Why are people so sure that you won't have to start a new character when the expansion hits? D2 did just that. Leveling, itemization, acts, other game mechanics will be different and a different experience through all the difficulties so starting from the beginning again just makes sense.
From a business standpoint, it would be a smart move to separate players and have players start new expansion characters. It gives more incentive to buy the newest content so that you can play and get the same experience as those who shelled out the money for the expansion.
D2 didn't make people start new characters for the expansions, they just had to convert their old characters to it. Shiny little button, made an old character and expansion character in no time flat.
You could probably predownload it, but you wouldn't have the key to play it until you got your actual box anyway, And it apparently will take just as long to decrypt the predownloads as it does to install it from the disk, so theres really no reason to worry about predownloading it if you're getting the CE.
Ok so I took a common sense approach because the numbers being posted a quite rediculous without some kind of real-world assumptions and restrictions being placed on them.
I have limited my calculations to "sensible" builds.
For the barbarian we have:
20,160,000,000 total barbarian combinations, with my given restrictions.
You guys can work out the rest!
Snipped the quote a bit, but thank you for understanding my point sir, you win the thread cookie. There may be wiggle room beyond what would normally be considered sensible, as odd combinations can sometimes provide utility beyond the obvious, but I like the idea you've taken here :D.
For proper theory crafting to occur, you should disregard the differences between the large majority of the possible builds as an overwhelming percent of those possible will be far from optimal just for the fact that they're being thrown together randomly and examined, and then meaningless to the fact that the skills may NOT be useful together, you're suggesting that same build should be considerd again with a different rune in x skill.
No, for proper theory crafting to occur one must logically take the first steps and hypothosise which skills could or should work together and compare from there, making only the changes the make sense, thus substantially limiting the number of possible comparisons needed/wasted. This would get the amount of time spent down to a reasonable value and thus allow people to play in this century.
Look, again I'm not arguing that the numbers are wrong, or whatever the case, but can you possibly tell me how the knowledge that there are 1.8 trillion builds or if I were to tell you there were 1.8 quadrillion builds would have any real affect on what you did to come up with a build?
There is a difference here. My numbers are not an estimate, they're correct. The OP is bullshit. Your point is completely meaningless in a world of easily swappable skills.
The important point being made here is that there are a significant number of builds to try in the game, and that it's non-trivial to determine the build to use. Compare to d2 where there were significantly *more* builds, but it was obvious what the best were, and your point wasn't meaningless because you *did* need to re-roll for *every minor difference.*
Correct or not isn't really the point. You're saying theres 1.8 tril, hes saying a metric butt ton more. The applied difference to any logical argument concerning the game is.... Nothing. It wouldn't affect the discussion wether it was half as much, or that number to the nth degree. I just don't undestand arguing of the specifics of the number of possible builds. THAT is very trivial, especially as the number of possible builds has nothing to do with determining "the build to use". Does knowing how many houses there are for sale on the entire planet help me to determine which one to buy? Not in any way, wether it was 1.8 trillion houses, or however many quadrillion houses, the house I buy is not affected in any way by this knowledge, and there is no practical use provided by knowing the answer.
The only possible way it would truly affect me would be if I was going to examine all the possibilities. When there are that many possibilities, ( in either case, well beyond the realm of possibility for anyone to acknowledge and check all of them ), it is quite clear no one will be doing such a thing.
Incase it seems necessary for me to defend that point as well, if you were able to look at, and consider every one of those possible builds in a single second, and the next in the next second, with no down time between, so one per second, for consecutive seconds.... you would spend the next 57,843.49 years going over the possible builds.
If it offended you that I called your math an estimate then sure, I'm sorry. I couldn't be bothered to work up the math myself, and so I wasn't going to confirm or deny either conclusion. To add to the silliness of calculating an exact number at such an extreme, if any skill is removed and not replace, or one added and not removed, it will invalidate all previous absolutely correct large numbers.
So... To state the point I originally made, which was apparently dismissed, for what reason I don't know...
The number of builds is sufficiently large for any discussion of diversity or any such topic as it could possibly apply to any aspect of the game.
Theory crafting should be used to figure out mathematical problems and possibilities that actually have some applicable use...
You can change it by typing "/players 8" or something similar to that, adding non present players to your game does not add them to your group however, so you will only get half the benefits of drop rating, so whatever the drop rate would be for 4 players, while increasing the difficulty of the enemies to the 8 player level.
Edit: If that isn't enough of a change for you and you do want a mod, plugy was always pretty common, there is a 1.14 compatible version that lets you change a large number of things. Not sure if drop rate was a part of it, but ladder rune words and uber events are.
It's just too bad that MF scales for group drop efficiency more than the 16% damage drop.
This, this, and more of this....
Edit: May have misread/misquoted this, but this still if I didn't
Anyway, generally more people in a game already means more and better drops regardless of your personal mf.
So you're at 100 and that guy is at 50.. Averaging at 75... You don't think the mf/drop bonus + general expected survivability and kill speed boost is going to make up for the 25% mf you "lost"?
I'm not saying I have hard numbers to prove it, but thats a hard argument to make from where I'm sitting :P.
Soooo, I was reading this, and your numbers are rather unimportant. Disregarding the reason for posting them, lets assume this game is rediculously successful beyond their wildest dreams, and reaches the 50 million sales mark. If there is even 1 billion combinations, which even the lower estimate suggested above says every class will have much more than that each, then to reach even that 1 billion combinations each of those 50,000,000 players would have to create 20 completely unique characters, not one of them being alike, and ofcourse to have them all unique all 20 of each of their characters would have to max out in level.
Thats for 1,000,000 combinations.
It's safe to assume that there is technically more than that.
Is there a need to bicker over the specifics of how many billions/trillions/quadrillions there might be? It seems that any arguement can be made by assuming the number of combinations is sufficiently large, no?
You know what I do when some punk kid disrespects me? I ignore him and move on with my life because I don't care what 'some punk kid' thinks about me.
Judging by your post, and the way you're insulting people in this thread, I'd say you were banned forever for being either profane, or just generally rude. Also for 'telling some punk kid how it is.' Seems like a legit ban to me, Blizzard doesn't need you throwing temper tantrums on their forums every time someone disagrees with you.
Gotta agree on this one. OP probably did deserve the ban. If some internet guy annoys you, you move on...
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D2 didn't make people start new characters for the expansions, they just had to convert their old characters to it. Shiny little button, made an old character and expansion character in no time flat.
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Snipped the quote a bit, but thank you for understanding my point sir, you win the thread cookie. There may be wiggle room beyond what would normally be considered sensible, as odd combinations can sometimes provide utility beyond the obvious, but I like the idea you've taken here :D.
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No, for proper theory crafting to occur one must logically take the first steps and hypothosise which skills could or should work together and compare from there, making only the changes the make sense, thus substantially limiting the number of possible comparisons needed/wasted. This would get the amount of time spent down to a reasonable value and thus allow people to play in this century.
Look, again I'm not arguing that the numbers are wrong, or whatever the case, but can you possibly tell me how the knowledge that there are 1.8 trillion builds or if I were to tell you there were 1.8 quadrillion builds would have any real affect on what you did to come up with a build?
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Correct or not isn't really the point. You're saying theres 1.8 tril, hes saying a metric butt ton more. The applied difference to any logical argument concerning the game is.... Nothing. It wouldn't affect the discussion wether it was half as much, or that number to the nth degree. I just don't undestand arguing of the specifics of the number of possible builds. THAT is very trivial, especially as the number of possible builds has nothing to do with determining "the build to use". Does knowing how many houses there are for sale on the entire planet help me to determine which one to buy? Not in any way, wether it was 1.8 trillion houses, or however many quadrillion houses, the house I buy is not affected in any way by this knowledge, and there is no practical use provided by knowing the answer.
The only possible way it would truly affect me would be if I was going to examine all the possibilities. When there are that many possibilities, ( in either case, well beyond the realm of possibility for anyone to acknowledge and check all of them ), it is quite clear no one will be doing such a thing.
Incase it seems necessary for me to defend that point as well, if you were able to look at, and consider every one of those possible builds in a single second, and the next in the next second, with no down time between, so one per second, for consecutive seconds.... you would spend the next 57,843.49 years going over the possible builds.
If it offended you that I called your math an estimate then sure, I'm sorry. I couldn't be bothered to work up the math myself, and so I wasn't going to confirm or deny either conclusion. To add to the silliness of calculating an exact number at such an extreme, if any skill is removed and not replace, or one added and not removed, it will invalidate all previous absolutely correct large numbers.
So... To state the point I originally made, which was apparently dismissed, for what reason I don't know...
The number of builds is sufficiently large for any discussion of diversity or any such topic as it could possibly apply to any aspect of the game.
Theory crafting should be used to figure out mathematical problems and possibilities that actually have some applicable use...
USE YOUR POWERS FOR GOOD!
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Edit: If that isn't enough of a change for you and you do want a mod, plugy was always pretty common, there is a 1.14 compatible version that lets you change a large number of things. Not sure if drop rate was a part of it, but ladder rune words and uber events are.
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This, this, and more of this....
Edit: May have misread/misquoted this, but this still if I didn't
Anyway, generally more people in a game already means more and better drops regardless of your personal mf.
So you're at 100 and that guy is at 50.. Averaging at 75... You don't think the mf/drop bonus + general expected survivability and kill speed boost is going to make up for the 25% mf you "lost"?
I'm not saying I have hard numbers to prove it, but thats a hard argument to make from where I'm sitting :P.
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Thats for 1,000,000 combinations.
It's safe to assume that there is technically more than that.
Is there a need to bicker over the specifics of how many billions/trillions/quadrillions there might be? It seems that any arguement can be made by assuming the number of combinations is sufficiently large, no?
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Excuse me but...
.. Just sayin