Diablo used to be about immersive action roleplaying, specializing your character, finding rare powerful loot to create diverse, unique builds, then slaying demons in masses, kill count, tiered difficulty, waves of monsters/hordes of demons and like in the original Diablo, the difficulty scaled based on each level of dungeon, the deeper you go, fighting bosses at the end of each dungeon, then fighting a final boss (Diablo, or in D2, any of the major bosses like Mephisto, Duriel, etc.) at the deepest level, but never should come down to being a 'timed trial' at a static selected difficulty, that turns the game into a racing game, which is what Greater Rifts are being the endgame in Diablo 3.
It is not the kind of infinite scaling we wanted (in my belief).
Ultimately what we wanted (in my belief) was, a scaling difficulty RNG dungeon based on levels completed or how far into the zone you venture with boss encounters, not one static rift with multiple levels but the same difficulty and a time limit to completing the static difficulty rift.
What it should be is a scaling difficulty dungeon with RNG maps and RNG monster combinations that tests the player's or players' survivability versus their damage/kill count, where you're not restrained a time window, but rather not dying to a zone/level/boss.
How it would work
The basic way is to start out in Illusionists Descent 1, the difficulty is Normal. You complete the map, the next level Illusionists Descent 2, becomes Hard difficulty and so on.
Another way as well is you have one very large, somewhat linear map with different zones, where the further you go, the harder/higher density the monsters become based on the zones, rather than a level.
But the only real difference is one is having levels laterally, with a boss at the end of each level, and one is expanding horizontally, with different zones having multiple difficulties, reaching a final zone with a boss.
So at the beginning of the map you fight normal monsters, but the further you go into the map into another zone the harder/higher density the monsters become, so the whole map actually has increasing difficulty itself.
Both ways work by itself, but you can combine the two and create a level with many zones and each zone progressively gets harder, with a boss at the end of the level, and the next level being the next progression of difficulty of multiple zones and the next difficulty boss.
This tests the player's or players' ability to defeat all the foes in that particular level/zone to move on to the next level of difficulty, there could be anywhere from 1-5 elites/champions per zone and a boss at the end of each level.
The boss mechanic would instead just be placed at the end of each zone/level, much like you see in the original Diablo 3 gameplay demo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEvThjiE038).
Imagine what's shown in the video being a randomly generated dungeon map with multiple levels down and multiple zones in a level, finally ending at a boss for that dungeon, giving you access to the next dungeon with the next segment of difficulty level and boss.
Now rather than having to finish the rift by getting enough 'orbs' or kill count to reach a boss on any random number of levels of maps cleared, it's about simply completing each level with many zones each getting harder, then a boss at the end of the level you have to beat to get to the next level with many more (even more than before perhaps) progressively harder zones with a harder boss at the end, scaling infinitely.
And if a player or group of players are not strong enough in damage they will never be able to do enough damage before being overwhelmed or can't progress further in that level, this is where the boss enrage could become useful again or just slowly grow stronger, or the boss could regenerate if they are not doing enough damage. If they don't have enough survivability they will be killed before being able to get to the end of the level.
This still allows for competition, but with a different objective that is not a race of speed, but instead true to Diablo, by defeating a boss/level/difficulty not by time, but by not dying.
The Leaderboards would just consist of difficulty cleared, this could be tuned so the difficulty levels are closer together at high levels so you can see a more distinct leader that is able to clear perhaps just 1 level higher as the number 1 on the leaderboard, so there could be many people that clear the same level, it would just then be based on who beat the highest first, instead of a race of time on who did it the fastest, and make the objective to clear 1 level higher to break the tie on level cleared and become the first to clear the next highest.
This would also more or less resolve the issue of rift fishing because it's less reliant on time and being lucky to complete it faster, but just focused on being able to beat that level and being the first to reach the highest level, which is still luck of RNG for being able to do sufficient damage and survive, but that is much more gear/skill/paragon based, no longer restrained by time, down to milliseconds, having to fish for lucky monsters that just give you a time advantage to completing the rift faster/in time.
Finally, for once in the game death is actually much more detrimental to the player in a way that is not annoying, but challenging to the player's survivability which is an important aspect of the concept of mortality in the Diablo genre and simply way better than right now.
No longer do we play to waste our time looking at the death screen and wait to revive over and over, maxing out at 30 seconds, because it's no longer about time, it's either simply your inability to progress further that stops you and death is just indefinite once you reach a certain level that will be a threshold, there could be a flat timer of just 5-10 seconds that is not a frustrating wait, or upon death or when all the players in the group are dead however many times, like with one resurrection for each player, you will be spawned back in town with the rift ended and closed allowing you to start again instead of having to abandon the game if you can't progress like right now.
In the case of hardcore, it would cause no issues whatsoever, once again, you would know your limit and only complete to the level you are capable of and that would be your record.
It would actually add even greater meaning to Hardcore mode, because the increasing difficulty itself is about survival and endurance, and the prime factor to hardcore is staying alive.
Like explained above, by making death more detrimental, it plays on hardcore players even more, but in a good, fair way, not by making it harder, but by making it more meaningful to stay alive instead of just beating a time, what they're playing for in the first place.
Lastly, this will allow there to finally be music and environmental effects based on the progression depth you've gone, closer to the boss, the louder more intense the music, ambient sounds, clattering, screams, echos, nightmarish groans, the lighting become darker and more contrasted, beacons of light of torches or infernal flames shooting out of walls, this is when the game can become immersive, what made Diablo so successful.
ARPGs are not popular anymore because Diablo 1 and 2 were the only popular, most dominant ARPGs for its time and D3 was supposed to be its successor but failed because of build diversity/itemization, AH, and also endless scaling difficulty instance dungeons that made D1 and 2 what it is on top of storyline and itemization, trading, and lastly PvP.
Diablo 3 is just a 6-piece/LoN set GR fishing/racing game.
This just once again brings the very essence of what made Diablo successful in the first place to light, if they were able to implement these fundamental changes the game could be brought back to life like necromancer is a nostalgic class that the community has been thinking about for years and they finally brought it back like also they did with the paladin (crusader) it's the same thing with this, going back to the roots; the necromancer from D1 was what made the game so iconic, this post is referring precisely toward the nostalgic aspect of what made Diablo great, a true dungeon crawler, not a static difficulty rift racing game.
I think it's a fitting suggestion seeing their release of the Necromancer, to be honest.
it doesn't need to be a single RNG dungeon with levels. What you describe is the PoE atlas (google it) merged in one dungeon. It doesn't need to be infintely scaling - just hard to complete and requiring time to do so.
Honestly? While i like your idea, the only way to make an endgame like this meaningful is just to remove ladders from it altogether. Then you have opened up lots of more build options just because there's no more a time constraint which favors the research of a "meta". While meta won't disappear, it becomes completely optional since you can do everything with any character/build becuase time is no more a factor.
Anyway ladders are attractive for a lot of players. That's where Challenge Rifts come - same setup and environment for everyone, fair competition/race and ladders that have a meaning. There you have your competitive environment without any impact on the endgame and meta.
You did endless Baal- and Diabloruns in Diablo 2. This was your highly praised endgame ... Now you do speeds and in the end you try to push as far as your grinding allows you. The same in Diablo 2: the more time you invested, the better was your result ... there is no difference.
You did endless Baal- and Diabloruns in Diablo 2. This was your highly praised endgame ... Now you do speeds and in the end you try to push as far as your grinding allows you. The same in Diablo 2: the more time you invested, the better was your result ... there is no difference.
I don't recall there being a timer, nor was it an infinitely scaling dungeon, which is what this would be, a combination of GR infinite scaling, which I think was the right direction, but just not in a timed environment and a static difficulty that you choose each time before entering the rift.
The key to it is combining the new concept of infinite scaling potential with the original D1/2 dungeon crawling element of the deeper the dungeon the harder the foes.
You did endless Baal- and Diabloruns in Diablo 2. This was your highly praised endgame ... Now you do speeds and in the end you try to push as far as your grinding allows you. The same in Diablo 2: the more time you invested, the better was your result ... there is no difference.
The major difference is that in D2 progression wasn't tied to an infinite scaling difficult content. And it make the whole thing completely different.
As you said, in D2 you had boss/farm runs, over and over and over. In D3 you have GRs runs, over and over and over. Both grinds and farms. But in D2, no matter the build/character you had, you could do it and you could find gear to support your own build and make your character stronger.
In D3, gear is thrown at you and everyone reaches the same plateau very fast. Then if you have the right class/build you can just progress further than anybody else because the only progression left is Paragon (LOL) and Legendary gems. The wrong/less optimal build will make you go only so far then you're locked into lower GRs with nothing to hunt for but +5 mainstat after some playtime.
The grind is not the issue. The way the grind is done is the issue.
Side note: GRs per se are not bad. The fact everyone needs to push as high as possible to progress with their char (due to Paragon and Gems) makes everyone focus only on the strongest builds because why bothering with something that cannot let you be as powerful as other people.
D3 structure is flawed at the core. WHile ladders are interesting only for a few people, there's zero incentive to play the char/build you like because you'll just be less powerful. Fight mechanics can be difficult without infinite scaling and character progression could be not tied to GRs,
But again, expecting something good now from D3 is kinda hard honestly.
Side note: GRs per se are not bad. The fact everyone needs to push as high as possible to progress with their char (due to Paragon and Gems) makes everyone focus only on the strongest builds because why bothering with something that cannot let you be as powerful as other people.
This. GR's both ruined and gave diversity to the game. Maybe what they should do is to hard cap GR's to a level that most of the builds can be played viable. Of course there will be best builds and fastest ones, but in the end lets say if I can complete a GR with a fun build other than the best, it is fine.
Then what's the point in continuing once you hit the hard cap? If anything GR's are great because they offer infinite scaling objectives, it gives you something that D2 was not able to offer.
What I dislike is that the speed at which you clear the rifts is more important than the level of the rift. Why run 100 if you can run 90 a few minutes faster. It's time that item stats scale with GR level, higher rifts should give better drops, not just more which then have just a chance to drop.
It takes me like 2-seconds flat to kill T13 ubers...
In the end it's all about depth. Depth of skills, depth of character specialization, depth of item powers, depth of item rarity, depth of builds, depth of build diversity, depth of item/set combinations, depth of infinite scaling dungeons, depth of music as you go deeper down, depth of ambient sounds, depth of difficulty, depth of density in monsters, depth of elite types. Johnny Depp... wait no.
Imagine if the elite/champion numbers scaled up based on zone/level tier, they can just keep going until there are 3 champions, etc and then maybe there could be a next level after 3 champions that is red called 'infernal' and once you meet 2 infernals after that one more level that's black called 'spectre' or 'abyssal' (I think uber bosses and keywardens might be this color already, which effectively makes them a miniboss/uber boss you can certainly use in the progression of elites) so now you have blue elites, yellow champions, red infernals, black spectres/abyssal (think red infernal like hellfire Diablo's red soulstone and black spectre/abyssal like Diablo in the Terror Realm).
But these wouldn't show up in the beginning levels, you would only have whites at first, then 1 elite, then after 3, 1 champion, so up until maybe the equivalent of GR60 or 70 is when you meet your first infernal or something like that.
So at endgame something equal to GR120 now, you could see like 2 spectre/abyssal, 3 infernals, 4 champions, 5 elites and the boss at the end, that would be insane. Each in their own zone of course, but you can always pull them all together perhaps if you can tank and want to do damage to as many monsters as possible. Or maybe by that difficulty there are only infernal and spectre/abyssal, so you have like 3 spectre/abyssal and 4 infernals.
There needs to be also doors/barriers and entrances to the next zone that takes time/damage to breakdown/open so that you can't easily skip to the next zone because the monsters in the previous zone will keep attacking you while you try and break the barrier to the next zone/area.
For example if you're a tank then you'll have trouble doing enough damage to break the door/barrier, but if you're a glass cannon then you'll die from the monsters attacking you though you can break down the door/barrier faster.
Just an idea, this also comes from D1 or D2 back when there were many colors for the elites and I know they wanted it more simple, but just 2 more isn't too many and only 2 isn't enough, and they are due to the scaled progression of depth levels once again, key to Diablo's original core.
I mean just look at goblins for example, why do we have so many colored goblins, but there's only 2 types of elites? It doesn't make sense. What is this goblin slayer? They said they didn't want too many colors for elites but instead makes them for goblins... that's pitiful, I'm sorry to say.
I agree there shouldn't be too many colors for elites, but I think blue, yellow, red and black really capture the essence of their difficulty, we have such a huge range of difficulty but all we ever see are 2 types of elites, it's a bit underwhelming to say the least.
Then what's the point in continuing once you hit the hard cap? If anything GR's are great because they offer infinite scaling objectives, it gives you something that D2 was not able to offer.
What I dislike is that the speed at which you clear the rifts is more important than the level of the rift. Why run 100 if you can run 90 a few minutes faster. It's time that item stats scale with GR level, higher rifts should give better drops, not just more which then have just a chance to drop.
The hard cap shouldbe something that takes quite a bunch of time to reach - and most of all, it should be tied to a single character while now you can just swap the legendary gems and nuke relatively high GR with sensible less effort. When you reach the "hard cap" you still have the hunt for Primals (optional but can be a goal) or you could do it with another char.
GR offer infinite scaling, but this comes at the price that once you reached a "soft cap", you either need to play meta or you're done. With no other reason than "you're not playing meta". Which sucks a lot.
There is zero incentive to play something that's not meta. Journey and all that stuff is nice but doesn't take much and it's not a long term objective. Once you're done with that it0's either meta or farming lower stuff because you cannot realistically do anything else, also because there's literally nothing to do but GRs.
I fail to see the logic here. Say we put a hard cap on GR level 100. Then, once your character hits it there is little more for him to do beyond farming better gear. Better gear which is rather useless since you can clear the highest difficult anyway. This would bring us back to literally the biggest problem of Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 vanilla: The lack of end game.
If you want to play an off-meta class and try to get to level 100 you can still do that now, there is no reason to hardcap the game for players who DO want to play meta-classes. The incentive to play off-meta classes is because you might enjoy them.
My point is that adding a hard-cap gives nothing to off-meta classes which they can't do already yet it severely limits the game for people who enjoy min-maxing and playing the perfect meta. The infinite scaling of GR's is the only thing that is keeping Diablo 3 somewhat alive: There is always a new objective.
Looks like one of 2 things. You either just hate D3, or you are just totally clueless as to what makes a good game. Wait, 3 things...you may also be bad mouthing anything having to do with Blizzard and their games because it seems like the thing to do. I see alot of that on gaming forums.
"Yup, leaderboards stand in the way of the future of the game"...leaderboards are vital to this game. People enjoy the challenge of pushing and want to see the results displayed. I'm sure other incredibly popular games like LoL or Overwatch have something similar. It would not be possible with the infinite ceiling GRs. They are perfectly suited. The Metas are necessary for the high rifts and awesome! Last nite I was grouped with 3 wizards on my zmonk. It was all i could do to keep them and myself alive as we progressed, finishing GR90s in 10 minutes. One Wiz dropped and a barb joined. We then zoomed through smoothly in 5 minutes. It was a blast. All of us joking and having fun. Without the above the game indeed would then die. Why even play?
D3 has some of the most incredible build diversity i've ever seen in any game. There are the different classes, all with various builds used in different stiuations. All of which can be changed, tweaked, and experimented with to no end. It also is what keeps people coming back for more.
If the game is "dead," why are there people playing 24/7? I can log on any time of day or nite, any day of the week, and i'm not even in a clan! I find games in seconds!! If its "dead," why is Blizzard patching it, improving it, adding content to it? Incredibly cool content i might add....the cube, the armory for example. Countless little quality of life improvements.The newest patch forthcoming, 2.5.0 is prob one of their best patches yet.
The problem here is that not everyone is able to compete on the leaderboards. Going from rank 1500 to rank 1400 isn't interesting. Being able to reach a higher level GR than you did before is a lot more motivating than clearing the same rift just a bit faster.
the incentive to play something else than meta: you don't lose out on loot because you can farm at the hard cap.
Well, you don't even NEED the loot because there is nothing left to do, there is no rift to clear. Unless you want to compete on leaderboards, which as mentioned above not everyone can do so.
It's a similar problem like Paragon 1.0 had.
It's still a lot better than the problem that vanilla and Diablo 2 had: The lack of something to do.
Yes, Diablo 2 was/is still played a lot, but this is mostly due to build and equipment diversity, not because of the amazing end game content.
The people who claim that Diablo 2 had such a big build diversity and such amazing items forget that 99% of the Diablo 2 guides also were about the same 2-3 items. Diversity wasnt as big as you guys think.
Also, the game D2 was much easier in general. Of course you can have more builds when you can just steamroll mobs with any item combination as soon as you reached a certain power level. The endless scaling actually adds challenge and replayability to D3.
Here's my thoughts on the matter(not that anyone asked for them!)
I like OP's idea, but I think to do such a change you'd probably first need to change a bigger core problem with the game before making any adjustments to the ladder/grifts...and that is the item hunt..but much more on that later. For now I'm going to warn you guys that the rest of this post is a tldr; rant on item hunting so if you want to ignore the rest be my guest.
Here's my sort of disorganized thoughts on some D3(and PoE) mechanics before getting into this:
1) I like the idea that Blizzard pitched originally about legendaries changing your spec on the fly when you get a certain legendary. I thought it was a good way to validate why they let you adjust your skills in the first place(and not be set skills like in other arpg's). Unfortunately, in practice with the lack of tuning/meta most legendaries are basically deemed useless so this mechanic is currently greatly flawed.
2) I dislike paragon grinding/key farming being the current gauge of your character progression(said everyone who plays/played D3)
3) I dislike the lack of build diversity especially in relation to my first point. Build diversity is going to never be a won battle in arpg's though. It wasn't really in D2(though better than D3), and it's also far from perfect in PoE as well(though I'd argue balance isn't as "hindering" to your enjoyment in PoE compared to D3).
4) I like not having an AH, and loot/progression being mostly personal/group based. I could probably rant for this one a bit...but I don't think trading has ever worked optimally in any arpg/mmorpg..so I don't get why arpg devs keep going back to it. For example I personally believe in PoE with its current level of popularity and poe.trade being its most efficient way of trading...it's basically devolved into vanilla d3's format of AH sniping(if I underprice I instantly see 5 vulture whispers to swoop in and take it..and consequently if I want to buy something fairly priced I never make it in time). I don't find that aspect fun in the slightest.
5) PoE has grown on me as D3 declined - I always liked PoE don't get me wrong, but in terms of hours dedicated to PoE vs D3... D3 definitely used to dominate my time and PoE would be basically a week or two commitment, and ironically I think the two have basically swapped and PoE has grown to the point that I can't stop. That said, I also wanted to make clear that I personally don't ever think PoE has the potential to be a D2 level of popularity in the history of gaming. The game just requires a level of dedication and research that is going to put off most players(though not me obviously). D3 is by far behind PoE now though in quality/evolution, but I really want D3 to to be on PoE's level(and I also believe in theory it could've been if I didn't feel like it was basically in maintenance mode at this point...maybe the necromancer patch will be more than just a necromancer though and I'll be proven wrong).
So how would Blizzard fix the current progression system in theory?
1) Keep trying the balance the sets - Duh, I guess...but I'm mentioning this because I(like many I assume that still play or moved on) feel frustrated because they go season after season while doing no changes to sets of any consequence. I wish I understood why they're afraid to try adjusting the sets until they're all within 5 grifts of eachother. I feel like a sloppy/rapid machine gun pace of balancing is better than doing nothing at all.
2) Short term loot fixes - The first iteration of Primal Ancients was actually closer to a bandaid fix than the current version(30% more stats vs perfect rolled ancient stats). The problem is they thought too small. Basically I'm saying...if the stats difference between legendary(baseline), ancient, and primal ancient is high enough to outweigh the legendary/set perk(so you always equip the primal ancient>ancient>legendary)..then build diversity will increase dramatically. Doing this would probably require an item squish I imagine or scaling would get ridiculous in its current format. Currently, I think primal ancients arguably going to make the game have even less longevity.
Long Term Game Mechanic changes
This is basically an expansion level of content(and frankly will probably never happen..but it's fun to think about!). After the short term loot changes...you'd basically need to do the following things:
1) Introduce a linear endless progression system - Simply put, both the gear scaling...and difficulty would never stop(or at least stop much later than 2 weeks into the season). You will always log on and grind out upgrades to your character...and you will always keep pushing yourself to higher levels of difficulty. A few fail safes would need to be implemented for this to work.
2) The Devs would need to take the data they get from the most "committed" grinders and formulate the rate/ilvl of gear that drops so that with all of the effort the players put in...they still either never hit the cap, or hit it with about 2-4 weeks of the season ending(assuming a 3 month cycle).
3) Gearing fail safes probably need to be put in - Obviously this is to counter the rut you'd get stuck in Vanilla D3(unless you were gifted at playing the AH). Personally, I think if they removed the arbitrary primary stats in the first tab of paragon system, and replaced it with drop rate modifiers(or drop "quality" modifiers so that your odds of getting the higher tier of loot in your current difficulty increase). It would help you be able to move to the next difficulty steadily.
4) The leaderboards/progression - If you get a solid foundation of loot/build progression, then I honestly think they can do whatever they feel like at this point. You can either do @OP's vision, or you could just keep the current Grift leaderboards, or heck you could even just make people progress by beating the story mode(boss enrages would probably need to be applied to make sure you beat the gear requirements), and using rifts/bounties to grind the gear to progress. If I had my choices, I'd definitely not do Grifts, but it's mostly because Grift bosses by themselves are kind of boring compared to vanilla end act bosses(or at least doing Grift bosses with new extra gimmicks like stuff to dodge or elite packs spawning mid fight randomly). Beating a new difficulty will in turn unlock new levels of rift difficulties/loot drops to grind out and endlessly progress until the 3 months are up.
5) Group scaling - Admittedly this is probably the part that needs to be carefully tuned a bit, They'd either need to give a better reason for you to play with your friends on a lower difficulty, or make the monsters calculate the relative power level of the each person in the group(like it would know if your toughness is higher so it hits you harder..similar situation for dps requirements).
Other random(and unrelated to the topic) ideas
What if your character's gearing process became a personal choice on what type of gear you'd wear, and paragon points rather than give arbitrary stats...would instead help these 4 modes of gearing in different ways. Here's 4 types of gearing I'd like to see.
A) Rune words - Similar to d2, they would drop out in the world, and combine certain combos in kanai's cube then to formulate a new type of armor/jewelry/weapons, Differing from D2 though...the idea would be the gear would have only primary stats(scaling on the ilvl of how far you're progressed since obviously you need the defensive perks from the two)...meaning you won't have attack speed/crit/etc..Instead the rune word would create certain effects that EXTREMELY buff the flat damage of a certain skill on your bar, and the rune word would also generate a similar perk like legendaries in d3(or they can simply add a big buff to its cooldown, crit chance, attack speed etc). The idea would be to collect runes, vendor certain runes for other runes, then formulate the combo to achieve the rune words affect the skill that you specifically want so you can always use a set skills that you particularly like for your class.
Spending Paragon points would increase the odds of the "rare" runes dropping in each difficulty bracket.
B ) Crafting - This is going to now be the counter to rune words. You're still going to grind and collect the crafting reagents, but unlike its current iteration(and rune words), it's going to focus on building up the stats on the gear to ridiculous levels rather than focus on skills. This path is going to be for people who just really want to have a lot of attack speed/crit/cooldown reduction..basically whatever they want... and don't necessarily care what skill they use.
Paragon points would increase the amount of crafting mats dropping.
C) "Magic Find" - This would be the third option in theory, and is basically what the current iteration of D3. You keep grinding and you get your set optimal set items(hopefully ancient), and wear the optimal set.
The Paragon points would basically increase the odds of rolling ancient/primal ancient(making the assumption that the rarity of the item always outweighs the legendary/set bonus for the record).
D) The gamble option/jack of all trades option - You would still collect bloods while grinding, then just gamble them away. I'm going to either presume you literally just keep spending them and it gives something completely random between crafting mats, runes, and gear. Or they could let you gamble a certain slot, and it also has a chance at giving your crafting or runes while gambling that slot at the same time. Increasing paragon points would drop more bloods. This option is just for those weird people who thrive on chaos(and hopefully would be tuned close enough so where the dumb lucky people come out ahead with it...and not not lucky fall behind). Obviously, this is a not a route for all.
The ways/combos could be balanced could be endless...like if you spend your paragon points evenly between the 4 categories...you see a fair balance of all slots of gear, but you don't see the rarest tier of stuff often. They could also either create every slot of gear for these 4 routes, and you would basically see none of the other 3 categories that you don't invest in, or they could have you see a baseline drop of all three, but the route you choose is going to only cover a few of the slots of gear, so the uncovered slots would be much weaker in comparison. For example, let's say rune words covered armor, but not jewelry. If you spent all your points into rune words..then you'd have amazing top tier of those slots, but the jewelry would basically be yellow or legendary quality stat sticks.
Sorry if it feels like I went extremely off topic, but yeah as mentioned previously in this thread(and in my post)...the odds of expecting major changes is probably improbable at this point. It's always fun to imagine though.
Diablo used to be about immersive action roleplaying, specializing your character, finding rare powerful loot to create diverse, unique builds, then slaying demons in masses, kill count, tiered difficulty, waves of monsters/hordes of demons and like in the original Diablo, the difficulty scaled based on each level of dungeon, the deeper you go, fighting bosses at the end of each dungeon, then fighting a final boss (Diablo, or in D2, any of the major bosses like Mephisto, Duriel, etc.) at the deepest level, but never should come down to being a 'timed trial' at a static selected difficulty, that turns the game into a racing game, which is what Greater Rifts are being the endgame in Diablo 3.
It is not the kind of infinite scaling we wanted (in my belief).
Ultimately what we wanted (in my belief) was, a scaling difficulty RNG dungeon based on levels completed or how far into the zone you venture with boss encounters, not one static rift with multiple levels but the same difficulty and a time limit to completing the static difficulty rift.
What it should be is a scaling difficulty dungeon with RNG maps and RNG monster combinations that tests the player's or players' survivability versus their damage/kill count, where you're not restrained a time window, but rather not dying to a zone/level/boss.
How it would work
But the only real difference is one is having levels laterally, with a boss at the end of each level, and one is expanding horizontally, with different zones having multiple difficulties, reaching a final zone with a boss.
So at the beginning of the map you fight normal monsters, but the further you go into the map into another zone the harder/higher density the monsters become, so the whole map actually has increasing difficulty itself.
Both ways work by itself, but you can combine the two and create a level with many zones and each zone progressively gets harder, with a boss at the end of the level, and the next level being the next progression of difficulty of multiple zones and the next difficulty boss.
This tests the player's or players' ability to defeat all the foes in that particular level/zone to move on to the next level of difficulty, there could be anywhere from 1-5 elites/champions per zone and a boss at the end of each level.
The boss mechanic would instead just be placed at the end of each zone/level, much like you see in the original Diablo 3 gameplay demo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEvThjiE038).
Imagine what's shown in the video being a randomly generated dungeon map with multiple levels down and multiple zones in a level, finally ending at a boss for that dungeon, giving you access to the next dungeon with the next segment of difficulty level and boss.
Now rather than having to finish the rift by getting enough 'orbs' or kill count to reach a boss on any random number of levels of maps cleared, it's about simply completing each level with many zones each getting harder, then a boss at the end of the level you have to beat to get to the next level with many more (even more than before perhaps) progressively harder zones with a harder boss at the end, scaling infinitely.
And if a player or group of players are not strong enough in damage they will never be able to do enough damage before being overwhelmed or can't progress further in that level, this is where the boss enrage could become useful again or just slowly grow stronger, or the boss could regenerate if they are not doing enough damage. If they don't have enough survivability they will be killed before being able to get to the end of the level.
This still allows for competition, but with a different objective that is not a race of speed, but instead true to Diablo, by defeating a boss/level/difficulty not by time, but by not dying.
The Leaderboards would just consist of difficulty cleared, this could be tuned so the difficulty levels are closer together at high levels so you can see a more distinct leader that is able to clear perhaps just 1 level higher as the number 1 on the leaderboard, so there could be many people that clear the same level, it would just then be based on who beat the highest first, instead of a race of time on who did it the fastest, and make the objective to clear 1 level higher to break the tie on level cleared and become the first to clear the next highest.
This would also more or less resolve the issue of rift fishing because it's less reliant on time and being lucky to complete it faster, but just focused on being able to beat that level and being the first to reach the highest level, which is still luck of RNG for being able to do sufficient damage and survive, but that is much more gear/skill/paragon based, no longer restrained by time, down to milliseconds, having to fish for lucky monsters that just give you a time advantage to completing the rift faster/in time.
Finally, for once in the game death is actually much more detrimental to the player in a way that is not annoying, but challenging to the player's survivability which is an important aspect of the concept of mortality in the Diablo genre and simply way better than right now.
No longer do we play to waste our time looking at the death screen and wait to revive over and over, maxing out at 30 seconds, because it's no longer about time, it's either simply your inability to progress further that stops you and death is just indefinite once you reach a certain level that will be a threshold, there could be a flat timer of just 5-10 seconds that is not a frustrating wait, or upon death or when all the players in the group are dead however many times, like with one resurrection for each player, you will be spawned back in town with the rift ended and closed allowing you to start again instead of having to abandon the game if you can't progress like right now.
In the case of hardcore, it would cause no issues whatsoever, once again, you would know your limit and only complete to the level you are capable of and that would be your record.
It would actually add even greater meaning to Hardcore mode, because the increasing difficulty itself is about survival and endurance, and the prime factor to hardcore is staying alive.
Like explained above, by making death more detrimental, it plays on hardcore players even more, but in a good, fair way, not by making it harder, but by making it more meaningful to stay alive instead of just beating a time, what they're playing for in the first place.
Lastly, this will allow there to finally be music and environmental effects based on the progression depth you've gone, closer to the boss, the louder more intense the music, ambient sounds, clattering, screams, echos, nightmarish groans, the lighting become darker and more contrasted, beacons of light of torches or infernal flames shooting out of walls, this is when the game can become immersive, what made Diablo so successful.
https://us.battle.net/forums/en/d3/topic/20753457247
Just let it go. Diablo is dead. ARPGs are not popular which means no smart company is going to invest in them.
ARPGs are not popular anymore because Diablo 1 and 2 were the only popular, most dominant ARPGs for its time and D3 was supposed to be its successor but failed because of build diversity/itemization, AH, and also endless scaling difficulty instance dungeons that made D1 and 2 what it is on top of storyline and itemization, trading, and lastly PvP.
Diablo 3 is just a 6-piece/LoN set GR fishing/racing game.
This just once again brings the very essence of what made Diablo successful in the first place to light, if they were able to implement these fundamental changes the game could be brought back to life like necromancer is a nostalgic class that the community has been thinking about for years and they finally brought it back like also they did with the paladin (crusader) it's the same thing with this, going back to the roots; the necromancer from D1 was what made the game so iconic, this post is referring precisely toward the nostalgic aspect of what made Diablo great, a true dungeon crawler, not a static difficulty rift racing game.
I think it's a fitting suggestion seeing their release of the Necromancer, to be honest.
it doesn't need to be a single RNG dungeon with levels. What you describe is the PoE atlas (google it) merged in one dungeon. It doesn't need to be infintely scaling - just hard to complete and requiring time to do so.
Honestly? While i like your idea, the only way to make an endgame like this meaningful is just to remove ladders from it altogether. Then you have opened up lots of more build options just because there's no more a time constraint which favors the research of a "meta". While meta won't disappear, it becomes completely optional since you can do everything with any character/build becuase time is no more a factor.
Anyway ladders are attractive for a lot of players. That's where Challenge Rifts come - same setup and environment for everyone, fair competition/race and ladders that have a meaning. There you have your competitive environment without any impact on the endgame and meta.
I mean - IT'S SO FREAKIN SIMPLE. To me at last.
I don't recall there being a timer, nor was it an infinitely scaling dungeon, which is what this would be, a combination of GR infinite scaling, which I think was the right direction, but just not in a timed environment and a static difficulty that you choose each time before entering the rift.
The key to it is combining the new concept of infinite scaling potential with the original D1/2 dungeon crawling element of the deeper the dungeon the harder the foes.
As you said, in D2 you had boss/farm runs, over and over and over. In D3 you have GRs runs, over and over and over. Both grinds and farms. But in D2, no matter the build/character you had, you could do it and you could find gear to support your own build and make your character stronger.
In D3, gear is thrown at you and everyone reaches the same plateau very fast. Then if you have the right class/build you can just progress further than anybody else because the only progression left is Paragon (LOL) and Legendary gems. The wrong/less optimal build will make you go only so far then you're locked into lower GRs with nothing to hunt for but +5 mainstat after some playtime.
The grind is not the issue. The way the grind is done is the issue.
Side note: GRs per se are not bad. The fact everyone needs to push as high as possible to progress with their char (due to Paragon and Gems) makes everyone focus only on the strongest builds because why bothering with something that cannot let you be as powerful as other people.
D3 structure is flawed at the core. WHile ladders are interesting only for a few people, there's zero incentive to play the char/build you like because you'll just be less powerful. Fight mechanics can be difficult without infinite scaling and character progression could be not tied to GRs,
But again, expecting something good now from D3 is kinda hard honestly.
Then what's the point in continuing once you hit the hard cap? If anything GR's are great because they offer infinite scaling objectives, it gives you something that D2 was not able to offer.
What I dislike is that the speed at which you clear the rifts is more important than the level of the rift. Why run 100 if you can run 90 a few minutes faster. It's time that item stats scale with GR level, higher rifts should give better drops, not just more which then have just a chance to drop.
It takes me like 2-seconds flat to kill T13 ubers...
In the end it's all about depth. Depth of skills, depth of character specialization, depth of item powers, depth of item rarity, depth of builds, depth of build diversity, depth of item/set combinations, depth of infinite scaling dungeons, depth of music as you go deeper down, depth of ambient sounds, depth of difficulty, depth of density in monsters, depth of elite types. Johnny Depp... wait no.
Imagine if the elite/champion numbers scaled up based on zone/level tier, they can just keep going until there are 3 champions, etc and then maybe there could be a next level after 3 champions that is red called 'infernal' and once you meet 2 infernals after that one more level that's black called 'spectre' or 'abyssal' (I think uber bosses and keywardens might be this color already, which effectively makes them a miniboss/uber boss you can certainly use in the progression of elites) so now you have blue elites, yellow champions, red infernals, black spectres/abyssal (think red infernal like hellfire Diablo's red soulstone and black spectre/abyssal like Diablo in the Terror Realm).
But these wouldn't show up in the beginning levels, you would only have whites at first, then 1 elite, then after 3, 1 champion, so up until maybe the equivalent of GR60 or 70 is when you meet your first infernal or something like that.
So at endgame something equal to GR120 now, you could see like 2 spectre/abyssal, 3 infernals, 4 champions, 5 elites and the boss at the end, that would be insane. Each in their own zone of course, but you can always pull them all together perhaps if you can tank and want to do damage to as many monsters as possible. Or maybe by that difficulty there are only infernal and spectre/abyssal, so you have like 3 spectre/abyssal and 4 infernals.
There needs to be also doors/barriers and entrances to the next zone that takes time/damage to breakdown/open so that you can't easily skip to the next zone because the monsters in the previous zone will keep attacking you while you try and break the barrier to the next zone/area.
For example if you're a tank then you'll have trouble doing enough damage to break the door/barrier, but if you're a glass cannon then you'll die from the monsters attacking you though you can break down the door/barrier faster.
Just an idea, this also comes from D1 or D2 back when there were many colors for the elites and I know they wanted it more simple, but just 2 more isn't too many and only 2 isn't enough, and they are due to the scaled progression of depth levels once again, key to Diablo's original core.
I mean just look at goblins for example, why do we have so many colored goblins, but there's only 2 types of elites? It doesn't make sense. What is this goblin slayer? They said they didn't want too many colors for elites but instead makes them for goblins... that's pitiful, I'm sorry to say.
I agree there shouldn't be too many colors for elites, but I think blue, yellow, red and black really capture the essence of their difficulty, we have such a huge range of difficulty but all we ever see are 2 types of elites, it's a bit underwhelming to say the least.
GR offer infinite scaling, but this comes at the price that once you reached a "soft cap", you either need to play meta or you're done. With no other reason than "you're not playing meta". Which sucks a lot.
There is zero incentive to play something that's not meta. Journey and all that stuff is nice but doesn't take much and it's not a long term objective. Once you're done with that it0's either meta or farming lower stuff because you cannot realistically do anything else, also because there's literally nothing to do but GRs.
I fail to see the logic here. Say we put a hard cap on GR level 100. Then, once your character hits it there is little more for him to do beyond farming better gear. Better gear which is rather useless since you can clear the highest difficult anyway. This would bring us back to literally the biggest problem of Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 vanilla: The lack of end game.
If you want to play an off-meta class and try to get to level 100 you can still do that now, there is no reason to hardcap the game for players who DO want to play meta-classes. The incentive to play off-meta classes is because you might enjoy them.
My point is that adding a hard-cap gives nothing to off-meta classes which they can't do already yet it severely limits the game for people who enjoy min-maxing and playing the perfect meta. The infinite scaling of GR's is the only thing that is keeping Diablo 3 somewhat alive: There is always a new objective.
@ Shapookya...
Looks like one of 2 things. You either just hate D3, or you are just totally clueless as to what makes a good game. Wait, 3 things...you may also be bad mouthing anything having to do with Blizzard and their games because it seems like the thing to do. I see alot of that on gaming forums.
"Yup, leaderboards stand in the way of the future of the game"...leaderboards are vital to this game. People enjoy the challenge of pushing and want to see the results displayed. I'm sure other incredibly popular games like LoL or Overwatch have something similar. It would not be possible with the infinite ceiling GRs. They are perfectly suited. The Metas are necessary for the high rifts and awesome! Last nite I was grouped with 3 wizards on my zmonk. It was all i could do to keep them and myself alive as we progressed, finishing GR90s in 10 minutes. One Wiz dropped and a barb joined. We then zoomed through smoothly in 5 minutes. It was a blast. All of us joking and having fun. Without the above the game indeed would then die. Why even play?
D3 has some of the most incredible build diversity i've ever seen in any game. There are the different classes, all with various builds used in different stiuations. All of which can be changed, tweaked, and experimented with to no end. It also is what keeps people coming back for more.
If the game is "dead," why are there people playing 24/7? I can log on any time of day or nite, any day of the week, and i'm not even in a clan! I find games in seconds!! If its "dead," why is Blizzard patching it, improving it, adding content to it? Incredibly cool content i might add....the cube, the armory for example. Countless little quality of life improvements.The newest patch forthcoming, 2.5.0 is prob one of their best patches yet.
Long live Diablo 3!
Finally someone says it :D.
But it is normal nowadays to call a game dead, when the playerbase hase dropped to a certain percentage of the one after
release. This was done in wc3, sc2 and also in d3.
There are indeed less games to find (ask the hardcore guys how hard it can be).
But you are right, people throw out hates for whatever reasons. I see persons hating on these forums
for years and i cannot understand why because why did they not leave the game?
The problem here is that not everyone is able to compete on the leaderboards. Going from rank 1500 to rank 1400 isn't interesting. Being able to reach a higher level GR than you did before is a lot more motivating than clearing the same rift just a bit faster.
Well, you don't even NEED the loot because there is nothing left to do, there is no rift to clear. Unless you want to compete on leaderboards, which as mentioned above not everyone can do so.
It's still a lot better than the problem that vanilla and Diablo 2 had: The lack of something to do.
Yes, Diablo 2 was/is still played a lot, but this is mostly due to build and equipment diversity, not because of the amazing end game content.
Greaters really need to be strictly about competition. Leave regular rifts and bounties for where you collect your loot.
Then, stop giving us a set for free, and seasons actually become a fun event for many again.
The people who claim that Diablo 2 had such a big build diversity and such amazing items forget that 99% of the Diablo 2 guides also were about the same 2-3 items. Diversity wasnt as big as you guys think.
Also, the game D2 was much easier in general. Of course you can have more builds when you can just steamroll mobs with any item combination as soon as you reached a certain power level. The endless scaling actually adds challenge and replayability to D3.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
some generic items
All it comes down to is generic powers, but Blizzard wants set powers only.
Here's my thoughts on the matter(not that anyone asked for them!)
I like OP's idea, but I think to do such a change you'd probably first need to change a bigger core problem with the game before making any adjustments to the ladder/grifts...and that is the item hunt..but much more on that later. For now I'm going to warn you guys that the rest of this post is a tldr; rant on item hunting so if you want to ignore the rest be my guest.
Here's my sort of disorganized thoughts on some D3(and PoE) mechanics before getting into this:
1) I like the idea that Blizzard pitched originally about legendaries changing your spec on the fly when you get a certain legendary. I thought it was a good way to validate why they let you adjust your skills in the first place(and not be set skills like in other arpg's). Unfortunately, in practice with the lack of tuning/meta most legendaries are basically deemed useless so this mechanic is currently greatly flawed.
2) I dislike paragon grinding/key farming being the current gauge of your character progression(said everyone who plays/played D3)
3) I dislike the lack of build diversity especially in relation to my first point. Build diversity is going to never be a won battle in arpg's though. It wasn't really in D2(though better than D3), and it's also far from perfect in PoE as well(though I'd argue balance isn't as "hindering" to your enjoyment in PoE compared to D3).
4) I like not having an AH, and loot/progression being mostly personal/group based. I could probably rant for this one a bit...but I don't think trading has ever worked optimally in any arpg/mmorpg..so I don't get why arpg devs keep going back to it. For example I personally believe in PoE with its current level of popularity and poe.trade being its most efficient way of trading...it's basically devolved into vanilla d3's format of AH sniping(if I underprice I instantly see 5 vulture whispers to swoop in and take it..and consequently if I want to buy something fairly priced I never make it in time). I don't find that aspect fun in the slightest.
5) PoE has grown on me as D3 declined - I always liked PoE don't get me wrong, but in terms of hours dedicated to PoE vs D3... D3 definitely used to dominate my time and PoE would be basically a week or two commitment, and ironically I think the two have basically swapped and PoE has grown to the point that I can't stop. That said, I also wanted to make clear that I personally don't ever think PoE has the potential to be a D2 level of popularity in the history of gaming. The game just requires a level of dedication and research that is going to put off most players(though not me obviously). D3 is by far behind PoE now though in quality/evolution, but I really want D3 to to be on PoE's level(and I also believe in theory it could've been if I didn't feel like it was basically in maintenance mode at this point...maybe the necromancer patch will be more than just a necromancer though and I'll be proven wrong).
So how would Blizzard fix the current progression system in theory?
1) Keep trying the balance the sets - Duh, I guess...but I'm mentioning this because I(like many I assume that still play or moved on) feel frustrated because they go season after season while doing no changes to sets of any consequence. I wish I understood why they're afraid to try adjusting the sets until they're all within 5 grifts of eachother. I feel like a sloppy/rapid machine gun pace of balancing is better than doing nothing at all.
2) Short term loot fixes - The first iteration of Primal Ancients was actually closer to a bandaid fix than the current version(30% more stats vs perfect rolled ancient stats). The problem is they thought too small. Basically I'm saying...if the stats difference between legendary(baseline), ancient, and primal ancient is high enough to outweigh the legendary/set perk(so you always equip the primal ancient>ancient>legendary)..then build diversity will increase dramatically. Doing this would probably require an item squish I imagine or scaling would get ridiculous in its current format. Currently, I think primal ancients arguably going to make the game have even less longevity.
Long Term Game Mechanic changes
This is basically an expansion level of content(and frankly will probably never happen..but it's fun to think about!). After the short term loot changes...you'd basically need to do the following things:
1) Introduce a linear endless progression system - Simply put, both the gear scaling...and difficulty would never stop(or at least stop much later than 2 weeks into the season). You will always log on and grind out upgrades to your character...and you will always keep pushing yourself to higher levels of difficulty. A few fail safes would need to be implemented for this to work.
2) The Devs would need to take the data they get from the most "committed" grinders and formulate the rate/ilvl of gear that drops so that with all of the effort the players put in...they still either never hit the cap, or hit it with about 2-4 weeks of the season ending(assuming a 3 month cycle).
3) Gearing fail safes probably need to be put in - Obviously this is to counter the rut you'd get stuck in Vanilla D3(unless you were gifted at playing the AH). Personally, I think if they removed the arbitrary primary stats in the first tab of paragon system, and replaced it with drop rate modifiers(or drop "quality" modifiers so that your odds of getting the higher tier of loot in your current difficulty increase). It would help you be able to move to the next difficulty steadily.
4) The leaderboards/progression - If you get a solid foundation of loot/build progression, then I honestly think they can do whatever they feel like at this point. You can either do @OP's vision, or you could just keep the current Grift leaderboards, or heck you could even just make people progress by beating the story mode(boss enrages would probably need to be applied to make sure you beat the gear requirements), and using rifts/bounties to grind the gear to progress. If I had my choices, I'd definitely not do Grifts, but it's mostly because Grift bosses by themselves are kind of boring compared to vanilla end act bosses(or at least doing Grift bosses with new extra gimmicks like stuff to dodge or elite packs spawning mid fight randomly). Beating a new difficulty will in turn unlock new levels of rift difficulties/loot drops to grind out and endlessly progress until the 3 months are up.
5) Group scaling - Admittedly this is probably the part that needs to be carefully tuned a bit, They'd either need to give a better reason for you to play with your friends on a lower difficulty, or make the monsters calculate the relative power level of the each person in the group(like it would know if your toughness is higher so it hits you harder..similar situation for dps requirements).
Other random(and unrelated to the topic) ideas
What if your character's gearing process became a personal choice on what type of gear you'd wear, and paragon points rather than give arbitrary stats...would instead help these 4 modes of gearing in different ways. Here's 4 types of gearing I'd like to see.
A) Rune words - Similar to d2, they would drop out in the world, and combine certain combos in kanai's cube then to formulate a new type of armor/jewelry/weapons, Differing from D2 though...the idea would be the gear would have only primary stats(scaling on the ilvl of how far you're progressed since obviously you need the defensive perks from the two)...meaning you won't have attack speed/crit/etc..Instead the rune word would create certain effects that EXTREMELY buff the flat damage of a certain skill on your bar, and the rune word would also generate a similar perk like legendaries in d3(or they can simply add a big buff to its cooldown, crit chance, attack speed etc). The idea would be to collect runes, vendor certain runes for other runes, then formulate the combo to achieve the rune words affect the skill that you specifically want so you can always use a set skills that you particularly like for your class.
Spending Paragon points would increase the odds of the "rare" runes dropping in each difficulty bracket.
B ) Crafting - This is going to now be the counter to rune words. You're still going to grind and collect the crafting reagents, but unlike its current iteration(and rune words), it's going to focus on building up the stats on the gear to ridiculous levels rather than focus on skills. This path is going to be for people who just really want to have a lot of attack speed/crit/cooldown reduction..basically whatever they want... and don't necessarily care what skill they use.
Paragon points would increase the amount of crafting mats dropping.
C) "Magic Find" - This would be the third option in theory, and is basically what the current iteration of D3. You keep grinding and you get your set optimal set items(hopefully ancient), and wear the optimal set.
The Paragon points would basically increase the odds of rolling ancient/primal ancient(making the assumption that the rarity of the item always outweighs the legendary/set bonus for the record).
D) The gamble option/jack of all trades option - You would still collect bloods while grinding, then just gamble them away. I'm going to either presume you literally just keep spending them and it gives something completely random between crafting mats, runes, and gear. Or they could let you gamble a certain slot, and it also has a chance at giving your crafting or runes while gambling that slot at the same time. Increasing paragon points would drop more bloods. This option is just for those weird people who thrive on chaos(and hopefully would be tuned close enough so where the dumb lucky people come out ahead with it...and not not lucky fall behind). Obviously, this is a not a route for all.
The ways/combos could be balanced could be endless...like if you spend your paragon points evenly between the 4 categories...you see a fair balance of all slots of gear, but you don't see the rarest tier of stuff often. They could also either create every slot of gear for these 4 routes, and you would basically see none of the other 3 categories that you don't invest in, or they could have you see a baseline drop of all three, but the route you choose is going to only cover a few of the slots of gear, so the uncovered slots would be much weaker in comparison. For example, let's say rune words covered armor, but not jewelry. If you spent all your points into rune words..then you'd have amazing top tier of those slots, but the jewelry would basically be yellow or legendary quality stat sticks.
Sorry if it feels like I went extremely off topic, but yeah as mentioned previously in this thread(and in my post)...the odds of expecting major changes is probably improbable at this point. It's always fun to imagine though.