If D2 had Greater Rifts

General Discussion
1

Imagine if Diablo 2 had greater rifts.
No, it wouldn’t suck.
Yes, it would seriously rule all. It really would.

You’d have a place to test all the builds you want against one another.
As opposed to “i can clear P3 hell pretty good and P8 hell not so fast” or “Fast P8 clearer vs medium-fast P8 clearer” and this jank D2 has us comparing builds on.

The LB’s would have to be broken down by class and by build tho. Loot would have to be omitted from greater rifts obviously to not make those the way to find gear to actually make you play the quest open area farming not the same thing you do to chase leaderboards. I just think / def know it would be unreal for D2.
So those who like meta can sit there on their hdin and trapsins and go ham, see how high they can climb, great good for them.

Then you can be like “well this off meta build is pretty weak lets see what super ultra rare gear i can look for to get it up a greater rift level or to”. I mean, rejuv potions would have to be completely deleted from the game, as well as enigma and spirit and stealth. If D2 made these changes, and ofc the higher FPS cap, game really would get another decade out of it. You now would have a reason to farm all that stuff besides youtube videos flexing what you find or forum posts or self peen in the mirror at night time. You’d be like ok i can PLAY this gear i found (if i dont pvp) and see how far MY build is going. I can look for that idk rare off meta gear eth ribcracker with a zod or soemthing in it paired with some 4 socket shield or w/e with like crazy ED jewels or w/e and a 15/40 somewhere in your build. Or maybe the difficulty pushes defense on these glass cannon builds which would totally shakeup the whole ‘bis’ gear we know per build.

Oh they’d have to get throw quantities like way higher so we can play like throw barb w/o having to go back to town every 32ish seconds. For real though wouldn’t it be so sweet i just thought of how cool that’d be so while you’re farming its not “oh man my stream is going to drool” its “nice I can try to climb higher now!” and the game is about loot not GR groups and gemups and paragon its about really rare stuff and seeing what you can do with it, w/o a clear bis list for many builds.

Basically it would be a place to test solo gear finds, check out other ppl’s gear, be like 'woah he/she found THAT rare of a circlet or w/e" and or “i think my way can top this person’s idea” since the game is deep enough there isn’t a “wear this, it wins” way for many not meta builds to this day even. That’s all just wanted to throw that out there, no-loot GR’s would be unreal if they were in D2. It would be a huge place to test all your year plus finds that isn’t pvp or a players count on hell difficulty. Like when some eth rare this that item drops you then go “and i can actually test this too” (if you dont pvp) and that would be like, a solo person’s dream. Agree?

Edit:
I forgot about immunities (which i seriously love in diablo 2 its the hardest part of the game its needed). What, you’re going to wear conviction on a stick and like fish for cold fire lighting maps?

I will say back to that tho, so what if fishing is a part of it you still have a platform to compare not a stopwatch on P8 or a strange comparison of P3 vs P8 clearer and such. So, if you idk one of my fav build’s throwbarb, and you see the leading axe thrower is idk GR 50. That guy fished hard for like whatever, not phys immunes or (its been a few years). So, you fish too. Yea its part of the process but the platform being there is a bigger deal than it not being there.

Does that make sense? Fishing as a necessary evil is still better than having just youtube videos to show your gear off or jsp posts or like nothing harder than P8 for the really OP builds to see how high they can go. Fishing’s lame, but it doesn’t kill the idea.

You’d also have to block prebuffs like wand charges and stuff, and obviously have like grief phase blade banned from greater rifts. Imagine how crazy a Durance of Hate doll’s on death explosion would hurt you for at GR 150…omg…now that would be challenge. Leave Black Souls / Gloams in, imagine getting like to your 3rd floor of GR and the souls come out to play…no that would not be a bad thing what goes around comes around it would be FUN that’s what games are about loot and trying it out, not exp farming and such. I mean yea, you’d want level 99 then to really max GR’s so, that’s sort of a problem since normally you dont need to invest that amt of time on a D2 char to feel pretty good bout it. Idk maybe just leave it be, it would be pretty cool to see an 89 beat a 99 bc the 89 found / knew to find some way better item or two. BTW this is why you want power on gear, not on skills / exp contrary to what d4’s devs say. Gear lets lower level ppl be better at times, or else it’s just an exp and skill allocation game.

4 Likes
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That is a good idea, it would make the end game much better, more varied.

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If you couldn’t get any gear/rewards from it, I would have been just fine with GRifts. Otherwise not.

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Have anybody tried Grifts in Median XL, does it work well?

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One of the few reasons why most people play PD2 or PoD instead of OG D2 bnet as well… (maps…)

The other ones are: the QoL features and the better class/item balances they have.

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No. Games like D2 and PoE have crap engines and simple gameplay mechanics. They aren’t a good candidate for what you refer to as D3 GR’s. The best you could get is D3’s scrapped trials experience (see PoE Delve).

D4 on the other side… Oh boy, I can’t wait.

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O look. Thorodan being most reasonable and flexible among D2 ‘fans’ :+1:.

I don’t think I specifically spelled it out in this forum, but yes, what you pointed out has basically in line with why I kept saying ‘D2 has no endgame’.

But it also has to do with ‘build diversity’ illusion, which you may not like to acknowledge it/hear it. System like in D3 exposes weak build, makes players think less of it, as not worth the time, being less efficient. Some players think D2 has some huge build diversity (to some extent, sure) while D3 is pigeonholed. Your proposition may bring similar result to D2, of how build diversity is in D3.

But as for the proposition itself, I will neither agree or disagree with it. I don’t think ‘purist’ will like it though.

1 Like
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Amphetamines and crack are not good for your inner gamer.

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Just give the purists their pure game, then add options for stuff like this. Many have probably thought about it, devs, players and streamers, but everyone are afraid of the purists calling names, review bombing, etc. But It would be an epic change to the end game.

Grift is such a good concept that it has kept players to D3 for years despite it having few endgame options. Just bring it in as is, no need to change anything.

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I’m all for a few optional changes, but they should still keep D2R pretty close to what D2 was. We’re already getting Diablo 4 as a new modern Diablo game. There’s no need for D2R to try to compete with that.

Admittedly I also don’t like grifts the way D3 implemented them. If they ended up being the primary way to farm gear in the endgame of D2R that would actually kill the game for me.

1 Like
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It could have less rewards than the other options, that way it won’t be the main focus so people still have to farm bosses and play campaign for the gear.

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No rifts, maybe a map system, but def not rifts.

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I guess you could get it up to the point where its inclusion is merely inoffensive, though I’d probably question if it’s worth spending the dev time adding it to the game.

If it were something small maybe, but I suspect that a greater rift system is a bit outside the scope of a remaster that only wants to make a few small QoL changes.

Even if you just copied it as it was in D3 and reduced the numbers on drops/XP.

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Tl:dr.

Could be fun though adding just ONE type of rift no keys needed. Seeing all kinds of D2 terrain and monsters.

Perhaps throw in personal loot, only in those rifts…

I would welcome such addition. Nice to have something else besides baal runs… :slight_smile:.

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Wouldn’t Diablo 1 be great if it had sparkle pony mounts?

Oh blessed mother of Cain make it stop make it stop. Greater rifts aren’t even good in Diablo 3.

1 Like
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OP at least is not asking for drops though. He just seems to be suggesting testing ground, LB type thing to check other’s feat and gear.

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Ty for the summary.

I don’t care about LB etc. But it is fine if they would implement it. Comparing is handy though.

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They can easily add more than 8 /players8 command that is still capped at 8 for the loot, but the players can compare how far (players10, 20, 30 etc) a build can go in same speed clear as /players1.

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Skelo to me this is the same thing as a greater rift.
Players 20 vs idk GR 50.

D3 did so many things wrong yes i am a D2 purist basically about 90ish percent.
I just see the game’s biggest problems, which are nowherenear diablo 3’s, and having an endgame scaling difficulty to DO something with all those epeen drops we all play the game for would be just awesome.

Again with the exceptions juvs are out, loot is out of GR’s that’s a huge one, group exp is left in (since grouping during the quest line with public loot is just wack, not as bad as private loot grouping both are bad when everyone can clear the maps so easily), and like obviously game-skippers like spirit stealth enigma are booted forever from the game.

Its really lame to be like “ok sweet this off meta build can do P3, maybe P4” and “o, that trapsin can P8 omg” and “o, this lightsorc can also P8 but it’s slightly faster than trapsin’s P8” like see how LAME that is bc we all outscaled the difficulty so hard over the last 20 years while the devs left blizzard. I mean other add ins ike you can’t return to town to heal constantly.

I’d go the other way and be like D3 should be about finding rare loot and all that but then there are so many other things D3 would have to do right and that post would take a day to write up. Love D2 or not, the game is lacking a testing ground, and if it had it, you’d have a lot more excitement when something GG drops instead of “i can’t wait to like stream this” or “ill make a d2jsp post about it” and such it would just be on your char, which would hopefully be near the top of the LB’s since the game isn’t about paragon and instead is about solo finding gear.

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It may sound great but in the practice you would fish for mobs with less immunities which would make the whole game revolve around that. D2 gameplay is not about resource management as you can spam potions or position heavy like D3 for dynamic combat as elite capabilities are pretty restricted to unholy auras, fire or cold enchanted burst on death or lightning.
The most overruling factor would be finding a rift with less immune monsters and no mana burn or stamina drain unique monsters. If such thing were to apply, it should be pretty similar to the PoE’s system with dungeon modifiers and scale has to stop somewhere before going all the way to the 150 tier.

You can’t teach an old dog, new tricks.