If Campaign Mode was so horribly linear i wouldn't mind if it was viable for farming, but since we are stuck with quests that have to be done in order, paths blocked until you complete each step and Azmodan "Master Tactician" and Diablo "Lord of Terrah" taunting you every 5 minutes, i'm glad i don't have to replay it in season.
I agree on your opinion about Rifts and Bounties, the former is waaaay too efficient and they screwed it. The free world we have has become useless and we are just playing inside our town to open the portal and enjoy a disproportionate drop rate compared to what's outside of the Rift bubble.
Then, when someone is in need of keystone (does it ever happen?) he will jump on Act 1 normal, because OP RING OF OPNESS drops only there. Your "I'm completely fed up with Act 1 bounties!" quote nailed this game mode perfectly.
Live Ubers are a joke, i have no idea why me and a friend tried to craft the Hellfire ring, but looking for Wardens and killing Bosses was a huge waste of time because the loot rewards outside rifts are too low. At least they will have something usefull to craft next patch, and i'm happy about it.
As you, shaggy, i wish that every mode has an equal reward system, because if i ever try to step out of Rifts of Act 1 Bounties i feel like an idiot, because going out of bounds makes me feel i'm doing it wrong.
Yes, I am playing almost exclusively co-op, so that's true - so we definitely have a different background here.
I don't support any namecalling but this limits your perspective quite a lot. How much time do you spend outside of t6 rifts? Have you ever farmed a full stack of rift fragments solo? Paid 20 fragments for 4 rifts?
Not that I don't respect your opinion, but I suppose you lack the experience that some of us have made.
Yes, I am playing almost exclusively co-op, so that's true - so we definitely have a different background here.
I don't support any namecalling but this limits your perspective quite a lot. How much time do you spend outside of t6 rifts? Have you ever farmed a full stack of rift fragments solo? Paid 20 fragments for 4 rifts?
Not that I don't respect your opinion, but I suppose you lack the experience that some of us have made.
Sigh... not sure where this is going. If you discard my opinion because I play "mostly in groups", I might as well say that shaggy's opinion, who's playing "mostly solo". Anyways...
I spend the overwhelming majority of my time outside of T6, because as you might now, my main class is wizard and since I don't have the Wand of Woh, T6 is not really an option. Yes, I have farmed many stacks of key fragments solo because I hate split farming. And yes, I have paid 20 fragments for 4 rifts many many times (I hate when everyone is just doodling in town and no one wants to open the rift).
I'm not sure what your assumptions are as to why my opinion should be invalid for this thread, though...
Sigh... not sure where this is going. If you discard my opinion because I play "mostly in groups", I might as well say that shaggy's opinion, who's playing "mostly solo". Anyways...
Isn't that the general jist of what you've said, without actually saying it?
I mean I get this major sense of "nothing is really broken because I'm not directly experiencing it" from a LOT of the posters here whom I know spend a significant amount of their play time in groups.
None of my suggestions would harm people who currently play in groups except for removing split-farming. And at this point I think that the existence of split-farming is the primary reason that many of the "non-rifting is not fun" sentiments have gone unaddressed. Even you admit that non-rifting should be... jazzed up. We disagree on how, OK cool, but we agree that Campaign Mode and Adventure Mode (sans rifts) aren't exactly blowing wind up most people's skirts.
So.... how do we fix that?
For the record, I didn't actually suggest allowing everything to drop everywhere, well not exactly. What I suggested was letting Infernal Machine keys drop off rift elites (so that rifting does still have some kind of point in light of other changes). But my intention was that if you wanted to farm a Hellfire Ring/Amulet that farming keywardens would still be the most expedient way to do so. I simply think that keeping entire systems completely isolated like that doesn't promote people experiencing new things.
My problem with Ubers is that once you get the item you really don't want to keep doing it. What if Ubers gave some pretty sweet XP, but because of the time to farm keys, they generally weren't worth it. But if acquiring these keys (albeit much slower) by rifting then would give you the OPTION of popping in for a few Uber kills, even if you don't necessarily need the organs, for a nice XP boost..... all because you were able to acquire some IMs, albeit less, just by doing your regular bit of whatever.
What you're suggesting, in D2 terms, is "even though there are 10 different bosses, everyone farms Baal or Pindle, so we may as well just remove Pindle." Yes, people are going to find the "best" way. Currently the best way, as defined by Josh, is to spend as much of your time as possible doing rifts. The issue is not the existence of a single "best" way to play though. The issue is the delta. How much better is it than everything else?
If you get 1 more legendary per week farming Baal as compared to Pindle, most people would agree that's close enough not to care. But if you get 1 more legendary per hour farming Baal as compared to Pindle.... that's a big enough delta for people to care.
I'm not interested in equity. I'm interested in parity. If someone wants to play Campaign Mode, it's not a problem if they sacrifice some loot, but it has to be CLOSE. You have to give the player the feeling that they're not taking it in the ass with a piece of rebar for playing something slightly differently. It's just the same as class balance. There's always going to be a "fastest farming" spec or "best GRift" spec. The issue is, simply put, keeping the other specs close.
I don't live under the illusion that everything is going to be 100% equal, ever, in any game like this. I'm not that naive. But things aren't even close to it right now. That gap must be addressed. Whether it's my way or someone else's way. That isn't going to change so long as the philosophy behind D3:RoS is "rifts are the endgame." That mentality must change otherwise everything else is doomed to be inferior-by-design.
Sigh... not sure where this is going. If you discard my opinion because I play "mostly in groups", I might as well say that shaggy's opinion, who's playing "mostly solo". Anyways...
I spend the overwhelming majority of my time outside of T6, because as you might now, my main class is wizard and since I don't have the Wand of Woh, T6 is not really an option. Yes, I have farmed many stacks of key fragments solo because I hate split farming. And yes, I have paid 20 fragments for 4 rifts many many times (I hate when everyone is just doodling in town and no one wants to open the rift).
I'm not discarding it completely, but I was under the impression that you didn't know the suffering from solo players. You mention 4 player t6 farming quite often, at least that's what I had in mind.
If you DO know it, which is what my questions were supposed to find out, I wonder how you came to the conclusion that we are at a sweet spot regarding loot distribution. That sounded like you hardly ever spend time out of rifts, like shaggy also concluded.
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.
It seems that there is some friction about what the actual goal is here....
some people think that the rewards are skewed. that some areas are to good in reward compared to other areas.
and they think that that must be changed.
so some people think that they risk having the "good reward areas" nerfed and less fun
some people think that they risk having the "bad reward areas" buffed to be equal to the "good reward areas" when those "good reward areas" are great!
well in a way both are right. But both of those extremes are a risky way of accessing the situation.
The assessment must be in Diablo 3's case as it stands is: What the player knows is to much, the game must reveal less.
If you are gaming around a table with pens and paper, the GM has all the dice and all the rules and all the story and everything hidden. keeping too much hidden and revealing too much are both bad ideas in theory. the idea I think is to reveal just enough.
in that sense in Diablo 3, if Blizzard and Co. are the "GMs" of Diablo 3, they have revealed too much it seems. Everyone and their dog knows the future.
The players know that location B yields reward percentage X/Y per hour, or a similar notion of where to go for better treasure.......I discovered it jumping head-first into the game just testing the expansion on the PTR. It immediately felt that more legendarys came from this area within 10 minutes of setting foot there........
so without knowing ANYTHING about the expansion I was sent to Rifts with a giant carrot on a stick until the end of time.
So its hard to claim that more or less rewards at location A or B is good or bad...
but its easy to claim that "knowing very clearly before hand, any permutation of the above statement to be the answer to the "puzzle" of the game for the next several months....is not ideal. Not when focusing on the raw quality of the game.
knowing the reward schedule is in theory a bad thing. learning about it is in theory good. so when you start knowing it and stop learning.....well....thats not really a good thing it seems.....
Jay Wilson said something about great loot being just around "the corner". The corner could be damn near anywhere
but not "that corner over there you access through this portal in the swamp seven days a week."
It exhibits that the unknown portion of a game like this is what sucks you (the player) forward. And when that "unknown" ceases to exist so does the intrigue and the fun. So oddly in a way to directly opposes your notion bagstone, hinting that "fun SHOULD be the thing that pushes you to rifts"....but it should push you into any and all areas of the game.....and the key is that, often, you're not too sure as a player exactly where that corner is....
Might be rifts....
Might probably be in areas with much harder challenges....
Might be in that fucking barrel outside of town.
The +5 Great Sword of Heaven's Rage........
Forged from the fabric of the universe, in the back pocket of a quill rat across the river. in a barrel behind the tool shed covered in rat shit. In the most perilous depth of hell guarded by 10,000 Demon lords....but you just never really know to a certainty........
D3 is an item oriented game, not skill based and it does have an end point, a point at which one will possess all items and will have maxed out their stats. Understandably, Blizzard have tried to stretch out the game further by adding RoS and the more recent patch such as 2.1 but unfortunately, they failed to recognise that stretching out a game by reducing drop rates rather than adding new scenes or gameplay will draw alot of complaints. Players will get bored and feel frustrated especially if they cater to extreme players ( those who play for great lengths of time ). Greater Rifts is a step in the right direction so lets see how that goes.
** IDEA ** I think they should put more emphasis on player vs player duelling, or even team vs team. Currently, we spend hundreds of hours finding/upgrading/accummulating gear but for what ? The top end players find their names on leaderboards which rank certain stats which we all know are not that accurate whilst the rest of us are left scratching our heads wondering why we are continuing to play after 500 hours. Let's face it, killing dumb computer monsters is boring. Having killed 600,000 of them already, i don't think anything can make it interesting.
If there was a way for teams to challenge one another, wouldn't that be more fun ?. There would be no such thing BIS items and build choice would become a critical factor in the outcome. It would give us all incentive to learn about other character builds/combos and learn how to use our characters better to find the balance between defense/attack. We would need to fight intelligently rather than just use the same skills again and again.
Have any of you play yahoo chess ? when you log in, you see lots of tables and can choose a table to play. D3 could do the same where the player/team who opens a battle puts up some prize money. The challenger has to match the prize and the winner takes all. After each battle, players ranking goes up or down following a similar system to Fide.
This change is major but will definitely be loved by the competitive ones amongst us. Ok, its straying from RPG but its better than adding another few levels which we know a certain few will probably complete within an hour then start complaining about. Those who want to be on a league table will love this format being able to fight their way to the top.
Keep in mind, as mentioned a post or two back, the drop rates in the PTR are surely boosted so as to get to test the new stuff in an accelerated time frame. Just a thought...
I agree on your opinion about Rifts and Bounties, the former is waaaay too efficient and they screwed it. The free world we have has become useless and we are just playing inside our town to open the portal and enjoy a disproportionate drop rate compared to what's outside of the Rift bubble.
Then, when someone is in need of keystone (does it ever happen?) he will jump on Act 1 normal, because OP RING OF OPNESS drops only there. Your "I'm completely fed up with Act 1 bounties!" quote nailed this game mode perfectly.
Live Ubers are a joke, i have no idea why me and a friend tried to craft the Hellfire ring, but looking for Wardens and killing Bosses was a huge waste of time because the loot rewards outside rifts are too low. At least they will have something usefull to craft next patch, and i'm happy about it.
As you, shaggy, i wish that every mode has an equal reward system, because if i ever try to step out of Rifts of Act 1 Bounties i feel like an idiot, because going out of bounds makes me feel i'm doing it wrong.
I don't support any namecalling but this limits your perspective quite a lot. How much time do you spend outside of t6 rifts? Have you ever farmed a full stack of rift fragments solo? Paid 20 fragments for 4 rifts?
Not that I don't respect your opinion, but I suppose you lack the experience that some of us have made.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
Sigh... not sure where this is going. If you discard my opinion because I play "mostly in groups", I might as well say that shaggy's opinion, who's playing "mostly solo". Anyways...
I spend the overwhelming majority of my time outside of T6, because as you might now, my main class is wizard and since I don't have the Wand of Woh, T6 is not really an option. Yes, I have farmed many stacks of key fragments solo because I hate split farming. And yes, I have paid 20 fragments for 4 rifts many many times (I hate when everyone is just doodling in town and no one wants to open the rift).
I'm not sure what your assumptions are as to why my opinion should be invalid for this thread, though...
I mean I get this major sense of "nothing is really broken because I'm not directly experiencing it" from a LOT of the posters here whom I know spend a significant amount of their play time in groups.
None of my suggestions would harm people who currently play in groups except for removing split-farming. And at this point I think that the existence of split-farming is the primary reason that many of the "non-rifting is not fun" sentiments have gone unaddressed. Even you admit that non-rifting should be... jazzed up. We disagree on how, OK cool, but we agree that Campaign Mode and Adventure Mode (sans rifts) aren't exactly blowing wind up most people's skirts.
So.... how do we fix that?
For the record, I didn't actually suggest allowing everything to drop everywhere, well not exactly. What I suggested was letting Infernal Machine keys drop off rift elites (so that rifting does still have some kind of point in light of other changes). But my intention was that if you wanted to farm a Hellfire Ring/Amulet that farming keywardens would still be the most expedient way to do so. I simply think that keeping entire systems completely isolated like that doesn't promote people experiencing new things.
My problem with Ubers is that once you get the item you really don't want to keep doing it. What if Ubers gave some pretty sweet XP, but because of the time to farm keys, they generally weren't worth it. But if acquiring these keys (albeit much slower) by rifting then would give you the OPTION of popping in for a few Uber kills, even if you don't necessarily need the organs, for a nice XP boost..... all because you were able to acquire some IMs, albeit less, just by doing your regular bit of whatever.
What you're suggesting, in D2 terms, is "even though there are 10 different bosses, everyone farms Baal or Pindle, so we may as well just remove Pindle." Yes, people are going to find the "best" way. Currently the best way, as defined by Josh, is to spend as much of your time as possible doing rifts. The issue is not the existence of a single "best" way to play though. The issue is the delta. How much better is it than everything else?
If you get 1 more legendary per week farming Baal as compared to Pindle, most people would agree that's close enough not to care. But if you get 1 more legendary per hour farming Baal as compared to Pindle.... that's a big enough delta for people to care.
I'm not interested in equity. I'm interested in parity. If someone wants to play Campaign Mode, it's not a problem if they sacrifice some loot, but it has to be CLOSE. You have to give the player the feeling that they're not taking it in the ass with a piece of rebar for playing something slightly differently. It's just the same as class balance. There's always going to be a "fastest farming" spec or "best GRift" spec. The issue is, simply put, keeping the other specs close.
I don't live under the illusion that everything is going to be 100% equal, ever, in any game like this. I'm not that naive. But things aren't even close to it right now. That gap must be addressed. Whether it's my way or someone else's way. That isn't going to change so long as the philosophy behind D3:RoS is "rifts are the endgame." That mentality must change otherwise everything else is doomed to be inferior-by-design.
I'm not discarding it completely, but I was under the impression that you didn't know the suffering from solo players. You mention 4 player t6 farming quite often, at least that's what I had in mind.
If you DO know it, which is what my questions were supposed to find out, I wonder how you came to the conclusion that we are at a sweet spot regarding loot distribution. That sounded like you hardly ever spend time out of rifts, like shaggy also concluded.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
some people think that the rewards are skewed. that some areas are to good in reward compared to other areas.
and they think that that must be changed.
so some people think that they risk having the "good reward areas" nerfed and less fun
some people think that they risk having the "bad reward areas" buffed to be equal to the "good reward areas" when those "good reward areas" are great!
well in a way both are right. But both of those extremes are a risky way of accessing the situation.
The assessment must be in Diablo 3's case as it stands is: What the player knows is to much, the game must reveal less.
If you are gaming around a table with pens and paper, the GM has all the dice and all the rules and all the story and everything hidden. keeping too much hidden and revealing too much are both bad ideas in theory. the idea I think is to reveal just enough.
in that sense in Diablo 3, if Blizzard and Co. are the "GMs" of Diablo 3, they have revealed too much it seems. Everyone and their dog knows the future.
The players know that location B yields reward percentage X/Y per hour, or a similar notion of where to go for better treasure.......I discovered it jumping head-first into the game just testing the expansion on the PTR. It immediately felt that more legendarys came from this area within 10 minutes of setting foot there........
so without knowing ANYTHING about the expansion I was sent to Rifts with a giant carrot on a stick until the end of time.
So its hard to claim that more or less rewards at location A or B is good or bad...
but its easy to claim that "knowing very clearly before hand, any permutation of the above statement to be the answer to the "puzzle" of the game for the next several months....is not ideal. Not when focusing on the raw quality of the game.
knowing the reward schedule is in theory a bad thing. learning about it is in theory good. so when you start knowing it and stop learning.....well....thats not really a good thing it seems.....
Jay Wilson said something about great loot being just around "the corner". The corner could be damn near anywhere
but not "that corner over there you access through this portal in the swamp seven days a week."
It exhibits that the unknown portion of a game like this is what sucks you (the player) forward. And when that "unknown" ceases to exist so does the intrigue and the fun. So oddly in a way to directly opposes your notion bagstone, hinting that "fun SHOULD be the thing that pushes you to rifts"....but it should push you into any and all areas of the game.....and the key is that, often, you're not too sure as a player exactly where that corner is....
Might be rifts....
Might probably be in areas with much harder challenges....
Might be in that fucking barrel outside of town.
The +5 Great Sword of Heaven's Rage........
Forged from the fabric of the universe, in the back pocket of a quill rat across the river. in a barrel behind the tool shed covered in rat shit. In the most perilous depth of hell guarded by 10,000 Demon lords....but you just never really know to a certainty........
(EDIT= Grammar)
** IDEA **
I think they should put more emphasis on player vs player duelling, or even team vs team. Currently, we spend hundreds of hours finding/upgrading/accummulating gear but for what ? The top end players find their names on leaderboards which rank certain stats which we all know are not that accurate whilst the rest of us are left scratching our heads wondering why we are continuing to play after 500 hours. Let's face it, killing dumb computer monsters is boring. Having killed 600,000 of them already, i don't think anything can make it interesting.
If there was a way for teams to challenge one another, wouldn't that be more fun ?. There would be no such thing BIS items and build choice would become a critical factor in the outcome. It would give us all incentive to learn about other character builds/combos and learn how to use our characters better to find the balance between defense/attack. We would need to fight intelligently rather than just use the same skills again and again.
Have any of you play yahoo chess ? when you log in, you see lots of tables and can choose a table to play. D3 could do the same where the player/team who opens a battle puts up some prize money. The challenger has to match the prize and the winner takes all. After each battle, players ranking goes up or down following a similar system to Fide.
This change is major but will definitely be loved by the competitive ones amongst us. Ok, its straying from RPG but its better than adding another few levels which we know a certain few will probably complete within an hour then start complaining about. Those who want to be on a league table will love this format being able to fight their way to the top.
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?