What is the best way (or the most appropriate) to play "solo players N games"?

Hi

Recently I started to try to play on higher players count (for extra Xp and difficult).

But I want to play alone . For me the "Perfect Game" would be one where a bunch of players join and each one do their own farm by themselves

At the moment, I'm crashing on another player's public games ().
But this not seems to be the better strategy... people end-up leaving the game or the game end up being on a lower level than me...
(and sometimes you feel like that you are messing or being rude with other people ...)

Are there some "standards" or "etiquette" that make easy for me to find (or create) games to achieve my goal ("playing alone in a game with more people")?
(games with specific names or specific messages on channels for example...)

fredkid wrote: 5 months ago

For me the "Perfect Game" would be one where a bunch of players join and each one do their own farm by themselves

This is called "split MF". It can be hard to organize a group of people to do this together (what with everyone having jobs, family or other responsibilities, not everyone being available at the same time, etc). We started a B.Net group with members from here for this purpose last year, but the whole split MF playing kind of died off when the main organizer left (both this site and the group).

You can try to look for public games with "split farm" or "split MF" in the game name, or games like "I TZ you MF" (meaning they want to run the current TZ and everyone else can run whatever other areas they want). Or you can try to create games yourself with names like this, and see if anyone joins.

ShadowHeart wrote: 5 months ago

You can try to look for public games with "split farm" or "split MF" in the game name, or games like "I TZ you MF" (meaning they want to run the current TZ and everyone else can run whatever other areas they want). Or you can try to create games yourself with names like this, and see if anyone joins.

I will try that

Pretty much what ShadowHeart said.

Though in my experience, it is a LOT easier to get that done well by hosting the games yourself and being clear about what you're doing.

E.g. start a run "split mf 01" or whatever and add "CS taken" to the description if you yourself are clearing CS. Or just call it "i CS u split 01" or "i CS u dont 01" or whatever. Really just anything that immediately makes it obvious which zone you yourself are doing so others don't go there.

Beyond the host's zone, folks tend to end up with overlap in other zones because you kind of have to guess what's already taken or discuss anew everytime someone new joins or expect new people to wait and keep an eye on their party screen to see where others go...it still works (for everyone) in a decent group but it tends to be far more annoying and result in far more "competition"/overlap for folks who aren't hosting the game with a clear message about their zone being taken.

Just make sure you pick a zone (or zones) yourself that actually take you more than like 30 seconds to clear as people tend to not stick around in your runs if you always leave and remake before they get anything done. At the same time, folks don't want to wait around for minutes at a time while you finish up so don't go "split mf, I do CS and

Baal and tower and tz u...wait in town until I'm done with half the game" either.
Roughly the time of a fast cowrun tends to be the ideal here in my experience since someone is always in cows and wants to at least get close to done, some are simply slower at their other zones and appreciate the extra buffer and those who are quicker can typically just add in 1 or 2 quick champs/bosses or another zone/chest run elsewhere to bridge the gap.

No matter what you do though, you will have the occasional annoying folks in there still actively joining your zone or folks just being significantly too fast (or slow) for your runs so..don't expect it to just work flawlessly 100% of the time.

You Could Also Run Multiple Copies if you have the Ram and Drive space to do so.

Struggling to run one on my note

fredkid wrote: 5 months ago

Struggling to run one on my note

Yeah I realize its not a option for everyone however, finding a good group like mentioned above is the second best option, its rare to find people who put relationships above pixels in public games so if you are able to gather nice group and run a split mf its priceless. I had one for a few years back where we did the splits by doling out acts then rotating them on new games, it worked out pretty well.

Xanhast70 wrote: 5 months ago

fredkid wrote: 5 months ago

Struggling to run one on my note

Yeah I realize its not a option for everyone however, finding a good group like mentioned above is the second best option, its rare to find people who put relationships above pixels in public games so if you are able to gather nice group and run a split mf its priceless. I had one for a few years back where we did the splits by doling out acts then rotating them on new games, it worked out pretty well.

A group of 5 would work out for all players since there are 5 acts in the game not including Secret Cows, or 6 players with Cows. To make it fair players can rotate up one act at a time. For example a player in act one in the first game would move to act 2 in the 2nd then 3rd and on like that while the player in act 5 would get bumped down to act 1 and then to act 2. Play 5 games total and everyone gets a shot at every act. After you can finish with a free for all in Secret Cows.

mhlg wrote: 5 months ago

Xanhast70 wrote: 5 months ago

fredkid wrote: 5 months ago

Struggling to run one on my note

Yeah I realize its not a option for everyone however, finding a good group like mentioned above is the second best option, its rare to find people who put relationships above pixels in public games so if you are able to gather nice group and run a split mf its priceless. I had one for a few years back where we did the splits by doling out acts then rotating them on new games, it worked out pretty well.

A group of 5 would work out for all players since there are 5 acts in the game not including Secret Cows, or 6 players with Cows. To make it fair players can rotate up one act at a time. For example a player in act one in the first game would move to act 2 in the 2nd then 3rd and on like that while the player in act 5 would get bumped down to act 1 and then to act 2. Play 5 games total and everyone gets a shot at every act. After you can finish with a free for all in Secret Cows.

Yep this works out well we typically ended by swaping things with each other at the end of the sessions this usually works out well for the most part

Creating games with specific names and hope to people enter is not working very well...

But, crashing into games with many people and do my own runs is working fine to farm on players 2-4+.
Depending on the game the

Terror Zone do not worth for me (or was already cleaned...), so I do some L85 zones that were not cleaned yet (plus the Act 5 super uniques that are easy to reach) and leave the game. XP gains is way huge than solo players 1

Games created for trades or discussions (yeah, found one for that, 7 people chating non stop and resting in town ) seems to be the best for that (people ignore you and stay on the game for a very long).

fredkid wrote: 5 months ago

Creating games with specific names and hope to people enter is not working very well...

But, crashing into games with many people and do my own runs is working fine to farm on players 2-4+.
Depending on the game the

Terror Zone do not worth for me (or was already cleaned...), so I do some L85 zones that were not cleaned yet (plus the Act 5 super uniques that are easy to reach) and leave the game. XP gains is way huge than solo players 1

Games created for trades or discussions (yeah, found one for that, 7 people chating non stop and resting in town ) seems to be the best for that (people ignore you and stay on the game for a very long).

My strat is to take things people usually neglect-

Icy Cellar,

Flayer Jungle(great for runes- many many monsters) and swampy pit, wsk levels(level 3 seems best-

Fetish+ghost type monsters). These are also harder and to my liking. That way I always have what to farm. You always switch games yeah, until you find that games that lasts 10-20 runs. Also calling drops adds a lot to the game for me, I love public games.
Also, the amount of times I saw Chaos or cows is open in a medium game(4-5) is surprising. Be on the lookout.

I dont like hosting, catering to everyones needs and looking at the clock is tiresome.

Of course not quiet the same, but providing at least the p8 drops in p1 games is playing a hork

War Cry barb with gosu equipment and 105 fcr. I clean cow level that way in a reasonable time and generate drops coming close to p8 (i'm not clear about the math behind)

There are probably a number of players in the forum who would love to be a part of organized farming groups and leveling runs. Especially in named games with passwords, which would prevent interference by PKers and moochers. A minor difficulty would be scheduling. Many forum members live in different time zones and have work obligations that affect the time of day they're available to commit, but that can be overcome with a little advance notice. For instance, if you live in U.S eastern time zone and you're looking to do a run on Thursday at 6 PM to 7 PM, EST, this would also allow some of our late night EU members to join. You can announce it a day or hours in advance and anyone who's interested in joining can sign up for it ahead of time until the run is filled, and if the run is overfilled then a second group can run concurrently (at the same time) in a different game. This will probably require a dedicated thread for the purpose, but it's totally doable and it could be fun.

There is actually a d2io group, could be time to reactivate it

Found back the topic: check here:

forums/looking-for-non-ladder-sc-split- ... 89074.html

(It says NL but there is an L section too. Even an HC one... but empty)

Necrarch wrote: 5 months ago

Found back the topic: check here:

forums/looking-for-non-ladder-sc-split- ... 89074.html

(It says NL but there is an L section too. Even an HC one... but empty)

I think people lost interest in the old thread because it required them to click a link to Bnet forums, signup to Bnet if they haven't already, and then join a group there, or create a group there with members they may or may not know. That might have one thinking "nope not doing that." Wouldn't it be easier and better to have a dedicated thread here on https://diablo2.io/ instead?

1. Add your info to the table, join the bnet group
2. After you join the group ask if there is an open slot somewhere
3. If there isn't, make a game and announce it so others can join later
4. When in game, tell other players what areas you intend to farm, so there is no overlap
5. When you finish run say 'done'
6. When everyone says 'done', group leader starts a new game
7. Rinse and repeat

mhlg wrote: 5 months ago

Wouldn't it be easier and better to have a dedicated thread here on https://diablo2.io/ instead?

Fairly certain we had one..it just died about as fast as the b.net group did.

Seems even though a lot of folks would generally like to run with others, the actual overlap in game modes, playtimes, preferred regions (i.e. ping tolerance) and whatnot tends to result in so little actual collaboration that it just dies off rather quickly.

Schnorki wrote: 5 months ago

mhlg wrote: 5 months ago

Wouldn't it be easier and better to have a dedicated thread here on https://diablo2.io/ instead?

Fairly certain we had one..it just died about as fast as the b.net group did.

Seems even though a lot of folks would generally like to run with others, the actual overlap in game modes, playtimes, preferred regions (i.e. ping tolerance) and whatnot tends to result in so little actual collaboration that it just dies off rather quickly.

I remember some of the attempts by members to assemble a farming group. What it lacked was enough advanced notice of a run and organization. On Discord MOTJ does runs that are often announced two are three days in advance, and anyone interested only needs to click a button to be counted. They set it up in the form of general announcements rather than posts in a thread that could get pushed back by off-topic or general discussion posts. I realize the setup is different here and more attention would be required to make it work. Perhaps we should do a poll (data collection) to find out what the best times are for people in different time zones, and if they would be willing to signup for doing D2 Chaos/

Baal runs, Split MF, Grushes, leveling, or socket quests?

As for the group, if some would be part of it, the use is on Bnet to say "hey I am MFing in XX minutes, wanna be part of it ?"

Rather simple, but the group is too small now to make this work.

Necrarch wrote: 5 months ago

As for the group, if some would be part of it, the use is on Bnet to say "hey I am MFing in XX minutes, wanna be part of it ?"

Rather simple, but the group is too small now to make this work.

A problem I see with some of the attempts to start group runs is the lack of organization, advanced planning, scheduling, and clearly defined goals. Maybe if they said "hey, who would like to do an hour of MFing on Thursday evening from 6/7 PM to 7/8 PM EST." If you're interested please leave a post in advance. People living on the west coast will probably find those times a bit early but they can schedule a game for everyone on the continent, and Necrarch when his wife is out of town.