Enjoyed the PTR so much that i ended up going back in Diablo IV after a long break -but was immediately reminded that the road to leveling glyphs just wasn’t fun.
Glyphs are kind of a catch -if you have the gear to level glyphs fast then glyphs at 21 are like a bonus to power, but at other times you need the glyphs in order to get the good gear, which can take forever when you can’t clear NDs fast yet.
Realistically, a glyph can take 10-12 NDs to level to 21. you need 5-6 glyphs for each character -which means 50-60 NDs (or more). That’s a lot of dungeons to run back to back non-stop for days on end. It starts to feel like a job and not a fun thing to do. You feel like this -I wake up in the morning, got to work, then get home and say to myself, “I better run 4-5 NDs tonight to get that glyph XP.”, rather than say “I’m going to play some Diablo cause I want to have fun after work.”
What if the leveling of glyphs was removed from NDs entirely? How about a new system to gain glyph XP, that isn’t as tedious as doing NDs over and over. Change it from a job to something fun for the player. Maybe allow glyphs to gain XP just from using them? ya have to get the glyphs to drop, same as now -but once you have a glyph, ya plug it into the socket on the paragon board and it immediately gains a small portion of XP from every kill no matter what content you are doing. As long as the glyph is plugged in the board and active, then it’s gaining XP.
Then we now need a reason for doing Nightmare Dungeons. -lets overhaul the reward system for NDs and make it worth doing them. What if we took a modified system from vault rewards and put that in NDs? What if we had some kind of keys that drop or keys that can be acquired by playing the game? Maybe have four chests at the end of a Nightmare Dungeon. One is free and has a few Legendary items with a small chance of a Unique. Second chest requires a key - let’s call it a Gear key. This chest has more Legendary items and a larger chance at a Unique item. Third chest requires a Materials key -it drops a ton of random materials -mats for elixirs, gear upgrades, temper mats, masterwork mats and even boss summoning materials. a random assortment so it varies with each run. no guarantee to get any one mat, but a random chance at any mat. Fourth chest can require a Gold key. This chest might drop like 500,000 or even 1 million gold. just gold -nothing else, but a crazy amount of gold.
Right now as it sits in game, I get so sick of running Nightmare Dungeons that once my glyphs are leveled up, i never ever want to set foot in them ever again. A system where I have a choice in what loot i get at the end of a Nightmare Dungeon would get me in them again and make them fun again. This 4-chest system would get me to do some Nightmare Dungeons from time to time -just to see what drops this time around.
What does everyone think of this idea? -and what can you guys add to or take away from this idea to make it an even better idea so that something like this can be implemented one day?
Thank you for the time and consideration on both a new system for Glyph XP and improving Nightmare Dungeon rewards.