English E.U. Forums thread - highly rated status reached!

Thanks everyone!

Quote from Benegesserit

It's spelled Defense. This is an American made game. They're not going to spell it your way.

Oh well.. if that's the only problem the have for implementing this they can spell/call it whatever they want.. And thanks everyone for supporting this!

Thanks once again guys

Thanks guys!

Someone in the U.S. forums suggested to have an official poll (such as the "design a legendary" one) with 15/20 great ideas (such as Damienjohn and MrMonstrosity's ones) found around the forums.

The ones with most votes will get into the game.I'd really love to have such poll!

Any other comment on this?

Quote from DamienJohn

Quote from Edriel

Don't worry dude. I just wanted to be sure I didn't "steal" any of his suggestions because I read his thread and I knew that the infernal tower was similar to my Wave of Death idea (I suggested it just because you know... it another way to ask "Blizz implement an endless wave mode!!"), but I didn't see anything similar to DotO and Infernal Rift. If I missed it it's only my fault and I really want to apologise with DamienJohn if that's the case.And don't worry about critics... if you have to just do it

Definitely no need for an apology Edriel! Although they share the same purpose (expanding endgame) your ideas here are very distinct and interesting.

I have to head out for a meeting right now but I'll read through in detail and leave some feedback when I'm home. But amazing presentation as per usual Edriel!

Also, do you mind if I add you in-game?

Thanks Sure add me if you like Thanks everyone for supporting this suggestion! Much appreciated!

Don't worry dude.

I just wanted to be sure I didn't "steal" any of his suggestions because I read his thread and I knew that the infernal tower was similar to my Wave of Death idea (I suggested it just because you know... it another way to ask "Blizz implement an endless wave mode!!"), but I didn't see anything similar to DotO and Infernal Rift.

If I missed it it's only my fault and I really want to apologise with DamienJohn if that's the case.And don't worry about critics... if you have to just do it

Really?

I thought he suggested only the Infernal Tower that was similar to my Wave of Death suggestion.

Did he suggest something similar to DotO and Infernal Rift as well? O.o

If so I completly missed it :/

Link to U.S. Forums Thread: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10949674935#1

Link to EU English Forums Thread: http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/8965947786 highly rated Link to Italian Forums Thread: http://eu.battle.net/d3/it/forum/topic/8965497773 Link to Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Diablo/comments/1t4f9u/suggestions_wave_of_death_defence_of_the_outpost/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edit: Player ShadowAegis in the U.S. forums suggested a really nice way to get great endgame ideas (such as DamienJohn and MrMonstrosity's ones) into the game.
I really liked his idea so I will put what he wrote just under here: "I could go for those challenge modes and I will give you a personal opinion. My take is real simple I say that those ideas and others like them can be handled in the following ways.

Let's say that with you and others brainstorming the devs could come up with around 20 such ideas.

Then the devs could take a poll and similar to the design a legendaries. Then the 10 with the most votes would be added in. Then out of those ten players could vote once more on which ones would be ladder only. Then the five with the most votes wins a place on the ladder only challenge modes.

I think that having challenges modes that are ladder only as well as having some non ladder would be great for this game. What does the rest of you think." http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10949674935#8 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi everyone!
I'm here again to suggest some ideas I had.
I know that one of them is a very popular requested feature (and suggested many times) and the others "might" sound similar but I think that I found some interesting ways to make them feel unique.

This is the first time I suggest an idea and throw it out to the "public" before hearing the feedback of the italian community (except the last suggestion) so I really don't know how this will end but in case you will like it, please click on the thumb just under my avatar on the left of this post, thank you

Prepare yourselves because this is a MASSIVE post with LOADS of images.

As always I apologise for my english.

TLDR Version at the end of the post.



This is one of the most popular features that this community would like to have in the game.
It's an "arena" where you have to fight waves of monsters.
But my suggestion gets a bit deeper and extends the difficulty based upon the player skills/gear/luck (yeah a bit of luck is always required :P)..

Let's have a look on the first image:



As you can see the difficulty is disabled because monsters will increase their strength as long as you survive in the arena.

So how do you extend the difficulty of this mode?

It's easy. Simply click on the "change" in the "Options" pane and:



In the "details" pane you can see the differences between the "type of monsters you're going to fight against".

If the player chooses "Normal" monsters he will face:

- normal monsters waves (this means that "normal" waves are composed by normal monsters)
- 1 elite pack every 5 waves
- 1 boss every 20 waves
- no random spawns

Note: random spawns are random generated monsters that have a chance to be spawned in addition to the wave: random spawns might be normal monsters, elite minions, elite packs or bosses

What happens if the player chooses one of the other "monsters type"?







Note: remember from now on that the numbers/values on the pictures are just examples

I think that the "Extreme" monsters are gonna be hard for everyone, even for the hardcorer of hardcore players.

Of course you don't do this just for the glory but for the competition because Wave of Death (much like the other two modes) will have a classification for the best players in the world based upon waves cleared, monster type selection and number of party members.




The name might remember you Defence of the Ancients but the game is not a MOBA and only the name is similar

WHAT IS DEFENCE OF THE OUTPOST?

Defence of the Outpost or DotO is similar to a "monsters wave" game but it's very different in philosophy.
You have to destroy the Demonic Shards that are the cause of the demonic invasion on the region.
Unfortunately there are many villagers and soldiers that ask for help so you have also to protect them.
So your mission is to protect the soldiers while at the same time put an end to the demonic invasion by destroying the Demonic Shards.

HOW DOES DEFENCE OF THE OUTPOST WORK?

When the player enters the game he will be inside the outpost. To start the "real game" he has to accept the first quest:





Note: the first quest will always be a "defend the villagers" quest because villagers play a very important role in DotO:
for every villager saved you gain one resource and resources are necessary to upgrade the outpost and to train new soldiers and improve their equipment.
These upgrades require quite some time to finish but the more villagers you have the faster you will finish them.



As I said earlier this game is like a "monster waves" game so you will have endless waves of enemies and every wave will have an increased quantity of monsters.
So the more you take to destroy the Demonic Shards the more difficult the game is going to be.
Every wave is composed by a set number of attacks (as you can see from the image) and if you kill all monsters of an attack before the time expires, the new attack will start istantly.
If on the other side you cannot kill all monsters before the time expires well... you will have to fight more monsters and this might lead to dramatic soldiers losses.

You can also notice in the image that there is a debuff called "Demonic Influence".
This debuff decreases your effectiveness in combat and you can free yourself from it only when you destroy the Demonic Shard.

Note: in this case you will win the game if you destroy the shard because there is only one to destroy but there is an option that allows you to increase the Demonic Shards you have to destroy (more on this later).
Every shard reduces your effectiveness in combat by 20% (example).

What happens next?



As you can see when the last attack has been cleared the countdown for the next wave begins (remember that the countdown starts in any case even if there are monsters left to kill).
This is the perfect time to go outside the outpost and try to find and destroy the Demonic Shard or accept new side-quests or upgrade the soldiers and the outpost.

SIDE-QUESTS AND UPGRADES

The player decides to go inside the chapel:



Cylai (the NPC with the yellow exclamation mark) will be the "side-quest giver":
these quests are repeatable and will allow the player to "obtain" new villagers, soldiers or powerful temporary buffs.
On side-quests you have to do different things around the map (outside the outpost) like "free the imprisoned villagers", "help the soldiers and recruit them for your cause", "kill mob X to gain a powerful buff" and so on.

The player can choose which quest to accept but he can only have one active at any one time.
In addition if the player has an active side-quest he cannot upgrade.

Note: basically you have two choices: accept a side-quest or upgrade/train your soldiers/outpost/villagers.
Of course the player can decide to go for a quest or for an upgrade while under siege but this will expose the outpost (in the case he's around the map to complete a quest) or the villagers (in the case of an upgrade) to massive danger.

If the player decides to upgrade he can talk to Sylmo (the NPC in front of the barbarian in the image):



Here you can see how many resources are available, how many villagers there are in the outpost, how much the upgrade time reduction is (3% time reduction per villager) and at what ranks are the soldiers' equipment and the outpost (maximum rank is 4 for both).
I think I don't need to explain much more as the image is quite clear so let's have a look on the various situations:





As you can see, the player decided to upgrade the soldiers' equipment but the time-choice for the upgrade was not good as the outpost is under attack.
This will make the defence much harder since not only he has to protect the soldiers but also the villagers because if you have no villagers left the upgrade won't finish until you save other villagers.

Note: this means that you cannot accept new side-quests (because you are upgrading) and you have to cancel the upgrade and start it over again once you have at least one villager. Also resources spent for the upgrade are lost forever.

Once the upgrade is complete all soldiers will have different visuals:

Equipment Rank 1:



Equipment Rank 2:



Equipment Rank 3:



Equipment Rank 4:



As you can see the number of soldiers has increased to 5.
This is because the player trained the villagers:





Note: The training villagers are the "templar-like" NPCs on the left. They won't attack enemies as they're still villagers.. so you have to protect them until they finish the training.

Now let's have a look on the last upgrade you can make:





How will your outpost look like when the upgrade is finished?

Outpost Rank 1:



Note: as you can see once you have upgraded the outpost to be at least "rank 1" you will receive a "global" buff that will diminish the effects of Demonic Influence.
I think you also noticed that the banner has two additional little flags on both sides. This is a suggestion to have "clan banners" - the little flags represents the clan flag.

Outpost Rank 2:



Outpost Rank 3:



Outpost Rank 4:



Once the player is prepared and confidend to leave the outpost he can finally go and destroy the Demonic Shard.
When he finds it he has first to kill the boss that makes the Shard invulnerable and then he can destroy the shard itself and claim victory.

Victory can be sweet and inside the outpost chapel you will find a new room filled with treasure... much like this one:



Note: this is just an example of how the treasure room should look like. The treasure will be based upon difficulty, outpost starting conditions, waves cleared and total game time

MODE SELECTION

Now let's take a step back and have a look at what are the different options for DotO:


Note: as you can see for DotO you can choose the difficulty because it will only determine the power of the monsters.
The "normal - 1 entrance" on the "options" pane is refered to the conditions of the outpost (more on this just under here)

Let's click on "change" and:


In the "details" pane you can see the conditions of the outpost once the game starts plus it let's you know how rewarding the side-quests are.







I'm sure you noticed the "1 entrance to defend" option at the bottom of the details pane.

What does that mean?
It means that the player can choose how many entrances the outpost will have.
This will make the game a lot harder not only for the fact that the player has to defend the outpost from multiple-side attacks but also that he has to destroy a number of Demonic Shards equal to the number of entrances (and remember that every Demonic Shard will increase the effects of Demonic Influence)!



The map layout will be something like this:

2 entrances:



3 entrances:



4 entrances:



Note: have a look on the minimap as well




Infernal Rift is the last suggestion I have (finally ;D).

WHAT IS INFERNAL RIFT?

The player has to reach a "room" where he can find the Infernal Rift and then seal it.
To accomplish this he has to complete quests and gain control of strategic areas that gives him buffs of his choice.
Once the rift is sealed he can take his just rewards.

HEROIC MODE





Once inside the game the player has to gain control of strategic areas and to do this he has to kill the watch towers:



and place his banner in its place:



Before gaining control of an area the banner has to maximize its influence.
This will take some time and in this time the player has to defend the banner from monsters' attacks (if the banner is destroyed he has to replace it and re-do the "operation").
Once he gained control of the area:



he can choose which buff to gain:







The buff affects the player only while he's inside the area of control. Different areas can have different buffs if the player decides so.

Gaining control of areas is very important because once the player has all areas under his control he will be able to enter in the Infernal Rift room and complete his "mission".

Unfortunately gaining control of areas is not very easy because banners can be attacked by monsters once in a while and also because there might be some "closed paths" that will force the player to do some quests if he wants to proceed:



Take the quest, complete it...



... and go back to gain control of other areas.

Once all areas are under the player's control the Infernal Rift room will open and a boss will spawn.
The player has to kill the boss and destroy the Infernal Rift to be victorious.

Note: once you can target the Infernal Rift (it's invulnerable until you kill the boss) and you attack it, it will keep spawning monsters (both normal and elite) until you completly destroy it.

NEPHALEM MODE

It works much like the "heroic mode" but you will have no quests, maps will be "mirror-style maps", rewards will be PvP-oriented (if they will ever exist) and it will be a speed-run mode.





You objective is always the same: seal the Infernal Rift.
To do this you have to gain control of all areas on your side of the map.
This will open your door and lock other player's doors that grant access to the "central room" (the Infernal Rift is inside this room).

Here's an example of a 1vs1 match:



Note: once the "central room" is opened, the random monsters' attacks to your banners will stop.

Note 2: mirror-style maps might be something like this: http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/monk/TLMC2/korpolusmall2.jpg (thanks SC2 :D)
"white dots" are the spawning locations of each player in a ALL VS ALL match.

If you succeed in sealing the Infernal Rift you will take all the rewards for your own.

But if you die... well... you won't be able to resurrect, other players' doors will unlock and you will lose your chance to win.




In DotO what's the point in wasting time between a wave and another to upgrade the outpost/soldiers or accept side-quests? Isn't it better to just go straight for the Demonic Shards?

For certain cases probably you are right. Maybe in the case where you have just one entrance you'd better go directly for the Demonic Shard.
But did you think that you can choose a harder difficulty and/or more than one entrance?
In the case of more than one entrance, if you go for one Demonic Shard are you sure you will be able to find it, kill all the demons to reach it, kill the boss, destroy the Demonic Shard and go back in time before your outpost is overwhelmed by monsters?

Did you think about allowing the "upgraded outpost buff" to be active only while inside the outpost itself and not "global"?

Yes, I thought about it and I think it will make DotO even more challenging.
The only thing is that Demonic Influence "numbers" have to be balanced.

Will there be only one map for DotO?

Well I'd like to have at least 3/4 different maps

Your numbers/values are all screwed!

As I wrote earlier numbers/values are just examples
This also includes the time between waves in DotO.

What happens if a player of the other team gain control of all areas at the same as me in the Infernal Rift?

Well... I don't thin it can happen. There is always a 0,0001 sec of difference between two actions ;D


Don't you think that the Extreme difficulty in Wave of Death is a bit too... extreme? C'mon... 1 boss every 5 waves plus frequent random spawns and normal minions are elite minions?!

I say: why not?
I mean.. players asked for challenges! Then give them challenges!
You are not forced to play on that difficulty... you can still enjoy Wave of Death in a lower difficulty But Wave of Death is just another suggestion of the usual endless wave game. Why bother to suggest it again? I think that giving Blizzard different variations of this type of game might allow them to find something new and interesting to implement. Also.. if you suggest it once again they might really implement it DamienJohn suggested the challenge mode just a few days ago. In his post he also suggested the "Infernal Tower" feature that is similar to your Wave of Death. Did you just steal his ideas for your own glory? Absolutely no. I read his thread and I liked it a lot.
Wave of Death, Infernal Tower or whatever you name it it's always the same suggestion that the community has been asking for quite some time now: an endless wave game with increasingly difficulty monsters. Similar ideas but with some differences (I wrote this just above here). The only thing I stole from him was the name of the new game mode "Challenge mode" because I think it's very fitting for a mode that can include both PvP and PvEvP. Defence of the Outpost and Infernal Rift ideas weren't suggested by anyone else.Or did I really miss that awesome post where someone suggested similar ideas?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's all guys!
I hope you enjoyed it (the few ones who were able to read till here at least )!

Let me know what you think.





Introducing Challenge Mode.
Challenge mode will have 3 different "sub-modes": Wave of Death, Defence of the Outpost and Infernal Rift.

Wave of Death
It is one of the most popular features that this community would like to have in the game.
It's an "arena" where you have to fight waves of increasing difficulty monsters.
The player can also choose some "particular" options to make the game harder.

Defence of the Outpost
Defence of the Outpost or DotO is similar to a "monsters wave" game but it's very different in philosophy.
You have to destroy the Demonic Shards that are the cause of the demonic invasion on the region.
Unfortunately there are many villagers and soldiers that ask for help so you have also to protect them.
So your mission is to protect the soldiers while at the same time put an end to the demonic invasion by destroying the Demonic Shards.
You can also upgrade your outpost and soldiers and you can do side-quests to help you claim victory.
The player can also choose the starting conditions of the outpost (quantity of soldiers, starting resources etc.)

Infernal Rift
Solo/cooperative: The player has to reach a "room" where he can find the Infernal Rift and then seal it.
To accomplish this he has to complete quests and gain control of strategic areas that gives him buffs of his choice.

Competitive: the player has to reach a "central room" where he can find the Infernal Rift and then seal it before opponent players.
To accomplish this he has to gain control of strategic areas that gives him buffs of his choice.
It's a speedrun game but if the player dies he cannot resurrect and other players will have the possibility to claim both treasure and victory.
The game will be played on mirror-like maps. Much like this one: http://www.teamliquid.net/staff/monk/TLMC2/korpolusmall2.jpg