Tier of legendary/set items in the future? Could call them Angelic or Divine tier items. Now this is were blizzard has too keep there foot down and make these items very, very rare. But once you find just one it will be game changer, 2-3 more affixes,set in already well rolled affixes, and higher stat rolls with unique abilities. Bringing this up because of the new greater rifts that will be coming( and maybe even 6-8 player raids down the long long road future, maybe? lol) I believe about a month or two ago someone had a post where he created some outrages OP amulets. But he was directly on the right path now, how items like that could be implemented.
Would like too hear everyone's thoughts! If anyone could find that post with the amulets for examples, please put it up. Thank you.
Tiers are stupid, if implemented they would immediately invalidate every other legendary in the game, regardless of how rare they are. Blizzard is putting a metric crapton of effort this expansion to do exactly the opposite, to bring as many legendaries as possible to rough the same level of effectiveness to combat that same effect of "These are BiS for everybody". One of the prevailing controversies currently around loot is the worry that the Hellfire Amulet will be one of these "higher tiered" items that will be required for any serious player to stay competitive.
Raids won't happen because there aren't specific loot tables for mobs. Besides, greater rifts are essentially raids as it is. You kill a bunch of trash then kill a highly rewarding boss at the end. Nearly the entire game would have to be reworked to fit more people in a game for 6-8 and that's just not feasible for a non-sub based franchise. They'd have to rebalance skills, buffs, and mobs. People with lower end computers would suffer due to the higher graphical and computational strain of having more spells and more calculations going at once. Not to mention completely rework the code and UI. It's just not viable considering the game is working just fine in the 4 person model.
Very very very unlikely. This was not the case in any of the previous Diablo games, and not in RoS with all the "new" items (they changed the legendaries instead of introducing a new tier, which would've been much easier for a gear reset).
I know that many people hate WoW in D3 discussions but in terms of itemization and "new item tiers" there are many similarities (especially the soft gear reset in RoS like in a typical WoW add-on), and WoW has managed to constantly increased gear without adding a new tier of loot - which basically already exists (artifact items are in the game files but only known as "GM items").
But let's just do a though exercise - let's assume those next tier items will be introduced. Either they're as rare as the Wand of Woh, which would players upset that it's simply just RNG whether or not you get it. If it's only for one slot and has WoW rarity, only a very few percent of players are ever going to see it. Does it make sense to introduce it then? Don't think so. On the other hand, if you make it drop more often (let's say, like set items these days) they become the typical endgame gear that 90% of the non-casual people are wearing - basically, whenever you loot a legendary item it would just be a place holder, but eventually you want this damn elusive "next tier item".
Conclusion: I don't think it would be healthy for the game at all to introduce a new tier. Eventually, this was also Blizzard's reasoning on why they never introduced artifact items in WoW, and I don't think it'll be any different in D3.
It's something I would welcome especially with the intro to greater rifts (as long as they wouldnt be mandatory in clearing a lvl 100 grift like the current state of those already super rare legendaries rimeheart/furnace) but i'm not expecting/very hopeful they will give us a tier beyond legendary. I think it would be cool if you had to acquire a new tier of legendarys wow style where you have to wait for one very rare drop to start an arduous quest chain with lots of lore about the item, eventually leading to the true legendary.
I don't think people are grasping the idea of later levels of a greater rift. They are SUPPOSED to be impossible. The design is that, currently, getting into the 40's is a pretty big feat for most players, at least on PTR. And that's supposed to be the soft cap, where players will then have to work very hard just to get past one more level.
And the idea of brand new items that immediately invalidate the hundreds of other legendaries? Horrible. TinyHell is correct that Blizzard is working hard to do the opposite of that; bring in new items every season that while powerful, they can co-exist along current legendaries in terms of power wise.
Well one of the big problems as of now is higher GR's are going too become almost impossible above level say 60 for example, Once Furnace,rimheart and EP is fixed we will never have enough DPS/Defense ratio too continue, Unless blizzard decides too drastically cut HP and what not too keep up. I'm also not saying it will be pure RNG, I think they would have too put a timer on these items. For just pure example once you go over 100 hours without finding one. Your chances begin too get higher until one drops. Just how legendary drops are right now. I also Believe this would give players in the "future" too have something to look forward too, Once you max out a character. Kinda like the new legendary gems coming. Blizzard already said new and improved legendarys would continue too keep coming. Just my opinion, One thing I think is missing is legendary/sets are dropping everywhere and even more in PTR. Blizzard just keeps increasing the drops rates more and more. On top of that 90% of the legendarys are just rares with higher stat rolls and useless special affix. I would just like something that is really exquisite, very rare. I'm also saying this is later future content. Six month+
I guess we will also find out, how far legendary gems take us,what rewards are going too be in ladders, and the ladder only items. Keep the discussion going people! Good opinions and feedback so far!
Thanks for the feedback Bleu42. I clearly see your point and understand what you are saying. I mean Diablo pretty much has limitless possibilities. Maybe the devs in future will spice up the rifts with more epic challenges adding multi RG's or adding mini boss's /events in the GRs.Witch I think a lot of people were looking forward too. So this keeps people interested and seeing new atmospheres other then just keep repeating level 30 GR over and over again.
I don't think people are grasping the idea of later levels of a greater rift. They are SUPPOSED to be impossible. The design is that, currently, getting into the 40's is a pretty big feat for most players, at least on PTR. And that's supposed to be the soft cap, where players will then have to work very hard just to get past one more level.
And the idea of brand new items that immediately invalidate the hundreds of other legendaries? Horrible. TinyHell is correct that Blizzard is working hard to do the opposite of that; bring in new items every season that while powerful, they can co-exist along current legendaries in terms of power wise.
The designers of the game did this to themselves. there is only one thing to be good at in this game; do more damage to monsters. and items can really do only one thing, because in the D3 universe all you have available to do is "do more damage" for faster legendary/per hour rate.
thats not the fault of "new items being deployed throughout a game" that the fault of "D3 the game itself" unfortunately....
the designers had a blank slate....they could have made anything your mind can conceive with the new game in the series....any classes any weapons....and tasks...any quests.....and we got "big deeps"
its the people who wanted to blend through umpteen thousand monsters while watching pirated movies, with top teir items falling out of barrels on a set schedule who got just what they wanted......
this game has actually molded people into saying new more powerful items could be a bad thing.............and then they state why...and due to the design of the game sadly they are in a way correct..........just horrible........
"this game has actually molded people into saying new more powerful items could be a bad thing.............and then they state why...and due to the design of the game sadly they are in a way correct"
No, tiers of more powerful items are a bad thing. It limits the diversity that blizzard is shooting for by making that tier the only thing worthwhile to have. What they're doing currently seems to be a more blended approach. They're doing a tuning pass on current legendaries to bring them all closer in line, then adding the handful of season-only legendaries that are a little bit better. You can interpret that as a tier if you'd like, but it's not in terms of more stats, just more interesting unique affixes...gamechangers if you will. Then at the end of the season they might do another tuning pass to bring everything back together and add a new handful of slightly better legendaries to the new season. There's always something better, but the rest doesn't necessarily get left behind.
this game has actually molded people into saying new more powerful items could be a bad thing.............and then they state why...and due to the design of the game sadly they are in a way correct..........just horrible........
MORE POWERFUL items would be a bad thing.
We already have legendaries that are of great power (stuff like Mirrorball, Starmetal Kukiri, etc.) and ones that have lower power (Angel Hair Braid, and other "legendary stat sticks). Myself, and plenty of others, have been complaining about that for quite a while because the lower power ones are, for all intents and purposes, junk gear that gets salvaged way too frequently.
We don't need new, more awesome, legendaries that make SMK into auto-salvage gear because it's just a junk item. We need more items of similar power that enable more builds and promote diversity.
What we don't need is a new "tier" of items that can roll 100 more primary stat that almost immediately invalidate every other existing item in the game. That was necessary with level 70 to make Loot 1.0 completely obsolete, but that had obvious rationale behind it. Every ladder season does not need a handful of items that are better than everything else out there. That does more to break itemization and force ladder play on players than it does to help anything. It creates way more problems than it solves.
All items need to have similar power. Not doing that just results in the same situation that we already have.... legendaries that don't have a special property being instantly ignored because they're inferior by design. Why would anyone espouse that as something good and then try to spin it as "LOL U GUYS ARE BRAINWASHED!" Completely absurd.
Good feedback everyone! We have a long way until the current PTR even goes live so I'm sure there is a lot of new things coming that we haven't seen yet. An example I forgot about is the new plan that will allow you too add a socket on too a weapon. This will become one of the top 5 items too find. Since it can add on a affix without sacrificing anything. Maybe more items/plans like this that can take very good items,make them unique and then take them too a new level. Like runes maybe. If you want too give me a rare gem, that I socket in my helm for example that lets me use frost nova(wizard spell) while I am on a barb with a separate cooldown, that I can control when too use it, would be pretty bad ass.
"this game has actually molded people into saying new more powerful items could be a bad thing.............and then they state why...and due to the design of the game sadly they are in a way correct"
No, tiers of more powerful items are a bad thing. It limits the diversity that blizzard is shooting for by making that tier the only thing worthwhile to have. What they're doing currently seems to be a more blended approach. They're doing a tuning pass on current legendaries to bring them all closer in line, then adding the handful of season-only legendaries that are a little bit better. You can interpret that as a tier if you'd like, but it's not in terms of more stats, just more interesting unique affixes...gamechangers if you will. Then at the end of the season they might do another tuning pass to bring everything back together and add a new handful of slightly better legendaries to the new season. There's always something better, but the rest doesn't necessarily get left behind.
I keep re-reading this to help me reply......and I basically agree with it 100%........but i can't say that adding a new teir would be bad becuase I don't trust blizzards interpretation of diversity. Adding "nothing" and/or tuning "nothing" is bad. Adding more powerful items is not categorically so. Otherwise one could say that the old vanilla legendarys were bad. as shitty as they were they at times made rares obsolete....in fact thats really what set people on fire most of the time....they found these rumoured legendary items and they DID NOT make the rares obsolete....they just absolutely sucked most of the time.. and people were not hinged on the fact that they did not change builds or playstyle....they fucking straight up SUCKED stats wise. I remember a while back when the new archon gear was released before the expansion. it was amazing....all it was was items that made the rest of the gear obsolete......but it was something new to hunt for. Same with the hellfire ring.....not build changing outside of the old PTR edition....but something new to look for...if they did roll out a new teir a new colour of item even if it did not change your build or playstyle....it would not be a "bad" thing.....not for D3 anyways.... it would be in no way as good as if they rolled out build changers.....but im not holding my breath on that.........
I hope you're right that they are working on build diversity through items full on....I agree its infinitely better than simply more stats or new colour.....I guess not actively playing the expansion watching people hit for a hundred bazillion damage kind of hinders my ability to debate here.....i mean if they have ramped up numbers so laughably high........that adding items to fluff them up even more is almost silly....thats unfortunate that the game has painted itself into that corner.....:(
maybe its the wow and mmo player in me, the years of playing that genre, that makes me aucutally like the tiered approach. Reading the arguments made so far, i can definitely see the downsides to such a system and how it relates to d3 and the arpg genre all together. However i think they should have a bit more control/smooth progression than they have had, even from vanilla.
To me, d3's item system has been a mess, and it has gotten a lot better, but it still is kinda the weakest part of the game currently. If i were to design the item system, i would have made blue gear in the beginning of d3 last longer, rares drop every so often, but those rares were really good. Then an even more rare chance of a legendary which was amazingly good, that you only needed a few to be really powerful.
Linear progression, currently you can just literally jump from junk rares pre-70, to straight all legendaries and doing t3/t4 for most classes, imagine a scenario where instead of t3/t4 the legendaries we have now, only got us to t2, like made the progression curve a lot smoother, and challenging while giving us legendaries that aucutally are good, there shouldn't have been so many junk legs to begin with, instead of going all out with 200, they should of just focused on making 100 but those 100 are amazing and everyone will use them for some build or another. Quality vs Quantity.
Blue items are just fodder for disenchant, no gameplay value there, about as bad as grey items and white items. Serves no purpose other than fuel breaking down and enchanting your legendary gear. Rares are in the same boat, as soon as you reach max level, you shed all rares for legendaries, and now we have 2 item types that serve only 2 purposes, minor purposes, fuel for enchanting/crafting, and vendoring for gold.
Ideally i would of liked the gear to stretch out more, and with more variety, instead of 2 t6 builds, because there is only like 2 legendaries with affixes that will carry you, make it 4 or even 6, they could of easily expanded it for every class, but for some reason they decided that pigeonholing us into 1 or 2 builds that were viable for t6 end game was a sound game design, and then make certain items of that build super rare so we were always chasing it, but i guess that's the whole point of the game.
i think gear should of been continuous throughout torment, instead of gear that drops in t1 that is good for running t6 with, they should have divided it up a bit more, make t1 gear a baseline, as you go up in difficulty, so does the gear, lets say a legendary like cindercoat, a t1 cindercoat might have 400 int, a t2 version might have 425 etc...adjust the mobs and challenge accordingly, and yes that would be quite complicated, but i like the complicated rather than extremely simplistic approach they did, but it also makes it easier/casual friendly and other benefits, so its not a real loss.
They could of had things to boost your gear some, in my t1/t2 example, if you got a cindercoat in t1, have some items or an upgrade system that you can use to upgrade it to a higher tier stats, so you wouldn't have to farm it again, in each torment level, at t6 the goal would be to be in mostly torment 5 gear, with some torment 6 upgraded stuff.
Gems the same way, instead of 1 static stat on each, make them into tiers, each upgrade level gives you more stats, maybe combining same level gems together, gives you next tier up or something. The gem system in Path of Exile is brilliant.
There's lots of ways they could of given d3 some depth and variety, but i feel the game right now is just a hollow shell waiting to be filled with new stuff, it just kinda is disappointing that we had to wait 2+ years for it to finally come around.
Love the feedback Raevynwillow!
I agree with a lot of what you just said. Too me I feel like the devs have always came up with solid Ideas and good baselines. But They don't go into depth/levels with it. Just like greater Rifts. ( witch could change and still in process) Yes they are very fun and fantastic,but about 2-6 weeks into once it is live its going too get blah. Because in the end all they are turned into are harder rifts that have timers? Like I said before in this thread where is the events/mini boss's. I know everyone will say well its all about speed, but where is the EPIC risk and reward of not dieing during a mini boss or a event and getting sent back too that checkpoint!!. A lot of people have already brought up gear scaling with difficulty. I think it could be a good idea if it was implemented right. Final saying on this reply, I do believe blizzard is going too go on the more side of bringing more gems and other things along thos lines that can improve gear you already have.
All I know is that if I'm running through a greater rift and just coming up on a Elite and it says prepare for a lesser Evil in 5 secs, you better hurry up and kill that Elite and bang Skeleton King just comes out of know where, I would love it.
Tiers are stupid, if implemented they would immediately invalidate every other legendary in the game, regardless of how rare they are. Blizzard is putting a metric crapton of effort this expansion to do exactly the opposite, to bring as many legendaries as possible to rough the same level of effectiveness to combat that same effect of "These are BiS for everybody". One of the prevailing controversies currently around loot is the worry that the Hellfire Amulet will be one of these "higher tiered" items that will be required for any serious player to stay competitive.
Raids won't happen because there aren't specific loot tables for mobs. Besides, greater rifts are essentially raids as it is. You kill a bunch of trash then kill a highly rewarding boss at the end. Nearly the entire game would have to be reworked to fit more people in a game for 6-8 and that's just not feasible for a non-sub based franchise. They'd have to rebalance skills, buffs, and mobs. People with lower end computers would suffer due to the higher graphical and computational strain of having more spells and more calculations going at once. Not to mention completely rework the code and UI. It's just not viable considering the game is working just fine in the 4 person model.
Greater rifts are in ladders. What happens to people that don't want to play ladders? I think that's one of the things they will get access to once the season ends, though. I forget off hand.
Reworking the entire game to fit in 6 - 8 people .... well, possibly, however they can just do the same thing they already do ... increase mob health and damage.
As for lagging everybody out.. Uhm.. that's not 100% client based. It's also how well coded the game is and what elements are incorporated. WoW can be run on a crappy laptop. Sure, you may need to turn down some settings, but it runs just fine, raid or not, on a crap machine.. So.. there goes that theory.
As for not having the revenue in a game that is not sub-based.. Pretty sure so many games are *dropping* that model because it is archaic and doesn't necessarily work that well. Well designed games which use microtransactions can do extremely well. For example: Angry Birds. League of Legends.
An example of a terrible microtransaction design? Did you ever play Warhammer Online Wrath of Heroes? If you did, well, there you go. Game never even made it out of open beta because they didn't put in the proper resources, didn't monetize it intelligently, and didn't even hardly do any advertising. Hell, the only forum the game had was put up by one of the players. Considering Electronic Arts was behind that title, that's pretty pathetic.
Greater rifts are in ladders. What happens to people that don't want to play ladders? I think that's one of the things they will get access to once the season ends, though. I forget off hand.
Nossir. Greater Rifts are released for everyone with 2.1. Not just for the season players. Were that the case, it's unlikely I'd ever be coming back to D3. Just waiting for now. Hopefully waiting long enough for them to remedy their crappy implementation of GRifts.
I agree with Raevynwillow for the most part, on how the loot is somewhat flawed. I really wish gear dropped in order to get you to the next difficulty level; this could've been the "tier" system. It would've been nice to have to work through T1 getting loot to get to T2. Instead as soon as I hit level 70, I craft a few items and do a rift or two, get a piece from Kadala and its off to the higher tiers within an hour of hitting 70.
I know people are for the most part impatient and want instant gratification, but then what are you left with? Just the grind.
I'm still in love with the game though. My only true dislike is the fact that 'best in slot' has ever been uttered. I like to do weird stuff man. When the game came out I rocked through Inferno with a sword/board demon hunter loaded with magic find. Now you have to use the same build and have the same gear as everyone else to accomplish end game. Ugh. I'll still do the crazy, I just can't get as far on it as the tough guys.
I agree with Raevynwillow for the most part, on how the loot is somewhat flawed. I really wish gear dropped in order to get you to the next difficulty level; this could've been the "tier" system. It would've been nice to have to work through T1 getting loot to get to T2. Instead as soon as I hit level 70, I craft a few items and do a rift or two, get a piece from Kadala and its off to the higher tiers within an hour of hitting 70.
They tried that with Inferno 1.0 and it failed miserably. One of the biggest problems is that it segments up the population too much.
You can run T5, your friend is stuck in T1. In the current system even though you get fewer drops, they're still the same quality, so you're penalized in volume of loot, but you're still getting loot that is relevant to your character. In a proposed "tier" system based on difficulty there would be no reason to go back to help your buddy out because you'd be getting items that have NO PURPOSE at all.
The game doesn't need more artificial "boxes" to put players in, especially with 2.1, it's segmented up enough already. Furthermore, very few people actually enjoyed having their items sectioned off like that. You spent weeks getting your iLvl 61 stuff, now you can (if you're lucky) do Act 2, and now you have to replace it all. It epitomized "grinding for +10 int" which the playerbase seems to reject. People like loading up a game and knowing that even though they're in T1 they have the ability to win the lottery and get that perfectly-rolled Wand of Woh. What you're proposing is basically punishing anyone who isn't in T6 by disallowing them to have the chance to get top-end gear. What does that serve? The "longevity" you gain from it is counterbalanced by people saying "fuck this" and moving on. We aren't gerbils here.
It seems that people much prefer grinding for items like SMK that actually change how you play and give intangible benefits as opposed to grinding just for "more stats." Tiered loot, particularly tiered loot based on difficulty, would only take us a step backwards in terms of feeling like the only reason we're killing monsters is to get 10 more primary stat and 5 more vitality.
Would like too hear everyone's thoughts! If anyone could find that post with the amulets for examples, please put it up. Thank you.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/russell3773-1387/hero/22070364
Raids won't happen because there aren't specific loot tables for mobs. Besides, greater rifts are essentially raids as it is. You kill a bunch of trash then kill a highly rewarding boss at the end. Nearly the entire game would have to be reworked to fit more people in a game for 6-8 and that's just not feasible for a non-sub based franchise. They'd have to rebalance skills, buffs, and mobs. People with lower end computers would suffer due to the higher graphical and computational strain of having more spells and more calculations going at once. Not to mention completely rework the code and UI. It's just not viable considering the game is working just fine in the 4 person model.
Very very very unlikely. This was not the case in any of the previous Diablo games, and not in RoS with all the "new" items (they changed the legendaries instead of introducing a new tier, which would've been much easier for a gear reset).
I know that many people hate WoW in D3 discussions but in terms of itemization and "new item tiers" there are many similarities (especially the soft gear reset in RoS like in a typical WoW add-on), and WoW has managed to constantly increased gear without adding a new tier of loot - which basically already exists (artifact items are in the game files but only known as "GM items").
But let's just do a though exercise - let's assume those next tier items will be introduced. Either they're as rare as the Wand of Woh, which would players upset that it's simply just RNG whether or not you get it. If it's only for one slot and has WoW rarity, only a very few percent of players are ever going to see it. Does it make sense to introduce it then? Don't think so. On the other hand, if you make it drop more often (let's say, like set items these days) they become the typical endgame gear that 90% of the non-casual people are wearing - basically, whenever you loot a legendary item it would just be a place holder, but eventually you want this damn elusive "next tier item".
Conclusion: I don't think it would be healthy for the game at all to introduce a new tier. Eventually, this was also Blizzard's reasoning on why they never introduced artifact items in WoW, and I don't think it'll be any different in D3.
hc sader: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/kawlin-1839/hero/48602348
And the idea of brand new items that immediately invalidate the hundreds of other legendaries? Horrible. TinyHell is correct that Blizzard is working hard to do the opposite of that; bring in new items every season that while powerful, they can co-exist along current legendaries in terms of power wise.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/russell3773-1387/hero/22070364
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/russell3773-1387/hero/22070364
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/russell3773-1387/hero/22070364
thats not the fault of "new items being deployed throughout a game" that the fault of "D3 the game itself" unfortunately....
the designers had a blank slate....they could have made anything your mind can conceive with the new game in the series....any classes any weapons....and tasks...any quests.....and we got "big deeps"
its the people who wanted to blend through umpteen thousand monsters while watching pirated movies, with top teir items falling out of barrels on a set schedule who got just what they wanted......
this game has actually molded people into saying new more powerful items could be a bad thing.............and then they state why...and due to the design of the game sadly they are in a way correct..........just horrible........
No, tiers of more powerful items are a bad thing. It limits the diversity that blizzard is shooting for by making that tier the only thing worthwhile to have. What they're doing currently seems to be a more blended approach. They're doing a tuning pass on current legendaries to bring them all closer in line, then adding the handful of season-only legendaries that are a little bit better. You can interpret that as a tier if you'd like, but it's not in terms of more stats, just more interesting unique affixes...gamechangers if you will. Then at the end of the season they might do another tuning pass to bring everything back together and add a new handful of slightly better legendaries to the new season. There's always something better, but the rest doesn't necessarily get left behind.
We already have legendaries that are of great power (stuff like Mirrorball, Starmetal Kukiri, etc.) and ones that have lower power (Angel Hair Braid, and other "legendary stat sticks). Myself, and plenty of others, have been complaining about that for quite a while because the lower power ones are, for all intents and purposes, junk gear that gets salvaged way too frequently.
We don't need new, more awesome, legendaries that make SMK into auto-salvage gear because it's just a junk item. We need more items of similar power that enable more builds and promote diversity.
What we don't need is a new "tier" of items that can roll 100 more primary stat that almost immediately invalidate every other existing item in the game. That was necessary with level 70 to make Loot 1.0 completely obsolete, but that had obvious rationale behind it. Every ladder season does not need a handful of items that are better than everything else out there. That does more to break itemization and force ladder play on players than it does to help anything. It creates way more problems than it solves.
All items need to have similar power. Not doing that just results in the same situation that we already have.... legendaries that don't have a special property being instantly ignored because they're inferior by design. Why would anyone espouse that as something good and then try to spin it as "LOL U GUYS ARE BRAINWASHED!" Completely absurd.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/russell3773-1387/hero/22070364
I hope you're right that they are working on build diversity through items full on....I agree its infinitely better than simply more stats or new colour.....I guess not actively playing the expansion watching people hit for a hundred bazillion damage kind of hinders my ability to debate here.....i mean if they have ramped up numbers so laughably high........that adding items to fluff them up even more is almost silly....thats unfortunate that the game has painted itself into that corner.....:(
To me, d3's item system has been a mess, and it has gotten a lot better, but it still is kinda the weakest part of the game currently. If i were to design the item system, i would have made blue gear in the beginning of d3 last longer, rares drop every so often, but those rares were really good. Then an even more rare chance of a legendary which was amazingly good, that you only needed a few to be really powerful.
Linear progression, currently you can just literally jump from junk rares pre-70, to straight all legendaries and doing t3/t4 for most classes, imagine a scenario where instead of t3/t4 the legendaries we have now, only got us to t2, like made the progression curve a lot smoother, and challenging while giving us legendaries that aucutally are good, there shouldn't have been so many junk legs to begin with, instead of going all out with 200, they should of just focused on making 100 but those 100 are amazing and everyone will use them for some build or another. Quality vs Quantity.
Blue items are just fodder for disenchant, no gameplay value there, about as bad as grey items and white items. Serves no purpose other than fuel breaking down and enchanting your legendary gear. Rares are in the same boat, as soon as you reach max level, you shed all rares for legendaries, and now we have 2 item types that serve only 2 purposes, minor purposes, fuel for enchanting/crafting, and vendoring for gold.
Ideally i would of liked the gear to stretch out more, and with more variety, instead of 2 t6 builds, because there is only like 2 legendaries with affixes that will carry you, make it 4 or even 6, they could of easily expanded it for every class, but for some reason they decided that pigeonholing us into 1 or 2 builds that were viable for t6 end game was a sound game design, and then make certain items of that build super rare so we were always chasing it, but i guess that's the whole point of the game.
i think gear should of been continuous throughout torment, instead of gear that drops in t1 that is good for running t6 with, they should have divided it up a bit more, make t1 gear a baseline, as you go up in difficulty, so does the gear, lets say a legendary like cindercoat, a t1 cindercoat might have 400 int, a t2 version might have 425 etc...adjust the mobs and challenge accordingly, and yes that would be quite complicated, but i like the complicated rather than extremely simplistic approach they did, but it also makes it easier/casual friendly and other benefits, so its not a real loss.
They could of had things to boost your gear some, in my t1/t2 example, if you got a cindercoat in t1, have some items or an upgrade system that you can use to upgrade it to a higher tier stats, so you wouldn't have to farm it again, in each torment level, at t6 the goal would be to be in mostly torment 5 gear, with some torment 6 upgraded stuff.
Gems the same way, instead of 1 static stat on each, make them into tiers, each upgrade level gives you more stats, maybe combining same level gems together, gives you next tier up or something. The gem system in Path of Exile is brilliant.
There's lots of ways they could of given d3 some depth and variety, but i feel the game right now is just a hollow shell waiting to be filled with new stuff, it just kinda is disappointing that we had to wait 2+ years for it to finally come around.
/long rant is long
I agree with a lot of what you just said. Too me I feel like the devs have always came up with solid Ideas and good baselines. But They don't go into depth/levels with it. Just like greater Rifts. ( witch could change and still in process) Yes they are very fun and fantastic,but about 2-6 weeks into once it is live its going too get blah. Because in the end all they are turned into are harder rifts that have timers? Like I said before in this thread where is the events/mini boss's. I know everyone will say well its all about speed, but where is the EPIC risk and reward of not dieing during a mini boss or a event and getting sent back too that checkpoint!!. A lot of people have already brought up gear scaling with difficulty. I think it could be a good idea if it was implemented right. Final saying on this reply, I do believe blizzard is going too go on the more side of bringing more gems and other things along thos lines that can improve gear you already have.
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/russell3773-1387/hero/22070364
Or Keywarden from Act 2 hehe
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/russell3773-1387/hero/22070364
Reworking the entire game to fit in 6 - 8 people .... well, possibly, however they can just do the same thing they already do ... increase mob health and damage.
As for lagging everybody out.. Uhm.. that's not 100% client based. It's also how well coded the game is and what elements are incorporated. WoW can be run on a crappy laptop. Sure, you may need to turn down some settings, but it runs just fine, raid or not, on a crap machine.. So.. there goes that theory.
As for not having the revenue in a game that is not sub-based.. Pretty sure so many games are *dropping* that model because it is archaic and doesn't necessarily work that well. Well designed games which use microtransactions can do extremely well. For example: Angry Birds. League of Legends.
An example of a terrible microtransaction design? Did you ever play Warhammer Online Wrath of Heroes? If you did, well, there you go. Game never even made it out of open beta because they didn't put in the proper resources, didn't monetize it intelligently, and didn't even hardly do any advertising. Hell, the only forum the game had was put up by one of the players. Considering Electronic Arts was behind that title, that's pretty pathetic.
Anyway. No. What you're saying are not absolutes.
I know people are for the most part impatient and want instant gratification, but then what are you left with? Just the grind.
I'm still in love with the game though. My only true dislike is the fact that 'best in slot' has ever been uttered. I like to do weird stuff man. When the game came out I rocked through Inferno with a sword/board demon hunter loaded with magic find. Now you have to use the same build and have the same gear as everyone else to accomplish end game. Ugh. I'll still do the crazy, I just can't get as far on it as the tough guys.
You can run T5, your friend is stuck in T1. In the current system even though you get fewer drops, they're still the same quality, so you're penalized in volume of loot, but you're still getting loot that is relevant to your character. In a proposed "tier" system based on difficulty there would be no reason to go back to help your buddy out because you'd be getting items that have NO PURPOSE at all.
The game doesn't need more artificial "boxes" to put players in, especially with 2.1, it's segmented up enough already. Furthermore, very few people actually enjoyed having their items sectioned off like that. You spent weeks getting your iLvl 61 stuff, now you can (if you're lucky) do Act 2, and now you have to replace it all. It epitomized "grinding for +10 int" which the playerbase seems to reject. People like loading up a game and knowing that even though they're in T1 they have the ability to win the lottery and get that perfectly-rolled Wand of Woh. What you're proposing is basically punishing anyone who isn't in T6 by disallowing them to have the chance to get top-end gear. What does that serve? The "longevity" you gain from it is counterbalanced by people saying "fuck this" and moving on. We aren't gerbils here.
It seems that people much prefer grinding for items like SMK that actually change how you play and give intangible benefits as opposed to grinding just for "more stats." Tiered loot, particularly tiered loot based on difficulty, would only take us a step backwards in terms of feeling like the only reason we're killing monsters is to get 10 more primary stat and 5 more vitality.