With all of the recent bans and reversals related to multi-accounting, I’ve received some pushback on my opinion about players using multiple accounts. I understand, after all, people have been doing this for years in both Diablo II: Resurrected and the original Diablo II with little to no consequence from Blizzard.
I can also understand Blizzard’s reluctance to take action, considering that multiple accounts generate additional revenue. I know the following proposal likely won’t be popular, as many players would lose an advantage they’ve become accustomed to, but I think it’s worth mentioning.
Goal
Eliminate the gameplay advantage that a player using multiple accounts in the same game has over someone playing with a single account.
Currently, multi-account players effectively gain access to online /players X benefits, along with class buffs and utilities that a single-account player cannot reasonably access alone.
Proposed Changes
Disable the no-drop bonus provided by players who are:
In town, or
Outside of town but idle for more than 30 seconds.
Remove active buffs (such as Enchant, Battle Orders, etc.) when the character who cast them: Enters town, or Remains idle outside of town for more than 30 seconds.
Remains idle for 30 seconds anywhere.
Expected Impact
Players who are genuinely using additional accounts for increased difficulty would be unaffected.
Muling items between accounts would remain unaffected.
Attempting to bypass the 30-second timer through automation would create a much clearer case for enforcement against botting or scripting.
Why This Matters
This change would encourage players to actually group up with other people instead of filling games with idle support characters. That, in turn, would help keep multiplayer active rather than turning it into a ghost town of trade games and solo players running multiple accounts.
After all, it’s multiplayer, not multi-account player.
For players who prefer to play alone with /players X , that experience already exists in offline single-player. If you want Battle Orders and Enchant, a small charm can be easily hacked up for that purpose.
i mean, the end game meta is to play solo in games with 7 other players in 7 different areas, and i find that to be no different than a multiboxer tbqh.
maybe just remove the “player total” increase in difficulty and allow us to select on game creation a difficulty from 1-8. i can see it now, Tier I-XVI diablo 2.
So the ten minute buff of your friend who is playing Barb or Enchantress suddenly vanishes from all party members, minions and mercs because he visits town?
Or when you are playing with more people, you permanently are in danger of losing a CTA-buff cast by party members?
Perhaps a different mechanic when visiting town, such as a loss of 1 to 2% of the maximum buff timer per second while in town? That would enable a quick town run without a total loss.
Or the idle rule can apply if the character is in town as well for buffs. As long as they are moving around, vendoring, buying/selling, in stash moving stuff, etc, they would not be considered idle.
Online play and particularly ladder has been fundamentally broken for as long as I’ve been playing this game. In 1.09 and before, grouping up had its place as it was a means of getting to level 99 efficiently, which in turn meant that ladder was simply an environment in which everyone was level 99. They went to the other extreme in 1.10 (and since), making it nearly impossible for the average player to reach level 99. In the process, group play only existed for the purpose of Baal games and pumping up XP for the chosen two (if they were lucky enough to get Baal XP while the other 6 sat out). Other than that, people only group up for things like Tristram (because leveling to 15 is tedious to do solo), normal Tombs (because builds need at minimum 18 or 24 to “come online” and it just makes the playthrough smoother, and maybe the outlier difficulty quests like Council or Ancients that some classes struggle with in NM/Hell. If I really had the patience to deal with 1-15 and leveling to 45-50 for NM start and 75-78 for Hell start, I don’t technically ever need to group with anyone - I just do it because an hour or two of 8-player tele-minions at the end of each difficulty is preferable to an underleveled playthrough or leveling myself in TZs.
Now with TZs and ROTW mechanics in play, “group play” just means multiple players all in different areas in a TZ game. There is no incentive to actually play together because it’s not the best XP and no one wants to fight for the drops. TZ Chaos and Baal if done right is maybe the exception for XP, but then again, there’s the issue of drops. This actively turns me off from trying to level another character fully on ladder since the one I did in season 7. It’s just not fun having to hunt for a game series to use for simulated /players 8.
Honestly, I don’t think the issues with multiplayer can be fixed completely because technically speaking, this isn’t WoW or some game where it’s a hard requirement. The entire game can be completed by a single player without ever grouping or trading. Implementing instanced loot in party games along with some refactoring of the XP system might give some life to true multiplayer, but otherwise multi-account players will always have a bought-and-paid-for advantage unless /players is implemented online, and Blizzard seems unwilling to do that.
Fully convert global XP bonus to party XP bonus and make personal loot. Personal loot means, the game randomly shares loot to number of players which are in same party and area. If you are 2 players, you get 50% loot, if you are 8 players, you get 12.5% of all loot. Keep no-drop bonus for party members in area, remove it for anyone else.
Simple as that.
No more multiboxing, no more silly split mf games, but party-play instead.
This game does seem to be lacking true multiplayer elements, like roles in a party, or even something as simple as a dice to roll and see who gets the sought-after drop this time.
In the old LaLa land server I used to play on in NWN, you’d only get XP if you were in range of the battle. Your party had to be together to spawn harder monsters. Your party had to be within 5 levels of each other or the lowest level dude wouldn’t get XP. And of course, it had a dice to roll to see who won the unique loot.
I’m not saying that I want this game to be transmogrified into that other game, but so far, most of the multiplayer aspects of this game have been a real let-down. Kind of like the game was made to be played and beaten solo player on any class, and multiplayer was thrown in as all the same but with bigger numbers on everything.
Or, could add ploot or “first dibs” loot so the game no longer actively discourages people from playing together. The concept of “split MF” is a flaming sign that something is very wrong in multiplayer.
Ploot is a lot, I prefer the idea of dibs loot, where any Set, Unique, Rune, or Quest items that drop are flagged for a random person in the area, and they have 2-3 seconds to grab it before anyone else can. Could also add some weighting to where when someone triggers multiple drops like bosses or chests, they’re guaranteed to have dibs on at least one item.
I was originally against ploot, hoping that humanity could come together and learn to share, but since that isn’t going to ever happen, and as long as it’s optional, and as long as it’s a few seconds, it’d be fine with it.
You’re entitled and insufferable. Get a life, stop blaming people in every thread and posting nonsense. Multiboxing is allowed by the devs and nobody cares if you don’t like it. Just move on.
And don’t forget to apologize to the people you falsely flamed earlier.
