DiabloFans

Battle.net US Forum Thread: http://us.battle.net...opic/8891689930 highly rated

Battle.net EU Forum Thread: http://eu.battle.net...opic/7527573396 highly rated

Reddit: http://www.reddit.co...stic_pt1_seals/

--------------------------------------------

Hi everyone,

before I start I want to apologize for my English. I hope you can understand it!

You might remember me for this thread.

This time I want to show you two ways I thought to make the mystic an artisan with original (I hope) mechanics.
This is the first part while the second one will come in the future (aka soon™).

It's a VERY VERY long read so I will put a TLDR version at the end of the whole post, but if you have some free time, please take a while and lis... read my idea

Like if you like!

PART 1: SEALS - BASE CONCEPT

What are the seals?

Seals are new droppable items that will allow the player to enchant any white item.


What is it that makes them different from the blacksmith's crafts and from a "similar-Diablo2-enchantment" implementation?

The difference is that with this system the player can choose which magic properties can be enchanted on the item.
Of course the choice remains random in some way (more on this later).


It doesn't seem a great idea... is there something that makes it cool?

Of course! It's been quite a while since I thought that Diablo 3 has a lot of potential in terms of character customization but mechanics like the ability to place statistics or the skill tree (that I really loved) that were a fundamental part of Diablo2 both for customization and replayability were cut from Diablo 3.
But it is also true that there are people who didn't like those mechanics so:

how to create another way to customize your character?
This is where my idea kicks in: seals can level up by capturing the souls (gain experience) of slayed monsters.
On every level they can be infused with different magic properties chosen by the player (these properties are the ones that will be enchanted on the item).
However, this wouldn't have been enough to make this idea looking great... maybe it would've just made it more frustrating.

So why not create a similar mechanic that players miss a lot, like Diablo 2 runes?
That's why I thought that if the player chooses the right combinations of skills (magic properties) to infuse into the seal he can unlock the secret properties of the seal itself.

But still, this was not enough for this feature because probably it would've been too easy to create the perfect seal so I had to think of two ways to make everything more hard:

1 - adding "breakibility" to the seal: on every level up and on every skill infusion ("skill infusion" is refered to the action of the player when he chooses a magic property to infuse into the seal) there is a 5% chance that the seal will break.

2 - adding another mechanic: the purification of the seal

What is the purification of the seal?

If the player reaches a point where the percentage of "breakability" is high he can decide to use the seal for an enchant so he can avoid to break it prematurely.
To be able to use the seal the player has to purify it by freeing and destroying the evil souls trapped into it.

Basically when the evil souls are free, the seal will disappear from the altar (more on this later) and some elite monsters will appear.
These monsters will be as powerful as the seal was.
Once the player has killed every monster of that elite pack, the last one killed will drop the seal in its purified form.
The purified seal allows the player to enchant a white item (more on this on the fourth part).
Elite monsters can also appear when the seal breaks prematurely, so it is important to handle these new items with care!

Another very important thing: if the player is not able to kill the spawned elite monsters the seal is lost forever!
So the player has to be careful to not make the evil souls too powerful!

Note: Purified seals cannot be traded

Are there different types of seal?

Yes:

- Seal of valor: can enchant one-handed weapons

- Seal of power: can enchant two-handed weapons

- Seal of will: can enchant armor items

- Seal of honor: can enchant jewels (white jewels? why not? maybe crafted by the jeweler)

- Seal of the Nephalem: can enchant class items

Seals are also divided based on the maximum level they can reach (e.g. the "Austere seal of valor" can reach only level 2 while the "Pure seal of valor" can reach level 3 and so on - note: the maximum level limit is 10) and based on their quality (magic, rare or legendary).

PART 2: SEALS - SKILL CHOICE AND INFUSION

In this part I will show you the first images of the new seal interface.

Here's the first one:



and here's the tutorial:



Let's see what happens if the player puts a seal into the altar:



As you can see the player chose a seal of valor and you can also notice that the quantity of souls needed for the seal to level up is 50.

The next image will show you the tutorial that appears when the seal reaches level 1:



See how the "breakability" percentage has increased to 5%.
This means that on the next level up or on the next skill infusion, the seal has a 5% chance to break.

At this point the player has just to click on the button "1 unused seal skill point" to open the window where he can choose which skill he would like to infuse into the seal:



This image shows you how the choice of a skill is made.
The player can choose one of two skills randomly chosen from a pool of many others.

Skills are divided between Primary and Secondary skills which can have other "secondary skills" called Traits.

Primary skills are infused into the first globe of every row of globes and they will determine what type of properties the seal will have.

Secondary abilities instead will improve or add effects that will "ensue" the characterization of Primary skills (I hope "ensue" makes sense).

Let's make an example based on the image above.

Cold Power will add cold damage to the item while:

- Freeze will add a chance to freeze the enemies

- Frozen Hell will additionally increase the cold damage done by Cold Power

- Blizzard will allow the player to use the Blizzard spell of the wizard (this affix doesn't exist at the moment but I think that the implementation of this idea would need a game with a larger pool of affixes and where an item can have more than just six affixes).

As you can see from the example above you can notice that the Primary skill determine the main "element" (in this case it's the cold damage) while Secondary skills just "ensue" it (I hope "ensue" makes sense here as well).

Anyway here's the tutorial that clears out any doubt you might still have:



This tutorial gives you another important information: the right combinations of skills allows you to unlock other primary or secondary skills so in the "list" of Secondary skills and Traits it won't appear any "Hidden" skill (which can be either Primary, Secondary or a Trait) because it is up to the player to discover "what skill unlocks skill X or Y or Z".

The player will have to choose from Fire Power or Cold Power and in our case he will choose Cold Power:



You can see how the Monster Power has increased and how it is based on the Primary skill (Primary skills will also determine the monster power).
Keep in mind that the seal breakability increases with a skill infusion as well infact it is now at 10% while previously was only 5%.

Let's see what happens at level 2:



This level activated two globes: one for another Primary skill and one for a Secondary skill so the player's choice for the next skill infusion can be made on two Secondary skills, two Primary skills or one Primary skill and one Secondary skill.
Have a look again on the seal breakability percentage.

On this next image you can see that the player has chosen another Primary skill:



and on the next level the altar will appear like this:



But let's take a step back: what would have happened if the player's choice was a Secondary ability instead of another Primary ability?
Here's the answer:



and the tutorial:



and level 3:



But let's take another step back and let's see which were the skill choices when the player decided to infuse "Freeze":



In the image above you can see that the Freeze skill has no Traits while Blizzard has. In this case the Traits of Blizzard would influence Blizzard of course, making it stronger by adding or improving its effects (e.g. a trait could add the effect of a Blizzard rune).

This time let's take a step forward instead and let's pretend that the seal has just reached level 4 and that the player has laready infused both Freeze and Blood Bath.
The player decides to infuse the next skill and:





But didn't Freeze have no traits? So how is it that possible?

Frozen Explosion is a Trait of Freeze and the infusion of both Freeze and Blood Bath unlocked it.
Frozen Explosion is infact a Hidden skill!

Hidden skills are a fundamental part of this idea and they will lead us to the next part but before we procced I want to try to be even more clearer on how this whole system works.

Basically this idea was inspired by one of my favorite games series: Heroes of Might and Magic.
If you never played any of them you might not be able to understand what I mean, but the ones familiar with the series will understand for sure.

I took the mechanic of the hero's level up (mostly from heroes 5) and just modified it a bit to be "Diablo-like".

Before we get to the next part I will show you one last image that might clears everything out (those of you familiar with Heroes of Might and Magic 5 might recognize it even if it is modified):



Don't look at the icons (they're just examples) but at the "sense" of the image.
I hope this helps to make everything clear on how my idea works.

PART 3: SEALS - HEROIC SKILL

This part explains how to unlock the "secret skill" of a seal with the right combinations of skills.

As I wrote above, the player doesn't know in advance how to unlock a secret skill.
However, it is possible to know what skills can unlock the Heroic Skill (this can be changed if it's too easy to unlock it).

What is the Heroic Skill?

I'm sure many of you noticed the big globe that is "alone". That globe is where the Heroic Skill will be infused.
Every Heroic Skill will give different magic properties depending on the type of seal and on the combinations of skills.

How do you unlock the Heroic Skill?

You just have to make the right decisions when you will infuse a skill.

But let's have a look on a first image:



You can notice that there is a "light" around the first globe: it means that the player is on the right way to unlock the Heroic Skill.

Let's skip to a higher level and let's pretend that the player infused the right skills to unlock the Heroic Skill:



and the tutorial:



and now with the Heroic Skill already infused:



Notice the green colored bonuses. Those are the Heroic skill magic properties!

The image above represents a case where everything went well (perfect skill choices and very lucky randomness), but in most cases the player will have to "wait" before having the chance to infuse the Heroic Skill because as I wrote earlier skills are randomly chosen from a pool of many of them.

In the image below you can see that the player had to wait until the max level to be able to infuse the Heroic Skill:



The player is also allowed to keep infusing skills even after the infusion of the Heroic Skill to make the seal more powerful but if he decides to do so he knows that the seal might break.
You can notice this with two images I showed you: a level 6 seal breakability is much lower than a level 10 but also their "power" is much different.

NOTE
I already explained this earlier but to make it clear I will explain this again:
in the images the level 10 seal breakability is 100% because the last skill has already been infused.
A level 10 seal with one seal skill point still remaining has a 95% breakability: this means that with the last skill infusion the player has a 95% chance to break the seal and if the infusion is successful the breakability percentage reaches 100% (the max level limit is 10 so with this last successful infusion the player does no longer have the risk to break the seal)

Let's have a look on the last two images before proceeding to the next part:





PART 4: MYSTIC - ENCHANTMENT

Once the player has purified the seal he cannot enchant a white item alone: he needs the help of the mystic.

To enchant an item you just need materials and gold.
Let's see a first image of the user interface:



As you can see there are two "slots": in one the player has to put the white item and in the other he has to put the right purified seal (seal of valor for one-handed weapons, seal of the nephalem for class-items etc).
There is also an "Item Statistics" panel where the player can see what magic properties the item will gain.

Here's an image of how the enchantment works:



The player just needs the required materials and gold and the enchantment will happen.

PART 5: MYSTIC - UPGRADE OF A SEAL

Seals can be upgraded and this allows the player to increase the maximum level limit a seal can reach.
This means that if the player wants a level 10 seal (which is the maximum level limit cap) he needs the help of the mystic (droppable seals reaches a maximum level of 6 in Inferno difficulty).

Here's two images on how the user interface will look like:





As you can see you can upgrade magic and rare seals (legendary too).
Higher level and legendary upgrades are droppable recipes of course.

On the image below you can see what the player needs to upgrade a "Seal of Will" (max level 1) into an "Austere Seal of Will" (max level 2).



You can now understand how important is the role of the mystic.

We will now have a look on the tooltip of a seal:



Let's explain its characteristics in detail:
you can notice that this is a rare seal and that it has a "Sacred power".
"Sacred Power" is just an indication to know what it is its maximum level.
However, you don't need to remember every single "power" to know what it is its maximum level because just below that there is this writing: "Level 5".
So this seal can reach level 5 at maximum.

If the player wants to increase its level cap he needs the mystic and the "upgrade operation" won't modify its magic properties in any way (except the level cap of course).

Speaking of magic properties you can see that this seal have two of them:

- Chance to break the seal recuded by 20%

- Monster power is reduced by 25%

This means that the seal has less chances to be broken and that the power of the monsters is reduced by 20% when they are released.

There are many more magic properties of course:

- Seal can be reused (only on a legendary seal)

- Indestructible (only on a legendary seal)

- Infused Skills power is increased by 5% per seal level

- Maximum level is 15 (on a legendary seal with reduced seal breakability and with the magic property above)

- Elemental skills power is increased by 10%

- Monster power is increased by 10% (yes, there are also negative magic properties!)

etc etc.

I also thought to give the Mystic the ability to also craft seals other than just upgrade them.

PART 6: CONCLUSION

I think that this idea will add a great amount of longevity to the game and a different "style" of enchantment.
I believe that if a player wants to create the perfect seal he needs to farm a lot but I hope that this doesn't lead to more frustration:
if the creation of Heroic Seals was almost impossible to do this idea would just need some adjustments like increasing the skill infusion choice from only two skills to three.

I know that to implement all of this the game would need a major overhaul but maybe the devs can take this idea to create a much more enjoyable and deeper-depth game.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Edit - Note
I'm not a fan myself of "break things" mostly if you have worked so hard to obtain those things.
As I wrote in a post on reddit I couldn't come up with anything else other than this "breakability" and I think that some features needs some downsides to make the game less linear.
Of course the "breakability" can be removed and changed to something else so that's why I'm writing here a couple of alternatives

Diablo (EU - EN):
instead of adding more seal breakability, with every seal lvl, it should add the chance of decreasing the seal of 1 seal lvl, so it would not get destroyed, but just lose one lvl. bcs it would be really annoying and propably really hard otherwise to get a lvl 10 seal.

CrniVuk (US - EN):
instead of "breaking" it in a way that it dissapears let the Seal simply be dissabled unless you can repair it again with some other specific item/seal/what ever.
That way the progress you worked for months doesnt just dissapear, and you encourage players to get out there and do something against it.
This could also work as a gold sink, as the Mystic has to repair it for you of course.

There can be other alternatives of course, just remember that this is a base idea that can be used by the devs.. so anything can be changed to be less complex / frustrating etc. It needs hard testing.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is all and I will leave you with two last images of the new UI (TLDR version after the images):





TLDR version:

Added a new droppable item: seals.
Seals are livellable items that must be purified (you have to kill the evil souls inside it) to make them able to enchant a white item (the enchantment requires the help of the mystic).
The magic properties infused into the seal can be choosen by the player in a random way (much like Heroes of Might and Magic 3/4/5) with the seal skill points that are earned through the levels of the seal.
The mystic will also increase the maximum level limit that a seal can reach.

And once again. Thanks everyone!

3/3 Highly Rated (EU - US - Reddit)

Quote from DeepThought

I posted a link on Reddit to this forum post. It is on /r/Diablo and /r/Diablo3. You deserve recognition for your work!

Thank you and thanks everyone for kind words.

I've read some comments on Reddit as well and while I agree with the people who says that these two ideas might be too much complicated for the Diablo3 player base I think that something must be done.

As I wrote at the start of the post these are just a couple of ideas that the developpers can use as base for something new and different.

If ever implemented I don't expect these features to stay the same I thought them, but I'm expecting them to give some nice ideas to developpers. That's all

Edit:

Link to U.S. Forums Thread: http://us.battle.net...opic/8156055717 highly rated

Link to EU English Forums Thread: http://eu.battle.net...opic/6787929710 highly rated

Link to EU Poland Forums Thread: http://eu.battle.net...opic/6891639245 highly rated

Link to Reddit discussion: http://www.reddit.co...nd_the_burning/ highly rated



And “like”... if you like (on the official forum threads and reddit too if you'd like of course)

Thanks everyone for the very positive feedback. It's much appreciated!
I'm glad that so many people liked the suggestions!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi everyone,

I wanted to send an e-mail directly to the developpers but it seems that they don't have a direct way to give them feedback (the only one I could find was this: wowcmfeedback@blizzard.com but it seems it refers only to the feedback on CMs, MPVs etc. - and anyway the files in .pdf are too big to be sent to them ).
So the only way to do it it's by using the forums so I will write my ideas here.

I'm sorry about the very long read BUT this is my feedback and it was intented to be read by the developpers, so if you don't want to read it, just stop here.

(remember that these are just simple ideas that the developpers can take as base to create something new and improve the game)

Here's the e-mail:


Hi,
I'm Edriel, an italian Diablo 3 player.


Firstly I want to apologise if my English is not very good, I'm really trying to write in the most clearer way I can but I don't know if I will succeed.


Since the launch of the game I felt that this chapter of the Diablo series could be very successful.
However I don't think that in its current state it can become a masterpiece.


With that in mind I started to make many suggestions on the Italian Forum and after a while quite a few people who were excited about my ideas suggested me to personally send you my feedback.
So that's why I'm writing you this e-mail.


I hope you will enjoy the two ideas I translated for you, because it took quite a while to do it


P.S. I posted the Talisman idea in September so it might feel a bit “old”.
P.P.S. I hope you can answer me, even just a “we received your feedback and we appreciate it would be nice”


Sincerely
Edriel
an italian fan of the Diablo series


FIRST SUGGESTION - REINTRODUCTION OF THE TALISMAN


➢ BASE CONCEPT

This idea is ment to improve 2 important aspects of the game that currently, in my opinion, are lackluster:

1. Longevity
2. Paragon Level design

I imagined something that is not far from the philosophy of the Diablo series and something that I really loved in other games: the souls.

The Talisman will be a special container that will allow the player to capture the souls of defeated enemies.




As you can see from the image the Talisman will feature 5 minor globes and a supreme globe of souls.
In the 5 minor globes the player will trap the souls of lesser demons (normal monsters or Elite monsters – the quantity of souls needed to full the globes depends on balance of course and on the talisman type. So the player can have “situations” where he/she needs just one Elite monster to fill completly the globe, “situations” where the quantity depends on how many times the player used the Talisman or “situations” where he/she needs a mix of normal and Elite monsters' souls and in this last case Elite souls would fill more the globe) while in the Supreme Globe the player can capture the soul of a Boss.

Every minor globe of souls will activate its own effect based on the type of Talisman that I will show you time to time.
When all the minor globes are full, the player is allowed to capture the soul of a boss that will increase or add other effects.
In addition everytime the players starts a new game session all globes are empty.

➢ TALISMAN OF THE NEPHALEM

This idea could replace the current mechanic of the Nephalem Valor by inherently including it into the Talisman.
The idea can also be “expanded”. But how? In this way:




This is the Talisman of the Nephalem.
As you can see there are various effects: +1 Artisan Item, +1 Follower Item etc.
These effects will unlock everytime the relative minor globe is full, but the effects (or bonus items in the case of this type of Talisman) are not cumulative so, for example, if the player has both the first and the second globes full, only the second effect will be applied.

With this Talisman the player needs just one Elite monster to fill completly a single minor globe and the effects will be applied only on Elite monsters kills and Boss kills.

Once all 5 minor globes are full, as I wrote above, the player can capture the soul of a Boss.
This soul will grant him/her the chance to have all the effects active, but when he/she kills another boss or when he/she kills an Elite monster and the “Talisman procs”, all souls will be lost.

Why did I wrote “Talisman procs”? Because if you did see there is a “chance to find 1%”.
What does that mean? It means that the chance to find bonus items is only of 1%.
Don't worry about that percentage because it refers to a Paragon Level 1 character: the percentage is equal to the Paragon Level of the character.

If the player kills another boss, instead, the chance is always set to 100%.

In this next image you can see the tutorial that might clear any doubt you could still have:




In this other image you can see that the player has a 1% chance to find an extra gem on the next kill of an Elite monster (or Boss):




This last image shows you how the Talisman will look like when all the globes are full:



➢ TALISMAN OF ENCHANTMENT

I feel that the lack of a quest that makes you enchant an item is very sad, so I thought a way to allow the Talisman to enchant items.

My initial thought was that this system should have had a mechanic based completly on the “harvest” of souls so without the need to add new droppable items and with a completly random enchantment.

However I feel that the introduction of new droppable items would fit much more the philosophy that the
developpers wanted for Diablo3.

These new items are the Soulstones and they will have one magic property each (except one particular soulstone of which I will write later)




This image represent the Talisman of Enchantment.
To explain how it works here's another image:




As you can see even in this case there is a sinergy between the Talisman and the Paragon Levels: the higher is the player's character Paragon Level the more powerful are the magic properties.

Let's have a look now at how a Soulstone looks like:




This is the particular Soulstone I wrote about earlier.
It will have always a primary statistic and a relative magic property of the class that uses that statistic.
For example the “Soulstone of Virtue” grants Dexterity and:
– Spirit Regeneration
or
– Life points per Spirit points spent
All other Soulstones will have their magic properties and their relative values completly random.
Let's have a look on how this Talisman works (make sure you check the Paragon Levels everytime):











Last but not least, the image that shows you how a full-globe-talisman looks like:




The soul of the Boss, as you have seen from the images, will give you a random number of sockets.
Anyway, this idea can be replaced with, maybe, a better one that allows the soul of the Boss to add a random magic property instead of the sockets.

Note: This Talisman idea can be used to craft new and powerful rings and amulets as well!

➢ TALISMAN OF SKILLS

This type of Talisman will allow the player to improve his/her abilities.
Let's see how it looks:




With this Talisman, whenever the player starts a new game session, the globes won't become empty.
The quantity of souls the player captured will be saved so the player's efforts won't be wasted, because every talent point the player gains makes the next Talisman “refill” longer.

To prevent that a player becomes too powerful, there can be a maximum number of talent points a player can gain.

To learn how this Talisman works I will show you an image:




Like every other Talisman I showed you, even this one has a sinergy with Paragon Levels.
The last image represent the Talisman when it has all its globes full:




➢ TALISMAN OF ABILITIES

This Talisman allows the player to benefit from various temporary buffs chosen by the player himself/herself.

Every 10 Paragon Levels a globe will unlock (in this Talisman there is another type of globe – the globles of temporary buffs - where the player can “put” the chosen buff) and it will allow the player to benefit both a longer duration of the buff and a “major quantity” of buffs at once.
Every globe has a duration of 5 minutes (hypothetical duration).
However, the 10th Paragon Level is an exception because the player will unlock not one, but two globes.

Anyway here's a first image to understand better what I've just written:




Now another image that shows you how the Talisman works:




In this case the temporary buff has already been chosen. To choose a temporary buff the player has just to click on the globe of temporary buffs. Once he/she clicked on it a window will open: this window is much like the window that allows the player to choose his/her passive abilities (just to let you know how it looks like).
From the image you can also understand that the temporary buff is already active because the minor globe linked to it is full.

Let's skip to level 20:




At level 20 a second minor globe of souls will unlock. This will allow the player to benefit from temporary buffs for another 5 minutes, but he/she must pay attention because the minor globes are not cumulative.
This means that the duration is just refreshed and it won't stack so the maximum duration is always 5 minutes.

At Paragon Level 30:







In this last image the player has just filled the second minor globe of souls.
This will grant him/her another temporary buff for another 5 minutes since the duration has just been refreshed by the second minor globe.
Just to make it clear: temporary buffs stacks with each other so in this case the player benefits of both temporary buffs.

What happens at Paragon Level 100?




This image explains that when the player captures the soul of a Boss, he/she can benefit of all the temporary buffs for a maximum duration of 30 minutes (or until he/she kills another Boss) with doubled effects!

Isn't there a negative aspect?
Yes and no: it's true that the supreme globe of souls makes the player very powerful, but the downside is that he/she must kill a boss within 5 minutes from when he/she filled the last minor globe.

This is the Talisman at full power:




Note - Temporary buffs can be various: e.g. +10% armor, when you drink a healing potion you gain 50 points of Fury etc, +5% movement speed etc.

➢ TALISMAN OF PORTALS

This Talisman has the simple function to capture souls. Once enough souls are captured the player can decide to release them to open a portal that leads to the Burning Hells.
The monsters that the player will find inside the portal will be stronger the higher the Paragon Level is.

Here's an image to explain how it works:




Here's an image of the new UI:




➢ THE TALISMAN

All these Talismans are separated ideas, but I thought that it would be awesome if all of them could be implemented into the game:




By clicking on the icons, the player can choose which Talisman he/she wants to use, so the Talisman itself will change its functionalities based on the player's choice.

The function of the Talisman can be changed any number of times within a game session but everytime the player changes a type of Talisman for another all souls will be released.

The Talisman of skills is no exception, but the bonuses the player receives from the skill points (the ones that are already allocated) will continue to be granted to him/her even if the Talisman is set to another type.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. You can check the animated gifs of the talismans of portals and abilities at these links (but the words are in
italian sorry):
Portals: http://imageshack.us...minatoevoc.gif/
Abilities: http://imageshack.us...itaanimato.gif/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


SECOND SUGGESTION – THE BURNING HELLS PORTALS


➢ BASE CONCEPT

This idea might be similar to the Talisman of Portals one, but I can assure that its philosophy is completly different.

After you defeat Diablo in Inferno difficulty the player will find out that there are still many Burning Hells Portals active throughout all Sanctury! The player's mission is to seal all of them.

To start the “sealing operation” the player has to talk with the Caravan Leader in any act.
The NPC will show the player the map of Sanctuary where he/she can see where the portals are.
After the player has chosen which portal to seal, he/she will start a quest that will be different everytime: mission rewards, objectives, treasures, bonuses etc. will be different from mission to mission (except a particular one,called “Enigma” where the objective is always the same – more on this later).

The tooltip of a mission looks like this:

● Mission Type
▪ Objectives

● Enemies in the area
▪ Resistances, abilities, damage, etc of the enemies

● Rewards based on the Mission Type
▪ Quantity or type of reward

● Description of the mission

The Description of the mission will be the only thing that has a fixed “pre-set” since the number of mission types is limited to three (the number is just the number of mission types I could thought about, but the number can increases depending on the feedback received).

It might sound a bit complicated now, but I can assure you that it's a very simple idea and with the help of some images everything is going to be much clearer.

Once the player has accepted the mission, he/she will get teleported to the area where the portal is and we can start the “sealing operations”. When the quest is completed the player can get his/her rewards.

➢ MISSIONS

Let's have a look at the map:




In this map the player can see where the portals are.
In every game session the position of the portals changes but the total number of them is always 10 (hypothetical number).

Let's have a look:





Note the different positions of the portals between the two images.

At this point the player has just to choose what portal he/she wants to seal so he/she will mouse-over over one and:




Let's analize the tooltip:

Mission: Assault

The mission type Assault is one of the three different mission types.
Assault indicates a mission where the player has more than one objective (objectives are random – I wrote about this earlier) and he/she must do them in a precise order. For every objective the player completes he/she will get a reward (more on this later).

Monsters

This point indicates which monsters the player has to fight against when he reaches that area.
In addition the player will know what the resistances, the abilities, the weakness etc. of the monsters are going to be.

Note: I thought that the resistances and the weaknesses of the monsters could be a fixed number (like 50%) and that only their damage increase could be random.
Another nice idea would be that the resistances of the monsters scale with Monster Power (MP0 = 5% resistance, MP1 =10% resistance... MP10 = immunity and no weaknesses ---> of couse the immunities cannot be to all elements...)
I thought it would be nice to reintroduce the resistances (even if it goes against developpers' will) mostly to give a sense to the elemental damage types.
In addition the player knows before the battle what type of resistances/weaknesses the mosters will have, so he/she can prepare better himself/herself with another type of weapon and/or another build etc.

Objective Rewards

Everytime the player completes an objective he/she will receive the rewards that are listed in this point.

Mission Rewards

When the players completes the mission he/she will get the rewards listed here.

Note: Just to be clear, even if I wrote this earlier, the rewards are random, and so are enemies etc.
E.g. If the player gets another Mission: Assault he/she might get the objective to kill X number of monsters and then save Y villagers, the monsters might be Moloks and Cultists with cold resistance and fire weakness, the objective reward might be Z quantity of gold and the Mission reward might be a rare amulet.

Let's have a look on the second mission type:




Mission: Race against time

In this mission the player has only one random objective but he must do it within a certain amount of time.
The thought a player should have is: will I go for the mission rewards or for the hidden treasures?
As you could understand, if the player wants the hidden treasures he/she must explore very well the entire area to look for them at the probable expense of a mission accomplishment (you lose time while looking for hidden treasures) or if the player wants the mission rewards he/she has to leave behind a lot of hidden treasures.

Note: This would be an ideal situation which might change due to the player's progress (more gear, lower MPs with end-game gear etc).

Hidden Treasures

This is a list of what items the player can find if he/she explores very well the area.
By doing so he/she loses time and he/she might fail to complete the mission.
Hidden treasures can be found inside corpses, chests, ashes etc.

Enemies and Mission rewards

The same as in Assault

Let's have a look on the last mission type:




Mission: Enigma

This mission type will have always a fixed objective: “disable traps”.
By looking at the image you can easily understand that there are no enemies, but this doesn't mean that when the player activates/disables a trap they won't appear.
To disable a trap, a player has to solve little enigmas (in Soul Reaver 1 style – just to be clear on how I ment these enigmas to be – but much much easier to solve) or he/she must activate and then destroy them (much like the one in the Cathedral where when you click on the chest a lot of skeletons appear).

Rewards

Everytime a trap is disabled/destroyed it will drop something. “That something” is what it is listed in this point.

Enemies and Mission rewards

The same as in Assault and in Race against time.

Now that the player knows what type of missions and rewards he/she can get, he/she has only to decide where to go:




Once the player has completed that mission (note how the portal is now grey-colored):




he/she has only to choose another one:




and so on.

➢ Q&A AND ACHIEVEMENTS

Q. What does the player have to do once he/she has the map of the burning hells portals open?

A. As I wrote above, the player has just to mouse-over over a portal to choose which mission he/she wants to do and once he/she decided he/she has just to click on that portal and the click “accept”.

Q. What would happen if a player relogs into the game after he/she got a disconnection while he/she was doing a mission?

A. As I wrote above, the position of the portals changes on every game session.
However if the player gets a disconnection or has to log-out, the mission will remain active and when the player steps back into the game he/she will see a town portal that leads to area of that mission.

Of course, if the player was doing a Race against time mission type that mission would get cancelled if too much time has passed between the disconnection and the relog.

Another thing: the Burning Hells portal of that mission will remain active, visible and will stay on the same position as it was before the relog. When the mission is completed that portal will grey-out and be disabled like all others. This is to clarify in case you had some doubts if there could be a case where a player could get more than 10 portals open at once in a single game session.

Q. Aren't there going to be any monsters in the Enigma missions?

A. Enigma mission type is like the other two, so the player might have to fight against monsters. That image was just an example to let you see that you could get an empty map and a “relative safe” area (however, monsters can spawn from traps!)

Q. In the Race against time mission type the player could just skip the mission rewards and just look for hidden treasures! Didn't you think about it?

A. In this mission type the rewards must be balanced in a way so the player MUST choose what he/she really wants to do: fail the mission and look for treasures or complete the mission and leave the treasures?

Q. Is there any achievement for the Burning Hells Portals?

A. Yes, here's a couple:







------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. Enigma missions might not be very “Diablo” like, but I think that something different might help this game to become a real success. Also you can have a mission that is a mix of all three... well.. the combinations can be many... it's just a matter of immagination I guess.

P.P.S. “Missions” can be renamed to “Quests” of course

If you would like to check my other ideas you can click on the link below:

http://eu.battle.net...opic/6533923479

That is an index of all my ideas for Diablo3, but unfortunately they are all in Italian.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reintroduction of the Talisman
and
The Burning Hells Portals
by Edriel - an italian fan of the Diablo series

Hello everyone! I am here to suggest some ideas I had. I tried to make it as simple and short as possible, so I hided some details. And I added Requirements Analysis to the end of each idea, to explain whys. Hope you will find some of these interesting and enjoy! Principles: More code reuse
Meet urgent needs
For majorities

Fusion Forge

Purposes: - Making “useless” legendries more useful
- Helping players accept account-bound
- End-game content like Cube/Runewords Brief:
- The forge has 4 slots; player can put whatever lv-70 legendary item into the one of slots
- If player puts another legendary item to an adjacent slot, and this legendary item has one and has only one common primary property as the first item, a link that represent this property would be formed - After clicking the Forge button, an amulet which has 4 “link” primary properties will be made, and all of those four legendary items will be salvaged

- This amulet has some very powerful secondary properties, like 500 arcane resistance, 10 pickup radius etc. Those secondary properties are decided by those 4 primary stats and their order
For example: Primary Attribute + Health (%Life/ Vitality) + Life (per hit/per second) + Critical (chance/damage) =500 Physical resistance + 80% Gold Find Details: Requirements Analysis:

Elemental Harmony

Purposes:
- Giving players 7th, 8th, and even more “skill slots” without adding any real skill slots
- Reduce complains about “elemental damage effect” (like fire weapon deals AoE damage etc.)
- Further increase build diversity Brief: - Any skill that deals damage can trigger Elemental Harmony
- Once the Elemental Harmony is triggered, a spell will be cast automatically
- The type of the Harmony spell is determined by the weapon’s elemental damage type and the skill’s element type Details: Examples:
Physical + Arcane= Wave of Force
Fire + Arcane= Hydra
Poison + Fire = Fire Bomb More examples and details: Requirements Analysis:

Demonic Soul Gem and Monster Innate Affixes

Purposes: - Better monster balances while keeping their characteristics
- Give players reason to fight ACT4 mobs instead of ACT1 boring zombies
- Solution to bad lucky problems (farm x hours without a legendary loot) Brief: - Some monsters have innate affixes. For example: Soul Ripper have “Tongue Attack”
- Those monsters, when become elites, have less elite affixes(like fire chains etc.) because of their innate affixes - Killing any monster gives player Soul Gem energy. Each affix (innate or elite) increases energy gain by X%, which means, a Phasebeast yields much more soul energy than a zombie - After the soul gem is fully recharged, player can use it and summon a powerful monster that guarantees drop a legendary item Details: - The soul gem can be over-charged to 1000%. Each time it loses 100% energy when used. The item type of the legendary drop is affected by the sum of numbers of energy.
For example:
“492% charged”-> 4+9+2=15 -> 15->1+5=6
6 means it has triple chance to drop a shoulders item than other armor types More details: Requirements Analysis:

Infernal Trail

Purposes: - Short pain, guaranteed profit
- A challenging end game content
- A way to compete with each other Brief:

- Compared with Campaign and Adventure mode, it is just a minor mode
- Monsters are very powerful in this mode - Each week, a player can only kill each monster once. They will not re-spawn until next week
- Each sub boss guarantee drops a legendary item the first time you kill it each week Pain Control: - Each item when you are killed by a pack of elite of a boss, their health and damage will be decreased by 10% this week
- If you failed to kill a sub boss 5 times in a row, its loot will be degrade this week (legendary gear to mat). Same rule applies to elite packs (3 times) Details: - Player can view best 100 players and inspect their builds and gear from a billboard Requirements Analysis:

Separate Challenges from Achievement UI

Purposes: - Another PvEvP end game content
- Some of the challenges are combat-irrelevant, which means everyone could join in despite their gear level Brief: - Separate challenges from Achievements and put them into a new Challenges interface, and add a leaderboard to it
- At the end of each month, the best 10 players of each class will be awarded with special portrait frames and aura dyes
- Some achievements could be converted to challenges like boss kill achievements (on torment 6; in 2 minutes; don’t get hit by some skills etc.) Requirements Analysis:

Demons Must Die

Purpose: - Offering players a new way to play Brief: - Inspired by game "Orcs Must Die". Players can build blade traps, explosive barrels and even moonseeds in order to help them to defend waves of attacks

- Unlike OMD, all of those traps must be active by hand, not automatically, in case of exploit. And blade traps have cooldown, barrels respawn after each wave
- DMD mode doesn’t reward any gear loot. But it is a faster way to collect gold and experience than adventure mode
- Strength of monsters are dynamically adjusted by players’ gear level (EHP, DPS and Healing) Details: - Traps deal little damage. But they apply effects to monsters, to let players kill them much easier.
For example:
Triple arcane damage taken
Convert chill effects into frozen effects for 15 seconds More details: Requirements Analysis:

Demonic Infusion

Purpose: - Another end game content Brief: - Players can get item: [Foul Demonic Crystals] from monsters. They can choose to salvage these into gems, or use them near a normal monster
- Upon used, the crystal will shatter and imbue its power to the monster, which will get a special affix, and this monster can level up. Once reached level 10, it guarantee drops a legendary mat or even legendary gear and a lot of gold Examples of this “special affix”: · Greed: This monster automatically picks up gold drops by other monsters, and gains a level for each X piles of gold picked up
· Enrage: Watching another monster killed increases damage and speed for 2 seconds. Gain a level for each X monster killed Other examples:

Skill-oriented instead of Luck-oriented

Purposes: - Improve gaming experience
- Reduce complains about random or inevitable death that pisses player off Reasons:
- Skill-oriented battle design makes player proud of their increasing skill
- Luck-oriented battle design pisses players off, just like arcane enchanted/frozen+ vortex, old reflect damage/mortar etc. Brief: - A Skill-Oriented affix should contain and only contain 2-3 of following parts:
1. Unavoidable Effect: Like Frozen, it deals unavoidable damage once the ice ball spawns. But it is not deadly. The purpose of Unavoidableis to make players balance between EHP/Healing and DPS
2.Deadly but AvoidableEffect: Like frozen effect of Frozen. Once applied, it can put player into a very dangerous situation.
3. Rewarding Effects: If players didn't get frozen by any ice balls, those ice balls will frozen/slow enemies. This kind of effect is to reward players for their skill and give them sense of accomplishment. Also, it "increases" farming difficulty of bots because it is hard for them to get rewarding effects.
Details: - Vortex:Spawn a big cycle of wind under a player’s feet and deal damage to him. If he chooses to run out of the cycle, he will be pulled to caster’s location. Otherwise the cyclone will disappear after 2 seconds.
Shielding:Damage taken will be doubled in 4 secsafter the shield expires. Requirements Analysis:

Waking Powers

Purposes: - Giving player a better first impression instead of “I became weaker after 2.0”
- Giving player more driving force to level up Brief: - For every X paragon level a player gains, he will also get one level of a passive skill beside paragon points
- Most of things that was taken away from players, like primary attributes of old paragon system and Nephalem Valor, will be back as one of those “passive skills”
- Some interesting things that does not booster players’ combat capacity that improves the game experience, could be added into game as one of those skills
- If possible, a skill tree could be better and it could silence more complains Example of the Powers: • Increase player’s movement speed while in town
• You can attack and destroy Treasure Goblin’s portals
• When a legendary item drops (from an enemy), confuse nearby enemies and make them attack each other More examples: Requirements Analysis:

Free Upgrades: Standard to deluxe, deluxe to Prime-Evils Pack

Reasons: - A lot of people complain that the expansion is a little bit too expansive.
- A lot of people were disappointed by D3V Brief:

- Upgrade current standard edition to deluxe edition, and deluxe edition to Prime-Evils editions for free
- The Prime-Evils contains World of Warcraft heirloom weapons (transmogrify weapons of RoS deluxe edition), Black Soul Stone mineral fields skin, RoS theme card skin etc. Requirements Analysis:

High Resolution Face Textures

Purpose: - Making this game looks like something released after 2000 instead of before Reasons: - Allowing players to custom their chars benefit a RPG game just like allowing players name their chars, dyeing their gear, transmogrifying their gear. And 1000% better
- When most of online games, especially those made in Korea or Japan, allow players to customize their chars however they like, while Diablo 3, a RPG game made by one of the best companies on the earth, only offering players a bad looking and low resolution face texture.

Miscs

- Completing a bounty increases rewards from bounties of another random acts by 10%, and remove 1 stack of bonus of this act - Allowing players to modify models might be a better idea than offering high resolution textures, just like the Elder Scrolls. - Difficulty settings could not be liner, like easy- normal- hard etc. The difficulty setting design of Meteor: Last Light is very advanced. Player can choose between normal mode and hardcore mode, and each of them has easy to hard settings. So Diablo could also provide players 3 modes like:
Serious Nephalem: Very high monster density, lower drop rate, low monster health
Destiny Warrior: Normal monster density, normal drop rate, normal monster health
Humanity Defender: Low density, high drop rate, high monster health
And 6 difficulty choices like torment 1-6. Torment 1 “Serious Nephalem” should be as difficult as torment 1 “Humanity Defender”. So players can use different builds to farm different modes. - Currently, one of the problems that discourage players do public games is that, if they play with some players that has less DPS than them, they may feel that they are carrying but without additional reward.
Unlocking higher public game settings by soloing uber bosses of that difficulty could be a solution - Whatever players complain is whatever they cannot control. Leaving something that system does now to players may solve some of those problems
For example, if players complain the reviving time of followers is too long. You can allow players clicking on followers to revive them (just like reviving players). They may stop complain, because it is their problem now.
Many designs follow this rule, like Runewords vs. random properties, luck-oriented affixes vs. skill-oriented affixes etc. - It is excited to see a lot of gold or some gear dropped by chests or ashes, but it is also easily exploited by bots. One of the solutions is adding invisible buff stacks to players: killing a monster gives player some stacks of this invisible buff, which greatly increases loots from chests etc. Opening chests removes some stacks of this buff. - Adding player rating system may improve environment of public games: If a player gets low ratings from many players in different games. He may not join another public game for some hours. - Adjusting the class balance is like trading with players - Dynamic system could be introduced to balance skills and runes, if a skill or rune is not popular then it will be automatically buffed by up to X%. This buff is determined by players themselves so they cannot complain about it. By Hawke0323 Hawke0323@gmail.com

Got bored and thought of some

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?

1. Add a subtract "-" button. Its very annoying when you want to make a minor adjustment you have to reset everything to do so.

2. Allow us to just hold down the + button to add points continuously. Instead right now we have to click the + button 50 times to max a stat.

3. Bring up the detailed stats page when the paragon page is up. Currently if you want to check what your current values are and how each point in whatever category affects them you have to leave the paragon page. For example say when you want to make a decision between armor, resists, and life to see what gives you more overall toughness, currently you have to add a point to one stat, exit paragon page, open stats page, check it, bring back the paragon page, reset, add a point in another category, etc.

These all seem like very common sense additions to me. I cant fathom why Blizz while testing didn't think of these.

Hi all!

Just wanted to share this mock-up infographic I designed for a new endgame option within D3. I've been traveling quite a bit for work, so to deal with my Diablo withdrawals I've pieced this together based on some existing ideas I've seen within the community as well as some new ones of my own.

Would love to hear some feedback on the concept as well as thoughts on what endgame means to you in Diablo.

Direct Link: http://i.imgur.com/JadEbrk.jpg

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why? The endgame in Diablo has always been about farming for better loot so you can farm for better loot.. better.

I agree! This is purely intended to augment that loot hunt we all know and love and extend the game's replayability, not replace it.


Why not just include Trials and Towers in Adventure Mode?

Good question. Each mode has a specific purpose that not everyone will be interested in, so overloading Adventure Mode with additional features feels like messy design to me. Story Mode = Enjoy the story, Adventure Mode = Play the item-hunt game (heart of Diablo franchise), Challenge Mode = Optional, augmentative content that extends the lifespan of the item-hunt game. But of course these modes could be joined, this is merely personal preference.


Does that mean no gear rewarded in Challenge Mode?

Yes. Only cosmetic rewards, competitive rankings and XP are offered in Challenge Mode. If Challenge Mode offered loot rewards, it would diminish the inherent purpose of Adventure Mode. The aim is to bring the heroes you've built into Challenge Mode to see what they can do, i.e; to improve your capabilities in Challenge Mode you need to farm Adventure Mode.
TL;DR: I like to compartmentalize.


Are Trials and Towers randomized to any extent?

No. By removing the random elements in regards to layouts, monster types and density, the Trials and Towers can serve as directly measurable content in a competitive sense. If random was at play, someone could simply perform well due to having "lucky RNG". So to summarize, randomization has been removed in Challenge Mode in order to level the playing field.


How does Difficulty work in relation to Trials and Towers?

Trials that are not affected directly by difficulty (like Race Trials) exist as static events that are played and ranked the same across all difficulty levels. Trials that contain monsters and are therefore affected by difficulty selection are ranked as per the difficulty in which the player achieved their result (see: Seasonal Leaderboards UI). Pandemonium Towers are capped on lower difficulties, higher ascension only becomes available with higher difficulties, with the Pandemonium Tower becoming "uncapped" on Torment VI.


The Tower is Endless?

Theoretically, yes. The increase in difficulty is dynamic up until the fixed rewards cease (Level 100), after that, each level sees a static increase (additive percentage) in Monster Damage and Hit Points. For the purpose of this concept let's say that's 5% per level, this means the most godly geared/skilled players can truly test their heroes to the absolute limits.


Couldn't you just skip mobs? Change to a more defensive spec for higher levels? And what happens when you die?

To access the next level you would be required to kill all the monsters on the current level. Skill selection would be locked from when you enter the Tower with a checkpoint every 25 Levels at which you can change your skill spec. These checkpoints also act as respawn points upon death, but they no longer appear after Level 100 (which would be very hard to reach as is).

Overall I haven't put too much thought into how tower progression would work, but I think losing all of your progress upon death would be a bit too much considering how long the climb is. I would love to hear some other ideas/suggestions regarding this!


What is this simultaneous instance nonsense?

When there are other players in your game and you choose to start a Trial or Tower, a dialogue box appears asking them if they would like to join in and challenge you. If they accept, they will be transported to their own instance of the same challenge. You are able to see the "ghosts" of other players according to where they are in their instance (see "Festering Circuit" race screenshot), but you have no direct affect on their game environment. For Tower Races, you would receive toast notifications in your chat each time a player reaches a new level.


Why not just have them in the same instance?

The competitive factor in Trials and Towers is based around how well each player performs, not how effectively you can impede your rivals. This is especially applicable to wave-type Trials and Pandemonium Towers, in which you can't have both characters in the same instance without it being Co-op.


Are the Bosses in Boss Time-trials different from their typical versions?

Yes, they would essentially be Uber versions of their normal encounters, with additional modifiers, more minions, larger HP pools etc.


Do Race Trials have other variables?

Races have additional factors in play outside of simply getting a character from point A to B. For example, Speed-boosting Nephalem Glory orbs can spawn along the route but might not always be in the most desirable of locations. In addition, obstacles such as Bear Traps and Barricades can impede your progress (another reason for separate instances). P.S- I love Mario Kart.


Uhh.. Where is PvP?

Ideally, Challenge Mode would also accomodate any type of future PvP implementation. I haven't included it in my concept as it's such a gigantic feature that it would probably need it's own infographic.


What's with the groan-worthy TV show references?

Because geeknerd.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello all, and thanks for reading. In this post, I would like to present an endgame system I’ve been thinking about the last few days, which I’ve called Orb of Nightmares. English isn’t my mother language, so sorry for my typo. Every comment is wellcome, it would be great knowing your opinion about.

Let's go with it:

What’s the system about?
The Orb of Nightmares is based on combats with uber monsters. Those monsters have a real identity like Leoric, Nihlathak or Diablo, presented as shadow memories from the past you can face and defeat. Once you defeat one of those characters, you get a temporal buff.
Let’s divide the system in 3 parts: Before the Orb to talk about how to access one of those encounters, During the Orb to talk about the encounter themselves, and After the Orb to talk about the rewards.

Before the Orb
There are some considerations about how to enter one of these fights:

• Avoiding a must-do system. Same as Nephalem Valor and the reason why it will be removed: we don’t want a task you have to accomplish every run to feel you’re not wasting your time.
• Making it flat: it becomes boring when there’s only one encounter that’s worth to fight.

So, my proposal consist in a new item and a new NPC in town:

The Archivist, new (and known) character. He travels through Sanctuary looking for lost pieces of information, and now he have listened about your great feats. That’s why he needs you to help him in a task: he have an artifact called the Orb of Nightmares. This legendary object lets revive ancient nightmares from the past and face them. For the Archivist, this means a great source of information given he could explore other’s nightmares to discover forgotten facts from the past, but he’s not in good shape to face such strong things. But with the help of a hero, he could get into even the worst nightmares (such those about The Butcher or even Diablo) to gather some information.

Tokens would be the new kind of item you can find. They could be anything personal (a journal, a doll, a small charm), an object loaded with the nightmares of someone who felt true fear about something. You can find those objects anywhere, but if you do, hurry up! Once in your hands, their charge will run out slowly (let’s say, 5 minutes). You have to take them to the archivist; he’s the one who can focus the token power into the orb. Once done, the token is destroyed and the orb is ready to take the archivist and you to a shadow world. Talk with him when you are prepared (there’s no countdown now).

During the Orb
The combat can be very different from one to another enemy, but in all cases, the scenario and the boss should look as something made from shadows and memories. The infernal machine’s ubers actually looks a bit this way with that smoky and dark appearance, so the thing would be taking them as a model and making them a bit less collourful.

We know that enemies should be recycled (models, textures, animations) so this system can be viable as a minor system, and same with scenarios. This is a limitation, of course, but we’ve seen how some effects can totally change a place as it happens in the Nephalem Rifts. As well, these combats refer to someone’s nightmares, so the idea is making everything dark, big and scary (not realistic).
Some examples I think that could be done with few effort:

The Dark Wanderer
Boss: Diablo
Senario: Old Tristam
Diablo himself walked through the roads of Tristam by his own feet. Despite of he was in a human form, the demonic chaos he unleashed fed the nightmares of both children and old men. It would be awesome fighting Diablo in this scenario (and even better if adding some fire to the town).

The Mad King
Boss: Leoric
Scenario: Leoric Countryard could look really awesome with a dark filter, as well as Leoric Manor.
Yes, Leoric as Skeleton appeared at Tristam Cathedral. But having his manor as an abandoned and enchanted place, local folks would probably feel fear about what lie into it. So, great reason to create an epic combat here.

The Flesh Ripper
Boss: The Butcher
Scenario: Tristam Cathedral with a dark filter looks really nice, and creating a closed arena with this appearance would be perfect. As well, adding some crippled corpses and blood would create a better feel of what the Butcher was.

The Betrayer
Boss: Necromancer (as Nihlathak)
Scenario: One of the caves of Act 1 would be ok, but creating a hall big enough for this combat. Some skeletons would also fit really well, even creating a short dungeon before reaching the big hall where Nihlathak would be waiting.

The Infernal Commander
Boss: Azmodan
Scenario: Diamond Gates (outer).
We know that Azmodan commanded some attacks against the High Heavens. He is supposed to be a great commander, meaning that even Angels may fear him. Of course, many demon militia would be needed.

The Summoner
Boss: Zoltun Kulle (as Horazon, a hat would fit well)
Scenario: Pandemonium Fortress with a cool filter could fit as the Arcane Sanctuary. Add Zoltun (Horazon) using many different elemental spells and some ghosts and you got it!

There are many possible combats to re-create by using D3 elements, so those are only a few of the many ideas I’ve been thinking (I’m still looking for an excuse to fight against the Ancients again, the most epic battle in D2 in my opinion). I want to hear your suggestions!

After the Orb
You fight the Boss, you defeat him and it’s corpse fades away in shadows. What now?
The reward is a really important part of the system. Not having rewards, or having a reward that doesn’t worth your time means that the system will be obsolete (see actual uber fights, wich you don’t really have to do if you are leveling in MP10).

In the adventure system we have the XP/Gold/Legendaries rewards almost covered with bounties, rifts and classical farming. Giving an extra way of getting these rewards is, at the end, making the equation more complicated and therefore is more possible for one of the systems to get obsolete.
That’s why I think that the best reward for these events is a temporal buff. You always say yes to improve even a little bit, and this will help you to get into the rest of the systems. Doing bounties is cool, but doing bounties with an extra 20% to all resistances for a while sounds better. As well, sounds cool watching all the shadows from the boss corpse converging around you and some letters saying “You have defeated this Nightmare! It power surrounds you, granting an extra 20% to all your resistances”.

The discussion here would come from:

• How long would the buff last?
• How powerful would it be?

I think we all agree that the more powerful the buff is, the shorter it should be and vice versa. So here I will propose some options I think are viable, and I suggest you to tell me your opinion about what the best option is.

• 7 Minutes buffs (one per combat): +15% movement speed, +30% to all resistances, +15 to pick-up radius, +50% maximum resource, etc.
• 1 Hour buffs: +9% movement speed, +15% to all resistances, +9 to pick-up radius, +25% maximum resource, etc.
• Permanent buffs (for the rest of the actual game): +6% movement speed, +10% to all resistances, +6 to pick-up radius, +10% maximum resource, etc.

(Note that those numbers should be tested in detail and balanced).

On the one hand, 7 minutes buffs would give you the same sense of a shrine: you have to run to take advantage of it. The way you play could change a lot, so a special care should be given to them.
On the other hand, permanent buffs doesn’t change so much the game, but can be accumulated, so the more you play, the more you get (long runs get better that short runs, as long as you are strong enough to defeat the bosses).

To sum up

• Orb of Nightmares is a system based on uber bosses and exclusive for the adventure mode.
• You can only fight them when certain item drops, so there is no “must-do” system as Nephalem Valor was.
• The encounter is random, so you will fight every boss during the endgame.
• The reward is a buff, and this is welcome at Normal mode as well as at Torment VI mode.
• The Archivist is back!
• Possibility of bringing back lots of epic fights from the Sanctuary History.

I hope you enjoyed reading. I think this system would be really cool, but maybe you don’t! That’s why I would really appreciate a comment telling what you think about this, how would you improve it or what would you change.

Thanks for reading!