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.
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It is important to remember that you cannot log out, you need to complete the event in one sitting to get the pet.
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They could even fix it for every season moving forward with relative ease in D3.
1 - Remove rewards from the Greater Rift system, infinite scaling higher rewards is the sole purpose this game is beginning to fade.
2 - Make set item drop rates lower than an ancient item. But they always roll ancient. If you want them to be the best, put your money where your mouth is Dev Crew!
3 - As stated above, the devs want sets to be the focus, so make them all really good, but really freaking rare. Balance them within 10% of that classes strongest set, and keep it that way, ALWAYS. This means when a new item is released, you tend to set power again, and adjust as needed. It is not rocket science.
4 - Also, this means no more Haedrigs Gift, the gift ruins any phase of mid game progression this game had in the past. Terrible idea.
5 - Tune torment difficulties to actually scale with power creep. Right now, Expert, T2-5, as well as T7-9 are all rarely played difficulties. Remove these, whether you keep using torment or a new name, does not matter, just make it a 1 by 1 progressive scale to the highest difficulty. Allowing a player to skip entire tiers ruins a key component of character progression that is ultra important. A sense that EVERY STEP MATTERS.
By doing these 5 steps, you fix inflated xp gains, you fix diversity issues, you add a sense of accomplishment and progression back into the game.
Once the Necro pack launches, these things need to happen, or the Necro pack sadly will be a flop. But I hope Blizzard understands that their next title is not going to sell by name alone like D3 did. It is going to take a lot of trust rebuilding. The community is torn regarding this game, many are just burnt out, but when you have sales of 32 million copies, and peak periods of only 30,000 players logged into a NA server, you clearly have an issue.
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Also, it has been proven to clear a GR96 with the right gear and paragon, but MoTE and Raekor IK can do GR99 by this same player. So really, if you buff it to 1,000% and add rend to the 6pc bonus, it is right there.
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None of these ruined the game, the game itself is just fine.
Everyone who votes for one of these issues has something else in common, THEY HAVE PLAYED THE GAME FAR TOO MUCH AND ARE BURNT OUT.
That is the common factor in 99% of people who complain that D3 is dead, yada yada
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They are all fast paced arcade games.
Maybe, Maybe, Grim Dawn is a little different. But aside from that, every single game on the market is about speed farming and being as fast and efficient as possible.
And no, those were not the exact words, but what does it matter, the lot of you had a pre-determined reaction to the Q&A anyways.
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No, you had a chance to earn them, and for whatever reason you were not able to in the past, that sucks for you.
Something in the game needs to be held with a level of prestige and honor. A feeling that "hey, I was on that season, and I earned this portrait"
If you add old portraits in seasons to come, you remove that feeling of accomplishment from all who earned it in the past. That would be a terrible decision.
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You trolls are terrible!
If you like the game so much, go play it, and stop diverting topics involving serious questions. Thanks, and good day!
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Blizzard needs to add QoL microtransactions to this game!
I know a lot of people that would buy stash tabs, pets, portrait frames, unique transmogs, etc..... and all of this profit would help add a revenue stream to provide quality content either in D3 or in a future Diablo game.
Do not get me wrong, I appreciate the fact they are allowing us to earn stash tabs, pets, transmogs, as well as adding the new armory and crafting tab for free. However, I feel like they lost out on a golden opportunity to bring in some much needed revenue to truly get this game where it needs to/should be.
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Whatever, to each their own.
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You think that the darkening of Tristram and motivation to create the Necro is nothing? All World of Warcraft did for its 10 year anniversary was offer an xp boost, and give a small bag of goodies.
The passion they are pouring into D3 is evident, they still care about the game immensely, and the lot of you need to stop acting like self-righteous people and see the facts!