What was the average computer system back when Diablo 2 released? A Pentium II/III or AMD K6/Athlon ~600Mhz? What, 128MB RAM?
Yeah, I don’t think they had people running 8 clients on one PC in mind back then, or even 5 years after the game released.
You’re looking for new features and solutions to problems that are possible with todays technology in a two+ decades old game. You’d probably have better luck selling bacon to a pig farmer.
The computing power of the average PC was skyrocketing in the last 2-3 decades (Moore’s law). I wasn’t a player of the old D2 but I’m confident that the average gaming PC could run multiple instances easily a few years after D2 release.
Video games like D2 were designed for the average home PC, they didn’t even require special hardware like 3D accelerators. Higher end PCs could probably run multiple instances even on the release day of the game.
Keep in mind processors back then were monolithic. One core. SMT didn’t exist until a year after the game came out, and even then it was restricted at first to Itanium server chips, followed by the first Pentium 4 processors a short time after. But even with SMT, it was still a single core doing the work. SMT was mainly a solution to solving, or at least alleviating the wait-state problem of only having a single core/thread while trying to run multiple tasks.
So why do you want to do it then?
I wasn’t trying to imply that, but I guess I could have worded it a little more specifically. That’s why I didn’t understand your previous reply.
I was complaining that there’s all this pushback against /pX, but “mysteriously” none of the critics seem to have a problem with multiboxing for extra player count.
It would give you /pX critics more credibility to actively speak out against multiboxing /pX as well. So far, I’ve never seen it. Until then it just looks like selective gatekeeping of an existing feature.
I don’t like it, but I can’t stop it nor is there any rule/law/tos against it. Doesn’t mean that I like it anymore than /pX. Multiplayer is the mode to play with other people and not to simulate them.
You can get a lot of value out of only 3 clients and PCs specs reached the required capacity long long ago.
Climbing up to 5, 7 or more clients on one PC is obviously more demanding but my guess would be at most a decade after D2 release not 20+ years. The original system requirements seem to mention optional support for graphics hardware acceleration too that started to become popular in the early 2000s - support like that can make it easier for the CPU depending on how good the implementation is. Old games like D2 wasted a lot of CPU time in software renderers.
Some longtime D2 players probably thought about multi-account setups during PC and laptop upgrades too. Keeping old machines instead of selling them for pennies can help in running multiple instances, it may be more comfortable than using only one strong PC. In 2010 even an average laptop had the specs to run at least 2-3 D2 clients and many of us had a laptop in addition to a stronger PC even before 2010.
Multiplayer game modes are played to have fun together but that is possible only in a well designed game.
In good multiplayer games the reward is higher efficiency that can be achieved only through close cooperation and well designed fun interactions. The designers try to weed out interactions that could turn strangers, team mates against each other. Multiplayer like that would be difficult to “simulate” and the players of those games don’t even want to simulate anything, they want other real players on their team instead of idle accounts or stupid AI.
In D2 you reach higher efficiency by having multiple players in the game as far from you as possible (split MF). It’s often easier to achieve that by coordinating idle accounts instead of a bunch of random strangers who do their own thing and in worst case compete for the best farming locations or try to grab my loot. In some cases those rando players aren’t even available, for example in case of a late night farming session. Their actions (join/leave/etc) and their presence are unpredictable in a wrong way.
You’re not much better either, your twitch VOD’s showed how racist you are with your comments ingame.
I used the term “bimbo” to respond to someone harassing me in game. There is nothing racial about that. My vods are still up on my twitch vodkahangover anyone can see them
Look up what this word’s definition, and even if someone harass you with racist words, no reason for you to put yorself on the same level… it’s still racist.
What racist word did i use?? Bimbo is not a racist word.
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bim·bo
/ˈbimbō/
noun
DEROGATORY•INFORMAL
an attractive but unintelligent or frivolous young woman.
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What word are you saying i said was racial?
You shouldnt make up stuff because you lost an argument bro. This is exactly why we need a block from game option to get rid of drama like this
Then why are you worried?
This is just BS with no reflection in reality. Design of the game has barely anything to do with having fun together. I still have friends I met +1ing each other for hours fighting for spot in L2.
Truth is if you interested in playing with others, you will have no problem finding bunch of people you enjoy playing with.
Would also like to address this bizarre idea that there are only bunch of griefers in this game. Not sure about this and previous ladder, but vast majority of people i met playing this game for 20+ years was friendly and helpful. Maybe then problem is you, not everybody else?
and you can get kickout for not playing latest FOTM build…
I play both online and offline, but lately i dont have as much time as i would want to so i wanted to choose one and stop playing other mode. I use offline for some research on rune drops and i need players 7/8 for that for testing. Stable 7/8 whole time. I wanted to move my test to online and ditch offline mode to not waste time there, but public games are not that good for that. Split mf game or baalruns are great for classis xp/mf/runes finding but often people leave or there is players 5 or 6 for some time which would mess with my experiment. I cant also do full run for my tests when people leave too early.
From these reasons i was curious if i could do it with own mules. It would not be as comfortable but still would do what i need. But anyway, i wont multibox online because ram need for 7 games running is way too high. So i will have to figure out something else.
If you are curious what do i test, i am trying to get data for best method to find runes. I test something nobody does farm actualy but i had quite good results with that so i want to know if its truly that good or i was just lucky.
I mean if people had a PX utitility they would not as reliant on botters/ wholesale spammers.
You have a myopic perspective thats seeded and based in controlling someones peace and enjoyment
No…you cant help other people by giving things away or rushing them to hell. You also cannot show people what you have gotten by grinding the game patiently
right now i’m struggling to turn on the game because i have no one to play with. but i guess everyone WANTS to play alone right? …
I guess no one wants to compete over the loot with you. Blame game design. MF’ing games have always been mostly private, nothing has changed there. It makes no sense to compete over farming locations and loot when you can avoid competition.
Your best bets are levelling games and public baal runs. Give people free rush service or host a baal run if all you miss is some form of interaction with others. Rush service is fun when I’m not in the mood for MF’ing but still want to enjoy the D2 atmosphere.
You are not limited to playing only D2. When I want to have fun with others I play a game with well designed multiplayer. Mostly shooters, some of them (like Deep Rock Galactic) have RPG elements.
An online game mode can be successful only if it can be played in public games with random strangers without serious issues. D2 is nothing like that so most people spend 99% of their playtime in private MF games. If we have to rely on a friend list to play multiplayer then there is no network effect - an online multiplayer game mode like that has no chance to become popular and successful.
This has nothing to do with me or specifically the D2 playerbase.
Pick 100 random people on the street and 5-10 percent of them will be sadists, psychpaths or something similar that makes good griefer material. It’s the same in video games. If your game mode enables their behaviour (like one sided hostile) then it can easily become a griefer’s paradise. Imagine a single sadist hopping public games for a couple hours in the evening only to mess with other players in various ways.
In practice griefers aren’t a problem in D2 because most players spend 99% of their playtime in private MF games (because of bad multiplayer design that includes a multitude of reasons in addition to griefers). Griefers obviously want to do maximum damage so they are probably after hardcore characters. In softcore the biggest damage I can imagine is XP loss with characters that are close to level 99 but most of us don’t bother with levelling up to 99 so griefers in public baal runs is likely to be a problem for a small number of players.
Many of my posts describe the differences between D2 online mode (mostly private MF games) and other online video games in which players spend most of their time in public games with strangers. There are a lot of differences, the way those video games deal with griefers is only one aspect of multiplayer design.
Sounds much more civilised than giving anyone (including psychopaths/sadists) the ability to hostile and kill my PvE characters anywhere including my own public games.
I don’t see a problem with hosts deciding how to run their games. If they want someone with a FOTM build they will find someone with a FOTM build. You should be able to find other games where the hosts goals align with yours. If you can do it in D2 private games with a friend list then you should be able to do it in a video game with lots of public games and a large playerbase as well.