Reporting Sneaky Players on Baal runs

Guys, have you been in the situaion when the team is making

Baal run and someone joins to ruin the process. Sneaky player can express hostility towards game host so than noone can enter the town portal. Or even he can come to

Throne of Destruction and kill the team from behind.

Sure pvp is fun. But it's sneaky when you kill those who are lower than you and don't wear appropariate gear to fight back. Chat explanations usually don't work, so reporting seems to be the only way to teach good manners.

What can we do in such situation? Blizzard has "Report" option. But then the game asks whether the player had offensive character name ot battletag or he ws just cheating. Ruining collective game process is neither of this.

Carry on my wayward soooon...

Unfortunately that's just one of those parts of the game that's probably not going to change.

This is all just my opinion, but I have recently been in this situation you describe, except that I was rushing a group. It was a pub game, we started on normal, I got them thru that no problem and then on to nightmare. Act 3 was where it got interesting, the unnamed player joined after someone else had to leave, and we were just about to finish up Trav council. Well, they immediately after joining turned hostile, and caught up to us in Trav. They were playing a typical hammerdin, but it was a good ambush. The player got our entire group, and set up camp to Grief the waypoint. The game was over. We made a private game and finished the rush. Cleared hell up to the ancients about 40 mins later.

I guess, I kind of like this sort of thing. Even though it got everyone killed, it spices things up. Is it rude and goes against etiquette? Well, yeah. But to these players, those things don't matter. The fun for them is joining pub games and being a boss monster the group can't defeat. I've accepted the random murderers as part of the online Diablo 2 experience a long time ago.

PKing has always been part of the game. Sure, it sucks if you're not prepared, but it adds an element of unpredictability to an otherwise monotonous game. Burning Souls, Undead Soul Killers, and PKs are the only things that make

Baal runs remotely interesting.

If I'm not in the mood or I recently joined a series of runs, I would leave the game because no one has a monopoly on good

Baal runs. If I've been part of a series of runs for several games and I like the group, then I'll probably stick around to defend the party. I don't really have a PvP setup, so I'm essentially always in PvM gear, but my PvM gear isn't a big dropoff from my DClone speedkilling gear. I once solo 3/4-chunked a hostile sorc in the throne room, but everyone else left, so I did as well. I was more annoyed that everyone bailed than I was with the sorc.

I've also PKKed a couple of trolls in TZs. Half the time, the PKs aren't actually good; they're just there to disrupt. The most satisfying time was banishing this one idiot necro PK to the shadow realm two games in a row with a one-shot

Charged Strike. I didn't really care how much he wasted my time trying to teleport in circles around me when I knew the area and the walls around the

Jail Level 1 waypoint each time and he didn't. He was delaying the inevitable. The second time, my 98-at-the-time trapsin friend also helped by baiting the waypoint.

Anyway, there isn't anything to report. The game was designed to allow this. There's nothing sneaky about it; only unprepared, negligent, and overconfident victims. You can leave and start/join a new game, and that would be easier than coordinating a defense. But a successful defense is far more satisfying than giving the PKer the satisfaction of a successful disruption.

Maybe start a petition to Blizzard to add the option "no player agression" to the game creation menu.

Blizzard doesn't care about actual cheaters (not only in D2), so there is zero chance it will do anything with griefers.

This has always been a part of the game, nothing to report there.

I hosted pub

Baal runs for about a month or so and would generously open a portal and kill

Baal waves +

Baal while people stood around and collected XP and loot, until one day, a Javazon decided to leave the party and kill

Baal himself to steal all the XP.. That was the last time I did a pub game and don't think I'd ever host them again after seeing that nonsense. Really a shame, as I miss that P8 excitement.. But not worth wasting my time if people are going to steal XP like that from the group. Decided to buy extra accounts for myself so I could at least get up to /p3 without having to deal with pubs. If only they'd give us /players functionality for Battle.net online..

Zero187 wrote: 2 years ago

If only they'd give us /players functionality for Battle.net online..

I wish..

It's probably Cooley.

Most Pkers I've encountered are essentially bullies. Most use paladins such as Smiters and Hammerdins, and attack builds that are great in game play, but not really suitable for Dueling. They do their best to try sneak attacks hoping you won't notice they're there. For instance if you're in the middle of a

Throne of Destruction battle, all the noise and action is enough to distract you and you might not notice they're there. I had that happen to me once. I only discovered what was going on when a message popped up stating I had killed another player. I looked around and sure enough there was his

Ear on the floor. I still have it. When I see them in a game and they're in town. I join drop it on the Ground so others can see, tell them he's a Pker, and then scoop it back up and exit

Note to Pkers, a high level Strathezon with a Faith and

Windforce might not be a good attack choice. I do think that there should be an option in the game for players to opt out of pking.

Zero187 wrote: 2 years ago

I hosted pub

Baal runs for about a month or so and would generously open a portal and kill

Baal waves +

Baal while people stood around and collected XP and loot, until one day, a Javazon decided to leave the party and kill

Baal himself to steal all the XP.. That was the last time I did a pub game and don't think I'd ever host them again after seeing that nonsense. Really a shame, as I miss that P8 excitement.. But not worth wasting my time if people are going to steal XP like that from the group. Decided to buy extra accounts for myself so I could at least get up to /p3 without having to deal with pubs. If only they'd give us /players functionality for Battle.net online..

It is BM to do that in someone else's hosted games without having a discussion about it, but that's also Blizzard's fault for enabling that behavior by not fixing their broken experience sharing formula. What happened there sounds like the level 96+ top-2/4 strategy where you get more individual XP taking out

Baal in a smaller group in a full game.

That was one reason why, despite initial reservation at the PTR announcement, I ended up liking TZs because it was a workaround to a bug the original devs never bothered fixing. By the time TZs came out though, there wasn't any realistic pub game scenario where I wasn't at least top-4. However, the TZ XP was still significantly better regardless.

mhlg wrote: 2 years ago

Most Pkers I've encountered are essentially bullies. Most use paladins such as Smiters and Hammerdins, and attack builds that are great in game play, but not really suitable for Dueling. They do their best to try sneak attacks hoping you won't notice they're there. For instance if you're in the middle of a

Throne of Destruction battle, all the noise and action is enough to distract you and you might not notice they're there.

This is the part I don't get though. If someone enters a game and goes hostile, most people in

Baal runs often just continue like nothing happened until they get killed, and only then do they bitch and moan. I don't see how any player with a functioning brain gets sneaked up upon. I immediately do one of the following: TP out, open my minimap and get ready, camp the waypoint (in TZ games), or leave.

Snakecharmed wrote: 2 years ago

mhlg wrote: 2 years ago

Most Pkers I've encountered are essentially bullies. Most use paladins such as Smiters and Hammerdins, and attack builds that are great in game play, but not really suitable for Dueling. They do their best to try sneak attacks hoping you won't notice they're there. For instance if you're in the middle of a

Throne of Destruction battle, all the noise and action is enough to distract you and you might not notice they're there.

This is the part I don't get though. If someone enters a game and goes hostile, most people in

Baal runs often just continue like nothing happened until they get killed, and only then do they bitch and moan. I don't see how any player with a functioning brain gets sneaked up upon. I immediately do one of the following: TP out, open my minimap and get ready, camp the waypoint (in TZ games), or leave.

I usually notice as well, but my system is a little more involved than most other PC systems. My PC is home-built, I use a 43 inch 4K HD TV as my monitor, and I have a 550 Watt RMS 6 speaker audio system. So there is a lot going on and it is easy for someone to not hear or notice the hostile tone amid all the clatter. I suspect the PKer uses that to their advantage.

I don't see how any player with a functioning brain gets sneaked up upon.

That's rather harsh and uncalled for.

It could be a pk request in stead of go hostile but Blizzard just doesn't care.

mhlg wrote: 2 years ago

That's rather harsh and uncalled for.

Well, I didn't mean that in a literal sense or intend to imply those people are dumb in general, so I could have phrased that differently, but I was being hyperbolic. The point I wanted to make though was that PKers often succeed due to their victims' complacency. I don't think there's really ever so much going on in the game that you wouldn't hear the horn, see the hostile icon, or notice the chat activity unless you're simply AFK, or in other words, not actually playing the game.

Here's another story: I was once in a game where I was in town and a PKer entered the game and got killed at the waypoint. I was in town the whole time and not a participant in the events, but the part that was rich was the PKer complaining about getting waypoint camped. Did this clown think this was a

Blood Moor duel and that he deserved any honor? You know that BM'ed plonker was going to use a full rejuv if he ever got low trying to PK, so why should his intended victims afford him a "fair" opportunity? Other players in this game were prepared, and good for them.

PKers aren't all they're cracked up to be, and a lot of players are complacent and never prepared. If you get killed by a PK, it's on you and no amount of complaining about the PK's BM will change that.

I realize you probably never meant all of what you said, but your words seemed clear.

I am many things but stupid isn't one of them. Sometimes I get so focused on what I'm doing that I shut out external non related stimuli, and I suspect a lot of other people do that as well. My view is quite simple. People should have the right to play the game as they choose, and for some that includes not having to watch out for PKers. I doubt that Blizzard will do it, but there really should be an opt out switch in the game.

As you know I joined S2 Ladder late just to have the opportunity to make a Mist bow and check out Sunders. It’s supposed to be about who can level to 99 first under the assumption that everyone begins at the same starting point and is playing by the same rules, but they’re not. Like many players you join public games to level and maybe find some stuff. I began joining public games and I noticed a lot of low level builds, about 4, being lead by one high level build. I joined one of the games and the level 88 Sorc went hostile on my level 24 Zon and I quit the game. I didn't see how my build was any different than the other players at about the same level. This happened to me on two other occasions before I started only joining games where everyone was on the same level. It occurred to me they had all paid to be rushed, and I didn't, and they weren't going to give me a free ride. For this reason I think ladder is dead, and it's also one of the reasons I'm going to sit out of S3.

That's fair, and perhaps it's a difference in mentality in how one approaches playing the game. At the end of the day, there is no real penalty for getting PKed other than a loss of gold and pride in softcore, and I guess that could be why some players aren't ever on high alert.

I take my approach knowing that Blizzard never did anything about this in LoD and there was no chance ATVI would do anything about it in D2R. In fact, I always interpreted it as a conscious design decision. I adopted the mentality of always being prepared for a PK entering the game as a result.

When I was playing my javazon in S1 especially towards the end, I was on a mission and there was no gameplay mode for me that didn't involve being on high alert. I would never be okay with getting got by a PK, but if I ever was, then I'd know there wouldn't be much I could say to defend myself. It only takes two clicks/keypresses at most to avoid the embarrassment or inconvenience. At that point in my leveling journey though, I was there to make a statement, so I went for the PKK multiple times in well-established runs because the trolls were being annoying little shits and I wasn't about to let them have their way.

In contrast, I've played in games where other party members did get PKed and they spent the next several minutes ranting and talking trash to the PK saying how lame they are for picking on lower level players, to fight someone on their own level, etc. Those players may not have explicitly consented to playing in a game with someone hostile, but it's not like the hostile party killed them immediately. The other players had ample opportunity to avoid the conflict if they weren't up for it.

If this happens to you in hardcore though, there's very little I can say that you probably haven't thought of yourself already. There's just no room to be reckless or lackadaisical in hardcore. And yet, DiabloPlayerKiller doesn't run out of material to post, which goes to show that there's just no helping some players.