Online difficulty scaling (ODS) revisited

Hi all.

Many a thread has been dedicated to this. Without necro’ing old threads, I want to revisit this topic to further strengthen a believe shared by many. ODS is nothing short off a highly desired piece of functionality. Why is this important? Because of the golden rule of (game) development:

You don’t get to decide how others play the game / interact with your product.

You create a playing ground with certain rules to make sure people cannot harass others or exploit the game to gain an unfair advantage. But ODS has nothing to do with those rules; it’s about creating additional value for your customers. From a development perspective (I’m in this industry) I simply cannot understand why this is such a no-go area for Blizzard. I understand the benefit of playing with others, I enjoy that feature as well. But gearing up a character, one that can ultimately handle P8 content, is not a mutually exclusive feature with aforementioned social play.

I really enjoy magic finding, but the content is too easy at this point for me. Social play is however not a consistent way to allow me to play P8 magic find (logistics, players being anti-social, not being able to enforce loot, etc.). It’s a great feature, but it has nothing to do with wanting to play solo, while also needing a bigger challenge.

I really hope some day a more customer-centric, validated approach will be used to think about such features. Because at this point, Blizzard decides how I should play the game.

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No to /players online. /thread

Thanks

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Thanks for your valuable contribution!

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if /p8 in online then u wont see any pub games
no one will play with friends all will play solo
thats not good idea

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There are many other ways Blizzard can make the game more challenging without adding a system that would break the game, p8 just doesn’t belong on bnet.

Players 8 offline gives so much rewards there would be no point in trading. Not to mention it would kill group play.

It’s about giving players what they need not what they want.

They could make alternatives ways to level to 99
They could make lv 95 zones
They could add another difficulty

And while I don’t think Blizzard will make these changes or that they should make them, these are better options for the game, than the path of least resistance and add players 8 online.

For someone who works in the field this is laziest and easiest way to add challenge.

Make builds which are not so strong if you want challenge , or try hardcore.

if /p8 in online then u wont see any pub games

This is an assumption. If you want to validate this, you ultimately need to roll out a production feature for it. It could also be there are plenty of people that will still trade using public games.

For someone who works in the field this is laziest and easiest way to add challenge.

What do you mean with laziest? If the solution is a pragmatic one, for the moment, why would you not? I agree there may be better options, but experimenting with features to get the validation you need is a common practice. If your argument holds, this would be the same for offline play.

It’s about giving players what they need not what they want.

I think it’s both.

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You admit it yourself there are better options , why add something that is inferior unless you want to take the

It doesn’t belong on bnet , it belongs offline.

I said there may be better options, don’t twist my words. You validate this by actually implementing different features. We know for offline play it works, so you at least have some basis for experimenting.

There are

Stupid idea.

And someone who works in the field remember its about the game and not you.

So you agree lol. If 100% of the players would chose solo given the choice (as indicated by 0 playing with friends),

Then OP is correct that there is demand.

Yes, give us the option. PLEASE!

No /players online.

2020206969

If indeed a majority of players would use the feature, it means there is a certain pain or gain you now identified, which is very important. If at some point it turns out the solution used is not the best implementation to fix the pain or boost the gain, you can always rework or implement something different. But the customer value remains the same nonetheless.

I almost find it funny how hated the idea is by those that farm successfully in groups.

“We must NOT ALLOW this because everyone would find good items! and that would be UNFAIR!!!”

I have grown to dislike public games. I telework and have kids. I cannot dedicate the same man hours as the hard core group players. I agree with ODS so I can play around my schedule and life style.

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And someone who works in the field remember its about the game and not you.

It’s about identifying your customer first and then finding out what they want/need. You will never build an effective proposition for a game just based off ‘this is a cool game (I think)’ and hope it will find adoption. That’s a great way to fail.

I have grown to dislike public games. I telework and have kids. I cannot dedicate the same man hours as the hard core group players. I agree with ODS so I can play around my schedule and life style.

For me personally this is also the case. It’s interesting too; you (re)release a 20 year old game. Of course the player base will have changed. So which new value can you introduce for those players? This should be self-evident. If the argument would be financial it would be different, but it’s not.

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Yes /players online.

Is that all you want to see? Not only players x online is bad idea but devs already commented on that. They sre agaisnt it.

Fact is that caster builds dominates in leveling and few melee builds struggle. Result of p x commsand would be public games full of peopke who cant play well or their build is weak trying to progress while casters will play solo on higher player setting.

Is what all I want to see? Nothing in this sentence is an opinion.

Result of p x commsand would be public games full of peopke who cant play well or their build is weak trying to progress while casters will play solo on higher player setting.

Again, an assumption. I know devs are against the idea, I just don’t agree with the arguments. It’s not up to me, so probably won’t happen. But I’m saying it shouldn’t be like this based on the feature context (that is an opinion).

I think it’s a lot more funny how dense the /players command advocates are in this forum.

People that can solo p8 efficiently won’t need to group anymore. People that cry for items, won’t be able to farm p8 efficiently. People that already find a lot of item because they put in the time, will be able to farm even more. Bots will be even more efficient. LK chest popping will be more efficient than farming areas/mobs.

Players command is just a very bad solution. It’s ok for single player / offline because you can’t have other people in your game, but it does not belong to multiplayer / online.

People that are currently crying for the players command just want more loot. It has been suggested multiple times to add the difficulty without any XP/Loot bonus and nobody wanted that, so the whole “having a challenge” BS can be ignored which makes this topic another → I want more loot without effort thread.

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another day another new account asking for p8.

report as spam and move on.

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