Should I SP or Battle net?

[llmercll]

Should I SP or Battle net?

Can anyone list some advantages and disadvantages? I want to complete through hell difficulty, and looking for the best experience.

I'm guess I'm just wondering what the gameplay is like on a battle net server in contrast to SP.

I made a ladder character, and there don't seem to be many servers at all on US east. I counted maybe 12. I suppose most of the servers are on hell difficulty though.

 

[ancalagon the black]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

bnet has lag

bnet has spammers and dupers

bnet has torch and anni

bnet has a limit on number of characters you can have and thus has a limit on the total amount of stuff you can hoard

bnet makes it harder to mule

bnet has to make sure you don't give your characters the same name as anyone else on the realm

bnet makes it more convenient to get a character rushed

 

[tavaritz]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

bnet has player killers, so play only with trusted company.

 

[llmercll]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

So what are the advantages of Bnet?

do you get better loot? is it more challenging?

ofc trading is an advantage

 

[tavaritz]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Advantages are:

You don't need RWM for ladder runewords.

You get Diablo Clone and übers, hence you get torch and anni.

You get more exp and loot in games where you have 4 or more allied(1) players as SP's /p8 only simulates 7 non-allied ie. 3,5 allied characters.

Nothing more.

(1) allied and in close proximity of the kill.

 

[Pijus1]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

You're in the wrong forum to get an objective answer.

Let's see.

If you have friends who play b.net, I say go there.

If you just like to play or magic find or optimize characters to infinity, play SP.

 

[Belthazor]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

If you actually want to play the game, you'll have to do it on your own, anyway, so you might as well play SP. On BNet one usually gets rushed through each difficulty, levels up to 15 in Trist runs, to 24 in tomb runs, kills ancients, levels to 40-45 in Baal runs, rush through NM, level in Baal runs, rush through hell, level in Baal runs. If you want items, you better play on your own, because otherwise people will pick them up before you and you'll never see the item that just dropped again. That's the BNet gameplay experience, unless you find a group of nice people.

 

[llmercll]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

so p8 increases difficulty and the amount of loot dropped? by 3.5x? but does it increase the power of the items dropped as well, or can the best loot be obtained in both sp and mp?

what is ATMA? and whats the advantage of static maps?

what is ubers?

 

[Foxtrue]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Another advantages of SP:

You can play any patch you want.

You can play multiplayer games with your friends TCP/IP knowing that is you and your friends who decide what are the rules.

You do not lose your characters if you do not play them for a long time and you can back-up your characters.

LE:
Ubers are a more powerful version of the big bosses from D2. They are harder to kill but give more experience due to bigger monster levels.

ATMA allows to transfer items between your characters very easy.

Static maps: After you discover the layout of the level the first time you can re-run that level faster since you know already the layout and so get experience faster.

 

[Fabian]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

The only advantage of Battle.net, although it's a pretty big one, is access to the World Events (Uber Diablo and Uber Tristram). I could probably list 10 bigger advantages of SP play (specifically in this community) though. Again, not the most impartial place to go to for opinions, but definitely play Single Player

 

[RobbyD]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Why can't you do both? Fire up a Realm char and create a SP char. Alternate playing them and see which one you like best.

You CAN play the game start to finish on BNet - you just have to password your games.

The biggest difference I noticed was how so many people do all the shortcuts on the Realm - it's all about Trist runs, Tomb runs, cow runs, etc. I also found that I rushed through a lot when BNetting, so things like allocating points after leveling, doing some cubing, I don't really get a chance to do that.

If you do public Realm games, it gets a little confusing (to me, an SP guy) with how the Quest rewards work and what not.

BUT - the uber quests are something I WANT TO DO before I give up on D2, and you can't do that on SP.

So, SP v Bnet:

For SP:

You control pace of game (big for me), can be addressed by private BNet game.

You can time travel (play prior patches) and get certain items that have bugged conversions, changed stats, etc. CAN'T do this on BNet.

You have very easy, unlimited muling with ATMA or GoMule.

You will never get Temp banned for running bosses.

No lag (unless you are playing MP)

You can still MP, and control who you play with.

For BNet:

DClone and Ubers! (and the associated charms)

You can get free stuff from giveaways/begging, and do the shortcut XP runs.

You can bypass most drawbacks (bots, advertisers, jerk players) by simply creating private password games.

Ready access to huge community of D2 Gamers - so if you need help with a boss or something, you can ask for help.

Muling and runewords as Blizzard originally provided for. BNet muling is a pain in the wazoo, and not 100% problem-free, but it doesn't use an outside app like ATMA or GoMule.

 

[llmercll]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

How do you mule over bnet? and atama is just an app that lets you transfer files between local characters right?

i probably will do both sp and bnet though, why not?

 

[RobbyD]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

How do you mule over bnet? and atama is just an app that lets you transfer files between local characters right?

i probably will do both sp and bnet though, why not?

Muling is a PAIN on BNet - you have to make another character, and you have to perm that character (play for 2 hours, I think) so it doesn't get deleted after 10 days of no play. Look for public games named "Mule parking" or "free parking" - you can leave your mule character in town and the game creator gets the XP benefit of more characters and keeps the game active.

Once you have permed your mule, you then have to create a game with your main character and play for 5 minutes or so to make the game stick - that is, a game that will stay available even with no characters in it. You drop whatever you want to put on your mule on the ground, leave the game with that char, and join the game with your mule and pick up the stuff off the ground. The danger with this is if something happens with the game (you didn't stay long enough, you got temp banned, or just lag issues), you lose whatever you dropped on the ground.

You are limited to your mule's stash and inventory, so if that fills up, you have to make another mule.

For SP, ATMA and GoMule are applications you can find links to in the FAQ sticky in this forum. You basically have infinite storage with these apps - you simply exit your game, open your character with ATMA/GoMule and click and drag your items to a stash file. This allows you to MF with a character and gear up any other character you make. These apps are used for SP trading as well.

I use ATMA, and I have many thousands of items (runes, Sets, uniques, socket items, jewelry, etc.) in my ATMA stash. ATMA works with all patches, and has the added benefit of a drop calculator for all patches - VERY handy for a 1.09 time traveler like myself.

As a warning, I don't know for sure that ATMA has been updated for 1.13, so it may not work with the essences from 1.13 - should work with everything else just fine (like all those fancy runes you will get from 1.13).

 

[jcvmarques]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

The Ubers are really the only reason to play on bnet.

I hate lag and I'm greedy. I want all the loot for myself. It's much more fun to find great stuff on your own. And you have static maps and no temp bans to help you on that.

I'm fine playing SP, the mercenary is my trusted companion and i don't need anyone else. :thumbup:

ATMA is a wonderful tool that makes SP worthwhile. Anything that drops you can save it outside the game. And it works on 1.13 with the essences too!

 

[Anheg]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

In bnet you need someone to hold a game open for you while you log in/out with each character to trade items. Another (riskier) way is to stay in a game for...15(??) mins to perm it, making the game stay up with no players in it for a set duration - then quickly relog with your other character(riiisky, been a while since i bnetted, not sure if this is do-able anymore)

I personally prefer SP way more than bnet. Too many lag issues, and frankly I don't play with anybody on D2 anyway and if i did then it would be people on this forum - meaning i'd probably just MP with them anyway.

The ubers and torches etc are nice, but you're not missing much to be honest...who point having duped, over-powered items like that anyway (imo)

Give them both a go, you might find you prefer having the option of joining other people's games, and you might not lag enough for it to be an issue. And you might not hoard enough items for muling to be an issue, and you probably don't need to play D2 if your net connection drops anyway right? and you might not worry about having 8 chars max per acc, or worry about logging in frequently enough not to get your chars deleted.....sorry i can't help it

Ultimately your choice! (play sp!!)

 

[ZeN]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Never played on B.Net nor do I intend to, but for me - SPF community is the biggest reason.

 

[Fabian]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Yeah honestly this community is the single biggest reason for me too. I wouldn't be playing d2 if it weren't for this forum, and if there was a similar forum for mxl, I'd 100% be playing that instead.

 

[llmercll]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

What is it you guys like about the single player community here? The trading? or tournaments? I don't know what they are

 

[tavaritz]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Tournaments(1) and the helping friendly atmosphere.

I don't trade nor MP, but others do and they take you in it after a period of good behaviour.

(1) If you don't know what tournaments are and you have some spare time I suggest that you look the stickied tournament listings and read through some of those tournament threads. They teach you how to play LoD.

 

[SpeedLimit]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

What is it you guys like about the single player community here?

The shenanigans, mostly.