Herein are my musings about the current state of play and desired changes:
I. Renown:
A. The current system is more of a chore than it has to be.
B. The system can actually be removed entirely by moving the rewards to milestones that the player more organically reaches through play.
- Point B would coincide with a paradigm shift of the “Skip Campaign” option.
- Rather than completely skipping the campaign, perhaps an expedited version of the campaign can be developed and renown rewards could be tied to points within the story.
II. Helltide:
A. Helltides are fun, and it will be interesting to see how they change with the upcoming density changes.
B. They are frequent enough to not warrant downtime in my opinion.
C. The experience should be at maximum bonus, so the difficulty in helltide should be CharLVL + 10.
D. To have the helltide always up, it would function as follows:
- 2 zones are active for helltide.
- A 30 minute timer is active in one of the 2 zones.
- At the expiration of the timer the helltide recedes in that zone.
- In a 3rd zone the helltide rises, and a timer (30 min) starts for the other original zone.
- This 1-4 loops and “creeps” through the map, and essentially has 100% uptime.
E. I’m not sure how to handle the helltide currency resets. Perhaps a minus every 30 min when the tides recede on one of the 2 zones.
III. Tree Of Whispers:
A. These are fun, but I feel bad for wasting time doing them.
B. These are changes that I believe can improve this system:
- 10 times increase to the number of Favors required.
- 10 times increase to the rewarded favors for doing listed tasks.
Note: the above changes results in no net change - Add favor rewards to completing any content:
a. Any Dungeon - 5 Favor
b. World Boss - 5 Favor
c. PVP Boss - 5 Favor
d. Cellar - 1 Favor
e. Essentially anything that gives Favors now when listed, always gives Favor. - Personally, I get that little dopamine hit when I happen to have done 2 Nightmare dungeons that happen to be whisper dungeons.
C. Rewards need to be revamped. Perhaps change the 3 rewards to 4 being: Weapon, Armor, Jewelry, or Chaos. The increased “randomness” can allow for increased power without being too worried about something being “too efficient” of a farm. (Not something I’m ever worried about)
IV. Nightmare Dungeons:
A. Needs a System Revamp.
B. The sigils don’t need to take up so much space.
C. There should be an NPC or device that the player “spends” sigil dust to generate a portal to the dungeon.
D. The npc can offer options that increase the “cost” of the Nightmare Dungeon.
E. The portal to the dungeon would also eliminate a loading screen.
F. More expensive and difficult dungeons can get reward and experience multipliers.
V. World Bosses
A. Make 'em more frequent. like a lot.
B. Add loot cap if A is an issue.
C. Uber versions with limited number of people.
VI. PVP
A. Haven’t done enough this season to comment.
B. Add Duels.
VII. Experience
A. Bonuses should be uncapped for solo play.
B. Bonuses past the current cap should accelerate on solo play.
- Bonus XP per Level over 1 to 10: 1.5% (15% max bonus)
- Bonus XP per Level over 11 to 20: 2.0% (15% + 20% max bonus)
- Bonus XP per Level over 21 to 30: 3.0% (35% + 30% max bonus)
- Bonus XP per Level over 31+ : 5.0% (65% + 5% per level bonus)
hopefully this is understandable
C. IDK if this is a good approach, but being penalized for hitting and winning above your weight sucks.
D. These bonuses would also greatly reward sigil pushing solo.
VIII. Itemization:
A. Item power should be closer tied to the difficulty and monster level it is obtained.
B. There should be more item breakpoints.
C. The affix ranges in those breakpoints should not overlap. (upgrading an item should never result in the rerolled affix being lower, because a new breakpoint was achieved)
D. With respect to A doing sufficiently difficult content should guarantee max IP items
E. Math for expected average IP Drop under this Paradigm:
ItemPowerDrop = ZoneLevel * 8 + RandomInt(-10,+10)
RandomInt just means a random integer -10 to 10 for randomness, until the range is made moot by difficulty
F. Levels beyond the point of max item power can give additional chance to drop unique items.
G. With respect to B and C. Lower tier affixes can be made worse and the top of the top can be better. Just don’t overlap them so and upgrade at the smith is always an upgrade.
H. Give max IP items access to a pool of “super tier” affixes.
IX. Trading:
A. Make Everything Tradeable.
B. Auction House would be nice, but if automation isn’t desired. Stash listing like in PoE.
C. I understand that this may be an issue if considered concurrent with Point VIII. With that in mind they may have to reconsider the level requirement changes that have already happened. (not that I think any of my ideas will be considered at all)
X. Crafting
A. The current state of enchanting is to find a 3/4 affix item and attempt to roll the 4th affix.
B. This isn’t horrible, though it does suck getting to the multi million gold rolls.
C. I think there should be options to try to randomly roll 1 affix or multiple in a less determinate way to make use of a 2/4 item.
-i.e. “Remove one affix at random and add a new one”
D. This would give you a chance to turn the 2/4 to 3/4 which you can then enchant roll to 4/4.
If you’ve read this far, thanks. If you agree, cool. If you disagree, I don’t care. I do enjoy playing the game Blizzard has put out. I only wish to share my thoughts that I believe will make the game better. Numbering of topics doesn’t indicate importance, this was a stream of consciousness post.
Addendum I. Post 100 Season 1:
A. The hearts should be much stronger when obtained from more difficult content. (Like all items mentioned above.
B. The different “Level” of hearts should have been more than bigger numbers. ex. Higher levels grant multi power hearts.
C. Uber Varshan.
D. The main problem with this game is there is not much reason to play past level 100.
Once I finish the season journey, I will probably play something else. Hopefully season 2 is better. If not, oh well.
Note: Journey and tier 100 are now completed, and I now find it very difficult to log in at all 