'Offline Mode' for Diablo 4! (Summoning Blizzard Staff)

General Discussion
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Hiya there everyone there seems to be a huge controversy around the whole
should Blizzard make an offline mode for Diablo 4 and/or should Diablo 4 strictly be online only (personally I’m all for the offline mode being able to play by myself and just enjoy it).
All the problems I have read so far about the whole ‘Offline vs. Online’
has been on/for cheating, botting, DRM and lastly resources in making an offline campaign.

So let us go over and address everything and maybe people will understand why offline will be a good idea and how these so called problems isn’t really a problem:

  1. Internet connection.
    Why it is true that in today’s standard most people have a stable internet connection however is having a game constantly being online really that good?
  • An internet connection can cut out meaning losing internet connection either by your internet provider, Blizzard’s servers, faulty motherboard and/or network card, accident to your internet cable or the internet cable by your internet provider, internet socket was damaged and many other things. Please no more Error 37.
  • Hacking is still a big thing and could happen to Blizzard’s servers or a virus uploaded by someone on their servers.
  • Leakage of private information because everything is stored even now some can snoop through everything you have on a character and whatnot which is something I’m not comfortable with and if someone knows how to find you in game then what is stopping them from making a hack to interfere with your progression in some way.
    Yeah, no thanks I think I’ll pass on that.
  • Lag will be huge issue for some and some more than others let me also remind you that it doesn’t matter if you have a good internet connection because that doesn’t determine anything especially if the servers are taxed and/or on high load, you will still have lag.
  • Global cooldowns to not overload the servers with spell spamming and also adds another layer of frustration to the game if anything, because after I cast all of my spells then what? What am I suppose to do, dance around my enemies or maybe sing them a lullaby? Should I sit there and hope that my spells comes off cooldown before I die? No thanks!
  • To always require an internet connection is just dumb because if you move or travel you won’t always have it so if you wanted to play then tough stuff because you can’t and wouldn’t that suck.
  • No mod support.
  • Private servers is a thing which I’m sure people are familiar with at this point World of Warcraft has have them for years but the point that I’m trying to make here is that they could do the same thing for Diablo 4 because as far as we know both offline and online private servers exists.
  1. Cheating.
    While cheating is a big problem to some I don’t really care if some cheats in a single-player game but thing is cheating will always exist both in offline and online mode and from what I know programmers are actually working like hell to make something to stop the cheating from happening online and what that entails we just have to wait and see.
  1. Botting.
    While botting has been a problem for several years both in Diablo games and others, Blizzard has announced in a post that the time for bots will soon come so we know that they are taking this seriously and has taken some time to develop tools/programs to deal with those nasty people.
  1. DRM.
    While copyright laws is good and all they could still be bypassed by making cracks/hacks that overwrite game files and tricking the game into thinking “Ok this is legit”. But you’d be sorely mistaken if you think this only happens to single-player games. I mentioned before private servers this also a bypass so if people really wanted they could bypass this.
    But not all is dark in recent years game developers have been cleverly coded in codes that makes the game literally unplayable if you hack it, I will not however say what they are doing but I will say this Blizzard could easily just make the game activate online as in you buy a key and once you activate it online it is permanently on your account and also they will get the info that you have used a legit code to activate the game with which must be purchased and activated through their own client, so you can’t take the code and sell it somewhere else nor activate it on another account.
  1. Resource cost/Money cost.
    Making a game in today’s standards ain’t easy nor cheap and also it takes time especially if you are gonna make an open world game like Diablo 4 is going to be. But making an offline mode and an online mode for Diablo 4 isn’t expensive nor resource heavy at all, let me explain; they are gonna use the same world in other words the same code however they will have to code in the differences between the two which wouldn’t take long at all not by any stretch of the imagination.

Offline is not a negative to the game in any way, shape or form it’s an asset to it something that is positive. You won’t be able to bring your characters from offline mode into online mode, you will have to make a new character for that. Saying that everything should be online is just an excuse and saying that online have more pros than offline is simply untrue, in fact it has more cons.

As a last thing here really quick please don’t come in here to troll and make sure that you read carefully and understand what is being said, you are however more than welcome to post your opinion(s) on this and/or discuss it, just keep in mind to be mature about it and thanks!

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There already is an Offline Mode Discussion for D4 happening. Didn’t need to make a new thread about it.

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For the 57th time, they already said no offline mode for D4. Stop beating a dead horse.

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Don’t make if offline, just to spite these griefers.

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Nah. Just a few crybabies with garbage rigs and bad internet.

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This is not one of those topics that they are actively wanting feedback for. It’s not open for discussion.

There will not be an offline mode for Diablo 4.

EDIT: As a side-note, offline mode does not equal “mod support”. Diablo 2 does not have “mod support”. It has mods that were made without developer permission, and without any tools provided by the developer to do so. “Mod support” would be something like StarCraft, or Skyrim, where tools are provided by the developer, and player-made mods are officially allowed.

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It’s called giving feedback so get over it.
Plus the more people that shows that they want an offline mode then Blizzard might reconsider it’s a shot in the dark but still worth a try.

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Heres your ANSWER

OFFLINE MODE ISNT HAPPENING all your doing is having a cry now and SPAMMING.

OFFLINE is a huge negative and has been discussed in length in other threads. Wanting to be ANTI SOCIAL , have a bad Rig or thinking cause its on my PC i wont Disconnect are not Valid Reasons to redesign there entire model.

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(Blizzard) Management said our target is online game now.
50% of player base like it that way too, and 48% don’t care…
Too bad you are in 2% that hates it… but you ain’t gonna get what you want from Blizzard…

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It’s the year 2020 and people are still talking about offline mode… Read the Developer notes, please.

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Don’t make it online, just to spite these griefers.

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For the 9993737th time: no, we are not stopping.

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I will answer the only point of your long post that matters at all when Blizzard makes such decision.

Afaik there are no diablo 3 pirate servers.

The main reason why it requires internet connection is piracy. If there was an offline mode - each d3 patch would appear on torrents within a week after release.

It is true that you can make 3rd party software to emulate server functions. But this isn’t a problem and that doesn’t invalidate always-online drm.
Consider this:

  • pirate servers are much harder to make than to crack an offline game. This stops people from even trying in most cases. Most online games do not have pirate servers.
  • pirate server is harder to maintain. In d3 a new season launches with a new set of mechanics, balance changes, etc. Pirate server requires hard work to keep up with that. In many cases they just don’t.
  • pirate servers take time to develop to a playable state. If someone truly intended to make one for d4 - it would take them years before it is any good. Wow servers took almost a DECADE before Vanilla (and vanilla only) got to a state somewhat resembling the original. By that point, 99% of those who are interested in a game would buy it. Cracking, on the other hand, has shorter timeframes and will result in substantial losses.
  • pirate servers are inferior. Many people wouldn’t even bother with them because they want a full authentic experience.
  • pirate servers get closed and the teams making them get in trouble. This creates further inconvenience for end users and they migrate to the authentic stuff.

Bottom line: online drm serves a purpose. A real one.
And whatever you say about it - it’s more profitable to implement it than not.
Blizzard stand to lose very few players if they make online drm - because in all honesty, servers work really well. But they stand to lose tens of millions of players to piracy of an offline game.

And honestly, I prefer the developer getting as much profit as possible. Piracy is abhorrent.

The rest of your points simply don’t matter. You are correct on some points, and others are completely ridiculous. But none of them matters in the face of hundreds of millions of dollars.

That’s true. For a time.
Every game worth hacking gets hacked eventually fully and completely. In fact, most of the secure DRM lower performance by themselves.
Those options are simply not valid.

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I mean yea, online connection but pls
100% SINGLEPLAYER option
I dont want my story to be ruined by some clowns

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There is definitely already a private server for Diablo 3 vanilla. Another developer working on a RoS emulator is actively and openly saying and i quote:

"Many of the developments that I once made at “Name removed” were partially reproduced by me in the current development, but very many things are missing, namely, all the content associated with the new classes, their abilities were not implemented at all. At the moment, the dialogue system has already been rewritten, and the basis of the inventory system has been written. However, from the point of view of the network, there are a lot of difficulties. The game server of the current Diablo III - has very little in common with versions 1.0.3 / 1.0.4. Many operating codes have been changed / deleted, as well as a lot of new ones.

In 1.0.3 - 322 operating codes, in 1.0.4 - 324, and in 2.6.7 - 550" End of quote.

In your post you say: “pirate servers are inferior. Many people wouldn’t even bother with them because they want a full authentic experience.”

I’m sorry, but what. Many people choose to play private servers to NOT get the authentic experience, this is where certain servers like “name removed” and “name removed” and “name removed” have gained so much popularity, for being different experiences. We even have streamers on twitch streaming private servers, that have SEASONS, please do your research properly.

While i agree that you should pay for your game, i dont agree on the online only portion. Never have, never will. Diablo 2 modding is a hell of a lot of fun. Have you ever looked at the files yourself?

I dont care if i have to be connected to bnet to play modded singleplayer diablo 4, where i can just mess about with my items and do stupid stuff and not have to interact with other people.

So, give it online drm, but please for the love of god, make it playable fully singleplayer away from bnet servers, so we the people that mod and enjoy fooling about and being powerful as hell, we get a chance to do so.

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I don’t care about modding, but I definitely want a private, invite-only game mode where I will not see a random person EVER. Not on town, not on a world boss event - NEVER.

As for D3 pirate servers - ok, they exist. They sound like a bad and outdated experience though, just like I was saying. They don’t matter.

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(Summoning Blizzard Staff)

I’m quite positive it doesn’t work that way. We’ll see.

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I am actually of an opinion that it works the other way around. I’m sure they have some sort of a directive to try and respond in threads that directly call them out only if absolutely necessary. To discourage people from doing that in every single “important” thread.

Also, Game developers rarely if ever respond to posts and questions of users. Blue posts are 99% CM’s who don’t have the knowledge or permission to respond regarding mechanics suggestions and discussions. So they wouldn’t be able to give you any good reply anyway.

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Finally someone that isn’t a whiny immature child and can actually speak like a normal human being I thank you for that.
However there seems to be some misinformation which Slothic corrected you on so I won’t bother with that but there could be one more thing depending on your answer:

Are you talking about when they made a Blizzlike server for Vanilla or are you talking about the first private server created here and that that took a decade to create?
If it is the latter then it’s simply untrue because I was playing on a private server called Tyringe for The Burning Crusade which came out 1 year after The Burning Crusade was released.

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I am talking about the first “blizzlike” server. Which are still not even nearly blizzlike enough.

I am aware that first pirate servers became available very shortly after release. But it isn’t the efforts of their makers that contributed - rather a partial wow server leak.

No one would have the data or go to such lengths as fast for diablo.

I actually never understood why would anyone waste their time writing tens of thousands lines of code to make an emulator to pirate a game. If I had such time, I would put it into my own indie game, even if it was basically a rip-off of another project because I didn’t have imagination to come up with my own game design.