Could SSF be a completely separate instance per character?

PTR Feedback
1

Now the PTR hasn’t started, so maybe it already is. I’m just going off of the assumption that SSF would be like HC or SC. That is, they’re separate, but characters in that mode would share the same stash, altar (come season 30), gold, materials, etc.

  1. Come Season 30, once the altar is unlocked, it’s unlocked. The altar adds too much power to make season start practices impossible. Because your season start character doesn’t share that altar, but you’re too powerful in non season to get an idea of what you may need to play. And while not everyone practices pre-season, some of us are competitive season start players, and that practice is helpful. With a separate instance, the altar would be reset per character, and that would resolve this issue.

  2. It helps the Speed Running community. Right now, in the speed running community, you’re not allowed to use vendors, your stash, the blacksmith, the enchantress, etc., because it becomes near impossible to tell if a person is within the confines of a true new game. How often have we seen streamers do Season Start practices, for them to only exceed the amount of materials they’d actually have in a true season start? The World Record for 1-70 in the speed running community is ~90 minutes. That has been exceeded practically every season for the past 20 seasons during season starts, even when there was no Haedrig’s Gift nor useful seasonal theme. With separate instances, an argument could be made to the moderators of the speed running community to finally allow what is actually truly available to new players, because every new character would be like a fresh account.

  3. It makes Hardcore more Hardcore. You die, you have to level from scratch. No Gem of Ease, no backup gear, etc. If you want that stuff, well, you have the regular non SSF found.

  4. It eases the stash space situation. With Hardcore, I need my real gear and backup gear. With shared stash, I also need to include other characters. But if stash is unique to the character, there’s more than enough space.

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2

We’ll find out in a few hours.

3

not likely. most people want SSF to be a shared account experience like in POE. you’d be looking for like a “solo character found” experience.

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4

Although you bring valid points to a complete isolated SSF character, I would like to share my stash with other characters. Using it does not change the fact that I got everything solo, just with a different character.
It would be quite a slog having to start from scratch on alts. Also, imagine getting an useful primal for another class and not being able to use it.
SSF does not mean “Single character self-found”.

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5

They could always just add another option.
Seasonal / Non-Seasonal
Hardcore / Normal
SSF / MP
Fresh Start / Existing

If you choose Fresh Start, then whether you choose seasonal, hardcore, SSF or whatever else, you start with nothing. No cube, no stash, no followers, no upgrades, nothing.

This would suit your needs without turning SSF in to something that would arguably ruin the experience for a lot of SSF players, especially hardcore SSF players.

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6

Separate character instances doesn’t work for one very important reason:

how do I get STR crimson gear for my templar if I’m playing my WD?

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7

Not really an issue… There’s literally about 3 items in the game that you might want to roll as a different main stat to your characters default. Everything else you can roll with your normal main stat. But just because it’s unlikely/difficult for the items to drop with a different main stat, it’s not impossible. You just couldn’t give it to an alt to reroll it.

If they determine this to be an issue, then they should just allow the main stat on items to be rerolled to ‘any’ stat (int/dex/str), rather than just your characters main stat.

This however would result in losing the option of rerolling another stat, so you’d have to find the perfect item to make that work.

They could provide a new cube page that lets you change the stats on an item by placing a yellow, green, or red gem in the cube with it. It wouldn’t change the stat values or anything, just change the main stat (if it includes one) to the same as the gem you provide. This would be a better solution imho.

2 Likes
8

You need different stats depending on your follower.

9

“need” and “want” aren’t really the same thing. But yes, that’s always been a problem and i’m not aware of anyone that goes out of their way to reroll stuff on an alt to get the best stats for their follower, although I have done it, I usually don’t care.

You can fairly easily cap their main stat bonus for their skills just using gems, then put cdr/attack speed etc… on their items.

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If you’re not going to use the immortality token, you do NEED a lot more toughness on your follower, which requires their main stat on all items in addition to gems (regular and legendary).

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Bumblebee already put out one suggestion, should such be needed.

An alternative argument though in that stats on your follower aren’t as important, is that everyone in SSF is relegated to the same disadvantaged state. Sure, will you be able to push as high of a Greater Rift? No. But no one else of your class will either.

One of the main reasons for SSF was that of being a fair playing field, to see how far your skill will take you compared to other players. Skill is skill, whether the ceiling players can push for Greater Rifts is 150 or 110. If you play a Crusader and clear a GR121 and are Rank 1, you’re still Rank 1 and have proof that you’re the best Crusader around, even if group leaderboards, Rank 1000 Crusader is GR149. Because you got there with your own skill, competing against other players of their own skill. Whereas your follower might benefit most from Intelligence, you’re competing against other Crusaders, not Wizards, Witch Doctors, and Necromancers.

If you’re just after pushing how high you can go, there’s already the group leaderboard where you can share gear, and use alts to create gear for your follower.

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We only have PoE to compare this mode to and that’s not how it works there.
I wonder how many players who want SSF also want for SCF (solo character found). Having to start from scratch on every single character would be quite boring for me, but fun for you.
So without actually consulting the player base, it’s difficult to know what is preferred.

13

That’s how PoE decided to handle it, but doesn’t mean it’s the best way to handle it, or the right way for Diablo 3. Regardless, SSF’s main focus is about competition vs other players on a fair playing ground.

Like I said above, if all you’re worried about is just seeing how high you can push, you don’t need a SSF league. And that was one reason people kept giving of why Diablo didn’t need a SSF league in the past. “You can just choose to play solo!” But that didn’t address the reason of why people wanted SSF. Because the detractors were right in one sense. If all you cared about was how high you could push and didn’t care about leaderboards, we’ve already had that ability since day one.

What you’re after is similar logic to people stating to remove the upcoming paragon cap. Capping it at 800, or whatever it will be, won’t allow you to push as high as you could normally push. But it’s not why many of us want a paragon cap for seasonal play.

As far as what the player base wants, in the end, the leveling is such a small portion of the game. Diablo 3 isn’t PoE. You can change your build at any time. Playing a Wizard and don’t like Tal’Rasha’s? You can easily change to Firebirds or Vyrs if you want too. You’re not forced to create a new character.

If you’re playing SC, you just need 7 slots to compete on every leaderboard, one for every class. There’s already a wardrobe that you can save your other builds. And because you’re not sharing the stash with other characters, the stash space provided currently in game is fairly generous. If SSF was solo character, with the current stash space, you can practically hold enough gear for 50+ unique builds. This provides much more flexibility overall than a shared stash.

In the end, like with every game, if you had 10 players choosing what’s best for the game, there are going to be 10 unique paradigms. Because that’s infeasible, you look for a ruleset in which you can group players. Yes, you’ll end up with 10 people who don’t get everything they want, but maybe you’ll have 3 groups who get 90% of what they want.

14

SCF also doesn’t mean it’s the best way to handle it, or the right way for Diablo 3.

It is when you only have to do it once from scratch. Subsequent ones will be much faster precisely because you can share gear, gold, gems, etc.

I am if I want to play a barb, dh or any other class. I probably won’t even have the challenge rift cache for the new character which will make leveling even more frustrating and time consuming.
This will be way worse if you have to complete the altar every single time.

Yeah, and where does SCF fall?

15

Maybe it’s not. Perhaps there’s a better way. This was just my suggestion.

For SC, you only need to run this 7 times. (I never really understood the people who had 3+ SC characters of the same class, except if one of them was used primarily as a trophy character. I.e. The first time they killed Diablo, and wanted to keep it as a reminder). For HC, yes, it will be more cumbersome. But you’ve also had a split in the community of people who wanted HC to be more hardcore (some have even stated it should be SCF), whereas others were fine at where it stood.

I’m looking at this mainly in a speed running perspective. It’s one of the gripes a few people have had in that community. They have to put in a bunch of arbitrary rules to create a fair playing field. And as I mentioned in the original post, it’s why that world record for a 1-70 is 90 minutes. Because the arbitrary rules only really allow one way to level, which isn’t a natural way most people would level in game, nor the way speed levelers actually do level in the game. With a true fresh start, those arbitrary rules can go away.

The bottom line is as it currently stands now, even without SSF, players who want to see how far they can push by themselves have a way, even if they can’t place on the leaderboards. With SSF or SCF, they’ll get that way, even if SCF won’t allow them to push as high.

But with speed running, especially come Season 30, we’re actually losing features in Diablo 3. Right now, we can simulate those features, even if not 100% accurate. Even if I can’t compete on the speed running leaderboards, I can currently simulate fresh starts. But with the permanent altar, once you unlock it, you’ll never have that option of a fresh start ever again, with the exception of season starts. But seasons also sometimes add features that make it impossible for a fresh vanilla start. Because of upcoming changes, we’re losing features for true speed running. We’re also losing the ability to practice season starts for the conquest race. Etc.

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1.) For those that have I don’t know if season 30 will mean that the altar will be in seasons or not. If it is for season as well as non season. Then the practices would change where you would have to unlock the altar of rites as well as get to level 70 asap like you did for this season.
2. You act as if the way speed running has been done is some sort of sacred tradition that should never change. News Flash games change and the speed running practices of players have to adapt with it. One of the biggest changes is that, at least the way it seems, that Rat runs will be no more.
3. But still the stash in HC is shared it isn’t separate. So that is okay if the stash for SSF and the altar is shared. The only problem that players are having without it is that there is no way for players that play solo all of the time to compete against those that have played on teams, farming up paragon, gem levels, gear, etc… Then when they are done with that they leave to do the solo climb on the leader boards. 4. Without a shared stash of any kind you would have all kinds of problems.

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“Only” 7 times. Even if I have to do it “only” 3 times it will be quite time consuming. The real solution for the altar is for them to allow us to disable nodes after they were enabled.

The only way they could please everyone is by adding the following options when creating a character (which may be unfeasible to be implemented)

[ ] Hardcore
[ ] Seasonal
   [ ] SSF
      [ ] Isolated character
   [ ] Paragon ceiling (###)

This would require quite a few leaderboards, but would solve most, if not all, complaints.

18

Well, it looks like SSF is the theme, and not available in non season, so I guess this all is completely moot.