Diablo needs competition

[Yoo]

Competition will drive players to find better gear, better builds, and better ways to play more than any other changes they may make. RoS appears to be in great shape, but how long will it last? How long will players set personal goals?

Of course players have different tolerances for both competition and personal goals. Some players may get bored after a single play through, others will put in hundreds of hours to find a grail item (and then another). Diablo population is skewed very heavily towards the single play through type of players. Competition is varied from very casual (think LoL unranked), to extremely intense. Population in competitive games has a much more even distribution of players and a higher retention rate (You might be thinking, 'but what about Wow?' Besides its monstrous amount of content, competition is found at the very basic level of standing in town inspecting other players.)

I believe that competition is a much greater motivator than solo play and provides great highs (and some lows) that make it exciting.

A system for players to compete with themselves or with others would be huge for the longevity and community of Diablo 3.

One example:
Allow players to turn in rift keys in various quantities.
The number of rift keys turned in determines the number of rifts within rifts.
Each subsequent rift increases in difficulty.
There will be a ranking system for both number of rifts completed and the time in which they were completed.

Could have various achievements/rewards for completing rift(s) of a certain depth or time.

 

[Yoo]

Just want to point out that the population of nearly all games is skewed very heavily towards the solo, casual players. For games with campaigns/stories, this means single play through, if they even get through all of it before moving on. For other games, this usually means playing only with friends, or only against bots. Even Riot was forced to devote dev resources to boosting their AI bots, because their internal analytics showed them that playing versus the AI was very popular, especially among those people that had no desire to PvP ever despite it being a PvP game.

If/when Blizzard gets around to this sort of thing in D3, I'd expect just ladders and PvP, rather than anything else. I don't think Diablo "needs" competition, though. Optional competitive things? Sure, great, more options and features are welcome. But any kind of compulsory competition would put off more people than it would entice, I'd guess.

Yes, I agree that its heavily skewed to solo. I'm proposing that competition will increase retention and interest in longer term play. Also, there is no part of LoL that is not competitive. Playing against bots or with friends is still competition.

I never meant it to be compulsory to play competitively or don't buy Diablo 3. Competition is something that will improve the game in the big picture and for a large portion of players.

 

[Supernova]

I agree with you Yoo. I love Diablo 3, and I play it quite alot. It's my go to game, but.... Something is missing. As of now, the only source of competition is comparing my profile to others and vice versa. It's fun to see how many paragon 100's one has or how much gold collected / achievements others have etc. Unfortunately it isn't enough. Players have been asking for PVP for a while now, but to be honest, they really just want competition. PvEvP or PvPvE would be best for Diablo 3. Ladders, Rankings, etc. Something to show off your epeen. Like you said with World of Warcraft. Standing in town and showing off all your amazing raid gear was always a fun part of the game. In fact, I raided in a top 100 guild back in Vanilla WoW, and I have very fond memories of showing off my BWL raid gear to other players on my server.

This was a form of competition that made the game for me. Although I did enjoy raiding 7 hours 5 days a week, I enjoyed it even more when I was able to show it off to everyone else... We need this for Diablo 3. ROS is a great expansion, but its missing this. With BOA gear I have always felt that its a step in the right direction, because at least our gear shows dedication and time spent rather to Auction House flipping or buying gold with RMT.

The dev team has acknowledged that they do want some sort of competition, but it's unclear on when we will ever see anything. I'm hoping sometime after launch they'll be patching things in, like they did with D3V.... Maybe then?

 

[Yoo]

I agree with you Yoo. I love Diablo 3, and I play it quite alot. It's my go to game, but.... Something is missing. As of now, the only source of competition is comparing my profile to others and vice versa. It's fun to see how many paragon 100's one has or how much gold collected / achievements others have etc. Unfortunately it isn't enough. Players have been asking for PVP for a while now, but to be honest, they really just want competition. PvEvP or PvPvE would be best for Diablo 3. Ladders, Rankings, etc. Something to show off your epeen. Like you said with World of Warcraft. Standing in town and showing off all your amazing raid gear was always a fun part of the game. In fact, I raided in a top 100 guild back in Vanilla WoW, and I have very fond memories of showing off my BWL raid gear to other players on my server.

This was a form of competition that made the game for me. Although I did enjoy raiding 7 hours 5 days a week, I enjoyed it even more when I was able to show it off to everyone else... We need this for Diablo 3. ROS is a great expansion, but its missing this. With BOA gear I have always felt that its a step in the right direction, because at least our gear shows dedication and time spent rather to Auction House flipping or buying gold with RMT.

The dev team has acknowledged that they do want some sort of competition, but it's unclear on when we will ever see anything. I'm hoping sometime after launch they'll be patching things in, like they did with D3V.... Maybe then?

Yeah, its too bad that even comparing items in Diablo 3 is basically non-existent... I loved arenas as well and it was quite similar to your raiding experience. Always checking profiles of other players, specs, gems, enchants and strategies. Only competition can spur so much enthusiasm.

The clan lobbies might really help for comparing to other players, but the 'competition' is who spends the most time. There's nothing to show that you might be more skilled, or found a better build, or better method.

 

[Sulle]

I am a very worried about the state D3 is in and the fact that there´s no end game at all besides farming and to what end one may ask. I know a lot of players have asked for pvp for a long time and although blizzard say they will add it at one point after the release of ROS, I can´t help thinking about what kind of pvp it will be.

If you see some of the new legendaries, then you know that it´s impossible to balance pvp around some of those items since some of them make you immune and even heal you to certain elements, so the only solution would be to make some kind of arena pvp with balanced items specifically for that. Blizzard actually had something like arena pvp with balanced items in the beginning, but scrapped it for some mysterious reason, even though the players at the blizzcon 2010 loved it.

We could easily get something like that back again, so I really hope that they come up with something spectacular because after waiting for pvp this long, I do hope it´s not brawling 2.0...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZrGE3VLiSk a fottage of the arena pvp at the time.