Mods. Editors. We all know that Diablo 3 will not be coming with any sort of editor. It'll never happen. Case closed.
As for mods. Mods have been the most important part of my gaming life since the begining. I see it like this: The community is either a developer's pawn, or the developer gives them the tools to play the game as the player intend, and create new things.
Mods are a must for a game to live on pass a certain point in time. And Diablo 3 is not looking to have Mod Support, or a side -open battle.net- where people can connect with modified files.
I am a modder. I always change every games I possibly can to adjust them to myself. -THAT- is the beauty of true gaming to me. If you kill modding for 1 game, you killed a thousand potential new games and thousand of ideas.
If it wasn't for modding (my own, or from others) I would have missed some of the best gaming experiences I have ever had. Yet modding in this day and age is disappearing. And I say: This isn't what I call Gaming, and I would not be a Gamer, without mods, and without the original works of the gaming communities.
And so I have to ask: What is your opinion on modding? If its not there, will you miss it greatly? Will you just not care at all? You don't have to answer these specific questions. I just want your opinions on modding. I for one, could not live without it.
I'm a fan of mods in general, it's a creative outlet that gives joy to the modders, and, if their mods are any good, other people too
Is blizzard somehow obligated to provide mod support? Not really. I don't know how much dev time it would require from them, but for the D3 customer base I don't think mods are a big selling point.
That's the business side of it. As for the..morality? legitimacy? of modding, assuming the company had the time/free money to develop mod tools, that is a different discussion.
For single player, I cannot see any downside for mod tools. It is an individual experience. There is a community shared experience in talking about the game with others, but your gaming experience in SP is totally your own choice.
For multiplayer, obviously a whole class of mods are restricted for compatibility issues automatically, and then another chunk of mods that would be obvious cheats, leaving you with interface mods, and not much else (I think?). They don't even want interface mods in D3. My reaction to this is 'meh'.
It is possible for interface mods to give you an advantage over other players. If they want to avoid that whole kettle of fish entirely and not have to worry about policing it and drawing a line, I'm ok with that decision. I don't want to be obligated to DL mods because other people are using them to get a leg up. Best example of this is the huge advantage you get from interface mods in WoW arena. (I would be quite displeased to have to DL "D3 Gladius") On the other hand, D3 is not a seriousface competitive game, even in the PvP. So you might argue that it's not a problem.
Well technically SC2 doesn't have a mod, but it has a map editor type thing, and they have said they might have custom PvP games. So if they had something even as small as that it could add to how long the game stays around. So you don't need complete modding, if they had something like that it would be just as good imo.
I'm a fan of mods in general, it's a creative outlet that gives joy to the modders, and, if their mods are any good, other people too
Is blizzard somehow obligated to provide mod support? Not really. I don't know how much dev time it would require from them, but for the D3 customer base I don't think mods are a big selling point.
That's the business side of it. As for the..morality? legitimacy? of modding, assuming the company had the time/free money to develop mod tools, that is a different discussion.
For single player, I cannot see any downside for mod tools. It is an individual experience. There is a community shared experience in talking about the game with others, but your gaming experience in SP is totally your own choice.
For multiplayer, obviously a whole class of mods are restricted for compatibility issues automatically, and then another chunk of mods that would be obvious cheats, leaving you with interface mods, and not much else (I think?). They don't even want interface mods in D3. My reaction to this is 'meh'.
It is possible for interface mods to give you an advantage over other players. If they want to avoid that whole kettle of fish entirely and not have to worry about policing it and drawing a line, I'm ok with that decision. I don't want to be obligated to DL mods because other people are using them to get a leg up. Best example of this is the huge advantage you get from interface mods in WoW arena. (I would be quite displeased to have to DL "D3 Gladius") On the other hand, D3 is not a seriousface competitive game, even in the PvP. So you might argue that it's not a problem.
You misunderstand something.
Multiplayer can very well have mods on the same level as single player, because D2 has them. Thats what we call Open Battle.net. Now, admitely its a very crude way to do it, but still. Even TCP/IP connections alone is a form of multiplayer modding.
Its limited, and full of cheating (so you generally play only with people you know, not with random folks), but it exists and is a possibility. It just needs to be an option.
But if Blizzard or any other company simply say "screw it" and want full control of all their players, then yes, multiplayer mods are lost. That is a very sad thing to me. So yes, I guess D3's multiplayer could only ever have such small things as interface mods if Blizzard didn't support it more directly.
Well technically SC2 doesn't have a mod, but it has a map editor type thing, and they have said they might have custom PvP games. So if they had something even as small as that it could add to how long the game stays around. So you don't need complete modding, if they had something like that it would be just as good imo.
I don't see how you can say that. Its nothing like modding at all, its just a bit of customization.
I am all for mods as long as it is played separately from Battle-net.
Blizzard never supported mods in D2 and there are many mods for D2.
Game companies are now concerned about pirates and are locking down many aspects of the game as well are trying to sell extra content and they do not want mods to compete with the extra content.
I do think that there will be mods for D3. It will likely take a little bit longer for mods. I have a feeling many mod makers will be busy playing the game when it first comes out and then start looking at ways to mod the game. Likely the first mods will be windows only since code edits are likely needed.
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Well technically SC2 doesn't have a mod, but it has a map editor type thing, and they have said they might have custom PvP games. So if they had something even as small as that it could add to how long the game stays around. So you don't need complete modding, if they had something like that it would be just as good imo.
I don't see how you can say that. Its nothing like modding at all, its just a bit of customization.
I know, I'm just saying that a minor modding like that can still greatly increase the longevity of the game. Just look at WC3, and the amount of custom games already in SC2.
I like mods, but I do not see them necessary in every type of game. Some games (particulary open-ended ones) are better suited for them than others.
Diablo, being pretty limited, doesn't gain much from modding. Diablo relies heavily on the randomizer, among other things. Generally, the mods I used for DII were mods that fixed some problems I had with the game. Same for TL. These things generally should be fixed by the developer not the players, and I hope this occurs in DIII.
Otherwise, usage of the TES toolkit or SCII map editor to create a Diablo like game makes more sense to me than the limited number of mods that can be made off a Hack&Slash environment.
I think Blizzard has the right to not offer multiplayer capability for mods. This is not so much a decision against multiplayer mods, but an attempt to try to limit the play experience of people that pirated the game, lack of open b.net is just a by-product of this.
Thats one of the problem in my eyes. With all those limitations, you punish a possibility of modding that exist since the dawn of time.
Diablo, being pretty limited, doesn't gain much from modding. Diablo relies heavily on the randomizer, among other things. Generally, the mods I used for DII were mods that fixed some problems I had with the game. Same for TL. These things generally should be fixed by the developer not the players, and I hope this occurs in DIII.
You're right that its not as important for a game like Diablo, but that doesn't make them pointless. There's a solid community for modding in D2 for a reason, and plenty of fans for things such as Median and Eastern Sun.
And no matter how you look at it, developers will never please everybody. But with modding, you can, to a degree.
Most games can be modded very easily through changing numbers in different files. That way you can alter pretty much everything in the game that has a number or name. Adding support for that is unnecessary since the people that usually make mods knows how to do this already, and simple tools will probably appear in less than a month. Changing things like models and stuff is harder, and support would need to be added for it to be more common in mods.
-Most games-. You go and try to change anything from a game that has nothing designed to be easy to modify. Basically, just dig in the lines of codes and try your best. Even D2 did not go far with this. There's some very easy modding possible because of Blizzard, but the rest, the code editing, is the most painful thing in the world in my experience.
If they don't want you to mod a game, then mods, if there's any, will be extremely few. Simple tools, what do you mean? Save editor and such, sure, but nothing actually mod related. Thats impossible. I'm no expert, but without the source, or some modding tools like many games provide, you can't really do much unless you're an expert with a lot of time on your hands, or something.
I'm not saying Diablo 3 should come with tools and editors. Thats a lot of work. But it should be opened to modding. And I doubt it will be, mostly because they want to control it all. Which annoys me.
I have no fact to give you, but I disagree, or maybe I just don't understand. Developers have the source. They don't need to make the game "easy to modify".
What I meant was that there are games which if modded, would diminish the playing experience. Games that have achieved perfection and thus any change will be inevitably a worse experience.
You don't paint Mona Lisa mustaches either - or change the chorus for 'Dancing With Mr.D'.
Of course we might disagree which games are 'perfect', but I'm certain there's a number of such games for most gamers.
But there's no such thing as a perfect game. Even if a game is perfect, then no one that thinks so have to use mods, so its not detrimental.
But the fact is, if some find -that- game perfect, not everybody will, and certain of those people could use mods to change their experience.
I have no fact to give you, but I disagree, or maybe I just don't understand. Developers have the source. They don't need to make the game "easy to modify".
Putting your data in-code no matter how you do it is not "easy to modify". You will always want to put alot of stuff in data structures external to your code. Then your non-programmer guys can monkey around with stuff without having to call over the coders every time, and it's typically much easier to view and modify with external tools (like say M$ Excel), not to mention faster to adjust without recompiles and less risk of new logic errors being introduced. That doesn't mean they will be using excel text files, but they will be using some kind of simple data format for many aspects of the game, and modders will eventually crack that format.
I'm kinda surprised I don't see any unofficial servers for SC2 yet. With the death of LAN/open there's even more incentive to do that sort of thing.
In diablo 2 the offline single-player still had separate client and server internally communicating like the client and battle.net. So it would be interesting to see how that is handled and if people figure out how to extract that into a custom server in D3.
Basically the future of D3 modding depends upon the ingenuity of the community.
As creator of the mod Hell Unleashed for Diablo 2. I'm pretty disappointed with the lack of any kind of planned modding support for D3... Yes D2 was moddable, yet not supported and it also took many years and a lot of hard work for the community to develop the tools and gain the knowledge to mod the game successfully... plus the official 1.10 patch also opened up a lot of new power and flexibility for modding. The difference this time around with Diablo 3 is that Blizzard seems to want to run the multiplayer aspect of the game like an MMORPG. To play multiplayer you have to be connected to battle.net... There is no open.net, LAN or TCP/IP... so essentially the only current way of playing any user created content in Diablo 3 multiplayer would be through a private server, which are illegal under Blizzard's terms of service.
While I'm sure their will be modding at some level for Diablo 3, I imagine they'll be a lot less motivation from mod developers and mod players given the lack of a multiplayer options and the fact that will essentially be back to square one... Especially given that will be seeing a lot of amazing action rpg style games in the next year or so that will not only support modding through official toolsets and editors, but multiplayer support as well. Torchlight 2, Hunted, Two Worlds 2, Dungeon Siege 3, Grim Dawn, and Neverwinter Reborn so far.
As much as I would like to create a Hell Unleashed 2, I may have to turn my sights elsewhere if Blizzard is simply going to ignore the modding community in regards to Diablo 3, and I imagine I won't be alone.
Will this turn into another thread about lack of LAN? Blizzard didn't make this decision to ignore modding, they did it to prevent piracy. There is also a possibility that the Pseudo-LAN will support mods since it only authenticates with Battle.net, you don't play on Blizzard's servers.
However there will be LAN for D3 eventually, even if it isn't supported. It has already been done for Torchlight, so why not for D3? Give it a year and I'm sure that someone will make a LAN "add-on" which will enable you to play mods without battle.net. Not sure if that will be legal though...
Torchlight has LAN? Where? Torchlight isn't even a multiplayer game, and the attempts so far have been good attempts but not worth the time.
And thats the point: Removing LAN because of piracy, if it kills modding, its bad. Its very much worth mentioning.
We have no clue what they are going to give us. Did they say anything about some pseudo-LAN? I don't remember that. They seem so inclined on making you play online that it doesn't look like it will be a possibility, and SC2 further proves that.
Also, yes, if a LAN add-on is necessary, thats because Blizzard doesn't want it with their game. Therefore it'll be looked down upon, and will be useless for mods. It'll only be used for pirates to play together.
I have the same feelings as Ophion, besides to be honest I've only once modded a game (SEGA's TW series) as i felt some of gaming aspects were flawed and could be done better. Oh and it was singeplayer.
But this is Blizzard and I trust them to make a game that won't cause me the want of modding.
Therefore, to answer the OP's question, the absence of modding doesn't touch me at all.
Mods. Editors. We all know that Diablo 3 will not be coming with any sort of editor. It'll never happen. Case closed.
As for mods. Mods have been the most important part of my gaming life since the begining. I see it like this: The community is either a developer's pawn, or the developer gives them the tools to play the game as the player intend, and create new things.
Mods are a must for a game to live on pass a certain point in time. And Diablo 3 is not looking to have Mod Support, or a side -open battle.net- where people can connect with modified files.
I am a modder. I always change every games I possibly can to adjust them to myself. -THAT- is the beauty of true gaming to me. If you kill modding for 1 game, you killed a thousand potential new games and thousand of ideas.
If it wasn't for modding (my own, or from others) I would have missed some of the best gaming experiences I have ever had. Yet modding in this day and age is disappearing. And I say: This isn't what I call Gaming, and I would not be a Gamer, without mods, and without the original works of the gaming communities.
And so I have to ask: What is your opinion on modding? If its not there, will you miss it greatly? Will you just not care at all? You don't have to answer these specific questions. I just want your opinions on modding. I for one, could not live without it.
Is blizzard somehow obligated to provide mod support? Not really. I don't know how much dev time it would require from them, but for the D3 customer base I don't think mods are a big selling point.
That's the business side of it. As for the..morality? legitimacy? of modding, assuming the company had the time/free money to develop mod tools, that is a different discussion.
For single player, I cannot see any downside for mod tools. It is an individual experience. There is a community shared experience in talking about the game with others, but your gaming experience in SP is totally your own choice.
For multiplayer, obviously a whole class of mods are restricted for compatibility issues automatically, and then another chunk of mods that would be obvious cheats, leaving you with interface mods, and not much else (I think?). They don't even want interface mods in D3. My reaction to this is 'meh'.
It is possible for interface mods to give you an advantage over other players. If they want to avoid that whole kettle of fish entirely and not have to worry about policing it and drawing a line, I'm ok with that decision. I don't want to be obligated to DL mods because other people are using them to get a leg up. Best example of this is the huge advantage you get from interface mods in WoW arena. (I would be quite displeased to have to DL "D3 Gladius") On the other hand, D3 is not a seriousface competitive game, even in the PvP. So you might argue that it's not a problem.
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You misunderstand something.
Multiplayer can very well have mods on the same level as single player, because D2 has them. Thats what we call Open Battle.net. Now, admitely its a very crude way to do it, but still. Even TCP/IP connections alone is a form of multiplayer modding.
Its limited, and full of cheating (so you generally play only with people you know, not with random folks), but it exists and is a possibility. It just needs to be an option.
But if Blizzard or any other company simply say "screw it" and want full control of all their players, then yes, multiplayer mods are lost. That is a very sad thing to me. So yes, I guess D3's multiplayer could only ever have such small things as interface mods if Blizzard didn't support it more directly.
I don't see how you can say that. Its nothing like modding at all, its just a bit of customization.
Blizzard never supported mods in D2 and there are many mods for D2.
Game companies are now concerned about pirates and are locking down many aspects of the game as well are trying to sell extra content and they do not want mods to compete with the extra content.
I do think that there will be mods for D3. It will likely take a little bit longer for mods. I have a feeling many mod makers will be busy playing the game when it first comes out and then start looking at ways to mod the game. Likely the first mods will be windows only since code edits are likely needed.
I know, I'm just saying that a minor modding like that can still greatly increase the longevity of the game. Just look at WC3, and the amount of custom games already in SC2.
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As for interface mods, thats a firm NO!
Diablo, being pretty limited, doesn't gain much from modding. Diablo relies heavily on the randomizer, among other things. Generally, the mods I used for DII were mods that fixed some problems I had with the game. Same for TL. These things generally should be fixed by the developer not the players, and I hope this occurs in DIII.
Otherwise, usage of the TES toolkit or SCII map editor to create a Diablo like game makes more sense to me than the limited number of mods that can be made off a Hack&Slash environment.
You're right that its not as important for a game like Diablo, but that doesn't make them pointless. There's a solid community for modding in D2 for a reason, and plenty of fans for things such as Median and Eastern Sun.
And no matter how you look at it, developers will never please everybody. But with modding, you can, to a degree.
How can mods be detrimental? They're never forced upon anyone, so I'm not sure what you have in mind.
-Most games-. You go and try to change anything from a game that has nothing designed to be easy to modify. Basically, just dig in the lines of codes and try your best. Even D2 did not go far with this. There's some very easy modding possible because of Blizzard, but the rest, the code editing, is the most painful thing in the world in my experience.
If they don't want you to mod a game, then mods, if there's any, will be extremely few. Simple tools, what do you mean? Save editor and such, sure, but nothing actually mod related. Thats impossible. I'm no expert, but without the source, or some modding tools like many games provide, you can't really do much unless you're an expert with a lot of time on your hands, or something.
I'm not saying Diablo 3 should come with tools and editors. Thats a lot of work. But it should be opened to modding. And I doubt it will be, mostly because they want to control it all. Which annoys me.
But there's no such thing as a perfect game. Even if a game is perfect, then no one that thinks so have to use mods, so its not detrimental.
But the fact is, if some find -that- game perfect, not everybody will, and certain of those people could use mods to change their experience.
Its all relative and mods are only options.
Putting your data in-code no matter how you do it is not "easy to modify". You will always want to put alot of stuff in data structures external to your code. Then your non-programmer guys can monkey around with stuff without having to call over the coders every time, and it's typically much easier to view and modify with external tools (like say M$ Excel), not to mention faster to adjust without recompiles and less risk of new logic errors being introduced. That doesn't mean they will be using excel text files, but they will be using some kind of simple data format for many aspects of the game, and modders will eventually crack that format.
I'm kinda surprised I don't see any unofficial servers for SC2 yet. With the death of LAN/open there's even more incentive to do that sort of thing.
In diablo 2 the offline single-player still had separate client and server internally communicating like the client and battle.net. So it would be interesting to see how that is handled and if people figure out how to extract that into a custom server in D3.
Basically the future of D3 modding depends upon the ingenuity of the community.
While I'm sure their will be modding at some level for Diablo 3, I imagine they'll be a lot less motivation from mod developers and mod players given the lack of a multiplayer options and the fact that will essentially be back to square one... Especially given that will be seeing a lot of amazing action rpg style games in the next year or so that will not only support modding through official toolsets and editors, but multiplayer support as well. Torchlight 2, Hunted, Two Worlds 2, Dungeon Siege 3, Grim Dawn, and Neverwinter Reborn so far.
As much as I would like to create a Hell Unleashed 2, I may have to turn my sights elsewhere if Blizzard is simply going to ignore the modding community in regards to Diablo 3, and I imagine I won't be alone.
Torchlight has LAN? Where? Torchlight isn't even a multiplayer game, and the attempts so far have been good attempts but not worth the time.
And thats the point: Removing LAN because of piracy, if it kills modding, its bad. Its very much worth mentioning.
We have no clue what they are going to give us. Did they say anything about some pseudo-LAN? I don't remember that. They seem so inclined on making you play online that it doesn't look like it will be a possibility, and SC2 further proves that.
Also, yes, if a LAN add-on is necessary, thats because Blizzard doesn't want it with their game. Therefore it'll be looked down upon, and will be useless for mods. It'll only be used for pirates to play together.
I wish I could trust Blizzard like you do.
Also, isn't that kind of confirming that there won't be any pseudo LAN?
""Diablo III will treat LAN in the same way that StarCraft II does""
I'm not sure if thats comforting, doesn't really tell us if any sort of modding through it is allowed. Hopefully yes.
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