Problem:
Currently, for drops, there is one right way to farm: Nephalem Rifts. They provide the most blood shards and they have a far higher drop rate on legendaries than Campaign Mode or anything else in Adventure Mode. This means that time spent doing anything other than Nephalem Rifts needs to be minimized in order to maximize your chances for items. This is a bad meta game, but one that's very easily fixed.
Solution:
1. Apply the same drop rates from Nephalem Rifts to the entire game, both Campaign and Adventure Modes.
2. Squash split-farming bounties.
3. Allow Legendary Gems to be upgraded in Nephalem Rifts and not just Greater Rifts (keep it commensurate with difficulty). Also give all elites in Nephalem Rifts a chance to drop Infernal Machine keys.
4. Increase the blood shards from Bounties to be roughly equal to that of those found in Nephalem Rifts on a per-hour basis.
5. Due to the reduced cost for entering Rifts, particularly for solo play, and the inability to split farm bounties, increase the chance for cache-specific legendaries by a generous amount.
These five rather simple changes would allow people to farm as they like instead of on a schedule. It would allow people who aren't totally into Greater Rifts to treat them as a proving ground instead of the only path to upgrade their Legendary Gems. Greater Rifts would, likely, still be better at upgrading the gems, but it wouldn't be the only way to do it, and that's a good thing. Bounties would feel a lot more rewarding. As it is, on T4, I still can do a full act's worth of bounties, and regularly see zero legendaries, including the cache. This feels underwhelming and bounties should be much more fun. If they nix split farming then maybe, just maybe, they can do other things to make bounties feel more enjoyable.
I like it. I just recently got a chance to test drive the expansion on the PTR...and was blown away at how much more rewarding the rifts were compared to doing bounties. but I had farmed up 80 keystone fragments through bounties before even learning what a rift was....and even alone the bounties seemed rather unrewarding and mindless. Not to mention they have you doing the same content in a wacky route killing bosses and opening cursed chests just as you might in campaign mode.......it felt like "thanks for running all over the whole country side killing demons...here is a bag of bullshit for your troubles" but I can dress like a ninja so that takes the edge off...
Problem:
Currently, for drops, there is one right way to farm: Nephalem Rifts. They provide the most blood shards and they have a far higher drop rate on legendaries than Campaign Mode or anything else in Adventure Mode. This means that time spent doing anything other than Nephalem Rifts needs to be minimized in order to maximize your chances for items. This is a bad meta game, but one that's very easily fixed.
Solution:
1. Apply the same drop rates from Nephalem Rifts to the entire game, both Campaign and Adventure Modes.
2. Squash split-farming bounties.
3. Allow Legendary Gems to be upgraded in Nephalem Rifts and not just Greater Rifts (keep it commensurate with difficulty). Also give all elites in Nephalem Rifts a chance to drop Infernal Machine keys.
4. Increase the blood shards from Bounties to be roughly equal to that of those found in Nephalem Rifts on a per-hour basis.
5. Due to the reduced cost for entering Rifts, particularly for solo play, and the inability to split farm bounties, increase the chance for cache-specific legendaries by a generous amount.
These five rather simple changes would allow people to farm as they like instead of on a schedule. It would allow people who aren't totally into Greater Rifts to treat them as a proving ground instead of the only path to upgrade their Legendary Gems. Greater Rifts would, likely, still be better at upgrading the gems, but it wouldn't be the only way to do it, and that's a good thing. Bounties would feel a lot more rewarding. As it is, on T4, I still can do a full act's worth of bounties, and regularly see zero legendaries, including the cache. This feels underwhelming and bounties should be much more fun. If they nix split farming then maybe, just maybe, they can do other things to make bounties feel more enjoyable.
1) How about reducing the droprate in rifts to what it is everywhere else?
3) All elites possibly drop infernal bits, seriously?
4) Increase blood shards in bounties? Why have rifts?
5) Increase cache legendary drops? While I can sympathize that the damn things seemingly NEVER drop, I don't want the keys to the city in 20 minutes.
Seriously, if you adopt what you propose then the whole games essentially the same thing. There's nothing really different anywhere and it gets really boring really quick. This is NOT what I want, and given a A or B I'll choose what I have now.
If you want better, work for it. Earn it, achieve it. (I know RNG is RNG, I know) But sitting on your ass whining and wishing for everything to be all things to the masses makes it all quite bland.
It reminds me of a fast food worker demanding $15.00 an hour instead ofimproving themselves by studying/education, or even simply trying to get a better job. Instead of pulling yourself out of the situation you're in, everyone should hand it out to all. It sounds nice, it isn't reality.
If you don't like where you're at, or you can't get what you want, the easiest thing to change is you.
I fully agree with shaggy's suggestions for improvement. On the topic of rift elites (not certain which mobs you mean - champs, rares, RGs, or perhaps unique mobs) i think that all of those stated should have a chance to drop a key (any type), however due to mob density in rifts, this would need to be a lower drop chance than from keywardens (should help to balance mat farming times). This is probably what was meant in the first place, I just wanted some clarity on it.
As for split bounties, completely removing this option would reduce group play. I would be more willing to accept a change which only allows multiple bounties to be simultaneously completed if they are from separate acts. This would still allow for group play, and would increase the necessary game time per run, while providing multiple caches at the end of the run. Allowing blood shard rewards to be affected by act bonus could help to add diversity for players. It would give a good reason to farm acts other than A1 all the time, as you can now decide between RoRG or more shards, and in some cases both. In order for this to operate correctly, the blood shards should be rewarded in the same way as bounty exp is (but at the end of the act, along with the cache).
I would really like to see these changes happen, but would not expect them for 2.1.
I agree on balancing drop rates on being the same, don't see the reason for them to be greater in Nephelem rifts. Just buff drops from guardian, I think he should be more rewarding.
1) How about reducing the droprate in rifts to what it is everywhere else?
What the drop rate actually is isn't really important. It should simply be equal. So long as rifts have singnificantly higher chance to drop legendaries there is going to be this fundamentally-backwards meta game of whereby everyone tries to minimize the amount of time they spend doing anything but rifts. Why have so much content and not use it? The goal of my suggestion wasn't to make loot fall from the sky, it was simply to make Bounties feel like something fun to do instead of a punishment for running out of fragments. I think we all should be able to agree on that, yes?
If evening out the drop rates between Rifts and non-Rift activities resulted in too much loot falling from the sky then, certainly, the overall rate should be adjusted accordingly.
3) All elites possibly drop infernal bits, seriously?
Again, my vision here was that farming Keywardens would remain the best way to craft a Hellfire Ring/Amulet if that is your primary objective. But, it should not be the ONLY way to achieve that goal. It's about parallel objectives. There are fewer balance issues if X isn't the *sole* way to acquire Y. Would it really be a problem if rift elites had a 1 in 500 chance to drop one of the four possible keys? I mean that's what I'm thinking here. It would hardly be the BEST way to acquire a ring/amulet. That's not what I'm aiming for.
4) Increase blood shards in bounties? Why have rifts?
Aside from fragments, why have bounties currently? Because most rifts have much better elite density? Because of the other buffs to rifts that I proposed? If we're eliminating split farming, which I really think the majority of the intelligent Diablo fans would agree is a good thing, then you have to buff the rewards for bounties somehow.
Maybe the ratio of blood shards from bounties to blood shards from rifts (per hour) isn't that far off and, in this case, this step is already taken. To me it feels off, which is why I've suggested it.
5) Increase cache legendary drops? While I can sympathize that the damn things seemingly NEVER drop, I don't want the keys to the city in 20 minutes.
I also do not want the keys to the city in 20 minutes.
This suggestion comes solely from the fact that for most players, unless you play in a 4p group ALL THE TIME, the number of fragments you need per rift is going down significantly come 2.1. This means the average person will need to farm fewer bounties to do the same number of rifts. As it stands I'm averaging roughly one RoRG per ~400 A1 bounties, so per ~80 sets of A1 bounties. I have yet to acquire a RoRG that one would consider "good" (ie: one with crit or crit damage).
Given that I'll be needing to do fewer bounties to maintain my rifting in 2.1, it would seem logical that some level of buff is in order.
Seriously, if you adopt what you propose then the whole games essentially the same thing. There's nothing really different anywhere and it gets really boring really quick. This is NOT what I want, and given a A or B I'll choose what I have now.
As it stands the only thing we do are rifts. What I'm trying to alleviate is the massive boredom and burnout from that. Most of my friends gave up on D3 already. Most of my friends gave up on RoS within 4-6 weeks because doing rifts ad infinatum (or doing bounties ad infinatum for a RoRG) just isn't fun. I'm to the point where I'd like to play through story mode just for a break, but I can't, because my choice is "have some variety in what I do" or "get appropriate amounts of loot."
In a game that's about loot, if you have options that yield less loot, they're almost always going to be spurned. Once someone has a "perfect" Hellfire Amulet the whole Ubers system is thrown away to them. Why? Because it's not well-integrated into the game we play. It's a wonky stand-alone system that encourages you to get what you need and then never touch it again. The first step to fixing that is to make it LESS ISOLATED. Somehow integrate it into regular gameplay.
It's not about welfare. It's not about getting the keys to the city in 20 minutes. It's about a more-comprehensive approach to what ultimately is a boring chore. Farming in 1.0.7+ actually was more enjoyable for me than farming in RoS+. I've burnt out on farming way faster because Rifts are about as enjoyable as Alkaizer runs. They're astonishingly repetitive, yet they're the only "right" way to play.
We need to break the stranglehold that rifts have on the game, while keeping them relevant and worthwhile. I very much believe that what I've suggested does precisely that.
The game already is boring for the reasons you're afraid my suggestions would bring about. I mean one of the major features of 2.1 is Greater Rifts. Which, pragmatically, are the same fucking thing as Rifts. They managed to implement a new feature that's the same damned thing we've already been doing for months. At least with my suggestions it would hopefully open up open world farming and Ubers to more use and would allow people to only go into Greater Rifts if they want to test their gear/build. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, really. Why should we have two versions of rifts that are both mandatory for character progression? So that people get fed up twice as fast?
Bounties feel unrewarding ATM, more of a stepping stone to access Nrifts than an actual place you wanna play/farm. And even then, rift key drops have nothing to do with Torment lvl, so there is no point in running bounties on higher difficulties.
Although this isn´t a bad mechanic, it doesn´t HAVE to be this way. It certainly wasn´t the idea behind bounty implementation.
Bounties should feel rewarding in their own right, but I believe that buffing general drop chance is NOT the way to go. Bounties act as a delayed reward, and I believe that the buff should be on the goodie bag and not the whole process.
Right now there are (arguably) only 3 legendaries of use in the whole bounty process:
Ring of Royal Grandeur: Did I say usable? This thing is mandatory in almost all builds, if not all.
Gloves of Worship: Nice effect on the shrines... Ever seen one? I have around 2,5k hours under my belt and have never seen ONE drop of these.
Illusory Boots: Lets you walk through enemies! I am part of a 60+ member clan. Only one drop, clanwise. (and no, not me)
Aside from ridicule drop chances... Endgame = Sets Who is going to sacrifice a slot for either gloves or boots? Specially since you already "have" to use a RoRG?
So... Ideas! How about better (double or triple) chance of drops on the Nepahlem caches? A guaranteed blood shard drop (10-20) plus a second posible drop of 10-20 shards based on Torment lvl? ...and god forbid, how about a bounty exclusive set usable by all classes? CDR themed maybe?
Problem:
Currently, for drops, there is one right way to farm: Nephalem Rifts. They provide the most blood shards and they have a far higher drop rate on legendaries than Campaign Mode or anything else in Adventure Mode. This means that time spent doing anything other than Nephalem Rifts needs to be minimized in order to maximize your chances for items. This is a bad meta game, but one that's very easily fixed.
Solution:
1. Apply the same drop rates from Nephalem Rifts to the entire game, both Campaign and Adventure Modes.
2. Squash split-farming bounties.
3. Allow Legendary Gems to be upgraded in Nephalem Rifts and not just Greater Rifts (keep it commensurate with difficulty). Also give all elites in Nephalem Rifts a chance to drop Infernal Machine keys.
4. Increase the blood shards from Bounties to be roughly equal to that of those found in Nephalem Rifts on a per-hour basis.
5. Due to the reduced cost for entering Rifts, particularly for solo play, and the inability to split farm bounties, increase the chance for cache-specific legendaries by a generous amount.
These five rather simple changes would allow people to farm as they like instead of on a schedule. It would allow people who aren't totally into Greater Rifts to treat them as a proving ground instead of the only path to upgrade their Legendary Gems. Greater Rifts would, likely, still be better at upgrading the gems, but it wouldn't be the only way to do it, and that's a good thing. Bounties would feel a lot more rewarding. As it is, on T4, I still can do a full act's worth of bounties, and regularly see zero legendaries, including the cache. This feels underwhelming and bounties should be much more fun. If they nix split farming then maybe, just maybe, they can do other things to make bounties feel more enjoyable.
If you want better, work for it. Earn it, achieve it. (I know RNG is RNG, I know) But sitting on your ass whining and wishing for everything to be all things to the masses makes it all quite bland.
I would argue that this passive "normalization" of areas quality of items would not be something that was done to ensure all items are generally easier to obtain by people, It would be done to say "go be an adventurer. you do not know the short list of items that exist in location A, so follow your nose and see what items are in your future. It would oppose the statement "go here to get item X,Y, or Z.
And to counter the argument that "harder areas are supposed to be the treasure troves of better items..." Yes. That's true. and its up to them (blizzard) to make it true. But making 1 or 2 "harder areas" or "more dangerous dungeons" and giving access to a handful of select items you may acquire, It's not a really grand solution.
It seems that the game is short on new areas you can fight, by encouraging players as they grow in power to occupy fewer and fewer areas.............
The game is not short on challenges that can potentially exist, should they take existing monsters and areas and jumble them up and create new scenarios. When I view the concept of "go to rifts to get better items overall" It's as discouraging as "go fight monsters with the same pool of "elite" abilities over and over to get better items overall". Just fight elites with arcane....and frozen....and vortex....over and over....it just seems limiting in a way...it makes the hellfire ring bosses seem like a grand slam because it was anything but more fucking arcane beams....It was rehashed monsters and areas into something different. even though the rewards for the bosses was cool, because the rings were so limited and known and predictable and streamlined and calculated...it was hampered due to that trait of knowing where to go and what you would get. That's why the rings and the uber bosses came out...every farmed the fuck out of them and then I would gather that the interest in the zone dropped as soon as it grew.... I would prefer that the interest drop off at a slower rate even if that interest did not grow quite so fast. and I would want that for old or out dated or out-leveled areas also. I would want the players to track all over the place eager to flip over any rock anywhere to see what was there as opposed to "level as fast as you can so you can turn off campaign mode, ignore bounties and just do rifts non stop because everyone knows That's were you get your power from.
Just like how skills and items and "builds" etc. etc. should all make players not using them just drool with curiosity...I think where you go and what you do in the game world should have the same effect...
Problem:
Currently, for drops, there is one right way to farm: Nephalem Rifts.2. Squash split-farming bounties.
3. Allow Legendary Gems to be upgraded in Nephalem Rifts and not just Greater Rifts (keep it commensurate with difficulty). Also give all elites in Nephalem Rifts a chance to drop Infernal Machine keys.
2 : why sqash about the only thing you do outside rifts?
I abolutely feel that the reward for doing increasingly harder/higher level bounties should be addressed. Other than maybe more gold (which IS a reason I do them) what else is there really? However I take issue when you say all WE ever do is rifts. However as stated above, bounty caches are so bad on drop rate I'm pretty much to the point I don't target them as a reason to do an area anymore. I'm sick of clicking them and getting crapola...I have maybe 4 RoRG's, don't remember when the things dropped, its been THAT long ago, and they pretty much all suck stat wise. I am not surprised at the 1 ring per 80 runs stated above, except to say it sounds low.
I do rifts in groups and solo, depends on nothing more than who's on and which character I feel like loading up. However I don't do bounties in groups. Detest split bounties, I want all the loot! I kick every rock, break every chest and generally pick my way through every damn thing that catches my eye. Got some good gear from a barrel. Drives my boys crazy.
Here's a thought, from the perspective I play bounties. A counter or percentage completed on bounties for everything in the run, percentage completed. Everything, bookcases, barrels, loose stones, everything! Achievement for tiers. 75%- 85%-100% ???
As for people complaining of repetitiveness of Diablo, have you played previous versions? It has always been so, might always be...
I disagree with the general notion fo this thread whch basically says that everything in the game should be equally rewarding. I think this will create a breeding ground for endless exploits and cheesy runs. There is absolutely no way Blizard can pull this off and to be honest, i don't even want them to. There should be different things to do to get different rewards. If everything will be equally rewarding then some idiot will farm some cave over and over and get all the loot and xp that way. Maybe yoyu don't see that as a problem but i do. I'm glad that we have "tiers" of effeciency in terms of farming areas. The random nature of rifts provides us with a healthy farming environment without the possibilities of finding a cheesy run with a certain ammount of chests or whatever. People will exploit the shit out of this and Blizzard will go back to playing cops and robbers again.
I completely agree to #2. Bounty splitfarming needs to be "removed". I really dislike splitfarming, i.e., playing in a group and yet play solo.
To all the other points... I disagree. Increase the drop rates everywhere outside of rifts? This was the case when RoS launched, and the reason why rifts have higher drop rates is because otherwise no one would do rifts. If you'd increase the drop rates outside of rifts, everyone would go back to chest farming, or farming specific spots like Malthael (which many people still do, see paragon leveling). The drop rates were not chosen arbitrarily but changed in many many many iterations to the way they are now because that's the sweet spot.
Also disagree to 3+4. Having specific actions/places for specific loot is exactly what increases diversity. If you can get every loot from everywhere it just makes a game bland and boring. I can see how we just disagree because it's a matter of personal preference, but it's just my opinion.
The thing that really threw me off though is that you say you enjoyed Alkaizer runs more than rifts. Yeah, if that's really the case then I have nothing to say. Running the same 2-3 zones all the time and ignoring 90% of all content, never seeing 90% of all mobs or areas in the game, was definitely way worse than the repetitiveness of rifts. And let's not even talk about D2... where it was not about farming one specific act or zone, but one specific boss (Baal) all the time. The Diablo franchise always has experienced some form of repetitive activity. But it was never less boring and more diverse than rifts, at least for me
And in 2.1 we're getting more different things to do - probably something like: Greater Rifts for legendary gems, Nephalem Rifts for loot and GR keys, bounties for cache-only items and rift keys, ubers for Hellfire Amulets, goblin hunts for gold. And maybe another sweet spot for XP. If your goal doesn't align with the required activity, it's just tough luck. It was always like that... in D1, D2, D3V, RoS - there were always sweet spots to achieving some specific goal. The alternative would be a boring game with no diversity - no thanks.
The core of diablo is grind. I don't understand what kind of game diversity you're looking for, because at the end of the day all there is to do is kill monsters. I think you're playing the wrong game if you find repeatedly killing monsters boring. As Bagstone said, there's already a little bit of diversity now and coming in 2.1, but at the end of the day it's all still just killing monsters.
I agree (as do most) that bounties should be buffed in rewards. But it's not as if that suggestion is anything new.
But surely there will always be a most efficient way of farming? No matter how much you nerf rifts of buff campaign/bounties, or balance the game in a million other ways, players will still eventually discover that a certain run is slightly faster or yields slightly better drops.
I don't see the point in doing the same thing over and over, simply to maximise your drop rates, if it isn't fun. What are you going to do with all that great gear you just acquired? Go farm some more?
If you want a game where intellect, strategy and good team work prevails, play something like DOTA, League of Legends or Counter Strike. If you just want to kill ALOT of time doing the same thing and don't mind feeling bored and unrewarded then D3 is the perfect game!. D3 has been designed to waste away thousands of hours yet you will never feel you have completed the game and will just want to keep playing and playing and playing and playing and playing and playing for no apparent reason.
If they mentioned the monotony on the box, I would have put it back on the shelf. Oh well, serves me right for trusting reviewers who'd only played the game for an hour before writing the review.
To be fair to D3, all games with no end point will get boring sooner or later.
In regards to the original post, if they equalise the drops across certain parts of the game, won't it become even more uniform and even more mundane ? At least now there is some variation albeit not to your liking.
But surely there will always be a most efficient way of farming? No matter how much you nerf rifts of buff campaign/bounties, or balance the game in a million other ways, players will still eventually discover that a certain run is slightly faster or yields slightly better drops.
I don't see the point in doing the same thing over and over, simply to maximise your drop rates, if it isn't fun. What are you going to do with all that great gear you just acquired? Go farm some more?
Most efficient? Go where the stuff drops.
If everything dropped everywhere, I could see some peoples heads exploding trying to figure out where the best place is to get something, because its everywhere...wonder if I could sell tickets?
That said, its human nature to try and maximize return on effort. Throw in the law of unintended consequences and the developers have quite a challenge.
What the drop rate actually is isn't really important. It should simply be equal. So long as rifts have singnificantly higher chance to drop legendaries there is going to be this fundamentally-backwards meta game of whereby everyone tries to minimize the amount of time they spend doing anything but rifts. Why have so much content and not use it? The goal of my suggestion wasn't to make loot fall from the sky, it was simply to make Bounties feel like something fun to do instead of a punishment for running out of fragments. I think we all should be able to agree on that, yes?
I agree with that. We already discussed the lack of (fun) things to do outside of rifts. Getting new fragments is a chore, especially when those unstable servers rob me of them 5 at a time multiple times an evening (disconnect during a solo rift).
To all the other points... I disagree. Increase the drop rates everywhere outside of rifts? This was the case when RoS launched, and the reason why rifts have higher drop rates is because otherwise no one would do rifts. If you'd increase the drop rates outside of rifts, everyone would go back to chest farming, or farming specific spots like Malthael (which many people still do, see paragon leveling). The drop rates were not chosen arbitrarily but changed in many many many iterations to the way they are now because that's the sweet spot.
I somehow agree with this too, but certainly not with the conclusion that this is the sweetspot. It's about as far away from that as it was before, only this time in favor of rifts. This is better than the previous iteration, but still not really good.
Rifts are fine, GRs will (hopefully) be fine, too. My issue is that to access these areas, we have to play content that is strictly less fun. Using fun as the ultimate measurement here, could have said efficient or many other words. Other content should co-exist with rifts, not as an inferior option for times when you're not cool enough to be in a rift.
But with this in mind, I would not completely remove gated content. Farming keys/ingredients/whatever for boss encounters like the Ubers is fine. But a Rift is not such an encounter, that's just a regular zone with no need of a gate imo.
To all the other points... I disagree. Increase the drop rates everywhere outside of rifts? This was the case when RoS launched, and the reason why rifts have higher drop rates is because otherwise no one would do rifts. If you'd increase the drop rates outside of rifts, everyone would go back to chest farming, or farming specific spots like Malthael (which many people still do, see paragon leveling). The drop rates were not chosen arbitrarily but changed in many many many iterations to the way they are now because that's the sweet spot.
No offense, but if you think the drop rates outside of rifts are currently the "sweet spot" then either you are blessed with not having to leave rifts very frequently or you and Josh are best buddies and go on romantic picnics and whisper sweet nothings to each other while sipping chardonnay in the mid-day sun.
The issue is that you have been brainwashed to believe that rifts should be THE ENDGAME. Imagine if you did some bounties... not because it was the only way to get access to rifts, but because you wanted to do bounties because they were fun and rewarding in their own right! Then, imagine that instead of immediately turning around and using those fragments, maybe you decided to play Campaign Mode. The horror! THE HORROR! I don't know why you, or anyone else, feels that the endgame must exist in only one fashion:
1) Unlock Adventure Mode
2) Do bounties for fragments or cache-only item
3) Do rifts, only going back to 2) if you run out of fragments
I have a feeling that you play a lot more co-op than solo if you think that the current situation is a "sweet spot" because, no offense, only someone who isn't forced to do as many bounties for fragments would have that opinion. I've yet to meet someone who predominantly plays solo who says "Man, I can't wait to do more bounties!" Usually it's more of a sarcastic "I'm so happy I ran out of fragments so that I can do bounties! I love getting 25% of the legendary drops so that I can have the pleasure of using them to temporarily get access to the better drop rates!" or "I'm completely fed up with Act 1 bounties!"
I simply envision a game where things like Ubers aren't something you do until you get a specific item and then never want to touch them again. I envision a game where people say "I'm tiring of rifts, so I'm just going to go farm random shit in Adventure Mode and then play some Campaign Mode"... and not have to pay for trying to break up the monotony by suffering through worse drop rates. I envision a game where the endgame isn't so completely procedural. The more choices we have, the better.
I mean there's something horribly wrong about the overarching design when people are routinely questioning why Campaign Mode even exists. I get that Josh wanted us to play with his new toys. I long said that we needed free travel between all waypoints in all acts, and the game is better for having it. But I really don't think that most players needed Campaign Mode to be completely neutered in order to try out Adventure Mode. Even if they had almost exactly the same loot/hr, most people would probably play Adventure Mode because it feels more like what we know Diablo to be.
I mean, currently, you don't even have to unlock Adventure Mode in seasons. Could we have any more clear of an indication that Campaign Mode should simply be removed? But why? Why shouldn't it be something we can enjoy rather than having this "everyone plays exactly the same at all times" philosophy forced down our throats?
It would be awesome if you could reply to the post, on topic, and just use arguments instead of calling me brainwashed and other things. I have my opinion, you have yours; I actually think that disagreement makes for an awesome discussion as long as we respect each other's opinion.
Now, back to topic:
Yes, I am playing almost exclusively co-op, so that's true - so we definitely have a different background here. Look, I don't disagree that the drop rates in campaign mode are underwhelming. But back in the days when they were a bit higher, specific non-rift activities were much better than rifts. It ended in a scenario where rifts were the worst for just about everything. There was absolutely no reason to do rifts other than "fun".
I wouldn't disagree if you had said "let's make campaign mode and bounties more interesting". Not at all! What I disagreed with is this notion of "let everything drop everywhere". As I said, split farming should be killed. No idea how that should be realized, but split farming should just be eliminated.
Campaign mode could be fixed similar to what they did with the "guaranteed Leoric's legendary" in 2.0.1; that was an incentive for people to play. Now, the fixed legendary from Malthael is not enough at all, since rifts were buffed like crazy. It wouldn't be too much if the legendary drop rate from act bosses would be about 50% (T1) to 100% (T6) on your first playthrough after using "reset quests". Something like that. Also, increase the key drop rate in these first playthroughs to 100%. Needs some balancing, but there's certainly something they could do.
For adventure mode, they should simply make higher difficulties drop significantly more loot (cache farming is still best on Normal difficulty, regardless if you're hunting for RoRG or just want rift keys). That, and kill split farming (e.g., you only get the cache if you missed at most one bounty in an act).
They could also connect bounties and keys: every completed bounty in an act increases the key drop chance by an additional 1-10%, depending on difficulty (1% for Normal, 5% for T1, 10% for T6). So if you'd do all 5 bounties on T6 in an act, you'd have a 100% drop chance on the Keywarden's kill.
It is absolutely impossible to perfectly balance all different game modes; campaign, adventure mode, rifts, greater rifts. There will always be a "better" place and a "worse" place. It's like any lower Torment feels unrewarding for anyone who has played T6 for a few weeks - doesn't mean that T6 rifts are the only thing that matter in this game. It's just all a matter of perception and personal taste. I think it's great if there are different things to do that reward you with different loot (or other benefits).
What we can agree on is that there are certainly some activities that feel underwhelming right now, and those need to be buffed. But your proposal - just buff all drop rates in all of campaign mode across the board, and make everything drop everywhere, such as blood shards and keys in rifts - is something that I don't agree with.
Edit: "But why? Why shouldn't it be something we can enjoy rather than having this "everyone plays exactly the same at all times" philosophy forced down our throats?"
=> If we'd make everything drop everywhere, it would result in exactly this. There'd be one sweet spot and everyone would be doing this one activity. Like Alkaizer run in 1.0.5 or MP10 Crater Scorpions in 1.0.7. It's inevitable.
Currently, for drops, there is one right way to farm: Nephalem Rifts. They provide the most blood shards and they have a far higher drop rate on legendaries than Campaign Mode or anything else in Adventure Mode. This means that time spent doing anything other than Nephalem Rifts needs to be minimized in order to maximize your chances for items. This is a bad meta game, but one that's very easily fixed.
Solution:
1. Apply the same drop rates from Nephalem Rifts to the entire game, both Campaign and Adventure Modes.
2. Squash split-farming bounties.
3. Allow Legendary Gems to be upgraded in Nephalem Rifts and not just Greater Rifts (keep it commensurate with difficulty). Also give all elites in Nephalem Rifts a chance to drop Infernal Machine keys.
4. Increase the blood shards from Bounties to be roughly equal to that of those found in Nephalem Rifts on a per-hour basis.
5. Due to the reduced cost for entering Rifts, particularly for solo play, and the inability to split farm bounties, increase the chance for cache-specific legendaries by a generous amount.
These five rather simple changes would allow people to farm as they like instead of on a schedule. It would allow people who aren't totally into Greater Rifts to treat them as a proving ground instead of the only path to upgrade their Legendary Gems. Greater Rifts would, likely, still be better at upgrading the gems, but it wouldn't be the only way to do it, and that's a good thing. Bounties would feel a lot more rewarding. As it is, on T4, I still can do a full act's worth of bounties, and regularly see zero legendaries, including the cache. This feels underwhelming and bounties should be much more fun. If they nix split farming then maybe, just maybe, they can do other things to make bounties feel more enjoyable.
but I can dress like a ninja so that takes the edge off...
3) All elites possibly drop infernal bits, seriously?
4) Increase blood shards in bounties? Why have rifts?
5) Increase cache legendary drops? While I can sympathize that the damn things seemingly NEVER drop, I don't want the keys to the city in 20 minutes.
Seriously, if you adopt what you propose then the whole games essentially the same thing. There's nothing really different anywhere and it gets really boring really quick. This is NOT what I want, and given a A or B I'll choose what I have now.
If you want better, work for it. Earn it, achieve it. (I know RNG is RNG, I know) But sitting on your ass whining and wishing for everything to be all things to the masses makes it all quite bland.
It reminds me of a fast food worker demanding $15.00 an hour instead ofimproving themselves by studying/education, or even simply trying to get a better job. Instead of pulling yourself out of the situation you're in, everyone should hand it out to all. It sounds nice, it isn't reality.
If you don't like where you're at, or you can't get what you want, the easiest thing to change is you.
BTW, I can totally see #2...
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What? Me worry?
As for split bounties, completely removing this option would reduce group play. I would be more willing to accept a change which only allows multiple bounties to be simultaneously completed if they are from separate acts. This would still allow for group play, and would increase the necessary game time per run, while providing multiple caches at the end of the run. Allowing blood shard rewards to be affected by act bonus could help to add diversity for players. It would give a good reason to farm acts other than A1 all the time, as you can now decide between RoRG or more shards, and in some cases both. In order for this to operate correctly, the blood shards should be rewarded in the same way as bounty exp is (but at the end of the act, along with the cache).
I would really like to see these changes happen, but would not expect them for 2.1.
If evening out the drop rates between Rifts and non-Rift activities resulted in too much loot falling from the sky then, certainly, the overall rate should be adjusted accordingly.
Again, my vision here was that farming Keywardens would remain the best way to craft a Hellfire Ring/Amulet if that is your primary objective. But, it should not be the ONLY way to achieve that goal. It's about parallel objectives. There are fewer balance issues if X isn't the *sole* way to acquire Y. Would it really be a problem if rift elites had a 1 in 500 chance to drop one of the four possible keys? I mean that's what I'm thinking here. It would hardly be the BEST way to acquire a ring/amulet. That's not what I'm aiming for.
Aside from fragments, why have bounties currently? Because most rifts have much better elite density? Because of the other buffs to rifts that I proposed? If we're eliminating split farming, which I really think the majority of the intelligent Diablo fans would agree is a good thing, then you have to buff the rewards for bounties somehow.
Maybe the ratio of blood shards from bounties to blood shards from rifts (per hour) isn't that far off and, in this case, this step is already taken. To me it feels off, which is why I've suggested it.
I also do not want the keys to the city in 20 minutes.
This suggestion comes solely from the fact that for most players, unless you play in a 4p group ALL THE TIME, the number of fragments you need per rift is going down significantly come 2.1. This means the average person will need to farm fewer bounties to do the same number of rifts. As it stands I'm averaging roughly one RoRG per ~400 A1 bounties, so per ~80 sets of A1 bounties. I have yet to acquire a RoRG that one would consider "good" (ie: one with crit or crit damage).
Given that I'll be needing to do fewer bounties to maintain my rifting in 2.1, it would seem logical that some level of buff is in order.
As it stands the only thing we do are rifts. What I'm trying to alleviate is the massive boredom and burnout from that. Most of my friends gave up on D3 already. Most of my friends gave up on RoS within 4-6 weeks because doing rifts ad infinatum (or doing bounties ad infinatum for a RoRG) just isn't fun. I'm to the point where I'd like to play through story mode just for a break, but I can't, because my choice is "have some variety in what I do" or "get appropriate amounts of loot."
In a game that's about loot, if you have options that yield less loot, they're almost always going to be spurned. Once someone has a "perfect" Hellfire Amulet the whole Ubers system is thrown away to them. Why? Because it's not well-integrated into the game we play. It's a wonky stand-alone system that encourages you to get what you need and then never touch it again. The first step to fixing that is to make it LESS ISOLATED. Somehow integrate it into regular gameplay.
It's not about welfare. It's not about getting the keys to the city in 20 minutes. It's about a more-comprehensive approach to what ultimately is a boring chore. Farming in 1.0.7+ actually was more enjoyable for me than farming in RoS+. I've burnt out on farming way faster because Rifts are about as enjoyable as Alkaizer runs. They're astonishingly repetitive, yet they're the only "right" way to play.
We need to break the stranglehold that rifts have on the game, while keeping them relevant and worthwhile. I very much believe that what I've suggested does precisely that.
The game already is boring for the reasons you're afraid my suggestions would bring about. I mean one of the major features of 2.1 is Greater Rifts. Which, pragmatically, are the same fucking thing as Rifts. They managed to implement a new feature that's the same damned thing we've already been doing for months. At least with my suggestions it would hopefully open up open world farming and Ubers to more use and would allow people to only go into Greater Rifts if they want to test their gear/build. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, really. Why should we have two versions of rifts that are both mandatory for character progression? So that people get fed up twice as fast?
Although this isn´t a bad mechanic, it doesn´t HAVE to be this way. It certainly wasn´t the idea behind bounty implementation.
Bounties should feel rewarding in their own right, but I believe that buffing general drop chance is NOT the way to go. Bounties act as a delayed reward, and I believe that the buff should be on the goodie bag and not the whole process.
Right now there are (arguably) only 3 legendaries of use in the whole bounty process:
So... Ideas! How about better (double or triple) chance of drops on the Nepahlem caches? A guaranteed blood shard drop (10-20) plus a second posible drop of 10-20 shards based on Torment lvl? ...and god forbid, how about a bounty exclusive set usable by all classes? CDR themed maybe?
Just my 2 cents =)
And to counter the argument that "harder areas are supposed to be the treasure troves of better items..." Yes. That's true. and its up to them (blizzard) to make it true. But making 1 or 2 "harder areas" or "more dangerous dungeons" and giving access to a handful of select items you may acquire, It's not a really grand solution.
It seems that the game is short on new areas you can fight, by encouraging players as they grow in power to occupy fewer and fewer areas.............
The game is not short on challenges that can potentially exist, should they take existing monsters and areas and jumble them up and create new scenarios.
When I view the concept of "go to rifts to get better items overall" It's as discouraging as "go fight monsters with the same pool of "elite" abilities over and over to get better items overall". Just fight elites with arcane....and frozen....and vortex....over and over....it just seems limiting in a way...it makes the hellfire ring bosses seem like a grand slam because it was anything but more fucking arcane beams....It was rehashed monsters and areas into something different. even though the rewards for the bosses was cool, because the rings were so limited and known and predictable and streamlined and calculated...it was hampered due to that trait of knowing where to go and what you would get. That's why the rings and the uber bosses came out...every farmed the fuck out of them and then I would gather that the interest in the zone dropped as soon as it grew....
I would prefer that the interest drop off at a slower rate even if that interest did not grow quite so fast. and I would want that for old or out dated or out-leveled areas also. I would want the players to track all over the place eager to flip over any rock anywhere to see what was there as opposed to "level as fast as you can so you can turn off campaign mode, ignore bounties and just do rifts non stop because everyone knows That's were you get your power from.
Just like how skills and items and "builds" etc. etc. should all make players not using them just drool with curiosity...I think where you go and what you do in the game world should have the same effect...
(heavily edited for spelling and grammar.......)
3 : More rifts?
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
I do rifts in groups and solo, depends on nothing more than who's on and which character I feel like loading up. However I don't do bounties in groups. Detest split bounties, I want all the loot! I kick every rock, break every chest and generally pick my way through every damn thing that catches my eye. Got some good gear from a barrel. Drives my boys crazy.
Here's a thought, from the perspective I play bounties. A counter or percentage completed on bounties for everything in the run, percentage completed. Everything, bookcases, barrels, loose stones, everything! Achievement for tiers. 75%- 85%-100% ???
As for people complaining of repetitiveness of Diablo, have you played previous versions? It has always been so, might always be...
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Monk season 7 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/MojoJoJo/42225505
DH season 6 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/DeadShot/75655606
Angry Chicken http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/WhoDoVooDoo/68187610
What? Me worry?
Let's start positively:
I completely agree to #2. Bounty splitfarming needs to be "removed". I really dislike splitfarming, i.e., playing in a group and yet play solo.
To all the other points... I disagree. Increase the drop rates everywhere outside of rifts? This was the case when RoS launched, and the reason why rifts have higher drop rates is because otherwise no one would do rifts. If you'd increase the drop rates outside of rifts, everyone would go back to chest farming, or farming specific spots like Malthael (which many people still do, see paragon leveling). The drop rates were not chosen arbitrarily but changed in many many many iterations to the way they are now because that's the sweet spot.
Also disagree to 3+4. Having specific actions/places for specific loot is exactly what increases diversity. If you can get every loot from everywhere it just makes a game bland and boring. I can see how we just disagree because it's a matter of personal preference, but it's just my opinion.
The thing that really threw me off though is that you say you enjoyed Alkaizer runs more than rifts. Yeah, if that's really the case then I have nothing to say. Running the same 2-3 zones all the time and ignoring 90% of all content, never seeing 90% of all mobs or areas in the game, was definitely way worse than the repetitiveness of rifts. And let's not even talk about D2... where it was not about farming one specific act or zone, but one specific boss (Baal) all the time. The Diablo franchise always has experienced some form of repetitive activity. But it was never less boring and more diverse than rifts, at least for me
And in 2.1 we're getting more different things to do - probably something like: Greater Rifts for legendary gems, Nephalem Rifts for loot and GR keys, bounties for cache-only items and rift keys, ubers for Hellfire Amulets, goblin hunts for gold. And maybe another sweet spot for XP. If your goal doesn't align with the required activity, it's just tough luck. It was always like that... in D1, D2, D3V, RoS - there were always sweet spots to achieving some specific goal. The alternative would be a boring game with no diversity - no thanks.
I agree (as do most) that bounties should be buffed in rewards. But it's not as if that suggestion is anything new.
I don't see the point in doing the same thing over and over, simply to maximise your drop rates, if it isn't fun. What are you going to do with all that great gear you just acquired? Go farm some more?
If they mentioned the monotony on the box, I would have put it back on the shelf. Oh well, serves me right for trusting reviewers who'd only played the game for an hour before writing the review.
To be fair to D3, all games with no end point will get boring sooner or later.
In regards to the original post, if they equalise the drops across certain parts of the game, won't it become even more uniform and even more mundane ? At least now there is some variation albeit not to your liking.
If everything dropped everywhere, I could see some peoples heads exploding trying to figure out where the best place is to get something, because its everywhere...wonder if I could sell tickets?
That said, its human nature to try and maximize return on effort. Throw in the law of unintended consequences and the developers have quite a challenge.
WD Season 8 https://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/Kildare/84509816
Monk season 7 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/MojoJoJo/42225505
DH season 6 http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/DeadShot/75655606
Angry Chicken http://www.diabloprogress.com/hero/finiar-1655/WhoDoVooDoo/68187610
What? Me worry?
I agree with that. We already discussed the lack of (fun) things to do outside of rifts. Getting new fragments is a chore, especially when those unstable servers rob me of them 5 at a time multiple times an evening (disconnect during a solo rift).
I somehow agree with this too, but certainly not with the conclusion that this is the sweetspot. It's about as far away from that as it was before, only this time in favor of rifts. This is better than the previous iteration, but still not really good.
Rifts are fine, GRs will (hopefully) be fine, too. My issue is that to access these areas, we have to play content that is strictly less fun. Using fun as the ultimate measurement here, could have said efficient or many other words. Other content should co-exist with rifts, not as an inferior option for times when you're not cool enough to be in a rift.
But with this in mind, I would not completely remove gated content. Farming keys/ingredients/whatever for boss encounters like the Ubers is fine. But a Rift is not such an encounter, that's just a regular zone with no need of a gate imo.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
The issue is that you have been brainwashed to believe that rifts should be THE ENDGAME. Imagine if you did some bounties... not because it was the only way to get access to rifts, but because you wanted to do bounties because they were fun and rewarding in their own right! Then, imagine that instead of immediately turning around and using those fragments, maybe you decided to play Campaign Mode. The horror! THE HORROR! I don't know why you, or anyone else, feels that the endgame must exist in only one fashion:
1) Unlock Adventure Mode
2) Do bounties for fragments or cache-only item
3) Do rifts, only going back to 2) if you run out of fragments
I have a feeling that you play a lot more co-op than solo if you think that the current situation is a "sweet spot" because, no offense, only someone who isn't forced to do as many bounties for fragments would have that opinion. I've yet to meet someone who predominantly plays solo who says "Man, I can't wait to do more bounties!" Usually it's more of a sarcastic "I'm so happy I ran out of fragments so that I can do bounties! I love getting 25% of the legendary drops so that I can have the pleasure of using them to temporarily get access to the better drop rates!" or "I'm completely fed up with Act 1 bounties!"
I simply envision a game where things like Ubers aren't something you do until you get a specific item and then never want to touch them again. I envision a game where people say "I'm tiring of rifts, so I'm just going to go farm random shit in Adventure Mode and then play some Campaign Mode"... and not have to pay for trying to break up the monotony by suffering through worse drop rates. I envision a game where the endgame isn't so completely procedural. The more choices we have, the better.
I mean there's something horribly wrong about the overarching design when people are routinely questioning why Campaign Mode even exists. I get that Josh wanted us to play with his new toys. I long said that we needed free travel between all waypoints in all acts, and the game is better for having it. But I really don't think that most players needed Campaign Mode to be completely neutered in order to try out Adventure Mode. Even if they had almost exactly the same loot/hr, most people would probably play Adventure Mode because it feels more like what we know Diablo to be.
I mean, currently, you don't even have to unlock Adventure Mode in seasons. Could we have any more clear of an indication that Campaign Mode should simply be removed? But why? Why shouldn't it be something we can enjoy rather than having this "everyone plays exactly the same at all times" philosophy forced down our throats?
It would be awesome if you could reply to the post, on topic, and just use arguments instead of calling me brainwashed and other things. I have my opinion, you have yours; I actually think that disagreement makes for an awesome discussion as long as we respect each other's opinion.
Now, back to topic:
Yes, I am playing almost exclusively co-op, so that's true - so we definitely have a different background here. Look, I don't disagree that the drop rates in campaign mode are underwhelming. But back in the days when they were a bit higher, specific non-rift activities were much better than rifts. It ended in a scenario where rifts were the worst for just about everything. There was absolutely no reason to do rifts other than "fun".
I wouldn't disagree if you had said "let's make campaign mode and bounties more interesting". Not at all! What I disagreed with is this notion of "let everything drop everywhere". As I said, split farming should be killed. No idea how that should be realized, but split farming should just be eliminated.
It is absolutely impossible to perfectly balance all different game modes; campaign, adventure mode, rifts, greater rifts. There will always be a "better" place and a "worse" place. It's like any lower Torment feels unrewarding for anyone who has played T6 for a few weeks - doesn't mean that T6 rifts are the only thing that matter in this game. It's just all a matter of perception and personal taste. I think it's great if there are different things to do that reward you with different loot (or other benefits).
What we can agree on is that there are certainly some activities that feel underwhelming right now, and those need to be buffed. But your proposal - just buff all drop rates in all of campaign mode across the board, and make everything drop everywhere, such as blood shards and keys in rifts - is something that I don't agree with.
Edit: "But why? Why shouldn't it be something we can enjoy rather than having this "everyone plays exactly the same at all times" philosophy forced down our throats?"
=> If we'd make everything drop everywhere, it would result in exactly this. There'd be one sweet spot and everyone would be doing this one activity. Like Alkaizer run in 1.0.5 or MP10 Crater Scorpions in 1.0.7. It's inevitable.