First of all, it was great having so much feedback in my first Orb of Nightmares post. Thank you all who read and commented about it, as well as the admins who put it in front page. Actually, is because this that I’m writing this second part of the article. Again, sorry for my typo.
I read many people saying that a buff as a reward is not enough. Probably I was thinking about these ubers as D3 vanilla ubers are: a bit more difficult, but not really challenging. Now that we will have more difficulties and more adventure options, I think we can suggest more difficult and challenging battles, so let’s think about a reward that is worth to get at least once.
One detail I think would be interesting to talk about is the possibility of creating a system that improves only the character you are playing, and not all account characters. This is meant to give some kind of individual progress (now that paragon levels are shared).
So, some possible rewards I’ve been thinking about:
Legendary Pot Essences
Given that legendary potions are introduced with unlimited uses, it would be cool having an option of improving one. By now, a legendary pot recovers 60% of your maximum HP and gives you some extra buff as breaking waller’s walls, for example. What about recovering a percentage of your resource pool as well?
The idea would be that defeating an uber gives you a number of essences. These essences give you the possibility of improving the pot you’re using so it gives you some points of fury, spirit, etc. The resource depends on the essence you use to improve the pot, so we have 6 different essences:
Spiritual Essence (Monk): the potion also gives you X% spirit points when used. Same with: Furious Essence (Barbarian), Wrathful Essence (Crusader), Balanced Essence (Demon Hunter), Arcane Essence (Mage), Tribal Essence (Witch Doctor).
Defeating an uber with a Monk gives you some Spiritual Essences and same with all classes. This means you have to defeat ubers with the class whose potion you want to improve to get the correct essences. This way, you can’t farm all essences with your main character.
How much resource does the pot recovers after the improvement? Well, it depends on the quantity of essences. The more essences you use to improve your pot, the better the pot gets. Each essence gives the pot +1% resource recovery, until a maximum of 50%. So:
Defeating an uber in Torment I difficulty gives you 1 essence.
Torment II: 2 essences.
Torment III: 3 essences.
Torment IV: 5 essences.
Torment V: 7 essences.
Torment VI: 10 essences.
With this kind of reward, you would have the chance of improving a legendary potion to refine your build. Essences can be taken as a crafting material for the Mystic, for example, and should not drop from other places. As well, different affixes could be designed for pots, so the complexity of your build would be based in more factors.
This idea can be developed much deeper, creating a way of obtaining a crafting material you can use to craft unique items or improving existing ones. As I usually say, every idea would be welcome!
Paragon Points
A new way of improving a character is through Paragon Points. They already gave you stats to make your farming sessions more productive, but the 2.0 version of them offers new ways and more liberty to improve a character in new ways. Thing is that once you get a Paragon Point, all your characters can use it, so there is a loss of individual progression when playing an specific character.
So, why not creating an small pool of Paragon Points specific for a certain character? It would be much smaller than the common pool, but it would be great anyway making that difference.
How can you get them? Defeating ubers. Defeat every uber in certain difficulty, and you’ll get a fixed number of points for that character (obviously, only once). The higher the difficulty is, the more Paragon Points you get when defeating every uber. Let’s say:
Torment I: you get 2 Paragon Points for each category (total of 8).
Torment II: you get 4 Paragon Points for each category (total of 16).
Torment III: you get 6 Paragon Points for each category (total of 24).
Torment IV: you get 8 Paragon Points for each category (total of 32).
Torment V: you get 10 Paragon Points for each category (total of 40).
Torment VI: you get 12 Paragon Points for each category (total of 48).
Maybe 48 Paragon Points look like many points, but remember, we are talking about really hard combats. Defeating every uber in Torment VI should be a great challenge.
Given that you only receive this bonus the first time you defeat every uber in certain difficulty, ubers should give you something more (Horadric Cache?). The cool thing is that you can’t get those points in any other way, so you can’t farm them with your main character for all the rest. You want to get 48 extra Paragon Points for certain character? You’ll have to improve that character until it’s strong enough to fight every Torment VI uber.
Skill Specialization
A bit more abstract idea that some people have already theorized about: the possibility of improving certain skill under a condition, so your build improves as long as you don’t change it. I’m not sure how could this idea be developed. A way could be giving you an extra % of damage when you defeat every uber without changing any skill. Proving you can finish every fight with an only build would make that build stronger.
A problem I see in this option is that it would make people search for the perfect build even faster, reducing again the variety of builds people normally play. The good part of this would be that defeating every uber with a non-common build would give you an extra sense of achievement, making it possible to improve existing builds that are not the best.
How would this specialization be reflected? Maybe as a state that boosts every damage, maybe as a permanent improvement for only one skill, maybe with an utility (auto pick-up gold, gems gives you more bonuses, nephalem cube, etc.).
I know I could be more specific about this, but I think there are so many things you could do here that I prefer to put some possibilities over the table and invite you to talk about.
To sum up
This thread tries to complete the first one in which I proposed the whole system.
The first proposed reward are exclusive crafting materials to improve legendary potions.
The second proposed reward are character-exclusive paragon points.
The third proposed reward is an specialization for the build you used to defeat the ubers.
Your comments in my previous thread gave me motivation to keep writting. Thank you all, I hope I'll read more comments so I can keep improving this funny idea!
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First of all, it was great having so much feedback in my first Orb of Nightmares post. Thank you all who read and commented about it, as well as the admins who put it in front page. Actually, is because this that I’m writing this second part of the article. Again, sorry for my typo.
I read many people saying that a buff as a reward is not enough. Probably I was thinking about these ubers as D3 vanilla ubers are: a bit more difficult, but not really challenging. Now that we will have more difficulties and more adventure options, I think we can suggest more difficult and challenging battles, so let’s think about a reward that is worth to get at least once.
One detail I think would be interesting to talk about is the possibility of creating a system that improves only the character you are playing, and not all account characters. This is meant to give some kind of individual progress (now that paragon levels are shared).
So, some possible rewards I’ve been thinking about:
Legendary Pot Essences
Given that legendary potions are introduced with unlimited uses, it would be cool having an option of improving one. By now, a legendary pot recovers 60% of your maximum HP and gives you some extra buff as breaking waller’s walls, for example. What about recovering a percentage of your resource pool as well?
The idea would be that defeating an uber gives you a number of essences. These essences give you the possibility of improving the pot you’re using so it gives you some points of fury, spirit, etc. The resource depends on the essence you use to improve the pot, so we have 6 different essences:
Spiritual Essence (Monk): the potion also gives you X% spirit points when used. Same with: Furious Essence (Barbarian), Wrathful Essence (Crusader), Balanced Essence (Demon Hunter), Arcane Essence (Mage), Tribal Essence (Witch Doctor).
Defeating an uber with a Monk gives you some Spiritual Essences and same with all classes. This means you have to defeat ubers with the class whose potion you want to improve to get the correct essences. This way, you can’t farm all essences with your main character.
How much resource does the pot recovers after the improvement? Well, it depends on the quantity of essences. The more essences you use to improve your pot, the better the pot gets. Each essence gives the pot +1% resource recovery, until a maximum of 50%. So:
With this kind of reward, you would have the chance of improving a legendary potion to refine your build. Essences can be taken as a crafting material for the Mystic, for example, and should not drop from other places. As well, different affixes could be designed for pots, so the complexity of your build would be based in more factors.
This idea can be developed much deeper, creating a way of obtaining a crafting material you can use to craft unique items or improving existing ones. As I usually say, every idea would be welcome!
Paragon Points
A new way of improving a character is through Paragon Points. They already gave you stats to make your farming sessions more productive, but the 2.0 version of them offers new ways and more liberty to improve a character in new ways. Thing is that once you get a Paragon Point, all your characters can use it, so there is a loss of individual progression when playing an specific character.
So, why not creating an small pool of Paragon Points specific for a certain character? It would be much smaller than the common pool, but it would be great anyway making that difference.
How can you get them? Defeating ubers. Defeat every uber in certain difficulty, and you’ll get a fixed number of points for that character (obviously, only once). The higher the difficulty is, the more Paragon Points you get when defeating every uber. Let’s say:
Maybe 48 Paragon Points look like many points, but remember, we are talking about really hard combats. Defeating every uber in Torment VI should be a great challenge.
Given that you only receive this bonus the first time you defeat every uber in certain difficulty, ubers should give you something more (Horadric Cache?). The cool thing is that you can’t get those points in any other way, so you can’t farm them with your main character for all the rest. You want to get 48 extra Paragon Points for certain character? You’ll have to improve that character until it’s strong enough to fight every Torment VI uber.
Skill Specialization
A bit more abstract idea that some people have already theorized about: the possibility of improving certain skill under a condition, so your build improves as long as you don’t change it. I’m not sure how could this idea be developed. A way could be giving you an extra % of damage when you defeat every uber without changing any skill. Proving you can finish every fight with an only build would make that build stronger.
A problem I see in this option is that it would make people search for the perfect build even faster, reducing again the variety of builds people normally play. The good part of this would be that defeating every uber with a non-common build would give you an extra sense of achievement, making it possible to improve existing builds that are not the best.
How would this specialization be reflected? Maybe as a state that boosts every damage, maybe as a permanent improvement for only one skill, maybe with an utility (auto pick-up gold, gems gives you more bonuses, nephalem cube, etc.).
I know I could be more specific about this, but I think there are so many things you could do here that I prefer to put some possibilities over the table and invite you to talk about.
To sum up