All the need is to rank based on average time of X number of Grifts in a row. Fail one, and it's doesn't count.
This is a really interesting idea, it allows for competition that somewhat balances out RNG without actually removing RNG. You would still fish for a good combination of rifts which should satisfy Blizzard's desire to maintain replayability but you wouldn't be completely out of the running if you don't spawn that one map layout/mob type/boss etc. I would be in favor of this style of competition.
What you're not taking into account is that is we assume the case where the largest numeric paragon gap exists (perfectly linear paragon level XP requirement - plvl1 takes 100xp, plvl2 takes a total 200xp etc) the difference in paragon levels will always be the exact same. 20% more paragon on the player playing 20% more.
In any OTHER case (increasing XP requirement per progression) you actually see a smaller paragon gap relative to XP difference.
I'm actually referring to something else, maybe I'm not explaining myself well but I agree with you that increasing the xp per paragon required for each additional level produces smaller power gaps than a linear scale. The gaps I am talking about are a product of increasing the base value and although the scale of xp to paragon being linear or not is certainly a factor in power gaps It doesn't change my core point.
the gap will always remain the excact same percentage difference no matter how you change the XP creep)
In other words if we both farm XP at the same rate per hour we will always be split by a gap relative to our time spent farming and that gap will always be the same amount of power whether we reach paragon 1000 or 10000. 20% more playtime will always be 20% more experience will always be 20% more paragon will always be 20% more main stat. Baseline XP creep has no effect there.
Here is where I'm looking at something different than you are. While in your example you correctly state that 20% more playtime = 20% more xp gained = 20% more mainstat you aren't looking at the absolute value of that 20%. That's the point I was trying to make. We both agree that base xp creep has no effect on the relationship between the 2 playtimes as a percentage but it does change the absolute value (the exact amount of xp).
From a competitive standpoint it would be preferable to maintain a smaller absolute power difference between players as it will result in closer competition. With the current structure of the system the absolute power difference will increase between 2 different playtimes whenever the ability to farm xp per hour increases which it does everytime a new major patch is released.
This is by no means the only issue with the paragon system, many other problems have already been discussed in this thread, I just want to point out one more thing that is mostly overlooked and which if left unchecked will result in progressively less close competition. I suppose it is subjective whether increasing power gaps or close competition matter to the game but I personally find it strange that the system works this way. Keep in mind that when the current paragon was introduced we did not yet have seasons/eras so there was no regularly scheduled power creep. Under those circumstances this specific issue didn't exist. It is actually the way the paragon system interacts with power creep that creates a scaling power gap and it's important to consider if that is good for the game.
On a different note bonus xp gear and the way xp bonuses are calculated in greater rifts are a far bigger issue for multiple reasons and any other flaws in the paragon system are magnified by these problems. Removing bonus xp gear from the game would be the single best thing Blizzard could do for the paragon system although the other issues presented in this thread and elsewhere need to be addressed at some point as well.
And how about we go and look at the actual time investiture difference between whatever arbitrary players we're comparing is between seasons? It does nothing to say players 1 and 60 have larger paragon gaps without also looking at their playtime gaps. Then we have to sit and look at how they reached that paragon (Rubies? Support builds? What are they ACTUALLY doing different). You need extensive and detailed information to make any REAL comparison between season leaderboards.
Valid point, I wanted to at least compare paragon earned against hours played but unfortunately the data wasn't available. I almost added a disclaimer but my post was too long as is. Even if you want to disregard that example though you should still be able to see that if you understand how the system works you can accurately determine that a widening power gap is inevitable.
Let me try a different sort of example based on math rather than incomplete statistics:
Every season/era there is power creep, this means we can farm paragon faster than before with each new patch. If this season we both farm paragon at a rate of 100 bil xp per hour and you play 5 hours a day but I play 6 then at the end of 1 week I will have gained 700 bil more xp than you.
Lets say next season power creep allows us to both farm 150 bil xp per hour. If we both play for the same number of hours again I will have 1050 bil more xp than you at the end of 1 week.
The difference between how much we both play doesn't change and yet the difference between your reward and mine increases. My previous example was certainly not scientific but by doing some basic math you can see that a similar outcome is inevitable just because of the systems current design.
(Disclaimer: 150 bil xp per hour next season is a number I pulled out my ass. No one knows what an accurate rate for farming xp next season/era is yet but surely we can all agree that next season/era we will be more powerful than this season/era and therefore able to farm paragon faster. This has already been demonstrated on the current PTR)
Let me try my hand at explaining the argument against the current paragon system:
The issue is not that playing more hours = more paragon = more power. I am not suggesting that those players who invest more time should not be rewarded for doing so. The issue is the rate of reward given relative to time spent is not a constant in this game. Due to the continuous power creep in each patch the amount of paragon you can earn in an hour becomes higher with every season/era. This ultimately means that the gap in power between players who invest more time and those who spend less time becomes bigger and bigger and will continue to do so with every new patch.
I would not ask for paragon caps or for paragon to not increase the power of your hero, I simply want the power differential between playing 4 hours a day and 5 hours a day (as an example) to remain constant with each new season/era.
Here is an example of what I mean about the widening power gap:
If you go to diabloprogress and look at the leaderboard for paragon earned in season 1 you will see that the number 1 paragon earner reached 1076 paragon by the end of the season. The number 60 earner achieved 877 paragon.
Do the math and you see that the difference in paragon between the highest earner and the 60th highest earner is 199 paragon or 995 mainstat.
Now do the same thing with the season 3 leaderboard and you see that the number 1 earner has already reached 1821 paragon while the number 60 earner has 1226 paragon. That's a difference of 595 paragon or 2975 mainstat. Even if you think Vajet is an anomaly comparing the number 2 earner to the number 60 results in a 416 paragon or 2080 mainstat difference.
Season 3 hasn't even finished and won't be as long as season 1 but already the difference in paragon between players is drastically larger than it was in season 1. This is because the paragon system has no provision to maintain a constant rate of reward to time invested. This trend will only continue with each patch creating larger and larger power gaps for the same differences in playtime unless the system is revised in some way.
Unfortunately I don't know if there is any way to stabilize the system without releasing the next expansion. Blizzard has stated that they never want you to log in to the game and feel less powerful than you were before. Making a retroactive change to paragon rewards would certainly do that. Conversely making a change to the system now with out applying it retroactively would give an unfair advantage to those who have already earned high paragons as other players would no longer be able to use the same means to catch up. The most likely scenario is for the next expansion to include an increase in max level from 70-80 as was done for RoS thereby allowing Blizzard to more or less reset everyone's paragon and implement a new paragon system with out negatively impacting anyone's power levels.
The point I believe of threads like this one is not to complain about haves and have not's but rather to bring attention to a system that has not kept up with other changes to the game in the hope that it will not be overlooked when the opportunity arises for Blizzard to re-balance the system and bring it back in line with the current direction of the game.
Good job going over a lot of questions, even if a bunch of them didn't get solid answers I appreciated that you brought up a good number of things in the limited time you had.
WTF happened to this thread? OP tried to inspire people with a story about how much fun this game can be when you remember to enjoy your own accomplishments and somehow everything went to hell. Congrats Krathoz, you deserve it. It's reasuring to know there are still some people in this game who can play well and log out at the end of the day with a smile on their face.
Really great work. Thanks for taking the time to write this all up and for sharing all of these tips. I'm excited to try out the spreadsheet for myself.
When you roll away a DPS stat for a socket on jewelry your "sheet" dps will drop but the your "effective" dps will be increased in most cases by using the right leg gems. The colored arrows only take into account simple sheet dps stats (primary/CC/CD/IAS/Avg.DMG etc.) other stats like elemental damage, skill damage, elite damage and the potential value of sockets aren't measured by those indicators. To make matters worse attackspeed will always show as a DPS increase on your sheet but many builds don't really benefit from it. Focus on the stats on the jewellry and not the arrows. You can fairly safely assume that sockets are always worth it, roll the worst stat off of your rings and amulets for sockets and you will almost always come out ahead.
the main things I care about for my playstyle atm...is movement speed/ quick control of battlefield...AND being tough to be killed, not downed for a second-long distraction o a bad click.
so, swiftness and good survivabiliity with a dps role (not tank)
Sounds like you are describing monk, probably should take a look at the raiment set build's for 2.2. That said I voted for Barb because they look really fun this patch.
It's true that it is unbalanced the way that monks and crusaders can wear more xp gear than barbs and DH's but that doesn't make them leachers, it just means they are lucky. In reality the supports increase everyone's xp/hour even if they do get the lions share and they work just as hard as the dps classes in most cases. Best thing to do is play both sides and take turns so that everyone can share in the xp riches but there is no need to call people "leachers" just because they can wear more bonus xp gear.
Make fighting ubers harder task, but up the droprate to 100% on t6.
This is my dream. Fighting ubers was my absolute favorite thing in vanilla but now sadly key farming is much harder and fighting ubers is so easy it's genuinely sad. I'll still do it for the amulet but in vanilla I collected hundreds of organs long after I got my ideal ring because I fought ubers just for the fun of it.
Do not trust whatever humans have to say about probability in an immersed context in which they have an interest in the outcome. The fallacies are everywhere, even apparent paradoxes. Graduate students in statistics are easily stumped if you transpose the problem into a practical context. It's part of how our brain works. At the most general level, the problem here is the change in perspective that comes when you've gotten the first rush of upgrades. Considering this, the drop rates are in my opinion way too high. When starting the season, all of us had a workable build within the second night (on hardcore even, where you take things more slowly).
From the perspective of getting the rudimentary gear required to enable a build, i.e. all set pieces with any roll, the drop rates are such that it doesn't feel like an accomplishment but rather something you are entitled to upon reaching 70. From the perspective of getting that exact item you so desperately want, with the roll you require, after the rest of your gear is already in the 98th percentile of quality, they will always and necessarily feel hopelessly low. You're not getting anything else to comfort you while waiting either, since you've got all but that one thing. And so you will look for ways to better your odds, and suddenly some fool claiming that the ancient furnace will drop from a particular weapon rack on a particular night of the week will start to seem like something you shouldn't dismiss off hand.
I'm quoting this post because it is so good people should read it twice, or as many times as it takes until they finally start to understand.
That was an entertaining video, I laughed most of the way through. It's great to see people testing alternate group compositions on the PTR and I really hope that when all the changes are finalized we will see some new class combinations in high Grift groups. At the same time I hope Blizz can do something to calm down that lag, holy crap your run made ball lightning look smooth. Good job guys, thanks for the vid, hope you guys had as much fun running that as I had watching it.
0
0
I'm actually referring to something else, maybe I'm not explaining myself well but I agree with you that increasing the xp per paragon required for each additional level produces smaller power gaps than a linear scale. The gaps I am talking about are a product of increasing the base value and although the scale of xp to paragon being linear or not is certainly a factor in power gaps It doesn't change my core point.
Here is where I'm looking at something different than you are. While in your example you correctly state that 20% more playtime = 20% more xp gained = 20% more mainstat you aren't looking at the absolute value of that 20%. That's the point I was trying to make. We both agree that base xp creep has no effect on the relationship between the 2 playtimes as a percentage but it does change the absolute value (the exact amount of xp).
From a competitive standpoint it would be preferable to maintain a smaller absolute power difference between players as it will result in closer competition. With the current structure of the system the absolute power difference will increase between 2 different playtimes whenever the ability to farm xp per hour increases which it does everytime a new major patch is released.
This is by no means the only issue with the paragon system, many other problems have already been discussed in this thread, I just want to point out one more thing that is mostly overlooked and which if left unchecked will result in progressively less close competition. I suppose it is subjective whether increasing power gaps or close competition matter to the game but I personally find it strange that the system works this way. Keep in mind that when the current paragon was introduced we did not yet have seasons/eras so there was no regularly scheduled power creep. Under those circumstances this specific issue didn't exist. It is actually the way the paragon system interacts with power creep that creates a scaling power gap and it's important to consider if that is good for the game.
On a different note bonus xp gear and the way xp bonuses are calculated in greater rifts are a far bigger issue for multiple reasons and any other flaws in the paragon system are magnified by these problems. Removing bonus xp gear from the game would be the single best thing Blizzard could do for the paragon system although the other issues presented in this thread and elsewhere need to be addressed at some point as well.
0
Valid point, I wanted to at least compare paragon earned against hours played but unfortunately the data wasn't available. I almost added a disclaimer but my post was too long as is. Even if you want to disregard that example though you should still be able to see that if you understand how the system works you can accurately determine that a widening power gap is inevitable.
Let me try a different sort of example based on math rather than incomplete statistics:
Every season/era there is power creep, this means we can farm paragon faster than before with each new patch. If this season we both farm paragon at a rate of 100 bil xp per hour and you play 5 hours a day but I play 6 then at the end of 1 week I will have gained 700 bil more xp than you.
Lets say next season power creep allows us to both farm 150 bil xp per hour. If we both play for the same number of hours again I will have 1050 bil more xp than you at the end of 1 week.
The difference between how much we both play doesn't change and yet the difference between your reward and mine increases. My previous example was certainly not scientific but by doing some basic math you can see that a similar outcome is inevitable just because of the systems current design.
(Disclaimer: 150 bil xp per hour next season is a number I pulled out my ass. No one knows what an accurate rate for farming xp next season/era is yet but surely we can all agree that next season/era we will be more powerful than this season/era and therefore able to farm paragon faster. This has already been demonstrated on the current PTR)
1
Let me try my hand at explaining the argument against the current paragon system:
The issue is not that playing more hours = more paragon = more power. I am not suggesting that those players who invest more time should not be rewarded for doing so. The issue is the rate of reward given relative to time spent is not a constant in this game. Due to the continuous power creep in each patch the amount of paragon you can earn in an hour becomes higher with every season/era. This ultimately means that the gap in power between players who invest more time and those who spend less time becomes bigger and bigger and will continue to do so with every new patch.
I would not ask for paragon caps or for paragon to not increase the power of your hero, I simply want the power differential between playing 4 hours a day and 5 hours a day (as an example) to remain constant with each new season/era.
Here is an example of what I mean about the widening power gap:
If you go to diabloprogress and look at the leaderboard for paragon earned in season 1 you will see that the number 1 paragon earner reached 1076 paragon by the end of the season. The number 60 earner achieved 877 paragon.
Do the math and you see that the difference in paragon between the highest earner and the 60th highest earner is 199 paragon or 995 mainstat.
Now do the same thing with the season 3 leaderboard and you see that the number 1 earner has already reached 1821 paragon while the number 60 earner has 1226 paragon. That's a difference of 595 paragon or 2975 mainstat. Even if you think Vajet is an anomaly comparing the number 2 earner to the number 60 results in a 416 paragon or 2080 mainstat difference.
Season 3 hasn't even finished and won't be as long as season 1 but already the difference in paragon between players is drastically larger than it was in season 1. This is because the paragon system has no provision to maintain a constant rate of reward to time invested. This trend will only continue with each patch creating larger and larger power gaps for the same differences in playtime unless the system is revised in some way.
Unfortunately I don't know if there is any way to stabilize the system without releasing the next expansion. Blizzard has stated that they never want you to log in to the game and feel less powerful than you were before. Making a retroactive change to paragon rewards would certainly do that. Conversely making a change to the system now with out applying it retroactively would give an unfair advantage to those who have already earned high paragons as other players would no longer be able to use the same means to catch up. The most likely scenario is for the next expansion to include an increase in max level from 70-80 as was done for RoS thereby allowing Blizzard to more or less reset everyone's paragon and implement a new paragon system with out negatively impacting anyone's power levels.
The point I believe of threads like this one is not to complain about haves and have not's but rather to bring attention to a system that has not kept up with other changes to the game in the hope that it will not be overlooked when the opportunity arises for Blizzard to re-balance the system and bring it back in line with the current direction of the game.
0
Good job going over a lot of questions, even if a bunch of them didn't get solid answers I appreciated that you brought up a good number of things in the limited time you had.
2
WTF happened to this thread? OP tried to inspire people with a story about how much fun this game can be when you remember to enjoy your own accomplishments and somehow everything went to hell. Congrats Krathoz, you deserve it. It's reasuring to know there are still some people in this game who can play well and log out at the end of the day with a smile on their face.
0
Really great work. Thanks for taking the time to write this all up and for sharing all of these tips. I'm excited to try out the spreadsheet for myself.
0
When you roll away a DPS stat for a socket on jewelry your "sheet" dps will drop but the your "effective" dps will be increased in most cases by using the right leg gems. The colored arrows only take into account simple sheet dps stats (primary/CC/CD/IAS/Avg.DMG etc.) other stats like elemental damage, skill damage, elite damage and the potential value of sockets aren't measured by those indicators. To make matters worse attackspeed will always show as a DPS increase on your sheet but many builds don't really benefit from it. Focus on the stats on the jewellry and not the arrows. You can fairly safely assume that sockets are always worth it, roll the worst stat off of your rings and amulets for sockets and you will almost always come out ahead.
0
Sounds like you are describing monk, probably should take a look at the raiment set build's for 2.2. That said I voted for Barb because they look really fun this patch.
0
It's true that it is unbalanced the way that monks and crusaders can wear more xp gear than barbs and DH's but that doesn't make them leachers, it just means they are lucky. In reality the supports increase everyone's xp/hour even if they do get the lions share and they work just as hard as the dps classes in most cases. Best thing to do is play both sides and take turns so that everyone can share in the xp riches but there is no need to call people "leachers" just because they can wear more bonus xp gear.
0
Whirlwind DH OP lol.
0
This is my dream. Fighting ubers was my absolute favorite thing in vanilla but now sadly key farming is much harder and fighting ubers is so easy it's genuinely sad. I'll still do it for the amulet but in vanilla I collected hundreds of organs long after I got my ideal ring because I fought ubers just for the fun of it.
0
I'm quoting this post because it is so good people should read it twice, or as many times as it takes until they finally start to understand.
0
Yes.
0
That was an entertaining video, I laughed most of the way through. It's great to see people testing alternate group compositions on the PTR and I really hope that when all the changes are finalized we will see some new class combinations in high Grift groups. At the same time I hope Blizz can do something to calm down that lag, holy crap your run made ball lightning look smooth. Good job guys, thanks for the vid, hope you guys had as much fun running that as I had watching it.