Gaming

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.

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.

If a single player game requires online connection im not buying it.

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.

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)

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 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 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.

Always-online singleplayer is bullshit, and we all know it.

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.

There's a difference between always-online SP and essentially one-person MP games though.

It sucks that they did it that way, but at least it makes slightly more sense there.

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?

I can't imagine that anyone actually likes being forced to be online in singleplayer games/modes, but I see the point when there is multiplayer involved. Diablo IV makes sense, but I strongly dislike the shift to the MMO-lite model that necessitates a permanent syncing instead of making it optional. I thought it was fine in Diablo III where you could pause as long as no one was in your lobby.

I suppose my stance on it is that, as long as multiplayer doesn't bleed into singleplayer, I'm okay with it - but I'm also fortunate to have a relatively stable connection. I much prefer games that don't lean into the online aspect at all, though.

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.

I dont like always online games, since I have had connection issues for a long time before I moved which made it almost impossible to play multiplayer games for me. And now my W-LAN card on my computer died without the option to use LAN. I am already glad that I can still access Denuvo "protected" games since those need to send some stuff to Denuvos sometimes.

My firewall is configured to block all programs by default. If a game refuses to open or function without internet and I can't find any workarounds it gets angry looks from me and I let it through. I get anxious when playing anything multiplayer so doing so saves me from having to interact with people if I accidentally trigger a multiplayer event or something. Also generally makes games launch faster.

I hate the "always online, always changing, sudo-mmo"- genre that's becoming the norm with certain publishers. Avoid anything GaaS-like unless it's something I feel the need to experience. In this case I just play Grim Dawn or some other great arpg whenever I get the itch for the genre! Lets me play multiplayer when I want to, and just play real singleplayer whenever I want to.

@Parellius
I despise them. I only buy them if I'm going to play online with friends but I know at some point if I want to play solo I'm going to have to get a "less connected" version of them...

Now if I only need the solo experience, well...

Another issue arises now that handheld PC gaming is getting more and more popular. Those games will definitely ignore a big part of their potential customer base, and I assume suffer the consequences

It made me stop buying games and consoles in the first place.

You have to be online, the game has to be downloaded on the system, there will be bugs and it has to be patched.

Just let me buy a game and play it. I may sound like an old fart but I really enjoyed the days that I could go to a store, buy a game and play it immediately on my console.

Especially the fact that bugs are literally shipped like features now and you just have to accept that your game of 80-90 dollars is ridden with bugs, yeah fuck off really.

Big no from me. I almost exclusively play single player games and tend go back to old games a lot. The always-online requirement is not just annoying in the now but a big problem for the longevity of games.

In the case of Diablo IV I'm also not sure if it was really meant to serve my interests rather than Blizzard's. The MMO-lite aspects feel like the excuse rather than the reason.

If it's not a multiplayer game then it shouldn't need to be online.

Like I play Hitman a lot and occasionally the game pauses because it loses connection to the server even though it's single-player. It's usually able to reconnect but its still a bit annoying. And I am playing with 500mb internet and an ethernet connection, so the issue is on their side.

So yeah, I really don't see why it's necessary or why it's become such a trend.

They are particularly annoying on the Steam Deck and other handhelds where not being online is common.

Anyway, I dislike it in general but like you I've put up with it in some cases (see the Hitman series).

I think when it makes sense it's fine, but I would only really say that for multiplayer games, if it's a single player game there is a really unfortunate reality, which is that pirating it will result in a better gameplay experience.

I try to avoid games with always online as much as possible but sometimes you don't have choice. If you want to play Diablo IV there's not much else you could do. But at least Diablo has some form of multiplayer. If you have a solely single player experience with always online, it's just bullshit. The DRM is only punishing players that pay for the game. If you insist to implement this kind of DRM then please go ahead but then you also have to run the servers forever. If you don't then why should I buy your game?

I'm not a fan at all. it gives a limit life to games, and ones that could be played Singleplayer definitely shouldn't have it.

definitely a turnoff for me.. years ago when I first discovered Diablo 2 on an old computer at a place I was house-sitting at, I had no internet whatsoever.. nothing
that game kept me sane in so many ways
eventually several months later I managed to leech some web access from an old construction yard or something behind the place, but that's a story for another time..

If a game is always online I expect it to be f2p, since then that's a situation where a game disappearing if the company decides to pull it doesn't bother me. It's not even likely that piracy would be able to save an always online game the way abandoned games that never got DRM removed can be.

Such a bad idea.

Internet goes? Can't play

Power goes? Can't play

Travelling? Can't play

Servers go down? Can't play

Servers are shutdown? Can't play

Not being able to pause a single player games is so silly, its such a good feature especially for situations like yours.

I pirate any single player games that require always online and its just a better experience, the game doesn't pause when the internet goes and I don't have to worry about servers being shutdown

I'm sure Blizzard and EA are looking at the way Netflix is forcing its users to only watch content in their own household and dying to implement that into their games too

I refuse to play them. My rule naturally excludes titles that actually need it for multiplayer, like MMORPGS.

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 have accepted the fact that this would be the new normal since Diablo 3 and the infamous error 37. It was a problem back then when good internet is hard to come by. But at 2023, unless there's zero online elements in a particular game, I have no issue with always online requirement.

Good that we still have great titles from Nintendo eg. TotK

The only reason to require an Internet connection for a game is if it's primarily multiplayer.

Emulation is my favorite way to play for this reason. I have the full game and I can play it in any way I choose when I choose and with the steam deck where I choose. I hate the preoder bullshit where they ship a broken mess and are patching it for a cycle or two and then they shut off the servers...

I boycott ubisoft for this and ea because they are a shitty company. Thankfully we have projects like pretendo and xlink Kai to restore the old networks and they work with emulators

It has no place in single player games and turns me off from playing them. There's no real reason they exist other than removing the ability to use cheats (which should be allowed in single players games imo) to obtain items or boosts that are only available on their cash shop. It also ties in to the Game As a Service model which i've come to detest; usually because they have a constant stream of updates that tries to monopolize your free time, whereas i am the kind of player that can say "ok this is done".

Games that offer multiplayer in addition to single player, such as D4, should allow you to have a single player save that's offline, can be paused and anything goes.

@Parellius I prefer games that I can play offline if I need to, but I have been a Diablo fan for over 20 years. Of course I purchased Diablo 4.

If it's single player game, having an always online component is straight up dumb. Fuck anybody who does this.

Personally it's never effected me but it feels like a really dumb decision made by ignorant suits. The fact that pirates get a better product than paying customers is pretty sad.

Ironically I think GTAV did a pretty decent job of this - you can pause at any time during the single player, however I don't remember if it requires a connection to play single player mode.

Imo if a game has a single player mode, being online for it should never be a requirement.

I refuse to buy always-online games. Not being able to pause is just dumb (and probably could be fixed if Blizzard would still give a damn). But not being able to mod the game is a deal-breaker for me, an ARPG that can't be modded is not worth my time.

I choose not to play these games.

Unless it's an online multiplayer game, it's an instant Nope button for me. I generally refuse to be locked out of my singleplayer content if I lose Internet connection, your servers go down, or worse... get shut down intentionally due to licensing deals ending.

Honestly fuck always online games. Piracy prevention methods at the cost of the paying customer. Absolute ridiculous that you cant play things you own offline