http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8728423772#5
The following was my response to someone else who does not understand some of the anti-cheat death systems that have been implemented in the game to prevent an easy way to avoid hardcore deaths.
It is called hardcore. Any mechanism used to detect lost connections would simply be abused by players who are about to die. Surrounded and frozen? Pause the game,unplug your computer, suddenly Hardcore is softcore.
First of all, you cannot just pause the game and unplug your network connection to simulate a disconnect. You cannot just force quit the client either after pausing. What happens is when you do that, the game will remain paused on the server. After 30 minutes has passed, the server then unpauses the game, to begin the 10 second countdown timer before the character is removed from the game.
If you attempt to login again before that 30 minute idle disconnect period has passed, the same thing will occur, the server will unpause your previous game session on the server. The login may seem to hang for a bit during the authentication process since it is waiting for the 10 second countdown to expire. Sometimes it will proceed at what looks like normal speed because the character died quickly. If the character managed to survive, everything will be normal upon login. If not, dead character. This was added in a long time ago when players were doing just that (pausing and disconnecting).
Yes, we know the potential for death can result from factors outside our control. And yes, I know the D3 dev team can’t cover every single one of those issues which aren’t on their end (like a power outage, an ISP related one, hardware glitch on someones system, etc). Some of this is just common sense and comes with the territory with an online only game.
For those who do not or have never tried playing hardcore, no amount of talk can explain how the gaming experience is completely different from softcore, where death is a meaningless inconvenience… where going back to playing softcore in the games current state, is not as challenging or fun. Thus we play knowing there is the potential for death outside of our own control. The issue I and many other hardcore players have is that the current latency and disconnect handling system is lacking in Diablo III. See the following for why.
Per Bashiok, the in-game latency meter is an actual system.
The latency indicator in-game is not a simple ping like most games, and is actually a full process of the game sending an action to the service, the service processing it, and returning it to the client.
I believe this is an actual API that is built into Battle.net 2.0 and so it is up to each dev team to implement in their client. The StarCraft 2 team has done just that where the game will auto pause once a certain threshold of latency occurs. I play SC2 casually and have experienced the auto pause a few times. If you are in a multiplayer game, the other party will also receive a popup stating that they are waiting for player XXXX. If after a certain period of time (I believe a minute) has passed, the other players can basically decide to have the lagging player removed. If you are playing a campaign or against the AI in a custom map/arcade game, you’ll similarly get this dialog box while the game is paused. It’s effective and works well.
Why is autopause implemented in SC2? The StarCraft 2 team understands that latency can mean the difference in a competition in either macro or micro game play. Some of the best players can micro manage several different units simultaneously; so lag can have an even greater effect when performing multiple actions (such as when directing a unit to gather resources, performing recon, having units building out a base, etc.) There is an in-game metric for this called APM (Actions Per Minute).
For D3, that system would work extremely well for single player. Co-op play would be an issue though since SC2 game play, speed, and objectives are much difference compared to D3 where the combat is generally far more faster paced. In co-op play, I can see this pause throwing players off rhythm with their respective characters as well as team play during a combat situation. I suppose they could make it like the boss battle dialog where once the latency has passed, everyone needs to accept to resume play again (the player will basically just have to ready themselves for quickly assuming control of their characters where they last left off).
As far as using this underlying system for disconnects, that again is something that is theoretically much easier to implement in single player. Again, since the meter is an actual system that knows when higher latency is occurring and auto pauses the game, that system would also have a better measurement of when an actual disconnect has occurred. Why? Because if server and client are no longer in communication with each other, it would show up in this system as very high latency. After N-amount of time has passed, it would be decided it is an actual disconnect situation at which point, the server could then unpause the game to begin the countdown timer. This would help to alleviate the current setup where your character is sitting unpaused in-game and it takes the server up to a minute before it even recognizes that a disconnect has occurred before it begins the 10 second countdown. Characters are normally slain during that period before the server actually registers the disconnect.
Again, handling this in a co-op situation in D3 is at least to me, a bit more complex unless it is paused for everyone. Then it gets sticky when it is time to actually remove the disconnected player from that game. I think from Blizzard’s stand point, doing that in co-op probably interferes too much with how game play situations normally are in multiplayer. I would actually go as far to suggest that autopause be only available in single player as a compromise.
I’ll be completely realistic though. From Blizzard’s perspective, this would be one of the things low on the list of priorities. Hardcore mode players represent a smaller fraction of the playerbase, where the above would really benefit only that smaller minority. If death actually had more meaning also in softcore (like loss of experience points), then maybe there would be a larger outcry from the total playerbase, to warrant a higher priority. Regardless, it shouldn’t mean that it isn’t important though.
If any of the above is an error, I challenge a blue (CM or developer) to shoot down my understanding/interpretation of what Bashiok mentioned regarding the in-game latency meter (as far as how I believe it is something built into Battle.net 2.0 and how it therefore, could be used similarly to the autopause system the SC2 team implemented). And until someone official does, I will stand by my belief that the D3 development team hasn’t done everything within their means to handle latency and disconnect situations to the best of their abilities.
