@crusader8463 said:
@FateOfNever said:
@deerokus said:
@FateOfNever said:
@depecheload said:
Someone tell me how Blizzard's plan of forcing you to play this online does anything good for the consumer at all?
Not buying this. It's broken. I'll give Torchlight 2 a chance though.
It prevents cheaters. That's something good for the consumer. It also prevents people from going "but I totally spent like three months playing this guy to get him to hell mode and now I can't play him with friends? I do nots understand why my single player character cannot be taken to an online mode? I are confused and now I will rages!" and make no mistake, there would be just as much rage about that as there is about these launch day problems because people, as a whole, are idiots and have become so spoiled and cannot comprehend things like that anymore that they would throw just as much of a fit about it. There could also be other benefits that I don't know about. So there, some benefits for the consumers and for Blizzard to not have to deal with idiot people. And Blizzard not having to deal with idiot people is a benefit to consumers because it means they can put their efforts to more worthwhile things. Like people getting their accounts hacked because they refuse to use proper security measures when dealing with their accounts.
If Joe Bloggs just wants to play co-op together with a friend and his girlfriend, why would he care that some guy thousands of miles away has cheated to clone some items? It has no effect on the consumer playing single player or private co-op with friends. These are not good reasons.
NB: I have never actually played a Diablo game and they didn't seem to even try to market this game to people like me. I would probably never have bought it anyway. Still, the whole scandal is interesting to me as they seem to have vociferous defenders on forums, which baffles me. They're a corporation who have screwed up here, they don't need your free attempts at PR.
I never said "everyone cares if someone cheats." But it's just as likely that thousands of people would eventually go "huh, I feel like checking out this pvp thing they got going on" when it launches... and then hit a giant fucking brick wall of people with invincible characters with gear that lets them one shot other people that aren't likewise made immortal by hacked characters and gear. At that point they get completely turned off from the experience and the game and bail.
It also effects people that attempt to use the AH; gold based or real money based, as suddenly people dupe items, and make both auction houses total crap shows of nothing but hacked items, which can affect people.
On top of all of that, if Diablo 3 ends up with a ladder the way Diablo 2 had a ladder, hacking and cheating also completely destroys that.
Random person A may not be effected. Random person B may be effected. Why is random person A, in your scenario, more important than random person B?
And why is person B more important than person A in yours? No matter what they do they are going to piss off one group or the other. They choose to piss off group A and give B what they want. That's it.
The difference there is that when the system works - and so far it has not work and I'm not defending that part of it other than telling people that think Blizzard was just being lazy about this problem or that they didn't throw enough money at it to make sure they were prepared that they have no idea how this stuff works - but when the system works, person A is not affected. Person A, when the system is working, is unaffected by the always on and Person B is also saved from problems.
Let's take Joe Bloggs as an example. Diablo 3 is not always online. Joe Bloggs can play the game offline by himself, sweet! Joe Bloggs then decides he wants to play online with his friend Timmy Tutoes. Except Joe Bloggs has to create an entirely new character to do as such because he didn't bother reading the part of offline mode that told him he could not take that character online due to issues with hacking. Joe Bloggs is now pissed off and decides he'll never play multiplayer and that he's done with D3 because of something so stupid. Or how about Joe Bloggs decides it's worth it to start all over again. Now he's forced to play online and... it's just like if D3 had always on, any time he wants to work on his character that he can play with Timmy Tutoes, he's subject to what he would already be subject to the way the game is now. However, here's the catch, Timmy Tutoes who has strictly played online got incredibly turned off by the game because of bull shit hackers ruining his experience in some way. So now Joe Bloggs can't play with Timmy Tutoes because Timmy Tutoes had his experience ruined by the thing that always on helps fight against while Joe Bloggs is now playing by the rules that always on would want him to abide by anyway.
So where's the difference here? Joe Bloggs can work on a different character that he can never take online? Which is a benefit that can also be a negative. While Timmy Tutoes is left to deal with the possible ramifications of hackers flooding the AH, creating broken items, and destroying the entire online aspect of Diablo 3 for a very large portion of the player base (whether it be because they bought hacked gear for 20 dollars that now makes them invincible and thus trivializes the entire game, because PvP is completely busted, because the ladder system is completely borked due to cheaters, etc.) And Blizzard is also left with having to deal with trying to clean up the whole mess and has to put in two, three, four times the effort to try and just keep the game free from hacked gear that breaks their game, cheaters in pvp for a better experience for everyone that wants to do that, a fair playing field for the potentially in the future but not existing right now ladder.
The downside is that when always on breaks, it really fucking sucks. But guess what, it sucks for everyone, both the people that understand WHY it's in place and the people that cannot fathom why people don't want other people cheating because they only care about themselves and their own experiences and not at all about what other people have to experience in the game. But the point I've been trying to make since that first reply was that there are, in fact, reasons for always on. People may not agree with them, people may not think they matter, but there are, in fact, reasons why always on exists for Diablo 3 regardless of whether they think those things may affect them this very minute or not, but they could affect them in the future.
It also comes up that the people that want to play through Diablo 3 once, by themselves, and never touch it again, always on doesn't affect them that much. It will affect them for their one play through, and then they're done with the game and it will never bother them again or hamper their experience of the game again. Where as the people that want to play online, want to play with other people, this is exactly the experience they would have anyway so it doesn't affect them at all.
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