Should I SP or Battle net?

[Painman]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

The community here is pretty laid back. Seems like more folks are interested in MFing and exploring odd builds while Bnet seems to be mostly PvP-driven. Everyone wants to be lvl 90, right now, with perfect items and high end runewords so they can go duel. That's what drives the economy and all the duping.

I decided I never really fit in there that well, so with 1.13 and improved rune drops I came here. I mostly just MF and look for really rare/weird stuff, I don't rush or duel, my characters will now never expire and I can stash as much loot as I please.

As for getting character to high levels - in SP it's not really difficult. with /players you can set the game to whatever level of toughness you like, or whatever you find your characters can comfortably handle. I mostly run around in Hell at players 3 and when I take my Blizz sorc on Ancient Tunnel runs, she does them at players 7. That sorc is level 91, and it just sorta happened since her main run is so beefed up. She can handle it, so why not? And I don't have to rely on bnetters coming and going or interrupting me in order to keep the run at that level.

I like it here in my own little bubble, and if something really neat happens, I can come here and gab about it.

 

[vadimk]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

A look from BNet player (although I do play SP sometines):

Mostly I play BNet for:
Trading. You can skip duped runes if you want, but sometimes it's very useful to sell something you don't need and buy stuff that never seems to fall for you no matter how you try.
Ubers. It's kind of a good endgame place to test you, especially in HC.

Real pains of BNet:
Tempbans. I cannot just run pindle, cause it's way faster than 20 games/hour allowed on BNet. I have to do something else to fill the gap.
Muling. You have to create a normal game and stay in it for at least 5 minutes. Then drop items on the ground, exit and come back with mule. And if you get disconnected (or even tempbanned) while doing that, you could lose the items.
Lags. Sometimes BNet lags, sometimes your internet, and other stuff happens. You can easily lose HC char this way.

 

[Moonfrost]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

I'd go SP simply for the luxury of muling mods like ATMA.

 

[Greebo]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Well, I'd like to butt in with "Why I like this community" message of my own:

(1) Experience and wealth of knowledge
This forum is full of people who know more about this game than the people who wrote it. If you want to know something like, oh I don't know, "What qlvl of a claw/orb I need for a staffmod X to drop and in which alvl can it be done?" there will be >100 people who will be able to answer you within 3 minutes, some of them not having to check any tables for data. And you will get your answer soon. And no-one will pretend to know the answer just to say something and look like they're knowledgeable.

The Mat/Pat/Guardian compilation of this Forum is the single best source of guides on the net IMHO.

(2) Maturity
This isn't a forum full of LOLs l33ts and other TLSes. We write in proper English with punctuation and proper grammar. Well, we try to anyway. And use CAPITAL letter if need be.

And this shows in other aspects of this forum.

(3) Trade-pool
You can trade here and few items from TC87 aside, you can find pretty much anything here.

(4) Helpfulness and hospitality
People here will welcome you with open arms, answer all your noobish questions without making fun of you, point you to good reading which will teach you a lot about the game. And when you write a Mat/Pat thread, you'll get an 'At a boy!' from people you look up to, sometimes. It's nice to share a game you love with community like that, IMHO. I mean, In My Honest Opinion .

--Greebo

 

[ZeN]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Greebo ruuulez !!!!!111!1one

Just what I meant, but was too lazy to type out.

 

[Drystan1]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

We write in proper English with punctuation and proper grammar

*Is very tempted to post the "OMG" "WTF" "WOOOOOT" screenshot of a SC Baal run with San and Schmaleop (I think,) when a Ber dropped as a reply to that comment.*

 

[Shagsbeard]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

No one has mentioned Pause?

 

[RobbyD]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Static maps and Pause *nod to Shagsbeard* are 2 definite advantages to SP that I didn't mention in my side by side - static maps means that the layout of any area is the same game to game to game for that charcter, and if you explored a whole area, all that mapping stays known. This is invaluable for boss running - being able to keep a sweet Mephy map (Durance 3 door around the corner from the waypoint) makes running him significantly easier. MP games reroll maps each game, though.

To reset maps, you start another difficulty with that character, or do a ISP game.

Pause - oh yeah, I totally forgot about that - not having pause can really be a problem in a tricky situation or if you need to leave your computer in a hurry.

In SP you own your character - it's on your computer and you can keep the save file and any ATMA stashes backed up in case you stop playing but come back several years later (as happens quite a bit). On BNet, you're at the mercy of the Blizz servers. You can't be banned from playing your SP characters.

Also, if you're into mods (Eastern Sun, Median) then SP is the only way to go. I've never played any of those, but I've heard their very interesting.

About BNet - there are some good private groups that have solid party play (such as The Amazon Basin) thay can provide a lot of help and support for a new player, so BNet's not all bad - but it's a LOT better if you get into a good group of players that like to play the game. When folks find some better item than they are using, a lot of times they will give the old item to somebody that can use it, so a lot of hand-me-down items are obtainable just by interaction with other players.

I play both SP for the access to 1.09 (I've kind of decided to Mat/Pat all 7 different characters - 4 down, 3 to go) and avoidance of lags and delays, and BNet with a personal friend to experience DClone and UT (one day). We're doing a Necro/Pally combo just to be as cookie cutter as possible (well, big level 21 isn't showing much, lol). If you're interested in teaming up to try out BNet, drop me a PM. My account is *RobbyD, but learning how communication on BNet is a learning curve.

 

[llmercll]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

You can't farm bosses though on SP can you? like once you kill andy...that's it.

right? but you can farm baal over and over again im sure. i still don't like the fact i wont be able to go back and fight other bosses again, unless im wrong.

 

[RobbyD]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

You can't farm bosses though on SP can you? like once you kill andy...that's it.

right? but you can farm baal over and over again im sure. i still don't like the fact i wont be able to go back and fight other bosses again, unless im wrong.

You can farm bosses until your eyes bleed and your wrists crack in SP - any boss. Countess, Andy, Mephisto, Council, Baal - and SP keeps the maps the same every game so you know exactly where to go.

 

[llmercll]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

That's excellent! I thought SP was restricted in that sense.

Just an off topic question about that, is it worth it to farm a boss that's a lower tier than another one? like mephisto over baal, andy over durial, etc? or do they consistently drop better gear, making only meaningful to farm the last boss you killed?

 

[Drystan1]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Andariel for Jewellery (rings/amulets)
Mephisto for very fast runs for the majority of items (including many useful.)
Baal for Baal GC's, experience!, and the chance of every item (minus Cow Kings)

Pindle for all items minus Cow King's set, Arach's, Tyrael's, and Azurewrath.

 

[llmercll]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Is ATMA considering hacking or cheating your character? does it flag the character so you cant go on open bnet or anything or is it completely legit?

 

[RobbyD]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

Is ATMA considering hacking or cheating your character? does it flag the character so you cant go on open bnet or anything or is it completely legit?

I had that exact question about a year ago. ATMA usage is technically cheating if you define that as using something not provided to you by the original game, but it's a practice widely accepted by the single player forum since it basically bypasses the major drawback of SP play - that is, the inability to mule items. It's accepted here because it doesn't allow you to alter the game itself, it just allows you to play SP with the ability for one character to find an item that another character can use, therefore putting it on more of an equal to BNet. The fact that it's SO much easier to use than the BNet process is just gravy.

There are many apps that are NOT accepted here, such as anything allowing you to edit characters or items - ATMA's inclusion (along with the runeword mod, which allows Ladder-only runewords to be made in SP games) to accepted practice by this forum is basically because it nullifies what is generally considered an oversight or unfair disadvantage to the SP game.

So.. as many say "you can do whatever you want on your own computer" but many practices will disallow you from trading via this forum (and are not allowed to be discussed here). But, use of ATMA or GoMule as well as the Runeword Mod ARE accepted for the purpose of this forum.

I use ATMA, and I can attest that use of ATMA will not get you banned from BNet since it's actually completely independent of your game files. I haven't tried RWM or the multi-instance dll thing, but I believe one or both of those run the risk of getting you banned from BNet. I defer you to the FAQ sticky at the top of this forum for more information of what's accepted by this community.

 

[Greebo]

Re: Should I SP or Battle net?

*Is very tempted to post the "OMG" "WTF" "WOOOOOT" screenshot of a SC Baal run with San and Schmaleop (I think,) when a Ber dropped as a reply to that comment.*

Well, in such situations, dear Sir, a "WOOOOOT" and a "WTF" is the proper response, grammatically, and all.

--Greebo