Vylox said:
Firstly, thanks for pointing towards those books. They look like they'll be a good read, not only for this but in general. Now onto the topic at hand. I'm not saying that offline mode = hacks but rather offline mode allows them to experiment in a safe environment which in turn makes it an easier process. As for the process you are suggesting, it wouldn't go to far in actually preventing hacks occurring, at best it will slow would-be hackers down. Here's an example of what I mean.
Say you are trying to develop a hack, you are monitoring how the local server and the client are interacting trying to find something that you can exploit. Then you see the way map data gets handled, you go "great, I'll be able to have the map permanently 100% visible now!" and get to work trying various methods to use that data to your advantage. Soon after you eventually get it to work as planned and you're running around in single-player with your map hack. The next logical step for you is taking a risk and applying it to the online version. The first thing you do is try to directly apply it just like it worked locally but it doesn't end up doing anything. So you then you start monitoring the interaction between your client and the online server(evidence shows that's viable). As you know what you're looking for, it doesn't take nearly as long as it did originally it. You rework your hack a little and bam, it works for the online version.
Now compare this to having now offline mode. You start monitoring the client and server interactions, after a while you spot some exploitable map data. You then set out to developing the same hack above and start trying them out on the server as you go along. After a few attempts you get a message "You have been disconnected from the server" and upon trying to log back in you find out you've been banned. Now of course you could get another account and try and again and repeat until it ends up working but the thing is, you've let Blizzard know that there is a possible exploit there. There's nothing stopping them trying to find out how you were trying to exploit it and then making some edits to stop it happening or at the very least invalidate what you've already done.
Bots: They could be considered a problem, in terms of the community controlled economy, but beyond that they really aren't much of an issue. I went scanning the D3 user forums on 5 different sites, and in D3 bots ARE a problem. In a big way. By user estimates, somewhere between 70 and 85% of all active accounts at any point in time on the D3 servers are bots. I'll take that with a grain of salt. However without any actual user statistics being provided, there is no real way to judge.
As for the previous user statistics issued by Blizzard. They count every individual login as a unique login, even if it is from the same IP address. As long as there is a specific interval between those log-ins. What that interval is I could not find.
Yep, but with the economy having such a vital role in games like Diablo it becomes a pretty big deal. But yeah, they're a problem in D3, much like a lot of other games. As for those statistics, they're only a little overestimated and by a little I mean a good 40-50%. There was a thread some time ago that went through it based on the 1 million per day, 3 million per month stats that Blizzard gave us. They made the assumptions that bots would log in every day and that actual players would only log in once in any given month. The figures they got were somewhere comfortable under 1 million(which was only 33% at the time). Of course there's a margin of error but they are much more believable than random players using stats like you suggested(The same players claim they aren't playing ever again and then remain active).
And do they? Can you link a source on that? I would have thought it would be something like; user x logs in, gets added to a database if they aren't already, then every 24 hours get a total player count and clear the stats.
Rust-storm and Ladder.
In D2, there was very little duping and item injection going on on the ladder server. If any at all. Yes there were lots of things people considered odd, however I can safely say that the amount of proclaimed duping and the amount of actual duping happening were vastly different. I had several people complain about some of the items I was using, claiming that they were duped, when in fact they were legitimate things that I either collected myself or re-rolled. It took me months to get a decent amazon torch, which I had acquired myself by opening up Tristram for someone else to clear it for me. After some time, I was able to do Tristram runs on my own with a bowZon. I was giving away torches and Anni charms on a regular basis (the Anni charms were much more difficult for me to acquire, as luck was involved in finding the server instances where D would spawn). Many people also complained about some of the extra rare items I would give away, even knowing that a person who played and was level 96 could generate every possible prefix and affix combination available in the game through drops or gambling, yet the +3 skill tree circlets I would regular get from gambling were almost always considered dupes by people (hence why I gave them away). People would also regularly state that any SoJ was duped, no matter what, even though it was available as a drop from Andariel in the first act, and could be farmed by anyone with a level 30+ character.
Yeah, I know. People are always quick to call you a hacker even when it's something as simple as a bit of RNG. But when you've had items you've received in trades just vanish and end up being banned for it then you know that duping is definitely still going on. The rust storm stuff doesn't do anything to stop people duping a desirable item and trading it to someone else in a single session.
Things were a bit different on the open/non-ladder servers, as they did not have rust-storms at all. I never played there, so I am unsure of how things worked out for people. However, on the ladder, the rust-storm was done upon game enter. So anything you had in your stash or inventory that was duplicated or injected was removed upon entering a game. I will admit, that it could be possible to force drops, duplicate or inject items within a specific game instance, however they would not be permanent items due to how the rust-storm worked and functioned.
Obviously the hacks were on a larger scale as there was no deterrent at all and of course duped items never got taken out of the economy either. But that's fine because it's to be expected of an open system and hell, it's even fun at times to just run a few hacks and breeze through the game.
