So Echoing Nightmares have had major changes since the PTR.
No gold drop means the gold wrap option is gone.
No shield pylon option.
Molten damage changed to physical? (seriously?) So fire immunity is out too.
Dunno what the “adjusted drop rate” means but can guess they won’t be 1:1 anymore.
2 Likes
ENs can’t be opened below level 70.
XP now is aligned with that of GR turn ins.
So much for the leveling potential everyone was excited about.
Otherwise, yeah, ENs have been made harder to survive in, including for HC. Bliz went with the exact opposite of the HC feedback. Ouch.
EDIT: Oh yeah, and the 15th is confirmed.
18 Likes
Indeed. Judging by the latest changes I see no incentive to do them at all now.
They may as well have named it the “Season of why even bother.”
They have effectively gutted any and all tactical options with these now.
10 Likes
Ya, now the question is, play HC and ignore EN, or play SC to see that “new content” a bit…
Wouldnt even consider playing if I hadnt skipped the past few seasons
2 Likes
All they need to do to make it fair for HC players is make it non permanent death like set dungeons.
If not HC players like us getting royally screwed.
7 Likes
So, HC players do not really want to play HC if it is difficult?
3 Likes
The only good change they made post PTR was fixing Earth Ally, tho that has yet to be seen as well.
The game format is designed to scale until it kills you. It’s literally designed to not be HC.
8 Likes
Do you die if you are overwhelmed? Can you avoid the mobs after a certain point to let the time run out?
Sad to say that this isn’t the first time that hardcore players get the short end of the stick.
1 Like
Hopefully the new Speed Pylon will allow players to run in circles until time runs out.
6 Likes
I’m baffled by these nerfs. There’s no communication at all from the devs for reasoning behind these changes and it’s really frustrating.
An explanation would be great here. What’s the draw for this season now?
8 Likes
Exactly. The XP sounds to be negligible advantage now. So the only benefit at all remains the augment gem. It is very far removed from an attractive or appealing Seasonal Theme. And basically gives the finger to HC, Solo, and Casual players who were looking forward to a nice new XP boost option for season start.
11 Likes
Curious how big of a difference the XP change is? The only somewhat interesting thing to me about the season theme was that players who don’t usually stick around that long each season would be able to experience higher paragon levels more quickly than they usually do.
Since the season theme offers no special interesting out of the ordinary effects, rapid XP gain seems like that would have been the only out of the ordinary aspect of the season. If you only gain XP as fast as you would doing rifts, what is the point? Season themes are supposed to change things up in some way.
4 Likes
At this point I will only be playing to get the pet/transmogs. It’s hugely disappointing.
3 Likes
Even that is heavily limited now. The change to both shield pylon and +100 scaling makes it harder to get 125 augments. Plus they didn’t seem to add any way to help get normal gems, drastically limiting how many augments one can practically use.
To me, Echoing Nightmares was always a quick and dirty method of generating augments after the success of such a feature in Season 25. It has always felt like they decided to make it a seasonal theme as a last resort.
5 Likes
Typical.
Players like one thing, and it gets inverted.
Going forward (or backward I suppose) the only logical strategy is to use reverse psychology. Tell the devs how much you love everything they do. Well, wait, no… they wouldn’t understand the sarcasm font.
2 Likes
Pretty sure it is to scale until you get overwhelmed. You can get overwhelmed and not die. If you die, then you die. Had plenty of overwhelms and didn’t die on the PTR early, unless they changed that, don’t die.
The devs have done a great job (creativity) with s24 and s25 with their imagination.
Voicing along the majority of posters here in d3 forum, it’s hugely a letdown this 26.
EN is the ‘special theme’ of s26.
But post-ptr,
- nerf the novelty of XP gains – new endgame lacks novelty to GR
- increase difficulty of climbing Tiers aka monster killing
- remove gold – this step leads to pigeon-hole of players’ playstyles, curb creativity and varied gameplay (builds, players’ preferences)
- remove health globe (see point 2)
- Fire to Physical immunity
- Shield to Speed – negates inclusive HC community did not add safe zones
- Rewards should Scale w difficulty – life, game, APRG philosophy screwed??
Taken overall, all these post-ptr changes have negated this new endgame content.
A lost opportunity, w XP gains as defining allure, varied style of plays (immunity amulet, Squirt, goldwrap), pylons appears as one progresses from levels 1-100-125-150-beyond, and rewards (bounty mats, Ancients-only) scaling with Levels progressions. …
I won’t even try to second-guess devs’ rationale, but truly hope it’s not meant to prolong product’s playtime by ‘enticing / force-feed’ players community to stay ‘engage’ with d3. Smart game design (carrots beat sticks mostly) will win illogical muses.
Sincerely.
Gamer
1 Like
Let’s not pretend standing around with immunity jewelry and a goldwrap for massive amounts of XP was novel and creative gameplay.
This is the same sort of adjustment we saw mid-PTR for the same reason. 150 was pretty trivial to get to with not much effort and that is clearly something Blizzard doesn’t want to see.
2 Likes