Hello everyone! I am here to suggest some ideas I had.
I tried to make it as simple and short as possible, so I hided some details. And I added Requirements Analysis to the end of each idea, to explain whys.
Hope you will find some of these interesting and enjoy!Principles:More code reuse Meet urgent needs For majorities
Fusion Forge
Purposes:
- Making “useless” legendries more useful - Helping players accept account-bound - End-game content like Cube/Runewords
Brief: - The forge has 4 slots; player can put whatever lv-70 legendary item into the one of slots - If player puts another legendary item to an adjacent slot, and this legendary item has one and has only one common primary property as the first item, a link that represent this property would be formed
- After clicking the Forge button, an amulet which has 4 “link” primary properties will be made, and all of those four legendary items will be salvaged
- This amulet has some very powerful secondary properties, like 500 arcane resistance, 10 pickup radius etc. Those secondary properties are decided by those 4 primary stats and their order
For example: Primary Attribute + Health (%Life/ Vitality) + Life (per hit/per second) + Critical (chance/damage) =500 Physical resistance + 80% Gold Find
Details:
- Players can upgrade this amulet to legendary by spending some mats and gold and completing some quests. After upgrade, the amulet gets a random legendary amulet affix. Players can upgrade it again to swap this affix Examples of Formulas: Formula 1: Primary Attribute + Speed (ASI/movement speed) + Critical + Elemental (bonus damage/skill damage increase) = 300 Fire Resistance + 300 Cold Resistance + 300 Lightning Resistance Formula 2(1.5): Speed + Primary Attribute + Elemental + Critical = 300 Arcane Resistance + 300 Physical Resistance + 10 Pickup Radius Formula 3: Life + Speed + Element + Critical = 5000 Life after Kill + 5% Additional Experience + 10% Less Damage from Range Attacks - Not only creating amulets, the Fusion Forge can be used in other ways like Horadric cube. However all formulas should contain at least one legendary item in order to differ it from the cube system, and serve its purpose “making any legendary item useful”
Requirements Analysis:
To players who get used to selling useless legendary items on AH, it is not easy to accept BoA immediately, not at all. It is because: the theme of the game is to farming valuable items, can’t selling but salvaging means less value (based on experience of D3V). However, if this player gets more reward from salvaging this legendary, his pain maybe eased (because the value of a legendary piece is increased). For example, giving him a lot of gold for each salvaging may be good, giving him another nice rolled item that he can use might be better . So here comes the basic idea of fusion forge: - Combine useless (good or bad) legendary items into good items that always could be useful - Add “formula” element into this system, in order to increase the complexity and depth of this game - Provide players something more to play, even if he is fully equipped with legendries
Elemental Harmony
Purposes: - Giving players 7th, 8th, and even more “skill slots” without adding any real skill slots - Reduce complains about “elemental damage effect” (like fire weapon deals AoE damage etc.) - Further increase build diversity
Brief:
- Any skill that deals damage can trigger Elemental Harmony - Once the Elemental Harmony is triggered, a spell will be cast automatically
- The type of the Harmony spell is determined by the weapon’s elemental damage type and the skill’s element type
Details:
Examples: Physical + Arcane= Wave of Force Fire + Arcane= Hydra Poison + Fire = Fire Bomb
More examples and details:
Ice + Poison= Acid Cloud Lightning + Ice= Sweeping Wind (Cyclone) Physical + Fire= Whirlwind (Volcanic)
- Skills without cooldown, when used, there’s a chance to trigger Elemental Harmony - Skills that has a cooldown, after holding the skill key for 0.3 seconds, will always trigger Elemental Harmony (EH) - After the Harmony is triggered by any skill that has a cooldown, all skills with cooldown cannot trigger EH again within a few seconds - Players can swap the elemental damage type of their weapons by using Fusion Forge, collecting special mats, or completing quests etc.
Requirements Analysis:
Requests about “more skill slots” and “elemental weapon effect” never rest. However, on the other hand they show needs of players that cannot be ignored. Elemental Harmony is such an idea that gives players more skills to use while keeping the 6 skill slots design. The prototype of EH was Passive Elemental Combo effects. For example: ice + fire=steam; lightning + any doubles the triggering rate; arcane + any reduces spell cost etc. However soon I found out that if it triggers so frequently, the operation burden of servers might be unnecessarily increased too much, and it is very hard to balance. So the triggering rate should be reduced, but as the compensation, the triggering effect should be powerful enough, maybe as power as another skill. So as the result, it became the EH.
Demonic Soul Gem and Monster Innate Affixes
Purposes:
- Better monster balances while keeping their characteristics - Give players reason to fight ACT4 mobs instead of ACT1 boring zombies - Solution to bad lucky problems (farm x hours without a legendary loot)
Brief:
- Some monsters have innate affixes. For example: Soul Ripper have “Tongue Attack”
- Those monsters, when become elites, have less elite affixes(like fire chains etc.) because of their innate affixes
- Killing any monster gives player Soul Gem energy. Each affix (innate or elite) increases energy gain by X%, which means, a Phasebeast yields much more soul energy than a zombie
- After the soul gem is fully recharged, player can use it and summon a powerful monster that guarantees drop a legendary item
Details:
- The soul gem can be over-charged to 1000%. Each time it loses 100% energy when used. The item type of the legendary drop is affected by the sum of numbers of energy. For example: “492% charged”-> 4+9+2=15 -> 15->1+5=6 6 means it has triple chance to drop a shoulders item than other armor types
More details:
- In case of exploit, the soul gem can only be used in single play mode, and the room will be locked, invitations will be aborted once the soul gem is used. And after the monster is killed, a random rare item the player is currently equipping will again “Ignore Durability Loss” property and became account-bound - The soul gem gains a small amount of energy each day, even player doesn’t log on
Requirements Analysis:
It is impossible to perfect balance monster’s strength and its rewards, so almost every player choose to butcher dumb zombies instead of getting one shot by ACT4 monsters. As the result, a large part of game content is wasted. The purpose of this system is to find a way to balance, although it is impossible to be perfect. However, I always believe the best balance is incomparability. - Find a way to nerf strong monsters without losing their characteristics - Find a way to reward players who fight those monsters, and make it very hard to find out what is a better choice So the idea of innate affixes comes out. By taking the place of elite affixes, the most infamous monster types could get a moderate nerf by adding innate affixes to them. And in order to balance normal monsters, increase drop rate by killing them could be a good idea. However, just by comparing farming speed of different monster types and drop rates can find out which is a better choice. The way that increases rewards must be complex enough to make it very hard to compare which is better. So idea of Demonic Soul Gem system came out.
Infernal Trail
Purposes:
- Short pain, guaranteed profit - A challenging end game content - A way to compete with each other
Brief:
- Compared with Campaign and Adventure mode, it is just a minor mode - Monsters are very powerful in this mode
- Each week, a player can only kill each monster once. They will not re-spawn until next week - Each sub boss guarantee drops a legendary item the first time you kill it each week
Pain Control:
- Each item when you are killed by a pack of elite of a boss, their health and damage will be decreased by 10% this week - If you failed to kill a sub boss 5 times in a row, its loot will be degrade this week (legendary gear to mat). Same rule applies to elite packs (3 times)
Details:
Locks: - The locks of single player mode and multiplayer mode are separated - Sub bosses only drops legendary mats this week if you’ve killed it in another mode - Sub bosses only drops legendary mats in multiplayer mode, if you’ve never defeated this boss in single player mode, in case of exploit
- ACT 1 is available at first month, ACT2 at second month etc.
- Player can view best 100 players and inspect their builds and gear from a billboardRequirements Analysis:
Dev teams introduced infernal difficulty to the game in order to provide top gear players something to do. However it soon turn out a tragic massacre, not players butchers monsters, but players get butchered by monsters. Countless complains and bad reviews confirm it again and again that it is not a good gaming experience. However, it is very important to provide players challenges, in order to drive them collect better gear and became more powerful, which is the theme of this game. And some players do like the challenging difficulty of infernal before nerfed. No pain, no gain. But too much pain, not enough profit maybe worse. What players need, is “Less pain, good profit”. However if there are too much easy profit, it is no long “profit” any longer.
How to solve this paradox? In order to provide enough profit, the loots are guaranteed legendries. And in order to keep those rewards “valuable”, you can’t farm again and again. This mode is difficult, so the pain must be under control: you can’t farm again and again. And before you gain too much pain (die too many times) from a single pack of monsters, they will be nerfed to ensure you will not receive any more pain from them. Adding a leaderboard could make this mode more competing, and drives players to gear up their chars, in order to earn a better place in the leaderboard.
Separate Challenges from Achievement UI
Purposes:
- Another PvEvP end game content - Some of the challenges are combat-irrelevant, which means everyone could join in despite their gear level
Brief:
- Separate challenges from Achievements and put them into a new Challenges interface, and add a leaderboard to it
- At the end of each month, the best 10 players of each class will be awarded with special portrait frames and aura dyes - Some achievements could be converted to challenges like boss kill achievements (on torment 6; in 2 minutes; don’t get hit by some skills etc.)
Requirements Analysis:
Some players bought Diablo 3 just because it is made by BLZ. However some of them were soon disappointed because they don't like farming the same content again and again. It is true: this game may need something else for players to do, not only farming and farming, because it is 2014 now, not 2004. Even though some of those contents should encourage players to farm, but some of those should be played even if a player is not that well geared. On the other hand, the resource like man-month is very limited for dev team. A “new” content that reuses as much as code as possible, is much better than some brand new content. Challenges are a part of achievement now. Just need a leaderboard added could make some players spend hours in them, happily.
Demons Must Die
Purpose:
- Offering players a new way to play
Brief:
- Inspired by game "Orcs Must Die". Players can build blade traps, explosive barrels and even moonseeds in order to help them to defend waves of attacks
- Unlike OMD, all of those traps must be active by hand, not automatically, in case of exploit. And blade traps have cooldown, barrels respawn after each wave - DMD mode doesn’t reward any gear loot. But it is a faster way to collect gold and experience than adventure mode - Strength of monsters are dynamically adjusted by players’ gear level (EHP, DPS and Healing)
Details:
- Traps deal little damage. But they apply effects to monsters, to let players kill them much easier. For example: Triple arcane damage taken Convert chill effects into frozen effects for 15 seconds
More details:
When taken fire damage, additional 200% damage will be dealt in 5 seconds After receive lightning damage, stun for 10 seconds Slow 90% if taken physical damage - After killed by monsters 6 times, the game will fail. And rewards will be reduced each sequential failure
Requirements Analysis:
Just like challenges, DMD mode is also easy to be made: all of those traps are preset. Just need an interface that allows players to place traps wherever they want, and make those traps click-to-active. Or even simpler, provide different maps instead of traps placing UI. However, there are too big problem of introduce a new mode to the game. 1. How to make it compatible with existing modes, which means players will play both of them, none of them would be wasted 2. A new game mode, especially like survival mode, could be easily exploited by bots Both of those problems are very hard to solve. Especially the second one, ‘cause for the first one, by adjusting the reward type of different modes, players will have to play both of them for different types of reward. Or limit players’ access to a certain mode can also solve first problem, just like Nephalem Rifts. The secret of effective bot farming is camping: the less movement the bot does, the better. And survival mode it just a perfect place for bots: they just need to stand there and kill whatever comes to them. So that’s why, monsters are dynamically adjusted, so players are impossible to defeat them without the help from traps. And all traps must be active by hand, making movement be required in order to survive. And if the bots dies too many times, it will receive less and less reward.
Demonic Infusion
Purpose:
- Another end game content
Brief:
- Players can get item: [Foul Demonic Crystals] from monsters. They can choose to salvage these into gems, or use them near a normal monster - Upon used, the crystal will shatter and imbue its power to the monster, which will get a special affix, and this monster can level up. Once reached level 10, it guarantee drops a legendary mat or even legendary gear and a lot of gold
Examples of this “special affix”:
· Greed: This monster automatically picks up gold drops by other monsters, and gains a level for each X piles of gold picked up · Enrage: Watching another monster killed increases damage and speed for 2 seconds. Gain a level for each X monster killed
Other examples:
Renewal: Once killed, revive after 30 seconds and drain every soul of monsters killed nearby. For each X souls drained, gain a level Possess: Once killed, possess another nearby monster, and gain a level Devour: Another monster that has 20% or lower health for more than 5 seconds will be devoured. For each X monsters devoured, gains a level
Skill-oriented instead of Luck-oriented
Purposes:
- Improve gaming experience - Reduce complains about random or inevitable death that pisses player off
Reasons: - Skill-oriented battle design makes player proud of their increasing skill - Luck-oriented battle design pisses players off, just like arcane enchanted/frozen+ vortex, old reflect damage/mortar etc.
Brief:
- A Skill-Oriented affix should contain and only contain 2-3 of following parts: 1. Unavoidable Effect: Like Frozen, it deals unavoidable damage once the ice ball spawns. But it is not deadly. The purpose of Unavoidableis to make players balance between EHP/Healing and DPS 2.Deadly but AvoidableEffect: Like frozen effect of Frozen. Once applied, it can put player into a very dangerous situation. 3. Rewarding Effects: If players didn't get frozen by any ice balls, those ice balls will frozen/slow enemies. This kind of effect is to reward players for their skill and give them sense of accomplishment. Also, it "increases" farming difficulty of bots because it is hard for them to get rewarding effects. Details:
- Vortex:Spawn a big cycle of wind under a player’s feet and deal damage to him. If he chooses to run out of the cycle, he will be pulled to caster’s location. Otherwise the cyclone will disappear after 2 seconds. Shielding:Damage taken will be doubled in 4 secsafter the shield expires.
Lightning Storm: Decrease the damage of first strike, and the damage will be increase with each sequential strike until player moves for at least 5 yards. Jailer:Increase damage dealt while being jailed by 300% Fast: No longer a passive effect, it increases monsters’ attack speed, movement speed, as well as damage taken by 60% for 4 seconds when active. Nightmarish:Players will always run to the opposite side of their mouse-over directions. Their damage taken will be reduced by 50% in 3 seconds after being feared. Extra Health: Also increase gold dropped by this monster. The faster they die, the more gold will be dropped. Desecrator:Damage will increase the longer player stand on it. Increase damage dealt by players who stand on it by 100% Mortar:When killed, deal a huge amount of damage to nearby monsters. Electrified:Taken damage from electrified monsters increase attack and movement speed and electrical damage taken by 10%, up to 10 stacks. Plagued:If nothing is standing in plagued pools, monster will be slowed by 30%
Requirements Analysis:
This part could be longer than a paper; I hope this image could help to understand:
Most of famous ACT games, for example Devil May Cry, even at the highest difficulty, if the players if well trained, he can still defeat it without taken any damage, which means no random damage, no random death, and even no inevitable damage. Why? Because that’s the essence of a successful ACT game: players receive as much as happiness as how they are skilled, which means more practice, more happiness. In other word, happiness is a somehow. However to Diablo, making some damage unavoidable is necessary in order to encourage player to get some EHP and Healing. But decisive damage must be avoidable, not only to provide guaranteed sense of accomplishment, but also avoid pissing players off, just like arcane enchanted + vortex or old damage reflect did.
Waking Powers
Purposes:
- Giving player a better first impression instead of “I became weaker after 2.0” - Giving player more driving force to level up
Brief:
- For every X paragon level a player gains, he will also get one level of a passive skill beside paragon points
- Most of things that was taken away from players, like primary attributes of old paragon system and Nephalem Valor, will be back as one of those “passive skills” - Some interesting things that does not booster players’ combat capacity that improves the game experience, could be added into game as one of those skills - If possible, a skill tree could be better and it could silence more complains
Example of the Powers:
• Increase player’s movement speed while in town • You can attack and destroy Treasure Goblin’s portals • When a legendary item drops (from an enemy), confuse nearby enemies and make them attack each other
More examples:
• There is a chance that, after dealt the final blow to a pack of elites of a boss, places player’s banner upon the corpse of enemy and gold rain from sky. (The total amount of gold equals to 20% of the gold dropped by this boss) • Decrease portal casting time while no enemies around. (Up to instant cast) • Give you a chance that acquire additional mats when salvage an item • After killed a pack of elites, reveals the location of nearest elite packs on your area map. • If you were killed by a pack of elites and after they are dead, there is a chance that a meteor will fall from sky and blow up their corpses, returning repairing fee to you • When removing a gem, there is a chance you can take your gold back • Using a shrine of elite restore some durability of your gear • Sometimes after you killed a monster, its ghost will help you pick up gold for some minutes and increase your Gold Find slightly • Increase your sight to help you reveal map faster, elites enemies you engaged will be marked on the map • After engaging a pack of elites, there is a chance that, durations of all shrine effects on you will be frozen until they are killed or disengaged.
Requirements Analysis:
Each player has different feeling about 2.0 PTR, but all of them find out that they are weaker than before. It is a bad first expression but easily solved. Some player feels less driven leveling up because there are less reward, and there is no cap of leveling. More encourage might be needed. Also, countless players cried for a skill tree, and a skill tree could silence most of them.
Free Upgrades: Standard to deluxe, deluxe to Prime-Evils Pack
Reasons:
- A lot of people complain that the expansion is a little bit too expansive. - A lot of people were disappointed by D3V
Brief:
- Upgrade current standard edition to deluxe edition, and deluxe edition to Prime-Evils editions for free - The Prime-Evils contains World of Warcraft heirloom weapons (transmogrify weapons of RoS deluxe edition), Black Soul Stone mineral fields skin, RoS theme card skin etc.
Requirements Analysis:
It is true that many players don’t like the price of expansion. The standard solutions are lowering the price or/and compensation. Compared with first one, compensation, with virtual property, may be as good as real property compensation for game players So the idea of a free upgrade comes out: Compensate players to make them think it is worthy to buy this expansion. Almost every player who has brought the standard edition knows that there is a more expansive deluxe edition. And what if they know they can get it for free now? They may think it saved them $20!
High Resolution Face Textures
Purpose:
- Making this game looks like something released after 2000 instead of before
Reasons:
- Allowing players to custom their chars benefit a RPG game just like allowing players name their chars, dyeing their gear, transmogrifying their gear. And 1000% better - When most of online games, especially those made in Korea or Japan, allow players to customize their chars however they like, while Diablo 3, a RPG game made by one of the best companies on the earth, only offering players a bad looking and low resolution face texture.
Miscs
- Completing a bounty increases rewards from bounties of another random acts by 10%, and remove 1 stack of bonus of this act
- Allowing players to modify models might be a better idea than offering high resolution textures, just like the Elder Scrolls.
- Difficulty settings could not be liner, like easy- normal- hard etc. The difficulty setting design of Meteor: Last Light is very advanced. Player can choose between normal mode and hardcore mode, and each of them has easy to hard settings. So Diablo could also provide players 3 modes like: Serious Nephalem: Very high monster density, lower drop rate, low monster health Destiny Warrior: Normal monster density, normal drop rate, normal monster health Humanity Defender: Low density, high drop rate, high monster health And 6 difficulty choices like torment 1-6. Torment 1 “Serious Nephalem” should be as difficult as torment 1 “Humanity Defender”. So players can use different builds to farm different modes.
- Currently, one of the problems that discourage players do public games is that, if they play with some players that has less DPS than them, they may feel that they are carrying but without additional reward. Unlocking higher public game settings by soloing uber bosses of that difficulty could be a solution
- Whatever players complain is whatever they cannot control. Leaving something that system does now to players may solve some of those problems For example, if players complain the reviving time of followers is too long. You can allow players clicking on followers to revive them (just like reviving players). They may stop complain, because it is their problem now. Many designs follow this rule, like Runewords vs. random properties, luck-oriented affixes vs. skill-oriented affixes etc.
- It is excited to see a lot of gold or some gear dropped by chests or ashes, but it is also easily exploited by bots. One of the solutions is adding invisible buff stacks to players: killing a monster gives player some stacks of this invisible buff, which greatly increases loots from chests etc. Opening chests removes some stacks of this buff.
- Adding player rating system may improve environment of public games: If a player gets low ratings from many players in different games. He may not join another public game for some hours.
- Adjusting the class balance is like trading with players
- Dynamic system could be introduced to balance skills and runes, if a skill or rune is not popular then it will be automatically buffed by up to X%. This buff is determined by players themselves so they cannot complain about it.
By Hawke0323
Hawke0323@gmail.com
Awesome.
So many nice suggestions by players.
Still dont know why Blizzard doesnt take a use of them ...
Because they aren't that well thought out (despite all the words), and are often too ambitious in terms of assets and development time to be considered. The head of the topic says it encourages "code re-use", but every suggestion here is a new feature that not only would require additional coding time, but lots of UI work.
Something like the Fusion Forge could take a few man-months to complete. Not a lot of bang for your buck when players already complain about how often (not often) updates are released.
Meet urgent needs
For majorities
Fusion Forge
Purposes: - Making “useless” legendries more useful- Helping players accept account-bound
- End-game content like Cube/Runewords Brief:
- The forge has 4 slots; player can put whatever lv-70 legendary item into the one of slots
- If player puts another legendary item to an adjacent slot, and this legendary item has one and has only one common primary property as the first item, a link that represent this property would be formed - After clicking the Forge button, an amulet which has 4 “link” primary properties will be made, and all of those four legendary items will be salvaged
- This amulet has some very powerful secondary properties, like 500 arcane resistance, 10 pickup radius etc. Those secondary properties are decided by those 4 primary stats and their order
For example: Primary Attribute + Health (%Life/ Vitality) + Life (per hit/per second) + Critical (chance/damage) =500 Physical resistance + 80% Gold Find Details:
- Players can upgrade this amulet to legendary by spending some mats and gold and completing some quests. After upgrade, the amulet gets a random legendary amulet affix. Players can upgrade it again to swap this affix
Examples of Formulas:
Formula 1: Primary Attribute + Speed (ASI/movement speed) + Critical + Elemental (bonus damage/skill damage increase) = 300 Fire Resistance + 300 Cold Resistance + 300 Lightning Resistance
Formula 2(1.5): Speed + Primary Attribute + Elemental + Critical = 300 Arcane Resistance + 300 Physical Resistance + 10 Pickup Radius
Formula 3: Life + Speed + Element + Critical = 5000 Life after Kill + 5% Additional Experience + 10% Less Damage from Range Attacks
- Not only creating amulets, the Fusion Forge can be used in other ways like Horadric cube. However all formulas should contain at least one legendary item in order to differ it from the cube system, and serve its purpose “making any legendary item useful”
To players who get used to selling useless legendary items on AH, it is not easy to accept BoA immediately, not at all. It is because: the theme of the game is to farming valuable items, can’t selling but salvaging means less value (based on experience of D3V).
However, if this player gets more reward from salvaging this legendary, his pain maybe eased (because the value of a legendary piece is increased). For example, giving him a lot of gold for each salvaging may be good, giving him another nice rolled item that he can use might be better
.
So here comes the basic idea of fusion forge:
- Combine useless (good or bad) legendary items into good items that always could be useful
- Add “formula” element into this system, in order to increase the complexity and depth of this game
- Provide players something more to play, even if he is fully equipped with legendries
Elemental Harmony
Purposes:- Giving players 7th, 8th, and even more “skill slots” without adding any real skill slots
- Reduce complains about “elemental damage effect” (like fire weapon deals AoE damage etc.)
- Further increase build diversity Brief: - Any skill that deals damage can trigger Elemental Harmony
- Once the Elemental Harmony is triggered, a spell will be cast automatically
- The type of the Harmony spell is determined by the weapon’s elemental damage type and the skill’s element type Details: Examples:
Physical + Arcane= Wave of Force
Fire + Arcane= Hydra
Poison + Fire = Fire Bomb More examples and details:
Ice + Poison= Acid Cloud
Lightning + Ice= Sweeping Wind (Cyclone)
Physical + Fire= Whirlwind (Volcanic)
- Skills without cooldown, when used, there’s a chance to trigger Elemental Harmony
- Skills that has a cooldown, after holding the skill key for 0.3 seconds, will always trigger Elemental Harmony (EH)
- After the Harmony is triggered by any skill that has a cooldown, all skills with cooldown cannot trigger EH again within a few seconds
- Players can swap the elemental damage type of their weapons by using Fusion Forge, collecting special mats, or completing quests etc.
Requests about “more skill slots” and “elemental weapon effect” never rest. However, on the other hand they show needs of players that cannot be ignored. Elemental Harmony is such an idea that gives players more skills to use while keeping the 6 skill slots design.
The prototype of EH was Passive Elemental Combo effects. For example: ice + fire=steam; lightning + any doubles the triggering rate; arcane + any reduces spell cost etc. However soon I found out that if it triggers so frequently, the operation burden of servers might be unnecessarily increased too much, and it is very hard to balance. So the triggering rate should be reduced, but as the compensation, the triggering effect should be powerful enough, maybe as power as another skill. So as the result, it became the EH.
Demonic Soul Gem and Monster Innate Affixes
Purposes: - Better monster balances while keeping their characteristics- Give players reason to fight ACT4 mobs instead of ACT1 boring zombies
- Solution to bad lucky problems (farm x hours without a legendary loot) Brief: - Some monsters have innate affixes. For example: Soul Ripper have “Tongue Attack”
- Those monsters, when become elites, have less elite affixes(like fire chains etc.) because of their innate affixes - Killing any monster gives player Soul Gem energy. Each affix (innate or elite) increases energy gain by X%, which means, a Phasebeast yields much more soul energy than a zombie - After the soul gem is fully recharged, player can use it and summon a powerful monster that guarantees drop a legendary item Details: - The soul gem can be over-charged to 1000%. Each time it loses 100% energy when used. The item type of the legendary drop is affected by the sum of numbers of energy.
For example:
“492% charged”-> 4+9+2=15 -> 15->1+5=6
6 means it has triple chance to drop a shoulders item than other armor types More details:
- In case of exploit, the soul gem can only be used in single play mode, and the room will be locked, invitations will be aborted once the soul gem is used. And after the monster is killed, a random rare item the player is currently equipping will again “Ignore Durability Loss” property and became account-bound
- The soul gem gains a small amount of energy each day, even player doesn’t log on
It is impossible to perfect balance monster’s strength and its rewards, so almost every player choose to butcher dumb zombies instead of getting one shot by ACT4 monsters. As the result, a large part of game content is wasted.
The purpose of this system is to find a way to balance, although it is impossible to be perfect. However, I always believe the best balance is incomparability.
- Find a way to nerf strong monsters without losing their characteristics
- Find a way to reward players who fight those monsters, and make it very hard to find out what is a better choice
So the idea of innate affixes comes out. By taking the place of elite affixes, the most infamous monster types could get a moderate nerf by adding innate affixes to them. And in order to balance normal monsters, increase drop rate by killing them could be a good idea. However, just by comparing farming speed of different monster types and drop rates can find out which is a better choice. The way that increases rewards must be complex enough to make it very hard to compare which is better. So idea of Demonic Soul Gem system came out.
Infernal Trail
Purposes: - Short pain, guaranteed profit- A challenging end game content
- A way to compete with each other Brief:
- Compared with Campaign and Adventure mode, it is just a minor mode
- Monsters are very powerful in this mode - Each week, a player can only kill each monster once. They will not re-spawn until next week
- Each sub boss guarantee drops a legendary item the first time you kill it each week Pain Control: - Each item when you are killed by a pack of elite of a boss, their health and damage will be decreased by 10% this week
- If you failed to kill a sub boss 5 times in a row, its loot will be degrade this week (legendary gear to mat). Same rule applies to elite packs (3 times) Details:
Locks:
- The locks of single player mode and multiplayer mode are separated
- Sub bosses only drops legendary mats this week if you’ve killed it in another mode
- Sub bosses only drops legendary mats in multiplayer mode, if you’ve never defeated this boss in single player mode, in case of exploit - ACT 1 is available at first month, ACT2 at second month etc.
Dev teams introduced infernal difficulty to the game in order to provide top gear players something to do. However it soon turn out a tragic massacre, not players butchers monsters, but players get butchered by monsters. Countless complains and bad reviews confirm it again and again that it is not a good gaming experience.
However, it is very important to provide players challenges, in order to drive them collect better gear and became more powerful, which is the theme of this game. And some players do like the challenging difficulty of infernal before nerfed.
No pain, no gain. But too much pain, not enough profit maybe worse. What players need, is “Less pain, good profit”. However if there are too much easy profit, it is no long “profit” any longer. How to solve this paradox?
In order to provide enough profit, the loots are guaranteed legendries. And in order to keep those rewards “valuable”, you can’t farm again and again.
This mode is difficult, so the pain must be under control: you can’t farm again and again. And before you gain too much pain (die too many times) from a single pack of monsters, they will be nerfed to ensure you will not receive any more pain from them.
Adding a leaderboard could make this mode more competing, and drives players to gear up their chars, in order to earn a better place in the leaderboard.
Separate Challenges from Achievement UI
Purposes: - Another PvEvP end game content- Some of the challenges are combat-irrelevant, which means everyone could join in despite their gear level Brief: - Separate challenges from Achievements and put them into a new Challenges interface, and add a leaderboard to it
- At the end of each month, the best 10 players of each class will be awarded with special portrait frames and aura dyes
- Some achievements could be converted to challenges like boss kill achievements (on torment 6; in 2 minutes; don’t get hit by some skills etc.) Requirements Analysis:
Some players bought Diablo 3 just because it is made by BLZ. However some of them were soon disappointed because they don't like farming the same content again and again. It is true: this game may need something else for players to do, not only farming and farming, because it is 2014 now, not 2004. Even though some of those contents should encourage players to farm, but some of those should be played even if a player is not that well geared.
On the other hand, the resource like man-month is very limited for dev team. A “new” content that reuses as much as code as possible, is much better than some brand new content. Challenges are a part of achievement now. Just need a leaderboard added could make some players spend hours in them, happily.
Demons Must Die
Purpose: - Offering players a new way to play Brief: - Inspired by game "Orcs Must Die". Players can build blade traps, explosive barrels and even moonseeds in order to help them to defend waves of attacks- Unlike OMD, all of those traps must be active by hand, not automatically, in case of exploit. And blade traps have cooldown, barrels respawn after each wave
- DMD mode doesn’t reward any gear loot. But it is a faster way to collect gold and experience than adventure mode
- Strength of monsters are dynamically adjusted by players’ gear level (EHP, DPS and Healing) Details: - Traps deal little damage. But they apply effects to monsters, to let players kill them much easier.
For example:
Triple arcane damage taken
Convert chill effects into frozen effects for 15 seconds More details:
When taken fire damage, additional 200% damage will be dealt in 5 seconds
After receive lightning damage, stun for 10 seconds
Slow 90% if taken physical damage
- After killed by monsters 6 times, the game will fail. And rewards will be reduced each sequential failure
Just like challenges, DMD mode is also easy to be made: all of those traps are preset. Just need an interface that allows players to place traps wherever they want, and make those traps click-to-active. Or even simpler, provide different maps instead of traps placing UI.
However, there are too big problem of introduce a new mode to the game.
1. How to make it compatible with existing modes, which means players will play both of them, none of them would be wasted
2. A new game mode, especially like survival mode, could be easily exploited by bots
Both of those problems are very hard to solve. Especially the second one, ‘cause for the first one, by adjusting the reward type of different modes, players will have to play both of them for different types of reward. Or limit players’ access to a certain mode can also solve first problem, just like Nephalem Rifts.
The secret of effective bot farming is camping: the less movement the bot does, the better. And survival mode it just a perfect place for bots: they just need to stand there and kill whatever comes to them.
So that’s why, monsters are dynamically adjusted, so players are impossible to defeat them without the help from traps. And all traps must be active by hand, making movement be required in order to survive. And if the bots dies too many times, it will receive less and less reward.
Demonic Infusion
Purpose: - Another end game content Brief: - Players can get item: [Foul Demonic Crystals] from monsters. They can choose to salvage these into gems, or use them near a normal monster- Upon used, the crystal will shatter and imbue its power to the monster, which will get a special affix, and this monster can level up. Once reached level 10, it guarantee drops a legendary mat or even legendary gear and a lot of gold Examples of this “special affix”: · Greed: This monster automatically picks up gold drops by other monsters, and gains a level for each X piles of gold picked up
· Enrage: Watching another monster killed increases damage and speed for 2 seconds. Gain a level for each X monster killed Other examples:
Renewal: Once killed, revive after 30 seconds and drain every soul of monsters killed nearby. For each X souls drained, gain a level
Possess: Once killed, possess another nearby monster, and gain a level
Devour: Another monster that has 20% or lower health for more than 5 seconds will be devoured. For each X monsters devoured, gains a level
Skill-oriented instead of Luck-oriented
Purposes: - Improve gaming experience- Reduce complains about random or inevitable death that pisses player off Reasons:
- Skill-oriented battle design makes player proud of their increasing skill
- Luck-oriented battle design pisses players off, just like arcane enchanted/frozen+ vortex, old reflect damage/mortar etc. Brief: - A Skill-Oriented affix should contain and only contain 2-3 of following parts:
1. Unavoidable Effect: Like Frozen, it deals unavoidable damage once the ice ball spawns. But it is not deadly. The purpose of Unavoidableis to make players balance between EHP/Healing and DPS
2.Deadly but AvoidableEffect: Like frozen effect of Frozen. Once applied, it can put player into a very dangerous situation.
3. Rewarding Effects: If players didn't get frozen by any ice balls, those ice balls will frozen/slow enemies. This kind of effect is to reward players for their skill and give them sense of accomplishment. Also, it "increases" farming difficulty of bots because it is hard for them to get rewarding effects.
Details: - Vortex:Spawn a big cycle of wind under a player’s feet and deal damage to him. If he chooses to run out of the cycle, he will be pulled to caster’s location. Otherwise the cyclone will disappear after 2 seconds.
Shielding:Damage taken will be doubled in 4 secsafter the shield expires.
Lightning Storm: Decrease the damage of first strike, and the damage will be increase with each sequential strike until player moves for at least 5 yards.
Jailer:Increase damage dealt while being jailed by 300%
Fast: No longer a passive effect, it increases monsters’ attack speed, movement speed, as well as damage taken by 60% for 4 seconds when active.
Nightmarish:Players will always run to the opposite side of their mouse-over directions. Their damage taken will be reduced by 50% in 3 seconds after being feared.
Extra Health: Also increase gold dropped by this monster. The faster they die, the more gold will be dropped.
Desecrator:Damage will increase the longer player stand on it. Increase damage dealt by players who stand on it by 100%
Mortar:When killed, deal a huge amount of damage to nearby monsters.
Electrified:Taken damage from electrified monsters increase attack and movement speed and electrical damage taken by 10%, up to 10 stacks.
Plagued:If nothing is standing in plagued pools, monster will be slowed by 30%
This part could be longer than a paper; I hope this image could help to understand:
Most of famous ACT games, for example Devil May Cry, even at the highest difficulty, if the players if well trained, he can still defeat it without taken any damage, which means no random damage, no random death, and even no inevitable damage.
Why? Because that’s the essence of a successful ACT game: players receive as much as happiness as how they are skilled, which means more practice, more happiness. In other word, happiness is a somehow.
However to Diablo, making some damage unavoidable is necessary in order to encourage player to get some EHP and Healing. But decisive damage must be avoidable, not only to provide guaranteed sense of accomplishment, but also avoid pissing players off, just like arcane enchanted + vortex or old damage reflect did.
Waking Powers
Purposes: - Giving player a better first impression instead of “I became weaker after 2.0”- Giving player more driving force to level up Brief: - For every X paragon level a player gains, he will also get one level of a passive skill beside paragon points
- Most of things that was taken away from players, like primary attributes of old paragon system and Nephalem Valor, will be back as one of those “passive skills”
- Some interesting things that does not booster players’ combat capacity that improves the game experience, could be added into game as one of those skills
- If possible, a skill tree could be better and it could silence more complains Example of the Powers: • Increase player’s movement speed while in town
• You can attack and destroy Treasure Goblin’s portals
• When a legendary item drops (from an enemy), confuse nearby enemies and make them attack each other More examples:
• There is a chance that, after dealt the final blow to a pack of elites of a boss, places player’s banner upon the corpse of enemy and gold rain from sky. (The total amount of gold equals to 20% of the gold dropped by this boss)
• Decrease portal casting time while no enemies around. (Up to instant cast)
• Give you a chance that acquire additional mats when salvage an item
• After killed a pack of elites, reveals the location of nearest elite packs on your area map.
• If you were killed by a pack of elites and after they are dead, there is a chance that a meteor will fall from sky and blow up their corpses, returning repairing fee to you
• When removing a gem, there is a chance you can take your gold back
• Using a shrine of elite restore some durability of your gear
• Sometimes after you killed a monster, its ghost will help you pick up gold for some minutes and increase your Gold Find slightly
• Increase your sight to help you reveal map faster, elites enemies you engaged will be marked on the map
• After engaging a pack of elites, there is a chance that, durations of all shrine effects on you will be frozen until they are killed or disengaged.
Each player has different feeling about 2.0 PTR, but all of them find out that they are weaker than before. It is a bad first expression but easily solved.
Some player feels less driven leveling up because there are less reward, and there is no cap of leveling. More encourage might be needed.
Also, countless players cried for a skill tree, and a skill tree could silence most of them.
Free Upgrades: Standard to deluxe, deluxe to Prime-Evils Pack
Reasons: - A lot of people complain that the expansion is a little bit too expansive.- A lot of people were disappointed by D3V Brief:
- Upgrade current standard edition to deluxe edition, and deluxe edition to Prime-Evils editions for free
- The Prime-Evils contains World of Warcraft heirloom weapons (transmogrify weapons of RoS deluxe edition), Black Soul Stone mineral fields skin, RoS theme card skin etc. Requirements Analysis:
It is true that many players don’t like the price of expansion. The standard solutions are lowering the price or/and compensation. Compared with first one, compensation, with virtual property, may be as good as real property compensation for game players
So the idea of a free upgrade comes out: Compensate players to make them think it is worthy to buy this expansion.
Almost every player who has brought the standard edition knows that there is a more expansive deluxe edition. And what if they know they can get it for free now? They may think it saved them $20!
High Resolution Face Textures
Purpose: - Making this game looks like something released after 2000 instead of before Reasons: - Allowing players to custom their chars benefit a RPG game just like allowing players name their chars, dyeing their gear, transmogrifying their gear. And 1000% better
- When most of online games, especially those made in Korea or Japan, allow players to customize their chars however they like, while Diablo 3, a RPG game made by one of the best companies on the earth, only offering players a bad looking and low resolution face texture.
Miscs
- Completing a bounty increases rewards from bounties of another random acts by 10%, and remove 1 stack of bonus of this act - Allowing players to modify models might be a better idea than offering high resolution textures, just like the Elder Scrolls. - Difficulty settings could not be liner, like easy- normal- hard etc. The difficulty setting design of Meteor: Last Light is very advanced. Player can choose between normal mode and hardcore mode, and each of them has easy to hard settings. So Diablo could also provide players 3 modes like:Serious Nephalem: Very high monster density, lower drop rate, low monster health
Destiny Warrior: Normal monster density, normal drop rate, normal monster health
Humanity Defender: Low density, high drop rate, high monster health
And 6 difficulty choices like torment 1-6. Torment 1 “Serious Nephalem” should be as difficult as torment 1 “Humanity Defender”. So players can use different builds to farm different modes. - Currently, one of the problems that discourage players do public games is that, if they play with some players that has less DPS than them, they may feel that they are carrying but without additional reward.
Unlocking higher public game settings by soloing uber bosses of that difficulty could be a solution - Whatever players complain is whatever they cannot control. Leaving something that system does now to players may solve some of those problems
For example, if players complain the reviving time of followers is too long. You can allow players clicking on followers to revive them (just like reviving players). They may stop complain, because it is their problem now.
Many designs follow this rule, like Runewords vs. random properties, luck-oriented affixes vs. skill-oriented affixes etc. - It is excited to see a lot of gold or some gear dropped by chests or ashes, but it is also easily exploited by bots. One of the solutions is adding invisible buff stacks to players: killing a monster gives player some stacks of this invisible buff, which greatly increases loots from chests etc. Opening chests removes some stacks of this buff. - Adding player rating system may improve environment of public games: If a player gets low ratings from many players in different games. He may not join another public game for some hours. - Adjusting the class balance is like trading with players - Dynamic system could be introduced to balance skills and runes, if a skill or rune is not popular then it will be automatically buffed by up to X%. This buff is determined by players themselves so they cannot complain about it. By Hawke0323 Hawke0323@gmail.com
Very good!
+1