Singleplayer =/= Multiplayer

General Discussion
1

I want to really emphasize this fact.

Singleplayer =/= Multiplayer

Single Player D2R is a 100% different game than Multiplayer D2R.

[Singleplayer]

-Static Maps

-Map stays revealed

-P1-P8 loot on command

-Exploitable (But considered normal gameplay, AKA reveal a gg lower kurast chest spawn, then spam it on P8, just one example)

[Multiplayer]

-P1 Loot

-Shared loot. Either have friends who share or play with random thieves.

-Trade is old school. Nothing has a real value so being ripped off is inevitable.

Singleplayer, you are doing great. No racing, no competition, just relaxed farming and full control over how you want to go about doing things.

Multiplayer on the other hand is complete chaos. Players who have organized groups dominate multiplayer because of organized looting, XP runs, helping each other. Random solo players (Which I think is the majority) have a much harder time. If you want all loot, you must play P1, which has such a low “nodrop” chance that farming stuff like hell cows isn’t even worth it. So we are stuck saveandexit spamming pindle/eldritch/shenk/meph etc… The game doesn’t feel the same as singleplayer. In SP, I can choose to farm hell cows on a P3-P8, get reasonable drops… On MP, I can either make a multiplayer cow game and 5 out of 8 players are leeches that are clicking loot or I can play P1 and get no loot.

The thing is, it’s the same game, but mechanically, the drop system makes the game completely different on SP vs MP.

I’m not even sure if this is a complaint or just feedback. I’m not really into trading, so I mostly play SSFHC, so I guess the answer is relative. I’m not sure what I’m trying to do on multiplayer since I will never have a shot at top10 99 and there isn’t any other form of competition. Why don’t I just play singleplayer? Well, for me, singleplayer sounds like cheating. So MP is my only option…

2 Likes
2

Man, are you full of yourself. If single player was so perfect, there’d be absolutely zero players online. Your OPINION is NOT a fact…

3

i think you meant “offline” and “online”

and this is bad design, opening chests in a demon-slaying game shouldnt be meta in any form

this is so true…cowsp1 is just lame compared with travp1

i really dont know from where this comes from but i really cant fully gear a sorce in one month offline but a can easily do it online with trade, let alone any other class by playing that class

4

Where in this post did I say singleplayer is perfect?

I said SP =/= MP

So we shouldn’t consider changes in the same boat. A change in MP might not be good for SP and vice versa. But mostly, MP is more complex because of the chaos. Groups of friends have a massive advantage over solo players because P1 loot is trash unless your farming superuniques/bosses in which case you are probably a sorceress.

In a nutshell, MP D2:LoD has always been like this. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see it.

Mods (PoD/PD2) have shown us a vision of what D2:LoD could look like. And no, I don’t think PoD/PD2 are perfect either. I’m just saying, Vanilla LoD has obvious design flaws that make it unfun to play multiplayer. P1 loot by force and you are competing against P5+ players who are organized. You not only have no chance at 99 leaderboard, you will also have no chance at gearing unless you grind over 500 hours minimum per league. (Hardcore mode)

The issue isn’t one thing. Increasing the base loot from P1 to P3 for example wouldn’t fix the issue. Because another issue would arise. The issue is the item system itself. It’s either too rare or too common. The dynamic comes from the “corruption” system that PoD/PD2 has. You can find a shako or whatever slightly easier BUT that doesn’t mean your done with that item slot. You get to make the choice of corruption. It’s not the exact idea either. It could be many things. But that bridge between finding your BiS and finding your BiS and being able to “slam” it. So it feels good because you are finding items, BUT you can also make them better through gambling/risk.

5

As it stands, online play allows you to trade with others, group up if/when you need to, and PvP. It is an official, non-hacked, no cheats, copy of your heroes. It is a bit like printed money, it is universally accepted because everyone trusts the issuer, the central bank. Or in this case, Blizzard.

Single Player characters are stored on your PC, and they are hackable, editable, corruptible and volatile (you can delete or lose them). More importantly, you can give yourself anything in the game in minutes. For example, the choice is, “do I run Hell Countess a million times, or do I simply edit the save file and give myself a high rune?”. Considering that each time you loot the Countess, the game on your computer simply rolls a dice, in total isolation, without awareness of any other computer or any other hero, there is no difference in any measurable metric, but only in the odds: when you loot the Countess your odds are exceedingly low, when you edit the save game files your odds are 1.

Therefore, IMO, Single Player is a joke, a test bed to try things on maybe, a simulation, until and unless you can
(a) take your SP heroes and play online with others (eg Private Servers), and
(b) someone vouching that your SP heroes have not been edited, so it is a fair play ground for all participants

6

Fair enough, So I guess what I’m saying is…

If they do consider making changes, it won’t be as simple as P3 base loot, etc…

There really needs to be an intricate system added like the mods. PD2 for example, has P5 loot as the baseline, but they also have a Worldstone Shard to corrupt items and an actual endgame. So our characters might seem more powerful, but there is actual content to challenge that extra power. I feel like the item system in the mods is better than vanilla because of this added depth of corruption. It feels better to find more stuff and be able to “slam” it, rather than play for 12 hours and maybe find one item and not be able to slam it.

EDIT: Really, I think Blizzard should add there own mod that is inspired by PD2/PoD. It will be funny when this mod attracts more attention than vanilla D2R. Vanilla D2R honestly is just nostalgia. I have been 1-90 on every class so many times, baal baal baal baal baal, then solo farm, trade, yada yada… I want something else, BUT I want that something else to be Diablo 2. Not Path of Exile, not Diablo 4, not Diablo 3. I want Diablo 2 to offer more, by Blizzard. Add your own mod. Expand the game. Offer ladders in your mod. I bet it will do better than vanilla D2R.

EDIT2: At the very minimum, they need to re-evaluate logic for P1 vs P8. A treasure chest makes no sense to grant more loot on P8 than P1, because it takes no skill to open it. Therefore, chests should be the same loot on P1 than P8. That is one example. White monsters, when you gain more players it says “MINIONS” gain more strength. Maybe differentiate white monsters vs minions/uniques. White monsters should have a universal value (item wise, P1-P8) but minions gain more loot. XP shouldn’t be changed. More players = more xp, I’m fine with that… But P1, chests and white monsters should be re-evaluated to be universal, meaning P1-P8 is the same, only minions are effected.

7

But it takes more skill to get there. And there are 8 players to share.