Posted by Twoflower; (Sorry, forum software is shit, impossible to quote correctly sometimes)
As long as the aim of the raceing game is to finish the track as fast as possible, knowing every turn in the track will only help you. I play Trackmania a lot, and on competition maps it s normal to practice for hours and hours just to get that last 10th of a second, sometimes even a 100th of a second. THAT is competitive and in the end only your skill decides if you win or lose.
Where a lot of folks are getting off-track (pun?) is that they're forgetting this is Diablo. They're also forgetting that entering the unknown is the hallmark of D3. Predictability rots away at longevity. There will be NO level playing field in this endgame competition.
That being said, Grifts need cleaned up severely. My concern isn't necessarily toward the leaderboard aspect, but rather, my concern is making sure that Grifts are fun, engaging, and always a different experience every time you enter. Believe me, Twoflower, the underlined part is 100% the mission statement of Blizz devs. They will not deviate from that prescription for Grifts. Nor should they.
If Grifts were predictable, what would emerge is a bevy of cookie cutter Grift builds, players knowing EXACTLY what gears and skills to bring to effectively exploit the Grift to their leisure.
I think the main problem with Grifts is that Blizzard tries to put something (semi)competitive into a game that does not work competitively. RNG based grind games just arent about skill, they are mainly about time investment.
My primary issue with ascension through Grifts into the higher tiers is the difficulty scaling in it's current iteration. The numbers just go up and up, no other challenges are presented. I would like to see more elite packs confronting you together, simultaneously being forced to combat multiple packs. Another wrinkle that may add some flavor would be by introducing elite packs that spawn with the RG. As you go higher and higher, you may start to encounter 2 or 3 elite packs with the RG.
Obviously something better fleshed out, but the gist of my suggestion would be challenging players with true combat adversity, as opposed to insanely blasted enemy damage/health numbers.
I think a lot of this will change in 2.1.2/season 2. Other pylons buffed, more pylon consistency, less punitive dead ends, revive at corpse (scaling timer), all rg's being looked at, melee oriented defense gems ... couldn't come fast enough.
Curse Network, do something about this horrid fuck-all software. I cannot even stand to use this forum anymore. I noticed that (yet again) the software fucked up my post formatting. So I try to edit it, and it REALLY fucked it up.
Are you people not aware how horrible this shit is or what?
I just can't dig the idea of targeting endgame upgrades beyond what Kadala offers. Sorry, just one mans opinion, but I can't support 'click' upgrades at that high of a level.
We all know that the people who top the leaderboards are benefactors of luck, there is no mystery to be solved there, and IMO, there's no reason to change that. All of this ties together with the reward system. Part of your reward for getting a great drop is an opportunity to place high on the boards. The boards are an extention of your luck, and that's all Diablo has ever been about. Luck.
Diablo 2 had trading? Yes. And even under the purview of trading, you required luck to garner wealth, which was needed to trade. As far as being able to target specific build defining Uniques in D2 via trading?
The whole economy was skewed beyond repair due to the prevalence of duping. Whether you duped or not, if you traded, you directly benefitted from duping. The economy was artificially inflated to a point of obscenity. The hard truth is, D2's endgame items were meant to take years to find. We weren't supposed to see Enigma, EbotdZ, EDC, Fortitude etc on every damn character.
Even with trading, these items would've taken years to put together, if it weren't for duping.
D3 vanilla got launched. You had to farm "Hell" before you could enter "Inferno", cause your gear after Hell difficulty was no where close to handle Inferno. You had to grind Act 1, to get lvl61 items, and maybe 1 or 2 strong legendaries, to progress to Act 2. And so on. Your gear was needed to make it to the end game (kill Diablo) and would have taken many of us months, if not years, to get to that point.
People started complaining about it being to hard, mobs got nerfed (first kill minions before champion takes damage, the enrage timer, ...). The general difficulty got nerfed. Lvl 63 items (act3&4 only) started dropping as soon as Hell act4. Increased legendary drops. New and better legendaries/sets. There was the AH, so you could complete your sets pretty fast (lots of bots putting set items up) resulting in the monster power levels being added, as it became to easy.
But to be honest, after 1500+ farming hours in vanilla, I did only get 1 mempo (best helm in game) with crit chance on it, and it came with an int roll on my monk. Also never found the perfect nats ring for him, or perfect WH or lacuni's. But people were farming, hoping to get that perfect item, linking the good items to friends (even if you sniped it from the AH, just finding it and being able to afford it was often great, self-found was crazy). At least, the group I was playing in.
Then ROS launched, with smartdrop, dropchance increased and increased with the first few weeks, option to enchant 1 of your rolls on all items, and very small ranges for rolls. Multiple people on my friend list with 1000-3000 hours of play time before ROS launch, stopped within 100 hours, cause their gear was as close to perfect as it would ever be, and the difference between a "hardcore" (as in play a lot) and a "casual" player would be so small anyway.
In 2.1.2, Blizzard will introduce the "Ancient" legendaries, with a (very) low drop chance. The real "hardcore" (again, play a lot) player can grind for the perfect gear, have better gear than the "casual" player, has something to be proud about again and show to their friends, has finally something to do again in a GRINDING game! While the "casual" player still sees his shiny beams, can get the full sets to feel strong, to mess around. This is a perfect solution to fix the game (the way it was supposed to be, GRINDING).
[Sarcasm] But oh no, because people didn't want to grind in the past, and the game became that casual you literally could complete full sets in town (either bloodshards or joining random public games), there were the Grifts that got introduced. You will try to rank against other people. And you can't expect people to grind for their perfect gear in a grinding game, because then the players with the best items (and thus either most luck or most time invested) will be at the top of the leaderboards. If you add new and better items in the game, you should give them to everyone in a easy way.[/Sarcasm]
Yes, I do get it can be frustrating you can't compete with the top if you are missing that one item. Yes, we all want perfect gear. But please, in the spirit of how the game first was launched, keep it a grinding game. Play and try to max out every item you have, with the best in slot items. If you feel like you are close to that, you can do greater rifts, to test how your good gear really holds up to other people their good gear.
Sorry for the rant, and happy farming. I know I will
To respond to the last few posts, people who play less and feel entitled to a leaderboard spot for some reason will never cease to complain, and it's clear that the top leaderboard spots will be held by those who play the most, have the best gear, and to a lesser extent the highest paragon.
I'm ok with this. Ancient items will only reinforce this. I'm ok with that too. A casual player doesn't have a strong argument for why they should be ranked as high as someone who outgears them.
However, there IS a strong argument for people clearly inferior gear (and arguable skill) being way ahead because of rift RNG.
THIS is what blizzard is (hopefully) normalizing a bit more. There's just no reason why most barbs should be struggling in mid 30s while a few 'solo' clear 50+ due to gg density, the (now dead) group exploit, and RG conduit fishing.
Where a lot of folks are getting off-track (pun?) is that they're forgetting this is Diablo. They're also forgetting that entering the unknown is the hallmark of D3. Predictability rots away at longevity. There will be NO level playing field in this endgame competition.
That being said, Grifts need cleaned up severely. My concern isn't necessarily toward the leaderboard aspect, but rather, my concern is making sure that Grifts are fun, engaging, and always a different experience every time you enter. Believe me, Twoflower, the underlined part is 100% the mission statement of Blizz devs. They will not deviate from that prescription for Grifts. Nor should they.
If Grifts were predictable, what would emerge is a bevy of cookie cutter Grift builds, players knowing EXACTLY what gears and skills to bring to effectively exploit the Grift to their leisure.
My primary issue with ascension through Grifts into the higher tiers is the difficulty scaling in it's current iteration. The numbers just go up and up, no other challenges are presented. I would like to see more elite packs confronting you together, simultaneously being forced to combat multiple packs. Another wrinkle that may add some flavor would be by introducing elite packs that spawn with the RG. As you go higher and higher, you may start to encounter 2 or 3 elite packs with the RG.
Obviously something better fleshed out, but the gist of my suggestion would be challenging players with true combat adversity, as opposed to insanely blasted enemy damage/health numbers.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
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Are you people not aware how horrible this shit is or what?
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
We all know that the people who top the leaderboards are benefactors of luck, there is no mystery to be solved there, and IMO, there's no reason to change that. All of this ties together with the reward system. Part of your reward for getting a great drop is an opportunity to place high on the boards. The boards are an extention of your luck, and that's all Diablo has ever been about. Luck.
Diablo 2 had trading? Yes. And even under the purview of trading, you required luck to garner wealth, which was needed to trade. As far as being able to target specific build defining Uniques in D2 via trading?
The whole economy was skewed beyond repair due to the prevalence of duping. Whether you duped or not, if you traded, you directly benefitted from duping. The economy was artificially inflated to a point of obscenity. The hard truth is, D2's endgame items were meant to take years to find. We weren't supposed to see Enigma, EbotdZ, EDC, Fortitude etc on every damn character.
Even with trading, these items would've taken years to put together, if it weren't for duping.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Lets not turn the situation around please...
D3 vanilla got launched. You had to farm "Hell" before you could enter "Inferno", cause your gear after Hell difficulty was no where close to handle Inferno. You had to grind Act 1, to get lvl61 items, and maybe 1 or 2 strong legendaries, to progress to Act 2. And so on. Your gear was needed to make it to the end game (kill Diablo) and would have taken many of us months, if not years, to get to that point.
People started complaining about it being to hard, mobs got nerfed (first kill minions before champion takes damage, the enrage timer, ...). The general difficulty got nerfed. Lvl 63 items (act3&4 only) started dropping as soon as Hell act4. Increased legendary drops. New and better legendaries/sets. There was the AH, so you could complete your sets pretty fast (lots of bots putting set items up) resulting in the monster power levels being added, as it became to easy.
But to be honest, after 1500+ farming hours in vanilla, I did only get 1 mempo (best helm in game) with crit chance on it, and it came with an int roll on my monk. Also never found the perfect nats ring for him, or perfect WH or lacuni's. But people were farming, hoping to get that perfect item, linking the good items to friends (even if you sniped it from the AH, just finding it and being able to afford it was often great, self-found was crazy). At least, the group I was playing in.
Then ROS launched, with smartdrop, dropchance increased and increased with the first few weeks, option to enchant 1 of your rolls on all items, and very small ranges for rolls. Multiple people on my friend list with 1000-3000 hours of play time before ROS launch, stopped within 100 hours, cause their gear was as close to perfect as it would ever be, and the difference between a "hardcore" (as in play a lot) and a "casual" player would be so small anyway.
In 2.1.2, Blizzard will introduce the "Ancient" legendaries, with a (very) low drop chance. The real "hardcore" (again, play a lot) player can grind for the perfect gear, have better gear than the "casual" player, has something to be proud about again and show to their friends, has finally something to do again in a GRINDING game! While the "casual" player still sees his shiny beams, can get the full sets to feel strong, to mess around. This is a perfect solution to fix the game (the way it was supposed to be, GRINDING).
[Sarcasm] But oh no, because people didn't want to grind in the past, and the game became that casual you literally could complete full sets in town (either bloodshards or joining random public games), there were the Grifts that got introduced. You will try to rank against other people. And you can't expect people to grind for their perfect gear in a grinding game, because then the players with the best items (and thus either most luck or most time invested) will be at the top of the leaderboards. If you add new and better items in the game, you should give them to everyone in a easy way.[/Sarcasm]
Yes, I do get it can be frustrating you can't compete with the top if you are missing that one item. Yes, we all want perfect gear. But please, in the spirit of how the game first was launched, keep it a grinding game. Play and try to max out every item you have, with the best in slot items. If you feel like you are close to that, you can do greater rifts, to test how your good gear really holds up to other people their good gear.
Sorry for the rant, and happy farming. I know I will
PS: thank you Blizzard for this <3
I'm ok with this. Ancient items will only reinforce this. I'm ok with that too. A casual player doesn't have a strong argument for why they should be ranked as high as someone who outgears them.
However, there IS a strong argument for people clearly inferior gear (and arguable skill) being way ahead because of rift RNG.
THIS is what blizzard is (hopefully) normalizing a bit more. There's just no reason why most barbs should be struggling in mid 30s while a few 'solo' clear 50+ due to gg density, the (now dead) group exploit, and RG conduit fishing.
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web