Diablo 4's first player to reach level 100 on Hardcore loses character to server disconnect
While they were still recognized by Blizzard, an unfortunate disconnect and the rules of Hardcore killed a character that had 82-hours of playtime.
Diablo 4’s fastest and most stalwart champion met with a cruel fate in the game this week. After Blizzard had announced a race to achieve level 100 in Hardcore Mode (where if your character dies, it’s permanent and you have to start a new character), Barbarian player cArn achieved the result. However, as he continued onward from the achievement, cArn’s 82-hour strong Barbarian was eventually slain, not by the actual in-game content, but by a server disconnect.
This incident was shared by cArn themselves as they were streaming on Twitch at the time, as spotted by PCGamesN. After achieving level 100 on Hardcore in Diablo 4 in the contest laid out by Blizzard, cArn went for the final boss of the game. Unfortunately, on his way there, technical issues struck, the enemies in the game suddenly locked up and started running in place and a few moments later, the game disconnected entirely. Blizzard’s built-in rules on Hardcore treat a disconnect as a death to prevent players from trying to cheese the system when low on health by logging out. So, when cArn was able to log in again, he found his character had been wiped.
Source: Blizzard Entertainment
Luckily, cArn was able to reach level 100 before the disconnect happened. They have been recognized by Blizzard as the winner of the contest. However, it’s also a highly disappointing end to an incredible run. CArn put 82 hours into their character and wasn’t even defeated by anything the game’s content had to offer. It also begs the question of how many other players’ runs were ended in such a manner. Given that Diablo 4 is a live-service game, disconnects that can destroy runs with dozens of hours logged is less than ideal, even if the game is quite fun in critical review.
Diablo 4 franchise general manager Rod Fergusson already confirmed that several expansions are already in the works for the game, but Blizzard might want to make the servers airtight first, especially if the game continues to have contests that demand dozens of hours of playtime.
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Shacknews
replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Diablo 4's first player to reach level 100 on Hardcore loses character to server disconnect
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I’m pretty sure that claim that a disconnect is treated as death is misleading. AFAIK, it works the exact same way as WoW where a disconnect has the character linger in game and vulnerable to attack until timeout.
In fact, during cArn_’s race his team noticed him DC and he almost died. They had to take up defensive positions around him intercepting projectiles to keep him alive until his rejoined.
The problem is that ARPG’s are more rippy and it’s a lot easier to die during that timeout period if you aren’t using potions and moving around.
I’m personally not a HC player, but Blizzard needs to come up with a different solution unless they plan to eventually alienate all HC players.-
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No he died to lagging out. You really think they would design a game that way?
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Is this actually true though? I'm trying to find other instances of that happening, seems like a lot of people would be complaining about losing characters in hardcore if this were the case. Watched the twitch clip of the guy getting disconnected and he was mid-combat, so are we sure his character didn't just get killed by enemies while disconnected?
I read somewhere else that getting disconnected in hardcore mode will automatically consume a scroll of escape if you have one in your inventory which could save your character. But why would your character need to be "saved" if disconnecting in hardcore automatically deletes your character?-
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I started a hardcore character and pulled the plug on my PS5 and disconnected. Reconnected and hardcore character is still available. I think the statement on the shacknews article is wrong, I think the guy just got disconnected while fighting and the monsters killed him. I don’t think it’s an instakill on disconnect.
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This is the clip I alluded to up above.
https://youtu.be/5rHRRvJEReM?t=315
The exact same player cArn_ DC'd while they were still in the race at only level 53. Once his team noticed, they stood around him to help intercept any projectiles and protect him until he DC'd. To me it seems to act exactly like WoW and other online games do, where a disconnect leaves your player standing there until you timeout. Aside from this article, I haven't seen anywhere else where it's reported that disconnecting kills HC players automatically. Just that it's not safe to do so.
If you rewind a little you can hear all of Zizaran's comments about the struggles with HC characters right now, including the dangers of DC'ing and some really bad bugs.-
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Sell functional enhancements after committing to only selling cosmetics so that you can target the 0.1% of hardcore players. Can’t fail
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They probably can't differentiate between an intentional or unintentional disconnect
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Yes? Otherwise you just build a reflex for logging out when things get dicey (out of potions, etc) and cheat the mode
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I mean that’s certainly an option but is it meaningfully different? Log out is death vs log out means your character is still in game for 30s? They’re pretty functionally equivalent. Anyone disconnected in an uncleared area is liable to die while the logout timer runs and they’ll be unhappy.
Anyone playing hardcore knows this is a risk just like dying to a lag spike is a risk. You can mitigate it somewhat with smart design but there’s some inevitable amount of bullshit deaths that are going to happen.-
I think the topic is getting obscured. The statement was that hardcore players get instakilled on disconnect. The supposed reason for this is so players don't abuse disconnecting to avoid death in hardcore mode. I was just saying that a logout timer would achieve the same goal but also wouldn't punish players who get disconnected in safe areas by having their character instakilled for disconnecting.
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I assume the insta kill on disconnect is specifically about the behavior in unsafe areas since otherwise how do you even quit the game?
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So it’s not instakill on disconnect then… it’s just the player getting killed by enemies while the character stands there and eventually times out. Which is totally fine.
The wording in the shacknews article seems to imply that simply disconnecting from the game instantly kills your character on disconnect to prevent cheating but it just seems like the same case as any online game where your character stands there inactive for a bit and gets killed by enemies because connection dropped.
I mean it sounded stupid to me which is why I questioned if that’s the case in the first place, which it isn’t. There is a “leave game” option in the game menu which is how I imagine they want you to log out-
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I mean it obviously can’t literally be “insta kill on disconnect” in all cases or you can’t quit the game. I don’t think it’d be weird to call it that when it applies outside town
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Given that it’s an optional mode called hardcore whose design is to make you lose 10-100s of hours of progress due to a lag spike I suspect that given an option between optimizing for ease/comfort and integrity of the mode they’ll just do the latter.
Death on disconnect outside a safe area is a very easy rule for players to understand. Blizzard can then optimize for reducing disconnects and not need to worry about optimizing for loading times to help hardcore players reconnect before a timer expires or whatever.-
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I mean what if you DC when you're in a safe area? Should that be death?
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Isn't it more than if you get disconnected and *then* get killed, they don't revert the death?
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Thats the biggest reason I'd never play hardcore
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Shocker. The only reason most of these guys lose them is due to that lol
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Peer has returned from the depths of IRC to reset your D4 connection, and at a high cost.
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At least he got to 100. Imagine getting disconnected at 99 right when you’re about to ding lol.
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Slap that on a resume!
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