Diablo III to Get Ladder Seasons, Tiered Rifts in Next Patch

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Well this is some good news, I couldn't give a single fuck about the offline mode or other crap, i'm more interested in being able to work hard for and grab actual rewards rather than going on T1-6 difficulty and get virtually the same loot if not less Leg drops than never being on a T mode at all, that's what's really put me off the end game as well as the boring Rifts and Bounties, no amount of Exp gain and + gold does it for me, I want to work and get those nice leg drops.

With that said I'd also love to know about the 360 version since a few friends of mine have had their interest peaked from me and would love to purchase and play.

 

[black_knight1337]

ARPG's are meant to be something you enjoy for a long period of time, yes. However, the difference between a good one and a bad one, is that the good ones give you targetable farming locations for items. As it stands 300 hours won't guarantee you BiS, hell, 4,000 hours won't guarantee it. I've gotten a small number of set items, to compound matters, some were copies of ones I already had, they all rolled shit. That's not a good system. A system were the rarest drops can drop with ANY stats does not make a good game, my barbarians belt rolled for a wizard, while it dropped on a barbarian. Both of my Royal Ring of Grandeurs rolled +int, on a barbarian.

Outside of the Torment only sets, there's plenty of ways to boost your chances of getting great items. Ring of Royal Grandeur? Act 1 bounties. Pride's Fall? Act 3 bounties. Reaper's Wraps? Malthael. Golden Scourge? Growlfang or Gnawbone. And for the drops that are only random? There's always Kadala. She seems to give legendaries every 500-1000 shards, so every 30-60 minutes. An int barb belt? Should be putting that in the bug reports forum, class specific items aren't supposed to roll stats for other classes. A Ring of Royal Grandeur rolling int for a barb doesn't make it a bad item. The mystic can turn that int into strength, crit chance, crit damage etc. Those rings are still very strong even if the rolls aren't great.

As for rifts dropping double legendaries, I'd have to call bullshit, granted it's only anecdotal evidence since it's only from my own point of view, but I frequently go through 4-5 t3 rifts without seeing a legendary drop. I can go for more than an hour without seeing one, only to get a two handed weapon, or a forgotten soul off of a rift boss. That is not good design.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/12471197317
Rifts have a multiplicative 100% buff to legendary drop rate now. For every legendary you get in normal bounties you should get two in normal rifts. For every legendary you get in T6, you should get 3-4 in T6 rifts. With the drop rates outside being, on average, one per hour, you'll be getting, on average, 2-4 per hour in rifts.

And before someone goes "Oh well you're just a casual who just wants the op BiS stuff without putting in the work" blah blah fucking blah, the game is ENTIRELY rng based. I got my Thunderfury from a god damned clay pot. A Thunderfury, blessed blade of the windseeker, a weapon that has legendary status in another game(WoW) isn't found on a challenging rare elite, or named mob that can only be summoned ala-Hellfire ring, was found in a pot. There's no rhyme or reason, there's no end game, there's no reason to go after the end gear, well, gear, because it's completely randomized. You could literally go your entire career playing for thousands of hours and NEVER see the item you want, never mind rolling well enough to be worth the effort. There are serious, indefensible flaws with the game.

I love ARPG's, I can't stand ARPG'S that use "Oh it's loot randomization lol" as a defense.

RNG is part of what makes it an ARPG. It's what gives these kind of game longevity. Remove that and it ends up being just another $60 game that only lasts, at most, 15-20 hours. That being said, Diablo 3 is far from being entirely RNG based at least in terms of the drops themselves. Using Thunderfury as an example, it's always going to roll with lightning damage, a main stat and a socket. That only leaves one primary affix being random and thanks to the mystic, every Thunderfury is going to be a good item (unless you use the mystic to ruin it). The same can be said for the other high end drops, they're all 1-2 random affixes which means most of them are going to be good items. Of course once you're at the stage where you just want better rolls then of course they'll be "crap" but that's going to happen no matter what.

You must have a very short memory. Diablo 3 didn't work right out of the box.

Remember?

And unlike other offline games, modders couldn't fix that shit.

Not to forget the loot system was so grindy that Blizzard has been working on rehauling it 2 years after release (even after having close to a decade to work on this game). That was the point of Loot 2.0, right?

That doesn't sound like something working out of the box.

I do remember the launch. I went to my local games store, picked up a copy, went home, installed it and then played it. So did millions of others. Yeah, their auth servers got hit pretty hard but that doesn't make the game broken. I'm not going to call Valve games broken because of the many times when the Steam servers have crashed.

Post-launch support doesn't mean a game is broken either. And with regards to the original point, D3 nailed it. The UI is great, the performance is great and there's a wide range of options. It's how PC versions should be done.

Do you mean co-op, or the <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/133265-Diablo-III-Arena-Style-PvP-May-Never-Happen>PvP that was promised for years but might never happen?

PvP got added over a year ago [http://us.battle.net/d3/en/game/patch-notes/1-0-7], well before they promised it (Patch 1.1.0).

 

[RA92]

snip

I didn't mean brawling - I meant actual PvP with persistence. What's the point of an always online lock if you don't even the features of any other MP games out there (not even loot, XP or score tracking), especially after the RMAH is gone? After all, Blizzard's VC's main defense was that <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.304833-Blizzard-Surprised-by-Reaction-to-Online-Only-Diablo-3?page=1>the persistent connection was the main draw of D3...

Without any kind of online persistent gameplay, name me one factor in this game that needed it to be always online.

And before you say anything about not just playing the game if I hate the DRM so much, it's not just about D3, but also about setting a precedence. Id Software was enthusiastic about Blizzard <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.306139-id-Software-Praises-Always-On-in-Diablo-3>"...force[ing] people to always be connected when you play the game...", and then there was SimCity 2013. Publishers only see how Blizzard sold D3 by the boatload.

I do remember the launch. I went to my local games store, picked up a copy, went home, installed it and then played it.

Right. When New Vegas came out, I went to my local games store, picked up a copy, went home, installed it and then played it. There was nothing wrong with my experience, so whatever everyone else experienced is invalidated.

I'm not going to call Valve games broken because of the many times when the Steam servers have crashed.

Steam is a delivery service, not the game itself. As long as a game is not using Steamworks DRM (which I always try to avoid), you can launch the game from your local exe. Which you can't do in D3.

Post-launch support doesn't mean a game is broken either. And with regards to the original point, D3 nailed it. The UI is great, the performance is great and there's a wide range of options. It's how PC versions should be done.

When post-launch support includes just dropping a major portion of the game (RMAH) and redoing the entire loot system (what the hell did they balance in their decade-long development?), you know you don't have a product that just 'works out of the box'. That was my point.

And I'm happy for you that you never had any latency issue.

 

[seditary]

I never was interested in the past so I'm a bit perplexed at my excitement for ladder.

I think its because I enjoy leveling in d3 more than pretty much any arpg due to the rapid changes in gear and skills.

 

[black_knight1337]

I didn't mean brawling - I meant actual PvP with persistence. What's the point of an always online lock if you don't even the features of any other MP games out there (not even loot, XP or score tracking), especially after the RMAH is gone? After all, Blizzard's VC's main defense was that <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.304833-Blizzard-Surprised-by-Reaction-to-Online-Only-Diablo-3?page=1>the persistent connection was the main draw of D3...

Going to need the source for the supposed 'persistent PvP' that was promised because as far as I know it was the same as it is currently but in a team based format with a tally for that session. There's already a robust api in place for tracking a number of things and the official PvEvP side of things is coming in the near future.

And before you say anything about not just playing the game if I hate the DRM so much, it's not just about D3, but also about setting a precedence. Id Software was enthusiastic about Blizzard <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.306139-id-Software-Praises-Always-On-in-Diablo-3>"...force[ing] people to always be connected when you play the game...", and then there was SimCity 2013. Publishers only see how Blizzard sold D3 by the boatload.

If anything, SimCity showed them that it's something that actually needs some effort put in for it to actually work. If the game is designed with it in mind to begin with (D3) then it's a success. If it's something that just tacked on for no reason (SimCity) then it's a horribly broken mess. Always-Online DRM, like it or not, is something that's going to become the norm, especially for games that are focused on multiplayer. And as much as I don't like DRM, it's not all that bad. We're living in a world where almost everyone can comfortably support services like this, as for those that can't... well gaming should be the least of their worries.

Steam is a delivery service, not the game itself. As long as a game is not using Steamworks DRM (which I always try to avoid), you can launch the game from your local exe.

Which is why I used Valve games as the example. If the Steam service goes down like it has many times in the past, then games locked to it become unplayable and no new games can be activated either, but if you're already in, there's hardly any difference. That's no different to what happened at launch for Diablo 3. The service (battle.net) got put under crippling load and denied a lot of people access to the content servers (Diablo 3) even though they were still going strong.

And I'm happy for you that you never had any latency issue.

Yep, my 10KB/s Aussie internet kept me in the green all this time.