My opinion on difficulty.

[Pren]

Pete, D1 single player's difficulty comes from the fact that if you get a stair trap, or a bad monster combination, don't have the attack rating to hit the monsters, or get stunlocked every time, you're looking at starting a new game. It's not really difficulty, per se, just an exceptionally long 'argh' timesink.

I've never come across something like that in d2, though. Immune bosses/packs/champions/etc that must be parked, but never had to abandon an area of the game that was required. NEw hell mode might make it that way, but again... what's the point? There is an entirely new world each game, just flip the switch and try again.

I had completely ignored the fallout/baldur's gate style monster spawns. That would be perfect for diablo single player. Static quest and lore creatures would be one time shots, but you could have plenty of random respawning encounters. Clearing a dungeon or act out could stop that, though.

Hrm, what else. Yes, one could conceivably get lvl18 before facing andariel in act 1, but it would be such a ridiculous pain in the ass that nobody in their right mind will do it. Setting it to players 8, you can get 18 easily in act 1. Big, big improvement over lvl12... and abilities that you weren't realistically supposed to have at that point. Also, you can begin relying on life/mana leech in act 1 with /players 8 (well, you could in 1.08), whereas it doesn't become viable until act 4 or later normally.

I suppose I like a constant to base everything else off of. What is an accomplishment, a difficulty, a failure, without a standard to compare it to? But the problem is that yes, players 1 is often quite lacking.