When you can host your own TCP/IP versions of a game, it means the client carries the ability to host the server connections. Those connections can be packet sniffed to understand how the data communicates with the servers. This allows for cheat developers to gain an understanding of what information they need to manipulate in order to cheat, without the need to be connected to live servers. If they’re not connected to live servers while packet sniffing, the server has 0 chance to identify who is trying to cheat, and ban them. By banning them for trying to cheat, it makes the cost of cheat development skyrocket. When the cost skyrockets, it dissuades development entirely.
You make a good point, but like I said earlier people are still going to develop these bots and cheats regardless of TCP being present in D2R (they already have been developed). It’s like you say, it’s not as easy for them of course but in the end they will make much more money than they lose from banned accounts, it’s too profitable.
From what I’ve heard there’s already an undetectable form of maphack that grabs the current mapseed and loads the same seed from legacy D2 that then projects as an overlay on D2R (I admit I’m out of my element on the more indepth workings of D2 hacks, but this sounds pretty plausible to me).
There’s also videos of working D2R bots on YouTube that are being sold for money.
I dunno, I just think that the pros of adding TCP back will outweigh the cons.
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Depending on the type of bot, it could just be a ban waiting to happen.
Adding it back is what will cause it all to become main stream and free like it was in LOD. When it costs a metric @$$ ton to develop, only a few people are willing to pay the price for it. Like you said, it’s profitable, which means people have to pay for it.
Yes there’s a full-fledged bot. I even know 1 of the guys who sells it. He will now charge 10 grand at the start of a season, and pro-rate it cheaper as the season progresses towards end of season. Legitimately. How many people do you think have bought it? I only know of 1 on the J who actually bought it.
Adding TCP back will generate only a select few players to benefit from it, but adding TCP back would throw the entire cheating scene we all knew in LOD right back into the same spot it was back then, where bots and map hacks are free, because 74,000 developers can make them, and there’s absolutely zero risk involved in doing so. You don’t risk your CD key being banned, or battle.net account being banned, or IP address being flagged when u have TCP/IP, and therein lies the problem as to why TCP leads directly to a cheaters world.
Consequently, ANY video game that has ANY kind of environment you can play in offline, has a significantly higher chance of there being more cheaters in. If you ever wondered, now you know. That’s why a multitude of other games steered completely away from alternative connectivity modes. It hinders e-sports entirely.
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This seems a really weak point to me. I’d expect it to be easy to cypher communications between server and client, also they may just implement some different settings for TCP/IP.
But this doesn’t even matter: google “ai aimbot”. There’s no need to know game code, just the ability to “see” each frame.
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I have a lot of doubts on your claims.
If they were true for modern days, Blizzard would have pointed at them as the main reason for removing TCP/IP.
Instead they pointed out security concerns for players, which is a pathetic excuse.
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That’s what this means dude.
Seeing as how botters have already taken root in the Ladder and decimated the economy without having TCP/IP to test their bots, I don’t see this as a valid reason against TCP/IP anymore.
TCP/IP should be reimplemented to allow playing with friends on any player count, to reduce reliance on the (occasionally) unstable Bnet servers, and mainly to allow the possibility of modded multiplayer.
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I’ve been saying this since day one and too many people believed TCP/IP would help botting/hacking: here we are, with bots and maphacks, without TCP/IP being the culprit for them.
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The bad guys already had their chance to gather all the information they needed with Alpha_Release.
It is time to give us back TCP/IP for all the great reasons mentioned in this thread a hundred times.
Do it!
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This is what I’ve said from day one. They’ve ripped the heart from this game when they Removed this most important feature
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Again, would be very nice to have TCP/IP for multiplayer since the Bnet servers are currently unstable. 
The possibility of modded multiplayer would also be a huge benefit and would bring a lot of people to D2R.
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I think TCP/IP would be a great addition but I would want IPv4 TCP/IP. We don’t need IPv6. Most home networks are less than 50 devices and most home routers can handle at least 200+ IPv4 DHCP clients. So in the case of us old school LAN party gamers who might invite 10-20 people over for some gaming fun there is still no need for IPv6 or Apple’s Bonjour nonsense. Another option would be to implement IPv4 and IPv6 but not require Bonjour.
So, in summary I want IPv4 TCP/IP without any Bonjour dependence.
Thanks in advance.
To be quite frank, the game should support both and we really need to start moving everyone and everything to IP6, it’s more robust, there is backwards compatibility, and reduces the need for all the functionality we improvised to solve the limited number of addresses problem. You don’t need any of that when there are enough addresses available for multiple earth-like planets.
It’s incredible how slow IP6 adoption has been. There’s little in the way of disadvantage other than the hassle of switching to a new standard.
Regardless, you can thank the people who hacked the alpha test for why there’s no open TCP/IP. I don’t think it’s coming back.
Yeah, ain’t that the damn truth. 
I don’t think we’ll ever see it officially reimplemented either unfortunately but it’s worth trying.
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So the community can get an idea to what each packet does and cheat again just like in good ole LoD, nice.
Nah, there’s already functional packet bots for D2R without having TCP/IP to sniff the packets. There’s videos of them on YT.
Not that they care about the bots anyways as evidenced by how quickly they destroyed the ladder economy, so might as well give us back TCP/IP so that legit players can play together through there rather than Botnet.
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There is absolutely no need for IPv6 for small private networks. Blizz already restricts/blocks any “body” from hosting e-sports competitions without their kiss of approval. So without a naming service IPv4 in small private networks is fine. In a larger or medium sized network, such as one on a university campus or corporate office, IPv6 has a place. If a small group of people (10 or less for arguments sake) want to play off-line over TCP/IP in a IPv6 environment a naming service is needed due to the length of IPv6 addresses. Without a centralized naming service (ex: DNS) we are forced to fall back on decentralized broadcast and discovery schemes.
Zero config software, such as Apple’s Bonjour, fall into the decentralized broadcast and discovery category. In larger or medium sized networks decentralized broadcast and discovery is inefficient/bad because it slows down the network. As more devices are added to such an environment network performance degrades. Network performance degrades because the amount of broadcast chatter pushed onto the wire.
However, in most small private networks (which 99.99% of home networks are) there is no need for zero config software. There is a configured router which has DHCP software. All client devices can be set to use DHCP with almost no effort. Most consumer grade router devices default to use both IPv4 and IPv6 with DHCP. Therefore there is no need for zero config software, when the network is already configured.
On my home router I disable IPv6 internally because my home network has less then 20 devices. A family of with 5 children would most likely have less than 40-50 devices (usually less then 30 devices). Even with 50 devices in a home private network many of the devices would not be suitable D2R devices (ex: watches, phones, tablets, TVs, voice assistant, etc). With only a handful of devices that could participate in a D2R game there isn’t a need for IPv6 and decentralized broadcast and discovery setups.
- I have no desire to install any Apple software on my Windows 10 installation, which includes Bonjour (My family does not use any Apple products).
- Blizzard’s games have no need to probe and discover what’s on my network.
- I should be able to type in an IPv4 address to connect to another PC to join a game which is what we can do in D2/LoD.
- I have no need for IPv6 on my small private home network and 99.99% of gamers would be hard pressed to be able to justify IPv6 use.
the need is that we should just have one standard instead of two.
There isn’t a disadvantage here. You say there’s no need, but that’s not a reason not to. It makes more sense to use the same system across the internet.
“Blizzard’s games have no need to probe and discover what’s on my network.” Funny enough, that’s praobably why they don’t do that.
I don’t think you understand, IP6 is a network communication standard. It has nothing whatsoever to do with probing and discovering whats on your network or any of that other stuff you’re talking about. You can still have private networks, you can still keep them secure, in fact IP6 is better for security. There’s just no basis for your comments.
The only reason you can’t do this is TCP IP was removed due to abuse during the alpha/beta tests. This has nothing whatsoever to do with TCP IP version 6. And in fact, you could still enter an IP 4 address assuming we had the feature, because, again, IP6 has backwards compatibility- it can translate IP4 addresses to IP 6- every IP4 address value has an equivalent in IP6.
This is about modernizing network standards, not about Blizzard snooping on your PC (which they don’t do for obvious legal reasons) or about the TCP IP feature of the game being removed. The number of devices on your home network is irrelevant.
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There is a reason to keep IPv4 on small private networks. The reason is because they are private and don’t need the benefits of IPv6. Do you really think you are going to impose your will upon someone’s private network? Good luck trying to make that a reality.
Without a centralized naming scheme, namely DNS, decentralized schemes are used to find (discover) entities on a network. The Bonjour zero config software is based on a decentralized broadcast and discovery scheme. Broadcast and discovery is a probing exercise. If Blizz makes the D2R code dependent on Bonjour then D2R will have the ability to probe the network to discover entities and services on the network. This would be the method of finding which PC’s are hosting games. The responses to the broadcast messages would be the method of advertising which PC are hosting games and any other services on those PCs. Unless you have access and control of changes to the code (for the life of the D2R game) you cannot guarantee what information will be ignored or stored.
If there is no dependence on IPv6 then there is no point to employ zero config software. Currently, SC:Remaster and War3 Reforged are code dependent on Bonjour. This means the customer who installs those games must accept and install Bonjour before being able to participate in off-line TCP/IP games. I know Bonjour runs of IPv4 but as I described in my prior post, in 99.99% of home private networks there is no point to employ a zero config client software when the network is already configured.
Private IPv4 networks can be considered secure enough for their purposes, this includes private at home networks. Obviously, if those in control of those at home networks do not secure the routers then those private networks are open to penetration.