build, where you pay stupid amounts of money to make your character look the same as all the other people who paid for the same skin.
I like the first game, have no interest in the second, and I resent where the mechanics designed for the second game interfere with the first.
It sucks, plain and simple. Single-player games should never require internet access, and if the game has a multiplayer component, it should be a separate mode that leaves the single-player mode working even when there is no internet connectivity.
It’s just basic fucking common sense… except that it conflicts with financial interests and greed.
It makes sense in that having a local single player and a multiplayer mode requires writing much of the game twice. Having a remote single player mode only requires making the game once, with a special instance spun up for each single player game.
I live a life where I often don’t have a persistent connection. That means for me, I can’t play new games. While I have been a fan and player of Diablo since the first one I’ll have to sit this one out.
I flat out refuse to buy games that require a constant internet connection. It’s annoying for multiplayer games but the need for always online with a single player game is ridiculous.
My internet connection drops constantly because Cox is horrible at providing what I pay for so if a game has an always online DRM component it becomes unplayable frequently. I don’t like it for that reason, but I also don’t like it from a “the server will go offline at some point and then this is going to be unplayable forever after that” point of view.
The always online is bad. The micro-transactions are worse. I’m tired of being told “But it’s just cosmetic!” Yeah, well that used to come with the game too. “They need to be able to make more content!” Yeah, it’s made over 666 million dollars. They can afford more content. “At least it’s not…” That shouldn’t exist either.
Games, and expansion packs. That’s it. Day one MTX is insulting. “here’s your game, pay to unlock more of it” should not be a thing we accept. At this point I half expect a back-slide to pay full price and then a sub to actually play the game. I can not wrap my head around why people defend it, I’ve stopped buying games with MTX entirely.
Diablo 2 resurrected is quite good, though. Nailed that one.
Well, games that are inherently built for an online social presence, like an MMORPG, makes perfect sense to require being always online. World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic come to mind.
Even though you can quest solo on those games, it doesn’t make sense from a core-concept standpoint that you just walk around an empty world where there’d otherwise be players doing their own thing.
If it’s a game that has little to nothing to do with online as a core part of its concept (like a single-player campaign where you can’t have any sort of online co-op), then yeah that seems rather silly.
I would never buy such games in the first place. If a singleplayer game doesn’t have an offline mode I’m not interested.
Imagine if they’d ever properly released Fallout 76 as SP or local co-op. Pivoting franchises into multiplayer/always-online that don’t benefit from it is such a petty, obvious cash grab
I have a friend who lives in a dry cabin in Alaska. Only internet is a limited mobile hotspot. Games like Diablo 4 are pretty much off limits.
I understand that some games can really benefit from being always online, but I think it’s important for games that can be played solo to have the offline option. The more choice the consumer has, the better.
I fuckin hate it. Total bullshit
I think it might be a good anti-piracy measure. But it’s really sad for the accessibility of these games as a whole, especially when it is possible to play the game without any online features.
I’m a big fan of the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch ability to simply turn into sleep mode, which allows me to pause very easily games. But I guess that’s not possible with online games :/
