Ive been pondering this since they detailed how war plans are going to play out, but what is the expected gameplay loop here?
Is the expected loop (from the devs) going to be sitting in war plans, customizing what we want to do and focus on? Or do we think players are going to dip in and out of war plans every so often to sit in, for example, pit and climb the tiers faster and upgrade glyphs than maybe war plans might allow?
Lets assume that in my play session I want to farm out pit tiers and glyph XP.
My understanding of warplans is that we have a small ātwigā of endgame activities to select from, and then we go. However, I dont think its clear that the entire war plan would be something that we specifically want to farm. When you make your selections, 3-4-5 ānodesā in the war plan, they could be various endgame activities and you might not be presented with 5 activities that are Pit only, if your current goal is pit farming. You might be forced to select some other activities, such as Helltides or Nightmare Dungeons, in order to complete the war plan.
So in that case, would I be dipping out of war plans to sit in pit, the old fashioned way, to farm up the tiers? And head back to war plans when Im ready for a break or to do something else? Or do we know that theres going to be a way for me to force pit activity selections in war plans?
tldr; the current endgame loop is: Sit in pits and farm up tiers/glyph XP, boss rotations, NM dungeons for mats, helltides, undercity, etc etc. All seperate things that serve a purpose but we only farm them when the need arises and then move onto the next.
But with LoH weāll have war plans that allow us to select a batch of activities and goā¦but they may not all be related to the one or two things we want to focus on. Soā¦whats the expected behavior there?
My take on warplans is that itās their way to force you do to all the different activities. They said something about the rewards being so much better that they expect everyone will do them. In other words, they nerfed not doing them into the ground.
Which is to say, the point of them is to get you to doing stuff everything instead of just focusing on a the item(s) you need.
While I will certainly give them a try I expect I would ignore them completely if doing so is viable. I just donāt want to do 3 activities I donāt like/need to do 1 or 2 I do.
Yeah, I guess thats kind of the big question and what you said is what most people will probably do. If WP is 2-3x+ more rewarding than just farming what you need, people will do that. Otherwise, they will ignore WP and the endgame of this expansion falls apart.
Im going to go out on a limb and sayā¦Iād hope that blizzard weighed the rewards in WP vs just doing the content in a silo and found that WP is the way to go. WP is one of the big hooks for this expansion.
Thinking about itā¦ Having all of these different āactivitiesā, and even calling them activities, creates this theme park vibe. The idea of theme park mmorpg, in this case theme park ARPG, comes to mind. Im not sure its the way to go when building arpg content.
Hopefully it works out and hopefully warplans is our new way to engage with endgame. Something similar to this is what I suggested a few years ago: Visual and visceral system to interact with(POE atlas, LE Monolith) instead of sigils, keys, and GR tiers. We are getting a GUI with nodes to path through, endgame trees to customizeā¦ so its a step.
My big fear is that itās going to turn into something you pretty much have to do but I hate.
Well, sure that could be applied to almost anything in anygame. Having an open ended endgame in an arpg is not a great thing. Its been like that in d4 since launch. The ARPGs with a more guided endgame are objectively better systems. I dont want hand holding but I want the game to say āOk, youre at endgame, heres where youre going to spend a lot of your timeā¦do xyz, then abcā¦and then do this and thatā.
Otherwise, we sit around and say āOk, guess Ill run pit for 3 hours, crap I need more XYZ resource, guess Ill do this other thing for a whileā.
Use it as you see fit. I figure itāll go mostly like this.
Reach level 70, unlock Torment difficulties + War Plans.
Use War Plans to help boost yourself with gear and materials. Fill out the Passive Treeās to tailor the end-game content more to your liking.
End up in the Pit, Tower and Echoing Hatred for endgame grinding.
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I can be wrong, butā¦
In Diablo 3 you have access to something alike (Tyrael) and by performing activities in order you have access to a special prize (itās also on WP).
But, at same time areas and bosses (activities?) still on the game to be played at your will without the sequence rules, also we have some activities that doesnāt fit on WP as World Bosses and Legions.
One thing that might help is that on War Plans, the system can generate the sigils and compasses needed to execute the war plans, maybe it will be extended to boss keys needed to complete them.
Some D3 expert can help here, but I vaguely remember some items just dropping through the Tyrael activity, one of the main incentives to perform activities through him. (Just checked google and looks like Ring of Royal Grandeur was a chase item on this).
What youre thinking about are adventure mode or bounties. If I remember correctly, they were nothing more than to stock up on some materials needed for upgrades. Outside of that, you say in public rifts/greater rifts. Maybe did adventure mode for 10% of your game time.
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There are a few items that are bounty only like ring of grandeur from act 1. You also get crafting mats from them. However, now with enmities the only reason to do them is the items (ring act 1 and gloves act 2) and the season journey.
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Warplans is more of the same.
Its a way to create a path to play what we were pkayed last 3 yearsā¦
I think a better way to look at it would be they are making the other activities more rewarding and adding some challenging aspects to them to make them more interesting.
We only got a small glimpse of whatās in them (Although I donāt watch streamers so perhaps thereās more information out there Iām not aware of) but things like adding beast in the ice to NMD boss fights should make them more fun.
Also doing the various war plan activities is adding to some sort of progress is a huge improvement. Right now everything feels disconnected and ultimately pointless.
Thereās a war plan bonus in the tree that apparently gives you a bonus glyph level for Pits, or more glyph xp or something like that. So youāll likely want to progress your tree before you ditch the system if you think you donāt want to do the rest of it.