There have been many recent discussions about how the ARPG genre needs to evolve. I have a question for the Diablo community. How would you feel if the Diablo series decided to stray from the traditional isometric perspective we've enjoyed for the past 20 years? Obviously, it's more than the camera perspective that makes an ARPG and Diablo game but would this change be too bold? Could it be made to still feel like a Diablo game?
Let me know what you think below. How would you approach future titles?
I've created a few mockups of Diablo III using a third-person perspective to add to the discussion.
One feature that's gone without change leading into Reaper of Souls has been socketing and gemming. While we have seen the addition of a single new gem type things have pretty much been kept the same since the original release of Diablo III. Other than the few choices we have when deciding which gem to use in our helm or weapon (if they have sockets) there isn't much else to decide on. In every other slot we're left with only two choices, All Resistance (Diamond) or a gem type corresponding to our chosen character's primary attribute. There have been many suggestions from the community as to how the feature could be improved but most of these have been mainly asking for Diablo II style jewels and Runes. We know from interviews that the developers have experimented with adding jewels to the game but couldn't find a solution which they found adequate.
I've been experimenting with a couple of my own suggestions to see how I could take the current bland system and rework it into something which would present us with new interesting choices. The goal was to make the system offer interesting choices while utilizing the current gems and and sockets we already have available in the current game. Before I start going through each of my ideas I would like to emphasize one important suggestion which applies to every single one, PRIMARY STATS NEED TO BE REMOVED FROM GEMS AND REPLACED WITH INTERESTING CHOICES. Choices such as the types we are presented with when gemming our helm or weapon, these should be applied to all item slots. Primary stats could be still used if needed, but instead of reading "+100 Strength" each occurrence could read "+100 Primary Stat" in order to work with all classes. I think this would go a long way in allowing the gem and socketing feature to be reworked. Keep that little suggestion in mind when going through my ideas
Legendary "Activated" Properties
The first suggestion I came up with is probably my favorite. The idea would be to rework some legendary items or introduce new legendary items with unique properties that could only be activated by using the required amount or combination of specific gems. Activating these properties would work in a similar way current set bonuses work, except they wouldn't follow any specific order and would only require using the correct gems indicated in the item's tool tip.
Unique legendary properties are only activated when the gem requirement or combination is met. Requirements could be anything from 3 of the same type of gem to an odd combination of gems (1 Topaz + 2 Diamonds).
The requirements take into account all gems placed in sockets shared across all equipped items.
Multiple legendary properties on the same item can all be activated at the same time, as long as each requirement is met.
Different items with gem activated properties would share the same pool of equipped gems.
Interaction Between Gems, Legendary Properties, and Skills
This concept isn't exactly new, we already see it present in skills such as the Crusader passive below:
Finery (Passive) - Gain 70 resistance to all elements for every different color gem socketed into your gear. If you have 5 different color gems socketed into your gear, you gain another 70 resistance to all elements.My suggestion is to bring similar ideas and properties to legendary items. Allowing our gemming choices to have a direct influence on a particular item either by modifying a skill or creating a more potent property would add so many new and much needed choices to socketing and gemming.
Adding legendary properties to items which either modify skills or make the properties more potent.
They don't necessarily need to promote stacking one single gem type, effects similar to the Crusader's Passive Finery could be used.
Matching Gems to Sockets
I'd like to make it clear before I jump into this suggestion that I don't think it's in any way the best solution for Diablo.This idea is direct spin off of the World of Warcraft's socketing feature. If each socket rolled with a random color corresponding to one of the already existing gem types we'd be given the choice to either gem the item to activate the socket bonus, or ignore it if we'd like to focus purely on the stats given by gems.
Each socket would randomly roll with a random color corresponding to one of the already existing gem types.
Placing a matching gem in each of the item's sockets would activate the legendary property or bonus for that item.
Socket colors would be generated randomly but could be enchanted or "rerolled" by the Mystic.
How would you revamp the socket and gem feature going into Reaper of Souls? I honestly think there is a simple solution that would make this feature interesting by offering some unique choices that won't require a ton of development time. I'd love to hear some other suggestions from the community.
Monster density in all areas has been changed to be more random. It makes the pace of the game feel so much better and more rewarding when you do find a large pack. You will notice this change on the PTR a little more because you don't have access to Torment difficulty (which I think might have a result on mob density?)
For example, playing in Nephalem Rifts you may come across some levels with a low monster density, but the very next level could be brought back up to 1.0.8 density. It's no longer just "go go go" but rather "slow" -> "fast" -> "medium" -> "slow" -> "OMG OVERRUN". I use the word slow as a comparison to the others, it isn't really that slow.
I know some people might not enjoy the change but give it a chance for a little before making up your minds completely. It's beta and things can still change. Going into the beta I started with the same opinion as many you but have grown to rather enjoy it.
As a side thought there are a bunch of interesting skill/items choices now which are connected or impacted by monster density in some way or another:
increases damage depending how close enemies are to you.
increases damage how far away enemies are from you.
increases damage depending how many enemies are around you.
when attacking pulls enemies to a location.
The more enemies taunted increase your Life Per Hit by X amount.
etc.
As an example I was using a new legendary amulet in the F&F beta that had a chance to pull all enemies to the location of the mob I was hitting on both my Barbarian and Crusader. I actually changed my passives and skills to include specific types which benefited me having as many mobs as I could close.
Blizzard will be providing a list of the choices for us to make, there wasn't really anything concrete from the discussion. Some good ideas were talked about and came directly from chat that Blizzard will now go through and try to make them work. We should be presented with a final list to vote on next time we hear about this project.
We want to compete, it's huma...err Nephalem nature. Not only do we want to compete against others but we want to challenge ourselves. Besides completing the hardest difficulty, comparing player stats, or earning Paragon levels there's nothing really at all used to compare our characters in game. Even Paragon levels can't be used to judge a players skill level, it's basically just an indication of time played. We're instead left to visit third-party sites like diabloprogress or YouTube to see where we rank amongst Diablo III's playerbase. It's these sites where we find people competing for the highest dps/stats, experience earned per hour, or even Uber boss kill times. I've even personally watched popular streamers hold competitions going head to head in a legendary hunt race, and it was actually rather enjoyable. Why don't we have the ability to do this in Diablo III? Why exactly are we staying up all hours of the night hunting for loot if we can't do anything with it? Some people might argue there was nothing to do with the gear we found in in Diablo II either, but remember this is the sequel. Gamers have different standards today, especially when it comes to games that are exclusively online.
With that said I think I've found the solution, and it's nothing we haven't seen before.
Nephalem Trials
Nephalem Trials aren't exactly a new concept. Blizzard first mentioned them at Gamescom and has since mentioned them many times as we've been nearing closer to the release of Reaper of Souls. It really saddened me when we got news of the feature being delayed.
Nephalem Trials are indeed still alive in some form, but they will not be added with the launch of Reaper of Souls. We absolutely love the idea behind the Trials (challenge-based systems can be so much fun), but before we implement them we want to make sure they have a strong underlying reward structure and tracking system. That kind of hook is important for a system like this and we didn’t want to add in Nephalem Trials to the game without it.
Oh really a "reward structure and tracking system"... My gut feeling tells me there's a reason why both Nephalem Trials and Ladders (never announced but hinted at) are both being delayed. The simple reason being that Blizzard wants these two features to be connected in order to create a new ranking and seasonal ladder system.
You have to admit that Blizzard is pretty damn good when it comes to creating rankings, ratings, or other systems which let players compete against each other either directly or indirectly. We've seen this demonstrated in World of Warcraft with its pvp arena, server first achievements and challenge modes. Starcraft's success and popularity is widely recognized as being directly related to its ranked system and ladder, did you see the competition at Blizzcon!? Even their new free to play game Hearthstone has a pretty good ranking system being added to it and most likely their newly announced Heroes of the Storm will follow suit. Diablo III is pretty much the only current Blizzard title that doesn't have any way for players to test themselves or compete against other players, I think it's about time we get something similar.
Endless Horde
What better way to test your survivability and killing speed then a trial made of an endless horde of demons. Play too defensive and you'll be eventually overrun, play too offensive and you'll quickly find yourself taking a dirt nap. Find the perfect balance in gear, manage your cool-downs, and hone your strategies either alone or in group play.
Each new wave is released at an increasingly faster rate, with each being stronger than the previous. Killing a wave earns players a higher score. The trial ends only when every Nephalem falls. Will you be forever remembered as the Nephalem champion that held his ground the longest against the burning hells?
Perhaps to even compensate for situations where a player might only have a limited amount of playtime, certain checkpoints could be reached letting players pickup where they left off and continue their progress at a later time.
Timed Dungeon
Inspired by World of Warcraft's challenge mode players test their efficiency to earn honors for the fastest run. Players compete against each other by clearing every monster in the dungeon. Players can even help their time by earning bonuses by opening chests throughout the dungeon.
To allow this to be a fair competition, every season will have a different map with a predetermined number tile sets, monsters, chests, and champions. A map's layout should still be randomized each time to ensure every attempt is slightly different and allows for a player's dungeon navigation skills are also a determining factor. Players will need to discover new builds and try different gear combinations to compete for the top rank.
Goblin Hunt
Race against time to kill as many of the devious little creatures as possible found randomly scattered throughout a dungeon.
There are many types of treasure goblins in Diablo III, they could possibly be even be worth different point values in this trial.
Rankings & Ladders
This isn't going to be the conventional ladder Diablo players are used to. Game time shouldn't be the main contributing factor when competing for top spot in a ladder. With the shift to skill based challenges, players with varying degrees of playtime will all be able to compete for top rankings. Advantages will still be present for players with more playtime in the form of getting their hands on more legendary items or earning a higher Paragon level to use in Nephalem Trials but at least time will no longer be the only decider.
Your highest score from each Nephalem Trial will be used to determine your overall "Nephalem Score" (yeah, yeah, I know another usage of the word Nephalem). There will still be individual ladders for each trial which would offer special rewards but the most prestigious honor would go to the players with the highest overall Nephalem Scores.
It would be impossible to balance classes so probably the best solution would be to have separate rankings for each class.
There could also be separate ladders depending on if you chose to play in groups with 2-4 friends. You might not be able to get a team rating, but you would still earn individual scores for your chosen class based on 2 player, 3 player, or 4 player games.
Seasons
Seasons don't have to mean wiping every character completely and starting from scratch. One of my most disliked features regarding ladders in Diablo II was when it came time for a ladder reset. I really enjoyed a fresh new competition but I didn't like losing my character's progress in terms of all the the gear I've worked hard to obtain in the process. Sure he was only moved to non-ladder but more than likely I would never touch him again. I could see how it may have been necessary in Diablo II due to inflation caused by trading and bots but that shouldn't be the case in Reaper of Souls where, it feels strange saying it, but there isn't going to be an economy anymore. With the introduction of BoA items and increased protection against dupes and bots it should be safe to not have to do a complete wipe. The introduction of shared Paragon levels is also another key reason why I feel it would be a pretty big disappointment if we were required to start from nothing. It would basically make the system we waited so long for pointless.
A season in Diablo III could simply mean resetting everyone's Nephalem Score back to zero and introducing new Nephalem Trial maps, monsters, and rewards. Blizzard could even introduce new types of trials in later seasons but that might be pushing things. There's already the great feature to create randomized dungeons, it would be as simple as Blizzard creating one new randomized dungeon for each trial when a new season is released. New combinations of maps and monsters should allow players to come up with unique builds, item combinations and strategies every season to compete for the honor of being ranked the top Nephalem of their chosen class.
Rewards
Rewards don't have to be given to just the top players in each class. It could work in a very similar manor as how Blizzard implemented WoW's PvP rewards or the Challenge Mode transmogrification gear where players need a certain rank in order to purchase cosmetic options such as new banners (improve these!), transmogrification gear or even perhaps cool new wings.
Save some unique rewards to hand out to the top ranked Nephalem of each class and ladder every season and you'd see people never getting bored.
Conclusion
Reaper of Souls adds so many improvements to the game but I believe in order to give some much needed improvements to the overall longevity of the game there needs to be a way to compete against one another. We might not be seeing any PvP introduced in the near future but there are definitely many options to implement competition based on the great PvE elements we already see in game.
Feel free to discuss other possible options for Nephalem Trials below, I know there were many types in some of the datamined information we've already seen but I'd love to hear your thoughts on new types they could implement.
Here's a quick series of clips I've put together showing everyone a Crusader thorns build I'm currently working on. This is a great example of how Loot 2.0 opens up the possibility for new builds by combining items and skills to create synergy. Before everyone says this is overpowered I'd like to point out that this isn't a cookie cutter/get one item and win build. This build requires a number of legendary items that I've personally only seen drop once in my entire ~40 hours of testing. I'm still playing around with the skills, passives, and enchanting to try and find the right combination but overall it's starting to feel pretty nice. This footage is all from Torment 1 difficulty. I've only tried doing a couple Torment 4 Nephalem Rifts which were much slower but still doable.
The first couple clips I'm just showing off how powerful Thorns can be when combined with the right legendary items. I'm literally just standing doing nothing and mowing everything down including elites. I could easily complete full Nephalem Rifts by just running through the entire map not using a single skill besides the occasional health potion and Steed Charge for mobility sake. Using skills makes things even faster and is definitely required when I go up in Torment difficulty. http://youtu.be/X16-pIerrh8
Here are the 6 key pieces of gear needed to create the build:
Thorns Set (helm, shoulders, gloves) - (4 set bonus) Your Thorns damage now hits all enemies in 15 yards. Sanguary Vambracers - Chance on being hit to deal 1000% of your thorns damage to nearby enemies. 1h Thorns Axe - Your Thorns damage is applied to every attack. Ring of Royal Grandeur - Reduces the number of items needed for set bonuses by 1.
The key here is the Ring of Royal Grandeur which lets me replace the Thorns Set bracers with the Sanguary Vambracers.
Near the end of the video I decided to try out a new legendary amulet which occasionally pulled all enemies to me which was SUPER nice in order to get everything in range of my Thorns. Even though I lost both damage and toughness I feel the trade off was worth it.
Now that BlizzCon is over and we've all had some time to go through many of the panels, interviews, and reviews I'd like to discuss one of my favorite new features, Nephalem Rifts.
I absolutely love the idea of random dungeons, never quite knowing what you're going to encounter in terms of maps, monsters, and bosses. It really will be a breath of fresh air for many of us after playing countless Act III, Crypt, or Uber runs. However, I still think Blizzard can do so much more with the concept and take this already great idea and turn it into truly one of the greatest features in, dare I say, any Diablo game to date. The good news is Blizzard is listening to our feedback and is still making changes to the expansion, so there's still time to offer our own opinions. I'm going to quickly go over a couple of my own suggestions which I feel would make for a much more fun experience, at least for me, to the overall Nephalem Rift feature.
Like I noted above, how and when we drop Keystones will ultimately depend on how rewarding Nephalem Rifts end up being. If Nephalem Rifts end up being super-duper rewarding and lucrative, then we may not hand out Keystones all that frequently. Conversely, if Nephalem Rifts aren't super-duper rewarding and lucrative (and instead fall somewhere in the middle, where they're still satisfying but not overly giving), they we may hand out Keystones at a much more frequent clip. Overall difficulty is also a factor. Our tuning at the moment is focused on finding the right balance between the three.
Why do we have to choose only one of the options Lylirra mentions? Dividing Keystones into different qualities would allow all of the above. Not all rifts need to be equal in terms of risk and rewards. The quality could have influence on the difficulty/mob density, number of levels, and potential loot rewards. If someone wants to spend their entire night running rifts they should be able to do so, not be limited to only a couple because of drop rates.
Different qualities of Keystones can be indicated by the color of its name and accompanying text:
Magic - These Keystones produce rifts 1-3 levels in depth and have an average monster density.
Rare - These Keystones produce rifts 1-7 levels in depth, have a moderate monster density and also have a slightly higher chance at rewarding high quality items.
Legendary - These Keystones produce rifts 1-10 levels in depth, have a high monster density, and have a much higher chance at rewarding high quality items. These could also provide more challenge by giving monsters special abilities or having more champion/elite packs. Imagine if every monster, including trash, had one elite affix such as molten or fire chains... There are many possibilities which could deem a rift worthy of legendary status.
Searching for Keystones
I think Blizzard is pretty spot on in terms of how players should be able to obtain Keystones. Completing Bounties or finding Keystones as random drops in Adventure mode is a great way to get people out exploring different areas they may not have visited otherwise. The only suggestion I have is to make sure Bounties always reward you with at least one Keystone, but follow my suggestion above and reward a random quality such as magic, rare, or legendary.
Difficulty
One area I haven't heard much about and hope we get some clarification on soon is how the new difficulties work when it comes to Keystones and rifts. If they work in a similar manor as Infernal Machines players will be able to farm lower difficulties for Keystones to create rifts in higher difficulties. I really hope this isn't the case and instead Blizzard makes Keystones usable only in the difficulty they were found in. I want there to be progression and players earning their way into these harder rifts where they'll be getting a better shot at high quality items.
I would love some sort of a challenge which is sorely missing from the current Diablo III. Even if I couldn't ever complete one myself it would be awesome to see streams/videos where players have to theorycraft and strategically try to complete a Legendary Torment difficulty rift. The words Blizzard keeps throwing around when they talk about the expansion is "End game for all" and this could be their chance to add something for the hardest of the hardcore which hasn't been present since early release.
Incentive to go Deeper
One of the first things I asked my friends shortly after they got back from BlizzCon was "What was at the end of a rift?". To my surprise none of them could even answer this question. All of them said that they completed the required number of kills to spawn the Rift Guardian before making their way to the end of the rift. I hope this isn't the case when the expansion is shipped, otherwise it's going to feel pretty lame.
I feel there needs to be an incentive to finish all of the Rift levels instead of just completing the required monster kills, but at the same time not punish the players that don't have more than 20 minutes. One easy option I could see is to have a counter for each individual level in a rift instead of one for the entire rift. That would mean a Rift Guardian spawning after each level. Is that a little excessive? I'm not really sure, but it would encourage people to finish a rift completely so they get to clear all guardians.
Named Keystones
This is just a fun suggestion I have when it comes to Nephalem Rifts. I think it would pretty cool to have some named legendary Keystones that generate rifts with unique content.
Examples like the one above could be used to open special rifts to things like unique monsters, tile sets, and even have the potential to drop items not found anywhere else. From the elusive secret cow level to a map populated entirely of champion/elite packs or perhaps a rift littered with treasure goblins and include greed himself. There are so many fun possibilities here.
I'd love to hear what other suggestions the community might have to improve the Nephalem Rift feature in its current iteration.
P.S. Please forgive me for any grammatical errors. I could hardly keep my eyes open at the time of writing this.
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There have been many recent discussions about how the ARPG genre needs to evolve. I have a question for the Diablo community. How would you feel if the Diablo series decided to stray from the traditional isometric perspective we've enjoyed for the past 20 years? Obviously, it's more than the camera perspective that makes an ARPG and Diablo game but would this change be too bold? Could it be made to still feel like a Diablo game?
Let me know what you think below. How would you approach future titles?
I've created a few mockups of Diablo III using a third-person perspective to add to the discussion.
1
Thanks Rebjorn! We're currently investigating.
1
Can't wait to get my hands on this set, this is the Crusader playstyle I've wanted since release.
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Legendary "Activated" Properties
The first suggestion I came up with is probably my favorite. The idea would be to rework some legendary items or introduce new legendary items with unique properties that could only be activated by using the required amount or combination of specific gems. Activating these properties would work in a similar way current set bonuses work, except they wouldn't follow any specific order and would only require using the correct gems indicated in the item's tool tip.Interaction Between Gems, Legendary Properties, and Skills
This concept isn't exactly new, we already see it present in skills such as the Crusader passive below: Finery (Passive) - Gain 70 resistance to all elements for every different color gem socketed into your gear.If you have 5 different color gems socketed into your gear, you gain another 70 resistance to all elements. My suggestion is to bring similar ideas and properties to legendary items. Allowing our gemming choices to have a direct influence on a particular item either by modifying a skill or creating a more potent property would add so many new and much needed choices to socketing and gemming.
Matching Gems to Sockets
I'd like to make it clear before I jump into this suggestion that I don't think it's in any way the best solution for Diablo.This idea is direct spin off of the World of Warcraft's socketing feature. If each socket rolled with a random color corresponding to one of the already existing gem types we'd be given the choice to either gem the item to activate the socket bonus, or ignore it if we'd like to focus purely on the stats given by gems.- Each socket would randomly roll with a random color corresponding to one of the already existing gem types.
- Placing a matching gem in each of the item's sockets would activate the legendary property or bonus for that item.
- Socket colors would be generated randomly but could be enchanted or "rerolled" by the Mystic.
How would you revamp the socket and gem feature going into Reaper of Souls? I honestly think there is a simple solution that would make this feature interesting by offering some unique choices that won't require a ton of development time. I'd love to hear some other suggestions from the community.1
For example, playing in Nephalem Rifts you may come across some levels with a low monster density, but the very next level could be brought back up to 1.0.8 density. It's no longer just "go go go" but rather "slow" -> "fast" -> "medium" -> "slow" -> "OMG OVERRUN". I use the word slow as a comparison to the others, it isn't really that slow.
I know some people might not enjoy the change but give it a chance for a little before making up your minds completely. It's beta and things can still change. Going into the beta I started with the same opinion as many you but have grown to rather enjoy it.
As a side thought there are a bunch of interesting skill/items choices now which are connected or impacted by monster density in some way or another:
- increases damage depending how close enemies are to you.
increases damage how far away enemies are from you.
- increases damage depending how many enemies are around you.
when attacking pulls enemies to a location.
- The more enemies taunted increase your Life Per Hit by X amount.
etc.
As an example I was using a new legendary amulet in the F&F beta that had a chance to pull all enemies to the location of the mob I was hitting on both my Barbarian and Crusader. I actually changed my passives and skills to include specific types which benefited me having as many mobs as I could close.1
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With that said I think I've found the solution, and it's nothing we haven't seen before.
Nephalem Trials
Nephalem Trials aren't exactly a new concept. Blizzard first mentioned them at Gamescom and has since mentioned them many times as we've been nearing closer to the release of Reaper of Souls. It really saddened me when we got news of the feature being delayed.
Originally Posted by (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Oh really a "reward structure and tracking system"... My gut feeling tells me there's a reason why both Nephalem Trials and Ladders (never announced but hinted at) are both being delayed. The simple reason being that Blizzard wants these two features to be connected in order to create a new ranking and seasonal ladder system.
You have to admit that Blizzard is pretty damn good when it comes to creating rankings, ratings, or other systems which let players compete against each other either directly or indirectly. We've seen this demonstrated in World of Warcraft with its pvp arena, server first achievements and challenge modes. Starcraft's success and popularity is widely recognized as being directly related to its ranked system and ladder, did you see the competition at Blizzcon!? Even their new free to play game Hearthstone has a pretty good ranking system being added to it and most likely their newly announced Heroes of the Storm will follow suit. Diablo III is pretty much the only current Blizzard title that doesn't have any way for players to test themselves or compete against other players, I think it's about time we get something similar.
Endless Horde
What better way to test your survivability and killing speed then a trial made of an endless horde of demons. Play too defensive and you'll be eventually overrun, play too offensive and you'll quickly find yourself taking a dirt nap. Find the perfect balance in gear, manage your cool-downs, and hone your strategies either alone or in group play.
Each new wave is released at an increasingly faster rate, with each being stronger than the previous. Killing a wave earns players a higher score. The trial ends only when every Nephalem falls. Will you be forever remembered as the Nephalem champion that held his ground the longest against the burning hells?
Perhaps to even compensate for situations where a player might only have a limited amount of playtime, certain checkpoints could be reached letting players pickup where they left off and continue their progress at a later time.
Timed Dungeon
Inspired by World of Warcraft's challenge mode players test their efficiency to earn honors for the fastest run. Players compete against each other by clearing every monster in the dungeon. Players can even help their time by earning bonuses by opening chests throughout the dungeon.
To allow this to be a fair competition, every season will have a different map with a predetermined number tile sets, monsters, chests, and champions. A map's layout should still be randomized each time to ensure every attempt is slightly different and allows for a player's dungeon navigation skills are also a determining factor. Players will need to discover new builds and try different gear combinations to compete for the top rank.
Goblin Hunt
Race against time to kill as many of the devious little creatures as possible found randomly scattered throughout a dungeon.
There are many types of treasure goblins in Diablo III, they could possibly be even be worth different point values in this trial.
Rankings & Ladders
This isn't going to be the conventional ladder Diablo players are used to. Game time shouldn't be the main contributing factor when competing for top spot in a ladder. With the shift to skill based challenges, players with varying degrees of playtime will all be able to compete for top rankings. Advantages will still be present for players with more playtime in the form of getting their hands on more legendary items or earning a higher Paragon level to use in Nephalem Trials but at least time will no longer be the only decider.
Your highest score from each Nephalem Trial will be used to determine your overall "Nephalem Score" (yeah, yeah, I know another usage of the word Nephalem). There will still be individual ladders for each trial which would offer special rewards but the most prestigious honor would go to the players with the highest overall Nephalem Scores.
It would be impossible to balance classes so probably the best solution would be to have separate rankings for each class.
There could also be separate ladders depending on if you chose to play in groups with 2-4 friends. You might not be able to get a team rating, but you would still earn individual scores for your chosen class based on 2 player, 3 player, or 4 player games.
Seasons
Seasons don't have to mean wiping every character completely and starting from scratch. One of my most disliked features regarding ladders in Diablo II was when it came time for a ladder reset. I really enjoyed a fresh new competition but I didn't like losing my character's progress in terms of all the the gear I've worked hard to obtain in the process. Sure he was only moved to non-ladder but more than likely I would never touch him again. I could see how it may have been necessary in Diablo II due to inflation caused by trading and bots but that shouldn't be the case in Reaper of Souls where, it feels strange saying it, but there isn't going to be an economy anymore. With the introduction of BoA items and increased protection against dupes and bots it should be safe to not have to do a complete wipe. The introduction of shared Paragon levels is also another key reason why I feel it would be a pretty big disappointment if we were required to start from nothing. It would basically make the system we waited so long for pointless.
A season in Diablo III could simply mean resetting everyone's Nephalem Score back to zero and introducing new Nephalem Trial maps, monsters, and rewards. Blizzard could even introduce new types of trials in later seasons but that might be pushing things. There's already the great feature to create randomized dungeons, it would be as simple as Blizzard creating one new randomized dungeon for each trial when a new season is released. New combinations of maps and monsters should allow players to come up with unique builds, item combinations and strategies every season to compete for the honor of being ranked the top Nephalem of their chosen class.
Rewards
Rewards don't have to be given to just the top players in each class. It could work in a very similar manor as how Blizzard implemented WoW's PvP rewards or the Challenge Mode transmogrification gear where players need a certain rank in order to purchase cosmetic options such as new banners (improve these!), transmogrification gear or even perhaps cool new wings.
Save some unique rewards to hand out to the top ranked Nephalem of each class and ladder every season and you'd see people never getting bored.
Conclusion
Reaper of Souls adds so many improvements to the game but I believe in order to give some much needed improvements to the overall longevity of the game there needs to be a way to compete against one another. We might not be seeing any PvP introduced in the near future but there are definitely many options to implement competition based on the great PvE elements we already see in game.
Feel free to discuss other possible options for Nephalem Trials below, I know there were many types in some of the datamined information we've already seen but I'd love to hear your thoughts on new types they could implement.
Cheers,
Monstrous
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The first couple clips I'm just showing off how powerful Thorns can be when combined with the right legendary items. I'm literally just standing doing nothing and mowing everything down including elites. I could easily complete full Nephalem Rifts by just running through the entire map not using a single skill besides the occasional health potion and Steed Charge for mobility sake. Using skills makes things even faster and is definitely required when I go up in Torment difficulty.
http://youtu.be/X16-pIerrh8
Here are the 6 key pieces of gear needed to create the build:
Thorns Set (helm, shoulders, gloves) - (4 set bonus) Your Thorns damage now hits all enemies in 15 yards.
Sanguary Vambracers - Chance on being hit to deal 1000% of your thorns damage to nearby enemies.
1h Thorns Axe - Your Thorns damage is applied to every attack.
Ring of Royal Grandeur - Reduces the number of items needed for set bonuses by 1.
The key here is the Ring of Royal Grandeur which lets me replace the Thorns Set bracers with the Sanguary Vambracers.
Near the end of the video I decided to try out a new legendary amulet which occasionally pulled all enemies to me which was SUPER nice in order to get everything in range of my Thorns. Even though I lost both damage and toughness I feel the trade off was worth it.
Hope you all enjoy!
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Now that BlizzCon is over and we've all had some time to go through many of the panels, interviews, and reviews I'd like to discuss one of my favorite new features, Nephalem Rifts.
I absolutely love the idea of random dungeons, never quite knowing what you're going to encounter in terms of maps, monsters, and bosses. It really will be a breath of fresh air for many of us after playing countless Act III, Crypt, or Uber runs. However, I still think Blizzard can do so much more with the concept and take this already great idea and turn it into truly one of the greatest features in, dare I say, any Diablo game to date. The good news is Blizzard is listening to our feedback and is still making changes to the expansion, so there's still time to offer our own opinions. I'm going to quickly go over a couple of my own suggestions which I feel would make for a much more fun experience, at least for me, to the overall Nephalem Rift feature.
Keystone Quality
Originally Posted by Lylirra (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
Why do we have to choose only one of the options Lylirra mentions? Dividing Keystones into different qualities would allow all of the above. Not all rifts need to be equal in terms of risk and rewards. The quality could have influence on the difficulty/mob density, number of levels, and potential loot rewards. If someone wants to spend their entire night running rifts they should be able to do so, not be limited to only a couple because of drop rates.
Different qualities of Keystones can be indicated by the color of its name and accompanying text:
Magic - These Keystones produce rifts 1-3 levels in depth and have an average monster density.
Rare - These Keystones produce rifts 1-7 levels in depth, have a moderate monster density and also have a slightly higher chance at rewarding high quality items.
Legendary - These Keystones produce rifts 1-10 levels in depth, have a high monster density, and have a much higher chance at rewarding high quality items. These could also provide more challenge by giving monsters special abilities or having more champion/elite packs. Imagine if every monster, including trash, had one elite affix such as molten or fire chains... There are many possibilities which could deem a rift worthy of legendary status.
Searching for Keystones
I think Blizzard is pretty spot on in terms of how players should be able to obtain Keystones. Completing Bounties or finding Keystones as random drops in Adventure mode is a great way to get people out exploring different areas they may not have visited otherwise. The only suggestion I have is to make sure Bounties always reward you with at least one Keystone, but follow my suggestion above and reward a random quality such as magic, rare, or legendary.
Difficulty
One area I haven't heard much about and hope we get some clarification on soon is how the new difficulties work when it comes to Keystones and rifts. If they work in a similar manor as Infernal Machines players will be able to farm lower difficulties for Keystones to create rifts in higher difficulties. I really hope this isn't the case and instead Blizzard makes Keystones usable only in the difficulty they were found in. I want there to be progression and players earning their way into these harder rifts where they'll be getting a better shot at high quality items.
I would love some sort of a challenge which is sorely missing from the current Diablo III. Even if I couldn't ever complete one myself it would be awesome to see streams/videos where players have to theorycraft and strategically try to complete a Legendary Torment difficulty rift. The words Blizzard keeps throwing around when they talk about the expansion is "End game for all" and this could be their chance to add something for the hardest of the hardcore which hasn't been present since early release.
Incentive to go Deeper
One of the first things I asked my friends shortly after they got back from BlizzCon was "What was at the end of a rift?". To my surprise none of them could even answer this question. All of them said that they completed the required number of kills to spawn the Rift Guardian before making their way to the end of the rift. I hope this isn't the case when the expansion is shipped, otherwise it's going to feel pretty lame.
I feel there needs to be an incentive to finish all of the Rift levels instead of just completing the required monster kills, but at the same time not punish the players that don't have more than 20 minutes. One easy option I could see is to have a counter for each individual level in a rift instead of one for the entire rift. That would mean a Rift Guardian spawning after each level. Is that a little excessive? I'm not really sure, but it would encourage people to finish a rift completely so they get to clear all guardians.
Named Keystones
This is just a fun suggestion I have when it comes to Nephalem Rifts. I think it would pretty cool to have some named legendary Keystones that generate rifts with unique content.
Examples like the one above could be used to open special rifts to things like unique monsters, tile sets, and even have the potential to drop items not found anywhere else. From the elusive secret cow level to a map populated entirely of champion/elite packs or perhaps a rift littered with treasure goblins and include greed himself. There are so many fun possibilities here.
I'd love to hear what other suggestions the community might have to improve the Nephalem Rift feature in its current iteration.
P.S. Please forgive me for any grammatical errors. I could hardly keep my eyes open at the time of writing this.