First of all great feedback post. My congratulations. I am regularly testing Terror Zones on PTR and here is my feedback:
1- I welcome the xp change and making Terror Zones the end game farm zone for level 99. As someone who reached level 99 in D2R season 1, Cbaaling and Diablo Chaining with my team was enjoyable, not because of what the game offered, but because of our companionship and banding together despite going through thousands of repetitive runs. I would personally prefer fixing Baal Throne Act 2 Wave no xp bug, and 4 player Baal Party xp distribution, but as I said, I welcome Terror Zones, with some reservation.
2- Terror Zones in its essence is a good idea, but as of now I’m a bit concerned about it. The way the XP works is problematic. If this version goes live in season 2, we will see 7 players sit in town and 1 level 99 candidate player blasting all terror zones, exit game, and start new game with 7 players in town. This will grant severe advantage to multiboxing (multiboxing is not illegal I know), or it will flat make community organizations have an advantage compared to 8 players playing together. As of now, 1 player can farm all players 8 scaled Terror monsters and gain maximum XP. Depending on the area, you can level up from 98 to 99 in less than 300 runs. Basically terror zones have a risk of becoming an EVEN WORSE version of Dchaining. I personally think premade/teamplay shared xp should be promoted in these zones, not by just making monsters difficult, but also by implementing a shared xp distribution system. So basically, if all 8 players are in the terror zone, all experience should be distributed equally between them, and there should be no experience gain advantage when 1 player solo farms p8 monsters. This can be done via special buff, or flat implementing another shared xp distribution system in these zones. This way, teams or pugs (pug is a word that is used to describe players who are normally playing solo but using looking for group tools to come together and form a temporary team/party in game) will be encouraged to play together, and they won’t feel bad because someone else has 7 more accounts and solo farming Terror Zones for max xp. Essentially, xp distribution should be reworked in these zones, so solo farming P8 monsters should not yield more xp compared to 8 players actively farming the P8 zone. Split farming should be discouraged, teamplay and cooperative farming should be encouraged. This brings me to the next point.
3- I agree about the monster difficulty. Terror monsters feel easy right now, even in P8 scaling. I did some tests and streamed the runs and I must say it feels like monsters need to be stronger. First of all monster density should be 100% increased. In addition to increasing monster density, monsters should be more powerful. This can be done in multiple ways, some of which are: 1) Add extra immunities including Magic Resistance/Magic Immunity, 2) Flat buff damage and healthpool of Terrorized Monsters, etc. The increased difficulty would also encourage teams to play certain comps, or include other classes rather than stacking 3 hammerdin 3 javazon and 2 sorceress (I’m exaggerating but you get the point).
4- I like the randomness aspect of Terror Zones, and I like the variety. However, I think we should start small, and have a Terror Zone map pool. Some zones are just too good or too bad. You may argue that this will be the case for everyone so play the cards you are dealt with, and I agree, however making a Terror Zone map pool is not a bad idea imo. For example, Act 4 is missing City of the Damned which is a great Zone. Focusing on Larger zones will result in longer game sessions. A good premade would usually take 2 to 2.5 min completing a Cbaal game. As of now, teams can literally devour some Terror Zones in 30 seconds and start a new game chain already. Therefore, I would argue that we start of with a Terror Zone map pool first, focus on larger areas to ensure comparatively longer game sessions (around 3 to 5 minutes full P8 clear per zone should be optimal). Merging River of Flame with Chaos Sanctuary is a great idea. This can be applied to other cases as well. Having a map pool ensures players experience an optimal terror zone gameplay, rather than leaving everything to rng. Someone coming home from work might get Lower Kurast terror zone, and someone might get lucky an hour later and might get Chaos Sanctuary terror zone, with Terror Diablo as boss.
5- I like the idea of having a Terror Boss, or at least a superunique. I would be okay with the monster rewarding xp and loot upon kill, but it needs to be challenging. It could be as difficult as Uber Izual for example. While writing this, I imagined placing Uber Mephisto with his GG conviction and watch him murder players in day 1. Speaking of which, the difficulty should be a challenging but enjoyable one. My concern with having a Terror boss would be chain farming. Players would probably flat search for the boss and kill Terror mobs on the way, save+exit the game and repeat the process all over again. Therefore, I suggest placing 4 superuniques in terror zones, and killing all 4 should then trigger the Terror Boss, sort of like the seal popping in CS. This way, you ensure players explore/play the terror zone, kill the superuniques and spawn the Terror Boss. Upon killing the Terror Boss, you save+exit and repeat the procedure. Having a map pool would also help balance these all together. The terror bosses should operate on Rock, Scissor, Paper balancing. In other words, Hammerdins can kill some bosses, but the others are nearly impossible to kill for them, so they need a Fury Druid for that boss. Stuff like this may open the possibility for having a diverse team composition.
6- While the idea of limiting teleports and TP’s is interesting, I don’t think it can be effectuated in a fun way. A sorceress can simply teleport near the terror zone and not enter it, and use TP just outside the Terror zone. However, in case teleporting is disable in terror zones, that would seriously affect the day 1 early game meta since clear speed would be dramatically reduced. Very interesting idea, but not yet ripe imho.
7- In summary, having a team oriented Terror Zone system would 100% improve the gameplay experience, at least for me. I like the idea and I believe it can be made better with further improvements. Having a map pool may allow consistent gameplay experience in between terror zones and it would also allow adding new zones/maps to the pool which would add freshness. Increasing monster density is 100% necessary and buffing monsters also helps encouraging players to play together. What kind of difficulty do we want to see? Do we want to see people dying way more often now? Experience farm is easier now compared to Season 1, so maybe we should be seeing more player deaths on level 98 and get shocked? I personally prefer a bit more brutal approach. Great risk great reward so y buff the zones but keep the XP. Monsters becoming harder to kill and potentially killing players may make up for it. Hope this feedback is seen by the officials and hopefully we can provide a positive impact on the gameplay experience. Looking good so far!
