Possible solution to "Baal runs"? [Archive] - Diablo 3 & Diablo 2 Forums

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CCCenturion

01-07-2009, 07:30

So one of the biggest complaints about D2 is that, assuming you build a character who can beat the game, you're going to spend 90% of that character's life in Baal run after Baal run, since no other areas can provide the loot and experience that you'll need to improve. I think that the biggest flaw of the game was that it was too easy for your character to outgrow it.

Is there a way to fix it? I think so. You could add a 4th difficulty level, where by the end of the game all of the monsters are as tough as in Uber Tristram. But it's still possible that someone would be able to find a glitch or a particular character build that can beat the game on that difficulty, and that will become the new cookie cutter build.

But what if there is no limit to the number of difficulty levels in the game? Each time you start a new game difficulty, all of the monsters' stats, including the number of monsters per pack, the number of Champions, and the aggressiveness of their AI, would be scaled according to your character level. Or more appropriately, the average character level of people beginning in that difficulty setting.

There would be no final difficulty setting, so instead of a Ladder where people compete to have the character (cough cough... BOT... cough cough)with the most experience, people would be racing to have the first character to unlock the newest difficulty setting. Eventually, players would find it to be impossible to get to the next difficulty unless they're in teams with other talented players with a wide range of skills. And then after that, eventually the game could spawn with monsters so tough that nobody could beat it... but eventually somebody would.

Basically, I'm talking about a game that's programmed to evolve along with the skill of the players. It would be very exciting to hear that the latest Ladder leader had just unlocked the 7th difficulty setting, when people had started to think that the game was impossible beyond the 6th.

Of course, there would have to be new possibilities for the stats that appear on rare items, so that players can keep up. But keep in mind, as better stats can be rolled on rares, the junk stats can still pop up, so those most godly of rare items would be extremely difficult to find.

I think that an open-ended game like this would really be groundbreaking in terms of replayability, and also make the Ladder so much more meaningful, since you'd really have to master the game in order to be the first to open a new difficulty setting.

Thoughts?

PandadudeSP

01-07-2009, 11:10

It's a good idea, but... some people prefer a stable endgame, and theres not much point in trying to beat difficulty level after difficulty if you never get the reward of reaching THE END. Also since there's going to be a level cap, at one point when people reach it they most likely wont be able to progress further. I do think something needs to be done for the people who continue to level up after making mat/pat w/e the new titles will be so the difficulty level doesnt just drop when you level up.
I 'm not sure much of what i wrote makes sense but ah well....

CCCenturion

01-07-2009, 14:07

Well, Diablo 2 had an end, but I can't say that made it all that rewarding. Once you beat the game, you still had a character with lots of skills and cool gear that you could no longer use (in a challenging way, except for PvP). And you could go find more loot and build your character up even more, but the game itself never gets more challenging.

That's what I mean by characters outgrowing the game; you have a character that you still want to play, but there's really no game left to play. In the scenario I'm envisioning, the reward from being able to bring your character as far along into the game as you possibly can. It's like a lot of classic arcade games that way. Very few people can actually beat Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, and that's what made them fun.

But I agree that what I'm talking about wouldn't really work out if there's a level cap. And without a level cap there's a lot of potential for abuse. So maybe there would be a policy where after you beat Act I on a certain difficulty, you can't go back and play in earlier difficulties. That would give you a chance to test the waters, and see if your character is ready for the next difficulty before fully committing to it.

SlechtWeerBeer

01-07-2009, 15:13

Is there a way to fix it? I think so. You could add a 4th difficulty level, where by the end of the game all of the monsters are as tough as in Uber Tristram. But it's still possible that someone would be able to find a glitch or a particular character build that can beat the game on that difficulty, and that will become the new cookie cutter build.

Then just keep grinding the third difficulty, and not go to the fourth.
You can beat the harder monsters, but if you can kill the weaker monsters 50x faster, you get a lot more loot killing the weaker monsters (and thus, more uber rare items). Eventually your character will be decked out it can kill the better monsters quick and safe enough. Rinse, repeat.

Baal is being ran because he poses no threat at all and drops good loot. If he took half an hour to kill for the same loot, people would find something that drops similarly, but much more often.

paperkut

01-07-2009, 17:40

The ever-scaling difficulties would be fun if you were rewarded with a number or title for completing them. And someone would NOT be able to keep beating them if the weapons and armor would stay scaled to the original 3rd difficulty. Everything after the third would force you to play more skillfully, cooperatively, etc.

Another way to 'help' stop runs would be to make no WPs anywhere near the boss. With the new system to gain mana (orbs & pots being much more rare) characters couldn't simply tp all the way there. They'd at least have to slay some baddies to acquire the mana to keep going.

There is another thread by Knight_Wolf called "Exploration: the new experience" or something close to that. He and others offer some great ideas on how to make exploring much more fun to discourage boss running. You guys should check it out.

Although I cannot stand boss running, keep in mind that boss running is a favorite of many players. Completely removing the ability to do so would probably anger a good portion of the population.

Putz

01-07-2009, 17:58

I've seen a few threads such as this now and the same idea comes to mind... it's an entirely new game. We don't know enough about "end game" to assume we'll have "baal run" issues.

MrCanon

01-07-2009, 19:02

That's probably going to be Blizzard's biggest challenge.

Having an endgame like an MMO that's long and meaningful where you put A LOT of time on the same character,

Or going for the multiple alts fast-paced game like we got in D2 (finish HELL, start and twink new alt, rinse and repeat).

I'm not sure what I want though, and what would be more fun in the end. :dontknow:

Risingred

01-07-2009, 21:05

I see where you're coming from OP but they could achieve the same thing in a much more simple matter. Level scaling comes to mind where it would look like this:

Normal: Monsters are the same level as you (you spawn the world upon entering and that determines their level).
Nightmare: Monsters are +5 levels above you.
Hell: Monsters are +10 level above you.

But that wouldn't be enough. There has to be something special about each difficulty that isn't lame like immunities, and this level scaling would have to be balanced around the "maximum power" items that you can find.

The only certain way to eliminate boss runs that I can think of is that, after you kill a boss, they never spawn again while that character is in the game. They'd get replaced by a superunique or something. But I don't think I like that.

GuardianHadriel

01-07-2009, 21:50

this problem is truly difficlut to handle

captain

01-07-2009, 22:01

Why can't they just add new patches or every year or two? Until the lore can catch up with the game. For example; in DII/LOD after the destruction of the world stone and the defeat of the three evils. Blizzard could have put together some quests that might logicaly take place after such an event. They don't have to mind blowing events. The new quests could be very hard and set up the edition of the game.

Akse

01-07-2009, 22:11

I've made a few posts about this..

We need some kind of systems that give you bonuses if you kill more than just the boss.

Bonus exp/items for clearing areas..
Bonus loot from boss if you have dealt with all his minions in the other levels of the dungeon.. (also minions should drop some nice loot)
Also several interesting end game areas instead of 1 place that gives best exp and best items.. we need like 2-3 equal end game areas where people can go and get equal loot and exp.

hubb

01-07-2009, 22:55

I posted an idea similar to yours in a thread about replayability, although it involves no difficulty levels, instead of infinite difficulty levels:

"I've always thought they should've done away with normal/nm/hell and just scaled the monsters up according to your level. So you can replay the game essentially infinitely, but it gets harder every time. It also stops farming as you start in act 1 every time you finish the game, and cant go back."

So instead of #players and the difficulty controlling monster hp/xp, it's controlled by #players and the average level of those players. You can still go back and help someone in a previous act. Nothing really changes, except that you obviously can't help someone in an act > yours, irrespective of your level.

Fenzalk

02-07-2009, 00:05

Risingred

02-07-2009, 02:04

My idea has been to offer an epic quest once you reach 99. If you complete it, your char is reset to level 1, and you get to choose ONE of dozens of character modifications available. Possible modifications would be a boost to fire damage, or a boost to a stat, maybe reveal a little extra info on the map, or some sort of small natural boost to magic-find, etc. Some of these would be stackable. So a druid could do the epic 10x and pick fire damage boost every time, eventually making things like fissure very strong.

The ladder would sort chars by the numbers of times they reset to level 1 FIRST, and then by experience gained SECOND.

I really, really love this idea.
I can't even get anal and point out some small problem with it. It's just a great idea. Even works into the respec system, where this would be your respec. I mean you'd lose equipment but that's your choice. It also attaches you more to your character, which is a design goal of Blizzard's.

Well done, my friend. :thumbup:

Awesomeaj108

03-07-2009, 02:25

It's a good idea, but... some people prefer a stable endgame, and theres not much point in trying to beat difficulty level after difficulty if you never get the reward of reaching THE END.

I don't think many of the players on battle.net care about an endgame. After all most of us get our characters rushed to the last boss, and THAT is when we really start to enjoy ourselves. The hook of Diablo II is item questing and stat/skill allocation and the game truly ends when you the "best" items and the "best" build; when you can easily plow through all the monsters in the game.

I think this an awesome idea. Of course for it to work out it would have to constantly monitored and tweaked, and level caps would have to vanish all together.

However how you would handle skill points? Part of Diablo's repeatability is the 20 pt cap on all skills, so you can try different variations. Would a +10 all skill occy have to surface in one of the hardest difficulites?

AFS

03-07-2009, 09:15

Nextt

03-07-2009, 12:37

The only certain way to eliminate boss runs that I can think of is that, after you kill a boss, they never spawn again while that character is in the game. They'd get replaced by a superunique or something. But I don't think I like that.

That doesn't really make sense the whole "never spawn again after killing the boss while character in game", yeah I'm 95% sure that they arn't, thats why you leave the game make a new one and kill that boss again.

Why can't they just add new patches or every year or two? Until the lore can catch up with the game. For example; in DII/LOD after the destruction of the world stone and the defeat of the three evils. Blizzard could have put together some quests that might logicaly take place after such an event. They don't have to mind blowing events. The new quests could be very hard and set up the edition of the game.

Because Battle.net is free to use, therefor they arn't going to put that much resource into the game for the next 5 years.

My idea has been to offer an epic quest once you reach 99. If you complete it, your char is reset to level 1, and you get to choose ONE of dozens of character modifications available. Possible modifications would be a boost to fire damage, or a boost to a stat, maybe reveal a little extra info on the map, or some sort of small natural boost to magic-find, etc. Some of these would be stackable. So a druid could do the epic 10x and pick fire damage boost every time, eventually making things like fissure very strong.

The ladder would sort chars by the numbers of times they reset to level 1 FIRST, and then by experience gained SECOND.

I actually SORTA like this idea and if anyone who has read one of my posts probably already know im a super critic and tend to stay true to not changing diablo to much.

A couple things that we would need to know about this is what is max level going to be, 99? and how long will it take to get there? If it takes as long as it does in D2 and you can only do it x amount of times then yeah its pretty good.
If it doesn't take to long to hit the max level to do this, than I wouldn't really like this cause you will have someone who goes 1-99 x5 by the time many people even hit 99 once. Depending on how much dmg or def or w/e the reward would be, that would be way to broken.
And the idea that the game will be based off of pure leveling doesn't sound fun.
Another question of this is if in the game you level 1-99 from pure quests than again its a plausible solution. But if its a lets say quests take you 1-70 or 80 and after that you get maybe a random quest here and there but its mainly something similar to baal runs but more obviously like running through all hell or w/e it is.
And I mean level 1-99 from all quests or even not with the same character more than twice is just redundant.
And a big thing blizz likes to do in the Diablo game is get you to play more than 1 character, so this would really be against that.
It is a good beginning of a brainstorm but without a solution yet ;)

EDIT:
Also theres some people "not me" but some people who complain about unfair advantages of a noob who is just starting the game and someone who has already re lvled 1-99 10 times. Ya know assuming they come in at a later date. But at the same time this might be the only time i agree with this cause i mean... its always going to be unfair advantage of the person who has been playing for a year + compared to the newb. BUT THIS , the noob goes 1-99 after forever, only to find out he stands no chance and has to level 1-99 8 more times if he wants to ever stand a chance in PvP

So maybe part of that brainstorm to find a solution can be. "special advantages of dmg increase or w/e it is that you get after doing it" doesn't work in a PvP scenario.

Risingred

03-07-2009, 14:12

That doesn't really make sense the whole "never spawn again after killing the boss while character in game", yeah I'm 95% sure that they arn't, thats why you leave the game make a new one and kill that boss again.

You must not have understood what I said.
Say you are playing a Sorc named "Fire". Fire kills Andariel. From now on, any game that Fire makes or joins, Andariel will no longer spawn. Instead of Andariel, you will fight a superunique or something. Each character you make only gets to fight/loot each boss once.
I'm not suggesting they do this, as it was really lame, but this is the same system they used in Hellgate: London.

kavlor

03-07-2009, 15:51

I dont think there would be anything wrong with 'runs' if say they were a quest that required you to do interesting stuff and there could be much more variety in viable runs.The final part of the Ubers kinda fails unless your playing with friends as everyone will try grab the Annihilus.

Blizzard could bear it in mind when designing levels which areas are likely to become runs and put in things that make leeching difficult.

Pyrohemia

03-07-2009, 18:27

Runs are done to maximize efficiency. This is either exp or loot versus time. In Diablo 2 the potential loot quality and potential exp is basically static for a given area between different game instances. This leaves the time. For areas like the ancient tunnels you have to find where the entrance spawned and then explore all of the twists and turns of the map. This makes its completion time highly variable on bnet with varying maps. Compare this to the chaos sanctuary where the map is identical every time. The chaos sanctuary can be cleared very fast because you know exactly where you are going and can optimize your route over dozens of identical runs. Even though you get more chances for TC 87's in AT per run you can do chaos runs much faster making it a much more efficient run.

A similar thing occurs with regards to exp. Clearing WSK levels 2 and 3 gives very similar exp to killing baal's minions and up until level 98 this is what you get most of your experience from in a baal run. Clearing WSK is almost never done for exp, however, because of the maze-like map and the much more dangerous monster spawns possible. The throne room has a constant map layout and the minions are week and predictible monster types. This is perfect for optimization. Even optimization to the extent of being run by simple bots. Clearing WSK even has a much higher rate of TC 87 drops and still it is never run.

In order to eliminate runs Blizzard needs to provide substantial rewards in the form of exp or drops to give bonuses for clearing the entire game. Otherwise whatever area has the safest monster spawns and most regular map layout will win.

Skip here if you don't want to read my wall of text.

My suggestion would be to make all bosses have amazing drops, way better than they do in Diablo 2, say 6 very high quality items for each player that helps kill. Also make it such that access to bosses is opened by killing seal mosters or opening locks et cetera, but make these seals spawn in random locations throughout the entire act as opposed to nearby. Hence clearing of the entire act, or most of it until all seals are found, is necessary in order to gain access to the boss which then greatly rewards those who have earned access. After, for example, 2 intense hours clearing all seals you would then get rewarded handsomely by the amazing boss loot. This concept could be used variously such that minor bosses take less time to access but provide less loot. This allows for a variety of lengths of time for playing and keep you from saying: "I have 1.5 hours to play. Damn. I can't get any good loot because opening all of the seals for the boss takes 2 hours. I might as well go play Tetris."

Fenzalk

04-07-2009, 05:48

Hee I see someone mentioned my post over at
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=18031241731&sid=3000

Other thoughts on what people said about it there:

1. Points obviously would be reset when you reset to level 1.

2. There's a couple different things you could do with gear. You could force people to sacrifice all the gear they used to beat the epic quest and reset to level 1. That would introduce an "equipment sink" to some degree in the game, forcing people to perhaps surrender epic gear to progress. On the other hand, just have them remove everything they are wearing and then min level requirements kick in as normal once they reset to level 1.

Nextt

04-07-2009, 11:13

You could force people to sacrifice all the gear they used to beat the epic quest and reset to level 1. That would introduce an "equipment sink" to some degree in the game, forcing people to perhaps surrender epic gear to progress. On the other hand, just have them remove everything they are wearing and then min level requirements kick in as normal once they reset to level 1.

You couldn't force that because 1. They could just take off all there gear before they did it and had someone else hold onto, if the arguement is they have to have something in those slots they put on all crappy gear. And we can continue with ways around that, that can't be forced upon the player because of something like "it knows what he wore last" and if that was the case, again just level by leeching and don't put your good gear on lol.

CCCenturion

04-07-2009, 21:20

This was just posted by KnS in the Diablo 3 Suggestions and Wish List forum (probably would have been a more appopropriate forum for this thread in the first place, but hey, it's relevant here so I thought it would be worth mentioning):

Well after playing D2 on and off for the past 2 years i am praying that D3 does not rely on Baal runs for Leveling or drops.

I was thinking and EVE online has an incredible system to spread players throughout the universe..

It works on the idea that if too many players are in 1 area rewards will diminish accordingly... I think this would stop people from over farming "the most effective bosses" and explore .

Example :
if Less than 1% of players who are online are in an area, they recieve 20% extra EXP and drops.

If more than 15% of players are in an area they will recieve a 40% penalty to EXP and drop rates.

If more than 33% of players are in the an area 80% penalty.

Areas are not Chapters btw, just specific Dungeons and such. Ex: Worldstone

This may not be viable to implicate instantly because at release most players will be traveling at a steady pace and grouped together...
maybe only implicate it after a week or 2??? or only in NM and Hell???

Just my take on what could halt repetitive farming..

So many advantagous to this system.

Feel free to comment :coffee:

KnS

Cormac McArt

13-08-2009, 19:41

Are you 'loco'??! Passing the game "164987" times!!?? ...
Instead they better make the Monsters smarter ...

casadeERIC

13-08-2009, 21:34

This may or may not be possible but I think if Blizzard really takes the time out to perfect it, it could be. Make it so that every quest in the act must be completed to move on to the Act boss. Once you have beaten a quest, you may repeat the quest but the insignificant xp returns from doing so make it really pointless. This prevents rushing through the game since once you have completed the quest (or rather, had someone more or less complete it for you) your ability to level up by way of "runs" is close to none.

How would someone level then? Blizzard wants the game to be challenging, epic and focus on player to cooperation right? If they streamline the leveling process so that completing act quests one by one will practically guarantee you a level 99 character at the end, nobody would need to do runs in the first place. This does not mean it should be easy. Quests in Hell should be very difficult to complete and IMO should require lots of party cooperation and character specialization. D3 should be about making an epic character from playing the game, not from easy repetitive xp farming.

What about MFing? Personally, I don't see anything wrong with doing MF runs so this isn't much of an issue for me. Yes, you may kill the act boss over and over again for their drops, but as long as you're not getting any xp from it, I think it's fair.

But this idea has a few problems. I can see people running an area (similar to cs or the throne) over and over again for xp. All you would need to do is make sure you don't kill the quest boss (as seen in cows) for the quest and boom you have a place to farm xp. But perhaps (I haven't really figured this part out yet) you could have mandatory quest "checkpoints" with super uniques that act similarly to act bosses wherein killing them would null all xp from that area should you choose to run it again. Make these checkpoints very frequent so that even if you avoid killing the checkpoint super unique to continuously farm xp from that area, the area and number of monsters to kill is so small in number that doing runs would be tedious and annoying.

Those are just my thoughts anyway. A game where doing quests is both fun AND rewarding is a game I want to play.

Cormac McArt

13-08-2009, 22:15

The whole idea of experience should be remade! IMHO The Greatest Experience Gain should be from Successful PvP!

AnimeCraze

14-08-2009, 00:25

I think the best way is to make each super unique monster have a probability of dropping some special item, that can be gotten nowhere else, and that you need combine a whole set of such special items to get what you want. ex. Have 40 super uniques have a chance of dropping a trophy, and only on collecting all 40 of them you get a torch, or whatever equivalent overpowered item there will be in D3. In a sense it's like the keys we have for ubers now, except distributed over a lot more monsters. If one wants to force everyone to do it, make them (both trophy and the "torch") some sort of key item that doesn't take inventory space, hence cannot be dropped.

Phesto

14-08-2009, 04:42

The solution is rather simple. Keep the INITIAL boss and other special monsters' drops special so that they retain significance, but after that, completely randomize which monsters within the act can drop particularly valuable items, also randomizing the NUMBER of monsters within the act that have special drop status (within some range, of course).

The result of that would be players traversing entire acts killing everything because they wouldn't have a clue which monster is able to drop what, and there still would be no guarantee, which would makes runs that much more meaningful & give items greater value, as they'd be attained primarily via time invested & good fortune, rather than targeting a specific area or monster repeatedly.

And to address the decrease in the significance of repeated boss fights, Blizzard could add any kind of incentives that they could dream up to reward players who, say, kill X boss in Y amount of time, or kills X boss Y times, etc. etc.

I think people have such difficult time figuring out solution because they can't think beyond this idea that certain monsters MUST drop the best items... this is the main problem.

And the other thing would just be to increase the AI of monsters, especially bosses, indefinitely, and plant these monsters in very high difficulty levels and such so you actually have to try in order to win and get a drop. They can make the data whatever they want, but if they don't want to be lazy with this one, then they can make some scary AI, too.

Funkopotamus

14-08-2009, 08:15

If they dip into the different demons and stuff, they could probably randomize everything.

Say in D2 terms, you kill Andariel. The first time you get Andariel. The second time you could get Andariel, or any number of greater demons from a pool of bosses that are around Andariel's level. Some could be stronger, some could be weaker. Maybe even throw in the chance of a bunch of regular monster boss packs.

With this, it's almost like the first run through is a set story and afterwards it becomes its own world with creatures coming and going. I don't know if it'll reduce the odds of farming a specific area, in fact I'm pretty sure it won't, but at least it'll make it a bit less boring.

Cormac McArt

14-08-2009, 10:39

The greatest rush would be if the location where the Big Bad Boss is Random anytime!

SlechtWeerBeer

14-08-2009, 14:17