I just watched Quin69's video guide on Monk's U6 gameplay to "push" Greater Rift progression for the season. The sad word that I heard early on that made me sorta, mentally, give up on the Season is the fun word of "snapshot."
If you haven't watched the video, a brief description; Monks are being encouraged now to fish for a GR with a Power Pylon somewhere near to the beginning of the first level of the GR. So that when you use the Pylon, the Exploding Palm skill of the Monk takes a snapshot of the damage and then you continue to piggy back the EP to new mobs throughout the GR. Even though the Pylon has worn off, your EP on existing mobs is still reflective of the increased DPS and you continue to spread that EP for the rest of the clear.
Snapshotting was a thing in vanilla with Sweeping Wind and it made the game play feel as though you were only being effective if you could maximize a gimmick, or fault of the design, to progress.
Between this and knowing that to come anywhere near the top 200, 100 or even 50 on the Leader boards of any given Season, you have to play at least 8 hours a day, just farming Paragon points to get the damage increase from your main stat...it makes me sort of not want to continue playing in the Season.
There are a lot of fun things to do, build you character, get the gear, improve the gear to Ancient, etc. Build a different type of character, repeat the gear process. But what is the end result? Even with its faults, the AH/RMAH gave you another purpose to play, because you never knew when you would find that hot item to sell. The Leader boards give you another reason to play, except after a week, if you haven't played 10 hours a day - what's the point? So you make a build that maximizes experience gain and you drearily farm experience. So that when you are ready, you farm the perfect GR to use a gimmick to try and progress.
Not rewarding game play for me. I'm curious if it is for others? Clearly the streamers and many others enjoy trying to beat out some sort of rank on the Leader boards, but is it really that rewarding? Does it make you awesome that you spend 70 hours or more a week playing this game, so you can say "I got to rank 1 because I have thousands of Paragon levels and spent days looking for the perfect GR to gimmick my way to the top!"
I hope that Blizzard runs the risk of pissing off their popular streamers, by putting a cap on Paragon levels for Seasons and for removing the snapshot gimmick from all classes and skills. Snap shot the dps and simply code so the dps increase ends across all instances of where it appears after the appropriate amount of time has passed.
So if you make it to rank 1 in a season, it's because you found great gear and used your skill and gear to make it to the top.
I just watched Quin69's video guide on Monk's U6 gameplay to "push" Greater Rift progression for the season. The sad word that I heard early on that made me sorta, mentally, give up on the Season is the fun word of "snapshot."
If you haven't watched the video, a brief description; Monks are being encouraged now to fish for a GR with a Power Pylon somewhere near to the beginning of the first level of the GR. So that when you use the Pylon, the Exploding Palm skill of the Monk takes a snapshot of the damage and then you continue to piggy back the EP to new mobs throughout the GR. Even though the Pylon has worn off, your EP on existing mobs is still reflective of the increased DPS and you continue to spread that EP for the rest of the clear.
Snapshotting was a thing in vanilla with Sweeping Wind and it made the game play feel as though you were only being effective if you could maximize a gimmick, or fault of the design, to progress.
Between this and knowing that to come anywhere near the top 200, 100 or even 50 on the Leader boards of any given Season, you have to play at least 8 hours a day, just farming Paragon points to get the damage increase from your main stat...it makes me sort of not want to continue playing in the Season.
There are a lot of fun things to do, build you character, get the gear, improve the gear to Ancient, etc. Build a different type of character, repeat the gear process. But what is the end result? Even with its faults, the AH/RMAH gave you another purpose to play, because you never knew when you would find that hot item to sell. The Leader boards give you another reason to play, except after a week, if you haven't played 10 hours a day - what's the point? So you make a build that maximizes experience gain and you drearily farm experience. So that when you are ready, you farm the perfect GR to use a gimmick to try and progress.
Not rewarding game play for me. I'm curious if it is for others? Clearly the streamers and many others enjoy trying to beat out some sort of rank on the Leader boards, but is it really that rewarding? Does it make you awesome that you spend 70 hours or more a week playing this game, so you can say "I got to rank 1 because I have thousands of Paragon levels and spent days looking for the perfect GR to gimmick my way to the top!"
I hope that Blizzard runs the risk of pissing off their popular streamers, by putting a cap on Paragon levels for Seasons and for removing the snapshot gimmick from all classes and skills. Snap shot the dps and simply code so the dps increase ends across all instances of where it appears after the appropriate amount of time has passed.
So if you make it to rank 1 in a season, it's because you found great gear and used your skill and gear to make it to the top.
Besides the RMAH comment which I just disagree with, I agree with the rest of your points;
Paragon needs some sort of power cap. You can continue to level, but I really think not having a cap on your main stat really hurts this game. I played the hell out of this season so far (just like every other season), but even though I've got a lot of ancient gear I'm miles behind because I haven't played 8 hours a day / botted. I personally think P800 should be the power cap, with additional levels giving maybe gold find (which is supposed to be worth something next patch anyway).
Also the snapshotting thing is just a facet in the larger problem of exploits. Look at all those streamers on the top of the leaderboards. They're ALL exploiting the hellfire problem, and abusing mechanics such as the one you mentioned. Now this is going to happen probably every season considering those tools go on to the PTR JUST to find these exploits, hide them and use them when the season starts, but I really hope Blizzard can jump on these problems sooner. It's been like two weeks for the hellfire thing and still going.
So while the gameplay is rewarding for me personally, I absolutely cut my play time by ~90% after the hellfire exploit came out, and a hotfix didn't. And look at that Gabynator screenshot, someone's (maybe his) toon is at like paragon 1,2xx. He's got over two thousand more main stat. It doesn't matter how hard I try, that's such a huge gap I'm not going to beat it, the numbers aren't there.
Anyway, rant over. Mostly agreed OP. Hopefully we can see some changes.
I always thought that seasons are only for the hardcore few who really want to compete in grift leaderbords.
I was happy for months playing non season casually because if you dont invest several hours per day into the game, you always have something to improve on with your chars. I leveled all classes and started farming the class sets for them and with casually logging in here and there, this kept me busy more or less since D3 release.
That all of course changed with 2.3 when it took me an entire day to equip my witch doctor to near perfect gear. TbH 2.3 kinda killed it for me. Gearing up is just too fast now.
But to stay on the topic of losing steam... I never had much to begin with. If you really want to go for a full season and staying competitive, you have to be aware that you can kiss your real life goodbye for at least 3 months and do nothing else but farm farm farm for more time than you spend in a full time job. If that is not for you, then forget about competitive season all together.
I did this once when WoW came out. I did not have a job back then and enjoyed the time. I'll never do it again though. I think my wife would leave me, not to mention my job etc.
Personaly I don't realy care about this.
AH/RMAH ruined the game completely, glad that's gone.
And in seasons, I don't play competitive for the leaderboards but I got a few friends and coworkers that play D3 aswell and we always keep pushing each other into our own leader board (yay I'm winning GR59).
And you saw the video of Quin69 using the power pylon snapshot, he makes it look easy but trust me I've tried it and doing it correctly takes a great amount of understanding and skill it's not that easy plus if you got a map with alot of small passages and corridors it's very hard to keep a full uptime of the Power Pylon.
But in the end, just as we say at our job, don't look to other people but look at what you can do yourself. Play the game because you like it, play it the way you want it but don't go and compare yourself with those "pro" gamers that do nothing but play D3 you'll only get depressed.
I play pretty regularly (probably 5-10 hours a week) and I just muddle through at my own pace.
Most of the time I just play solo because I hate the clutter of everyones spell effects and/or spending my whole time chasing after a dashing monk or WW barbarian.
The leader boards are there just as a sort of novelty, not intended to be taken seriously. Why? It's an RNG loot based game, with other layers of RNG. Which is fine for the most part, as long as you don't think "ranks" in this game have much meaning. Just have fun.
But in the end, just as we say at our job, don't look to other people but look at what you can do yourself. Play the game because you like it, play it the way you want it but don't go and compare yourself with those "pro" gamers that do nothing but play D3 you'll only get depressed.
But in the end, just as we say at our job, don't look to other people but look at what you can do yourself. Play the game because you like it, play it the way you want it but don't go and compare yourself with those "pro" gamers that do nothing but play D3 you'll only get depressed.
I honestly still find the game enjoyable even if i only play non-seasons, play the way you want to play.
D3 hasn't been about skill for a long time, long before GRs entered the picture. The fact remains that the rifts and the gear/stats do more than players are able to overcome. The only exception to when skill *might* have been the main factor in D3 is probably during launch week, before the first set of nerfs came in. Even then, choice of class was probably more relevant than skill.
The way the game is structured isn't meant to be competitive from a skill standpoint. It's built around item hunting and paragon farming. I could reliably keep top 1% rankings in games like WoW and StarCraft. However for ranking systems such as D3 I generally only keep high leaderboard standings (I have no idea where 1% rankings would be, maybe top 100 or so?) for the start of the season, or if some class happens to be significantly underplayed.
Until the method of ranking is changed, the game is going to be about gear and rift RNG. I had 4 characters in the top 1000 solo boards earlier in the season, and they all relied on specific rifts, mostly going through like 10-30 rifts just to get a spot on the boards. I don't think any of them even took a top 100 spot aside from my Wizard yesterday.
Just yesterday I tried playing a Vrys Wizard which I really don't know how to play too well (I only played Vrys like 6 hours this season, probably a third of that sitting in town trying to figure out the skills). I happened to have decent Vrys gear in the stash from playing my DB farming Wizard, so I stuck it on a new Wizard and fished through like 20 rifts. Came out ranked 75 on the leaderboard. Of the 20 or so rifts, only like 3-4 of them were even able to clear to the RG before the timer. The rest of the rifts were just garbage. bad mobs, bad layout, bad RG, etc. Had a run on the same difficulty (GR63) take 22 minutes (and even had one I couldn't kill the RG at all), while my clear was 13 minutes. Just all rift RNG.
To the suggestions that I play the way I want to and not concern myself with the streamers - my desire to compete on a Leader board has nothing to do with "this is what the streamers do, so I must do it to" mentality. The Leader board is something that helps me find a purpose with my one character, after a certain amount of gear has been attained.
Ask yourself - how long do you stay satisfied, playing one character, constantly looking for a slightly better ancient weapon or better roll on one piece of gear? Well some would say if you don't enjoy that one character, make a different class character and start the process of gearing all over again. It's the same problem. What else do you enjoy doing? Achievements. I like those and now that there are some form of rewards for attaining them, aside from bragging rights, I'm considering doing more of them. What's the other big glaring thing that you can do, with your one character to test it, and push it toward stronger, better horizons? Leader boards.
Imagine if the Season capped at 50 points in each category. Imagine for Monks if the snapshot gimmick was removed. You would have to rely upon skill, decision making and RNG to grace you with a slightly better gear than the other players. Quin can rush to the top, but the key is that other people may beat him out of the coveted top, by getting lucky with gear or just making better decisions. Right now if you wanted to try to get to the top 100, you couldn't because of his Paragon level lead everyone has.
Yes. I know - "well that's your fault for not playing 14 hours a day, every day, farming experience."
I say, respectfully - that isn't an answer. It's an excuse for a why a vital system to the game hasn't been changed.
I guess I'm saying that after I grind out a good character, I want to take a shot at a Leader board where if I get lucky with finding the right gear, I can make it to the top, just like everyone else. And I don't have to use a gimmick or dedicate unrealistic amounts of time to farming experience. Farming for gear I get - not experience.
You talk about the end result of everything you do and how leaderboards give you another reason to play, as if what your doing right now is boring but if you were doing the same thing yet also got some pixels on a leaderboard then itd be fun because there's reason to your action! It's a video game, you play it to have fun... If your not having fun then stop playing to many people these days substitute fun in games for purpose and I say it's a damn shame, it's a hobby not a job.
I just watched Quin69's video guide on Monk's U6 gameplay to "push" Greater Rift progression for the season. The sad word that I heard early on that made me sorta, mentally, give up on the Season is the fun word of "snapshot."
If you haven't watched the video, a brief description; Monks are being encouraged now to fish for a GR with a Power Pylon somewhere near to the beginning of the first level of the GR. So that when you use the Pylon, the Exploding Palm skill of the Monk takes a snapshot of the damage and then you continue to piggy back the EP to new mobs throughout the GR. Even though the Pylon has worn off, your EP on existing mobs is still reflective of the increased DPS and you continue to spread that EP for the rest of the clear.
Snapshotting was a thing in vanilla with Sweeping Wind and it made the game play feel as though you were only being effective if you could maximize a gimmick, or fault of the design, to progress.
Between this and knowing that to come anywhere near the top 200, 100 or even 50 on the Leader boards of any given Season, you have to play at least 8 hours a day, just farming Paragon points to get the damage increase from your main stat...it makes me sort of not want to continue playing in the Season.
There are a lot of fun things to do, build you character, get the gear, improve the gear to Ancient, etc. Build a different type of character, repeat the gear process. But what is the end result? Even with its faults, the AH/RMAH gave you another purpose to play, because you never knew when you would find that hot item to sell. The Leader boards give you another reason to play, except after a week, if you haven't played 10 hours a day - what's the point? So you make a build that maximizes experience gain and you drearily farm experience. So that when you are ready, you farm the perfect GR to use a gimmick to try and progress.
Not rewarding game play for me. I'm curious if it is for others? Clearly the streamers and many others enjoy trying to beat out some sort of rank on the Leader boards, but is it really that rewarding? Does it make you awesome that you spend 70 hours or more a week playing this game, so you can say "I got to rank 1 because I have thousands of Paragon levels and spent days looking for the perfect GR to gimmick my way to the top!"
I hope that Blizzard runs the risk of pissing off their popular streamers, by putting a cap on Paragon levels for Seasons and for removing the snapshot gimmick from all classes and skills. Snap shot the dps and simply code so the dps increase ends across all instances of where it appears after the appropriate amount of time has passed.
So if you make it to rank 1 in a season, it's because you found great gear and used your skill and gear to make it to the top.
Why is everyone suggesting getting rid of paragon levels? If you can't progress higher then the game is dead. There just need to be some slight adjustments and we are all good. I've said it time and time again, but I'll repeat myself happily over here:
Remove bonus experience from group play.
Increase monster health in 3p and 4p games slightly.
Reduce main stat gain from paragon core after p800 to something lower, e.g. 2.
Try to bring the classes closer together again in terms of damage and solo viability.
Try hardcore. It brings much more sense into your gameplay, makes skill matter more, and also makes achievements more valuable. Also quite easy to get into leaderboards, I just closed gr60 with my monk a couple of days ago which brought me into top400. Felt pretty cool. And my wiz is still somewhere in top1000 with as low as 48.
Oh and btw I see like everyone wants to get to the top of leaderboards and stuff.. But guys:
1. It is meant to be competitive so the number of places on "the top" is limited. Whenever you get there - someone else gets kicked out. So the fact that it requires to farm exp 8hrs a day to get to the top seems pretty ok to me. At least it feels more fair than someone getting to the top because of some super rare drops like 0,0001%.
2. You dont actually have to push the leaderboards to enjoy the game. After all D3 is not meant to be highly competitive. Try HC as I said above.
It's really all on Blizzard to get rid of snapshotting and gimmicks. Quin69 and a number of other players have made blizzard and the community aware of these problems and they didnt do anything about it.
Fortunately, Diablo 3 has gotten better and better each patch. Keep believing and voicing your opinions and Blizzard will hopefully do the right thing.
Paragon levels having a cap defeats the purpose of having paragon levels. They were a way to slightly improve your character over time to break the monotony and possibly achieve a higher content you wouldn't other wise be able to do on your own.
there are millions of players all out there trying to get on the leader boards and a very select few killing themselves trying to get to the top. If you feel like you are going to top these people somehow if there is a cap, you will be disappointed. This is there life, they will do anything and everything to make sure they are on top. each season will show that these same people will always be on the top. They have dedicated themselves to the game. you see it at every competitive event.
Quin69 is a PROFESSIONAL gamer. He makes money playing the game for 10 hours a day. It isn't solely playing for hours and hours getting paragon levels that can put you on the leaderboard. He knows game mechanics and move progression, builds, etc. about everything he plays. If you want to also push the #1 spot, you have to have skill as well. If you are in a GR70 as a squishy wizard, you have to play it right to beat it. If you want to just get in the top 1000, ok, you can get lucky, but the first page of leaders, no way. If you want to be that competitive you have to put the time in.
Time doesn't just net you paragon levels and better gear. It gives you experience playing the build and develops your skill.
Just play. That's all you have to do to enjoy the game. I would like to be on the leaderboards myself and I know enough about game mechanics that I could, but I don't have the time to with a family and four kids. I realize my limitations and accept it, but have goals to get better.
If you cannot play the game to YOUR LIKING, and are constantly comparing what YOU do to others, YOU are never going to enjoy this game because OTHERS are always going to do something more innovative and BETTER.
If you really want to enjoy the game, as other posters have said, find what YOU PERSONALLY LIKE, and just do it, stop concerning yourself with other people, it is just a retarded concept tbh.
My monk has completed grift 65. I'm at 730ish paragon. My clear was in the top 200 when I finished it and I did not have a power pylon. While I agree the top spots will be held by dream rifts with dream pylons, why is this a bad thing?
Learn to use Mythic Rythum properly and profit. It is definitely a skill managing your EP's through a greater rift and trying to carry a juiced up one the whole way through. That extra added level of skill required is what has me coming back over and over. Otherwise its just dash punch punch strike over and over.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I just watched Quin69's video guide on Monk's U6 gameplay to "push" Greater Rift progression for the season. The sad word that I heard early on that made me sorta, mentally, give up on the Season is the fun word of "snapshot."
If you haven't watched the video, a brief description; Monks are being encouraged now to fish for a GR with a Power Pylon somewhere near to the beginning of the first level of the GR. So that when you use the Pylon, the Exploding Palm skill of the Monk takes a snapshot of the damage and then you continue to piggy back the EP to new mobs throughout the GR. Even though the Pylon has worn off, your EP on existing mobs is still reflective of the increased DPS and you continue to spread that EP for the rest of the clear.
Snapshotting was a thing in vanilla with Sweeping Wind and it made the game play feel as though you were only being effective if you could maximize a gimmick, or fault of the design, to progress.
Between this and knowing that to come anywhere near the top 200, 100 or even 50 on the Leader boards of any given Season, you have to play at least 8 hours a day, just farming Paragon points to get the damage increase from your main stat...it makes me sort of not want to continue playing in the Season.
There are a lot of fun things to do, build you character, get the gear, improve the gear to Ancient, etc. Build a different type of character, repeat the gear process. But what is the end result? Even with its faults, the AH/RMAH gave you another purpose to play, because you never knew when you would find that hot item to sell. The Leader boards give you another reason to play, except after a week, if you haven't played 10 hours a day - what's the point? So you make a build that maximizes experience gain and you drearily farm experience. So that when you are ready, you farm the perfect GR to use a gimmick to try and progress.
Not rewarding game play for me. I'm curious if it is for others? Clearly the streamers and many others enjoy trying to beat out some sort of rank on the Leader boards, but is it really that rewarding? Does it make you awesome that you spend 70 hours or more a week playing this game, so you can say "I got to rank 1 because I have thousands of Paragon levels and spent days looking for the perfect GR to gimmick my way to the top!"
I hope that Blizzard runs the risk of pissing off their popular streamers, by putting a cap on Paragon levels for Seasons and for removing the snapshot gimmick from all classes and skills. Snap shot the dps and simply code so the dps increase ends across all instances of where it appears after the appropriate amount of time has passed.
So if you make it to rank 1 in a season, it's because you found great gear and used your skill and gear to make it to the top.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
Even though there was another topic that was closed due to the same type of potential flaming it would have brought,I wanted to get something out.
What type of reward are you looking for and expecting from a game?
What does it matter what others do?Set your own goals,dont live off of others achievements.
You want to enjoy the game,well then enjoy it in your own way not others ways.
The AH/RMAH was not something that gave people a purpose/reason to play.It was what made people quit playing.
I just dont get why people have to complain about their own likes and dislikes based off of what others do,especially in a video game.
Besides the RMAH comment which I just disagree with, I agree with the rest of your points;
Paragon needs some sort of power cap. You can continue to level, but I really think not having a cap on your main stat really hurts this game. I played the hell out of this season so far (just like every other season), but even though I've got a lot of ancient gear I'm miles behind because I haven't played 8 hours a day / botted. I personally think P800 should be the power cap, with additional levels giving maybe gold find (which is supposed to be worth something next patch anyway).
Also the snapshotting thing is just a facet in the larger problem of exploits. Look at all those streamers on the top of the leaderboards. They're ALL exploiting the hellfire problem, and abusing mechanics such as the one you mentioned. Now this is going to happen probably every season considering those tools go on to the PTR JUST to find these exploits, hide them and use them when the season starts, but I really hope Blizzard can jump on these problems sooner. It's been like two weeks for the hellfire thing and still going.
So while the gameplay is rewarding for me personally, I absolutely cut my play time by ~90% after the hellfire exploit came out, and a hotfix didn't. And look at that Gabynator screenshot, someone's (maybe his) toon is at like paragon 1,2xx. He's got over two thousand more main stat. It doesn't matter how hard I try, that's such a huge gap I'm not going to beat it, the numbers aren't there.
Anyway, rant over. Mostly agreed OP. Hopefully we can see some changes.
I always thought that seasons are only for the hardcore few who really want to compete in grift leaderbords.
I was happy for months playing non season casually because if you dont invest several hours per day into the game, you always have something to improve on with your chars. I leveled all classes and started farming the class sets for them and with casually logging in here and there, this kept me busy more or less since D3 release.
That all of course changed with 2.3 when it took me an entire day to equip my witch doctor to near perfect gear. TbH 2.3 kinda killed it for me. Gearing up is just too fast now.
But to stay on the topic of losing steam... I never had much to begin with. If you really want to go for a full season and staying competitive, you have to be aware that you can kiss your real life goodbye for at least 3 months and do nothing else but farm farm farm for more time than you spend in a full time job. If that is not for you, then forget about competitive season all together.
I did this once when WoW came out. I did not have a job back then and enjoyed the time. I'll never do it again though. I think my wife would leave me, not to mention my job etc.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
Personaly I don't realy care about this.
AH/RMAH ruined the game completely, glad that's gone.
And in seasons, I don't play competitive for the leaderboards but I got a few friends and coworkers that play D3 aswell and we always keep pushing each other into our own leader board (yay I'm winning GR59).
And you saw the video of Quin69 using the power pylon snapshot, he makes it look easy but trust me I've tried it and doing it correctly takes a great amount of understanding and skill it's not that easy plus if you got a map with alot of small passages and corridors it's very hard to keep a full uptime of the Power Pylon.
But in the end, just as we say at our job, don't look to other people but look at what you can do yourself. Play the game because you like it, play it the way you want it but don't go and compare yourself with those "pro" gamers that do nothing but play D3 you'll only get depressed.
Its another season to the trash bcs of another exploit. No one cares about leaderboards
Couldn't care less for leaderboards.
I play pretty regularly (probably 5-10 hours a week) and I just muddle through at my own pace.
Most of the time I just play solo because I hate the clutter of everyones spell effects and/or spending my whole time chasing after a dashing monk or WW barbarian.
TL:DR - Play your own way.
The leader boards are there just as a sort of novelty, not intended to be taken seriously. Why? It's an RNG loot based game, with other layers of RNG. Which is fine for the most part, as long as you don't think "ranks" in this game have much meaning. Just have fun.
No, you cannot top the ranks of a completely time-based game if you have outside responsibilities.
D3 hasn't been about skill for a long time, long before GRs entered the picture. The fact remains that the rifts and the gear/stats do more than players are able to overcome. The only exception to when skill *might* have been the main factor in D3 is probably during launch week, before the first set of nerfs came in. Even then, choice of class was probably more relevant than skill.
The way the game is structured isn't meant to be competitive from a skill standpoint. It's built around item hunting and paragon farming. I could reliably keep top 1% rankings in games like WoW and StarCraft. However for ranking systems such as D3 I generally only keep high leaderboard standings (I have no idea where 1% rankings would be, maybe top 100 or so?) for the start of the season, or if some class happens to be significantly underplayed.
Until the method of ranking is changed, the game is going to be about gear and rift RNG. I had 4 characters in the top 1000 solo boards earlier in the season, and they all relied on specific rifts, mostly going through like 10-30 rifts just to get a spot on the boards. I don't think any of them even took a top 100 spot aside from my Wizard yesterday.
Just yesterday I tried playing a Vrys Wizard which I really don't know how to play too well (I only played Vrys like 6 hours this season, probably a third of that sitting in town trying to figure out the skills). I happened to have decent Vrys gear in the stash from playing my DB farming Wizard, so I stuck it on a new Wizard and fished through like 20 rifts. Came out ranked 75 on the leaderboard. Of the 20 or so rifts, only like 3-4 of them were even able to clear to the RG before the timer. The rest of the rifts were just garbage. bad mobs, bad layout, bad RG, etc. Had a run on the same difficulty (GR63) take 22 minutes (and even had one I couldn't kill the RG at all), while my clear was 13 minutes. Just all rift RNG.
Sorry for lack of response - busy week.
To the suggestions that I play the way I want to and not concern myself with the streamers - my desire to compete on a Leader board has nothing to do with "this is what the streamers do, so I must do it to" mentality. The Leader board is something that helps me find a purpose with my one character, after a certain amount of gear has been attained.
Ask yourself - how long do you stay satisfied, playing one character, constantly looking for a slightly better ancient weapon or better roll on one piece of gear? Well some would say if you don't enjoy that one character, make a different class character and start the process of gearing all over again. It's the same problem. What else do you enjoy doing? Achievements. I like those and now that there are some form of rewards for attaining them, aside from bragging rights, I'm considering doing more of them. What's the other big glaring thing that you can do, with your one character to test it, and push it toward stronger, better horizons? Leader boards.
Imagine if the Season capped at 50 points in each category. Imagine for Monks if the snapshot gimmick was removed. You would have to rely upon skill, decision making and RNG to grace you with a slightly better gear than the other players. Quin can rush to the top, but the key is that other people may beat him out of the coveted top, by getting lucky with gear or just making better decisions. Right now if you wanted to try to get to the top 100, you couldn't because of his Paragon level lead everyone has.
Yes. I know - "well that's your fault for not playing 14 hours a day, every day, farming experience."
I say, respectfully - that isn't an answer. It's an excuse for a why a vital system to the game hasn't been changed.
I guess I'm saying that after I grind out a good character, I want to take a shot at a Leader board where if I get lucky with finding the right gear, I can make it to the top, just like everyone else. And I don't have to use a gimmick or dedicate unrealistic amounts of time to farming experience. Farming for gear I get - not experience.
Monkalicious: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/OptimusPrime-12194/hero/79139477
You talk about the end result of everything you do and how leaderboards give you another reason to play, as if what your doing right now is boring but if you were doing the same thing yet also got some pixels on a leaderboard then itd be fun because there's reason to your action! It's a video game, you play it to have fun... If your not having fun then stop playing to many people these days substitute fun in games for purpose and I say it's a damn shame, it's a hobby not a job.
Try hardcore. It brings much more sense into your gameplay, makes skill matter more, and also makes achievements more valuable. Also quite easy to get into leaderboards, I just closed gr60 with my monk a couple of days ago which brought me into top400. Felt pretty cool. And my wiz is still somewhere in top1000 with as low as 48.
Oh and btw I see like everyone wants to get to the top of leaderboards and stuff.. But guys:
1. It is meant to be competitive so the number of places on "the top" is limited. Whenever you get there - someone else gets kicked out. So the fact that it requires to farm exp 8hrs a day to get to the top seems pretty ok to me. At least it feels more fair than someone getting to the top because of some super rare drops like 0,0001%.
2. You dont actually have to push the leaderboards to enjoy the game. After all D3 is not meant to be highly competitive. Try HC as I said above.
It's really all on Blizzard to get rid of snapshotting and gimmicks. Quin69 and a number of other players have made blizzard and the community aware of these problems and they didnt do anything about it.
Fortunately, Diablo 3 has gotten better and better each patch. Keep believing and voicing your opinions and Blizzard will hopefully do the right thing.
Paragon levels having a cap defeats the purpose of having paragon levels. They were a way to slightly improve your character over time to break the monotony and possibly achieve a higher content you wouldn't other wise be able to do on your own.
there are millions of players all out there trying to get on the leader boards and a very select few killing themselves trying to get to the top. If you feel like you are going to top these people somehow if there is a cap, you will be disappointed. This is there life, they will do anything and everything to make sure they are on top. each season will show that these same people will always be on the top. They have dedicated themselves to the game. you see it at every competitive event.
Quin69 is a PROFESSIONAL gamer. He makes money playing the game for 10 hours a day. It isn't solely playing for hours and hours getting paragon levels that can put you on the leaderboard. He knows game mechanics and move progression, builds, etc. about everything he plays. If you want to also push the #1 spot, you have to have skill as well. If you are in a GR70 as a squishy wizard, you have to play it right to beat it. If you want to just get in the top 1000, ok, you can get lucky, but the first page of leaders, no way. If you want to be that competitive you have to put the time in.
Time doesn't just net you paragon levels and better gear. It gives you experience playing the build and develops your skill.
Just play. That's all you have to do to enjoy the game. I would like to be on the leaderboards myself and I know enough about game mechanics that I could, but I don't have the time to with a family and four kids. I realize my limitations and accept it, but have goals to get better.
Yep cleared GR62 on season, Now I got bored. Noting eles left do to actually expect farming paragon. but why?
The fact of the matter is that:
If you cannot play the game to YOUR LIKING, and are constantly comparing what YOU do to others, YOU are never going to enjoy this game because OTHERS are always going to do something more innovative and BETTER.
If you really want to enjoy the game, as other posters have said, find what YOU PERSONALLY LIKE, and just do it, stop concerning yourself with other people, it is just a retarded concept tbh.
My monk has completed grift 65. I'm at 730ish paragon. My clear was in the top 200 when I finished it and I did not have a power pylon. While I agree the top spots will be held by dream rifts with dream pylons, why is this a bad thing?
Learn to use Mythic Rythum properly and profit. It is definitely a skill managing your EP's through a greater rift and trying to carry a juiced up one the whole way through. That extra added level of skill required is what has me coming back over and over. Otherwise its just dash punch punch strike over and over.