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I'm huge on the idea of endgame "events." First, a definition. By "event" I mean in-game occurrences that are specific, unique, and temporary, which give characters the opportunity to explore fresh content and reap dynamic rewards.

I find it's the best way to keep the game fresh and engaging. If done right, they help keep story/lore relevant to we the to-be level-capped. In keeping with the Diablo universe, I would imagine these events to be random.. Either realm-wide on some time interval (on a weekly rotation, for example), or server-specific (generated randomly with each game).

To stoke the idea fire, here are two obvious and general events I could imagine:

1. "Siege" style events: you'll get some kind of in-game announcement about <area> being overrun. So gladiators mount up, fight your way through the area, and suddenly find yourself in an unusual "event" zone, and have to fight your way to some artifact or loot.

2. Event bosses: random non-standard bosses (hopefully tied to story or lore) appear in a side-zone, in-game notification

Thoughts? Ideas? The more detail the better, if you have specific lore-based events in mind, I'd love to hear em.

I usually do not like end game events. The end game event should be the main boss at the end of the game. I do not mind if the content is done through the regular game but should not be as tough as the last boss. That boss should be the toughest and meanest.

Theres an amazing mode in a random MMO I play where theres an arena with a crystal in the middle and it has a health bar, waves of mobs poor in and its your job to protect the crystal against all the waves (and every 5th wave has a boss). If you complete the mode you get a few random items, some being amazing.

I would love to see something like that, or maybe a guild only set of dungeons that are almost impossible with amazing rewords at the end. I really just want something other than Baal grinding forever, preferably a few different options so it never get old. Your two event ideas are also very good, weekly events and things always add longevity to a game.

Quote from Hans

I usually do not like end game events. The end game event should be the main boss at the end of the game. I do not mind if the content is done through the regular game but should not be as tough as the last boss. That boss should be the toughest and meanest.

While I agree that the last boss fight should be the hardest, and events shouldn't take away from the main story line, I agree with Lames that I don't want to just grind the last boss over and over again. Here's an idea of how an event can supplement the end-game fight:

You encounter an NPC that says he/she can make you a nasty weapon if only they could have access to <last boss>'s heart. You have to escort this NPC through hell, kill the boss, and now you have to cut the heart out. But when you do the heart transports you to a dream state where you have to fight your own most terrifying version of Diablo. Once you do that, you get access to the heart, and the NPC gives you a recipe so you can use "essence of <boss> heart" as a crafting item to make something with.

So that's what I'm talking about.. new, fresh reasons to go back and experience the main content over and over again.

I believe they stated that they are going to implement optional quests. There is also going to be missions to upgrade the Artisan.

So that's what I'm talking about.. new, fresh reasons to go back and experience the main content over and over again.

I love this idea, I'm not afraid of grinding forever but I would love to see something fresh from time to time at least.

I believe they stated that they are going to implement optional quests.

I remember all the way back when information for D3 first started coming out they said that there would be optional randomized quests. And I remember one of the ways they said it would happen was a random section of a map would be cut out and replaced with the quest area or boss... I just cant for the life of me remember if its still part of the game or if its one of the things that was removed for whatever reason.

Quote from Dolaiim

1. "Siege" style events: you'll get some kind of in-game announcement about <area> being overrun. So gladiators mount up, fight your way through the area, and suddenly find yourself in an unusual "event" zone, and have to fight your way to some artifact or loot.

2. Event bosses: random non-standard bosses (hopefully tied to story or lore) appear in a side-zone, in-game notification

I think this would be awesome, even as something that isn't an end game event. I think that the event could be rolled based on the highest level character in the game.

Let's use Diablo 2 as an example, since everyone knows the monsters and such within. I'm thinking it would be pretty cool if a message flashed that said "The Stony Field is under heavy siege!". You take the Waypoint to the Stony Field and there are several Champions, Uniques and Minions storming a group of people who are held up in some sort of little bunker that would randomly spawn within the game. Hopefully the mob of monsters would be lead by one primary monster, something that is bigger and more intimidating than the others, has special attacks, etc.

I'm thinking it would be based on the highest characters level. The area would always be random to make you go back to different parts of the map. The 'lead boss' attacking the people would always be random. Some events would be easier, some would be harder. Some bosses would have a better chance to drop better items, etc.

It would also be great if they made some of them very difficult. Like if it spawns in act 1, it is relatively easy and something that primarily rewards you with gold and experience. If you get lucky and spawn special ones in act 4, then something like 'Uber Diablo' could show up and you have a chance for him to drop high end loot. The ones that reward the better loot would obviously be very challenging... Perhaps the difficulty could be represented by font color or something along those lines so you know what you are getting into if you go and try to help... Some of them you wouldn't be able to accomplish unless your character is already powerful, some of them would be rather easy, etc.

I dunno, I think that's a pretty interesting idea to implement. Especially if they came up with 30-50 different scenarios that could spawn throughout the game. Have like 25 of them be rather 'common', occurring in about 10% of made games. Have about 15 be 'uncommon', occurring in about 3% of made games. 5 of them being 'rare', occuring in about .01% of made games and 2 or 3 that would be unique, occurring in about .001% of games made.

Doesn't seem like it would be all that hard for Blizzard to develop these either. The areas would already be made. All they would have to do is develop one NPC you could talk to, just pick random monsters for each event and design a little mini-boss for most of the common, uncommon and rare events, then two or three really bad ass monsters for the unique events.

I guess i agree with most of what you all said.. But there should ALSO be some endgame content that should NOT be randomly accessible like in the first post and the one posted by Phrayed but rather something you can always count on being there.. Take for example the Secret Cow level, you can always count on being able to go there whenever you please.. Except there should be many different instances like it, and instead of just the same old "pointless" hack'n'slash (like the cow level), each has different challenges and missions such as those posted by LamesMcGee:

Theres an amazing mode in a random MMO I play where theres an arena with a crystal in the middle and it has a health bar, waves of mobs poor in and its your job to protect the crystal against all the waves (and every 5th wave has a boss). If you complete the mode you get a few random items, some being amazing.

I would love to see something like that, or maybe a guild only set of dungeons that are almost impossible with amazing rewords at the end. I really just want something other than Baal grinding forever, preferably a few different options so it never get old. Your two event ideas are also very good, weekly events and things always add longevity to a game.

I'm with Phrayed on this one. It would definitely add some flavor to the game and be something fun to do with friends. I think they could come up with some really cool event ideas. I have a few I can think of that I wouldn't mind seeing, I can't see them happening though.

I think metzGRR has an interesting idea too. A timed dungeon that offers bonuses for speedy completion, there is some potential there. Although, I am not really into the "guaranteed loot" idea.

Edit: 53 posts!! my favorite number!!

Time trial dungeons, the faster you complete it, the more gold you will receive at the end. Players will compete with each other and the amount of gold received at end will also work as a way to show how fast you beat it.

I am very fond of this idea.

To add on to my post above...

I know Blizzard really wants to encourage people to stay in games and play through them... Or at least I assume that by what I have read. They don't want people making a game, then leaving, making a new game, leaving 30 seconds later, etc. They want to try to encourage you to stay in a game.

I'm thinking that perhaps these particular events won't spawn immediately. Maybe after a certain amount of time has gone by or you have killed a certain amount of monsters, that could trigger a chance for the event to happen.

So if you kill 500 monsters in a game or something, then you are looking at:

90% an event does not spawn at all.
6% a 'Common Event' spawns. (30 Different Instances of this could happen)
3% a 'Uncommon Event' spawns. (15 Different Instances of this could happen)
.9% a 'Rare Event' spawns. (6 Different Instances of this could happen) - Only available in Nightmare/Hell.
.1% a 'Unique Event' spawns. (2-3 Different Instances of this could happen) - Only available in Hell.

I'm thinking this is what it could look like for a 'Common Event' when it spawns. Something that would have relatively low risk.

The Stony Field is under attack!

Uncommon Events, that would have a slightly stronger end boss.

The Far Oasis is under Siege!

Rare Events, which would combine both more difficult 'minions' and a stronger, more noticeable end boss.

War has broken out in the Flayer Jungle!

Unique Events, which would be extremely difficult. Having a huge boss leading a very strong army. The loot at this point may be something set in stone like Anni, Torch, etc. Perhaps not as overpowered, maybe still random. I'm sure Blizzard could figure it out.

The Gates of Hell have opened in The Bloody Foothills. (Looking for the Unique color of gold, cannot quite find it though. )

But the idea of people needing to kill monsters to have the event spawn would stop bots from farming these things... Or at least make it a little more difficult. It would also make people play in the game longer, rather than continuously teleporting down to a boss over and over. Of course, they would have to make the rewards worth it so people were willing to kill all of those monsters.

Where's the last 1% go?

1% chance Baal gives up and goes home.

Lol Gives up and drops the best item in the game *Attention Baal has decided to go home but dropped the most powerful item in the game at some random location Good Luck* Be ironic if there was no item but people spend hours looking for it lolz

I'm pretty sure though that we wont be getting areas or events based on chance or luck.. Except of course for the random generated maps and side quests..

Yeah.

Math failure on my part.

The time trial thing would be pretty easy to implement. All they'd have to do was put in some achievements for completing certain dungeons in certain amounts of time.

As far as the siege idea goes, during the Crafting Sanctuary panel they talked about how part of the game would be a siege on Bastion's Keep, which I'm pretty sure is a Barbarian keep on the border of the Dreadlands. Idk if they'd put in another siege, but they did talk about how it was a very easy way to have the player essentially just kill a bunch of things, as normal, but make it have some kind of reason behind it.

Quote from Jackzor

The time trial thing would be pretty easy to implement. All they'd have to do was put in some achievements for completing certain dungeons in certain amounts of time.

But its such a bad idea. I don't want more reasons for people to play faster and faster. I'm sick of that already.

The timed dungeon in my opinion should only be an optional side quest

Quote from SFJake

Quote from Jackzor

The time trial thing would be pretty easy to implement. All they'd have to do was put in some achievements for completing certain dungeons in certain amounts of time.

But its such a bad idea. I don't want more reasons for people to play faster and faster. I'm sick of that already.

Well if they made it so the time limit was pretty much impossible to achieve without previous knowledge of the dungeon and really good gear, then it would turn it into something that people come back into the dungeon and do, instead of having it be something people try to rush the first time around. If you're already overgeared for a dungeon, whats the harm in something promoting a faster completion? I get what you're saying overall, but there are ways they can make it so that its not something that you can just do right away, and is instead something you have to plan for and work towards during later dungeon runs. People will try to do stuff as quickly as possible anyway, so having an achievement to show it off sounds like a fine idea to me. You'd just have to make sure its a time that clearly can't be done unless you have the gear and plan for it. Otherwise it would turn into a mess.

Well beating dungeons in certain amounts of time, or beating harder versions of previous dungeons, would be "end game." Seeing as you'd need good gear and tactics to do well in the dungeons. Some sort of Heroic dungeon system would make it so that you didnt have to do the same bosses over and over as well.