BlizzCon Americas Regional Finalists & Videos
Heroes Alpha Patch 32455 - Promotional Items, Anub'arak & Azmodan, New Mounts, New Skins, Hero Changes
Warlords of Draenor - The Iron Maidens, Blue Posts and Tweets, Fan Art
Greater Rifts Purpose
Grimiku made a post earlier today clarifying some aspects of Greater Rifts. In terms of mechanics, obviously, they serve to gather and upgrade the recently introduced, and extremely powerful, Legendary Gems. But he focuses on addressing some players' expectation of reaching extremely high levels, similarly to what happened in the PTR. It is also clarified that currently GRs have no actual limit (programming-wise).
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
There is some confusion that comes up from time to time about the role that Greater Rifts are intended to play, and I’d like to take a moment to help try and clear that up.
For the most part, Greater Rifts are intended to act like a yardstick (or meter stick, if we’re waxing Metric) by which players can measure the power growth of their hero, as opposed to something that is meant to be completed in its entirety. Part of the confusion about the intended role of Greater Rifts might come from the fact that, during the public test phase of patch 2.1.0, there was a temporary cap in place (for testing purposes), and some players were able to reach that limit while the PTR was running. However, we never intended to allow players to reach the maximum level of what Greater Rifts offer once the system went live. In fact, for all intents and purposes, the number of Greater Rift levels currently has no limit.
Female Crusader Cosplay
Bethany Bled, also known as NaletH over at Deviantart, published a preview of her Female Crusader cosplay armor, to be worn at the Kontakt 5 convention in Istanbul. It looks amazing! Check the screenshots below, or her full gallery for all the photos.
Deadset Sanctuary Talk
DeadSetGaming published another Sanctuary Sunday Talk video, with some more lore on the world of Diablo. This week's video focuses on the Sin War. Watch it below!
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Posted Oct 7, 20142 players of equal skill and gear could be several levels apart if one is the luckiest in the world and the other is... (me? :p) unlucky.
Map layout is one thing. But mobs is a different matter. I have not once got a greater rift of zombies which is the best density wise. I usualy get crap with a few big mobs here and there. Even been times where i had to run back 1-2 levels to get enough mobs to even finish a greater rift. exit after 4 levels... no thanks
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Posted Oct 7, 2014GRifts are perfectly fine by me - there is a certain randomness, yes, and its amount is known and expectable. Of course getting an unlucky map is frustrating, but what of we deem "unlucky" maps as "normal", and instead hope for a lucky layout the very same way we hope for a legendary roll? Don't today's players feel this excitement and thrill of gambling?
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Posted Oct 7, 2014I wouldn't want D3 to NOT be random, but at the same time, that blue post explanation fails beyond belief.
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Posted Oct 7, 2014I was actually defending Blizzard's wording of a "yard stick". GRifts do completely fail as a competitive measuring tool, as a laser ruler. But it does fare well as a crude yard stick - a gr30-capable char is undoubtedly better than a gr25-capable one, just keep in mind that measurement error is in the order of 5 levels.
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Posted Oct 7, 2014I guess you could argue that Greater Rifts are competitive in a similar manner that "card games" are competitive - MtG, Hearthstone, Poker. In a single hand, Poker is also completely determined by RNG, but is still widely regarded as a professional, skill based sport nonetheless (this is quite enlightening on this matter).
So yeah, in a sense, over the course of a thousand rifts, the player (party?) better prepared to deal with the changes from one Rift to the other, and more skilled with the game mechanics, would have the upper hand.
That said, I've been telling some others for the last 2 months that to me it's almost impossible to have an RNG-based game similar to Diablo be actually competitive. It's an illusion of competition, as you're only really competing with people on a PvE-level with similar play times (a 100 hour player simply isn't competing with a 1k hour player, period). And even at that, it's more about composition (or exploiting some mechanics?) and gear quality than actual skill, thanks to some changes to Set items in the last patches.
I personally enjoy these patches for what they are. Legendary Gems promote some different playstyles, and Seasons give me a reason to start fresh and try out the new legendaries on a subpar level, before the real "end-game", where the game is the most enjoyable imo. Where you have to actually weigh an item versus another to see which one is more effective, where your resources (for enchanting, etc.) are not unlimited, and where skillfull play actually matters (specially in hardcore, where screwing up once means death).
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Posted Oct 8, 2014-
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Posted Oct 8, 2014Wat? Are you ok? I have no idea where you got that from my post...