Are you tired of FSS imposing pointless limits on Singleplayer mode?

[Huskie]

I've been thinking of asking this here in SP Enclave for a while:
Are you tired of the hand-holding FSS does with the SPers, imposing limits and things which we should know better about?

I know I am.

I simply can't understand why FSS imposes limits like bosses that don't respawn, removing rewards (for example the item drops from hellrifts in the Ludgate Hill "Tripping the rifts" quest) and other stuff...

In my opinion the player should be free to set these things himself in some sort of gameplay options panel.

First, there should be an option for bosses to respawn. I think that specially for singleplayers, who are usually the most casual type of players, the ability to farm anything would only make sense in this type of game. It is not as if it would cause any kind of unbalance, since we're only playing alone and thus can only affect our own gameplay. As it is now, we can only farm the very first and the very final boss. Occuli and Abaddon are unintended and unofficial exceptions which apparently are getting "fixed" soon. In Diablo 2 being able to farm anything at anytime was great fun, at least for me, as a singleplayer.

Second, there should be an option to make bosses drop the same quality loot they drop for the first time they die, on subsequent deaths as well. What's the points in toning it down? Again, it can't unbalance anything, and just makes the farming quicker for those who can't afford to farm for hours on end. In Diablo 2 the first drop was at best just a tiny bit better than the subsequent, but nothing that could disencourage killing the boss in question again. After killing Sydonai I really don't feel like going through all that hassle to kill him again just to get a much worse drop. If he still dropped good stuff the second time around (and the times after it) I just might do it again and have a great time while doing it.

A way of setting the difficulty of item drops (i.e. an inherent "Luck" factor of the character) for better or worse if you wish to raise or lower the game's difficulty, would also be interesting. I find the drops on HG:L to be extremely boring. I recently edited the memory on my game to give myself 5000 Luck (anything too much over that number seems to hit a cap which resets your Luck to 0), and as ludicrous as that number may seem, I could compare it to having a measly "~50% better chance of finding magic items" on Diablo 2. And honestly, I'm having a whole lot more fun playing with the 5000 Luck, than doing it the legit way, no guilt feeling for cheating whatsoever involved.

Also, a way to set how many monsters/champions would be neat. I know that that's basically asking for Elite mode.


Anyway, there's a whole lot of things that should be customizable. Not in a sandbox game, type of way, but more to give the singleplayers a bit more freedom to do as their wish. If we're gonna be treated as second class trash by FSS at least let us play our game how we wish to, without all this handholding crap. And I just had to get this off my chest.

I wonder where BrotherLaz is. I used to play his Diablo 2 mod and it was brilliant. HG:L could use some of his work. I saw some of his posts here in the forum, but they were pretty old. I wonder if he still has any interest in the game?

[Virus]

They banned Brother Laz from the Official Forums because he chose to speak what he felt to be true. He is a EU player no longer welcome in the US Forums.

[Amarra]

I tend to agree that singleplayers have a lot to be upset about, but I wouldn't exactly say these specific issues are at the top of my list. I do agree with your concerns, but I'm not particularly irate about them.

About customization -- I like this point. Moddability of the singleplayer component would be amazing. Right now I think Flagship has a lot of other things to be thinking about, but in the long term we can push for improved modding capabilities.

Concerning the bosses -- Since I don't play online, everything I know about the patch 1.0 changes to boss farming is second hand information. However, what I've heard is that 1.0 fixes some bugs that allowed farming of Abbadon and Occulis too quickly. Farming is apparently still possible, but it takes longer to make the instance reset.



And since this is a pet peeve of mine, I just have to say:
I think that specially for singleplayers, who are usually the most casual type of playersI play singleplayer precisely because I'm not a casual player. I use singleplayer so that I can play whenever I want. While the servers are down, while my internet connection is unplugged, 15 years from now when the servers may not be running anymore...

[Huskie]

They banned Brother Laz from the Official Forums because he chose to speak what he felt to be true. He is a EU player no longer welcome in the US Forums.

Hmm, so he still plays HG:L? By the way, I was actually referring to his posts here in HGG, I don't have access to the official forums myself, but thanks for the info.

Anyway, if he still plays and you see him around, could you ask him for me if he has any plans of modding HG:L, please?


I tend to agree that singleplayers have a lot to be upset about, but I wouldn't exactly say these specific issues are at the top of my list. I do agree with your concerns, but I'm not particularly irate about them.

About customization -- I like this point. Moddability of the singleplayer component would be amazing. Right now I think Flagship has a lot of other things to be thinking about, but in the long term we can push for improved modding capabilities.

To be honest I think a whole lot of things could use a change and not necessarily those I mentioned are the main ones, but I just pointed out the ones that illustrate better the pointless limits imposed by FSS I was referring to.

Concerning the bosses -- Since I don't play online, everything I know about the patch 1.0 changes to boss farming is second hand information. However, what I've heard is that 1.0 fixes some bugs that allowed farming of Abbadon and Occulis too quickly. Farming is apparently still possible, but it takes longer to make the instance reset.

Well, knowing the way flagship does things I'm really not holding my hopes too high about this. They're probably going to make it impossible to use PRDs in those instances and make you have to relog and run all the way back to those bosses, which is extremely stupid and lame IMO (especially for Occuli with all that boil bursting crap in the way).

Plus, the techsmiths should have their drops fixed, too. Right now their drops after you killed them for the first time around is the same of that of normal monster's champions, which is kinda pathetic...

I play singleplayer precisely because I'm not a casual player. I use singleplayer so that I can play whenever I want. While the servers are down, while my internet connection is unplugged, 15 years from now when the servers may not be running anymore...

Well, I didn't say that each and every singleplayer is a casual player, just that the most probably are. ;)

[Lonethar]

I have other issues more pressing to me. The others you listed are lower priority for me. I feel the same as Amarra about them in fact. I am having LOTS of fun with Fallout 2 right now so Im not too worried about my HG:L exprience right now.

Ill close this post by saying "Vote apples as the official crunchy snack of HG:L Spers"

[Spearthrower]

I can only agree Huskie. When the game started out, there was SP and MP. Now Mr Roper claims that it was always designed to be a "MMORPG" (which is especially funny when it isn't!).... and to tell you the truth, it appears that SP was considered for a certain amount of time, then all further thought going into it was abandoned. No one really bothered to see what effects certain choices would have on the Out Of The Box game.

I read a lot of blogs and articles from the great games designers and FSS have repeatedly made what are considered to be text book errors.

At the end of the day though, it is them that will pay for their mistakes.

I don't know if any of you would be leaping to buy their next offering?

Whereas, I am now looking forward to Diablo 3 much more. Initially I thought it might be lame as it had none of the crew..... now it appears that it was Blizzard that were the key to its success, not this motley bunch! ;)

[BryanM]

Eh, I saw Laz make a post in the official forums a few days back.

It's just a lack of caring; they don't listen, we spoke our peace, nothing left to do.

Except maybe play through the entire game taking screenshots and then making commentary on those screenshots, but it'd take a seriously sick man to do that. A real masochist.

We should be able to "reroll" instances to get monsters and bosses back in there; this isn't Diablo 2 where logging out of a game and back in takes three seconds.

And trash monsters should have a higher quality drop rate, so boss farming isn't the only end game.

Meh.

[Steelgaze]

Whoa, that is lame of them to ban him. I guess it shows how far they have dropped for customer appreciation.

[MrBib]

Whereas, I am now looking forward to Diablo 3 much more. Initially I thought it might be lame as it had none of the crew..... now it appears that it was Blizzard that were the key to its success, not this motley bunch! ;)

Can these guys produce Diablo 3? Or does Blizzard own the rights?

Fallout 3 is the game I'm very much looking forward to next, along with an eventual D3. :)

[Spearthrower]

Blizzard Entertainment owns the rights. I assume it will be developed by the remaining staff of the now closed Blizzard North, even missing half the staff that were originally involved.

[Huskie]

Yeah as soon as D3 comes out I think HG:L will lose a big part of it's player base (me included, in the very unlikely case I'm still playing this by the time it's released).

Anyway, I guess if Laz is still around, like BryanM pointed out, I guess it's still possible that SP can have a few tweaks if he has plans of modding it (or can be tallked into it :) ). I would really appreciate if anybody who could get in touch with him could kindly ask him to visit this topic and say if he has any plans of modding it or not. I'll try and find his Diablo 2's mod homepage and see if there's any way to contact him through there.

[Sp3tSnAz]

Jump on IRC if you want ;)

He hangs out in the Mythos channel :p

I think he's pretty much off HGL for now, and is sticking with Mythos as it is now....

irc.hellgateguru.com, channel #Mythos

He's LazBro in that channel, and you can also note that he doesn't go onto the Hellgate channel that we have :p So I think he's given up on that :p

[Huskie]

Thanks Sp3tSnAz, I'll try it out, although I'm completely unfamiliar with IRC, believe it or not.

Hmm, writing irc.hellgateguru.com on my IE's Address box takes me to a totally strange website talking about some Apache stuff... How do I get started with this IRC thing? Yeah I'm a total noob... :D

[Amarra]

You need an IRC client. Try mIRC (http://www.mirc.com) or X-Chat (http://xchat.org/).

[Sp3tSnAz]

http://www.hellgateguru.com/irc/

Read that :p

It also has a link to a web based java client you can use :)

When you login, either ask in the Hellgate channel what to do, or type /join Mythos

You can also change your name with /nick Name, where name is your name you want to use :)

[Huskie]

Ok, thanks for the help guys, +reps coming to you both! :D

EDIT: Must spread before giving +rep to Sp3tSnAz again. =\

[Revan]

Blizzard Entertainment owns the rights. I assume it will be developed by the remaining staff of the now closed Blizzard North, even missing half the staff that were originally involved.

igiven the quality or lackthereof of HGL.
the missing half of the original Blizzard North seems to be the crappy ones.

the remainign ones would probably be the ones that made Diablo 1 n 2 great but didn't get the credit dued

[Lillis]

I just checked youtube, and apparently they've changed the melee forward-moving swinging animation (BM/GRD). That was one of the things I actually really hated about the melee classes. Guess I'll just cross my fingers and hope to die for them to at least give us SP'ers that update on the animation...

In closure; speaking from my heart:
WHERE THE FUCK IS MY GODDAMN SP-PATCH, YOU FSS-JERKOFFS!!?

;)

[Sp3tSnAz]

igiven the quality or lackthereof of HGL.
the missing half of the original Blizzard North seems to be the crappy ones.

the remainign ones would probably be the ones that made Diablo 1 n 2 great but didn't get the credit dued

Totally don't agree with that...

Peter Hu and Lee Hu (Or whatever their names are, they are 2 programmer brothers) essentially made all of patch 1.10 and 1.11 and 1.11b on their own as far as I know, as at that stage due to no monthly fee there wasn't really any people working on the game and they single handedly added life back into it....

Both of them are at FSS now...

I however stand by my earlier statement and still believe it, FSS has great talent but they don't have the management to give them correct direction, which is what Blizzard provided for them at least imo...

Having a thousand great creative ideas that are all awesome does not help a company if it can't concentrate on a small handful of those and really polish them up... and to me it seems like FSS lacked that directional figure who made the decisions on what things were key and what should have been reserved for after release...

[Spearthrower]

and to me it seems like FSS lacked that directional figure who made the decisions on what things were key and what should have been reserved for after release...

It does make sense. Something like fumbling the ball at the line. They made a lot of dubious decisions that have lead to a stream of problems that they've been continuously forced to react to rather than to act on going forward.

In this scenario, a lot of the blame must be apportioned to the publishers who made the call. Basically, the marketing system demanded a Halloween release, whether everything was in place or not.

A lot more research could have been done a lot earlier to work out what needed to be in the game to satisfy all parties.

As an aside, they really needed to work better with their SEA partners. The stories from there would curl your hair! Basically, once a patch has been released in US/EU.... FSS needs to recompile it before sending it over to IAH or it simply doesn't work on their servers. So then IAH needs to do a lot of work on it, release it to Test servers, test it then patch. This process seems to take around a month. That month has been long enough to see a 80% drop in numbers.

I'd really like to be able to read an authentic developer's diary.