I don't know about the rest of you but I would like to see the world be open when I start a game. What I mean by that is like in D2 I could start a game from any act and kill every boss from every act. Main boss or mini boss. prior to patch 1.0.7 I guess I didn't mind as much, because farming the bossess really didn't give you anything, but know with the new crafting items, they only drop from cirtian bosses. I got used to running the same route over and over, now i have to change my play style again if i want to get any of these crafting items. I still like the game, but it is getting harder and harder to stay interested. Run gholm 100 times isn't fun to me. Force me to get 5 NV and then, at least, let me run all the acts and all the bosses i want to kill in ONE GAME!
Just ranting, sorry to be a downer, i really do enjoy playing diablo.
I think you two need to get your heads out of your asses.
Is that really necessary? I thought you were more mature. Look at the order of posts, thanks.
And I have no doubt that some people have good intentions, but such a system WOULD essentially be exploited by many people to skip content and do boss runs, just like in D2. I just said that we're not going there because it's Blizzard decision to do so. And I'm sorry that I like that, I know that makes me a fanboy, damn. Sorry, can't hate Blizzard for implementing something I would've liked to see 10 years ago.
Yeah, you're basically asking for going back to D2 mode - going straight for the bosses and ignoring 99% of all content.
Not gonna happen, sorry.
Agreed. To hell with that.
People need to get over this rear-view mirror D2 thing.
I'm going to tell you two, whom I think are very good people, that you're flat-out wrong on this one.
As long as NV stacks matter, we simply won't be just doing the D2 boss-only shit. We don't have to worry about that. I HATE not having the open world. I hate not being able to kill Maghda because doing so means I cut off all the good spots in Act 2.
I want to spend MORE time in one game farming MORE things. I want to get my 5 stacks of NV and then hit all my favorite spots in the game. Vault of the Assassin, Black Canyon Mines, Alcarnus, Cemetery, Festering Woods, Keeps 1 & 3, Rakkis Crossing, Core of Arreat, Leoric's Manor Courtyard, then the bosses which are accessible (Maghda, Zoltan Kulle, Belial, Siegebreaker, Azmodan, Iskatu, Rakanoth).... and perhaps, just perhaps, all three keywardens if I see fit.
One thing I fucking *loathe* with a passion about the Infernal Machines is that farming key parts goes completely against the idea of how farming is supposed to work in D3. 5NV + Boss + reset is exactly what people were doing on Siegebreaker. That is such a boring way to play. An open world would make farming for Infernal Machines a LOT less tedious and a LOT more enjoyable.
I really think it's very possible to have a completely open world (which I refer to as non-storymode) without going back to boss-only farming. In fact, a non-storymode would probably be the single best thing they could do for Act 4 without completely redesigning it to not be farming-friendly.
We have NV transitioning between Acts, honestly, an open world (with controls to prevent outright boss farming) is the next logical progression of that. I think that having bosses as options is important though. I don't want to ONLY farm elite packs, and I don't want to ONLY farm bosses. I want to have the opportunity to do both.
Let me tell you that I don't think the current implementation is perfect. Actually, it's far from perfect; right now everyone is doing Keep 2+Ghom, rinse and repeat.
And about the open world, one thing that I really *hate* is that new act means new game, that is ridiculous and in this case a comparison with D2 is absolutely valid, I have no idea why they changed this (well, actually the only reason I could think of is because of having a better mechanism to control which texture are being loaded, but since this game is so low on GFX that can't be it).
There are other things that are stupid right now: Why do you have to cancel all the animations (3x during a Diablo fight, are you kidding me)? Why are the quests so worthless (NO XP? 800 gold? What the hell?). Why are so many areas not randomized (Leoric's Manor, Bridge of Korsikk, Arreat Core, ...)? That's something they kept from D1+D2 and that I never liked, btw.
However, I like the general idea of having to play through the game rather than "open world". Its current implementation is far from perfect, NV5 is not enough to prevent exploiting farm spots like Ghom, and the aforementioned issues are bothering me. But again, just going back to D2 mode of an open world is something like the "surrender" option for Blizzard and they're just not doing it.
Agree completely, this "choose a quest system" is really bad. IMO, once you completed the quest, the areas should remain in a different status, call it open, revisitable, grindable, etc.
Not to mention the chance to TP to another acts and continue your farm there without losing NV.
as long as incentives are in the right place so the average person wants to farm everything, then bitching about open world doom is moot.
and only good will come. people need to stop acting like open world = boss farm only or some nonsense, it can mean what ever the hell blizzard balances it to mean.
However, I like the general idea of having to play through the game rather than "open world". Its current implementation is far from perfect, NV5 is not enough to prevent exploiting farm spots like Ghom, and the aforementioned issues are bothering me. But again, just going back to D2 mode of an open world is something like the "surrender" option for Blizzard and they're just not doing it.
"Farm mode" could unlock on a per-toon basis only after you've killed Inferno Diablo. I'm not saying that there wouldn'e be some residual clean-up that has to happen. Maybe the Keeps Level 3 waypoint needs to not be right next to Ghom. OK. That's pretty fixable, and it shouldn't be a reason not to move forward with this.
I truly think that allowing a "farm mode" is the #1 most important change for the longevity of the game and that we'd be better off discussing how to allow such a thing while maintaining the mantra that sticking with a game (as opposed to creating a new game every 27 seconds), with lots of farmable areas, and NV, is really what the endgame is about.
I find absolutely NOTHING enjoyable about having to pick what stage of the storyline I want to start from and having that define what monsters are available to me. I like killing bosses here and there. I do NOT like picking a point and knowing "oh, well, if I want to kill Belial and Zoltan Kulle then I can't kill Maghda unless I play through most of Act 2."
Not fun! Very, very, not fun. And, I might add, that for people who just want to farm high-density areas, an open game wouldn't change much for them. In this case, the options that an open game would provide vastly outweigh some of the other side-effects that Blizzard would have to iron out.
EDIT
Since 1.0.7 I've been doing Keeps Level 3 -> Core of Arreat -> Rakkis Crossing (if I don't have 5 NV, which only happens about 1 in 10 times) -> Azmodan -> Iskatu -> Rakanoth. It's been IMMENSELY enjoyable for me. It probably isn't the most efficient way to farm patterns, but it works for me. We should want people finding their little niches like this as opposed to doing things to curb that.
Okay, if we say we would have an open world, what about some timer for "open new game" after you quit a game that only lasted a few minutes? Or some kind of limit, like max. 3 games per hour or so?
I spent more gold buying the npc sold intel pattern than i did buying all the other intel patterns combined on the gold ah. The only thing ive changed about the way i farm act 3 is i start on the quest to kill cydea instead of azmodan and do my normal farm path, plus one extra tower floor and killing cydea for a possibility at patterns i *might* use for a different character. And if i wanted to i can now go to act 4 and kill more stuff there for chances at patterns that i could probably just buy for cheap. Unless people are bleeding demonic essences out of every cavity, im not really sure why ghom is seen as the go to farm boss.
@Bagstone
If it were needed I sincerely doubt that the average player would ever notice a 120s "cooldown" on creating a new game. I have never, ever, created games remotely that fast.
But, the bigger question (for me) is that given NV and how the game currently is, what would necessitate it? I'm just curious as to what scenarios you see creeping up that would make Blizzard need to deviate from what we have now, given an open world.
Do you think people would just WP around hitting Ghom, Zoltan Kulle, Maghda, Azmodan, and Rakanoth with no NV? Would they have 5 NV? Would getting 5 NV and then hitting up a handful of accessible bosses be that horrible? If so, is it possible to move the WPs around a bit so that the bosses aren't quite as accessible? From my perspective, most people consider bosses to be tremendously inefficient right now, so I'd like to understand what could influence that to change.
I'm literally asking because, frankly, my mind can't process ALL the possible outcomes and you probably have thought of things I haven't and vice versa. Brainstorming is cool!
As long as NV stacks matter, we simply won't be just doing the D2 boss-only shit. We don't have to worry about that. I HATE not having the open world. I hate not being able to kill Maghda because doing so means I cut off all the good spots in Act 2.
I want to spend MORE time in one game farming MORE things. I want to get my 5 stacks of NV and then hit all my favorite spots in the game. Vault of the Assassin, Black Canyon Mines, Alcarnus, Cemetery, Festering Woods, Keeps 1 & 3, Rakkis Crossing, Core of Arreat, Leoric's Manor Courtyard, then the bosses which are accessible (Maghda, Zoltan Kulle, Belial, Siegebreaker, Azmodan, Iskatu, Rakanoth).... and perhaps, just perhaps, all three keywardens if I see fit.
One thing I fucking *loathe* with a passion about the Infernal Machines is that farming key parts goes completely against the idea of how farming is supposed to work in D3. 5NV + Boss + reset is exactly what people were doing on Siegebreaker. That is such a boring way to play. An open world would make farming for Infernal Machines a LOT less tedious and a LOT more enjoyable.
I really think it's very possible to have a completely open world (which I refer to as non-storymode) without going back to boss-only farming. In fact, a non-storymode would probably be the single best thing they could do for Act 4 without completely redesigning it to not be farming-friendly.
We have NV transitioning between Acts, honestly, an open world (with controls to prevent outright boss farming) is the next logical progression of that. I think that having bosses as options is important though. I don't want to ONLY farm elite packs, and I don't want to ONLY farm bosses. I want to have the opportunity to do both.
Pre-1.07 the game was just about avoiding bosses, farming areas with high mob density and high elite density (especially in the beginning of a run to quickly get to NV5). Right now it seems that it's the other way round, bosses become more interesting and people do NV5 + boss X runs (like the Ghom example which lasts way less than 5 minutes if you're quick).
Many people wrote their runs last ~5-10 minutes, and I think that's fairly short and sad, but it's just my personal opinion. I'd rather kill myself than playing 5 minute runs for 3 hours straight, just can't do that. NV5 doesn't really help that much because for well-equipped players it only takes a couple of dozen seconds to get NV5.
Hm, what you wrote is actually exactly what I want, too: "I want to spend MORE time in one game farming MORE things. I want to get my 5 stacks of NV and then hit all my favorite spots in the game."
Completely agree, same here. It's just that balancing seems to be impossible. I was shocked when someone did extensive research ~3 months ago that showed that even after farming 1-2 areas it's already more efficient to create a new game rather than make NV5 last and visit 2-3 more areas. I know that mob density is a problem and it's not perfectly balanced, but is it that off? Blizzard was aware of that quite soon and countered the "open game, kill boss X or farm area Y, quit, rinse & repeat" mentality by introducing NV5. We have Keywardens as an incentive, we have elite packs for NV5 and bonus drops, we have mini bosses for plans, and so on; but it seems that 5 minutes after the introduction of any attempt by Blizzard to balance the game people come up with a strategy that entails visiting 1% of the game only. Hence I'm kind of giving up hope that we'll ever see that perfect balance - because quite honestly, in 20 years of gaming I don't recall a game that was ever perfectly balanced from beginning to end. And with D3 being a game with such a dedicated, hardcore theorycrafting, number-crunching community I feel that we'll never get there.
I wouldn't mind an open world *if* the balance was created in such a way that your mind wouldn't try to force you into some short runs, whether it's Baal, Ghom, or Keep 2 only. Right now I'm in an act 3 game and killing this and that and I'm just like "okay, let's go here next and empty this area, too" but there's a part of my brain that's whispering "you're losing XP while doing this, you would be better off to restart the game". I tell this part of the brain to shut up, and sometimes I just wished I would've never heard of Alkaizer in the first place...
I wouldn't mind an open world *if* the balance was created in such a way that your mind wouldn't try to force you into some short runs, whether it's Baal, Ghom, or Keep 2 only. Right now I'm in an act 3 game and killing this and that and I'm just like "okay, let's go here next and empty this area, too" but there's a part of my brain that's whispering "you're losing XP while doing this, you would be better off to restart the game". I tell this part of the brain to shut up, and sometimes I just wished I would've never heard of Alkaizer in the first place...
Hurry up and get to paragon 100 and you can join in me in endlessly exploring the nooks and crannies of any Act, any dungeon, and so forth and just do whatever without any pressure whatsoever. Oh, look! A set item! It sucks? No prob, I'll just go over here and flip some bodies and maybe I'll get something awesome; no problem, plenty of things to do since I have nothing left on my agenda.
open world would help with getting to 100 paragon... i don't wanna have to grind a few areas in act 3 to level... MP1, and kill everhything... i rarely find anything good off bosses anyway, i'd probbaly just skip them all....
It wouldn't cause Boss only farming either. The only reason people only farmed bosses in D2, is because only bosses in D2 dropped any good piles of loot. D3 fixed this. closing off and funneling us through the world sent the opposite message. Blizzard can't make up their mind. Do they want us to farm where we want to farm like they claimed by making elite packs worth killing?(which is a success, they most definitely ARE worth killing!!) or do they want us doing "XXXX-runs" by funneling us through a preset path, over and over and over?
The original idea for inferno was basically what we eventually got with the MP system. A way to farm anywhere you want to get the loot you want. Only problem is, they neglected to open up the world and give us the "anywhere" part. We can start as one of a dozen or so locations in an act, and then finish the act. Thats fine, and I enjoy doing that, but i also see great value in saying ok, i just killed siegebreaker and want a change of scenery without losing my NV stacks....oh wait, i can't just choose an Act 2 waypoint, i have to start a new game.
Maybe they honestly thought that choosing a quest to start from was a good idea, who knows, they made so many mistakes before that Blizzard cant surprise me now. Well, except that I thought that the brawling thing was some sort of mediocre automatic match making, turns out that is not even that.
My original post, i guess was miss leading. I didn't mean just to farm bosses I just used it as an example. What I want to do, is what what a lot of others want here as well. Once I get my 5 NV I want to kill, maybe all the key wardens or go to act 1/2 to kill stuff or kill some mid act bosses. I want to play longer in the game instead of re-running the same area over and over in 5 to 10 min.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Just ranting, sorry to be a downer, i really do enjoy playing diablo.
Not gonna happen, sorry.
Agreed. To hell with that.
People need to get over this rear-view mirror D2 thing.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Is that really necessary? I thought you were more mature. Look at the order of posts, thanks.
And I have no doubt that some people have good intentions, but such a system WOULD essentially be exploited by many people to skip content and do boss runs, just like in D2. I just said that we're not going there because it's Blizzard decision to do so. And I'm sorry that I like that, I know that makes me a fanboy, damn. Sorry, can't hate Blizzard for implementing something I would've liked to see 10 years ago.
I'm going to tell you two, whom I think are very good people, that you're flat-out wrong on this one.
As long as NV stacks matter, we simply won't be just doing the D2 boss-only shit. We don't have to worry about that. I HATE not having the open world. I hate not being able to kill Maghda because doing so means I cut off all the good spots in Act 2.
I want to spend MORE time in one game farming MORE things. I want to get my 5 stacks of NV and then hit all my favorite spots in the game. Vault of the Assassin, Black Canyon Mines, Alcarnus, Cemetery, Festering Woods, Keeps 1 & 3, Rakkis Crossing, Core of Arreat, Leoric's Manor Courtyard, then the bosses which are accessible (Maghda, Zoltan Kulle, Belial, Siegebreaker, Azmodan, Iskatu, Rakanoth).... and perhaps, just perhaps, all three keywardens if I see fit.
One thing I fucking *loathe* with a passion about the Infernal Machines is that farming key parts goes completely against the idea of how farming is supposed to work in D3. 5NV + Boss + reset is exactly what people were doing on Siegebreaker. That is such a boring way to play. An open world would make farming for Infernal Machines a LOT less tedious and a LOT more enjoyable.
I really think it's very possible to have a completely open world (which I refer to as non-storymode) without going back to boss-only farming. In fact, a non-storymode would probably be the single best thing they could do for Act 4 without completely redesigning it to not be farming-friendly.
We have NV transitioning between Acts, honestly, an open world (with controls to prevent outright boss farming) is the next logical progression of that. I think that having bosses as options is important though. I don't want to ONLY farm elite packs, and I don't want to ONLY farm bosses. I want to have the opportunity to do both.
And about the open world, one thing that I really *hate* is that new act means new game, that is ridiculous and in this case a comparison with D2 is absolutely valid, I have no idea why they changed this (well, actually the only reason I could think of is because of having a better mechanism to control which texture are being loaded, but since this game is so low on GFX that can't be it).
There are other things that are stupid right now: Why do you have to cancel all the animations (3x during a Diablo fight, are you kidding me)? Why are the quests so worthless (NO XP? 800 gold? What the hell?). Why are so many areas not randomized (Leoric's Manor, Bridge of Korsikk, Arreat Core, ...)? That's something they kept from D1+D2 and that I never liked, btw.
However, I like the general idea of having to play through the game rather than "open world". Its current implementation is far from perfect, NV5 is not enough to prevent exploiting farm spots like Ghom, and the aforementioned issues are bothering me. But again, just going back to D2 mode of an open world is something like the "surrender" option for Blizzard and they're just not doing it.
Not to mention the chance to TP to another acts and continue your farm there without losing NV.
and only good will come. people need to stop acting like open world = boss farm only or some nonsense, it can mean what ever the hell blizzard balances it to mean.
"Farm mode" could unlock on a per-toon basis only after you've killed Inferno Diablo. I'm not saying that there wouldn'e be some residual clean-up that has to happen. Maybe the Keeps Level 3 waypoint needs to not be right next to Ghom. OK. That's pretty fixable, and it shouldn't be a reason not to move forward with this.
I truly think that allowing a "farm mode" is the #1 most important change for the longevity of the game and that we'd be better off discussing how to allow such a thing while maintaining the mantra that sticking with a game (as opposed to creating a new game every 27 seconds), with lots of farmable areas, and NV, is really what the endgame is about.
I find absolutely NOTHING enjoyable about having to pick what stage of the storyline I want to start from and having that define what monsters are available to me. I like killing bosses here and there. I do NOT like picking a point and knowing "oh, well, if I want to kill Belial and Zoltan Kulle then I can't kill Maghda unless I play through most of Act 2."
Not fun! Very, very, not fun. And, I might add, that for people who just want to farm high-density areas, an open game wouldn't change much for them. In this case, the options that an open game would provide vastly outweigh some of the other side-effects that Blizzard would have to iron out.
EDIT
Since 1.0.7 I've been doing Keeps Level 3 -> Core of Arreat -> Rakkis Crossing (if I don't have 5 NV, which only happens about 1 in 10 times) -> Azmodan -> Iskatu -> Rakanoth. It's been IMMENSELY enjoyable for me. It probably isn't the most efficient way to farm patterns, but it works for me. We should want people finding their little niches like this as opposed to doing things to curb that.
Okay, if we say we would have an open world, what about some timer for "open new game" after you quit a game that only lasted a few minutes? Or some kind of limit, like max. 3 games per hour or so?
If it were needed I sincerely doubt that the average player would ever notice a 120s "cooldown" on creating a new game. I have never, ever, created games remotely that fast.
But, the bigger question (for me) is that given NV and how the game currently is, what would necessitate it? I'm just curious as to what scenarios you see creeping up that would make Blizzard need to deviate from what we have now, given an open world.
Do you think people would just WP around hitting Ghom, Zoltan Kulle, Maghda, Azmodan, and Rakanoth with no NV? Would they have 5 NV? Would getting 5 NV and then hitting up a handful of accessible bosses be that horrible? If so, is it possible to move the WPs around a bit so that the bosses aren't quite as accessible? From my perspective, most people consider bosses to be tremendously inefficient right now, so I'd like to understand what could influence that to change.
I'm literally asking because, frankly, my mind can't process ALL the possible outcomes and you probably have thought of things I haven't and vice versa. Brainstorming is cool!
^this
Many people wrote their runs last ~5-10 minutes, and I think that's fairly short and sad, but it's just my personal opinion. I'd rather kill myself than playing 5 minute runs for 3 hours straight, just can't do that. NV5 doesn't really help that much because for well-equipped players it only takes a couple of dozen seconds to get NV5.
Hm, what you wrote is actually exactly what I want, too: "I want to spend MORE time in one game farming MORE things. I want to get my 5 stacks of NV and then hit all my favorite spots in the game."
Completely agree, same here. It's just that balancing seems to be impossible. I was shocked when someone did extensive research ~3 months ago that showed that even after farming 1-2 areas it's already more efficient to create a new game rather than make NV5 last and visit 2-3 more areas. I know that mob density is a problem and it's not perfectly balanced, but is it that off? Blizzard was aware of that quite soon and countered the "open game, kill boss X or farm area Y, quit, rinse & repeat" mentality by introducing NV5. We have Keywardens as an incentive, we have elite packs for NV5 and bonus drops, we have mini bosses for plans, and so on; but it seems that 5 minutes after the introduction of any attempt by Blizzard to balance the game people come up with a strategy that entails visiting 1% of the game only. Hence I'm kind of giving up hope that we'll ever see that perfect balance - because quite honestly, in 20 years of gaming I don't recall a game that was ever perfectly balanced from beginning to end. And with D3 being a game with such a dedicated, hardcore theorycrafting, number-crunching community I feel that we'll never get there.
I wouldn't mind an open world *if* the balance was created in such a way that your mind wouldn't try to force you into some short runs, whether it's Baal, Ghom, or Keep 2 only. Right now I'm in an act 3 game and killing this and that and I'm just like "okay, let's go here next and empty this area, too" but there's a part of my brain that's whispering "you're losing XP while doing this, you would be better off to restart the game". I tell this part of the brain to shut up, and sometimes I just wished I would've never heard of Alkaizer in the first place...
Hurry up and get to paragon 100 and you can join in me in endlessly exploring the nooks and crannies of any Act, any dungeon, and so forth and just do whatever without any pressure whatsoever. Oh, look! A set item! It sucks? No prob, I'll just go over here and flip some bodies and maybe I'll get something awesome; no problem, plenty of things to do since I have nothing left on my agenda.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
It wouldn't cause Boss only farming either. The only reason people only farmed bosses in D2, is because only bosses in D2 dropped any good piles of loot. D3 fixed this. closing off and funneling us through the world sent the opposite message. Blizzard can't make up their mind. Do they want us to farm where we want to farm like they claimed by making elite packs worth killing?(which is a success, they most definitely ARE worth killing!!) or do they want us doing "XXXX-runs" by funneling us through a preset path, over and over and over?
The original idea for inferno was basically what we eventually got with the MP system. A way to farm anywhere you want to get the loot you want. Only problem is, they neglected to open up the world and give us the "anywhere" part. We can start as one of a dozen or so locations in an act, and then finish the act. Thats fine, and I enjoy doing that, but i also see great value in saying ok, i just killed siegebreaker and want a change of scenery without losing my NV stacks....oh wait, i can't just choose an Act 2 waypoint, i have to start a new game.