Just my opinion on endless dungeon (ED) and survival mode:
To me they are very similar game types, where in survival you battle waves thrown at you on a time basis... Endless dungeon kind of has the player battle waves on a level by level basis.
The advantage of survival mode though address the shortcomings of Endless dungeon. From what I've read the flaws of ED are that:
it can take a long time for each attempt; going through 100 levels even at 10 minutes a level is extremely long ...survival is set up for relatively short attempts with a faster increasing difficulty
downtime if a player goes in the wrong direction... survival has no real downtime, unless the team is diesel it would be near non-stop combat until everyone is dead.
Let's say rewards with considerable value are added, what's to stop people from setting up rigged battles just to get rewards? Bets seems like the safest incentive for PvP deathmatches.
Competitive survival gauntlets, fastest event completion (first to complete a quest, first to kill a boss), highest kill counts, seems like the best place to put game-generated rewards in order to prevent rigging.
Good Question! So if there was a reward system, whats to stop match rigging? Well, a safegaurd i thought of would need to be put in to simply drop the statistical chance of a good reward based on the number of times you have played PVP with all members in the PVP match.
For example Player A normally has a 10% chance of winning a Legendary after winning a PVP match. A joins a match with Player B to fight players C and D. After winning they decide to rematch.. for fun. Lets just say its a 1% deduction for recent (recent could be defined as long as 1 month) repeat players. So in the second match, Player A now has a 7% chance, because he played with B, C, and D before. If player A wants to play yet a third match with B but against players E and F that chance would be 8% because he has recently played 2 games with player B.
So players trying to rig matches would quickly find they are getting worse and worse loot for a reward.
I believe this would stop match rigging and more importantly clans from forming near-unbeatable teams and dominating arenas just to farm good items. Additionally it would encourage players to go out and find new people play with and slaughter.
As for the match betting, I personally don't have a problem with it. But I do think that the system would quickly become underused (rather than spur e-sport matches) because no player is going to bet their good gear. It would have to be gold or RMAH dollars in order for it to last...that would work better. But again, what if players just want to casually fight each other?
The "random reward random setup" from the original post is the most tried-and-true method of keeping the user engaged in a somewhat repetitive task (it is operant conditioning if you didn't get the skinners reference); which is really what we all want. Betting is fine, but it should be an addition to "random reward random setup", not in replacement.
Actually "random reward random setup" is really what made Diablo addicting in the first place
Just my opinions and knowledge, discuss further!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blizzard used to care about releasing Diablo III, then they all took an arrow in the knee...
Based on the Dev interview, there still seems to be few ideas at Blizzard about what to do about PVP. I figure I'd kick this off with a few ideas I've had for a while, post your response or your own ideas.
"Random Reward Random Setup"
Idea #1 Make it competitive
No matter what is implemented, it needs to have a sense of competition. It doesn't need to be an eSport, but if there is no incentive to win, players will stop PVP after about a month. I think the devs realize this much based on their "nerf gun" analogy... Ill take it a step further: give players a random reward for winning (items, gold, or AH$). The incentive fits perfectly, players can farm by playing PVP or PVE; and what made Diablo popular (that random chance of getting an exciting prize) is infused into PVP.
Idea #2 Make it random
Again no matter what PVP mode is decided, add randomness, probability, and chance! Thats, what makes diablo, DIABLO. Make the maps random (both in setting and in placement of tiles), make the objectives random, I already said it but make the rewards random, hell...even add random environmental effects (slippery ground that knocks moving targets down, portals that teleport players to random locations). The point is make it random to keep the player engaged.
^^O.C. Skinner's box if you look closely^^
Game Modes
Game mode: Idea #3 Survival mode
Not sure how the devs miss-tested this one, all I know is that the most played task in the D3 beta was the jar of souls event... which is basically a very short version of survival mode. For those that don't know, survival mode is basically waves of monsters coming at the party of players, each wave harder than the last, and between the waves comes an increasing # of bosses (in this case elite packs). Waves are time based, so if your group isn't killing fast enough, you quickly get overwhelmed. Add Ideas 1 & 2 to this and list best times of the day, week, year.
Game mode: Idea #4 Team Deathmatch Battlefield-style
The devs are right in that its hard to tune a PVE game into PVP game modes. Thats why I dont think they should bother taking the PVE out of the game modes. Anyone play the old battlefields where it would be a PVP 6v6 but each side had about 20 bots as well (each side starts with 200 lives deaths of AI OR players are -1 life)? While the bots sucked, if you tried to ignore them and just go after real players those bots would quickly put a bullet in your head. Thats where I think Diablo PVP has to go, not so much bots but lots of demons/angels on both sides. Killing opposing AI brings you closer to victory, not killing them puts you in the dirt real quick. I even came up with a name for the game mode: Angels vs Demons, one group leads the angels, another leads the demons....again add idea 1 & 2 to this.
Go ahead and post your ideas below be it endless dungeons or unicorn-horn fighting
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Blizzard used to care about releasing Diablo III, then they all took an arrow in the knee...
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To me they are very similar game types, where in survival you battle waves thrown at you on a time basis... Endless dungeon kind of has the player battle waves on a level by level basis.
The advantage of survival mode though address the shortcomings of Endless dungeon. From what I've read the flaws of ED are that:
Good Question! So if there was a reward system, whats to stop match rigging? Well, a safegaurd i thought of would need to be put in to simply drop the statistical chance of a good reward based on the number of times you have played PVP with all members in the PVP match.
For example Player A normally has a 10% chance of winning a Legendary after winning a PVP match. A joins a match with Player B to fight players C and D. After winning they decide to rematch.. for fun. Lets just say its a 1% deduction for recent (recent could be defined as long as 1 month) repeat players. So in the second match, Player A now has a 7% chance, because he played with B, C, and D before. If player A wants to play yet a third match with B but against players E and F that chance would be 8% because he has recently played 2 games with player B.
So players trying to rig matches would quickly find they are getting worse and worse loot for a reward.
I believe this would stop match rigging and more importantly clans from forming near-unbeatable teams and dominating arenas just to farm good items. Additionally it would encourage players to go out and find new people play with and slaughter.
As for the match betting, I personally don't have a problem with it. But I do think that the system would quickly become underused (rather than spur e-sport matches) because no player is going to bet their good gear. It would have to be gold or RMAH dollars in order for it to last...that would work better. But again, what if players just want to casually fight each other?
The "random reward random setup" from the original post is the most tried-and-true method of keeping the user engaged in a somewhat repetitive task (it is operant conditioning if you didn't get the skinners reference); which is really what we all want. Betting is fine, but it should be an addition to "random reward random setup", not in replacement.
Actually "random reward random setup" is really what made Diablo addicting in the first place
Just my opinions and knowledge, discuss further!
"Random Reward Random Setup"
Idea #1 Make it competitive
No matter what is implemented, it needs to have a sense of competition. It doesn't need to be an eSport, but if there is no incentive to win, players will stop PVP after about a month. I think the devs realize this much based on their "nerf gun" analogy... Ill take it a step further: give players a random reward for winning (items, gold, or AH$). The incentive fits perfectly, players can farm by playing PVP or PVE; and what made Diablo popular (that random chance of getting an exciting prize) is infused into PVP.
Idea #2 Make it random
Again no matter what PVP mode is decided, add randomness, probability, and chance! Thats, what makes diablo, DIABLO. Make the maps random (both in setting and in placement of tiles), make the objectives random, I already said it but make the rewards random, hell...even add random environmental effects (slippery ground that knocks moving targets down, portals that teleport players to random locations). The point is make it random to keep the player engaged.
^^O.C. Skinner's box if you look closely^^
Game Modes
Game mode: Idea #3 Survival mode
Not sure how the devs miss-tested this one, all I know is that the most played task in the D3 beta was the jar of souls event... which is basically a very short version of survival mode. For those that don't know, survival mode is basically waves of monsters coming at the party of players, each wave harder than the last, and between the waves comes an increasing # of bosses (in this case elite packs). Waves are time based, so if your group isn't killing fast enough, you quickly get overwhelmed. Add Ideas 1 & 2 to this and list best times of the day, week, year.
Game mode: Idea #4 Team Deathmatch Battlefield-style
The devs are right in that its hard to tune a PVE game into PVP game modes. Thats why I dont think they should bother taking the PVE out of the game modes. Anyone play the old battlefields where it would be a PVP 6v6 but each side had about 20 bots as well (each side starts with 200 lives deaths of AI OR players are -1 life)? While the bots sucked, if you tried to ignore them and just go after real players those bots would quickly put a bullet in your head. Thats where I think Diablo PVP has to go, not so much bots but lots of demons/angels on both sides. Killing opposing AI brings you closer to victory, not killing them puts you in the dirt real quick. I even came up with a name for the game mode: Angels vs Demons, one group leads the angels, another leads the demons....again add idea 1 & 2 to this.
Go ahead and post your ideas below be it endless dungeons or unicorn-horn fighting