DIII wants to steer you down a specific path at all times.
It's funny that you say that because this change, and many others (scorpion runs pre-2.0, Mira runs, cursed chest runs, etc.) have all been nerfed because, if left unaddressed, they become the defacto "right" way to play the game.
These things get nerfed because the way they "want" you to play the game is just to go out and kill monsters and feel relatively safe that if you choose Gardens of Hope Tier 1 and I choose the Weeping Hollow that neither of us has a massive advantage. Their "way" to play the game is that there shouldn't be a "right" way to play it, at least as it pertains to the question "Where should I farm?"
These things get nerfed because, if they don't, they LIMIT choices. If you're not doing CotA you may be having fun, but you're probably imposing a 50% XP penalty on yourself. If they did nothing they'd silently be endorsing, as Ruksak put it, Baal runs 2.0. Which, oddly enough, would be forcing us all down the same path. They're actually fighting for our ability to choose whatever path we want because all paths are (close to) the same.
That's kinda the opposite of trying to steer us down a specific path, isn't it?
I don't buy the "I feel forced to play this way" argument. I don't buy the "runs like CotA limit choice" line. I have a choice. If I don't find that fun then I don't have to do it, period. I know Blizz says stuff like this a lot, but I don't agree with them (at least, not when it comes to a game like Diablo, with no competition and being essentially single player. For a game like WoW I understand.) I didn't run CotA, but if I wanted to be as efficient as possible I would have. That simply wasn't my priority. I wanted to have fun, that's all.
It's not that I don't appreciate your point though. I understand the goal of making the entire game "as efficient as possible", it's just that I, and others, enjoy finding that one spot, that one run, that one that's just a bit better than the rest. I often enjoy that kind of play because I like the feeling of leveling/grinding more quickly than I could otherwise. I do this in every RPG I play and I have fun doing it.
I'm not sure what there is to "buy" in the argument. Moreover, I'm not sure how your personal experience and way of playing the game has any bearing on whether the argument is a good one or not.
The argument is that there is a critical mass of players who are of a particular predisposition that have a very adverse reaction to a significant opportunity cost. That is, given the choice between "fun gameplay" and "efficient gameplay", they will feel compelled to go the "efficient gameplay" route because what they perceive as the wasted opportunity of going the "fun gameplay" route is substantial enough to ruin their enjoyment. Thus, for these players, they are effectively stuck in a Catch-22: they can play the boring way, or get frustrated and ultimate bored playing the "fun" way.
It's pretty indisputable that at least some of these players exist. Clearly you're not one of them, but I'll admit that I'm probably pretty close to being in that category. And I'm certainly not the only one.
The only real question is: how big of a playerbase does that group represent? Is it a tiny fraction? A large majority? Somewhere in between? I actually don't think game companies have done proper research into this (or maybe they have), but given that their financial success depends on knowing answers to questions like these, I'm going to go ahead and give a successful gaming company the benefit of the doubt here and say they know what they're doing.
In other words, whether you're one of those people or not, there's apparently a large enough group out there who do feel negatively impacted by cota runs for this to be worth addressing for Blizzard.
1. Remove ALL rare, legendary and set item drops from ALL low hp mobs. 0% chance and buff the drops on elite packs and high hp mobs a little bit. This way you would still give people who only care about XP/h and option of purely farming that but get no chances to get any gear. This way if you want to buff up that T1 to T4 and just focus your build on AoE and killing easy safe white mobs... why not get more exp for it, while the player still playing "normally" on T1 will get the same exp and drops as before. THIS is giving players choices.
Yeah, you don't get it all, eh? The major complaint in this thread (one I don't agree with, but at least understand) is that nerfing cota effectively nerfed other Act I runs (Cath 4, in particular, but there may be others). Your "option" doesn't change that in the least. Your nerf to cota would equally nerf all of these other zones/runs that people are referring to. You're not giving players options, you're just choosing to punish them in a different way.
I've killed all 3 ubers on T3 5 times now and not gotten a single uber part.
Even on T6, you have to kill each keywarden an average of 6 times to get 3 keys, and then you'd have to kill each uber an average of 2 times to get 1 part from each. So basically you're looking at an average of 12 kills for each keywarden, just for 1 ring - on the maximum difficulty.
On T1 that'd go up to 48 kills on each keywarden. 12 times to get 3 keys, then 4 times for each uber. And remember that this is an average based on the drop chance. You could be really unlucky and not get keys many times in a row, or of course you could be really lucky and get all parts immediately, but on average, luck will balance out to these values.
Dunno about you, but I don't much fancy having to kill the act 1-3 keywardens a total of 144 times on T1 for a chance at 1 ring. It's just not good enough for the effort required.
Your math is pretty wrong, but your point is extremely valid. On AVERAGE on T1, you would need to kill a key warden about 2.4 times to get a key - so you overstate that a little. But you also point out you could be unlucky and that number could be much higher. In fact, you understate this part. If you kill the key warden 4 times on T1, there's a 30% chance you won't get a key at all. I wouldn't even call 30% being terribly unlucky. That's almost 1/3. So for about a third of people, the situation will be worse than you describe!
Need to check CoTA and see if they adjusted the monster density in there - that can yield pretty good XP per hour. Did a few runs last night on T4 and the XP was comparable
Better, I think. I get about 50 million in 2 minutes on t5.
CotA wasn't a fixed amount as the mob density had some variation from run to run. I say that, because I was able to log in for half an hour this afternoon when they put the server back up temporarily and did a couple of CotA runs and it looked to me (I didn't think to check #'s) as though I was getting less exp per run. It might just be I got hit with the random variability - or perhaps Blizzard did in fact adjust CotA somehow.
People are telling you it IS Diablo because Diablo isn't a single, narrow concept that you isolated from Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction. They're not arguing with you or bashing you, they're giving you legitimate reasons why your point is not well thought through.
You're the one who started throwing a mini tantrum because people were disagreeing with you.
Or maybe we're all just internet bullies and you're just mad that you can't log into our game and kill us a "few hundred" times. You sound like a really rational, well-adjusted human being.
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The argument is that there is a critical mass of players who are of a particular predisposition that have a very adverse reaction to a significant opportunity cost. That is, given the choice between "fun gameplay" and "efficient gameplay", they will feel compelled to go the "efficient gameplay" route because what they perceive as the wasted opportunity of going the "fun gameplay" route is substantial enough to ruin their enjoyment. Thus, for these players, they are effectively stuck in a Catch-22: they can play the boring way, or get frustrated and ultimate bored playing the "fun" way.
It's pretty indisputable that at least some of these players exist. Clearly you're not one of them, but I'll admit that I'm probably pretty close to being in that category. And I'm certainly not the only one.
The only real question is: how big of a playerbase does that group represent? Is it a tiny fraction? A large majority? Somewhere in between? I actually don't think game companies have done proper research into this (or maybe they have), but given that their financial success depends on knowing answers to questions like these, I'm going to go ahead and give a successful gaming company the benefit of the doubt here and say they know what they're doing.
In other words, whether you're one of those people or not, there's apparently a large enough group out there who do feel negatively impacted by cota runs for this to be worth addressing for Blizzard.
You're the one who started throwing a mini tantrum because people were disagreeing with you.
Or maybe we're all just internet bullies and you're just mad that you can't log into our game and kill us a "few hundred" times. You sound like a really rational, well-adjusted human being.