Definition of ‘cookie cutter’
If you describe something as having a cookie-cutter approach or style, you mean that the same approach or style is always used and not enough attention is paid to individual differences.
This is actually blizzards 101 goto idea for games now. They cookie cutter EVERYTHING. This is one of the only games with true uniqueness to it and it is one my favorite games of all time. However, it has had a problem ever since 1.09d…the battle.net closed network programming.
Ever notice that with 95% chance to hit you can still miss 10x in a row? Ever see enemies teleport to different locations after some time? Ever fire a fireball and enemies in the group didn’t even get hit at all? This is all due to predictive networking instead of lockstep. Lockstep is what PoE uses and it is why the game works so well and doesn’t have these problems.
This is the primary reason the game will fail… It is extremely frustrating (especially for people playing hardcore) to just die from an enemy hitting you across the map that is nowhere near you. When the game comes out, don’t even play online because it will be a complete waste of time unless they fix this…
This literally translates to “Diablo 2 is too difficult and other games are easy. please make Diablo 2 easier”.
No thanks. I love how much more difficult D2 is than D3. D3 is a literal button mash with zero thinking. D2 you have to constantly strategize and stop to farm better gear to move forward. Im not saying its super hard in general, its just much harder than games like PoE and D3 which you can turn your brain off and play.
The netcode for positioning in the game does suck.
Toggle run/walk more often, that will help with the character position desynchronizations. Picking up/interacting with items and of course teleporting also update your position.
Yes, netcode of d2/d2r has problems. But your post has close to zero technical insights and basically comes down to: d2 does something bad, poe does it better.
Why is it about lockstep? what is lockstep? do you know what it is?
What is predictive networking? Why would it lead to the effects you describe?
I really think you op is still too shallow for this kind of discussion.
If you just want to complain about the results, its fine. But leave the technical stuff out.
Or provide more information, if you know more. But this hybrid post doesnt help anybody.
Non-technical people get confused and technical people will just frown upon it.
I only saw one obvious desync during both betas. Act 2 town, trying to walk over to Elzix to gamble, the server saw me stuck behind a wall. I just walked where my merc was, did a little moon walking, gave the wall a WIIIIDE berth and it was fine.
When in doubt, avoid walking near walls everyone! Diablo 2 likes to think you’re a wall hugger first and foremost. If you walk too close too a wall edge and take a turn, you’re almost guaranteed to rubberband all the way back to that wall after about 4 seconds.
I have never had issues with the playability of D2 whether PvP or PvM so to me this is a stupid complaint. PoE has many positives but control over your character overall feels so janky and unpolished compared to a 20+ year old game which feels very smooth and accurate.
Simply put:
Lockstepping is a client to server to client determination to prove the character is where it actually is on the client. It is very network intensive (relatively speaking compared to a “client predictive” setup), and can cause a lot of stuttery lag.
Client Predictive network design is where everything happens immediately and is sent to the server for authentication to prove it happened and it isn’t guaranteed to work, resulting in rubberbanding/desyncs.
Advanced explanation:
Lockstep:
Character casts fireball → Sends to server the information → Server proves it happened → Server determines if the fireball will in fact hit the target in the path the player sent the fireball → Sends this information back to client → Fireball hits target and kills it
Client Predictive:
Character casts fireball → It hits target → This information is sent to server → Server proves whether or not it can happen → Server determines the target has moved → Sends to client → Fireball hits but does nothing
I never had rubberbanding in D3.
Does that mean that it uses lockstepping?
Does it mean that it uses an improved version of client predictive network?
or is there a third option?
It could be a homebrew design. Blizzard’s known to build in house. But it could be lockstepping as well. I didn’t play nearly extensively enough to determine this.
It will fail but for other reasons. Being primarily (except for party fun runs) a HC player from day 1, I learned many years ago not to trust online only games. If I play online, it will be using the most defensive build possible, one that can survive a DC lol. Yeah, you can call this cheating, but I call BS investing thousands of hours and losing everything due to server side problems. Been there done that, multiple time, for years lol. Not anymore. This was fully resolved in D3, because it’s so casual that you can RIP and fully rebuild your char in 1 day tops. Still some ragequit not as often nowadays.
Hmm, I think you only have 2-3 builds per class if pushing max efficiency. It’s almost as bad as D3. 1 Speed farmer, 1 PVP and 1 for Ubers, what uniqueness are we talking about?
You want true uniqueness and no predictive networking while still having the same D2 environment? Then it’s either D2 Reign of Terror GD Mod or Path of Diablo. The former is currently my fav version of D2 as it has the best QoL, massive diversity (over 100 class combinations and thousands of viable builds), crazy cool graphics (imo, better than D2R), a ton of new bosses and secret areas to explore. I ripped twice today for being t00 curious and getting oneshot by bosses I’ve never seen before lol
I like the mods you are mentioning, very good stuff…
However, in this remake, none of them will work and never will work because of the code changes. Blizzard has already stated this, you can only mod very few set things. Completely useless and moving backwards.
I actually played the grim dawn mod a TON and it was great. Love that you mentioned that one, i think most people have no idea…
I agree, if more D2 players gave it a try, this could easily become the next most popular remaster of the game. The only reason it’s not is due to the lack of online economy. But even that could be fixed if the demand is high.
Same with Activision, they just keep making copies of COD with the same textures and similar guns and similar maps and very little difference. And each year the game sucks, each new addition gets worse and worse and worse. Until they are forced to make a new batch because everyone is losing interest.
I’d say Bo3 and Modern warfare were both new batches. but Infinite warfare, WW2, Bo4, and then COD mobile as well as Cold war and vanguard are just copies that suck and are a complete waste of time.
They will just keep making more copies.
I know I’m not necessarily keeping it relevant to Blizzard but the main idea was that they and Activision aren’t so different, especially since they partnered
With regional servers. Now with players from around the world in the same game space, I’m a bit worried about network bandwidth once all the servers are hit with every Necro in the world having 40 summons up at the same time…
Remember, it takes 0.2 seconds for a ping to circle the globe in a single optical fiber - and that’s not including routing time…
