Protecting your "PRECIOUS" economy ain't working so give up and fix desync instead

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Ten_of_Swords wrote:

The result was that for the first 3-4 weeks of a new ladder there was a real gem of a game there. That’s what we were all after... But it never lasted, soon enigma wearing hammerdins would be botting hell baal runs and it was pretty much all downhill as the hacks started coming back into use. Almost everyone I knew would quit after this happens until the new league.

Just want to touch on this aspect, in the permanent leagues Standard\HC there would be no "fixing" them after you released the floodgates of trusting the client. You would essentially be alienating somewhere around 40% of the player base right off the bat, not to mention the players that play in the leagues that would object to the changes as well.

NOT something PoE needs. It is a successful ARPG game that suffers from desync for some players, its up to the players to adjust build style, flask, ect in order for them to survive in a HC environment.

D2 IS A DIFFERENT GAME, one that made money off of selling additional copies of the game, it was actually beneficial for Blizzard to allow players to get banned online and have to purchase another account, in PoE it isn't beneficial they don't gain anything from banning accounts. Your the one spreading misinformation about D2 in order to improve your case. Nonetheless this isn't D2, this is PoE, if you like D2 and want PoE to be D2, its not going to happen, what would the point of this game be if it copied every aspect of another game, including the good\bad?

@legatus You spend more time on these forums complaining then you do playing the game.

Even with all the botters, I never really felt like the economy in D2 mattered--and I think its importance has been grossly overemphasized in this game--because it's your character and gameplay that make it fun. Some games have lots of cheating going on, and yet they are, or were, some of the best games out there. A few off the top of my head:

Borderlands series
Diablo 2
Torchlight 1 & 2
Elder Scrolls series
Fallout series
Halo 2

Cheating is one of those things that different people have different definitions or tolerances for and it comes in lots of varieties. My definition is pretty strict, but my tolerance is slightly less so. For example, some people don't call exploiting the game engine cheating. I do. You see lots of pros in SSB Melee do it though with their short-hop slide-dashing stuff. Blowing things up through walls in Deus Ex or Borderlands is as well. But I don't mind those kinds of things that much because they don't reduce the game experience.

Goetz and a couple others assert/assume that trusting the position of the characters and monsters to the client would open the game up to god-mode, 100% accuracy, always crit, etc, but that's just a slippery slope fallacy. It would only open it up to things pertaining to character position, and this is mostly in the form of map hacks (not that big a deal) for your average player, and maybe "ghost dodging" for your more hardcore hacker/botter (which would be more easily detected and banned). I find that an acceptable price for a smooth game. None of the games I listed above had players leave in droves due to cheating alone, but rather a combination of factors--most notably age of the game and newer competitors on the market. Why would that be? I think it comes down to one thing above all others: Choice.

Players could choose not to cheat, but in poe they cannot choose not to desync. The play experience in those other games is dictated by the player rather than a faulty engine/code.

Cheating only ruins games when it is rampantly unchecked AND diminishes the player experience--this happened to COD 4. The reason it didn't have this effect on Halo 2 was because of the kind of cheating that went on. Halo had lots of fun glitches and boost jumps that let you get outside the normal play area and explore the levels more, but it wasn't usually practical to try to use during a competitive match. COD 4's cheating was similar, but about getting stuck in the geometry of the level such that you can shoots lots of people without possibility of retalition. In short, it actually increased the fun of Halo 2 while ruining competitive multiplayer in COD4. It's easy to see why each would effect the game differently. As long as GGG kept its stance against it, they could mitigate the effects of cheating on the game.

I can go into great depth over TONS of games about the impact of various kinds of cheating on each game, but at the end of the day we are talking about it as it relates to poe. The kinds of cheating that would be allowed by taking the necessary steps to desync would do less to damage the game than desync does in the first place. There would just need to be some extra steps taken to protect races and pvp, but that should be fairly easy if they just scrutinize the play of people in the upper tiers of play to ensure they are legit.

One final note to the players saying "I don't get desync" or "It isn't a problem." This does NOT strengthen your argument at all. It only destroys whatever credibility people would have granted you by default. It shows not only a lack of respect for your fellow players, but also a complete disregard for the facts. You are committing the internet equivalent of a child covering his ears, closing his eyes, and shouting "Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na..." to drown out what other people are trying to tell them.

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goetzjam wrote:

I really do understand the desire for a self found league or an offline client, D2 had it, but that is a relic from the past. PoE's business model relies on MTX sales an offline client doesn't fit that business model at all, even D3 doesn't have an offline version.

This is simply unture.

Now, before I elaborate, I want to mention that I'm on a crap laptop and experience desync problems fairly constantly (yes, goetzjam, that means multiple times per minute), and I STILL favor desync over hacked items. However, here's the thing about offline clients and Diablo III.

I would play Diablo II for hours, by myself, just for fun. Offline. It was a helluva time, and I loved every minute of it, as well as the days of LAN parties with my friends. The greatest advantage Diablo II has over games like PoE is that I can just pick it up and play, anywhere, anytime. Long bus ride? Power's out? Crappy internet? Who cares! The game doesn't require an internet connection.

Setting aside that Diablo III was a steaming pile of crap in general, the very first thing that turned me off of it was that I couldn't play it whenever I wanted. Always-online in games is an obstacle to fun, and a consideration I have to make for the game to be worth my time or not (Path, obviously, still is), but it is NOT an obstacle to microtransactions.

I have bought literally every piece of DLC for Borderlands 1 and 2 ever released. All of it. Every single extra area, character, and costume piece that Gearbox has released, and I expect to do the same with the Pre-Sequel--and I play exclusively locally. If PoE had an offline-only mode, I would still have spent all this money on it with the plan to spend more. Your argument against an offline self-found league, sir, is invalid.

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Even with all the botters, I never really felt like the economy in D2 mattered--and I think its importance has been grossly overemphasized in this game--because it's your character and gameplay that make it fun.

Your not understanding the difference between the current system PoE has and the one D2 had. If you don't like the current system PoE has then by all means the economy wouldn't matter to you.

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Some games have lots of cheating going on, and yet they are, or were, some of the best games out there. A few off the top of my head:

Borderlands series
Diablo 2
Torchlight 1 & 2
Elder Scrolls series
Fallout series
Halo 2

Those are all great games for what they provide, but why can't we have this one single ARPG game with the issue of desync without opening the door wider for cheaters?

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Goetz and a couple others assert/assume that trusting the position of the characters and monsters to the client would open the game up to god-mode, 100% accuracy, always crit, etc, but that's just a slippery slope fallacy. It would only open it up to things pertaining to character position, and this is mostly in the form of map hacks (not that big a deal) for your average player, and maybe "ghost dodging" for your more hardcore hacker/botter (which would be more easily detected and banned). I find that an acceptable price for a smooth game. None of the games I listed above had players leave in droves due to cheating alone, but rather a combination of factors--most notably age of the game and newer competitors on the market. Why would that be? I think it comes down to one thing above all others: Choice.

No one has said how much more is the "ideal" level of trusting the client, people have said in this thread about trusting the client for player positioning, but not monsters, that only lessons the effect of desync at the cost of being able to move your character wherever you wanted, without trusting the client fully (both players, monsters and obstetrical) then the issue will STILL BE THERE for the players experiencing desync. If players are only concerned with the positioning of themselves a quartz flask allows you to move through mobs, lessening the effects of desync.

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Players could choose not to cheat, but in poe they cannot choose not to desync. The play experience in those other games is dictated by the player rather than a faulty engine/code.

This statement is VERY true, probably one of the better statements in this whole argument, but let me top it with this statement. Players cannot choose whether or not cheating effects them in a multiplayer online game, especially one based around an economy like PoE. The consequences of enabling further cheater affects players that don't have issues with desync and like the security that prevents a lot of client side cheats.

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Cheating only ruins games when it is rampantly unchecked AND diminishes the player experience--this happened to COD 4. The reason it didn't have this effect on Halo 2 was because of the kind of cheating that went on. Halo had lots of fun glitches and boost jumps that let you get outside the normal play area and explore the levels more, but it wasn't usually practical to try to use during a competitive match. COD 4's cheating was similar, but about getting stuck in the geometry of the level such that you can shoots lots of people without possibility of retalition. In short, it actually increased the fun of Halo 2 while ruining competitive multiplayer in COD4. It's easy to see why each would effect the game differently. As long as GGG kept its stance against it, they could mitigate the effects of cheating on the game.

It is a free to play game, people can create many many accounts to do what they want if you open the floodgates. No consequences for cheating on new accounts mean that you cant ever possibly keep it in check if you open those doors. Would love to hear someone argue the point against this.

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I can go into great depth over TONS of games about the impact of various kinds of cheating on each game, but at the end of the day we are talking about it as it relates to poe. The kinds of cheating that would be allowed by taking the necessary steps to desync would do less to damage the game than desync does in the first place. There would just need to be some extra steps taken to protect races and pvp, but that should be fairly easy if they just scrutinize the play of people in the upper tiers of play to ensure they are legit.

Great, allow PoE to be the game plauged with desync that doesn't allow for client side cheating, let me have 1 game where it doesn't have to conform to what other games have done.

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One final note to the players saying "I don't get desync" or "It isn't a problem." This does NOT strengthen your argument at all. It only destroys whatever credibility people would have granted you by default. It shows not only a lack of respect for your fellow players, but also a complete disregard for the facts. You are committing the internet equivalent of a child covering his ears, closing his eyes, and shouting "Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na..." to drown out what other people are trying to tell them.

The same counter argument can be made for you, because you have issues with desync you can't see how the proposed changes will change the game drastically for those without issues.

Basically that boils down to an offline version of PoE would be awesome and I agree before they stop "developing and supporting" poe they should release a version that works offline completely, but that is a long way down the road.

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Setting aside that Diablo III was a steaming pile of crap in general, the very first thing that turned me off of it was that I couldn't play it whenever I wanted. Always-online in games is an obstacle to fun, and a consideration I have to make for the game to be worth my time or not (Path, obviously, still is), but it is NOT an obstacle to microtransactions.

It is an obstacle for the MTX that GGG currently has, the largest MTX and most profitable being stash tabs, if you have an offline version of the game, that no longer becomes something you can sell or players need, they can EASILY hack all the items, stashspace, ect they want, look at all the D2 mods.

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I have bought literally every piece of DLC for Borderlands 1 and 2 ever released. All of it. Every single extra area, character, and costume piece that Gearbox has released, and I expect to do the same with the Pre-Sequel--and I play exclusively locally. If PoE had an offline-only mode, I would still have spent all this money on it with the plan to spend more. Your argument against an offline self-found league, sir, is invalid.

Except it isn't those small MTX amounts add up to what spent for every piece of borderlands 1 and 2 DLC? Is it $1050, no, but lets say I follow the same principle as you and bought everyone of those instead, how much money does GGG have from you and me? Still less then the total amount this game has gotten from me. GGG's business model is VERY cleaver, lets not forget that when trying to compare it to an offline version of a similar genre.

I do however support a paid to play solo selfound league, if or whenever GGG adds that into the game I would be 100% for players being able to pay to create and play in one.

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Chris wrote:

53 users have completed 8/8 challenges in the Torment and Bloodlines challenge leagues. After disqualifying 14 users who used maphacks (prior to our warning last week) there are 39 legitimate players who have won shirts so far. 11 slots left!

even after the warning, you see how many people try to cheat even on the highest ranks.

I do not want this number to increase, period. GGG MUST NOT GIVE MORE CHANCES TO CHEATERS.

It boils down to this: How long can the game survive with a dwindling player base (mostly due to desync) in the name of preventing cheating (which it still doesn't)?

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AlbinosaurusRex wrote:

It boils down to this: How long can the game survive with a dwindling player base (mostly due to desync) in the name of preventing cheating (which it still doesn't)?

It does prevent some forms of cheating, but not all. You have no stats to prove your statement is true, you aren't GGG you don't know how many players are playing in the game, really as simple as that.

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goetzjam wrote:

I really do understand the desire for a self found league or an offline client, D2 had it, but that is a relic from the past. PoE's business model relies on MTX sales an offline client doesn't fit that business model at all, even D3 doesn't have an offline version.

 I never said an SFL was a local off-line league. SFL would still require the Internet and be server/client driven. The only change would be that the client would be the authority on position/movement and the rest stays on the server. That's all.

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goetzjam wrote:

It isn't a failure its worked for over 2 years, the very few cheaters\botters there are now PAIL in comparison to what unleashing the floodgates would allow.

 I never said that the current server/client programming model wasn't effective at minimizing hackers, in fact I acknowledged that GGG was quite effective at keeping hacks out of PoE. In over 2 years of casual and sometimes semi-serious playing of PoE desync hasn't been reduced at all and as my efficiency of playing a build has gone up so to has the amount of desync I experience. Attempting to increase my map/zone clearing speed with fast evasion builds is the current cause of high desync. To that end GGG has indeed failed to deliver a better playing experience since my start in CB.

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goetzjam wrote:

So your not disputing the reasoning for why GGG won't trust the client, what exactly are you disputing your solution of trusting the client but not caring if the botters\cheaters\ect all gain so much to where the economy would literally be pointless. Trusting the client can mean devastating things like movement speed bonuses\damage bonuses\never missing\never getting stunned\never dieing, literally everything you can possibly thing of can be possible by trusting the client, even if GGG still pushed loot and didn't trust the client for that, the fundamental things that make an ARPG tick.

 Not if GGG can figure out how to do multi-threaded programming such that the client can self monitor itself for hacks and shut down immediately upon detecting any hacking attempts. Since I don't want to cheat and never will I'll take significantly reduced desync over a Fort Knox protected game economy, which incidentally hasn't happened as other bugs (such as /hideout) or Maphack (only now is GGG banning players that use it but it's been around for quite a while) or other secret bots that are adversely affecting the PoE economy and cheating the legit players and robbing us of maximum fun by forcing us to endure high desync just to play our beloved PoE.

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goetzjam wrote:

I don't think quite a few players posting on this forum have fun playing the game. They might want something specific like an off-line version of PoE, or the ability to cheat by trusting the client. Please by all means point me to the #1 arpg, because as far as I am concerned that is PoE. D2 was fantastic, that is a relic from the past, but it isn't being developed anymore.

GGG can't fix the speed of light, they can only do small things to improve the effect it may have on some players, however sacrificing gameplay things that would allow for cheating isn't acceptable.

 It has already been discussed and established that Internet latency to the PoE game servers is not the cause of so much desync we have to put up with (just look at my post on how very good my link to Dallas is), but that "action prediction" is a failure for anything that moves faster than a slow pace. Also, I don't have a #1 arpg at this time. There are aspects of D3:RoS that I like (very low desync and Rifts), TL2 does some things very well (loot and fast play), and PoE has some great features (build diversity, theory crafting, passive tree, old school arpg hardcore theme, history and story telling to set the mood) but none of them are great at everything. Currently PoE is closer if I had to pick a 1, 2, and 3, but if GGG could deliver a much lower desync version of PoE then it would be a no-brainer for me to declare it the #1 current arpg.