I don’t think it’s any secret… Blizzard either can’t or is unwilling to do anything about the bots. The lobby is full of RMT website spam… The game list is now flooded with RMT website spam… Everywhere and everything to do with multiplayer in this game is hounding us to pay money to 3rd parties for their items…
AND BLIZZARD CONTINUES TO DO NOTHING ABOUT IT!
The every ~6 month “banwaves” do nothing except generate a bit of revenue for Blizzard… Since the banwaves are so infrequent, the botters just rebuy the game and continue like nothing ever happened… Then whenever Blizzard wants some free money, the cycle eventually repeats with another banwave.
One thing that I feel would help save this game from the RMT botting online disgrace that it has become is the addition of a solo-self-found ladder. No joining others games, no trading because you can’t join others games, buying items via RMT or JSP wouldn’t be possible… It’s just the player, their skill and luck to climb the ladder.
Ah, what the hell am I doing… I know Blizzard will never do this… They don’t care about this game or the dwindling legitimate player base that still plays it. They probably WANT us to buy items from 3rd parties, because the money will filter back to them with banwaves and botters rebuying the game. What a disgrace. And they want me to buy Diablo 4?? HAHAHAHA not after this craptastrophe.
It would be a great Diablo experience, but you’re right Blizzard will never do it for many reasons. I don’t think they would know how to implement it correctly. The PD2 guys could do it. They did such a good job on their online mode and leaderboards. Those guys should be making their own ARPG in UE5.
Diablo 4 has no way to group up, no trade hub, nothing. That games already in shambles.
I would like it but agree I am highly doubtful it will happen.
I didn’t want sunder charms or TZs, I just wanted D2 1.14e with some QoL improvements but even those I will begrudgingly say sure, its your game.
However the lobby and online aspect of the game needs and has needed since launch a dramatic overhaul and modernization. It was annoying seeing it have less features than even D2, but the fact it still barely functions as an adequate chat room blows my mind.
Since the damn Beta. Hell, it actually even goes further back to when people were looking at the game files during the Alpha, the lobby still looks the exact same.
It irks me that they haven’t done to improve the lobby over the past two years, the Bnet 2.0 implementation in D2R is complete garbage. Major downgrade from the original D2 like you said.
I would’ve loved if they had done something like StarCraft 2’s Bnet 2.0 implementation with the actually functioning chat and clans and stuff like that. The ingame social aspect of D2 is almost completely missing from D2R with the rampant spambots in the lobby and the fricking chat bug that’s still in the game after 2 years!!!
Not that I have played SC2 in recent times, but even that is a far step away of what they invented in bnet 1.0 20+ years ago. Perhaps a clan system is cool, but bnet 1.0 had it all. It really does show just how much Actision doesn’t understand the community they bought into. But they keep making money hand over fist, so you’ll never see another LOD or SCBW or WC3. Just more basic rushed games because honestly it is more profitable.
D2 is a “finished” game, it does not generate meaningful income, so it is not worth to put huge efforts in developing additional features, plus they dont want an internal competitor for their current cash maker, this is probably why they made D2 a bit worse than it was before the Sunder-era. It is still good for their junior devs to practice and also to test things for D4…
I don’t think you understand what bnet actually is. It’s a hosting platform that multiple games run on. I suspect bnet, as you know it, doesn’t exist anymore because of the advancements in cloud hosting.
I am glad, that some people are finally catching on, that Blizzard are not doing as much as they should have to preserve the integrity of their games.
Sadly, I’ve written about this for years, and people would typically dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist on the D3 forums…
If they wanted to do something about the botters, they could have done. Wanna know how I know?
A friend of mine started botting during Classic D3 when RMAH was still operational. He got banned within several days. It didn’t take a month, nor six months. Less than a week.
Meaning, when they wanted to protect their sacred cow, The Real Money Auction House, they dedicated enough resources in order to combat botting efficiently.
When RoS came out and there was no more RMAH, people were allowed to cheat for years. The first big ban wave came out in 2016, two years after RoS came out. That’s how little they cared.
It was so bad, that a group of content creators made an open letter and begged Blizzard to take action against the rampant cheating.
Interestingly enough, some of the people, who signed under the open letter… got banned for cheating. If I’m not mistaking, it was wudijo himself, who got banned for cheating…
yet was allowed to buy the game again and is considered one of the best players to date… despite him being banned for cheating. The way I hear it, he still resorts to various exploits, although on a lesser scale than flat out botting.
Blizzard also could have taken further steps to reduce botting. Mainly, banning not just the game key, but the entire battle net account, as well as issue IP bans, hardware bans and credit card bans.
As far as I’m aware, they don’t seem to be doing that, as they wanna collect what’s the rough equivalent of a WoW monthly fee, which is the botters buying the game again after a ban wave.
As to your suggesting about a Solo-Self-Found- Ladder, I gotta say, that while this would certainly reduce botting and people trading items for real money, it does little or nothing for Diablo 2 and for the legitimate player.
D2 is rather simplistic game when it comes to the basic gameplay. It’s a point & click game. Pretty much every other genre is more complex in terms of basic gameplay, be it FPS, RTS, MMO, fighter game and so on.
The more interesting and engaging part of D2 is interacting with others, mainly through the trading simulator aspect of the game. Knowing what to farm, where to farm it and approximate trade values is where the semblance of complexity comes to this game.
Your suggesting would take trading away, and what you’re left with is people farming all season long in hopes, that they’d get what they need, but you deprive them of the tool, that typically allows them to have control over what they get and the ability to assemble full gear. You reduce the game down to chance, and the player from active agent down to an observer, that watches a movie rather than interact with a game and his actions having effects.
In other words, I agree that actions should be taken against the botters… but not in a manner, that changes the game and sacrifices the player’s control, and thus – enjoyment.
The meta is reliant on people playing in p8 games and farming solo. It would take ages longer to get 99 because you wouldn’t have the p8 exp bonus and some issues would be glaringly obvious such as only sorc having teleport would put all other classes behind (because who self farms a jah and a ber for enigma in a reasonable amount of time?).
If we want a ssf ladder, there would have to be an entire class rebalance (e.g. barbarian being competitive at farming exp as other classes, sorc not having such a huge advantageous start due to teleport, etc.) and they would have to change how player number bonuses work.
I believe a SSF ladder would be a good tool for them to help balance the classes. As you mentioned, sorc would reign… Bring the overpowered classes down, bring the underpowered classes up, everyone meet in the middle.
Teleport is long overdue to be nerfed IMO… It shouldn’t be able to be spamcast for bullet train travel speeds without a significant depletion of mana anyway. Maybe rapid casts in short bursts, but not continuous.
Maybe some sort of teleport “fatigue” cooldown that doubles the cost of teleport for a few seconds after casing… If you teleport again with a stack of teleport fatigue, you’ll gain another stack of teleport fatigue, doubling the cost again. And the cooldown pauses if teleport continues to cast. The cooldown begins once teleport isn’t cast again, and all teleport fatigue is cleared after 5 seconds.
They are not going to dedicate resources to rebalance all the classes.
But also, you continue to ignore the part as to how drop rates work in D2.
Say you want Griffon’s Eye… or say some more build defining weapon along the lines of Death’s Web or Deaths Fathom. You take trading away, and you reduce the entire game up to chance. The person either gets the item or he doesn’t.
We’ve already seen how this works in the early seasons of D3. Remember when Blizzard introduced Ancient items in D3… prior to the end of Season 1?
Remember how D3 was like prior to Blizzard patching the crafting systrem and effectively allowing you to craft any and all items by convering rare gear into legendary and set items, there was a big element of RNG.
You’d either get your build defining item during the season, or you don’t. Nothing to do with how much you played or how skilled you were. It was down to mere chance.
You could play an entire season as a Witch Doctor and never get Starmetal Kukri for support or Dagger of Darts for damage… let alone ancient ones.
And later when they introduced crafting (there was basic crafting initially, but it didn’t allow you to create and.or reroll any and all items), it all came down to who botted more paragon.
For what you want to work, they’d have to rework the entire game. Not just re-balance the classes, but also buff drop rates to D3 level, and/or introduce crafting, that allows you to craft any and all unique and set items…
And if they were to do it (which they wont), then: Congratulations, you’ve effectively reduced D2 down to D3 level. Can you not see why that would be a problem?
If the majority of players want class rebalancing, then they will be more inclined to do so. It’s people who have given up hope that they will do anything that is holding us back from becoming the majority of players.
They’ve already made small tweaks to some skills… So you are wrong to say they won’t do class rebalancing.
First, I would really appreciate it, if you actually engage with me in an honest discussion, rather than throw a mere sentence or two, without actually addressing my points.
Second, if you truly believe, that Blizzard will take the time to rebalance all the D2 classes (when a big selling point of the game was, that this is basically D2 remasatered with rather minor changes), then you’re delusional.
They’ve already made most of the money D2R will make. They are not going to dedicate that much resources in order to drastically change a game, for which the only steady income they get is from banning botters every now and then…
And third, as I already pointed out, even if they were to rebalance the classes from the ground up… which they wont, but let’s assume, that in this hypothetical scenario, parallel universe if you will, they do… that would not be enough…
I don’t know why you’re ignoring this. You yourself might be perfectly content to mindlessly kill things at random in hopes of getting a specific item for your build based on mere chance, but someone like me wouldn’t be.
And this wouldn’t be Diablo 2 as we know it. It would be Diablo 2 basterdized and turned into Diablo 3.
Can you not see where the path you’re suggesting leads?
Eh, I think I’m done conversing with you. You aren’t making much point for discussion, but rather playing Chicken Little and taking things off the deep end… Accusing me of wanting to turn the game into D3 and such. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to respond to that.
Nope. I am taking your suggesting to it’'s logical conclusion… and we’ve already seen how that plays out in practice in the early seasons of D3: Reaper of Souls.
Because you have nothing to say and/or suggest, that would change the outcome.
If your suggesting were to be implemented, you are effectively reducing D2 down to D3,
which is not what the vast majority of Diablo 2 fans would want for the game. I certainly wouldn’t.
If you want Blizzard to reduce RMT? Ask them to:
issue bans more frequantly;
to ban entire battle net accounts rather than a single license key;
to ban IP, hardware and credit card number, so that they can no longer be used on the battle net platform (and although I’'m sure there are some workarounds, it would reduce the number of botters)
As to solo-self-found ladder, it would be nice if they were to implement it for those, who wanna try their luck… but it would be frustrating, because D2 drop rates are not tailored around solo self found.
And if you were to adjust class balance, droprates and add D3 style crafingn in order for solo self found to work in a manner, that allows you to complete your build not based on pure luck, then you turn the game into D3.
It’s the completely natural outcome, your desire taken to it’s logical conclusion and exposed for all to see…
personaly i think a SOLO-SELF-FOUND LADDER is a horrible idea
and just too have this idea , expose how player lost the true essence of diablo
diablo suppose to be a pretty brutal group experience where
pvp suppose to be very easy to turn on at any moment , sadly over the year the game slowly change and become so easy soloing 8 player content and player lost the true essence of the game . at least d4 Blizzcon 2019 trailer have this right
Options for ladder/non ladder, classic/LoD, Hardcore/Softcore… And a new option… SSF or not.
Enabling SSF restricts you from joining others games, thus no trading and no playing with others. Some people like playing this way.
When browsing the ladder rankings, there will be a SSF option available which only shows SSF player ranks. So no need to split the community when it comes to playing on different servers/realms.
You can opt out of SSF at any time to be able to join others games and trade, but you can’t re-enable it for that character.
There would be a need for a SSF shared stash separate from the main shared stash.
If you hate the idea (if it were to become a reality), then don’t choose the option… No one is forcing you to play it. It’s OPTIONAL. Just because YOU don’t like playing this way doesn’t mean EVERYONE doesn’t. If you want to play with the bot infested community, go right on ahead. Those who want to participate in the SSF ladder option can do so.
That’s true in theory.
In practice such an idea should be subjected to objective evaluation. Blizzard should look into how much demand there is into something like that.
Considering, that Blizzard have limited resources to dedicate on this game, I’'d argue they should spent the time and manpower on something, that would benefit the majority of the fans, rather than a small group of people, who wanna play the game in a manner, that is antithetical to what the game is and how it’s meant to be played over battle net.
I don’t think you understand that bnet 2.0 was designed and implemented with the release of SC2. Bnet 1.0’s chat channel and friendslist implementation was peak 20 years ago and what they’ve made for the online interaction dubbed 2.0 by the devs of SC2 is a far reach from what we once had. It has nothing to do with cloud hosting whatsoever. Not only do the chat features operate worse or not at all to the degree the old ones did, but there is zero cross game communication which was easily doable in bnet 1.0. Thanks for trying though.
to improve the lobby over the past two years, the Bnet 2.0 implementation in D2R is complete garbage. Major downgrade from the original D2 like you said.