youd just farm gear on your main and offload it to your low level paragon character for easy rankings. and thats a ridiculous system that nobody would want
If I could turn off paragon at 800, I'd still farm for gear. My issue with paragon right now is that if I don't play a spec that is optimized for exp farming, I'm hurting my friends I play with. The difference in gear drops from an extra 10 lvls of GRifts is not that big, but the difference in xp is noticeable.
The general idea is to make diablo 3 endgame and leaderboard competition more attractive for the more casual / non-botter player. As mentioned, the mere time you spend on the game makes your character more powerful, and gives you a tremendous advantage for the leadboard which some consider unfair.
Leaderboards are meant for competition, and competition is often meant to be skill-based (tactical, strategic, execution, ...) rather than time-based. More often than not, however, the amount of time you spend affects your skill, but this is still considered fair.
In diablo 3, time played gives you at least these advantages:
better items
better rift levels (Grift fishing)
improved skill and techniques
more dps/survival from parangon and XP
An ideal competitive system would eliminate all advantages but improved skill and techniques.
Your solution proposes to get rid of the parangon problem (although the same problem still persists, to a lesser extent, within categories). But the remaining problems, which you would not fail to notice and write about once your proposition goes live, still remain.
In short, someone who invests more time in the game will still have an advantage over you, even within the parangon leagues.
There is no way to address in a straightforward manner all the above-mentioned problems. Parangon leagues (or having a separate league with parangon bonus capped at 800) somehow dampen the problem but doesn't solve it by any means.
One idea that has surfaced could be the following:
Similar to the set dungeons idea from Blizzard, seasons could propose a static dungeon withincreased difficulty per dungeon level and "saves" at each level once the previous has been completed. Upon arriving into the dungeon, all items's stats currently worn are standardized to their maximum possible value. Parangon bonus is capped at 800.
Each class will have to figure out how to beat the current level, and leaderboards can keep track of who has advanced the most inside the dungeon, by level, and then % of level completed.
I don't want to diverse into discussing the obvious advantages of this idea (which isn't mine by any means): true, fair competitive setting, increased community activity, almost uniquely skill-based (still need to access the ancient items), more excitment in the game, meaningful in-game goals, leading to better gameplay experience, leading in the community at large better streams, increased popularity of the game, etc...
TL;DR: What you truly want is not to tweak the GRIFT experience to make xp grinding less relevant but to add another game mode that is truly based on skill/strategy/tactics/execution and where time played does not give any advantage at all after a certain point (required to have the proper items). If we had such a mode, chances are that you wouldn't want to make any change on the current GRIFT leaderboard paradigm, as the only leaderboard that would really count would be the skill-based one. Instead of asking for half measure, we should investigate more into the best competitive mode, which the GRIFT can never be.
@OP: Split leaderboards is a valid solution to the paragon problem. It is not my favourite one from all the possible options, but at this point ANY solution implemented by Blizzard would be heavenly manna saving a large number of their player base.
@wiwh: Nice post! I agree with your skill/time analysis and I too have proposed static dungeons before. The two main negative issues with them are: 1) Randomness is a core factor in Diablo and when removed it doesn't feel you are playing Diablo any more 2) Time played would actually give you an advantage if you could re-play the static dungeon.
So another option to eliminate 1) and 2) would be to have a fixed number of "static competitive Greater Rifts" with capped paragon in them. Imagine a stack of 1k GRs. You are given them one by one randomly (your time is tracked) and when you play all 1k you have the total sum up of your time in every one of these (if you disconnect or leave while in the dungeon you are automatically given 20 min as a time). All other competitive players have exactly the same GRs (in different order) and time sum up. Logically the leaderboard winner will be the one with the fastest total time of all 1k GRs.
What the above includes to the game is basically another end-game scenario. The ultimate skill based game of course would be a PvP mode with ladder. But since we don't have neither of these, split leaderboards will be a huge win if implemented.
Make pl higher than xxx ininfluent on chars performance, but reward exp with cosmetic stuff, not stats.
keep a leaderboard just about exp... and another one about grifts, the latter being affected only by build, gear and player's skill(and luck to roll the right mobs/map).
It would save both serial grinders and competitive theorycrafters..without bracketing people.
I made a little test with a point based leaderboard system, which nullifies the advantage of Paragon. You can see the results here (updated an hour ago through the api):
The left column is top 1000 (eu, us, kr/tw, no china) sorted by points. The right column is top 1000 sorted the standard way.
You can see for example players like Njinx, Stahlbürste, vahter, Zaramos jumping a lot in the rankings, as others quite naturally falling down. Gabynator is still #1 lol.
So, this is an alternative leaderboard and I think it offers more balanced rankings. Enjoy!
PS. If there is interest, I'll discuss the points formula (it's specific for every class), as I don't expect to update or further develop this, so if others are interested and want to continue the idea, I'll make a thread for it.
Why cant we have a paragon system that affects skills and not stats?
i agree with you on this one i want that as a reward of my hard work not given to me.
Hi,
Nice post, good to read!
The general idea is to make diablo 3 endgame and leaderboard competition more attractive for the more casual / non-botter player. As mentioned, the mere time you spend on the game makes your character more powerful, and gives you a tremendous advantage for the leadboard which some consider unfair.
Leaderboards are meant for competition, and competition is often meant to be skill-based (tactical, strategic, execution, ...) rather than time-based. More often than not, however, the amount of time you spend affects your skill, but this is still considered fair.
In diablo 3, time played gives you at least these advantages:
An ideal competitive system would eliminate all advantages but improved skill and techniques.
Your solution proposes to get rid of the parangon problem (although the same problem still persists, to a lesser extent, within categories). But the remaining problems, which you would not fail to notice and write about once your proposition goes live, still remain.
In short, someone who invests more time in the game will still have an advantage over you, even within the parangon leagues.
There is no way to address in a straightforward manner all the above-mentioned problems. Parangon leagues (or having a separate league with parangon bonus capped at 800) somehow dampen the problem but doesn't solve it by any means.
One idea that has surfaced could be the following:
Similar to the set dungeons idea from Blizzard, seasons could propose a static dungeon withincreased difficulty per dungeon level and "saves" at each level once the previous has been completed. Upon arriving into the dungeon, all items's stats currently worn are standardized to their maximum possible value. Parangon bonus is capped at 800.
Each class will have to figure out how to beat the current level, and leaderboards can keep track of who has advanced the most inside the dungeon, by level, and then % of level completed.
I don't want to diverse into discussing the obvious advantages of this idea (which isn't mine by any means): true, fair competitive setting, increased community activity, almost uniquely skill-based (still need to access the ancient items), more excitment in the game, meaningful in-game goals, leading to better gameplay experience, leading in the community at large better streams, increased popularity of the game, etc...
TL;DR: What you truly want is not to tweak the GRIFT experience to make xp grinding less relevant but to add another game mode that is truly based on skill/strategy/tactics/execution and where time played does not give any advantage at all after a certain point (required to have the proper items). If we had such a mode, chances are that you wouldn't want to make any change on the current GRIFT leaderboard paradigm, as the only leaderboard that would really count would be the skill-based one. Instead of asking for half measure, we should investigate more into the best competitive mode, which the GRIFT can never be.
@OP: Split leaderboards is a valid solution to the paragon problem. It is not my favourite one from all the possible options, but at this point ANY solution implemented by Blizzard would be heavenly manna saving a large number of their player base.
@wiwh: Nice post! I agree with your skill/time analysis and I too have proposed static dungeons before. The two main negative issues with them are: 1) Randomness is a core factor in Diablo and when removed it doesn't feel you are playing Diablo any more 2) Time played would actually give you an advantage if you could re-play the static dungeon.
So another option to eliminate 1) and 2) would be to have a fixed number of "static competitive Greater Rifts" with capped paragon in them. Imagine a stack of 1k GRs. You are given them one by one randomly (your time is tracked) and when you play all 1k you have the total sum up of your time in every one of these (if you disconnect or leave while in the dungeon you are automatically given 20 min as a time). All other competitive players have exactly the same GRs (in different order) and time sum up. Logically the leaderboard winner will be the one with the fastest total time of all 1k GRs.
What the above includes to the game is basically another end-game scenario. The ultimate skill based game of course would be a PvP mode with ladder. But since we don't have neither of these, split leaderboards will be a huge win if implemented.
Make pl higher than xxx ininfluent on chars performance, but reward exp with cosmetic stuff, not stats.
keep a leaderboard just about exp... and another one about grifts, the latter being affected only by build, gear and player's skill(and luck to roll the right mobs/map).
It would save both serial grinders and competitive theorycrafters..without bracketing people.
--- Kev ---
I made a little test with a point based leaderboard system, which nullifies the advantage of Paragon. You can see the results here (updated an hour ago through the api):
Season 4: Barb, Monk
Era 4: Barb, Monk
The left column is top 1000 (eu, us, kr/tw, no china) sorted by points. The right column is top 1000 sorted the standard way.
You can see for example players like Njinx, Stahlbürste, vahter, Zaramos jumping a lot in the rankings, as others quite naturally falling down. Gabynator is still #1 lol.
So, this is an alternative leaderboard and I think it offers more balanced rankings. Enjoy!
PS. If there is interest, I'll discuss the points formula (it's specific for every class), as I don't expect to update or further develop this, so if others are interested and want to continue the idea, I'll make a thread for it.