- Sep 12, 2013
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~Donald Trump on Israel-Palistine peace.
SPF needs that same bold leadership here to resolve disputes over acceptable gameplay practices!!!
The SPF I know
- Thread starter helvete1
- Start date
~Donald Trump on Israel-Palistine peace.
SPF needs that same bold leadership here to resolve disputes over acceptable gameplay practices!!!
lolwut. The dispute is already settled. All we are is arguing semantics, not casting ballots.
- Sep 12, 2013
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Just an FYI - Thy has asked me to keep an eye on things here when she's unavailable. I'm watching this debate with great interest at the moment.
I enjoy a bit of 1.07 play myself, and have carried a couple very nice MPK rings forward. (My poisonmancer in particular benefits from one.) I think there's a fine line between enjoying the quirks of an historical patch and effectively breaking the game - the question is where exactly that line is drawn.
ioupain
Well-known member
What I'm about to say doesn't really have an impact on the ruleset discussed above, just speaks to the context of the conversation.
This is an interesting question, if we're being technically correct (the best kind of correct) I'm pretty sure Blizzard broke the game enough by itself (note: I'm not saying that fact, is carte blanche reason to break it more).
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The discussion so far has mostly centred around items, but for me, the biggest problem has always been the skill bugs. Looking at the intention of the skill (from descriptions) versus what is actually implemented in the code (which we know thanks to the hard work of people like @onderduiker ) we can see that there are lots of things that were unintended. The fact that these were well documented prior to the last few major releases and in many cases easily fixed (moving a value from one column to another), but were ignored by the developers, speaks volumes to me. It is all well and good to proselytise about 'What Blizzard intended', when they couldn't even be bothered to correct long standing issues handed to them on a silver platter. In fact, the whole 'SoJ selling leading to Diablo walks the Earth' malarkey is frankly laughable; any sane person would realise that it would reward duping behaviour rather than lead to its reduction.
Everyone already knows that Blizzard's intention was to dissuade Single Players and encourage Realm Players, so to use 'What Blizzard intended' as some sort of bludgeon is disingenuous at best.
This is an interesting question, if we're being technically correct (the best kind of correct) I'm pretty sure Blizzard broke the game enough by itself (note: I'm not saying that fact, is carte blanche reason to break it more).
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The discussion so far has mostly centred around items, but for me, the biggest problem has always been the skill bugs. Looking at the intention of the skill (from descriptions) versus what is actually implemented in the code (which we know thanks to the hard work of people like @onderduiker ) we can see that there are lots of things that were unintended. The fact that these were well documented prior to the last few major releases and in many cases easily fixed (moving a value from one column to another), but were ignored by the developers, speaks volumes to me. It is all well and good to proselytise about 'What Blizzard intended', when they couldn't even be bothered to correct long standing issues handed to them on a silver platter. In fact, the whole 'SoJ selling leading to Diablo walks the Earth' malarkey is frankly laughable; any sane person would realise that it would reward duping behaviour rather than lead to its reduction.
Everyone already knows that Blizzard's intention was to dissuade Single Players and encourage Realm Players, so to use 'What Blizzard intended' as some sort of bludgeon is disingenuous at best.
IMO, this whole debate all boils down to self discipline.
As a SP-only player, I reigned myself on the fact that I will not and ever have access to the BNET while playing Diablo 2, naturally this means I am prevented from trading and playing with others. Note: I do not miss those priviledges, if I did I would play on BNET.
That aside, what does that mean to me?-- well it means that I am locked from BNET exclusives and ability to mule the items I have on hand. So what do I do?-- I utilize what I have available at my disposal to flesh out my offline experience to become as if it was online (which I consider the full D2 package). What does that entail?-- well modding.
The mod that I use is [highlight]not forum accepted[/highlight]. I know, it get's negative publicity here but again I must stress, everything boils down to self discipline. What does that mean, you disable and don't perform the actions that are clearly not along the lines of how the actual game would play, eg (and I'm speaking as a user): disabling the free respec features. Now how does this benefit me?-- Well the mod allows me to utilize IN-GAME MULING (that means no need to exit the current game in order to mule items like ATMA/GoMule) which proves a more complete experience in my opinion, as well as all the other BNET content. Now do I plan on doing them? The answer is a simple no.. however I left those options opened as I see it as part of the game (the complete D2 package if you will).
I know that by using an unauthorized mod that I am prohibited from trading, but as I stated earlier, as a SP-only player, that stipulation to me is fine. However, to others?-- there are multitudes of other mods to the games out there such as bots and editors, how does a stranger online in a different location know that you are using them?-- the answer is simply, we don't know unless you let us know. So again, it ultimately boils down to self discipline and how one interpret the spirit of the game. So the question to ask yourself or to others is: How far will you, the player, fall down that slippery slope that Pandora's box opens up?
As for me, I will only open the box up to the point that I can get as close of an experience to D2 BNET Ladder as possible.
As a SP-only player, I reigned myself on the fact that I will not and ever have access to the BNET while playing Diablo 2, naturally this means I am prevented from trading and playing with others. Note: I do not miss those priviledges, if I did I would play on BNET.
That aside, what does that mean to me?-- well it means that I am locked from BNET exclusives and ability to mule the items I have on hand. So what do I do?-- I utilize what I have available at my disposal to flesh out my offline experience to become as if it was online (which I consider the full D2 package). What does that entail?-- well modding.
The mod that I use is [highlight]not forum accepted[/highlight]. I know, it get's negative publicity here but again I must stress, everything boils down to self discipline. What does that mean, you disable and don't perform the actions that are clearly not along the lines of how the actual game would play, eg (and I'm speaking as a user): disabling the free respec features. Now how does this benefit me?-- Well the mod allows me to utilize IN-GAME MULING (that means no need to exit the current game in order to mule items like ATMA/GoMule) which proves a more complete experience in my opinion, as well as all the other BNET content. Now do I plan on doing them? The answer is a simple no.. however I left those options opened as I see it as part of the game (the complete D2 package if you will).
I know that by using an unauthorized mod that I am prohibited from trading, but as I stated earlier, as a SP-only player, that stipulation to me is fine. However, to others?-- there are multitudes of other mods to the games out there such as bots and editors, how does a stranger online in a different location know that you are using them?-- the answer is simply, we don't know unless you let us know. So again, it ultimately boils down to self discipline and how one interpret the spirit of the game. So the question to ask yourself or to others is: How far will you, the player, fall down that slippery slope that Pandora's box opens up?
As for me, I will only open the box up to the point that I can get as close of an experience to D2 BNET Ladder as possible.
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Macintom
New member
- Aug 9, 2016
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I think this brings it down to the point which counts for me.
I stopped playing Bnet those days because it was so annoying with all those bots, script kiddies, grabbing party-members and so on. But I loved this game and its features so what could I do? Singleplayer of course was the answer. But why no Insight, playing at /players 1, no muling etc.???
I really wanted to simulate the Bnet on my PC without Dupes, Hax and all those things. I´m outing myself as a [highlight]user of a non- forum accepted mod[/highlight] when it comes to Patch 1.13c. And as okey stated, it´s all about discipline. YOU decide wether you use all of the features that comes with it. I only want the options that come with Bnet. I deactivated all other options. Muling is done by GoMule. No bigger stash, no respec etc.
I want to say that on my harddisk is a legit Singleplayer Installation. No Dupes Hx, ... you know
When it comes to Patch 1.07 that I started some time ago I use Galaxy´s playersX-Mod because I want to simulate Bnet with full games. I really would like that GalaXyHaXz would release a version without coloured runes because I think this doesn´t belong to this patch. ...
So, many words (excuse my bad english), all I wanted to state is that if there were no mods singleplayer could be very boring.
p.s. My opinion about timetravelling: it breaks the game and makes it imbalanced. What drops in a patch stays in this patch. No forwarding should be allowed.
Regards, Tom
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@Macintom Let's do a mental exercise to see what logical conclusions we can come up with.
So when users played 1.10 on battle.net and patch 1.11 came out, should Blizzard have deleted their characters in order to make them start over and guarantee that no items are moved over? Basically in battle.net that doesn't need to be done since you can just move the characters to Non-Ladder, and start a new Ladder season which is just stuff in that patch.
For Single Player, there is no "Ladder Reset", but like you said, it's about "discipline", so you can simulate a ladder reset by starting all over again. However, the non-ladder characters on the new patch don't get deleted or anything, but they still remain on the new patch. Which means two things:
1. Old patch characters can be time travelled forward and played on the new versions (Which basically equals non-ladder)
2. New characters on the new patch can be either "non-ladder" or "ladder" depending how you want to do it. If you make a new character on the new patch that is "non-ladder", then you can share your items with your existing items (1.07, 1.08 items etc), but if you decide to make a "ladder" (requires discipline) char on the new patch, then you basically have a completely separate single player stash for that specific version.
3. When you decide to do another "ladder reset", then you can take all of your previously created (and separate) "ladder characters" and merge them with your old non-ladder characters, and start all over again with separate ladder characters/stashes for that version (or for that new ladder run).
So this could go either way ;D. A lot of people in the SPF might just decide to say "Oh well then I will just do "non-ladder" single player time travel" haha.
So when users played 1.10 on battle.net and patch 1.11 came out, should Blizzard have deleted their characters in order to make them start over and guarantee that no items are moved over? Basically in battle.net that doesn't need to be done since you can just move the characters to Non-Ladder, and start a new Ladder season which is just stuff in that patch.
For Single Player, there is no "Ladder Reset", but like you said, it's about "discipline", so you can simulate a ladder reset by starting all over again. However, the non-ladder characters on the new patch don't get deleted or anything, but they still remain on the new patch. Which means two things:
1. Old patch characters can be time travelled forward and played on the new versions (Which basically equals non-ladder)
2. New characters on the new patch can be either "non-ladder" or "ladder" depending how you want to do it. If you make a new character on the new patch that is "non-ladder", then you can share your items with your existing items (1.07, 1.08 items etc), but if you decide to make a "ladder" (requires discipline) char on the new patch, then you basically have a completely separate single player stash for that specific version.
3. When you decide to do another "ladder reset", then you can take all of your previously created (and separate) "ladder characters" and merge them with your old non-ladder characters, and start all over again with separate ladder characters/stashes for that version (or for that new ladder run).
So this could go either way ;D. A lot of people in the SPF might just decide to say "Oh well then I will just do "non-ladder" single player time travel" haha.
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What about the "grandfather" rule? I.e. at one point in time, people on battle net gambled tons of SoJ's and got nice dual leech jewerly. Blizzard later took this out of the game. Some who played 1.08 were able to get a nice Valor/Shako/WF. But those too were nerfed. However, those who obtained these items were allowed to keep them. By that logic, it isn't really fair to people who didn't play the game back then that some people still have these items (and they sell for ridiculous prices) and they will never be able to obtain them.
I'm sure there is at least one "legit" case of an SPFer who farmed rares back in 2000, quit the game because they hated the expansion, then came back years later. Only to find a bug gave some of their old characters' rares overpowered stats. Maybe this was only 2-3 people, but in that case they would have been grandfathered in. It is only fair that anyone can experience the patch they please, because not everyone played the game way back and had those opportunities.
The line of cheese shall be drawn between whether or not a video game is doing its job. No game is fun when you cheat to have infinite life, ammo, hacked items, etc., but bugged rewards require a great deal of dedication to obtain. If the aspects of older patches keep us entertained, then what line is crossed?
Honestly I'm arguing to see the other viewpoints. As an engineer student I find it interesting to examine the code and see exactly what causes these issues. With that said, I also avoid them. I don't use or create anything which results from an avoidable programming error. And for others, the rules in place already address time traveling and the restrictions quite well.
I don't mind playing with non-FAM mods, provided it is from the developers "true intention". Anyone who writes code knows that this is simply to make something that works. Playing older patches with these bugs fixed, or the players command... or the newest patch with all the battle.net only content makes single player truly shine!
I'm sure there is at least one "legit" case of an SPFer who farmed rares back in 2000, quit the game because they hated the expansion, then came back years later. Only to find a bug gave some of their old characters' rares overpowered stats. Maybe this was only 2-3 people, but in that case they would have been grandfathered in. It is only fair that anyone can experience the patch they please, because not everyone played the game way back and had those opportunities.
The line of cheese shall be drawn between whether or not a video game is doing its job. No game is fun when you cheat to have infinite life, ammo, hacked items, etc., but bugged rewards require a great deal of dedication to obtain. If the aspects of older patches keep us entertained, then what line is crossed?
Honestly I'm arguing to see the other viewpoints. As an engineer student I find it interesting to examine the code and see exactly what causes these issues. With that said, I also avoid them. I don't use or create anything which results from an avoidable programming error. And for others, the rules in place already address time traveling and the restrictions quite well.
I don't mind playing with non-FAM mods, provided it is from the developers "true intention". Anyone who writes code knows that this is simply to make something that works. Playing older patches with these bugs fixed, or the players command... or the newest patch with all the battle.net only content makes single player truly shine!
I remember waaay back in time when a friend of mine got Railroad Tycoon. We played the game alot. Tried out different approaches and settings and had fun for many days. Then one of us, can't remember which, got the information that simply pressing $ would get you a little sum of money. Ofc we instantly tried it out and bought everything available and won the game easy.
The game lost it's luster after that. Maybe because beating a game while only cheating a little felt no different then beating a game by cheating alot - the victory wasn't a deserved one. And the game without cheating got boring af, because we had tried all the trains.
...and that's how I feel about dii as well. Time-travel, atma-bugging etc. may not be in the same category as using a mod to create advantages or items in game, but to me there is little distinction. Going down either road, is going to destroy the game for me.
How others view it, is ofc entirely up to them, though I expect players to post the way they've exploited the game (if applicable) when they choose to post screenshots, progress threads or similar. That way I will know which posts I should pay respect and which I should ignore. The threads by okey for instance; I followed them with great interest and respect - not so anymore.
The game lost it's luster after that. Maybe because beating a game while only cheating a little felt no different then beating a game by cheating alot - the victory wasn't a deserved one. And the game without cheating got boring af, because we had tried all the trains.
...and that's how I feel about dii as well. Time-travel, atma-bugging etc. may not be in the same category as using a mod to create advantages or items in game, but to me there is little distinction. Going down either road, is going to destroy the game for me.
How others view it, is ofc entirely up to them, though I expect players to post the way they've exploited the game (if applicable) when they choose to post screenshots, progress threads or similar. That way I will know which posts I should pay respect and which I should ignore. The threads by okey for instance; I followed them with great interest and respect - not so anymore.
@ThomasJohnsen I use to play Starcraft 1 and Warcraft III a lot before, and sure you had cheats such as "black sheep wall", "power overwhelming", and "there is now cow level", and yea it was fun to use these cheats, but it was also fun to replay the game without using any of it. The game won't lose its fun just because you can use those cheats. You can equally just say "I will try to beat the game completely without any cheats".
By your logic, Blizzard destroyed Starcraft 1 and Warcraft III from the first day since there were cheats directly provided by Blizzard in the game. Also plenty of other games have cheats that you can use in the game (Grand Theft Auto is famous for this and it's arguably one of the best sandbox games ever made). Built in cheats in games was extremely common for much of gaming history.
By your logic, Blizzard destroyed Starcraft 1 and Warcraft III from the first day since there were cheats directly provided by Blizzard in the game. Also plenty of other games have cheats that you can use in the game (Grand Theft Auto is famous for this and it's arguably one of the best sandbox games ever made). Built in cheats in games was extremely common for much of gaming history.
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It could be difficult to gather a group of more than 10 people who have the same opinion and same self-discipline. That's why I'm in favor of clear, easy to understand rules.
A small forum profile, same as a trade profile, for declaring just what ideology each of us follows would be nice. Then I could write there that I play a bunch of older patches, use the RWM, and use GoMule/ATMA. I could also write that I just want the items for having, I don't really have the time to actually use them. And that my 99-er was 1.13 final from start to end. Etc.
A small forum profile, same as a trade profile, for declaring just what ideology each of us follows would be nice. Then I could write there that I play a bunch of older patches, use the RWM, and use GoMule/ATMA. I could also write that I just want the items for having, I don't really have the time to actually use them. And that my 99-er was 1.13 final from start to end. Etc.
I just thought about a case where you can time travel on battle.net and skip versions (theoretically possible, not 100% sure).
If you played battle.net back in 1.08 and then after a few months you quit and came back 10 years later, you would be in 1.13+ at this point, since you haven't logged onto battle.net, you haven't loaded up your character in a multi-player game, so technically the next time you play on that character, it would be time-traveled from one specific version to another. Now obviously characters expire on battle.net, so I believe the only way you could do this is if you had a character name that nobody used for 10 years (I think once the character expires, your character actually still stays on the servers, it's just that the name becomes available. If someone makes a character with your old name, your character becomes unrecoverable. If nobody makes a character with that name, then if you double click your character, it will be "recovered"). So this situation is highly improbable for it to actually happen but just wanted to mention it for the exercise sake.
EDIT: The item migration bugs might be alleviated a bit if after the new version and the ladder reset, Blizzard ran a script that would "load/save" each character on the server. This means the user doesn't need to be logged in because during Blizzard's Maintenance mode, they migrated the character for you.
If you played battle.net back in 1.08 and then after a few months you quit and came back 10 years later, you would be in 1.13+ at this point, since you haven't logged onto battle.net, you haven't loaded up your character in a multi-player game, so technically the next time you play on that character, it would be time-traveled from one specific version to another. Now obviously characters expire on battle.net, so I believe the only way you could do this is if you had a character name that nobody used for 10 years (I think once the character expires, your character actually still stays on the servers, it's just that the name becomes available. If someone makes a character with your old name, your character becomes unrecoverable. If nobody makes a character with that name, then if you double click your character, it will be "recovered"). So this situation is highly improbable for it to actually happen but just wanted to mention it for the exercise sake.
EDIT: The item migration bugs might be alleviated a bit if after the new version and the ladder reset, Blizzard ran a script that would "load/save" each character on the server. This means the user doesn't need to be logged in because during Blizzard's Maintenance mode, they migrated the character for you.
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ioupain
Well-known member
Not the case @fearedbliss, characters would disappear after 90 days of inactivity.
EDIT: Oops, sorry, I should have read the whole post, you may be right...
EDIT: Oops, sorry, I should have read the whole post, you may be right...
That's similar to what I just said. Under rare circumstances had someone kept logging in to keep their characters from expiring (but never joined a game), they would still exist. If by some chance they had some classic characters, then forwarded them directly to 1.13, these "bugged rare" items could theoretically exist on the realms. From what I understand though, blizzard did wipe certain legit items during the rust storm. These included 08 valors/shakos. So a purist would say you can forward these items to 1.09, but no further.
@ioupainmax That's what I meant by "characters expire". I remember post 1.10 I hadn't played for a long time and I came back and even though my character expired, I was able to use it. Unless Blizzard got even stricter with their policy recently, but I remember I at least did this in 1.13. It would be an easy experiment to do. Make a character with a complicated name that nobody would use:
LomnroaiASDF
Wait 200 days, come back and see if you can still access it.
LomnroaiASDF
Wait 200 days, come back and see if you can still access it.
ioupain
Well-known member
Taking it to it's ultimate conclusion, would a fundamental purist also avoid any other useful information not contained within the game (websites like this or Arreat Summit) - i.e. never look to see what all the runewords were and therefore, have to use trial and error to discover them?
Probably getting silly now, but there was a time when people were called heretics for coloured runes and then they were added to a subsequent patch.
Probably getting silly now, but there was a time when people were called heretics for coloured runes and then they were added to a subsequent patch.
OT: Lol I think the important thing to take from all of this is that sometimes Blizzard doesn't know best *cough* Diablo III *cough*. But honestly the direction Blizzard North (Brevik) was taking it in I also wasn't really in favor of.. making Diablo III an action mmorpg is not what I wanted for sure. Although I do have a lot of respect for David Brevik, he's definitely one of my gaming idols.
My post was very clearly indicating my take on the matter. That you read it as a general statement regarding everyone playing any game is a bit of a stretch imo.
My point was that members should clearly indicate which cheats, hacks, mods or similar they use when posting here. To me a sweet rare found in an untwinked tourney can make me drool - the very same rare found by a mod user has no interest for me whatsoever. You may argue that that makes me an oddball (which isn't far from the truth), but that's the way I feel.
@ThomasJohnsen I read it that way because you wrote it that way..
"The game lost it's luster after that. Maybe because beating a game while only cheating a little felt no different then beating a game by cheating alot - the victory wasn't a deserved one. And the game without cheating got boring af, because we had tried all the trains.
...and that's how I feel about dii as well."
Which means you are making a logical connection between the experience you had pre-post "$" cheat usage in one game, and then saying that the same thing is what's happening on another game. So that seems to mean a general statement on your idea of what would happen if a game either had built in cheats provided by the company (Tycoon) or things that people made outside the company but that do similar things.
I wasn't saying your idea was wrong, if that's how you feel, that's perfectly fine by me, like I said before, you need to experience the game the way _you_ want to experience it. But what I'm saying is that given that you feel that way, it seems that you got bored with the game simply because you found out the company built in some cheats into the game.. so that's why I'm saying that if you find out that another game (Starcraft, Warcraft, etc) also had the same thing, would you also get bored with those games and lose respect and/or luster for them?
"The game lost it's luster after that. Maybe because beating a game while only cheating a little felt no different then beating a game by cheating alot - the victory wasn't a deserved one. And the game without cheating got boring af, because we had tried all the trains.
...and that's how I feel about dii as well."
Which means you are making a logical connection between the experience you had pre-post "$" cheat usage in one game, and then saying that the same thing is what's happening on another game. So that seems to mean a general statement on your idea of what would happen if a game either had built in cheats provided by the company (Tycoon) or things that people made outside the company but that do similar things.
I wasn't saying your idea was wrong, if that's how you feel, that's perfectly fine by me
, like I said before, you need to experience the game the way _you_ want to experience it. But what I'm saying is that given that you feel that way, it seems that you got bored with the game simply because you found out the company built in some cheats into the game.. so that's why I'm saying that if you find out that another game (Starcraft, Warcraft, etc) also had the same thing, would you also get bored with those games and lose respect and/or luster for them?
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