Can we have a /players slider online or a new difficulty that simulates /players 8?

General Discussion
81

Realistically speaking the most likely future of D2R looks like this:

Blizzard does nothing because they don’t profit from doing work on D2R. 2-3 years from now even low/average PC specs will be capable of running 3, 5 or 8 D2R instances in parallel. D2R accounts are already fairly cheap, on sale 5+ accounts cost roughly what you pay for one new triple-A game. The playerbase is shrinking and the average D2R player already has a lot of experience. The future playerbase will be small consisting of highly skilled players min-maxing the crap out of the game. Every serious D2R player will use multiple accounts because it becomes more and more affordable both in terms of hardware and software (D2R accounts).

It was still interesting to have these conversations. It’s funny how dishonest some players are about already benefitting from the higher drop rates of /p7. :smiley:

I haven’t played the original D2 (at least not seriously, I tried it on LAN with a few friends on normal difficulty) but AFAIK online alt accounts were free in that version of the game with volatile character slots (they were deleted after a few months of inactivity). As hardware became stronger (a few years after D2 release in 2000) experienced players probably started using multiple accounts for various benefits (increased drop rates being only one of the many).

Playing D2R with multiple accounts is already very common. Here is how I know:

There are many benefits to having multiple accounts (I mentioned a few in a previous post), here is one that can make trading easier and I have seen a lot of players doing it on traderie while trading higher quantities of crafting materials:

If you log in an account in a specific region (EU/NA/AS) that account can create games only in that region and can join games only in that region with gamename/password in the lobby. However, from the friend list your accounts can join games created in other regions (your accounts should obviously friend each other for convenience). You can log in all of your accounts in your region (for low latency) but use 2 accounts to have logins in the two other regions. Let’s say someone gives me a gamename/password on the Asia server. I use my “proxy” account that I logged in on the Asia server to join the game with gamename/password in lobby and then on my mule accounts (logged in on the EU servers) I use the friend list to join/follow my Asia proxy account. If someone enters your trade game with 2 or more characters then this technique is the likely reason.

82

I thu people like you should have learnt your lesson by now with the status of D2R…

Do you honestly think that it Hurt botter and people who use JSP?

Yes it is true that more loot devalue item and by the book, it force botters to lower their prices on item.

However, it also means that items are much more attractive to buy with real world currency. If I can spend 20 bucks for a full set of trang, why would I spend the time farming and trade with in-game currency?

And Let’s not forget that devaluing works on players too. The direct result of that is the item that you farm no longer have value, and the item you want used to cost and um would most likely cost a Lo, or even ber. It literly make farming and trading pointless

At this point you may as well just play single player, which you already have the px function from the get-go.

allowing px function on bnet never favor regular players

83

It seems people break down into one of three groups when it comes to discussing changes in regards to MP or botting:

  1. People who are unhappy with MP and/or botting, but don’t believe Blizzard can or will do much, if anything, about it. These people tend to call for easy-to-implement solutions (because that’s the most effort they think they might get) to either be able to entirely extricate themselves from the problems (SSF) or at least reduce the reliance on/negative impact of MP upon themselves (/players x).
  1. People who are unhappy with MP and/or botting, but DO believe Blizzard can AND will do something about it. These people usually offer elaborate suggestions to improve MP or to get rid of botting, with faith that these things may actually occur. They adamantly oppose group #1’s ideas as defeatist, who in turn think group #2’s ideas are naive.
  1. People who, for whatever legitimate or illegitimate reasons, believe everything is perfectly fine as is. They tend to adamantly oppose any MP-impacting changes whatsoever because the current situation suits them just fine. This group seems to largely consist of botters, “human bots” (AKA poopsockers), multi-boxers, JSPers, and/or “pillars of the community”.

Just an observation.

1 Like
84

As the playerbase shrinks the optimal bot capacity (to saturate the D2 market at the right speed to maximize ROI for the botter) also becomes lower. With a small playerbase the optimal number of bots may become low enough so that banning them may not worth the effort for Blizzard even if the botters buy new accounts. Blizzard works with large numbers, small profits add nothing to their bottom line.

The botters don’t care. They are happy with much lower profits than a large company like Blizzard. They probably split up their investments between various RPGs based how popular and profitable those video games are.

The average player has a tendency to min/max at least a few aspects of its video games - this is never “illegitimate” if you are doing it without breaking the “law” (e.g.: using banned cheat programs). “Legitimate” isn’t what other players think is “ethical” (which is a subjective thing).

When min/maxing encourages players to do unpleasant activities (like split MF with strangers in D2) it is usually a sign of bad design. The designer created the wrong kind of “carrot” and/or designed the wrong kind of path between the player and the carrot (sometimes the players/testers find unintended/unplanned paths to min/max their own fun out of the game).

Min/maxing the farming aspect as a solo D2R player currently has an above average monetary cost (fairly strong hardware, multiple accounts) but the prices are falling rapidly.

85

Except for barb and necro, all classes have at least 1 build that can clear p8 “fast” aka it’s definetely worth to solo p8 instead of grouping for xp and loot. But at least with solo p8, you would not struggle to keep up with a baalrun or whatever.

So if you want pub groups to be only filled with noobs and meme builds and barbs and necros, then p8 is the way to go.

That’s nonsense. Especially since you mentioned pX instead of p8, you already know that every class would profit from soloing p3/p5/p8 over grouping.

Seems more like “nail hit on the head”. It also seems that only people who struggle to get endgame gear are begging for /pX and are in denial that people who can, would just solo pX instead of carrying leechers in pubs.

So reward bots/maphacks even more.

just make a new one, doesn’t really stop progress and would just reduce the options a little.

So why do you want to implement a feature that just does the exact opposite?

86

I already told you that i would enjoy it. But i know its not good for online as it would push almost everyone into solo play, making group play just way too worse than it is now. I dont like that.

I am not sure what do you mean. Current system doesnt have any special benefits to bots. Players X would benefit everyone bots included making more loot for everyone. If you have 8 bots, you dont join them all in 1 game, thats not effective. You will do 8 games where you run Chaos for example. With players x, those bots can make 8 games on players 5 for example generating a lot more loot. Significantly more in case of bot farms. Botters would freaking love to have players x command.

Thats what makes D2 so real and its harsh dark word. Evil players fit very well into that theme. On other hand you can find a lot of great friendly players. And there is more of them than the evil ones definitely.

No it wasnt. Shared stash was added to game only now, which is wasquite terrible game design for offline before. I would say it was designed more to be played with other people. Skills of characters interacting with other characters , skills in pvp working differenty vs players than monsters… Game was clearly designed for both equally. You absolutly cant say that game was designed for solo. Game clearly shows that its not.

The issue is not the drop rates. Issue is that game is way too easy to farm on high player setting solo. So you dont have that many reasons why farm with others. Poorly balancef too Op skills is bad game design. Solution is not addong players x online. Solution is to nerf skills/ some items and increase monster modifiers so solo player cant farm anything above players 3 even with top gear. Then people will actualy have to group up to have more loot dropping. Currently is difficulty of multiplayer games a joke.

The social aspect of it. You talk to others, they can help you with your body if you die, sharing items if you dont need them, showing of loot you found and just normal human conversations about game or anything.

I should not have said that, its more complicated with me. I just have times where i play alone and then when i play with people. Lets say i enjoyed both over the years solo play and group play or split farming. I guess i never was fully solo as i always interact with other people. I dont multi account game joining mules so i join others to get more loot and xp. Which resulted in manygreat MP experiences of finding new friends even. I just have periods of time when i just go hidden on profile and play solo and dont want to be bothered by anyone you know? Maybe lone wolf was overstatement or i simply imagine bring it differently than you.

I only recently started solo selffound online tournament so lately i was completely solo for month. But i miss interactions with players. I just dont need them all the time.

I spend years playing on private d2 servers which had amazing communities and i have to say that anyone who didnt play on those have no idea how how true multiplayer experience without cheating looks like in D2 :). I have countless of hours with playing with other people so i am definitely qualified for commenting MP :).

Others who tho? People asking for players x online are clearly minority. Its not like there is huge number of players asking for it or comolaining about drops. Its same people most of the time in all these topics.

No, its game mechanic, you are literary only person i know who has opinion about this game feature being exploit. Come on dude, its not.

87

You are already enjoying it unless you are a rookie. And again, it would be difficult to find any other reason for you to defend that design. You should really stop pretending that you don’t exploit increased drop rates.

How would bots benefit from removing increased drop rates from multiplayer games? It would nerf them. Without increased MP drop rates players would have no good reason to ask for /p8 in solo online games either.

People want entertainment not badly designed multiplayer games and stupid excuses for the bad design like the one above.

We naturally avoid psychopaths/sociopaths because it’s common sense to do so. This applies to both real life and video games for obvious reasons. It doesn’t matter how many good people you meet when the design rewards psychopaths/sociopaths when you stumble into one. Bad experience in general has a more prominent long-lasting effect for evolutionary reasons.

Reward psychopaths/sociopaths with your multiplayer design and you end up with a higher than average concentration of psychopaths/sociopaths and almost no one else. The early internet suffered from this problem everywhere (in MP video games like D2, communication platforms, forums, etc). Moderation systems and better multiplayer game design were invented for good reasons.

What players are looking for isn’t “real” things that suck but entertainment. This reminds me of the very first FPS game I was working on: the design included a short crouch-like animation before high jumps (like in real life) and the run animation was swinging the weapon and the crosshair like crazy. Those “real” things sucked and were removed from the design quickly because players want entertainment not “real” things that suck hard like psyhcopaths/sociopaths and public split MF games in D2.

The fact that “split MF” has “split” in its name and design is an indication of failure as a multiplayer activity. No one would engage in a crap “multiplayer” activity like that for any other reason than exploiting significantly higher drop rates.

Anyone who has a clue about game design would tell you that D2 split MF is a great example of failed multiplayer design for many different reasons. I already explained a few points but you seem to lack the capacity to understand any of it.

You can have those without an exploit like significant increase in MP drop rates in exchange for not much work.

If increased MP drop rates are so essential that removing it would “destroy” multiplayer for you that’s a clear indication that you don’t genuinely care about any of those things on your list.

Here is the part where you are saying that it’s an exploit without using the word “exploit”:

It’s just as easy in multiplayer, that’s why it is an exploit that should not exist. High damage character getting more drops by killing the same number of enemies within roughly the same timeframe.

Don’t tell me that you don’t know how to get significantly more drops (compared to single player /p1) within the same timeframe with 6-7 other players or your own alt accounts in your game. Are you a rookie or what?

No matter how you try to make it look like you are right, you are just plain wrong. That’s why you contradict yourself so often.

1 Like
88

Ah yes the old “i’m unsocial but i deny it, so i need the game to force me to be social” argument…

Stupid.

89

Why do you keep talking about nerfing drops to p1 for everyone? Nobody wants this.

Players x command is not the same thing as playing in MP games. You can use that commands in ways which are virtualy impossible online in current game or would take too much time to execute with mule accounts.

People often dont even know what they want. Current system is enjoable enough so game got remaster and is played a lot even after 20 years. Just because you want something doesnt mean you should get it.

D2R has still much more enjoyable multiplayer than d3 or d4.

Where is everyone then? Its just few people here like you who thinks that. There is nothing wrong with split farming style of playing. Game is not perfect and much can be improved but you see problems where they are not.

Well i have same feeling about you. You lack imagination to see how negatively that command would affect the game. I have explained it to you multiple times already and you still dont get it. You call game systs as exploit and ask for weird thing like players 1 for everyone. So idk man, looks to me that you lost touch with reality.

Its exploit only in your head…

Anyway, you have clear statements from devs that they dont want players x online. Using similar argument or same as me. For obvious reason, they understand that it would have negative impact on MP part of game. You are just too blind to see it.

If you are too antisocial, you can use mule accounts to get similar results as with players or just play singleplayer.

Players x command is pointless at this moment, only reason to implement it would be huge decline of player base, which didnt happen yet as you can still find people to play with.

90

The point is that changes have been made like this for 24 years. Three awful products were released: D3, DI and D4. Why would you think Blizzard would have a radical change of philosophy towards the Diablo franchise at this point especially based on your personal opinion?

91

I have the imagination to see how negatively those increased drop rates can affect the online version of the game both in solo and MP games. In contrast you can see the same only in case of solo - seems to be some kind of selective blindness.

I know. Probably nothing will happen as I already mentioned in a previous post. Why would Blizzard spend money on D2R? However, that doesn’t mean that discussions should not take place on the design of the game. Just because a random Blizzard employee said something doesn’t mean that it’s an absolute truth. In fact, it’s not uncommon to hear nonsense or blatant lies from Blizzard.

When they don’t want to do work on a not so profitable project (like D2R that isn’t a modern day cash cow) it’s easy to come up with excuses. In case of D2R the usual low-effort excuse was always something like “it has always been like this” even in case of simple QoL improvements. They probably think the same about bots and their lobby spam. Making excuses is easy. Doing something, spending money on a project like D2R is more difficult and rather pointless from a business perspective.

After release it took months for them to fix the server issues and they left serious bugs in the game (like the dysfunctional chat that sometimes doesn’t work or shows lobby ads in games). Based on those long delays and ignored serious bugs I doubt they had any developers working on D2R on a permanent basis after release.

Says someone who endorses multiplayer design that rewards greed and various forms of antisocial behaviour.

I do it to avoid antisocials/psychopaths/sociopaths in my MF sessions with a 100% success rate. I let only known players into my games if we happen to be online at the same time. Precautions like these are unnecessary in video games that have well designed multiplayer that doesn’t reward greed and antisocial behaviour.

I can’t believe that some of you come up with worthless stupid advice like this one despite the fact that no one asked for it…

You would be one of the last people on Earth I’d ask for advice.

The playerbase is already small and in case of a game like D2R it is bound to stay small forever. Masses of players can be retained only with frequent new content releases that D2R never really had. This has its upsides too because frequent releases rarely do any good for the design of any video game in the long run.

Losing lots of players is the last thing any reasonable person would worry about because you can’t lose lots of players with an already small playerbase. The players of those “amazing” split MF games are a fairly small portion of an already small playerbase. All of this is just another nonsense attempt at trying to make increased MP droprates look justified.

Virtually all players of the future small D2R playerbase will farm with a multi-account setup (many of them already do) to have access to an online solo /p7. The required hardware and software gets cheaper by the day. You won’t have any advantages on the market but the increased MP drop rates make the game easier for min/maxers that includes most players.

92

This is so demonstrably false. Say what you will about D3/D4 as a whole, but in every instance where multiple players are on screen together in those games the experience is better for everyone. There is only genuinely useful cooperation, with no ridiculous greed mechanics to worry about. It’s exactly the opposite in D2. Having more players in a game negatively affects everyone.

Desirable farming locations are exhausted quicker. Those “amazing” split MF games usually last like 2 minutes and then you have to go back to the lobby again and may or may not get a spot in the next one. And when random people are together… you can’t honestly say that you are just going to sit this one out when a Ber rune drops from a monster that you didn’t even touch. Not to mention the fact that griefers / PK’ers exist at all and are allowed to join games where they are unwanted.

Literally the only time you want to see other random players is in town when you are trading with them. Put down the rose colored glasses every once in a while and you will see there are good and bad things about all of these games.

This is 100% the truth.

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93

Yeah, “Split MF” represents the complete failure of the MP design of D2. Complaining about /players x driving people away from each other is an admission that the MP game design is already awful. Those of us advocating for /players x are just being honest about it.

Another thing is that online /players x already exists for people that are willing to buy it. So it’s fine for some, just not for everyone? I think that’s TRON’s point about making all drops p1 regardless of player count, to even the playing field. To argue against /players x without also arguing against multiboxing is just pure hypocrisy. So where is all the hand-wringing against multiboxing?

3 Likes
94

Here are your options:

  1. Pay for online /p8 and enjoy it solo or with your friends when they happen to be online
  2. Suffer the consequences of engaging in or avoiding a badly designed multiplayer activity: public split MF

Luckily, option number 1 will soon become virtually free within a few years when low/mid spec gaming PCs become strong enough to run multiple D2R instances so avoiding option number 2 will be super easy. The required hardware is already much cheaper than it was 2 years ago when D2R released.

Both solo /p8 and multiplayer /p1 are about levelling the playing field. I mentioned the “/p1 drops everywhere” option because it makes the game more difficult even for min/maxers like me and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing in a hardcore ARPG. Moreover, the “/p1 drops everywhere” option isn’t vulnerable to arguments like “you want it only to make the game easier”. Interestingly those who come up with that argument are likely to be the ones making the game easier for themselves with the current implementation, it’s hardcore projection.

95

No, because that would decrease the number of game sales and Blizzard would be losing money, e.g. multiboxing.

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96

With the small playerbase of D2 the profits are unlikely to be significant but doing literally zero work in exchange for a little bit more money is still a better option for them.

97

The droprate increase is justified by more players fighting over the loot.

It’s a minority that uses multiboxing and loading 8 times the game is done by even fewer people. Most of the multiboxers have maybe 2-3 copies at that’s it. Especially since it’s not really fun to use without using banable 3rd party tools. Manually loading multiple instances in one game just to farm a 2 min area is more annoying than useful.

So because you don’t like split mf, you want to kill the rest of multiplayer interaction? Go and play offline

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98

Increased drop rates dont negatively affect the game. Its game mechanic to compensate more players in same game.

This has nothing to do with spending money. They do not wante it because its not good feature for online play. Even if they had money for new things, they would not add it. You are right about technical issue and they inability to fix thrm , but again it has nothing to do with what we talk about. They dont want players x command online because its bad design choice, not because they dont have money for implementing it.

Not to mention that many cool changes they can make can do one guy on free time.

I dont need rainbow world like you. I want real word, greed is part of it. Also your comments about antisocial behavior and psychopats is exaggerating as hell. Its not such issues as you make it to be. So i suggest to look in the mirror first, because my experience from multiplayer is completely different.

Its just one of the options if you need that command badly.

Your loss :slight_smile:

Its smaller, not small enough to implememt the command.

Main issue are botters which makes people to not want to play. Game would not even need new content if they would actusly care about dealing with cheaters. But yes some nee content would also help. Without dealing with bots tho, it will do nothing on its own.

Not really, d2 has better multiplayer. If you want MP for snowflakes, you might enjoy d3 for sure. D4 is little bit better but it has long way to go to be on quality level of D2 in general.

Quite opposite, its amazing that you can group up with more friends and game is still quite decent to watch, d3 and d4 is huge mess on screen even with 4 people and you dont see what is going on.

Not really, i do these split games and 8 people all do different stuff just fine. This used to be issue. Its not anymore with terror zones and more area 85 zones. Your information on this are outdated. And its usualy more than two minutes, more like 4. Which is totaly fine to do your prefered zone on even something on top of that. If you need more time, you would suck even with players x setting and kill slow.

Player killers make game more spicey and immersive. This had to go away in d3 because of snowflakes. D4 reintroduced it again luckily in limited version.

Sometimes you are lucky, sonetimes you are not and pick it. I dont see issue with that, there is enough drop to sell. You seriously cry over ber when people dont even often pick up and id items which have value of multiple bers?:joy:.

99

Today the average gaming PC specs aren’t strong enough to run 8 D2R accounts but that is about to change in the coming years.

3 accounts is a significant improvement over one - that’s exactly what I recommended as a minimum setup in a previous post. /p3 can be farmed by any build and today’s mid-spec gaming PCs should have no problem running them in parallel with 32GB RAM.

I know at least two dozen people who have 8 or more accounts (dclone farmers and some former/current trade partners). A multi-account setup has many advantages (on top of an online /pX) like more storage, multiple unid annis per dclone walk, the ability to keep all of my main ladder characters on separate accounts so any two of them can interact with each other. I’d run a setup like this even without drop bonuses.

Multiboxing is pretty common in RPG variants, we haven’t invented anything new in this discussion. One of my real-world friends is currently playing Guild Wars 2 and he has lots of accounts.

The original D2 has very low hardware requirements with today’s standards, some veteran D2 players probably multi-boxed the crap out of that game a few years after its release. The average gaming PC specs became orders of magnitude stronger since D2 release in 2000.

/p1 or /p3 for target farming. /p7 for farming out multiple locations with a light sorc or similar (cows, chaos, wsk, bosses).

Starting up all accounts takes some time (especially with my method that doesn’t require 3rd party applications) but it has to be done only once. Switching between them and joining games takes only about 5-10 seconds per account even with my very clunky setup. Even if you waste 30-60 seconds to join your game with 6 alts it can be less wasted time than jumping from one split MF game to another in the lobby hoping that you get at least the worst farming location. The alternative is creating a selfish “I cow/chaos u mf” game and hoping that others join and compete with each other without touching my cows. Both of them are stupid chores, unpleasant time wasters.

I have seen split MF games and PvP games but never a combination like “PvP cow farming”.

In most cases the players are competing for the best farming locations not individual pieces of loot. That unfun chore is what I avoid with a multi-account setup. Unnecessary competition that can be avoided is for losers.

There is no need for more players, only more accounts. Everyone has realised this by now, except you.

100

Weird reaction. I didnt talk about need. I am saying that its game mechanic to compensate more players in game so there is more loot for them. If you abuse it by joining your own accounts you have increased loot too. So what? Game doesnt care who is behind account.