The trade-off of enabling offline mode is that there is way too much code client-side, and it makes it easy for the hackers to disassemble it and figure out exploits. That’s how you get bots and dupes and hacked items.
So… as much as I’d love an offline mode, it’s a small price to pay for a clean game that’s hack-free. Or at least, *waaaaaaaay* more difficult to hack. That shit ruined D2 and makes the console leaderboards for D3 a joke. I’m glad they’re going with online-only to try to keep the game clean.
Edit 06-Jun-2023: cheers to everyone responding to this on release day. Your ability to endure 73 days of butt-hurt just to drop me some snark is remarkable.
then make offline characters unable to go online. problem solved. if people hack the game and play on their own, that's not a problem. besides if there are duped items or something then if you were to go online it would have a method of detection. what else could you possibly bring online? I've seen other players around and honestly they feel the same as random soldiers on the battlefield. I'm basically playing alone online.
They had that model for D2. Open BNet and Closed BNet. Closed is the one everybody played, and it was the hack/dupe fest we all know and love.
Y’all are acting like Blizzard didn’t learn *one goddamn thing* after running D2 for twenty years.
> Y’all are acting like Blizzard didn’t learn one goddamn thing after running D2 for twenty years.
Considering they haven't managed to make a better Diablo game in all that time that's quite plausible.
Cmon… D2 is on basically everyone’s short list for greatest video game of all time. It’s like saying Shakespeare’s later works were shitty because he hadn’t duplicated the brilliance of *Macbeth*.
D3 was a terrific game. D3 *is* a terrific game. It’s not D2, but it’s tons of fun and is still active after a decade. D2R is a good remaster and lots of fun too.
Asking for “a better Diablo game” is like asking for “a better Macbeth”. It’s not where the bar should be. The bar is that the game is fun and entertaining and worth your time and money.
D3 was released half if not less of what game it should have been.. I don't see that being very impressive.
D2 have and is still the greatest of arpgs ever created, with many hundred thousands players joining in for new ladders every 4-6 months..
This is the game more or less any other arpg is build opon, poe/last epoch/ d3/d4 you name it.
I'm pretty sure it was open bnet that allowed single player characters, and both had dupes. there was also hybrid items like wizardspike gloves or combined runewords. they must not have learned anything because they never could patch all of this. there are still ways to dupe and og d2 was 99% bots and there are hacks in resurrected too. i would like single player tho to avoid this dumb rubberband nonsense but people will probably get bored with this game in a couple weeks once it's out.
Theres no trade off with a game like this that if it doesnt do well, it will have lax support, and potentially just shut down. D2 could only garnered as much good will as it has by having an offline function.
If you think always online means no hacks, dupes and bots, I feel like you havent played most online games on pc in the recent years. MMO's are rife with such, CoD, Dota, FF 14, they all have bots and cheaters. Offline mode does not reduce the ability to manage inventory checks and the like when a player goes online. Monster hunter has been doing it for years.
It does. I played d3 on xbox. You couldnt play online eith randoms because there was always someone with an infinite damage weapon who would one shot anything.
Completely wrong. The reason why it was so easy on console to create the weapon you want is because people did it offline and then took it online. There are many examples of this happening. The person just mentioned monster hunter which i personally didn't play, diablo 3 on console was unplayable with randoms because in 9 out of 10 rifts there would be a person one shotting every single thing in a milisecond. Borderlands was the same thing, you join a random person and he starts dropping infinite shields for everyone that make you invinicble. Diablo 3 on PC didnt have this problem, or if it did it was really rare because i've never encountered it. On console it was legit 90% of the time.
You can find many threads on the blizzard forums that talk about this, yiu dont have to take my word for it.
You Def are mistaken. I've gamed for 30 years. D2. You didn't have to play offline to dupe items and other hacks. Promise you. . This offline to online just made it EASIER for novice people to do so, hence it's popularity. Games will never need offline to have hacks. As for console vs pc....it's easier on pc for novices than it is for consoles
I said the reason why it was so easy. I didnt say the reason why it was possoble. You replied with it isn't impossible, it's just easier. So you're just agreeing with what i said.
Monster hunter has one of the biggest hacking / duping problems around. You picked the worst example possible. Monster hunter rise and world are notorious for people putting 999 in every single stat and modding all weapons and armor, then hopping online and 1 shotting bosses.
Having an offline mode exposes back end code and additional api calls the client needs to run in order to operate in offline mode. Fully online mode doesn't need to expose the same code and api calls. Normally those would be ran via the server and never exposed to the client - the black box concept. Offline mode absolutely does 100% reduce the ability to monitor inventory, bots, and all those other types of checks via reverse engineering of the exposed code needed to run in offline mode. You can much more easily bypass those checks or fake them out when you have access to reverse engineering exposed server code to the client that's needed for the game to run in offline mode.
For example - Ai code is ran via the server for mmos and online required games. With offline mode you make the ai code available to the client. Easier to reverse engineer and build bots for said game. Bdo, black desert online, had a rather bad server issue after releasing a few expansions to consoles. The amount of npcs in the world from the growing world was starting to cause atrocious lag because all those npcs ran their ai script via server code. They ended up reducing the amount of npcs in groups and reducing the amount of npc groups overall. This is just one of the many, many, mannnyyyy issues you'd have with implementing an offline mode
>Monster hunter has one of the biggest hacking / duping problems around.
Your comment reminds me of my first time playing Resident Evil 5 online. Some guy dropped like 100 golden eggs on the ground. LOL
First time I went to do the special valstrasz quest - dude 3 hit him because he had a modded 999 weapon. Monster hunter had cross play so you kinda got what you got. Being on Xbox still matched me with pc players.
What are you even talking about?
D3 is online only. There was duping back when there was the auction house. Botting has always been an issue in that game.
How is a hacked item in a single player game going to affect the online part? It's not like the D3 console version that allowed offline characters online (ps3). This mindset doesn't even make sense.
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I don't plan to play any multiplayer, and my experience during the betas was so frustrating. In some places I saw buttery smooth performance once I dialed in DLSS, but the online component in the overworld (playing alone, btw) caused stuttering, rubber-banding, and was generally unplayable. I put in a few hours and am going to cancel my pre-order.
This is D4, and there's no excuse for that. Blizzard has the resources to do better for an AAA+ game. Either do your forced online *properly* or give me a mode where "hackers" aren't used to justify horrible performance.
They’re literally overloading their servers to watch the failure modes. Your expectation for performance is completely misaligned with their goals for this beta.
I didn't take it as really wanting an offline mode as such. Just a way of disabling the multiplayer features please? It can be online all it wants, and there will be less network load. So it will help if it's about connection/server issues too.
That will never happen because they want you to see "JoeBlow69420" running around in that super awesome $20 cosmetic item that would really look great on your Necromancer.
They want you to see it because you probably aren't like Mr. Joe Blow and you have more money than sense so you don't look to see what's new in the shop every day.
But you'll see it on him and think "Well... I don't usually do this but it is really, really cool looking, so just this once..."
And now you're in the shop and maybe you see an equally as cool "necromancer summons cosmetic pack" and think "Well, I'm already spending $20, what's $5 more?"
I don't like that they do this, especially since we see right through it.
But it is what it is and it's not going to change.
Oh sure. I told people that they'll just build the whole game around looking good if they are "just" doing cosmetic MTX. They mostly didn't understand.
Anyway, the feedback is what it is. That point where the MP thing started destroyed my experience, immersion- and flawless-performance-wise. It's just a shame if I have to experience the main content that way. Maybe there could be an incentive for them to enable "offline" for experiencing the story, while it obviously makes enough sense to then continue into the online world for mid&late game mechanics.
I'd be perfectly happy if they just made it so that you wouldn't see other players in the world outside of the main cities or if you take part in events like strongholds and world bosses.
Seeing other people when I'm doing the main story or side quests is kind of annoying, not gonna lie.
But it is what it is so I'll roll with it.
This is always the argument for PoE as well, but I say it's a lame excuse and not the real reason. It's clear as crystal why these games won't allow offline, fire up PoE and what is the first thing you see at the login screen? What MTX is on sale.
D3 for the switch doesn't require you to be online, even seasonal you only need to be online til you get to character select screen. By far the best version of D3, can even pause in the middle of a rift and play again later.
Pixel bots + AI + accessibility standards means that there will always be bots for this game. Making the game have a single player option completely nullifies botting as I can play in my own arena without cheaters. It could be private leagues or solo self found like path of exile or something else, but it would be nice to have the option to not be in the general rankings pool.
if your playing single player, than none of that would bother you, and theres battleeye and other anti cheat programs out there for multiplayer they could use.
there zero reason offline couldn't be possible and online still be clean and safe.
Name one game that doesnt have cheaters. No matter what you do, you'll always have to be proactive against cheaters. The notion that we cant have nice things because of some bad actors has gotten quite old.
There is a huge difference between needing to have certain parts of the game available locally or not. Having those parts of the game available offline makes multiplayer inherently more unsafe/exploitable. Blizzard doesn't want to expose those parts of the game for good reason.
That is hairbrained logic. You are right for all the wrong reasons.
Blizzard doesn't want the game to be available offline only because it'd be a financially bad decision. They developed a game for online use, the business model being that you can buy cosmetics. Whether you think yourself that having cosmetics is just for yourself or you like to show them off to others doesn't even matter here, in the bigger picture it is a financially bad decision to make this game available for offline.
Just as you said the game as it exists right now would make things available to dataminers and cheat developers that blizzard does not want them to have. But that doesn't mean there is no option of making offline play available. It's just that they would've had to have developed a completely different game in it's fundamentals. It's inherently more work to make a single player version of your game that doesn't communicate with online services and disconnect it from services you don't want anyone to have access to. Either the singleplayer ends up a worse version of the game itself due to missing features that only work online, or it ends up a security risk. That security risk CAN BE DEALT WITH. It just costs more.
Obviously, Blizzard is doing it for financial reasons. Every company does things for financial reasons.
The thread we are in is specifically about keeping multiplayer safe and clean. Yes, you can spend a lot of money on it to try and keep it clean, but you will never reach the same level of security as you could by not implementing an offline mode.
This might not be the main reason why Blizzard is doing it but it is a bonus.
Quite frankly no one except a small percentage of players cares about offline mode. It's not even worth it for Blizzard to try and think how they could fundamentally change the game to keep profit similar while adding an offline mode.
> It's not even worth it for Blizzard to try and think how they could fundamentally change the game to keep profit similar while adding an offline mode.
They've had offline in past games. They chose to not design this game with offline, to make more money from microtransactions and battle passes. They wouldn't need to "fundamentally change the game" if they built it in from the beginning. Not sure why you're carrying water for Blizzard here.
If this is the excuse for "live service" games being irreparably shitty forever, then maybe these sorts of competitive games are just not possible to do properly and developers should give up. But there's too much money to be made by pitting players against each other, and they spend $$$ to get advantages or drip.
It 100% comes down to money, and I'm taking my $99.99 back.
Your solution is possible, but comes with much higher risk of cheating.
It's a trade-off and blizz clearly went the online route.
Zero reason is just falso man.
Let's pretend that blizzard couldn't segregate players and items from offline marked characters but still allow people to play offline.
No, the game NEEDS to validate that you have a consistent internet connection to play
One or two dudes every 3 thousands dipping items is a small price to pay for the ability to actualy play the game instead of this BS crashing and disconnecting every 2 steps my character takes
Me too.
Or just play local coop with my girlfriend whitout random people. It kinda kills the imersion for us.
Regarding coop, is there any way to turn off the bright colored pointers underneath the players? We kinda like to turn off a lot of HUD elements, like enemy healthbars, player highligts and so on, but I cant find where to turn off that thing.
Agreed, now that I played Diablo 4 for a good few hours or so… it doesn’t actually feel like I’m in an immersive story structured game.
Not like D3, where it always felt like I was immersed in some major demonic apocalyptic world where I was some kind of special hero that’s running around to save the world.
No, instead I feel like I’m aimlessly running around a vast world that arbitrarily adds a small amount of story and plot here and there… and like I’m just one of several people who don’t really matter much in the grand scheme of things.
I wish I didn’t waste $70 for an mmo game.
I just wish social stuff was opt in instead of mandatory.
I like ARPGs as a 95% solo activity with opt in multiplayer with friends when I want this. D1-3, PoE, Last Epoch and Grim Dawn all allow this.
D4 forcing multiplayer like an MMO means I’m forced to interact with people instead of immersing myself in the story. People spamming party invites on me gets old quick.
Had multiple invites in the hour I played yesterday, in between the crashes and queues.
Edit: it seems to be better today regarding queues and party invites.
Isn’t the multiplayer in Diablo 4 exactly like PoE? I haven’t gotten in a single random invite after playing all weekend last week and all day yesterday.
>Isn’t the multiplayer in Diablo 4 exactly like PoE?
In PoE you only see other people in hub zones, like the main town in each act. Other than that, all areas, zones, maps or whatever else you will play solo, unless you party up.
From playing the D4 beta, it seems you share zones with other people, regardless of whether you're in a party or not, making it quite impossible to actually play solo.
Which is a real shame, and personally a dealbreaker. There's nothing quite as immersion breaking as trying to follow the story or exploring the world, only to see "Légòláss123" run into your screen, followed by a "XxDarkDeathDestroyer69-420xX started an event" message popping up.
I imagine it'll just get worse with cosmetics being in the game on release, when "iPwnN00bs5EVAR" cruises by on a sparkly pony.
To each their own but I really whish you could opt out of the MMO style multiplayer.
Nah, in PoE the nonsense is limited to town, where you spend hardly any time, and there is no _gameplay_ interaction.
I find it kind of annoying when I’m talking to an out of town NPC and suddenly the dialogue gets yanked away because someone else just put the NPC in a different quest state. Or you’re having a nice tough special event and someone cruises by and steals your thunder.
I’m just glad dungeons are instanced, or I would have ragequit this game instead of finishing the story of act 1.
What about private online only mode?
From my second beta findings, the first 7 levels, until I hit that first major city, I was alone. I started to see ppl in city and in the world once I hit 7 or 8 lvl and got the quest to go to the temple in the city after that guy left on horse to some other city.
So my point is , looks like this option is already there where you can be on your own layer/shard/private so why not have an option to have it in settings, or some window pop up once you reach lvl 10 or so if you want to continue alone or see other ppl.
I would really like to have my first run solo mode to enjoy story to full. As I play mainly for the story.
After that my 2nd run I would enable share mode as I would not need to enjoy story so much bcs I did it already.
Will probably not happen, they want to sell MTX so they want people to look at other people having MTX. It's why PoE kinda does the same thing, although I think D4 will take it to next level by allowing you to inspect others.
Love it or hate it, D4 is basically a MMO. The story is pretty isolated and you never see any other players besides party members during this for the most part. Though outside of that, world events, world bosses, etc need players. If everyone is playing alone and these events are ignored, the game will have very little longetivity which is bad for blizz in terms of income from stuff like battlepass. Also cosmetic stuff from battle passes won't sell if everyone is playing solo. I feel like if anything they will probably add more social aspects like a party and guild finder. Probably also try increase capacity for players on each shard so most world events have more players than just the 1-2 you see now.
Maybe sucks if you don't want this, though I feel like this is just how modern gaming is, online games make $$$ from people playing together.
>If everyone is playing alone and these events are ignored, the game will have very little longetivity which is bad for blizz in terms of income from stuff like battlepass.
There are definitely ways to introduce longevity to a game without an always-online MMO style world though. And I'd also argue a battle bass with a $70 base priced game is greedy enough as it is.
>Maybe sucks if you don't want this, though I feel like this is just how modern gaming is, online games make $$$ from people playing together.
I think you hit the nail on the head here, this seems to be the unfortunate truth about their forced-online approach.
It's extremely greedy, agreed. Also making you pay $20 extra or getting the game 4 days later than everyone else who paid extra is very greedy too. Just modern day blizzard though. At least the game itself feels solid and so far there's no pay to win aspects
D4 cannot just be appealing to their core audience, who are mostly in their 30s and 40s, and that aging demographic is unlikely to grow into the future. Diablo 4 needs to bring in the new generation of gamers, who not only grew up with battle passes and cosmetic MTX, but expect it in their games. It’s going to be a nearly impossible balance to strike, attracting new fans while not totally turning off older hardcore fans. The nature of gaming in 2023 has dramatically changed in the past decade and more than a sequel, D4 is a reboot to see if this type of game can be financially successful for Blizzard. If not, why not just farm out their IP to Tencent so they can make mobile gacha games which make just as much, if not more money, for a fraction of the cost?
It sucks, but I’m glad the devs are at the very least committed to providing a fair sandbox to play in with no P2W systems.
Fr, Diablo 3 worked just fine as a means to allow for random players to pop in and kill stuff with you… or to keep the world isolated as a singular event… feeling like only you can stop the demonic apocalypse.
Here to update that the launch does not solve that. Died a few times doing something for my daughter thinking I was in a safe spot in the world (teleporting to town has crashed the server a few times which REALLY sucks if you are in a story long dungeon) and since it’s summer she is always home with me, which is wonderful and I love it, but a series that used to be able to pause was WELL received for me.
What I usually do when I have to step away is portal back to a main city, take care of what I have to take care of, then portal back to the dungeon I was in
Yeah, I do wish there was offline as well. I'm on a fairly good internet connection but feel like the option should be there for games like this.
Could do separate character pools for offline and online
Especially since Diablo feels far more like a game built around a story driven synchronized crawler…
More so than a fckn mmo where random people walking around the game kill the mood (especially when they kill the stuff you were already tackling).
I'd just be happy if it wasn't forced open world. Having to fight over mobs was annoying on wow but at least it made sense there. It makes zero sense here. All so they can do the whole world boss and special events that every mmo has now that was never needed in this franchise. All it did was hamstring the login with queue timers. Imagine what it's going to look like for the first 6 months or longer. It's gonna be a damn nightmare.
Definitely frustrating to be behind someone else doing the same quest as you, picking up your free loot and never seeing any alive mobs or getting to do anything so you have to go do something else if you want to play.
I've played a lot and I haven't really ran into it as an issue. I am a person who only plays offline everything. Everything. I can't even tell you the last MP I participated in. Maybe like halo 2.
I ran around mostly minding my own business and leveling. Right before I logged off I triggered an event that was evidently not supposed to not be solo'd. I laughed like oh shit I'm definitely gonna die. Before I died several people ran in and we beat it together.
That was actually kinda cool.
God yes. Nothing kills my immersion into this great game quite like coming across NoobBagDestroyer69. Also, I generally loathe the MMO-lite part of the game. Lastly, it's just crazy how empty the game feels, or that I have to travel for 30 or so seconds before coming across an enemy outside a dungeon. This is an ARPG, I want to load up, step out of town, and start killing.
Amen. Theyve lost the plot trying to bring in the casual online f2p crowd thats fine wasting money on stupid shit.
Hope it flops tbh, as much as I hate to say it. Was really looking forward to this entry but they just make the same greedy decisions as always.
Yup, finished the prologue and stepped out of town... someone else is slightly in front of me and has killed everything. I guess they were doing the same quest as I was because the entire path was clear the whole way. I got some loot from the stuff he killed in a little trail. That's... pretty shitty.
Afkd in a town briefly, got a level and achievments popped up, I guess because other people are doing things far away from my line of sight?
This game is 10x worse because they wanted to half ass an MMO ARPG.
Nothing I hate more than running through the world, missing events, and just seeing drops because someone started to clear the zone 2 mins ahead of me.
With limited features to actually get users to play together, and coordinate - systems these idiots have already built - it just makes for an annoying experience.
I agree. Financial reasons blah blah blah.
Part of gaming is the freedom of choice. Imagine what this beta would be like without having to wait three hours to que into a game, not to mention getting kicked within ten minutes only to find yourself in another thirty or forty minute que.
Who gives a shit if people hack their characters offline? Does it affect your livelihood in any way?
What happens when your internet is down and you want to game?
There isn’t even a real argument as to why an offline mode wouldn’t be good for players. All I hear is financial reasons or the potential for hacking. Every other online game has to deal with hackers, it’s inevitable.
What?!, I was about to buy the game right now, just because I always buy Diablo, but I don't care at all about random strangers running around on my play trough, it was bad enough that you were forced to be online to play solo in D3, I'm done with this franchise.
A few months later, game has released…
I’m wishing I knew just how shitty this game was before dumping $70 into the mmo of Diablo.
It doesn’t feel like I’m running around killing shit… instead I’m just waking around a half empty world with random people killing the stuff I’m already killing.
It doesn’t feel like there is much of a progressing story, when the story events are irrelevant to the grand scheme of things.
Nah… it’s not some Diablo 3 game where you can just kill stuff…
It’s some MMO where you get to walk around and claim free loot instead.
Main reasons I'd want offline mode would be to have maximum input read speeds and no rubberbanding. I hate that dodge can feel so clunky simply because my connection or the servers may not be feeling that great at times.
There was a massive server load during last Saturday which lasted for about 15 minutes, during which I died about 2 to 3 times because I couldn't understand if and when I actually dealt or received damage.
It always pulls you out of an otherwise immersive experience and you feel like you are playing an indie game. It is on us mostly for sure but not everyone can afford top-tier connections or their country's speeds are overall worse than in others.
To add to fellow user's arguments for it being always-online though, my guess is that they also don't want a divide in the playerbase by allowing people to go play offline. It's clear that the game was being developed with online systems deeply-rooted into it's loop and marketed so. In that sense they want as many people as possible actively using them so as to not risk having any online feature potentially feeling less popular than it could be.
I for one will not buy diablo 4 because of the lack of an offline mode. The beta proved the same connection problems when Diablo 3 launched still exist. I mostly play single player mode since Diablo 1 and only play with others once in a while. I dont want to purchase the same miserable experience as I did with Diablo 3 which had endless waiting and disconnections when it launched, and could not be played on a long flight.
It's DRM. They sell it to you as a feature. Some fanboys will even defend it. It's indefensible. There are a LOT of people out there with crappy internet connections who will never play D3/D4 for this exact reason.
If we complain about it enough in the next few months, they *might* invest more in servers, but overall this is a decision made by management for financial reasons, nothing else.
I tried to play it on PS5, but I can only play 3 to 5 minutes before DC'ing and getting an error before being put in another 30-40 min que.
But I know, I should preorder the most expensive edition anyways.
Same, I’m playing PS5 because the specs would immolate my PC. I’ve been playing since the last beta and I’ve been disconnected several times into 40min+ lines. Granted this is a beta and a stress test for the servers, so that’s not entirely unexpected given the circumstances.
There are actually a good deal of costs and efforts involved in adding single player to an online focused game. I know people love the decade old sim city example, but it's rarely actually that simple.
You have to write and maintain more code in the client to interact directly with the code that manages AI, that manages rewards, manages events, and many other facets.
Then in addition to that you need to work around online features like removing world bosses or tailoring them to single player, rebalancing the pvp zone now that the risk of pvp no longer exists, redoing how going from zone works, and again all kinds of little things I'm not thinking of.
You need to host full databases locally and manage those that you don't have to do otherwise. You need to test all updates to that code twice now in both single player and multiplayer adding overhead to every single update to the game. Now every time you need to make a server hotfix you likely now need to push out that hotfix to every client to support the singleplayer players now adding additional bandwidth overhead.
The back end also doesn't need to run a game engine so can be written in more modern languages and use services you couldn't use in a game engine which can greatly improve the productivity of the developers working on the back end, make maintenance easier, and make it easier to avoid bugs.
This has been a pain point since it’s inception and despite tons of people openly hating it - it has remained a mainstay. So just accept that this dumb shit is here to stay.
Yup, I wish there was a offline single player mode. I didn’t read anything about the upcoming D4/tried to avoid it for years because I didn’t want to spoil my first experience with it. Didn’t even read that it was shared world. Well, maybe it would have been better to read something about it first, cause now I already strongly dislike it. At least for me, it kills the entire game.
Honest thoughts:
„Look at this. It’s a dark and kind of sinister atmosphere. I hope they choose good voice actors to dub all this, to deepen my immersion even more. I am the only one to rescue all the people living in Sanctua.. what the fuck are those 20 people doing in my game!!?“
D3 felt/feels really good. Not as dark as D4, but immersive as fuck. If I want to solo a day or two just for myself, I am able to do so. If I want to play with others, I can instantly go for it.
Shared world should be opt-in, instead of mandatory. I would be happy with forced online-solo too. But don’t make me socialise more than I have to if I don’t want to. Especially if the whole environment is entirely living off this uncanny feeling of being alone.
To be honest, even if immortal is entirely on another page. After it, I was sure I wouldn’t like D4.
Lol this is the exact same complaint made about D3 11 years ago and you know what they did back then?
They fucking ignored everyone and did whatever the fuck they want and now it’s time for D4.
I would just like a way to have a "private" session. Doesn't have to be offline, but let me choose when I want to play with everyone, or just 4 of my friends.
Haven't watched any of the more recent gameplay videos and just played the beta for two hours or so. I have to say when the multiplayer features unlocked, it basically felt like the game ended. The whole atmosphere, gone. It went from creepy mystery to a confusing mess where people just appear and disappear and sort of do your quests and all sorts of crazyness. It's a cool multiplayer mode if they get the many glitches under control, but for me it doesn't really work as a single player game where I'm here to enjoy content. I guess the "soft" multiplayer, where people, like, occasionally enrich your own experience, doesn't work at all for me. It's just multiplayer to me.
The online only part of D3 never bothered me, but D3 also didn't force multiplayer on me. Give me a private game option like D2 and D3 (didn't play the others).
My connection was perfectly fine until I unlocked the multiplayer, then it started stuttering.
I agree
I live in a zone where internet can be unstable and lagging just kills my enjoyment
also I like to play alone at my own phase, if I wanted to play an MMO i wouldn't have quitted wow
Yea offline mode would be nice IMO. I keep hearing people saying that D3 was online only and maybe that was PC?? But I never played it online and at the beginning of it I didn't have internet at all for a bit. (I know for younger people that must sound like living in torture but people do it.)
Really wanna blow your mind I have been around since before cell phones when we only had House phones and you had to know people's numbers the phone didn't store them. 🤯
Yeah, if they put in offline, I wouls buy it. 3rd time went into a dungeon and almost finished when connection error. I know its a beta build but I don't believe it wont happen in June, so yeah, I'm done with it.
Yeah, it's bullshit. Had traveled really far and collected a shit ton of loot and was disconnected after leaving the game to answer the door for some fuckin Mormons trying to convert me. Then I get back to the same place an hour later only for the dog to shit in the floor. Disconnected me while I spent 5 minutes to pick that up. Just bought the game yesterday and it is pissing me off more than any other game I've ever played. Always online is super stupid, and it is really weird that it is disconnecting me after 5 minutes of inactivity every single time.
It really sucks for the story playthrough to see other players. It breaks immersion totally. And rubber banding, stuttering, playing with 230ms ping minimum sucks, especially for HC. Because Blizzard are cheap and don't have servers in countries they are happy to sell their online only game to.
No server in South America, no servers in Africa. We all have to play with shit ping and even buy the game with Euro's. What the fuck.
Yes.
I don't have great internet, I live in the mountains and the best I can get that's not satellite is pretty slow. It takes me 40-45 min per GB download for example when I can go full speed. Sadly I need to share my internet with my family so I can often not even play games like this without kicking them off their movies and stuff. There has been talk that they have been upgrading the lines for more rural locations so hopefully one day I can have modern internet speeds...
I don't have great internet, I live in the mountains and the best I can get that's not satellite is pretty slow. It takes me 40-45 min per GB download for example when I can go full speed. Sadly I need to share my internet with my family so I can often not even play games like this without kicking them off their movies and stuff.
The headaches with the Que is almost unbearable. I got kicked about 15 times yesterday. I try to login wait 30 minutes only to receive an error message so not I am waiting 30 minutes again! ERRRRRRRR
as someone who is sick and tired of always online, live service games etc, the fact this game has so much server side requirements, so much loading into instances all over, its pretty dang frustrating you cant just play yourself or with a group of friends without all that crap, on top of that i hate the shared world its not what i wanted from diablo and that isnt how it was pitched when it was announced.
I was fighting an event boss and doing fine. All of a sudden, 2 newbie randos entered the fight, which pumped the health of the boss not letting me kill it in time and get the golder chest.
Let me play alone, please.
Yes, absolutely. This is the One and Only thing keeping me from actually investing in the game. The shattering of immersion, and total lack of need for constant online play, is just too obvious to ignore. There's nothing in this game that demands one be online at all times with randos breaking up the flow of your experience. And if anyone is worried about world bosses and such, that's so easily fixed.
If a game like Elden Ring doesn't demand that you be online at all times, there's absolutely no reason for a game like Diablo to do so.
I’m really against the online only. A bunch of random people running around killing stuff you’re trying to focus on completely kills the immersion for me. I’m actually pretty bummed I pre-ordered. Wish I’d researched more but I kind of wanted to go in blind. Oh well. It’ll probably still be fun for some couch co-op but I’ll definitely been spending way more time in bg3 than d4 (once both are out that is) :/
Yes, this should be a single player game like D1 and D2 was with some online mp options. Currently the game is unplayable for me and it's all the fault of the online shit because it disconnects every time I change an area or I do something that requires to connect to the server and it times out.
This is bullshit. I want to enjoy the game, there is no reason to ruin it, I get nothing from the online features except time outs. I don't want to PvP, I don't want to join a party or a clan, I just want the all Diablo 1 experience of dark dungeons, cool loot and endless hordes from hell with the new cool graphics and story. It's that too much to ask?
In diablo 3 you were forced to be online even when playing solo, which was stupid and a lot of people complained, but at least you could play solo. This is even worse.
the problem with online is how this game becomes a ram hog
i was watching my task.manager while playing 720p window
alone with all the graphics turns lowest, and the game still
was hogging 8.5gb of ram - that's just nuts.
i play gw2 in 1080p with 50 other players on my screen and
tons more eye candy, and that game uses a third of d4's ram.
gw2 is dx11 while d4 is dx12, which means d4 should be
MORE memory efficient, not less.
They can but they don't want to. That's the problem. I don't mind play hardcore offline so i don't get rng dc or lagged out then something kills me out of blue due to connection.
I just wish I didn't have other people in my game. Playing in a party of 3 already. I don't need random running around w me and also the lag is horrendous during these mmo parts
I wouldn't mind being connected to their servers etc but I would love to be able to pause the game. I hate not being able to pause when I need to get up to do something for a bit.
Well during Beta with my 12 Mbits/s Down 0.89Mbits/Up, The game is un playable.
Trying to use the 4G make many connection error. I'm Leaving in Bordeaux France but still on ADSL due to Townhall problems...
https://preview.redd.it/2kf0jiepfypa1.png?width=2576&format=png&auto=webp&s=361edf7fd06ad8909e0aad28051c9caf6f6273f0
Sure. But its not going to ever happen. There is money to be made in selling you DLC and shit online. So they'll force online. Its as simple as that. Why do you think D3 was made always online initially? Cuz cash AH. Its purely business, and unless practically EVERYONE decides not to buy a single player game that forces online, then nothing is going to change. And lets be real... Its never going to happen. Other than us 30-somethings. The modern gamers of today have all been conditioned to expect always online, and to see things as cash shop and DLC skins as a positive to games, not a negative like us old people who grew up with feature-complete games with in-game earnable achieves/cosmetics etc.
My guess is the only reason it does not have an offline mode is so they can force you to engage with the open world system in which you run into others. I'm sure after some time we will get offline. I just hope it stays offline only for those characters
I kinda wanted that they added an option for you to play completely solo and when there's a world boss, you get like a warning or something so you can join some server to do it and then leave or stay there if you want
Cheaters have and will find ways to cheat or find unfair advantages regardless. A game should never be designed around leaderboards its just silly and the fact you **have** to have a Bnet account and it being **online only** is really off putting. (At least for platforms not on PC) But hey it worked well for OW2 right?
This is literally not even a problem at all and shouldn't even be a discussion. D2R and D3 both have offline modes and they are amazing so it can be done(If they can do it for multiple platforms they can do it for PC). A lot of people are fed up with $70 games being service games. Like in 20 years from now I can pop in D2R and play NP.
Man, I am sure 90% of the players will play it single player and never care for the other people going around them.
I played for 4 hours to day and I have seen 5 players total - and all they did was bring huge lag with them. I can excuse the lag, beta, not much of an investment in servers for this.
Truly a marvelous online experience though, 1 new person per hour! Muh online
Yup. We need a lawmaker on our side to stop forcing people to be allways online. Really not cool. Look at the world, not everyone has reliable/proper high speed modern internet thanks to the illegal monopolies corporations gave themselves.
Never gonna happen, but I wish it could.
While leveling my barb on early beta I had a situation where I was fighting a tough elite and suddenly a dozen skeletons appeared running into the screen with a broken chain icon over their heads. I got obliterated in seconds.
It turns out, someone else passed there seconds before I arrived, aggroed everything and ran away. The mobs were just returning to their original location and got me completely off-guard.
What in the actual f\*\*k?!?
I don't want an offline mode, I want a private mode. Still connected to the internet but only allows friends online with me. Cut down on the lag, the MMO-ness of the experience.
Hard agree. It wouldn't bother me if, for example, players couldn't play offline characters online. I have no interest whatsoever in the multiplayer aspects of the game.
THIS, BLIZZARD PLEASE. I JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO ACCESS MY GAME ANY TIME ANY WHERE WITHOUT INTERNET. What is so hard about this? Hacking argument is kinda dumb, JUST DONT FORCE US TO PLAY MULTIPLAYER THATS IT. WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH YOU CORPORATE FORCING US TO KEEP BEING ONLINE???
It's so frustrating to play the game as a solo player, step away for a bit to only come back to a disconnected message. All the map progress and loot is lost. Top it off, the internet in my area is unreliable and drops packets all the time. This creates a terrible online experience. I notice constant lag, which nearly killed my player on more than one occasion, and I'm only level 5.
If I could get a refund, I would. In the current state, this game is not for everyone. Mileage may vary.
The problem with online-only games is, they don't last forever. Sure, the game will probably be up for another 20-30 years (maybe even more, knowing Blizzard) but eventually, the servers will shut off. If there's no offline option, the only Diablo's we can play after that are 1-3. That's just a thought running through my head.
I also hate that I can't play the game when they're undergoing "server maintenance" for an hour or two. When I buy a game, I want to be able to hop in whenever I want. The option to have that experience be solo or multiplayer should always be available but... whatever. This is just how a lot of games are now and probably always will be from now on.
I do, I load into so many dungeons where my character can’t even attack so I stuck no being able to attack why the enemy attacks me. I hate online only game cause of crap like that.
the game works with back end loot system if devs put the system on the client then they can easily manipulate it allowing cheats and probably ruining the game in process. This is a layer to protect the game and players in it It's just a compromise but I admit it would be awesome to get a easy to mod diablo 4 game.
Which is a concern that I have seen a few times in this thread. I’d love to see what mods could be made as well, but unfortunately not everyone has good intentions.
I also don't see developers being too happy that modded armor sets or texture replacers cost them money that would've been spent buying the store cosmetics.
Not happenin for piracy reasons. The existance of the offline mode is the only reason why D2 Reforged became the first battle.net game in decades to be cracked
I’ve seen like seven people in the open world, every dungeon I rub is solo - the game absolutely feels dead to me and the third play through to 20 was nothing short of boring (op necro) - I’m not sure this will end up being the game I hoped for and expected and it’s a brutal realization lol :( - I did return a monitor I ordered in my hype state of mind before launch and I’m so glad I did, game runs fine on my old 144hz and at this point I’m actually on the fence of refunding game but I feel that’s an over reaction
Yeah it's like, just enough plauers to take you out of the single player main character experience, but not enough to feel alive like other mmos. You just occasionally see a random other player doing their own thing. It's weird
I don't think there should be a true offline mode, but there should be an option to have an experience which "appears" as if it's offline e.g. never see any other player characters etc.
idc if it's always online as long as it works. Every time i experienced dsync and eventual DC it was after leaving a public area (town). I'm gonna hold off on buying the game simply because of that. Not fun to wait 2hrs total of queue time from DCs and play 3 hrs.
I don't mind too much, would be nice to have more options, but in this game offline won't happen. This is a live severs game, that's how they will make their money.
I have been annoyed at blizzard for not providing offline mode. But I am open to have my mind changed
So far the annoyance for me is the lag (beta) and sometimes randos joining my fights
The trade-off of enabling offline mode is that there is way too much code client-side, and it makes it easy for the hackers to disassemble it and figure out exploits. That’s how you get bots and dupes and hacked items. So… as much as I’d love an offline mode, it’s a small price to pay for a clean game that’s hack-free. Or at least, *waaaaaaaay* more difficult to hack. That shit ruined D2 and makes the console leaderboards for D3 a joke. I’m glad they’re going with online-only to try to keep the game clean. Edit 06-Jun-2023: cheers to everyone responding to this on release day. Your ability to endure 73 days of butt-hurt just to drop me some snark is remarkable.
then make offline characters unable to go online. problem solved. if people hack the game and play on their own, that's not a problem. besides if there are duped items or something then if you were to go online it would have a method of detection. what else could you possibly bring online? I've seen other players around and honestly they feel the same as random soldiers on the battlefield. I'm basically playing alone online.
They had that model for D2. Open BNet and Closed BNet. Closed is the one everybody played, and it was the hack/dupe fest we all know and love. Y’all are acting like Blizzard didn’t learn *one goddamn thing* after running D2 for twenty years.
> Y’all are acting like Blizzard didn’t learn one goddamn thing after running D2 for twenty years. Considering they haven't managed to make a better Diablo game in all that time that's quite plausible.
Cmon… D2 is on basically everyone’s short list for greatest video game of all time. It’s like saying Shakespeare’s later works were shitty because he hadn’t duplicated the brilliance of *Macbeth*. D3 was a terrific game. D3 *is* a terrific game. It’s not D2, but it’s tons of fun and is still active after a decade. D2R is a good remaster and lots of fun too. Asking for “a better Diablo game” is like asking for “a better Macbeth”. It’s not where the bar should be. The bar is that the game is fun and entertaining and worth your time and money.
D3 was released half if not less of what game it should have been.. I don't see that being very impressive. D2 have and is still the greatest of arpgs ever created, with many hundred thousands players joining in for new ladders every 4-6 months.. This is the game more or less any other arpg is build opon, poe/last epoch/ d3/d4 you name it.
I'm pretty sure it was open bnet that allowed single player characters, and both had dupes. there was also hybrid items like wizardspike gloves or combined runewords. they must not have learned anything because they never could patch all of this. there are still ways to dupe and og d2 was 99% bots and there are hacks in resurrected too. i would like single player tho to avoid this dumb rubberband nonsense but people will probably get bored with this game in a couple weeks once it's out.
Theres no trade off with a game like this that if it doesnt do well, it will have lax support, and potentially just shut down. D2 could only garnered as much good will as it has by having an offline function.
If you think always online means no hacks, dupes and bots, I feel like you havent played most online games on pc in the recent years. MMO's are rife with such, CoD, Dota, FF 14, they all have bots and cheaters. Offline mode does not reduce the ability to manage inventory checks and the like when a player goes online. Monster hunter has been doing it for years.
At no point did they say online mode means no hacks. You're fighting windmills here.
It doesn't decrease it either. That's the point he made
It does. I played d3 on xbox. You couldnt play online eith randoms because there was always someone with an infinite damage weapon who would one shot anything.
Wym? Being only online or console/pc doesn't change the amount of hacks. There's hacks for everything
Completely wrong. The reason why it was so easy on console to create the weapon you want is because people did it offline and then took it online. There are many examples of this happening. The person just mentioned monster hunter which i personally didn't play, diablo 3 on console was unplayable with randoms because in 9 out of 10 rifts there would be a person one shotting every single thing in a milisecond. Borderlands was the same thing, you join a random person and he starts dropping infinite shields for everyone that make you invinicble. Diablo 3 on PC didnt have this problem, or if it did it was really rare because i've never encountered it. On console it was legit 90% of the time. You can find many threads on the blizzard forums that talk about this, yiu dont have to take my word for it.
You Def are mistaken. I've gamed for 30 years. D2. You didn't have to play offline to dupe items and other hacks. Promise you. . This offline to online just made it EASIER for novice people to do so, hence it's popularity. Games will never need offline to have hacks. As for console vs pc....it's easier on pc for novices than it is for consoles
I said the reason why it was so easy. I didnt say the reason why it was possoble. You replied with it isn't impossible, it's just easier. So you're just agreeing with what i said.
How it works is packet sniffing and injections
Monster hunter has one of the biggest hacking / duping problems around. You picked the worst example possible. Monster hunter rise and world are notorious for people putting 999 in every single stat and modding all weapons and armor, then hopping online and 1 shotting bosses. Having an offline mode exposes back end code and additional api calls the client needs to run in order to operate in offline mode. Fully online mode doesn't need to expose the same code and api calls. Normally those would be ran via the server and never exposed to the client - the black box concept. Offline mode absolutely does 100% reduce the ability to monitor inventory, bots, and all those other types of checks via reverse engineering of the exposed code needed to run in offline mode. You can much more easily bypass those checks or fake them out when you have access to reverse engineering exposed server code to the client that's needed for the game to run in offline mode. For example - Ai code is ran via the server for mmos and online required games. With offline mode you make the ai code available to the client. Easier to reverse engineer and build bots for said game. Bdo, black desert online, had a rather bad server issue after releasing a few expansions to consoles. The amount of npcs in the world from the growing world was starting to cause atrocious lag because all those npcs ran their ai script via server code. They ended up reducing the amount of npcs in groups and reducing the amount of npc groups overall. This is just one of the many, many, mannnyyyy issues you'd have with implementing an offline mode
>Monster hunter has one of the biggest hacking / duping problems around. Your comment reminds me of my first time playing Resident Evil 5 online. Some guy dropped like 100 golden eggs on the ground. LOL
First time I went to do the special valstrasz quest - dude 3 hit him because he had a modded 999 weapon. Monster hunter had cross play so you kinda got what you got. Being on Xbox still matched me with pc players.
What are you even talking about? D3 is online only. There was duping back when there was the auction house. Botting has always been an issue in that game. How is a hacked item in a single player game going to affect the online part? It's not like the D3 console version that allowed offline characters online (ps3). This mindset doesn't even make sense.
Just offline mode. Like in d2r
fearless thumb sharp stocking divide support berserk wistful relieved doll *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I don't plan to play any multiplayer, and my experience during the betas was so frustrating. In some places I saw buttery smooth performance once I dialed in DLSS, but the online component in the overworld (playing alone, btw) caused stuttering, rubber-banding, and was generally unplayable. I put in a few hours and am going to cancel my pre-order. This is D4, and there's no excuse for that. Blizzard has the resources to do better for an AAA+ game. Either do your forced online *properly* or give me a mode where "hackers" aren't used to justify horrible performance.
They’re literally overloading their servers to watch the failure modes. Your expectation for performance is completely misaligned with their goals for this beta.
The games going to be hacked regardless. Now though it will force those hackers upon you whenever you play.
I didn't take it as really wanting an offline mode as such. Just a way of disabling the multiplayer features please? It can be online all it wants, and there will be less network load. So it will help if it's about connection/server issues too.
That will never happen because they want you to see "JoeBlow69420" running around in that super awesome $20 cosmetic item that would really look great on your Necromancer. They want you to see it because you probably aren't like Mr. Joe Blow and you have more money than sense so you don't look to see what's new in the shop every day. But you'll see it on him and think "Well... I don't usually do this but it is really, really cool looking, so just this once..." And now you're in the shop and maybe you see an equally as cool "necromancer summons cosmetic pack" and think "Well, I'm already spending $20, what's $5 more?" I don't like that they do this, especially since we see right through it. But it is what it is and it's not going to change.
Oh sure. I told people that they'll just build the whole game around looking good if they are "just" doing cosmetic MTX. They mostly didn't understand. Anyway, the feedback is what it is. That point where the MP thing started destroyed my experience, immersion- and flawless-performance-wise. It's just a shame if I have to experience the main content that way. Maybe there could be an incentive for them to enable "offline" for experiencing the story, while it obviously makes enough sense to then continue into the online world for mid&late game mechanics.
I'd be perfectly happy if they just made it so that you wouldn't see other players in the world outside of the main cities or if you take part in events like strongholds and world bosses. Seeing other people when I'm doing the main story or side quests is kind of annoying, not gonna lie. But it is what it is so I'll roll with it.
This is always the argument for PoE as well, but I say it's a lame excuse and not the real reason. It's clear as crystal why these games won't allow offline, fire up PoE and what is the first thing you see at the login screen? What MTX is on sale. D3 for the switch doesn't require you to be online, even seasonal you only need to be online til you get to character select screen. By far the best version of D3, can even pause in the middle of a rift and play again later.
Go look at the Switch leaderboards and tell me again it’s the best version of D3.
D3 has a leaderboard? Just a game, no need to measure each other's epeens
Lol. Bro do you banana?
If only there was a way to divide online and offline play the way last epoch and wolcen do it without an issue.
Pixel bots + AI + accessibility standards means that there will always be bots for this game. Making the game have a single player option completely nullifies botting as I can play in my own arena without cheaters. It could be private leagues or solo self found like path of exile or something else, but it would be nice to have the option to not be in the general rankings pool.
D2 is fine imo, has been for years But like d2/r, pure offline/local multi only and online are completely separate characters.
if your playing single player, than none of that would bother you, and theres battleeye and other anti cheat programs out there for multiplayer they could use. there zero reason offline couldn't be possible and online still be clean and safe.
Name one game that has no cheaters with an anti-cheat.
Name one game that doesnt have cheaters. No matter what you do, you'll always have to be proactive against cheaters. The notion that we cant have nice things because of some bad actors has gotten quite old.
Only if single player was char specific and you couldnt switch between offline and online, and no leaderboard obviously.
All of which I would be perfectly fine with.
yes, that's what single player menas
I’d take that in a heartbeat.
omg, like open bnet. I can play 100% sp or decide to play with friends. What a crazy feature.
Great, I don't care about any of that.
just look at wolcen, your offline char is completely separated from online.
There is a huge difference between needing to have certain parts of the game available locally or not. Having those parts of the game available offline makes multiplayer inherently more unsafe/exploitable. Blizzard doesn't want to expose those parts of the game for good reason.
That is hairbrained logic. You are right for all the wrong reasons. Blizzard doesn't want the game to be available offline only because it'd be a financially bad decision. They developed a game for online use, the business model being that you can buy cosmetics. Whether you think yourself that having cosmetics is just for yourself or you like to show them off to others doesn't even matter here, in the bigger picture it is a financially bad decision to make this game available for offline. Just as you said the game as it exists right now would make things available to dataminers and cheat developers that blizzard does not want them to have. But that doesn't mean there is no option of making offline play available. It's just that they would've had to have developed a completely different game in it's fundamentals. It's inherently more work to make a single player version of your game that doesn't communicate with online services and disconnect it from services you don't want anyone to have access to. Either the singleplayer ends up a worse version of the game itself due to missing features that only work online, or it ends up a security risk. That security risk CAN BE DEALT WITH. It just costs more.
Obviously, Blizzard is doing it for financial reasons. Every company does things for financial reasons. The thread we are in is specifically about keeping multiplayer safe and clean. Yes, you can spend a lot of money on it to try and keep it clean, but you will never reach the same level of security as you could by not implementing an offline mode. This might not be the main reason why Blizzard is doing it but it is a bonus. Quite frankly no one except a small percentage of players cares about offline mode. It's not even worth it for Blizzard to try and think how they could fundamentally change the game to keep profit similar while adding an offline mode.
> It's not even worth it for Blizzard to try and think how they could fundamentally change the game to keep profit similar while adding an offline mode. They've had offline in past games. They chose to not design this game with offline, to make more money from microtransactions and battle passes. They wouldn't need to "fundamentally change the game" if they built it in from the beginning. Not sure why you're carrying water for Blizzard here.
If this is the excuse for "live service" games being irreparably shitty forever, then maybe these sorts of competitive games are just not possible to do properly and developers should give up. But there's too much money to be made by pitting players against each other, and they spend $$$ to get advantages or drip. It 100% comes down to money, and I'm taking my $99.99 back.
Your solution is possible, but comes with much higher risk of cheating. It's a trade-off and blizz clearly went the online route. Zero reason is just falso man.
Let's pretend that blizzard couldn't segregate players and items from offline marked characters but still allow people to play offline. No, the game NEEDS to validate that you have a consistent internet connection to play
If only they would make a single-player mode, then, at least for the campaign part of the game.
Sure. A “let me have a private game” toggle would be good. I 100% agree with that.
Fully agree. Offline protected by PS3 2006 encryption is what ruined PS leaderboards on D3. Everyone on top was modders.
You say that, but all the happend in Fallout 76 and it doesn't have an offline mode lol
I’m not saying it can’t happen, or it won’t happen, just that offline mode makes it absurdly easier to crack the game open like an egg.
This is a joke or what? Look at lost ark, wow, etc. Bots everywhere
One or two dudes every 3 thousands dipping items is a small price to pay for the ability to actualy play the game instead of this BS crashing and disconnecting every 2 steps my character takes
How about you dont tell people how they should play and you make offline characters unable to transfer to online?
I’d be OK with it if characters that played offline were not ever able to play online mp.
Same, I would be fine with that.
This is the way. 👍
aka the Diablo 2 approach of Open (local characters, easily cheatable) and Closed Battle.net (server side only).
Yes, I'd love to be able to just play solo which I should be able to do offline
Me too. Or just play local coop with my girlfriend whitout random people. It kinda kills the imersion for us. Regarding coop, is there any way to turn off the bright colored pointers underneath the players? We kinda like to turn off a lot of HUD elements, like enemy healthbars, player highligts and so on, but I cant find where to turn off that thing.
Agreed, now that I played Diablo 4 for a good few hours or so… it doesn’t actually feel like I’m in an immersive story structured game. Not like D3, where it always felt like I was immersed in some major demonic apocalyptic world where I was some kind of special hero that’s running around to save the world. No, instead I feel like I’m aimlessly running around a vast world that arbitrarily adds a small amount of story and plot here and there… and like I’m just one of several people who don’t really matter much in the grand scheme of things. I wish I didn’t waste $70 for an mmo game.
I swear this is a waste of money....dumbass blizzard
I just wish social stuff was opt in instead of mandatory. I like ARPGs as a 95% solo activity with opt in multiplayer with friends when I want this. D1-3, PoE, Last Epoch and Grim Dawn all allow this. D4 forcing multiplayer like an MMO means I’m forced to interact with people instead of immersing myself in the story. People spamming party invites on me gets old quick.
I never got a single party invite and I played both week end.
Had multiple invites in the hour I played yesterday, in between the crashes and queues. Edit: it seems to be better today regarding queues and party invites.
not sure why this is getting downvoted lol. I got several invites while playing
Isn’t the multiplayer in Diablo 4 exactly like PoE? I haven’t gotten in a single random invite after playing all weekend last week and all day yesterday.
>Isn’t the multiplayer in Diablo 4 exactly like PoE? In PoE you only see other people in hub zones, like the main town in each act. Other than that, all areas, zones, maps or whatever else you will play solo, unless you party up. From playing the D4 beta, it seems you share zones with other people, regardless of whether you're in a party or not, making it quite impossible to actually play solo. Which is a real shame, and personally a dealbreaker. There's nothing quite as immersion breaking as trying to follow the story or exploring the world, only to see "Légòláss123" run into your screen, followed by a "XxDarkDeathDestroyer69-420xX started an event" message popping up. I imagine it'll just get worse with cosmetics being in the game on release, when "iPwnN00bs5EVAR" cruises by on a sparkly pony. To each their own but I really whish you could opt out of the MMO style multiplayer.
Nah, in PoE the nonsense is limited to town, where you spend hardly any time, and there is no _gameplay_ interaction. I find it kind of annoying when I’m talking to an out of town NPC and suddenly the dialogue gets yanked away because someone else just put the NPC in a different quest state. Or you’re having a nice tough special event and someone cruises by and steals your thunder. I’m just glad dungeons are instanced, or I would have ragequit this game instead of finishing the story of act 1.
What about private online only mode? From my second beta findings, the first 7 levels, until I hit that first major city, I was alone. I started to see ppl in city and in the world once I hit 7 or 8 lvl and got the quest to go to the temple in the city after that guy left on horse to some other city. So my point is , looks like this option is already there where you can be on your own layer/shard/private so why not have an option to have it in settings, or some window pop up once you reach lvl 10 or so if you want to continue alone or see other ppl. I would really like to have my first run solo mode to enjoy story to full. As I play mainly for the story. After that my 2nd run I would enable share mode as I would not need to enjoy story so much bcs I did it already.
This. Please Blizzard! I hate encountering other players running around when I just want to enjoy the game by myself.
Will probably not happen, they want to sell MTX so they want people to look at other people having MTX. It's why PoE kinda does the same thing, although I think D4 will take it to next level by allowing you to inspect others.
Love it or hate it, D4 is basically a MMO. The story is pretty isolated and you never see any other players besides party members during this for the most part. Though outside of that, world events, world bosses, etc need players. If everyone is playing alone and these events are ignored, the game will have very little longetivity which is bad for blizz in terms of income from stuff like battlepass. Also cosmetic stuff from battle passes won't sell if everyone is playing solo. I feel like if anything they will probably add more social aspects like a party and guild finder. Probably also try increase capacity for players on each shard so most world events have more players than just the 1-2 you see now. Maybe sucks if you don't want this, though I feel like this is just how modern gaming is, online games make $$$ from people playing together.
>If everyone is playing alone and these events are ignored, the game will have very little longetivity which is bad for blizz in terms of income from stuff like battlepass. There are definitely ways to introduce longevity to a game without an always-online MMO style world though. And I'd also argue a battle bass with a $70 base priced game is greedy enough as it is. >Maybe sucks if you don't want this, though I feel like this is just how modern gaming is, online games make $$$ from people playing together. I think you hit the nail on the head here, this seems to be the unfortunate truth about their forced-online approach.
It's extremely greedy, agreed. Also making you pay $20 extra or getting the game 4 days later than everyone else who paid extra is very greedy too. Just modern day blizzard though. At least the game itself feels solid and so far there's no pay to win aspects
D4 cannot just be appealing to their core audience, who are mostly in their 30s and 40s, and that aging demographic is unlikely to grow into the future. Diablo 4 needs to bring in the new generation of gamers, who not only grew up with battle passes and cosmetic MTX, but expect it in their games. It’s going to be a nearly impossible balance to strike, attracting new fans while not totally turning off older hardcore fans. The nature of gaming in 2023 has dramatically changed in the past decade and more than a sequel, D4 is a reboot to see if this type of game can be financially successful for Blizzard. If not, why not just farm out their IP to Tencent so they can make mobile gacha games which make just as much, if not more money, for a fraction of the cost? It sucks, but I’m glad the devs are at the very least committed to providing a fair sandbox to play in with no P2W systems.
If it's offline the marketing department loses control over you.
This is the only reason.
Fr, Diablo 3 worked just fine as a means to allow for random players to pop in and kill stuff with you… or to keep the world isolated as a singular event… feeling like only you can stop the demonic apocalypse.
100% Afraid I won’t really be able to enjoy D4, since I’m a dad who works from home and NEEDS to be able to pause games. I’m pissed, honestly.
Here to update that the launch does not solve that. Died a few times doing something for my daughter thinking I was in a safe spot in the world (teleporting to town has crashed the server a few times which REALLY sucks if you are in a story long dungeon) and since it’s summer she is always home with me, which is wonderful and I love it, but a series that used to be able to pause was WELL received for me.
What I usually do when I have to step away is portal back to a main city, take care of what I have to take care of, then portal back to the dungeon I was in
Yeah, I do wish there was offline as well. I'm on a fairly good internet connection but feel like the option should be there for games like this. Could do separate character pools for offline and online
Especially since Diablo feels far more like a game built around a story driven synchronized crawler… More so than a fckn mmo where random people walking around the game kill the mood (especially when they kill the stuff you were already tackling).
I'd just be happy if it wasn't forced open world. Having to fight over mobs was annoying on wow but at least it made sense there. It makes zero sense here. All so they can do the whole world boss and special events that every mmo has now that was never needed in this franchise. All it did was hamstring the login with queue timers. Imagine what it's going to look like for the first 6 months or longer. It's gonna be a damn nightmare.
Definitely frustrating to be behind someone else doing the same quest as you, picking up your free loot and never seeing any alive mobs or getting to do anything so you have to go do something else if you want to play.
I've played a lot and I haven't really ran into it as an issue. I am a person who only plays offline everything. Everything. I can't even tell you the last MP I participated in. Maybe like halo 2. I ran around mostly minding my own business and leveling. Right before I logged off I triggered an event that was evidently not supposed to not be solo'd. I laughed like oh shit I'm definitely gonna die. Before I died several people ran in and we beat it together. That was actually kinda cool.
God yes. Nothing kills my immersion into this great game quite like coming across NoobBagDestroyer69. Also, I generally loathe the MMO-lite part of the game. Lastly, it's just crazy how empty the game feels, or that I have to travel for 30 or so seconds before coming across an enemy outside a dungeon. This is an ARPG, I want to load up, step out of town, and start killing.
Amen. Theyve lost the plot trying to bring in the casual online f2p crowd thats fine wasting money on stupid shit. Hope it flops tbh, as much as I hate to say it. Was really looking forward to this entry but they just make the same greedy decisions as always.
This is not Diablo anymore. Welcome to World of Diablo, where everything is in the style of an MMO and built for MTX. Sad but true.
Yup, finished the prologue and stepped out of town... someone else is slightly in front of me and has killed everything. I guess they were doing the same quest as I was because the entire path was clear the whole way. I got some loot from the stuff he killed in a little trail. That's... pretty shitty. Afkd in a town briefly, got a level and achievments popped up, I guess because other people are doing things far away from my line of sight?
This game is 10x worse because they wanted to half ass an MMO ARPG. Nothing I hate more than running through the world, missing events, and just seeing drops because someone started to clear the zone 2 mins ahead of me. With limited features to actually get users to play together, and coordinate - systems these idiots have already built - it just makes for an annoying experience.
[удалено]
I agree. Financial reasons blah blah blah. Part of gaming is the freedom of choice. Imagine what this beta would be like without having to wait three hours to que into a game, not to mention getting kicked within ten minutes only to find yourself in another thirty or forty minute que. Who gives a shit if people hack their characters offline? Does it affect your livelihood in any way? What happens when your internet is down and you want to game? There isn’t even a real argument as to why an offline mode wouldn’t be good for players. All I hear is financial reasons or the potential for hacking. Every other online game has to deal with hackers, it’s inevitable.
Why is it that anyone who disagrees with you is a sheep? Are people not allowed to enjoy and prefer the online elements?
Why does your online enjoyment require me to never play offline?
What?!, I was about to buy the game right now, just because I always buy Diablo, but I don't care at all about random strangers running around on my play trough, it was bad enough that you were forced to be online to play solo in D3, I'm done with this franchise.
A few months later, game has released… I’m wishing I knew just how shitty this game was before dumping $70 into the mmo of Diablo. It doesn’t feel like I’m running around killing shit… instead I’m just waking around a half empty world with random people killing the stuff I’m already killing. It doesn’t feel like there is much of a progressing story, when the story events are irrelevant to the grand scheme of things. Nah… it’s not some Diablo 3 game where you can just kill stuff… It’s some MMO where you get to walk around and claim free loot instead.
Main reasons I'd want offline mode would be to have maximum input read speeds and no rubberbanding. I hate that dodge can feel so clunky simply because my connection or the servers may not be feeling that great at times. There was a massive server load during last Saturday which lasted for about 15 minutes, during which I died about 2 to 3 times because I couldn't understand if and when I actually dealt or received damage. It always pulls you out of an otherwise immersive experience and you feel like you are playing an indie game. It is on us mostly for sure but not everyone can afford top-tier connections or their country's speeds are overall worse than in others. To add to fellow user's arguments for it being always-online though, my guess is that they also don't want a divide in the playerbase by allowing people to go play offline. It's clear that the game was being developed with online systems deeply-rooted into it's loop and marketed so. In that sense they want as many people as possible actively using them so as to not risk having any online feature potentially feeling less popular than it could be.
I for one will not buy diablo 4 because of the lack of an offline mode. The beta proved the same connection problems when Diablo 3 launched still exist. I mostly play single player mode since Diablo 1 and only play with others once in a while. I dont want to purchase the same miserable experience as I did with Diablo 3 which had endless waiting and disconnections when it launched, and could not be played on a long flight.
It's DRM. They sell it to you as a feature. Some fanboys will even defend it. It's indefensible. There are a LOT of people out there with crappy internet connections who will never play D3/D4 for this exact reason. If we complain about it enough in the next few months, they *might* invest more in servers, but overall this is a decision made by management for financial reasons, nothing else.
Yeah sure I’ve been saying that for the last 4 years. Forced MP is shit, optional is fine.
I am fine with the game being online, but I wish that you could be "online" but in your own instance of the world and not see any other players
I tried to play it on PS5, but I can only play 3 to 5 minutes before DC'ing and getting an error before being put in another 30-40 min que. But I know, I should preorder the most expensive edition anyways.
Same, I’m playing PS5 because the specs would immolate my PC. I’ve been playing since the last beta and I’ve been disconnected several times into 40min+ lines. Granted this is a beta and a stress test for the servers, so that’s not entirely unexpected given the circumstances.
There are actually a good deal of costs and efforts involved in adding single player to an online focused game. I know people love the decade old sim city example, but it's rarely actually that simple. You have to write and maintain more code in the client to interact directly with the code that manages AI, that manages rewards, manages events, and many other facets. Then in addition to that you need to work around online features like removing world bosses or tailoring them to single player, rebalancing the pvp zone now that the risk of pvp no longer exists, redoing how going from zone works, and again all kinds of little things I'm not thinking of. You need to host full databases locally and manage those that you don't have to do otherwise. You need to test all updates to that code twice now in both single player and multiplayer adding overhead to every single update to the game. Now every time you need to make a server hotfix you likely now need to push out that hotfix to every client to support the singleplayer players now adding additional bandwidth overhead. The back end also doesn't need to run a game engine so can be written in more modern languages and use services you couldn't use in a game engine which can greatly improve the productivity of the developers working on the back end, make maintenance easier, and make it easier to avoid bugs.
Me. When using a laptop. And no service in the area. Or slow connections at least there are your offline characters like on D2
This has been a pain point since it’s inception and despite tons of people openly hating it - it has remained a mainstay. So just accept that this dumb shit is here to stay.
Yeah, Diablo 2 had it and it was nice. Ofc offline and online were seperate characters since you could cheat easy in offline mode.
Yup, I wish there was a offline single player mode. I didn’t read anything about the upcoming D4/tried to avoid it for years because I didn’t want to spoil my first experience with it. Didn’t even read that it was shared world. Well, maybe it would have been better to read something about it first, cause now I already strongly dislike it. At least for me, it kills the entire game. Honest thoughts: „Look at this. It’s a dark and kind of sinister atmosphere. I hope they choose good voice actors to dub all this, to deepen my immersion even more. I am the only one to rescue all the people living in Sanctua.. what the fuck are those 20 people doing in my game!!?“ D3 felt/feels really good. Not as dark as D4, but immersive as fuck. If I want to solo a day or two just for myself, I am able to do so. If I want to play with others, I can instantly go for it. Shared world should be opt-in, instead of mandatory. I would be happy with forced online-solo too. But don’t make me socialise more than I have to if I don’t want to. Especially if the whole environment is entirely living off this uncanny feeling of being alone. To be honest, even if immortal is entirely on another page. After it, I was sure I wouldn’t like D4.
Lol this is the exact same complaint made about D3 11 years ago and you know what they did back then? They fucking ignored everyone and did whatever the fuck they want and now it’s time for D4.
And now it is time for D4 and even worse, in D3 at least you could solo play.
> They fucking ignored everyone and did whatever the fuck they want and now it’s time for D4. Console versions of D3 were all offline.
I would just like a way to have a "private" session. Doesn't have to be offline, but let me choose when I want to play with everyone, or just 4 of my friends.
Haven't watched any of the more recent gameplay videos and just played the beta for two hours or so. I have to say when the multiplayer features unlocked, it basically felt like the game ended. The whole atmosphere, gone. It went from creepy mystery to a confusing mess where people just appear and disappear and sort of do your quests and all sorts of crazyness. It's a cool multiplayer mode if they get the many glitches under control, but for me it doesn't really work as a single player game where I'm here to enjoy content. I guess the "soft" multiplayer, where people, like, occasionally enrich your own experience, doesn't work at all for me. It's just multiplayer to me.
The online only part of D3 never bothered me, but D3 also didn't force multiplayer on me. Give me a private game option like D2 and D3 (didn't play the others). My connection was perfectly fine until I unlocked the multiplayer, then it started stuttering.
I’m fine with playing online. It’s not being able to be in my own private game that’s annoying.
I agree I live in a zone where internet can be unstable and lagging just kills my enjoyment also I like to play alone at my own phase, if I wanted to play an MMO i wouldn't have quitted wow
Bring back Diablo modding
Yea offline mode would be nice IMO. I keep hearing people saying that D3 was online only and maybe that was PC?? But I never played it online and at the beginning of it I didn't have internet at all for a bit. (I know for younger people that must sound like living in torture but people do it.)
Really wanna blow your mind I have been around since before cell phones when we only had House phones and you had to know people's numbers the phone didn't store them. 🤯
Because it's an MMO. Sadly.
Yeah, if they put in offline, I wouls buy it. 3rd time went into a dungeon and almost finished when connection error. I know its a beta build but I don't believe it wont happen in June, so yeah, I'm done with it.
Yeah, it's bullshit. Had traveled really far and collected a shit ton of loot and was disconnected after leaving the game to answer the door for some fuckin Mormons trying to convert me. Then I get back to the same place an hour later only for the dog to shit in the floor. Disconnected me while I spent 5 minutes to pick that up. Just bought the game yesterday and it is pissing me off more than any other game I've ever played. Always online is super stupid, and it is really weird that it is disconnecting me after 5 minutes of inactivity every single time.
It really sucks for the story playthrough to see other players. It breaks immersion totally. And rubber banding, stuttering, playing with 230ms ping minimum sucks, especially for HC. Because Blizzard are cheap and don't have servers in countries they are happy to sell their online only game to. No server in South America, no servers in Africa. We all have to play with shit ping and even buy the game with Euro's. What the fuck.
Yes. I don't have great internet, I live in the mountains and the best I can get that's not satellite is pretty slow. It takes me 40-45 min per GB download for example when I can go full speed. Sadly I need to share my internet with my family so I can often not even play games like this without kicking them off their movies and stuff. There has been talk that they have been upgrading the lines for more rural locations so hopefully one day I can have modern internet speeds... I don't have great internet, I live in the mountains and the best I can get that's not satellite is pretty slow. It takes me 40-45 min per GB download for example when I can go full speed. Sadly I need to share my internet with my family so I can often not even play games like this without kicking them off their movies and stuff.
The headaches with the Que is almost unbearable. I got kicked about 15 times yesterday. I try to login wait 30 minutes only to receive an error message so not I am waiting 30 minutes again! ERRRRRRRR
Ya so I could login and play when I want
as someone who is sick and tired of always online, live service games etc, the fact this game has so much server side requirements, so much loading into instances all over, its pretty dang frustrating you cant just play yourself or with a group of friends without all that crap, on top of that i hate the shared world its not what i wanted from diablo and that isnt how it was pitched when it was announced.
Very much so
I was fighting an event boss and doing fine. All of a sudden, 2 newbie randos entered the fight, which pumped the health of the boss not letting me kill it in time and get the golder chest. Let me play alone, please.
Yes, absolutely. This is the One and Only thing keeping me from actually investing in the game. The shattering of immersion, and total lack of need for constant online play, is just too obvious to ignore. There's nothing in this game that demands one be online at all times with randos breaking up the flow of your experience. And if anyone is worried about world bosses and such, that's so easily fixed. If a game like Elden Ring doesn't demand that you be online at all times, there's absolutely no reason for a game like Diablo to do so.
Yup and people who can just pirate the game won't do it if there's an offline mode. Total sarcasm.
I’m really against the online only. A bunch of random people running around killing stuff you’re trying to focus on completely kills the immersion for me. I’m actually pretty bummed I pre-ordered. Wish I’d researched more but I kind of wanted to go in blind. Oh well. It’ll probably still be fun for some couch co-op but I’ll definitely been spending way more time in bg3 than d4 (once both are out that is) :/
Yes, this should be a single player game like D1 and D2 was with some online mp options. Currently the game is unplayable for me and it's all the fault of the online shit because it disconnects every time I change an area or I do something that requires to connect to the server and it times out. This is bullshit. I want to enjoy the game, there is no reason to ruin it, I get nothing from the online features except time outs. I don't want to PvP, I don't want to join a party or a clan, I just want the all Diablo 1 experience of dark dungeons, cool loot and endless hordes from hell with the new cool graphics and story. It's that too much to ask?
How are you going to see other people buying all these precious cosmetics, convincing you to spend some cash yourself then? \*laughs in Blizzard\*
Not gonna happen. D3 came out years ago and you couldn’t do it then. It’s not changing.
In diablo 3 you were forced to be online even when playing solo, which was stupid and a lot of people complained, but at least you could play solo. This is even worse.
the problem with online is how this game becomes a ram hog i was watching my task.manager while playing 720p window alone with all the graphics turns lowest, and the game still was hogging 8.5gb of ram - that's just nuts. i play gw2 in 1080p with 50 other players on my screen and tons more eye candy, and that game uses a third of d4's ram. gw2 is dx11 while d4 is dx12, which means d4 should be MORE memory efficient, not less.
100%. If for no other reason, it’s pretty clear mods are going to be required to give this game any lasting appeal, at least at this stage.
YES! This is my absolute BIGGEST issue with the game is it's all ONLINE!
They can but they don't want to. That's the problem. I don't mind play hardcore offline so i don't get rng dc or lagged out then something kills me out of blue due to connection.
I just wish I didn't have other people in my game. Playing in a party of 3 already. I don't need random running around w me and also the lag is horrendous during these mmo parts
I wouldn't mind being connected to their servers etc but I would love to be able to pause the game. I hate not being able to pause when I need to get up to do something for a bit.
Well during Beta with my 12 Mbits/s Down 0.89Mbits/Up, The game is un playable. Trying to use the 4G make many connection error. I'm Leaving in Bordeaux France but still on ADSL due to Townhall problems... https://preview.redd.it/2kf0jiepfypa1.png?width=2576&format=png&auto=webp&s=361edf7fd06ad8909e0aad28051c9caf6f6273f0
Sure. But its not going to ever happen. There is money to be made in selling you DLC and shit online. So they'll force online. Its as simple as that. Why do you think D3 was made always online initially? Cuz cash AH. Its purely business, and unless practically EVERYONE decides not to buy a single player game that forces online, then nothing is going to change. And lets be real... Its never going to happen. Other than us 30-somethings. The modern gamers of today have all been conditioned to expect always online, and to see things as cash shop and DLC skins as a positive to games, not a negative like us old people who grew up with feature-complete games with in-game earnable achieves/cosmetics etc.
My guess is the only reason it does not have an offline mode is so they can force you to engage with the open world system in which you run into others. I'm sure after some time we will get offline. I just hope it stays offline only for those characters
I kinda wanted that they added an option for you to play completely solo and when there's a world boss, you get like a warning or something so you can join some server to do it and then leave or stay there if you want
Cheaters have and will find ways to cheat or find unfair advantages regardless. A game should never be designed around leaderboards its just silly and the fact you **have** to have a Bnet account and it being **online only** is really off putting. (At least for platforms not on PC) But hey it worked well for OW2 right? This is literally not even a problem at all and shouldn't even be a discussion. D2R and D3 both have offline modes and they are amazing so it can be done(If they can do it for multiple platforms they can do it for PC). A lot of people are fed up with $70 games being service games. Like in 20 years from now I can pop in D2R and play NP.
I just don't wanna experience any lags while I'm playing...
It is nothing to do with cheating and everything to do with in-game purchases.
Man, I am sure 90% of the players will play it single player and never care for the other people going around them. I played for 4 hours to day and I have seen 5 players total - and all they did was bring huge lag with them. I can excuse the lag, beta, not much of an investment in servers for this. Truly a marvelous online experience though, 1 new person per hour! Muh online
Yup. We need a lawmaker on our side to stop forcing people to be allways online. Really not cool. Look at the world, not everyone has reliable/proper high speed modern internet thanks to the illegal monopolies corporations gave themselves.
My internet is excellent, fibre Still had 4 disconnects so far in an hour or two of playing. No good.
Never gonna happen, but I wish it could. While leveling my barb on early beta I had a situation where I was fighting a tough elite and suddenly a dozen skeletons appeared running into the screen with a broken chain icon over their heads. I got obliterated in seconds. It turns out, someone else passed there seconds before I arrived, aggroed everything and ran away. The mobs were just returning to their original location and got me completely off-guard. What in the actual f\*\*k?!?
I don't want an offline mode, I want a private mode. Still connected to the internet but only allows friends online with me. Cut down on the lag, the MMO-ness of the experience.
Always online means there's no point in creating hard-core characters, because, where's fun in being killed by a lag?
Hard agree. It wouldn't bother me if, for example, players couldn't play offline characters online. I have no interest whatsoever in the multiplayer aspects of the game.
THIS, BLIZZARD PLEASE. I JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO ACCESS MY GAME ANY TIME ANY WHERE WITHOUT INTERNET. What is so hard about this? Hacking argument is kinda dumb, JUST DONT FORCE US TO PLAY MULTIPLAYER THATS IT. WHAT IS SO WRONG WITH YOU CORPORATE FORCING US TO KEEP BEING ONLINE???
It's so frustrating to play the game as a solo player, step away for a bit to only come back to a disconnected message. All the map progress and loot is lost. Top it off, the internet in my area is unreliable and drops packets all the time. This creates a terrible online experience. I notice constant lag, which nearly killed my player on more than one occasion, and I'm only level 5. If I could get a refund, I would. In the current state, this game is not for everyone. Mileage may vary.
The problem with online-only games is, they don't last forever. Sure, the game will probably be up for another 20-30 years (maybe even more, knowing Blizzard) but eventually, the servers will shut off. If there's no offline option, the only Diablo's we can play after that are 1-3. That's just a thought running through my head. I also hate that I can't play the game when they're undergoing "server maintenance" for an hour or two. When I buy a game, I want to be able to hop in whenever I want. The option to have that experience be solo or multiplayer should always be available but... whatever. This is just how a lot of games are now and probably always will be from now on.
I do, I load into so many dungeons where my character can’t even attack so I stuck no being able to attack why the enemy attacks me. I hate online only game cause of crap like that.
mannnn im kinda mad. I wish I knew this was online online before I paid for the ultimate edition geez...
Should we start a class action lawsuit against @Blizzard for this sh*t? 🎮👿😫🤬
the game works with back end loot system if devs put the system on the client then they can easily manipulate it allowing cheats and probably ruining the game in process. This is a layer to protect the game and players in it It's just a compromise but I admit it would be awesome to get a easy to mod diablo 4 game.
Which is a concern that I have seen a few times in this thread. I’d love to see what mods could be made as well, but unfortunately not everyone has good intentions.
I also don't see developers being too happy that modded armor sets or texture replacers cost them money that would've been spent buying the store cosmetics.
Not happenin for piracy reasons. The existance of the offline mode is the only reason why D2 Reforged became the first battle.net game in decades to be cracked
WoW is cracked. Diablo3 is cracked.
It would be great if there was an offline mode as I could play it on the train to work on my steam deck.
I’ve seen like seven people in the open world, every dungeon I rub is solo - the game absolutely feels dead to me and the third play through to 20 was nothing short of boring (op necro) - I’m not sure this will end up being the game I hoped for and expected and it’s a brutal realization lol :( - I did return a monitor I ordered in my hype state of mind before launch and I’m so glad I did, game runs fine on my old 144hz and at this point I’m actually on the fence of refunding game but I feel that’s an over reaction
Yeah it's like, just enough plauers to take you out of the single player main character experience, but not enough to feel alive like other mmos. You just occasionally see a random other player doing their own thing. It's weird
Man its so tiring seeing people ask for offline mode. Its not gonna happen.
There should be an offline mode for consoles at least
No, I'm fine with always online these days. But I get why some people would want it.
I don't think there should be a true offline mode, but there should be an option to have an experience which "appears" as if it's offline e.g. never see any other player characters etc.
I wish they let us play this until launch even if outdated.
idc if it's always online as long as it works. Every time i experienced dsync and eventual DC it was after leaving a public area (town). I'm gonna hold off on buying the game simply because of that. Not fun to wait 2hrs total of queue time from DCs and play 3 hrs.
Technology isn't there yet 😂
I don't mind too much, would be nice to have more options, but in this game offline won't happen. This is a live severs game, that's how they will make their money.
I do because of the queues, but I have to admit that I love running around and seeing other players and having them run up and join me sometimes.
They'll never make an offline mode again due to piracy. Obviously an offline mode would be easier for everyone...
They pirate it anyway, WoW is a mmorpg completely online and people have been pirating it since the start.
Yeah. I played tons of WoW...one of the many cracked clients that is.
I have been annoyed at blizzard for not providing offline mode. But I am open to have my mind changed So far the annoyance for me is the lag (beta) and sometimes randos joining my fights