There's been quite a bit of discussion here and at the bnet forums about the pros and cons of the RIF system. I don't see these types of runs as that dissimilar to old school Baal exp runs in D2.
This is a touchy subject with a lot of people, so let me say off the bat I in no way advocate nerfing the system of RIF for people who want to use it as a targeted way to effectively play the game just by gambling.
There are pros and cons to this type of system, the pros being an (and the only) easy and accessible way to quickly upgrade a particular slot of your gear.
I enjoy RIF as an occasional play style, specifically if I am not as interested in just seeing what type of items the slot machine pumps out and instead I just really want a specific item quickly. However, I think overall the discrepancy between being a rift runner and leecher is a bit too high in favor of leeching at the moment. I don't think this should be addressed by nerfing the leeching component, I think it should be addressed by buffing the runner component.
When I am a rift runner, I typically clear T6 rifts. There are benefits to actually running the dungeon, in that you find all sorts of gear while doing so - this is slightly counterbalanced by the fact that rift leechers also tend to find quite a few legendaries off the boss kills as well. You also gain experience and paragon levels while running the rifts, but arguably when people can hop in to multiple T4-T6 rifts at the end boss and receive the 40-60mil experience reward multiple times during the 9-12 minutes it takes me to clear a T6 rift they can actually get equal if not better xp/hr leeching compared to running. I do not have a good solution for this that makes both sides of the argument happy so I won't be focusing on the experience aspect of runner vs. leecher in this thread.
I would suggest a system that awards players for actually progressing through the rifts themselves. For example, when the red bar hits 10%, 20%, etc it flashes to indicate progress. Potentially when this happens, a very mild buff that increases blood shard generation from the boss by 5% and experience gained by 1% be applied every time. This would help balance the fact that running the rifts is not nearly as efficient as leeching from them.
RIF could actually be built in to the game engine itself, so when you choose to play it offers you an automated system of finding RIF groups, checks your shard count if you join as a leecher, and automatically forces you to reopen so people cannot leave.
Regarding rift content, I think some work can be done to improve upon the actual experience. Having the exact same goal of "fill up the red bar" over and over is a bit mundane to say the least. Having a few different types of goals I think would greatly help increase the monotony of this. For example, have an ancient sword / shield / breastplate randomly drop from mobs throughout the rift as you clear them and tune it so that the average kills to acquire these items were about the same as filling up the red bar. Once all 3 items are acquired you combine them to spawn the boss.
Another idea would be similar to the goblin packs (which are awesome), have pre-determined sets of "mob armies" spawn randomly throughout rifts. One example would be an army with lines of wretched mothers with the front line having smaller versions and like 20 of them, and 5-6 lines of them with less, but bigger and harder wretched mothers in the back of the army.
Another idea would be having mini-bosses that spawn (with no indicator as to how to spawn them so they would not be exploited) as to prior to the rift guardian spawn and a certain number of miniboss kills would spawn the guardian. These are just ideas I thought up off the top of my head, trying to come up with ones that would not be commonly exploited compared to something like "seek out these 3 switches and hit them to spawn the rift guardian" which would cause people to just sprint straight through to them.
Regarding playing through the plot, I very much like of the idea that every time you reset quests the final boss will guarantee a legendary. I think this should be expanded to all bosses in all acts and that they should drop enough legendaries to make it a viable option for playing and gear/hr. I believe even if all bosses in the plot drop 1 legendary it still won't even be equal to spending the same amount of time in rifts instead. Obviously Blizzard is the one who probably has the most accurate numbers on average leg/hr doing whatever play mode so I think adding enough guaranteed legendaries to act bosses to at least make it an option worth considering would help in ensuring no particular game style dominants the field. Giving us more options as players is always a good thing in my opinion.
With the Hellfire ring, my suggestion would be to change all existing RROG to Hellfire's and allow future Hellfire rings to roll with the same stat. This would eliminate the issue of redundant items with the same stat. I also think key/organ drop rates need to progress up to 100% at T6. The new hellfire system has obviously been a huge failure, and couple this with the fact that people have to do large amounts of split bounties to gain RROGs I think you could kill two birds with one stone with this method. I used to very much enjoy farming MP10 keys / organs and crafting rings but now if its not RROG / SOJ / Unity it is pretty much not used.
Halycon amulet- ok its cute, people are fans of that artist and its a cool tribute. Its stats are garbage (I have a perfect one and its still garbage) and it has a high drop chance out of the amulet pool: If I'm supposed to be excited when I see a legendary drop, it certainly is never the case when I see the mouse shaped amulet.
Other items that have static stats that guarantee they will never be used ever: Blackthorne's amulet also comes to mind here, what's the point of this in the game, it drastically limits choices?
Blackthorne's: This is actually a descent starter set, but I get SOO excited when I see a set chest/legs etc drop only to find out its like my 1000th Blackthorne's piece. I think Torment only sets should have a new color associated with them so the game stops trolling us all with Blackthorne's.
Higher Torment Bounties: These seem worthless, my wife and I do 5-6 T5 bounties daily and I do not see a drastic benefit over T2...or even normal. I think drop rates across the board for higher torment bounties, specifically 4-6, need to be buffed to account for the fact that people run split bounties on lower tiers but cannot effectively split at higher torment levels. Should being able to farm something in the way the game was originally intended and at the hardest difficulty actually hinder you? It's not like actually finding the RROG is the end of the search: it rolls with main stat/AS/life on hit so it only has one variable stat. I'm on my 10th RROG, and farming thousands of split bounties because its the most efficient way to find this ring is a bit tiresome.
Lastly, solo play. I remember when the game released how it was completely pointless to play with other people. Blizzard did an amazing job of fixing this problem, but I think they went way too far. I love grouping with others, but I also love playing solo. I don't feel like MFing solo is even remotely as efficient as group play, which I think is a bit unfair to anyone anytime they do want to play solo. Sometimes, you want to be able to pause the game at will and play the game on your own pace (typically the groups I run T6 with run !@#$%^- fast and its practically a sprint to the finish line, then a reset and go again). If you look at say group play to solo play, the mobs only have 150% more HP so 2.5x total even though there are 4 players, player abilities synergize universally making killing a ton faster, and you gain 30% more drops form the party buff. While great, this is over killed to the point where you've effectively removed solo play as a viable way of obtaining gear at near the same level.
A long time ago, and many times since then, Blizzard has stated that it wants the players of this game to have plenty of options as to how they want to play the game. Well don't nerf anything, bring the efficacy of the underrepresented play styles (solo play, playing through the plot, higher torment bounties, running rifts compared to leeching them) up to the level where they are at lease somewhat competitive with the alternative "efficient" options. I'm not saying make them all equal, but at least closer.
All in all, I'm really happy with the direction the game has gone in since 2.0 and ROS went live, and I hope the game continues to improve.
you don't have to open your Rifts to anyone. The whole RIF is a voluntary system. Nothing is broke. Anyone who want to sit around and wait to hopefully get invited to a game is....put your adjective here. I perfer to play the game, some perfer to sit and wait. no buff's need done no nerfs need to be done.
I do enjoy the game, and I play most of the play styles mentioned. I don't think that point is mutually exclusive to wanting a more balanced reward structure while choosing different styles of play!
These just my opinions on how to improve what I already consider an awesome game that I play on a daily basis. I wrote this because I consider the ideas I presented as possible options to improve the game and at least create a dialog about these ideas. If people don't like some, or all, of them, that's fine, but I've spent a ton of my life since ROS has been released playing this game and I felt the areas I discussed were ways it could be improved.
Reasonable analogy between Baal runs and RIF (both boring as hell, both most efficient way to play).
But the big problem with Baal runs in D2, iirc, was that they were literally the only way to gain levels once you got really close to 99, weren't they?
At least playing D3 in alternate ways only gives you less efficiency, not zero efficiency. So I feel comfortable never doing the RIF grind.
I think there's a perception that RiF is the new Baal run, but that's actually far from the truth. Like MP vs. SP, there are various ways to play, and they have various levels of efficiency, but none of them are so inefficient that it completely kills the enjoyment. Except for Story Mode. That shit's busted, yo.
This is a touchy subject with a lot of people, so let me say off the bat I in no way advocate nerfing the system of RIF for people who want to use it as a targeted way to effectively play the game just by gambling.
There are pros and cons to this type of system, the pros being an (and the only) easy and accessible way to quickly upgrade a particular slot of your gear.
I enjoy RIF as an occasional play style, specifically if I am not as interested in just seeing what type of items the slot machine pumps out and instead I just really want a specific item quickly. However, I think overall the discrepancy between being a rift runner and leecher is a bit too high in favor of leeching at the moment. I don't think this should be addressed by nerfing the leeching component, I think it should be addressed by buffing the runner component.
When I am a rift runner, I typically clear T6 rifts. There are benefits to actually running the dungeon, in that you find all sorts of gear while doing so - this is slightly counterbalanced by the fact that rift leechers also tend to find quite a few legendaries off the boss kills as well. You also gain experience and paragon levels while running the rifts, but arguably when people can hop in to multiple T4-T6 rifts at the end boss and receive the 40-60mil experience reward multiple times during the 9-12 minutes it takes me to clear a T6 rift they can actually get equal if not better xp/hr leeching compared to running. I do not have a good solution for this that makes both sides of the argument happy so I won't be focusing on the experience aspect of runner vs. leecher in this thread.
I would suggest a system that awards players for actually progressing through the rifts themselves. For example, when the red bar hits 10%, 20%, etc it flashes to indicate progress. Potentially when this happens, a very mild buff that increases blood shard generation from the boss by 5% and experience gained by 1% be applied every time. This would help balance the fact that running the rifts is not nearly as efficient as leeching from them.
RIF could actually be built in to the game engine itself, so when you choose to play it offers you an automated system of finding RIF groups, checks your shard count if you join as a leecher, and automatically forces you to reopen so people cannot leave.
Regarding rift content, I think some work can be done to improve upon the actual experience. Having the exact same goal of "fill up the red bar" over and over is a bit mundane to say the least. Having a few different types of goals I think would greatly help increase the monotony of this. For example, have an ancient sword / shield / breastplate randomly drop from mobs throughout the rift as you clear them and tune it so that the average kills to acquire these items were about the same as filling up the red bar. Once all 3 items are acquired you combine them to spawn the boss.
Another idea would be similar to the goblin packs (which are awesome), have pre-determined sets of "mob armies" spawn randomly throughout rifts. One example would be an army with lines of wretched mothers with the front line having smaller versions and like 20 of them, and 5-6 lines of them with less, but bigger and harder wretched mothers in the back of the army.
Another idea would be having mini-bosses that spawn (with no indicator as to how to spawn them so they would not be exploited) as to prior to the rift guardian spawn and a certain number of miniboss kills would spawn the guardian. These are just ideas I thought up off the top of my head, trying to come up with ones that would not be commonly exploited compared to something like "seek out these 3 switches and hit them to spawn the rift guardian" which would cause people to just sprint straight through to them.
Regarding playing through the plot, I very much like of the idea that every time you reset quests the final boss will guarantee a legendary. I think this should be expanded to all bosses in all acts and that they should drop enough legendaries to make it a viable option for playing and gear/hr. I believe even if all bosses in the plot drop 1 legendary it still won't even be equal to spending the same amount of time in rifts instead. Obviously Blizzard is the one who probably has the most accurate numbers on average leg/hr doing whatever play mode so I think adding enough guaranteed legendaries to act bosses to at least make it an option worth considering would help in ensuring no particular game style dominants the field. Giving us more options as players is always a good thing in my opinion.
With the Hellfire ring, my suggestion would be to change all existing RROG to Hellfire's and allow future Hellfire rings to roll with the same stat. This would eliminate the issue of redundant items with the same stat. I also think key/organ drop rates need to progress up to 100% at T6. The new hellfire system has obviously been a huge failure, and couple this with the fact that people have to do large amounts of split bounties to gain RROGs I think you could kill two birds with one stone with this method. I used to very much enjoy farming MP10 keys / organs and crafting rings but now if its not RROG / SOJ / Unity it is pretty much not used.
Halycon amulet- ok its cute, people are fans of that artist and its a cool tribute. Its stats are garbage (I have a perfect one and its still garbage) and it has a high drop chance out of the amulet pool: If I'm supposed to be excited when I see a legendary drop, it certainly is never the case when I see the mouse shaped amulet.
Other items that have static stats that guarantee they will never be used ever: Blackthorne's amulet also comes to mind here, what's the point of this in the game, it drastically limits choices?
Blackthorne's: This is actually a descent starter set, but I get SOO excited when I see a set chest/legs etc drop only to find out its like my 1000th Blackthorne's piece. I think Torment only sets should have a new color associated with them so the game stops trolling us all with Blackthorne's.
Higher Torment Bounties: These seem worthless, my wife and I do 5-6 T5 bounties daily and I do not see a drastic benefit over T2...or even normal. I think drop rates across the board for higher torment bounties, specifically 4-6, need to be buffed to account for the fact that people run split bounties on lower tiers but cannot effectively split at higher torment levels. Should being able to farm something in the way the game was originally intended and at the hardest difficulty actually hinder you? It's not like actually finding the RROG is the end of the search: it rolls with main stat/AS/life on hit so it only has one variable stat. I'm on my 10th RROG, and farming thousands of split bounties because its the most efficient way to find this ring is a bit tiresome.
Lastly, solo play. I remember when the game released how it was completely pointless to play with other people. Blizzard did an amazing job of fixing this problem, but I think they went way too far. I love grouping with others, but I also love playing solo. I don't feel like MFing solo is even remotely as efficient as group play, which I think is a bit unfair to anyone anytime they do want to play solo. Sometimes, you want to be able to pause the game at will and play the game on your own pace (typically the groups I run T6 with run !@#$%^- fast and its practically a sprint to the finish line, then a reset and go again). If you look at say group play to solo play, the mobs only have 150% more HP so 2.5x total even though there are 4 players, player abilities synergize universally making killing a ton faster, and you gain 30% more drops form the party buff. While great, this is over killed to the point where you've effectively removed solo play as a viable way of obtaining gear at near the same level.
A long time ago, and many times since then, Blizzard has stated that it wants the players of this game to have plenty of options as to how they want to play the game. Well don't nerf anything, bring the efficacy of the underrepresented play styles (solo play, playing through the plot, higher torment bounties, running rifts compared to leeching them) up to the level where they are at lease somewhat competitive with the alternative "efficient" options. I'm not saying make them all equal, but at least closer.
All in all, I'm really happy with the direction the game has gone in since 2.0 and ROS went live, and I hope the game continues to improve.
These just my opinions on how to improve what I already consider an awesome game that I play on a daily basis. I wrote this because I consider the ideas I presented as possible options to improve the game and at least create a dialog about these ideas. If people don't like some, or all, of them, that's fine, but I've spent a ton of my life since ROS has been released playing this game and I felt the areas I discussed were ways it could be improved.
But the big problem with Baal runs in D2, iirc, was that they were literally the only way to gain levels once you got really close to 99, weren't they?
At least playing D3 in alternate ways only gives you less efficiency, not zero efficiency. So I feel comfortable never doing the RIF grind.