I don’t mind multiplayer for Diablo. My first experience with Diablo was at a cybercafe in Virginia in 1996. Multiplayer was only LAN. No TCP/IP.
I’ve played every Diablo game since, including the latest Diablo Immortal. Multiplayer is fine when it’s optional. What I hate is forced parties. Dungeons where I have to have 2+ more players to even participate despite my 9,000 combat rating.
Forced multiplayer is bad. Developers shouldn’t assume every player has 7 friends who also play. “Always Online” is also bad. What if I want to play during a flight or traveling where I have a few days down time? What if I want to play when I don’t have access to the internet? Sucks to be you…
The vast majority of my experience playing D2 was solo, single player. The vast majority of my experience with D3 was solo, single-player. Even in DI, I run around ignoring party requests and playing how I want to play but there’s tons of content I can’t enjoy because I don’t have a party of 8 and refuse to party up with random 14 year old kids.
I like how some MMO’s just threw you into a raid group if you were in the area. GW2 (requires a little bit of effort) and old Warhammer Online had this. When done right it was great. Run to area event, get roped into the raid group, beat the big bad boss creature, get rewards, leave raid group.
Very few forced mplayer games really really work well to avoid toxic communities. Deep Rock Galactic seems to be a magical game where everyone comes together. But the reality is that most games end up with toxic people.
My fiance definitely prefers SPGs over mplayer, mainly because she never has to consider dealing with this BS or playing on someone else's time. And she gets sadder and sadder every time she is forced into some mplayer experience when she just wants to enjoy a game alone. And I can completely empathize.
I've gone mostly single player as I got older. Even stuff like Monster Hunter World I will struggle against Behemoth instead of just teaming up. Other people are just added complexity I don't want to deal with.
That said game design and moderation can help alleviate the toxicity. FFXIV is fairly decent for this, as raids tend to have zero setup so at worst you just waste time attempting them. Contrast with other MMOs where you have to earn entry or face significant costs to attempt, then more costs when you fail, that's understandably a recipe for toxicity even in a supposedly cooperative game.
They're technically not forced multiplayer (though they're intended to be played as such), but games like Journey and Death Stranding seem to show that limiting actual interaction between players can really foster positive qualities in people.
> Deep Rock Galactic seems to be a magical game where everyone comes together.
I do continue to see this mentioned on Reddit. I've got hundreds and hundreds of hours in DRG and it's all solo aside from literally 5-10 games I played with friends-only (but none of them play regularly). I'm so glad DRG support single player, gives you a bonus (Bosco), scales the game, and lets you pause. I'm glad the multiplayer is good, I'm happier that I don't have to deal with it at all if I don't want to.
It's been really sad to see my favorite franchises slowly go online/multiplayer (Elder Scrolls/Fallout) and I constantly worry that the games I've been playing for over a decade (like Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3, FO:LV, FO4, ME1, ME2, ME3) are the last of their breed. For me even having multiplayer/online (more specifically, a recurring revenue stream) taints a game in the same way that IAP taints mobile games (with the exception of "remove ads", "full unlock", or "unlock level pack", if I see "500 gems" I run in the other direction). It skews incentives and ruins games. No matter how much you swear up one side and down the other that it doesn't, it's not true. PvZ 2+ was ruined by IAP and EA even went back and ruined PvZ 1 (even for people who bought it). "Where's The Water?" was also a great game that was littered with IAP in the second version, Angry Birds as well has fallen. It makes me incredibly mad and sad that there are so few good single player games and the ones that do exist aren't coming from AAA studios/big names. DRG is a good example, so is something like Factorio (which does have multiplayer, but don't monetize it). Cosmetic-only DLC/IAP seems to be pretty safe overall but I still worry how much longer it can last when assholes like the CEO of Unity thinks anyone not prioritizing monetization are "Fucking Idiots" (His "apology" is meaningless, he meant what he said and fully believes it).
It just feels like we will never see something as pure, wonderful, and buggy :) as Skyrim again. Even that game has the shitty "Creation Club" or whatever they called it trying to monetize mods. ES:O/FO:76 are garbage compared to their predecessors. Indie games are great and seem to be the only place you see a real desire to create something fun, not just something that will print money, but I yearn for the kinds of games we just don't see from indies (again, ES/FO/ME to name a few I've loved, if you know of any like this please let me know).
I desperately hope I'm wrong and we see a resurgence of games that try to be fun instead of casinos in disguise. Until then I'll keep playing my old games and the few indies that make me happy instead of feeling like a second job.
I'm more or less the same. If i wanted to deal with people I'd be out doing something, not playing a video game.
my exception is dark souls, where I happen to really enjoy the pvp approach, and doesn't really give players much of a way to be toxic other than literally throwing dung at each other.
But usually there's other options if you want to be specific about who you invite. Clans/Guilds are moderated (require approval) and parties are (accept invite) so a raid group is just a lump of parties together for a goal. This, I support. Having to "lfrg bleh bleh" sucks and is never an effective use of your time in a game. Raid Finders (like Party Finders) promised to deliver a better experience but failed for the most part as people continue to restrict who they play with.
How would you solve raid groups NOT being pointless while also making sure that players who want to participate, can, without having to play the "pick me for your team" game?
Pay-to-win mechanics only work in multiplayer, so expect a lot more pressure for settings where conspicuous consumption flourishes. The worm will eventually turn, but not until there is a pretty massive shift in the public consciousness - which would have a far greater impact than just wiping out loot crates and $1.99 cosmetic reskins.
Both kinds of games are good. When forced cooperation works, such as in early WoW and even more so with early Everquest, it can be a very magical thing. The combination of high time investment to get things done, often needing other classes to do those things, and no cross-server play builds a server community in a very special way. Other classes needing skills only yours has also means you have other people coming to you for help often, you can sell your skills, and your class feels more fun and unique.
Of course, these games have other massive issues. Particularly the leveling experience on servers past the initial rush.
There are plenty of hack and slash games out there, no need to keep feeding the soulless, dehumanizing machine that is Activision Blizzard, just so Bobby Kotick could ruin more lives. Every dollar you send in their direction ends up covering up more abuse and financing political extremism. He is way worst than your average slimy executive, he is a very sick person.
Diablo is dead, the people that know how to make Diablo games left a long time ago.
They can't even remaster Diablo 2 without fucking it up. You can't even play single player offline without signing into a "Blizzard account" that fucks up and won't update and has to be reinstalled and then maybe, if you're lucky, they might let you play the game you paid for.
I bought that for my wife after quite some discussion of what a pile of shit Blizzard is.
After that experience, I can't imagine giving them any money for "Diablo" 4, especially considering how much I failed to enjoy "Diablo" 3 (which I bought on Playstation since once again, the computer version doesn't work offline).
I prefer to spend money on Dark Souls now, it has that melancholy feeling that Diablo 1 had, and that sense of danger, that dark atmosphere.
As a person who never played D1 or D2, I picked up D3 on the Switch last year and it’s been one of my favorite games. Not sure what I’m missing out on from the other two games but D3 scratched an itch for me that was lacking from the games I played in my free time.
Accessibility. It was by far the most accessible Diablo game. You didn’t have to go find some complicated build to feel strong. You could literally play anything.
Making a Cast-on-crit automated character that could cause recursive explosions of knives and fireballs as long as it stayed within range of enemies was so satisfying.
Theorycrafting is fun. I want a PoE that allows and encourages botting so I can play it like an incremental game more than an ARPG.
It is though their recent direction is concerning. I quit this league within a week or two. Don't really want to unpack all the drama here and the game is still very good, I just need to wait and see what they do next time around.
Yeah, the addition of the constellation system on top of the dual skill trees was huge for me too. Brings the depth to a level where you can spend ages theorycrafting, while not being nearly as immediately daunting to new players as PoEs skill tree can be.
Tencent is present in almost every game dev company, including blizzard. they own almost half of epic too, so half of unreal engine is owned by them too. you will be playin a very narrow selection of games if u go down that road.
Also check out Grim Dawn. Feels a bit less cartoony than Torchlight which I appreciated, and has a lot of nice solutions for quality of life problems from D2.
Grim Dawn is also great, though you'll only be able to squeeze a few hundred hours of greatness compared to the thousands of hours of greatness you can get out of PoE.
There is a mode where you create the character separated from the global server, so u play alone, or you can pay GGG for a private server to play only with friends. but is always online.
I'm surprised and somewhat doubtful the process for online vs offline is materially different. I wonder if some of the reluctance/delay on single player is to keep the data miners at bay. The moment loot and drop rates go into a local data pack, that information will go out to all the min-maxers who will bring that info back into ladder play.
While single player is a big part of Diablo, the difference between Diablo and the RPGs the author compares it to is that those other RPGs don't have a thriving multiplayer scene (From games being the exception, but doesn't materially change the point). You can't treat them the same.
Also from what I hear at least, exploiting was rampant in at least classic Diablo 2 because the client was trusted (haven't paid attention to the remaster to see if they did anything about it there). My understanding is Diablo 3 was ostensibly online-only to try to address this (especially since it originally shipped with a real-money auction house which would have been even more dead on arrival than it already was had exploits been straightforward)
Alternatively, the original Dungeon Defenders game addressed this by building a wall between singleplayer and multiplayer sessions. You were welcome to get up to cheaty shenanigans with singleplayer characters locally, but those characters could never be used in online sessions, which were more tightly controlled to give players a more fair impression of character progression. I forget if there was some kind of direct connect option to let other players join you in local cheaty shenanigans if they wanted.
It may also be that many players mostly play "single player" but on the multiplayer closed servers. That is how I played back in the day. Occasionally with friends or randoms but also quite a bit alone. After the hack fest that Diablo 1 became, closed servers seemed like a good idea...
This is what I see for a vast majority of Diablo3 players. We are all forced to play online, but nearly everyone plays alone most of the time from what I've seen.
Diablo 1 local friends multiplayer was amazing because nobody was super amazing, nobody knew everything and there were still dark corners to explore and items to discover.
Diablo 2 and onwards felt so much worse for me because once you get online you’re among a community that has “figured out the game” and the mystique is all but gone.
Playing Elden Ring totally blind concurrently with friends who all committed not to look anything up brought that original Diablo 1 feeling back, decades later. It was an incredible experience. Messaging the group with a “holy crap I found an entire secret area inside a secret area inside a secret area!” was powerful.
I plan on playing Diablo 4 completely isolated from the online community.
I feel like Diablo is the wrong game to be asking this about, and OP is making some assumptions that don't really ring true to me. I'd be kinda surprised if multiplayer wasn't what the vast majority of the Diablo 2 playerbase was interested in - it's basically an mmo-lite.
It would be nice if Diablo 4 supported offline play but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Not surprised - most of the core hack and slash gameplay is generally done solo. The multiplayer comes in with talking to other players in towns, trading items, and competing with people/showing off over character progression while knowing that everyone's character data is stored in a centralized server and probably hasn't been hacked.
I only get that from D3, which I''ll note wasn't mentioned - D3 to me personally was hugely disappointing as to me it had a marginal storyline and all real character skill progression or good equipment was tied to online BS.
I'm not sure how they could act on the request to have a better storyline, other than just hire better writers. Blizzard always had... serviceable but not great plotlines (and well-loved characters, but IMO more as a result of character design and that kind of stuff, rather than plot).
The D2 community is small but very vocal. Truth is, if the community got to design a game it would be absolutely horrible. They basically want to design a slot machine that you have to pull 5,000, so that you can then compare against other people who have also pulled the same slot machine 5,000 times. You get cred for both having pulled the slot machine the most times, as well as the least times, before getting a jackpot. But the jackpot isn't that impressive. It's like playing free slots for days on end to win $5 in virtual currency.
That's the Diablo 2 experience that the fanbase wants.
You don't need to imagine what would happen. Path of Exile was designed by hardcore Diablo 2 fans.
If you really don't like content past the main story it does still have a great regular first playthrough campaign.
It even replaces the Diablo 2 "play through the same 5 acts 3 times on increasingly higher difficulties" thing with a single 10 act long campaign, although the second half is revisiting altered versions of the same areas from the first half with different plot.
But they also weave a bunch of cool lore into the postgame in a way that Diablo 2 didn't really do[0], and make it much more interesting than just killing the same handful of endgame bosses over and over again for loot.
[0] At one point the main postgame big bads were canonically characters that used to be the good guys in there fighting the old bad guys, but got driven insane in what was basically a giant meta reference to hardcore players that spend thousands of hours in the postgame.
I agree 100%. Diablo 2 was a good game, the part of it that was actually Diablo 2. The multiplayer post-endgame was just a community of addicts playing a game that was already over endlessly.
See also the community saying that Diablo 3 starts after you play all the content. Yes, the game you are playing doesn't get good until it is finished.
The proper comparison would be to Path of Exile. That's an on-line ARPG with a "Solo self-found" mode. But I'd much prefer single player. There's no one in single player out to ruin or game the economy.
Diablo 2's got a semi-vibrant modding community that has done a fair amount with the game that would not have been possible without single-player/open multiplayer. I agree with you that the vast majority of players probably will only want closed, online multiplayer but it's hard to imagine it having the same legs as D2 without.
Readit News
I’ve played every Diablo game since, including the latest Diablo Immortal. Multiplayer is fine when it’s optional. What I hate is forced parties. Dungeons where I have to have 2+ more players to even participate despite my 9,000 combat rating.
Forced multiplayer is bad. Developers shouldn’t assume every player has 7 friends who also play. “Always Online” is also bad. What if I want to play during a flight or traveling where I have a few days down time? What if I want to play when I don’t have access to the internet? Sucks to be you…
The vast majority of my experience playing D2 was solo, single player. The vast majority of my experience with D3 was solo, single-player. Even in DI, I run around ignoring party requests and playing how I want to play but there’s tons of content I can’t enjoy because I don’t have a party of 8 and refuse to party up with random 14 year old kids.
I like how some MMO’s just threw you into a raid group if you were in the area. GW2 (requires a little bit of effort) and old Warhammer Online had this. When done right it was great. Run to area event, get roped into the raid group, beat the big bad boss creature, get rewards, leave raid group.
My fiance definitely prefers SPGs over mplayer, mainly because she never has to consider dealing with this BS or playing on someone else's time. And she gets sadder and sadder every time she is forced into some mplayer experience when she just wants to enjoy a game alone. And I can completely empathize.
That said game design and moderation can help alleviate the toxicity. FFXIV is fairly decent for this, as raids tend to have zero setup so at worst you just waste time attempting them. Contrast with other MMOs where you have to earn entry or face significant costs to attempt, then more costs when you fail, that's understandably a recipe for toxicity even in a supposedly cooperative game.
Team Fortress 2 also comes to mind, what a beautiful community.
I do continue to see this mentioned on Reddit. I've got hundreds and hundreds of hours in DRG and it's all solo aside from literally 5-10 games I played with friends-only (but none of them play regularly). I'm so glad DRG support single player, gives you a bonus (Bosco), scales the game, and lets you pause. I'm glad the multiplayer is good, I'm happier that I don't have to deal with it at all if I don't want to.
It's been really sad to see my favorite franchises slowly go online/multiplayer (Elder Scrolls/Fallout) and I constantly worry that the games I've been playing for over a decade (like Oblivion, Skyrim, FO3, FO:LV, FO4, ME1, ME2, ME3) are the last of their breed. For me even having multiplayer/online (more specifically, a recurring revenue stream) taints a game in the same way that IAP taints mobile games (with the exception of "remove ads", "full unlock", or "unlock level pack", if I see "500 gems" I run in the other direction). It skews incentives and ruins games. No matter how much you swear up one side and down the other that it doesn't, it's not true. PvZ 2+ was ruined by IAP and EA even went back and ruined PvZ 1 (even for people who bought it). "Where's The Water?" was also a great game that was littered with IAP in the second version, Angry Birds as well has fallen. It makes me incredibly mad and sad that there are so few good single player games and the ones that do exist aren't coming from AAA studios/big names. DRG is a good example, so is something like Factorio (which does have multiplayer, but don't monetize it). Cosmetic-only DLC/IAP seems to be pretty safe overall but I still worry how much longer it can last when assholes like the CEO of Unity thinks anyone not prioritizing monetization are "Fucking Idiots" (His "apology" is meaningless, he meant what he said and fully believes it).
It just feels like we will never see something as pure, wonderful, and buggy :) as Skyrim again. Even that game has the shitty "Creation Club" or whatever they called it trying to monetize mods. ES:O/FO:76 are garbage compared to their predecessors. Indie games are great and seem to be the only place you see a real desire to create something fun, not just something that will print money, but I yearn for the kinds of games we just don't see from indies (again, ES/FO/ME to name a few I've loved, if you know of any like this please let me know).
I desperately hope I'm wrong and we see a resurgence of games that try to be fun instead of casinos in disguise. Until then I'll keep playing my old games and the few indies that make me happy instead of feeling like a second job.
my exception is dark souls, where I happen to really enjoy the pvp approach, and doesn't really give players much of a way to be toxic other than literally throwing dung at each other.
How would you solve raid groups NOT being pointless while also making sure that players who want to participate, can, without having to play the "pick me for your team" game?
Of course, these games have other massive issues. Particularly the leveling experience on servers past the initial rush.
Talking of which... nethack is still around, still a strong 1p or offline game, has a new dev release (3.7), and is part of an exhibit at the MOMA ( https://www.nethack.org/download/MOMA/NHoutside.jpg ).
They can't even remaster Diablo 2 without fucking it up. You can't even play single player offline without signing into a "Blizzard account" that fucks up and won't update and has to be reinstalled and then maybe, if you're lucky, they might let you play the game you paid for.
I bought that for my wife after quite some discussion of what a pile of shit Blizzard is.
After that experience, I can't imagine giving them any money for "Diablo" 4, especially considering how much I failed to enjoy "Diablo" 3 (which I bought on Playstation since once again, the computer version doesn't work offline).
I prefer to spend money on Dark Souls now, it has that melancholy feeling that Diablo 1 had, and that sense of danger, that dark atmosphere.
the art direction is OK, the changes aren't bad, but it looks more generic than D2 did.
Overall it's the same but worse with less features, instead of the same but better which is what a remaster should be.
Theorycrafting is fun. I want a PoE that allows and encourages botting so I can play it like an incremental game more than an ARPG.
Well, it's actually Titan Quest++, but the gameplay was far more flowing, and reminded me a lot of D2 with a far more interesting build system.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
While single player is a big part of Diablo, the difference between Diablo and the RPGs the author compares it to is that those other RPGs don't have a thriving multiplayer scene (From games being the exception, but doesn't materially change the point). You can't treat them the same.
Alternatively, the original Dungeon Defenders game addressed this by building a wall between singleplayer and multiplayer sessions. You were welcome to get up to cheaty shenanigans with singleplayer characters locally, but those characters could never be used in online sessions, which were more tightly controlled to give players a more fair impression of character progression. I forget if there was some kind of direct connect option to let other players join you in local cheaty shenanigans if they wanted.
Deleted Comment
Diablo 2 and onwards felt so much worse for me because once you get online you’re among a community that has “figured out the game” and the mystique is all but gone.
Playing Elden Ring totally blind concurrently with friends who all committed not to look anything up brought that original Diablo 1 feeling back, decades later. It was an incredible experience. Messaging the group with a “holy crap I found an entire secret area inside a secret area inside a secret area!” was powerful.
I plan on playing Diablo 4 completely isolated from the online community.
It would be nice if Diablo 4 supported offline play but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Are you kinda surprised?
That's the Diablo 2 experience that the fanbase wants.
If you really don't like content past the main story it does still have a great regular first playthrough campaign.
It even replaces the Diablo 2 "play through the same 5 acts 3 times on increasingly higher difficulties" thing with a single 10 act long campaign, although the second half is revisiting altered versions of the same areas from the first half with different plot.
But they also weave a bunch of cool lore into the postgame in a way that Diablo 2 didn't really do[0], and make it much more interesting than just killing the same handful of endgame bosses over and over again for loot.
[0] At one point the main postgame big bads were canonically characters that used to be the good guys in there fighting the old bad guys, but got driven insane in what was basically a giant meta reference to hardcore players that spend thousands of hours in the postgame.
See also the community saying that Diablo 3 starts after you play all the content. Yes, the game you are playing doesn't get good until it is finished.