Thoughts on "Race to 99" contest

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ConnerMacleod

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Thoughts on "Race to 99" contest

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Here's what I don't get... and I've been playing Softcore for a little bit this season in addition to HC. Last season there were some builds I wanted to experiment with for PvP and PK and well, HC is just not the place to go practicing.

Anyhow.

This contest is completely weighted towards the Softcore community. It took me about 6 days to level up an Enchantress to 77 (yes, I suck, I went the long route and PLAYED THROUGH ACT 3 in all difficulties) and when I finally got to Baal at about level 76, the players were all either untwinked or naked.

There were naked sorcs running around with staves that were probably the same stave they got when they clicked "Create Another Sorc". Obviously they aren't there to run the ladder. If I had done the SC thing, which is the following to level up to 75:

Run Den of Evil
Run Tristram 10 times
Run Sewers and Arcane 10 times
Run Travincal 10-15 times
Get Ancients at 21
Baal run (complain for 2 hours that you aren't getting experience) to 36
Proceed to Nightmare
Beg for rush to NM Ancients
Do ancients at 37 (then proceed to ask why you couldn't get quest)
Proceed to beg all friends on list to NM Cow you to 40
Get Ancients
Do Baal runs to 53
Proceed to Hell
Beg for rush to Hell Ancients
Do ancients at 55 (then proceed to ask why you couldn't get quest)
Ask friends to Hell Cow you to 60
Get Ancients
Then do endless Hell Baal runs

Ah yes, Level 75 in a week? Well, this is what I saw in the SC community on East. At least, this is how people seemed to be playing. How in the hell did these people get to 80 the first night I wonder?

Anyhow, enough ranting. The problem is, these people are going to get to 99, when the HC community has no shot of winning it. The "serious" 99 runners are all using Chicken in Softcore (I saw it firsthand, they just don't want to lose their precious XP), and they will all hit 99 probably in the next 2 weeks.

Here's an addendum that Blizzard SHOULD have put into their rules: The winning 99 will have his account scanned for hack usage. If it is deemed they hacked their way to 99, then the character and account will be summarily obliterated from the Ladder.

What Blizz did with this whole contest is 1) Give it to the SC community and 2) Encourage use of Maphacks, c3p0's, and whatever. Talk about unfair advantages. And all this for a measly $175 in Blizzard Junk which I would probably throw away. A better prize would have been a lifetime subscription to their Pay-to-Play servers for WoW...

Everyone disagree with me?
 
85 in one day is very possible in HC Xpac wiht a litle help.

Now 80 in one day starting from scratch is probably a good HARD 22-24 hour run and very doable. You can hit 80 in NM Baals in big games but with solo exp pretty quickly thus the biggest problem with Xpac.

NM is so freaking easy in Xpac if you lvl thil it gets slow in Norm. Hell it is nothing to hit 45 in Norm and cake walk thru NM. I have soloed my curent 60 sorc thru Norm and NM other than a few (2) player Baal runs in just about 20 hours total play and much of that was taking my Act 2 Defiance merc back to Act 2 to slowly lvl him up since once i got to Act 3 he didnt lvl well. I probably put 1/5 my time on this sorc in lvlin merc.

With the use of all the illegit tools out there it is nothign to safely hit certain areas very quickly and gain 1-2 lvls per run. Especially considering many are also using chicken they can just push push push, MF with no resisits...etc

i am shocked that you are shocked somoene could hit 80 in SC in one day.
 
In all fairness there are SC people who do know how to play the game, they just play it in a way that involves killing somewhat faster in exchange for being more accident prone.

I don't consider myself to be a better player since moving away from SC, just one who avoids death a lot more.

Aside from that I agree with you, it is an SC oriented contest that encourages hack use. I *CAN* concieve on an HC player winning though, the HFC guys on Asia 3 weren't that far behind the SC community last season iirc. That doesn't make it likely that it will happen, but it is feasible.
 
BTW, I could care less about the first lvl 99 ******** as you know it will simply be either somoene that has a buttload of time to play, or someone that had a bot to make up for time.
 
STINGER said:
BTW, I could care less about the first lvl 99 ******** as you know it will simply be either somoene that has a buttload of time to play, or someone that had a bot to make up for time.
Click to expand...

Then why ***** about it?
 
Lmao Carnage... going into attack mode. LOL

Well, screw the quality of play on SC, I'm just there to work on some LLD/MidLevel PK chars. Test their viability and level them to where I would in HC before taking them live. Good place to do it, just getting to where I can efficiently level is like a pain in the ***. I play straight, these guys, "TP to THRONE!" when they are level 15! I was thinking of a thread called "Bad Play in SC, Watch out!"

But like I said, it's just a contest to give the SC community something to do this season. God forbid they ever learn where to find Khalim's Brain... or get one of their own for that matter. Untwinked they hit 80 in one day Stinger... Impossible to do in my opinion unless you are totally using hacks. If I was playing in a team that knew wtf they were doing, I may have a shot at about 60, since I play like Tarzan in a jungle of Rush Monkeys.

Another thought on it... What Blizzard should do and would be absolutely histerically funny IMHO: Wait for all ladders to get 98s on them, and then just as people get to 3.5 billion XP, perform a mass ban for use of bots, maphack, d2loader, etc.

OH my god could you hear the screams? Oh the pain. Would give me such happiness. Then we'll see who's legit by the way they all one by one slide into oblivion on the ladder.
 
I agree that its sad that blizz will basically be acknowledging and rewarding hack users.

On the other hand, I would expect that blizz will award the first HC char the same rewards that the first SC char will receive. Blizz is fully aware that HC is essentially a different game than SC. Although it only took another month or so for the first HC to hit 99 after the first SC did. Its ironic that in HC you don't have to worry about experience loss at lvl 98 by dying. Didn't the SC guy die several times at lvl 98? :)
 
Sure you have to worry about it, I know one or two people who dropped places in the ladder after dying PvM, that's why I made sure to die PvP ^^
 
Meh...like others have stated, Blizzard is directly supporting hack usage, whether they don't know or know and don't care. I talked to GU-Zero and Ali_ownsBM about how they ran the ladder, and the answer may surprise you.

GU-Zero, got to hell baals the morning of the second day apparently, but since hell baals were very slow, he leveled by joining hell games and helping the party out with BO and getting exp from the boss monsters until like level 83-84, then has baaled the rest. Respectable I guess.

Ali_OwnsBM, on the otherhand, despite his name,(from what he told me anyway)
got to hell baals the night of the second day, leveled there enough to do hell andy, mf'ed hell andy, then pbotted to level 93. Once there, he had enough gear to do serious hell baals. So he logs on in the morning, mfs until someone msgs him about a hell baal(usually quick I assume) then joins it and that continues all day. Then he turns on the pbot for the night, gotta havethat extra 5 mil or whatever exp you know. Pfft, the irony.
 
viamede said:
IIRC you had "squelched" Stinger :scratch:...

guess old habits die hard ;)
Click to expand...

As far as i know he never announced a squelching but he doesnt seem to have anything of note to add to much thread I have read from him for some time so dont let him bother you.......I sure as hell dont!

Glad to see you are your chipper old self.

Note: I am still trying to figure out what i typed up there that got ********* as I didnt thoink I typed a word like that in there....oh well.
 
AliOwnsBM got to 93 Pbotting? AND located all his gear that way? Not a chance. He's lying. And if he is botting at night, I hope a serious lag spike hits his comp and kills him.
 
not like it wasnt obvious when ladder was reset and everyone and their mother had lvl 70 by the first day.

no, i dont doubt that some of these people actually had skills. i know some pretty baalsy sorks running around with craptacular gear, mostly d2 classic converts that got boed along the way. but for every talented sork, there are probably 100 that gets there by leeching and being retards.

oh, and i dont want to go into the botting issue either. botting after the second day? entirely possible. all you need is a barb and a sork running meff during the first half of the second day, and you can pretty much assemble your gear right then and there. and of course, pindle and company give insane exp at lvls <90.

it's really frustrating how the legit players get punished for being legit. last ladder season i died like 34975209350293502 times, but then the hackers, without their precious chicken or maphack, died like 5 times as much as i did. in the middle of the season, having learned my lessons, i actually did pretty well (im one of the probably very few that were rich enough to trade for high runes with my 35097359603 meff runs).

but then again, good guys always finish last.
 
if you want to race leveling up, a week for lvl 75 was way too long, and could be cut to 1/4 or less in a completely legit way.


here is an old story out of my own personal exp:

lvl 67(?) ama, HCL 1 - created on some Sat night in Nov last year, and played her till i went to bed. continued to lvl her up after I got up Sunday morning. she was nearly lvl 70 (67 iirc) when she finally got pk'ed on the afternoon of that day (due to a mistake I made whe tired). which brough to the end of my 7th char on HCL 1.

As for SC, lvling up can be even faster. My kicksin, SCL 1, got to lvl 74 slightly over a night game play.



My personal exp tells me that fast legit lvlup in 1.10 is doable, but requires a decent build (for doing good dmg in poor gear), enough good luck (for not dying in poor gear), and lots of party play (for getting extra xp per kill).

Sadly, botting makes legit lvling so foolish and meaningless. For HCL 2, I no longer care about how fast my chars can level up.

As far as d2 is concerned, the only thing I now care about is to get my most favorite builds (7 right now) to decent levels by playing through the game. Going through act3 all diff lvls is not an option to me, but a must to most of them (if not all).



BTW, I don't trade (except once - see below), don't bot, never begged for rush. my dead ama above didn't have any unique/set items. And my kicksin barely had anything good, but I played her very aggressively (hey that was SCL) and had her tank almost everything till Hell act1. She never died though (not even close).

here is my entire trading history:

first trade, completed: bought a kuko for 30 chips (after I stared on a new realm).
second trade, aborted: wanna trade away my cruel winged hapoon (nearly 300%, with a 2nd mod), but got disconnected from b.net.
 
STINGER said:
As far as i know he never announced a squelching .
Click to expand...

Sheesh....well my apologies then...I thought he had...tough to follow all the flaming...


I'll just go back to the ambrosia....
 
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