DIII wants to steer you down a specific path at all times.
It's funny that you say that because this change, and many others (scorpion runs pre-2.0, Mira runs, cursed chest runs, etc.) have all been nerfed because, if left unaddressed, they become the defacto "right" way to play the game.
These things get nerfed because the way they "want" you to play the game is just to go out and kill monsters and feel relatively safe that if you choose Gardens of Hope Tier 1 and I choose the Weeping Hollow that neither of us has a massive advantage. Their "way" to play the game is that there shouldn't be a "right" way to play it, at least as it pertains to the question "Where should I farm?"
These things get nerfed because, if they don't, they LIMIT choices. If you're not doing CotA you may be having fun, but you're probably imposing a 50% XP penalty on yourself. If they did nothing they'd silently be endorsing, as Ruksak put it, Baal runs 2.0. Which, oddly enough, would be forcing us all down the same path. They're actually fighting for our ability to choose whatever path we want because all paths are (close to) the same.
That's kinda the opposite of trying to steer us down a specific path, isn't it?
DIII wants to steer you down a specific path at all times.
It's funny that you say that because this change, and many others (scorpion runs pre-2.0, Mira runs, cursed chest runs, etc.) have all been nerfed because, if left unaddressed, they become the defacto "right" way to play the game.
These things get nerfed because the way they "want" you to play the game is just to go out and kill monsters and feel relatively safe that if you choose Gardens of Hope Tier 1 and I choose the Weeping Hollow that neither of us has a massive advantage. Their "way" to play the game is that there shouldn't be a "right" way to play it, at least as it pertains to the question "Where should I farm?"
These things get nerfed because, if they don't, they LIMIT choices. If you're not doing CotA you may be having fun, but you're probably imposing a 50% XP penalty on yourself. If they did nothing they'd silently be endorsing, as Ruksak put it, Baal runs 2.0. Which, oddly enough, would be forcing us all down the same path. They're actually fighting for our ability to choose whatever path we want because all paths are (close to) the same.
That's kinda the opposite of trying to steer us down a specific path, isn't it?
I don't buy the "I feel forced to play this way" argument. I don't buy the "runs like CotA limit choice" line. I have a choice. If I don't find that fun then I don't have to do it, period. I know Blizz says stuff like this a lot, but I don't agree with them (at least, not when it comes to a game like Diablo, with no competition and being essentially single player. For a game like WoW I understand.) I didn't run CotA, but if I wanted to be as efficient as possible I would have. That simply wasn't my priority. I wanted to have fun, that's all.
It's not that I don't appreciate your point though. I understand the goal of making the entire game "as efficient as possible", it's just that I, and others, enjoy finding that one spot, that one run, that one <whatever> that's just a bit better than the rest. I often enjoy that kind of play because I like the feeling of leveling/grinding more quickly than I could otherwise. I do this in every RPG I play and I have fun doing it.
^ This post here reminded me of time spent in the late nineties playing final fantasy 3(6), marching back and forth in that goddamn dinosaur forest for at least 60 hours.....wow...them memories........
1. Remove ALL rare, legendary and set item drops from ALL low hp mobs. 0% chance and buff the drops on elite packs and high hp mobs a little bit. This way you would still give people who only care about XP/h and option of purely farming that but get no chances to get any gear. This way if you want to buff up that T1 to T4 and just focus your build on AoE and killing easy safe white mobs... why not get more exp for it, while the player still playing "normally" on T1 will get the same exp and drops as before. THIS is giving players choices.
Yeah, you don't get it all, eh? The major complaint in this thread (one I don't agree with, but at least understand) is that nerfing cota effectively nerfed other Act I runs (Cath 4, in particular, but there may be others). Your "option" doesn't change that in the least. Your nerf to cota would equally nerf all of these other zones/runs that people are referring to. You're not giving players options, you're just choosing to punish them in a different way.
DIII wants to steer you down a specific path at all times.
It's funny that you say that because this change, and many others (scorpion runs pre-2.0, Mira runs, cursed chest runs, etc.) have all been nerfed because, if left unaddressed, they become the defacto "right" way to play the game.
These things get nerfed because the way they "want" you to play the game is just to go out and kill monsters and feel relatively safe that if you choose Gardens of Hope Tier 1 and I choose the Weeping Hollow that neither of us has a massive advantage. Their "way" to play the game is that there shouldn't be a "right" way to play it, at least as it pertains to the question "Where should I farm?"
These things get nerfed because, if they don't, they LIMIT choices. If you're not doing CotA you may be having fun, but you're probably imposing a 50% XP penalty on yourself. If they did nothing they'd silently be endorsing, as Ruksak put it, Baal runs 2.0. Which, oddly enough, would be forcing us all down the same path. They're actually fighting for our ability to choose whatever path we want because all paths are (close to) the same.
That's kinda the opposite of trying to steer us down a specific path, isn't it?
I don't buy the "I feel forced to play this way" argument. I don't buy the "runs like CotA limit choice" line. I have a choice. If I don't find that fun then I don't have to do it, period. I know Blizz says stuff like this a lot, but I don't agree with them (at least, not when it comes to a game like Diablo, with no competition and being essentially single player. For a game like WoW I understand.) I didn't run CotA, but if I wanted to be as efficient as possible I would have. That simply wasn't my priority. I wanted to have fun, that's all.
It's not that I don't appreciate your point though. I understand the goal of making the entire game "as efficient as possible", it's just that I, and others, enjoy finding that one spot, that one run, that one that's just a bit better than the rest. I often enjoy that kind of play because I like the feeling of leveling/grinding more quickly than I could otherwise. I do this in every RPG I play and I have fun doing it.
I'm not sure what there is to "buy" in the argument. Moreover, I'm not sure how your personal experience and way of playing the game has any bearing on whether the argument is a good one or not.
The argument is that there is a critical mass of players who are of a particular predisposition that have a very adverse reaction to a significant opportunity cost. That is, given the choice between "fun gameplay" and "efficient gameplay", they will feel compelled to go the "efficient gameplay" route because what they perceive as the wasted opportunity of going the "fun gameplay" route is substantial enough to ruin their enjoyment. Thus, for these players, they are effectively stuck in a Catch-22: they can play the boring way, or get frustrated and ultimate bored playing the "fun" way.
It's pretty indisputable that at least some of these players exist. Clearly you're not one of them, but I'll admit that I'm probably pretty close to being in that category. And I'm certainly not the only one.
The only real question is: how big of a playerbase does that group represent? Is it a tiny fraction? A large majority? Somewhere in between? I actually don't think game companies have done proper research into this (or maybe they have), but given that their financial success depends on knowing answers to questions like these, I'm going to go ahead and give a successful gaming company the benefit of the doubt here and say they know what they're doing.
In other words, whether you're one of those people or not, there's apparently a large enough group out there who do feel negatively impacted by cota runs for this to be worth addressing for Blizzard.
The nerf of ANY farming area at this point is just punishment. With the AH being closed and no real money trading hands..who cares? Let players farm where they want. If somebody finds a easy place to farm it harms nobody. There is nothing to gain.
The nerf of ANY farming area at this point is just punishment. With the AH being closed and no real money trading hands..who cares? Let players farm where they want. If somebody finds a easy place to farm it harms nobody. There is nothing to gain.
I'll need to save this somewhere so I stop writing it in reply to these things in every topic.
Finding a spot where the farm is easier "makes" the other players go there, because they feel they're not efficient enough otherwise. All the topics of "Blizzard is forcing me to do this" are exactly that. One thing in the game that is a bit unbalanced compared to the rest of it. A skill does 5% more damage? Blizzard is forcing it. An item that gives 5% more Crit Damage? Blizzard are forcing it. An area that gives 5% more XP? Blizzard are forcing it.
You can't have "it hurts nobody", because it hurts the game's image and the community's behavior.
Never really thought of it that way but I never really do the farming runs like everyone else. I just derp around whatever act I feel like at the time, although admittedly at lower exp/drop chances than farming certain areas.
It would be nice for it to be completely equal but at a point that does become a bit harder and near impossible. Blizzard knows this though, they aren't shooting for absolute equality as they've said recently about Mira runs, they just want it to be comparable to normal leveling. So I imagine once the rest of the game is comparable to these farming areas then they'll stop nerfing more and more of them. That way people like me who just fight where they like the scenery and spawnrate will still get near the same results as someone farming a specific area repeatedly because it's faster runs or some such.
I want to kill the first zombie outside Tristram and have it drop a full set.
It's just how I want to play and it doesn't hurt anyone.
This will probably raise a few eyebrows but... It really doesn't hurt anyone. The whole concept of having some sort of competition in D3 is purely artificial. At least for now. It's like if TL2 players suddenly start complaining about over 9000 cheat mods out there. No one does that, right? Why should it be different here? Why would anyone complain if you want all the legendaries in the world?
I know that we've been through this a long time ago, but we wouldn't have this discussion if D3 had an online mode for ladders and HC and offline for all the others.
^ truth. I like how everyone is clinging to the "wait 2-3 days for adventure mode/ Neph rifts". Are you guys that naive? Those are just gonna get the nerf bat in the first 4 hours just like everything else.
I want to kill the first zombie outside Tristram and have it drop a full set.
It's just how I want to play and it doesn't hurt anyone.
This will probably raise a few eyebrows but... It really doesn't hurt anyone. The whole concept of having some sort of competition in D3 is purely artificial. At least for now. It's like if TL2 players suddenly start complaining about over 9000 cheat mods out there. No one does that, right? Why should it be different here? Why would anyone complain if you want all the legendaries in the world?
I know that we've been through this a long time ago, but we wouldn't have this discussion if D3 had an online mode for ladders and HC and offline for all the others.
It does not hurt the players until it hurts the game. The game then becomes "kill the zombies at rumford" or "go to cota" so sure X number of people can run cota 24-7, and it would be hard to notice the effects in game as you are playing....you can say it does not effect you and simply ignore it, but eventually there will be effects; More and more people you'd bump into would be hundreds of paragon levels deeper than those that roamed through the game normally. It would sneak up on you just like the shitty economy did; oh you only have hundreds of millions of gold? oh well....then you cannot even purchase one single piece of "end game" gear. sorry.
The people who acquired that wealth and are now draped in that gear? it was not all smarts and savvy.... the gold only existed because too much gold was dropping, people were farming fucking clay jars all day, and bot farms ran roughshod for 6 month stretches, the AH had virtually no fees or penalties...
It was bullshit. Items soon cost as much as a fucking commercial airliner....for everyone who would EVER start playing. but its possible to ignore that fact. Just look away and *poof* it doesn't matter. But it still matters! the issue is still there!
My wife bought the game a few day ago on sale. To say she is "Mega-noob-5000" would be an understatement. but shes happier than a pig in shit. She. does. not. have. a. clue. about the intricacies of the game I've been blathering on about for the past year+.....but the stupid concepts are still there, tainting her game whether she knows it or not.
for her to say "its no big deal" is different than Blizzard saying "its no big deal". Blizzard knows and hopefully Blizzard cares.
huge differences in wealth is OK
huge differences in character power and gear and level is OK
But that does not mean that how those differences come to be is irrelevant. It's relevant. the reputation and the quality of the game are at stake.
^ truth. I like how everyone is clinging to the "wait 2-3 days for adventure mode/ Neph rifts". Are you guys that naive? Those are just gonna get the nerf bat in the first 4 hours just like everything else.
How stupid do you have to be to believe that they'll nerf new content to be worse than old content when it comes to rewards? So much fuss about one room with enemies that only melee being nerfed.
CotA farming is nothing more than an ode to dumbed down gameplay.
Maybe YOU Should STOP Calling People stupid. I bet I can find new content they put in only to nerf soon afterwards. I think your pretty stupid
They weren't really exploits. It's just Blizzard not really knowing how to make this game more enjoyable.
Instead of having CotA give best XP, how about boost density in more places? Nope too hard, let's just nerf CotA.
So Rumford and Core runs give best legs? Let's nerf chests and leg drop instead of balancing it between elites, trash mobs and objects.
At some point, it will be 100% useless to farm high Torment levels. Cause A.) It wont be efficient for farming cause you have to kill WAY WAY to many monsters to get legendary items. And B.) Farming lower difficulty will be way faster then torment rewarding more legendaries, even though they've almost nerfed it to the spot you lose motivation to farm cause you barely get any. How many hundreds of hours am I supposed to farm to get my gear? 700? 1700? 3000?. I've got more legendaries then I can count now since patch, there's still a lot I haven't gotten, and that's JUST on my monk. What if I wanna play Wizard, or Barb etc? I'm gonna have to spend just as much time on them. I still don't have Thunderfuy, or Won Kim Lau, or Nemesis Bracers, or more then 1 inna's set piece. And I found many legendaries when Core and Rumford were great farming spots, also doing full playthrough. But the problem with full playthrough is that it's boring as hell, I hate some parts of Act1, I hate whole Act2, I hate some part of Act3 and I hate whole Act4. I've played through those Acts so many times I completely HATE THEM. Act1 and Act2 were alright in 1.0.8 because of mob density, but that's removed now.
I think Blizzard is missing the point of Diablo 3 and RTS games. In Diablo 2, people farmed same spots over and over, like Baal runs etc. Did that stop people from farming other places too? Or players to stop playing? No. We want to find legendary items, we want to get upgrades. We don't wanna farm things we don't wanna farm. Paragon levels don't mean much to me, if I wanted I could be plvl 450 on live, but 'm just 190, because I care more about items then some number next to your name giving you small amount of stats. I get motivated finding legendary items, I lose motivation when I farm and I don't get shit.
In 1.0.8, most legendary items were shit you found, heck almost all of them. But when you were finding 6+ an hour on average, even spiking up to 12 in just 1 hour. That's what kept you going. Now you can easily go without a legendary for 1-2 hours. One guy in my clan got 2 legendary items from FULL playthrough of the game INCLUDING Diablo's guaranteed legendary. So that's just 1 legendary for 4 hours of play time. Assuming you're not sick geared and running through the acts with 3 other people in 30mins or less.
I know Blizzard will most likely never read my post, but just what I feel about the game. Diablo is about legendary items and other good items. And paragon level should be optional. Also how long till they nerf all the good spots to get leg in RoS? Even doing bounties and rifts? Maybe they've already nerfed it to the ground since beta. Heck we might all be given base stats and remove all items from the game, cause items will no longer drop for us. Cause they nerfed everything. And everyone has a base 1000plvls cause mobs no longer give XP.
Boosting density is a lot more complicated than what you may think. Fixing the ammount of xp gained by trash mobs sounds reasonable.
No, you don't have to kill "WAY WAY" more monsters on higher torments to get legendaries. It's just that it will take you longer because you are killing slower.
P level 190 and complaining about having to play too much? Farm 700 hours on 2.0 and then come back with the results.
Yeah you hate all the acts. That's a valid reason as to why fuill playthroughs are boring. Oh wait, the old ruins and the core of arreat are "great" farming spots now? Can't you see how that's broken? People farming 1 spot over and over just because it has like 5 chests or something... I wonder if anybody thought about the old ruins pre 2.0 anyway...
D3 is not an RTS game.
Baal runs prove nothing here. People did not do Baal runs for the drops hence your analogy is flawed. See, you claim that all you want is upgrades and you couldn't care less about paragon levels. Well, why would you do Baal runs then? Why not go pits or something? Different games. Stop mixing up shit from 10 years ago. Baal runs are broken anyway.
Yay let's find 10 legendaries per hour and they are all shit bu you know what? we can sell them unidentified and spam the trading chat or go to crappy 3rd party forums! Back to 10 years ago again! woohoo!
You are right that the game is about progress. When you farm for items, you will get the experience on the way. But not when you farm core runs on normal for speed and effeciency. That won't get you any XP and that just sucks because you are ignoring 99% of the game... broken design that needs to change.
There is a difference between an efficient "route" and "you are a fool not to be doing this" route. They don't go out of their way to nerf a good efficient route.
Well unfortunately, Diablo 3 isn't a game with homogeneous game and experience content. You can't expect every area, with every variance in mob density to give you the same experience. It's idealism at best. UNLESS, that is exactly what you want. An exp bar that goes up at a fixed rate as you play, no matter where or what you are doing... c'mon listen to yourselves.
It's an inherent trait of rpgs with experience based leveling systems to have a "most efficient" path. Add to that, that many players play for their own reason, be it for gear or p lvls, and then finally you reach the conclusion: You can't complain about players playing the game that was put in front of them.
If you feel "punished" because you think in terms of leveling speed benchmarks and you're NOT going the most efficient route (which I respect), you can't complain about not being the fastest (no, sir). And this utter BS about people who don't run Cota now feeling punished because in the 15 minutes they spend in that area in one of their full game play through, they get a little less exp, is just that: utter BS.
People always find something to gripe about. Just sayin'.
Well unfortunately, Diablo 3 isn't a game with homogeneous game and experience content. You can't expect every area, with every variance in mob density to give you the same experience. It's idealism at best. UNLESS, that is exactly what you want. An exp bar that goes up at a fixed rate as you play, no matter where or what you are doing... c'mon listen to yourselves.
But anyone with half a brain knows that Blizzard isn't aiming for absolute equity. They're aiming for relative parity. Some variance is not only expected, but tolerated, because complete equity is just impossible with a game this large with so many variables as it pertains to farming. How could you ever really "balance" the Desolate Sands versus the Festering Woods versus The Silver Spire 1/2? It's pretty silly to suggest that since they can't be 100% balanced that we should have to tolerate OBVIOUS outliers like CotA, Mira, and Cursed Chest runs where people were gaining far more XP/hr than everyone in the community knew they should be gaining.
The top two people on diabloprogress.com are paragon level 657. That, alone, should indicate just how broken the "top" farming methods are/were as compared to how "normal" people were farming (I'm paragon 200, and that's probably higher than average, although nothing to brag about). These guys are HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of XP past me. There's no way to argue that it's not a problem. These are the same people who will get to paragon ~1000 and whine that for the past 200 levels all they've got is primary stat and it's a "boring" system and then all their twitch.tv nuthuggers will go out to the forums, like the dutiful souls they are, and flame Blizzard over it. Yet the major cause of the problem is the RETARDED amount of XP they were able to get pre-RoS in a very dubious manner.
The game isn't competitive, but CotA, Mira, and Cursed Chest runs were so strong that they really made it a false choice. You could choose to play "your way" but you knew in the back of your mind that you were doing something severely suboptimal (and that very well may cut into your fun) or you could choose to do the most boring runs known to man and have awesome XP, but eventually be bored to tears. Neither of those is long-term fun. And that's why Blizzard is aiming for *parity.* The game is supposed to be fun and these ridiculous farming methods only serve to undermine the fun for people who use them and people who do not use them alike.
Well unfortunately, Diablo 3 isn't a game with homogeneous game and experience content. You can't expect every area, with every variance in mob density to give you the same experience. It's idealism at best. UNLESS, that is exactly what you want. An exp bar that goes up at a fixed rate as you play, no matter where or what you are doing... c'mon listen to yourselves.
But anyone with half a brain knows that Blizzard isn't aiming for absolute equity. They're aiming for relative parity. Some variance is not only expected, but tolerated, because complete equity is just impossible with a game this large with so many variables as it pertains to farming. How could you ever really "balance" the Desolate Sands versus the Festering Woods versus The Silver Spire 1/2? It's pretty silly to suggest that since they can't be 100% balanced that we should have to tolerate OBVIOUS outliers like CotA, Mira, and Cursed Chest runs where people were gaining far more XP/hr than everyone in the community knew they should be gaining.
Correct. And while I am not in favor of this "obvious outlier" like CotA, the burden of responsibility for this "exploit" falls on Blizzard, not the few players that took advantage of what was, in a way, offered to them.
What I hear a lot here is the complaint that the few people who did run CotA days on end ruined it for those that didn't, because the playing field wasn't even. This is the assessment I have an issue with. If anyone has the responsibility for this, it's Blizzard.
The flip side of the coin is that when Blizz fixes CotA and similar areas, they will be replaced by the next best thing. And the whole thing starts over again. And honestly, there is a good chance that RoS will come with areas that are more "efficient" than CotA. So the complaining is really irrelevant.
And in my opinion, Blizz didn't fix the problems to level the playing field as far as leveling goes. They're trying to make more content viable so that more content gets screen time, which increases the longevity of this game for casual players who would otherwise get bored of running one path and switch to different games. In short, to make it more fun in the long run. You know how Blizz does everything for the casual players. But that's a whole different topic.
Even if all zones had "equal" density, there will ALWAYS be one or two zones that everyone farms if nothing, then because of the shape and layout, frequency of chest spawns, etc. So what is the point in making everything blandly the same and overcrowded.
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These things get nerfed because the way they "want" you to play the game is just to go out and kill monsters and feel relatively safe that if you choose Gardens of Hope Tier 1 and I choose the Weeping Hollow that neither of us has a massive advantage. Their "way" to play the game is that there shouldn't be a "right" way to play it, at least as it pertains to the question "Where should I farm?"
These things get nerfed because, if they don't, they LIMIT choices. If you're not doing CotA you may be having fun, but you're probably imposing a 50% XP penalty on yourself. If they did nothing they'd silently be endorsing, as Ruksak put it, Baal runs 2.0. Which, oddly enough, would be forcing us all down the same path. They're actually fighting for our ability to choose whatever path we want because all paths are (close to) the same.
That's kinda the opposite of trying to steer us down a specific path, isn't it?
It's not that I don't appreciate your point though. I understand the goal of making the entire game "as efficient as possible", it's just that I, and others, enjoy finding that one spot, that one run, that one <whatever> that's just a bit better than the rest. I often enjoy that kind of play because I like the feeling of leveling/grinding more quickly than I could otherwise. I do this in every RPG I play and I have fun doing it.
The argument is that there is a critical mass of players who are of a particular predisposition that have a very adverse reaction to a significant opportunity cost. That is, given the choice between "fun gameplay" and "efficient gameplay", they will feel compelled to go the "efficient gameplay" route because what they perceive as the wasted opportunity of going the "fun gameplay" route is substantial enough to ruin their enjoyment. Thus, for these players, they are effectively stuck in a Catch-22: they can play the boring way, or get frustrated and ultimate bored playing the "fun" way.
It's pretty indisputable that at least some of these players exist. Clearly you're not one of them, but I'll admit that I'm probably pretty close to being in that category. And I'm certainly not the only one.
The only real question is: how big of a playerbase does that group represent? Is it a tiny fraction? A large majority? Somewhere in between? I actually don't think game companies have done proper research into this (or maybe they have), but given that their financial success depends on knowing answers to questions like these, I'm going to go ahead and give a successful gaming company the benefit of the doubt here and say they know what they're doing.
In other words, whether you're one of those people or not, there's apparently a large enough group out there who do feel negatively impacted by cota runs for this to be worth addressing for Blizzard.
I'll need to save this somewhere so I stop writing it in reply to these things in every topic.
Finding a spot where the farm is easier "makes" the other players go there, because they feel they're not efficient enough otherwise. All the topics of "Blizzard is forcing me to do this" are exactly that. One thing in the game that is a bit unbalanced compared to the rest of it. A skill does 5% more damage? Blizzard is forcing it. An item that gives 5% more Crit Damage? Blizzard are forcing it. An area that gives 5% more XP? Blizzard are forcing it.
You can't have "it hurts nobody", because it hurts the game's image and the community's behavior.
Ha. Bagstone.
It would be nice for it to be completely equal but at a point that does become a bit harder and near impossible. Blizzard knows this though, they aren't shooting for absolute equality as they've said recently about Mira runs, they just want it to be comparable to normal leveling. So I imagine once the rest of the game is comparable to these farming areas then they'll stop nerfing more and more of them. That way people like me who just fight where they like the scenery and spawnrate will still get near the same results as someone farming a specific area repeatedly because it's faster runs or some such.
I know that we've been through this a long time ago, but we wouldn't have this discussion if D3 had an online mode for ladders and HC and offline for all the others.
The people who acquired that wealth and are now draped in that gear? it was not all smarts and savvy.... the gold only existed because too much gold was dropping, people were farming fucking clay jars all day, and bot farms ran roughshod for 6 month stretches, the AH had virtually no fees or penalties...
It was bullshit. Items soon cost as much as a fucking commercial airliner....for everyone who would EVER start playing. but its possible to ignore that fact. Just look away and *poof* it doesn't matter. But it still matters! the issue is still there!
My wife bought the game a few day ago on sale. To say she is "Mega-noob-5000" would be an understatement. but shes happier than a pig in shit. She. does. not. have. a. clue. about the intricacies of the game I've been blathering on about for the past year+.....but the stupid concepts are still there, tainting her game whether she knows it or not.
for her to say "its no big deal" is different than Blizzard saying "its no big deal". Blizzard knows and hopefully Blizzard cares.
huge differences in wealth is OK
huge differences in character power and gear and level is OK
But that does not mean that how those differences come to be is irrelevant. It's relevant. the reputation and the quality of the game are at stake.
Instead of having CotA give best XP, how about boost density in more places? Nope too hard, let's just nerf CotA.
So Rumford and Core runs give best legs? Let's nerf chests and leg drop instead of balancing it between elites, trash mobs and objects.
At some point, it will be 100% useless to farm high Torment levels. Cause A.) It wont be efficient for farming cause you have to kill WAY WAY to many monsters to get legendary items. And B.) Farming lower difficulty will be way faster then torment rewarding more legendaries, even though they've almost nerfed it to the spot you lose motivation to farm cause you barely get any. How many hundreds of hours am I supposed to farm to get my gear? 700? 1700? 3000?. I've got more legendaries then I can count now since patch, there's still a lot I haven't gotten, and that's JUST on my monk. What if I wanna play Wizard, or Barb etc? I'm gonna have to spend just as much time on them. I still don't have Thunderfuy, or Won Kim Lau, or Nemesis Bracers, or more then 1 inna's set piece. And I found many legendaries when Core and Rumford were great farming spots, also doing full playthrough. But the problem with full playthrough is that it's boring as hell, I hate some parts of Act1, I hate whole Act2, I hate some part of Act3 and I hate whole Act4. I've played through those Acts so many times I completely HATE THEM. Act1 and Act2 were alright in 1.0.8 because of mob density, but that's removed now.
I think Blizzard is missing the point of Diablo 3 and RTS games. In Diablo 2, people farmed same spots over and over, like Baal runs etc. Did that stop people from farming other places too? Or players to stop playing? No. We want to find legendary items, we want to get upgrades. We don't wanna farm things we don't wanna farm. Paragon levels don't mean much to me, if I wanted I could be plvl 450 on live, but 'm just 190, because I care more about items then some number next to your name giving you small amount of stats. I get motivated finding legendary items, I lose motivation when I farm and I don't get shit.
In 1.0.8, most legendary items were shit you found, heck almost all of them. But when you were finding 6+ an hour on average, even spiking up to 12 in just 1 hour. That's what kept you going. Now you can easily go without a legendary for 1-2 hours. One guy in my clan got 2 legendary items from FULL playthrough of the game INCLUDING Diablo's guaranteed legendary. So that's just 1 legendary for 4 hours of play time. Assuming you're not sick geared and running through the acts with 3 other people in 30mins or less.
I know Blizzard will most likely never read my post, but just what I feel about the game. Diablo is about legendary items and other good items. And paragon level should be optional. Also how long till they nerf all the good spots to get leg in RoS? Even doing bounties and rifts? Maybe they've already nerfed it to the ground since beta. Heck we might all be given base stats and remove all items from the game, cause items will no longer drop for us. Cause they nerfed everything. And everyone has a base 1000plvls cause mobs no longer give XP.
No, you don't have to kill "WAY WAY" more monsters on higher torments to get legendaries. It's just that it will take you longer because you are killing slower.
P level 190 and complaining about having to play too much? Farm 700 hours on 2.0 and then come back with the results.
Yeah you hate all the acts. That's a valid reason as to why fuill playthroughs are boring. Oh wait, the old ruins and the core of arreat are "great" farming spots now? Can't you see how that's broken? People farming 1 spot over and over just because it has like 5 chests or something... I wonder if anybody thought about the old ruins pre 2.0 anyway...
D3 is not an RTS game.
Baal runs prove nothing here. People did not do Baal runs for the drops hence your analogy is flawed. See, you claim that all you want is upgrades and you couldn't care less about paragon levels. Well, why would you do Baal runs then? Why not go pits or something? Different games. Stop mixing up shit from 10 years ago. Baal runs are broken anyway.
Yay let's find 10 legendaries per hour and they are all shit bu you know what? we can sell them unidentified and spam the trading chat or go to crappy 3rd party forums! Back to 10 years ago again! woohoo!
You are right that the game is about progress. When you farm for items, you will get the experience on the way. But not when you farm core runs on normal for speed and effeciency. That won't get you any XP and that just sucks because you are ignoring 99% of the game... broken design that needs to change.
Last paragraph? No.
It's an inherent trait of rpgs with experience based leveling systems to have a "most efficient" path. Add to that, that many players play for their own reason, be it for gear or p lvls, and then finally you reach the conclusion: You can't complain about players playing the game that was put in front of them.
If you feel "punished" because you think in terms of leveling speed benchmarks and you're NOT going the most efficient route (which I respect), you can't complain about not being the fastest (no, sir). And this utter BS about people who don't run Cota now feeling punished because in the 15 minutes they spend in that area in one of their full game play through, they get a little less exp, is just that: utter BS.
People always find something to gripe about. Just sayin'.
The top two people on diabloprogress.com are paragon level 657. That, alone, should indicate just how broken the "top" farming methods are/were as compared to how "normal" people were farming (I'm paragon 200, and that's probably higher than average, although nothing to brag about). These guys are HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of XP past me. There's no way to argue that it's not a problem. These are the same people who will get to paragon ~1000 and whine that for the past 200 levels all they've got is primary stat and it's a "boring" system and then all their twitch.tv nuthuggers will go out to the forums, like the dutiful souls they are, and flame Blizzard over it. Yet the major cause of the problem is the RETARDED amount of XP they were able to get pre-RoS in a very dubious manner.
The game isn't competitive, but CotA, Mira, and Cursed Chest runs were so strong that they really made it a false choice. You could choose to play "your way" but you knew in the back of your mind that you were doing something severely suboptimal (and that very well may cut into your fun) or you could choose to do the most boring runs known to man and have awesome XP, but eventually be bored to tears. Neither of those is long-term fun. And that's why Blizzard is aiming for *parity.* The game is supposed to be fun and these ridiculous farming methods only serve to undermine the fun for people who use them and people who do not use them alike.
What I hear a lot here is the complaint that the few people who did run CotA days on end ruined it for those that didn't, because the playing field wasn't even. This is the assessment I have an issue with. If anyone has the responsibility for this, it's Blizzard.
The flip side of the coin is that when Blizz fixes CotA and similar areas, they will be replaced by the next best thing. And the whole thing starts over again. And honestly, there is a good chance that RoS will come with areas that are more "efficient" than CotA. So the complaining is really irrelevant.
And in my opinion, Blizz didn't fix the problems to level the playing field as far as leveling goes. They're trying to make more content viable so that more content gets screen time, which increases the longevity of this game for casual players who would otherwise get bored of running one path and switch to different games. In short, to make it more fun in the long run. You know how Blizz does everything for the casual players. But that's a whole different topic.