Yea I am going to have to disagree with Autocthon as well in regards to leaderboards being stat based... However you are 100% accurate in that the top spots reflect your groups GRift fishing skills/patience. But even with an op map/mob combo, if the group doesn't have the right synergy or if someone isn't properly pulling their weight, 10/10 fail - so chalk it up as an XP run, It shows when a S9 4man w/ combined para 9169 can clear a 117 while a NS9 group in the top 5 sits at a 116 - even though combined their para is 13007. Same era, meta, and skils.
That also has something to do with effort as well. A lot of players push leaderboards in seasonal, I don't see as much or nearly as much effort in non-seasonal play. To me, being on the leaderboards in non-seasonal doesn't rellay matter, because everybody has their GG gear, their 4-5k paragons, the super gems, it's not really worth it. In seasonal, everybody's trying to push as high as they can for the end of the season, with the "fair opportunity".
I don't have an issue with non-seasonal, I just don't find it nearly as competitive as seasonal. As far as your math is concerned, if the zDPS have more paragon than the DPS, your whole total is out of line. It's dependant on the DPS paragons how fast the clear is, not the overall combined total.
To answer your both of your questions, no. Odyn's Chain Lightning isn't the same as Electrocute - Chain Lightning. It neither procs Mandald Heal nor does it get doubled by Velvet. Sad, but true. =(
Getting to the point: the whole discussion Primals v1 VS Primals v2 is completely bogus. The relative power provided by v1 is around 2-3 GRs on a paragon 2k character - so extremely low also given the rarity of the item.
I'd agree here with the exception of the weapon slot. The boost in damage from the damage range alone is an easy 6-7 GR levels, 10 if you're good and like fishing. The fact that every skill multiplies (and subsequently every multiplier afterwards) from your weapon's damage range means that increasing it increases your overall damage output exponentially. I believe the math is something to the effect of 100 damage range = 1000 main stat (could be 2, it's been forever since I've actually looked at it). That's quite a bump.
Primals v2 have on the other side next to zero impact and are pointless to hunt for the most part until you really want to "finish" your character.
While your overall statement here is true, shouldn't that be what we all strive for in a season? I mean realistically speaking of course, it almost never happens, but when it does all that is left is the paragon grind. It'll keep players going, and complaining about it the whole way, but at least they're still playing.
v1 didn't have GRs requirement so ladders could be easily fucked up by some sheer luck and while Ladders imho have next to zero meaning, still it's not something anyone wants. v2 Primals just negate this possibility since a good rolled Ancient is really near in terms of power with a Primal.
True, however, I think with the addition that Mystic gives perfect rerolls sort of gives an edge towards Primals, not a huge edge, but it's definitely in favor of Primal. I think truly the solution is going to end up somewhere in the middle. While Primals serve that "last 1%" you'll get on gear, they should definitely have impact, but not nearly as much impact as v1.0. It's already an unspoken rule in-game, if a weapon isn't ancient, it's not really worth using. There's a reason for that. Primal v1.0 just exacerbates that same stereotype.
The whole Primal thing was doomed before even coming to light since it's just "meh" design. The game needs different gameplay additions - i hope that with Challenge Rifts also standard ladders will just be removed since they're actually not an indicator for anything so the attention will be less focused on the fantomatic "meta" which is created by players and gives the false impression that if you don't play that exact build you're doing it wrong.
I agree 100%. Which is why instead of giving us Primals, they should be focusing more on balancing each class, giving more legendary affixes, and fixing old/broken/useless legendary affixes. Who's going to use a Dovu Energy Trap these days with the CC immunity in the air? If each class had at least 5 GR pushing builds over 3 different sets, excluding LoN builds, the game would be more competitive, and less cookie cutter. I think we can all agree that even with the paragon problem persisting, being able to play at the same level with 5 unique builds for your class would be a lot easier to take. (PS Also fits with the Armoury, just sayin.)
Game doesn't need pointless power creep to be made more playable by the competitive crowd. It needs more competing options, less power gap, and ways to distinguish player ability that don't involve grinding up the stat ladder.
Nearly 100% of what gets a player on the top leaderboards is pure stat. The only bit of differentiation between players at the top by the end of a season is how lucky they were fishing for rifts. Power creep doesn't make knowledge of the game any more important, nor does it make time investment any more rewarding. It's just same shit different numbers.
If you want the game to hold the attention of streamers add something like PoE map system (which let a player progress through challenges). Add a balanced competitive mode (whole point of challenge rifts). Add more competing options and wildly crazy items. Don't just tack another zero onto the end of stat values and say "Now your time matters more".
Strongly disagree. Of course mainstat has a point in overall performance, as it should; but you said that nearly 100% of what brings a player to the leaderboards is stat / gear.
That is 100% wrong, and any player in the top 100 on any leaderboard will verify it. Player performance is the highest factor, by far.
Honestly, my personal opinion is that your points sound quite like an excuse for someone who wants the game to be completely casual. LoL- HOTA mode on.
Log in and be able to compete in equal playground with someone who has gotten 4k paragon while you made it to paragon 600 in your 2-hours a week schedule. Not gonna happen in D3. It never happened in D2 either , or any ARPG for what it takes.
Clearly I want an ARPG where progress and time invested do matter, while your approach sounds like a MOBA-shooter type of game.
Competition does matter. But so does playing incentive. And power creep IS an incentive.
Actually, it's fairly accurate to assume that player knowledge/skill is a factor, but a lot of that comes down to rift fishing, which is exactly what he said. After that it's simple stat math, if you're not within XXX paragons of the next player on the boards, you can't compete with them regardless of skill, as they are just putting out more raw numbers. Adding Primals only exacerbates the difference of rift fishing/knowledge to complete luck, which is detrimental to your first point, that streamers-elite players-competition bring new players to the game. I don't believe his point is to make the game casual, but instead to have more varied options in build diversity, instead of just raw numbers. In fact your assumption appears to be illogical, as wouldn't a complete casual want bigger numbers on their gear so they don't have to spend hours paragon farming? Just a thought.
If they were to instead take Primals out of the game completely, balance 3 sets for each class to deal roughly the same amount of damage, add legendary affixes to currently useless legendaries, upgrade current useless legendary affixes to be useful in at least 1 build, they'd be making huge strides towards more competitive and more exciting game-play. I used to laugh (out loud) at the Play-Your-Way Thursday segments, as they were usually extremely useless builds for doing basically anything with. "This build clears T8, I like it." Yea, but the highest difficulty is T13... Wouldn't you want more builds that do things differently at the maximum rather than builds that have to stoop to lower difficulty settings to be effective?
Power creep is incentive, but it's not the ONLY incentive. I've said it before and I'll say it again, getting a Primal Ancient Obsidian Ring really makes no difference, getting a Primal Ancient Crushbane is completely useless.
How is it that every post about Primal Ancients somehow gets dragged down into "Botting" or "Paragon"? I mean they are both obvious issues, but I mean why can't anybody stay on point in the discussions they choose to participate? Real facts though, Paragns and Botting are issues that also make Primal Ancient a very bad idea, and while I understand that they may be related, they aren't the only reasons for Primals being bad. There is plenty of merit on both sides of the issue, but we can all agree, Primals aren't what the game needs right now.
I believe it's not just you, but you may be incorrect about your assumption, level 56 on Hard difficulty, I encountered an Odious Collector, and he dropped 30 DBs, 16 FSs, 120 VCs, 110 ADs, and 87 RPs. I think it may be a minor tweak, as they are likely testing the creation aspect to Primal Ancients via the cube. If not though, I'm really glad goblins are worth even more in 2.5 =)
It's like talking to the toaster and expecting it to understand. I'll say this, here, officially; If you accept the term that Diablo is in MM, you are a fool. The points you've made are foolhardy. They serve only your interests, not the game as a whole. While I've agreed with you that paragon is a problem, you've theatrically attempted to prove that I somehow am contradicting myself.
Discussion is far from over Arydor. The ship just leaved the harbor. I expect such threads to be re-created on the forums during the whole Season 4. This topic will be re-discovered and re-discussed by the players just as the topic with the trials mechanic was. It all boils down to when blizzard will finally hear the community.
Ah and btw I have no self-interest in D3 (RMAH is long gone). I haven't played since S5 (I am not a non-seasonal player - surprise!). Sad thing is the people from my friend list don't play too. Somehow endless paragon and botting killed the game for all of them. Some will return for the Challenge Rifts, the others will stay with WoW, HS and PoE, just as D3 will stay in maintenance mode for the years to come.
I don't think I was trolling back then, and I'm not now. After 2 years, we're not talking about the same thing. You're talking about a cap in seasons, still, and it's still a bad idea. If you can't reward people for taking the time and effort to play the game, why would they play it? I'm saying that Primals are a bad idea, with or without a cap, because they don't add anything to the game in it's current form. I've seen people say "You can Grift for exp, or Rift and Bounty for Primals" which, is kind of like saying you Grift now for Blood Shards and do bounties for gear. Greater Rifts don't drop legendaries? Something I hadn't even thought of would be the Bounty Legendaries. Remember when Ancients first arrived and they were sort of rare to get them, and yet people would STILL spam split bounty groups until they got an Ancient Illusionary Boots or RoRG? That will still happen with Primals.
I knew back then that paragons were a problem. Your solution is to limit each player to a set amount of mainstat, in which, they cannot progress any further up the endless ladder. Your solution doesn't fix the problem, it just makes seasons shorter. A race if you would, instead of a competition. Primals are innately bad, just like Ancients were a bad idea when they were implemented. I remember having countless discussions about how as an above-casual-but-below-hardcore player, I'd probably see maybe 2 perfect ancient pieces per season. That held true, as a hardcore player I'd likely see a full set of near perfect ancient rolls. That held true too. In case you don't remember, Ancients weren't welcomed either, and they weren't welcome until Blizzard upped the drop rate. Now a month in a people are finding full sets of Ancient gear in a week. Primals is the same path. We'll have the same discussion again in 2 years time, the cycle will continue. It won't change the fact that until they change something like;
-Each Paragon Point for Intelligence, Dexterity,and Strength now only increases by 1-2 and each point in Vitality now increases by 10.
-Intelligence no longer gives Resist All, Strength and Dexterity no longer give Armor.
-Vitality now grants Armor and Resist All at a ratio of 10 Vitality = 1 Armor,1 Resist All.
Nothing will change, ever. Or they could rework the paragon system, again. Which by the way wasn't a problem until people started gaining such massive amounts of exp. I still remember the first person to hit paragon 1000, and that was a crazy achievement. Now it's just another number. I remember when leveling your gems to 30-35 was a big deal. It all falls back to the math behind D3, and Primals are just simply put a bad idea. You've also failed to counter my points. You can't say why Primals are a good idea without resorting to backwards logic of 'don't let people play for 16 hours at a time'. They don't have to, they want to. The only difference in this opinion, is how fast they get their GG gear, and how much longer they have to 'farm paragons' to keep up with the guy behind them on the LBs because he's motivated to beat the time to take Rank 1. There really isn't character progression after GG as far as gear/skills/passives go. So what is the reward for continuing to play after you've achieved GG status? Paragons. They aren't the best system, they aren't even a good system, but currently they are all we get.
Take Season 9 here for example, let's say Primals were implemented today. Y0da goes out and farms some speed Grift 100's (!!) and low and behold he gets a Primal Ancient Pig Sticker. It's rolled pretty terribly, but it's what he wanted, so he fixes it up as best he can and equips it and jumps 12 Grift levels on the LBs. Now let's say the guy in 15th is doing the same thing, but he gets a Primal Tal'Rasha's Relentless Pursuit, and jumps 2 Grift levels. In the spirit of competition, that's BAD. Let's look at an even worse case scenario, the player in 800th spot... well, he got SUPER lucky and got 4 Primals, all for his build, and jumps from 800th to 2nd. The guy who was in third got 2 Primals but they were Crushbane and Obsidian. He's now falling down the ladder as people who are farming at the same level are getting more/better Primals than he is. Now he's in 800th spot because bad RNG. After about the 14th Primal Ancient Sloriak's Madness he quits, because the game is just RNG. How is that good for the game?
EDIT: Also in that thread, my original post was "a warning shot" as it were, as the discussion wasn't being anywhere near logical. Yes paragons were a problem then, and have continued to be a problem now, and will likely remain a problem in the future. I also go on to read that most of that thread was you spouting off about mainstat and paragon caps. You still haven't answered what the reward is for after being GG and hitting cap. Nothing. D3 offers nothing in sorts of advancement after people reach your cap. The competition is over, you hit your peak and that's all you get. Problem with that is, it could be late in the season, it could be early, but then it's not a competition, but a race against RNG. Not much of a grindy game then is it?
You want people to play for 3 months. You want them to be excited for 3 months. You want them to have fun for 3 months.
Yep, that is why the devs are putting the primals in the game: Nobody is excited when he has to farm paragon. But, wait... You said primals are "a horrible idea". You are contradicting yourself again. Primals are exactly added to keep people excited, because with or without mainstat cap 99% of the players are gone after 2 weeks of season's start.
Just to make one thing clear:
1) Primals without seasonal mainstat cap are good for the casuals and bad for everybody else, because of the RNG
2) Primals with seasonal mainstat cap are good for everyone
It's like talking to the toaster and expecting it to understand. I'll say this, here, officially; If you accept the term that Diablo is in MM, you are a fool. If you blindly accept that any change to the game is an improvement, then you'll have to accept that Berry Sparkle Cake Attack will be the highest point damage skill that the Necromancer will get, because, it's a change, so it must be an improvement.
PTR is meant for discussion. It's supposed to provide the community a position to take on the next content patch. The points you've made are foolhardy. They serve only your interests, not the game as a whole. While I've agreed with you that paragon is a problem, you've theatrically attempted to prove that I somehow am contradicting myself. It's you who has yet to prove the point of why Primals are "good". You stated a few points, I've pointed out that your logic is flawed. Your response is that RNG is minimized with a seasonal cap, and also, it'll make less people care about playing seasons. That is purely your viewpoint on how the game should be played. If people hated seasons so much, why do so many people play seasonal? (I'm not going to debate that, as it's completely off topic, but the fact remains that your replies are in extent from the viewpoint that seasons are a waste of time.)
The Devs also said: "We're adding Paragons to the game." and "We're reworking Paragons to be an endless ladder." Those were amazing ideas too, right? You can't have your cake and eat it too. It's not contradictory if I didn't say Primals will add excitement. Sure, it *could* be exciting, but it's just another level of farm for those who take the competition seriously. It doesn't change your gameplay choices it just simply prolongs the status of GG, which truth be told, may not happen, and then AGAIN, your entire season, 16 hours a day, wasted, because you didn't have good RNG.
The difference is the perception. You see it as farming paragons and getting GG, whereas I see it as farming GG and getting paragons (it's intended purpose btw). When people are GG, what do they do? Do they swap to non-seasonal, and just play for funzies? Or do they farm paragon and try and push as high as they can? Introducing Primals will make a difference, sure, Rank 1 on all the leaderboards will be 13/13 Primal, all the way to about Rank 85ish. From there to about 400ish it'll be 12/13 Primal. From there down it'll be 11/13 Primal until you reach probably around 900ish, and that'll be filled up with the 10/13 Primal players. So what about all those super serious folks off the leaderboards that played 16 hours a day, and only got 9/13 Primal items for their build? What do they get? You see this as a nerf to paragons, when in fact it's the opposite. It's something that's been a problem in WoW for a while now, the difference between Warforging and Titanforging. However, items are farmable in WoW (Boss A drops Item X) it's RNG if the item upgrades, if it even drops, but it can't drop from another boss, in D3's case, another RG.
As far as your logic goes, it sounds like you just hate seasons. Playing non-seasonal during a season isn't in the spirit of seasons, for a seasonal player. It would kind of be like quitting? I don't play a lot of Diablo in the non-season. It's not fun nor is it entertaining. I have (now) 9 seasons worth of gear saved up, what are the chances I don't have a perfectly rolled set of Ancient, everything? I get that for a non-seasonal player, Primals sound like a god-send, but when weighed into a competition, they're just another level of RNG, power creep, that puts the fate of your entire season in the hands of RNG. It already is, in a way, but you can get multiple Ancient items, poorly rolled, well rolled, and perfectly rolled. Making Legendaries non-existent isn't a good answer. Capping mainstat isn't an answer. You want people to play for 3 months. You want them to be excited for 3 months. You want them to have fun for 3 months. You don't want them to get capped on day 5 and quit to go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure because they're "done".
But dude, let me say one thing: Many, if not "most" of D3 players play seasons just to get extra stash and go back to non-season after this. Did you notice seasons are abandoned hills after 2nd month? If you don´t have a really close team, you will need to come back to non-season just because you have no option unless you play solo.
ANY improvment to game must take it seriously in consideration. Or you will need to get back the exclusives legendaries and create some exclusive seasonal build/sets to keep everyone playing seasons until it ends. And even that way, just those ones how really need the new items will keep playing it until it ends.
Edit: Ok, i know "most of players" dont abandon seasons and seasonal player base é really enough to keep playing if you really want to. My bad. But doesn't anwers the question: What to do to keep seasons interesting after 2 months and keep non-seasonal players not moaning about it?
Your entire post was contradicted with your edit. There are many suggestions on how to make the seasonal and game better all over the place. My overall suggestion for the non-seasonal players would be, if you don't want to take part in that half of the game, don't meddle with it. "I can't play kuz my friends all play seasonal."? Maybe you should play seasonal. I've had a few friends who've been skeptical about because of D3's RNG, and now we all play seasonally, together. Why? As much fun as it is destroying everything on a GG geared character, it is also fun to play the game from scratch. No paragons, no gems, and no gear. I think Season 7 instead of seeing who got the highest GR, we raced paragons. It was fun. It also brings to line new players. Season starts and everybody is new, whereas in non-seasonal, you've got 4k paragons, GG gear and destroy everything, how on earth does somebody who bought a box yesterday catch up? Enough off topic though. If we blindly accept "ANY improvement" to the game... See "Berry Sparkle Cake Attack" above.
The problems are not the items, it's the paragon system and teamplay vs. soloplay thats the problem.
You compete on not even terms. How can a soloplayer even get close to the same paragon as a player that usually grind in a 4-man team. This also goes to leveling up gems and arguementing gear.
There should be an option preferably when you create your character or atleast when you enter your first greater rift. That saves you to a leaderboard type. This includes gems and items achived from greater rifts.
That would atleast set the soloboards to fair and reasonable propotion.
Adding better items is not bad it's motivating and if you then look at the leaderboards well yes ofcourse the ones with the best gear are usually in the top, the season is long and what's stopping everyone to get the good gear themselfs to compete even with 2-4hrs/day gameplay. People should start compete more against themselfs then look at others.
I agree with the first statement here. Completely. They really should do something about it. What should they do though? They had to add all the group bonuses to get people to play in groups. It was more advantageous if you solo'd Diablo on the highest difficulty you could prior to the RMAH/AH departing, and the group exp/magic find buff. I agree, there should be a form of trading available in game, but if you were around in those times, a level 55 1h sword would sell for 20m gold. Not a lot by today's standards, but this was before the Boon of the Hoarder. You had enough to repair if you were lucky, without selling items on the AH.
The third bit in there, about having separate leaderboards is redundant unless you plan on secluding yourself from playing with your friends. I agree it's not a good system, but realistically saying 'I'm only playing solo this season' is kind of, well, limiting. The idea is to expand your options. I'd agree that support builds, skills that affect others in your group, and the exp buff could go out the window, but then we're back to a solo player game. As far as adding better items, how does adding Primals fix any of the issues that are currently plaguing the game? By adding a lucky drop that might close a little bit of paragon gap, that they'll have anyway AND a drop or 12 more of their own? I'm not against build diversity, but I used to hate builds that REQUIRED item X to work, because despite having all the other 12 pieces, not having that 13th broke everything. Admittedly, Legendaries rain from the sky, but they aren't all good. Some of them are downright bad. Ancients suffer the same RNG; I give you, the new and improved Mandald Heal, pinnacle of the Wiz Season 9. If you want to be competitive on the solo leaderboards (I'm talking Top 1000 at this point, 1 month into the season) you NEED one, and not just an okay one, but a well rolled, if not perfect one. The range on the affix is 1000% damage, and a real difference maker when mobs have higher health pools. Now imagine if you will, Primals exist, and they are extremely rare. You are the luckiest of lucky people and get a Primal Ancient Mandald Heal to drop really early in the season. You're SO excited about the red border, and then you look at the stats on the ring;
-Int
-AR
-RCR
-%Life
-Enemies stunned by Paralysis take 13,231% weapon damage, as Lightning.
How excited are you now, that one of the rarest and most sought after items for Wizards in the game, is now yours and wearing it is actually worse than wearing an Ancient one with -CHC -CHD - CDR -Socket, -13987%? Which in and of itself would be a miracle to get, unless, as is current format, you spent 16 hours a day farming Grifts and paragons. Adding items isn't a bad thing, adding better items, not a bad thing. Adding better versions of what we already have, for no other purpose than for power creep, is bad. It's an old adage at this point, but if you're not using an ancient weapon, it's not worth playing. They've tried to alleviate that by making (absurd btw) power gains on sets and legendary affixes. Anything they add numbers wise is a bad thing. If you really look at it. "The leaderboards are cluttered with people spamming 4 man meta groups all day and then soloing GR 102 with all the stuff they got from that portion of the game". That's not going to change unless something is done to drastically reduce the bonuses to group play. To build on that even more, the more they add, the bigger the divide between players becomes. The honest truth of it is that paragons are a problem. Nobody is denying that, but if we blindly accept this as a 'good thing' without actually questioning it, we're doomed to repeat the failure that is paragons.
The issue I take with a seasonal cap, is it devalues time and effort.
-Seasons ARE different from Non-Seasonal. They are timed.
You have it written yourself, but you fail to see it. Let me make it easier for you: Because seasons are time limited, time and effort from a player during a season are limited too. Seasonal mainstat cap devalues nothing.
About the RNG: With a seasonal cap, the role the RNG plays gets smaller. Finding some primals will grant you extra mainstat, but since it is capped at some value, it won't matter if it was belt, armor etc... At some point during the season a player will reach the cap and he won't care about the RNG anymore. It will be just: 1) having fun, 2) aiming LBs, 3) switching to NS for more main stat.
I see it perfectly, you're a non-seasonal player, and all your friends still play seasonal. If I devote 4 hours a day to playing seasonal Diablo 3, then I should expect to get X value from it. With RNG, I can expect a lot less and receive a lot more. If another player devotes 8 hours a day and their lively hood to the season, then they can expect to get Y value from it. If ever X = Y, then there is a HUGE problem. How do you not see this?
As far as your logic goes, it sounds like you just hate seasons. Playing non-seasonal during a season isn't in the spirit of seasons, for a seasonal player. It would kind of be like quitting? I don't play a lot of Diablo in the non-season. It's not fun nor is it entertaining. I have (now) 9 seasons worth of gear saved up, what are the chances I don't have a perfectly rolled set of Ancient, everything? I get that for a non-seasonal player, Primals sound like a god-send, but when weighed into a competition, they're just another level of RNG, power creep, that puts the fate of your entire season in the hands of RNG. It already is, in a way, but you can get multiple Ancient items, poorly rolled, well rolled, and perfectly rolled. Making Legendaries non-existent isn't a good answer. Capping mainstat isn't an answer. You want people to play for 3 months. You want them to be excited for 3 months. You want them to have fun for 3 months. You don't want them to get capped on day 5 and quit to go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure because they're "done".
The mainstay issues are that they continue to just add layers...
That is why we need a seasonal cap on mainstat. What this will achieve is the following:
- Players will be free to choose how they want to progress and acquire mainstat: through grinding paragons (grs) or primals (rifts/bounties)
- Public games grouping will improve tremendously
- The RNG layers will be put down to rest
- Competitive, solo and casual players will be on even grounds with the 24/7 grinders
- Botting value will decrease
- Seasons will finally start feeling different from non-season besides stash tabs
Downsides of capping mainstat on seasons only: None.
The issue I take with a seasonal cap, is it devalues time and effort. While I have a job, and can't play Diablo for 16 hours a day, I do have to have the respect that those who do will be better than me. I do try to make the most out of my playtime, and have reached the leaderboards a few times, and got knocked off, it's all part of the game.
To get to your bullet points here:
-Public games are toxic. The rare gem that is a good public game is rarer than a Primal Uber Super Meta Awesome Ancient Furnace (1,456,342-2,345,234 Damage, 3000% Damage to Elites, always rolls with 30% damage and 15% Attack Speed, and can be Gifted 5 times.) They almost always end in failure, mostly because there is a lack of communication. The 4-5 seconds it takes to type out there is a channeling pylon ahead because your team mates aren't tabbing constantly while not in combat can get you killed.
-Adding more RNG removes RNG.... I'd love to hear your logic on that one.
-Solo play will NEVER be on the same level as multiplayer, unless something drastic changes. I mean solo play, like, a 3x toughness boost when solo, or something crazy like that. The reasons why multiplayer games are so much better than solo is because 2 different builds merge together, one offensive, one defensive. If I can dish out another trillion damage by not focusing at all on defense, and the other player never dies and can extend that to me, then we'll go a lot further than a solo player trying to balance both. Also, I fail to see your logic in "the guy who plays for 2 hours and might find a really awesome Primal and the guy who plays 16 hours a day" are on the same playing field. Law of averages says that while yes, the 2 hour guy got REALLY lucky, the 16 hour guy has about 100000x the chances to get lucky. "I got 20 Traveler's Pledges today, 1 of them is bound to be decent" already exists.
-Has zero effect on botting. Botters will just continue to bot for gear. That's kind of the whole point of botting, to do the tedious and repetitive tasks that you don't want to. Look at all the people that were banned for botting off the leaderboards, you think they botted all of it, some of it, or maybe just the Keystone farming? (The answer is d) all of the above.) People already bot for gear as it is, for Ancients, for specific items, for everything. If you think by removing the paragon grind you're reducing botting, you're kind of missing the point.
-Seasons ARE different from Non-Seasonal. They are timed. Nobody is supposed to know exactly when the season ends (though it's been predictable, and then announced 2-4 weeks ahead of time, GG Blizz) which is supposed to be the point. You play as hard as you can, as long as you can, as well as you can, to achieve as much as you can, before it ends (and you get your name immortalized in the menus). Nobody cares about non-seasonal leaderboards, unless it's the off-season (week or two). ((How many Youtube videos are up about non-seasonal play? How many streamers are streaming non-seasonal play?)) Then it's all about how high you can push with the new changes and XXXX paragon. The builds are pre-determined before the season even starts. That's a problem. They've also the problems of not being able to change things mid-season. (Remember that old trick using Sever to one-shot an RG at high levels?)
Keep in mind that a large portion of the streamers didn't just leave because it was 'an endless grind for paragons', but it was also boring, doing the same thing over and over again. Which is simple to fix, remove support builds completely. No more 'heals your allies', '15% to your aliies', '50% for you and your allies', nothing, gone, bye bye. Big Bad Voodoo "While standing in the circle, YOU get 20% damage and 15% damage reduction." Simple. I fixed the boring monotonous paragon grind.
Then also keep in mind that they were also sick of the plateau, and hitting it so early on in the season. "No matter what I do, IF I get hit in GRXX, I die, even if I put all my 2500 paragons into Vitality, the white mob just one shots me." Adding a cap just extends this plateau to a longer time period. Also, we're one month into the season, and even casual solo's have 800+ paragons. When/where do you cap paragons? before 800 where they don't matter? (Why don't they matter you may be asking, because they're capped. You can only get 5% crit chance, 50% crit damage, and 10% CDR from paragons, what difference does it make where I put them when I get 800, the tree is filled.)
Seasons haven't changed. Perception has. People see it as an endless grind for paragons, and the only real part that matters is the last week of the season. I see it like a sport, every game counts, from the first to the last. I Agree that paragons are a problem, but capping them sort of means you hit the cap, get some good gear, do your good rift, and quit for the rest of the season. If that's 2 days in, what purpose is there to play the game?
Primal Ancients are one of the best ideas Diablo devs had in a long time!
Not even by a long shot.
Well, now by introducing Primals Blizzard simply nerfed paragons as we all wanted. Better gear means paragons are worth less!
No, they're not. Each paragon level is worth the exact same amount. A player with 1200 paragons with a Primal Weapon is still better than an 800 paragon with a Primal Weapon. All Primal Ancients will do is add more RNG. The difference between a Rank 1 and Rank 2 will be gear, always. Skill is pretty much defined at that point, and it will be the difference of usually the weapon slot. Who got the better rolled weapon? Who's skills are doing 5x5x1.25x1.30x1.20 more damage per attack? Primal Weapons only add that extra layer of RNG, which is fine, but then also take into account the rarity, Primal Ancient Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. Awesome, Health Globes grant me... my life bar? REALLY GLAD I GOT THAT ONE. They've had this debate, and lost it, with their other, more popular games' communities.
Success would also be attributed to being lucky instead of skilled, or committed. If Primal Ancients make it through the cutting room, expect the Leaderboards to end up on the floor. Another reason not to play seasonal. Remember when the WHOLE point of seasonal play was to get as good as you could within a set amount of time and play as well as you could? IT hasn't changed, but what has is the perception of it. People grind the only power increase they can, and while doing so get well rolled items... nothing has changed. Paragons are a problem, but there are better options. Primals devalue Legendaries. I think they were going the right direction with Cald's Despair, but that should have been more like a Ram's Gift. That, and of course removing Primaries defensive traits, puts more value in each choice made with paragons. Up to 800, your choices don't matter, and after 800, well it's all mainstat, all the time.
And last but not least Primal Ancient means more build will be viable for farming keys and doing low GRs for gem ups. Players will start to experiment composing whole new builds around that one primal weapon they got. It will be more efficient to play weaker build but with better gear than to play better build but with worse items. Look at Crusaders Top100 - Bomb and Light builds go head to head depending on who got better grear for their spec - I think thats awesome and Primals could help diversify other ladderboards
I'm confused. If this diversity already exists, and has the possibility to exist, then how does adding a super rare drop change that? Other than making your Primal Ancient Crushbane better than a Wand of Woh?
If you want to talk itemization changes, then let's talk specifically about weapons. Already, a MH/OH combo is 5x stronger than almost every single 2H weapon in the game. Why?
-The difference between a MH and a 2H is minimal, 1.5k at Maximum.
-Set items offer even more power. (150% damage while at maximum Spirit)
-Sets and item combinations are more powerful. (Wearing 4pc Set A and 6pc Set B= 3000% damage)
People also misinterpret what it means when you 'can' have better. It's ALREADY an issue when getting into group play in seasonal (Season 9) if you're not already paragon 800, have a full set of Ancient Gear that's be augmented with 60+ gems, and part of the 'meta'. Let's say you enjoy WD. Well, Firebats WD got some buffs and is part of the meta, and hey, you're paragon 800, oh, you don't have an Ancient Sacred Harvester, we'll wait to find somebody who does. You don't have at least 11/13 Ancient? Too bad, enjoy farming your 60's in Public Games.
Now let's say you enjoy Demon Hunter. "Go play solo. I don't care if you're 2k paragon, full ancient and augmented with 100's.... you're not a FB WD, Mandald Wiz or Gen Monk."
Streamers used to (and to some degree still do) along with the leaderboards, set a standard of play. It's reinforced that the meta is really the only way to play, since doing anything other than that is less than optimal. It's an extremely similar conversation to that of WoW Legendaries, where Mythic raid teams won't even accept recruits without BiS Legendaries. They 'can' get them, but they didn't. Take the fact that WoW has over 10x the playerbase that Diablo does, and then think about the fact that Wow has 8(?) Legendaries per class, and 4(?) Shared Class Lengendaries. Diablo has thousands of Legendaries, all with a chance to roll Primal, and be really cool, or really crap. Take into account Affixes, an Ancient Wand of Woh is still better than a Primal Ancient Sloriak's Madness if you're using an Explosive Blast build. Yes, Primal Ancient would mean more damage per attack, but a Woh triples the damage of the skill, and has an additive 100% extra damage. You're going to make a build around Sloriak's? Sure... if you enjoy dying, I guess? Your wand can laugh at you?
Primal is a horrible idea, until they fix itemization and legendaries in general. For everyone, everywhere, at all skills levels.
I see a lot of people in the thread are using the term power creep incorrectly. This could be, because they don't know the true meaning of the term, which is this:
Power creep is a process that sometimes occurs in games where new content slowly outstrip the power of previous alternatives. This leads to players abandoning previous options in favour of the latest and more powerful alternatives, resulting in an inevitable increase in power throughout the game.
Sorry, I've been away for the weekend. How do you not see this as Primal Ancients? Primals increase the actual damage range on a weapon... for a game that is based on multiplying weapon damage to deal damage, this is an astronomical gain. Some builds would ONLY be playable with a well rolled Primal Ancient weapon. Take into account how many weapons are in the game, then take into account the range in which they can be rolled. Got all that math down? Now think about how rare these drops will be. It is by definition, power creep.
Anyways, this thread sort of filled up while I was gone. The mainstay issues are that they continue to just add layers... If they revisited some of the useless items, and made them work a bit better, things would be great. I just recently laughed at the fact that the Archon Wizard build is actually favoring a Pig Sticker now, because of the AS of the weapon and 5 affixes. Pig Sticker. All the fantastic wands/swords/staves... BiS weapon, Pig Sticker. Squee! Lmao. Same goes for those thorns saders... Pig Sticker is up on top of that pile too. Again, 5 Affixes, and the AS of the weapon. Gift of Sil has 5 affixes, and most of them look pretty good, but thing is, it's a 1.4 AS weapon, not a 1.59, Numbers are a huge part of this game, and people just don't see how adding more numbers is just making things worse.
Maintenance mode means no core changes are coming - itemization, paragon system, skill system are going to stay the same. Necro is a DLC and that is quite ok for a MM, because it is just an addition that is not intervening with the core systems.
Primals are a motivation for the dedicated players. The casuals will have to choose wisely what items exactly they need to roll as primals, because a casual player will never be able to roll full primal gear in one season, if he doesn't bot. This however doesn't mean that the casual players won't be super happy when they see that primal rolls.
I agree with you primals doesn't offer nothing new (itemization wise), they are the same as the ancients in this regard, but we don't have to expect nothing new in this direction, because we know the game is in a MM. But when the ancients drop in 2014, D3 wasn't in a MM (ancients back then was a bad choice, the whole itemization should have been reworked). That is the main difference. The other is that the advantage from paragon now is a lot bigger than in 2014 thus primals help a little.
I agree with the things you mentioned needing a rework. Solo play and end game build diversity are the most important topics needing the dev's attention. I follow the official forums closely and there are threads about this every day. If I were a D3 dev I would get nervous only at opening my own game's forums. So I guess they prefer not to do it.
Right now I would love to see a seasonal cap on main stat. Cap it at 15k and make one season with such cap, just to see how this will affect public games grouping, solo play, casual play. I personally think it will improve the player's seasonal experience in many ways. Many old school players will return just to see this in action. And it's a very little work code wise.
I still fail to see how adding a new class doesn't affect core systems. Considering the information that's been released on Necro's, they will have a huge impact. Itemization, skills and paragon have been cemented for the past 3 years, itemization has barely changed since the RMAH left the game. Paragon v.2.0 hasn't changed, ever. And skills are tweaked every now and again, but they still add things like Mandald Heal, buff set bonuses, give affixes, change affixes. A lot of minor changes, and some less impactful than others. I guess to me, MM would mean here are the 3 sets for each class, they all do the exact same amount of damage, just in different ways, go grind and have fun slaying demons, we'll see you in a year, when we shut down the servers, GLHF until then. So adding an item (Mandald Heal in this instance) that causes Wizard's to run a hybrid of Tal's and Vyr's with a skill that was previous to this patch unused, can hardly be considered MM. Anyways!
The most important thing to note is that by putting a primary cap on people, you actually take away from the diehards. I agree, if done properly, it could work, but then again, once you've reached cap with GG, what do you do? What if RNG was super good and you were GG 3 days in? You just grind to cap, push as high as you can and then wait 2 1/2 months to play the next season? As of now, the only thing I can see a cap doing is make people put points into Vitality. Forcibly, because they can't do anything else with all their paragons. What it basically comes down to, balance wise, is what is the limitation of the playerbase? Paragons offer a (endless) power creep, so the more you play the more you win. Grouping, and substantially stacking the group, causes a further rift between players (basically doing anything solo is wasting your time, outside solo pushing for Blood Shard cap?) if you want to be technical about it, not everybody enjoys group play. Which is why I would suggest the following:
Remove Primals from 2.5, they add nothing to the current system, and will cause a larger rift between players at different paragon levels. It's very easy to say here, that while yes, this guy's paragon 1200, and I'm only 800, but I have a Primal weapon, and he's only got an Ancient. Which is true, it does close that gap, and only that gap, until the 1200 player gets their Primal weapon, or even if they got it first, the difference is the same or larger. The fact that they are craftable makes a meaningful choice in gameplay though, you could spend most of your time DB farming or Grifting, choose. Oh wait, you need to Rift for keys, so you may as well DB farm while doing that, right? Just an all around bad idea.
Remove group bonus EXP, this includes nerfing Gem of Ease (@70) into the ground as they did bonus experience on gear/sets. You should never be rewarded for just playing with other people. It trivializes solo play, and also causes a dynamic that forms if you play with 2 others, that you require a 4th to be on par. This also slows down the paragon creep as far as it should be, putting everybody on an even playing field, at all times. Playing for 8 hours in a 2 player group doing 10 rifts per hour at level 90 rewards the same experience if you did the exact same thing in a 4 player group doing 10 rifts per hour at level 90. "Play your way" right?
Have all debuffs apply to yourself, or the group, not both. Either support support builds or don't. There are 6 skills slots, and 4-5 passives. I'm sure you can cookie cutter your way into figuring out how to either make a support role completely viable, or remove the ability to make one. Every season it's the same thing. Need to nerf support monks, but we don't want to remove all of their mitigation. Okay. So Inner Sanctuary, yea, that only applies to the monk that put it on the ground now. Alright, let's see, DHs get a couple of debuffs, we'll use those as a support, nope, only applies to damage done to them. Well, I guess then we're running 4 DPS and let's see how we do. Builds would be more tanky, but less designed for straight damage output while someone else worries about your defense in straight %'s. 3 supports and a twister wizard... that was a hilarious joke, especially when it was the wizards that got the nerfs. Either give it a go, or get rid of it, but stop flip flopping.
Never reinstitute trading or AH features into the game. Gold isn't even really a currency anymore. Boon of the Hoarder, Avarice Band, go nuts. Add a Gold Wrap and you can farm T13 with those 2 items and gem (it would take forever, I know, lots of kiting, but still, could be done.) The prices for everything would be just insane. What would we trade for? Items for other items? One idea that was flipped to me was to make trading viable again, you could trade your paragons, with a cap, of say 100 paragon per item. Again, this would be just horrible.
Remove ALL defensive traits from Primary Stats. No resist all, no armour, nothing. It's just a straight damage upgrade. What does this do? It makes every single paragon over 800 a choice between little offence, or little defence. Instead of getting a bit of both out of Primary, get one.
All in all, Primals don't add anything to the game except power creep. Which is the same problem with paragons. It's all about the creep, and not about how you play the game.
D4 could be a totally different genre thus a necro there would feel different. Note that I am not saying D4 is coming, if a new game is going to get announced this year I would expect WarCraft 4.
Also, primals now have a different role than the ancients back in 2014. As of now D3 is in a maintenance mode, nobody expects miracles. In 2014 everything was still possible. The devs just choose the easy path or the marketing team said "no moneys in arpgs", we don't know. What we know is that right now primals are not a bad choice. What makes the situation bad is that there is nothing else coming. Maybe we should wait, who knows. Or maybe primals will completely turn off the rest of the people still playing D3, if trading or seasonal cap on main stat is not coming. Because when they drop it's going to be a botter's paradise.
I'm fairly certain, that adding a new class and 4 new sets for the class is the exact opposite of maintenance mode. Maybe I just don't understand the words there, but isn't that the point in which they only do small patches for quality of life or the fix something that is completely broken.... How is adding a new class any indication? Not to mention, my inflection as it was, was that if they are adding things to the game that aren't small tweaks, then they are not in MM. All I have seen is people say, I think it's good because paragon farming is just boring. Fair, but does that mean they have every piece PERFECTLY rolled in every slot, ancient, augmented with 100+ gems, no, it just means that they've given up the hope that it will happen, and take the best they can get.
The problem with Primal Ancient isn't that it's a new tier, but the fact that it will be less available to casual players. There are people who have played 16 hours a day since season 9 started. While they are paragon farming, they are also getting tons of legendaries. Every one that drops after 2.5 will have a chance to be Primal. The chances of them getting a Primal before guy127 who plays for 20 minutes at a time is astronomical, and yet RNG is still RNG. So how exactly is it different with Primals? Now that we've covered the basics of "The more you play, the more you win", what does Primal Ancient offer to the game, outside of 'bigger numbers kuz gear has bigger numbers'? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Outside your initial 'wow' moment of getting it, it's just another bump. In fact it actually devalues regular legendaries completely. Anyone can make the comparison between Ancient and Primal Ancient and say, meh, not too big a difference, but from regular good old old fashioned legendaries, they are an extreme boost.
Followers need work, solo play needs work, support builds need work, gear? We'll all end up playing whatever build pushes out the most multipliers for skill XYZ anyways. Adding another layer of RNG to an already RNG loot fest isn't the answer for paragon farming. Engaging and competitive builds, that beats paragon farming everyday.
Side note: They should give DHs more set options. A belt? Necklace? Maybe? Considering Nat's is the only set that isn't Gloves/Helm/Chest/Boots/Pants/Shoulders... it's pretty weak in regards to build diversity. Don't worry though, Primals will save it.
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I don't have an issue with non-seasonal, I just don't find it nearly as competitive as seasonal. As far as your math is concerned, if the zDPS have more paragon than the DPS, your whole total is out of line. It's dependant on the DPS paragons how fast the clear is, not the overall combined total.
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To answer your both of your questions, no. Odyn's Chain Lightning isn't the same as Electrocute - Chain Lightning. It neither procs Mandald Heal nor does it get doubled by Velvet. Sad, but true. =(
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While your overall statement here is true, shouldn't that be what we all strive for in a season? I mean realistically speaking of course, it almost never happens, but when it does all that is left is the paragon grind. It'll keep players going, and complaining about it the whole way, but at least they're still playing.
True, however, I think with the addition that Mystic gives perfect rerolls sort of gives an edge towards Primals, not a huge edge, but it's definitely in favor of Primal. I think truly the solution is going to end up somewhere in the middle. While Primals serve that "last 1%" you'll get on gear, they should definitely have impact, but not nearly as much impact as v1.0. It's already an unspoken rule in-game, if a weapon isn't ancient, it's not really worth using. There's a reason for that. Primal v1.0 just exacerbates that same stereotype.
I agree 100%. Which is why instead of giving us Primals, they should be focusing more on balancing each class, giving more legendary affixes, and fixing old/broken/useless legendary affixes. Who's going to use a Dovu Energy Trap these days with the CC immunity in the air? If each class had at least 5 GR pushing builds over 3 different sets, excluding LoN builds, the game would be more competitive, and less cookie cutter. I think we can all agree that even with the paragon problem persisting, being able to play at the same level with 5 unique builds for your class would be a lot easier to take. (PS Also fits with the Armoury, just sayin.)
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If they were to instead take Primals out of the game completely, balance 3 sets for each class to deal roughly the same amount of damage, add legendary affixes to currently useless legendaries, upgrade current useless legendary affixes to be useful in at least 1 build, they'd be making huge strides towards more competitive and more exciting game-play. I used to laugh (out loud) at the Play-Your-Way Thursday segments, as they were usually extremely useless builds for doing basically anything with. "This build clears T8, I like it." Yea, but the highest difficulty is T13... Wouldn't you want more builds that do things differently at the maximum rather than builds that have to stoop to lower difficulty settings to be effective?
Power creep is incentive, but it's not the ONLY incentive. I've said it before and I'll say it again, getting a Primal Ancient Obsidian Ring really makes no difference, getting a Primal Ancient Crushbane is completely useless.
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How is it that every post about Primal Ancients somehow gets dragged down into "Botting" or "Paragon"? I mean they are both obvious issues, but I mean why can't anybody stay on point in the discussions they choose to participate? Real facts though, Paragns and Botting are issues that also make Primal Ancient a very bad idea, and while I understand that they may be related, they aren't the only reasons for Primals being bad. There is plenty of merit on both sides of the issue, but we can all agree, Primals aren't what the game needs right now.
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I believe it's not just you, but you may be incorrect about your assumption, level 56 on Hard difficulty, I encountered an Odious Collector, and he dropped 30 DBs, 16 FSs, 120 VCs, 110 ADs, and 87 RPs. I think it may be a minor tweak, as they are likely testing the creation aspect to Primal Ancients via the cube. If not though, I'm really glad goblins are worth even more in 2.5 =)
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I don't think I was trolling back then, and I'm not now. After 2 years, we're not talking about the same thing. You're talking about a cap in seasons, still, and it's still a bad idea. If you can't reward people for taking the time and effort to play the game, why would they play it? I'm saying that Primals are a bad idea, with or without a cap, because they don't add anything to the game in it's current form. I've seen people say "You can Grift for exp, or Rift and Bounty for Primals" which, is kind of like saying you Grift now for Blood Shards and do bounties for gear. Greater Rifts don't drop legendaries? Something I hadn't even thought of would be the Bounty Legendaries. Remember when Ancients first arrived and they were sort of rare to get them, and yet people would STILL spam split bounty groups until they got an Ancient Illusionary Boots or RoRG? That will still happen with Primals.
I knew back then that paragons were a problem. Your solution is to limit each player to a set amount of mainstat, in which, they cannot progress any further up the endless ladder. Your solution doesn't fix the problem, it just makes seasons shorter. A race if you would, instead of a competition. Primals are innately bad, just like Ancients were a bad idea when they were implemented. I remember having countless discussions about how as an above-casual-but-below-hardcore player, I'd probably see maybe 2 perfect ancient pieces per season. That held true, as a hardcore player I'd likely see a full set of near perfect ancient rolls. That held true too. In case you don't remember, Ancients weren't welcomed either, and they weren't welcome until Blizzard upped the drop rate. Now a month in a people are finding full sets of Ancient gear in a week. Primals is the same path. We'll have the same discussion again in 2 years time, the cycle will continue. It won't change the fact that until they change something like;
-Each Paragon Point for Intelligence, Dexterity,and Strength now only increases by 1-2 and each point in Vitality now increases by 10.
-Intelligence no longer gives Resist All, Strength and Dexterity no longer give Armor.
-Vitality now grants Armor and Resist All at a ratio of 10 Vitality = 1 Armor,1 Resist All.
Nothing will change, ever. Or they could rework the paragon system, again. Which by the way wasn't a problem until people started gaining such massive amounts of exp. I still remember the first person to hit paragon 1000, and that was a crazy achievement. Now it's just another number. I remember when leveling your gems to 30-35 was a big deal. It all falls back to the math behind D3, and Primals are just simply put a bad idea. You've also failed to counter my points. You can't say why Primals are a good idea without resorting to backwards logic of 'don't let people play for 16 hours at a time'. They don't have to, they want to. The only difference in this opinion, is how fast they get their GG gear, and how much longer they have to 'farm paragons' to keep up with the guy behind them on the LBs because he's motivated to beat the time to take Rank 1. There really isn't character progression after GG as far as gear/skills/passives go. So what is the reward for continuing to play after you've achieved GG status? Paragons. They aren't the best system, they aren't even a good system, but currently they are all we get.
Take Season 9 here for example, let's say Primals were implemented today. Y0da goes out and farms some speed Grift 100's (!!) and low and behold he gets a Primal Ancient Pig Sticker. It's rolled pretty terribly, but it's what he wanted, so he fixes it up as best he can and equips it and jumps 12 Grift levels on the LBs. Now let's say the guy in 15th is doing the same thing, but he gets a Primal Tal'Rasha's Relentless Pursuit, and jumps 2 Grift levels. In the spirit of competition, that's BAD. Let's look at an even worse case scenario, the player in 800th spot... well, he got SUPER lucky and got 4 Primals, all for his build, and jumps from 800th to 2nd. The guy who was in third got 2 Primals but they were Crushbane and Obsidian. He's now falling down the ladder as people who are farming at the same level are getting more/better Primals than he is. Now he's in 800th spot because bad RNG. After about the 14th Primal Ancient Sloriak's Madness he quits, because the game is just RNG. How is that good for the game?
EDIT: Also in that thread, my original post was "a warning shot" as it were, as the discussion wasn't being anywhere near logical. Yes paragons were a problem then, and have continued to be a problem now, and will likely remain a problem in the future. I also go on to read that most of that thread was you spouting off about mainstat and paragon caps. You still haven't answered what the reward is for after being GG and hitting cap. Nothing. D3 offers nothing in sorts of advancement after people reach your cap. The competition is over, you hit your peak and that's all you get. Problem with that is, it could be late in the season, it could be early, but then it's not a competition, but a race against RNG. Not much of a grindy game then is it?
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It's like talking to the toaster and expecting it to understand. I'll say this, here, officially; If you accept the term that Diablo is in MM, you are a fool. If you blindly accept that any change to the game is an improvement, then you'll have to accept that Berry Sparkle Cake Attack will be the highest point damage skill that the Necromancer will get, because, it's a change, so it must be an improvement.
PTR is meant for discussion. It's supposed to provide the community a position to take on the next content patch. The points you've made are foolhardy. They serve only your interests, not the game as a whole. While I've agreed with you that paragon is a problem, you've theatrically attempted to prove that I somehow am contradicting myself. It's you who has yet to prove the point of why Primals are "good". You stated a few points, I've pointed out that your logic is flawed. Your response is that RNG is minimized with a seasonal cap, and also, it'll make less people care about playing seasons. That is purely your viewpoint on how the game should be played. If people hated seasons so much, why do so many people play seasonal? (I'm not going to debate that, as it's completely off topic, but the fact remains that your replies are in extent from the viewpoint that seasons are a waste of time.)
The Devs also said: "We're adding Paragons to the game." and "We're reworking Paragons to be an endless ladder." Those were amazing ideas too, right? You can't have your cake and eat it too. It's not contradictory if I didn't say Primals will add excitement. Sure, it *could* be exciting, but it's just another level of farm for those who take the competition seriously. It doesn't change your gameplay choices it just simply prolongs the status of GG, which truth be told, may not happen, and then AGAIN, your entire season, 16 hours a day, wasted, because you didn't have good RNG.
The difference is the perception. You see it as farming paragons and getting GG, whereas I see it as farming GG and getting paragons (it's intended purpose btw). When people are GG, what do they do? Do they swap to non-seasonal, and just play for funzies? Or do they farm paragon and try and push as high as they can? Introducing Primals will make a difference, sure, Rank 1 on all the leaderboards will be 13/13 Primal, all the way to about Rank 85ish. From there to about 400ish it'll be 12/13 Primal. From there down it'll be 11/13 Primal until you reach probably around 900ish, and that'll be filled up with the 10/13 Primal players. So what about all those super serious folks off the leaderboards that played 16 hours a day, and only got 9/13 Primal items for their build? What do they get? You see this as a nerf to paragons, when in fact it's the opposite. It's something that's been a problem in WoW for a while now, the difference between Warforging and Titanforging. However, items are farmable in WoW (Boss A drops Item X) it's RNG if the item upgrades, if it even drops, but it can't drop from another boss, in D3's case, another RG.
Your entire post was contradicted with your edit. There are many suggestions on how to make the seasonal and game better all over the place. My overall suggestion for the non-seasonal players would be, if you don't want to take part in that half of the game, don't meddle with it. "I can't play kuz my friends all play seasonal."? Maybe you should play seasonal. I've had a few friends who've been skeptical about because of D3's RNG, and now we all play seasonally, together. Why? As much fun as it is destroying everything on a GG geared character, it is also fun to play the game from scratch. No paragons, no gems, and no gear. I think Season 7 instead of seeing who got the highest GR, we raced paragons. It was fun. It also brings to line new players. Season starts and everybody is new, whereas in non-seasonal, you've got 4k paragons, GG gear and destroy everything, how on earth does somebody who bought a box yesterday catch up? Enough off topic though. If we blindly accept "ANY improvement" to the game... See "Berry Sparkle Cake Attack" above.
I agree with the first statement here. Completely. They really should do something about it. What should they do though? They had to add all the group bonuses to get people to play in groups. It was more advantageous if you solo'd Diablo on the highest difficulty you could prior to the RMAH/AH departing, and the group exp/magic find buff. I agree, there should be a form of trading available in game, but if you were around in those times, a level 55 1h sword would sell for 20m gold. Not a lot by today's standards, but this was before the Boon of the Hoarder. You had enough to repair if you were lucky, without selling items on the AH.
The third bit in there, about having separate leaderboards is redundant unless you plan on secluding yourself from playing with your friends. I agree it's not a good system, but realistically saying 'I'm only playing solo this season' is kind of, well, limiting. The idea is to expand your options. I'd agree that support builds, skills that affect others in your group, and the exp buff could go out the window, but then we're back to a solo player game. As far as adding better items, how does adding Primals fix any of the issues that are currently plaguing the game? By adding a lucky drop that might close a little bit of paragon gap, that they'll have anyway AND a drop or 12 more of their own? I'm not against build diversity, but I used to hate builds that REQUIRED item X to work, because despite having all the other 12 pieces, not having that 13th broke everything. Admittedly, Legendaries rain from the sky, but they aren't all good. Some of them are downright bad. Ancients suffer the same RNG; I give you, the new and improved Mandald Heal, pinnacle of the Wiz Season 9. If you want to be competitive on the solo leaderboards (I'm talking Top 1000 at this point, 1 month into the season) you NEED one, and not just an okay one, but a well rolled, if not perfect one. The range on the affix is 1000% damage, and a real difference maker when mobs have higher health pools. Now imagine if you will, Primals exist, and they are extremely rare. You are the luckiest of lucky people and get a Primal Ancient Mandald Heal to drop really early in the season. You're SO excited about the red border, and then you look at the stats on the ring;
-Int
-AR
-RCR
-%Life
-Enemies stunned by Paralysis take 13,231% weapon damage, as Lightning.
How excited are you now, that one of the rarest and most sought after items for Wizards in the game, is now yours and wearing it is actually worse than wearing an Ancient one with -CHC -CHD - CDR -Socket, -13987%? Which in and of itself would be a miracle to get, unless, as is current format, you spent 16 hours a day farming Grifts and paragons. Adding items isn't a bad thing, adding better items, not a bad thing. Adding better versions of what we already have, for no other purpose than for power creep, is bad. It's an old adage at this point, but if you're not using an ancient weapon, it's not worth playing. They've tried to alleviate that by making (absurd btw) power gains on sets and legendary affixes. Anything they add numbers wise is a bad thing. If you really look at it. "The leaderboards are cluttered with people spamming 4 man meta groups all day and then soloing GR 102 with all the stuff they got from that portion of the game". That's not going to change unless something is done to drastically reduce the bonuses to group play. To build on that even more, the more they add, the bigger the divide between players becomes. The honest truth of it is that paragons are a problem. Nobody is denying that, but if we blindly accept this as a 'good thing' without actually questioning it, we're doomed to repeat the failure that is paragons.
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As far as your logic goes, it sounds like you just hate seasons. Playing non-seasonal during a season isn't in the spirit of seasons, for a seasonal player. It would kind of be like quitting? I don't play a lot of Diablo in the non-season. It's not fun nor is it entertaining. I have (now) 9 seasons worth of gear saved up, what are the chances I don't have a perfectly rolled set of Ancient, everything? I get that for a non-seasonal player, Primals sound like a god-send, but when weighed into a competition, they're just another level of RNG, power creep, that puts the fate of your entire season in the hands of RNG. It already is, in a way, but you can get multiple Ancient items, poorly rolled, well rolled, and perfectly rolled. Making Legendaries non-existent isn't a good answer. Capping mainstat isn't an answer. You want people to play for 3 months. You want them to be excited for 3 months. You want them to have fun for 3 months. You don't want them to get capped on day 5 and quit to go play Hello Kitty Island Adventure because they're "done".
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You implied people were using the term incorrectly. If they are talking about Primal Ancients, they are talking about power creep.
I didn't say it was either. Power creep for the sake of power creep is always bad. Paragons for example.
The issue I take with a seasonal cap, is it devalues time and effort. While I have a job, and can't play Diablo for 16 hours a day, I do have to have the respect that those who do will be better than me. I do try to make the most out of my playtime, and have reached the leaderboards a few times, and got knocked off, it's all part of the game.
To get to your bullet points here:
-Public games are toxic. The rare gem that is a good public game is rarer than a Primal Uber Super Meta Awesome Ancient Furnace (1,456,342-2,345,234 Damage, 3000% Damage to Elites, always rolls with 30% damage and 15% Attack Speed, and can be Gifted 5 times.) They almost always end in failure, mostly because there is a lack of communication. The 4-5 seconds it takes to type out there is a channeling pylon ahead because your team mates aren't tabbing constantly while not in combat can get you killed.
-Adding more RNG removes RNG.... I'd love to hear your logic on that one.
-Solo play will NEVER be on the same level as multiplayer, unless something drastic changes. I mean solo play, like, a 3x toughness boost when solo, or something crazy like that. The reasons why multiplayer games are so much better than solo is because 2 different builds merge together, one offensive, one defensive. If I can dish out another trillion damage by not focusing at all on defense, and the other player never dies and can extend that to me, then we'll go a lot further than a solo player trying to balance both. Also, I fail to see your logic in "the guy who plays for 2 hours and might find a really awesome Primal and the guy who plays 16 hours a day" are on the same playing field. Law of averages says that while yes, the 2 hour guy got REALLY lucky, the 16 hour guy has about 100000x the chances to get lucky. "I got 20 Traveler's Pledges today, 1 of them is bound to be decent" already exists.
-Has zero effect on botting. Botters will just continue to bot for gear. That's kind of the whole point of botting, to do the tedious and repetitive tasks that you don't want to. Look at all the people that were banned for botting off the leaderboards, you think they botted all of it, some of it, or maybe just the Keystone farming? (The answer is d) all of the above.) People already bot for gear as it is, for Ancients, for specific items, for everything. If you think by removing the paragon grind you're reducing botting, you're kind of missing the point.
-Seasons ARE different from Non-Seasonal. They are timed. Nobody is supposed to know exactly when the season ends (though it's been predictable, and then announced 2-4 weeks ahead of time, GG Blizz) which is supposed to be the point. You play as hard as you can, as long as you can, as well as you can, to achieve as much as you can, before it ends (and you get your name immortalized in the menus). Nobody cares about non-seasonal leaderboards, unless it's the off-season (week or two). ((How many Youtube videos are up about non-seasonal play? How many streamers are streaming non-seasonal play?)) Then it's all about how high you can push with the new changes and XXXX paragon. The builds are pre-determined before the season even starts. That's a problem. They've also the problems of not being able to change things mid-season. (Remember that old trick using Sever to one-shot an RG at high levels?)
Keep in mind that a large portion of the streamers didn't just leave because it was 'an endless grind for paragons', but it was also boring, doing the same thing over and over again. Which is simple to fix, remove support builds completely. No more 'heals your allies', '15% to your aliies', '50% for you and your allies', nothing, gone, bye bye. Big Bad Voodoo "While standing in the circle, YOU get 20% damage and 15% damage reduction." Simple. I fixed the boring monotonous paragon grind.
Then also keep in mind that they were also sick of the plateau, and hitting it so early on in the season. "No matter what I do, IF I get hit in GRXX, I die, even if I put all my 2500 paragons into Vitality, the white mob just one shots me." Adding a cap just extends this plateau to a longer time period. Also, we're one month into the season, and even casual solo's have 800+ paragons. When/where do you cap paragons? before 800 where they don't matter? (Why don't they matter you may be asking, because they're capped. You can only get 5% crit chance, 50% crit damage, and 10% CDR from paragons, what difference does it make where I put them when I get 800, the tree is filled.)
Seasons haven't changed. Perception has. People see it as an endless grind for paragons, and the only real part that matters is the last week of the season. I see it like a sport, every game counts, from the first to the last. I Agree that paragons are a problem, but capping them sort of means you hit the cap, get some good gear, do your good rift, and quit for the rest of the season. If that's 2 days in, what purpose is there to play the game?
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Not even by a long shot.
No, they're not. Each paragon level is worth the exact same amount. A player with 1200 paragons with a Primal Weapon is still better than an 800 paragon with a Primal Weapon. All Primal Ancients will do is add more RNG. The difference between a Rank 1 and Rank 2 will be gear, always. Skill is pretty much defined at that point, and it will be the difference of usually the weapon slot. Who got the better rolled weapon? Who's skills are doing 5x5x1.25x1.30x1.20 more damage per attack? Primal Weapons only add that extra layer of RNG, which is fine, but then also take into account the rarity, Primal Ancient Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac. Awesome, Health Globes grant me... my life bar? REALLY GLAD I GOT THAT ONE. They've had this debate, and lost it, with their other, more popular games' communities.
Success would also be attributed to being lucky instead of skilled, or committed. If Primal Ancients make it through the cutting room, expect the Leaderboards to end up on the floor. Another reason not to play seasonal. Remember when the WHOLE point of seasonal play was to get as good as you could within a set amount of time and play as well as you could? IT hasn't changed, but what has is the perception of it. People grind the only power increase they can, and while doing so get well rolled items... nothing has changed. Paragons are a problem, but there are better options. Primals devalue Legendaries. I think they were going the right direction with Cald's Despair, but that should have been more like a Ram's Gift. That, and of course removing Primaries defensive traits, puts more value in each choice made with paragons. Up to 800, your choices don't matter, and after 800, well it's all mainstat, all the time.
I'm confused. If this diversity already exists, and has the possibility to exist, then how does adding a super rare drop change that? Other than making your Primal Ancient Crushbane better than a Wand of Woh?
If you want to talk itemization changes, then let's talk specifically about weapons. Already, a MH/OH combo is 5x stronger than almost every single 2H weapon in the game. Why?
-The difference between a MH and a 2H is minimal, 1.5k at Maximum.
-Set items offer even more power. (150% damage while at maximum Spirit)
-Sets and item combinations are more powerful. (Wearing 4pc Set A and 6pc Set B= 3000% damage)
People also misinterpret what it means when you 'can' have better. It's ALREADY an issue when getting into group play in seasonal (Season 9) if you're not already paragon 800, have a full set of Ancient Gear that's be augmented with 60+ gems, and part of the 'meta'. Let's say you enjoy WD. Well, Firebats WD got some buffs and is part of the meta, and hey, you're paragon 800, oh, you don't have an Ancient Sacred Harvester, we'll wait to find somebody who does. You don't have at least 11/13 Ancient? Too bad, enjoy farming your 60's in Public Games.
Now let's say you enjoy Demon Hunter. "Go play solo. I don't care if you're 2k paragon, full ancient and augmented with 100's.... you're not a FB WD, Mandald Wiz or Gen Monk."
Streamers used to (and to some degree still do) along with the leaderboards, set a standard of play. It's reinforced that the meta is really the only way to play, since doing anything other than that is less than optimal. It's an extremely similar conversation to that of WoW Legendaries, where Mythic raid teams won't even accept recruits without BiS Legendaries. They 'can' get them, but they didn't. Take the fact that WoW has over 10x the playerbase that Diablo does, and then think about the fact that Wow has 8(?) Legendaries per class, and 4(?) Shared Class Lengendaries. Diablo has thousands of Legendaries, all with a chance to roll Primal, and be really cool, or really crap. Take into account Affixes, an Ancient Wand of Woh is still better than a Primal Ancient Sloriak's Madness if you're using an Explosive Blast build. Yes, Primal Ancient would mean more damage per attack, but a Woh triples the damage of the skill, and has an additive 100% extra damage. You're going to make a build around Sloriak's? Sure... if you enjoy dying, I guess? Your wand can laugh at you?
Primal is a horrible idea, until they fix itemization and legendaries in general. For everyone, everywhere, at all skills levels.
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Anyways, this thread sort of filled up while I was gone. The mainstay issues are that they continue to just add layers... If they revisited some of the useless items, and made them work a bit better, things would be great. I just recently laughed at the fact that the Archon Wizard build is actually favoring a Pig Sticker now, because of the AS of the weapon and 5 affixes. Pig Sticker. All the fantastic wands/swords/staves... BiS weapon, Pig Sticker. Squee! Lmao. Same goes for those thorns saders... Pig Sticker is up on top of that pile too. Again, 5 Affixes, and the AS of the weapon. Gift of Sil has 5 affixes, and most of them look pretty good, but thing is, it's a 1.4 AS weapon, not a 1.59, Numbers are a huge part of this game, and people just don't see how adding more numbers is just making things worse.
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I still fail to see how adding a new class doesn't affect core systems. Considering the information that's been released on Necro's, they will have a huge impact. Itemization, skills and paragon have been cemented for the past 3 years, itemization has barely changed since the RMAH left the game. Paragon v.2.0 hasn't changed, ever. And skills are tweaked every now and again, but they still add things like Mandald Heal, buff set bonuses, give affixes, change affixes. A lot of minor changes, and some less impactful than others. I guess to me, MM would mean here are the 3 sets for each class, they all do the exact same amount of damage, just in different ways, go grind and have fun slaying demons, we'll see you in a year, when we shut down the servers, GLHF until then. So adding an item (Mandald Heal in this instance) that causes Wizard's to run a hybrid of Tal's and Vyr's with a skill that was previous to this patch unused, can hardly be considered MM. Anyways!
The most important thing to note is that by putting a primary cap on people, you actually take away from the diehards. I agree, if done properly, it could work, but then again, once you've reached cap with GG, what do you do? What if RNG was super good and you were GG 3 days in? You just grind to cap, push as high as you can and then wait 2 1/2 months to play the next season? As of now, the only thing I can see a cap doing is make people put points into Vitality. Forcibly, because they can't do anything else with all their paragons. What it basically comes down to, balance wise, is what is the limitation of the playerbase? Paragons offer a (endless) power creep, so the more you play the more you win. Grouping, and substantially stacking the group, causes a further rift between players (basically doing anything solo is wasting your time, outside solo pushing for Blood Shard cap?) if you want to be technical about it, not everybody enjoys group play. Which is why I would suggest the following:
Remove Primals from 2.5, they add nothing to the current system, and will cause a larger rift between players at different paragon levels. It's very easy to say here, that while yes, this guy's paragon 1200, and I'm only 800, but I have a Primal weapon, and he's only got an Ancient. Which is true, it does close that gap, and only that gap, until the 1200 player gets their Primal weapon, or even if they got it first, the difference is the same or larger. The fact that they are craftable makes a meaningful choice in gameplay though, you could spend most of your time DB farming or Grifting, choose. Oh wait, you need to Rift for keys, so you may as well DB farm while doing that, right? Just an all around bad idea.
Remove group bonus EXP, this includes nerfing Gem of Ease (@70) into the ground as they did bonus experience on gear/sets. You should never be rewarded for just playing with other people. It trivializes solo play, and also causes a dynamic that forms if you play with 2 others, that you require a 4th to be on par. This also slows down the paragon creep as far as it should be, putting everybody on an even playing field, at all times. Playing for 8 hours in a 2 player group doing 10 rifts per hour at level 90 rewards the same experience if you did the exact same thing in a 4 player group doing 10 rifts per hour at level 90. "Play your way" right?
Have all debuffs apply to yourself, or the group, not both. Either support support builds or don't. There are 6 skills slots, and 4-5 passives. I'm sure you can cookie cutter your way into figuring out how to either make a support role completely viable, or remove the ability to make one. Every season it's the same thing. Need to nerf support monks, but we don't want to remove all of their mitigation. Okay. So Inner Sanctuary, yea, that only applies to the monk that put it on the ground now. Alright, let's see, DHs get a couple of debuffs, we'll use those as a support, nope, only applies to damage done to them. Well, I guess then we're running 4 DPS and let's see how we do. Builds would be more tanky, but less designed for straight damage output while someone else worries about your defense in straight %'s. 3 supports and a twister wizard... that was a hilarious joke, especially when it was the wizards that got the nerfs. Either give it a go, or get rid of it, but stop flip flopping.
Never reinstitute trading or AH features into the game. Gold isn't even really a currency anymore. Boon of the Hoarder, Avarice Band, go nuts. Add a Gold Wrap and you can farm T13 with those 2 items and gem (it would take forever, I know, lots of kiting, but still, could be done.) The prices for everything would be just insane. What would we trade for? Items for other items? One idea that was flipped to me was to make trading viable again, you could trade your paragons, with a cap, of say 100 paragon per item. Again, this would be just horrible.
Remove ALL defensive traits from Primary Stats. No resist all, no armour, nothing. It's just a straight damage upgrade. What does this do? It makes every single paragon over 800 a choice between little offence, or little defence. Instead of getting a bit of both out of Primary, get one.
All in all, Primals don't add anything to the game except power creep. Which is the same problem with paragons. It's all about the creep, and not about how you play the game.
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The problem with Primal Ancient isn't that it's a new tier, but the fact that it will be less available to casual players. There are people who have played 16 hours a day since season 9 started. While they are paragon farming, they are also getting tons of legendaries. Every one that drops after 2.5 will have a chance to be Primal. The chances of them getting a Primal before guy127 who plays for 20 minutes at a time is astronomical, and yet RNG is still RNG. So how exactly is it different with Primals? Now that we've covered the basics of "The more you play, the more you win", what does Primal Ancient offer to the game, outside of 'bigger numbers kuz gear has bigger numbers'? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Outside your initial 'wow' moment of getting it, it's just another bump. In fact it actually devalues regular legendaries completely. Anyone can make the comparison between Ancient and Primal Ancient and say, meh, not too big a difference, but from regular good old old fashioned legendaries, they are an extreme boost.
Followers need work, solo play needs work, support builds need work, gear? We'll all end up playing whatever build pushes out the most multipliers for skill XYZ anyways. Adding another layer of RNG to an already RNG loot fest isn't the answer for paragon farming. Engaging and competitive builds, that beats paragon farming everyday.
Side note: They should give DHs more set options. A belt? Necklace? Maybe? Considering Nat's is the only set that isn't Gloves/Helm/Chest/Boots/Pants/Shoulders... it's pretty weak in regards to build diversity. Don't worry though, Primals will save it.