Re: No Baal Runs!!!
I totally agree with the OP.. I hate this new thing that came to the game in LOD.. RUNS, runs x runs y runs z whatever it is it must be a run. There are no more just exp game 1 2 3 4 5 where people with different levels just come to the game and exp all around the world.
This is how it was in D2 before LOD. People did of course do CS CS CS CS at high levels 90+ because there was no point doing anything else but river and CS at high levels cause it didn't give any exp. But there isn't the situation that lod has that once people get to hell they want to be in the last act immidiately and they do 8 player runs somewhere, 1.08 it was bloody, 1.09 it was cows and 1.10+ mainly baal.
Games were typicall: xp here 1,2,3 etc, amapala 1,2,3 etc, sorcnecro 1,2,3 etc, exp game 1, 2,3 and of course the usual questing games. These amapala and sorcnecro games were generally games where people wanted to have some kind of setup for clearing CS, people didn't clear CS in 8 player party because before LOD in 1.06 exp was completely shared, so forming a huge group was really ****ty exp. 2-3 player parties were good because clearing the areas was a lot faster than solo(ama gets conc, sorc gets lower res and CE). So generally it was 2 player team clearing CS, 1 high level barb in river of flame (83+), lower level characters doing outer steppes, plains and damned (75-83), and below that flayer or arcane sanc or such. So the game areas were used a lot more than today.
So solutions for the Baal run problems are quite hard to find if blizzard wants as they have said many times to support party playing and multiplaying. Shared exp is a good thing but for multiplaying it might actually be pain in the butt. People want to solo because it gives full exp, or play in small parties because the faster killing speed goes over the exp penalty of the party.
If we think that we don't put shared exp to Diablo 3, some of my ideas for preventing "runs" might be:
1) In the End game we should have at least 3 equal exping/item finding areas. Equal meaning similar worth in exp, and item quality. Also we could have some sort of quest that is available for every game that would reward you with gold and exp and maybe random rare item(like from gamble). In this quest you would have to clear let say 80-90% of these 3 areas to get the quest done. So this way the party that creates the game will do at least those 3 areas so that they get the quest.
2) Exp bonus buff. This buff only works in the act you are, this buff activates when you clear 80-90% of monsters in 1 real area in the act (if you go to other act the buff don't work there). So you would gain let say 5%(just an example) exp bonus for every area you have cleared in the act if we have 7 areas in act it would be 35% bonus in the last places you go in that act. At high levels it wouldn't be beneficial to clear all the areas in the act if the start areas are lower level but even then you could make the last 4 areas..
3) This might already be in the game.. if we have WP lets say for the last place of the game, now after the WP there would be 3 dungeons before the last boss each size of one World stone keep level. So how would be get to the last boss? Wizard teleports? Okey but if there won't be townportal system in D3 it doesn't help much when everyone else have to run.. also if(lets hope so) teleporting is manahungry in D3 it would be slow to get there. So only viable option is to run through all the levels of the dungeon to the last boss and hey why not? They should just design the levels of the dungeons so that they give good loot and exp, there should be some interesting bosses on the way and maybe some of those random quests.
Well gotta go now but thers some ideas.
