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?
Last month, construction workers did something in our street. I didn’t have Landline Internet for a whole week. Always Online is pretty horrible for single player games.
I fuckin hate it. Total bullshit
If a game has a single player mode without features that require internet, and isn’t accessible without wifi, thats just lazy design imo.
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.
In my opinion all games that can be played solo should have an offline mode. Personally I have an excellent internet connection but I hate having to depend on servers to be able to play the game that I bought.
The thing about always online is that the servers often crap out, especially during launch or during major patches. That just annoys the hell out of me.
I almost exclusively play single-player games. I’m not sure I own one that is always online, since I pretty much always have WiFi on and wouldn’t notice the difference, but I don’t see why any of my games would have to be always online.
Singleplayer games have no reason to require an internet connection to be able to play the game.
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.
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.
Definite no from me. Applies to all apps, really: there should always be an offline mode unless always-on is absolutely required (i.e., accessing a website/API is the app’s sole purpose).
This is a big problem for me with mobile games, since developers seem to have forgotten that cell service is not universal, capable of failure, and often metered.
Of course, there are still annoying edge cases. A bunch of apps I have don’t strictly require always-on connection, but they have a check-in at startup. They skip the check if you have no service at all, but if you have service without data, they just sit there without timing out.
I hate it I try to always avoid always online drm but sometimes it’s really impossible, i’m gonna be honest and say that i got some issue with my steamdeck for them. (f u ubisoft btw) So if i find that a singleplayer game needs an always online drm i just don’t buy it.
Same. I really loved the first two Diablos, but I wouldn’t touch the new one because of it. I’ll just wait a decade or so and emulate it.
Always a bit of a turn off for me. Ross (guy that did Gordon’s mind and game dungeon) has a pretty good series of videos about why online only games are bad because they can be killed. He really hates the idea of killing games, and I agree with him.
Not only can the game get killed, however, but it can be changed fundamentally in a bad way. Balance can be tweaked for the worse etc. And unlike single player games you can’t revert back to a previous version.
I also hate that LAN play has been pretty much stripped from the PC game landscape. LAN parties during college were the shit.
Overwatch 1 is a prime example in recent memory. I preordered the damn thing and got the fancy skin. I will probably never be able to play the sunsetted maps again. Never be able to recreate the broken fun of the first month after launch, when people would randomly form identical hero meme comps in quick play. Never be able to go back to before the battle pass, when you didn’t functionally have to pay to unlock new heroes.
It’s a damn shame. Capitalism corrupts everything I love.
In case of Diablo IV in my opinion Blizzard has a good track record of keeping game servers online for years and years.
That being said, the game does have some weird server hopping mechanic that you can’t turn off, meaning it seems to switch servers while you’re playing, which isn’t always as seamless as you’d hope it would be. Also, at least for me, it sometimes selects servers with >100ms latency, which is quite noticeable of course.
Agreed. If I’m honest in this case my concern isn’t necessarily that my access will be restricted at some point (or even the very rare dips when it switches servers on entering or leaving an area). It’s more around the fact I’m playing the game effectively in single player and unfortunately that’s likely to have shelf life due to personal circumstances.
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.
