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?
Last month, construction workers did something in our street. I didn’t have Landline Internet for a whole week. Always Online is pretty horrible for single player games.
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.
It depends on the game. Like if it’s an online only game, then of course that makes sense. But a single player game, or even a game with a single player mode requiring always online is and will always be dumb.
Diablo 4 not being designed for offline solo play as well (like D2 and I think even D3 was) is annoying though.
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”
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.
I honestly don’t really like it even when implemented well. It’s even what caused me to uninstall Just Cause 3. As fun of a game it was, I hated being constantly harassed by Square Enix telling me to connect to their servers or that there was some kind of error in connecting to said servers. I just want to play the damn game.
I find games to be less fun the more time I’m spending not actually playing said game and dealing with some menu option or another, and always online games seem to be the worst offenders in this category.
I started playing D4 two days ago and constantly try to pause the game when I need to give something else attention. It should also be easy to do when you’re alone in a dungeon. There are games that are online but let you pause when you’re alone (though I can’t remember which game I am thinking of right now)
The games I play usually don’t support online at all lol. So a game being only online is kinda a deal breaker for me lol.
I hate it.
Usually I’m online but what if I’m not, or what if they have server problems, or what if in 5 years they feel done with the game and remove the servers. If I pay for a game, I want to be able to play that game on my terms
It just leads to a worse player experience now, and limited likely an inability to play later
I don’t like it. I play with a Steam Deck from my bed and the Wi-Fi connection is pretty bad from there. I easily loose connection every five minutes.
That means I can’t play any games that require constan online connection, which is a bummer.
Same experience as you with D4. Fun game but the always-on requirement is a tad annoying. Not deal-breaking for me, but I have had my fair share of rubber-banding on my SteamDeck, especially with Bluetooth headphones connected. D2R worked well offline, why not have an offline mode here?
It’s a case of the game industry creating a problem to sell the solution in my opinion. They insist that they need fo force increasingly ridiculous monetisation onto us because they need to maintain the servers, but the reason they need servers to maintain in the first place is because they made their functionally single player game phone home unnecessarily every ten seconds. The irony being that if I’d just pirated the game I wouldn’t have to deal with that.
I think I prefer games that require being allways on-line to those with bad Denuvo implementation that kills the performance.
I like it. I like to know that people likely haven’t hacked their chars. I’ve never had my crashing or rubber banding. It’s been seamless and while an offline version would be fine for me, that would never be the real game and you should never be allowed online.
In case of Diablo IV in my opinion Blizzard has a good track record of keeping game servers online for years and years.
That being said, the game does have some weird server hopping mechanic that you can’t turn off, meaning it seems to switch servers while you’re playing, which isn’t always as seamless as you’d hope it would be. Also, at least for me, it sometimes selects servers with >100ms latency, which is quite noticeable of course.
Agreed. If I’m honest in this case my concern isn’t necessarily that my access will be restricted at some point (or even the very rare dips when it switches servers on entering or leaving an area). It’s more around the fact I’m playing the game effectively in single player and unfortunately that’s likely to have shelf life due to personal circumstances.
