At the time when D2 and D2:LoD were released, he was the President of Blizzard North and the Designer of both games. If you enjoy either game or have a desire to play D2R, he deserves a certain amount of credit, irrespective of his later accomplishments or lack thereof in your mind.
Iāve tried to keep up with the daily cap to progression in magic legends the open beta.
After 1 week of grinding hard in the alpha (was only given a week of that phase) I just canāt do it anymore.
The grind has got to go! Iām fine with seeing myself out, tooā¦
Multiplayer usually spoils your progression due to trading (D2) or more rewards (D3).
Hence, the two should be equally good.
Some people want to progress fast
The problem with progressing fast is thatā¦
They want to progress fast so that they can stop worrying about progressing.
So that they can enjoy the other parts of the game.
When there are no other parts of the game. It is grinding for grinding sake.
This is a terrible idea.
How you do that?
In aRPGs there are two phases:
1] Improving your character
2] Doing the endgame stuff after your build is finished
There are players that prefer 1], or 2], or enjoy both equally.
Regarding 2]:
How do you finish your build when you can continue to improve your character?
Low level dueling would be my example for D2:
I could find an absolute set of items that an absolute level no further character could use, and utilize them in pvp dueling.
Not exactly something I would consider as belonging to an A-RPG.
But, having an āarcade PvPā mode, where you could make a character, and select whatever gear you wanted, and then have some āarenaā to PvP in (that arena might be the entire game world in theory), could be perfectly fine. Would do no harm to the rest of the game.
I believe WoW had PvP tournament servers that worked like this once.
Same droprates. Same power/kill speed etc.
Not rocket science. Just balance solo and multiplayer equally.
Part of which includes; actually being able to finish a build. In a reasonable timeframe.
No silly āendless paragonā, or even worse, āendless gear scalingā 
Perhaps not.
Or perhaps that is where the action can really utilize the rpg dynamics to make for some really entertaining times. That donāt require a lifetime and a day to experience / enjoy and appreciate.
At some point your average time for upgrade will be so big, youād practically finished your build.
Yeah, easy to say, practically impossible to do it without one being better.
Where I am lost is to why there are those that continue to retain this idea that there needs to be an average time for upgrade being so big.
It doesnāt hurt. Some people would farm with months to get +1 level equivalent of stats.
Thatās why I often say everyone has a different grind tolerance.
I disagree. It does hurt.
It is unnecessary to provide the illusion of progression when it really is null and void just for the sake of convincing others that they have something to work for still?
This is very true.
Your old school cats will have very little tolerance for it.
Your new school cats with no bills to pay will have all the time in the world to embrace it.
Well, you give the hamsters a wheel. How often they ride it is their problem.
Iād ride it for a few hours a day (lazy hamster), others would switch with their room mates even to keep the wheel going (account sharers).
As long as they are within a few % of each other, nobody will care. Goal should be that multiplayer were those few % better of course, as to not disincentivize multiplayer.
But if groups could do a GR150 in 10 minutes, while a solo player could do it in 10 minutes and 10 seconds, at the same gear and skill lvl, that difference would not be a problem.
(not condoning the existence of GR150s :P)
Nobody says balancing is easy. But still the goal you should be aiming for. Similar with build balancing. Have a wide range of builds that are close enough to each other in power to offer some end-game diversity.
And not like D3 where Blizzard are apparently unable to get two builds to be within a staggering 10000% power difference of each otherā¦
That difference is a mere .02%
Bad example 
Iād say we need an AI for this (no joke). It could be done in such a way to deliver varied rewards to the players - more loot for noobs, and less for the pros exploiting multiplayer strengths.
10/600 sec = 1.66%?
But the goal should not be to make ānoobsā as strong as good players. Then you take away player skill.
When talking about balance I definitely mean balance between players at the same skill lvl and all that. Nothing wrong with a skilled player performing much better than an unskilled one.
As for āexploiting multiplayer strengthsā; you balance that by making monsters stronger in multiplayer, so players have some challenging content to use those multiplayer strengths against.
That said, imo; the best way to design something like GRifts would be;
Have 10 key dungeon lvls with increasing reward and difficulty.
Then have 10 more key dungeon lvls with only increasing difficulty, no additional reward. Making those only a place to test your power.
That helps against making the gearing speed difference between players too extreme. And also helps a bit against solo/multiplayer imbalances.
D3s endless scaling in difficulty and reward was a mistake. Cap the rewards much earlier, where more players can be part of it. That also makes more builds feel viable. D2 at least got that part right (it just missed the optional higher difficulty).
You take away factors you canāt balance for.
If player A gets X loot in solo, but 1.1 * X loot in multi due to he and his buddies exploiting strengths of multiplayer, the AI will cut that 10% bonus for player A.