The “good” old days.
Pylon appearing no more than once per Greater Rift.The change, along with the nerf to Conduit Pylons on higher GRs, was obviously meant to retain some randomness, without making the highest Greater Rift leaderboards too pylon-based in results. (As many players felt they were in the past.)
Currently on the PTR there are no Pylons spawning in Greater Rifts, and while Blizzard has confirmed this is a bug, some fans like it like that. There are even some PYLON PETITION posts on the B.net forums, though we know how Blizzard deals with those.
So what do you guys think about Pylons in Greater Rifts? You can try Grifts without Pylons now on the PTR, or just play a GRift on Live and don’t click the Pylons you do find, and see how it feels without that element of randomness. Or just vote on the theory rather than the practice! In any event, here’s a vote/survey to take the community’s temperature about this issue.
Vote: Remove Pylons from Greater Rifts?
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Either only 1 of each pylon in the entire GR, or no pylons at all. I'm trying to measure my kill efficiency, not luck… but that's my opinion.
I think the current Live system works okay. I also think Pylons are part of character build strategy, since you can make a sustainable character without burst damage, but they won't really benefit from Channeling Pylons. While some chars who are only limited by cooldowns and/or resource cost get that 30s of God Mode and it can really make a difference.
I think greater rifts are okay, regular rifts are a little better, but some hybrid of the 2 would be ideal. Pylons are great and can be fun, namely conduit, speed, and channeling because they change things up. What’s really annoying about greater rifts are the orbs from elite packs, especially as a wizard playing firebirds. The annoying part of normal rifts is items dropping throughout, but this isn’t as big a deal when you only care about legendaries. Both would benefit from removal of the proximity requirement on the exp bonus in multiplayer, as rifting already encourages you to cooperate, but sometimes splitting up makes sense and there’s no reason to be punished for it.
I definitely don’t want to see pylons removed. GR are always about luck, even without pylons. I’ve so far cleared 31 as my personal best solo without dying, then subsequently got my ass kicked in a 28. The monster types and map layouts play more of a roll for me than pylon placement.
Lastly, the map layouts for greater rifts pretty much all suck. Regular rifts have some nice open levels, but greater rifts are all stupid tight hallways. Getting stuck constantly by a single medium or 2 small monsters blocking the path is frustrating and only highlights how nerfed skills like teleport are when half the time they go on cooldown to no effect because there was a rock within arm’s reach of your character.
get ready for orbs dropping from elites in normal rifts too. believe they added that to the ptr unless they've removed already.
The major criticism about pylons is that they add an element of variance to Greater Rifts which leads to execessive fishing for the best case scenario.
However at this point there are other factors whose impact in that regard is much greater than the pylons. Those are namely layout, mob types, density and the rift guardian.
The current system for pylons seems to be working relatively well and it could be great with some tuning. Pylons are awesome because theyy create interesting decisions (in most cases anyway) and with the changes in 2.1.2 Blizzard has done a reasonable job of adjusting the power level of the different pylons.
As Flux mentioned different classes and builds benefit in a varying degree from the different pylons (apart from the power pylon, everybody loves those) but that is also true for layouts, enemy types and rift guardians.
So the core question really is: Do you like variance in Greater Rifts ?
If you do not the you will not like pylons in Geater Rifts. If you do then it is hard to argue against the current system since its impact is not nearly as great as that of the other factors while creating interesting gameplay decisions.
Keep it the way it is for now. People will fish for the grifts they want based on monster types and layout so eliminating Pylons won`t change that, imo. Maybe investigate after the current era ends but I`m tired of them messing with stuff right in the middle of seasons etc.
2 cents.
While I don't think Pylons should be in GRifts, IMO it's kind of the least biggest issue with GRifts, as has been alluded to in above posts.
As I see it there's two groups in the community (which is clearly shown in the poll answers) between those who would like the Leaderboards to mean something, and those who don't care. Neither party is 'right', but they are both incompatible (to a degree). And the problem, if there is one, is that GRifts are trying to cater to both parties at once. BUt this doesn't work.
All Grifts should be completely identical in the form of a single straight hallway with no variance and a time limit. You kill as far as you can in the time limit, and that's it.
We could keep track of it with a growing bar on your player profile or portrait and give it a snappy title, like Potency/Efficiency Excellence Number.
That way whenever you see someone in game you immediately know who has the bigger one and thus is more awesome at pretty much everything. Hardcore players should have an extra 5 inches added by default.
Yes, some people play games competitively. How ridiculous.
On an unrelated note you may find this enlightening: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport
When it's a game determined so much by random numbers, yes it is absurd. The only way to make it completely fair is to do what I said and take all the variance out of everything and make it purely about who imaginary slays the most pixels in the least amount of time.
I have been and will continue to be irritable when people insist on removing fun aspects of my recreation for their pretend superiority.
This ain't uberproleague starcraft, and if I wanted that I'd go play it.
That's fair that you play it purely for fun, but I don't see why you can't extend that same allowance to others who enjoy competing.
However, I understand that in this case it seems that the two are in direct conflict, which is exactly the point of my initial post further up: there's clearly two populations here with different opinions, and those opinions are in direct conflict.
I'm not entirely sure if there's a solution that will satisfy both parties, beyond creating two separate GRifting systems that cater directly to each party i.e. like the current HC/SC divide.
The game's already slanted far in favor of leaderboard crawlers. There's a huge difference in time spent vs reward by doing Grifts as opposed to "merely" doing T6. To do grifts efficiently you have to min/max… which means playing like a competitor whether I want or not just to avoid wasting time.
All snark on my part aside, you are correct. There's no way to please everyone. I think the community has been split enough already, what with HC/Season, HC/non, SC/season, SC/non. If anything, I'd vote to drop the leaderboard from non-seasons just to keep things fresh every few months.
Right on the money, I think that is the best way to handle true leaderboards.
Straight hallway, lots of enemies of almost every single variable, boss is always the same.
The higher you go the more damage/health/difficulty of enemies appears.
There is no timer, just how long it takes you to complete it, so you could go very high and complete very slowly, but easily beaten by someone else.
For starters how does a "bug" like that slip in to the PTR?? Thats really careless for a bug like that to happen….
Second of all there are much bigger problems with game balance than pylons… They are using boses that are designed for T6 gameplay and specific maps but with hugely ramped up health and damage and in random maps??
But to answer the question I think the pylons are great in Grifts… They bring some different gameplay to the Grifts. Even though some people fish for pylons I think they bring more to a Grift than they hurt in randomness and with some tweaking can be even better…
its no bug its inteded but they make it sound its a bug, its the easiest way for e developer today, "hey its a bug" i mean yeah right.. codes in programs dont suddenly on their own remove or patch lol.. they think we gamers are idiots or what? they could just said yes they are removed since its a ptr and they want get feedback on how players like rifts without them instead – honesty works best in the long run imo..
Totally agree, no way that was an accident.
By the way, do you prefer your tinfoil hat pointed or round? I find that pointed helps me communicate with the mother ship better, but round keeps out more of the government's mind control rays.
Why can’t I vote Yes, I want even more Pylons in Grifts? Many people seem to forget Diablo is about fun first, than difficulty second.
I think there should be two "systems" of Greater Rifts: have one that allows pylons to spawn but these GRs do not contribute to leaderboards in any way; the other GRs have no pylons at all (maybe not even normal shrines?) and these are the rifts that are tied to the leaderboards.
I really like to find pylons. Especially the one that starts zapping everything around you dealing an absurd amount of damage to monsters. IMO that one is a lot of fun. Removing them would be a big mistake because it would just be to help some very competitive people know how far they can get into GRifts without any random help.
But the vast majority of players simply do not care weather or no they reached Grift level 41 instead of 40 (or whatever level) because they got lucky. And doing so would reduce the amount of fun they get out of the game.
I dont care personally they can be there or not, im just a casual gamer anyway im struggling with my barb to beat 42gr anyways so for me it doesnt make a difference, blizzard cant make everyone happy anyways.
Honestly I would just leave them in in their original state but maybe that's because I don't really care at all about the leader boards. Every pylon that pops makes my life that much easier. Then again I don't really care about getting too far in GRifts either, just enough to get my legendary gems their secondary ability is all I need.
There's a patch on the PTR and, on the notes, we got:
"- Some changes have been made to the way Pylons spawn in Greater Rifts"
Solve offer them in grim up to lvl 30. Leader boards will always surpassed that amount. Casual players that do want them in rarely fully surpass that for reasons of effeciency of gem leveling. I personally think getting ur gem to to lvl 25 can be achieved on gr 30. Any higher an u should have no pylons.
Pylons are fine the way they are. There’s so much RNG getting the perfect gear to drop, and people can’t handle a little RNG in trying to get the perfect spawn to push for a higher rift level?
Besides, if they take them out everybody who is SURE they would be higher up if all those people ahead of them hadn’t gotten ‘lucky’ would have a massive reality check.
The types of mobs that spawn in the rift have FAR more to do with your time than where the pylons are.
What they should do it introduce an ‘arena’ mode where the spawns are all in the same order for everybody. Then people who want to compare themselves could run that mode. They could make it a lot like the arena mode in a rachet and clank game, and not only would it let you measure skill, but it would be fun.