One of my goals in the last few seasons has been to complete all the various conquests, especially the more skill/planning intensive ones. Of all the conquests in the available pool, the only one I have yet to complete and really want to is the Sprinter conquest, or Speed Racer for hardcore. In my attempts, looking at advice from videos and forums on the best way to achieve this, I found it just out of my skill range on the first tries, which made me want to work harder to get it. However, I found that there were several aspects of the campaign that felt particularly egregious to the speedrunning experience that I wanted to address here.
These comments are not new by any means, and are common complaints about the campaign generally and specifically in regards to this conquest. They do however represent my perspective on this matter, namely that I think the conquest should not be made âeasierâ per se, but certain QoL adjustments can be made to the campaign to soften some of the abrasive edges to the experience that make it less frustrating at certain points.
These âpointsâ all share one thing in common: they tend to bottleneck the progression of the speedrun artificially due to the following features:
- NPC movement speed being unnecessarily slow
- Campaign-necessary conversation sequences being delayed without reason
- Map indicators for proximity to objectives varies wildly from quest to quest, region to region
There are other things I could mention - such as the overall superfluity of conversations with NPCs to progress questlines, etc. - but would only amount to an attack on the campaign design choices of the original developers and not on the implementation of those ideas. As far as the latter goes, there are many ways in which implementation of the current campaign as it stands can be improved for QoL concerns.
My main concern is for solo play, but these changes will (hopefully) have just as positive an effect on group play, even appreciable to experienced groups that get this conquest every time. I find that it is typically hard to get a group together over chat to attempt these conquests, and the coordination is usually not something players enjoy outside their known friends and clanmates. I would like to increase the doability of this conquest as a solo player, which I know well is already doable, but it falls into the realm of the more maximally try-hard players, and not consistently available to the average player without lots of practice. Iâd like to see this conquest consistently attainable in solo play by making it dependent upon a specific, viable speed build and general knowledge of the game. There are always those who want to min/max their performance for records, but most people just want the option to do this conquest without distracting from other elements in the game, like greater rifts and what not.
So here are my suggestions for improvement. Rather than getting an itemized list of every frustrating issue, I will group generally applicable suggestions with examples of where these could be implemented to maximal effect.
- Make all chat sequences available immediately in sequence: an example here is where Lyndon in act 1 after the Khazra den event is completed shows up, but you go up to him at first and his exclamation goes away for a few seconds while he talks at you. The quest icon should not go away, and you should be able to interrupt his monologue and get right to the quest.
- NPC interactions and movement speed sped up dramatically. Most follower NPCs share your movement speed or else teleport to you if you get ahead of them. But in certain instances, like in the Lyndon quest again, lyndon lags behind you as you run to the waypoint for the drowned temple. Yet another example here is the death sequence of Nigel Cutthroat in the Lyndon quest, which makes you have to wait until his prolonged expiration ends to resume the quest. These sorts of interactions add nothing substantial and should be cancelable by the player. Another example of this is Emperor Hakan in act 2 sewers, Haedrig walking to the cellar in act 1, Karyna walking out of Aranaeâs lair.
- All object interactions made instantaneous. There is a sequence in the temple of the ancients quest in Act 1 where you have to interact with the pillars outside the drowned temple and for no reason at all you have to fiddle with the obelisk for about 2.5 seconds each. This also applies to many sidequests in adventure mode which have inexplicable wait timers (and no progress bar) while others do not, such as Last Stand of the Ancients in Act 1 festering woods.
- Large, open maps need higher indicator radius. There is an art to this, but I believe it could be better tuned. For example, Act 1 Halls of Agony L2 the indicator for the next level is visible from super far away, but for the Khazra den, the locations of Kulleâs bodyparts in the Desolate sands, Aranaeâs lair, Cathedral levels, etc. are all basically within line of sight distance. My suggestion would be either scale this radius over time (i.e. the more time you spend looking the bigger the radius, so you get a hint if youâre struggling) or just increase it over time. Some events this really doesnt seem to create an issue, such as the Khazra staff event, which only has three static locations on a static map and can be memorized with an easy route.
- Interruptible chat sequences: The main example of this I can think of is the beginning of act 4 where Imperius talks to Tyrael and blah blah blah. The easiest way currently to get around this sequence is to start the conversation, TP, and return - thus interrupting the sequence. I think that cancellable chat conversation here is what is needed.
- Other slow animations sped up or skipped. The Skeleton king is the worst offender here, with his requiring that you click him then wait about 20 seconds for him to get down off his chair so you can kill him. I think this should be sped up or made into a skippable cutscene, like how the Skele King spawns in ubers. There is a precedent for altering bossfight animations: Skeleton king skeletons no longer spawn, barring the gate to the boss, and Belialâs animation was changed (much needed!) to make his true form spawn faster.
There are obviously so many more ways that the campaign could be made smoother, but I think these are very conservative QoL suggestions which can and should be made. We will always have sequences of the campaign more annoying than others that we would rather skip, but that is just life. We can however hope that these will be improved over time.
All this said, most people never play the campaign except to do this achievement. These changes are meant to soften the awkward edges of the campaign to make this achievement slightly more accessible to solo players. coordinated group play and try-harders are always going to outperform the majority of us, but this makes it less frustrating for the layman to get these conquests done.
What are your thoughts? Iâd love to hear other ideas for QoL improvements to the campaign that would make this conquest a bit more manageable for the average player.
Unfortunately, I canât post links here but if you search for something like âspeedrun diablo 3 guidesâ it should be possible to find.