With a lot of the new content on the rise and a lot of ideas showing up to help replayability; micro-transactions, pvp racing, ancient legendary gifts, etc. I wanted to bring a couple of other ideas to the table which I think will help expand the value of Diablo 3 as a whole and how players can feel they are less victims of RNG and have more focus and progression in their character play through.
I enjoy playing diablo 3. However I do not like farming in Diablo 3. People tell me that's the point of the game and I disagree. The point of the game is to get gear and eventually create something of your own that helps you kick demon ass. RNG is just a drug in this game, an addiction, dopamine straight to brain kind of deal; players farm and farm just to get that rush of picking up that item they've been hunting for for hundreds of hours. This is great feeling and is tried and true in a lot of games but with the pool of items being flooded with more legendaries and now ancient lengendaries,the game is going to slowly become a game where the skill of players is less relevant than luck (it is already most of the way there, but skill can take you very far in this game. I sure as hell can't do G. Rift 40+ even with the right gear.) So the question I've been asking myself is how does diablo 3 progress into a state of skill based farming without bastardizing the core concept the game is created on?
Area and tier based loot drops with a tempering system (will explain tempering shortly.) This concept actually goes back to D2 as farming certain areas and enemies yielded better chances to get the loot you needed. This created opportunities with players to hunt out spots and give personal goals not dictated by the game which, to many people I played with back then and now, still is an ideal way to play any game with farming. I suggest that certain legendaries are available from normal to master difficulty only. In Torment 1 a new stack of legendaries is added that are available in T1 only. So on and so forth for all the legendaries in the game and finishing with ancient legendaries for items in T6. In addition to limiting items to difficulty, constricting them to acts or bosses (such as the butcher's cleaver only dropping on the butcher... like act 4 or something) you are creating game play where a person can push their characters at a steady rate to end game without creating frustration that you just weren't lucky this season (furnace anyone?)
To further this steady progression I suggest a tempering system. Unlike crafting and enchanting where you are completely gambling on stats or affixes, tempering is a system that takes all your crafting materials and let's you expend them to raise the stat points of individual affixes so you can eventually max out your dream gear. "It was hard enough to get your marauders set but you didn't get the stats you needed... Yeah I know you farmed 200 hours and just got your 5th piece. I know. Yeah it's not going to take you past greater rift 35. Go farm some more and come back." It's a shitty feeling to know you have played SO long on a toon and to get gear you absolutely need for a build and it counts for little when you get it because it had terrible stats. Tempering will solve this issue without trivializing crafting and enchanting (also it makes veil crystals worth getting again) because where as crafting resets whole items, and enchanting resets a single affix, tempering brings their values to a maximum. This will make players feel like they are steadily progressing and bring people more in line with a skill difference rather than a luck difference. Depending on how the Devs want to approach this, it could be incredibly complex or simple, either making the rarest components raise stats by a 1 to 1 ratio while less rare components take multiple of the same to accomplish the same feat or just make veil crystals raise stats by a static value (dictated by the affix) and make the gold value go up as you craft more into it.
That's my idea anyways and I'm sure people disagree but I think it would bring a lot of power to the players to let them be able to hunt more specific gear they needed and eventually max it out. Time and proper gameplay being the biggest factors of improvement of course.
Would be more interesting if it was seasonal only, unlocks after para 400-500, this form of system needs to be expensive and only be rewarding to people who put in the time, game got made so casual it needs more depth to it now... absolutely hate how some under para 200 players have some perfected gear and see para 500-600 with only some average gear not speaking out of jealousy or envy just want to highlight a broken system..... which tempering system wouldl fix
I enjoy playing diablo 3. However I do not like farming in Diablo 3. People tell me that's the point of the game and I disagree. The point of the game is to get gear and eventually create something of your own that helps you kick demon ass. RNG is just a drug in this game, an addiction, dopamine straight to brain kind of deal; players farm and farm just to get that rush of picking up that item they've been hunting for for hundreds of hours. This is great feeling and is tried and true in a lot of games but with the pool of items being flooded with more legendaries and now ancient lengendaries,the game is going to slowly become a game where the skill of players is less relevant than luck (it is already most of the way there, but skill can take you very far in this game. I sure as hell can't do G. Rift 40+ even with the right gear.) So the question I've been asking myself is how does diablo 3 progress into a state of skill based farming without bastardizing the core concept the game is created on?
Area and tier based loot drops with a tempering system (will explain tempering shortly.) This concept actually goes back to D2 as farming certain areas and enemies yielded better chances to get the loot you needed. This created opportunities with players to hunt out spots and give personal goals not dictated by the game which, to many people I played with back then and now, still is an ideal way to play any game with farming. I suggest that certain legendaries are available from normal to master difficulty only. In Torment 1 a new stack of legendaries is added that are available in T1 only. So on and so forth for all the legendaries in the game and finishing with ancient legendaries for items in T6. In addition to limiting items to difficulty, constricting them to acts or bosses (such as the butcher's cleaver only dropping on the butcher... like act 4 or something) you are creating game play where a person can push their characters at a steady rate to end game without creating frustration that you just weren't lucky this season (furnace anyone?)
To further this steady progression I suggest a tempering system. Unlike crafting and enchanting where you are completely gambling on stats or affixes, tempering is a system that takes all your crafting materials and let's you expend them to raise the stat points of individual affixes so you can eventually max out your dream gear. "It was hard enough to get your marauders set but you didn't get the stats you needed... Yeah I know you farmed 200 hours and just got your 5th piece. I know. Yeah it's not going to take you past greater rift 35. Go farm some more and come back." It's a shitty feeling to know you have played SO long on a toon and to get gear you absolutely need for a build and it counts for little when you get it because it had terrible stats. Tempering will solve this issue without trivializing crafting and enchanting (also it makes veil crystals worth getting again) because where as crafting resets whole items, and enchanting resets a single affix, tempering brings their values to a maximum. This will make players feel like they are steadily progressing and bring people more in line with a skill difference rather than a luck difference. Depending on how the Devs want to approach this, it could be incredibly complex or simple, either making the rarest components raise stats by a 1 to 1 ratio while less rare components take multiple of the same to accomplish the same feat or just make veil crystals raise stats by a static value (dictated by the affix) and make the gold value go up as you craft more into it.
That's my idea anyways and I'm sure people disagree but I think it would bring a lot of power to the players to let them be able to hunt more specific gear they needed and eventually max it out. Time and proper gameplay being the biggest factors of improvement of course.