Map reveal & No death penalty

[Unda]

Everything looks good and all, but I really dislike those.

HC was never an option for me because it's too brutal when real life calls, or when there's computer / Internet failure. A reasonable death penalty for softcore would make more sense to me.

The map reveal feels like everyone has the option to cheat. I'm going to enable it since the feature exists, but I would like the game better without it.
If the game had a built-in bot, I would probably enable that one too.

Has there been any polls yet? Am I the only one who feels this way?

Facts: Map Reveal isnt option which can be enabled, you must talk to one NPC (Gheed, Atma and so on) to reveal it by clicking that option from his dialog window, each new game and for each act. Imo its 'Quality of Life' feature which most of the time im not even using but its no big deal as I remember from vanilla D2 that I did know how map looks after walking specific direction, kinda like you remembered automatically all scars and moles your girlfriend body got. So short, QoL not cheat.

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Death penalty isnt easy topic, there are people who believe old system was not friendly for good game experience, imo death penalty should be even in softcore game but I switched now for hardcore only so I will not tell people how they should play their softcore.

Marco explained decision about Death Penalty removal in few aspects, so check it out if you are curious:
viewtopic.php?p=168338#p168338
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=21777

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You said that hardcore isnt option for you, but have you tried it with MedianXL on realm? Servers are surprisingly stable and there is even hardcore-only server GS19, I dont recall I had ever the famous black wall from bnet on The Sin War realm. So better try it and you will see that you will more often die on hardcore due to own mistakes and failures or lazyness than realm lag. There is another option for you too if you really want to stick to softcore only, you can set own rule/rules and if you die due to normal scenario you will delete that character and if it will be lag or disconnection death then you can keep playing it, its all about your experience with game so 'tweak' it the way it will be better for your philosophy.

[HechtHeftig]

Well, considering that there‘s already some automated bans, like the multilogging part, I assume there is already some kind of self-coded auto-ban Software. And if you look at the Banlist, there are quite a bunch of players who were banned because Of the wrong mh. I don‘t know though how much of that is done because of Chatlogs (where people admit they use a different mh) or manually because of reports, or by the automated program itself.

[plts88]

Just a simple question: have you ever played MXL? Are you trying to justify these changes from the perspective of cLoD player?

I think it was some years ago when I tested MXL, but I barely saw any instances so I completely forgot about them. I didnt play far enough.

Yeah, sure, just implement a sloppy anti-cheat system without the source code lol

There's no need for the source code. Especially when talking about a sloppy anti-cheat as you quoted me.

So better try it and you will see that you will more often die on hardcore due to own mistakes and failures or lazyness than realm lag.

That's basically what I said, I didn't blame anyone. I just wouldn't be able to deal with it, if my computer crashes, or the power cuts out, or one of the million other ways to die on HC happens:D

[Unda]

That's basically what I said, I didn't blame anyone. I just wouldn't be able to deal with it, if my computer crashes, or the power cuts out, or one of the million other ways to die on HC happens:D

I was dying on hardcore due to mistakes and failures as many times as with lags, classic D2 and LoD and it was always part of the story like evil entities tried rekt your character one way or the another with dirty lag tricks. Death on hardcore is the start for another character and his story, maybe new build you didnt tried, no matter died legit way or lagit way

With Median if you choose hardcore then you must know from the start what you want to do and what not, call it roleplay but in some part it was just avoiding places which used mechanics able to kill you 9 out of 10 tries.

[Marco]

map reveal:

due to how the game works, the client (player pc) has the info on map layout, which means it can be fetched by 3rd party tools. A lot of players can't be bothered about maze mechanisms, and most end-game zones don't have them anyway. We rather not force them to use some third party tool to enjoy MXL. For those that dislike the feature, they can choose not to use it. There isn't a considerable advantage to using it considering most endgame zones have a static layout.


death penalty:

from an emotional standpoint, I don't think the few amount of times recovering body was fun to do are worth the countless times people have lost their entire equipment due to multiple bugs with corpses + gear requirements + full inventory. Not to mention most of the times you died it really sucked to get body back, and why most people would simply choose to re-join their game. This also caused a lot of unnecessary stress to the servers.

there are multiple other balance issues with it, such as the fact you couldn't rejoin a SP game, or that the exp loss forced people into awkward leveling, where you'd need to uninterruptedly get to next level and not attempt an uber due to the risk of death.

[SwineFlu]

I think it was some years ago when I tested MXL, but I barely saw any instances so I completely forgot about them. I didnt play far enough.

Well, that's what I thought, death is inevitable part of the gameplay in MXL. Death penalty was more like unfun and artificial feature rather than punishment.

There's no need for the source code. Especially when talking about a sloppy anti-cheat as you quoted me.

So you are suggesting standalone anti-cheat application instead of embedded warden-like protection? Sure, seems easy enough to implement for such a small team...

[plts88]

@Marco
I just hope people are happy with the outcome, but new players who don't understand how different Median XL is compared to normal D2; hearing about the differences in a wrong order can cause a negative reaction. That's basically what happened to me, "no death penalty, what's the reason to play?". But I have it figured by now.

So you are suggesting standalone anti-cheat application instead of embedded warden-like protection? Sure, seems easy enough to implement for such a small team...

It doesn't have to be a standalone application. It's not as difficult as you seem to think.
Not likely to have a high priority for such a small team though.

[Unda]

There are many things which was fixed earlier with MXL2017 and are not mentioned in the trailer, like Mercenaries fix so you dont need to relog anymore after his death and many more awesome stuff but I think trailer was chosen to be short, maybe there will be second trailer with more in depth infos or list of changes and major fixes of Sigma, including implemented earlier with MXL2017.

[AzureGladiator]

map reveal:

due to how the game works, the client (player pc) has the info on map layout, which means it can be fetched by 3rd party tools. A lot of players can't be bothered about maze mechanisms, and most end-game zones don't have them anyway. We rather not force them to use some third party tool to enjoy MXL. For those that dislike the feature, they can choose not to use it. There isn't a considerable advantage to using it considering most endgame zones have a static layout.


death penalty:

from an emotional standpoint, I don't think the few amount of times recovering body was fun to do are worth the countless times people have lost their entire equipment due to multiple bugs with corpses + gear requirements + full inventory. Not to mention most of the times you died it really sucked to get body back, and why most people would simply choose to re-join their game. This also caused a lot of unnecessary stress to the servers.

there are multiple other balance issues with it, such as the fact you couldn't rejoin a SP game, or that the exp loss forced people into awkward leveling, where you'd need to uninterruptedly get to next level and not attempt an uber due to the risk of death.

Map reveal is understandable. If you wanted to satisfy those who dislike it, one idea might be to have map reveal unlocked only after completing normal.

On the other hand, I think the Diablo formula needs some form of death penalty. I'm not saying it should be gold, corpses, or experience, but it just needs something. One idea might be to have maximum life reduced after each death, where killing monsters grants that maximum life back (higher level monsters = more life back). There would be some sort of limit to the maximum life reduction of course.
That's just my thoughts on the topic, but do what you will. I'm still going to play your mod, hahaha!

[Unda]

On the other hand, I think the Diablo formula needs some form of death penalty. I'm not saying it should be gold, corpses, or experience, but it just needs something. One idea might be to have maximum life reduced after each death, where killing monsters grants that maximum life back (higher level monsters = more life back). There would be some sort of limit to the maximum life reduction of course.
That's just my thoughts on the topic, but do what you will. I'm still going to play your mod, hahaha!

Debuff with timer for an hour, no matter if you relog or not sounds good, even different types of debuffs depending on the area you died. Definitely you should post it in suggestions thread.