I personally think Challenge Rifts could have been much more if they were implemented properly. The problems with them however are quite fixable. Here are some of the most mentioned problems associated with CRifts:
1) The selected builds are bad/not fun - This is the most mentioned problem discussed at all forums regarding CRifts. The players simply don't like the automatic selection algorithm and the snapshotted builds. This however could sometimes be due to the fact that they find them hard to complete. A possible solution would be to implement a voting process, lower the original tier by 20% and allow tier progression.
2) The rewards don't scale with one's accomplishments - Simply said, you play more, you get nothing for it, even the LB is not permanent. A possible solution would be the rewards to be scaled with the tier progression and a permanent LB to be found in-game.
3) Only one class per week - If the player is forced to play an exact class/build there is very high chance the majority will not complete the weekly challenge. A possible solution would be the inclusion of all 7 classes in the weekly pool.
4) CRifts does not involve pushing - The offered snapshots are low tier fast times. While a competition could be build around everything, the skill factor in fast times is a lot lower than this involved during a pushing activity. This simply means that the majority of the competitive players will skip the CRifts as long as there is no tier progression, which will allow a pushing activity to be executed.
There are also a lot of other more minor problems like specific RNG factors and no global competition. Whether you find the CRift mode unfinished or not, share what could be done in order more people to play these and take part in the CRift competition.
Haven't actually looked at Challenge Rifts and don't have any plans to. The idea is completely uninteresting to me and I can't think of any tweaks to it that would make me interested.
the challenge mode thing as it stands is totally pointless to me i have no clue who comes up with them builds but i gotta say every single one was total rubbish and no clue on how to gear or anything no augments always super low paragon no gems half the time its like what has this game become
You see, thats basically the only thing I like aboyt them, the wierd stuff that isnt meta which makes you have to actually have to think about how to get the most of it rather than just playing exactly what you are used to on your main character.
I agree that's the only thing I like about them, too. However the builds that came up (especially right after they were introduced and I checked them every week) were so messy it wasnt even funny to run most builds. Like Archon builds with no CDR, no Ressource regen ouside Archon. Just an example. No synergy whatsoever in those builds. Dull, stupid and no reason to play them at all. Even a pain to get those 5 min runs done.
The original runners most likely came up with those builds while farming items and having no clue what else to put in cube, which items to use... or still farming those meta related items and on the way just putting placeholders in those missing slots...
Blizzard announced CRs in a way that I thought we would see something like this:
builds with interesting ideas using synergies of the selected skills/items. while not being top builds but still trying to make them work in the best way possible (zombie charger wd, spectral blade wizard, weapon throw barb, you name it...). no useless items equipped, no stupid gameplay because the original runner had no clue about the game, and so on...
That's not the case. Not even close. That's why it's utterly disappointing and a waste of time to me.
Diablo is all about pushing those grifts, so it makes sense to have a mode in which you try to beat the last run of X player and hopefully implement an option where you can give a recomendation to person which own the character to improve the game itself ourselves. But the case seems to be that not only we have rubbish builds and unoptimazed but also it repeats too much with the same type of characters, we are taking seriously the game and we want to have classes properly done as well.
We also could have top 1 builds as much as a grift 70 or even 40 but the rewards doesn't reflect the effort you put into it. For example, knowing wich enemies to aboid, wich one to engage, wich level is optimal and wich is useless gives you a higher chance to complete it, but that time invested won't feel good unless you get something useful back, otherwise we are better off playing our own grifts.
In my opinion devs tried to put in the game players idea about fixed rifts and they failed at it.
Biggest problem of challenge rifts is that they are totally disconnected from your char. In the game that is all about character progression and item grind we got a mode where we don't use our beloved char ... what ?
This could be a really nice addition if they would snapshot some rift once a week, then make weekly leaderboards and allow people to compete for those weekly rifts but with their own chars. That would remove grift fishing and would introduce creative ways of playing our current toons to squezze maximum of those static rifts.
Personally, I'm completely unsurprised that CRs weren't very popular and was predicting they wouldn't be successful the moment they were announced. The heart and soul of an ARPG is finding loot, and CRs take away the whole loot find aspect. The notion that people play ARPGs for competition seems kind of weird to me, when I compete, I'd much rather play a MOBA or shooter or something head to head. If they want competition, they should put in a PvP mode, not challenge rifts.
builds with interesting ideas using synergies of the selected skills/items. while not being top builds but still trying to make them work in the best way possible
I too think this is what they should aim for regarding builds, but with the current automatic selection algorithm it would be very hard to achieve. They should seriously consider adding a voting method allowing the players to influence the chosen snapshotted builds.
allow people to compete for those weekly rifts but with their own chars. That would remove grift fishing and would introduce creative ways of playing our current toons to squezze maximum of those static rifts.
If we had end game build diversity it would be interesting to have such main stat capped mode, where one is free to play the static rift with his own choice of items. But right now it would be just the same build every week.
I'd much rather play a MOBA or shooter or something head to head. If they want competition, they should put in a PvP mode, not challenge rifts.
Well, that is exactly the problem - a PvP mode is a dumbed down MOBA. There is no logic to add something like this if it is not an upgrade to the MOBAs, while GR pushing is something quite unique and not being head to head doesn't mean it will prevent the mode from having success on a competitive level. There are many real sports competitions, which don't involve direct player interaction.
The results from the poll are all 60/40 distributed, which means that combined would make at least 80% of the people play more if the mode is improved with all suggested options. However most people don't believe such thing will happen and consider the CRifts a missed opportunity. Maybe we will learn more at Blizzcon about that, let's see what info the invited streamers bring to us.
The results from the poll are all 60/40 distributed, which means that combined would make at least 80% of the people play more if the mode is improved with all suggested options. However most people don't believe such thing will happen and consider the CRifts a missed opportunity. Maybe we will learn more at Blizzcon about that, let's see what info the invited streamers bring to us.
I doubt 80% would play more considering the only thing that had more than 50% saying they would play more is "more rewards". All the other changes probably wouldn't motivate 20% additional players over the 60% you'd get just by upping the rewards. I suspect there is a strong correlation among No votes and among yes votes on the other conditions.
I dunno, there might be some correlation, but I doubt it is extremely high.
I also suspect a lot of the people who voted with "NO" to the builds question underestimate how much the selected builds influence the fun factor. What I mean is that if we could vote, which build to be the next CR, suddenly there would be a whole new "game" for the streamers/build creators who enjoy theorycrafting and for the people who follow them. They will start making fun-to-play builds with which to place in the regular LB and their viewers/community to have the choice to vote in order the build to be selected as a CR. For those that aren't interested in the voting process, there will be still the reward to play a meaningful, polished and fun CR build, which could actually be used for non-meta purposes if you have the items in-game.
To me, the main design of the CR mode have to include:
- A proper competitive environment
- Fun builds, which the casual players to copy and play in-game
- Meaningful rewards for the dedicated players who are after items and paragon
If the above 3 aspects are fulfilled the CR mode will be a success for all groups of players. The competitive players don't care much what build is selected or what is the reward, as long as every skill is used during the rift and there is a pushing activity. The casual players don't care whether they'll push or not, they are after the fun. The dedicated players main goal is to get the reward as fast as possible, they are those after META builds and won't ever copy a CR build. But with good design, the CR static mode could offer enjoyable experience for everyone.
I just hope it doesn't mean it's the other way round next week - I don't want to have a CR to eat 20 minutes into the season. For me I only do challenge rifts if I can one-shot them, just for the mats; if they take more than 15 minutes I may as well do a bounty so no benefit anymore.
Challenge rifts would be awesome if it was someones progression accomplishment rift and we were allowed to use our characters to see if we can match up. That's what I originally envisioned when I heard about these initially. Tier based with greater rewards would give incentive to push. If I could use my character, I would be more enticed to push and figure out how to beat the time. As it is today, I usually try it once and bail if I don't complete it because it's usually a crap build that I don't know or a class I never play. This isn't fun. There is a reason I don't like to play some classes and as designed today I get no enjoyment from a challenge rift when I'm forced to play that class.
They should have never used random builds from random people. This should have been more thought out - it should have been specific dev builds that had specific synergy (so it doesn't have to be meta builds, but builds that worked if it was thought out) and the time completed should have be a set time. It should have all been planned out and not random.
The Devs should have made the challenge, not just pick some random crap build that may or may not work. It should have been fun to play with. The devs should have made a build that other players may have not used or had a synergy that most people didn't see.
From what I read at the US forums atm, it seems the current CRifts for US and EU pretty much illustrate all the points discussed in this OP.
- US CR is the hardest until now and people flame in the forums that the build is bad and the rift is hard to beat
- EU CR is 2 min GR14 with full set and everyone completed it on their first try
I hope the D3 devs evaluate the feedback from the community and use it to improve the CR mode.
I did that GR14 on EU. I mean come on. You don't even need either sets or supporting legendaries to complete GR14. Running a strong but also fairly slow build on GR14. I still don't get the purpose of those.
One thing was nice for sure. It was easy and faster than any bounty run. If that's what CRs are regulated to I'm fine with doing them once a week. Still a pity when you think about the potential they have. And then again reading the US has a really bad CR this week... so still almost a waste of time checking and evaluating if it's worth running or skipping each and every week.
If that's what CRs are regulated to I'm fine with doing them once a week.
I doubt they are happy with the current version of CRifts. They made a few blue posts since the release of the mode, in which they ask for feedback and kind of excuse for the rough experience to their casual player base. So, one thing is sure - these are going to get softer in the future. But are they going to be more fun? Or more engaging for the competitive players? Are we going to see meaningful builds? We have to see. If they want replayability in the mode, they have to change things.
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I personally think Challenge Rifts could have been much more if they were implemented properly. The problems with them however are quite fixable. Here are some of the most mentioned problems associated with CRifts:
1) The selected builds are bad/not fun - This is the most mentioned problem discussed at all forums regarding CRifts. The players simply don't like the automatic selection algorithm and the snapshotted builds. This however could sometimes be due to the fact that they find them hard to complete. A possible solution would be to implement a voting process, lower the original tier by 20% and allow tier progression.
2) The rewards don't scale with one's accomplishments - Simply said, you play more, you get nothing for it, even the LB is not permanent. A possible solution would be the rewards to be scaled with the tier progression and a permanent LB to be found in-game.
3) Only one class per week - If the player is forced to play an exact class/build there is very high chance the majority will not complete the weekly challenge. A possible solution would be the inclusion of all 7 classes in the weekly pool.
4) CRifts does not involve pushing - The offered snapshots are low tier fast times. While a competition could be build around everything, the skill factor in fast times is a lot lower than this involved during a pushing activity. This simply means that the majority of the competitive players will skip the CRifts as long as there is no tier progression, which will allow a pushing activity to be executed.
There are also a lot of other more minor problems like specific RNG factors and no global competition. Whether you find the CRift mode unfinished or not, share what could be done in order more people to play these and take part in the CRift competition.
Haven't actually looked at Challenge Rifts and don't have any plans to. The idea is completely uninteresting to me and I can't think of any tweaks to it that would make me interested.
I agree that's the only thing I like about them, too. However the builds that came up (especially right after they were introduced and I checked them every week) were so messy it wasnt even funny to run most builds. Like Archon builds with no CDR, no Ressource regen ouside Archon. Just an example. No synergy whatsoever in those builds. Dull, stupid and no reason to play them at all. Even a pain to get those 5 min runs done.
The original runners most likely came up with those builds while farming items and having no clue what else to put in cube, which items to use... or still farming those meta related items and on the way just putting placeholders in those missing slots...
Blizzard announced CRs in a way that I thought we would see something like this:
builds with interesting ideas using synergies of the selected skills/items. while not being top builds but still trying to make them work in the best way possible (zombie charger wd, spectral blade wizard, weapon throw barb, you name it...). no useless items equipped, no stupid gameplay because the original runner had no clue about the game, and so on...
That's not the case. Not even close. That's why it's utterly disappointing and a waste of time to me.
Diablo is all about pushing those grifts, so it makes sense to have a mode in which you try to beat the last run of X player and hopefully implement an option where you can give a recomendation to person which own the character to improve the game itself ourselves. But the case seems to be that not only we have rubbish builds and unoptimazed but also it repeats too much with the same type of characters, we are taking seriously the game and we want to have classes properly done as well.
We also could have top 1 builds as much as a grift 70 or even 40 but the rewards doesn't reflect the effort you put into it. For example, knowing wich enemies to aboid, wich one to engage, wich level is optimal and wich is useless gives you a higher chance to complete it, but that time invested won't feel good unless you get something useful back, otherwise we are better off playing our own grifts.
In my opinion devs tried to put in the game players idea about fixed rifts and they failed at it.
Biggest problem of challenge rifts is that they are totally disconnected from your char. In the game that is all about character progression and item grind we got a mode where we don't use our beloved char ... what ?
This could be a really nice addition if they would snapshot some rift once a week, then make weekly leaderboards and allow people to compete for those weekly rifts but with their own chars. That would remove grift fishing and would introduce creative ways of playing our current toons to squezze maximum of those static rifts.
Personally, I'm completely unsurprised that CRs weren't very popular and was predicting they wouldn't be successful the moment they were announced. The heart and soul of an ARPG is finding loot, and CRs take away the whole loot find aspect. The notion that people play ARPGs for competition seems kind of weird to me, when I compete, I'd much rather play a MOBA or shooter or something head to head. If they want competition, they should put in a PvP mode, not challenge rifts.
I too think this is what they should aim for regarding builds, but with the current automatic selection algorithm it would be very hard to achieve. They should seriously consider adding a voting method allowing the players to influence the chosen snapshotted builds.
If we had end game build diversity it would be interesting to have such main stat capped mode, where one is free to play the static rift with his own choice of items. But right now it would be just the same build every week.
Well, that is exactly the problem - a PvP mode is a dumbed down MOBA. There is no logic to add something like this if it is not an upgrade to the MOBAs, while GR pushing is something quite unique and not being head to head doesn't mean it will prevent the mode from having success on a competitive level. There are many real sports competitions, which don't involve direct player interaction.The results from the poll are all 60/40 distributed, which means that combined would make at least 80% of the people play more if the mode is improved with all suggested options. However most people don't believe such thing will happen and consider the CRifts a missed opportunity. Maybe we will learn more at Blizzcon about that, let's see what info the invited streamers bring to us.
I dunno, there might be some correlation, but I doubt it is extremely high.
I also suspect a lot of the people who voted with "NO" to the builds question underestimate how much the selected builds influence the fun factor. What I mean is that if we could vote, which build to be the next CR, suddenly there would be a whole new "game" for the streamers/build creators who enjoy theorycrafting and for the people who follow them. They will start making fun-to-play builds with which to place in the regular LB and their viewers/community to have the choice to vote in order the build to be selected as a CR. For those that aren't interested in the voting process, there will be still the reward to play a meaningful, polished and fun CR build, which could actually be used for non-meta purposes if you have the items in-game.
To me, the main design of the CR mode have to include:
- A proper competitive environment
- Fun builds, which the casual players to copy and play in-game
- Meaningful rewards for the dedicated players who are after items and paragon
If the above 3 aspects are fulfilled the CR mode will be a success for all groups of players. The competitive players don't care much what build is selected or what is the reward, as long as every skill is used during the rift and there is a pushing activity. The casual players don't care whether they'll push or not, they are after the fun. The dedicated players main goal is to get the reward as fast as possible, they are those after META builds and won't ever copy a CR build. But with good design, the CR static mode could offer enjoyable experience for everyone.
From what I read at the US forums atm, it seems the current CRifts for US and EU pretty much illustrate all the points discussed in this OP.
- US CR is the hardest until now and people flame in the forums that the build is bad and the rift is hard to beat
- EU CR is 2 min GR14 with full set and everyone completed it on their first try
I hope the D3 devs evaluate the feedback from the community and use it to improve the CR mode.
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ModeratorI just hope it doesn't mean it's the other way round next week - I don't want to have a CR to eat 20 minutes into the season. For me I only do challenge rifts if I can one-shot them, just for the mats; if they take more than 15 minutes I may as well do a bounty so no benefit anymore.
Let's see if CRs come up at Blizzcon.
Challenge rifts would be awesome if it was someones progression accomplishment rift and we were allowed to use our characters to see if we can match up. That's what I originally envisioned when I heard about these initially. Tier based with greater rewards would give incentive to push. If I could use my character, I would be more enticed to push and figure out how to beat the time. As it is today, I usually try it once and bail if I don't complete it because it's usually a crap build that I don't know or a class I never play. This isn't fun. There is a reason I don't like to play some classes and as designed today I get no enjoyment from a challenge rift when I'm forced to play that class.
They should have never used random builds from random people. This should have been more thought out - it should have been specific dev builds that had specific synergy (so it doesn't have to be meta builds, but builds that worked if it was thought out) and the time completed should have be a set time. It should have all been planned out and not random.
The Devs should have made the challenge, not just pick some random crap build that may or may not work. It should have been fun to play with. The devs should have made a build that other players may have not used or had a synergy that most people didn't see.
I did that GR14 on EU. I mean come on. You don't even need either sets or supporting legendaries to complete GR14. Running a strong but also fairly slow build on GR14. I still don't get the purpose of those.
One thing was nice for sure. It was easy and faster than any bounty run. If that's what CRs are regulated to I'm fine with doing them once a week. Still a pity when you think about the potential they have. And then again reading the US has a really bad CR this week... so still almost a waste of time checking and evaluating if it's worth running or skipping each and every week.