I’m currently playing Diablo IV (and having a blast with it) but finding one small gripe which I only think is going to get worse and probably stop me playing it completely in the long run.
My girlfriend is currently pregnant. This means in 6 months time we’ll have a newborn. With this in mind I’m expecting to only be able to grab a few minutes at a time to game and even when I think I’ll have longer I may end up jumping off at short notice. This means I’ll almost certainly come to rely on games which I can pause. Unfortunately this isn’t possible with Diablo IV since it requires an always online connection even though I’m essentially playing it as a single player game.
What are other people’s thoughts?
If the game is single player, there’s no reason for it to force you to be connected to the internet. It’s annoying and it shouldn’t be the norm
It sucks, plain and simple. Single-player games should never require internet access, and if the game has a multiplayer component, it should be a separate mode that leaves the single-player mode working even when there is no internet connectivity.
It’s just basic fucking common sense… except that it conflicts with financial interests and greed.
also the asshole dev “THiS is tO preVenT uSer dOinG ILLEGaL acTIon suCh As TEmPerING gamE AND Cheat EngInE”
Which we all know is going to happen anyway.
If it’s single player game, having an always online component is straight up dumb. Fuck anybody who does this.
D4 is worse, imho. It forces you to play multiplayer at all times, completely destroying any immersion in the lore.
Sucks, too, because they nailed Diablo’s atmosphere (from games 1 & 2, not the WoW-ified D3 aesthetic.)
Is Diablo 2 still worth playing in 2023? I played D3 a few years back and thought it was just okay.
Diablo 2 has aged fantastically. It is still pretty much the king of the genre despite being 23 years old. D2R did a lot to bring the visuals up to date. Unlike other ARPGs, you can actually beat the game pretty fast if you know what you are doing. It’s a very efficient and clean game design. The game is a blast to play casually.
Absolutely… with mods!
Granted, I haven’t had time to sink into it recently, so I’m a bit out of the loop, but Path of Diablo is very popular, and I know there’s another big one I don’t have time to hunt down rn.
D2R is also an option.
That said, I have the nostalgia and patience for D2’s idiosyncrasies from having played it for years; I’m not sure how well it holds up for someone completely new, coming from the more streamlined/polished UX from modern games.
Sweet, thanks for the mod recommendations! Do you know how Diablo 2: Resurrected differs from the original version and if it’s worth the $30 extra?
That I don’t know. I’ve never played it. I just bought it myself in a bundle sale with the D3 stuff I didn’t have. I have to on D3 within a month of launch, so I thought I’d give it a try sometime since they say it’s a lot better since the expansion.
If you’ve never played the original, take the Resurrected. They’re the same game, but Resurrected is beautiful. Be warned though that mechanically, it’s an old game, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who hasn’t played it back then.
I choose not to play these games.
I hate it.
Usually I’m online but what if I’m not, or what if they have server problems, or what if in 5 years they feel done with the game and remove the servers. If I pay for a game, I want to be able to play that game on my terms
It just leads to a worse player experience now, and limited likely an inability to play later
Honestly fuck always online games. Piracy prevention methods at the cost of the paying customer. Absolute ridiculous that you cant play things you own offline
Always a bit of a turn off for me. Ross (guy that did Gordon’s mind and game dungeon) has a pretty good series of videos about why online only games are bad because they can be killed. He really hates the idea of killing games, and I agree with him.
Not only can the game get killed, however, but it can be changed fundamentally in a bad way. Balance can be tweaked for the worse etc. And unlike single player games you can’t revert back to a previous version.
I also hate that LAN play has been pretty much stripped from the PC game landscape. LAN parties during college were the shit.
Overwatch 1 is a prime example in recent memory. I preordered the damn thing and got the fancy skin. I will probably never be able to play the sunsetted maps again. Never be able to recreate the broken fun of the first month after launch, when people would randomly form identical hero meme comps in quick play. Never be able to go back to before the battle pass, when you didn’t functionally have to pay to unlock new heroes.
It’s a damn shame. Capitalism corrupts everything I love.
As a new dad, that problem was solved by being too tired to game with the little free time anyway lol. Also emulators like yuzu work wonders here as you can just pause the emulator even if the game doesn’t support it.
I don’t even have a child yet the work related fatigue is enough to make me avoid intense/stressful games that I’d play when younger. I can’t imagine choosing to play a game rather than sleeping if I had to also take care of a newborn.
If it’s not a multiplayer game then it shouldn’t need to be online.
Like I play Hitman a lot and occasionally the game pauses because it loses connection to the server even though it’s single-player. It’s usually able to reconnect but its still a bit annoying. And I am playing with 500mb internet and an ethernet connection, so the issue is on their side.
So yeah, I really don’t see why it’s necessary or why it’s become such a trend.
I flat out refuse to buy games that require a constant internet connection. It’s annoying for multiplayer games but the need for always online with a single player game is ridiculous.
Singleplayer games have no reason to require an internet connection to be able to play the game.
I honestly don’t really like it even when implemented well. It’s even what caused me to uninstall Just Cause 3. As fun of a game it was, I hated being constantly harassed by Square Enix telling me to connect to their servers or that there was some kind of error in connecting to said servers. I just want to play the damn game.
If it’s a singleplayer then no, I don’t think there are any reasons to have singleplayers to be always online. It can have online features but shouldn’t be a requirement
If it’s single player games, there should be ZERO reasons to have it requiring online connectivity 24/7. No buy for me. There will be times where your internet goes offline for ISP related issues or Xbox Live or PSN experiencing server issues. How am I going to play those games?
The only reason to require an Internet connection for a game is if it’s primarily multiplayer.
