....commencing countdown to x-pac....Originally Posted by konfeta
The expansion should focus on expanding the game with new art, mechanics, systems, etc. and improving the game as a whole. The act of recycling existing content to create suitable challenges really should be accomplished before most of the people who will be Inferno players put Act 4 Inferno on farm status.
I am lucky in that I am interested enough in PvP for that to keep me busy (assuming no delays). What about players who want that kind of challenge but aren't interested in PvP? Once you can farm Inferno, your other characters are going to get powerful much, MUCH faster.
Come back here after you've got a hardcore character that's cleared Inferno and let us know how many hours that took you. If you feel like you didn't get your moneys worth of entertaining for all of those hours, then maybe we can get a pledge drive campaign going for you to reimburse you.
Sounds like an all icing, no cake kind of situation. Champions/rares become uninteresting when that's all you face. Couldn't have loot or else it'd just be farmed. And from what inferno sounds like, they've created an entire difficulty of souped up difficulty enemies - whether or not they all happen to be blue.Imagine dungeons filled only with champion class enemies.
I think it would be dumb if they had any PvM sections that were separated from the rest of the game. It would feel like an arcade game, and not at all the Blizzard-type feel. I'm sure they have lots of events where you have to grapple with increasing waves of mobs - we have a few events that are kind of like that in the beta already.Last stand scenarios where you are in an arena format and fight off increasingly more powerful waves.
A place where hard bosses exist? I'm sure that "concept" will find its way into the game.Areas that expand on the concept of Uber Tristram.
For starters, only the class with the best movement abilities could win, and classes without them couldn't even begin to compete. If they have an event in the game where something is collapsing and you have to make it out in time, then great. But if it is just a disconnected game mode, then it completely breaks the game's design. If you ever ask "what is my character doing here?" the answer should always be "fighting demons in hell", not "trying to get past level 15 wave 35 in challenge mode!!!" because that is just not what Diablo is about. Diablo cannot be every game to everyone.Hell, a race concept? Great idea, a dungeon with a time limit to test how deep a path of bodies you can carve.
In short, PvE end-game with fights that are about the thrill of ultimate combat and challenge rather than another step on the progression treadmill or another farming area to perfect and squeeze for items.
PvP Arena.
Drop the jackass attitude. I am not saying the game is bad because it doesn't have an end-game. I am pointing out an area of the game where I feel it needs a specific kind of improvement. Hardcore mode does not interest me, it's a playstyle shift and is not focused on introducing gameplay additions I outlined.Come back here after you've got a hardcore character that's cleared Inferno and let us know how many hours that took you. If you feel like you didn't get your moneys worth of entertaining for all of those hours, then maybe we can get a pledge drive campaign going for you to reimburse you.
So... That's it? All that nitpicking and your actual counter-argument comes down to "Diablo 3 can't be everything, so go away people wanting feature x?" Classy, dude. Classy.Diablo cannot be every game to everyone.
In short, PvE end-game with fights that are about the thrill of ultimate combat and challenge rather than another step on the progression treadmill or another farming area to perfect and squeeze for items.
Out of curiosity, should PvP arena and AH be scrapped because it feels "disconnected" from the rest of the game? (damnit, stupid board downtime let yovargas ninja me)
Look to keep it simple: I gave an explanation as to why I think PvE end-game should be in the game - to give PvE challenge an outlet in context of a completed build to parallel the outlet that is PvP challenge. I am not saying the game will be "teh fail" because it doesn't have that. I am saying it would be a really nice feature that would actually innovate the ARPG genre and extend to PvE combat a similiar sense of purpose as for character building and PvP. If it needs an additional motivation for the reward obsessed people, give these challenges a threshold score for a cosmetic reward or some item that's nice having but isn't farmable.
Last edited by konfeta; 11-04-2012 at 21:24.
It would be great if PvP content were somehow able to be incorporated into the same flow of the game as PvE, but D2 has proven that that does not work. The best case scenario is for it to be separated out, it is a different animal and should be treated as such.
PvE end game is in the game, you just seem to be not interested in the way it presents itself (hardcore mode and inferno). I don't think it would be a nice feature to have disconnected challenges, because then we're no longer in the world of Sanctuary - we're suddenly saying "oh, let's take these characters out of context and plop them down into an artificial gimmicky situation to test them". That's horrible, horrible game design that ruins what Blizzard is trying to do. They repeat over and over that world-building is a crucial part to their success, and I think that is correct. They need to get the challenge for PvE endgame into their world, not take you out of it and put you in "Super Time Trial Mode!!!" or something stupid like that.
PvP Arena * 2.
Don't forget about the story as well.
The story of the badass demonslayer ends when you beat normal. Everything after that is already a disconnect, out of the flow "of the game" for majority of players. If Blizzard is using artificial, gimmicks of forcing 4 consecutive playthroughs in an absolutely linear game to raise the challenge, they can handle a little world breaking design if they already did it twice with trade and PvP.It would be great if PvP content were somehow able to be incorporated into the same flow of the game as PvE, but D2 has proven that that does not work. The best case scenario is for it to be separated out, it is a different animal and should be treated as such.
Regardless, nothing about such events necessitates them being a "quit to main menu to access" deals. They can be perfectly integrated into the world itself with a random excuse of "here is a portal/dungeon/spaceship to some weird area of hell where demons are gonna invade from, go kill" if it is so important to them to seam such content with the world.
You are just arguing semantics. I outlined what I define as end-game because it is the feature I want to see. Pointing at things that are explicitly nothing like it is not even an argument. I outlined why Inferno is inherently not suitable for its purpose. Hardcore doesn't follow into it because it has nothing to do with the characters I am perfecting in Softcore nor does it actually present additional combat challenge - it just adds a very time consuming punishment.PvE end game is in the game, you just seem to be not interested in the way it presents itself (hardcore mode and inferno).
Before this degenerates into one of them fashionable circular arguments or trolling, let's see if you can answer this directly:
What do you have against PvE content designed to provide challenge to perfected (as in both in skill selection and equipment) character builds? Note, Inferno logically becomes less challenging the more you play it simply because you acquire power by finding Inferno grade gear, so it cannot fulfill that design requirement in and of itself by its very nature.
I still have hopes too, but imagine if they just go the Zod way of making an addictive game... I'm sure plenty of people on the site have done Hell Lower Kurast runs trying to find a High Rune. I participated in that madness too for dozens of hours before I gave up at the sheer inanity of it.
There are actually Diablo 2 mods that do variations of this. In particular, Median XL has an 'uberquest' where you need to reach the end of a dungeon and kill the boss there within a certain time limit, and if you do so he gives you a unique charm upgrade. And the fastest classes aren't the ones that are the best at this, because the area is filled with incredibly hard-hitting monsters. You need a combination of CC, tankiness and DPS to fight your way through. And while there are classes that excel at this dungeon, that doesn't mean the other classes get gimped - MXL has a ton of uberdungeons for different classes to attempt.
(A timed scenario isn't a problem from a lore-wise stand-point either, since you can always justify it in some way or the other. To take an example from what's already in the beta - you could have a Head Cultist at the end of the dungeon who's casting a ritual that will summon an incredibly powerful demon that will kill all but the very best characters, and the race is to kill him before he can complete the ritual. Then you could even have a second quest where you allow him to finish the ritual, and then successfully vanquish the demon.)
I'm not saying MXL does this perfectly, God knows it has its own share of balancing problems. But the idea has merit, and in the hands of a company with access to as big a playerbase as Blizzard is, it can be balanced. The problem is that all of this requires a LOT more work than just opening up a table and tweaking the numbers in there and calling it a new difficulty mode.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks