Annihilus, DClone, SoJs and what Blizzard intends to do?

General Discussion
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Copied from another forum:

Interesting insight on Diablo Clone Walks by Mirrormn

I’ve participated a little bit in the back rooms where DClone walks are getting organized, so let me tell you exactly what has been going on:

People are using firewall rules and running on specific regions (Europe or Asia/Mumbai) to target specific sets of IPs. This may be why casual NA users do not ever see DClone walk on their own.

“Multis” are WAY easier to set up than in original Diablo 2. This is because in original Diablo 2, you needed a different IP address for each client you were connecting with, while in D2R, you only need a unique account for each new client. There are programs out there that allow you to launch multiple clients on a single computer - they’re not popularly discussed because there is a profit motive in preventing casuals from doing this, so most people who know how to do it have no reason to teach anyone else. But they’re out there, and freely available.

A single Anni is worth more than an entire copy of D2R (roughly, prices keep changing over time, and methods of converting items into real money have different efficiency, but this certainly is true in many cases). This means that the profit motive for getting additional clients into DClone walks is roughly unlimited. For each copy of D2 you buy, if you can get a single additional Anni out of it, it basically has already paid off.

People who organize walks have no way of knowing how many clients you’re bringing. People who have tons of clients benefit paying a small buy-in and then trying to squeeze their 10-20+ clients into the one hot IP. There is a huge profit motive in doing this, and no real way to stop it.

Because multi-client users are trying to use up all the spots on a hot server, single-client users who pay SoJs to buy in have a higher chance of getting screwed and not finding a game.

Also, because the multi-clienters farm Annis so hard and have them in bulk, they’ve depressed the market to the point where an Anni is worth less than 2 SoJs.

As these trends continue, it becomes less and less viable for “traditional” DClone hunting - where you have a single client, pay 2 SoJs, and get 1 Anni out of it - to run at all. Traditional DClone hunting is basically dead at this point as a result.

Instead, there is a new method of DClone hunting where a single person collects 100+ clients that they control entirely; they privately choose an IP and get all their clients onto that IP without telling anyone else about it; and then they sell these games to people for a set SoJ price (last I saw was 3 SoJs for 2 games), and do the walk once they’ve collected everyone’s SoJs. The one person in control of everything passes out as many games as they need to to raise the SoJs needed for the walk, and then any clients/games they have beyond that are pure profit. As far as I know, this is the only form of DClone walking (beyond large public events done by streamers) that is viable right now.

So, we’ve reached a point where Annis are basically completely controlled by an extremely small number of people (I know of ~4, perhaps there are more) who can afford to invest thousands of dollars into running over 100 copies of D2R at a time. Of course, these people almost certainly sell all/most of their Annis for real money, because why else would you invest so much money into the scheme to begin with?

Everything that was originally interesting or fun about DClone walking is completely broken now. It was already in a pretty terrible place when D2R released because of the high price of SoJs (since there are no duped ones hanging around now), but the paradigm that has evolved out of the capability to run an unlimited number of clients on a single IP address has destroyed even the niche community of DClone hunting that used to exist.

The whole mechanic is completely non-functional now. If Blizzard allows Ladder to go live with current DClone mechanics, the only thing they will accomplish is to make these people who have invested in these 100+ client setups very very rich, as they will be in a position to control the vast majority of Ladder Annis in the whole world. It needs to be changed.

Having read that and after trying to hunt the Diablo Clone for a while, I can say that it describes the current situation pretty well, and it is bad.

Can we actually get an official response on what Blizzard intends to do with this anti-dupe mechanic from the 2000s which clearly has no place in the current game?

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https://strawpoll.com/pej6wuwbr

let me just drop this here

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u could make ur own cabal instead of bein a hater

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I don’t think it’s this serious.

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whatever you mean /chr

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I am happy if they rework how the event works, but I’d keep it really difficult and a group effort.

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There have been plenty of ideas thrown around. Such as spawning DClone for yourself if you sell a SoJ - same as in SP.

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I got my Anni for free but was doing the firewall blocking to narrow the IP. That being said if they made it so that SoJ’s sold were account tied I would be for it so that selling x amount of soj’s would spawn diablo I would be cool with it although im not sure what a fair amount would be since solo finding an SoJ is really hard.

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Selling 1 soj to vendor=diablo clone spawn in your game. Problem fixed.

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My thought on a global or regional Dclone spawn method:

Get rid of the total sale count. DClone needs to sneak up on us. Dclone should not be able to be sniffed out with netstat.

0.13888%, or 1 out of every 720 walks = Base chance of Dclone walking for everyone globally when enough SoJ sales pop him. This is per individual game. No SOJ sales required. If you contribute to the next walk, you boost your chances of getting him to spawn.
IF HE DOES NOT SPAWN FOR YOU OR YOU MISS THE WALK, you get to keep your upgraded chance.
IF HE DOES SPAWN FOR YOU, your chance is reset back to the base chance. (regardless if you kill him or not)

1:720 or 0.13888% = Base chance.
1:120 or 0.8333% = Sell 1 SoJ.
1:24 or 4.1667% = Sell 2 SoJs.
1:6 or 16.667% = Sell 3 SoJs.
1:2 or 50% = Sell 4 SoJs.
1:1 or 100% = Sell 5 SoJs.

Incentivizes people to sell SoJs for a better chance to get Annihilus. But if you want to be a cheapskate and wait up to 720 walks (or longer), you can.

Going from the cheapskate route to the expensive route wait-wise, if there were an average of 2 global walk triggers per day, with 0 SoJ sales you’d have to sit in game 24/7 FOR A YEAR for a good chance of getting Dclone to spawn in your game. 2 months for 1 SoJ sale, just shy of 2 weeks for 2 SoJ sales, 3 days for 3 SoJ sales, and 1 day for 4 SoJ sales.

Chances would need to be ironed out for multiplayer games. My first thought, since it’s only going to be 1 Annihilus drop in a multiplayer game, the base chance * number of players. So an 8 player game would equal a 1:90, or 1.111% chance of Dclone spawning in that game if enough SoJs are sold. If Dclone walks in a multiplayer game, it does not reset your accounts SoJ sale upgraded chance.

This is just an example. Numbers could be changed of course.

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t/change-uber-spawn-mechanic/36771/54

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Greetings friends. I’ve been playing D2 since its release. It took me about a long time to figure out how to run more D2 on a single computer. I was able to release 4 devils on one IP without any problems. Only the game had to be long enough so that IP was not banned. Then it started to get me short and I was looking for a way to release more copies. It goes without problems. I paid about $ 20 a month and was able to run more than 30 copies of the devil on just a PC. It was enough to use enough VPN servers. I know several people who operated more than 150 copies of D2 fifteen years ago. So I don’t think there’s any difference that I can now run 100 copies in D2R. In D2, the monthly costs were slightly higher, but it was nothing that could not cover one or two copies of Diablo, and these people subsequently benefited from the rest of the copies of which they had 150 or more. how do you think eshops with D2 items were operated? multiple copies of D2 and bots. So in conclusion … this is not a problem because it is not a problem to use a VPN. The problem is that these people currently run DC very often, which destroys the enjoyment. There are two ways to break this down. The first is to make hunting anni accessible to all. But anni loses her charm. The second is to make hunting anni more difficult so that it is not worthwhile to run multi-accounts to such an extent, but this will probably increase the difficulty of getting anni an ordinary player.

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Here’s my idea for a new DClone/Anni spawn mechanic:

A new Cube recipe where 3 unique rings = an Essence of Jordan (a new item). The Essence of Jordan can be sold to merchants. Once 5 Essence of Jordans are sold to merchants in your game Diablo Walks the Earth in your game. The Diablo Clone fight itself remains unchanged.

I’m open to the number of Essence of Jordans required to sell not being 5 (15 unique rings), perhaps 10 (30 unique rings) is better. I personally like this, because it doesn’t introduce a new item to farm (such as a new keyset) nor does it lock the event behind the Standard of Heroes and Uber Tristram, but does give value to garbage unique rings such as low Nagelrings, Manald Heals, low Ravenfrosts, etc. This also gives the Anni a way to be farmable, as you can farm unique rings without it having to be a specific unique ring, while still keeping rarity to the event because even at 15 unique rings per Anni, that price is high considering that not every unique ring will be thrown into the Cube for it (i.e. most SOJs, high BKs, perfect Ravens,9% Carrion Winds, and 29-30% Nagelrings maybe). I’d like to hear people’s thoughts