Quick thought; can they just be called primal legendaries? Primal ancient legendary just is a little gobbled up ya know?
Obviously no one will call them primal ancient. Primal is just fine. Just like most people say "I found an ancient item" and not an "ancient legendary item".
Well yea haha I know WE will. I'm talking about how to me it looks silly on the weapon: Primal Ancient Legendary Two Handed Axe. But that's just mo.
Lol ye I'm very much looking forward to finding Primal Ancient Legendary Ancient Parthan Defenders
As to whether these primals are a good thing or not, I think it's nice to have items to hunt for.
I mean,loothunt wasn't part of the game anymore as it's literally raining legs, it was a stathunt not a loothunt so I like the idea of having a range of rare legs.
The way they've done it though is a little dissapointing, just adding some main stat and a little dmg.
Hoped they could've used their imagination a little bit more.
using their imagination a bit more would result in them creating new items with fluff text, possible lore connections and new / unique effects. instead they tweak and change existing items, modify some game modes and let the game move on with no real impact. they change numbers, we kill bigger numbers with even bigger numbers and all "progress" feels hollow.
"uhh, i beat GR121 yesterday! it was exhilarating!" wow. that sounds great. how about the time we managed to kill our first hell lord de seis in the chaos sanctuary? THAT sounds like a name. GR121 could be some planet. yawn.
and now they tweak everything a bit more so that we could beat GR125 one day. "BUT IT HAS XX% MORE DIFFICULTY! DON'T YOU RECOGNIZE MY ACCOMPLISHMENT?!"
These primals does not effect CHD, CHC, CDR etc, right? If not, that's sad imo. Most builds strive to have high numbers of those stats and it won't matter if they're ancient or primal, they'll still roll like normal items. Yey, higher sec resist and mainstat but it feels like a wasted opportunity.
Example:
Normal rings roll up to 8% CDR, ancient up to 9-10% and Primal up to 11-12%. Just a minor increase but if you get the right rolls you could end up changing a build drastically. Three primals could let you roll attack speed instead of CDR, or drop a passive for something else.
I guess primals are fine (except for the red border, zero durability much?), they should just be tuned a bit!
I guess I don't understand why we're having the exact same conversation as we did when Ancients were announced. It turned out okay, but it's nothing great. Let's add another layer to our pound cake. It was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now. I realize that this thread has covered a multitude of opinions, but realistically, it'll turn out the same. "Oh hey, I got an Ancient Yang's Recurve... that would have been nice if it rolled Primal Ancient... Salvage." It is just power creep, just like ancients were.
Also, if Primals apply to secondary stats like CDR and RCR, it will only make matters worse. "You can only play this build if you get 2 Primal rings, a Primal neck, a Primal weapon, Primal gloves and Primal shoulders, because at that point you can have 100% uptime on Archon.
Just want to point out, if it is main mode, why are we getting Necromancers? Wouldn't that be something to hold onto for D4? Unless D4 is 12 years down the road and somebody pretty high up went all banana bonkers to get them in game before the end of the next quarter....
D4 could be a totally different genre thus a necro there would feel different. Note that I am not saying D4 is coming, if a new game is going to get announced this year I would expect WarCraft 4.
Also, primals now have a different role than the ancients back in 2014. As of now D3 is in a maintenance mode, nobody expects miracles. In 2014 everything was still possible. The devs just choose the easy path or the marketing team said "no moneys in arpgs", we don't know. What we know is that right now primals are not a bad choice. What makes the situation bad is that there is nothing else coming. Maybe we should wait, who knows. Or maybe primals will completely turn off the rest of the people still playing D3, if trading or seasonal cap on main stat is not coming. Because when they drop it's going to be a botter's paradise.
D4 could be a totally different genre thus a necro there would feel different. Note that I am not saying D4 is coming, if a new game is going to get announced this year I would expect WarCraft 4.
Also, primals now have a different role than the ancients back in 2014. As of now D3 is in a maintenance mode, nobody expects miracles. In 2014 everything was still possible. The devs just choose the easy path or the marketing team said "no moneys in arpgs", we don't know. What we know is that right now primals are not a bad choice. What makes the situation bad is that there is nothing else coming. Maybe we should wait, who knows. Or maybe primals will completely turn off the rest of the people still playing D3, if trading or seasonal cap on main stat is not coming. Because when they drop it's going to be a botter's paradise.
I'm fairly certain, that adding a new class and 4 new sets for the class is the exact opposite of maintenance mode. Maybe I just don't understand the words there, but isn't that the point in which they only do small patches for quality of life or the fix something that is completely broken.... How is adding a new class any indication? Not to mention, my inflection as it was, was that if they are adding things to the game that aren't small tweaks, then they are not in MM. All I have seen is people say, I think it's good because paragon farming is just boring. Fair, but does that mean they have every piece PERFECTLY rolled in every slot, ancient, augmented with 100+ gems, no, it just means that they've given up the hope that it will happen, and take the best they can get.
The problem with Primal Ancient isn't that it's a new tier, but the fact that it will be less available to casual players. There are people who have played 16 hours a day since season 9 started. While they are paragon farming, they are also getting tons of legendaries. Every one that drops after 2.5 will have a chance to be Primal. The chances of them getting a Primal before guy127 who plays for 20 minutes at a time is astronomical, and yet RNG is still RNG. So how exactly is it different with Primals? Now that we've covered the basics of "The more you play, the more you win", what does Primal Ancient offer to the game, outside of 'bigger numbers kuz gear has bigger numbers'? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Outside your initial 'wow' moment of getting it, it's just another bump. In fact it actually devalues regular legendaries completely. Anyone can make the comparison between Ancient and Primal Ancient and say, meh, not too big a difference, but from regular good old old fashioned legendaries, they are an extreme boost.
Followers need work, solo play needs work, support builds need work, gear? We'll all end up playing whatever build pushes out the most multipliers for skill XYZ anyways. Adding another layer of RNG to an already RNG loot fest isn't the answer for paragon farming. Engaging and competitive builds, that beats paragon farming everyday.
Side note: They should give DHs more set options. A belt? Necklace? Maybe? Considering Nat's is the only set that isn't Gloves/Helm/Chest/Boots/Pants/Shoulders... it's pretty weak in regards to build diversity. Don't worry though, Primals will save it.
Maintenance mode means no core changes are coming - itemization, paragon system, skill system are going to stay the same. Necro is a DLC and that is quite ok for a MM, because it is just an addition that is not intervening with the core systems.
Primals are a motivation for the dedicated players. The casuals will have to choose wisely what items exactly they need to roll as primals, because a casual player will never be able to roll full primal gear in one season, if he doesn't bot. This however doesn't mean that the casual players won't be super happy when they see that primal rolls.
I agree with you primals doesn't offer nothing new (itemization wise), they are the same as the ancients in this regard, but we don't have to expect nothing new in this direction, because we know the game is in a MM. But when the ancients drop in 2014, D3 wasn't in a MM (ancients back then was a bad choice, the whole itemization should have been reworked). That is the main difference. The other is that the advantage from paragon now is a lot bigger than in 2014 thus primals help a little.
I agree with the things you mentioned needing a rework. Solo play and end game build diversity are the most important topics needing the dev's attention. I follow the official forums closely and there are threads about this every day. If I were a D3 dev I would get nervous only at opening my own game's forums. So I guess they prefer not to do it.
Right now I would love to see a seasonal cap on main stat. Cap it at 15k and make one season with such cap, just to see how this will affect public games grouping, solo play, casual play. I personally think it will improve the player's seasonal experience in many ways. Many old school players will return just to see this in action. And it's a very little work code wise.
Maintenance mode means no core changes are coming - itemization, paragon system, skill system are going to stay the same. Necro is a DLC and that is quite ok for a MM, because it is just an addition that is not intervening with the core systems.
Primals are a motivation for the dedicated players. The casuals will have to choose wisely what items exactly they need to roll as primals, because a casual player will never be able to roll full primal gear in one season, if he doesn't bot. This however doesn't mean that the casual players won't be super happy when they see that primal rolls.
I agree with you primals doesn't offer nothing new (itemization wise), they are the same as the ancients in this regard, but we don't have to expect nothing new in this direction, because we know the game is in a MM. But when the ancients drop in 2014, D3 wasn't in a MM (ancients back then was a bad choice, the whole itemization should have been reworked). That is the main difference. The other is that the advantage from paragon now is a lot bigger than in 2014 thus primals help a little.
I agree with the things you mentioned needing a rework. Solo play and end game build diversity are the most important topics needing the dev's attention. I follow the official forums closely and there are threads about this every day. If I were a D3 dev I would get nervous only at opening my own game's forums. So I guess they prefer not to do it.
Right now I would love to see a seasonal cap on main stat. Cap it at 15k and make one season with such cap, just to see how this will affect public games grouping, solo play, casual play. I personally think it will improve the player's seasonal experience in many ways. Many old school players will return just to see this in action. And it's a very little work code wise.
I still fail to see how adding a new class doesn't affect core systems. Considering the information that's been released on Necro's, they will have a huge impact. Itemization, skills and paragon have been cemented for the past 3 years, itemization has barely changed since the RMAH left the game. Paragon v.2.0 hasn't changed, ever. And skills are tweaked every now and again, but they still add things like Mandald Heal, buff set bonuses, give affixes, change affixes. A lot of minor changes, and some less impactful than others. I guess to me, MM would mean here are the 3 sets for each class, they all do the exact same amount of damage, just in different ways, go grind and have fun slaying demons, we'll see you in a year, when we shut down the servers, GLHF until then. So adding an item (Mandald Heal in this instance) that causes Wizard's to run a hybrid of Tal's and Vyr's with a skill that was previous to this patch unused, can hardly be considered MM. Anyways!
The most important thing to note is that by putting a primary cap on people, you actually take away from the diehards. I agree, if done properly, it could work, but then again, once you've reached cap with GG, what do you do? What if RNG was super good and you were GG 3 days in? You just grind to cap, push as high as you can and then wait 2 1/2 months to play the next season? As of now, the only thing I can see a cap doing is make people put points into Vitality. Forcibly, because they can't do anything else with all their paragons. What it basically comes down to, balance wise, is what is the limitation of the playerbase? Paragons offer a (endless) power creep, so the more you play the more you win. Grouping, and substantially stacking the group, causes a further rift between players (basically doing anything solo is wasting your time, outside solo pushing for Blood Shard cap?) if you want to be technical about it, not everybody enjoys group play. Which is why I would suggest the following:
Remove Primals from 2.5, they add nothing to the current system, and will cause a larger rift between players at different paragon levels. It's very easy to say here, that while yes, this guy's paragon 1200, and I'm only 800, but I have a Primal weapon, and he's only got an Ancient. Which is true, it does close that gap, and only that gap, until the 1200 player gets their Primal weapon, or even if they got it first, the difference is the same or larger. The fact that they are craftable makes a meaningful choice in gameplay though, you could spend most of your time DB farming or Grifting, choose. Oh wait, you need to Rift for keys, so you may as well DB farm while doing that, right? Just an all around bad idea.
Remove group bonus EXP, this includes nerfing Gem of Ease (@70) into the ground as they did bonus experience on gear/sets. You should never be rewarded for just playing with other people. It trivializes solo play, and also causes a dynamic that forms if you play with 2 others, that you require a 4th to be on par. This also slows down the paragon creep as far as it should be, putting everybody on an even playing field, at all times. Playing for 8 hours in a 2 player group doing 10 rifts per hour at level 90 rewards the same experience if you did the exact same thing in a 4 player group doing 10 rifts per hour at level 90. "Play your way" right?
Have all debuffs apply to yourself, or the group, not both. Either support support builds or don't. There are 6 skills slots, and 4-5 passives. I'm sure you can cookie cutter your way into figuring out how to either make a support role completely viable, or remove the ability to make one. Every season it's the same thing. Need to nerf support monks, but we don't want to remove all of their mitigation. Okay. So Inner Sanctuary, yea, that only applies to the monk that put it on the ground now. Alright, let's see, DHs get a couple of debuffs, we'll use those as a support, nope, only applies to damage done to them. Well, I guess then we're running 4 DPS and let's see how we do. Builds would be more tanky, but less designed for straight damage output while someone else worries about your defense in straight %'s. 3 supports and a twister wizard... that was a hilarious joke, especially when it was the wizards that got the nerfs. Either give it a go, or get rid of it, but stop flip flopping.
Never reinstitute trading or AH features into the game. Gold isn't even really a currency anymore. Boon of the Hoarder, Avarice Band, go nuts. Add a Gold Wrap and you can farm T13 with those 2 items and gem (it would take forever, I know, lots of kiting, but still, could be done.) The prices for everything would be just insane. What would we trade for? Items for other items? One idea that was flipped to me was to make trading viable again, you could trade your paragons, with a cap, of say 100 paragon per item. Again, this would be just horrible.
Remove ALL defensive traits from Primary Stats. No resist all, no armour, nothing. It's just a straight damage upgrade. What does this do? It makes every single paragon over 800 a choice between little offence, or little defence. Instead of getting a bit of both out of Primary, get one.
All in all, Primals don't add anything to the game except power creep. Which is the same problem with paragons. It's all about the creep, and not about how you play the game.
All in all, Primals don't add anything to the game except power creep. Which is the same problem with paragons. It's all about the creep, and not about how you play the game.
If they put a seasonal cap on main stat it would be about how you'll want to play the game - focus on GR for exp or rift/bounty for primals. As of now primals are only power creep and some motivation for the dedicated players. But they are a step in the right direction. A seasonal cap on main stat will give the player the opportunity to choose his way of progression through the season. Once the cap is reached - he can either push season's LBs or switch to non-season. With the time the optimal duration for a season based on the value of the cap will be realized.
I would even go further and introduce character aging for seasons. Each character can live for 500 real hours during a season. Once these end the player won't have the option to play any more with this character during the season. Combined with soul-bound items and mats (again only a seasonal feature) this will totally make botting irrelevant on seasons. Because botting will cost you real hours and your character will age.
IMO loot hasn't been good since 2.0. Getting rewarded for just getting to 70 and playin a couple of hours is shit. When drop rates are low in general it increases build diversity because not everyone has a yangs or furnace. It was fun trying to make the best build out of the items you had as opposed to everyone has the same items with varying stat rolls.
All in all, Primals don't add anything to the game except power creep. Which is the same problem with paragons. It's all about the creep, and not about how you play the game.
If they put a seasonal cap on main stat it would be about how you'll want to play the game - focus on GR for exp or rift/bounty for primals. As of now primals are only power creep and some motivation for the dedicated players. But they are a step in the right direction. A seasonal cap on main stat will give the player the opportunity to choose his way of progression through the season. Once the cap is reached - he can either push season's LBs or switch to non-season. With the time the optimal duration for a season based on the value of the cap will be realized.
I would even go further and introduce character aging for seasons. Each character can live for 500 real hours during a season. Once these end the player won't have the option to play any more with this character during the season. Combined with soul-bound items and mats (again only a seasonal feature) this will totally make botting irrelevant on seasons. Because botting will cost you real hours and your character will age.
With primal ancients the paragonsystem gets nerfed a little bit and finding primals is not about power creep (sure you can do this too while searching for the items), but for grinding items. Your goal for the season could be to gear up your character completely during the seas
on instead of reaching top x in the leaderboards. And you know what? Endless grinding through monster groups is and was always what diablo was supposed to be. People want back the "good old times". But they don't remember that it was a time when they did nothing else than running the exact same farming route (or later FoM) over and over again using exactly one build.
Nowadays so many builds are viable. Look at the leaderboards. For so many classes almost 3 builds are in the top 20 or were until recently.
I think "character aging" is a very bad idea. This game is supposed to give a reward for putting time into it. And there still is enough room for "skill". I am always shocked when i see, how much problems some people have of getting geared correctly or get the leaderboards (and yes you can easily get top 100 without any powercreeping).
If you want to have a game where "everything" is balanced based on skill, even blizzard itself offers enough options (sc,sc2,wc3, mb HotS).
But again Diablo is a game where you have to put time (and the thing why streamers left is because they are not able to put time into it anymore, because gearing up was too fast etc.) in to get on top and i think it is fine that such a game exists.
Streamers gave up with D3 because nobody, except a few aficionados, care a f*ck about endless pl grinding.
because it's not a game. It's a job. a boring job
I'm ok with mowing mobs hours long, all-week long, for months. It was Diablo and it's what I wished for.
But ppl used to grind mobs for gear. for gear to trade. for gold.
Exp runs were ok, but capped at 99. Or just get bored before the top and stop at a decently high level.
It's ok that we've got more build variety...well, it's also 2017, something better than D2 is required.
Cap paragon levels or make it non-influent on main stats. Add more cosmetic rewards, tougher/grindy-er to acquire.
more difficult achievs.
more items revisiting useless ones.
more core game mechanics.
Introduce variety, if grind is required, at least introduce a choice: you player can choose towards what to grind, cosmetics, grifts cap, achievs.
(and the usual advice: diablo is about items, unlock trade/reintroduce gah. Trading and market is a huge part in online games. Yes, will be gold vendors and black market...but will be also trading with guildies and friends.)
Want to content purists? lock trade in seasonal mode.
Obviously the main issue with Primals is the fact that they buff only the mainstat.
Super rare drops are actually a cool thing. It was great feeling back in the day to have the first Wand of Woh drop. I never got the all D2 runes and that's perfectly fine. It's the point of ARPGs that there some cool items we are dreaming to drop.
Primals, however, are very boring and lack excitement as they buff only mainstat and outside the weapon slot, are not necessary even weared with the first Primal drop. An item this rare should be no-brainer to equip.
Some solutions presented on the forums:
- Let player to roll 2 stats on Primals (no powercreep otion)
- Let players to roll every stat on a very high price (no powercreep otion)
- Make a consumable that allows players to roll any stat they want on their Primals (no powercreep option)
- Widen also the affix stats and rise the lower level
- Add another affix for the Primals
- Make a pool of random affixes able to roll for Primals like "Immune to Molten", "+5% chance to legendary item to be an ancient" and so on
- Have a very expensive cube receipt for Primals for players who hate RNG or are hated by RNG.
My point is that whatever they are changing, a rare item should always feel exciting.
If you can't reforge/cube and get Pancients items, then why would you farm bounty materials when you can't use the mats to get a best-in-slot items? In that case Pancients will kill bounties. :/
I see a lot of people in the thread are using the term power creep incorrectly. This could be, because they don't know the true meaning of the term, which is this:
Power creep is a process that sometimes occurs in games where new content slowly outstrip the power of previous alternatives. This leads to players abandoning previous options in favour of the latest and more powerful alternatives, resulting in an inevitable increase in power throughout the game.
- Make a consumable that allows players to roll any stat they want on their Primals (no powercreep option)
I have suggested this last year and it would be even better now, when primals are on their way:
About the loot system: It is too fast even for casual players atm. And there is still too much variance if you want flawless ancient end game gear. So the solution is simple: Slow down the item progression and add more ways for the players to counter the variance. A good item for the last will be, let's call it the Skelos' Gift (and let's make it with a drop chance of 1/25 of the current chance for Ramaladni's Gift): Allow enchanting of all item properties. What this would give is another item property reroll after you have already enchanted an item. This way the competitive players would be able to kill the variance since they would have 4-5 of these at the end of the season. This means you would have 4-5 new re-rolls on the hardest-to-get items and you would be free to use them as you wish: create a perfect Compass Rose from scratch or distribute the Gifts to different items.
Remember pre RoS when "Inferno" difficulty was only meant for the hardcore players? Everybody complained that they werent able to play inferno and difficulty was lowered.
Remember when Paragon points were only for the hardcore?
Remeber when ancients were only for the hardcore?
Primal ancients will go the exact same way. People will whine on the forums that they "payed the same price but can not get all the items" and Blizzard will increase drop chances till everybody walks around in all primal ancients.
Remember pre RoS when "Inferno" difficulty was only meant for the hardcore players? Everybody complained that they werent able to play inferno and difficulty was lowered.
Remember when Paragon points were only for the hardcore?
Remeber when ancients were only for the hardcore?
Primal ancients will go the exact same way. People will whine on the forums that they "payed the same price but can not get all the items" and Blizzard will increase drop chances till everybody walks around in all primal ancients.
Can you stop lying to yourself at least, please ? The problem was never ifnerno, the problem was that you/me farmed something for 15days, and still never found one useful item. We were farming for gold, which had pathetic drop just because of RMAH/AH , so most people were buying gold, and in later stages you couldnt buy BiS item either ( which were all yellow btw, not legendary, legendaries were worse than yellow by far in case there are people who didnt play the abomination of vanilla d3 )
I don't play d3 nowadays either, but thats only because i am bored of being set with their wanted build ( set ) , there is no freedom at all for build variety and thats the reason i am not even playing for the last 3 or 4 seasons already.
Paragon only for the hardcore ? - You mean losers in real life ? Yes i know ....
Remeber when ancients were only for the hardcore? - Yeah that 30% more main stat really hardcore, such a good design....
I was hoping them fixing the items by giving option to play any build and be effective with difference in maybe 0,5% power ... i see they still didnt learn anything.
These primals does not effect CHD, CHC, CDR etc, right? If not, that's sad imo. Most builds strive to have high numbers of those stats and it won't matter if they're ancient or primal, they'll still roll like normal items. Yey, higher sec resist and mainstat but it feels like a wasted opportunity.
Example:
Normal rings roll up to 8% CDR, ancient up to 9-10% and Primal up to 11-12%. Just a minor increase but if you get the right rolls you could end up changing a build drastically. Three primals could let you roll attack speed instead of CDR, or drop a passive for something else.
I guess primals are fine (except for the red border, zero durability much?), they should just be tuned a bit!
I like your idea, but just for CHD and CHC since they are just mainly dmg modifiers (should also work with RCR, elemental dmg and maybe also with ATS but you know...breakpoints... so I would probably shy away from that.)
But CDR is a very very important stat for some builds (!!). I have tested so many builds with CDR and some are just lacking a few points here and there to make a build work or completely fail. If you target CDR for constant uptimes or especially for rotations it's a far too important stat.
It would make primals just mandatory and not only nice to have in certain slots (like gloves, rings, shoulders,...) Imagine you can drop obsidian ring of the zodiac for something like unity, coe, ring of royal grandeur, just because you got those few extra CDR points... way too powerful in my opinion.
certain builds in the past would have not worked if the max CDR roll would be 7%. Just sayin... it would overall make a huge difference if they would do primals with higher CDR values.
These primals does not effect CHD, CHC, CDR etc, right? If not, that's sad imo. Most builds strive to have high numbers of those stats and it won't matter if they're ancient or primal, they'll still roll like normal items. Yey, higher sec resist and mainstat but it feels like a wasted opportunity.
Example:
Normal rings roll up to 8% CDR, ancient up to 9-10% and Primal up to 11-12%. Just a minor increase but if you get the right rolls you could end up changing a build drastically. Three primals could let you roll attack speed instead of CDR, or drop a passive for something else.
I guess primals are fine (except for the red border, zero durability much?), they should just be tuned a bit!
I like your idea, but just for CHD and CHC since they are just mainly dmg modifiers (should also work with RCR, elemental dmg and maybe also with ATS but you know...breakpoints... so I would probably shy away from that.)
But CDR is a very very important stat for some builds (!!). I have tested so many builds with CDR and some are just lacking a few points here and there to make a build work or completely fail. If you target CDR for constant uptimes or especially for rotations it's a far too important stat.
It would make primals just mandatory and not only nice to have in certain slots (like gloves, rings, shoulders,...) Imagine you can drop obsidian ring of the zodiac for something like unity, coe, ring of royal grandeur, just because you got those few extra CDR points... way too powerful in my opinion.
certain builds in the past would have not worked if the max CDR roll would be 7%. Just sayin... it would overall make a huge difference if they would do primals with higher CDR values.
Yeah, I know it would but I think it would be good anyway. More CHD, AD won't change builds, CDR, RCR, CHC could though. It would be like LoN, some builds would require more and better gear then others. In the long run it would work like any other build. You would have to get over X CDR for it to work optimal. However, it would most likely still work with less CDR, just not as good as it could.
Wouldn't it be cool if you could drop Zodiac for something else and would that be so bad? You'd have to progress for it, grind more gear and eventually you can roll with that Krede's Flame you always wanted to implement in your build! I get your point with something being mandatory which is harder to get then just some gear piece and I understand that 3 primal CDR items could be what is needed for you to change build completely into something much more effective. I still think it's what Diablo is about, improving your gear. I don't think it would matter much for leader boards though. I mean, those in the top farm so much anyway and are bound to get the items they need. It might give someone who's lucky a boost in GRLVLS but things do that anyway. Get an ancient good weapon in the beginning of a season and you'll sky rocket your progress.
My point is, it's worth trying use the PTR and such for it. See what happens.
I mean my statement was just so that it is clear how much of an influence certain stats would make in the decision making whether to equip a primal item or use a "better" rolled ancient...
overall i would be fine with it, just that it won't happen
I see a lot of people in the thread are using the term power creep incorrectly. This could be, because they don't know the true meaning of the term, which is this:
Power creep is a process that sometimes occurs in games where new content slowly outstrip the power of previous alternatives. This leads to players abandoning previous options in favour of the latest and more powerful alternatives, resulting in an inevitable increase in power throughout the game.
Sorry, I've been away for the weekend. How do you not see this as Primal Ancients? Primals increase the actual damage range on a weapon... for a game that is based on multiplying weapon damage to deal damage, this is an astronomical gain. Some builds would ONLY be playable with a well rolled Primal Ancient weapon. Take into account how many weapons are in the game, then take into account the range in which they can be rolled. Got all that math down? Now think about how rare these drops will be. It is by definition, power creep.
Anyways, this thread sort of filled up while I was gone. The mainstay issues are that they continue to just add layers... If they revisited some of the useless items, and made them work a bit better, things would be great. I just recently laughed at the fact that the Archon Wizard build is actually favoring a Pig Sticker now, because of the AS of the weapon and 5 affixes. Pig Sticker. All the fantastic wands/swords/staves... BiS weapon, Pig Sticker. Squee! Lmao. Same goes for those thorns saders... Pig Sticker is up on top of that pile too. Again, 5 Affixes, and the AS of the weapon. Gift of Sil has 5 affixes, and most of them look pretty good, but thing is, it's a 1.4 AS weapon, not a 1.59, Numbers are a huge part of this game, and people just don't see how adding more numbers is just making things worse.
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"uhh, i beat GR121 yesterday! it was exhilarating!" wow. that sounds great. how about the time we managed to kill our first hell lord de seis in the chaos sanctuary? THAT sounds like a name. GR121 could be some planet. yawn.
and now they tweak everything a bit more so that we could beat GR125 one day. "BUT IT HAS XX% MORE DIFFICULTY! DON'T YOU RECOGNIZE MY ACCOMPLISHMENT?!"
These primals does not effect CHD, CHC, CDR etc, right? If not, that's sad imo. Most builds strive to have high numbers of those stats and it won't matter if they're ancient or primal, they'll still roll like normal items. Yey, higher sec resist and mainstat but it feels like a wasted opportunity.
Example:
Normal rings roll up to 8% CDR, ancient up to 9-10% and Primal up to 11-12%. Just a minor increase but if you get the right rolls you could end up changing a build drastically. Three primals could let you roll attack speed instead of CDR, or drop a passive for something else.
I guess primals are fine (except for the red border, zero durability much?), they should just be tuned a bit!
I guess I don't understand why we're having the exact same conversation as we did when Ancients were announced. It turned out okay, but it's nothing great. Let's add another layer to our pound cake. It was a bad idea then, and it's a bad idea now. I realize that this thread has covered a multitude of opinions, but realistically, it'll turn out the same. "Oh hey, I got an Ancient Yang's Recurve... that would have been nice if it rolled Primal Ancient... Salvage." It is just power creep, just like ancients were.
Also, if Primals apply to secondary stats like CDR and RCR, it will only make matters worse. "You can only play this build if you get 2 Primal rings, a Primal neck, a Primal weapon, Primal gloves and Primal shoulders, because at that point you can have 100% uptime on Archon.
Just want to point out, if it is main mode, why are we getting Necromancers? Wouldn't that be something to hold onto for D4? Unless D4 is 12 years down the road and somebody pretty high up went all banana bonkers to get them in game before the end of the next quarter....
D4 could be a totally different genre thus a necro there would feel different. Note that I am not saying D4 is coming, if a new game is going to get announced this year I would expect WarCraft 4.
Also, primals now have a different role than the ancients back in 2014. As of now D3 is in a maintenance mode, nobody expects miracles. In 2014 everything was still possible. The devs just choose the easy path or the marketing team said "no moneys in arpgs", we don't know. What we know is that right now primals are not a bad choice. What makes the situation bad is that there is nothing else coming. Maybe we should wait, who knows. Or maybe primals will completely turn off the rest of the people still playing D3, if trading or seasonal cap on main stat is not coming. Because when they drop it's going to be a botter's paradise.
The problem with Primal Ancient isn't that it's a new tier, but the fact that it will be less available to casual players. There are people who have played 16 hours a day since season 9 started. While they are paragon farming, they are also getting tons of legendaries. Every one that drops after 2.5 will have a chance to be Primal. The chances of them getting a Primal before guy127 who plays for 20 minutes at a time is astronomical, and yet RNG is still RNG. So how exactly is it different with Primals? Now that we've covered the basics of "The more you play, the more you win", what does Primal Ancient offer to the game, outside of 'bigger numbers kuz gear has bigger numbers'? Nothing. Zip. Zilch. Zero. Outside your initial 'wow' moment of getting it, it's just another bump. In fact it actually devalues regular legendaries completely. Anyone can make the comparison between Ancient and Primal Ancient and say, meh, not too big a difference, but from regular good old old fashioned legendaries, they are an extreme boost.
Followers need work, solo play needs work, support builds need work, gear? We'll all end up playing whatever build pushes out the most multipliers for skill XYZ anyways. Adding another layer of RNG to an already RNG loot fest isn't the answer for paragon farming. Engaging and competitive builds, that beats paragon farming everyday.
Side note: They should give DHs more set options. A belt? Necklace? Maybe? Considering Nat's is the only set that isn't Gloves/Helm/Chest/Boots/Pants/Shoulders... it's pretty weak in regards to build diversity. Don't worry though, Primals will save it.
@Arydor:
Maintenance mode means no core changes are coming - itemization, paragon system, skill system are going to stay the same. Necro is a DLC and that is quite ok for a MM, because it is just an addition that is not intervening with the core systems.
Primals are a motivation for the dedicated players. The casuals will have to choose wisely what items exactly they need to roll as primals, because a casual player will never be able to roll full primal gear in one season, if he doesn't bot. This however doesn't mean that the casual players won't be super happy when they see that primal rolls.
I agree with you primals doesn't offer nothing new (itemization wise), they are the same as the ancients in this regard, but we don't have to expect nothing new in this direction, because we know the game is in a MM. But when the ancients drop in 2014, D3 wasn't in a MM (ancients back then was a bad choice, the whole itemization should have been reworked). That is the main difference. The other is that the advantage from paragon now is a lot bigger than in 2014 thus primals help a little.
I agree with the things you mentioned needing a rework. Solo play and end game build diversity are the most important topics needing the dev's attention. I follow the official forums closely and there are threads about this every day. If I were a D3 dev I would get nervous only at opening my own game's forums. So I guess they prefer not to do it.
Right now I would love to see a seasonal cap on main stat. Cap it at 15k and make one season with such cap, just to see how this will affect public games grouping, solo play, casual play. I personally think it will improve the player's seasonal experience in many ways. Many old school players will return just to see this in action. And it's a very little work code wise.
I still fail to see how adding a new class doesn't affect core systems. Considering the information that's been released on Necro's, they will have a huge impact. Itemization, skills and paragon have been cemented for the past 3 years, itemization has barely changed since the RMAH left the game. Paragon v.2.0 hasn't changed, ever. And skills are tweaked every now and again, but they still add things like Mandald Heal, buff set bonuses, give affixes, change affixes. A lot of minor changes, and some less impactful than others. I guess to me, MM would mean here are the 3 sets for each class, they all do the exact same amount of damage, just in different ways, go grind and have fun slaying demons, we'll see you in a year, when we shut down the servers, GLHF until then. So adding an item (Mandald Heal in this instance) that causes Wizard's to run a hybrid of Tal's and Vyr's with a skill that was previous to this patch unused, can hardly be considered MM. Anyways!
The most important thing to note is that by putting a primary cap on people, you actually take away from the diehards. I agree, if done properly, it could work, but then again, once you've reached cap with GG, what do you do? What if RNG was super good and you were GG 3 days in? You just grind to cap, push as high as you can and then wait 2 1/2 months to play the next season? As of now, the only thing I can see a cap doing is make people put points into Vitality. Forcibly, because they can't do anything else with all their paragons. What it basically comes down to, balance wise, is what is the limitation of the playerbase? Paragons offer a (endless) power creep, so the more you play the more you win. Grouping, and substantially stacking the group, causes a further rift between players (basically doing anything solo is wasting your time, outside solo pushing for Blood Shard cap?) if you want to be technical about it, not everybody enjoys group play. Which is why I would suggest the following:
Remove Primals from 2.5, they add nothing to the current system, and will cause a larger rift between players at different paragon levels. It's very easy to say here, that while yes, this guy's paragon 1200, and I'm only 800, but I have a Primal weapon, and he's only got an Ancient. Which is true, it does close that gap, and only that gap, until the 1200 player gets their Primal weapon, or even if they got it first, the difference is the same or larger. The fact that they are craftable makes a meaningful choice in gameplay though, you could spend most of your time DB farming or Grifting, choose. Oh wait, you need to Rift for keys, so you may as well DB farm while doing that, right? Just an all around bad idea.
Remove group bonus EXP, this includes nerfing Gem of Ease (@70) into the ground as they did bonus experience on gear/sets. You should never be rewarded for just playing with other people. It trivializes solo play, and also causes a dynamic that forms if you play with 2 others, that you require a 4th to be on par. This also slows down the paragon creep as far as it should be, putting everybody on an even playing field, at all times. Playing for 8 hours in a 2 player group doing 10 rifts per hour at level 90 rewards the same experience if you did the exact same thing in a 4 player group doing 10 rifts per hour at level 90. "Play your way" right?
Have all debuffs apply to yourself, or the group, not both. Either support support builds or don't. There are 6 skills slots, and 4-5 passives. I'm sure you can cookie cutter your way into figuring out how to either make a support role completely viable, or remove the ability to make one. Every season it's the same thing. Need to nerf support monks, but we don't want to remove all of their mitigation. Okay. So Inner Sanctuary, yea, that only applies to the monk that put it on the ground now. Alright, let's see, DHs get a couple of debuffs, we'll use those as a support, nope, only applies to damage done to them. Well, I guess then we're running 4 DPS and let's see how we do. Builds would be more tanky, but less designed for straight damage output while someone else worries about your defense in straight %'s. 3 supports and a twister wizard... that was a hilarious joke, especially when it was the wizards that got the nerfs. Either give it a go, or get rid of it, but stop flip flopping.
Never reinstitute trading or AH features into the game. Gold isn't even really a currency anymore. Boon of the Hoarder, Avarice Band, go nuts. Add a Gold Wrap and you can farm T13 with those 2 items and gem (it would take forever, I know, lots of kiting, but still, could be done.) The prices for everything would be just insane. What would we trade for? Items for other items? One idea that was flipped to me was to make trading viable again, you could trade your paragons, with a cap, of say 100 paragon per item. Again, this would be just horrible.
Remove ALL defensive traits from Primary Stats. No resist all, no armour, nothing. It's just a straight damage upgrade. What does this do? It makes every single paragon over 800 a choice between little offence, or little defence. Instead of getting a bit of both out of Primary, get one.
All in all, Primals don't add anything to the game except power creep. Which is the same problem with paragons. It's all about the creep, and not about how you play the game.
If they put a seasonal cap on main stat it would be about how you'll want to play the game - focus on GR for exp or rift/bounty for primals. As of now primals are only power creep and some motivation for the dedicated players. But they are a step in the right direction. A seasonal cap on main stat will give the player the opportunity to choose his way of progression through the season. Once the cap is reached - he can either push season's LBs or switch to non-season. With the time the optimal duration for a season based on the value of the cap will be realized.
I would even go further and introduce character aging for seasons. Each character can live for 500 real hours during a season. Once these end the player won't have the option to play any more with this character during the season. Combined with soul-bound items and mats (again only a seasonal feature) this will totally make botting irrelevant on seasons. Because botting will cost you real hours and your character will age.
IMO loot hasn't been good since 2.0. Getting rewarded for just getting to 70 and playin a couple of hours is shit. When drop rates are low in general it increases build diversity because not everyone has a yangs or furnace. It was fun trying to make the best build out of the items you had as opposed to everyone has the same items with varying stat rolls.
With primal ancients the paragonsystem gets nerfed a little bit and finding primals is not about power creep (sure you can do this too while searching for the items), but for grinding items. Your goal for the season could be to gear up your character completely during the seas
on instead of reaching top x in the leaderboards. And you know what? Endless grinding through monster groups is and was always what diablo was supposed to be. People want back the "good old times". But they don't remember that it was a time when they did nothing else than running the exact same farming route (or later FoM) over and over again using exactly one build.
Nowadays so many builds are viable. Look at the leaderboards. For so many classes almost 3 builds are in the top 20 or were until recently.
I think "character aging" is a very bad idea. This game is supposed to give a reward for putting time into it. And there still is enough room for "skill". I am always shocked when i see, how much problems some people have of getting geared correctly or get the leaderboards (and yes you can easily get top 100 without any powercreeping).
If you want to have a game where "everything" is balanced based on skill, even blizzard itself offers enough options (sc,sc2,wc3, mb HotS).
But again Diablo is a game where you have to put time (and the thing why streamers left is because they are not able to put time into it anymore, because gearing up was too fast etc.) in to get on top and i think it is fine that such a game exists.
Streamers gave up with D3 because nobody, except a few aficionados, care a f*ck about endless pl grinding.
because it's not a game. It's a job. a boring job
I'm ok with mowing mobs hours long, all-week long, for months. It was Diablo and it's what I wished for.
But ppl used to grind mobs for gear. for gear to trade. for gold.
Exp runs were ok, but capped at 99. Or just get bored before the top and stop at a decently high level.
It's ok that we've got more build variety...well, it's also 2017, something better than D2 is required.
Cap paragon levels or make it non-influent on main stats. Add more cosmetic rewards, tougher/grindy-er to acquire.
more difficult achievs.
more items revisiting useless ones.
more core game mechanics.
Introduce variety, if grind is required, at least introduce a choice: you player can choose towards what to grind, cosmetics, grifts cap, achievs.
(and the usual advice: diablo is about items, unlock trade/reintroduce gah. Trading and market is a huge part in online games. Yes, will be gold vendors and black market...but will be also trading with guildies and friends.)
Want to content purists? lock trade in seasonal mode.
--- Kev ---
Obviously the main issue with Primals is the fact that they buff only the mainstat.
Super rare drops are actually a cool thing. It was great feeling back in the day to have the first Wand of Woh drop. I never got the all D2 runes and that's perfectly fine. It's the point of ARPGs that there some cool items we are dreaming to drop.
Primals, however, are very boring and lack excitement as they buff only mainstat and outside the weapon slot, are not necessary even weared with the first Primal drop. An item this rare should be no-brainer to equip.
Some solutions presented on the forums:
- Let player to roll 2 stats on Primals (no powercreep otion)
- Let players to roll every stat on a very high price (no powercreep otion)
- Make a consumable that allows players to roll any stat they want on their Primals (no powercreep option)
- Widen also the affix stats and rise the lower level
- Add another affix for the Primals
- Make a pool of random affixes able to roll for Primals like "Immune to Molten", "+5% chance to legendary item to be an ancient" and so on
- Have a very expensive cube receipt for Primals for players who hate RNG or are hated by RNG.
My point is that whatever they are changing, a rare item should always feel exciting.
If you can't reforge/cube and get Pancients items, then why would you farm bounty materials when you can't use the mats to get a best-in-slot items? In that case Pancients will kill bounties. :/
I see a lot of people in the thread are using the term power creep incorrectly. This could be, because they don't know the true meaning of the term, which is this:
About character aging:
Character aging would be extremely bad idea for non-season. It is a great idea for season.
I have suggested this last year and it would be even better now, when primals are on their way:
Remember pre RoS when "Inferno" difficulty was only meant for the hardcore players? Everybody complained that they werent able to play inferno and difficulty was lowered.
Remember when Paragon points were only for the hardcore?
Remeber when ancients were only for the hardcore?
Primal ancients will go the exact same way. People will whine on the forums that they "payed the same price but can not get all the items" and Blizzard will increase drop chances till everybody walks around in all primal ancients.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Twoflower-2131/hero/47336841
I don't play d3 nowadays either, but thats only because i am bored of being set with their wanted build ( set ) , there is no freedom at all for build variety and thats the reason i am not even playing for the last 3 or 4 seasons already.
Paragon only for the hardcore ? - You mean losers in real life ? Yes i know ....
Remeber when ancients were only for the hardcore? - Yeah that 30% more main stat really hardcore, such a good design....
I was hoping them fixing the items by giving option to play any build and be effective with difference in maybe 0,5% power ... i see they still didnt learn anything.
But CDR is a very very important stat for some builds (!!). I have tested so many builds with CDR and some are just lacking a few points here and there to make a build work or completely fail. If you target CDR for constant uptimes or especially for rotations it's a far too important stat.
It would make primals just mandatory and not only nice to have in certain slots (like gloves, rings, shoulders,...) Imagine you can drop obsidian ring of the zodiac for something like unity, coe, ring of royal grandeur, just because you got those few extra CDR points... way too powerful in my opinion.
certain builds in the past would have not worked if the max CDR roll would be 7%. Just sayin... it would overall make a huge difference if they would do primals with higher CDR values.
Wouldn't it be cool if you could drop Zodiac for something else and would that be so bad? You'd have to progress for it, grind more gear and eventually you can roll with that Krede's Flame you always wanted to implement in your build! I get your point with something being mandatory which is harder to get then just some gear piece and I understand that 3 primal CDR items could be what is needed for you to change build completely into something much more effective. I still think it's what Diablo is about, improving your gear. I don't think it would matter much for leader boards though. I mean, those in the top farm so much anyway and are bound to get the items they need. It might give someone who's lucky a boost in GRLVLS but things do that anyway. Get an ancient good weapon in the beginning of a season and you'll sky rocket your progress.
My point is, it's worth trying
in fact you're right. what i was thinking?
I mean my statement was just so that it is clear how much of an influence certain stats would make in the decision making whether to equip a primal item or use a "better" rolled ancient...
overall i would be fine with it, just that it won't happen
Anyways, this thread sort of filled up while I was gone. The mainstay issues are that they continue to just add layers... If they revisited some of the useless items, and made them work a bit better, things would be great. I just recently laughed at the fact that the Archon Wizard build is actually favoring a Pig Sticker now, because of the AS of the weapon and 5 affixes. Pig Sticker. All the fantastic wands/swords/staves... BiS weapon, Pig Sticker. Squee! Lmao. Same goes for those thorns saders... Pig Sticker is up on top of that pile too. Again, 5 Affixes, and the AS of the weapon. Gift of Sil has 5 affixes, and most of them look pretty good, but thing is, it's a 1.4 AS weapon, not a 1.59, Numbers are a huge part of this game, and people just don't see how adding more numbers is just making things worse.