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
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.
Not directly answering your question about D2, but if you’re looking for a more modern D2 style experience Grim Dawn is worth looking into. May scratch that itch.
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?
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.
Games that completely disable single-player with no internet connection bother me. I like to be able to play my games whenever I want. What happens to these games down the road when the servers go down?
And if ever they take their servers offline, the game becomes abandonware.
Honestly? I used to not care. I usually have internet connectivity and have at least one backup method of getting online.
But now my father is psuedo-homeless and there’s so many games he’s missed out on because his Van/RV didn’t get enough cell signal to work.
After that I understood the problem in a far deeper way.
Games were accessible to me as a kid, not because I could afford them, but because I could just pop in my neighbors CD (and enter their CD key if needed) and be off to the races! If I were to grow up poor now, it would be miserable.
Always-online “single player” games, huge downloads, and if you happen to avoid all that you STILL need to check in online occassionally to use your own Steam Library.
I mean, if 15 year old me existed today, I’d still be pirating things but it would be through a network of friends with Blu-ray burners and good internet connections.
These days, I try to buy on GOG only, and only their non-DRM titles. Then I can throw them onto a samsung t5 and sneaker net it to my dad without worrying if Steam/Origin/Blizzard/Epic will get in the way.
GOG really is the way to go. I try to support them whenever I can.
With 2 kids now, gaming time is very hard to come by. At least I know that when I do have time to game again, I’ll be able to play these games because they have no server to connect to.
Singleplayer games have no reason to require an internet connection to be able to play the game.
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.
It makes sense in that having a local single player and a multiplayer mode requires writing much of the game twice. Having a remote single player mode only requires making the game once, with a special instance spun up for each single player game.
I live a life where I often don’t have a persistent connection. That means for me, I can’t play new games. While I have been a fan and player of Diablo since the first one I’ll have to sit this one out.
I would never buy such games in the first place. If a singleplayer game doesn’t have an offline mode I’m not interested.
If it’s a strictly multiplayer game, fine.
If not, that’s just DRM, and it should die in a fire.
In my opinion all games that can be played solo should have an offline mode. Personally I have an excellent internet connection but I hate having to depend on servers to be able to play the game that I bought.
The thing about always online is that the servers often crap out, especially during launch or during major patches. That just annoys the hell out of me.
These were my thoughts as well. Ever since I’ve had a good internet connection, online only games haven’t really bothered me, but that’s a privilege many don’t have.
When I had crap internet it, I’d have to download a patch overnight and it was awful getting a surprise patch, meaning I couldn’t play til the next day.
I don’t see any reason for single player games not to have an offline mode. Especially for people who don’t have good access to internet.
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?
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.
Complete dealbreaker for me. You’ll never actually own games with such models, as you are completely dependand on the publisher. Once they pull the plug, you can’t play the game you paid for. Server probleem? Sorry, you can’t play right now. Traveling? Sorry, can’t play.
It is also generally bad for modding and the overall user experience. These kind of games often have DRM that don’t allow for modding
I choose not to play these games.
If a single player game requires online connection im not buying it.
This. If I’m gonna gave to get a pirate version in order for it to work, I’m donating to the crackers that fixed it, not the publishers that deliberately broke it.
Always-online has not affected me much. What you describe above about pausing is a coding issue, not an attribute of online play. To my knowledge, Watch Dogs 2 and Deep Rock Galactic work the same way: People can join your session at any random moment, but before they do, you can pause the game as normally.
