Diablo 3 Combat Will Be Lag-Free; PayPal Supported
Diablo 3 F&F beta testers are claiming zero combat latency. Meanwhile, Blizzard launched an online character creator while announcing a partnership with PayPal.
Players testing the Diablo 3 Friends and Family beta are claiming that Blizzard has found a way to remove the delay of character combat action stemming from network latency. In fact, players are claiming that nearly all combat actions are seemingly instantaneous -- it's as if they're playing a local, single-player campaign. This is good news for players in Australia, New Zealand and other high-latency regions that don’t have access to localized servers.
According to the testers, Blizzard has developed a secure and tamper-proof method of client/server communication that allows the local client to handle its own calculations and send the data to the server for verification. Latency is eliminated because the client does not wait for the server to respond, but instead moves on as business as usual. However, the server inspects the data for tampering, and if it detects foul play, it will disconnect the player from the network.
Meanwhile, Blizzard has launched a Diablo 3 Skill Calculator wizard for creating a blueprint of a character prior to the game's release. Players can choose from a list of five classes including the Barbarian, the Demon Hunter, the Monk, the Witch Doctor and the Wizard, and then choose six active skills by sorting through the entire skill tree. Once those are chosen, players can socket runestones within those skills and then choose an additional three passive skills. Naturally the characters can't be used in the actual game, but the creations can be shared via Twitter and Facebook.
"If you think you've found the deadliest combination for your class, be sure to export your build and spread the word!" Blizzard states.
Also on Wednesday, Blizzard announced that PayPal will be the payment-service partner of choice for Diablo 3's auction house, allowing players who trade with real-world currency the ability to cash out the spoils of their battle-torn adventures via a PayPal account.
"PayPal will also soon be added in several regions as a payment option on Battle.net, providing another convenient and secure payment method for digital purchases of Blizzard products and services," Blizzard said. "We’ll share region-related specifics, as well as further details on everything mentioned above, in the near future. Stay tuned!"
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Lag free? But will average rigs be able to handle the data processing? some youtube vids are actually showing some in-game lags, probably due to video settings.. hmmm.. wondering..
I'm gonna be rich, rich,rich!!!!
Oh wait I just got undersold by a million gold farmers, crud
here come the Chinese players, lol
No thanks....
I wonder if this tech will make it across to WoW...
Lag free? But will average rigs be able to handle the data processing? some youtube vids are actually showing some in-game lags, probably due to video settings.. hmmm.. wondering..
This kind of data processing will be trivial with pseudo-modern processors.
So if the client is handling the game, why can there not be a local side single player game? Sorry, but I have a feeling that the lag free feel is due to the fact that it's a F&F beta, not because Blizzard has somehow done something no other company has been able to do and that's eliminate internet lag.
I think when a few million players are playing, the lag will rear it's ugly head.
I'm more worried about the penalty, getting kicked off the server.
I have a pretty crappy 3MB DSL connection. Actual speed is rather low because I have a noisy line. When I play TF2 every now and then the screen stutters and I end up dead somewhere I'm assuming because the server "reset me" to where I should have been. I'd rather see this happen then kicked and have to reload everything.
The calculator should be fun to play with. Is there a listing somewhere of all the skill and damage they can do?
well you cant change your own ping so the game can only be as close to your ping to the server client if you got 300ping to the server you got 300 ping and no less.
Being in F&F beta, FPS =/= Latency from some of the comments. The game has some fps issues which can be seen with a lot of action, at times it can be random but such is a BETA. The game latency wise seems to run fine, I get 60-70ms low end and 160ms on a high normal end. BUT, there are intermittent issues sometimes that cause the game to halt. You are able to run around but enemies don't react to you or skills and or arrows won't fire off but you melee attack for nothing. MS will spike 1600-3500-16000 nothing happens you can't exit the game or leave your current, forcing you to end the D3 client only to login again with no issues.
Seems to me this could only work with single-player games (which appears to be the case in the sample video). And lag in single-player is only an issue thanks to Blizzard for forcing people to play on Battle.Net, even during single-player campaigns. So thanks, Blizzard, for fixing an issue you introduced with your over-zealous efforts to curb piracy.
With multi-player, actions by each player must be arbitrated somehow, and that's usually done by the server. Otherwise, you might have one person killing a monster at the same time another person is getting killed (or in PVP, two players killing each other at the same time, how would that work?). Imagine if you make the killing blow to a monster on your computer, but on your friends computer, the monster casts some spell that kills you instead, how would this be resolved on the server? For that matter, how does each client end up fighting the same monster? If each client computer makes it's own decision, wouldn't you technically be fighting two different monsters, a copy for each person in the party? I don't think that could work, so I don't think this solves lag where it's traditionally most annoying, multi-player (traditionally, because traditionally, single-player don't got lag!!!).
I have spent countless hours in both Diablo and Diablo II. I love both games and will always look back on them as great gaming experiences. However it saddens me to think that I may not even buy this one. I simply cannot support the auction house this game will have.
I know some people may read this and simply think that I could just choose not to use the auction house and therefor it has no effect on me. However this is not true. Other players that I play with will undoubtedly use it to gear themselves. If the game allows PVP in a similar fashion to Diablo II it surely will effect me as well. This is going to promote bots farming for unique items and give Blizzard a reason not to combat them. This is also going to promote players to cheat and use auto-loot grabs so all legit players playing with them will never get a quality drop because it's already looted before it even actually hits the floor.
Is this the Diablo any of us wants?
3mb connection is quite fast, the faster i can get in tasmania australia here is 1500/256
I have spent countless hours in both Diablo and Diablo II. I love both games and will always look back on them as great gaming experiences. However it saddens me to think that I may not even buy this one. I simply cannot support the auction house this game will have. I know some people may read this and simply think that I could just choose not to use the auction house and therefor it has no effect on me. However this is not true. Other players that I play with will undoubtedly use it to gear themselves. If the game allows PVP in a similar fashion to Diablo II it surely will effect me as well. This is going to promote bots farming for unique items and give Blizzard a reason not to combat them. This is also going to promote players to cheat and use auto-loot grabs so all legit players playing with them will never get a quality drop because it's already looted before it even actually hits the floor. Is this the Diablo any of us wants?
Blah, blah blah
Look, you can start your bitter little crusade - but you will never be happy.
When Starcraft 2 came out, there were those who said they would never play because there was no LAN and because it was coming out in three installments.
I play the game every second day versus someone who sits right beside me, I've never once had an "issue" with the non-LAN play.
These people are still going, endlessly, a tiny little crusade of bitter people. Most of whom probably have and play the game anyway.
Moral of the story? stop hypothesizing and building a case against something you know little or nothing about - shutup and deal with it
I have spent countless hours in both Diablo and Diablo II. I love both games and will always look back on them as great gaming experiences. However it saddens me to think that I may not even buy this one. I simply cannot support the auction house this game will have. I know some people may read this and simply think that I could just choose not to use the auction house and therefor it has no effect on me. However this is not true. Other players that I play with will undoubtedly use it to gear themselves. If the game allows PVP in a similar fashion to Diablo II it surely will effect me as well. This is going to promote bots farming for unique items and give Blizzard a reason not to combat them. This is also going to promote players to cheat and use auto-loot grabs so all legit players playing with them will never get a quality drop because it's already looted before it even actually hits the floor. Is this the Diablo any of us wants?
Not only do I believe you are right that Blizzard will not combat them, I believe if the items sold by the botters sell for enough where Blizz is making money on the sale, they will encourage such botters and farmers.
There is also the issue that Blizzard has already said if too many of an item appears on the AH, they will then nerf those items. I know they did this previously, but single player players didn't have to download the patches which nerfed items. For D3 they have no choice.
And I also agree with Hellwig that this seems like a fix designed only for the single player campaigns as it just wouldn't work well with multiplayer for the reasons he/she stated. Of course as they said, Blizz themselves created this problem and put all this work on themselves.
I have spent countless hours in both Diablo and Diablo II. I love both games and will always look back on them as great gaming experiences. However it saddens me to think that I may not even buy this one. I simply cannot support the auction house this game will have. I know some people may read this and simply think that I could just choose not to use the auction house and therefor it has no effect on me. However this is not true. Other players that I play with will undoubtedly use it to gear themselves. If the game allows PVP in a similar fashion to Diablo II it surely will effect me as well. This is going to promote bots farming for unique items and give Blizzard a reason not to combat them. This is also going to promote players to cheat and use auto-loot grabs so all legit players playing with them will never get a quality drop because it's already looted before it even actually hits the floor. Is this the Diablo any of us wants?
1. If you spent countless hours in D1/D2 you're very well aware of the side-economy where it was possible to get anything you wanted for real money through ebay and whatnot. Especially D1 was a hackfest.
2. You haven't done your research on looting. When something drops its yours only, others can't see it. Essentially there's a round robin style built in so no, there won't be auto-grab bots and stuff.
3. PvP will be done in arenas. Not PKing in the open. So again, no one will grief you.
1. If you spent countless hours in D1/D2 you're very well aware of the side-economy where it was possible to get anything you wanted for real money through ebay and whatnot. Especially D1 was a hackfest. 2. You haven't done your research on looting. When something drops its yours only, others can't see it. Essentially there's a round robin style built in so no, there won't be auto-grab bots and stuff. 3. PvP will be done in arenas. Not PKing in the open. So again, no one will grief you.
1. Yes, D2 had that. However, it was not sactioned by Blizzard. The activity in D3 will be, which means Blizzard (namely Bobby Kotick) will have incentive to allow the activity to occur. So just because it happened in D2 doesn't mean nothing will change with Blizzard getting involved. And since D3 must be played online even for single player, and since Blizzard has a financial stake in the auction sales, legitimate players will have to battle against botters and farmers for drops. They may be in seperate instances of the game, but the server will not allow too many of any particular item to drop so that it's price won't fall to the point where Blizz makes no money off it's potential sale.
2. That may be true that they are going to a Guild Wars style assigned looting still doesn't take away from the fact from the point in number 1, that even players in single player games will be affected by botters who are in their own seperate instance of the game.
3. You obviously did not understand the point Nuclear was making. Even if Nuclear does not participate in the AH, since the AH is now legitimatized, many many more people will buy items on it, thus making the characters more powerful, not through gameplay, but based on the amount of money in their wallet they are willing to spend on items. So yes, his gameplay will be affected, even if in an indirect way.
As a South African to me the proof will be in the pudding and I hope I get my hands on a beta to see it first hand before buying. Saying our networks is unstable is an understatement. Locally we get anything from 50-100ms on good days, the base to europe is 250ms, my average WoW lag was 750ms and when the birds hit the fan I got 900ms to a local Killing floor server while someone from the USA got constant 400ms. So the biggest question is what happens when you hit your infrastructure point where latency is anything between 500ms and 60k ms ?
I totally aggree with Hellwig. Two computers in the same game with 200ms will handle things differently and... this just doesnt add up...
But well let's see what Blizzard has to offer, they are proffessionals and will struggle to support their system. I guess if it doesnt work they will patch the game after half a year making it playable for everyone.
When i am in my country (Greece) i have 200-250ms in WOW, when im in UK for my studies, I have 15-20ms and i can tell you makes a huge difference in PvP especially.
get ready to get paypal scammed
Tom's, I've got a 404 error when accessing the page from your link, but the blizzard site's default link when I use the drop-down menu to get to the page is http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/barbarian
To those wondering if the elimination of network latency will actually work- it will if the player's actions are being handled client-side.
Think of an FPS where you fire at someone. Normally your computer sends where you fired the shot and the server determines when you fired the shot (which is affected by the network latency). If the server says you were on target then you were on target.
Here, the player's client does both and sends back all the information, and as long as it is deemed to be legitimate then the server accepts that you were on target. This is the way the "zero ping" mutator works in UT3 which has been around for a while.
waaah waaah, wahhh, always so much griefing every single time a D3 news surface.
Honestly, I am loving the auction house, I'm not a kid anymore, I have a job, I work 8 to 5, I don't have the time as these kids who sit in mom's basement all day farming gears. So while they are "hardworking" farming in the basement, I am hardworking making real money at work, after I get home, i will want use my hard-earned money to buy the absolute best gears, to make up for the time lost during work. To me, this is perfectly fair, different people have different priorities, you can bet yo ass I'll be dropping my entire paycheque on the auction house when the game comes, just to see these kids cry. to these whiners - grow up, get a job.
Maybe the lag in diablo 2 was caused by the fact that many people played it on a 56 k modem????
Let's hope it works,but for PayPal,I have second thoughts.
waaah waaah, wahhh, always so much griefing every single time a D3 news surface.Honestly, I am loving the auction house, I'm not a kid anymore, I have a job, I work 8 to 5, I don't have the time as these kids who sit in mom's basement all day farming gears. So while they are "hardworking" farming in the basement, I am hardworking making real money at work, after I get home, i will want use my hard-earned money to buy the absolute best gears, to make up for the time lost during work. To me, this is perfectly fair, different people have different priorities, you can bet yo ass I'll be dropping my entire paycheque on the auction house when the game comes, just to see these kids cry. to these whiners - grow up, get a job.
i had a teacher in school who played diablo 2 to level 99, now a teacher has a FAR longer job than you, needing to correct 100~ kids papers every day before going online and playing with us. he was still better geared than most of the kids who played with him...
i will forever have more respect for that kind of a person than i will EVER have for someone who makes comments like you.
waaah waaah, wahhh, always so much griefing every single time a D3 news surface.Honestly, I am loving the auction house, I'm not a kid anymore, I have a job, I work 8 to 5, I don't have the time as these kids who sit in mom's basement all day farming gears. So while they are "hardworking" farming in the basement, I am hardworking making real money at work, after I get home, i will want use my hard-earned money to buy the absolute best gears, to make up for the time lost during work. To me, this is perfectly fair, different people have different priorities, you can bet yo ass I'll be dropping my entire paycheque on the auction house when the game comes, just to see these kids cry. to these whiners - grow up, get a job.
Hate to break this to you, many of us not only have jobs, but school as well. Just because we all have varying degrees of responsibility in our lives does not mean that how much disposable (and unforunately as will be the case, indisposable) income someone has should allow them an advantage over gameplay.
There is also another factor being played out here that I have seen very few people talk about, and that is the driving away of the franchise fan. The fact is very few fans of the Diablo franchise will want to pay money to get ahead in the game. Someone who is a true fan will want to experience it as it's intended. However, grouping with someone, or even worse facing someone in PvP, who has basically "paid to win" will not be a lot of fun. True fans are not all that interested in "shiny gear" as the end all be all of the game.
Blizzard has already lost a fair amount of the franchise fan base of Warcraft during the last 2 expansions. Not only has the comics been cancelled due to low sales, and the second pre-cataclysm novel (second of three, the first also having low sales) just now being released at a ridiculous point where they are about to bring out the final plot points of the expansion, they are losing subscribers at a quick pace. Nearly a million in just six months. The first six months of the expansion. Not a good sign.
The fact is the players who will take shortcuts with the game to purchase gear so they won't have to go through what they see as the boring aspects of "gearing up" are not the types of fans that keep a franchise alive and going.
To those wondering if the elimination of network latency will actually work- it will if the player's actions are being handled client-side. Think of an FPS where you fire at someone. Normally your computer sends where you fired the shot and the server determines when you fired the shot (which is affected by the network latency). If the server says you were on target then you were on target. Here, the player's client does both and sends back all the information, and as long as it is deemed to be legitimate then the server accepts that you were on target. This is the way the "zero ping" mutator works in UT3 which has been around for a while.
UT3 has no AI mobs that I am aware of. The fact is when it comes to multiplayer for D3, the client can not control the players actions and the AI mobs reaction in a multiplayer group because other players are having interaction with that same mob. And if each players client registers something different, then you have a serious game bug. Therefore, the latency issue is still going to be there.
Sorry, as hellwig pointed out, only in single player will this potential fix have any bearing, and it is unneccessary work they created for themselves if they had a traditional single player game in place.
Id write lol, but this is one of those laught so hard my tacco fell off and i lost my sombrero.....
.
Lets see, this is the ingredients: Calculations on local, data verification by server only, partnership with paypal. ANd the Recipie is!!!!
Yeah, godlike Baalrun Bots flooding diablo 3 incoming!
Or perhaps blizzard themselves will sell items
1. Yes, D2 had that. However, it was not sactioned by Blizzard. The activity in D3 will be, which means Blizzard (namely Bobby Kotick) will have incentive to allow the activity to occur. So just because it happened in D2 doesn't mean nothing will change with Blizzard getting involved. And since D3 must be played online even for single player, and since Blizzard has a financial stake in the auction sales, legitimate players will have to battle against botters and farmers for drops. They may be in seperate instances of the game, but the server will not allow too many of any particular item to drop so that it's price won't fall to the point where Blizz makes no money off it's potential sale.2. That may be true that they are going to a Guild Wars style assigned looting still doesn't take away from the fact from the point in number 1, that even players in single player games will be affected by botters who are in their own seperate instance of the game.3. You obviously did not understand the point Nuclear was making. Even if Nuclear does not participate in the AH, since the AH is now legitimatized, many many more people will buy items on it, thus making the characters more powerful, not through gameplay, but based on the amount of money in their wallet they are willing to spend on items. So yes, his gameplay will be affected, even if in an indirect way.
1. Let me quote him: "I have spent countless hours in both Diablo and Diablo II. I love both games and will always look back on them as great gaming experiences. However it saddens me to think that I may not even buy this one."
So, D1 was hacked to death, D2 was hacked and bot'ed to death and also had a massive black market. Yet he loved both games and considers them great gaming experiences. And that's why he doesn't make sense.
2. Diablo is not an mmo. Just because it requires an internet connection doesn't make it a mmog. The only competitive thing in the past was the ladder realm first lvl99 bragging rights. And that didn't require either skill nor gear, just pure dedication (aka no life).
3. see 2.
Either way, I don't mind him not playing or any of you for that matter. Even if I was the only person on earth playing it I would enjoy it equally because its not an mmog but essentially a single player with online perks.
waaah waaah, wahhh, always so much griefing every single time a D3 news surface.Honestly, I am loving the auction house, I'm not a kid anymore, I have a job, I work 8 to 5, I don't have the time as these kids who sit in mom's basement all day farming gears. So while they are "hardworking" farming in the basement, I am hardworking making real money at work, after I get home, i will want use my hard-earned money to buy the absolute best gears, to make up for the time lost during work. To me, this is perfectly fair, different people have different priorities, you can bet yo ass I'll be dropping my entire paycheque on the auction house when the game comes, just to see these kids cry. to these whiners - grow up, get a job.
I, along with many other people will be ROFL as we pawn your @$$ in-game regardless of the money you spend gearing up! I agree there's no reason to get worked up as there's no way around farmers. However, by earning your own gear it allows your to improve your technique. Many people who buy gear do not know their limitations of their own character. They may go about easily killing mobs, but when it comes to PVP they just get beaten, by sub-par geared people.