In a previous post, I mentioned about how I was enjoying the game but started to grow a little burnt out. Compared to initial release, the game has come a long way in making key strides to improving what I felt was an Alpha game that was forced to meet a deadline. Still the main content pretty much gets repetitive quickly and what I hope to do in this post is offer some suggestions on taking the foundation of this current patch and looking towards the future.
Obviously, the biggest aspect added to the game this patch was ladders/seasons. While some people don’t feel it was compelling enough nor what everyone had envisioned, the main thing is that the groundwork was set forth here. Unfortunately, some people figured out certain exploits and this is something that just won’t be avoided due to the very nature of gaming.
Most of the content for this patch besides seasons was to focus on ladders for Greater Rifts. The game did a lot to put in the ability to gear fast and allow players to compete in the first season so that they could move higher and higher in the Greater Rift competition (which is where all the real end game content is at).
Unfortunately, if you’re not competing in these ladders/seasons, then the motivation to play starts to dwindle once you reach a certain point with your character. For myself, I managed to gear my Demon Hunter to the point where he can pull off a solo T6 normal Nephlam Rift run without any issue (unless he gets supremely unlucky with some horrible mobs and elites clustered together). Even Greater Rifts at level 25-28 are pretty easy and at this stage I’m just using my Demon Hunter as a feeder character to provide Blood Shards and spare gear to my other toons.
However, just running T6 Rifts and finding no loot becomes very mind numbing quickly. Same with spending 1000-2000 Blood Shards and not getting the specific item that you want. You feel that there’s little you can do to improve your character once you get to a certain point. And after that threshold, all the improvements are incredibly incremental and spaced out. Yet the goal at the end of the day is the same: see how far you can get and be able to try out new things.
Yet the RNG aspect more than anything takes away a lot of the fun in the game. I understand RNG from an RPG point of view. I’ve been dealing with it throughout my gaming experience. However, the issue isn’t purely RNG but the gap that exist in the realm of Diablo 3 for RNG.
What does that mean?
Take a game like Bard’s Tale 3 for instance. The game was structured around 7 realms (if I can remember correctly) each of which had their own monsters and items you could find in each realm that would be appropriate in power for that difficulty. You still had to deal with the RNG but it wouldn’t take forever to find what you needed. Also, the items were static in their attributes.
With Diablo 3, the distribution is too ridiculous and not scaled in any sensible manner once you hit level 70. In my case, I do a lot of T6 solo runs (because I find it far more efficient than running with a group, even with the bonus Magic Find). Yet the loot type and quality never corresponds to the fact that I’m doing the most difficult level in the game (outside of Greater Rifts). The only part that was made more certain was the Bounty Cache Legenadaries, which received were buffed.
In my opinion, Diablo 3 needs to close that gap of distribution, similar to how they made farming the Ring of Royal Grandeur (which imo was the reason for the buffed Bounty Cache) improved. My suggestion is that legendaries should no longer be pure RNG but more focused on areas. For instance, killing the Skeleton King in Act 1 could yield the Leoric’s Crown. Or perhaps tie Unique Mobs to specific legendaries, similar to how you could farm crafted materials previously.
Using this method will provide more incentive to do bounties again. Right now, outside of farming for a perfect Ring of Royal Grandeur, the only real reason to do bounties is for the Rift Cache keys. But if you’re like me and have 5-600 Rift Cache keys, there’s absolutely no solid reason to do them anymore. Also, why enforce something that forces you to do all of them unless you really want that cache bounty?
Another thing that I really loved in patch 2.1 was the implementation of Legendary Gems. The idea that you could improve a gem through beating a Greater Rift has been a great idea. The problem I have with the current implementation is that you can only improve the primary statistic. In some cases, the secondary statistic looks far more appealing (like Bane of the Powerful) for leveling and could make a huge difference in very high level Greater Rifts. Also, some of the improvements on a per rank are pretty stingy like adding 1 second of uptime on the Bane of the Powerful gem. I feel that even with perfect gear, the improvements to the rank of gems can only take you so far in Greater Rifts. So definitely in a future content patch, there should be a way to add onto this aspect, if not provide maybe a third tier ranking so that there’s an incentive to push beyond rank 25.
That said, the idea of gear progression through Greater Rifts provides an interesting idea. Although we have enchanting that allows us to reroll stats on gear, there’s little that we can do once we achieve perfect itemization with enchanting. For instance, if you hit 10.0% critical hit chance on your gloves after doing your reroll, that’s it. There’s no room to move from that point.
Also, you pretty much are sacrificing that one stat for another. Gift of Silaria did provide a way for weapons to be improved by allowing you to add a socket and giving you the opportunity to reroll another stat. If the game provides another item similar to Gift of Silaria that allows you to add a random stat, that could be a pretty nice thing.
Combined you could have this item that gives you a new random stat to any piece of gear (or at least Rings and Amulets which are the hardest to reroll and scrounge for critical stats in the first place) as well as a way to progress other pieces of gear, not through randomization but through actual ranking. Perhaps, this system of ranking up items could focus around weapons. If they really wanted to put a killer incentive to do seasons, then they could add these weapons to seasons only for the next season.
Next I think a major improvement needs to happen for melee. Although I play every class and have 70s of all the major classes, I tend to play melee the least. I think melee has been Blizzard’s Achilles Heel for a long time (this happens in World of Warcraft too) where your front line guys just end up becoming cannon fodder while your range slowly pick off the enemy. At least in the way the game is set up at the moment, I feel that melee suffers in not being able to absorb enough damage while not dishing out enough damage to compensate.
In most RPGs, melee fighters tend to be heavily armored types that can absorb a great deal of punishment because of their armor. In World of Warcraft and Diablo 3, armor doesn’t really seem to play the same level of effect. Instead, your absorption occurs through a combination of your spec/talents and stats on your gear. To me that doesn’t really make a lot of sense. If you wear plate armor, you should be able to mitigate a lot of damage.
Now, in the realm of end game Diablo 3, you really only have 3 pure melee classes in barbarians, monks and crusaders. I know crusaders can go ranged attack. I don’t know about monks but most of the issues I’ve heard thus far revolve around the barbarian’s 6 set bonus centered around charge. The problem surfaces when a barbarian has to charge at an opponent with electricity and fire chains affixes. Their set bonus pretty much is rendered useless and they end up one shotting themselves. Usually, the problem occurs in that they are not competitive compared to Demon Hunters because of this mechanic and must rely on RNG in the hopes that the end boss in a Greater Rift (or any elite/champion packs for that matter) do not have these one shot mechanic affixes attached.
One idea to deal with this is to provide a new set for next season for Barbarians (or all classes) that helps make them immune or have them focus around a different skill. One thought would be to center the skill around Call of the Ancients and make them either permanent or reduce the cooldown to 30 seconds. That would allow for a cooldown reduction style build and allow Barbarians to have the incentive to use the Bane of the Enforcer gem. Maybe the 4 set bonus would allow for a low cooldown or permanence and the 6 set bonus would be to gain all the runes for Call of the Ancients.
An alternative to this would be to Seismic Slam/Avalanche focused build that would make Barbarians ranged. I know this doesn’t exactly solve the melee problem but it would put them on par with Crusaders in being able to attack much safer from a distance. The set could allow for Seismic Slam to reduce the cooldown of Avalance by 3 seconds each time an enemy gets hit.
Beyond class and gear improvements is there any way to improve the content itself? So far the only new content in terms of map/monsters were the Goblin Rift, the trial and the new lag map. The problem with content like this is that the game play remains the same. I think long term the game should implement some sort of map maker at the very least. After staring at the same maps with different lighting and coloring over and over, it would be cool to see new environments with different structures. Hence, a map maker would be a great addition in the future.
In general, I think those are the main aspects that should be looked at seriously for an upcoming patch. Outside of the map editor, the other parts I think aren’t unreasonable. The game requires new end goals to be implemented. Having more item upgrades is a definite must have since there isn’t a lot to look forward to once you find your basic items. Improving the RNG aspect through narrowing item gaps will resolve a lot of issues too. And fixing melee’s problems is something that must happen before the next season goes into effect.