11 ms·

Diablo 2, Diablo 4, and Single Player: An open letter to Blizzard

81 points by nixass 4y ago

p1necone 4y ago
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.
- ribosometronome 4y ago
  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.
- jonwinstanley 4y ago
  Yeah. I’m hoping GTA 6 has a huge 1 player story
- olliej 4y ago
  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.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    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).
    - olliej 4y ago
      I guess “better storyline” is the wrong request “more story in the main game”
      - bee_rider 4y ago
        It might be kind of neat if they tied the plotline to the rift mechanic. Unveil new bits of plot a particular depth is hit or something...
  - p1necone 4y ago
    D3 got a lot better after the auction house was removed.
- chowells 4y ago
  Blizzard's public figures said that the average number of players in an online Diablo 2 game was... 1.1. Are you kinda surprised?
  - p1necone 4y ago
    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.
- themagician 4y ago
  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.
  - likeclockwork 4y ago
    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.
  - p1necone 4y ago
    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.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  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.
olliej 4y ago
Seriously, I understand that minimal storyline is cheaper to produce, and online only solves "piracy" and allows monetization of basic gameplay through gambling, etc, but I am so sick of it. D3 was wretched as the drops were always useless, and everything was geared towards online play outside the storyline if you ever wanted to have "good" equipment. This was offset by having an absurdly out of balance normal character, especially by the latter half of the story game. I hate online play - if I wanted be to treated to a bunch of varyingly spelled curse words I'd just go create a twitter account where I pretended to be a woman in tech. It would be cheaper and just as unpleasant. [edit: or SC2, which I used to do PVP until the adoption of a free to play PVP model resulting in a dramatic increase in the amount of abuse and shitty behaviour of other people. Presumably because getting your account banned simply means creating another one. Honestly I wish they had a "play vs people who paid only" mode.]
- Jyaif 4y ago
  They aren't making online mode by pleasure: it's much harder to make than offline single player. Piracy (no need to put it in quotes) is 100% to blame.
  - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
    > Piracy (no need to put it in quotes) is 100% to blame. I think you mean corporate greed. It's true that pirates fight against corporate greed, but let's not pretend these companies are short on money to make good games.
    - hacym 4y ago
      Have you looked at the margin of game studios? A bad launch could shut them down seemingly overnight.
      - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
        Activision Blizzard, the one that makes Diablo, has a yearly net revenue of 8 billion $. They are getting bought out by Microsoft. I don't think they're running out of $$$ anytime soon.
BashiBazouk 4y ago
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...
- nitrixion 4y ago
  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.
madrox 4y ago
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.
- indigochill 4y ago
  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.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
reactordev 4y ago
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.
- derac 4y ago
  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.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  I feel it makes raid groups pointless. If they're not organized then they're mostly just background noise.
  - gabereiser 4y ago
braingenious 4y ago
I just want a sequel to Nox :(
- jadbox 4y ago
  Nox was fantastic, as a Diablo with a bit more tactical play. I also really liked the original Icewind Dale 1 for the same reason.
- anthk 4y ago
  Not a sequel, but you have a libre Nox reimplemenation at https://osgameclones.com https://osgameclones.com You need the original data.
  - braingenious 4y ago
    Cool!
blibble 4y ago
/dev/null will pay more attention to your feedback than Blizzard
caiomassan 4y ago
Path of Exile is free and a far superior game. don't give money to Blizzard, please.
- jayd16 4y ago
  POE is an online only game though. Maybe superior but it supports Blizzard's focus on online first, no?
  - caiomassan 4y ago
    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.
- camdenlock 4y ago
  The company behind PoE is owned by a CCP-controlled company, Tencent. Go play Torchlight or something. :)
  - caiomassan 4y ago
    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.
    - danaris 4y ago
      ...You mean "nearly every indie game"? There are games outside the giant AAA studios.
  - hnick 4y ago
    Maybe the old ones, I think the new Torchlight has gacha elements :(
    - 4y ago
Comevius 4y ago
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.
- rootw0rm 4y ago
  Grim Dawn is an excellent Diablo-like, I highly recommend it
- wwweston 4y ago
  > There are plenty of hack 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 https://www.nethack.org/download/MOMA/NHoutside.jpg ).
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    how many decades until someone renders all of nethack with stable diffusion…
nitwit005 4y ago
They seem well aware that most people don't want to play the multiplayer of most of these games, as they've previously discussed most people buying Starcraft games for the campaigns. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what people want to play, but what they think will make the most money. People have gotten really good at extracting money from online games. Although, Blizzard has had its failures there (see Diablo 3 auction house).
- hacym 4y ago
  “Most” people wouldn’t buy Diablo if it was single player only. Despite your opinion on it, people generally regard Diablo as a great game to play with 1-3 other people.
  - nitwit005 4y ago
    I didn't state any opinion on Diablo at all.
    - hacym 4y ago
      Yet you’re in a thread about Diablo.
      - nitwit005 4y ago
        And I made a comment about the attitude of the studio that makes it, rather than about Diablo specifically. Your comments, unfortunately, don't make any real sense.
Waterluvian 4y ago
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.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Diablo II was amazing for us because we played on a LAN without internet access.
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    I’m truly jealous. I was too young to realize it would be that way so I was super eager to be online.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The joys of a college without internet access in the dorms. Heroes III, Action Quake II, and Diablo 2 for days.
the_only_law 4y ago
What’s going on in game dev? I’m seeing a ton of companies, big and small pump out what seems to be the opposite of what their fans want. The other day, I clicked on a video ranting about one of the latest Battlefield games. I used to play BF4 years ago. I enjoyed it, and remember plenty of CoD vs BF debates. As I was watching the guys rant, I couldn’t help but agree with everything. Everything shown in the video, was exactly the opposite of why BF built a great franchise. It seemed more like the company tried to be every shooter game that’s been popular in the past decade at once, and seemed more like a cheesy Fortnite ripoff than the tactical arcade shooter I remember. I can name numerous other games (mostly in shooter/strategy genres because that’s what I mostly play) with similar stories of games starting to flop because the companies ignore their customers, usually so they can ripoff some recently successful games. FWIW, there are some great companies making amazing games (this year has been awesome for Paradox, for example), it’s just odd that many franchises I remember being quite good take such odd direction that people will hate.
- KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
  "Fans" is a small market, it's better to aim at the mass market who don't go on forums.
  - ayngg 4y ago
    This. The video game industry has grown by such huge amounts over the past 10-15 years that fans of old franchises are a small minority of the total demographic developers want and need to justify pumping the budgets they do into games now. Most of the new market consumers are fine with microtransactions, season passes, cosmetics, loot boxes and other types of monetization and gameplay that is way more profitable. If you sell a game d2 fans want, you are making serious monetization concessions to appeal to a tiny sliver of the overall userbase of the next diablo so it doesn't make sense. When a game like Genshin Impact does 1 billion in revenue every 6 months it is only a matter of time before the rest of the market moves in that direction.
    - falcolas 4y ago
FirstLvR 4y ago
I’ve played every game from blizzard since I was very very young. Sadly those days are gone, ow2 was the last nail to the coffin with battle pass But hey, almost every game is doing this, so let’s pick right next time and pls do Not pre order !
- hacym 4y ago
  Free game with a battle pass for cosmetics? What is the problem there?
atum47 4y ago
I bought diablo 2 for the Xbox series x and couldn't get it to pass the first screen. I wanted to play it offline. It insisted that it could not connect to the servers. Couldn't find support either with Microsoft or Blizzard so I asked for my money back. I really wanted to play this, since I couldn't when I was a kid. Sad thing that they think they every game should be online or multiplayer.
yazzku 4y ago
Activision/Blizzard is not interested in making games anymore. They have settled on well-known formulas -- World of Warcraft, Diablo, loot systems, Call of Duties, etc -- and constantly rehash them for the big bucks. They don't give two shits about players or open letters. The Diablos are online because the DRM is just too good. The best thing a Diablo fan can do at this point is to turn away and not buy any of their shit anymore.
PostOnce 4y ago
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.
- gandalfgreybeer 4y ago
  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.
  - hacym 4y ago
    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.
    - montagg 4y ago
      D3 on console also has a much more arcade-y feel than the PC version. And the local multiplayer is soooooo much fun.
- hacym 4y ago
  What did they fuck up about D2 remaster? I thought they did quite a good job.
  - PostOnce 4y ago

81 points by nixass 4y ago

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.

ribosometronome 4y ago
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.
jonwinstanley 4y ago
Yeah. I’m hoping GTA 6 has a huge 1 player story
olliej 4y ago
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.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  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).
  - olliej 4y ago
    I guess “better storyline” is the wrong request “more story in the main game”
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      It might be kind of neat if they tied the plotline to the rift mechanic. Unveil new bits of plot a particular depth is hit or something...
- p1necone 4y ago
  D3 got a lot better after the auction house was removed.
chowells 4y ago
Blizzard's public figures said that the average number of players in an online Diablo 2 game was... 1.1. Are you kinda surprised?
- p1necone 4y ago
  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.
themagician 4y ago
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.
- likeclockwork 4y ago
  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.
- p1necone 4y ago
  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.
slowmovintarget 4y ago
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.

olliej 4y ago

Seriously, I understand that minimal storyline is cheaper to produce, and online only solves "piracy" and allows monetization of basic gameplay through gambling, etc, but I am so sick of it. D3 was wretched as the drops were always useless, and everything was geared towards online play outside the storyline if you ever wanted to have "good" equipment. This was offset by having an absurdly out of balance normal character, especially by the latter half of the story game. I hate online play - if I wanted be to treated to a bunch of varyingly spelled curse words I'd just go create a twitter account where I pretended to be a woman in tech. It would be cheaper and just as unpleasant. [edit: or SC2, which I used to do PVP until the adoption of a free to play PVP model resulting in a dramatic increase in the amount of abuse and shitty behaviour of other people. Presumably because getting your account banned simply means creating another one. Honestly I wish they had a "play vs people who paid only" mode.]

Jyaif 4y ago
They aren't making online mode by pleasure: it's much harder to make than offline single player. Piracy (no need to put it in quotes) is 100% to blame.
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  > Piracy (no need to put it in quotes) is 100% to blame. I think you mean corporate greed. It's true that pirates fight against corporate greed, but let's not pretend these companies are short on money to make good games.
  - hacym 4y ago
    Have you looked at the margin of game studios? A bad launch could shut them down seemingly overnight.
    - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
      Activision Blizzard, the one that makes Diablo, has a yearly net revenue of 8 billion $. They are getting bought out by Microsoft. I don't think they're running out of $$$ anytime soon.

BashiBazouk 4y ago

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...

nitrixion 4y ago
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.

madrox 4y ago

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.

indigochill 4y ago
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.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

reactordev 4y ago

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.

derac 4y ago
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.
spywaregorilla 4y ago
I feel it makes raid groups pointless. If they're not organized then they're mostly just background noise.
- gabereiser 4y ago

braingenious 4y ago

I just want a sequel to Nox :(

jadbox 4y ago
Nox was fantastic, as a Diablo with a bit more tactical play. I also really liked the original Icewind Dale 1 for the same reason.
anthk 4y ago
Not a sequel, but you have a libre Nox reimplemenation at https://osgameclones.com https://osgameclones.com You need the original data.
- braingenious 4y ago
  Cool!

blibble 4y ago

/dev/null will pay more attention to your feedback than Blizzard

caiomassan 4y ago

Path of Exile is free and a far superior game. don't give money to Blizzard, please.

jayd16 4y ago
POE is an online only game though. Maybe superior but it supports Blizzard's focus on online first, no?
- caiomassan 4y ago
  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.
camdenlock 4y ago
The company behind PoE is owned by a CCP-controlled company, Tencent. Go play Torchlight or something. :)
- caiomassan 4y ago
  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.
  - danaris 4y ago
    ...You mean "nearly every indie game"? There are games outside the giant AAA studios.
- hnick 4y ago
  Maybe the old ones, I think the new Torchlight has gacha elements :(
  - 4y ago

Comevius 4y ago

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.

rootw0rm 4y ago
Grim Dawn is an excellent Diablo-like, I highly recommend it
wwweston 4y ago
> There are plenty of hack 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 https://www.nethack.org/download/MOMA/NHoutside.jpg ).
- mensetmanusman 4y ago
  how many decades until someone renders all of nethack with stable diffusion…

nitwit005 4y ago

They seem well aware that most people don't want to play the multiplayer of most of these games, as they've previously discussed most people buying Starcraft games for the campaigns. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter what people want to play, but what they think will make the most money. People have gotten really good at extracting money from online games. Although, Blizzard has had its failures there (see Diablo 3 auction house).

hacym 4y ago
“Most” people wouldn’t buy Diablo if it was single player only. Despite your opinion on it, people generally regard Diablo as a great game to play with 1-3 other people.
- nitwit005 4y ago
  I didn't state any opinion on Diablo at all.
  - hacym 4y ago
    Yet you’re in a thread about Diablo.
    - nitwit005 4y ago
      And I made a comment about the attitude of the studio that makes it, rather than about Diablo specifically. Your comments, unfortunately, don't make any real sense.

Waterluvian 4y ago

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.

bombcar 4y ago
Diablo II was amazing for us because we played on a LAN without internet access.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  I’m truly jealous. I was too young to realize it would be that way so I was super eager to be online.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The joys of a college without internet access in the dorms. Heroes III, Action Quake II, and Diablo 2 for days.

the_only_law 4y ago

What’s going on in game dev? I’m seeing a ton of companies, big and small pump out what seems to be the opposite of what their fans want. The other day, I clicked on a video ranting about one of the latest Battlefield games. I used to play BF4 years ago. I enjoyed it, and remember plenty of CoD vs BF debates. As I was watching the guys rant, I couldn’t help but agree with everything. Everything shown in the video, was exactly the opposite of why BF built a great franchise. It seemed more like the company tried to be every shooter game that’s been popular in the past decade at once, and seemed more like a cheesy Fortnite ripoff than the tactical arcade shooter I remember. I can name numerous other games (mostly in shooter/strategy genres because that’s what I mostly play) with similar stories of games starting to flop because the companies ignore their customers, usually so they can ripoff some recently successful games. FWIW, there are some great companies making amazing games (this year has been awesome for Paradox, for example), it’s just odd that many franchises I remember being quite good take such odd direction that people will hate.

KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
"Fans" is a small market, it's better to aim at the mass market who don't go on forums.
- ayngg 4y ago
  This. The video game industry has grown by such huge amounts over the past 10-15 years that fans of old franchises are a small minority of the total demographic developers want and need to justify pumping the budgets they do into games now. Most of the new market consumers are fine with microtransactions, season passes, cosmetics, loot boxes and other types of monetization and gameplay that is way more profitable. If you sell a game d2 fans want, you are making serious monetization concessions to appeal to a tiny sliver of the overall userbase of the next diablo so it doesn't make sense. When a game like Genshin Impact does 1 billion in revenue every 6 months it is only a matter of time before the rest of the market moves in that direction.
  - falcolas 4y ago

FirstLvR 4y ago

I’ve played every game from blizzard since I was very very young. Sadly those days are gone, ow2 was the last nail to the coffin with battle pass But hey, almost every game is doing this, so let’s pick right next time and pls do Not pre order !

hacym 4y ago
Free game with a battle pass for cosmetics? What is the problem there?

atum47 4y ago

I bought diablo 2 for the Xbox series x and couldn't get it to pass the first screen. I wanted to play it offline. It insisted that it could not connect to the servers. Couldn't find support either with Microsoft or Blizzard so I asked for my money back. I really wanted to play this, since I couldn't when I was a kid. Sad thing that they think they every game should be online or multiplayer.

yazzku 4y ago

Activision/Blizzard is not interested in making games anymore. They have settled on well-known formulas -- World of Warcraft, Diablo, loot systems, Call of Duties, etc -- and constantly rehash them for the big bucks. They don't give two shits about players or open letters. The Diablos are online because the DRM is just too good. The best thing a Diablo fan can do at this point is to turn away and not buy any of their shit anymore.

PostOnce 4y ago

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.

gandalfgreybeer 4y ago
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.
- hacym 4y ago
  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.
  - montagg 4y ago
    D3 on console also has a much more arcade-y feel than the PC version. And the local multiplayer is soooooo much fun.
hacym 4y ago
What did they fuck up about D2 remaster? I thought they did quite a good job.
- PostOnce 4y ago