Rampant cheating in a game is usually a symptom that something is wrong with the game's overall design ... too repetitive, not high enough time/reward ratio, bad economy setup ...

Rampant cheating in a game is usually a symptom that something is wrong with the game's overall design ... too repetitive, not high enough time/reward ratio, bad economy setup ...

I agree with you partially. We have to keep in mind there is an interest that's driving a certain group of cheaters and that is making money. If, by using bots / exploits they can get items easily then they can offer these to other players for a price that seems very cheap when compared to the time the legit player has to put in (on average) to find the item himself.

If you say well, let all players have the possibility to find the rarest items without a lot of time investment then you beat the purpose of having those rare items in the game. Now the players will start complaining that there is nothing more to do, lack of end-game content.

If you say well, let all players have the possibility to find the rarest items without a lot of time investment then you beat the purpose of having those rare items in the game. Now the players will start complaining that there is nothing more to do, lack of end-game content.

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The issue here would be - how do you get those 'rare' items?

If the answer is "killing some creatures for 20+ hours", than you have a game design issue.

Server side inventory, loot, NPCs, and actions work quite well with little impact on the performance of the system, if designed well.

World of Warcraft is a good example. Since day 1, everything has been done server side, which reduced player cheating by quite a lot.

The issue here would be - how do you get those 'rare' items?

If the answer is "killing some creatures for 20+ hours", than you have a game design issue.

Server side inventory, loot, NPCs, and actions work quite well with little impact on the performance of the system, if designed well.

World of Warcraft is a good example. Since day 1, everything has been done server side, which reduced player cheating by quite a lot.

When taking WoW as an example I agree with what you say but it's a different beast then an ARPG like D2. The WoW players pay a hefty subscription fee each month. On the plus side they get continuous monitoring by GMs and new content is added through expansions.

In D2 there was 1 expansion I think in 2001. The game has been patched many times in an effort to improve things but I feel the core problem is that the game is meant to run without actual humans monitoring what is going on. Which makes sense as a business decision because there are no subs being paid by the players.

The cheaters are clever enough to find a new way in very quickly and after a patch or ban wave they are back in no time.

About the rarity of items in D2

There are incredibly rare items. To find certain items perfectly rolled is like a winning ticket in the lottery.

Finishing the game on hell difficulty is not that hard and most characters can quite comfortably do it when they are around level 80 and have let's say "medium" quality items equipped. Everything that follows when players want to make their characters stronger is the end game content in D2 and it's huge.

That this design feature works is evident by the fact that there are still players working on their characters even after more then a decade. IMO it's not a game design issue as in bad game design but it's just the fact that it's vulnerable because cheaters will try to get in from any direction they can think of and they have been bloody creative when you look at all the exploits that occurred in D2.

Personally I would pay subs for an ARPG if it's a good game that offers the same kind of itemization and character development like D2 offers but I know not everyone thinks the same about this. (I've partaken in discussions on community forums)

The issue here would be - how do you get those 'rare' items?

If the answer is "killing some creatures for 20+ hours", than you have a game design issue.

Server side inventory, loot, NPCs, and actions work quite well with little impact on the performance of the system, if designed well.

World of Warcraft is a good example. Since day 1, everything has been done server side, which reduced player cheating by quite a lot.

When taking WoW as an example I agree with what you say but it's a different beast then an ARPG like D2. The WoW players pay a hefty subscription fee each month. On the plus side they get continuous monitoring by GMs and new content is added through expansions.

In D2 there was 1 expansion I think in 2001. The game has been patched many times in an effort to improve things but I feel the core problem is that the game is meant to run without actual humans monitoring what is going on. Which makes sense as a business decision because there are no subs being paid by the players.

The cheaters are clever enough to find a new way in very quickly and after a patch or ban wave they are back in no time.

About the rarity of items in D2

There are incredibly rare items. To find certain items perfectly rolled is like a winning ticket in the lottery.

Finishing the game on hell difficulty is not that hard and most characters can quite comfortably do it when they are around level 80 and have let's say "medium" quality items equipped. Everything that follows when players want to make their characters stronger is the end game content in D2 and it's huge.

That this design feature works is evident by the fact that there are still players working on their characters even after more then a decade. IMO it's not a game design issue as in bad game design but it's just the fact that it's vulnerable because cheaters will try to get in from any direction they can think of and they have been bloody creative when you look at all the exploits that occurred in D2.

Personally I would pay subs for an ARPG if it's a good game that offers the same kind of itemization and character development like D2 offers but I know not everyone thinks the same about this. (I've partaken in discussions on community forums)

I understand that there are player that enjoy the item lottery that is Diablo (not one of them myself, but I do understand where these players are coming from). Thing is, contrary to a lottery where you buy a lottery ticket and just wait to see if you win, you need to constantly work on your "lottery ticket" in Diablo, with a lot of that work actually "feeling" like work because killing the same mob a million times in a row kinda kills any kind of fun that might have been there the first few times.

THAT is what I and many other will call bad design. Having to to chores and grind for a POSSIBLE reward is not what a game should be about. Yes, there are people enjoying "work simulators" just as there are people who enjoy flying a virtual 747 from Paris to New York in realtime over weekend.

The amount of people that do enjoy hardcore "work simulators" like what Diablo becomes once you are aiming for specific, very rare items is most probably a very small number. Yet there are much more people that would like to enjoy the benefits of the work, hence -> cheating to get the benefits without the work.

A game is meant to be fun. Grinding is not fun to most people. At least not what most games today call "grind" (mindless fetch quests, kill azillion of mobs just to see if a rare item drops, working in the resource gathering mine just to be able to craft a rare item).

Making grind a central part of your game is only a good idea when you create a niche game just for players enjoying the grind... other than that, you are creating content that is only there to silence the vocal 1-2% of hardcore players that are hardcore enough to not only reach the endgame, but also stay in the endgame loop for years and would complain loudly on forums if the endgame didn't have some collectables only attainable through massive amount of playtime.

Most players will never reach that point, before their dedication to the game will wane.

Thus, bad design in the sense of creating content for a minority, while not investing some time into content or even better gameplay that makes the grind to reach that content so much fun that more players try to reach the content, thus stay playing the game longer.

Other games have made grind not only bearable, but fun. With the result that players see the "grind" no longer as grind but part of the game. Of course they are not asking you to kill a zillion of the same old lame goblin just to have a realistic chance of winning the item lottery. They just ask you to play the game as normal, to reach a certain goal.

There are a ton of ways how you could build that into an ARPG. How about collecting SOMETHING that can be used in special item stores to buy rare items (sound a lot like ingame cash, does it)? How about making the store more like a lottery, like "Every week one player can win an ultimate sword of awesomness, invest your hard earned gems now for a chance!"? Or just make it a one armed bandit where you have a chance of rolling a rare weapon every time you insert X amount of gems? The amount of gems needed can still be high, but players should be able to earn that currency without having to do the same old dungeon over and over, or worse yet, kill the same old tired endboss a million times.

How about rare items being bound to player levels, stat increase leveling off at some point, but player level still raises? So every time your highlevel character increases in level, you have a small chance to be awarded a rare item?

Problem is, as long as the grind is long and not fun, and people still want to reap the benefits (read the game is good enough for them to care, and they can show off in front of others), there will be an incentive for people to cheat.

Now, of course you could safeguard against cheating by investing more money into games like Diablo... question is, will that really translate into more sales? Why would any dev in his right mind invest more into an already niche game (ARPG are a niche RPGs which is a niche of games as a whole), just to make it more attractive for a niche of players (the players that actually invest the work needed to get some of the rarer items that are targeted by cheaters)?

While on the other hand, you might actually loose some players (yes, even cheaters pay for games if they cannot crack it)?

If you are building a multiplayer RPG, you have to move the loot drops to server side in multiplayer mode. Server side can track how many rare items are dropped on a given period of time. That metrics can be measured, tracked, graphed, and compared with the database. This is not hard to do, and as a matter of fact, can be monitored automatically and raise an alert if the numbers don't match. No moderators is needed.

If your game includes a resource that can be bought with real money, e.g. a freemium, you can also track how many of these resources you have given out to players vs how much $ you receive.

Regarding bots. Why not include an auto-play as part of your game mechanic? I am starting to see some games implementing autoplay on parts of their game. If your game involves some kind of grinding, it will be helpful for legit players, and deter cheaters to using bots.

Regarding bots. Why not include an auto-play as part of your game mechanic? I am starting to see some games implementing autoplay on parts of their game. If your game involves some kind of grinding, it will be helpful for legit players, and deter cheaters to using bots.

Agreed that it might look like it could solve the bot problem in RPGs (in that players feel other players get the rewards without putting in the works, because they can now officially do the same)... but it might actually be detrimental because it now devalues everything. If your game is built around the core of valuing items/whatever by the amount of work needed to achieve your goal (getting the item, or whatever is your goal), then autoplay will work against that core. If the only accomplishment in getting the sword of awesomeness is having enough patience to let the game play itself for 3 months before reaping the benefits, it doesn't sound like such an accomplishment anymore, does it?

All the while you are trying to patch up deep rooted design problems with your autoplay feature without solving the core problems: a big important part of your game not being fun. Autoplay will let you skip that part, not make it more fun. Basically, just like bots in loot driven RPGs do, it lets people skip content. It devalues a big part of the work you put into the game.

I would rather try to design the game so nobody wishes for an autoplay feature, really... this way, most people will also not want to use bots to skip content (apart from the few that troll the world just for kicks... but when the bot only lets them skip the fun, there is less hate from the rest of the playerbase, thus less food for the troll)

Regarding bots. Why not include an auto-play as part of your game mechanic? I am starting to see some games implementing autoplay on parts of their game. If your game involves some kind of grinding, it will be helpful for legit players, and deter cheaters to using bots.

Agreed that it might look like it could solve the bot problem in RPGs (in that players feel other players get the rewards without putting in the works, because they can now officially do the same)... but it might actually be detrimental because it now devalues everything. If your game is built around the core of valuing items/whatever by the amount of work needed to achieve your goal (getting the item, or whatever is your goal), then autoplay will work against that core. If the only accomplishment in getting the sword of awesomeness is having enough patience to let the game play itself for 3 months before reaping the benefits, it doesn't sound like such an accomplishment anymore, does it?

All the while you are trying to patch up deep rooted design problems with your autoplay feature without solving the core problems: a big important part of your game not being fun. Autoplay will let you skip that part, not make it more fun. Basically, just like bots in loot driven RPGs do, it lets people skip content. It devalues a big part of the work you put into the game.

I would rather try to design the game so nobody wishes for an autoplay feature, really... this way, most people will also not want to use bots to skip content (apart from the few that troll the world just for kicks... but when the bot only lets them skip the fun, there is less hate from the rest of the playerbase, thus less food for the troll)

Well, that's why I said "part of your game". At least in games that I have seen so far, autoplay is enabled when reward is really small, like giving 10xp per kill while you need 10000000xp to level up. So autoplay won't be enough to get you that sword of awesomeness, but doing it every night while you sleep, for say 7 days, will probably get you halfway to level up.

Or, you can also tune it down a bit that autoplay will execute sub-optimal combos, that if you use autoplay, you get roughly 50% of the rewards. So for hardcore players that do want that sword of awesomeness, autoplay is a bad choice, but for moments like "I gotta run grab some food, so 50% is better than nothing", autoplay is a great choice.

It's not a bad mechanic if controlled and enabled properly. It removes the tediousness of grinding from players, while at the same time, deters players from using bots.

There are some games that allow you to "rent" items / powers / bots .

Speaking of which, games that include automation seem to be taking off big time !

@Gian-Reto

I understand what you say, I agree that endless grinding is not interesting for the majority of players. It is only interesting for the players who want to reach lvl 99 in D2 which is a real grind due to diminishing xp at the highest lvls. However the casual players are fine, there is no obligation to to that and they can finish the game around lvl 80-85.

Looking at the itemization in D2. When you have played for a long time you get to see the big picture. D2 has real good itemization that allows amazing character customization. When you farm items, there is not one sword of awesomeness. You farm tons of different item types, gems and craft materials. It doesn't feel like a grind if you enjoy having many different ways to improve your character. But again if the casual players would see this as a grind they are fine, they do not need very rare items to complete the game (killing Baal on hell difficulty).

Now here's the big issue that I think developers overlook. It's a good thing to have the hardcore players in your ARPG game and in your game community

Just think of the things hardcore D2 players or D2 fans did for the game.

• Creating fan sites with forums and trade forums (Baron's bazaar, Amazon Basin, diabloii.net, diablofans.com, are good examples). There is a wealth of information there about everything in the game and people form groups of friends or guilds.
• In D2 you can use the gems you find to re-roll the mods on magic and rare items. From what I've seen casual players are not into this because they're not shooting for perfect gear and consider it a waste of gems. The hardcore players are re-rolling. They want all the gems they can get their hands on because it allows to re-roll a specific item which is very efficient compared to monster drops for that specific item. You need to slay many monsters to have that item type drop because of the amount of different item types in the treasure classes. So.. hardcore players are asking for gems, casual players are happy to trade gems vs common items (set, unique, etc) and they help each other out and both benefit. General perfect gems for rolling charms, perfect skulls for rolling rares, perfect amethysts for crafting caster amulets and so on.
• The hardcore players may be more vocal (annoying?) for the developers but they help by reporting bugs, cheats and exploits. They can be very helpful during development for play test purposes and beta testing.

IMO, if developers do not take the hardcore players into account they make a mistake. Again I make a diablo example but it's what happened when Blizzard developed D3. The developers had no feel with the (mostly hardcore) reminder of the D2 players. They have developed D3 with mostly the casual players in mind and it backfired. I dare say that the way they have developed D3 has wasted millions of dollars in development costs. I know D3 sold very well but it was poorly received and Blizzard has (had) to make countless changes to the game to try win back the fans.

I said all this to keep pointing at the itemization in ARPGs. It's not bad design to have very rare items in the game as long as the itemization is such that casual players can play their game and are not obliged to farm / grind for very rare items. They could very well find something incredibly rare as a bonus such is the nature of RNG in these type of games. It's just awesome when it happens whether you're a hardcore player or not.