Blizzard has repeatedly that they want to encourage people to play together and not just join a game and go off on your own. How do you think they will accomplish this?

If there is a benefit (enhanced chance of high lvl drops maybe) for playing in games with more people many are gonna want to go off on their own to gain those benefits without doing exactly what the other players in the game are doing.

I think one way to solve this would be to only apply those benefits if players are within a certain radius of eachother. This would work similar to an aura that triggers and applies an icon to the corner of your screen showing that drop % is increased for you or whatever the benefit was. In a 3 player game this triggers when 2 people are close and scales up when the 3rd person arrives. In a 4 or more player game it triggers at 3 people and scales when the 4th player arrives (this would prevent people from going off in two groups of 2)

This could be fairly large radius such as the same level of a dungeon or the same outdoor zone. Maybe it needs to be smaller or larger, this would be determined in beta after some testing.

I just think that to encourage people to stick together there has to be some kind of benfit applied only in proximity of the other players or people are just gonna go off and do what they want to do.

and a exp bonus well they already had tht but make it like you said so you have to be in X range to get it

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Q u o t e:
The distance limitation you're speaking of in being considered an active participant already exists in the game.

The item benefit of playing together is due partly to the per-player item drops, but also increase in items-per-minute ratio due to groups killing faster than a single player. The amount of items dropping with each additional player is slightly higher than if those players were to just play in their own games. Now, that's slightly deceiving because we're talking about the entire pool of drops, but actually each player sees and receives an equal portion, so in this case we're looking at the drops as if they were shared completely freely within the group. This may not be the case for all items or groups.

Still, if you have three friends and you're all buddy-buddy with each other and sharing everything, the benefit of playing together for item drops is noticeable. If you're all being very stingy and not sharing anything, or just throwing out the crap, you'll still see a slight increase just from killing speed.

But anyway, with all that in mind, there is already of course a distance limit in which you'll be considered an active participant in a monster kill to be able to receive a drop from it. If you're out of range and someone in your party kills something, you don't get a drop from it. It's a very obvious solution to deal with a very obvious issue. The range is fairly forgiving.

So instead our focus turns to helping groups help themselves through various mechanics to keep everyone together. But those are specifics for another time though.

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Okay, so that means that if I wanted to create a D3 item store, I would have 5 bot characters "buddy-buddy" with each other on 5 seperate computers running 5 seperate D3 CD Keys, using but 1 D3-equivalent-to-Hammerdin with 4 follow or leech-bots, and get x5 the drops with just 1 fully geared character? By the sounds of it, being an "active participant" simply means you have to be within a close proximately of the monsters on death, but that does not mean that you will actually need to help in any way, shape, or form in killing it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the exact same thing that is happening in Diablo II baal runs, where there are 1 or 2 Hammerdins killing everything and the rest of the players is composed of leechers doing nothing more than picking up the drops?

Well if they make the mosters harder when more peopel join the game like in d2 but to a higher degree that could possibly solve that... bu then you lose the extra item drops becaseu then the mosters will be harder to kill with more people so they still die at the same rate so then you get no extra items...

I like the OP's idea of having an onscreen notifier about what drop% bonus the party is getting. I would also like to see a similar notifier about experience. In D2 there was so much misinformation regarding when and how you got an experience penalty that it was hard for new players to know when, where and how to level their characters. Even if the HUD had a rookie and veteran setting would be nice. Rookie would look more like D2 with just life and a few basic commands whereas the veteran display could have all the various numbers and percentages easily displayed.

Well, the problem with what you said is the botting itself, this is going to be a brand new game, there isn't going to be bots until the computer savvy folk decide to create one. So, basically it is up to Blizzard to carefully make the program as hack proof as possible, and have as many moderators as possible to cease those that do things like that. So don't say something like that, when it might not even be viable.

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Q u o t e:
Well, the problem with what you said is the botting itself, this is going to be a brand new game, there isn't going to be bots until the computer savvy folk decide to create one. So, basically it is up to Blizzard to carefully make the program as hack proof as possible, and have as many moderators as possible to cease those that do things like that. So don't say something like that, when it might not even be viable.

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Um, have you ever been to a baal run that was actually not run by a bot? I have! Guess what, you still have the exact same problem with leechers, bot run or otherwise. As for the moderator thing, this isn't World of Warcraft. There isn't going to be one large server - there will be hundreds and thousands of seperate servers with a max of 5 people in each. I doubt Blizzard is going to have moderators join every single server and watch what everyone is doing. In a MMO, it's possible because other players can report stuff going awry, but doing that in a game like Diablo III can never be due to private/passworded games, games with a maximum number of players that can easily get full by the people that don't report, etc.

I think Blizzard is making the right thing here from what Bashiok says. It seems like the most logical thing to do.

One way to stop leechs seems to be to simply drop them from the group. Bashiok states this bonus applies to group members, So im assuming it does not apply to people outside of the party.

This still leaves plenty of room for griefing and kill stealing but I'm sure blizzard is taking the appropriate steps to combat this.

In regaurds to the concern about bots, I'm sure there is a way for these people to be tracked or caught. If someone has a random server being generated with a random name and password every 20 minutes for 24 hour periods with the same 5 chars joining everytime I'm pretty sure blizzard can catch on.

We all know Blizzard is working hard on making this game as user friendly as possible, the last thing they want is a random griefer or botter ruining the majorities playing experience, in turn causing them losses.

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Q u o t e:
If you did need to damage every enemy in order to get a drop from it we would essentially be requiring all players who wanted to play in groups build their characters for AoE damage. It would then be enforcing the exact opposite of teamwork. Everyone would be going crazy trying to do as much damage to as much as possible so they could try to get a drop off of it.

We could then rename the game to Antithesis of Fun

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Okay, I could understand this somewhat. Maybe Diablo III will have a Healer-type or support character that simply helps the party with buffs or by a less-than-direct means than just damage. And it's very possible that some classes may not have an AoE skill, or some players may simply choose not to use them, and I compeletely agree that it would be more fun if drops were given to these players in the party regardless, as long as they are actually doing *something* to contribute to the party, whether by buffs, healing, or some other actions. The problem I personally have is just those that do nothing but leech, or the players that do absolutely nothing to contribute to the party but is shared equally in the rewards. Again, the example of baal runs in Diablo II comes to mind. In baal runs, we often see AFK naked characters wielding nothing but Ondal's Wisdom for the 5% to Experience Gained sitting in the corner or within that distance that you were talking about for Diablo III inorder to "earn" the rewards without actually doing anything. Sometimes they are not even AFK, so they run around and pick up the drops, and again, this sounds like it could be done in Diablo III, with or without bots. Maybe it's just me, but I have never thought that leeching or having leechers follow me around all day doing nothing but picking up the loot from my kills was a whole lot of fun.

Maybe Diablo III could do something about leeching, if it's believed to be a problem, by using some different tactics that a few other games use? A game that I play called RuneScape attempts to prevent leechers in one of their minigames called Soul Wars by using what they call an "activity bar". Every player has an activity bar that decreases over a period of time and when it is depleted entirely, the player then loses out on the drops and whatnot that they would have normally "earned" if they were actually participating in the game. The activity bar replenshes based on the types of activities that the player does so it's really just a simple counter to leechers. If the player uses a spell or an attack on a monster, it could replenish. If the player heals or buffs a party member, it could replenish. If the player picks up Life or Mana Orbs, which helps the entire party, it could replenish. In other words, the only way for the activity bar to ever reach 0% is if the player does nothing at all but pick up items and/or leech. Even if the player is making but one attack every 60 seconds, it is still a hell of a lot better than what is being done in Diablo II's baal runs.

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Q u o t e:


Players joining your games that do something to annoy you will always be a problem as long as you allow them to. So really the simple solution here is to not play in publicly open games.

But, from a game feature side, it sounds like what you're actually asking for are game moderation options. Such as the ability for the game creator or game participants to kick, ban, squelch, etc. And maybe those are some possibilities, maybe, but they themselves could easily be turned around and used as griefing tools themselves.

There are solutions. I don't think it's a problem that warrants a lot of time at the moment though.

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Okay lol XD. I would actually prefer no player moderation, but rather just a system built in that keeps leeching to a minimum. Anyways, that's just my thoughts -.-'.

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Q u o t e:


Okay, I could understand this somewhat. Maybe Diablo III will have a Healer-type or support character that simply helps the party with buffs or by a less-than-direct means than just damage. And it's very possible that some classes may not have an AoE skill, or some players may simply choose not to use them, and I compeletely agree that it would be more fun if drops were given to these players in the party regardless, as long as they are actually doing *something* to contribute to the party, whether by buffs, healing, or some other actions. The problem I personally have is just those that do nothing but leech, or the players that do absolutely nothing to contribute to the party but is shared equally in the rewards. Again, the example of baal runs in Diablo II comes to mind. In baal runs, we often see AFK naked characters wielding nothing but Ondal's Wisdom for the 5% to Experience Gained sitting in the corner or within that distance that you were talking about for Diablo III inorder to "earn" the rewards without actually doing anything. Sometimes they are not even AFK, so they run around and pick up the drops, and again, this sounds like it could be done in Diablo III, with or without bots. Maybe it's just me, but I have never thought that leeching or having leechers follow me around all day doing nothing but picking up the loot from my kills was a whole lot of fun.

Maybe Diablo III could do something about leeching, if it's believed to be a problem, by using some different tactics that a few other games use? A game that I play called RuneScape attempts to prevent leechers in one of their minigames called Soul Wars by using what they call an "activity bar". Every player has an activity bar that decreases over a period of time and when it is depleted entirely, the player then loses out on the drops and whatnot that they would have normally "earned" if they were actually participating in the game. The activity bar replenshes based on the types of activities that the player does so it's really just a simple counter to leechers. If the player uses a spell or an attack on a monster, it could replenish. If the player heals or buffs a party member, it could replenish. If the player picks up Life or Mana Orbs, which helps the entire party, it could replenish. In other words, the only way for the activity bar to ever reach 0% is if the player does nothing at all but pick up items and/or leech. Even if the player is making but one attack every 60 seconds, it is still a hell of a lot better than what is being done in Diablo II's baal runs.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but if someone isn't contributing anything to the party and is leeching exp and loot drops, can't you just reform a party without that person and then they wont gain any of the exp or loot that your party gets, effectively solving this entire issue?

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Q u o t e:
Originally posted by Bashiok [Blizzard Poster]

Players joining your games that do something to annoy you will always be a problem as long as you allow them to. So really the simple solution here is to not play in publicly open games.

But, from a game feature side, it sounds like what you're actually asking for are game moderation options. Such as the ability for the game creator or game participants to kick, ban, squelch, etc. And maybe those are some possibilities, maybe, but they themselves could easily be turned around and used as griefing tools themselves.

There are solutions. I don't think it's a problem that warrants a lot of time at the moment though.

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To be honest it would be fairly simple to solve players using it to grief : Limit those options to the room creator. Chances are the room creator won't use his power to grief like others will if they had it.

And if the creator is a !%%! and abuses it, you can leave the game and know not to join that person's games.

In my opinion, that solves pretty much all the problems with giving moderation power to players, even if it's only in rooms they create. It still allows the room creator to remove troublemakers, while also preventing malicious players from using it to grief other players.

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Q u o t e:


Correct me if I'm wrong, but if someone isn't contributing anything to the party and is leeching exp and loot drops, can't you just reform a party without that person and then they wont gain any of the exp or loot that your party gets, effectively solving this entire issue?

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Couldn't the same be said with Diablo II baal runs?

I can't imagine blizzard not implementing a party system. Something like WoW would be just fine. A leader who can do the inviting/kicking so players don't randomly get screwed over.

There will be @!@*%@%s in every game. So if someone kicks you before a boss, kicks you for no apparent reason, seems like a botter, etc, just squelch them, blacklist them, don't play with them again. It's not really Blizzards job to prevent %#**@@@s, just to prevent the extent to which they can affect us.