View Full Version : Infernal Mode Won't Stop Farming Runs (for now)
I don't believe that Blizzard is going to solve the problem of players farming the path of least resistance in Infernal mode simply by making all monsters level 61. I'm presuming that bosses will also have shared loot tables just like the level 61 monsters.
If this is the case, then players are simply going to find the easiest infernal level to farm as well as boss and do that until their bags are filled with the best loot in the game.
My suggestion is for Blizzard to have each boss drop different components for items that you need to craft the best gear and weapons in the game. This way players will be forced to play every level in Infernal Difficulty instead of just farming particularly easy bosses or areas of the game that they come across.
What do you think of my suggestion and Blizzard's current implementation of Infernal Difficulty?
Personally, I think they are headed in the right direction and I hope to see them implement additional features to prevent repetitive farming runs by the player base.
I don't think anyone believes that the idea of making every monster level 61 will automatically solve the boss running problem.
The easiest way for Blizzard to do it at the start, without any fancy special systems, is to simply make their random events and random dungeons have the best drop rates. After that they can monitor player farming habits and come up with a more permanent solution based on real data and feedback.
Personally, I am hoping for even further randomization - the biggest problem of the "path of least resistance" is that every build will probably have strong and weak areas, so players will want to farm areas according to build. If players do not naturally vary up their own gameplay by switching builds and farming different areas, they should attempt to eradicate the very idea of "ideal build for ideal location" by pumping randomization into overdrive - start with champion pack frequency and start throwing in foreign monsters into the area.
They should probably also account for things like monster density - if act 1 is a tutorial and doesn't throw hordes of zombies, skeletons, goatmen, and whatnot at us in early difficulties, in Inferno mode they should definitely make it feel like you are in a meatgrinder comparable to later acts.
If that still fails, then they should probably start doing fancy systems that physically force you to not replay the same area - degenerating drop rates until you clear out 10 other sections or something like that. But that's kinda bull****, IMO.
You know your idea is a bit out there, but I actually like it!
I don't think anyone believes that the idea of making every monster level 61 will automatically solve the boss running problem.
The easiest way for Blizzard to do it at the start, without any fancy special systems, is to simply make their random events and random dungeons have the best drop rates. After that they can monitor player farming habits and come up with a more permanent solution based on real data and feedback.
Personally, I am hoping for even further randomization - the biggest problem of the "path of least resistance" is that every build will probably have strong and weak areas, so players will want to farm areas according to build. If players do not naturally vary up their own gameplay by switching builds and farming different areas, they should attempt to eradicate the very idea of "ideal build for ideal location" by pumping randomization into overdrive - start with champion pack frequency and start throwing in foreign monsters into the area.
They should probably also account for things like monster density - if act 1 is a tutorial and doesn't throw hordes of zombies, skeletons, goatmen, and whatnot at us in early difficulties, in Inferno mode they should definitely make it feel like you are in a meatgrinder comparable to later acts.
If that still fails, then they should probably start doing fancy systems that physically force you to not replay the same area - degenerating drop rates until you clear out 10 other sections or something like that. But that's kinda bull****, IMO.
I think Blizzard is going to give us incentives to do all the bosses, but not force us according to their recent remarks.
You know your idea is a bit out there, but I actually like it!
I have a really open mind when it comes to Diablo 3. Despite all the whacky changes Blizzard has made in the past six months, I've seen the reasoning behind them and tried to come up with helpful additions to their ideas.
I'm so excited for Beta... just can't wait to see how this all plays out!
(Even though we'll only get Act 1)
I was hoping for a MF bonus counter in Inferno only that increases when:
- You kill monsters
- Additional bonus MF growth if you're doing the Inferno act for the 1st time in a 12 hr period.
Decreases when:
- Time passes (Better go fast!)
- More additional decay the higher your MF bonus is.
- Additional decay if you've already farmed the same Inferno act within a 12 hr period, more penalty the closer in time you last farmed the act. Farming may be defined as getting above say 25% MF bonus in a given act to trigger the flag.
Resets to 0% when:
- Go to another act
- Leave game
I see the pros as:
- Encourages a fast,risky and exciting pace, also your skill, gear and party will heavily influence your farm quality / speed. (If done right and playing HC, man I get excited)
- Encourages you to do whole act, or at least a good portion of one, before you pop the boss.
- Encourages you to rotate Acts, ideally the bonus and penalty timing is tweaked so you get the most out of it when rotating though all acts (and doing the whole act).
"Wilson added that if player behavior does eventually lead to tightly focused runs in Diablo III, the developer may make adjustments for that by encouraging (and rewarding) players for having more diverse replays." (src) (http://kotaku.com/5831680/diablo-iii-just-got-harder-than-hell-with-new-inferno-difficulty)
"Wilson added that if player behavior does eventually lead to tightly focused runs in Diablo III, the developer may make adjustments for that by encouraging (and rewarding) players for having more diverse replays." (src) (http://kotaku.com/5831680/diablo-iii-just-got-harder-than-hell-with-new-inferno-difficulty)
Thanks for the link, that's what I was referring to in terms of incentives.
You enter the game and run up to a NPC with a punctuation mark of some color or whatever over his head. He tells you:
"Hey, I heard there is treasure in the Swamp of Pain.. blah blah blah flavor text blah blah blah." (or some other random area).
[This quest will last for 58:27...58:26...]
The players run off to the swamp and start killing everything that gets in their way searching every crack and cave and dungeon until they find a specialized encounter with a chest that explodes into gold and treasures. Fun is had, demons are slaughtered, loot is found.
Lather, rinse, repeat. How is this so difficult?
No boss respawn in a game - every killed unique bos gives a bonus to mf (like 5% (up to debate))
so it would be best to complete the whole game instead of doing the same run over and over again
You enter the game and run up to a NPC with a punctuation mark of some color or whatever over his head. He tells you:
"Hey, I heard there is treasure in the Swamp of Pain.. blah blah blah flavor text blah blah blah." (or some other random area).
[This quest will last for 58:27...58:26...]
The players run off to the swamp and start killing everything that gets in their way searching every crack and cave and dungeon until they find a specialized encounter with a chest that explodes into gold and treasures. Fun is had, demons are slaughtered, loot is found.
Lather, rinse, repeat. How is this so difficult?
randomized hourly quest ( instead of dailies ) - interesting thought - but they should be the same globally or else ppl just will reroll games until they get their desired "hourly"
If they randomize areas well enough than this would eliminate the "path of least resistance" issue, since the path would no longer be static, and may well not be of "least resistance". :)
betazoid
24-08-2011, 15:34
This random horde of monsters is a nice idea. It could be totally random and having variety of small, medium and big champion groups, where co-op is really needed to defeat big group without huge pain. Drop rates are increased slightly, same as D2 champ packs. Small pack could be wandering group of 5 or so monsters, medium around 10 and huge a mass, possibly several waves.
To support this, no quest giver, but random NPC in town or which you can meet at wilderness, giving hints where he has meet and escaped this monster group or camp and their possible treasures.
I don't like the idea of different bosses dropping different components. Sounds like key runs. Those got pretty repetitive as it was and most people would just get good at running one of them and trade for the others. I don't think that would solve the problem.
I think the idea of an NPC who gives out a random quest with increased drops would work. It would be nice if they add something to it where you can't just create a new game and get a new quest. I imagine there will be quick/easy quests and annoying/hard quests. If there's no punishment for just creating a new game and trying again I expect a lot of people will just pop into a game, see what quest the get and quit if it's one they don't want.
I say this because of how annoying it is in SC2 to play custom games with teammates where there is no punishment for quitting. They pop in and if any little thing is not to their liking they just quit. Gets rather annoying.
I don't think giving bosses certain component fixes the problem - because it creates a new one. From what I've understood, the whole reasoning behind flattening the difficulty for inferno is to make all farming areas viable for farming items. I don't think their goal is to force people into having to farm all different areas - their goal is to allow people to viably farm in the area of their choice.
Thus, all enemies in Inferno can drop any item - as, currently, item drops are tied directly to the level of the foe.
People will almost always take the path of least resistance, but in a lot of ways, I don't see boss runs always being the path of least resistance. Just like how people gravitated towards Pindle and Eldritch/Shenk runs, or even Pit runs, people will undoubtedly find boss-alternatives that can level out the loot-to-time ratio across both elite-mob hunting and boss hunting.
Which is the other side of the problem. I don't think it would be good to swing the equation so far to the other side that no one ever fights bosses in inferno mode because there's no good reason to.
Boss fights should be made into "safe" farming IMO. Slower, reliable, but lesser rewards on average than the randomized methods.
sigh... it's no big deal really when the time comes it will be dealt with if it is a serious issue down the line
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