by JR Cook - 8 years ago     show comments

Angels and demons are bound to their natures. Demons are given to chaos and deceit; angels to truth and order. That much is known …The Nephalem alone have choice. ~Archangel Itherael.

Welcome to Wishful Wednesdays where we will attempt to show some ideas from fellow Nephalem who want to see something added to the game: whether that be builds that need items to make them work, a new or revamped mode of game-play that they would enjoy, holiday buffs or just QoL improvements.

There are many people that play Diablo 3: some only play solo, some only multiplayer and others play a mixture of solo and group.

There are some people who would like solo play to be as rewarding as multiplayer. I, personally, think that multiplayer should be more rewarding, but, the difference shouldn’t be as massive as it is now.

The Issues:

One of the main reasons it is so much more productive than solo play is because of the variance in Greater Rift levels between one player and four player.

In season 3 the top solo players were 10-16 Greater Rifts behind four player groups in softcore and 9-12 behind in hardcore. There was one change to Greater Rifts that came in with 2.3 that made many people hope that solo would be closer to multiplayer.:

But the difference in range is now 8-17 for softcore and 6-14 for hardcore. This means the “weakest” class’s max player (based on current leaderboards) is 1 (2 for hardcore) Greater Rift further away than the season 3’s equivalent but the “strongest” class’s max player is 2 closer (3 for hardcore). Overall the change in range is negligible at only a .5 Greater Rift average change. This gives a couple of major advantages to the group player against the purely solo player.

One of these advantages is gem upgrades. Taking Bane of the Trapped as an example: each level gives a .3% increase to damage. That’s a 3% damage increase per 10 levels which could be the difference between completing that decently fished Greater Rift or re-rolling for a perfect Greater Rift.

Another major advantage is Paragon Levels. Greater Rifts have multiplicative experience.

Comparing Multiplicative vs Additive

We’re going to use Base XP at 100,000, a flawless ruby in helm and Bonus XP at 100% for easier math.
Regular Rift(Additive):XP = Base XP (1 + (XP from gear + Bonus XP))

XP = 100,000 (1 + (.41 + 1)) = 100,000 (1+1.41) = 100,000 (2.41) = 241,000

Greater Rift(Multiplicative): XP = Base XP (1 + XP from gear)(1 + Bonus XP)

XP = 100,000 (1 + .41) (1 + 1) = 100,000(1.41)(2) = 100,000(2.82) = 282,000

If we did this same example with 500% Bonus XP it would be 641,000 in the additive math and 846,000 in multiplicative. As that shows the higher level of Greater Rift you can comfortably farm increases your experience gain exponentially. Not only are groups  going about 10 levels higher for much more experience they also usually bring a ZDPS class with them who can, and do, wear some %XP gear; i.e. Cain’s set. In previous seasons this person would have been the only one to benefit from these extra sources but this patch also had a change to combat “leechers”:

This means the rest of the group gets a higher XP from gear number in the equation while the one wearing the gear gets their’s lowered but as they wouldn’t be able to complete a Greater Rift at that level in that gear it’s still much more than they would get in their solo dps gear.

This was not taking into account the fact that these Greater Rifts are done much faster in a group meaning more XP/gem upgrades/Loot per hour even if done at the same level as solo players or the Strength in Numbers buff you get in multiplayer: 10% Bonus to Magic Find, Gold and XP per player within range which is a multiplicative bonus.

Now, let’s be honest: the Magic Find and Gold Find wouldn’t be missed, at the moment, if they took that away. But, even so, it’s still a free 1-3% chance for legendaries (10% of MF applies to legendary drop chance) and if and when they do add a gold sink then it might have an effect.

Possible Solutions:

There are many suggestions across the community to help make the gap between the solo player and the group player a more reasonable amount. Most of these are echoed from many people so I won’t always give a source for the ideas.

One of the common ideas is to increase the health buff monsters get in multiplayer. The monster health increase for each extra person is 50% so that a full group would have monsters with 250% the health of a solo player’s equivalent monster.

Another of the more common changes suggested is to remove the Strength in Numbers buff.

The original game had a different number for monster health scaling (75% per person in normal up to 110% per person in inferno) and even had a damage multiplier to the monsters as you added more people. The changes to what they have now happened over the course of the first year with the damage multiplier being removed in 1.0.3 (June 2012) and the health scaling being lowered multiple times until finally settling at the flat 50% per player in 1.0.8 (May 2013) which is also the patch that added the Strength in Numbers buff. These were implemented because multiplayer wasn’t worth the loss in efficiency the solo player had: we’ve come a long, long way.

If they were to revert the changes to monster health pools:

• Four player group composition might change but doubtful change to gap
• What it would change would be the leveling groups or the casual groups who just want to have fun having a longer/harder time which would mean there would be less groups, public or private, to join if you are playing a class that’s not in the meta or not geared enough for the most efficient Greater Rift level.
• It would also make split bounties more annoying.

If the Strength in Numbers buff was removed:

• When they added the buff there was a cap in both the difficulty that could be done and the Paragon Level you could attain.  Neither of these are capped anymore, or the cap is so high as to be unattainable at current power levels, so this buff is a case of the rich getting richer.
• If they do remove the buff it would remove one of the reasons to stay close to everyone in the party, however the other reasons to stay close like class buffs and support monk heals should be enough of a reason.

Overall, I doubt increasing the health pools would be beneficial to the game but the Strength in Numbers buff being removed could be an option.

There is also a suggestion to add a cap to Paragon Levels.

• Would allow multiplayer to have the early advantage but the solo player would be able to catch up eventually
• Would add a definitive goal to reach for
• Once you’ve reached the cap there wouldn’t be much more to attain
• Takes away the excitement of reaching a higher Paragon Level than you did the previous season

I’m not convinced the pros outweigh the cons on this one.

A suggestion Leviathan gave in voice chat and that I saw on the forums from Triage was the Players X Command type that Diablo 2 had. I have never played Diablo 2 so Leviathan had to explain it to me: basically it allows you to simulate a game mode by telling the game there are more (never less) people in the game than there are so you would be able to play up to a four player game, with all the benefits of Strength in Numbers with the detriment of the monsters having more health, even if you’re playing solo.

• This would close the gap slightly in the Paragon race while still making multiplayer more attractive as it still has all the bonuses of ZDPS classes, faster clears and more gem upgrade chances.
• If it’s only a solo mode would that make solo more efficient than playing a two player group?
• If it’s available to two and three player as well, does that make a three player group more efficient than four player by changing the experience sharing equation?

It would need some testing but could be a viable change.

A recent forum post from atsbill123 titled We Should Have 4 Balls which, while having the kind of comments you would expect, suggests that rare packs don’t drop enough progression orbs. This post was not attempting to propose a change to solo versus multiplayer but it led me to the idea of having solo Greater Rifts having more progression from elites than multiplayer.

• This would allow the solo and multiplayer Greater Rift max clears to be a little closer
• It would also allow for faster Greater Rift farming
• Allows power creep without having new items
• Might make solo more efficient than two player games
• Would make the composition of multiplayer groups less flexible to make it even more efficient

This might be the only way to make max Greater Rift clear levels closer to the group clear levels which would limit the effect of gem upgrade differences while still giving the advantage to the group for experience farming but more from composition of group instead of the higher Greater Rift level.

There were many other suggestions, including ways that got rid of multiplayer entirely 😥 , but these were the top ones I thought either had a large portion of the (vocal) community behind them or had a higher chance of working to bridge that gap.

Have something you wish would be added to the game? Whether you have ideas on how to make a build work, a mode of game-play you’d like to see changed or an improvement added to the general game, I’d love to hear about it.