The type of buff or amount of buff isn’t the real issue with this situation Zax. C’mon, you know this.
It’s the fact that they’ve started doing global blanket effects, it’s neat, but it’s not content.
A few days ago we had a post about farming for runeword bases for trade over uniques. In this post he made a good point to reduce your MF and go for clear speed. Now this +50% buff comes along and if you’re running 0% MF, this 50% is significant due to the DR of MF.
Global buffs for events should be placed as an option on an NPC that you can speak with to activate. Not a blanket effect for the whole of the game.
I’m not some contrarian or perfectionist, just move the darn buff to an NPC dialogue option. It would solve a lot of rustled jimmies.
While I don’t fully agree with the bonus, there are a few things to note:
It’s mid season not beginning
50% MF boost is far less impactful than players 3+
It’s only for a few days
Now it is definitely a slippery slope like you said… it could get worse and that’s where I agree.
If they do this boost once per season mid season then I would be fine with it.
If they do more later on then it will become a big issue for me…
Perhaps this boost once a season and maybe a second time at the very end is a way of appeasing the /players8 crowd without ruining the game and this is the happy medium.
Indeed. It is also the 21st Anniversary of Diablo 2 launch on June 29, 2000.
Not sure how I feel about it overall, but given how small it is, and that it is only a few days, I see it as something fun, but that if you miss out you don’t really lose much.
What I hope they don’t do is given in to those who complain that D2 is a long loot hunt and gripe about drop rates. The base drop rates are FINE!
Diablo 2 is of legal drinking age now. That’s pretty fun.
The issue is they’re modern gamers playing a game that doesn’t have an “endgame”. You can clear Hell difficulty, even farm it, with well below the very best. So you farm until you’re fully decked out, then what? Unless you’re some fanatical PvPer, there isn’t much left. This is because Hell difficulty IS D2’s endgame, and it can be cleared without too much farming.
Now, ladder is unique because it resets, so could ladder be endgame? No, for the exact reason that it resets. Now within the context of ladder, you could argue there is an endgame, but it’s remarkably similar to the endgame of non-ladder. The most significant difference being the endless P8 Baal minion farms to hit 99.
D2’s long loot hunt is the only reason the game ever got a remaster. And to those who say the loot hunt IS the endgame, RNG doesn’t count as endgame, especially when the difficulty remains the same as it was 400 hours prior, when you first got into Hell difficulty.
I am going to differ on this I think. Why? I came from old pencil and paper RPGs where the core aspect was improving your character (and amazing custom stories!). So every little improvement mattered. It was the core of the game.
D2 does the same thing. Gradual improvement in a character as you progress. Yes, there is RNG, but that is expected. It keeps people coming back for a chance at that BiS item. I do realize that is completely based on Psych gambling research and most games have it.
I LIKE leveling though. I like making alts. I like getting that little gear bump or skill points.
It is one of the things I love about D2. I can go smash monsters, burn off frustrations and stress, and maybe just get something cool at the end of the run. If nothing else, I feel I enjoyed my time.
We won’t talk about how many alts I make in other games
My sarcasm detector is poor when using text, but I sense sarcasm here. heh. Free patch, small anniversary buff OMG MTX! ???
There’s nothing wrong with differing on what the game means to you. I just don’t think it’s healthy to reinforce this notion that RNG is the endgame of D2. It just makes the drop rate buffers feel like they can’t ever reach the endgame. If you make Hell difficulty the endgame, then their argument holds a lot less water. Savvy?
They could not possibly be that stupid. It is one thing to release a mobile game where everyone expects transactions (free to play model). There is a market for those games, but this PC crowd here is not that market. That was made VERY clear at Blizzcon 2018. If they took a PAID game and screwed it up like that people would universally be furious.
This is a super great, i really hope that they would do more events, even full time ladder events ect… This give the game a purpose when there isn’t much end game stuff to do, here i know that i can maybe get a few extra items in one weekend, so i would take time off to do it.
Keep it up blizzard, and keep making events + look at some map system / new end game stuff to do that is perhaps abit challenging!
Slippery slope isn’t much of an argument. If you’re not opposed to X but are afraid X leads to Y, then argue against Y, not X.
50% MF is not 500% runes
Although I personally wouldn’t mind if at some point they try a short rapid season with much higher drops where characters vanish at the end and don’t convert back into standard (so you don’t have to worry about it impacting non-season), possibly between major seasons for a week or two.
No one made the slippery slope argument. We’ve pointed out the numerous holiday, seasonal, political events they do in their games (which don’t need specific examples if you’ve actually played their games), along with the rampant loot box history reaching back to Overwatch in 2016 and earlier if you consider Hearthstone, and made the case that they could let this get out of hand.
In my experience, people that use the “slippery slope fallacy” as a counter argument, are either ignorant of, or purposefully ignore the history and precedent already set by Blizzard.
Inb4 2nd Ladder they hit us with “Since we can’t/don’t want to do something against a certain site we give everyone a free Enigma for the REAL FRESH ladder reset experience”
