Diablo IV, Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 Forums - Diabloii.Net
I know I've been absent from the forums for quite some time, but I wrote this report of my experience with the PTR a few weeks ago to share with the community. I'm sure you guys have been heavily discussing it, but I just wanted to chip my two cents in.
With this pre-expansion patch, I set out to see how a player would fare with a completely fresh start. Seeing as how most players are probably approaching this opportunity as a chance to determine how their existing characters and gear will adapt to Paragon 2.0, Loot 2.0, and the reworked difficulty system, I thought it might be useful to see how a player with no ability to have ever used the Auction House would survive and what walls they might run into. My results surprised me.
The positives from my experience were many. I played the console version of Diablo 3 when it debuted back in September and one of the main laudable qualities of that experience was that it was far more rewarding than what PC players were used to at the time. Legendaries, hyperbolically speaking, rained from the sky, as the drop rate was able to be boosted without an Auction House to consider. With the announcement of the Auction House closing for the PC version, it seemed like the console would be the best place to look in terms of what to expect from such a major change. Within the first few days of watching those with access to the Friends and Family Beta for Reaper of Souls, it was clear that that same enhanced drop rate had made its way into the expansion. It has since been tempered back and this, coinciding with Travis Day waxing poetic on Magic Find and its negative influence on the core gameplay experience, has, at least for now, established the reward system that players will be operating under once 2.0.1 hits. Magic Find is of next to no importance and the goal is to simply gear for killing and do it quickly - the drops will follow.
Starting with a brand new Demon Hunter, I cleared Acts I to IV with no deaths and no problems on Normal difficulty. I was around level 35 or so when I had finished and each major Act boss dropped a Legendary; a majority of which were rings and were targeted specifically for my character. I received Nemesis Bracers, which were recently hotfixed, from killing Diablo. Outside of the Act bosses, I believe only one other Legendary randomly dropped in the world. From early on, the only Magic Find I had was the 6% I got from a Nagelring. This rate of reward seemed acceptable though, and the bracers in particular were a cool drop because they changed the way I approached my play. I would often clear a wide berth around a shrine before activating it in order to take on the newly spawned Elite/Unique monster in relative safety. The monsters scaling with my level also made it seem like I wasn't really rushing to complete the game on the current difficulty, since the experience points flowed consistently. However, this is when I noticed the major problem with this patch.
Upon completion of Act IV, all of the acts were now available to my Demon Hunter, but she was still 25 levels away from max level. Naturally, my inclination was to get her there, but how? With the removal of the progression from Normal to Nightmare to Hell to Inferno, we have the freedom to begin running whatever we want after clearing each Act once, but the game itself provides no direction or incentive to go to any certain zone once that task has been completed. Densities have been changed from the last adjustments they received so that, in general, there are no major areas where it makes sense to go farm experience efficiently. At first, this seems like a blessing. The scaling difficulty makes it so that any zone, give or take the different monster types, grants about the same experience. However, what this does in reality is trap players into the same exact runs they were mindlessly doing previously, just sooner than they were used to. The "fault" lies with the existence of Adventure Mode. It's currently slated as an "expansion only" feature.
Loot Runs are randomized dungeons, monsters, and a mini-boss that drops sweet loot. Also, they'll be pre-patched for free. #D3RoS
— Diablo (@Diablo) August 21, 2013
The tweet above shows that Loot Runs were actually supposed to be a part of the pre-expansion patch, comporting with Mosquiera's pillar of "end game for everyone," but, as Lylirra has recently been noting in the forums, Loot Runs were iterated upon until they became their most recent incarnation, Nephalem Rifts, and the development team made the choice of limiting them exclusively to Reaper of Souls. As a result, what once made sense as a decision to enable players to have freedom by removing the need for progression from difficulty to difficult just to get to Inferno, now leaves players directionless and bored. Currently, my Demon Hunter is at level 48 and I've run my favorite parts of Acts I, II, and III to get her those additional levels after "beating the game." When I log in to continue the trek to 60, though, I find myself less and less excited as the main difference will be that I will "unlock" changing my experience bar to fill up with blue instead of yellow.
Without "endgame for everyone" making it to those who choose not to expand, I foresee that it will only be a matter of time, and a very short one, before they either quit playing or reluctantly expand. Perhaps Blizzard is doing this intentionally, hoping for the latter - if the unexpanded players see those who buy into Reaper of Souls enjoying Adventure Mode and Nephalem Rifts, they may eventually feel forced to buy in to find that enjoyment for themselves.
Thanks for reading.
TL;DR - Reaper of Souls or nothing at all.
With this pre-expansion patch, I set out to see how a player would fare with a completely fresh start. Seeing as how most players are probably approaching this opportunity as a chance to determine how their existing characters and gear will adapt to Paragon 2.0, Loot 2.0, and the reworked difficulty system, I thought it might be useful to see how a player with no ability to have ever used the Auction House would survive and what walls they might run into. My results surprised me.
The positives from my experience were many. I played the console version of Diablo 3 when it debuted back in September and one of the main laudable qualities of that experience was that it was far more rewarding than what PC players were used to at the time. Legendaries, hyperbolically speaking, rained from the sky, as the drop rate was able to be boosted without an Auction House to consider. With the announcement of the Auction House closing for the PC version, it seemed like the console would be the best place to look in terms of what to expect from such a major change. Within the first few days of watching those with access to the Friends and Family Beta for Reaper of Souls, it was clear that that same enhanced drop rate had made its way into the expansion. It has since been tempered back and this, coinciding with Travis Day waxing poetic on Magic Find and its negative influence on the core gameplay experience, has, at least for now, established the reward system that players will be operating under once 2.0.1 hits. Magic Find is of next to no importance and the goal is to simply gear for killing and do it quickly - the drops will follow.
Starting with a brand new Demon Hunter, I cleared Acts I to IV with no deaths and no problems on Normal difficulty. I was around level 35 or so when I had finished and each major Act boss dropped a Legendary; a majority of which were rings and were targeted specifically for my character. I received Nemesis Bracers, which were recently hotfixed, from killing Diablo. Outside of the Act bosses, I believe only one other Legendary randomly dropped in the world. From early on, the only Magic Find I had was the 6% I got from a Nagelring. This rate of reward seemed acceptable though, and the bracers in particular were a cool drop because they changed the way I approached my play. I would often clear a wide berth around a shrine before activating it in order to take on the newly spawned Elite/Unique monster in relative safety. The monsters scaling with my level also made it seem like I wasn't really rushing to complete the game on the current difficulty, since the experience points flowed consistently. However, this is when I noticed the major problem with this patch.
Upon completion of Act IV, all of the acts were now available to my Demon Hunter, but she was still 25 levels away from max level. Naturally, my inclination was to get her there, but how? With the removal of the progression from Normal to Nightmare to Hell to Inferno, we have the freedom to begin running whatever we want after clearing each Act once, but the game itself provides no direction or incentive to go to any certain zone once that task has been completed. Densities have been changed from the last adjustments they received so that, in general, there are no major areas where it makes sense to go farm experience efficiently. At first, this seems like a blessing. The scaling difficulty makes it so that any zone, give or take the different monster types, grants about the same experience. However, what this does in reality is trap players into the same exact runs they were mindlessly doing previously, just sooner than they were used to. The "fault" lies with the existence of Adventure Mode. It's currently slated as an "expansion only" feature.
Loot Runs are randomized dungeons, monsters, and a mini-boss that drops sweet loot. Also, they'll be pre-patched for free. #D3RoS
— Diablo (@Diablo) August 21, 2013
The tweet above shows that Loot Runs were actually supposed to be a part of the pre-expansion patch, comporting with Mosquiera's pillar of "end game for everyone," but, as Lylirra has recently been noting in the forums, Loot Runs were iterated upon until they became their most recent incarnation, Nephalem Rifts, and the development team made the choice of limiting them exclusively to Reaper of Souls. As a result, what once made sense as a decision to enable players to have freedom by removing the need for progression from difficulty to difficult just to get to Inferno, now leaves players directionless and bored. Currently, my Demon Hunter is at level 48 and I've run my favorite parts of Acts I, II, and III to get her those additional levels after "beating the game." When I log in to continue the trek to 60, though, I find myself less and less excited as the main difference will be that I will "unlock" changing my experience bar to fill up with blue instead of yellow.
Without "endgame for everyone" making it to those who choose not to expand, I foresee that it will only be a matter of time, and a very short one, before they either quit playing or reluctantly expand. Perhaps Blizzard is doing this intentionally, hoping for the latter - if the unexpanded players see those who buy into Reaper of Souls enjoying Adventure Mode and Nephalem Rifts, they may eventually feel forced to buy in to find that enjoyment for themselves.
Thanks for reading.
TL;DR - Reaper of Souls or nothing at all.