I have seen few topics about player killing, mainly in hardcore and i think its interesting topic to talk about. I think its part of the game and it should stay. My only concern are people using tppk hacks.
What do you think about player killing guys?
I would like to quote some texts from one of the mains devs of diablo 2 and his opinions about player killing as its interesting reading. Its Max Shaefer who defend player killing in diablo 2. Text below was his reaction to discussion aboit player killing back in the old days of diablo 2
I am Max Schaefer, and I am a senior designer of both Diablo II and the Lord of Destruction Expansion pack. I have never posted here before, but I have from time to time in our own forums.
I am the guy you all love to hate. I, along with the rest of the Blizzard North management, deliberately and with clear intent allowed limited PKing in the Diablo universe. However, this current argument has run a bit astray.
Roger Eberhart is a fine member of our QA staff, and does his job with professionalism and talent, but he is not an official spokesperson for what we do and do not encourage. I donāt recall ever discussing the issue of PKing with him. Sure, the Assassin character has a novel method of killing both players and monsters (traps), but the intent of the character was never to be a PK. Traps simply struck us as a fun new way of doing combat, as opposed to traditional melee and ranged attacks. Though itās irrelevant, I have never heard of an Assassin killing another player with traps. I would guess that it would, in reality, be a fairly akward and inefficient way to PK.
To answer the original question: Do we āencourageā people to PK? Not really. We encourage people to party up, both for strategic and server-efficiency reasons. Other than that, itās pretty much up to you all to decide what to do. Obviously, weāve set up and elaborate world of monsters, quests, items, and plot(ā¦) but there is almost no effort given to āencourageā PKing, other than not preventing it.
Although I do not want to enter a prolonged debate about PKing (Iāve done so already for over five years), I will address just a few things.
1) The entire game is set up to kill your player. Every monster, boss, and trap has as itās only goal the death of your player. The addition of the occaisional anti-social player only adds to the feeling of tension and fear that makes the rewards of success that much better. Remember this: the world of Diablo II is not a safe, warm place. It is a place of great evil, and even greater good.
2) In Diablo 1, the cheating and hacking rendered PKing a disproportionately annoying addition to the game, for example the Town-Kill or the Auto-Kill. This is not the case in D2, where the avoidance of PKs is a relatively trivial matter. Other posters have listed all of the ways in which we have made PKing all the more difficult.
3) Even with a PK switch, there are abundant ways that anti-social people can ruin your game. Believe me, there are far worse things to do than declare hostile and try to attack another player. Without this option, the ājerksā will not go away.
4) A story about heroes and conquests needs villians. Hordes of identical monsters do not fulfill this requirement in my opinion. Part of what makes the Diablo II community great is the great variety of personalities and styles. The last thing we want is to force people into some idealized regimen of āproperā role-playing. Rather, we sought to make a game where people create their own fantasies and adventures.
and finally,
5) Diablo II and the expansion are the games that we at Blizzard want to play. That is our formula for success. Companies that design games based on focus groups, marketing opinions, and even fan input do not succeed. Although hearing the opinions of others are valuable to us, every design decision must pass the test of whether or not WE would want it in the game. In many cases, weāve changed our minds after hearing compelling arguments. But weāve decided that PKing is part of the Diablo universe. We are well aware that this does not please everyone. However, you are right: we are not apologetic about it. Not at all. Sure, we could implement a PK switch. Itās a trivial coding task. But we wouldnāt be being true to ourselves, and our goals as gamemakers.
We are proud of what weāve made in the Diablo universe, and the overwhelming success and support of our customers vindicates our core decisions from a business standpoint as well. Sure weāve made mistakes, after all, weāre just gamers who are fortunate enough to have built a successful game company. We spend each day doing what we love to do: make and play fun computer games. The sales and success are nice, but they are secondary to our goal of making the games that we want to play.
Max Schaefer
Vice President and co-founder, Blizzard North
