He then went on to respond to more user questions:"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."
"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?""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."
"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.""There's nothing wrong with the idea of friends running other friends through the game. Have a friend with a higher level character? Cool, have him help you through the game if you want. That doesn't mean we won't have some limitations or slight impedances, for instance we probably wouldn't want it to figure out to be the best way to level, but the general idea of friends helping friends is a positive aspect and something we want to retain as best as possible."
So what do you guys think about all of these group play issues? Let's hear your opinions!"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."
Since the drop calculation is done for each player individually, MF should, if implemented, function very well. Now either it could only affect the player who has it, or more likely, the MF of the player who strikes the killing blow would be applied.
Either way, it was merely speculation. I think Ivaron made a good point, letting MF work in unison between players is another way to encourage teamplay. If it appears that is.
In Diablo II, whether online or offline, your own MF is the only MF that mattered for you. Your mercenary's MF is equal to your MF plus his. No one else in your party, though, would directly benefit from your MF (as in, it didn't pool together or anything), although the more people in the game, the better the drops could be.
Edit-
@ Doppel: That would really suck if that's how it all came out in Diablo III. I guess if MF couldn't work out well, they would either have to think of something more creative to affect drops or just have everyone have the same drop rates, which would basically mean in most cases builds would just be straight power builds, I think, since there would be no need to account for anything else. I'm not saying that as a fact, but it seems, to me, when I think about it, that that is how it would turn out.
A game moderation will be abused no matter what. So to say, you hate leechers and you wish they would die or disappear, well here is the thing, when you were getting rush you're basically leeching. Imagine if d3 dev team created anti-leeching. All of what they stand for will be for nothing. People won't play together, the game becomes bland because people aren't playing together, and they might lose profits from sales because people won't buy d3 . Why? it has a bad rating due to the fact that .."people aren't playing together and therefore it is boring." That's why blizzard are being open-minded and fair to everyone. Being biased is a bad thing to have.
diablo 2 was all about leeching, rushing, glitching, hacking, and getting ahead by any means necessary
Duping, Hacking, ect.. Only started after the 1.08 patch.
If you did play D2 you would relize that it is/was anything from leeching, rushing, hacking.
That is just the majority of people that are left from a game that is 9 years old and very outdated.
Reply to Wardzy
Leechers are less of a problem since everyone gets different item drops unseen by anyone else. They are an extra person in your party which (i presume) means you get more experience for the kills anyway. No one can 'steal' items anymore. So the fact that they are gaining exp by doing nothing... i dont see how that could be annoying in the slightest tbh.
Finally someone who makes a relevant comment that's post related.
The issue ain't about MF, since MF is item related and items will be limited to
your own drops. So why the shit ya'll posting about MF?
It's about whinners again finding something to complain bout. Let's analyze shall we.
The Whinner:
"OooOoh, I just can't stand that mean mean leecher, he's just standing there
staring at meh allll day."
The Mean Pro-Leeching Blizzard:
"WTF? This guy got his own drops, an added exp boost from the evil leecher,
and the possibility to password his game, what else do we need to do?
The Mattheo Cure!
Just give him a pacifier and get this show on the road for christ' sake.
Next subject, this topic is a dead one.
Funny, I read your post 3 times and I still don't see how what I said can't directly fix your little issues.
If you want killing speed, make a public, get a few good players, start a private. Problem Fixed. With public gAming, it's to be expected that a few idiots or useless players will be joining, it goes with the territory. You can't take a shit and have it smell like roses.
Second, noone said anything about running someone. The fact that you are running someone implies that you and him have an agreement on the service you are performing, thus you should not have any doubt as to his intentions for sticking around you.
If there is a leecher per say, sticking to your party making the game too challenging for your taste, then simply stop killing monsters and his ass will die soon, otherwise go back to solution number 1, make a private.
Anything else?
Please man, I dont mean to be disrespectful by any means, but look at what your writing.
Can you even grasp the implications of what you are demanding....?
I want to play but I don't want idiots joining my game....Sure let's just casually ask Blizzard to design an "Idiot Filter". This way anyone not sharing your exact train of thoughts won't be able to enter your game.
It's either your playing this game or not, if you do choose to play, then you must accept the inevitable truth. You will share BNet with thousands of other idiots. The idea is to minimize the effect they have on your gameplay, since we have already come to the conclusion that getting rid of them isn't a realistic option.
OK , so keep your arguments properly directed. Alot of people have hinted on the Ban/Kick option. But in this case that's what you should be arguing about. Not about people leeching, to which I'm sure that if your anything near a veteran D2 player you have done hundreds of time before.
You should go make a Kick/Ban game option thread, if it doesn't already exist.
I'll skip this section and pretend this made sense....
Actually, this is the worst possible thread to post your kick/ban idea in. If you take a moment and actually read the thread name (I'll write it down for you) Bashiok on "Encouraging People to Play Together", you will actually notice that they are NOT trying to find ways to kick people out or remove players from the game but find ways to even make idiots gather and still be able to have some sort of teamwork.
If you were to actually implement a kick/ban feature, you would end up having a Dawn of War2 'esque situation where if your not the right level or right race you often get kicked out of games before you even type in "Hi".
It would end up being a test of will just to find a game to play and most people would probably end up just playing by themselves.....
How does that even remotely encourage TeamWork?
As Mattheo said, a kick ban feature is the worst thing ever. Trust me that there is not a single kick or ban feature that was not abused to death.
Playing online includes idiots. I hate this, everyone hate this, but its the truth. In the world, there are idiots, there are people wanting to do nothing else but ruin other people's life. You can't stop it.
As far as possible solutions, the only I know of is to create a system that monitors if someone is actively doing something to help the team. It does NOT give more or less drops or anything because of this. However, it would force the player to throw a few bones every fight to be considered active.
The only problem is that increasing the requirements to be considered "active" can become an annoyance to some people, while something too small will have little effect on them (just throw a fireball per fight and I get drop!)
In any case, the problem is not as annoying as certain make it sounds like. I can't say I love having an idiot following me and taking his loot, but with ow D3 works now, WHO CARES? He's useless, true, but he can't touch my gains.
And on that topic alone, I would expect people to rarely have it off. Why host without it if I can have it on just in case someone I don't like comes by?
So thats not really an excuse that you can have it on or off. I could be wrong here, sure, but still.
Hope so anyways, with the level of maturity back in D2, there is reason for some serious doubt.
well sadly that's true, but there's nothing we can do about it anyway
No idea what that meant.
You abuse you will be alone? Uh? With a big community, and since groups of people will probably be the ones abusing it, I have no idea what you are talking about.
it's just like Zhar said, think about it: if you abuse the kicking thing, who are you gonna play with? there's no gain in abusing it