I pre-ordered D3 and played on opening day back in 2012. I played the game for around a year before quitting in disgust. I didn’t pick the game back up until January 2016 when I bought the PS4 port. I have played an awful lot since then. I don’t play much now, cos the game is so unbalanced. I mean, my fave build cannot compete vs GOD HA cos the game is badly unbalanced. I can make up for some of the advantages, but not all. A really good player will always beat me with equal paragon if he or she is playing GOD HA. I can make up the 10 GR loss to GOD HA against most players as my skills and experience is better.
No GP will agree with you on this. I would trust their views over yours any day of the week! (no offence meant btw).
I see no problem with that either. I do it every season, pulling a 16 hour day on opening day typically. I have to, as a solo player, I can’t compete with group players on the journey to clvl 70, let alone doing the conquests/seasonal challenges. With that said, I managed rank 9 (maximum 1050 points) globally for the seasonal challenges on PS4 this season. Did curses conquest SOLO on both SC and HC. All of it solo. If I was in a group…
Tell that to the millions of smokers around the world who are harassed and financially punished by various governments.
I still desire SSF. I go for conquests at the beginning of the season on the PC. I’ve managed to hit top 3 in multiple categories solo. But the top group, well, they’re a group. And you can’t compete with that, no matter how good you are. And since Season 15, I’ve managed to hit Rank 1 on whatever class I was playing. But once again, I’ve found that solo, you have roughly 3 hours when you can compete, at which point you just can’t compete.
As an example, Rob, one of the most well known Diablo players, posted a video of his Season 23 start. I had an hour on him for getting my first 4 chapters done. They were still running Torment IV when I was running T10. They got their 6 piece set at roughly 2:40 into the season, and by 3:15 in the season, they managed to surpass my paragon level. They gained 21 levels from a GR47, 66-87, which roughly 3.3B XP. I went ahead and looked for a similar start where I ran a GR47. I went from 54 to 75, which is 2.3B XP. That’s a little more than 30% XP difference from Strength in Numbers (it’s roughly 45% more XP). Sure, different monsters, having +xp on their gear, etc. And because groups can play a higher difficulty than solo players, they’ll be getting 100% or more XP per rift & GR, just a half hour later. It all adds up and quickly puts you out of any relevancy for leaderboards unless you’re willing to put in 5x as much play time.
Season 22, I ran in a group on EU, and it was probably my best start of all time, despite hitting 70 roughly 45 minutes later than the top players. I managed to be the first player to clear a GR70 or above, and was 14 GR levels above the top 4 player group, and 30 GR levels compared to the top solo leaderboard. And on Asia, where I ran solo, yet had a faster 1-70, and never really ran into any snags, I was 300 paragon behind compared to my EU grouped counterpart. That was the same season start strategy, and I wasn’t any luckier on EU. Groups just make that big of a difference.
Exactly. I am a firm believer that the seasonal challenges LBs should be changed to solo only. That’ll sort the men from the boys. Conquests too. With that said, I think it would be far too difficult to set up a system for this. The easiest way would be SSF and group seasonal challenges LBs.
yeah can play 5x more, but there’s only a limited number of hours in the day. If they are doing 4 man groups for 10-12 hours, there is no way I can compete!
Yup, I can imagine this. it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that your GR clears were outperforming the group players either - I’ve seen you play and you’re a top notch player. Not all players are created equally, but most of them make up for crappiness by grouping up. I know many would disagree with this comment, but I will 100% stand by it.
As to cheating etc, I was, until recently, a member of a very large D3 PS4 Facebook group. What a toxic environment. In the end, I was warned by the admin that it was unacceptable to call out cheats that were posting their blatant cheating escapades and that it was “bullying”. I snorted the drink I was drinking through my nose and told the admin where to go and left the group.
The problem is, you can’t call out cheating. It’s against the rules of the forum. I know for a fact that one of the most well known Diablo players is a cheater, who uses third party programs, including bots. I managed to catch part of their stream, and recorded it, when they mistakenly had some overlays up, including a map hack, as well as bots running for them. They’ve never been banned. So yeah, I don’t trust for one moment the ban waves are doing more than a cursory job.
The whole “just report them” doesn’t do squat. The same thing with reporting cheats. I’ve reported exploits before that still exist within the game. And I’m not talking about clever use of game mechanics, or even bugs like XP with Set Dungeons or Custerian Wristguards where a player could mistakenly find the bugs fairly easily. I’m talking about things you have to go out of your way for, and that no sane human would ever try. They just never get fixed. And this is all on the PC.
On the console, forget about it. I still hold a grudge that you have to wait 30 seconds for an act to end in a group in campaign mode. This makes Sprinter/Speed Racer so much more difficult. This is something that’s existed since the very first release of the game on the console, and should have been one of the very first bugs they caught in QA, as it’s a highly visible bug.
I’m pretty sure I can guess which well known Diablo player you are talking about too. If only we could send PMs on these forums…
at least PC version of the game gets some anti-cheat love from Blizzard. On consoles, we are 100% ignored. And they want us to buy D2R lol…
as per Nick, apparently Blizzard didn’t do any of the design or dev for porting D3 to consoles. It was done by a 3rd party company. That would explain the mess we have, and Blizzard’s unwillingness to fix issues. They obviously didn’t do any QA on the console ports.
Can I just clear something up. As BehindTimes mentioned something.
The “jester” guy is the only one who can mod gear into Seasons…he gave a copy of his character to a friend and they fell out and the friend then used Save Wizard to clone that multiple times.
This is why there are loads of people in Seasons with modded gear because from the one guy who modded Save Wizard has been used to clone to other PSN accounts.
The original guy who modded has said he regrets giving his friend a clone of the modded toon and won’t be doing that again.
Thus unless the original guy does that again in future seasons or reveals to the mass how he did then only he is able to do this and it will not become more frequent.
Given the little knowledge I got from the guy I seriously doubt anyone else will do what he did.
Thus whilst modded gear on PS4 in Seasons is now possible it is only possible via one guy who has had 15 years of serious experience in the modding community.
Point I’m trying to make is I do not see Seasons being massively compromised in the future because of this work the one guy did.
Have a look at LB’s on PS, Switch. You make your own determination by what you are seeing. From what I see on Xbox, I see most players use it. So my own personal experience is leading me to this conclusion. And a majority could easily be represented as 51% of players since it is a majority. Since xbox is most the secure of all the consoles, it is easily assumed that most players on other consoles have a higher numbers that exploit. It is not a 100% based assumption, but without going out and buying a new console to see, it is a logical assumption.
Assumptions can have their place… they are still assumptions. As do the anecdotal observations.
People’s impressions…
Not saying they’re untrue, cause I haven’t researched it to be able to claim what is fact… just that there can be a variety of assumptions and anecdotal experiences, possibly even biases, depending who you ask.
The more secure platform having less cheating seems to be a reasonable assumption to me.
My logical assumption is based upon the given information, aka looking at leaderboards and seeing many perfectly rolled ancients and/or primals. Some of which are fully primaled within two weeks. Not to say, everyone is cheating when looking at the leaderboards, but I still believe the majority of the players do use it and if you asked the most consistent players, which I have, they agree nearly all top level players do so. Most of them believe all the top players do.
It is more the path of least resistance as many people do not wish to farm thousands of bounties if they can get it done with a few hundred. Without any actual numbers it isn’t factual, but there is a hard inclination pointing to it.
We’d need to know the total number of players for a % too… is that clear from the leaderboards? Maybe it shows every single player and can be counted or are some players not on the leaderboard?
These points seem to describe a causal relationship between being at top of the leaderboard and the cheating, at least in many cases. I think we’ve seen this point being made before, just presented from other angles.
Perhaps it is fairer to say most players at the top of the console leaderboards have got there by cheating, rather than most console players are cheating (accepting the leaderboard observations presented). Is PC different?
You can tell via Paragon as a good way of people botting on PC. There was someone with 7 or 8 primals on a WD I saw on there a few weeks ago. Over 5.6k Para
Some of them are more noticeable than others, but there were also people who were around 3-4k.
how can you tell how many paragon players have? is that only a feature in PC? Console players have zero clue unless its someone you grouped with and that is only during the moment of time you are grouped with them. Unless they are on your friends list and it should how many paragon if the character they are playing is 70+
If you don’t mind scrolling for 9 1/2 hours, you can check the achievement leaderboards to get a player count. The friend with the lowest # of achievement points (20) is at position ~180k. I will admit, let’s not consider people under level 70 here. By the time you get Chapter IV accomplished for Haedrig’s Gift, you’re at minimum going to have roughly 300 achievement points. I would guess that let’s say 600 is the bare minimum for a player who’s in it for more than GR70. Roughly 25000 players on the PlayStation have 700 achievement points, and 40000 have roughly 600 achievement points. Obviously not all of them are going to be the same class.
EDIT
I looked it up, and 540 is really the lowest you can have for GR70+. (Yes, you can have fewer, but I doubt anyone doing GR100+ can’t do a sub 6 minute T6 rift). And this pretty much requires you don’t do any boss bounties. On the PC, there is one player who managed to hit GR146 with only 600 achievement points, albeit most people in the top 10 have 700+.
Interesting one there… automated play vs actual play… tricky to tell the difference perhaps, except in those instances you seem to suggest - where some have taken automation well further than what actual play could achieve in the time given.
There are more players botting on PC then might be apparent.
So lets say I work in IT, working from home and I start bot on my personal pc for D3 or any other game. Here is the thing mostly you will first get a message form like a GM, maybe asking about hours played or whatever.
Since you sitting there but working on your laptop you can catch the message and answer and they won’t suspect you of botting any more.
Leveled fishing in vanilla wow this way quite a few times. Got a message from GM sometimes after fishing in same spot for like 8 hours straight.
So don’t believe botting don’t exist just because someone don’t get banned for it.
When looking at a player’s gear 2 weeks into season, I am also inclined to believe a person has likely cheated for their gear if half of it is primal or nearly perfect ancients. Does it mean they cheated? From your posts in other topics, I am led to believe you wouldn’t label said players as cheaters. So which is it?
As far as top players go…
The erroneous logic flows as follows:
Cheating for gear or any cheat provides an advantage; said advantage COULD be used to out perform other players; therfore all or most top performing players must cheat.
See the error? It is asserting an assumption, based on possibility, as fact.
Some players understand builds and mechanics far better than most, is that not a possible advantage that could explain how well they perform?
I have heard from numerous people, " if you are clearing higher than GR level x, then you are cheating, because it is impossible not to die in HC". I then look at their gear on leaderboards and laugh hysterically when I see their monk not running harmony, no secondary resists, no diamonds in chest/pants, running only 2500 vitality, and no sustain. Then I understand why they think it is impossible to survive at gr level x or higher. They simply do not understand defenses and/or the math behind defense.
Is it more likely that there is a higher concentration of cheaters appearing at the top of the leaderboard? Sure. Does that mean most or all? No. It is easy to jump to false conclussions when one thinks they understand, but they really don’t.
The one guy who modded Seasons on PS4 for S24 annoyed those that could mod previous Seasons (they kept this quiet) so now you have the boards awash with modders because the other modders have come out the woodwork.
Seasons could be modded around S18 but was kept quiet by modders until this Season.
Seasons are utterly goosed on PS4 from now on just like Switch.