Diablo III is getting killed on Metacritic

[Plague_Injected]

"bomb internet" doesn't really mean anything when the Blizzard servers are down.

This is the point that half the Internet is missing at the moment.

 

[Decko87]

A lot of the server stuff that's going on is pretty terrible, considering what a large company they are and the amount of experience they have at this point with online games. It's not like they don't have experience with the biggest MMORPG of all time or anything, LOL.

On the other hand, I just hit level 28 with my Barbarian, and I have to say that this game is one the most fun experiences I've ever had. It sucks that it's not working perfectly right now because it's really sullying an amazing gameplay experience. The environments are so diverse and intricate, the atmosphere is fantastic, the music is ambient and adds a nice feel to the game(probably the worst part however), the sound effects and physics are visceral and intense, and the game play is above and beyond my hopes and dreams.

I know people are pissed, but once you get deep into Act 1, the game will grab your attention without you even noticing it's happened, it really does pull you in.

 

[Liqq]

Damn, with all the problems this game has I'm glad I held off. What a turd.

 

[FrEaKy]

A lot of the server stuff that's going on is pretty terrible, considering what a large company they are and the amount of experience they have at this point with online games. It's not like they don't have experience with the biggest MMORPG of all time or anything, LOL.

On the other hand, I just hit level 28 with my Barbarian, and I have to say that this game is one the most fun experiences I've ever had. It sucks that it's not working perfectly right now because it's really sullying an amazing gameplay experience. The environments are so diverse and intricate, the atmosphere is fantastic, the music is ambient and adds a nice feel to the game(probably the worst part however), the sound effects and physics are visceral and intense, and the game play is above and beyond my hopes and dreams.

I know people are pissed, but once you get deep into Act 1, the game will grab your attention without you even noticing it's happened, it really does pull you in.

With the complaints of server issues, you need to understand something, YES Blizzard should have more knowledge of this considering how WoW turned out, but you also have to see, when D3 went live, millions of people went online at the same exact moment. Blizzards servers can handle a filtering of people, not everyone getting on at the EXACT same moment and killing their provisioning servers, Most companies, especially when it comes to MMO's or the like, have muiltipul servers, you have your east / west / etc. servers than you have a provisioning server, when you login for the first time, you hit the provisioning server, than it jumps you to what ever server is hosting your actual profile.

When a buncha people hit that provisioning server at the same time, its database couldnt handle the massive hit, most servers cant, and popped it off for alot of people. Blizzard saw this immediatly and attempted to fix the problem, even so far as doing a maintenance upgrade within the first 2 hours of release, thats not a bad thing. Blizzard is doing one hell of a job supporting ALOT of people who had issues with the server not to mention what they did for those who did pre-orders who lost it due to a sales company going belly up.

Just because a few kiddies have a bad night doesnt mean the game is terrible. Blizzard will always support their games, thats what makes them good, thats why I have no problem throwing money at them

 

[StryderxX]

Damn, with all the problems this game has I'm glad I held off. What a turd.

The game is not a turd, It's Blizzard's under estimation on server load and day one bugs that has players up in arms.

 

[Mortuus]

playing alright now on EU with 50ms ping.

 

[StryderxX]

With the complaints of server issues, you need to understand something, YES Blizzard should have more knowledge of this considering how WoW turned out, but you also have to see, when D3 went live, millions of people went online at the same exact moment. Blizzards servers can handle a filtering of people, not everyone getting on at the EXACT same moment and killing their provisioning servers, Most companies, especially when it comes to MMO's or the like, have muiltipul servers, you have your east / west / etc. servers than you have a provisioning server, when you login for the first time, you hit the provisioning server, than it jumps you to what ever server is hosting your actual profile.

When a buncha people hit that provisioning server at the same time, its database couldnt handle the massive hit, most servers cant, and popped it off for alot of people. Blizzard saw this immediatly and attempted to fix the problem, even so far as doing a maintenance upgrade within the first 2 hours of release, thats not a bad thing. Blizzard is doing one hell of a job supporting ALOT of people who had issues with the server not to mention what they did for those who did pre-orders who lost it due to a sales company going belly up.

Just because a few kiddies have a bad night doesnt mean the game is terrible. Blizzard will always support their games, thats what makes them good, thats why I have no problem throwing money at them

This server situation isn't anything new. There are many ways that Blizzard could have alleviated server load issues. What they should have done was over build their backend then slowly scale down to accommodate normal server load or bring the service online in phases and distribute the load across all server farms not just regional. Setting a firm turn up date then scrambling to try to deal with massive lag and outages because of poor planning does nothing but upset customers.

 

[daglesj]

The game is not a turd, It's Blizzard's under estimation on server load and day one bugs that has players up in arms.

It is a little surprising that they couldn't estimate the level of service they would have to provide. There is a little logic in going in low and ramping up so you don't over budget on the hardware but that approach does kill as a PR exercise as been seen before.

Me? I'd have asked the folks that should know in my project team to estimate the requirement. Then I'd think about all the 'herd outrage' and hate emails from 13-15 year olds (or people of that mental age/ability) threatening to kill my family and I'd say "Okay double that figure!"

After all you'll only need 30% of them in 6 months time and you can move the excess over to the WoW farm.

 

[StryderxX]

It is a little surprising that they couldn't estimate the level of service they would have to provide. There is a little logic in going in low and ramping up so you don't over budget on the hardware but that approach does kill as a PR exercise as been seen before.

Me? I'd have asked the folks that should know in my project team to estimate the requirement. Then I'd think about all the 'herd outrage' and hate emails from 13-15 year olds (or people of that mental age/ability) threatening to kill my family and I'd say "Okay double that figure!"

After all you'll only need 30% of them in 6 months time and you can move the excess over to the WoW farm.

It seems that Blizzard learned nothing from that beta weekend where they had problems dealing with about 300,000 concurrent players. I'm guessing that Blizzard had a set budget with Diablo 3 and tried to do the best they could with said budget. It was obviously not enough.

 

[mdk30]

I never said I cheat at all. The purpose of online only is too insure the integrity of the game. There was lots of duping and cheating in Diablo 2 and it's an intelligent move in order to make sure everything in the game is legit. It's also a smart way to prevent pirating.

I don't mind being called a fanboy I love diablo3

The "integrity of the game" reasoning is just laughable. Blizzard themselves have gone out of their way to state that D3 is a completely soloable game. If so, then why not have an offline only mode that doesn't fuck with the multiplayer side at all?

 

[MrGuvernment]

i guess the game was more popular than blizzard had thought.. but even then you would think they would have the infrastructure to run this no problem...

 

[speshial]

i dunno, i didnt play the beta and the game is sort of fun, but maybe its because im 21 now, but i really am not enjoying d3 as much as i thought i would.

 

[pigwalk]

I'm glad I waited for a Starter Key. I would have been mad too if I had paid 60 bucks and could barely play on day one.

 

[TheToE!]

The situation is pretty much bullshit. There was some lag bad last night. I was playing by myself..Why would there be lag in a single player game? Online only for single player fucking sucks, no defending that really. I got kicked right before a boss kill and just called it quits for the night. The game really feels like a mixture of wow and torchlight to me. The Diablo "mood" is gone. I hate the music as well. Don't get me started on the shitty textures and colors..It feels like a ipad game and really I wouldn't be surprised if it comes to Ipad at all. Waited 12 years for this? Really?

 

[obs]

The "integrity of the game" reasoning is just laughable. Blizzard themselves have gone out of their way to state that D3 is a completely soloable game. If so, then why not have an offline only mode that doesn't fuck with the multiplayer side at all?

Because that's a lot of work for the 0.1% of the target audience that doesn't have internet? Having an offline mode where people are free to hack/cheat/dup to their heart's content while also maintaining the online integrity is a waste of time.

 

[termite]

Given that there is server caused lag in single player, would that allude to the fact that the game is ran like an MMO? There are client side files, but even with an always connected DRM there is no reason for lag when playing SP, that really sounds like much of the games recourses are being provided by the server.

I have the game purchased, but I guess I'll wait a week for the servers to get settled down.

 

[StryderxX]

I was playing single player last night and while in a dungeon the game just stopped generating the map. I was literally standing in a dungeon with no where to walk. I turned to leave and the path I was just on dissapeared as well. I was trapped. I couldn't even quit the game via the menu either. I was forced to go to the task manager and end the game that way. This is the bullshit we have to deal with for SP D3.

 

[Scooty Puff Sr.]

Given that there is server caused lag in single player, would that allude to the fact that the game is ran like an MMO? There are client side files, but even with an always connected DRM there is no reason for lag when playing SP, that really sounds like much of the games recourses are being provided by the server.

I have the game purchased, but I guess I'll wait a week for the servers to get settled down.

This is true and this is the reason why they did a server/client setup. All of the calculations, item stats, monster AI and such are handled by the server. By doing this it makes it incredibly hard to hack. It also means that we will never truly know exact drop rates, or the loot tables for mobs. We will have estimates but without the actual data to data mine from the clients we wont know for sure like we did in D2.

This also makes piracy very hard, and for the "No, they already hacked the beta" people, they didn't completely hack the beta. People were able to make a sandbox type connection where you could run around and kill a few things or equip gear, but because the servers manage a lot of the assets it means that it will take people years of work to get the game even remotely like it is online. They will have to manually code all of the monster AI and stats and drop rates. Even then, since we don't have that data from the server we can never make is exactly the same.

 

[Yakk]

Glad I am waiting on this one it seems. Looks like blizzard pulled an ubisoft...

 

[dremic]

The "integrity of the game" reasoning is just laughable. Blizzard themselves have gone out of their way to state that D3 is a completely soloable game. If so, then why not have an offline only mode that doesn't fuck with the multiplayer side at all?

what dont you understand about server side and client relationships that the logic of their decision is beyond your reach?

 

[Russ]

Hilarious to see people thinking that single player is a simple fix. Either:

1) You spend more money and development time developing a second game that is very different from the way that the current game is coded. There IS NO single player in the game as far as the code is concerned.

or

2) You leave your game open to hacking single player characters into multiplayer and fooling the servers because you allowed a perfect clone of your game to be played locally.

Both of these problems cannot be solved simultaneously. Hence, no single player. So suck it up and be social.

 

[HOOfan_1]

It's simple folks, you don't like it, don't buy it. Please though, the whining has got to stop.

That makes sense...."if you don't love the game, don't comment on it, Drink the Blizzard Kool Aid. or shut up"

Sorry, I don't think anyone has to have actually played the game to express dislike over the always online requirement. Even that is the core nature of the game (which IMO it isn't) that is still a valid sticking point.

 

[Rdzona]

This is the bullshit we have to deal with for SP D3.

I gotta laugh at this mentality. (Cliche forthcoming) As if someone held a gun to your head and made you deal with this bullshit.

Wah wah wah, QQ some more

So much madness in here. Didn't mommy teach you guys about patience? Generation of instant gratification.

 

[termite]

This is true and this is the reason why they did a server/client setup. All of the calculations, item stats, monster AI and such are handled by the server. By doing this it makes it incredibly hard to hack. It also means that we will never truly know exact drop rates, or the loot tables for mobs. We will have estimates but without the actual data to data mine from the clients we wont know for sure like we did in D2.

This also makes piracy very hard, and for the "No, they already hacked the beta" people, they didn't completely hack the beta. People were able to make a sandbox type connection where you could run around and kill a few things or equip gear, but because the servers manage a lot of the assets it means that it will take people years of work to get the game even remotely like it is online. They will have to manually code all of the monster AI and stats and drop rates. Even then, since we don't have that data from the server we can never make is exactly the same.

Well I guess we are lucky they are not requiring a monthly fee then. Games going down this route was an eventuality really; I just wish Blizzard would wake the fuck up for once and actually plan for a launch.

I always get the impression from Blizzard that as soon as a game goes “gold” they tell everyone good job and give them the week of launch off.

 

[TwistedAegis]

I'm sick of having to say this because it is so bloody simple: Simply make the single player not have any interaction at all with the online portion. It's not a hard solution. It would prevent people from cheating the RMAH because even if they did dupe items in the single player they couldn't take them online. Hell they could even have two SP modes since some people would like to use AH and get online achievements or transfer the SP characters to MP and what not. To me it sounds like a perfectly simple solution that would make everyone happy.

Because that's a lot of work for the 0.1% of the target audience that doesn't have internet? Having an offline mode where people are free to hack/cheat/dup to their heart's content while also maintaining the online integrity is a waste of time.

Hilarious to see people thinking that single player is a simple fix. Either:

1) You spend more money and development time developing a second game that is very different from the way that the current game is coded. There IS NO single player in the game as far as the code is concerned.

or

2) You leave your game open to hacking single player characters into multiplayer and fooling the servers because you allowed a perfect clone of your game to be played locally.

Both of these problems cannot be solved simultaneously. Hence, no single player. So suck it up and be social.

Just wanted to sum up the entire argument in one post. If you emulate the server side loot engine on the client side for offline single player, you open it up to tinkering by hackers who can then figure out how to dupe online. They would have to code an entire seperate way to handle loot for offline single player, and apparently they felt the return on investment wasn't there.

Yes the first day kinda sucked, but I still played for about 10 hours or so total and leveled a wizard to 23 and a monk to 15, having a ton of fun. It'll be fixed soon enough; I'm more than satisifed with D3, definitely a worthy successor to D2. That being said, I definitely don't feel it is as "epic" as D2...the storyline seems very muted right now and almost unimportant to the game. (Late Act 2 for me)

 

[Seelenlos]

I'm continually amazed that on a hardware forum that people still don't understand that unforeseen problems come up all the time in a deployment, hardware or software and in this case both. There are always problems. Why is this so surprising?

As for metacritic it is a good site to get a general outlook of a game. Just like with any review of anything you need to take what the reviewer says with a grain of salt. I personally don't agree with some of the design choices blizzard went with but the game is still fun. Actually I was surprised how much better the game was than the beta. Thew few months I played the beta I never came close to dieing. I was in a panic a few times last night and came real close to loosing my character, very nice.

Someone else in this thread said if you toss the 1s and 10s you get a more accurate view of the game. Most of those will be nerdrage and fanboys reviews IMO.

 

[TheCowOfNow]

I would give the game a solid 7 for the 3 hours I was ABLE to play last night. would have been an 8 or higher otherwise.

The story isn't nearly as compelling as D2 but it has had some interesting turns and such and I am only in Act 2.

Gameplay, physics, enviros, playing with friends, music, all win IMO. I would recommend getting a group and setting up everyone with a skill that causes an explosion and just round up a room and watch body parts fly. Its quite satisfying.

I think Blizz should be bitch slapped for having such a shit launch, but I'm not going to not play because of that.

I mean I get that it was a huge amount of people and data, but blizzard....come on. You do run the largest MMO of all time. You've launched several very hyped titles with online components. There is just no reason for it to be this bad. I expected servers crashing. But not for several hours on launch day.

This launch will be cited as one of the worst going forward.

 

[fattypants]

So many white knights, coming to the rescue the fair maiden Activision-Blizzard, hoping to live happily ever after with their sweet Bobby Kotick.

They're as bad as the biodrones during SWTOR's launch.

 

[Scooty Puff Sr.]

The story isn't nearly as compelling as D2 but it has had some interesting turns and such and I am only in Act 2.

I've seen a few people say this and I don't really understand the reasoning. In D2 the only thing that advanced the story were the cinematics. You would start an Act, go do some random quests that really didn't have anything to do with the story. Kill some guy in a sewer, kill some vipers because they hate the sun for some reason, put together this staff to open a tomb which somehow was already opened because the bad guy was there already. Then, once the Act finished you would watch the cinematic that actually told you what is happening in the story.

I think the twists that I have seen so far going into Act 2 already show a much deeper story than D2.

 

[MavericK]

I'm sick of having to say this because it is so bloody simple: Simply make the single player not have any interaction at all with the online portion. It's not a hard solution. It would prevent people from cheating the RMAH because even if they did dupe items in the single player they couldn't take them online. Hell they could even have two SP modes since some people would like to use AH and get online achievements or transfer the SP characters to MP and what not. To me it sounds like a perfectly simple solution that would make everyone happy.

Agreed. It is pretty ridiculous that they didn't do this. I remember in Diablo 2 I played primarily SP and you never had to log on to anything to do it.

 

[MavericK]

I'm continually amazed that on a hardware forum that people still don't understand that unforeseen problems come up all the time in a deployment, hardware or software and in this case both. There are always problems. Why is this so surprising?

Well, not saying that I don't agree with you in some way, but:

1) There's was a closed (and later open) beta almost up until launch.

2) Blizzard should know a little something about server load management because, you know... WoW.

 

[Scooty Puff Sr.]

Agreed. It is pretty ridiculous that they didn't do this. I remember in Diablo 2 I played primarily SP and you never had to log on to anything to do it.

Reread past posts explaining why they could not make a SP game.
Understand that the game is built differently than D2 so they can not be compared.
Realize that they announced this many years ago and would have to completely remake the game to add single player.
Accept that this is the direction they made for the game years ago and that this decision has many benefits as well as consequences.

...Profit.

 

[theNoid]

I've seen a few people say this and I don't really understand the reasoning. In D2 the only thing that advanced the story were the cinematics. You would start an Act, go do some random quests that really didn't have anything to do with the story. Kill some guy in a sewer, kill some vipers because they hate the sun for some reason, put together this staff to open a tomb which somehow was already opened because the bad guy was there already. Then, once the Act finished you would watch the cinematic that actually told you what is happening in the story.

I think the twists that I have seen so far going into Act 2 already show a much deeper story than D2.

I agree, however this model still allows for massive pirating and people to play the entire game for free offline. The way it is today, there is no pirating.. you have to buy the game, authenticate an account with b.net and sign in to even play the SP.

Nothing to pirate

 

[LeninGHOLA]

Reread past posts explaining why they could not make a SP game.
Understand that the game is built differently than D2 so they can not be compared.
Realize that they announced this many years ago and would have to completely remake the game to add single player.
Accept that this is the direction they made for the game years ago and that this decision has many benefits as well as consequences.

...Profit.

All they would need is a "call once" file integrity check or separate file tags for the loot database. Orrr... keep SP separate so you can't use your SP character online.

You don't have to completely rebuild the entire game just to allow client side SP.

 

[HOOfan_1]

Not to mention the great success of Skyrim proves that single player only is still a viable option...

So if single player only is only 1% of Diablo 3's sales...it could still be worth making a single player only game.

 

[Scooty Puff Sr.]

All they would need is a "call once" file integrity check or separate file tags for the loot database. Orrr... keep SP separate so you can't use your SP character online.

You don't have to completely rebuild the entire game just to allow client side SP.

They do because like I posted before, the server controls all of the monster AI, loot tables, damage calculations and such. So they would have to design the client to handle those things. Also, Like stated before, by having the server manage these things it is "hidden" from us. If they released a SP then all of the info would be on the client and could be data mined. We wont know exactly how the game functions which makes it very hard to pirate, it also means that all the duping that was rampant in D2 is nearly impossible because it is easy to check how the item was created.

 

[Sweetleader]

I really don't understand the complaint about "on-line only". Doesn't BF3 require an internet connection through their stupid web browser? I didn't see many complaints about that.

My only complaint is the RMAH. It is going to set a precedant for the rest of the gaming community that buying and selling is "ok" for A+ titles. It is already bad enough we have "f2p" games that are charging for weapon unlocks. Now we have an extremely popular game that says it is ok for people to sell items for real money.

Overall I like the game. I'm a level 23 Wizard and it really is a blast. I amaze myself sometimes at how many mobs I can take on and not die as long as I use the proper rotation.

 

[TheCommander]

Just wanted to sum up the entire argument in one post. If you emulate the server side loot engine on the client side for offline single player, you open it up to tinkering by hackers who can then figure out how to dupe online. They would have to code an entire seperate way to handle loot for offline single player, and apparently they felt the return on investment wasn't there.

Yes the first day kinda sucked, but I still played for about 10 hours or so total and leveled a wizard to 23 and a monk to 15, having a ton of fun. It'll be fixed soon enough; I'm more than satisifed with D3, definitely a worthy successor to D2. That being said, I definitely don't feel it is as "epic" as D2...the storyline seems very muted right now and almost unimportant to the game. (Late Act 2 for me)

Thing is with or without singleplayer, it can be accomplished. The game will eventually be cracked and the tinkering will occur.

As for the gameplay itself, I agree it isnt as epic.

 

[Scooty Puff Sr.]

Thing is with or without singleplayer, it can be accomplished. The game will eventually be cracked and the tinkering will occur.

It can be accomplished to a degree. Look at WoW, yes there are private WoW servers running, but there are not any that are exactly like the official servers. They can come close but it can never be exactly the same game. With Diablo it is even worse because the loot is random. They will never be able to make an exact copy of all the loot tables in the game.

So yes they can "pirate" it. It will take a while to get decent because they will have to manually code all the scripts for the quests and AI and such. Then, I can download it and run a private server that lets me run around the game and kill some monsters which drop loot and everything, but it will not be the same game as being online.

Then you know, there is the whole fact that it makes dupes nearly impossible and makes it easier to track bots which makes the online game better.

 

[MavericK]

Reread past posts explaining why they could not make a SP game.
Understand that the game is built differently than D2 so they can not be compared.
Realize that they announced this many years ago and would have to completely remake the game to add single player.
Accept that this is the direction they made for the game years ago and that this decision has many benefits as well as consequences.

I don't disagree in any particular way with your post, and I did read previous posts, but my point is they shouldn't have made it this way in the first place.