So this is a quick thread I wanted to make following the opening panel at Blizzcon. I'm very excited for the necro, and new areas are always welcome. I also hope that this is a sign of a new DLC type system for the Diablo franchise, so it can bring in steady income and thus we can get more and more content.
However, the following is a list of the deep problems myself as well as many others have with the current state of Diablo 3. I'm going to try to make it quick, so if I don't cover something please feel free to add. In only a somewhat particular order, here's my five problems with D3 that, when put together, has caused me to actually contemplate whether I'll really love this game again; (I know I know, dramatic, but still).
1. Paragon
A great idea of a system, it unfortunately fell to all the early changes in the game, and couldn't keep up. Originally meant to be an extra reward for slaying monsters and not getting loot, it's character specific leveling and the fact that it granted Magic Find meant no one wanted to play any alts. Fast forward to Paragon now being account wide and near infinite. Magic Find is gone, and drops dramatically increased. Alas, Paragon still rewards power, but instead of increased drops it now gives the player direct stat upgrades, and there's no cap. There's MANY ways to change paragon, and in the end the power needs a cap somewhere, or it should be completely removed. My ideal situation is that past a certain level, the only rewards are cosmetic. And instead of just filling every available stat upgrade, you only get a certain amount of points to distribute, IE a skill tree but for stats. However it's done, it needs fixing.
2. Greater Rifts
A good addition to the game, greater rifts present the end game for D3, it's what you strive for. However, the biggest problem with them (and there's many little ones), is that they are infinite. Their difficulty has no cap (see a theme?). Why is that a problem? Because that system inherently goes AGAINST classes having multiple builds and options. It doesn't matter that one build is only a little bit behind in damage and survivability, because the very nature of infinite rifts is that they shave off every build but the most optimal. Greater Rifts need a cap as well, a very difficult to achieve BUT obtainable cap. Why? Because if I can clear the hardest level with a build I like AND the most 'optimal' build, then I'll play the one I like, even if it's slightly slower, because I've reached the 'end game'.
3. Sets
At launch, sets were trash. Most likely due to Blizzard not wanting them to be overpowered, which makes sense. However, instead of slowly moving the pendulum in the direction of making them more competitive, that thing was drop kicked through the other side of the grandfather clock. Now, sets are absolutely mandatory to even touch the end game of Diablo. Not only do they take up half your equipment slots, locking you out of all the other fun and interesting stand alone legendaries, they also lock you IN to very specific skills. Man, it's fun to have your generator tickle for 50m, and your spender crit for a Trillion. Sets need to be dialed back, optional. No more of this 'increase your damage with a couple skills by 4,000%'. And while the legacy of nightmares ring set has good intentions, it's again another SET of items mandatory for players.
4. Loot
Loot! The friggin focus of the game since D1! Sure there's small groups of people who would argue that they liked other aspects more, but would you really have liked PVP in D2 if there wasn't any loot? D3 doesn't seem to share the same opinion however, considering just how easy it to to get every item in the game, within DAYS of a season starting. Between multiple legendary drops per Greater Rift, gambling, a free set every season, and targeted legendaries via rare upgrading, there might as well be a loot vendor in town. The focus instead has shifted to just XP farming for paragon, and maybe hoping for another ancient version of an item you've already got three of, with 1% more crit.
The original vision for loot is what I personally think we need to go back to (after it was buffed even); About a legendary or two an hour. It should actually be somewhat rare to get them. Now I know the reaction to that; most are crap so that would suck. Right, they're crap when compared to the one that increases a single skills damage by 400%. All that insane damage increase needs to be toned down a TON.
And speaking of loot, we desperately need something to lust after, something to hope to drop, besides just weapons and armor. Rare Runes, Charms and Jewels would be very welcome. I'd also personally go as far as to remove the leveling mechanic on legendary gems (again, at least add a cap), and just friggin call em jewels.
5. Player interaction, and the catch-all category
Okay so yea this last bit has a few things in it, but they are all pretty important in my opinion. I'll just write maybe a sentence or two about each.
A. Custom games.
That games list from D2 was genius. No matter how many filters and options you want to try to put into D3's random queue public game system, nothing beats being able to make your own game, give it a title and some options. This is something I'd love to see a return on.
B. Difficulties.
Holly hell we don't need 17 + difficulties! A normal / NM / hell while leveling / getting the first bit of gear for your fresh max level would do wonders, with a final, kick-your-ass Inferno mode to top it off. You'd still have a range of Greater Rifts, but like I wrote above they'd have a cap.
C. Trading.
Lets say by some miracle that everything written was implemented. Then there'd be no reason not to re-introduce trading. With all the new items that can drop (charms / jewels / runes) as well as the lowered drop rate, there might actually be an in-game economy.
D. PVP.
Not last because I hate it, but because it's actually kind of simple. Just put back in the hostile system from Diablo 2. The creator of the game can choose whether people can hostile one another, and bam, that's that.
Alright, so, giant wall of text. Also what I listed would definitely require a LOT of work. But, hey, if I was making the next expansion, this would be the vision. Thoughts?
A new franchise or D4. Fixing D3 would be more work than starting fresh.
Only comment I can offer is add PvP with player damage reduction by 95% and add ladders based on specific abilities not classes (would see more variety of builds trying to push their limit).
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Playing Diablo since 97. I know nothing and having nothing good to say, I be a troll.
A new franchise or D4. Fixing D3 would be more work than starting fresh.
Only comment I can offer is add PvP with player damage reduction by 95% and add ladders based on specific abilities not classes (would see more variety of builds trying to push their limit).
Well that's the argument though, isn't it? Do you build a brand new game from the ground up, which will take years upon years with all new art and assets, or do you fix what is essentially a working game?
I'd like to rather see a fix to the current D3. Unless they go into an MMO or other type of genre with Diablo, there's no reason to start over again.
Sounds like you want the return of D3 vanilla. No, really. Far in between legendaries, no absurd paragon leveling system, sets not mandatory, fewer difficulties etc.
Basically D3 vanilla + a few RoS features.
I think the early RoS loot was fine. Very rare items like Furnace and Star Metal Kukri, but items that were actually fun and useful instead of legendaries in Vanilla, where a big find might be Mempo, or you'd get a legendary bow that rolled strength or some other crap.
Sounds like you want the return of D3 vanilla. No, really. Far in between legendaries, no absurd paragon leveling system, sets not mandatory, fewer difficulties etc.
Basically D3 vanilla + a few RoS features.
If you want to put it that way, sure.
I'd like to think of it more like Current RoS, with it's core features tweaked. Rarer loot, capped power in GR's, Sets and items and Paragon. Then build off of that with new items to find (runes / charms / jewels ect.), adding in custom games / pvp / and trading. I give reasons for these in my OP, but that's the quick TLDR.
This is just a horrendous set of ideas. You want the game's scalability removed, and it returned to the D3 vanilla slog fest. Almost reminiscent of someone who wants New York City "dirty and original" like it was in the 1980's again. No thanks, and lets dial back on the "MUST HAVE CHANGES." Its your opinion, and its not a panic. We are getting an expansion, things are looking good.
This is just a horrendous set of ideas. You want the game's scalability removed, and it returned to the D3 vanilla slog fest. Almost reminiscent of someone who wants New York City "dirty and original" like it was in the 1980's again. No thanks, and lets dial back on the "MUST HAVE CHANGES." Its your opinion, and its not a panic. We are getting an expansion, things are looking good.
While you don't have to like my ideas, I do feel the need to point out that we aren't getting an expansion. If we were they would have saved the necro, which won't come out for close to a year, for it.
And the whole point of my thread is that even with a new class, nothing is actually being fixed, let alone addressed. If you're perfectly fine with the state of the game that's cool, but I had to at least write out the problems I personally see as the core issues that continue to dissolve this game.
Also, lastly, the title is MY top 5 changes. So if that bothers you I don't know what to tell ya.
But what is there to actually fix? Lets really break down the complaining.
1. PARAGON IS UNFAIR!!!! Um...no. You do not NEED to grind to Paragon 2000. You only "need" to if you want to be a leaderboard player, but that requires dedication. If you do not want to (as I do not) that is fine, but do not demand that a hard cap limit others that do. Paragon and its incremental improvements are important. Would I rather that there be something more interesting than just primary stat buffing after 800? Yes. Would I rather that, generally, stacking primary stat (while avoiding it on your amulet in exchange for elemental damage) not be the final frontier? Sure. But not optimal and broken are different.
2. TOO MANY ITEMS DROP!!!! Again, inaccurate. High drops allow players to easily build the big 3-5 builds per class, but the ancient item sub-class than adds a perfect extra tier. This way, decent players can have nice things (unlike Runewords in D2, where a casual was stuck using Ethereal Edge while a pro was dancing around with a Breath of the Dying ethereal Thunder Maul), but high-end players can perfect those items and hit another few levels.
3. SETS ARE CONSTRICTING: Do you remember when sets were just more primary stats as a bonus? Sets allow you to have a variety of builds. Lets say instead of sets, there were clear sets of items usable for each skill combination. So instead of Unhallowed Set + Yang's Recurve + Dead Man's Legacy, you would have YR + DML + 6 other Multishot items. Same result.
I am sorry to bring politics into this, but you sound like a Bernie type of guy. "THEY PLAY AT A HIGHER LEVEL AND I JUST WANT TO BE CASUAL, SO MAKE EVERYONE BE AS CASUAL AS ME!!!!" I call BS. If you do not want to play the set that gets you GR100, but only the one that does GR80, that does not mean that GR80 should be the cap to protect your feelings. Part of having choice is accepting the consequences and responsibilities of that choice. The game you want would exist if Calvin and Hobbes (the theologian and political scientist, not the kid and tiger) made a game.
And I consider this sort of DCL as a borderline expansion.
Well that's the argument though, isn't it? Do you build a brand new game from the ground up, which will take years upon years with all new art and assets, or do you fix what is essentially a working game?
I'd like to rather see a fix to the current D3. Unless they go into an MMO or other type of genre with Diablo, there's no reason to start over again.
I'm happy where this game has gone since vanilla, but in its current state this game isn't fun playing for more than a week. Addressing some of the core issues of the game would cause a long overhaul of re-balancing, it took them a few seasons just to somewhat balance LoN and basically all it did was create massive power creep.
There is a simple life-cycle of a game, the longer it is played, the quicker I get bored of it when I come back to it. If they re-hauled the game I'd be happy, but would likely just stop playing again after a couple of months. I rather have something new and shiny to eventually get burnt out on. for example I played wow a fair bit, but in the end I was playing the "same game" with new content that dumbed down all theory crafting and uniqueness. It eventually got to the point I bought and expansion and quit after two months because I seen most of the content and grinding the same game play I've done for years just gets stale. I haven't gone back in years and refuse to do so unless its F2P (which will never happen).
The reason I made my two suggestions is it would be very easy and rejuvenate the D3 community somewhat. All D2 had was player damage reduction and it was policed and run by the community. It kept D2 going a lot longer than seasons did and it made other pieces of loot more intriguing. far as my suggestion for ladders, seeing the same old cookie cutter builds gets old. I know my suggestion would lead to the same situation, but wouldn't it be fun seeing a WD toad build and how far you could push it and get recognised?
I enjoyed D3 and definitely got my entertainment value. I expect this game to go maintenance mode two seasons ago and now it just finally went maintenance. I've since switched to a few other games and are enjoying those thoroughly. When D3 finally gets some updates I'll be like most others probably play for awhile again before burning out. It's the nature of this series, it doesn't cost you to leave the game, you can always come back and enjoy any additional features.
TL;DR
It's been a good ride. Waiting for the new shiny, until then I'll enjoy Grim Dawn for my Diablo needs.
I like where D3 is at now and I know I'm in a tiny minority.. maybe 5% if that. I like where paragon's at, although paragon does feel like it relates more to power than gear at time. Maybe there is a positive correlation between the two.
4, The loot before wasn't balanced. People getting 10-20 legendaries per hour by certain farming routes compared to others getting 1, maybe 2 an hour. IT wasn't even necessarily based on who had the best MF gear even. I would rather see more legendaries/set pieces drop than less; however, I do think they have it right at the moment. You really need to spend a lot of time getting the right pieces of gear that let you run through Torment 10 or higher quickly. At 30+ hours in this season, I'm not there yet (mostly due to time I'm able to play but still).
Other notes about your points- THEY WONT ADD A TRADING SYSTEM EVER! - Why? Don't you remember the ebay/bots farming for gear since they could sell it online for money? This is why they started with the AH- figuring people could only trade through their system and they'd get a cut. Well I'm guessing they found out some people were making plenty- enough to have a tax form to fill out from the money they were making. Now Blizz didn't cut out AH because other people were making money.. that'd be dumb; they did run into bugs that were ruining the system- a bug that would post your auction incorrectly and if you cancelled it, it somehow gave you way more money back (erroneously). Bugs like this plagued the auction house at time and it was down quite often... because of this they dropped it from the game and made most items that are worthwhile soulbound (aside from group members now). They won't bring trading back because then people are going back to amazon and ebay to sell digital goods. (also being able to sell digital goods like that ends in people trying to hack other accounts- See WoW).
TLDR: Some of your ideas couldn't ever happen: Trade, loot balancing. PAragon balancing is a good idea- it was a great idea at first but after ROS, things didn't quite get back to how it was before), I do think PVP could be added back and custom games- they made this online game a lot less about playing with random diablo players as they made about- play with your friends or clan only.
I like where D3 is at now and I know I'm in a tiny minority.. maybe 5% if that. I like where paragon's at, although paragon does feel like it relates more to power than gear at time. Maybe there is a positive correlation between the two.
4, The loot before wasn't balanced. People getting 10-20 legendaries per hour by certain farming routes compared to others getting 1, maybe 2 an hour. IT wasn't even necessarily based on who had the best MF gear even. I would rather see more legendaries/set pieces drop than less; however, I do think they have it right at the moment. You really need to spend a lot of time getting the right pieces of gear that let you run through Torment 10 or higher quickly. At 30+ hours in this season, I'm not there yet (mostly due to time I'm able to play but still).
Other notes about your points- THEY WONT ADD A TRADING SYSTEM EVER! - Why? Don't you remember the ebay/bots farming for gear since they could sell it online for money? This is why they started with the AH- figuring people could only trade through their system and they'd get a cut. Well I'm guessing they found out some people were making plenty- enough to have a tax form to fill out from the money they were making. Now Blizz didn't cut out AH because other people were making money.. that'd be dumb; they did run into bugs that were ruining the system- a bug that would post your auction incorrectly and if you cancelled it, it somehow gave you way more money back (erroneously). Bugs like this plagued the auction house at time and it was down quite often... because of this they dropped it from the game and made most items that are worthwhile soulbound (aside from group members now). They won't bring trading back because then people are going back to amazon and ebay to sell digital goods. (also being able to sell digital goods like that ends in people trying to hack other accounts- See WoW).
TLDR: Some of your ideas couldn't ever happen: Trade, loot balancing. PAragon balancing is a good idea- it was a great idea at first but after ROS, things didn't quite get back to how it was before), I do think PVP could be added back and custom games- they made this online game a lot less about playing with random diablo players as they made about- play with your friends or clan only.
That's why I added trading in the last paragraph; something that I think could happen if done very carefully. However, yes that would bring in a whole new slew of problems, and my feelings aren't going to be hurt if it never makes it back in.
On the topic of loot, it boils down to personal preference. I'd personally rather see less items dropping, and the more rare / powerful ones actually be rare again. I feel that having the loot hunt turned into 'find all items multiple times, and instead hope they have higher stats' isn't near as fun as 'oh man how awesome would it be to have X drop!'. Again, personal preference.
Well that's the argument though, isn't it? Do you build a brand new game from the ground up, which will take years upon years with all new art and assets, or do you fix what is essentially a working game?
I'd like to rather see a fix to the current D3. Unless they go into an MMO or other type of genre with Diablo, there's no reason to start over again.
I'm happy where this game has gone since vanilla, but in its current state this game isn't fun playing for more than a week. Addressing some of the core issues of the game would cause a long overhaul of re-balancing, it took them a few seasons just to somewhat balance LoN and basically all it did was create massive power creep.
There is a simple life-cycle of a game, the longer it is played, the quicker I get bored of it when I come back to it. If they re-hauled the game I'd be happy, but would likely just stop playing again after a couple of months. I rather have something new and shiny to eventually get burnt out on. for example I played wow a fair bit, but in the end I was playing the "same game" with new content that dumbed down all theory crafting and uniqueness. It eventually got to the point I bought and expansion and quit after two months because I seen most of the content and grinding the same game play I've done for years just gets stale. I haven't gone back in years and refuse to do so unless its F2P (which will never happen).
The reason I made my two suggestions is it would be very easy and rejuvenate the D3 community somewhat. All D2 had was player damage reduction and it was policed and run by the community. It kept D2 going a lot longer than seasons did and it made other pieces of loot more intriguing. far as my suggestion for ladders, seeing the same old cookie cutter builds gets old. I know my suggestion would lead to the same situation, but wouldn't it be fun seeing a WD toad build and how far you could push it and get recognised?
I enjoyed D3 and definitely got my entertainment value. I expect this game to go maintenance mode two seasons ago and now it just finally went maintenance. I've since switched to a few other games and are enjoying those thoroughly. When D3 finally gets some updates I'll be like most others probably play for awhile again before burning out. It's the nature of this series, it doesn't cost you to leave the game, you can always come back and enjoy any additional features.
TL;DR
It's been a good ride. Waiting for the new shiny, until then I'll enjoy Grim Dawn for my Diablo needs.
When I made this list of what I'd like to see fixed, it was with the assumption that there's be whole new expansions. I agree that even if they overhauled some of the systems, the game would burn out again for lots of people because lack of new content, IE whole new acts.
Side note; just started playing Grim Dawn last night. That game runs SUPER smooth and looks really good on my 21:9, 3k monitor. I might actually get into it.
ok, to start this off I'm a pretty casual player. I play around 50-100h each season, which is a month or so of gameplay before I move on and play other games for a bit until next season arrives or there are something fun to try on PTR. I mostly play solo or with a smaller bunch of friends. I've only reached as "high" as GR76, which i'm fine with since i'm not an competitive player. I only compete with myself and try to reach further each season.
When it comes to your suggested changes I do see why you might want them, and they are stuff that often comes up on the forums and so. But as a pretty casual player I can't say I myself find them that necessary and to be the right for the game and the majority of players (not the majority of the forum users).
1. Paragon
Here I can agree to a certain points. Paragon could be more then just a main stat grind, and the idea of it being tied to skills actually sounds like something interesting. I can also understand why blizz implemented paragon as it is, to make sure that we're always rewarded and gain something out of our time playing when we're unlucky.
2. Greater Rifts
I find it a good thing that the GR is infinite, since it means that there is always something really challenging to do. Sure most of the time we'll hit a "brick wall" where we either need to get lucky or upgrade our gear a bit more. But that is a part of the game, upgrading your character in every way possible. If they would set a limit to GR ppl would still use the "best" build, since it could do it the fastest and be most optimal, that just how it works when ppl are competitive. You say that you want a cap 2 be able to use every build and still do the max difficulty. Most sets don't actually have that huge difference in what they can clear anymore, at least long from how they used to be, and blizz is sure to make changes to try balance them if needed in the future. If you don't care about competition, you can use any set you want and still be able to play at the "end game", since the end game is not the highest GR anyone do the season, the "end game" is in a way right now the whole game. Mostly thanks to the leveling process being as fast as it is.
3. Sets
I think it already said exactly my thought on this somewhere else in the comments, but the thing with sets is that if we remove the color on them and instead look at them as legendaries with powers. Then they are no different from a LoN build without the ring set. A set is just a couple of items that together make some skills viable, just like the random legs also do. And if we didn't have sets, you would still need a certain "set" of items to complete your build. Unless every item just had pure (boring) stats.
4. Loot
I might not be the best to have an opinion on this, since I never played D2, and really didn't like the loot system in D3 vanilla. Sure we get a lot of gear super fast, and there is a lot of ways to get gear (some to get specific gear even faster with cube). But the thing is that the system is made to suit as many as possible. If you like playing the game casually then you are still able to get decent gear in a timely manner. And if you are the person who play a lot you have ancient items to farm after. I see the comment a lot about how D2 had a much better system loot system since it took longer to get gear, while it being true at what rate you might get gear, the point still stands that when you had gear there was 1 thing to do, farm for that 1% better item. It don't matter if there drops a lot of items or not, if we have ancient items or not. In the end we'll all just farm for that 1% better item in both games. That's just how ARPGs work.
But i'm not just gonna defend the loot system and say it's perfect, don't get me wrong, I would love to see more rare items (that is randomly dropped. not like the super rare cosmetic items *cough* cosmic wings *cough* that drops from rare mobs). What these items could be I'm not sure of, but something that's not necessary, but makes some power changes to your character and is rare enough to get you hyped when you see it drop.
5. The rest...
A) Custom games
I don't really see a big point having this when we have communities for all different purposes. Public games is and should be fast to enter if you just want to play together with other ppl and not needing to go through a long list of games named in all strange ways.
B)Difficulties
While I think there might be a bit to much difficulties now since they've added t11+, I don't really see a problem with having them. There is no one forcing you to use them, and some ppl rather play a slower pace game then super fast. That is the reason some wanted higher torment lvls. The thing I like with them adding difficulties is that the ubers could still feel like a challenge. But this could be fixed with having the old man outside the door change the difficulty of the ubers with gr lvl scaling.
C) Trading
No matter how I look at trading I just keep thinking of how the old d3 system worked and how much I disliked that. I only find more problems arise with trading being possible. And in a way I use my own economy system in d3. I find myself often running out of blue and white materials, and instead of doing boring runs for them specifically, I do different kind of boosting (1-70, gear...) and in return I get a bunch of materials I need while still getting chance for regular loot. So there is different ways of looking at it I guess.
D) PvP
Not a big fan of PvP myslef, so I totally see what you mean here. When it comes to the hostile system in D2 (since I never played D2 I can only speak from what I've heard) do it sound pretty stupid to be honest. A way to kill people anywhere for me has no point, and is not what Diablo is about. It is as you said earlier about loot, and more loot!
So this is my two cents about these topics. And while I think I might be a minority on the forums. I think that there is a lot of players that can agree with me on some of these. And sorry for the long post, I guess I just needed to wright my thoughts after reading way to many posts about all the bad things about D3. Lastly I do want to give kudos to you for actually giving some constructive criticism and ideas. Not only saying "D3 sux! it's dead and no one plays it LUL". So big + for that (y)!
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So this is a quick thread I wanted to make following the opening panel at Blizzcon. I'm very excited for the necro, and new areas are always welcome. I also hope that this is a sign of a new DLC type system for the Diablo franchise, so it can bring in steady income and thus we can get more and more content.
However, the following is a list of the deep problems myself as well as many others have with the current state of Diablo 3. I'm going to try to make it quick, so if I don't cover something please feel free to add. In only a somewhat particular order, here's my five problems with D3 that, when put together, has caused me to actually contemplate whether I'll really love this game again; (I know I know, dramatic, but still).
1. Paragon
A great idea of a system, it unfortunately fell to all the early changes in the game, and couldn't keep up. Originally meant to be an extra reward for slaying monsters and not getting loot, it's character specific leveling and the fact that it granted Magic Find meant no one wanted to play any alts. Fast forward to Paragon now being account wide and near infinite. Magic Find is gone, and drops dramatically increased. Alas, Paragon still rewards power, but instead of increased drops it now gives the player direct stat upgrades, and there's no cap. There's MANY ways to change paragon, and in the end the power needs a cap somewhere, or it should be completely removed. My ideal situation is that past a certain level, the only rewards are cosmetic. And instead of just filling every available stat upgrade, you only get a certain amount of points to distribute, IE a skill tree but for stats. However it's done, it needs fixing.
2. Greater Rifts
A good addition to the game, greater rifts present the end game for D3, it's what you strive for. However, the biggest problem with them (and there's many little ones), is that they are infinite. Their difficulty has no cap (see a theme?). Why is that a problem? Because that system inherently goes AGAINST classes having multiple builds and options. It doesn't matter that one build is only a little bit behind in damage and survivability, because the very nature of infinite rifts is that they shave off every build but the most optimal. Greater Rifts need a cap as well, a very difficult to achieve BUT obtainable cap. Why? Because if I can clear the hardest level with a build I like AND the most 'optimal' build, then I'll play the one I like, even if it's slightly slower, because I've reached the 'end game'.
3. Sets
At launch, sets were trash. Most likely due to Blizzard not wanting them to be overpowered, which makes sense. However, instead of slowly moving the pendulum in the direction of making them more competitive, that thing was drop kicked through the other side of the grandfather clock. Now, sets are absolutely mandatory to even touch the end game of Diablo. Not only do they take up half your equipment slots, locking you out of all the other fun and interesting stand alone legendaries, they also lock you IN to very specific skills. Man, it's fun to have your generator tickle for 50m, and your spender crit for a Trillion. Sets need to be dialed back, optional. No more of this 'increase your damage with a couple skills by 4,000%'. And while the legacy of nightmares ring set has good intentions, it's again another SET of items mandatory for players.
4. Loot
Loot! The friggin focus of the game since D1! Sure there's small groups of people who would argue that they liked other aspects more, but would you really have liked PVP in D2 if there wasn't any loot? D3 doesn't seem to share the same opinion however, considering just how easy it to to get every item in the game, within DAYS of a season starting. Between multiple legendary drops per Greater Rift, gambling, a free set every season, and targeted legendaries via rare upgrading, there might as well be a loot vendor in town. The focus instead has shifted to just XP farming for paragon, and maybe hoping for another ancient version of an item you've already got three of, with 1% more crit.
The original vision for loot is what I personally think we need to go back to (after it was buffed even); About a legendary or two an hour. It should actually be somewhat rare to get them. Now I know the reaction to that; most are crap so that would suck. Right, they're crap when compared to the one that increases a single skills damage by 400%. All that insane damage increase needs to be toned down a TON.
And speaking of loot, we desperately need something to lust after, something to hope to drop, besides just weapons and armor. Rare Runes, Charms and Jewels would be very welcome. I'd also personally go as far as to remove the leveling mechanic on legendary gems (again, at least add a cap), and just friggin call em jewels.
5. Player interaction, and the catch-all category
Okay so yea this last bit has a few things in it, but they are all pretty important in my opinion. I'll just write maybe a sentence or two about each.
A. Custom games.
That games list from D2 was genius. No matter how many filters and options you want to try to put into D3's random queue public game system, nothing beats being able to make your own game, give it a title and some options. This is something I'd love to see a return on.
B. Difficulties.
Holly hell we don't need 17 + difficulties! A normal / NM / hell while leveling / getting the first bit of gear for your fresh max level would do wonders, with a final, kick-your-ass Inferno mode to top it off. You'd still have a range of Greater Rifts, but like I wrote above they'd have a cap.
C. Trading.
Lets say by some miracle that everything written was implemented. Then there'd be no reason not to re-introduce trading. With all the new items that can drop (charms / jewels / runes) as well as the lowered drop rate, there might actually be an in-game economy.
D. PVP.
Not last because I hate it, but because it's actually kind of simple. Just put back in the hostile system from Diablo 2. The creator of the game can choose whether people can hostile one another, and bam, that's that.
Alright, so, giant wall of text. Also what I listed would definitely require a LOT of work. But, hey, if I was making the next expansion, this would be the vision. Thoughts?
A new franchise or D4. Fixing D3 would be more work than starting fresh.
Only comment I can offer is add PvP with player damage reduction by 95% and add ladders based on specific abilities not classes (would see more variety of builds trying to push their limit).
I'd like to rather see a fix to the current D3. Unless they go into an MMO or other type of genre with Diablo, there's no reason to start over again.
I'd like to think of it more like Current RoS, with it's core features tweaked. Rarer loot, capped power in GR's, Sets and items and Paragon. Then build off of that with new items to find (runes / charms / jewels ect.), adding in custom games / pvp / and trading. I give reasons for these in my OP, but that's the quick TLDR.
This is just a horrendous set of ideas. You want the game's scalability removed, and it returned to the D3 vanilla slog fest. Almost reminiscent of someone who wants New York City "dirty and original" like it was in the 1980's again. No thanks, and lets dial back on the "MUST HAVE CHANGES." Its your opinion, and its not a panic. We are getting an expansion, things are looking good.
we arent getting an expansion, were getting a necromancer. unless they announced a new act and i missed it.
And the whole point of my thread is that even with a new class, nothing is actually being fixed, let alone addressed. If you're perfectly fine with the state of the game that's cool, but I had to at least write out the problems I personally see as the core issues that continue to dissolve this game.
Also, lastly, the title is MY top 5 changes. So if that bothers you I don't know what to tell ya.
But what is there to actually fix? Lets really break down the complaining.
1. PARAGON IS UNFAIR!!!! Um...no. You do not NEED to grind to Paragon 2000. You only "need" to if you want to be a leaderboard player, but that requires dedication. If you do not want to (as I do not) that is fine, but do not demand that a hard cap limit others that do. Paragon and its incremental improvements are important. Would I rather that there be something more interesting than just primary stat buffing after 800? Yes. Would I rather that, generally, stacking primary stat (while avoiding it on your amulet in exchange for elemental damage) not be the final frontier? Sure. But not optimal and broken are different.
2. TOO MANY ITEMS DROP!!!! Again, inaccurate. High drops allow players to easily build the big 3-5 builds per class, but the ancient item sub-class than adds a perfect extra tier. This way, decent players can have nice things (unlike Runewords in D2, where a casual was stuck using Ethereal Edge while a pro was dancing around with a Breath of the Dying ethereal Thunder Maul), but high-end players can perfect those items and hit another few levels.
3. SETS ARE CONSTRICTING: Do you remember when sets were just more primary stats as a bonus? Sets allow you to have a variety of builds. Lets say instead of sets, there were clear sets of items usable for each skill combination. So instead of Unhallowed Set + Yang's Recurve + Dead Man's Legacy, you would have YR + DML + 6 other Multishot items. Same result.
I am sorry to bring politics into this, but you sound like a Bernie type of guy. "THEY PLAY AT A HIGHER LEVEL AND I JUST WANT TO BE CASUAL, SO MAKE EVERYONE BE AS CASUAL AS ME!!!!" I call BS. If you do not want to play the set that gets you GR100, but only the one that does GR80, that does not mean that GR80 should be the cap to protect your feelings. Part of having choice is accepting the consequences and responsibilities of that choice. The game you want would exist if Calvin and Hobbes (the theologian and political scientist, not the kid and tiger) made a game.
And I consider this sort of DCL as a borderline expansion.
I'm happy where this game has gone since vanilla, but in its current state this game isn't fun playing for more than a week. Addressing some of the core issues of the game would cause a long overhaul of re-balancing, it took them a few seasons just to somewhat balance LoN and basically all it did was create massive power creep.
There is a simple life-cycle of a game, the longer it is played, the quicker I get bored of it when I come back to it. If they re-hauled the game I'd be happy, but would likely just stop playing again after a couple of months. I rather have something new and shiny to eventually get burnt out on. for example I played wow a fair bit, but in the end I was playing the "same game" with new content that dumbed down all theory crafting and uniqueness. It eventually got to the point I bought and expansion and quit after two months because I seen most of the content and grinding the same game play I've done for years just gets stale. I haven't gone back in years and refuse to do so unless its F2P (which will never happen).
The reason I made my two suggestions is it would be very easy and rejuvenate the D3 community somewhat. All D2 had was player damage reduction and it was policed and run by the community. It kept D2 going a lot longer than seasons did and it made other pieces of loot more intriguing. far as my suggestion for ladders, seeing the same old cookie cutter builds gets old. I know my suggestion would lead to the same situation, but wouldn't it be fun seeing a WD toad build and how far you could push it and get recognised?
I enjoyed D3 and definitely got my entertainment value. I expect this game to go maintenance mode two seasons ago and now it just finally went maintenance. I've since switched to a few other games and are enjoying those thoroughly. When D3 finally gets some updates I'll be like most others probably play for awhile again before burning out. It's the nature of this series, it doesn't cost you to leave the game, you can always come back and enjoy any additional features.
TL;DR
It's been a good ride. Waiting for the new shiny, until then I'll enjoy Grim Dawn for my Diablo needs.
I like where D3 is at now and I know I'm in a tiny minority.. maybe 5% if that. I like where paragon's at, although paragon does feel like it relates more to power than gear at time. Maybe there is a positive correlation between the two.
4, The loot before wasn't balanced. People getting 10-20 legendaries per hour by certain farming routes compared to others getting 1, maybe 2 an hour. IT wasn't even necessarily based on who had the best MF gear even. I would rather see more legendaries/set pieces drop than less; however, I do think they have it right at the moment. You really need to spend a lot of time getting the right pieces of gear that let you run through Torment 10 or higher quickly. At 30+ hours in this season, I'm not there yet (mostly due to time I'm able to play but still).
Other notes about your points- THEY WONT ADD A TRADING SYSTEM EVER! - Why? Don't you remember the ebay/bots farming for gear since they could sell it online for money? This is why they started with the AH- figuring people could only trade through their system and they'd get a cut. Well I'm guessing they found out some people were making plenty- enough to have a tax form to fill out from the money they were making. Now Blizz didn't cut out AH because other people were making money.. that'd be dumb; they did run into bugs that were ruining the system- a bug that would post your auction incorrectly and if you cancelled it, it somehow gave you way more money back (erroneously). Bugs like this plagued the auction house at time and it was down quite often... because of this they dropped it from the game and made most items that are worthwhile soulbound (aside from group members now). They won't bring trading back because then people are going back to amazon and ebay to sell digital goods. (also being able to sell digital goods like that ends in people trying to hack other accounts- See WoW).
TLDR: Some of your ideas couldn't ever happen: Trade, loot balancing. PAragon balancing is a good idea- it was a great idea at first but after ROS, things didn't quite get back to how it was before), I do think PVP could be added back and custom games- they made this online game a lot less about playing with random diablo players as they made about- play with your friends or clan only.
On the topic of loot, it boils down to personal preference. I'd personally rather see less items dropping, and the more rare / powerful ones actually be rare again. I feel that having the loot hunt turned into 'find all items multiple times, and instead hope they have higher stats' isn't near as fun as 'oh man how awesome would it be to have X drop!'. Again, personal preference.
Side note; just started playing Grim Dawn last night. That game runs SUPER smooth and looks really good on my 21:9, 3k monitor. I might actually get into it.
ok, to start this off I'm a pretty casual player. I play around 50-100h each season, which is a month or so of gameplay before I move on and play other games for a bit until next season arrives or there are something fun to try on PTR. I mostly play solo or with a smaller bunch of friends. I've only reached as "high" as GR76, which i'm fine with since i'm not an competitive player. I only compete with myself and try to reach further each season.
When it comes to your suggested changes I do see why you might want them, and they are stuff that often comes up on the forums and so. But as a pretty casual player I can't say I myself find them that necessary and to be the right for the game and the majority of players (not the majority of the forum users).
1. Paragon
Here I can agree to a certain points. Paragon could be more then just a main stat grind, and the idea of it being tied to skills actually sounds like something interesting. I can also understand why blizz implemented paragon as it is, to make sure that we're always rewarded and gain something out of our time playing when we're unlucky.
2. Greater Rifts
I find it a good thing that the GR is infinite, since it means that there is always something really challenging to do. Sure most of the time we'll hit a "brick wall" where we either need to get lucky or upgrade our gear a bit more. But that is a part of the game, upgrading your character in every way possible. If they would set a limit to GR ppl would still use the "best" build, since it could do it the fastest and be most optimal, that just how it works when ppl are competitive. You say that you want a cap 2 be able to use every build and still do the max difficulty. Most sets don't actually have that huge difference in what they can clear anymore, at least long from how they used to be, and blizz is sure to make changes to try balance them if needed in the future. If you don't care about competition, you can use any set you want and still be able to play at the "end game", since the end game is not the highest GR anyone do the season, the "end game" is in a way right now the whole game. Mostly thanks to the leveling process being as fast as it is.
3. Sets
I think it already said exactly my thought on this somewhere else in the comments, but the thing with sets is that if we remove the color on them and instead look at them as legendaries with powers. Then they are no different from a LoN build without the ring set. A set is just a couple of items that together make some skills viable, just like the random legs also do. And if we didn't have sets, you would still need a certain "set" of items to complete your build. Unless every item just had pure (boring) stats.
4. Loot
I might not be the best to have an opinion on this, since I never played D2, and really didn't like the loot system in D3 vanilla. Sure we get a lot of gear super fast, and there is a lot of ways to get gear (some to get specific gear even faster with cube). But the thing is that the system is made to suit as many as possible. If you like playing the game casually then you are still able to get decent gear in a timely manner. And if you are the person who play a lot you have ancient items to farm after. I see the comment a lot about how D2 had a much better system loot system since it took longer to get gear, while it being true at what rate you might get gear, the point still stands that when you had gear there was 1 thing to do, farm for that 1% better item. It don't matter if there drops a lot of items or not, if we have ancient items or not. In the end we'll all just farm for that 1% better item in both games. That's just how ARPGs work.
But i'm not just gonna defend the loot system and say it's perfect, don't get me wrong, I would love to see more rare items (that is randomly dropped. not like the super rare cosmetic items *cough* cosmic wings *cough* that drops from rare mobs). What these items could be I'm not sure of, but something that's not necessary, but makes some power changes to your character and is rare enough to get you hyped when you see it drop.
5. The rest...
A) Custom games
I don't really see a big point having this when we have communities for all different purposes. Public games is and should be fast to enter if you just want to play together with other ppl and not needing to go through a long list of games named in all strange ways.
B)Difficulties
While I think there might be a bit to much difficulties now since they've added t11+, I don't really see a problem with having them. There is no one forcing you to use them, and some ppl rather play a slower pace game then super fast. That is the reason some wanted higher torment lvls. The thing I like with them adding difficulties is that the ubers could still feel like a challenge. But this could be fixed with having the old man outside the door change the difficulty of the ubers with gr lvl scaling.
C) Trading
No matter how I look at trading I just keep thinking of how the old d3 system worked and how much I disliked that. I only find more problems arise with trading being possible. And in a way I use my own economy system in d3. I find myself often running out of blue and white materials, and instead of doing boring runs for them specifically, I do different kind of boosting (1-70, gear...) and in return I get a bunch of materials I need while still getting chance for regular loot. So there is different ways of looking at it I guess.
D) PvP
Not a big fan of PvP myslef, so I totally see what you mean here. When it comes to the hostile system in D2 (since I never played D2 I can only speak from what I've heard) do it sound pretty stupid to be honest. A way to kill people anywhere for me has no point, and is not what Diablo is about. It is as you said earlier about loot, and more loot!
So this is my two cents about these topics. And while I think I might be a minority on the forums. I think that there is a lot of players that can agree with me on some of these. And sorry for the long post, I guess I just needed to wright my thoughts after reading way to many posts about all the bad things about D3. Lastly I do want to give kudos to you for actually giving some constructive criticism and ideas. Not only saying "D3 sux! it's dead and no one plays it LUL". So big + for that (y)!