Purists will kill this game early with their fear of change

Diablo II: Resurrected General Discussion
100

I never said that, so cut the BS yourself, dude.

Sure it can be better! It’s a 20years old game! But you guys are pretending, that you exactly know, how to do that. And that’s the real BS in these forums! People are yelling about personal loot, but have never thought about statistical consequences, altering the game experience.

In fact you guys have no idea, what made this game so addicting and you have no clue, for what reasons people still play it TODAY.

Let me elaborate only on personal loot for a second and why it changes the game more than you might think. First of all, the total amount of drops has to be the same as for shared loot. If you have more drops, you have more runes, means more OP runewords. → changes the ladder completely!

But if the total amount of drops stays the same, there is a subtle problem with personal loot. Idk, if you played D2 long enough to know, but in general the problem with random drops is: on average, your loot is equally good every day you play. BUT the longer you play the game, the longer become the periods, in which you don’t find a good item. That’s a simple statistical consquence, expressed by the variance. Now in singleplay, this is annoying, because when the variance hits you in the face, you might not see a single high rune for a month. Now think of that: Not only the drops are random, but also, who in the party it gets distributed to. It’s simple combinatorics, that in an 8 player game, you will have even longer periods, in which you don’t see a good item. That might leave you without any good items for 1-2 weeks or so, even if you play like a mad man.

With shared loot, you see every drop and for every single drop, you have the chance to grab it. That’s a completely different motivation, than being completely unable to change your faith, not to get items.

So don’t talk about changes, that improve the game,

!

And there is a very simple solution to all of this. Let the release version untouched! Let the devs play around with changes, when they have the time to do so and let them implement some changes on PTRs in the 2., or 3. ladder. Make it step by step and NOT like the D3 devs did it with D3. They rushed 10 different concepts about PvP, Skill system, Itemization, Inferno mode, Horadrics cube, … and forfeited all of them again, because none of it worked well! Don’t pretend, that you knew, if these changes work!

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101

I have and even posted such. Also, I know it will change multiplayer group dynamics. Some will say for the better while some will say for the worse.

This is not true. The average frequency will be the same. There is the perception that this is true, but it is due to initially considering more items good, but as you get further along in end game that list tends to narrow or good items that you already have are considered slightly less good, and the missing good items become more valuable.

102

So what’s good about getting worse drops for a longer period of time? (even though an average, you get the same amount and rarity of drops ofc) It just is demotivating!

And this is not a negligible effect… in physics, the very same thing for dirt particles in water is called “Brownian Motion”, which you can easily see under a microscope. It has nothing to do with a “believe”. I mean, there was is a novel price awarded for the experimental discovery… this is not my weird phantasy, just to argue against changes. People, who say, personal loot has no negatives, are just plain wrong. The longer you play, the worse this will get and people would just be suffering.

Ofc the average is the same. But the VARIANCE increases, as you keep playing. → Have a look at “random walks” or “Brownian Motion”.

103

I have not said that. I could be wrong, but you and many others have not said that FFA loot has no negatives. It is a personal opinion where there are pros and cons for each

There is a certain drop rate for a good item. That rate does not change if at end game farming the same areas/monsters.

Let’s say on average a good item drops once in 500 total drops on average. The probability P of not getting a good item drop among n total drops is

P = (1 - 1/500) ^ n

You will notice that this formula does not have a time factor or any information about prior drops.

This is not the same as Brownian motion. It is a binomial distribution.

Are you trying to get at the relative variance around the expected mean decreases of a binomial distribution as n increases. That is true. However, that variance does not alter the binomial frequency per se.

104

I know, man! :smiley: That’s exactly what I said. ON AVERAGE, you get the same loot. But there are periods, in which (by chance) you do not get good loot. Dry spells, in which you can’t find items. The longer you play, the longer these periods get.

I mean, read my post above, everything is explained there… It is not about the droprates. NOT about the average.

See, let’s say we farm a Boss and he has a chance of p[good loot] to drop something valuable. With that, I mean something, that does not get vendored for example. Now on average, you do see a good item every 1/p runs, right? So the expectation value (theoretical average) for the number of runs, you do not see a good item, is

N_0 = 1/p - 1

Because on the 1/p-th run, you will on average get a good items again.

But there is the variance (the error of the expectation value)

Var(N) = <(N_0 - N)^2>

Where N is just the total number of runs, you do. Notice the square! This quantity is always positive and it increases with the number of runs (so with the time played, as long as you grind mobs). The error of the expectation value gets bigger, as the number of runs increases. This causes the expectation value to predict drops in a short amount of runs worse and worse, statistically. This means, even though, you do always have the same chances for good loot, the time, in which you will not find a good item, will increase with time / runs.

Also the periods, in which you find GG items in a row increases of course. But in an 8 Players game, with personal (randomly distributed) loot, we get into the regime, where the periods of bad loot might become of the order of half a ladder, considering that they are going to be 3 months only.

Now tell me, how motivating is it, to maybe have a GG ladder, where you find 6 high runes and then the next ladder, you don’t even see one end-game item?

I am not completely against changes, I also have a long list of changes, which I would like. But most of the suggestions in these forums are way bigger changes, than most people think.

105

This still follow the binomial distribution. The longer you play, you also have periods where good drops cluster together.

Total Item drops (n) Average Expected Drop Percentage ± 3 SD [~99.7% probabilty that each case of sample size n will fall within this range, SD = standard devaition which is the sqaure roo of the variance)
100 12.5% ± 10.7%
1000 12.5% ± 3.4%
10000 12.5% ± 1.1%
100000 12.5% ± 0.3%
1000000 12.5% ± 0.1%

This example is based on 1 in 8 chance but not 1 in 500 but it illustrates what I am saying. You are absolutely correct that the longer you play, you will experience more “droughts” but you will also experience more positive clustering.

So in this example let’s compare 10 100 item drops versus a single 1000 drops.

The standard deviation(whci is the square root of the variance) for any 100 drops will be rather variable. Sometimes in 100 drops you get way more (and way less) than you expect on average. If you look at 1000 drops the relative variance is less.

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106

True! And that’s not at all a problem, if the droughts are not too long. But if they get to the order of a ladder, it is a big problem, because people will have incredibly good ladders and incredibly bad ladders.

And now all I am saying is: that’s a huge change, considering, that this was never the case in D2.

107

The primary way mathematically (or computationally) to decrease the potential drought length is to increase the drop rate or to put in a pity timer. Increasing the drop rate probably is taboo; however, I suspect that they will do this eventually.

In D2 currently, you have item duping and rampant botting that has increased the supply of items to trade. Without this (or in the case where this is significantly reduced), the item economy will have far more limited supply and there will be inflation in item value.

108

Yes, you are right, but that raises the average, so you will have way more good items in the game, because thousands and thousands of people play the game and there the average works perfectly again. And now theitem values differ drastically from original D2 and there are way too many OP runewords. -> huge change

109

Well, I think a real inflation is not going to happen, because the currency drops (runes) change with the item drops. But it is a difference, if there are 100 Grief runewords, or 1000 Griefs, as the Barbarians and Smiters would take over the game :smiley:

110

It depends on what D2 trade economy is being discussed. If it is a current “closed” trade economy with little duping and botting (primarily legitimate players), the trade economy in D2R will be similar in D2.

If the particular D2 trade economy has lots of duping and botting, then D2R will result in a supply side shortage in comparison, raising prices (assuming that D2R can eliminate duping and decrease bots).

111

OMFG I beat hell a few times, stop trying to undermine my arguments with that excuse because you have no real argument other than no change bad i’m too old, everthing was perfect when i was a kid and it still is

112

I’d be OK with new things, balance changes, QoL changes, which they are already doing (shared stash), just no “core” gameplay changes. Don’t mess with PVP or FFA loot or how games are created and joined, etc.

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113

Hey carebear sorry ya not getting what ya want. But not changing to every whim for the casuals is not killing the game. This game has been going for 20 years and looks like it is going keep going strong for another 20. Hey D3 is active and D4. On day one I am sure you can be max level 40 with BIS gear with your pet monkey by your side and puprle butterfly flowing close behind. Then go into your Secret carebear unicorn fairytale land and eat some candy canes. Go to town brother and have fun.

114

Toxic purists already shining, looks like a very promising future for the game. D2 community atm is too small to be profitable for blizzard or worth investing time and money in, and if you get your way D2R will very quickly return to the same spot. So stop whining old man, change is good and no matter how good something was it can be better. I hope the devs will find a middleground for old and new players and not only listen to whiny old guys who think everything they had as kids was perfect

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115

Don’t play public games, if you ask me. If private games will be possible, then that’ll be a good time for certain.

These losers like this Heatcrusher guy aren’t worth the time and effort to play with. Let 'em play by themselves.

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116

20 years later, ppl still playing Diablo 2 and his “old mecanics”.

Purists could try to “calm down”, same for newcomers buddy.

The game is a masterpiece, mecanics are amazing. Only thing that is bad and hasnt aged well is the graphism, thanks god we got a remaster :+1:

Don’t worry, Diablo 4 is coming, full of QoL changes and stuff :ok_hand:

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117

20 years later like 20 people are playing the game and 10000 bots lol. The game is amazing but it has to get updates and changes in the remaster just like they did in the actual game. Im not even going to respond to the D4 thing anymore

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118

So fix bots ? D2R is supposed to be clean, so problem solved.

Nothing else need to changed, especialy the mecanics/gameplay.

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119

To anyone wanting drastic changes go post them in the D4 forums. This is a D2 remaster and not a remake.

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