Our inability to change the player count in solo online games, coupled with a matchmaking that makes it incredibly difficult to find people to play with.
Don’t get me wrong I love this game. I played when I was younger for years while growing up. I have also thoroughly enjoyed playing d2 on my switch thus far.
However, I am at a point now where farming 1 player games is simply not rewarding enough. I have gone 3 weeks without getting any notable drops. I play a fair amount and aside from some mid runes and mediocre unique items, there is just nothing there.
Blizzard, please fix this. The tool is there already for offline characters, please make it available for online play as well. This would go a long way to increasing the longevity of your console player base.
To be frank, this feels like a money grab more than anything. Insentivising console players to purchase a second copy of the game so that we can have higher drop rates. Convince me I’m wrong.
This would be the most compelling money grab in history.
The price per hour gameplay is subjective.
For me ANY game I play for 100 hours+ is a success.
This is the only metric to judge the game by. How many hours do you play it?
It is why I often dismiss casual gamers because they play very low hours and purchase many games. Mostly because their mindset is not one of deepening understanding but instead experience surfing.
Would you trust a Car critic who was a Hotdog critic the week before?
It’s my opinion that if you are a gamer, that this game is not a cash grab. I don’t play crap games. I’m well over 100 hours and most people consider 8-24 hours a Hit.
The data speaks
PS. Lex Fridman Mentioned Diablo Hardcore mode in his Podcast about AI. A Diablo Fan. #258 @ 101:00
If there’s any version of this game that’s a cash grab its the switch version. Underpowered console, worst online service. Never should have been made for switch
The issue here doesn’t appear to be a discrepancy in effort, or even a willful lack thereof, but rather a gap in the equity of features. As I understand it, with the matchmaking on consoles being what it is, players are unable to grind in large games, subsequently placing them at a disadvantage because they do not get the benefit of upped loot drops. An easy fix to this would be to implement a /players scale in online games that gets overridden when additional players join.
When you buy a game with advertised features, you expect these features to work. That is a foundational obligation on the developers part. When some of these advertised features don’t work either entirely or partially, the onus is on the developers to make good by their customers.
If console players cannot, through no fault of their own, access these features, there needs to be a true fix or a temporary workaround. I do not find it to be an unreasonable ask to implement the /players setting online so long as the matchmaking system is denying a large demographic of players of an INTEGRAL portion of gameplay.
Lol what? Are you even listening to yourself? So you’re telling us as soon as you hit 8-24 hours of play time your criticisms of a game are no longer valid? Gtfo of here lmao
Just because you’ve played a game for a day doesn’t mean it’s good, or that you’ve got your money’s worth. Your logic is so simpy
Maybe the cocktail of allergy and cold medicine that I’m taking is clouding my brain a bit, but I’m not understanding the logic you used to arrive at your response. Quite frankly I’m not even sure what your argument is.
When D2R was released, it was touted as a revamped edition that—graphics and QoL improvements aside—remained true to its original predecessor. A huge selling point was that console players would be given a multiplayer experience that more or less mirrored that of the PC experience. This is a promise that Blizzard has not held. Console players have suffered months of either lackluster or totally nonexistent online play.
The criticisms aimed at Blizzard in this regard contain no hypocrisy, nor an expiration date. These are not personal quibbles or the whinings of illy dedicated players. These are people who are being denied the experiences they were promised and paid money for.
If you bought a sports car with the intention of driving fast, but got home to realize that there were manufacturer defects that capped the speed at 80mph, would you be happy? Would your criticisms fail to remain valid after 24hrs? Would you be at fault for receiving a partially functional product, or would the manufacturer?
Just hit 600 hours playing on ps5, not a single regret.
See, is subjective. But i respect anyone opinion who claim that the online feature is bad. Not that many other actually care btw.
No use talking sense to that guy. He is of the ire that everything he thinks/types is unbridled genius and everyone else is a casual simpleton. Big superiority complex with that one.
I will fairly point out and explain the facts with evidence. Also stay on topic to the original post. (Before it was diverted to a debate about quality by this post)
Convince me I’m wrong. I did try but, back on topic
The most missunderstood feature
/player x.
First for all those who want to know absolutely everything about this feature, here you go.
Where I think the OP is confused about /Player x.
“Our inability to change the player count in solo online games”
There is a driving function of /player x that people get wrong. It’s not a tool to enhance your loot finding, it’s a tool to simulate online players.
What I mean by that is this.
The multiplayer experience was crafted with all it’s mechanics for multiple players. The increased monster HP, increased experience, and increased loot quantity.
Then the ability to deliver that multiplayer experience when there are not enough players in your group or you have no internet was added (/Player x).
Also for more context of the time. Online games (other than D2) often had AI bots fill player spots when not enough people were online. Why? We were playing on 56k Modems and you had to play local. You would have terrible latency trying to connect to distant servers. Which meant if you wanted to play at 1AM You’d have a hard time finding people.
You whipper snappers take broadband for granted
The /player x command was not allowed in “Official” multiplayer games on Bnet.
“From version 1.09 onward, the player setting can be changed arbitrarily in Single Player mode, open battle.net and non battle.net Multiplayer mode.”
So why seperate Open battle.net and non battle.net?
To maintain the vision of and integrity for the multiplayer experience.
If you make the effort to find friends to play with, awesome! Enjoy the perks that brings.
If you can’t, tough. Find some.
This encourages you to get your friends playing Diablo 2 and was a common marketing tactic of the day.
The only space where you could be online/solo with /player x were “un-official” servers… which currently do not exist in D2R.
“Matchmaking that makes it incredibly difficult to find people to play with”
This is true and not true.
There is a debate still raging about how the game needs a better way internally to get people together online. It’s a whole issue on it’s own.
What’s not true is that it’s difficult to find people online to play with.
There are countless threads on this very forum of people grouping up. There are Online communities to join. There are matchmaking apps. You can find people to play with.
The True Issue
Why people are having a hard time getting items they see other people have.
Streamers
Streamers are running a business. They have an incentive to make people excited to play the game. They want the game to look as exciting as possible. If you are playing then you are watching them for tips and info.
What you may not know is they will buy items from 3rd Party sites (Not Allowed but often condoned) To build uber characters for demonstration purposes and farming with.
They also edit out the grind. How much they play to find items is way larger than most realise.
Deep Knowledge
If you want the most out of this game you need to understand it’s very complex item generation system. Otherwise you will be in the dark as to why other people have such powerful items. Start here. Brace yourself.
You want the elite experience then you have to put in the elite amount of effort.
The Proxy Criticism
More often than not I see criticism that is not based on objective reason or evidence. Instead it’s some flaw preventing their full enjoyment of the game.
The error is more often not the construction of the game but the actions and knowledge of the user.
It’s easy to just point a finger and say “The problem is that! Change that to make me happy!”
It’s much harder to see yourself as someone who made an error.
No game (even great ones) appeal to everyone.
You may have may not have researched what you were buying. (There are so many ways to not get burned)
You can read the games website. You can watch so many reviews before you purchase. If it looks fishy don’t buy.
No one is forcing you to stay and play something you don’t like. That’s your choice.
My Money is Superfly TnT!
Mmm. Nope. No you bought a product.
It has always been the generosity and self interest of Developers to patch their games or give free additional content. Once games started to be more Online and contracts evolved there are certain obligations of functionality. Those are in writing and companies are bound to them.
Your percieved value and a Develpers obligation to bend to your desire is not a legal contract but one of respect. Too often not reciprocated.
We buy things and are responsible for what our purchase affords us under the law.
If you want Royal Service you pay Treasure Prices
Outrage Culture (Added)
When you draw attention to yourself by directing outrage at something
Nothing reaps social reward quite as quickly as finding something to generate rage about.
Step 1
Find a controversial topic or make a non-controversial topic into one. Step 2
Take the “Highroad” and defend obvious points. Step 3 Propagate your message often and broadly. Step 4 Collect a mob and suppress reason by any means possible. Step 5 Collect social high-fives from your mob. Bask in the mess you created.
This does nothing to solve an issue and is often the real purpose of what people claim are issues.
What do you do?
What I do is make sure I understand as much about any issue I have.
That involves effort. Lots of time. Lots of searching. Lots of thinking.
Otherwise how are you going to fix your problem?
I have no issues with D2R.
If you do have issues and you want to inform people, what are you bringing them? I’ve yet to see any good logic or sources for reasons Not to keep playing.
Blizzard should hire you, considering you put baffling amounts of effort into diverting accountability.
There’s a simple point being made here. Single Player has the /players x feature to better mimic the experience of online play. Currently online console play is broken, or at the very least fundamentally flawed beyond justification. The issues currently plaguing console matchmaking are likely far more complicated and labor intensive fixes. A simple band-aid solution to make online console play more equitable would be to TEMPORARILY implement an already existing feature to bridge the gap.
If you can not see past your self-righteousness to understand that, then I’m not sure there’s any more conversation to be had.
Service you pay Treasure Prices 
from your mob. Bask in the mess you created.
