Altar of Rites during Non-Season

General Discussion
21

The broader issue is of “target audience” vs “actual audience,” and what to do when there becomes a nontrivial disconnect between those two groupings of players.

To illustrate my point, quite literally, here’s a meme:

I think D3 vanilla - as in, the actual original launch - may have been intended to be “sweaty tryhard” much in the same vein as PoE. Inferno mode definitely required cheese and/or wallet warriors! But, after the RMAH got taken down and Loot 2.0 was implemented, I think there was a paradigm shift. The D3 we have now, is NOT a “hardcore” experience when compared relative to other titles on the market.

And now that we’re in Maintenance Mode™, I think the pudding’s never been more proven. Leaderboards? More like Cheaterboards, amirite? World firsts? Done within hours of season launch. Seasons themselves? Maybe they’ll start on time, maybe not! I guess it depends on whether someone remembered to feed the hamster in the server room every few months.

HOWEVER!

I still don’t think this game is “super casual.” We’re not exactly “Candy Crush” levels of gaming, here. Especially for those who want to explore seasons and do bare minimum levels of research, I think there’s plenty of resources out there and plenty of places to ask clarifying questions.

(you might have to deal with a sarcastic butt like me, but we’ll still get you the answers)

EDIT: So to reiterate my point, I think this game’s casual enough that sure, not EVERYONE is going to think about Altar, research Altar, or even realize there IS an Altar. At the same time, two things can be true at once: “most people” who post on the forums, post in reddit, post on discord, Google wiki’s, are probably smart enough to learn the intricate ins and outs of this game.

(provided they’re posting and participating in good faith)

1 Like
22

My point is that yes if you go by volume, the majority of the player base does not use google, does not even hit level 70 and very very few have ever done a CR, or similar. I doubt less than 1% have ever bothered to look at leaderboards and even then half was by mistake or couldn’t care less. I have played since the start in 2012 and haven’t ever looked once.

I occasionally play with 2 people that fit into this category where they are often annoyed by the seasons as they only play maybe once every 3 weeks and neither have ever unlocked primals. I’ve sent guides, etc but they don’t really get the massive power imbalance between random gear and the set bonuses.

One dude mentioned power imbalance as why the altar shouldn’t go to NS which is dumb. Most people playing who dig into things are already playing seasons and NS is a loot graveyard where things go to die and isn’t fun to play at all. Most of the people on these forums would have the altar unlocked in 5 minutes and then the only real difference is maybe they’d occasionally play a day or two between seasons. For the rest, it could be a nice QOL boost if they rarely play and tend to get frozen out by the season starts and endings a lot. I wouldn’t be surprised if they plan to kill the servers for this game entirely within the next 5 years, all that adding the altar would do is make it so the people who barely play and don’t play seasons can get somewhat of the same experience.

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23

This game is actually pretty darn casual if you compare it to something like POE…

I sank probably 1500 hours into POE (1) and the loot RNG, the corruption of items, the affixes that can kill you instantly if you stand in the wrong spot or even get too close (dozens of them versus the 3 or so in D3)… the item drop tables where you might play for 5 years and see a given item once… D3 is definitely the casual choice.

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24

I only ever played NS in D3. It was great.

25

C’mon blizzerd, just give the non season boyz their altar. doesnt hurt anything.

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26

see? (One of) my point(s) exactly! :smiley:

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27

The Altar won’t come.

Anyhow, we don’t even need the full altar NS. What should be done is that they enable all the QoL (e.g. pets collecting materials) because that won’t hurt anyone. And Fissures should be in NS, maybe limited to solo games. Nothing more, nothing less. Buffs and the like can stay in seasons for all I care, but QoL should not be gated.

That’s all I have to say to this. Won’t waste anymore time talking about a dead horse I don’t even ride anymore (haven’t really played D3 since end of S30 or so…).

4 Likes
28

This season is the first one I’ve sunk some decent hours into… though, I’m not here for the paragons or pushing. Been having too much fun farming fissures with the QoL buffs.

But agree that if they just enable the pet auto salvaging and collecting, and enable fissures, that would go a long way to making NS playable again.

2 Likes
29

While I agree that all or parts of the Altar should be available in NS, along with fissures, it’s clear by now that Blizz -for whatever reasons - is dead set against it and it’s never going to happen.

Which basically leaves NS as unplayable - once you have experienced the QoL of the Altar and the power levels of seasonal themes it’s very jarring to go back to NS and try and play without them. Clunky and slow are the two words that come to mind!

And for a game this old that’s fine IMHO. Vast majority of players have moved on to other games and just dip in and out of seasons and the themes and the journey at their pleasure. No issues with stash space ever again either. And if you want to keep grinding away at NS (why though, for the love of suffering Jesus?!) you can do that too, you’re just in an outdated, left behind game mode. And if that’s your choice, more power to you…but no ‘actual’ power though, sorry to say!

3 Likes
30

They sound so so salty. I’m not purchasing Avowed yet and i doubt i’ll get the next xpac now. Sorc is awful to play but was worth it up to where i am.

31

I’ve said it before, but the unofficial theory goes that Blizz is intentionally making certain classes and/or specs overpowered for a single season, and then nerfing them back from orbit at the end of the season, while making something else brokenly OP for the next season.

I don’t think they deserve enough credit to be given the benefit of the doubt; I straight up do not believe they are intelligent enough, coding wise, to “intentionally” create these bugs to be “just buggy enough” in the “correct” direction as to always be beneficial (to one single class and/or spec within a class), and then also savvy enough, PR wise, to go "woopsie daisy, looks like we made an error :wink: :wink: " on top of that.

Because remember now, this is the same company that brought us “don’t you guys have phones” followed by “you think you want it, but you don’t” followed by “we like trains so feedback takes months to implement” followed by “Leaderboards are coming Soon™” followed by " BLIP " (etc. ad nauseum ad infinitum)

At the same time though, the empirical pattern of behavior is uncannily accurate and definitely supports this theory. Summon necro’s were absurd in beta so they nerfed them for launch, during which Druids were considered OP. Then Season 1 Druids sucked and Necro’s were OP again. Season 2 Sorcs got bugged and they were top. Season 3 Barbs had a bugged interaction which made them top. Necro’s came back Season 4 from what I heard, and I don’t know what happened during season 5 but Spiritborn came out for Season 6 and had a CRAP ton of bugs that made it stupidly OP. Season 7, from what I hear, brings Rogues into the top spot.

So to recap:

Pre-Launch: Necro
Launch: Druid
S1: Necro
S2: Sorc (due to a bug)
S3: Barb (due to a bug)
S4: Necro
S5: ?
S6: Spiritborn (due to MULTIPLE bugs + "please buy our expac, it has OP class :wink: ")
S7: Rogue (possibly due to a bug? I’m not sure, I don’t really pay attention anymore)

Necro seems to be favored overall but it really does seem like a different class is claiming top gun every season, with at least 3 of the 7 seasons having that power come DIRECTLY from bugs, be they singular or plural.

Again, I don’t think blizz is really capable of pulling this off fully intentionally. But, when “happy little accidents” do occur, I do believe they’ve adopted the “let fun times stay fun” philosophy because an extremely vocal part of the D4 community HATES it when bugs get fixed mid-season.

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33

:mouse_trap: :mouse_trap: :mouse_trap: :frog: :frog: :frog: scary times lol.

34

Never my Druid! Werewolf lives matter

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35

Very clunky and slow. So clunky and slow, you wouldn’t bother playing it anymore after one finishes with the campaign. It’s just an interactive trophy case for anyone who cares to keep their best loot for display.

What I can’t get past is that they actually enabled the Altar enabled in NS for a few minutes. Perusoe got screenshots of it. So it can be enabled by a setting on the dev’s end. It’s a simple thing but it doesn’t give me confidence that D4 will get the love from Blizzard in the long run that I’d want to see if I was to jump on the D4 bandwagon.

The impression I get from the current Diablo devs is that D3 is a constant annoyance when they just want to focus on D4… but to some of the Diablo fans, D3 is a game, a community, a cherished memory from their time with the franchise; and putting those final touches on the game as it goes into maintenance mode means a lot.

All we’re left with now is coming back every few seasons when we like a theme.

36

D3 is awesome and i’m here daily to check the forums. You’re obviously just a slacker and a D4 sucker! I literally just want to play it because i done everything in D3 but D4 doesn’t seem to want anyone to complete it except those that let it suck so i think it sucks so bad right now. My character better be fun to play and not :poop: by time i next cba to log in.

1 Like
37

My D4 experience was actually not too bad.

I totally didn’t go crazy or anything.

Totally didn’t go crazy… Totally…

38

I’m glad to hear it, honestly. Only thing i have to say about crafting is it sucks we cant modify uniques apart from tempering or reroll affixes.

39

D4’s current crafting system, like literally everything I’ve ever seen out of D4 to date, feels like an “almost there, but not quite” type of situation. Some of the theory is great, but the execution is just… off. You know?

Crafting is about choice, and choice is great! Having your gear choices matter is incredibly and fundamentally important to this genre! But… when the “choice” is itself not fun to engage with, then the whole thing falls flat. To wit, I think they took the WORST parts of D3’s Mystic reroll + Kadala gambling, and ran full tilt with that as inspiration for the whole “oops, you rolled a useless additive 5 times in a row, guess the item’s bricked forever” thing.

I think they took the WORST lessons from how “fun” it is to have Primals be so rare/conditionally gated in D3, and ran full tilt with that as their inspiration for Mythics. (cereal commercial narrative voice: “Now with 20% more starred affixes!”)

And that’s what’s keeping me from going full tilt myself, into D4. I go in every couple of seasons, and I go “okay, they did this and this and this, which is great, but there’s still this and this and this, which is not so great.” I have fun, in small bursts. But said bursts are multiple months apart and I don’t feel like that’s the kind of “engagement metric” Blizz was banking on.

And they could easily keep me hooked, it’s not like I’m shy about my opinions. But I guess, not enough people are like me to warrant changing the game to chase people like me :confused: (or if there are people like me, I guess we don’t spend enough money?)

2 Likes
40

You’re not wrong. Everything feels that way, like they’re almost there then stop. If they spent less time having devs making new :poop: to put on the MTX store and focus on gameplay, they could make it there.

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41

Well it is now being ran by the same company who can’t seem to admit nobody likes W11 and are about to create the world’s biggest security nightmare if they do actually discontinue W10 in 6 months.

There’s a ton they could have done to polish this game up and make it more fun. A way to auto upgrade all gems at once, a way to automatically fill up the blood shards to cap rather than the dumb “I can’t carry anymore” with space for 300 left.

The biggest things about non season is the drastic drops in damage, movement speed, and such means it’s boring to play. Movement speed on the game is so annoying, I’d even find a season with triple movement speed fun as a season mechanic by itself. The clunky resource gain/spending design sucks too and really isn’t very fun to play while leveling and the best builds I love don’t worry about it at all.

At this point my biggest hope for anything Diablo/Warcraft related would be some other company acquiring them, until that happens nothing they are making these days appeals to me at all.