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T10 Farming vs Greater Rifting

In a recent vein to yesterday's highlighted video, Bluddshed has also made one comparing T10 farming and Greater Rifting - check it out below!

Custom Rifts Suggestion

PrvtPile has crafted an interesting idea on our forums. What if the Random Element of Greater Rifts could be removed and players could instead choose what kind of Rift they want to play. He also thought of a few downsides to balance the feature, like not getting loot from these GRs.

Check out the short snippet below, or the original thread for the whole idea!

Original Thread

 

 

 

 

Once you’ve chosen all your settings, now you Create the Custom Rift. First you name it, select whether it is open to public or not, and whether it is a Static Rift.

 

STATIC RIFTS (this is an important option, and deserves a separate discussion to itself)

A non-Static rift would simply operate as regular Rifts and Grifts currently do i.e. whenever you enter a new rift it randomizes (from the set criteria) the rift. So, even if you select only 1 map-type etc. for your Custom Rift, but do not set it as Static, it will still randomly create a rift based on that one map type and the other criteria every time someone attempts that rift. A Static Rift, however, will only create one single rift when the creator/designer of the Custom Rift initially creates the Custom Rift, and from then on all subsequent openings of that rift, by anyone, will all be exactly the same, from the map layout to the monsters’ spawn location and type, pylon location etc. Everything is identical for every player who opens that Custom Rift (excluding RG spawn location, obviously).

 

PROS of a Static Rift

• reduces the advantage of things like THUD (everybody already knows the full map and pylon location etc.)
• removes the need for GRift fishing
• reduces overall balance issues such as mob types, mob affixes, map types, pylons etc. If the Rift is identical for everyone, it doesn’t really matter if Ghosts or Conduits are OP or not, because everyone has to fight/use them (this also allows us to bring the fun dense maps back to Greater Rifts, so we’re not stuck with shitty Cave maps 75% of time)
• allows the use of mob/map-specific strategies: items like http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/arthefs-spark-of-life might be more useable (unlikely, but you get my point) if you know 100% of the Rift is Undead mobs

CONS

• boring? (not for people who enjoy the competition)

If you’re still unconvinced by Custom Rifts, well, simple: there’s no need to play these Custom Rifts at all if you have no interest in them. You miss out on nothing by not playing them. It’s just like how some people will never play Hardcore-mode and they don’t miss out on anything by not. Which brings me to my next important point.

 

NO LOOT

Custom Rifts would have no loot. None at all (not even from the Rift Guardian). And no experience gained. This is partly so that people couldn’t cheese and create some easy farming rift, but more so because Custom Rifts would be purely about the fun of the competition, just like those countless other games we play because people enjoy competing against each other – that’s what drives (in part) communities. We can see this where D3 communities are already (and have been for a long time) creating their own friendly competitions/challenges in order to keep themselves entertained when there’s little else in the game for them to do, and GRift-fishing becomes too tedious. For examples see the old T6 speed-clearing competition ( http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/14609681171#1 ), the HC No Set Challenge (http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/18000139876?page=1 ), the Reddit Challenge ( https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo/wiki/weeklychallenge_s1 ), and I’m sure there’s many more.

(continues...)