Actually, p8 for online won't break the game

General Discussion
1

This is a right to scale up the difficulty with more reward.

The argument was that “if the loot was too easy, the game will die soon” and “ppl won’t play together anymore”.

Actually no, most people think of the HRs and unique items, but that’s not all it about.

First, trust the depth of the game design, the true MF item was not HRs and unique, but some extreme rare “rare and magic items”.

For example, a 4s scepter with +3 hammer +3 concentration and +3 foh or something, which can be socketed with Fortitude. Or, a 4s magic monarch shield with +blocking rate for facets, +30% IAS and insane prefix suffix greater talon, rare diadems, rings, super strong magic items, crafted amulets, rings, gloves. These can be even stronger than unique items, and are extremely hard to get even with a p8 loot. Most ppl don’t even get it in a solo mf or group p8 mf in the past 10 years.

Second, the playing experience improved. Players can decide when to play a harder game on their own, not be bothered by other ppl, won’t be worried about item stealing. And completing a build faster is good for playing, getting an Enigma is the “beginning” of the game, there’re so many fun builds to play, so many things to do. You can have more than one set of those “end game gadgets” without any problem, and still have many potential things to play.

And the last, ppl still can play with friends, try different builds, and maybe try different difficulty together. There’s no meaning for just mf together and split into different areas, that’s forcing people be doing what they actually don’t want to do if there’s another better option. When there’s a new ladder season, most people WILL be playing together for a fresh start, the playthrough, and early~midterm development together, that’s what ladder is about.

Well if you paid 8 sets of the game for your own p8 bot mf, that was your sunk cost, thanks for your contribution, it’s time to let the game be more fun for real player.

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2

Actually, p8 for non-ladder won’t break the game.

Fixed it.

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3

P8 kills the game. Any ladder would be sorc only

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4

There are only 5 reasons to join someone elses game in D2.

XP, Loot, Trading, PvP, and Co-op Playthroughs

That’s it. What does adding plays 8 add to the online experience?

  1. XP: Greatly reduced reason to play with others, and weaker builds get screwed.
  2. Loot: No reason to join games to farm other spots while they Chaos/Baal/Quest.
  3. Trading: Reduced overall item rarity leads to less reasons to trade.
  4. PvP: Could help people that hate PvE, but small community to begin with.
  5. Co-op Playthroughs: Not a reason to ad players 8, it’s a reason to restore IP connections and Lan play.

Just sounds like a net loss of the online experience with a slight nod to the PvP playerbase who afaik are too few to worry about.

There is already a game mode for people who don’t want online interaction. It’s called Offline.

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yes, p8 won’t hurt. Blizz please set mf reward the same of p1 to p100 and let them challenge higher difficulties just for showing off

6

No thank you.
20chars

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7

Exactly lol.

They TOTATLLY wouldn’t just go farm player 100 pits for drops right? It would just be for the “challenge.”

The only honest argumenta for players 8 are… “I want to level my hammerdin faster,” or “I want to run around 1 shotting low HP level 85 areas like pits for easy runes.”

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But how wouldnit scale? What will be the calculations? How would it effect the distance bonuses? What’s the guarantee that the game just won’t say Adios! and crash? What’s whit lvl and build differences? There ARE so many things that can go wrong.

9

There is no MF reward for p8, there is only less chance of “no drop” occurring when you kill a monster. That’s it.

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11

Gonna do same reply here, as I did on another p8 online thread.

The /playerx command was added to emulate more players in Single Player.

Online, you have other players to interact with - since it’s called Multiplayer.
Getting the emulation of more players online, would remove the whole multiplayer aspect, since you’ll get more out of it running solo with high /playerx command set.

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12

That’s true in about the same manner that the only honest arguments against it are “I’m a botter that sells stuff while I can live in my mom’s basement”

If P8 is trivial, then there’s either a design issue that can be fixed or you’re so good that you deserve the rewards. Regardless, P8 isn’t the issue here. It’s like lack of game difficulty.

It’s probably a strange concept, but some people play with friends because they enjoy doing things with friends. Multiplay was the option to socialize, not a reward level. Cooperative D2 hasn’t ever been more efficient* than SP, and no split farming isn’t “cooperative play.”

*Well, not unless you’re ninja’ing all the loot. If you divvy it up, you’ll get less than SP with a similar kill rate.

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If the left path leads you to the same place as the right path, in the same time, it doesn’t matter what the paths are called.

14

This is exactly what I’m saying.
If /playerx was added online - playing alone on p7 would give the best drop allocation to keep for yourself, without having to share with anybody.
So the best way to play online for loot and experience, is to play “Single Player” online.
Adding this is anti-multiplayer.

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15

Yea, you entirely missed what I was getting at. The game is already anti-multiplayer. This feature is not.

You play MP to socialize. Adding this doesn’t prevent you from having, playing with, or even making new friends. That’s always been the reason to play cooperatively. It was even marketed as “you can play with your friends” not “you can play for more loot with others.”

16

As long as Sorc has teleport, P8 online is a death stab for every ladder

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17

If there is less of a chance for no drop, that equates to more drops. More drops = More rewarding.

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18

I’m 100% in support of it, for many reasons. The most important of which are:

  1. Unethical players are already getting players 8 by joining other people’s games and ruining them. As things stand, the ethical players do not have player 8, but the unethical ones do. Adding players 8 (/players x) will fix these problems.

  2. Offline mode does not allow for group play. Back in the day, we had ‘open battlenet’ for people who wanted to use all kinds of mods and glitched gear, AND for players who wanted to play with friends on their offline characters.
    Now, you may be wondering, if they can play online with their friends, why not just play online all the time? Easy answer: They may not always have access to the internet when they have access to their computers. Maybe they’re traveling a lot. Maybe their local internet connection is bad or nonexistent, and they can only play with friends when they visit relatives or are at university or something.

  3. The ‘/players x’ command is not simply increasing drop rate and exp, it’s increasing difficulty. It’s a way of adding extra difficulty levels for players who wish to challenge themselves. Your random noob isn’t going to gain any benefit from ‘/players 7’ if they can’t even clear ‘/players 1’ without dying. If anything, they’re just going to die more and find less, if they use it.

Also, who cares what effect this has on the game’s economy. It probably won’t have any effect, because drop rates basically go up across the board with increased difficulty, meaning things should still be worth more or less the same relative to each other. The only REAL hit to the game economy will be to the people who sell their items for real world $. And that seems like a good thing. Less incentive for people to sell their good drops for IRL $ rather than just trade them in-game for in-game items and equipment. If you can get $5000 for a JMOD, you would be nuts to not sell it for that. If you can only get $50 for a JMOD, it’s probably not worth risking a ban and the loss of your characters. And to be fair, I don’t think JMODs will drop any more often with the ‘/players 7’ command than they do now, so maybe a bad item for my example, but the point’s the same.

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19

Co-op Playthroughs: Not a reason to ad players 8, it’s a reason to restore IP connections and Lan play.

Yes please. This is one of the multitude of reasons that TCP/IP should be reinstated in D2R, being able to play /players 8 with a friend or two without having to organize 8 man games or joining pubbies on Bnet would be very nice. Not to mention it would enable the option of modded multiplayer in D2R which would certainly attract a lot of people.

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20

play offline

end of story

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21

I’d be 100% down for the return of TCP/IP. My father still enjoys games like D2 but simply isn’t able to spend hundreds of hours sitting in a chair to level/farm. (He’s in his late 60s and in poor health.) We try to fit in some father/son gaming time every week to this day and it would honestly be fun to do some edited local character stuff with him without the hassle of having to level and gear up characters for him.

Until then I guess we’ll just play some occasional Borderlands/Warthunder. :slight_smile:

Also the nice thing about TCP/IP play is it lets you do things like play the occasional playthrough with friends that mostly play single player.

Again we don’t need online p8… we need TCP/IP.

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