Diablo 2, Diablo 4, and Single Player: An open letter to Blizzard
purediablo.com
purediablo.com
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.
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?
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 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.
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.
So it is interesting in it’s own way.
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.
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.
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 spent a lot of time tuning those mechanics with the stated intent of making multiplayer that was cooperative and positive.
I think what they achieved is generally quite impressive.
Team Fortress 2 also comes to mind, what a beautiful community.
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.
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.
Is more of an action rpg, but its also has very satisfying crafting system.
They have a lot of DLC's but all of them are just gestures and skins for your various npcs.
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.
Of course, these games have other massive issues. Particularly the leveling experience on servers past the initial rush.
Talking of which... nethack is still around, still a strong 1p or offline game, has a new dev release (3.7), and is part of an exhibit at the MOMA ( https://www.nethack.org/download/MOMA/NHoutside.jpg ).
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.
the art direction is OK, the changes aren't bad, but it looks more generic than D2 did.
Overall it's the same but worse with less features, instead of the same but better which is what a remaster should be.
There are games outside the giant AAA studios.
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.
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.
Well, it's actually Titan Quest++, but the gameplay was far more flowing, and reminded me a lot of D2 with a far more interesting build system.
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.
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.
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.
It would be nice if Diablo 4 supported offline play but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Are you kinda surprised?
That's the Diablo 2 experience that the fanbase wants.
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.
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.
You need the original data.
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).
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.
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.
And that’s a terrible thing for players - people - in the long run.
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.
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.
Despite the backlash, the game has made $100m of revenue over 2-months.
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.]
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.
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.
But hey, almost every game is doing this, so let’s pick right next time and pls do Not pre order !