So the beta version of the Tower has been released today along with a minor patch of a few key changes. At this stage, the Tower offers nothing beyond leaderboards and there might even be some bugs. That said, I don’t see it truly lighting the fire in terms of excitement but I figured I’d provide some thoughts about where this belongs in the scheme of things along with some late season 11 notions.
First, I mentioned in a previous blog post that the idea of e-sports needs to die already for Blizzard. The issue I have with e-sports is that it tends to ruin the balance of the game because of how builds are then forced into a flavor of the month scenario and little wiggle room can exist for anything that’s not meta. As a result, a lame culture of constant “balance changes” occurs which gets passed off as content to justify a bigger issue of the creative dearth in a game.
Given that statement, the general feedback for Towers on reddit has been bland mostly because there’s no reason to do them beyond the general ketchup masturbation in exhibiting one’s girth (or in reality lack thereof) to others. Now, Blizzard did mention that eventually these leaderboards and the Tower will eventually provide some sort of cosmetic reward but it’s unknown if that only applies to people who rank at the top. But I figure in most cases, the vast bulk of players will never reach that level and the usual suspects will be the ones wearing those cosmetics.
In my previous blog post, I also mentioned that the people interested will be very limited. Looking at the Twitch numbers it clearly demonstrates that little has changed with this feature. Not to mention once again it’s the typical usuals who maintain their position both on the leaderboards and in view rankings. Even with the release of this supposed grand feature, the level of interest (at least with regards to viewing) can’t even beat Path of Exile 2 nor even re-attract the general ARPG high end player crowd.
So what does that say about this situation? I think that in an ARPG game where the incentive for doing content is loot in performing a repetitive grind, the notion of e-sports generally is a bad one. The e-sport type of races that other games have (like Path of Exile) generally have been more community driven where more creative conditions are provided such as certain leveling, additional mods that increase the difficulty that can be controlled by a streamer or community, the battle royale mode that PoE introduced, etc. However, I think people recognize that the Tower is nothing more than a bad rehash of the Gauntlet except that the Gauntlet had some reward attached.
In addition, I think that these leaderboards feel again more like some stupid KPI checkbox much like PVP and the Dark Citadel but add absolutely nothing to the game except a very niche part. In short, it’s such a huge disappointment and waste of developer resources that should be better allocated to real features that players want (e.g. more variety of end game content and creative modes of power gain).
I did read that some players are crying for the integration of the leaderboards into the Pit directly because of the “success” for Diablo 3. I think the only thing good about having those leaderboards in Diablo 3 for Greater Rifts was to be able to view other builds as people climbed the ladder. But the main issue to me was that the game had an impossible time trying to balance classes out rather than allowing players more ways to have some level of creative freedom in coming up with builds (e.g. Hybrid builds were nuked). I think part of the problem was that there weren’t enough resources to devote to testing and ensuring that carefully defined builds wouldn’t overtake everything else. But in the end, the game ended up becoming stale for a while until the later seasons once a few new features came out.
My worry is that the same will happen to Diablo 4 where there’s not enough internal resources to devote to allowing more builds to flourish and that we’ll only see very narrowly defined builds. And with Talismans coming out with supposed “set” features, my fear that regimented builds will end up dominating will simply turn Blizzard into a bigger corporate laughing stock than it already has. At any rate, I doubt I’ll participate in the near future for this game mode. It’s not my cup of tea and seems more like a waste of time.
That said, I did play a bit more. I ended up trying a Dance of Knives Rogue. Leveling certainly was a lot of fun. But once I reached T3, things slowed massively because boss fights would drag. I’m not a huge fan of the Trap mechanic being the thing that causes the real damage when you’re skill ought to be Dance of Knives. This scenario ends up becoming similar to the situation with Barbarians using Earthquake to scale their damage as opposed to Whirlwind and/or Dust Devils. But I do prefer Dance of Knives as a general skill because it’s smoother to play than more click intensive builds. I did note that Rain of Arrows is supposedly very strong too but again it looks sketchy.
Also, I reverted my Necromancer back to Golems as Blood Wave was simply too awkward to play. Golems still is weak for area clear and has a silly time delay even when you get enough cooldown. But the main positive for playing Golems is the single target nuke. Like Trap Rogues and EQ Barbarians though, Necromancers face a similar issue in that many scale their damage through Sacrifice and Darkness skills, which really make no sense and cause you to give up more defensive abilities and gear slots. This is something I really hope to see change as I feel you end up having a bunch of worthless skills on your action bar.
Finally, the 2nd best build of the season came in the form of Crackling Energy Sorcerer. Because I had the bulk of the gear needed, it only took me a night to get my Sorcerer up to Pit 60 so that my Glyphs could be leveled to 46. That said, this easily was the 2nd best build I played this season. It’s really a night and day difference between my Hydra Sorcerer and this one (and I did level one from scratch). But T4 content melts/gets shredded in an instant and I had no issues on any boss. I’m sure higher level Pits would be more of a challenge but at this stage, I don’t care. I’m more about the toys than whether I’m trying to run the toy into the ground.
With the Sorcerer getting built up that quickly, I did run into the same problem I’ve had with previous seasons: general lack of end game diverse content. In thinking back to last season, even Helltide was more interesting just because of the Chaos Waves. Same with Nightmare Dungeons. But the game at this stage is incredibly bland. The small changes like the different mobs in Helltides and the changes to Elites/Rares simply aren’t enough as diverse content for me. The activities still are the same except more annoying in a few cases. Most of the fun I had was during the Goblin Event just because that whole period was timed but provided an added incentive for doing dungeons and being in the world hunting for Goblins and their Shrines.
Yet I feel that the biggest piece of new content that was going to be the centerpiece was the Tower. Unfortunately, that part was not only DoA but dead today beyond the usual 2-3 streamers who enjoy that kind of thing. The Azmodan boss was fine as a new boss and I’m sure he’ll be around in some form just because the game needs more world bosses. There’s also the revamped Capstone Dungeons but those are only worth doing for the season journey. Once you complete those, there’s no reason to redo them, which is fine because they’re annoying and pointless to me. However, it just made me think that the general season journey should be restarted per character to make things more interesting because there is simply not enough content to keep me motivated.
I did manage to kill off Lilith on T4 too using my Auradin. I read that one ability got a stealth nerf but I figured if there was one class at that point who could easily kill T4 Lilith and avoid the additional phases, it would be Auradin. And I was right which was nice as I was able to obtain two Sparks and create another Mythic.
Sadly, there were only a small number of people from my Clan who got on the game. I think they had some fun but it didn’t last. The bigger issue is that the expansion’s price point pretty much is a bit high for a preorder, even if you get the Paladin immediately (as well as Vessel of Hatred if you did not already own it). I think if the Expansion came out at $20, there would have been more people who could afford it. At $40, it’s quite steep. I wanted to get this as a gift for a friend but $40 seems like a lot for me at the moment. At least at $20, it would be like getting a fast food meal which isn’t as horrific.
Now, with the current stuff out of the way, I started thinking a little more on other things in the game. I did mention in that previous blog about how World Bosses served little to no purpose. At least for now, the loot has gotten a lot better with the main motivation in dropping Nightmare Dungeon sigils. Some people claim that doing World Bosses, especially Azmodan have been the best way to farm Mythics sigils but I have yet to stumble across one. I have stumbled upon Mythic runs for Undercity but I haven’t run many.
In mentioning the Undercity and the earlier Tower debacle (and I believe it is a failure already), I sincerely hope that the Diablo 4 team stops doubling down on timed events. I think there’s just too many in the game for no good reason. I feel as though too much creative in Blizzard has been devoted to a very specific game mode that resembles a timed mosh pit. Infernal Hordes, Undercity, shrine timed events, the outdoor Helltide boss, Chaos Waves, Pit, Gauntlet, AoZ, other events and now Towers are all part of this banal system that frankly is not interesting. Now, I know they’re introducing Fishing in the expansion which seems to be counterintuitive and just a feature that might end up being a bobber with some “+” symbol to activate, but can’t we get other types of activities? For instance, the older part of the game tried to have unique nodes for farming herbs or the old Altars of Lilith. I have no idea why these were put in the game outside of how they were meant as a type of feature copied from WoW or a small power boost. Although the Altars of Lilith themselves would be painful to farm each time a new season caused a reset, the idea of a small power hunt would be interesting just to do other activities.
Another thing that I was thinking about was the idea of affixes on gear. I mentioned how the current way gear drops (outside of Uniques which are static) is too random. Diablo 3 had better itemization in that they separated affixes by having a secondary category. While in most cases, secondary affixes were mostly worthless, in a few cases like Gold Pickup Radius, it would be useful when you were fine tuning gear. So in a kind of itemization 3.0 part, I was thinking that there needs to be several categories of affixes. Like say 2-3 major and 1-3 minor. Then within each of those affixes, there are categories that get attached. In a way, some of this exist like with weapons where you cannot have certain overlapping affixes.
But the idea with this new itemization is that rather than having “legendaries” that you hunt for, you search for bases that contain these categories of affixes. Rarity will only determine the number of affixes you can craft upon them. Instead, you can craft affixes based on the enhantress along with having corresponding materials that increase in cost as you add certain affixes. So prestigious affixes such as core skills and passives might have a higher cost while more common affixes (e.g. a plain poison resist or life on kill) might be cheaper. But in those cases, they can only be applied to the minor affix section. Actual gear that drop will be infrequent especially legendaries, which should have better and more ideal stats but can only be rerolled at a high cost. On top of that, you should be able to reroll and modify the affixes with special currency. That currency would be similar in that high prestige affixes would have that high cost. In this manner, the actual drops should be higher in quality rather than quantity and that the loot filter coming will be aimed.
What about Greater Affixes? So while handling Tempering I ran into an issue where I felt that my life was becoming pointless as I continued to reroll tempers in trying to hit a Greater Affix. Part of this was because I didn’t realize you could simply spam add more scrolls for rerolls. But Tempering, Masterworking and Enchanting are in a similar state where hitting the thing you need isn’t rewarding at all. It’s just a matter of time and materials. But the actual act of trying to obtain that roll is pointless and physically painful (not to mention mentally exhausting as you internally die of boredom). I still think that instead of getting random rolls to hit the Greater Affixes, like everything else I’m proposing the value of a Greater Affix should be determined by a rare currency you apply.
I really believe that if we had a new system of rare but significant currencies that represent the RNG item hunt in addition to the base, then crafting will feel far more meaningful and impactful than its current state. The current crafting systems with the Tempering, Masterworking and Enchanting are all pointless acts of busy work. While Tempering and Masterworking are in a better state than before, the fact that they made the RNG about hitting the critical you need rather than locating a thing to get the critical is where the system falls apart. We’re still in the same bad place of spending more time at the forge, wasting our life trying to get what we want. I’d prefer to be out in the world wasting my time, feeling productive as opposed to a meaningless, brain dead activity that simply doesn’t feel good because there’s no sensible rational for it. I would understand the necessity of its current format if it’s meant to act as a stop gap until the new crafting feature makes it way, but I have little confidence in the Blizzard team based on just seeing the current Tower release.
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