Mob Types (default, all selected): Select which mobs will be present in the rift, based on which act they originate from. Tired of wasps? Remove Act 2 mobs.
Mob Density (default, 3): Select from preset mob density values e.g. 1 = minimum density, 6 = maximum density.
Elite Types (default, all selected): Remove Yellow or Blue packs.
Elite Affixes (default, all selected): Remove certain elite affixes.
Timer (default, selected, 15 mins): change the duration of the timer, or remove the timer completely.
Deaths Allowed (default, unselected): unselected means infinite number of deaths allowed, as per usual in Softcore mode. But if selected, then only a certain amount of deaths would be allowed before the Rift was automatically failed.
Mob CC Resistance (default, selected, 95%): This is for mob CC resistance cap. Currently in patch 2.3 it has been increased to 95%, up from 65% of the previous patch. This value wouldn’t change the inherent CC resistance gain and decay stats of patch 2.3: 10% increased resistance per 1 second under CC, and the decay of 5% resistance per second while out of CC e.g. if this value was set at 0%, then mobs would have no resistance at all to CC effects and could easily be perma-stunned. If set to 100% then mobs would increase their CC resistance by 10% per second of CC, up to 100% and then be immune to all CC effects, until their resistance decayed. 65% would be similarish CC-effects of patch 2.2.
Misc. Opts: Remove health/nephalem globes entirely if desired. Allow gold drops and clickables to make use of items like http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/goldwrap, http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/harrington-waistguard, and other interesting items that cannot be used in GRifts simply because gold drops and clickables have been removed from them. (To prevent people cheesing and farming gold you could make it so that any gold picked up in the GRift doesn’t go to the player’s account).
Remove all sources of healing, from abilities or item stats etc., so that you only have a starting health pool and that’s all you have to work with.
Item Options
Item Types (default, all selected): Disallow Ancient items or Legendary items. Disallow sets, or restrict the amount of set items (per set) you can equip e.g. so you can only equip 2 set items per set. Or change the amount of sets you can equip, e.g. only 2-pieces from a set, and only 1 set allowed. Can remove Legendary gems, or just restrict the level the gem can be, to avoid group-leveled gems from dominating.
Item Slots (default, all selected): Want to remove jewelry? Want to force builds that don’t have pants? Go nuts.
Map Options
Maps (default, all selected): Select which map types you want in the pool. It may be impractical to list all the individual maps, so maybe just a selection from Act I, II, III etc.
Rift Guardian (default, 1, all selected): Select which RGs you want to be available to spawn. Or remove the RG entirely. Or maybe you’re insane and want more than 1 RG to make the end of a GRift more like the Uber battles.
Pylons (default, all Pylons selected, no Shrines selected): Select which Pylons/Shrines you want to be able to spawn.
Difficulty Level Range (default, 1 – 100): Set which GRift level range the GRift starts at and maxes out at, to allow a range of difficulties, or you may just want to set it at one difficulty. Maybe you want to set the Grift at, say, level 60 and just see how fast people can complete that difficulty level.
Rift Level Range (default, 1 – 10): This is the number of map levels in the actual Rift, I believe 10 is currently the max. Maybe you want the rift to only have 1 single map level so you put the max at 1. There may be some technical difficulties here with the interaction between Mob Density meter to make one level have sufficient mobs for 100% progress, so maybe this option isn't viable.
Player Options
Paragon Points (default, unselected): Set a cap for the number of paragon points that can be allocated before entering the custom rift, to make paragon grinding not the be-all and end-all.
Stat Caps (default, none selected): Set caps for particular character stats. Leave unselected to leave uncapped, as per normal. This particular example has crit chance and crit damage capped at the inherent bases of 5 and 50, and Elemental damage capped at 0% and Attack speed capped at 1 APS. This would only affect unbuffed sheet stats from gear and passive effects, but would obviously not include dynamic/active buffs.
Classes and Team Size (default, all selected): Allows the setting of what classes and number of players could partake in the custom rift. Maybe the monk community wants to create a rift to see how monks perform on that particular rift, or maybe the Demon Hunters want to see what kind of 4-player DH groups can do against each other. Or maybe force a mixture of Monk + Crusader teams, etc.
Followers (default, 1, Multiplayer off, all other selected): Restrict access to only particular followers, or allow more than 1 follower to be used, or allow followers in multiplayer.
Creating your Custom Rift
Once you’ve chosen all your settings, now you Create the Custom Rift. First you name it, select whether it is open to public or not, and whether it is a Static Rift.
STATIC RIFTS (this is an important option, and deserves a separate discussion to itself)
A non-Static rift would simply operate as regular Rifts and Grifts currently do i.e. whenever you enter a new rift it randomizes (from the set criteria) the rift. So, even if you select only 1 map-type etc. for your Custom Rift, but do not set it as Static, it will still randomly create a rift based on that one map type and the other criteria every time someone attempts that rift. A Static Rift, however, will only create one single rift when the creator/designer of the Custom Rift initially creates the Custom Rift, and from then on all subsequent openings of that rift, by anyone, will all be exactly the same, from the map layout to the monsters’ spawn location and type, pylon location etc. Everything is identical for every player who opens that Custom Rift (excluding RG spawn location, obviously).
PROS of a Static Rift
reduces the advantage of things like THUD (everybody already knows the full map and pylon location etc.)
removes the need for GRift fishing
reduces overall balance issues such as mob types, mob affixes, map types, pylons etc. If the Rift is identical for everyone, it doesn’t really matter if Ghosts or Conduits are OP or not, because everyone has to fight/use them (this also allows us to bring the fun dense maps back to Greater Rifts, so we’re not stuck with shitty Cave maps 75% of time)
boring? (not for people who enjoy the competition)
If you’re still unconvinced by Custom Rifts, well, simple: there’s no need to play these Custom Rifts at all if you have no interest in them. You miss out on nothing by not playing them. It’s just like how some people will never play Hardcore-mode and they don’t miss out on anything by not. Which brings me to my next important point.
NO LOOT
Custom Rifts would have no loot. None at all (not even from the Rift Guardian). And no experience gained. This is partly so that people couldn’t cheese and create some easy farming rift, but more so because Custom Rifts would be purely about the fun of the competition, just like those countless other games we play because people enjoy competing against each other – that’s what drives (in part) communities. We can see this where D3 communities are already (and have been for a long time) creating their own friendly competitions/challenges in order to keep themselves entertained when there’s little else in the game for them to do, and GRift-fishing becomes too tedious. For examples see the old T6 speed-clearing competition ( http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/14609681171#1 ), the HC No Set Challenge (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/18000139876?page=1 ), the Reddit Challenge ( https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo/wiki/weeklychallenge_s1 ), and I’m sure there’s many more.
Searching for a Custom Rift
Lastly, just to touch on the some of the logistics of a potential Custom Rift system.
‘How would you search for or join a Custom Rift?’
The search system currently used for Communities could be duplicated to provide a search system for Custom Rifts. You could filter the search via words in the title or description - it would likely be too difficult to filter the search by every possible criteria that the Custom Rift could vary by, but one important criteria that should be filterable is Static or non-Static Rifts. This must be a filter option.
The search would return all the Custom Rifts that satisfy the criteria, ordered by most populated at the top, similar to the Community search feature. Clicking on a particular Custom Rift would provide a short description of the Custom Rift made by the creator, and list a few of the more prominent categories, highlighting those that are altered from the default (which you could further explore by looking at the details of the Custom Rift). Clicking Join Custom Rift will add that Custom Rift to your list of ‘My Custom Rifts’.
Entering a Custom Rift
Open a game and go to the Rift Pylon, as per usual when entering a rift. The Custom drop-down lists all of ‘My Custom Rifts’ i.e. all those Custom Rifts that I have ‘joined’, by searching for them as you would search for and join a Community. Once a specific Custom Rift is selected it checks your current gear setup against the criteria of that Custom Rift to see if they are satisfied. If no, an error message is displayed. If yes, then another drop-down for the level of Custom Rift would appear for you to select the level (as currently happens with Greater Rifts). Entering a Custom Rift does not require any kind of ‘key’– you can enter as many times as you want for ‘free’. This is allowable because Custom Rifts don’t provide you with any loot/xp/gold/etc. and so cannot be ‘farmed’.
Leaderboards
This suggestion of Leaderboards has Custom Rifts as a separate category to Greater Rift Leaderboards. However, Greater Rift Leaderboards could potentially just be removed, if Custom Rifts become the prime place where players can compete against each other for Leaderboard positions, and Greater Rifts can just be another place to farm LGems/xp/loot etc.
As you can see in the pic there is an added drop-down list for selecting which Custom Rift Leaderboard you wish to peruse. This drop-down automatically lists the 10 most populous Custom Rifts, and then below this is the list of ‘my’ Custom Rifts that I've personally joined (if they’re not in the top 10 most populous list already). This example assumes that the separate class communities have split off into their own specific Rifts. However, that won't necessarily happen, and the D3 community as a whole may decide on one type of Custom Rift that is good for all class-types.
Thanks for taking the time to read! Any feedback/suggestions would be great. Do you think some type of Custom Rift system would be viable??
Would also be cool if we could have "themed" seasons. Sorta like Tavern Brawls or some of the LoL game modes, where a season gets a special rule set that you can do crazy stuff, but it only lasts 2-4 weeks.
Not that I am against this idea, but doesn't it sort of remove the RNG from an RNG game? I mean, as you've stated, there is no loot/xp for doing these, so unless they cap paragons, aside from competing with your buddies (which you can already do on your 'friends' leaderboard) this really doesn't do anything for character advancement. All it does is give you a cookie cut rift in order to challenge your friends, in which 'highest paragon/best class' wins. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great, but that's alot of work for no gain, not exactly blizzard's style, if ya know what I mean.
(Double Edit:) If they cap paragons, this would be an amazing addition. If they cap time played availability, this would be the worst addition.
Cool idea, but all you're doing is giving players the option of removing everything that's unfavorable, thereby standardizing the game even more than it already is. It'll take a couple days before the 'perfect grift' community is born and everyone is running the exact same thing while complaining that the game lacks diversity.
Cool idea, but all you're doing is giving players the option of removing everything that's unfavorable, thereby standardizing the game even more than it already is. It'll take a couple days before the 'perfect grift' community is born and everyone is running the exact same thing while complaining that the game lacks diversity.
Did u read it all or just TL;Dr? He says its No exp No loot gain...
Did he write anything about that? I dont think he did. The OPs idea might be OK, but the way he presented it is just beyond retarded with thousands of different combinations, 99% of which no one would ever use after figuring the "best" setup. EVER. Only making it overcomplicated. Doesnt matter theres no XP/loot. Everyone would end up running with 95% of all the settings being absolutely the same, changing a couple of the settings, and even then those particular settings which might allow for 10 different levels would maybe ever see settings at only their extremes. Basically what im saying is, instead of 150 different things to set at 6 different levels each there might just as well be only 3 things to set at 2 different levels.
OP did mention no loot and no XP and i quote:
"Custom Rifts would have no loot. None at all (not even from the Rift Guardian). And no experience gained. This is partly so that people couldn’t cheese and create some easy farming rift, but more so because Custom Rifts would be purely about the fun of the competition"
Why would there be a "perfect rift" if you don't gain xp/loot out of it? It actually sounds like this idea can allow players to be more creative with the way they want to compete with others. Sure, there might be popular custom rift choices or settings that will be pushed by popular streamers for various reasons but that would most likely a flavor of the month type of thing.
I personally wouldn't really enjoy this idea if it were to be implemented but i think it's pretty good and i'm sure many people will really like it if it was in game. Good job on the effort nonetheless. I think it's a pretty good idea.
I love this idea, because I think it will give people something to do once they're bored of speed GRs or have given up on the leaderboards and completed all conquests, season journey, and whatever achievable goals there are for the average Joe. It reminds me of Wudijo's "rares only" GR challenge - wouldn't it be fun if you could have that as a game mode? It's very much like the Conquests, but there are so few of them per season. It would also address something that is lacking in Diablo 3 that ensures replayability for many people in other games: modding. Sure, you don't have the modding freedom of WC3/SC2 or other games, but you could think of certain exotic custom games that are so unique that it almost feels like a different game mode. Think about it - one of the most popular game genre these days (mobas) was entirely based on a player creation!
An idea like this would be a middle way - Blizzard doesn't want to allow modding in Diablo 3, but at least players would have some freedom in creating their own environment and rules.
What would promote this game mode is that after a fixed time (i.e., once per week) a ranking of the most popular custom games is published and for each of those the top times (i.e., a list of the top 3 custom games and the top 10 or 100 people for each of those).
However (i have may missed a part on the OP, feel free to correct me): why people would run the custom rifts if no XP nor loot is awarded? I agree that making them give standard rewards would just make people run the optimal rift over and over and over, but once the flavor of "let's try something fancy" vanishes, i don't see many people putting effort in both creating and especially running them.
No XP/no loot = loss of time from an efficieny point of view. It may be fun to do that once in a while, but with themnot giving character power i don't see much future in this.
Agree on that. Still to push leaderboards you need gear first and Paragon/Legendary gems later.
If these don't give the rewards, i expect the "optimal" choice to be simply ignoring them through all season and farm everything you can till last week, where people starts to push the leaderboards behind at least their current paragon.
I don't know, maybe i'm just missing something but this is how i picture it (not much different from current solo leaderboards which will be invaded by group players having more paragon and gem levels than solo players).
Hey, i'm not discarding the idea. I just tink it can be improved to a better implementation (and keeping the no loot/no xp is a must).
Would also be cool if we could have "themed" seasons. Sorta like Tavern Brawls or some of the LoL game modes, where a season gets a special rule set that you can do crazy stuff, but it only lasts 2-4 weeks.
Absolutely. If a custom Rift system didn't happen (and it almost certainly won't) I'd settle for just a few Blizzard-approved 'theme' Rifts each season that mix up the meta, like a no-sets Rift or something.
Not that I am against this idea, but doesn't it sort of remove the RNG from an RNG game? I mean, as you've stated, there is no loot/xp for doing these, so unless they cap paragons, aside from competing with your buddies (which you can already do on your 'friends' leaderboard) this really doesn't do anything for character advancement. All it does is give you a cookie cut rift in order to challenge your friends, in which 'highest paragon/best class' wins. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great, but that's alot of work for no gain, not exactly blizzard's style, if ya know what I mean.
(Double Edit:) If they cap paragons, this would be an amazing addition. If they cap time played availability, this would be the worst addition.
Ideally a system like this would completely replace GRifts for Leaderboards. Most people who are trying to push Leaderboards are sick and tired of the layer-upon-layer of RNG and the endless open-close-open-close GRift fishing.
I love this idea, because I think it will give people something to do once they're bored of speed GRs or have given up on the leaderboards and completed all conquests, season journey, and whatever achievable goals there are for the average Joe. It reminds me of Wudijo's "rares only" GR challenge - wouldn't it be fun if you could have that as a game mode? It's very much like the Conquests, but there are so few of them per season. It would also address something that is lacking in Diablo 3 that ensures replayability for many people in other games: modding. Sure, you don't have the modding freedom of WC3/SC2 or other games, but you could think of certain exotic custom games that are so unique that it almost feels like a different game mode. Think about it - one of the most popular game genre these days (mobas) was entirely based on a player creation!
An idea like this would be a middle way - Blizzard doesn't want to allow modding in Diablo 3, but at least players would have some freedom in creating their own environment and rules.
What would promote this game mode is that after a fixed time (i.e., once per week) a ranking of the most popular custom games is published and for each of those the top times (i.e., a list of the top 3 custom games and the top 10 or 100 people for each of those).
I think there's a lot of potential in this idea!
Yes, I enjoyed Wudijo's video very much! I love the idea of an All Yellow Challenge, or a non-set challenge, but in a more organised/official environment rather than having to record your runs etc. which is often tedious/difficult and ultimately makes me not bother.
And I love the suggestion for the publishing of the most popular at the end of a week or so! That's a great idea, and solves the issues with the potential messiness of the Leaderboards that I was thinking might happen with my suggested system. Perhaps a fortnight/month would be a decent amount of time, to let a variety of theories develop on how to best complete a particular Custom Rift. They could even have different lengths of time, some for a week, some for a month - it could be Blizzard's twist on PoE's weekly races. Hmmmm.
Does anyone remember "Stunts", the 1990 PC game? It had a race track editor, and me and my friends created challenges for each other - creating a track that was impossibly hard to beat. Similar to some of the shipped tracks in later editions of "Trackmania" these days.
This would be similar - I'd create a variation of a GR 60 rift with only super tough packs of Executioners having awful affixes. Maybe on a dense map, because honestly - everyone hates Sewers. Only one Shield Pylon so you'd have to use it carefully, and you're not allowed to use any paragon points. Who could beat that - and who could beat that the fastest?
Regarding the "no XP/loot" idea - it is true that there needs to be some limitation or drawback in this system, otherwise everyone would just make GR80 "gg riffs" with Hamelin as RG and farm 1 trillion XP per hour. *That* would make D3 really boring, it would almost feel like Crypt runs ;-)
Sounds pretty amazing really, but I think there should be loot and XP involved still. One way you could balance this is to have a magic find / XP multiplier on every option. So you could make an extremely easy rift, on a good map, with high density and beat it very fast, but you would get almost no loot or xp for it due to the options that you have selected. If you add extra rift guardians, no champion packs, no pylons, low density, select only act 5 mobs, restrict legendaries, or other such options, you would get bonus XP and loot. The more difficult it is, the more bonus you get. The easier it is, the less bonus you get. Each and every check mark would change what your bonus is.
Now say you want to get similar loot to a GR50, but you only want act 1 mobs. Well Act one mobs give you minus bonus, so maybe you want to select bad maps to compensate. Or maybe you just run on a higher difficulty level, or maybe you could even ban belts if you don't really need one for you build. There would be so many options available to customize your setup it would be amazing.
I would love for something like this to be implemented, but I seriously doubt they will take it this far. I just really hope that blizzard makes the static rift of the week or something that allows everyone to compete on the same rift.
Regarding the "no XP/loot" idea - it is true that there needs to be some limitation or drawback in this system, otherwise everyone would just make GR80 "gg riffs" with Hamelin as RG and farm 1 trillion XP per hour. *That* would make D3 really boring, it would almost feel like Crypt runs ;-)
Yes, I think it's critical for it working that it must have no 'rewards' beyond the intrinsic rewards of the fun in competing with friends and other members of the community, and in creating interesting rifts.
A side step of this idea would be to use the Kanai's Cube for generating a 'custom' rift. Filling it with magic and rare items only and using the Cube's power will create a rift with monsters and their abilities generated from the item types and their properties.
That's an interesting idea, and one I'd be happy with seeing implemented as well. In fact I imagine that idea is probably more likely to happen than any Custom Rift idea, in that the Devs probably have plans for making Kanai's Cube do something related to customising rifts.
Add a paragon option as well like max 800 and no paragon etc...
Under 'Player Options', it's the first option
Paragon Points (default, unselected): Set a cap for the number of paragon points that can be allocated before
entering the custom rift, to make paragon grinding not the be-all and end-all.
But you're right, it is one of the most important options, IMO, and I hope at the very least they simply place a limit on Paragon Points that can be used in Greater Rifts next season.
I agree with no xp or loot rewards but what generalized customization rewards? Say some cool portrait frame or pennant etc for doing custom rifts? Maybe the community could vote on the rewards for a season or even design the customization and then vote. That would be cool.
Paragon Points (default, unselected): Set a cap for the number of paragon points that can be allocated before
entering the custom rift, to make paragon grinding not the be-all and end-all.
But you're right, it is one of the most important options, IMO, and I hope at the very least they simply place a limit on Paragon Points that can be used in Greater Rifts next season.
I missed on my once over thanks for pointing it out. All the skimming one is bound to miss something.
Its clear you put a lot of thought into this and I am not trying to be a jerk but this is probably the worst idea I've seen. I get the concept of trying to add more features to the game to maybe keep people interested in playing but all these options to make custom challenge mode rifts with no reward. Whats the point in doing them then? I guess the way of the industry today has really warped my thinking of games. Today theres no point in playing a game just for the sake of fun. We play for gains, gear, currency, etc. I imagine the people who play for the leader boards are an extreme minority.
Hell I hate all mobas with the exception of heroes of the storm because in HOTS you are farming gold to unlock new characters. Once I have unlocked them all I will continue to play and farm gold to unlock the new heroes when they are released but if the releases slow down then I will probably stop playing altogether.
You are suggestion an indepth idea that would require a lot of coding and the extreme minority of players would even be remotely interested because there is no reward to playing this mode. Thats a lot of work for blizzard to do for little reward. They are making changes to try and bring people back to the game and keep people playing. Not adding a complex feature that a handful of players might use.
Custom Rifts idea is more on the side of game design than game playing. If the problem is you want more control over spawns and environments, the ability to "customize" your rifts, then maybe the Kube would be a better idea.
What if you could put in certain items like any recipe and generate your own unique rifts. Path of Exile has a feature like that. We can already spawn a portal to goblintown, what if you could spawn a portal into a dungeon of Kurast that had some special modifiers? Like Random Boss Encounters or Elites Only? What about a dungeon where you have to get an artifact at the end and then high tail it back to the entrance? Certain "static rifts" could have a competitiveness to it that you don't get with greater rifts. Finishing within time should not be the only metric by which characters are judged.
I think there should simply be more variety of rift types, objectives to win added. For example instead of just a timer bar and progress in a static way with a boss then done, have a mode that you gotta seek out and kill so many of different types of mobs, or collect x thing and survive while carrying it back to point A.
Kinda combine rifts with bounties, more objective based rifts where you can compete with others still and have fun challenging yourself, with different rewards for different things. Like maybe one can be a crafting rift, where you have to deliver stuff to a npc, and you gotta make it through without dying each time you die you lose points or items if you make it through you get more rewards.
Also before rifts were added i always wanted an endless mode a true endless dungeon...a rift that you completed each floor, and it gets slightly harder each floor, instead of selecting a difficulty, going in and doing it, then exiting and doing it again allow 1 rift where you just keep going down and down and the goal is to see how far down you can go before dying or timer and endless dungeon competition. Some floors are freebies, with gold/vendors on them, randomly. Like that Fate game series (and torchlight)
Whats the point in doing them then? I guess the way of the industry today has really warped my thinking of games. Today theres no point in playing a game just for the sake of fun. We play for gains, gear, currency, etc. I imagine the people who play for the leader boards are an extreme minority.
I think the billions of gamers world-wide who play 'real-life' sports and esports and many other games purely for the fun of competing with each other would have to disagree. "gear, currency, etc." are not fun in themselves; they're merely a means to having fun. As is competition.
You are suggestion an indepth idea that would require a lot of coding
This is possibly true, but also very possibly not. Almost all of the functionality suggested in this idea already has to exist in the game (there's clearly switches for turning on-and-off Pylons/Shrines/Gold/etc. as Grifts and Rifts differ in these options). All they would have to do is create a GUI for these switches. Is it a large amount of work? Well, probably, but so is adding anything to the game, which is something they clearly have to do to keep people playing.
A possible way to implement something that has been suggested by many people before (with pics!).
Custom Rifts
[TL;DR: Inspired by Community-created 'challenges' such as: https://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/3r3y0z/season_3_rdiablo_billions_of_misfortunate_builds/ Custom rifts would allow the creation of specific Rifts to support and facilitate such Community-created events to provide an alternative end-game than GRift Fishing.]
Custom Rift Settings
Game Play Options
Mob Types (default, all selected): Select which mobs will be present in the rift, based on which act they originate from. Tired of wasps? Remove Act 2 mobs.
Mob Density (default, 3): Select from preset mob density values e.g. 1 = minimum density, 6 = maximum density.
Elite Types (default, all selected): Remove Yellow or Blue packs.
Elite Affixes (default, all selected): Remove certain elite affixes.
Timer (default, selected, 15 mins): change the duration of the timer, or remove the timer completely.
Deaths Allowed (default, unselected): unselected means infinite number of deaths allowed, as per usual in Softcore mode. But if selected, then only a certain amount of deaths would be allowed before the Rift was automatically failed.
Mob CC Resistance (default, selected, 95%): This is for mob CC resistance cap. Currently in patch 2.3 it has been increased to 95%, up from 65% of the previous patch. This value wouldn’t change the inherent CC resistance gain and decay stats of patch 2.3: 10% increased resistance per 1 second under CC, and the decay of 5% resistance per second while out of CC e.g. if this value was set at 0%, then mobs would have no resistance at all to CC effects and could easily be perma-stunned. If set to 100% then mobs would increase their CC resistance by 10% per second of CC, up to 100% and then be immune to all CC effects, until their resistance decayed. 65% would be similarish CC-effects of patch 2.2.
Misc. Opts: Remove health/nephalem globes entirely if desired. Allow gold drops and clickables to make use of items like http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/goldwrap, http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/harrington-waistguard, and other interesting items that cannot be used in GRifts simply because gold drops and clickables have been removed from them. (To prevent people cheesing and farming gold you could make it so that any gold picked up in the GRift doesn’t go to the player’s account).
Remove all sources of healing, from abilities or item stats etc., so that you only have a starting health pool and that’s all you have to work with.
Item Options
Item Types (default, all selected): Disallow Ancient items or Legendary items. Disallow sets, or restrict the amount of set items (per set) you can equip e.g. so you can only equip 2 set items per set. Or change the amount of sets you can equip, e.g. only 2-pieces from a set, and only 1 set allowed. Can remove Legendary gems, or just restrict the level the gem can be, to avoid group-leveled gems from dominating.
Item Slots (default, all selected): Want to remove jewelry? Want to force builds that don’t have pants? Go nuts.
Map Options
Maps (default, all selected): Select which map types you want in the pool. It may be impractical to list all the individual maps, so maybe just a selection from Act I, II, III etc.
Rift Guardian (default, 1, all selected): Select which RGs you want to be available to spawn. Or remove the RG entirely. Or maybe you’re insane and want more than 1 RG to make the end of a GRift more like the Uber battles.
Pylons (default, all Pylons selected, no Shrines selected): Select which Pylons/Shrines you want to be able to spawn.
Difficulty Level Range (default, 1 – 100): Set which GRift level range the GRift starts at and maxes out at, to allow a range of difficulties, or you may just want to set it at one difficulty. Maybe you want to set the Grift at, say, level 60 and just see how fast people can complete that difficulty level.
Rift Level Range (default, 1 – 10): This is the number of map levels in the actual Rift, I believe 10 is currently the max. Maybe you want the rift to only have 1 single map level so you put the max at 1. There may be some technical difficulties here with the interaction between Mob Density meter to make one level have sufficient mobs for 100% progress, so maybe this option isn't viable.
Player Options
Paragon Points (default, unselected): Set a cap for the number of paragon points that can be allocated before entering the custom rift, to make paragon grinding not the be-all and end-all.
Stat Caps (default, none selected): Set caps for particular character stats. Leave unselected to leave uncapped, as per normal. This particular example has crit chance and crit damage capped at the inherent bases of 5 and 50, and Elemental damage capped at 0% and Attack speed capped at 1 APS. This would only affect unbuffed sheet stats from gear and passive effects, but would obviously not include dynamic/active buffs.
Classes and Team Size (default, all selected): Allows the setting of what classes and number of players could partake in the custom rift. Maybe the monk community wants to create a rift to see how monks perform on that particular rift, or maybe the Demon Hunters want to see what kind of 4-player DH groups can do against each other. Or maybe force a mixture of Monk + Crusader teams, etc.
Followers (default, 1, Multiplayer off, all other selected): Restrict access to only particular followers, or allow more than 1 follower to be used, or allow followers in multiplayer.
Creating your Custom Rift
Once you’ve chosen all your settings, now you Create the Custom Rift. First you name it, select whether it is open to public or not, and whether it is a Static Rift.
STATIC RIFTS (this is an important option, and deserves a separate discussion to itself)
A non-Static rift would simply operate as regular Rifts and Grifts currently do i.e. whenever you enter a new rift it randomizes (from the set criteria) the rift. So, even if you select only 1 map-type etc. for your Custom Rift, but do not set it as Static, it will still randomly create a rift based on that one map type and the other criteria every time someone attempts that rift. A Static Rift, however, will only create one single rift when the creator/designer of the Custom Rift initially creates the Custom Rift, and from then on all subsequent openings of that rift, by anyone, will all be exactly the same, from the map layout to the monsters’ spawn location and type, pylon location etc. Everything is identical for every player who opens that Custom Rift (excluding RG spawn location, obviously).
PROS of a Static Rift
CONS
If you’re still unconvinced by Custom Rifts, well, simple: there’s no need to play these Custom Rifts at all if you have no interest in them. You miss out on nothing by not playing them. It’s just like how some people will never play Hardcore-mode and they don’t miss out on anything by not. Which brings me to my next important point.
NO LOOT
Custom Rifts would have no loot. None at all (not even from the Rift Guardian). And no experience gained. This is partly so that people couldn’t cheese and create some easy farming rift, but more so because Custom Rifts would be purely about the fun of the competition, just like those countless other games we play because people enjoy competing against each other – that’s what drives (in part) communities. We can see this where D3 communities are already (and have been for a long time) creating their own friendly competitions/challenges in order to keep themselves entertained when there’s little else in the game for them to do, and GRift-fishing becomes too tedious. For examples see the old T6 speed-clearing competition ( http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/14609681171#1 ), the HC No Set Challenge (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/18000139876?page=1 ), the Reddit Challenge ( https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo/wiki/weeklychallenge_s1 ), and I’m sure there’s many more.
Searching for a Custom Rift
Lastly, just to touch on the some of the logistics of a potential Custom Rift system.
‘How would you search for or join a Custom Rift?’
The search system currently used for Communities could be duplicated to provide a search system for Custom Rifts. You could filter the search via words in the title or description - it would likely be too difficult to filter the search by every possible criteria that the Custom Rift could vary by, but one important criteria that should be filterable is Static or non-Static Rifts. This must be a filter option.
The search would return all the Custom Rifts that satisfy the criteria, ordered by most populated at the top, similar to the Community search feature. Clicking on a particular Custom Rift would provide a short description of the Custom Rift made by the creator, and list a few of the more prominent categories, highlighting those that are altered from the default (which you could further explore by looking at the details of the Custom Rift). Clicking Join Custom Rift will add that Custom Rift to your list of ‘My Custom Rifts’.
Entering a Custom Rift
Open a game and go to the Rift Pylon, as per usual when entering a rift. The Custom drop-down lists all of ‘My Custom Rifts’ i.e. all those Custom Rifts that I have ‘joined’, by searching for them as you would search for and join a Community. Once a specific Custom Rift is selected it checks your current gear setup against the criteria of that Custom Rift to see if they are satisfied. If no, an error message is displayed. If yes, then another drop-down for the level of Custom Rift would appear for you to select the level (as currently happens with Greater Rifts). Entering a Custom Rift does not require any kind of ‘key’ – you can enter as many times as you want for ‘free’. This is allowable because Custom Rifts don’t provide you with any loot/xp/gold/etc. and so cannot be ‘farmed’.
Leaderboards
This suggestion of Leaderboards has Custom Rifts as a separate category to Greater Rift Leaderboards. However, Greater Rift Leaderboards could potentially just be removed, if Custom Rifts become the prime place where players can compete against each other for Leaderboard positions, and Greater Rifts can just be another place to farm LGems/xp/loot etc.
As you can see in the pic there is an added drop-down list for selecting which Custom Rift Leaderboard you wish to peruse. This drop-down automatically lists the 10 most populous Custom Rifts, and then below this is the list of ‘my’ Custom Rifts that I've personally joined (if they’re not in the top 10 most populous list already). This example assumes that the separate class communities have split off into their own specific Rifts. However, that won't necessarily happen, and the D3 community as a whole may decide on one type of Custom Rift that is good for all class-types.
Thanks for taking the time to read! Any feedback/suggestions would be great. Do you think some type of Custom Rift system would be viable??
Awesome idea.
Would also be cool if we could have "themed" seasons. Sorta like Tavern Brawls or some of the LoL game modes, where a season gets a special rule set that you can do crazy stuff, but it only lasts 2-4 weeks.
Not that I am against this idea, but doesn't it sort of remove the RNG from an RNG game? I mean, as you've stated, there is no loot/xp for doing these, so unless they cap paragons, aside from competing with your buddies (which you can already do on your 'friends' leaderboard) this really doesn't do anything for character advancement. All it does is give you a cookie cut rift in order to challenge your friends, in which 'highest paragon/best class' wins. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great, but that's alot of work for no gain, not exactly blizzard's style, if ya know what I mean.
(Double Edit:) If they cap paragons, this would be an amazing addition. If they cap time played availability, this would be the worst addition.
Cool idea, but all you're doing is giving players the option of removing everything that's unfavorable, thereby standardizing the game even more than it already is. It'll take a couple days before the 'perfect grift' community is born and everyone is running the exact same thing while complaining that the game lacks diversity.
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
Why would there be a "perfect rift" if you don't gain xp/loot out of it? It actually sounds like this idea can allow players to be more creative with the way they want to compete with others. Sure, there might be popular custom rift choices or settings that will be pushed by popular streamers for various reasons but that would most likely a flavor of the month type of thing.
I personally wouldn't really enjoy this idea if it were to be implemented but i think it's pretty good and i'm sure many people will really like it if it was in game. Good job on the effort nonetheless. I think it's a pretty good idea.
Thats all he's good at anyway, useless bla bla bla video.
I love this idea, because I think it will give people something to do once they're bored of speed GRs or have given up on the leaderboards and completed all conquests, season journey, and whatever achievable goals there are for the average Joe. It reminds me of Wudijo's "rares only" GR challenge - wouldn't it be fun if you could have that as a game mode? It's very much like the Conquests, but there are so few of them per season. It would also address something that is lacking in Diablo 3 that ensures replayability for many people in other games: modding. Sure, you don't have the modding freedom of WC3/SC2 or other games, but you could think of certain exotic custom games that are so unique that it almost feels like a different game mode. Think about it - one of the most popular game genre these days (mobas) was entirely based on a player creation!
An idea like this would be a middle way - Blizzard doesn't want to allow modding in Diablo 3, but at least players would have some freedom in creating their own environment and rules.
What would promote this game mode is that after a fixed time (i.e., once per week) a ranking of the most popular custom games is published and for each of those the top times (i.e., a list of the top 3 custom games and the top 10 or 100 people for each of those).
I think there's a lot of potential in this idea!
Look a cool idea on paper.
However (i have may missed a part on the OP, feel free to correct me): why people would run the custom rifts if no XP nor loot is awarded? I agree that making them give standard rewards would just make people run the optimal rift over and over and over, but once the flavor of "let's try something fancy" vanishes, i don't see many people putting effort in both creating and especially running them.
No XP/no loot = loss of time from an efficieny point of view. It may be fun to do that once in a while, but with themnot giving character power i don't see much future in this.
Agree on that. Still to push leaderboards you need gear first and Paragon/Legendary gems later.
If these don't give the rewards, i expect the "optimal" choice to be simply ignoring them through all season and farm everything you can till last week, where people starts to push the leaderboards behind at least their current paragon.
I don't know, maybe i'm just missing something but this is how i picture it (not much different from current solo leaderboards which will be invaded by group players having more paragon and gem levels than solo players).
Hey, i'm not discarding the idea. I just tink it can be improved to a better implementation (and keeping the no loot/no xp is a must).
Ideally a system like this would completely replace GRifts for Leaderboards. Most people who are trying to push Leaderboards are sick and tired of the layer-upon-layer of RNG and the endless open-close-open-close GRift fishing.
Yes, I enjoyed Wudijo's video very much! I love the idea of an All Yellow Challenge, or a non-set challenge, but in a more organised/official environment rather than having to record your runs etc. which is often tedious/difficult and ultimately makes me not bother.
And I love the suggestion for the publishing of the most popular at the end of a week or so! That's a great idea, and solves the issues with the potential messiness of the Leaderboards that I was thinking might happen with my suggested system. Perhaps a fortnight/month would be a decent amount of time, to let a variety of theories develop on how to best complete a particular Custom Rift. They could even have different lengths of time, some for a week, some for a month - it could be Blizzard's twist on PoE's weekly races. Hmmmm.
Does anyone remember "Stunts", the 1990 PC game? It had a race track editor, and me and my friends created challenges for each other - creating a track that was impossibly hard to beat. Similar to some of the shipped tracks in later editions of "Trackmania" these days.
This would be similar - I'd create a variation of a GR 60 rift with only super tough packs of Executioners having awful affixes. Maybe on a dense map, because honestly - everyone hates Sewers. Only one Shield Pylon so you'd have to use it carefully, and you're not allowed to use any paragon points. Who could beat that - and who could beat that the fastest?
Regarding the "no XP/loot" idea - it is true that there needs to be some limitation or drawback in this system, otherwise everyone would just make GR80 "gg riffs" with Hamelin as RG and farm 1 trillion XP per hour. *That* would make D3 really boring, it would almost feel like Crypt runs ;-)
Sounds pretty amazing really, but I think there should be loot and XP involved still. One way you could balance this is to have a magic find / XP multiplier on every option. So you could make an extremely easy rift, on a good map, with high density and beat it very fast, but you would get almost no loot or xp for it due to the options that you have selected. If you add extra rift guardians, no champion packs, no pylons, low density, select only act 5 mobs, restrict legendaries, or other such options, you would get bonus XP and loot. The more difficult it is, the more bonus you get. The easier it is, the less bonus you get. Each and every check mark would change what your bonus is.
Now say you want to get similar loot to a GR50, but you only want act 1 mobs. Well Act one mobs give you minus bonus, so maybe you want to select bad maps to compensate. Or maybe you just run on a higher difficulty level, or maybe you could even ban belts if you don't really need one for you build. There would be so many options available to customize your setup it would be amazing.
I would love for something like this to be implemented, but I seriously doubt they will take it this far. I just really hope that blizzard makes the static rift of the week or something that allows everyone to compete on the same rift.
Add a paragon option as well like max 800 and no paragon etc...
Yes, I think it's critical for it working that it must have no 'rewards' beyond the intrinsic rewards of the fun in competing with friends and other members of the community, and in creating interesting rifts.
That's an interesting idea, and one I'd be happy with seeing implemented as well. In fact I imagine that idea is probably more likely to happen than any Custom Rift idea, in that the Devs probably have plans for making Kanai's Cube do something related to customising rifts.
Under 'Player Options', it's the first option
But you're right, it is one of the most important options, IMO, and I hope at the very least they simply place a limit on Paragon Points that can be used in Greater Rifts next season.I agree with no xp or loot rewards but what generalized customization rewards? Say some cool portrait frame or pennant etc for doing custom rifts? Maybe the community could vote on the rewards for a season or even design the customization and then vote. That would be cool.
I missed on my once over thanks for pointing it out. All the skimming one is bound to miss something.
Its clear you put a lot of thought into this and I am not trying to be a jerk but this is probably the worst idea I've seen. I get the concept of trying to add more features to the game to maybe keep people interested in playing but all these options to make custom challenge mode rifts with no reward. Whats the point in doing them then? I guess the way of the industry today has really warped my thinking of games. Today theres no point in playing a game just for the sake of fun. We play for gains, gear, currency, etc. I imagine the people who play for the leader boards are an extreme minority.
Hell I hate all mobas with the exception of heroes of the storm because in HOTS you are farming gold to unlock new characters. Once I have unlocked them all I will continue to play and farm gold to unlock the new heroes when they are released but if the releases slow down then I will probably stop playing altogether.
You are suggestion an indepth idea that would require a lot of coding and the extreme minority of players would even be remotely interested because there is no reward to playing this mode. Thats a lot of work for blizzard to do for little reward. They are making changes to try and bring people back to the game and keep people playing. Not adding a complex feature that a handful of players might use.
Custom Rifts idea is more on the side of game design than game playing. If the problem is you want more control over spawns and environments, the ability to "customize" your rifts, then maybe the Kube would be a better idea.
What if you could put in certain items like any recipe and generate your own unique rifts. Path of Exile has a feature like that. We can already spawn a portal to goblintown, what if you could spawn a portal into a dungeon of Kurast that had some special modifiers? Like Random Boss Encounters or Elites Only? What about a dungeon where you have to get an artifact at the end and then high tail it back to the entrance? Certain "static rifts" could have a competitiveness to it that you don't get with greater rifts. Finishing within time should not be the only metric by which characters are judged.
I think there should simply be more variety of rift types, objectives to win added. For example instead of just a timer bar and progress in a static way with a boss then done, have a mode that you gotta seek out and kill so many of different types of mobs, or collect x thing and survive while carrying it back to point A.
Kinda combine rifts with bounties, more objective based rifts where you can compete with others still and have fun challenging yourself, with different rewards for different things. Like maybe one can be a crafting rift, where you have to deliver stuff to a npc, and you gotta make it through without dying each time you die you lose points or items if you make it through you get more rewards.
Also before rifts were added i always wanted an endless mode a true endless dungeon...a rift that you completed each floor, and it gets slightly harder each floor, instead of selecting a difficulty, going in and doing it, then exiting and doing it again allow 1 rift where you just keep going down and down and the goal is to see how far down you can go before dying or timer and endless dungeon competition. Some floors are freebies, with gold/vendors on them, randomly. Like that Fate game series (and torchlight)
I think the billions of gamers world-wide who play 'real-life' sports and esports and many other games purely for the fun of competing with each other would have to disagree. "gear, currency, etc." are not fun in themselves; they're merely a means to having fun. As is competition.
This is possibly true, but also very possibly not. Almost all of the functionality suggested in this idea already has to exist in the game (there's clearly switches for turning on-and-off Pylons/Shrines/Gold/etc. as Grifts and Rifts differ in these options). All they would have to do is create a GUI for these switches. Is it a large amount of work? Well, probably, but so is adding anything to the game, which is something they clearly have to do to keep people playing.
Yes, these are both interesting ideas that would be cool to see in the game.