My current helm on season is 1000/987/6/socket. Most other pieces are this way as well (limited exceptions being amulet and rings), all within 1% of max. And to be honest, I'm not nearly pushing as hard as I can (I'm studying engineering right now, I don't have the time).
What this means: primal ancients are a 0.001%-1% upgrade, even for casual players (I'm a casual this season for sure). That's it. Each piece I find is an infinitesimal upgrade, and after I find one, well, there's no more reason to ever have to find another one, hence no benefit to farming. What happens when you get a full set and you only play wizard? Then you have no reason to play the game at all.
Primals: Might as well be nothing, and will eventually ruin the game.
My current helm on season is 1000/987/6/socket. Most other pieces are this way as well (limited exceptions being amulet and rings), all within 1% of max. And to be honest, I'm not nearly pushing as hard as I can (I'm studying engineering right now, I don't have the time).
What this means: primal ancients are a 0.001%-1% upgrade, even for casual players (I'm a casual this season for sure). That's it. Each piece I find is an infinitesimal upgrade, and after I find one, well, there's no more reason to ever have to find another one, hence no benefit to farming. What happens when you get a full set and you only play wizard? Then you have no reason to play the game at all.
Primals: Might as well be nothing, and will eventually ruin the game.
maybe if you bot 18 hours a day for 3 years you might get items for 1 build.
but what about all the new build and all the new items every patch?
and do not tell me you farm 24/ hours a day to get 10-100 main stat on your items.
most players even stop before finding full normal ancient, the perfect items will make ppl play more but none will ever get perfect stat combination in every slot, (MAYBE THORNS SADER LON with random items)
I was pushing rank 1 in the first few seasons. Most of the pro players belong to communities and really don't interact with the general population. There's teams out there running speed 90s within the first couple days of season. By their good graces, I'm allowed to play with good players, because they know I can do my job as support or dps in a "no room for error" environment. Most players simply don't perform to these standards and hence are inefficient. I don't bot, I have toons with thousands of hours since vanilla on them. I don't really have to play hard anymore, even so, with the crafting system, within weeks of a new season, I am optimally geared.
If you want to instantly point fingers and blame your shortcomings on others, or to simply call them cheaters, it makes you a toxic individual. Maybe you should try talking to people or doing some research before you just spout off, because now I wouldn't be inclined to help you at all.
And in reply to your second post, those secondaries are detrimental to both group and solo play. There's only so many times you can CC enemies before they become CC immune. It's just the way things work. Good players don't want any more CC from bad secondary affixes interfering with CC/debuffs/control from the group, causing future CC to be ineffective.
It's just the way it is. Anytime someone specifically putting on more CC than necessary (like iceblink gem past 25), they just don't know what they are doing.
How is it that every post about Primal Ancients somehow gets dragged down into "Botting" or "Paragon"? I mean they are both obvious issues, but I mean why can't anybody stay on point in the discussions they choose to participate? Real facts though, Paragns and Botting are issues that also make Primal Ancient a very bad idea, and while I understand that they may be related, they aren't the only reasons for Primals being bad. There is plenty of merit on both sides of the issue, but we can all agree, Primals aren't what the game needs right now.
To be fair, Primal Ancients on its own is not a bad idea. It's just not a good or great one, and definitely one that isn't meeting our expectations for what the game needs. In the current state, they're just another layer of 'ooh shiny' loot that can drop, something that adds to the thrill of finding ancients.
Their rarity makes them comparable to Ramaldni's gift. The gift itself isn't a very interesting concept, only adding a socket to weapons which essentially lets you have another stat. The power of these drops is necessary for any end-game build, but no so much that you can't function without them. Yet despite being uninteresting and necessary for end game, no one specifically farms for them, and we still get a momentary feeling of excitement when they drop considering their rarity. Since they upped the drop rate recently, now they're just things you put in the bank, and that feeling is gone because they're no so rare any more.
That's where ancient Primals come in. They're the new Ramaldni's gift. They're not interesting at all, and an AP rolled on a useless legendary is still useless, but you'll get that brief feeling of excitement every time you see them drop just because it happens so rarely. That's their only true purpose for the long term of this game. After a while, you're going to forget they even exist, but the rare chance that they drop will give you a brief feeling of excitement because it's something out of the ordinary, just like when a Unique drops in Diablo 2 even though most of them are shitty.
In terms of fresh blood, Primal Ancients are kinda shit. Fun concept, but they should have been introduced along side vanilla ancients for maximum effect. Still not really happy about the Grift 70 requirement, either. Spits in the face of praying to RNGesus, which is what the grind is all about.
In terms of fresh blood, Primal Ancients are kinda shit. Fun concept, but they should have been introduced along side vanilla ancients for maximum effect. Still not really happy about the Grift 70 requirement, either. Spits in the face of praying to RNGesus, which is what the grind is all about.
I agree with your first statement. I disagree with the second. I've never had the best of luck and I don't mind a bit of a grind to get my BiS. However, if someone gets their BiS fresh outta power leveling to 70 in Torment 6 just because RNGesus favored them a little more than me, I'd be a little salty.
In terms of fresh blood, Primal Ancients are kinda shit. Fun concept, but they should have been introduced along side vanilla ancients for maximum effect. Still not really happy about the Grift 70 requirement, either. Spits in the face of praying to RNGesus, which is what the grind is all about.
I agree with your first statement. I disagree with the second. I've never had the best of luck and I don't mind a bit of a grind to get my BiS. However, if someone gets their BiS fresh outta power leveling to 70 in Torment 6 just because RNGesus favored them a little more than me, I'd be a little salty.
But isn't that what a lootgrinder is about? Lucky drops?
In D2, you can right now get rushed through hell, kill a monster in a highlevel zone and get a zod rune dropped.
In PoE, you can right now, level to the endgame, start a map and get a mirror (so freaking rare, people would give you whatever you want for it).
Rare items should not be put behind a difficulty wall. Rarity is the wall. Some get it sooner, others later. Some get multiple ones of them, others none. That's how these games work. That's what makes them so exciting.
I suppose. Would you really be that much less excited about a legendary drop just because there's not a chance that it can be a Primal EVEN IF a Primal does not differ all that much from a normal Ancient? Say this goes through and I start a new character or play seasonal, I would still find it exciting to find just a regular Ancient. Finding a Primal would be cool, but it doesn't make it that much more substantially exciting if I find one knowing that it could have potentially just been a really, really good Ancient.
New Primals are a waste of time. Sorry Blizzard, you ruined a good thing.
The orignal primal were great, improved stats and 1% , these are garbage, simple capped ancients, and blizzard gave importance to all those crying cheerleaders on the forums.
But the improved stats would make the Primals an absolute requirement to be competitive on the leaderboards. On top of that, it would just add to the seemingly endless power creep.
What are you considering endless? the legendary-ancient step? The paragon system?
Game is stagnating, that is very hard to argue against.
Seasonal rewards aren't enough to keep the interest. And plenty of players (myself included) have recently finished their maximum stash tabs allowance, even after missing 1 or 2 seasons.
No matter that you like it or not, game needs to provide incentives to those who spend more time on it; this ain't a Call of Duty game - We don't need or want to be clones of each other with same stats; if you wanna compete, just play enough to compete. Big names always manage to make great results with lower paragon.
The intent of reducing power-creep has been one of the reasons for the streamers to leave for greener pastures. They want a game where knowing about the game and investing time has real benefits. And , nowadays, streamers-elite players-competition are a big point of attracting new players to a game.
What are you considering endless? the legendary-ancient step? The paragon system?
Game is stagnating, that is very hard to argue against.
Seasonal rewards aren't enough to keep the interest. And plenty of players (myself included) have recently finished their maximum stash tabs allowance, even after missing 1 or 2 seasons.
No matter that you like it or not, game needs to provide incentives to those who spend more time on it; this ain't a Call of Duty game - We don't need or want to be clones of each other with same stats; if you wanna compete, just play enough to compete. Big names always manage to make great results with lower paragon.
The intent of reducing power-creep has been one of the reasons for the streamers to leave for greener pastures. They want a game where knowing about the game and investing time has real benefits. And , nowadays, streamers-elite players-competition are a big point of attracting new players to a game.
Game doesn't need pointless power creep to be made more playable by the competitive crowd. It needs more competing options, less power gap, and ways to distinguish player ability that don't involve grinding up the stat ladder.
Nearly 100% of what gets a player on the top leaderboards is pure stat. The only bit of differentiation between players at the top by the end of a season is how lucky they were fishing for rifts. Power creep doesn't make knowledge of the game any more important, nor does it make time investment any more rewarding. It's just same shit different numbers.
If you want the game to hold the attention of streamers add something like PoE map system (which let a player progress through challenges). Add a balanced competitive mode (whole point of challenge rifts). Add more competing options and wildly crazy items. Don't just tack another zero onto the end of stat values and say "Now your time matters more".
Game doesn't need pointless power creep to be made more playable by the competitive crowd. It needs more competing options, less power gap, and ways to distinguish player ability that don't involve grinding up the stat ladder.
Nearly 100% of what gets a player on the top leaderboards is pure stat. The only bit of differentiation between players at the top by the end of a season is how lucky they were fishing for rifts. Power creep doesn't make knowledge of the game any more important, nor does it make time investment any more rewarding. It's just same shit different numbers.
If you want the game to hold the attention of streamers add something like PoE map system (which let a player progress through challenges). Add a balanced competitive mode (whole point of challenge rifts). Add more competing options and wildly crazy items. Don't just tack another zero onto the end of stat values and say "Now your time matters more".
Strongly disagree. Of course mainstat has a point in overall performance, as it should; but you said that nearly 100% of what brings a player to the leaderboards is stat / gear.
That is 100% wrong, and any player in the top 100 on any leaderboard will verify it. Player performance is the highest factor, by far.
Honestly, my personal opinion is that your points sound quite like an excuse for someone who wants the game to be completely casual. LoL- HOTA mode on.
Log in and be able to compete in equal playground with someone who has gotten 4k paragon while you made it to paragon 600 in your 2-hours a week schedule. Not gonna happen in D3. It never happened in D2 either , or any ARPG for what it takes.
Clearly I want an ARPG where progress and time invested do matter, while your approach sounds like a MOBA-shooter type of game.
Competition does matter. But so does playing incentive. And power creep IS an incentive.
Strongly disagree. Of course mainstat has a point in overall performance, as it should; but you said that nearly 100% of what brings a player to the leaderboards is stat / gear.
That is 100% wrong, and any player in the top 100 on any leaderboard will verify it. Player performance is the highest factor, by far.
Honestly, my personal opinion is that your points sound quite like an excuse for someone who wants the game to be completely casual. LoL- HOTA mode on.
Log in and be able to compete in equal playground with someone who has gotten 4k paragon while you made it to paragon 600 in your 2-hours a week schedule. Not gonna happen in D3. It never happened in D2 either , or any ARPG for what it takes.
Clearly I want an ARPG where progress and time invested do matter, while your approach sounds like a MOBA-shooter type of game.
Competition does matter. But so does playing incentive. And power creep IS an incentive.
The difference between two people? Sure skill might shine there. The difference between the top 100 and the next 100? that's ALL playtime, and by extension stats. Assuming equal skill (and by the time you're talking about top 100 that's essentially guaranteed at the end of a season) the only difference between clearing GR100 and GR101 is stats.
You want a game where skill matters? Remove Paragon. You want a game that stagnates and loses the interest of the competitive crowd?Make the game about that powercreep and RNG.
Power creep is not, despite what people might think, an incentive. It's a lazy way to get people to come back. The difference between the the game before and after ancients was just how big the numbers got. That's not rewarding how much you play or how wel you play, that's throwing more zeroes on the end of the combat log and calling it a day.
I personally don't care about making leaderboards. I happen to like to try new things. I don't care that LoN was BiS for half the classes I play because the part of the game that's actually interesting is finding a new way to play. Or finding a particularly rare or gamechanging item (and FYI "gamechanging" doesn't have to mean BiS lkeaderboard material either).
IF you want D3 to be replayable ad nauseum then the game needs to be non-solvable. It needs to not boil down to "insert-DPS boost fish for rift". Unfortunately it currently does, and as long as it does the only "competition" ihn the game is who can grind paragon the fastest because at the end of the day the player skill ceiling is laughably low. Memorize some patterns then get as close to perfect as possible with your positioning and you're good to go. Go ahead and take a look at the leaderboards. Rank them by Paragon and DPS. Feel free to count how many outliers there are.
Game doesn't need pointless power creep to be made more playable by the competitive crowd. It needs more competing options, less power gap, and ways to distinguish player ability that don't involve grinding up the stat ladder.
Nearly 100% of what gets a player on the top leaderboards is pure stat. The only bit of differentiation between players at the top by the end of a season is how lucky they were fishing for rifts. Power creep doesn't make knowledge of the game any more important, nor does it make time investment any more rewarding. It's just same shit different numbers.
If you want the game to hold the attention of streamers add something like PoE map system (which let a player progress through challenges). Add a balanced competitive mode (whole point of challenge rifts). Add more competing options and wildly crazy items. Don't just tack another zero onto the end of stat values and say "Now your time matters more".
Strongly disagree. Of course mainstat has a point in overall performance, as it should; but you said that nearly 100% of what brings a player to the leaderboards is stat / gear.
That is 100% wrong, and any player in the top 100 on any leaderboard will verify it. Player performance is the highest factor, by far.
Honestly, my personal opinion is that your points sound quite like an excuse for someone who wants the game to be completely casual. LoL- HOTA mode on.
Log in and be able to compete in equal playground with someone who has gotten 4k paragon while you made it to paragon 600 in your 2-hours a week schedule. Not gonna happen in D3. It never happened in D2 either , or any ARPG for what it takes.
Clearly I want an ARPG where progress and time invested do matter, while your approach sounds like a MOBA-shooter type of game.
Competition does matter. But so does playing incentive. And power creep IS an incentive.
Actually, it's fairly accurate to assume that player knowledge/skill is a factor, but a lot of that comes down to rift fishing, which is exactly what he said. After that it's simple stat math, if you're not within XXX paragons of the next player on the boards, you can't compete with them regardless of skill, as they are just putting out more raw numbers. Adding Primals only exacerbates the difference of rift fishing/knowledge to complete luck, which is detrimental to your first point, that streamers-elite players-competition bring new players to the game. I don't believe his point is to make the game casual, but instead to have more varied options in build diversity, instead of just raw numbers. In fact your assumption appears to be illogical, as wouldn't a complete casual want bigger numbers on their gear so they don't have to spend hours paragon farming? Just a thought.
If they were to instead take Primals out of the game completely, balance 3 sets for each class to deal roughly the same amount of damage, add legendary affixes to currently useless legendaries, upgrade current useless legendary affixes to be useful in at least 1 build, they'd be making huge strides towards more competitive and more exciting game-play. I used to laugh (out loud) at the Play-Your-Way Thursday segments, as they were usually extremely useless builds for doing basically anything with. "This build clears T8, I like it." Yea, but the highest difficulty is T13... Wouldn't you want more builds that do things differently at the maximum rather than builds that have to stoop to lower difficulty settings to be effective?
Power creep is incentive, but it's not the ONLY incentive. I've said it before and I'll say it again, getting a Primal Ancient Obsidian Ring really makes no difference, getting a Primal Ancient Crushbane is completely useless.
Getting to the point: the whole discussion Primals v1 VS Primals v2 is completely bogus. The relative power provided by v1 is around 2-3 GRs on a paragon 2k character - so extremely low also given the rarity of the item.
Primals v2 have on the other side next to zero impact and are pointless to hunt for the most part until you really want to "finish" your character.
The whole reason is that seasons are a game based on (freakin) ladders. Even the smallest power increase is something most players focus on and what drives the casual masses to hunt for. Anyway the reality is that only a few people will actually get some of the given the rarity.
v1 didn't have GRs requirement so ladders could be easily fucked up by some sheer luck and while Ladders imho have next to zero meaning, still it's not something anyone wants. v2 Primals just negate this possibility since a good rolled Ancient is really near in terms of power with a Primal.
The whole Primal thing was doomed before even coming to light since it's just "meh" design. The game needs different gameplay additions - i hope that with Challenge Rifts also standard ladders will just be removed since they're actually not an indicator for anything so the attention will be less focused on the fantomatic "meta" which is created by players and gives the false impression that if you don't play that exact build you're doing it wrong.
Getting to the point: the whole discussion Primals v1 VS Primals v2 is completely bogus. The relative power provided by v1 is around 2-3 GRs on a paragon 2k character - so extremely low also given the rarity of the item.
I'd agree here with the exception of the weapon slot. The boost in damage from the damage range alone is an easy 6-7 GR levels, 10 if you're good and like fishing. The fact that every skill multiplies (and subsequently every multiplier afterwards) from your weapon's damage range means that increasing it increases your overall damage output exponentially. I believe the math is something to the effect of 100 damage range = 1000 main stat (could be 2, it's been forever since I've actually looked at it). That's quite a bump.
Primals v2 have on the other side next to zero impact and are pointless to hunt for the most part until you really want to "finish" your character.
While your overall statement here is true, shouldn't that be what we all strive for in a season? I mean realistically speaking of course, it almost never happens, but when it does all that is left is the paragon grind. It'll keep players going, and complaining about it the whole way, but at least they're still playing.
v1 didn't have GRs requirement so ladders could be easily fucked up by some sheer luck and while Ladders imho have next to zero meaning, still it's not something anyone wants. v2 Primals just negate this possibility since a good rolled Ancient is really near in terms of power with a Primal.
True, however, I think with the addition that Mystic gives perfect rerolls sort of gives an edge towards Primals, not a huge edge, but it's definitely in favor of Primal. I think truly the solution is going to end up somewhere in the middle. While Primals serve that "last 1%" you'll get on gear, they should definitely have impact, but not nearly as much impact as v1.0. It's already an unspoken rule in-game, if a weapon isn't ancient, it's not really worth using. There's a reason for that. Primal v1.0 just exacerbates that same stereotype.
The whole Primal thing was doomed before even coming to light since it's just "meh" design. The game needs different gameplay additions - i hope that with Challenge Rifts also standard ladders will just be removed since they're actually not an indicator for anything so the attention will be less focused on the fantomatic "meta" which is created by players and gives the false impression that if you don't play that exact build you're doing it wrong.
I agree 100%. Which is why instead of giving us Primals, they should be focusing more on balancing each class, giving more legendary affixes, and fixing old/broken/useless legendary affixes. Who's going to use a Dovu Energy Trap these days with the CC immunity in the air? If each class had at least 5 GR pushing builds over 3 different sets, excluding LoN builds, the game would be more competitive, and less cookie cutter. I think we can all agree that even with the paragon problem persisting, being able to play at the same level with 5 unique builds for your class would be a lot easier to take. (PS Also fits with the Armoury, just sayin.)
Getting to the point: the whole discussion Primals v1 VS Primals v2 is completely bogus. The relative power provided by v1 is around 2-3 GRs on a paragon 2k character - so extremely low also given the rarity of the item.
Primals v2 have on the other side next to zero impact and are pointless to hunt for the most part until you really want to "finish" your character.
The whole reason is that seasons are a game based on (freakin) ladders. Even the smallest power increase is something most players focus on and what drives the casual masses to hunt for. Anyway the reality is that only a few people will actually get some of the given the rarity.
v1 didn't have GRs requirement so ladders could be easily fucked up by some sheer luck and while Ladders imho have next to zero meaning, still it's not something anyone wants. v2 Primals just negate this possibility since a good rolled Ancient is really near in terms of power with a Primal.
The whole Primal thing was doomed before even coming to light since it's just "meh" design. The game needs different gameplay additions - i hope that with Challenge Rifts also standard ladders will just be removed since they're actually not an indicator for anything so the attention will be less focused on the fantomatic "meta" which is created by players and gives the false impression that if you don't play that exact build you're doing it wrong.
I can agree here. I think it's a cop out on creating actual content for the game (ie. more-to-do). The ladder grind doesn't really feel like competition. It's under-rewarding and it's insanely time-consuming. I feel the game needs a way that's rewarding for players to interact with one another that isn't a monotonous grind vs. the algorithm. A way for the players of the game to test their minds against each other, rather than against the AI.
I can agree here. I think it's a cop out on creating actual content for the game (ie. more-to-do). The ladder grind doesn't really feel like competition. It's under-rewarding and it's insanely time-consuming. I feel the game needs a way that's rewarding for players to interact with one another that isn't a monotonous grind vs. the algorithm. A way for the players of the game to test their minds against each other, rather than against the AI.
I think Challenge Rifts will be a pretty good addition for that. No excuses, no meta, no RNG - everyone uses the same char/build and has the same rift and it's a true race; i don't think the game engine and mechanics are feasible and flexible enough for a true PvP competition. It's something i'm not interested on actually, but the system is way better than the current "i have farmed 100% efficiently for a thousand hours more than you so i win" thing.
The game needs other things to do, simply put. Story mode could be meaningful in some way but it's just left there. New zones are cool but they're there just for a couple of new bouties no one cares for. Character power is tied to GRs climbing and legendary gems since gearing reaches a plateau pretty fast even for casual players.
So i just checked newest PTR patch notes....i didn't want to make a whole another topic just to write one thing.
So here it is. - Man would I be pissed right now if i went and wasted my time testing on PTR , i thank you all who went there and wasted your time, for basically nothing. These devs are clueless for sure Primal rtrds, thats for sure Hahaaaa
My current helm on season is 1000/987/6/socket. Most other pieces are this way as well (limited exceptions being amulet and rings), all within 1% of max. And to be honest, I'm not nearly pushing as hard as I can (I'm studying engineering right now, I don't have the time).
What this means: primal ancients are a 0.001%-1% upgrade, even for casual players (I'm a casual this season for sure). That's it. Each piece I find is an infinitesimal upgrade, and after I find one, well, there's no more reason to ever have to find another one, hence no benefit to farming. What happens when you get a full set and you only play wizard? Then you have no reason to play the game at all.
Primals: Might as well be nothing, and will eventually ruin the game.
New Primals are a waste of time. Sorry Blizzard, you ruined a good thing.
I was pushing rank 1 in the first few seasons. Most of the pro players belong to communities and really don't interact with the general population. There's teams out there running speed 90s within the first couple days of season. By their good graces, I'm allowed to play with good players, because they know I can do my job as support or dps in a "no room for error" environment. Most players simply don't perform to these standards and hence are inefficient. I don't bot, I have toons with thousands of hours since vanilla on them. I don't really have to play hard anymore, even so, with the crafting system, within weeks of a new season, I am optimally geared.
If you want to instantly point fingers and blame your shortcomings on others, or to simply call them cheaters, it makes you a toxic individual. Maybe you should try talking to people or doing some research before you just spout off, because now I wouldn't be inclined to help you at all.
And in reply to your second post, those secondaries are detrimental to both group and solo play. There's only so many times you can CC enemies before they become CC immune. It's just the way things work. Good players don't want any more CC from bad secondary affixes interfering with CC/debuffs/control from the group, causing future CC to be ineffective.
It's just the way it is. Anytime someone specifically putting on more CC than necessary (like iceblink gem past 25), they just don't know what they are doing.
How is it that every post about Primal Ancients somehow gets dragged down into "Botting" or "Paragon"? I mean they are both obvious issues, but I mean why can't anybody stay on point in the discussions they choose to participate? Real facts though, Paragns and Botting are issues that also make Primal Ancient a very bad idea, and while I understand that they may be related, they aren't the only reasons for Primals being bad. There is plenty of merit on both sides of the issue, but we can all agree, Primals aren't what the game needs right now.
To be fair, Primal Ancients on its own is not a bad idea. It's just not a good or great one, and definitely one that isn't meeting our expectations for what the game needs. In the current state, they're just another layer of 'ooh shiny' loot that can drop, something that adds to the thrill of finding ancients.
Their rarity makes them comparable to Ramaldni's gift. The gift itself isn't a very interesting concept, only adding a socket to weapons which essentially lets you have another stat. The power of these drops is necessary for any end-game build, but no so much that you can't function without them. Yet despite being uninteresting and necessary for end game, no one specifically farms for them, and we still get a momentary feeling of excitement when they drop considering their rarity. Since they upped the drop rate recently, now they're just things you put in the bank, and that feeling is gone because they're no so rare any more.
That's where ancient Primals come in. They're the new Ramaldni's gift. They're not interesting at all, and an AP rolled on a useless legendary is still useless, but you'll get that brief feeling of excitement every time you see them drop just because it happens so rarely. That's their only true purpose for the long term of this game. After a while, you're going to forget they even exist, but the rare chance that they drop will give you a brief feeling of excitement because it's something out of the ordinary, just like when a Unique drops in Diablo 2 even though most of them are shitty.
In terms of fresh blood, Primal Ancients are kinda shit. Fun concept, but they should have been introduced along side vanilla ancients for maximum effect. Still not really happy about the Grift 70 requirement, either. Spits in the face of praying to RNGesus, which is what the grind is all about.
But the improved stats would make the Primals an absolute requirement to be competitive on the leaderboards. On top of that, it would just add to the seemingly endless power creep.
What are you considering endless? the legendary-ancient step? The paragon system?
Game is stagnating, that is very hard to argue against.
Seasonal rewards aren't enough to keep the interest. And plenty of players (myself included) have recently finished their maximum stash tabs allowance, even after missing 1 or 2 seasons.
No matter that you like it or not, game needs to provide incentives to those who spend more time on it; this ain't a Call of Duty game - We don't need or want to be clones of each other with same stats; if you wanna compete, just play enough to compete. Big names always manage to make great results with lower paragon.
The intent of reducing power-creep has been one of the reasons for the streamers to leave for greener pastures. They want a game where knowing about the game and investing time has real benefits. And , nowadays, streamers-elite players-competition are a big point of attracting new players to a game.
Game doesn't need pointless power creep to be made more playable by the competitive crowd. It needs more competing options, less power gap, and ways to distinguish player ability that don't involve grinding up the stat ladder.
Nearly 100% of what gets a player on the top leaderboards is pure stat. The only bit of differentiation between players at the top by the end of a season is how lucky they were fishing for rifts. Power creep doesn't make knowledge of the game any more important, nor does it make time investment any more rewarding. It's just same shit different numbers.
If you want the game to hold the attention of streamers add something like PoE map system (which let a player progress through challenges). Add a balanced competitive mode (whole point of challenge rifts). Add more competing options and wildly crazy items. Don't just tack another zero onto the end of stat values and say "Now your time matters more".
Strongly disagree. Of course mainstat has a point in overall performance, as it should; but you said that nearly 100% of what brings a player to the leaderboards is stat / gear.
That is 100% wrong, and any player in the top 100 on any leaderboard will verify it. Player performance is the highest factor, by far.
Honestly, my personal opinion is that your points sound quite like an excuse for someone who wants the game to be completely casual. LoL- HOTA mode on.
Log in and be able to compete in equal playground with someone who has gotten 4k paragon while you made it to paragon 600 in your 2-hours a week schedule. Not gonna happen in D3. It never happened in D2 either , or any ARPG for what it takes.
Clearly I want an ARPG where progress and time invested do matter, while your approach sounds like a MOBA-shooter type of game.
Competition does matter. But so does playing incentive. And power creep IS an incentive.
You want a game where skill matters? Remove Paragon. You want a game that stagnates and loses the interest of the competitive crowd?Make the game about that powercreep and RNG.
Power creep is not, despite what people might think, an incentive. It's a lazy way to get people to come back. The difference between the the game before and after ancients was just how big the numbers got. That's not rewarding how much you play or how wel you play, that's throwing more zeroes on the end of the combat log and calling it a day.
I personally don't care about making leaderboards. I happen to like to try new things. I don't care that LoN was BiS for half the classes I play because the part of the game that's actually interesting is finding a new way to play. Or finding a particularly rare or gamechanging item (and FYI "gamechanging" doesn't have to mean BiS lkeaderboard material either).
IF you want D3 to be replayable ad nauseum then the game needs to be non-solvable. It needs to not boil down to "insert-DPS boost fish for rift". Unfortunately it currently does, and as long as it does the only "competition" ihn the game is who can grind paragon the fastest because at the end of the day the player skill ceiling is laughably low. Memorize some patterns then get as close to perfect as possible with your positioning and you're good to go. Go ahead and take a look at the leaderboards. Rank them by Paragon and DPS. Feel free to count how many outliers there are.
Blizzard just needs to bring back v1.0 primal ancients!
Hell, they should even implement purple mythic items with 50% stat boost and .1% chance to drop!![:D :D](https://media.diablofans.com/avatars/11/54/1132633219.png)
While they're at it, they should make items trade-able again to teach all these dorks how to say, "Hi", "Bye", and "Thank You" ...![:P :P](https://media.diablofans.com/avatars/11/53/2414650765.png)
If they were to instead take Primals out of the game completely, balance 3 sets for each class to deal roughly the same amount of damage, add legendary affixes to currently useless legendaries, upgrade current useless legendary affixes to be useful in at least 1 build, they'd be making huge strides towards more competitive and more exciting game-play. I used to laugh (out loud) at the Play-Your-Way Thursday segments, as they were usually extremely useless builds for doing basically anything with. "This build clears T8, I like it." Yea, but the highest difficulty is T13... Wouldn't you want more builds that do things differently at the maximum rather than builds that have to stoop to lower difficulty settings to be effective?
Power creep is incentive, but it's not the ONLY incentive. I've said it before and I'll say it again, getting a Primal Ancient Obsidian Ring really makes no difference, getting a Primal Ancient Crushbane is completely useless.
Getting to the point: the whole discussion Primals v1 VS Primals v2 is completely bogus. The relative power provided by v1 is around 2-3 GRs on a paragon 2k character - so extremely low also given the rarity of the item.
Primals v2 have on the other side next to zero impact and are pointless to hunt for the most part until you really want to "finish" your character.
The whole reason is that seasons are a game based on (freakin) ladders. Even the smallest power increase is something most players focus on and what drives the casual masses to hunt for. Anyway the reality is that only a few people will actually get some of the given the rarity.
v1 didn't have GRs requirement so ladders could be easily fucked up by some sheer luck and while Ladders imho have next to zero meaning, still it's not something anyone wants. v2 Primals just negate this possibility since a good rolled Ancient is really near in terms of power with a Primal.
The whole Primal thing was doomed before even coming to light since it's just "meh" design. The game needs different gameplay additions - i hope that with Challenge Rifts also standard ladders will just be removed since they're actually not an indicator for anything so the attention will be less focused on the fantomatic "meta" which is created by players and gives the false impression that if you don't play that exact build you're doing it wrong.
While your overall statement here is true, shouldn't that be what we all strive for in a season? I mean realistically speaking of course, it almost never happens, but when it does all that is left is the paragon grind. It'll keep players going, and complaining about it the whole way, but at least they're still playing.
True, however, I think with the addition that Mystic gives perfect rerolls sort of gives an edge towards Primals, not a huge edge, but it's definitely in favor of Primal. I think truly the solution is going to end up somewhere in the middle. While Primals serve that "last 1%" you'll get on gear, they should definitely have impact, but not nearly as much impact as v1.0. It's already an unspoken rule in-game, if a weapon isn't ancient, it's not really worth using. There's a reason for that. Primal v1.0 just exacerbates that same stereotype.
I agree 100%. Which is why instead of giving us Primals, they should be focusing more on balancing each class, giving more legendary affixes, and fixing old/broken/useless legendary affixes. Who's going to use a Dovu Energy Trap these days with the CC immunity in the air? If each class had at least 5 GR pushing builds over 3 different sets, excluding LoN builds, the game would be more competitive, and less cookie cutter. I think we can all agree that even with the paragon problem persisting, being able to play at the same level with 5 unique builds for your class would be a lot easier to take. (PS Also fits with the Armoury, just sayin.)
The game needs other things to do, simply put. Story mode could be meaningful in some way but it's just left there. New zones are cool but they're there just for a couple of new bouties no one cares for. Character power is tied to GRs climbing and legendary gems since gearing reaches a plateau pretty fast even for casual players.
So i just checked newest PTR patch notes....i didn't want to make a whole another topic just to write one thing.
So here it is. - Man would I be pissed right now if i went and wasted my time testing on PTR , i thank you all who went there and wasted your time, for basically nothing. These devs are clueless for sure
Primal rtrds, thats for sure Hahaaaa
There is no saving this game, it seems .....