Heading into Season 7 there are keys questions that need to be addressed and talking about frivolities like the Goblin Giggle is just pure Bovine Scatology and a waste of time.
!. What is being done to break up the 1 dps and 3 support meta?
2. How is the monotony of the endless same grind of paragon chasing being addressed?
3. Is the crafting system being improved?
4. Will all classes be able to participate in the end game beyond support roles?
5. Will the community and matchmaking system ever be improved?
6. What is the future vision for D3 beyond Season 6?
This list can go on and on with many serious topics, but instead we get insights into bullocks like the goblin giggle.
My point was not that solo play should be on par with group play. I was seeking more ways for solo players to accomplish tasks that has thus far been best achieved by group play. My main gripe is gem leveling. The best way to level gems is in groups that can push a player into higher ranked grs than a solo player can succeed on their own in an efficient manner. With the game in the state it is in- and seems to be staying at for the future- there should be more open doors for solo progression. Gem leveling is a prime example that needs an alternative route for advancement.
Groups could remain the best way to do progression tasks, but they should no longer be the only way. The game needs refinement now that it is so old and new projects are in development. It should not be abandoned the way D2 was for so many years.
Gem leveling could be better. The crafting system is still too much of a crap shoot. The community system sucks to the point that matchmaking is a nightmare to use.
If Blizzard wants to divert internal resources elsewhere, fine, but at the same time D3 is not so old that it could be abandoned to the point that refinement is no longer a prospect. Refinement needs to happen.
This topic should not be derailed into a solo versus group offshoot debate.
A few names of import have been moved from the D3 team. The game is over 4 years old. A mysterious Diablo related project is hiring staff. Season six is stuck in near the same meta as season five of one dps and three support with that meta no end in sight.
This means the game is in a rut and needs a change on a fundamental level that would have not been considered in the past and that change is to finally allow solo play to advance in ways it has never been allowed before.
Why?
Why subject the D3 players to hit the same walls over and over by forcing them to reconstruct the same old group meta time and time again in order to advance? Why not free players to do what the franchise used to do and allow players no limits in solo play? What does no limits on solo play mean?
The game needs to break the barriers that force players to stay in the meta in order to advance in progression and I mean specifically gem leveling. What keeps one player down with relatively the same gear as another player is mainly gem levels. Why continue to force people who want to play the game mainly as a solo player to go into the busted meta group system when the game is looking like into is going into maintenance mode from the business perspective? Group play has pushed the game past the goal of the GR100 barrier and beyond.
Now is the time as season 7 looms to allow solo players to gain progress without the necessity of the damn busted meta. This could easily be done thru an additional method of advancing gem levels via maybe gift cubes like Ramaladnis that grant gems levels up to a cap, say 2 to 5 levels past a player's solo gr best. Maybe a gift that grants 1 gem level a 1 level bonus to a max of a gem level 100?
Grouping will always be best for rapid progress in exp, rift times, and assistance to reach new gr personal bests; However, there should now be some alternative way to also advance in gearing as a solo player in areas that have been traditionally next to impossible to progress without a meta group.
If D3 is now long in the tooth and Blizzard has eyes for a new project, why should the old biases linger against solo play?
IMHO the meta sucks because of only one dps is needed. A player spends months collecting all kinds of dps gear for all the classes and then has to put it all aside to play support. What a lame conclusion for a fantasy game. The meta should only need one or two supports, and all classes should be capable of playing in a four player group. Any other conclusion is bad game design. At least with Firebird the dps will not be one stupid wizard attacking a corner of a wall. How lame is that for a meta? I'm one of the strongest heroes on the board because I attack walls so nicely! LAME.
If people are complaining that there is no content to the game, then that is because the game is all about pushing Grs and that's pretty much it. Once a person has played thru campaign, neph rifts, and bounties a few hundred times that kind of content becomes old news and meaningless. All of that activity just points the player to one conclusion and that conclusion is that the game is all about pushing Grs. The game has no vision beyond that. If the game does it would be news to me.
Diablo 3 is Grs.
The only true solution to changing the breadth of the game is to make a new game that starts with a foundation with more compass than Gr pushing. I'm all for a new game, Diablo 4, but at the pace Blizzard creates new games it would be at the minimum 5 years out. The public waited for over a decade to go from D2 to D3.
If no new game is going to be released any time soon, then D3 itself has to be streamlined to make getting to GR content less annoying. Veteran players know what they want and making them jump thru hoops to get it is fine and dandy if it is actually FUN content. Problem is neph rifts are damn boring, bounties are damn boring, and veteran players not gaining more control over RNG is damn boring. If a veteran player could gain more control over the RNG then the build up tasks towards Gr pushing might be less annoying.
The game is supposed to be about fun. Hoops and busy work are not fun if a player never gains more advantage thru persistent play other than spending long amounts of time to get advantage. This is why botting becomes appealing to many. Players who put commitment should gain edges towards controlling RNG factors. Creating faster ways to raise gems is one way to reward dedicated players.
I do not see how high ranked gems or augmentation can be considered as optional to anyone who wants to play the game for longer than a few months. What is considered high on the leaderboards? It takes solid gem ranks and okay augmentation just to reach the bottom of the leaderboards in nonseason. To say leaderboard is just extra activity to what the game is about seems a misrepresentation of the goal of the game. The goal of the game is not just getting past level 70, but to push the highest GR possible in solo and group play possible. Claiming that campaign mode, neph rifting speeds, or bounties, or anything but GR pushing is the end goal of the game is not true even if the devs have tried to paint such a picture at anytime since GRs were initiated. Once Grs were put into the game, the game became Grs and the chase to push them. That's it. Nothing else matters.
That opinion being said every activity in the game needs to be streamlined in an enjoyable way to facilitate Gr play. Campaign is a nice one time visit, but has nothing to do with Grs. It should not be tied to pushing. Bounties take too long and often involve players who can mess up the entire process thru bad play. Bounties need to be sped up. Neph rifting is a necessary activity to find gear, but the number of Gr keys currently dropped is too low because it delays a player from getting into Grs. Seasons are okay because it tightens the window of time to race to the top and starts all players at the same level. Seasons are more incentive to create effect groups than nonseaon. Not having a ton of accumulated resources motivates players to look for help in the form of other players, whereas in nonseason a well resourced player can ignore others and solo quite well until better gem levels are required.
Anything that wastes a player's time from being in Greater Rifts is an issue that needs to be addressed and streamlined. With augmentation being added to the game it is not a luxury, but a new necessity to play the game effectively. This means prolonged gem ranking cannot be called a good use of a player's precious time if it over taxes that limited play time. As gem leveling stands it does delay players and prevents them from spending time in Grs where the meat of the game really is. Solutions may include:
A. More chances
B. Being allowed to buy chances instead of a fixed number
C. Chances being increased based on the difference of the gem starting rank and the level of the Gr completed- as above posts have advocated
D. Alternative ways to level gems outside of GRs, such as gem based bounties that quick boost low ranked gems
E. Simply being able to automatically pay to rank a gem to level fifty in the up front gold equivalent of having to run all the low level Grs required to get a gem to fifty.
There are many solutions but the devs have to be willing to address what impedes players from playing the meat of the game and stop cock blocking all the time. The game is about Grs. All activity needs to get players efficiently to Grs. All the extraneous activity that prevents players from playing the meat of the game is just annoying and stubborness by the devs. It seems they have created a game and then want to keep players from playing it. Their attitudes about game issues is very passive-aggressive and smacks of resentment towards players who want to speed up the processes in order to focus on the goal of the game with the limited playtime a player has per week.
Gr levels and leaderboard should never be handed to players wanting to gain them, but denying that the current state of in game activities like legendary gem leveling creates unnecessary time delays is just wrong, mean spirited, and ignoring the truth.
There are a number of side issues that detract from the main issue which is the group compositions that inevitably become cookie cutter when pushing the leaderboards. There is a certain class of player that can be called elite that top the leaderboards and they dictate what other players will do trying to imitate the success of the elites. This results in the group compositions for four player GR pushing that almost every group calls for when making a group, Currently this is the DMO wiz and three supports.
The issue is how to make for more group compositions viable closer to the current highest GR levels being pushed. Most dedicated players are trying to get into the 100+ GR club currently, so they are keeping to the cookie cutter solution as a solid entry. The cookie cutter composition is played for many GR levels before the current highest GR clears also. It would be nice if the cookie cutter solution wasn't necessary until about ten GR levels before the highest GR cleared by the top of the 4 player GR leaderboard.
That being said I simply have no clue as to how to broaden the entry way into higher GRs. I'm sick of the cookie cutter groups, but they are the most effective and all thirsty players will use them regardless just for a chance to be even considered somewhat near elite status. There will always be a meta solution in group or solo play that makes the most headway and players will follow those molds.
What the Holy Grail solution would be is to make as many other builds and group compositions almost as viable to the metas for as long as possible. If the elites are playing the in vogue cookie cutter meta at gr 100+, then it would be nice to be able to play other group compositions up to GR 95 or so. These alternative compositions would have to be near in number output as the current cookie cutter solution. The question though is how could the dev team even anticipate what the meta will be and how to convince multiple players to bother with anything other than the cookie cutter which has proven successful by its proven performance as demonstrated by the top positions on the leaderboards?
Overall the real problem may not bet the performance possibilities of other builds, but instead the way players play the game. How willing are players to actually try the second or third best builds just for more variety? Because there are meta builds players line up like sheep in a chute just to be near elite status and seem very unwilling to try anything else once a pathway to the top seems open. Getting to the top is just like mountain climbing. Once a route has been established, following climbers tend to stick to that path with not much will to vary from it.
How can the dev team open the meta to more build possibilities when most players only want to play what is currently considered the best solution? Nerf everything to the same level of mediocrity? If the end of the game is to get to the highest GR possible in group or solo play then that goal is the limit to what the game can ever possibly be. The GR end game is Diablo3, so the only solution is to make another Diablo game designed from the ground up where highest GR level is not the intended goal.
I didn't join a solid clan until para 670 and after season 4 I will still be under 1200. In my experience...don't even bother trying to group with snobs. Start your own clan and work at building it. Most snobs already have a tight circle of friends and they hate any newbies to the circle. Few people can break into any clan that has a sense of elitism. It's not worth worrying over. If you are worried about being in the top 10% of players or higher you're bound for heartache.
Many leets bot. End of story. Those that don't have tight circles of friends that feed off eachother and 9 times out of 10 don't want any outside players. The reason they succeed is because of the tight sharing of resources that can be gained by a symbiotic relationship and if you weren't part of the circle when that began you probably won't ever get in.
The best bet is setting up a midlevel clan or community on your own and nurturing your own network with players who don't have leet entanglements either. There have been many whine threads created about how top players having other players who act as groupies in order to push the pace and resources necessary to make the headway needed to be among the top percentages.
Best bet is to avoid that mindset and forge the game into something fun for yourself and stop trying to play the game as someone else defines it. You can't live up to someone else's expectations cause if you try they will simply change the requirements to maintain their sense of superiority.
When i hit para 300 people said I should be 500. When I hit 600, it was then supposed to be 800. I hit 800, then it was a 1000. I'll be over 1100 after season rollover and people say I should be 1200. 1200 people get the brush off by 1500 para players who get the brush off by 1800+ players.
Maybe the heart of the problem is that there is no other worth while game play other than high GRs for leaderboard status and that is why everyone is locked into needing the same build to reach for the top? Speed farming and bounties are just a distraction from the thing players actually care about and that is higher Gr performance. What other activity is the game about? There will always be an idea of an uber build and players will all latch on to it if it is on top of the leaderboards. Achievements, item collections, and time spent getting paragon points are fine and dandy, but all players really care about is the damn leaderboards.
If only there was a way to filter by play style and personality rather than para level....casual, nice, asshole, leet asshole, pure asshole barb in Wastes etc etc.
2
Who gives a Flying FRAK!!??
Heading into Season 7 there are keys questions that need to be addressed and talking about frivolities like the Goblin Giggle is just pure Bovine Scatology and a waste of time.
!. What is being done to break up the 1 dps and 3 support meta?
2. How is the monotony of the endless same grind of paragon chasing being addressed?
3. Is the crafting system being improved?
4. Will all classes be able to participate in the end game beyond support roles?
5. Will the community and matchmaking system ever be improved?
6. What is the future vision for D3 beyond Season 6?
This list can go on and on with many serious topics, but instead we get insights into bullocks like the goblin giggle.
Really Blizz team?
1
My point was not that solo play should be on par with group play. I was seeking more ways for solo players to accomplish tasks that has thus far been best achieved by group play. My main gripe is gem leveling. The best way to level gems is in groups that can push a player into higher ranked grs than a solo player can succeed on their own in an efficient manner. With the game in the state it is in- and seems to be staying at for the future- there should be more open doors for solo progression. Gem leveling is a prime example that needs an alternative route for advancement.
Groups could remain the best way to do progression tasks, but they should no longer be the only way. The game needs refinement now that it is so old and new projects are in development. It should not be abandoned the way D2 was for so many years.
Gem leveling could be better. The crafting system is still too much of a crap shoot. The community system sucks to the point that matchmaking is a nightmare to use.
If Blizzard wants to divert internal resources elsewhere, fine, but at the same time D3 is not so old that it could be abandoned to the point that refinement is no longer a prospect. Refinement needs to happen.
This topic should not be derailed into a solo versus group offshoot debate.
1
A few names of import have been moved from the D3 team. The game is over 4 years old. A mysterious Diablo related project is hiring staff. Season six is stuck in near the same meta as season five of one dps and three support with that meta no end in sight.
This means the game is in a rut and needs a change on a fundamental level that would have not been considered in the past and that change is to finally allow solo play to advance in ways it has never been allowed before.
Why?
Why subject the D3 players to hit the same walls over and over by forcing them to reconstruct the same old group meta time and time again in order to advance? Why not free players to do what the franchise used to do and allow players no limits in solo play? What does no limits on solo play mean?
The game needs to break the barriers that force players to stay in the meta in order to advance in progression and I mean specifically gem leveling. What keeps one player down with relatively the same gear as another player is mainly gem levels. Why continue to force people who want to play the game mainly as a solo player to go into the busted meta group system when the game is looking like into is going into maintenance mode from the business perspective? Group play has pushed the game past the goal of the GR100 barrier and beyond.
Now is the time as season 7 looms to allow solo players to gain progress without the necessity of the damn busted meta. This could easily be done thru an additional method of advancing gem levels via maybe gift cubes like Ramaladnis that grant gems levels up to a cap, say 2 to 5 levels past a player's solo gr best. Maybe a gift that grants 1 gem level a 1 level bonus to a max of a gem level 100?
Grouping will always be best for rapid progress in exp, rift times, and assistance to reach new gr personal bests; However, there should now be some alternative way to also advance in gearing as a solo player in areas that have been traditionally next to impossible to progress without a meta group.
If D3 is now long in the tooth and Blizzard has eyes for a new project, why should the old biases linger against solo play?
4
IMHO the meta sucks because of only one dps is needed. A player spends months collecting all kinds of dps gear for all the classes and then has to put it all aside to play support. What a lame conclusion for a fantasy game. The meta should only need one or two supports, and all classes should be capable of playing in a four player group. Any other conclusion is bad game design. At least with Firebird the dps will not be one stupid wizard attacking a corner of a wall. How lame is that for a meta? I'm one of the strongest heroes on the board because I attack walls so nicely! LAME.
1
If people are complaining that there is no content to the game, then that is because the game is all about pushing Grs and that's pretty much it. Once a person has played thru campaign, neph rifts, and bounties a few hundred times that kind of content becomes old news and meaningless. All of that activity just points the player to one conclusion and that conclusion is that the game is all about pushing Grs. The game has no vision beyond that. If the game does it would be news to me.
Diablo 3 is Grs.
The only true solution to changing the breadth of the game is to make a new game that starts with a foundation with more compass than Gr pushing. I'm all for a new game, Diablo 4, but at the pace Blizzard creates new games it would be at the minimum 5 years out. The public waited for over a decade to go from D2 to D3.
If no new game is going to be released any time soon, then D3 itself has to be streamlined to make getting to GR content less annoying. Veteran players know what they want and making them jump thru hoops to get it is fine and dandy if it is actually FUN content. Problem is neph rifts are damn boring, bounties are damn boring, and veteran players not gaining more control over RNG is damn boring. If a veteran player could gain more control over the RNG then the build up tasks towards Gr pushing might be less annoying.
The game is supposed to be about fun. Hoops and busy work are not fun if a player never gains more advantage thru persistent play other than spending long amounts of time to get advantage. This is why botting becomes appealing to many. Players who put commitment should gain edges towards controlling RNG factors. Creating faster ways to raise gems is one way to reward dedicated players.
1
I do not see how high ranked gems or augmentation can be considered as optional to anyone who wants to play the game for longer than a few months. What is considered high on the leaderboards? It takes solid gem ranks and okay augmentation just to reach the bottom of the leaderboards in nonseason. To say leaderboard is just extra activity to what the game is about seems a misrepresentation of the goal of the game. The goal of the game is not just getting past level 70, but to push the highest GR possible in solo and group play possible. Claiming that campaign mode, neph rifting speeds, or bounties, or anything but GR pushing is the end goal of the game is not true even if the devs have tried to paint such a picture at anytime since GRs were initiated. Once Grs were put into the game, the game became Grs and the chase to push them. That's it. Nothing else matters.
That opinion being said every activity in the game needs to be streamlined in an enjoyable way to facilitate Gr play. Campaign is a nice one time visit, but has nothing to do with Grs. It should not be tied to pushing. Bounties take too long and often involve players who can mess up the entire process thru bad play. Bounties need to be sped up. Neph rifting is a necessary activity to find gear, but the number of Gr keys currently dropped is too low because it delays a player from getting into Grs. Seasons are okay because it tightens the window of time to race to the top and starts all players at the same level. Seasons are more incentive to create effect groups than nonseaon. Not having a ton of accumulated resources motivates players to look for help in the form of other players, whereas in nonseason a well resourced player can ignore others and solo quite well until better gem levels are required.
Anything that wastes a player's time from being in Greater Rifts is an issue that needs to be addressed and streamlined. With augmentation being added to the game it is not a luxury, but a new necessity to play the game effectively. This means prolonged gem ranking cannot be called a good use of a player's precious time if it over taxes that limited play time. As gem leveling stands it does delay players and prevents them from spending time in Grs where the meat of the game really is. Solutions may include:
A. More chances
B. Being allowed to buy chances instead of a fixed number
C. Chances being increased based on the difference of the gem starting rank and the level of the Gr completed- as above posts have advocated
D. Alternative ways to level gems outside of GRs, such as gem based bounties that quick boost low ranked gems
E. Simply being able to automatically pay to rank a gem to level fifty in the up front gold equivalent of having to run all the low level Grs required to get a gem to fifty.
There are many solutions but the devs have to be willing to address what impedes players from playing the meat of the game and stop cock blocking all the time. The game is about Grs. All activity needs to get players efficiently to Grs. All the extraneous activity that prevents players from playing the meat of the game is just annoying and stubborness by the devs. It seems they have created a game and then want to keep players from playing it. Their attitudes about game issues is very passive-aggressive and smacks of resentment towards players who want to speed up the processes in order to focus on the goal of the game with the limited playtime a player has per week.
Gr levels and leaderboard should never be handed to players wanting to gain them, but denying that the current state of in game activities like legendary gem leveling creates unnecessary time delays is just wrong, mean spirited, and ignoring the truth.
1
There are a number of side issues that detract from the main issue which is the group compositions that inevitably become cookie cutter when pushing the leaderboards. There is a certain class of player that can be called elite that top the leaderboards and they dictate what other players will do trying to imitate the success of the elites. This results in the group compositions for four player GR pushing that almost every group calls for when making a group, Currently this is the DMO wiz and three supports.
The issue is how to make for more group compositions viable closer to the current highest GR levels being pushed. Most dedicated players are trying to get into the 100+ GR club currently, so they are keeping to the cookie cutter solution as a solid entry. The cookie cutter composition is played for many GR levels before the current highest GR clears also. It would be nice if the cookie cutter solution wasn't necessary until about ten GR levels before the highest GR cleared by the top of the 4 player GR leaderboard.
That being said I simply have no clue as to how to broaden the entry way into higher GRs. I'm sick of the cookie cutter groups, but they are the most effective and all thirsty players will use them regardless just for a chance to be even considered somewhat near elite status. There will always be a meta solution in group or solo play that makes the most headway and players will follow those molds.
What the Holy Grail solution would be is to make as many other builds and group compositions almost as viable to the metas for as long as possible. If the elites are playing the in vogue cookie cutter meta at gr 100+, then it would be nice to be able to play other group compositions up to GR 95 or so. These alternative compositions would have to be near in number output as the current cookie cutter solution. The question though is how could the dev team even anticipate what the meta will be and how to convince multiple players to bother with anything other than the cookie cutter which has proven successful by its proven performance as demonstrated by the top positions on the leaderboards?
Overall the real problem may not bet the performance possibilities of other builds, but instead the way players play the game. How willing are players to actually try the second or third best builds just for more variety? Because there are meta builds players line up like sheep in a chute just to be near elite status and seem very unwilling to try anything else once a pathway to the top seems open. Getting to the top is just like mountain climbing. Once a route has been established, following climbers tend to stick to that path with not much will to vary from it.
How can the dev team open the meta to more build possibilities when most players only want to play what is currently considered the best solution? Nerf everything to the same level of mediocrity? If the end of the game is to get to the highest GR possible in group or solo play then that goal is the limit to what the game can ever possibly be. The GR end game is Diablo3, so the only solution is to make another Diablo game designed from the ground up where highest GR level is not the intended goal.
3
I didn't join a solid clan until para 670 and after season 4 I will still be under 1200. In my experience...don't even bother trying to group with snobs. Start your own clan and work at building it. Most snobs already have a tight circle of friends and they hate any newbies to the circle. Few people can break into any clan that has a sense of elitism. It's not worth worrying over. If you are worried about being in the top 10% of players or higher you're bound for heartache.
Many leets bot. End of story. Those that don't have tight circles of friends that feed off eachother and 9 times out of 10 don't want any outside players. The reason they succeed is because of the tight sharing of resources that can be gained by a symbiotic relationship and if you weren't part of the circle when that began you probably won't ever get in.
The best bet is setting up a midlevel clan or community on your own and nurturing your own network with players who don't have leet entanglements either. There have been many whine threads created about how top players having other players who act as groupies in order to push the pace and resources necessary to make the headway needed to be among the top percentages.
Best bet is to avoid that mindset and forge the game into something fun for yourself and stop trying to play the game as someone else defines it. You can't live up to someone else's expectations cause if you try they will simply change the requirements to maintain their sense of superiority.
When i hit para 300 people said I should be 500. When I hit 600, it was then supposed to be 800. I hit 800, then it was a 1000. I'll be over 1100 after season rollover and people say I should be 1200. 1200 people get the brush off by 1500 para players who get the brush off by 1800+ players.
Fuch the meta snobs!
3
Maybe the heart of the problem is that there is no other worth while game play other than high GRs for leaderboard status and that is why everyone is locked into needing the same build to reach for the top? Speed farming and bounties are just a distraction from the thing players actually care about and that is higher Gr performance. What other activity is the game about? There will always be an idea of an uber build and players will all latch on to it if it is on top of the leaderboards. Achievements, item collections, and time spent getting paragon points are fine and dandy, but all players really care about is the damn leaderboards.
3
If only there was a way to filter by play style and personality rather than para level....casual, nice, asshole, leet asshole, pure asshole barb in Wastes etc etc.