TLDR; (I’ve also TL;DR’d the paragraphs in the main text)
- Terror Zones underwhelming; great for faster farming/grinding, but not actually challenging
- “Hard core light” mode: dying doesn’t perma-kill your character, but it resets the difficulty
- Addition of Ch VI (which exists only in Doom difficulty) set in Heaven, with new quest rewards
- Act VI rewards: Expanded personal inventory, increase a skill’s hard point limit to 25, jewel with +1 skills to “teleport” and “town portal”, and an extra shared Stash tab
- Large Charms dropped Act VI can provide certain passive buffs (and can be rerolled like skillers)
- The darkness is actually dark, and +X to Light Radius will actually be useful
- Completing Doom, or going to another difficulty, also resets it
- Buffed Horadric Cube with new recipes using end game mats, and larger internal space
- Larzuk will add sockets to belts, gloves, and boots
- Mercs can wear belts, gloves, boots, and jewellery
- Hire multiple mercs at the same time - one from each act
- Minimum enemy level (trash mobs) is 100
- Uniques/Super Uniques approximately as hard as current Ubers (replaced ‘Stone Skin’ with "Lock’)
- Traps and shrines buffed and diversified so they’re far more potent
- No new gear types; the game isn’t really harder if you can just “equip your way out of it”
- Some QoL improvements
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I fancy a new challenge that isn’t HC or PvP. If I can do Uber Tristram in my sleep now, there must be plenty of you out there. Although Terrorized Zones are a welcome addition, they feel more like a tentative step into introducing a new challenge to the game, rather than an actual commitment to pushing experienced players to their limits; great for faster exp, but not at all a new challenge. So, to make things a bit spicier for well-geared high level characters, I propose:
When you die in Doom, you are kicked out of the difficulty. When you re-enter, all quests and waypoints have reset. Changing difficulty or completing Doom also resets it.
No new gear types exist in Doom. You cannot get better gear, only the stuff available up to current end game will drop. All areas are now able to drop all gear. Max level remains 99.
Doom should “be the same game, but feel very different”. There shouldn’t be such a thing as “Doom rushes”. No matter how geared you are, and experienced, it should have to be played slowly and cautiously. All it takes is a couple of unlucky uniques spawning close by each other and you don’t take them seriously, and poof you’re back at the difficulty select screen. Blizzard should commit to ensuring any new rune words/uniques going forward don’t exceed the current power of existing gear options, and aim to increase diversity of builds rather than introducing any new tiers of power.
~ Quest Ideas
TL;DR - Quests repeatable, quest rewards re-earnable. Because Doom resets upon leaving it, it means you can re-acquire quest bonuses. This includes the skill point bonuses from Radamant and Izual and the stat points from Serina/Ruined Temple, and direct HP and resist bonuses from Alkor and Malah. IMO (and I’m open to having my mind changed here) while these bonuses are significant, they are small enough that given you’ll have to start Doom from scratch each time to get them, they’re enough of a challenge to get each time it seems fair to me. Of course, it means the more you complete Doom, the easier it’ll get, incrementally. The first quest in Act I no longer grants a skill point. Instead, you get 2x character resets. I did feel this early skill point would be a little too farmable.
TL;DR - Mercs can now wear all gear. Quests that grant Mercs in previous difficulties now allow the hiring of Mercs that can wear all gear (still subject to their class restrictions, of course). Ideally, all difficulties would be retroactively updated so N-mercs can only equip weapons and armour, NM-mercs can also equip helms and belts, H-mercs can also equip gloves and boots, and D-mercs get the jewellery. I just think it’s more neat 'n tidy that way. It would also make mercs interesting throughout each difficulty as you weigh up the perks of the extra gear versus keeping the current merc and their weapon.
TL;DR - Multiple mercs, one from each Act, possible. Hiring a Merc in the next town doesn’t replace the old merc, you can keep them. Hiring a merc from the same town does replace (each town can only spare exactly one person to join you #PlotDevice) but it does mean you can have a merc from each town with you. Unlike most things in Doom, this does not reset when you leave the difficulty; you can take them back to lesser difficulties with you, and they persist when you restart Doom for whatever reason (unless you died; then they’ll all be gone). Folk will be able to see how far you’ve made it through Doom, and Hell becomes a joke.
TL;DR - socket belts, gloves and boots via Larzuk. I was also thinking the gear enhancement quest rewards could be buffed for Doom, too. So Charsi’s imbue quest could be guaranteed to give a rare item, perhaps? The main thing I was looking to achieve in this vein, though, is Larzuk’s socket quest now allows him to add a single socket to belts, gloves and boots. Or maybe two sockets to gloves and boots if you want to be pedantic.
TL;DR - Larger cube with recipes using end game items (eg Annis). I’d also like the Horadric Cube to get a little love. I was thinking an internal size boost to 5x5 or something and some fun new recipes using end game drops. I like the idea of 3x Anni + GC = skiller GC, and also Anni + Standard of Heroes = re-rolled Anni, and Torch + SoH = re-rolled Torch. My concern is the cube is droppable, so I think it’d need to be locked to Doom somehow so it couldn’t be given away in lesser difficulties, and to ensure players were coming to the difficulty with the Annis/Torches/Standards they wanted to use (Dclone and ubers still only being present in Hell, you see). You’d have to re-acquire the cube in Act II each playthrough. Would love to hear some other recipe suggestions.
~ Enemy/Terrain Ideas
TL;DR - Unique monsters equivalent to ubers. My thinking is that uniques and super uniques should be the same kind of dangerous as the current Ubers. For example, they should have Meph’s brutal Conviction aura as one of their random potential traits. They should regen HP the same way. They should also be able to freely respawn their minions. Between this, and their being present all over the place, and possibly several together, they should be a real challenge to tackle, and will likely prove more deadly than the Ubers. It’s all well and good taking those guys on when you can separate them and fight them in relatively open ground like Tristram, but walking round the corner in Catacombs and finding two of the buggers in a narrow corridor, or an uber beetle in Maggot Lair, might be a whole other story.
TL;DR - All trash mobs are level 100. Maybe they range from 100 - 105 or something. My point is, monsters don’t get stronger per se from act to act, so ostensibly all acts are as hard as one another. The challenge will be perseverance through a consistently difficult game where you always have to pay attention, with the mobs’ natural variation driving the challenge, rather than just higher stats. This also links in to how the uniques are all “Uber-equivalent”; they’d always be level 110 as in Tristram’s Ubers. As there is no new gear in Doom, this won’t affect what you can drop.
TL;DR - Uniques can block teleport. I also want to add a ‘lockdown’ trait that they can potentially roll. I’d like it to replace Stone Skin (which, frankly, is tedious rather than hard). Lockdown would, over a pretty wide area, prevent Teleport. Teleport is great for farming, which I don’t envision Doom being played for, and it makes getting out of danger very easy. I wouldn’t completely disable it, but I’d like players to be aware they could find themselves trapped (remember what it was like before you got Enigma?)
Of course, the act bosses themselves would then have to be a whole new step up again. I’ll let you ponder that.
TL;DR - Traps buffed, diversified, and triggerable by attacks. Traps also need sorting out. It’s always bothered me that in Hell they were never a real threat. They’re not a real threat at any point for the most part, but in Hell they should be. In Doom, they damn well will be. I also think breakable objects like barrels should be destroyable with attacks (still drop their loot), which would make planning combat around them more of a challenge. Imagine being in the midst of holding your own against two ubers in some dark corridor and you get the message “you were slain by a barrel”. Traps should also be able to cripple you with status ailment like decrepify.
TL;DR - Shrines to be buffed, diversified, and enhanced by gear properties. On the other hand, shrines will now do more. For example, health/mana shrines will now grant you x seconds of rapid regeneration (x being a high number equivalent to a few minutes) and stamina shrines significantly increase your run/walk. Gem shrines are now rune shrines (they’ll up a random rune in your inventory to the next level). Ideas for the rest are welcome. I also think end-game runewords and unique gear (which I think most folk agree need a bit of an overhaul so they can compete with said runewords) of the kind you’ll need to survive in Doom should have a new mod added: “improve effect of shrines by x %”, x being variable depending on the roll. Or maybe “shrine effects last x seconds longer” (30, 60, etc). I’d also add shrines that grant total immunity to a given element or damage type for a set period of time. Or that grant you Fade or Battle Orders etc.
TL;DR - Dark areas like night time and underground areas are almost pitch black. Light radius boosting gear (and spots near wall sconces or camp fires etc) raises the light level effectively. Maybe this change should be made for all difficulties, but if not, fine - it should at least be in the hardest difficulty in the game. In addition to suddenly fighting a unique as tough as an uber that can crush your resists and stop you teleporting away, this really would make exploration a slow, deliberate, considered process. Perhaps, with everything considered, players could be tempted down dead end routes for magic chests with higher than usual odds of dropping high runes or elite bases, just to see if they’ll risk it.
Also;
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Doom adds 50% to difficulty resistance penalty? For a total -150% resists.
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Doom reduces Life Leach effectiveness to 25% (maybe change the current 100/50/33% to 100/75/50/25% while at it)
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Any other difficulty penalties I’m missing?
~ Act VI
(Story) TL;DR - You fight in Heaven to uncover a plot to overthrow God. You start in the Pandemonium Fortress as in Act IV. Tyreal is gone, and behind where he was are stairs leading up. You get up to Heaven, and are searching for Tyreal. Quest 1: Find (and, it turns out, rescue) Tyreal. Once rescued, he explains he was summoned back to Heaven for interfering too much in mortal affairs. He was on his way to see God, when he was imprisoned. Quest 2: Find and kill the angels who were in league with Izual. You learn they wanted Tyreal out of they way because they’re trying to overthrow God and he’s one of God’s strongest allies. Quest 3: Defeat the big bad. You learn the chaos caused by Diablo/Baal/Meph was orchestrated by this new big bad to lure Tyreal into meddling with human affairs too much, to keep him out the way and perhaps even have him fall from God’s favour/be punished. Congratulations, you saved God.
(Rewards) TL;DR - Expanded personal inventory, increase a skill’s hard point limit to 25, jewel with +1 to “teleport” and “town portal”, and an extra shared Stash tab. Rescuing Tyreal results in an additional row added to your inventory, making it 10x5. I think this would be good for making LCs valuable, as they’d now fit above/below GCs. This is the only quest which doesn’t repeat its reward. Hunting down other bad angels scores you a jewel (required level 30) that grants +1 to Teleport, which would negate the need for Enigma, and also grants +1 to Town Portal. Finally, saving God from the big bad would allow you to choose a skill to raise it’s hard-point cap to 25. It doesn’t give you the extra points, and while the quest is repeatable, it’ll only do each skill once. After the credits/congratulations screen, reloading this character (in any difficulty) reveals an additional shared tab in the Stash chest. This is repeatable, perhaps up to a point (say, a total of 20 shared tabs; so 17 earnable? Maybe more). This is per the entire account, so it benefits all characters on the account, but means you can’t go get another 17 tabs from another character.
(Large Charms) TL;DR - Act VI Large Charms can roll (or be re-rolled with 3x PGems) with certain buffs. The buffs would be based on non-damaging auras or other boons already available to the various classes. So for example, a FRW buff equivalent to, say, level x Vigor, or a stats buff equivalent to level x Battle Orders. This idea is certainly incomplete, but so far:
- Level 4 Vigor
- Level 1 Battle Orders
- Level 1 _________ Mastery (Blade mastery would also work on claws)
- Level 12 Pierce
- Level ?? Cyclone Armour (bearing in mind it’d never turn off, it cannot be too high level)
- Level ?? Bone Armour
- Level ?? Fade
- Level ?? Energy Shield
- Level ?? Warmth
(Secret Cow Level) TL;DR - Fight one of every unique, super unique and boss, from all difficulties, in this one arena. Reward is a togglable cape that changes your appearance. Trash mobs and champions as well, of course, but the main point of this is that the map will contain a ton of uniques, plus all super uniques and bosses. Many of them will be easy pickings as they’re from lower difficulties, but it’ll make picking out the Doom versions trickier and may mean they catch you by surprise. There will also be an uber version of The Cow King, of course. Like the very first quest of Act I, the game monitors the remaining enemies and you are notified when the count has reached zero. On completion, your character now has a distinctive cape to show off to others. It can be toggled off.
QoL Improvements
A “lock difficulty” option of some kind. It’d be awful to lose progress in Doom because you accidentally selected Hell. This would also be good for solo offliners who have a good farming map on lesser difficulties. Next to the difficulty selection menu is a padlock icon. It is unlocked. You select it to lock the character into whichever difficulty you select. You select your difficulty. This character now cannot access other difficulties until you go and click the padlock button again, freeing them up.
Renamed, draggable stash tabs. Given the additional tabs, it’d be really handy if you could give them short names (say ~10 characters; letters, numbers, symbols and icons [eg runes/weapons/emojis]). ‘Personal’ wouldn’t be renamable, but the rest would be. It should also be possible to drag shared tabs into different orders like Chrome tabs.