Diablo III controversy

[Dog Pants]

Diablo III is generating a lot of controversy lately, with its real money auction houses and always online DRM. The former makes me uncomfortable, the latter is a personal bugbear of mine. But I've been thinking about both and maybe they have some good points. It's probably fairly normal to be uncomfortable with buying and selling in-game items for real money - it's not something gamers are used to, and the thought of parting with yet more cash after you've already shelled out for the game feels like you're being milked. It's likely that the rarest items will only be available on the cash auction house if they fetch a high price, which is suspiciously close to a pay-to-win system. However, I think the real crux of the system is the gold farmers. You get them in any MMO, spamming chat with their dodgy deals, but this move effectively makes what they're doing legitimate. It can then be controlled and regulated, and it will make a wealth of items available cheaply on the auction houses. Of course it would likely freeze normal gamers out of the market too, but maybe that's a good thing if people don't feel driven by a need to sell everything they loot. So assuming the real money economy is a good thing, there needs to be a strong system in place to prevent hacking and cheating exploiting it. I don't know the technical details, but it seems reasonable that a server-client system where all the important stuff is done by Blizzard is a solid step towards security. Whether it all pans out this way remains to be seen, and I think I'll be watching rather than buying initially at least, but it has some potential to make some great leaps forward in in-game economics.

But that's just my ramblings. What do you bummers think?

[buzzmong]

Wait, Diablo III isn't a single player game?

Oh

RMT in a single player game can go suck off a traffic bollard.

As for always-on-DRM, it can get cunted in the fuck. If it has always on DRM, I won't buy it. Same as I've done for the Ubisoft games that have had it, because I will not be treated as a thief after legally buying a product.

[Grimmie]

Player-to-player microtransactions? Sounds good to me. Nobody has to use it unless they want to.
I'm probably going to be playing solely with 5punkers, so I'm not worried about some rich dude coming on with his paid-for armour. What difference does it make if somebody wants to complete a rare armour set with a $10 instead of grinding tirelessly at a boss over and over till they get the drop they want?

Always-on DRM? Sounds a bit dodgy, but if it's anything like Starcraft II's DRM, then that's cool.
Battle.net allows you to play as a 'guest' if you're offline, but you can't earn achievements. It does make sense for a game that really earned its stars in PVP/Co-op, and one that was ruined by people spoofing items and killing/stealing stuff from innocent people in their servers.

[spoodie]

Wait, Diablo III isn't a single player game?

Oh

RMT in a single player game can go suck off a traffic bollard.

As for always-on-DRM, it can get cunted in the fuck. If it has always on DRM, I won't buy it. Same as I've done for the Ubisoft games that have had it, because I will not be treated as a thief after legally buying a product.

It's both single and multiplayer.
Purchasing things is a shortcut to items you'd get anyway, if you spend enough time. That's what I've been led to believe.
Always-on-DRM will help stop people cheating the transaction system. Not that I agree with it.

None of this helps with people in China, or where ever, farming items to sell and effecting the economy. But would this be a bad thing? Perhaps it'll make items cheaper. But it would make it harder for a normal person to make a bit of cash.

[FatherJack]

Perhaps I'm a cynic, but I think they've seen how big an impact gold farmers have on a game's economy and and how rife the practise is and rather than try to stamp it out, or make it an non-issue by not having player trading they've taken the decision to legitamize it and take a cut. AH taxes will now be real cash straight into Blizzard's bank account and the always-on DRM is to make sure they get that cut on every transaction.

[deject]

I was never a big Diablo guy mostly because I just never bought it or ever played it. The news I hear about D3 makes me wary to jump in at this point. I have no interest in the lore so it'd have to be OMG BEST GEAM EVARRRRRRRRRRRRRR for me to bother checking it out at this point.

[FatherJack]

I wasn't really interested in the first Diablo game, 1996 was all about Quake. I didn't pay much attention to Diablo 2 until after the expansion pack which upped the resolution from shit to rubbish, but by the time I got around to actually playing it online, Dungeon Siege was out which I thought far superior.

Since then we've had two more Dungeon Sieges and Titan Quest, but fixed camera heights where you can't look where the character is looking (ie: down a corridor at what's coming) seem to increasingly infuriate me these days.

When I saw the Witch Doctor video I was kind of interested, as it seemed like a cross between my two most-played WoW classes - DK and Warlock, but stuff I've seen since makes it look like it'll just be the overrun-by-a-million-enemies clickety-clickfest that always annoyed me in the past.

[buzzmong]

Diablo II was a good game for the time in my view. I can't deny it actually played quite well, but gameplay was pretty repetitive. I never got past act II because I got bored of going round and just smacking stuff.

Really, I think Diablo II suffers from rose-tinted glasses in the eyes of lots of people, I don't think it could be regarded as a classic though because it didn't really break new ground or massively raise the bar, which is why I'm not too fussed about Diablo III.

Come to think of it, DII consisted pretty much of grinding like you get in current MMO's.

I never played the online side of it though, so can't comment on it. I suppose it must add something because it's still popular as far as I'm aware.

[Joose]

Perhaps I'm a cynic, but I think they've seen how big an impact gold farmers have on a game's economy and and how rife the practise is and rather than try to stamp it out, or make it an non-issue by not having player trading they've taken the decision to legitamize it and take a cut. AH taxes will now be real cash straight into Blizzard's bank account and the always-on DRM is to make sure they get that cut on every transaction.

I'll be amazed if Blizzard makes any money from this at all, profit wise. Nothing is likely to go for particularly high prices, so any percentages they make will struggle to cover costs from extra infrastructure, customer support, transaction fees etc. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it runs at a mild loss.

Personally, I don't see the problem with the AH thing. Anyone playing this pvp is doin it rong, and if you are playing coop then you are only going to be playing with mates, so it's not like some guy dropping hundreds of pounds on the AH to get Pimp Shit is going to be a problem. If you don't like the idea, don't use it. It'll be just like it doesn't exist.

The always on DRM is a bad thing, I guess. As someone who never does offline gaming, and has a rock solid net connection, it's a bit hard for me to muster any enthusiasm over getting angry though. I can see why it might inconvenience those less luck than me, but...meh.

[spoodie]

Here's a video by Total Biscuit on the subject. It sounds exactly as FJ described it and I can see it making money.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBrESZJlNvQ[/media]

Fortunately I have next to zero interest in the game, more interest in this aspect of it. Morbid curiosity.

[Roman Totale]

We exploited the Auction House in CoH with minimum effort (as in exploited the markets, not cheating or anything like that) and made bags of in game cash. I would buy up all the items that were listed cheap and corner the market.

Now turn that in to real money and Chinese gold farmers who genuinely do this for a living.

The always on DRM can go fuck itself. I've never actually had an instance where I'd wanted to play something when I didn't have online access, but it's the thought that counts.

[Dog Pants]

I have had an instance when I've wanted to play something and didn't have online access. Bioshock, when I was posted to RAF Leeming and found BT refused to provide a connection. So it's kind of personal for me, and publishers saying things like "If you're a real gamer you'd have an internet connection, if not it's your own fault" really pisses me off.

[Joose]

The big difference between this idea and the AH in other games like CoH though, is that it is for real money, not fake money, and Blizzard are not setting the prices, players are. If its easy to game the system, then it will be super profitable for a very short time, before everything exploitable becomes worthlessly cheap. Plus, unless certain items are absurdly rare, to the point where on average only one of them drops a year or something, I will be astounded if anything goes for hundreds of dollars/pounds. Apart from those occasions where someone puts something on for waaaay above the normal asking price, and someone is foolish enough to not notice.

I admit I didn't watch all the way though the video there, but one of the things the letter at the beginning was worried about was this unbalancing PvP. The devs themselves have gone on record saying the PvP will not be balanced in any way, and they are not even going to try to make it work properly. Its not the focus of the game. Its there, if you want to piss about, but they have all but straight out said that it will suck, and they don't care. So yes, it will break the already broken PvP. So what?

What I really don't understand about all the upset is that this whole process is not actually a new thing. People bought and sold items and gold for real money in the older Diablo games all the time. There just wasn't a safe, established way of doing that, so occasionally you would paypal the guy your money, and he would never turn up on the server to throw your expensive item on the ground. The only real difference I can see is that in the new system, you are less likely to get screwed.

Ultimately, my money is on everyone flapping about how the AH will destroy the game right until it comes out (maybe for a little while after). The game will then sell by the fuckload, the AH will turn out to not affect most of us in the slightest, and after a little while we will have forgotten we were ever angry about it.

I have had an instance when I've wanted to play something and didn't have online access. Bioshock, when I was posted to RAF Leeming and found BT refused to provide a connection. So it's kind of personal for me, and publishers saying things like "If you're a real gamer you'd have an internet connection, if not it's your own fault" really pisses me off.

Don't get me wrong, I understand that, and I agree that its stupid of them. I don't actually think its the wrong way for DRM to go, mind, its more that they have gone there way too early. In the shiny future where high speed mobile internets are so ubiquitous that not having a net connection is as unthinkable as running out of air, always on DRM makes a lot of sense. But we are not there yet, and I can see why this kind of thing would piss you off. It just doesn't piss me off. I cant get passionate about it, as it doesn't affect me at all. Sorry.

In case im coming off all callous, think of it this way: Australian gamers often don't get access to games we do due to stupid laws. The effect is the same as always on DRM: A big chunk of the worlds gaming population is being stopped from playing games for no good reason. Are we Brits/Americans/Other assorted countries getting all angry and ranty about that? Not really, no. Because it doesn't affect us.

[Dog Pants]

Don't get me wrong Joose, none of my mini-rant was directed at you. I can understand the logic behind connection based DRM, it's the attitude of developers who state that if that DRM ruins your experience it's your own fault which upsets me. People in that kind of situation are a minority, and from a neutral standpoint I can understand the business decision, but don't try to make out it's the customer's fault. As for the AH, I'm pretty much in agreement. I want to hate it, but when I think about it it kind of makes sense. So, as I say, I'll wait and see.

[Nickface]

I have no interest in the lore...

Christ, I've played through both games several times and I still couldn't tell you the story.

It's something like: we have to kill the bad demony man after staying a while and listening to a guy that sounds like Jimmy Stewart. After you kill demony man the first time you stab yourself in the face with a pointy ruby. Then you apparently demony man is coming back which leads you to getting a "nice cube" according to Jimmy, which you use to help kill demony man a second time, but then oh wait, he has a bro in the mountains who was just chillin' the entire time.


I think Blizzard is trying to make D3 a LOT more MMO like, seeing as they want to make abilities more readily available during gameplay. I've not been enthused as much as other people because frankly, Diablo players ruin the game for me. They break the game down to percentages, variables and spreadsheets, do a "Baal run" to pump their characters up to level10,000 then just spam "frost bukake" while teleporting around the map and grabbing the loot. Why do I want to hang around that?

[Dog Pants]

Interesting development on the real money AH. They've removed it from the Korean version as it constituted gambling there.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01 ... uth-korea/

Lots of commenters are crying for it to be removed from all versions. Personally I'd just not use it. It's not like it puts you at a disadvantage unless you're playing it competitively. For the single player gamer, which despite Blizz's insistence to the contrary most people will play, it has no effect whatsoever. The permanent internet connection on the other hand will have an effect on the single player game, but I've made my point about that already.