How it will go down.

[Grug]

How it will go down.

As of late I've seen several threads debating myriad multiplayer and mechanic speculations. I'm going to sort them out into the most logical sorting I can think of. I don't claim to know everything available about Diablo 3, but I have read everything I found, including a few things other posters didn't know. Anyways, here I go.

Hardcore:
Hardcore vs. Softcore seems to be a rather intense controversy. SC players can't see the point of losing their characters in HC, while HC players like to think HC requires more skill and is more prestigious than SC. Personally, I'm with the SC players, but not the way you think.

The truth is, there isn't any difference between HC and SC. None. You could simulate the experience by playing Softcore and then quitting if you die. Not much point, hmm? If I were working at Blizzard, I would actually make HC into a different mode. HC players would receive double XP and 1.5x items compared to Softcore. The rapid advancement combined with items steadily lagging behind levels would encourage Hardcore players to play fast and loose, to push push push until they die. Part of the fun of Softcore is getting attached to your character, something that is contrary to the idea of Hardcore. While Softcore is like an RPG, Hardcore is supposed to be like an Arcade game. You play for the high score, and when you lose you start over. In this way the two modes are appreciably different and offer actual differences in play style.


PK
I really cannot comprehend why people defend PK. Blizzard has designed their game so contrary to PK, yet some still insist on its inclusion. I define PK as non-consensual Player versus Player gameplay, ie Ambushes, Ganking, or surprise encounters.

The entire idea of a PK appalls me. I can understand the motivation, certainly. When I played WoW, I too engaged in a bit of ganking. It is definitely enjoyable to crush a low-level player beneath your might. But I always had a rule that I would never camp someone more than three times. There comes a point where the thrill stops coming from exulting in your superiority and starts coming from simply ruining someone's day. I once had my 34 priest get chased by a level 60 rogue for a good Ten Minutes before being cut down, and the enemy continued to wait for me to return. The whole time I was asking myself if this person had nothing better to do. Is it really worth chasing one low-level player for ten minutes? If the answer is yes, then you are either incredibly bored or a griefer that shouldn't be a part of a community.

The second argument I hear is that surprise PvP encourages realism. That's fine! In a game like Age of Conan or WoW, it reminds you that you are in a persistent world, and it can really get the blood flowing. However, there is a limit. If all you want to do is fight monsters, then constantly getting interrupted by an axe in your spine is just annoying. Granted, one should expect to encounter other players in a known PvP zone, but ones of similar level that could be competed against. It is an unacceptable infringement on a player's right to play the game if they are attacked by a foe twice his or her level, or in a peaceful area like a starting zone.

Now, this all assumes you are playing in a persistent world where random encounters are part of the fun. But Diablo is different. It is an instanced game, and one designed for co-operation. How would you feel if you were playing, say, Super Mario, and another player randomly popped in and starting killing you? (I know it's a weird example but there aren't many games without explicit PvP included).

Blizzard has limited the number of players in a game because they want people playing WITH each other instead of just NEAR each other like in Diablo 2, where a level twelve group of three would be in the same game as a level 39 sorceress doing a baal run, a level 30 going through the durance of hate, and three others just trading in town. Diablo is not a persistent world game, so they want people to join a game to play that game instead of just using it as a space to do other things.

 

[MYK]

Re: How it will go down.

The truth is, there isn't any difference between HC and SC. None. You could simulate the experience by playing Softcore and then quitting if you die. Not much point, hmm? If I were working at Blizzard, I would actually make HC into a different mode. HC players would receive double XP and 1.5x items compared to Softcore. The rapid advancement combined with items steadily lagging behind levels would encourage Hardcore players to play fast and loose, to push push push until they die. Part of the fun of Softcore is getting attached to your character, something that is contrary to the idea of Hardcore. While Softcore is like an RPG, Hardcore is supposed to be like an Arcade game. You play for the high score, and when you lose you start over. In this way the two modes are appreciably different and offer actual differences in play style.

The whole point of D2 HC is to show that you can or can't play the game and beat it without a character death. Unless the framework is really different, simply making it easier(more exp/drops) would make it less satisfying.

When you die in SC: respawn in town. Go die getting your body or S&E and make a new game to try again. This is great, if there's a puzzle element and if tactics are required. Once you solve the puzzle, you can move forward. You get to do this in HC, too, but the cost of making the wrong tactical choice comes with a great penalty(Bye bye items & character) unless you're looted. But there's not a whole lot of real tactics and puzzle completion required in D2...

PK
I really cannot comprehend why people defend PK.

If someone chases you around, your character can: Leave, fight back, live, die.
Some pitfalls of D2 PK:
-In D2:LoD, living and dying is heavily based on your items. If someone charges your Necromancer with an ethereal maul loaded with carnage jewels, the necro will be reduced to a skinny guy on the floor. Get/Buy better gear than your opponent and the chances of him dying before you tilt in your favor.
-In a Perfect World® your hunter has to find you to kill you. Surprise, Blizzard, your players use your files against you! Every *hunter* has maphack, chicken and auto-rejuv. Chances are, if he's got this stuff, he's also loaded with purchased/botted gear. You will not win unless you've got a character of similar or better gear and/or a trick up your sleeve!
-Killing noobs. This is the "side effect" of going PKing: Because all of the real losers have hax, you really only manage to kill the noob/legit players that aren't cheating. Congrats, you've now got a realm full of "pros."

Fix those and I support PKing. I think it has the possibility of adding a lot to the game, if implemented soundly.

 

[Grug]

Re: How it will go down.

I fail to see how PK helps. Of course there should be PvP, but why should it happen without warning? If the games support only four players, is it really worth interrupting a group of three? Like I said, Blizzard is trying to make everyone in the same instance play together.

 

[Krugar]

Re: How it will go down.

The truth is, there isn't any difference between HC and SC. None. You could simulate the experience by playing Softcore and then quitting if you die. Not much point, hmm?

HC enforces this on you, instead of making it optional and dependent on your particular mood at the time. The whole point of this game mode is precisely to provide the same exact mechanism for softcore. No more no less. With the one and only exception we all know about.

If I were working at Blizzard, I would actually make HC into a different mode. HC players would receive double XP and 1.5x items compared to Softcore. The rapid advancement combined with items steadily lagging behind levels would encourage Hardcore players to play fast and loose, to push push push until they die.

Assuming there will be a level cap, this would make HC play a much easier game than softcore. Precisely the opposite of what one wants.

As for item drops, I have to say a big NO!
Item drops are the most relevant to HC players. This is where the whole game lies, if played correctly (aka in a legit way). Making changes here that make HC different from SC completely defeats the whole purpose. It's the antithesis of the whole thing -- HC cannot be made easier. Only harder.

Part of the fun of Softcore is getting attached to your character, something that is contrary to the idea of Hardcore.

Eh! I could never be more attached to my HC characters. My SC characters are cannon food. Mindless things who run around oblivious to any dangers just eager to move to the next area.

Conversely, my HC characters are nourished, protected, carefully planned from day 1. Every item is IDed, almost every fight planned, moving to another Act is pondered, moving to another difficulty level is heavily pondered. My HC characters are living things. My SC characters are puppets. I truly suffer when I lose an HC character just like last week when my frost zealot stupidly died to the Ancients, so close from Pat. And It's unavoidable with most HCers. We just can't help it feeling a lot more attached to our HC characters than we will ever be to our SC ones.

PK
I really cannot comprehend why people defend PK. Blizzard has designed their game so contrary to PK, yet some still insist on its inclusion.

... including Blizzard. So far.

The debate of whether PK is a good or bad thing is as old as PvP itself. And that's pretty old. >20 years old. It's more than enough time to reach the conclusion no one is right and everybody is wrong.

But...

Non consensual PK is at the core of the problem and is often misunderstood, in my humble opinion. The problem is that for most hardcore PKers, non consensual PK is what PVP is all about. I tend to agree with them. Whereas Forced Consensual PK is something else entirely they don't care about; Dueling.

Some designers implement an hybrid form in which players can declare their character as PK from the moment they create them. All others are non-PK. Pkers can only engage in non consensual PvP with other Pkers. But this still presents a problem in that it is just a disguised form of forced consensual PK.

Meanwhile non-PK players are non-PK for a reason. I mean, it's pretty obvious they don't want to engage in PVP. So, they look at PK as a means to ruin their own enjoyment of the game.

There's an obvious conflict here. On one hand, PKers are so because they engage in non consensual PvP. Dueling is not -- neither does it make sense to become -- PvP. On the other hand, non-PKers cannot comprehend why it is acceptable for them to be PKed when they obviously don't want to have anything to do with this type of playstyle.

Solve this aged dilema, and you will be rich.

 

[MYK]

Re: How it will go down.

I fail to see how PK helps. Of course there should be PvP, but why should it happen without warning? If the games support only four players, is it really worth interrupting a group of three? Like I said, Blizzard is trying to make everyone in the same instance play together.

Without warning? The big red skull icon never failed to let me know when someone had the intentions of blowing my character to pieces.

Introducing a PKer certainly won't harm everyone playing together. They just won't be enjoying that time together if their character is dying.
In D2:LoD it wasn't hard to make a new game or a private one to get away from the hostile crowd...

One reason why I can't say that I'm sure about PK one way or the other is that I haven't played D3. I just don't know enough about how it works. This leads to pretty undecided feelings based on other things that have always been up to Blizzard to take care of or forget or ignore.

 

[Bad Ash]

Re: How it will go down.

I just want to comment on one thing you mentioned and that is hc vs. sc saying that you get more attached to a char in sc. Frankly, I think this is a comment from someone who has never played hc or havent played it enough.

Hardcore makes you SO much more attached to your chars it isnt even funny. Knowing they could die at any moment an dyou put so much work into them, say you are lvl 70 and die or even above level 30. thats an accomplishment and knowing you have made it that far in HC make you that much more attached to your HC char and it increases with every level you get. Your post i good, but I have played both sc and hc extensively, you can not compare the attachment of a character you hc vs sc. hc takes the cake

 

[Silverfang]

Re: How it will go down.

[...], while HC players like to think HC requires more skill and is more prestigious than SC. [...]

HC doesn't requires more skill. It just needs more caution to play while putting out far more adrenalin into one's system.

[...] Part of the fun of Softcore is getting attached to your character, something that is contrary to the idea of Hardcore. [...]

I don't know if it's "contrary to the idea of HC," but the only real attachement to the characters I've found while playing D2 was in HC-Mode. Characters that revive and revive and revive are just some neat toys to put away anytime, something more interesting comes up. HC-chars get nourished from the first moment on and only put away (for a time) for lack of proper items to play them further; put out again the moment these items are obtained. Heck, there was a time, i've first created a background for my hc-chars, then chose skills proper to that background, looking for how far such a character can "travel" selffound. (That was imho a pretty damn fun way of playing.)

 

[qOcOp]

Re: How it will go down.

Eh! I could never be more attached to my HC characters. My SC characters are cannon food. Mindless things who run around oblivious to any dangers just eager to move to the next area.

Conversely, my HC characters are nourished, protected, carefully planned from day 1. Every item is IDed, almost every fight planned, moving to another Act is pondered, moving to another difficulty level is heavily pondered. My HC characters are living things. My SC characters are puppets. I truly suffer when I lose an HC character just like last week when my frost zealot stupidly died to the Ancients, so close from Pat. And It's unavoidable with most HCers. We just can't help it feeling a lot more attached to our HC characters than we will ever be to our SC ones.

i agree with this. been playing SC since day one of my d2 career and just started a hc necro recently. im neglecting my sc chars now even though im just barely starting to get good items on them, my lvl 35 guy owns!

 

[jamesL]

Re: How it will go down.

what if PK is only allowed against players of similar level ?
so you can ony attack someone who is 3 levels lower than you or any level higher than you
so if a level 25 char wants to attack a char a level 42 char, then he can go right ahead and do so, but if he wants to bully a level 17 char then he's not allowed to can't attack
however, if the level 17 attacks him first then he is of course allowed to defend

so people who never want to to PvP will have to take a chance that they may be attacked by suprised, but at least they know it will be by someone near their level so they have a chance of living

 

[stillman]

Re: How it will go down.

I find hc and sc are so very different.

In sc, you can focus more on becoming richer and richer. Not in hc. I don't think I would ever wear a good coa or 60-160 in hc mode. The risk of losing it is always there. In sc, you would of course fill up your inventory with godly charms without a moments hesitation. So sc chrs are going to have way more godly gear.

In hc, I feel more immersed somehow. It's as though I'm controling an actual person down there, who bleeds and dies for real. Plus, many people keep saying you can simply play sc carefully and not die to replicate hc mode, but there is this huge issue of proof. What proof do you have? In sc, you can put in all the effort you want, but I can still accuse you of lying and claim you died 200 times. In hc, the proof is there.

There is no way I'd ever play a glass cannon in hc. Again, so many differences between the two modes.

So I like both modes. With the d2 reset coming, I find it hard to decide which mode I will play.

 

[Approon]

Re: How it will go down.

Im just the opposite to the op when it comes to attaching to the character. The softcore character feels more sloppy to me, the hardcore on the other hand are the jewels in my character collections since you must spend more time while developing them. Sure its sad when a hardcore character dies but thats part of why you like it so much.

Hands down REAL hardcore
~Approon

 

[Funkopotamus]

Re: How it will go down.

If someone chases you around, your character can: Leave, fight back, live, die.

That's lame though. For how often I would come across a team of good people to play with I have to leave or fight a twinked player when some jerk decides he wants to have some fun? Or I finally find the cairn stones on nightmare and a paladin with 40 levels on me wants to duke it out. Or I'm in the middle of soloing Diablo with my untwinked character and the level 10~ kicker with the tower shield and hammer is calling me a chicken for not wanting to fight someone 20 levels below me. I've seen what people socket in that stuff, I ain't touchin' that.

 

[Grug]

Re: How it will go down.

I stand corrected about Hardcore. I am mistaken about hardcore characters being trash. But it is still true that hardcore is almost exactly the same as softcore in terms of the Game, and I still think there should be some greater difference.

PK:
You guys are still thinking in MMO mentality. Places where random encounters happen. Diablo is an instanced game, and with the focus on co-operative play, a PK is like a team-killer in a shooter, simply ruining other people's time in an inappropriate setting. When you make an instance in Diablo, you want it to be played your way, not someone else's, and that usually means no PK. That's why it's instanced and not a Shared space. /ramble



I was cut off yesterday before I could continue my post. In terms of Battle.net, I propose that each individual game have "modes".

Modes would be preferences in the game that let others know exactly what the creator intends. These choices could not be changed after the game is created, so it would be impossible to switch from shared loot to free for all mid-fight and steal all the items. If you want to change, it's not hard to simply start a new instance.

Proposed modes include Normal, which is what it says. there would be a PvP mode, which would manifest as a little flag next to the game name to indicate that PvP would be possible in that zone. There could be Auto-Party mode, where everyone in the game would automatically be partied with the host. There could also be Trade mode, which would allow up to eight or twelve players to be in the game at once, but they could not leave town.

And to head off the inevitable arguments, If you are in a trade game and you want to fight, you join a new one! Again with the MMO mentality. the spaces are created for specific purposes, not all of them. If you want to trade, you can make a space for trading. but it doesn't also need to be a space for Fighting and dueling because you can just make a separate one for those activities.

 

[Gonzo]

Re: How it will go down.

HC is stupid when you can die to lag and desyncs, and people can quit whenever they get into trouble. The game also isn't balanced for HC since you tend to have certain classes and builds that are simply better just because they can take more punishment (hopefully this will be lessened with auto stats.)

They should find a way to get people to play carefully without separating them into different modes.

One thing I just thought of was some sort of area or even an entire difficulty with great rewards that constitutes the end-game, but if you die then you are forced to redo some prior event (like completing the previous difficulty or some quest.) Just something that will provide incentive to people to build and play with a careful mindset, but still provides some ability to readjust so you don't lose everything to a fluke.

 

[Grug]

Re: How it will go down.

Look, what I'm trying to say about PK is that when someone makes a game, they expect it to follow his or her rules. If that means no PK, then visitors should not be able to PK.

 

[Krugar]

Re: How it will go down.

It's the least of all evils, I agree. But in a non-persistent world such as that of Diablo, that will kill PK. Might as well just not make the game PKable.

Given that PvP is unfortunately taken for granted these day, I doubt Blizzard will have the balls to do it. Would like to see that happen. But those days are gone.

 

[Grug]

Re: How it will go down.

Don't be too pessimistic. If you make a setting that allows PvP, I'm sure that players with your same sentiments will flock to them for the extra sense of danger, that a teammate could turn traitorous at any time.

 

[Krugar]

Re: How it will go down.

Hmm... you are assuming I like PvP. Which couldn't be further from the truth. My only interest in PvP is on MUDs where game mechanics and design allowed for what I consider the best PvP environments on gaming history.

Yet, I see everywhere that games not really well designed or meant for PvP (as is the case with Diablo), if having a multiplayer setting, end up allowing this option to go pretty much unchecked. And this happens -- it's my guess -- because no one really has the balls to make a multiplayer game without PvP.

And making a non-persistent world like Diablo provide a PvP checkbox on game creation, is going to kill PvP. Almost no one will check that box.

On the other I would find another option more viable; To allow players to decide during character creation if they want to make a PK character or a regular one. PK characters cannot mix with the general population. Then provide incentives for players to play PK characters. Like equipment they only can find, even quests who knows, or new areas. Provide character statistics, implement ladders.