Request: Tweak Single Player

Console Discussion
1

One obvious issue with Diablo 2 is that the playing experience for multi-player is totally different than single player:

  • Immunities are almost a non-issue in multi-player but a total show stopper for many builds in single player. Playing with just one friend, even if you are both Sorcs, makes immunities nearly never matter and one can make super specialised builds. With a group of 3 it is a hard guarantee for them to not matter
  • Dying (non-hardcore) is single player can be game stopper since one needs to recover your body; in multiplayer a single player dying is totally recoverable easy
  • Even end game activities are so much easier with just a party of 2; a party of 3 with even cheap gear makes even the uber-bosses a world easier

On top of this, there is the trading/farming nature to the game; getting any of the higher runes (like above Mal) without trading is very, very hard. In addition, loads of items are super, super rare drops. The net effect is that single player builds tend to be… quite limited and more of a never ending chore to even try to reach end game content. I can beat Hell solo with just a few different builds (I have managed the following: Paladin where most of the way as a hammerdin then respec to FoZ, Amazon dual between lighting fury and ice arrow, Sorc with fire-wall or hydra and ice-orb; I think I can do a druid and Barbarian and maybe a trap-Assassin). The hard reason being that the item farming solo for anything more is not reasonable.

I would love to make an Assassin with dual Mosaic rune words, but one needs two Guls for this. I have never even seen a Gul ever drop even. The highest rune I saw ever drop, back over 20 years in the original Diablo 2 was an Ist.

What I propose is the following:

  • for single player offline, change the drop rates dramatically (also the gambling rates too). Diablo 3 is a LOT funner from this (I love Diablo 2’s character classes though).
  • also for single player, kill the item-tetris. If I remember correctly, offline does not have a character limit, so making mules on top of mules is silly.

The truth is that multiplayer on console is borderline dead too (I don’t know about PC though) and these changes would make the game more fun instead of more of torture; this is more like what Diablo 3 is now where outside of perfect stats, one can nearly get any item one wants to make whatever build one wants after playing a bunch, but not a ridiculous amount. I think Diablo 2 has more build variety potential than Diablo 3 (because Diablo 3 sets are so much more powerful than uniques in Diablo 3) and I would love to just try some builds; the Bear Sorceress I would love to try, but the time investment to just try to get that gear is not practical or realistic. One idea is perhaps a limited multi-player where items are locked after a few hours to an account, but item and rune drops are far more frequent.

2

Sorry, but hell no! You are asking this game to be something that is not. You want D3 experience? Play that, simple is that. I am causal dad of 2, have limited playtime, yet in the last 2 years I have found almost everything in this game, have decked out characters, surplus expensive runes, etc and I play exclusively offline, single player. RPGs are chore, repetition is the core of the game and the current drop rates are just perfect. You can find everything within reasonable amount of time, if you have never seen a GUL, you are probably playing this game wrong, sorry.

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3

I been enjoying the journey so far without any issues you mentioned.

Here is my advice.

  1. Understand the core of the game.
  2. Get a character and reach level 97.
  3. Understand each stat on an item.

If you can’t achieve any of the above. Please keep playing Diablo 3.

Just because the name of the game is the same doesn’t mean the gameplay needs to be.

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4

Well, that is rude advice. I will play whatever game I feel like and bloody well share my thoughts on the experience. You have no privilege to tell anyone to play a different game.

So, I do know the game and stats. Though not hard with some care, I even managed to get an annihilus charm with my poor holy bolt paladin; but the fight was more a chore than fun: hit him once with with a prevent monster heal item equipped and then cycle between hitting him (he spawned in Cold Plains, so that was a God-send) and running back to town. Strictly speaking this was online, but online is so dead on console that it effectively is single player nearly.

The hours needed to reach level 97 is immense. The hours needed to high level runes is also immense. My gripe is the time investment needed; the jump from beating Hell to the more interesting items is massive. I see regularly folks saying bits like “I farmed X-site for 20 hours”. That is not fun, that is just repetitive silliness and that silliness is why Reddit’s like “i duped um runes up to a Lo… and i dont regret it.” exist. Doing the same easy thing over and over again (endless farming) is just time consumption, not a real challenge and not really fun. A guide for Lower Kurast for single player talks about running around to open the same chests (since the map is fixed for single player until one changes difficulty) for hours. Do the same silly thing: run to 6 chests for 8 hours to likely get a Ber or Sur rune to drop and be fast at it too: hit them all in 30 seconds… That is not fun, that is not challenging. That is just tedium…

That endless farming is what ruins the game on PC: bots to farm. I remember when I played Diablo 2 on the PC over 20 years ago: the endless bots with their endless crap along with the endless stream of scammers… and the cheating. That was awful. My read of the D2R on PC is that it has framing bots and the same crap again: money for items and so on. Did not anyone learn from the failed Diablo 3 auction house? Never make game items have a chance to be worth money. The locking items to an account was nearly genius for Diablo 3 and would do a world of good for D2R I’d bet.

You all also missed the main point of the post: there is a world of difference in the game between solo and multiplayer. Playing with just one friend makes the game go from really hard at the end to pretty easy; immunities do not matter, a little caution makes retrieving the body easy; there is no need to have high items, as even poor items work well on all activities with a friend. One sees all sorts of bits like “to take on ubers, get Dracul’s Grasp”, but entirely pointless if you make a party; very poorly equipped team of 4 will steam-roll ubers: a holy bolt paladin, a necro to curse and 2 sorcs for nuke. Two moderately skilled players can do it too with utter crap equipment.

This is the freaking point: there is a world of difference between multi and single player. I had high hopes for D2R where it started nice where some tweaks were made and rune words were added… and then there was nothing. The reason there is nothing is simply because the appeal of the game is low (atleast on console); that lack of appeal makes the game that appears designed for multiplayer become a single player game.

I just want to have a fun single player experience. Doing endless runs for hours on end is not fun; just tedium.

Edit/Update: I went back and looked at one of my older online chars (the one with the anni-charm), turns out that character also has an Ohm and Ist rune too; funny how I forgot that character has them; even has the runes to make a Call to Arms… but actually this kind of proves my point: the character has an Ohm, but no Gul or Vex; which means trading which on console is dead and on PC is a toxic cesspool.

5

You just prove all my points valid. Thank you for doing that.

You can play whatever game you like. But don’t come here and ask to change my game to meet your expectations. I don’t need items raining on me.

I failed to see any of your points. But for sure you read too much build guides and played the game thinking things work as mentioned. You should read leveling guides. Or visit amazonbasin. Learn and understand what the devs created. Stop asking to change the core of the game. Play it long enough and things will change for the better. If you can’t invest the time. Play something else.

6

Guess you are not very good at reading. The core point: a total different experience between single and multiplayer and multiplayer is dead on console. So tweak single player to make it more fun.

7

I have to admit that I felt similar early on but later I realised why it is good how the game is right now. Immunities are a good challenge and not really an issue mid-game, you have sunder charms and other ways of dealing with it and personally don’t think it should be changed for playthrough experience, some games should just be challenging.

I admit that multiplay is dead on console Xbox has no community whatsoever but I just don’t see you argument, how does drop rate change “fun” factor? What you ask for is actually what Diablo 4 is alike nowadays (except trading), quick levelling, power fantasy, you can finish a season within couple of weeks at the most. It is not fun, their user base is complaining on these forums all the time, everyone wants a different thing and the dev team is trying to please everyone… which makes D4 to be a game for no-one, no identity, no challenge, no monster variety, nothing just endless grind for nothing.

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8

Why don’t you try redirect your words against yourself. You seem to refuse to accept facts and enjoy applying whatever you see fit.

I read all your points and answered you.

KryptonKooky made good points. Try taking people advice for a change. Or understand what they’re trying to say.

I’m always here to help. But if you insist on attacking me. Good luck in life.

9

There is something quite twisted in the sunder charms: you cannot get them until AFTER you beat Hell. In terms of difficulty, the game is all over the map on this. Multiplayer it is EASY to beat on Hell even with crap equipment. For solo, some classes are very easy to beat on Hell (Paladin and Sorc in particular are not hard), but others are really hard (bone-spear Necro suffers from magic imminuties and summoner has usually lots of trouble on boss fights).

I disagree. The point of disagreement is simple: you seem ok with loads and load of same grind and same farming; I am not.

I played Diablo 2 back before Resurrected on ancient Windows 98 and XP on Battle.net over 20 years ago.

Diablo 2 Resurrected is for good and bad, essentially the same game. I welcomed the minor rune word additions, the separate cool downs and the adding of all rune words to single player (though the old school Diablo 2 did not have single player, it simply had non-realms).

However, the game still had its fundamental flaw: so, so much grind. The super-majority of drops are garbage drops. Expect a good 1-2 hours between good drops and very often for a different character class. If one does farming (which is boring after less than an hour), expect maybe a little shorter time, like a good drop ever 45 minutes or so; but it gets boring fast. Teleporting to Andarial or Mephisto gets old pretty quick.

This then leads to how realm play is poisoned: there is monetary incentive to sell items. This leads to the bots which ruins the game.

I am not advocating dropping the immunities (though to be fair original release of Diablo 2 did not have them in Hell if I remember correctly); however, I see people grind on single player for more than a YEAR. That is crazy.

The game’s grind by level 80 or so is basically Baal runs, Chaos Sanctuary runs and the only variety is the Terrorized zones (which is also a quasi torture since it changes every hour and only some are good spots for one’s build). The grind to go from level 80 or so (i.e. beat Hell) to the uber-tristram is massive with literally nothing in-between. Just endless Baal and Chaos Sanctuary runs (with terrorized zones to mix it up).

On single player farming is easier since one can fish for a good map and also a minor cheat on terrorized zones be changing your system’s clock. However, both of these are actually more like exploiting the game rather than playing it.

What I am advocating is to change single player to make the grind less so and the joy more so. Diablo 2 is better than Diablo 3 in terms of possibility of build variety. It is worse than Diablo 2 in terms of so much more grind.

Ideally, I’d rather see multiplayer change too:

  • lock items after a few hours to an account
  • make drops more frequent to counteract the loss of trading

This will kill the entire bot scene and the poisoning of the game from money. I don’t expect this to happen, but tweaking single player would atleast make the solo experience more fun.

10

I am not sure if the message is getting across. Group play is always different compared to solo and there is no point to make the experience identical! The point is to have different game modes so everyone can enjoy the mode they like. And it is not Blizzard’s fault that the console community is non-existent on battlenet hence, you cannot enjoy your game mode.

The other argument about difficult classes/builds for play through is also not very solid. No boss is immune to anything so beating the game can be done with any class/any build in general. But of course, not every build is equally strong/efficient. If you came across a quest where you encountered something immune to your damage then reset the game, simple is that. The other option is to play dual spec characters but again, not every class can do that efficiently and it is fine, some skills not meant to be for playthrough. Sure, playing arctic blast druid with 7 other players on battlenet will get you through the game but you are not contributing anything in reality, you are just leeching XP/gear/etc. making others carry you through.

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11

The real solution to your problem is to enable cross play so PC/console players can play together in one large online community just like it is for Diablo 4, this is what you should be campaigning about.

12

Before getting a good community, the bots have to die. For the bots to die, means lock items to an account which means (for ladder especially) change the nature of drops: enable targetted farming and drops are drops usually for the char playing.