Hmmm, who's to say Diablo 3 won't offer the same kind of thing that SC 2 does? They don't offer the tools to do so, but I could imagine having a Diablo 3 battlenet section where you can play mod games. o.o
some people will play the mod instead of their actual game that they worked so hard for
Modding and user created content is more of a longevity value... I spent years modding Diablo II, but this was well after I had played the official version... I have every intention to play through Diablo 3 from start to finish with a few different characters. I will play through expansions and official DLC as well, but after a certain point it just becomes old and done... This is when the value of modding becomes much higher. Many games such Oblivion are only still being played because of mods. The bulk of players who play my Hell Unleashed mod are those who quit Diablo 2 long ago because they were simply bored of the game and the endless tedious item grinding that Diablo 2 amounted to in the end.
I think initial modding support may distract from their vision and getting everyone to play Diablo 3 as they had intended first and foremost. But after the initial excitement has worn off and players have blazed through all the content it becomes far more nessecary to keep players interested while waiting for the next expansion or whatever. Players who cannot find their niche or have grown bored of the game will either quit or move onto mods.
I loved playing SC2 on the official ladder for competetive ranking. But I haven't in many months simply because I got bored of playing the exact same maps over and over again, so now I find a lot more entertainment in custom maps and never play the official ladder anymore and probably won't again until an expansion or map pack.
Well if the amount of content being released is anywhere close to the content releases in WoW, then people won't get bored for a while. Especially if the endgame is more interesting than in D2. That being said the lack of mods certainly seems like a missed opportunity. It should at least be available at some later date after people have explored all the content they have to offer.
As far as LAN, even though it does suck that they don't have it, I know plenty of people who would have bought D2 were it not for LAN allowing multiple people to use one copy. Obviously they'll do some kind of authentication every time you insteall the game, but its at least more likely that people are using someone else's copy when playing offline. I see no reason with them making it so that you have to pay to play the game. And as far as connection goes, I had plenty of "LAN parties" on SC2 with friends of mine where we just got together and played on Battle.net without any connection problems. In the end the only thing it creates problems for is mods. Which is terribly unfortunate, but really it just compounds upon Blizzard's anti modding stance as opposed to being a major flaw with the game. Its really only a huge problem if you think of it in D2 terms, where you could have a lot of connection problems if you didn't use LAN.
Sid Meier's Civilization VI and V. Completely, 100% moddable, LAN enabled, huge successes. Go figure......
The two things don't go hand in hand. There are plenty of moddable and LAN enabled games that aren't even close to successes. It can contribute to already high quality (or at least good) games, but it doesn't make the game awesome. You still need a good base game (not to mention player base) in order to have a good modding community.
It's mainly odd that they aren't jumping on the user-created content bandwagon. Many modern games are, including genres which didn't previously include such features. Halo comes to mind, Infamous 2, others. Whether or not these were really that great is a matter of opinion, but I can name a handful of people off the top of my head that were/are more excited for many games because they featured or were advertised to feature user-created content tools.
Modding is but one facet of user-created content. Much of the fun behind mods, I've found, isn't just playing them- it's making them. Figuring out puzzles, solving questions, doing so in unique ways- these three things are what many still complain to this day they can't find in base games. Like, for instance, Diablo II. If I've seen one complaint about grinding and cookie-cutter builds, I've seen them all.
Of course, no one here is claiming that any such content would replace Blizzard's own. Mods are, by their nature, based on and draw upon the content the developers give us. Furthermore, having or not having mods would not affect anyone that doesn't want to play them. If anything, it'll only develop a larger, more diverse fanbase, more revenue for Blizzard, and something to do in ten years when all the grinding and cookie-cutter complaints surface again. When it comes down to it, it is logically undeniable that mods add longevity to the games they mod- for certain players. Maybe a lot of players, as the case may be.
Supporting or not supporting modding, or merely condoning it, as Blizzard seems privy to do, there will, in all likelihood, be mods for the coming game. I believe it is unfortunate that Blizzard sees no merit in catering to this audience. If they won't, we will.
And who knows: maybe post-release, like I said, they'll throw modders a bone or two.
Even if there is no official LAN support, I've seen talk of just hacking the shit out of the game and using third-party stuff to make it LAN-able. Of course, not supporting LAN will also likely increase the number of private realms, too.
Or they could simply take a page from Bioware and Runic Games and support player run servers for modding rather then declaring them an abomination to Blizzard's strictly controlled MMORPG style battle.net
I'm not a terrible mod enthusiast but I do like using them to spice up the game or change a few things. Unfortunately, Blizzard doesn't like to let players play how they want, as evidenced by WoW (yay let's remove half the talents). That's pretty much why their stance on mods is so negative. They want to control the users of their games.
I don't trust Blizzard to add content nor add good content. They can't even do it with WoW. The last company I recall that was actually good at updating stuff was CCP. Otherwise, though, pretty much every game company has a horrid record of updating and fixing things. So mods are a very positive thing to build on top of a product, especially one such as Diablo which would be very easy to improve through addition of skills, levels, items, monsters, etc.
Removal of LAN is just shooting themselves in the foot, but their feet are huge so they won't really notice it either way.
I think it is as simple as this: Blizzard is not supporting mods because they don't believe that the mods created would be better than what they will create themselves.
It is kinda fun to hear. Especially because we all know that Blizzard actually got many of D2 mods' content for D2 itself and even expressed their gratitude in some weird form. After all, many of WoW' players know Onyxia and Nefaria monsters.
Some kind of mod integration into Bnet would have been cool. They have an extensive SC2 editor and custom maps. D3 mods might be quite different from a custom map, but some kind of system could have been implemented. It might take a while to patch when joining a new game or something, but an efficient system would likely not suffer too much from this. I think that really would have extended the life of the game, giving it nearly endless replayability. I agree with Blizzard that a map editor is not really needed, but there is certainly much more to Diablo than a random map. I don't get why they wouldn't include any mod support, it's really unfortunate.
One issue would be the amount of mods. If the game came with an editor that is easy to use than a lot of players would start making mods. The problem is that many of these mods are likely going to be the same modifications to get items faster and more skills and such. The problem is then sifting through all the mods to find a good one.
Also if Blizzard allows mods on Battle-net then it would take quite a bit of resources to manage the games since it would be unfair if a PvP with heavily modified gear plays against a player that is using the normal D3 battle-net gear.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
On Strike and supporting Fallout 4 Mod Makers
Some fallout 4 mod makers have had their mods stolen and uploaded and downloaded on Bethesda's site for the Xbox One.
Hans: for your second point, the answer is easy; look, for example, at Battlefield 2: when you're using a mod, the "Search Game" screen only displays games that are using the same mod as you, so you only play with/against people in the exact same conditions as you. Why can't a system like that be used in D3?
They likely will not do that since that might be considered as supporting mods.
That system sounds nice if it works as intended.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
On Strike and supporting Fallout 4 Mod Makers
Some fallout 4 mod makers have had their mods stolen and uploaded and downloaded on Bethesda's site for the Xbox One.
Please support them.
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I'll be reading the full artice soon enough to add some input
Modding and user created content is more of a longevity value... I spent years modding Diablo II, but this was well after I had played the official version... I have every intention to play through Diablo 3 from start to finish with a few different characters. I will play through expansions and official DLC as well, but after a certain point it just becomes old and done... This is when the value of modding becomes much higher. Many games such Oblivion are only still being played because of mods. The bulk of players who play my Hell Unleashed mod are those who quit Diablo 2 long ago because they were simply bored of the game and the endless tedious item grinding that Diablo 2 amounted to in the end.
I think initial modding support may distract from their vision and getting everyone to play Diablo 3 as they had intended first and foremost. But after the initial excitement has worn off and players have blazed through all the content it becomes far more nessecary to keep players interested while waiting for the next expansion or whatever. Players who cannot find their niche or have grown bored of the game will either quit or move onto mods.
I loved playing SC2 on the official ladder for competetive ranking. But I haven't in many months simply because I got bored of playing the exact same maps over and over again, so now I find a lot more entertainment in custom maps and never play the official ladder anymore and probably won't again until an expansion or map pack.
As far as LAN, even though it does suck that they don't have it, I know plenty of people who would have bought D2 were it not for LAN allowing multiple people to use one copy. Obviously they'll do some kind of authentication every time you insteall the game, but its at least more likely that people are using someone else's copy when playing offline. I see no reason with them making it so that you have to pay to play the game. And as far as connection goes, I had plenty of "LAN parties" on SC2 with friends of mine where we just got together and played on Battle.net without any connection problems. In the end the only thing it creates problems for is mods. Which is terribly unfortunate, but really it just compounds upon Blizzard's anti modding stance as opposed to being a major flaw with the game. Its really only a huge problem if you think of it in D2 terms, where you could have a lot of connection problems if you didn't use LAN.
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Modding is but one facet of user-created content. Much of the fun behind mods, I've found, isn't just playing them- it's making them. Figuring out puzzles, solving questions, doing so in unique ways- these three things are what many still complain to this day they can't find in base games. Like, for instance, Diablo II. If I've seen one complaint about grinding and cookie-cutter builds, I've seen them all.
Of course, no one here is claiming that any such content would replace Blizzard's own. Mods are, by their nature, based on and draw upon the content the developers give us. Furthermore, having or not having mods would not affect anyone that doesn't want to play them. If anything, it'll only develop a larger, more diverse fanbase, more revenue for Blizzard, and something to do in ten years when all the grinding and cookie-cutter complaints surface again. When it comes down to it, it is logically undeniable that mods add longevity to the games they mod- for certain players. Maybe a lot of players, as the case may be.
Supporting or not supporting modding, or merely condoning it, as Blizzard seems privy to do, there will, in all likelihood, be mods for the coming game. I believe it is unfortunate that Blizzard sees no merit in catering to this audience. If they won't, we will.
And who knows: maybe post-release, like I said, they'll throw modders a bone or two.
I do not give a fuck about your arguments about removing LAN and mods.
Blizzard did not make this decision to personally fuck over you mod players. They made it to fuck over the pirates.
If you are a pirate, then as a software professional I'm saying this to you, Go fuck yourself, and burn in hell.
As for whether or not they supports mods, I do not give a shit. But your arguments about eliminating LAN play fucking you over just piss me off.
** And yes I know I used the f-bomb 5 times within this post, and normally would be considered excessive. I just really need to emphasize this point.
How about a dungeon creater?
Gives you a layout where you can add in structures, monsters, puzzles, etc.
Just flew into my head and figured I would throw it into here.
that is also the only downside i see the most newer blizzard games
is the lack of LAN
not a whole lot of games do support mods at all
its just ppl find a way to make mods work
in a sense, mods are a form of hacking
so this has no bearing on mods other than no LAN support
Be my Buddy =^.^=
Agreed.
I don't trust Blizzard to add content nor add good content. They can't even do it with WoW. The last company I recall that was actually good at updating stuff was CCP. Otherwise, though, pretty much every game company has a horrid record of updating and fixing things. So mods are a very positive thing to build on top of a product, especially one such as Diablo which would be very easy to improve through addition of skills, levels, items, monsters, etc.
Removal of LAN is just shooting themselves in the foot, but their feet are huge so they won't really notice it either way.
Also if Blizzard allows mods on Battle-net then it would take quite a bit of resources to manage the games since it would be unfair if a PvP with heavily modified gear plays against a player that is using the normal D3 battle-net gear.
They likely will not do that since that might be considered as supporting mods.
That system sounds nice if it works as intended.