Remove the Party Experience Bonus!

[Rataxes]

I disagree. If no one is partied, all crosses are red. If partied, all are green. When all crosses are red, which one is the PK? Is he even in your act? The "all party" helped identify who the PK was, or if he/she was even on your screen. This allowed a quick "am I at risk" assessment to be made, however, Trigger and Scroll hack . . . renders a lot moot.

Blizzard could also implent a big flashing arrow that pointed at the PK and displayed a sign stating: "THIS IS THE PK!", but it wouldn't be necessary, would it? You don't need that to tell who's the PK, just as you don't need color-coding to see who the PK is. It sure wasn't necessary in Classic. You saw the name of the PK'er when he hostiled you, you'll see the same name on the map when he appears, and he'll most likely be moving in a very obvious pattern that should give him away the instant he enters your map if you, for some reason didn't catch his name.

Really? The nuisance PK is the only red x, the party remains the same color as you. That is as clearly tagged as necessary

The point is, that with Triggerhack and Hydra PK'ing, anyone - green, red, or rainbow colored, is a potential PK. This is why you cannot tag PKs with color-coding, not until Blizzard gets rid of these unlawful PK'ing methods.

No One Is Required to Party Up

No One Was Required to Play Solo When There Was No Party XP Bonus

For those who do, the reward should remain, but perhaps the bonus needs to be reduced. If you check the comments on how the party bonus is being changed, you might understand that leaching will be more difficult, while true party play will still get a small reward.

Yes it will be somewhat harder to leech, though I don't doubt that it'll still very much be alive in v1.10. Rushing will at least hopefully cease to exist, but removing the party XP bonus would completely eliminate leeching.

You can also choose not to party. So, choose it. Why rain on the parade of others?

Feels like I've repeated this enough by now. The point is that I do not want to eliminate party play, I do not want to force everyone to play solo. What I want, and I dare say I speak for more people than myself, is not something I can get by merely choosing to do this or that. I want a return of the D2C atmosphere and gaming climate, and if it should ever come back, what would be a better time than now, when Blizzard with v1.10 apparently is trying to go back to D2's roots in all other aspects?

For some, true enough. Bnet is for everyone who bought the game.

I'll be egocentric enough to say that I think the competitive hardcore players (not the game mode) was Blizzard's first priority when they designed D2 Closed. And I guess it evened out in the end, competitive players were the ones to get the shaft when LoD was introduced. The somewhat decent PvP balance that existed in Classic was crushed, and the Ladder was turned into a true joke with thousands of lvl 99 characters. The competitive ladder will hopefully make a return in v1.10, but PvP is probably forever doomed.

Yep, you don't care about anyone else's fun, just your own.

No, but like I have previously stated. I believe D2 Closed was originally designed with competitive players primarily in mind. Leisure players belong as little in a competitive environment as novice players belong in Hell. Of course, this balance shifted completely when LoD came out. Just as you claim there's more than enough room for my playing style, there was more than enough room for leisure players back in classic.

For some of us, Diablo II is indeed a hobby, a leisure activity. If I wanted to get wound up, I'd play and RTS like Starcraft. That, sir, is REAL competition, and it is well balanced.

Did you ever play D2 competitively? If not, who are you to judge how fit D2 once was for competitive play? I play a lot of Starcraft and Counter-Strike as well, that doesn't change the fact that I think D2 offered some very good competitive play.

Right. But is every party by definition a competitor? No, a party can also be a team. Some games, like basketball, are a competition between teams. Some games, like golf, are solo competitions, though it too can be competition in a team format. Poker, on the other hand, is a Many V Many solo competition. Blizzard's ability to make the games appeal broad enough is part of the secret to Diablo II's success.

A party is a competitor if I choose to compete with it, and a team is also a competitor by definition. The ladder race between RUSSBarb and GERBarb was indeed a fight between teams, but that is really the only existing example in the pretty short history of D2, unless you count Team PvP. It's also proof that there was no need for an XP bonus for parties, a good and well-planned party could still achieve far greater things than any soloist could.

The current ladder in simply more of a joke than the original pre-LoD ladder.

The ladder means something? Right, XP over time.

The ladder runners displayed admirable degrees of commitment, effort and determination. Yes I'd say it meant something for many people. I'm sure Sirian killing NM Diablo with 10 000 Firebolts meant something to some people, even though it means absolutely nothing to me.

That does not demand that a party penalty by inflicted. The two ideas can coexist in harmony. Since parties tend to kill faster anyway, a small reduction in the party bonus would not necessarily hurt party play. However, since killing speed looks to have been curtailed, unless partied, by design, maybe the reward for partying up is appropriate

One thing I liked about the past penalty of partying, vs the current godly rewards which makes partying a no-brainer, was that optimizing XP/time was very complex. Will I gain more experience by going solo? Can I make up for the halved XP with halved killing time or increased safety if I party up with this Necro? What is really the ultimate balance between party sizes and and increased killing speed from character combinations? But I guess unless Blizzard makes any drastic changes to the Party system, the best party combination will be as much of a no-brainer as ever - 8 partied killer machines who don't really contribute much to one-anothers efficiency, but that's not something they have to concern themselves with, because of the Party bonus.

I would've loved it if people were forced to consider which combination would work best, weigh drawbacks with benefits for every single viable party size and combination. I bet you'd see a lot of creativity and different ideas about how to gain experience the quickest. Some people would go solo, some people would team-up in carefully planned 2-3 player parties, while some would maybe decide that they'd rather go for the challenge of trying to get a whole 8-player team up on the ladder - with each player up right after one-another, which would indeed be quite a challenge if the PXPB (I'll just call it that in the future) was removed. Just like how it was in the very beginning of D2.

Diablo II can be enjoyed on a variety of different levels. Far better that the game be enjoyable either as a team venture or a competition than to preclude either. The party penalty penalized team play in a multiplayer game. Think about the paradox involved in that.

Multi-player doesn't necessarily have anything to do with co-operative play, so I see no paradox. The thing is that Blizzard really hasn't been able to balance the game for different playing styles. According to you and others, leisure and party players were suppressed in Classic. According to me, competitive players were completely shafted in LoD. I personally think that removing the Party XP bonus would improve the balance for the different playing styles. But maybe v1.10 already has enough in store to revive the competitive side of D2 to what it once was.