Hey guys, today I want to discuss why I feel leaderboard positions are mostly luck. While this is only news to some, I felt compelled to demonstrate this in action when I opened up my luckiest greater rift to date ... at tier 35 (I was speed farming to level up some gems). Needless to say I was a little mad considering this would have been an easy 40-42 solo clear which would have put me on leaderboards.
In this video I stomp the ez mode rift and talk about luck vs. gear vs. skill, things I believe Blizzard will change, and why it's somewhat pointless to 'grind to the top' unless you're prepared to go RNG fishing. Enjoy!
A great illustration of the most glaring issue with the GR process, an implementation proposed to us as competition, yet rife with numerous RnG based issues that make luck more and more paramount the higher you go. Great video as always, MHG.
The wrong idea would be for them to simply scale down "Credit" for zombies/skeletons. Frankly, impromptu zombie apocalypses are pretty damn fun, and I don't think they should do anything to take away from that. They need to adjust tougher monsters to compare with these zombie Grifts, not nerf our beloved walking dead to a point where they're seen as simply being a roadblock.
They need to seriously up the credit given for felling the more tanky enemies who use inherent abilities such as stun, knockback, teleport, thunderstorm, charge etc.....specifically many Act IV and V enemies. Also needed is a more consistent density no matter what the tiers enemy types are.
I would like to see difficulty scaling done not just by bumping the numbers to insane levels as you progress, but also adding more elites and adjusting the progress slider accordingly. The challenge of higher tiers shouldn't just come from exaggerated numbers. Difficulty should also come from waves of randomly generated elite packs engaging you simultaneously.
Crusaders are bypassing much of the sparsity issues by simply hoping on that goddamn obnoxious horse and trotting from one elite pack to the next, wholly ignoring the all-too-sparse spattering of white enemies in between. This is a serious issue in group play, as many crusaders seemingly have no compunction about leaving others in the dust to sally forth through white mobs, often getting stuck and having to fight them, as opposed to simply blowing by them.
There is a flawed aspect of a foot race in GR's, and when the idea of an "endless dungeon" was first being talked about over a year ago, a Diablo version of Mario Cart is certainly not what I had in mind. We should be challenged in combat, not by way of footspeed.
Other issues that are RnG related but still have an affect on top leaderboard players are present and exclusive to density issues, and we would be remiss to not have these issues fixed as well. Seconds make minutes just like pennies make dollars. Therefor, any unnecessary issues with the general design of Grifts should be identified and either removed or retooled.
1) Progress orbs. WHY? I suppose this is some developer trick to make you feel like you're being rewarded with *something dropping, but the whole concept of these purple bastards goes against Blizz's mission statement concerning Grifts. We're not supposed to stop to pick up anything, but here we are, picking up progress orbs. Why are there 3 of them? Why is there even 1 of them? Why not just add the progress and forego the bullshit? Why do they disperse unevenly, often far apart (as much as 40 yards) and concentrically opposed.
Often players have to wait for molten/arcane/waller to clear before picking them up. We have to run backward and play a pacman-esque game of pick 'em up. Sometimes they even get missed, as they can hide in corners out of view.
2) Grift Guardian Spawn location. Now this....this grinds my fuckin' gears. MHG gave a great illustration of the density issue, here's an illustration of another issue that could single handedly kill a shot at placing on the boards;
That should NEVER happen. Granted that was only a t28 Grift. But then again, I was only doing a t28 because the monk really blows ass in trials, consistently garnering keys well below my ideal Grift starting point. As well, this was a horribly sparse Grift to boot. So beyond the leaderboard competition aspect, these issues affect people that just want to play Grifts solo for fun. The grift pictured above was a trifecta of frustration that had nothing to do with a desire for top placement. I got screwed by the trial, I got screwed by the (lack of) density. I got lastly screwed by the RG spawn.
So there it is. A series of issues tearing the heart out of what is actually a great endgame idea, one poorly implemented.
1) Remove trials
2) Adjust "credit" for varying monster types accordingly.
3) Adjust density consistency.
4) Present challenges beyond bumping numbers. More multiple encounters with multiple elites, making the threat of death more of a threat to your time.
I agree with pretty much everything you just said. To add to it a bit:
1) Trial system should indeed be removed. It's a more complex programming task, but IMO you should be able to select a rift (or lower) of your choosing, with the highest being a calculation of your average X number of best solo/group clears, with various weights being assigned based on some formula, similar to how SC2 rankings work. This is quite difficult to get right, but I think it's the right move.
2) Yup, more difficult mobs (anarchs, corrupted angels) should have more weight than zombies ...
3) Density needs to be more normalized. Very frustrating to spend 20 seconds entering a room with NOTHING there ... at all. Density needs to be a BIT more consistent, though not so consistent that you can predict exact travel time, otherwise you open up room for botting.
4) Not sure how to add this in. Cool idea, but could be a balancing nightmare.
5) I agree, progress orbs need to be removed. It's just a nuisance.
6) Doesn't have to be on TOP of the player, but I would say within the same screen.
Also, I think pylons, shrines, and chests should all be removed from grifts. They just don't belong there. No one wears harrington's in grifts (very few maps have chests), and conduits are the reason barbs are 'ok' in blizzard's eyes, when really they're not: Raekors OP in AOE, tickle single target. Big problem.
I agree with pretty much everything you just said. To add to it a bit:
1) Trial system should indeed be removed. It's a more complex programming task, but IMO you should be able to select a rift (or lower) of your choosing, with the highest being a calculation of your average X number of best solo/group clears, with various weights being assigned based on some formula, similar to how SC2 rankings work. This is quite difficult to get right, but I think it's the right move.
Good post, I agree with all the other points.
1) If a player only played solo, a weighted calculation would most likely lower his maximum possible rift level. For solo it should be max cleared level +1, so after clearing 38 you should be able to push 39 without having to clear 38 again. As for groups, a more complicated formula could indeed be needed.
No. Solo it should be your best clear. That's obvious. It's in a group when things get murky. It should probably just be the average of the parties best clear minus -1.
I agree with pretty much everything you just said. To add to it a bit:
1) Trial system should indeed be removed. It's a more complex programming task, but IMO you should be able to select a rift (or lower) of your choosing, with the highest being a calculation of your average X number of best solo/group clears, with various weights being assigned based on some formula, similar to how SC2 rankings work. This is quite difficult to get right, but I think it's the right move.
3) Density needs to be more normalized. Very frustrating to spend 20 seconds entering a room with NOTHING there ... at all. Density needs to be a BIT more consistent, though not so consistent that you can predict exact travel time, otherwise you open up room for botting.
Good post, I agree with all the other points.
1) If a player only played solo, a weighted calculation would most likely lower his maximum possible rift level. For solo it should be max cleared level +1, so after clearing 38 you should be able to push 39 without having to clear 38 again. As for groups, a more complicated formula could indeed be needed.
3b) Adjust map consistency. GRifts can never be comparable if one player gets a chain of tiny maps like Hell Rift with regular checkpoints and the next one gets this (notice the insanely long dead end - next floor is at the top right, and that this was the only floor for ~ 85% progress). If we get those huge levels, there should be extra checkpoints every few screens (around 5) and absolutely no dead ends that you can't identify as such without running into them for 30 seconds or more.
Good call. I forgot to mention this issue.
One idea to resolve this may be done by providing players with more than one exit to the next floor. I've run into the issue you pictured above a few times, and when it occurs on the first floor, not too big of a deal, as you can TP back to town and re-enter. Still this destroys continuity in a run, and wastes precious time.
IMO, movement speed and speed-skills shouldn't be so heavily utilized toward Grift success, as this is a clear example where a Crus (for example) would have an advantage due to the prevalence of the Steed Charge skill.
The Keep tilesets are another map where players can find themselves FAR on the opposite edge as the entrance to the next tier. I can't really think of a better solution than to have multiple entrances on convoluted maps.
No. Solo it should be your best clear. That's obvious. It's in a group when things get murky. It should probably just be the average of the parties best clear minus -1.
I say just allow the player with the highest clear to be able to open +1 from the highest successful clear they've participated in. This could be determined based on the number of players in the game in conjunction with the players highest clear for the same amount of players. The game already tracks your best effort for 1, 2, 3, and 4 player games respectively.
If your highest clear in a 2 player game is 25, then you can open up to a 26 while in a 2 player game. If your highest 4 player clear is 34, then you can open a 35 in a 4 player game ....and so on. I'm sure there may be issues with this idea, which is the point of us having this discussion.
For the removal of the trials, I'm ok with that, as long as you have to start lower than your highest clear (if you completed 40, you start at 38 for example). Since there will always be some kind of rng, starting at completed+1 as some suggest here, would make it even easier to fish for those perfect rifts.
For the progression orbs, I think it was a good idea that only got implemented partly. From what I can see, it would be a way to progress faster in the lower rifts. The faster you kill an elite, the more orbs, with no orbs if it takes 9 or more seconds (1% of the time, if I read correct that elites give 1% progression) to kill the pack. Oneshotting elites shows you can handle way higher level, and you got time to pick them up, while there is no issue in higher levels as they don't drop anymore. Seeing how a lot of things in the game are like this (elemental damage doesn't really do anything, only cold does, there were plans to give each type a proc), I kinda think this was the idea but it got dropped somewhere.
Progress orbs should indeed be removed. Killing an elite pack should be progress in itself.
Yellow packs should be viewed as something welcome, not something to be skipped. I've read on arguments stating that "yellows are inefficient, so just skip or bring them along".
Map generation, while including some degree of randomness, should not be counter-intuitive. A player should know where the exit (or exits--the multiple exit idea is pretty sweet) is.
Simple number bumping creates bigger problems down the line. As RG HP numbers increase, the amount of time needed to kill it evidently increases. However, the time limit does not. As the amount of time needed to kill the RG increases, the player is left with less time to accumulate progress. Sometimes, getting the RG to spawn with 2 minutes to spare isnt even enough to ensure a GR clear, especially at the higher GRs.
In connection to the previous point, the decreasing amount of time needed to achieve 100% progress/GR spawn (as GR levels increase) becomes increasingly influenced by the supposed "random" factors of designated map, mob type and density. In a theoretical situation wherein a player has reached a point wherein he will take 5 minutes to kill the RG, then he should hit the random jackpot to ensure that GR spawn is achieved in 10 minutes or less.
On a side note, the scaling of mob HP in the GRs is ridiculous in its own right. When did a mob with 1.5B HP become something to consider as an "inefficient" target? That alone shows that player DPS and stats will plateau far earlier than GR mob HPs. It will reach a point wherein it becomes theoretically impossible to clear a GR.
The trial system is terribly flawed. A player should be able to consistently get the same level rift keystone (or give or take a level) if he were to perform trials in succession; however, the swing ranges from two levels below to two levels higher.
The trial system can be somehow "fixed" by creating a resource sink wherein a player can spend resources to "craft" a keystone corresponding to a set range of values, with the costs increasing as the keystone level also increases. It can be a better alternative to repeatedly doing trials.
On the topic of allowable GR ranges, a "+1" to the highest completed GR is an acceptable upper limit, because that is, evidently, the next challenge that the solo player is to clear. GR level 1 is evidently the lowest limit that should be in place.
For parties, the average (rounded down) of corresponding party size is a good way to deal with the spread. Averaging can deal with instances with values relatively close to each other. However, there are issues with outliers, such as when a player has not participated in a party of a particular size. For example, a good player may have cleared GR 40 solo but has not played in 3 player GRs--but his party members have cleared 35 each--would a GR of 23 be acceptable?
Agree with pretty much everything here. Makes too much sense to blizz not to make these changes but hey they've done things that boggles the mind (like how we still auto pick up potions when we have leg potions).
If you truely want the grifts to be competitive, you have to make them static. Otherwise someone will always complain about balance.
Calling the current Grift issues "imbalanced" is like saying a hijacker is just being rude to the other passengers.
Nobody is expecting across-the-board balance, in respect to Grift leaderboards. When someone plays an often punishing game like D3, they expect some level of variance and equal parts "I got screwed" with "I got lucky". What we're seeing here is broken. Simply put, a great endgame idea (we waited a long time for) ....is broken.
Bare in mind i'm not raging about this. I'm a patient guy, most of the time. I'm willing to wait for them to get it tuned. We're just passing around ideas to get an aggregate sample of what players would like to see GR's evolve into. Props to Blizz for dev'ing a solid idea for endgame. It just needs tuned now that we've all had a chance to suss out glaring issues.
If you truely want the grifts to be competitive, you have to make them static. Otherwise someone will always complain about balance.
Technically yes, a 100% static map would be competitive. It would also get botted. And it would also be boring. See: any FPS map (I remember my CS days). There needs to be variability, just not THIS much. Literally, if they just removed all shrines, pylons, chests, progress globes, rg spawns halfway across the map, and provided mixed density, it would already be a 100% improvement.
1) Remove conduits damage on bosses. 2) Normalize density properly. 3) Remove Trials all together. Create a new system to give rewards for consistency or something of the sorts. 4) Static maps doesn't seem to me like a good thing inside the normal leaderboards. But you should be allowed to get a grift ID and let other people try the same exact grift as you. I can see communities getting behind this for making competitions etc. See how you match up to others in the same exact setting. 5) Ability to veto 2-3 specific RG's and Map tile sets.
If you truely want the grifts to be competitive, you have to make them static. Otherwise someone will always complain about balance.
And it would also be boring. See: any FPS map (I remember my CS days).
Oh yeah, CS is totally boring, that's why millions of people play it all the time.
CS is a very good example. They took anthing unnecessary out of the game and all they have is a base map and game mechanics. The guy with the better mastery of the game mechanics wins. That's how you make competitive.
It's like the difference between Risk and chess. Chess is really a strategy game. Risk tries to be, but it includes dices, and tadaa it's a rng fest.
I'm not knocking CS, I played it for years (beta 5 up through CS:S, briefly touched GO). I'm saying if they did THAT level of normalization for D3 it would be boring for an ARPG genre.
The problem is there's TOO much RNG currently. Same thing is happening in Hearthstone right now - too much RNG in Arenas.
Oh yeah, CS is totally boring, that's why millions of people play it all the time.
CS is a very good example. They took anthing unnecessary out of the game and all they have is a base map and game mechanics. The guy with the better mastery of the game mechanics wins. That's how you make competitive.
It's like the difference between Risk and chess. Chess is really a strategy game. Risk tries to be, but it includes dices, and tadaa it's a rng fest.
The problem with this solution is that is makes Grifting stale and repetitive. This would be akin to playing a racing video game and entering a race track you've driven on a thousand times, where you know every turn ahead.
Not the best idea for a grind-centric game expecting thousands of hours of replayability.
The strategy of a Diablo game comes from entering the unknown and knowing how to confront it. The issue as it stands now, a player has no choice but to fail, because many of these Grifts are sparse, empty or too stocked with hard to kill enemies that don't lend as much credit as a room full of lackadaisical, nonthreatening zombie hordes.
Oh yeah, CS is totally boring, that's why millions of people play it all the time.
Yep, justin beiber, kanye west and miley cyrus are some of the greatest musicans in history based on this.
Anything over 35 is stupid and not worth trying for (solo). Grifts are really poorly designed and people are already tired of them. The bad part is t6 has become t1, so there is nothing todo except bang your head on the wall doing dumb trials and hoping for a zombie rift. That got old very very fast.
The problem with this solution is that is makes Grifting stale and repetitive. This would be akin to playing a racing video game and entering a race track you've driven on a thousand times, where you know every turn ahead.
Not the best idea for a grind-centric game expecting thousands of hours of replayability.
The strategy of a Diablo game comes from entering the unknown and knowing how to confront it. The issue as it stands now, a player has no choice but to fail, because many of these Grifts are sparse, empty or too stocked with hard to kill enemies that don't lend as much credit as a room full of lackadaisical, nonthreatening zombie hordes.
As long as the aim of the raceing game is to finish the track as fast as possible, knowing every turn in the track will only help you. I play Trackmania a lot, and on competition maps it s normal to practice for hours and hours just to get that last 10th of a second, sometimes even a 100th of a second. THAT is competitive and in the end only your skill decides if you win or lose.
I also dont think that Grifts are for grinding again and again. They are for trying to set a new best score. Your motivation is in beating the level as fast as possible. You grind gear etc on bounties and normal rifts enugh.
You see yourself, as long as there are any differences, there will be complaining. If it's not about conduit pylons (and once they are gone, the next pylon which will offer the "best" reward, probably power pylon...) then its the kind of mobs you encounter, or it's about their density. As long as there are ANY differences, people will complain about it.
I think the main problem with Grifts is that Blizzard tries to put something (semi)competitive into a game that does not work competitively. RNG based grind games just arent about skill, they are mainly about time investment.
Quote from chadwxYep, justin beiber, kanye west and miley cyrus are some of the greatest musicans in history based on this.
Anything over 35 is stupid and not worth trying for (solo). Grifts are really poorly designed and people are already tired of them. The bad part is t6 has become t1, so there is nothing todo except bang your head on the wall doing dumb trials and hoping for a zombie rift. That got old very very fast.
Exagerating my position and turning it into caricature in the hope to make me look bad in the (vain) hope that me looking bad makes you look smarter... Well, it never worked and it never will. But thanks for trying.
Arguments like "X is just stupid" shows how much time you spend on eloquently formulating your sophisticated viewpoints.
In this video I stomp the ez mode rift and talk about luck vs. gear vs. skill, things I believe Blizzard will change, and why it's somewhat pointless to 'grind to the top' unless you're prepared to go RNG fishing. Enjoy!
http://youtu.be/35dpzBGsZ_0
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
The wrong idea would be for them to simply scale down "Credit" for zombies/skeletons. Frankly, impromptu zombie apocalypses are pretty damn fun, and I don't think they should do anything to take away from that. They need to adjust tougher monsters to compare with these zombie Grifts, not nerf our beloved walking dead to a point where they're seen as simply being a roadblock.
They need to seriously up the credit given for felling the more tanky enemies who use inherent abilities such as stun, knockback, teleport, thunderstorm, charge etc.....specifically many Act IV and V enemies. Also needed is a more consistent density no matter what the tiers enemy types are.
I would like to see difficulty scaling done not just by bumping the numbers to insane levels as you progress, but also adding more elites and adjusting the progress slider accordingly. The challenge of higher tiers shouldn't just come from exaggerated numbers. Difficulty should also come from waves of randomly generated elite packs engaging you simultaneously.
Crusaders are bypassing much of the sparsity issues by simply hoping on that goddamn obnoxious horse and trotting from one elite pack to the next, wholly ignoring the all-too-sparse spattering of white enemies in between. This is a serious issue in group play, as many crusaders seemingly have no compunction about leaving others in the dust to sally forth through white mobs, often getting stuck and having to fight them, as opposed to simply blowing by them.
There is a flawed aspect of a foot race in GR's, and when the idea of an "endless dungeon" was first being talked about over a year ago, a Diablo version of Mario Cart is certainly not what I had in mind. We should be challenged in combat, not by way of footspeed.
Other issues that are RnG related but still have an affect on top leaderboard players are present and exclusive to density issues, and we would be remiss to not have these issues fixed as well. Seconds make minutes just like pennies make dollars. Therefor, any unnecessary issues with the general design of Grifts should be identified and either removed or retooled.
1) Progress orbs. WHY? I suppose this is some developer trick to make you feel like you're being rewarded with *something dropping, but the whole concept of these purple bastards goes against Blizz's mission statement concerning Grifts. We're not supposed to stop to pick up anything, but here we are, picking up progress orbs. Why are there 3 of them? Why is there even 1 of them? Why not just add the progress and forego the bullshit? Why do they disperse unevenly, often far apart (as much as 40 yards) and concentrically opposed.
Often players have to wait for molten/arcane/waller to clear before picking them up. We have to run backward and play a pacman-esque game of pick 'em up. Sometimes they even get missed, as they can hide in corners out of view.
2) Grift Guardian Spawn location. Now this....this grinds my fuckin' gears. MHG gave a great illustration of the density issue, here's an illustration of another issue that could single handedly kill a shot at placing on the boards;
That should NEVER happen. Granted that was only a t28 Grift. But then again, I was only doing a t28 because the monk really blows ass in trials, consistently garnering keys well below my ideal Grift starting point. As well, this was a horribly sparse Grift to boot. So beyond the leaderboard competition aspect, these issues affect people that just want to play Grifts solo for fun. The grift pictured above was a trifecta of frustration that had nothing to do with a desire for top placement. I got screwed by the trial, I got screwed by the (lack of) density. I got lastly screwed by the RG spawn.
So there it is. A series of issues tearing the heart out of what is actually a great endgame idea, one poorly implemented.
1) Remove trials
2) Adjust "credit" for varying monster types accordingly.
3) Adjust density consistency.
4) Present challenges beyond bumping numbers. More multiple encounters with multiple elites, making the threat of death more of a threat to your time.
5) Remove or adjust Progress Orb spawns.
6) FIX RG spawns to (exact) player location.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
1) Trial system should indeed be removed. It's a more complex programming task, but IMO you should be able to select a rift (or lower) of your choosing, with the highest being a calculation of your average X number of best solo/group clears, with various weights being assigned based on some formula, similar to how SC2 rankings work. This is quite difficult to get right, but I think it's the right move.
2) Yup, more difficult mobs (anarchs, corrupted angels) should have more weight than zombies ...
3) Density needs to be more normalized. Very frustrating to spend 20 seconds entering a room with NOTHING there ... at all. Density needs to be a BIT more consistent, though not so consistent that you can predict exact travel time, otherwise you open up room for botting.
4) Not sure how to add this in. Cool idea, but could be a balancing nightmare.
5) I agree, progress orbs need to be removed. It's just a nuisance.
6) Doesn't have to be on TOP of the player, but I would say within the same screen.
Also, I think pylons, shrines, and chests should all be removed from grifts. They just don't belong there. No one wears harrington's in grifts (very few maps have chests), and conduits are the reason barbs are 'ok' in blizzard's eyes, when really they're not: Raekors OP in AOE, tickle single target. Big problem.
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
One idea to resolve this may be done by providing players with more than one exit to the next floor. I've run into the issue you pictured above a few times, and when it occurs on the first floor, not too big of a deal, as you can TP back to town and re-enter. Still this destroys continuity in a run, and wastes precious time.
IMO, movement speed and speed-skills shouldn't be so heavily utilized toward Grift success, as this is a clear example where a Crus (for example) would have an advantage due to the prevalence of the Steed Charge skill.
The Keep tilesets are another map where players can find themselves FAR on the opposite edge as the entrance to the next tier. I can't really think of a better solution than to have multiple entrances on convoluted maps.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
If your highest clear in a 2 player game is 25, then you can open up to a 26 while in a 2 player game. If your highest 4 player clear is 34, then you can open a 35 in a 4 player game ....and so on. I'm sure there may be issues with this idea, which is the point of us having this discussion.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Pretty much agree with everything.
For the removal of the trials, I'm ok with that, as long as you have to start lower than your highest clear (if you completed 40, you start at 38 for example). Since there will always be some kind of rng, starting at completed+1 as some suggest here, would make it even easier to fish for those perfect rifts.
For the progression orbs, I think it was a good idea that only got implemented partly. From what I can see, it would be a way to progress faster in the lower rifts. The faster you kill an elite, the more orbs, with no orbs if it takes 9 or more seconds (1% of the time, if I read correct that elites give 1% progression) to kill the pack. Oneshotting elites shows you can handle way higher level, and you got time to pick them up, while there is no issue in higher levels as they don't drop anymore. Seeing how a lot of things in the game are like this (elemental damage doesn't really do anything, only cold does, there were plans to give each type a proc), I kinda think this was the idea but it got dropped somewhere.
To add a bit:
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
Nobody is expecting across-the-board balance, in respect to Grift leaderboards. When someone plays an often punishing game like D3, they expect some level of variance and equal parts "I got screwed" with "I got lucky". What we're seeing here is broken. Simply put, a great endgame idea (we waited a long time for) ....is broken.
Bare in mind i'm not raging about this. I'm a patient guy, most of the time. I'm willing to wait for them to get it tuned. We're just passing around ideas to get an aggregate sample of what players would like to see GR's evolve into. Props to Blizz for dev'ing a solid idea for endgame. It just needs tuned now that we've all had a chance to suss out glaring issues.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Didn't draw consecrate? Loss
Didn't get Act 1 GR? Loss
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
http://youtu.be/VGr2ouuolrk
My thoughts on the whole thing is fairly simple.
1) Remove conduits damage on bosses.
2) Normalize density properly.
3) Remove Trials all together. Create a new system to give rewards for consistency or something of the sorts.
4) Static maps doesn't seem to me like a good thing inside the normal leaderboards. But you should be allowed to get a grift ID and let other people try the same exact grift as you. I can see communities getting behind this for making competitions etc. See how you match up to others in the same exact setting.
5) Ability to veto 2-3 specific RG's and Map tile sets.
CS is a very good example. They took anthing unnecessary out of the game and all they have is a base map and game mechanics. The guy with the better mastery of the game mechanics wins. That's how you make competitive.
It's like the difference between Risk and chess. Chess is really a strategy game. Risk tries to be, but it includes dices, and tadaa it's a rng fest.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
The problem is there's TOO much RNG currently. Same thing is happening in Hearthstone right now - too much RNG in Arenas.
MeatHeadGaming - YouTube - Twitch - Facebook - Web
Not the best idea for a grind-centric game expecting thousands of hours of replayability.
The strategy of a Diablo game comes from entering the unknown and knowing how to confront it. The issue as it stands now, a player has no choice but to fail, because many of these Grifts are sparse, empty or too stocked with hard to kill enemies that don't lend as much credit as a room full of lackadaisical, nonthreatening zombie hordes.
BurningRope#1322 (US~HC) Request an invite to the official (NA) <dfans> Clan
Yep, justin beiber, kanye west and miley cyrus are some of the greatest musicans in history based on this.
Anything over 35 is stupid and not worth trying for (solo). Grifts are really poorly designed and people are already tired of them. The bad part is t6 has become t1, so there is nothing todo except bang your head on the wall doing dumb trials and hoping for a zombie rift. That got old very very fast.
I also dont think that Grifts are for grinding again and again. They are for trying to set a new best score. Your motivation is in beating the level as fast as possible. You grind gear etc on bounties and normal rifts enugh.
You see yourself, as long as there are any differences, there will be complaining. If it's not about conduit pylons (and once they are gone, the next pylon which will offer the "best" reward, probably power pylon...) then its the kind of mobs you encounter, or it's about their density. As long as there are ANY differences, people will complain about it.
I think the main problem with Grifts is that Blizzard tries to put something (semi)competitive into a game that does not work competitively. RNG based grind games just arent about skill, they are mainly about time investment.
Exagerating my position and turning it into caricature in the hope to make me look bad in the (vain) hope that me looking bad makes you look smarter... Well, it never worked and it never will. But thanks for trying.
Arguments like "X is just stupid" shows how much time you spend on eloquently formulating your sophisticated viewpoints.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841