If the game was given a single player experience and mod tools, well that's just adding features to the game while taking pretty much nothing away so yeah of-course that would improve the game, modding and messing with the games mechanics is fun.
That being said I feel the community severely underestimate how difficult it is to keep people playing a game for weeks, months, years after release and Blizzard has done an excellent job at keeping the game going (especially considering there's no cost after buying the initial game). If they were to simply drop the game and give it's control to the community it'd likely be dead within the month, I mean mods are fun but I can't think of a single mod that largely changes the games mechanics that's kept me interested for more than a week.
Also, you say it's been proven that games with mod tools have a long life... But I doubt any of them are raking in as many hours playtime a day as Diablo is right now. Mods are nothing more than a bit of fun on the side, a game can't lean on them to keep it going for years to come. I mean look at torchlight 2, how many people still play that?
I would stop playing the game, I have seen what hacked items are like on the console and remember those days from Diablo 1 and for me that just isn't fun.
This isn't going to happen unless Blizzard sells off the franchise or goes belly up. This is definitely the case for PC. The game requires you to ping the D3 servers. This was probably implemented for the auction house that no longer exists. But you will notice that modding tools were never release. They we for Starcraft and not D3. Why is this? The answer has to do with PvP. Since it doesn't exist there is no reason to allow mods. For Starcraft, maps need to to be created and modded to allow for tournament editions of those maps. These custom maps aren't what Blizzard wants to spend their resources on. Without a good reason Blizzard isn't going to just give away their tools.
They did that with Warcraft and it basically spawned the MMO industry that they never made a cent from.
If they were to simply drop the game and give it's control to the community it'd likely be dead within the month, I mean mods are fun but I can't think of a single mod that largely changes the games mechanics that's kept me interested for more than a week.
While I mentioned that I don't think there's a clear correlation between modding and a game's lifespan, there are also examples that do in fact support OPs point. Two of the most popular games these days started as player-created mods: DotA and CS.
This isn't going to happen unless Blizzard sells off the franchise or goes belly up. This is definitely the case for PC. The game requires you to ping the D3 servers. This was probably implemented for the auction house that no longer exists. But you will notice that modding tools were never release. They we for Starcraft and not D3. Why is this? The answer has to do with PvP.
Completely agree with everything but your last word. It had nothing to do with PvP. One minor reason was the auction house, specifically the RMAH. But then again, it was decided way before the AH was even a realistic topic for the developers that D3 would not support modding. The AH was mentioned in 2009 (though at that time it was just an upcoming debate and far from realization), whereas modding was confirmed to be not included as early as 2008.
They did that with Warcraft and it basically spawned the MMO industry that they never made a cent from.
Care to elaborate what you wanted to say here? A quick Google search tells me that the last official numbers from 2013 reported that WoW yielded 1 billion dollars revenue for Blizzard. It obviously has gone down since - the amount of subscribers dropped to about half as many - but I think you would agree that 1bn is a bit more than zero ;-)
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K, my opinion: I think, OP, you're a bit exaggerating here by asking for D3 to be open source. Which will never ever be the case, let's make that clear. It' technically almost impossible, due to the code being intellectual property of so many people, and probably code fragments of D3 would give away too many interfaces, such as the Battle.Net connection and so on. You say you'll be a game developer soon... have you ever seen code of a AAA game? It would take ages to make it open source. I remember well how long it took until Quake 3 was finally open source, and that was announced relatively early...
Anyways - I basically agree with the underlying message. Modding would be great. I also think that for a game that has no AH/RMAH anymore, no PvP, and the developers stating over and over again that it's not supposed to be competitive and the leaderboards are not their design focus, mods would be awesome. However, the mod would need to be able to tinker with droprates: I would reduce the amount of drops like crazy. It's just wrong that you can complete any character in just one day. Just a separate game mode with RoS release drop rates, where it took a long time to complete a set, would already be great for my long-term motivation... and would give those cool non-set items a purpose beyond just one conquest. But that would mean that Blizzard would have to reveal not only part of their net code, but even let mods tinker with the server-calculated drop rates. The likelihood of that happening: Something between 0% and 1%, but it's closer to the first number ;-)
I think our best bet at this point to save this game are micro-transactions for cosmetic stuff, which would net D3 some revenue and give the D3 developers more weight in negotations with Activison-Blizzard. One new server to deal with the lag would already be a good start, but they need money for that...
I dont think this game can go full open source, private server, etc. Because of 2 reasons: no. 1 - Cheating and no. 2 - it will compete with blizzard's "vanilla" Diablo.
But what I would like to see are Grift designer, Mob designer, and on PTR only, set designer. This could be in a special development tool that does not allow those issues. Well pTR might be a free for all but its PTR so who cares.
This would let people come up with cool synergies and maps. Ideally I would love an Arena designer too for PVP but...
1) It would be flat out illegal for Blizzard to do so. As Bagstone mentioned, Blizzard has licensed a ton of code and tools in order to implement the game, and they are in no position to re license it. I guess you could pay the license fee, see any modders with 5 figure sums just lying around?
2) No one would be able to do much with it for oh, 6 - 12 months. Modern game engines are obscenely complex. Probably some of the most complex coding done today, given all the parts.
3) No one would be able to really play, since it is designed as a servside only game. You would need the database code and schema, as well as the network protocol. Without those, you get to rewrite large parts of the game to remove the server dependency..
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So, as a future game developer I personally think Diablo 3 has some great features but lacks in very many things.
Someone who has played Diablo for over a decade and has attended other ARPG titles, I see what Diablo really could be.
No game is perfect, and Diablo 2 LOD was frankly like catching lightning in a bottle.
What if the community of modders had their hands on this game?
I could see Diablo 3 turn into an amazing epic game.
Personally, if Blizzard wants to just drop this game....let us take control of its future.
Been proven that games with mod tools have a long live.
Your thoughts below.
-Cobearz
If the game was given a single player experience and mod tools, well that's just adding features to the game while taking pretty much nothing away so yeah of-course that would improve the game, modding and messing with the games mechanics is fun.
That being said I feel the community severely underestimate how difficult it is to keep people playing a game for weeks, months, years after release and Blizzard has done an excellent job at keeping the game going (especially considering there's no cost after buying the initial game). If they were to simply drop the game and give it's control to the community it'd likely be dead within the month, I mean mods are fun but I can't think of a single mod that largely changes the games mechanics that's kept me interested for more than a week.
Also, you say it's been proven that games with mod tools have a long life... But I doubt any of them are raking in as many hours playtime a day as Diablo is right now. Mods are nothing more than a bit of fun on the side, a game can't lean on them to keep it going for years to come. I mean look at torchlight 2, how many people still play that?
I would stop playing the game, I have seen what hacked items are like on the console and remember those days from Diablo 1 and for me that just isn't fun.
This isn't going to happen unless Blizzard sells off the franchise or goes belly up. This is definitely the case for PC. The game requires you to ping the D3 servers. This was probably implemented for the auction house that no longer exists. But you will notice that modding tools were never release. They we for Starcraft and not D3. Why is this? The answer has to do with PvP. Since it doesn't exist there is no reason to allow mods. For Starcraft, maps need to to be created and modded to allow for tournament editions of those maps. These custom maps aren't what Blizzard wants to spend their resources on. Without a good reason Blizzard isn't going to just give away their tools.
They did that with Warcraft and it basically spawned the MMO industry that they never made a cent from.
You can wish, but it is not going to happen.
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ModeratorI'll add my own opinion at the bottom, but first a few questions/clarifications:
Has it? I'm not saying it's wrong (though I somehow doubt it, there are plenty of long-lasting games with no modding scene at all).While I mentioned that I don't think there's a clear correlation between modding and a game's lifespan, there are also examples that do in fact support OPs point. Two of the most popular games these days started as player-created mods: DotA and CS.
Completely agree with everything but your last word. It had nothing to do with PvP. One minor reason was the auction house, specifically the RMAH. But then again, it was decided way before the AH was even a realistic topic for the developers that D3 would not support modding. The AH was mentioned in 2009 (though at that time it was just an upcoming debate and far from realization), whereas modding was confirmed to be not included as early as 2008.
Care to elaborate what you wanted to say here? A quick Google search tells me that the last official numbers from 2013 reported that WoW yielded 1 billion dollars revenue for Blizzard. It obviously has gone down since - the amount of subscribers dropped to about half as many - but I think you would agree that 1bn is a bit more than zero ;-)
============================================
K, my opinion: I think, OP, you're a bit exaggerating here by asking for D3 to be open source. Which will never ever be the case, let's make that clear. It' technically almost impossible, due to the code being intellectual property of so many people, and probably code fragments of D3 would give away too many interfaces, such as the Battle.Net connection and so on. You say you'll be a game developer soon... have you ever seen code of a AAA game? It would take ages to make it open source. I remember well how long it took until Quake 3 was finally open source, and that was announced relatively early...
Anyways - I basically agree with the underlying message. Modding would be great. I also think that for a game that has no AH/RMAH anymore, no PvP, and the developers stating over and over again that it's not supposed to be competitive and the leaderboards are not their design focus, mods would be awesome. However, the mod would need to be able to tinker with droprates: I would reduce the amount of drops like crazy. It's just wrong that you can complete any character in just one day. Just a separate game mode with RoS release drop rates, where it took a long time to complete a set, would already be great for my long-term motivation... and would give those cool non-set items a purpose beyond just one conquest. But that would mean that Blizzard would have to reveal not only part of their net code, but even let mods tinker with the server-calculated drop rates. The likelihood of that happening: Something between 0% and 1%, but it's closer to the first number ;-)
I think our best bet at this point to save this game are micro-transactions for cosmetic stuff, which would net D3 some revenue and give the D3 developers more weight in negotations with Activison-Blizzard. One new server to deal with the lag would already be a good start, but they need money for that...
a developing tool like the one given to sc2 players would be great...
Bagstone was the only one who successfully answered the post so far.
Question is, what would you do if diablo 3 source code AKA modding tools were released.
Very simple...diablo "fans"...
-Cobearz
I dont think this game can go full open source, private server, etc. Because of 2 reasons: no. 1 - Cheating and no. 2 - it will compete with blizzard's "vanilla" Diablo.
But what I would like to see are Grift designer, Mob designer, and on PTR only, set designer. This could be in a special development tool that does not allow those issues. Well pTR might be a free for all but its PTR so who cares.
This would let people come up with cool synergies and maps. Ideally I would love an Arena designer too for PVP but...
If this were to happen, 90% of this dev team would be unemployed
What would happen?
1) It would be flat out illegal for Blizzard to do so. As Bagstone mentioned, Blizzard has licensed a ton of code and tools in order to implement the game, and they are in no position to re license it. I guess you could pay the license fee, see any modders with 5 figure sums just lying around?
2) No one would be able to do much with it for oh, 6 - 12 months. Modern game engines are obscenely complex. Probably some of the most complex coding done today, given all the parts.
3) No one would be able to really play, since it is designed as a servside only game. You would need the database code and schema, as well as the network protocol. Without those, you get to rewrite large parts of the game to remove the server dependency..