DiabloFans

Now that BlizzCon is over and we've all had some time to go through many of the panels, interviews, and reviews I'd like to discuss one of my favorite new features, Nephalem Rifts.

I absolutely love the idea of random dungeons, never quite knowing what you're going to encounter in terms of maps, monsters, and bosses. It really will be a breath of fresh air for many of us after playing countless Act III, Crypt, or Uber runs. However, I still think Blizzard can do so much more with the concept and take this already great idea and turn it into truly one of the greatest features in, dare I say, any Diablo game to date. The good news is Blizzard is listening to our feedback and is still making changes to the expansion, so there's still time to offer our own opinions. I'm going to quickly go over a couple of my own suggestions which I feel would make for a much more fun experience, at least for me, to the overall Nephalem Rift feature.

Keystone Quality


Why do we have to choose only one of the options Lylirra mentions? Dividing Keystones into different qualities would allow all of the above. Not all rifts need to be equal in terms of risk and rewards. The quality could have influence on the difficulty/mob density, number of levels, and potential loot rewards. If someone wants to spend their entire night running rifts they should be able to do so, not be limited to only a couple because of drop rates.

Different qualities of Keystones can be indicated by the color of its name and accompanying text:

Magic - These Keystones produce rifts 1-3 levels in depth and have an average monster density.

Rare - These Keystones produce rifts 1-7 levels in depth, have a moderate monster density and also have a slightly higher chance at rewarding high quality items.

Legendary - These Keystones produce rifts 1-10 levels in depth, have a high monster density, and have a much higher chance at rewarding high quality items. These could also provide more challenge by giving monsters special abilities or having more champion/elite packs. Imagine if every monster, including trash, had one elite affix such as molten or fire chains... There are many possibilities which could deem a rift worthy of legendary status.

Searching for Keystones

I think Blizzard is pretty spot on in terms of how players should be able to obtain Keystones. Completing Bounties or finding Keystones as random drops in Adventure mode is a great way to get people out exploring different areas they may not have visited otherwise. The only suggestion I have is to make sure Bounties always reward you with at least one Keystone, but follow my suggestion above and reward a random quality such as magic, rare, or legendary.


Difficulty

One area I haven't heard much about and hope we get some clarification on soon is how the new difficulties work when it comes to Keystones and rifts. If they work in a similar manor as Infernal Machines players will be able to farm lower difficulties for Keystones to create rifts in higher difficulties. I really hope this isn't the case and instead Blizzard makes Keystones usable only in the difficulty they were found in. I want there to be progression and players earning their way into these harder rifts where they'll be getting a better shot at high quality items.



I would love some sort of a challenge which is sorely missing from the current Diablo III. Even if I couldn't ever complete one myself it would be awesome to see streams/videos where players have to theorycraft and strategically try to complete a Legendary Torment difficulty rift. The words Blizzard keeps throwing around when they talk about the expansion is "End game for all" and this could be their chance to add something for the hardest of the hardcore which hasn't been present since early release.

Incentive to go Deeper

One of the first things I asked my friends shortly after they got back from BlizzCon was "What was at the end of a rift?". To my surprise none of them could even answer this question. All of them said that they completed the required number of kills to spawn the Rift Guardian before making their way to the end of the rift. I hope this isn't the case when the expansion is shipped, otherwise it's going to feel pretty lame.

I feel there needs to be an incentive to finish all of the Rift levels instead of just completing the required monster kills, but at the same time not punish the players that don't have more than 20 minutes. One easy option I could see is to have a counter for each individual level in a rift instead of one for the entire rift. That would mean a Rift Guardian spawning after each level. Is that a little excessive? I'm not really sure, but it would encourage people to finish a rift completely so they get to clear all guardians.

Named Keystones

This is just a fun suggestion I have when it comes to Nephalem Rifts. I think it would pretty cool to have some named legendary Keystones that generate rifts with unique content.



Examples like the one above could be used to open special rifts to things like unique monsters, tile sets, and even have the potential to drop items not found anywhere else. From the elusive secret cow level to a map populated entirely of champion/elite packs or perhaps a rift littered with treasure goblins and include greed himself. There are so many fun possibilities here.



I'd love to hear what other suggestions the community might have to improve the Nephalem Rift feature in its current iteration.

P.S. Please forgive me for any grammatical errors. I could hardly keep my eyes open at the time of writing this.

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Rarity

If you ask any veteran Diablo player what their most memorable moment was from a past Diablo game, more often than not it will involve a story about the time when a certain rare item dropped for them. Whether that drop was a legendary (unique) item which was statistically next to impossible to find, a high rune needed to craft an amazing runeword, or even just a legendary item with perfect stats, the feeling was pretty much all the same (alright.. finding something like a Windforce, Zod rune, or Tyrael’s Might was a little different haha). Players could probably even go as far as recalling the time of day, act, zone, or monster that dropped that particular item, it was that memorable. How can we give this same nostalgia feeling back to the items in Diablo III?

Drop Rates

Drop rates have changed dramatically since release. I remember when the game was first launched I had almost leveled up two characters to max level before seeing my first legendary drop. I didn't really mind the low drop rates (even though the items were usually worse than rares), but it was a huge change compared to Diablo II where you couldn't finish the first Act on normal without seeing one drop. Where Diablo II had all items available in the hardest difficulty, Diablo III did things differently by splitting them up between four difficulties. This severely limited the amount of legendary items which could be found.

The good news is there is a change coming in loot 2.0 which which will make all legendary items available in every difficulty. I don't need to dive into all the details regarding this as many people are already aware of them, but what I want to talk about is the new possibilities this opens up. Possibilities in regards to drop rates. What I'd love to see now is the shift back to different drop rates inside each item type. I wouldn't mind the statistically impossible drops if it was offset by the fact that there were other, more common items available.

For example, let's take a look at legendary two-handed swords. Currently in patch 1.0.8 if we were to find a legendary two-handed sword in Inferno difficulty it would could only be one of 4 possibilities. With the new change that number will now increase to a possible 9, more than double the previous amount. We now have enough items in the same item type to afford to have substantially different drop rates.


(numbers are just for show)

The difficult part is balancing drop rates alongside the Auction House. In Diablo II the rarest item of them all, Tyrael's Might, had the highest chance to drop from the last boss in the game. Do you know what that drop rate was? A staggering 1:409,739 (0 Magic Find / 1 player game). Considering there was no Auction House available in Diablo II, even seeing one on another player was a feat of it's own. If Blizzard tried to make an item equivalent to that in Diablo III the drop rate would probably need to increase to something in the millions due to the Auction House.

Something could also be added to increase the excitement and also help people recognize the rarity of the item visually. Something as subtle as a different particle effect in the legendary's beam of light would go a long way to recognize when something truly special dropped. I don't know about you but if I saw an unidentified two-handed sword on the ground with a sparkling beam like The Grandfather's below I'd be jumping out of my seat in excitement.



How cool would that be, especially for new players or the less informed to know how rare their drop was without running to the Auction House to check the prices. What do you think the order in rarity is of the legendary helms below?



In one of the recent developer interviews Travis day is heard saying that he wants to create items that will be remembered. He even goes on to compare the impact of the items he hopes to create to that of World of Warcraft's Legendary sword, Thunderfury. I just pray that the reason he's using Thunderfury as an example isn't just for the sole reason it was powerful but also that not everyone had one and that it took not just a lot of hard work to get but even just plain luck. It wouldn't have had near as much impact if everyone on the server was running around with it, people knew of you and your guild if you were lucky enough to receive one, that's the reason it was remembered.

While I'm on this topic I'm going to also going to mention my own opinion in regards to the transmogrification system which might be making it's way into Diablo III. Don't include legendary items. The unique models are just as much of the reason as the unique properties as to why they can be labeled as a legendary. Do what you want with rares, but please leave legendary items out of it. If you absolutely think legendary items need to be included than at least connect the ability to do so with only the items your character has personally identified, at least that would help keep the integrity of the rarest items.

So please Blizzard, I beg, move away from the only thing rare about an item being the combination of random properties to the actual item itself.

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Rewarding the Hunt

At the heart of the Diablo series lies the single most important aspect of the game, the hunt for items. It's the search for rare items which makes us stay up all hours of the night killing demon after demon, hoping for that one special drop.

Since the introduction of the Auction House the hunt for items has changed, instead of hunting for items in the game world we're now instead supposed to hunt for deals on the Auction House. Players are rewarded more for sitting outside the game than actually killing monsters. The Auction House isn't going away, so how can we give incentive to those that actually play the game?

Recognition for Discovery

This idea I haven't seen pop up anywhere and I've had stuck in my head since my days of playing Diablo II and I think has a lot of merit as a feature in terms of both game play longevity and progression. The idea first came to me doing Act 3 Mephisto runs one night playing Diablo II a long time ago. As cheesy as it might be I used to keep a pen and paper at my desk to write down what unique items I'd find during my play session, something that I could not only use to brag about to my younger brother but also something I could use to record my own collection of items (pen and paper achievements...lol).



The idea would be to connect a bonus, most likely in the form of small stat increases, to the discovery of items. It's such a simple idea and one I feel would change the game for the better. In the example below I used the achievement layout to showcase the idea.



Notice how I used the word "identify"? This would be such a simple way to ensure that people couldn't just buy every single item off the AH to reap all of the benefits, players would now rewarded for playing the game not the Auction House. The bonus wouldn't have to be huge, just a little something to be recognized for the effort (or luck) put in to obtaining items. Sure someone could buy or trade for unidentified items outside the AH but it would be much harder to do, especially if they adjusted the drop rates accordingly.

So maybe you're rocking a Maximus and you find a Warmonger, wouldn't it be cool if by just finding a weapon of the same type you just increased your two-handed sword damage by 1%. Better yet, if the bonuses were account wide similar to achievements, you could find something on your Barbarian that could potentially give a small boost to another class. I think this idea is great in terms of progressing your character as you play the game. As another added bonus for identifying an item, and if the transmogrification feature existed (which I hope it never does) would be to allow that item's model to be applied to another item of the same type.

This next addition is for all you lore junkies and collectors out there. With being a game designed completely around cool items why don't we know more about the history of them? There's an entire in-game journal which for the most part is completely ignored. Why not make a section for all the cool items we find?



I don't know about you but there's so many items like the Grandfather that I'd like to know more about. I'm sure the writers at Blizzard could throw us a bone, the Diablo story is rich with lore.




Magic Find

Ah, the stat everyone loves and hates at the same time. Just like it was in Diablo II, Magic Find is a very valuable stat. So much that people were actually switching to an entirely different gear set just to boost it as high as possible before landing the killing blow on elites and champions. Blizzard's fix, the addition of Paragon levels to slowly make the need for Magic Find on items obsolete as a player progressed to level 100. Sure this was a great bonus to have and fixed the need to swap gear but it also created an entirely new problem, punishment to play anything other than your character with the highest Paragon.

Something that struck me by surprise is a recent quote taken from the recent Blizzard Developer Interview with Diablofans:


I used to think the same way as Travis, I've always wanted to try out some other classes other than my barbarian but there was something always holding me back, something called Paragon levels. Was it the slight boost in primary stats stopping me from switching to a different character? Nope, it was the thought of all the loot I would be missing out on if I didn't have my valuable Magic Find which Paragon levels granted me. I would easily trade 300 of my primary stat to jump on a different character for a night, but when it came down to missing out on the potential for loot, nope not a chance.

I think it would be completely wrong of Blizzard to make Paragon levels account wide. Paragon is meant to provide players who've reached level 60 an extended progression system, don't shorten that to 1/5th of the time needed by requiring only one character to reach Paragon 100. Instead, bare with me on this one, why don't we remove Magic Find from items and Paragon levels. Wow, do you feel that? That's called freedom, the freedom to play any character you want now and not have to sacrifice loot.

So, if we no longer get our beloved Magic Find from either items nor Paragon levels where do we get it now? Well, what if we moved it all into Nephalem Valor and tried something like this:

• Remove the NV cap size of 5
• Cap Magic Find at 500% for every character
• Award different values of Magic Find per stack of NV depending on the Monster Power
• Earn NV at any level, not just at level 60
• Lose a stack of NV for every death
• De-emphasize the need for Magic Find in general

It might look something like this:



Simple changes right? But lets look at what issues we may have just solved:

1. Rewards players for playing at a higher Monster Power (reach MF cap faster)
2. Rewards players for staying in one game and playing through all acts
3. Lower level characters have the same chance at finding legendary items
4. No longer punished for playing low Paragon characters (No MF)
5. Stops high MP leachers (if they keep dying it's not worth it)
6. Might help somewhat to combat bots
7. Players shouldn't need to get to max MF to find good items, sure it should help but not as much as it does currently.

Overall I think this is the right direction for the game and should solve many of the problems we face right now in regards to Magic Find and the hunt for items. It's tough to think that such an iconic stat in the Diablo series has become more of a burden more than something fun, but that's where we're at. I'll leave you with a fun item I came up with to tie along with the changes to Nephalem Valor that I just proposed, enjoy.


(the new "Magic Find"?)

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Crafting

Crafting has such huge potential to be one of the most interesting parts of Diablo III. Not only that but it might be the only way to fix the economy in it's current state. A little over a year into the game and we can already see the hyper inflation resulting from a game with no proper item or gold sinks. So, what can be done to crafting to get and keep a healthy economy?

Salvaging

Something absolutely needs to be done to make salvaging items more desirable. Yeah there's Brimstones, but I'm not sure why Blizzard decided to make them have a 100% chance of being salvaged from legendary items. I guess It probably made sense back when legendary items were actually hard to find at release, but when they increased the drop rates they should have also removed the 100% salvage chance.

I've already suggested this idea before regarding new types of Brimestone's but I'd like to mention it again. The idea is that by salvaging legendary items they'd have a small chance to produce a type of Brimstone depending on the elemental type of the item that's being salvaged. Maybe even tie in the rarity of the legendary item being salvaged to the chance of producing one.



Make these also be part of crafting recipes for all of the artisans. Obviously crafting recipes as a whole need help before this could even be implemented but I'm sure we'll see that happen along with loot 2.0. It would definitely increase the amount of legendary items being removed from the economy.

Legendary Crafting Materials

In Diablo II we had Runes which were the primary crafting reagent. Runes ranged from the very commonly found to the near impossible to find. Blizzard really needs to introduce similar crafting reagents in loot 2.0. They obviously can't be called runes, as those already exist in the form of Skill Runes, but they need to exist in some other form. They need to be something that we can find out in the game world by killing things and more importantly be highly valued in the crafting system.

I think I've found the perfect place for them to drop.



You may recall coming across monsters with purple name plates and unique names during your play sessions. What are they you ask? Your answer is as good as mine, the only thing they're linked to right now is an achievement. Sure some of them are obviously in the game for a laugh, Jay Wilson comes to mind, but for the most part they just exist for no reason at all. Why don't we give them a reason to exist? Blizzard could toss those rare crafting materials on their loot table with a very tiny drop rare and put them to good use. Beef them up a bit in terms of health and damage similar to Keywardens and they'd be perfect. Give them a little bit more randomness in their spawn locations so they can't be easily farmed and you'd have a very nice feature.



There's 82 named unique monsters as part of the acheivement "A Unique Collection", giving them all a chance to drop a unique crafting reagent would be an amazing way to spice up crafting. Throw on a Bind to Account similar to Demonic Essence and you'd really have people out in the world playing the game like it was meant to be played.

If you're anything like me your stash and bags are already really full of items that you couldn't possibly fathom the idea of more crafting materials. This next idea is to help all of us hoarders get a little breathing room.



This would be so welcome, having separate inventories for weapons and armor, crafting materials, gems, and the upcoming mystic artisan. Make picking up items automatically place them in the right inventory and you would have probably one of the most welcome features to many people alike.

While we're at it let's go ahead and clean up something I wish was never implemented in the first place... 15 gem versions. Blizzard should reduce the number of types found in the first 3 difficulties to one each, there's not really any point in having more.



Removing these steps in gem progression could be countered by just decreasing the drop rates accordingly. While we're talking about gem drop rates I don't see why we can't just have all gem grades be drop-able, but with increasingly low drop rates. At least that would give self-found players a chance at getting to the higher versions. It's not like upgrading gems is good gold sink anyways, we can definitely find a better one.

The Mystic

Everybody knows she's coming in the expansion but just how she'll work is still a mystery. The mystic might have features like crafting elixirs or potions, but she'll most definitely be involved in some type of item upgrading or enhancement feature. I tried my best to come up with a solution that not only works in terms of item progression, but also something to become the main item and gold sink for the game.

It was very hard trying to come up with an idea on just how her features should work. You obviously want to avoid making it so players only have to find one item and then just keep upgrading it until it's the best item in the game. That's why I didn't include a way to reroll item properties in my version of the mystic. I think by not allowing the re-roll of item properties it should at least still give reason for players to seek out upgrades. Instead my version focuses on only upgrading the originally rolled stats on an item. These stats could be upgraded to it's max potential value, but only for an increasingly amount of gold as it gets near max value. Take a look at the example below to see how upgrading this helm's Critical Hit Chance would work.



If you noticed above by placing the item you wish to upgrade in the mystic's menu you are shown the max value of the properties which already exist on the item. By clicking on each property you'd be presented with the required materials and cost to upgrade the stat. The idea is for different stats to be upgraded using different crafted materials, materials being a combination of both Bind on Account and tradable materials. This would ensure someone couldn't just buy all the crafting materials off the AH and upgrade to a perfect item, they'd be forced to play the game in order to collect the BOA items similar to Demonic Essence.

The next thing you may have noticed is the cost associated with upgrading the Critical Hit Chance on the helm by .5%. The number is meant to be big, this cost will be the main gold sink in the game and most likely a cost most min/maxers would be willing to pay to upgrade an item. The most interesting concept however is one that you can't see in the picture above. The concept being as you gradually upgrade your stats on an item the monetary costs associated with the upgrades also increases.



In the example above you can see how the closer the value moves to it's maximum potential, the higher the cost associated with the upgrade. This in some way mimics how the current gem progression system works that we all use Diablo III.

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Legendary Items

This is the biggie and one of the additions I'm most excited for from loot 2.0. The developers, more specifically Travis Day, have already stated that they want to make game changing legendary items. Game changing in terms of the way items interact with skills, passives, and gearing choices.There probably will be a couple different types of items that will make up the this whole concept, lets explore some.

Class specific legendary items and set bonuses have the most potential when it comes to items that change the way skills and passives work. Really, it's the only option since putting skill changing properties on an item type available to all classes would be pointless seeing how skills are unique to each class.

In the expansion I can't see any classes getting any additional Skill Runes. What I could see though is a new empty rune slot being added.



What rune belongs to this slot you may ask? Well the answer is, it depends on the items you're using!



When I was originally trying to determine just how adding new Skill Rune effects on items should work I didn't have the empty rune slot. The problematic scenario I kept running into was, what if someone didn't want to use the new Rune Skill being offered by the item? Would they have to just shun that item out of their possible gear choices and find something else? That's where the idea of an empty Skill Rune slot came from, now when equipping an item with a new rune variation they wouldn't be forced to use it anymore, they'd have the choice of turning it off/on just like any other Skill Rune.



The beauty of a system like this is that it offers a huge depth in game play compared to the current system. Currently in the game once you hit level 60 you're done discovering your skills. With a system like this even at level 60 you could keep discovering new builds depending on what items you've found. Remember the idea of super rare items I talked about above? Imagine playing the game for a year and finally getting your hands on one of those super rare items with a sweet new Rune Skill, your entire play style or build could change to something completely different. It would make the game feel so fresh, people wouldn't be able to just run to the forums, look up the best build, and be done with swapping skills forever. Instead new builds would constantly be discovered that not everyone would have access to right away. This idea could even go further, what if a new build needed not only 1 but even 2 or 3 new Rune Skills only available on items. Combining gear to make new builds, who'd have thought? If Blizzard added even one new item to the game at a later point it could have the potential to create entirely new builds.

The next type of item I'll touch on is the also made to be for class specific items.



These could directly add new bonuses to passive skills or skills themselves. In the example above I gave a direct bonus to the Barbarian passive skill, Brawler. That seems pretty simple on it's own but what I hope you all noticed is the twist at the end which reads "within Pickup Radius". Hmm did I just make a once useless stat potentially sought after by the Barbarian class?

What I hope you all take away from this example is that we don't need to be so focused on making every single affix as good as one another. Lets make items do the work in making this happen. Imagine if there was a shield that changed the way Thorns damage worked and allowed stacking it to be viable, or a mace that made stacking as much armor as possible increase the damage of one of your skills. The possibilities are endless here and I really hope these are the type of ideas Travis Day is working on.

The next, and final type of legendary item that we could see wouldn't really have anything to do with Runes or skills at all. Instead these items would focus on providing unique new ways to play and gear your character. Imagine if you found the Girdle of Giants below.



Pretty cool eh? Some might think it doesn't change much because of the reduced damage, and really it might not do much in terms of directly increasing your overall damage. It might not even look like it would be better than today's Witching Hour which has amazing damage stats. It instead does something else, it opens up how many choices the Barbarian has in possible weapon choices. This one item added hundreds of different combinations of weapons. Maybe some of these combinations have the potential to create a new build, the possibilities could be endless. This is just the result of one new belt, imagine if other similar type items existed.

[saving this area for showcasing my legendary item thoughts]

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In Conclusion

If you made it this far in my crazy long post I salute you and thank you very much for taking the time to look over my ideas. As you can see I'm very passionate when it comes to Diablo in general, especially when it comes to the hunt for items. I think by working together, the Diablo community and Blizzard, we'll finally get to the point where we can call Diablo III the greatest ARPG every created.

Thank you.


If you haven't checked out my other posts please feel free to look them over and let me know what you think.

http://www.diablofan...review-a-dream/ (old ideas, but still an interesting read)

http://www.diablofan...-dream-fanmade/ (pretty cool idea for a variation of the classic ladder system)