The idea isn't to remove the gambling. You can still gamble. There would be rifts, Kadala and greater rifts (and technically there is no guarantee you would get exactly what you wanted just like before, so in every zone you are infact gambling.) All that I'm suggesting is to limit everything else outside of rifts to zone specific farming. As for tiered farming, I fail to see the issue since everyone has been doing it since RoS. Certain items do not drop, period, until you hit a specific level. This is a form of tiered drop rate, just tiered off your level not difficulty. There are also a large number of items that do not drop until you are on Torment 1 or higher. This is exactly what I'm referring to. The only difference is that I suggest they spread it out more so people can focus on gear choices with higher success and in turn, create different adventures with every playthrough. My demon hunter may not care for act 1 drops as much as act 3 while my undead charming witchdoctor might be the exact opposite. Paired with my friends, we can create adventures to go on. When we feel we've put in our duty in those acts, we can round out the adventure with a rift run and maybe a greater rift if so lucky. I honestly cannot believe some people are satisfied with running rifts to play the game. There is SO much in the game to do but being funneled into a streamline of repeated randomly generated dungeons is asinine. The only reason we do it is it's the most efficient way to get items. I think by making different zones the place to hunt for specific gear while keeping rifts as the "everything drops here" place to farm, it will give a nice balance so players can take a break from the same thing, over... and over... and over... and over again.
As for the tempering, I explained that nothing changed except that you can eventually max out stats; regardless of the cost, that is the point. This enforces skill play. If two people walk in with the "exact same gear," they will know who is the better player after gaming together. This will make players seek good gameplay habits if they want to progress in the game because the farming game is no longer their motivation (provided they have the exact gear they want.)
But that issue could be easily fixed with drop rate changes. I'd rather play different zones to make each experience fresh than just doing rifts over and over. If I get frustrated, I can go to a new zone instead of having to do another rift because, right now, that's really all I can do for efficiency's sake. Hell, if they actually worked on magic find, it may not be terrible. No matter how you look at it, farming for 1 out of 5-10 items is better than 1 out of 250+.
I also wouldn't mind, with them being conscious of zone farming, for them to take the time to revisit some old zones and tinker with them for a better dungeon crawl experience.
The hot topics for D3 these days seem to be RNG dictates everything so luck outweighs skill. I agree to a point. The point of the game is to farm though. It got me thinking that done right, we could make this cake and eat it too.
Area Farming - Make item types more prevalent in certain acts and zones. This makes players looking for certain gear more likely to seek out certain zones rather than rift forever and ever creating repetitive gameplay. Chest become the jack of all trades however: Normal chests allow players to gain access to ANY item in the act while resplendent chests allow players to gain any item from all acts. We keep the absolute RNG factor through chest, but constrain it while actually hunting zones.
Undead related gear in act 1.
Demon slaying gear in act 3.
Poison related gear in the blood marsh. Etc.
Difficulty farming - Legendaries are limited to difficulties: Normal to Torment 6. This creates layers that progresses players from point A to B. Farm your character up to master and get a few legendaries. Now move into T2. It's hard yes, but now new gear opens up and you can farm this difficulty and hunt for gear here to help you progress to the next stage. This also alows scaling to be fixed. People don't fight bosses unless it's for a bounty at this point, and because of RNG, players could have gotten lucky on stats and will just plow through them in 10-30 seconds. Boring. By creating tiers and knowing what players have access to, the game will become interesting to play at all levels as every new difficulty will pose a new challenge and grant you the next step in evolving your characters gear.
"I heard there was an enemy in Act 3/Torment 1 that dropped the rare marauder's helm!"
"Whoa! I love that set. I'm off to do some act 3 bounties then and see if I can get it."
Tempering - Getting the item you wanted since you started is really disappointing when it's got the lowest stats you can get. It's actually a slap to the face. You were basically punished for being unlucky. Tempering is the idea that a player can spend crafting resources to max out his stats on gear. Changing stat affixes is for the enchantress, so you can still be unlucky on WHICH stats you get but once you do get them, you'll be able to start capping them... at a price of course. Every point raised in this item will raise the cost of the next point you raise. Depending on how rare the gear is, you might actually consider farming it again for better stats as paying 450 million gold just doesn't sound worth it. This will also bring value back to gold again. This will provide huge value to farming and salvaging in general. Depending on how ridiculous the Devs wanted to be, it could be quite extravagant:
1 Veil Crystal + x gold = +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, or +1 Intelligence.
1 Veil Crystal + x gold = +1 Vitality
1 Veil Crystal + x gold = +1 Armor
10 Lizard Eye + x gold = +0.1% Critical Hit Chance
TL;DR - I think Diablo 3 will be better when RNG is constrained without taking it away. You can hunt for specific items, but chests will serve as RNG like in D3's current state. Blood shards and Kadala are just alternative ways to play with RNG as well. Tempering.
As for the tempering, I explained that nothing changed except that you can eventually max out stats; regardless of the cost, that is the point. This enforces skill play. If two people walk in with the "exact same gear," they will know who is the better player after gaming together. This will make players seek good gameplay habits if they want to progress in the game because the farming game is no longer their motivation (provided they have the exact gear they want.)
I also wouldn't mind, with them being conscious of zone farming, for them to take the time to revisit some old zones and tinker with them for a better dungeon crawl experience.
Area Farming - Make item types more prevalent in certain acts and zones. This makes players looking for certain gear more likely to seek out certain zones rather than rift forever and ever creating repetitive gameplay. Chest become the jack of all trades however: Normal chests allow players to gain access to ANY item in the act while resplendent chests allow players to gain any item from all acts. We keep the absolute RNG factor through chest, but constrain it while actually hunting zones.
- Undead related gear in act 1.
- Demon slaying gear in act 3.
- Poison related gear in the blood marsh. Etc.
Difficulty farming - Legendaries are limited to difficulties: Normal to Torment 6. This creates layers that progresses players from point A to B. Farm your character up to master and get a few legendaries. Now move into T2. It's hard yes, but now new gear opens up and you can farm this difficulty and hunt for gear here to help you progress to the next stage. This also alows scaling to be fixed. People don't fight bosses unless it's for a bounty at this point, and because of RNG, players could have gotten lucky on stats and will just plow through them in 10-30 seconds. Boring. By creating tiers and knowing what players have access to, the game will become interesting to play at all levels as every new difficulty will pose a new challenge and grant you the next step in evolving your characters gear."I heard there was an enemy in Act 3/Torment 1 that dropped the rare marauder's helm!"
"Whoa! I love that set. I'm off to do some act 3 bounties then and see if I can get it."
Tempering - Getting the item you wanted since you started is really disappointing when it's got the lowest stats you can get. It's actually a slap to the face. You were basically punished for being unlucky. Tempering is the idea that a player can spend crafting resources to max out his stats on gear. Changing stat affixes is for the enchantress, so you can still be unlucky on WHICH stats you get but once you do get them, you'll be able to start capping them... at a price of course. Every point raised in this item will raise the cost of the next point you raise. Depending on how rare the gear is, you might actually consider farming it again for better stats as paying 450 million gold just doesn't sound worth it. This will also bring value back to gold again. This will provide huge value to farming and salvaging in general. Depending on how ridiculous the Devs wanted to be, it could be quite extravagant:
- 1 Veil Crystal + x gold = +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, or +1 Intelligence.
- 1 Veil Crystal + x gold = +1 Vitality
- 1 Veil Crystal + x gold = +1 Armor
- 10 Lizard Eye + x gold = +0.1% Critical Hit Chance
- 1 Lizard Eye + x gold = +1.0% Critical Hit Damage
- 100 Arcane Dust + x gold = +1.0% Elemental Ability Damage
.... Something like that.TL;DR - I think Diablo 3 will be better when RNG is constrained without taking it away. You can hunt for specific items, but chests will serve as RNG like in D3's current state. Blood shards and Kadala are just alternative ways to play with RNG as well. Tempering.