What’s it going to take to get the developers to remove these cancerous entities? I get the urge to play some D4, farm some obducite, then start getting constant soulspires sucking my time and energy and I end up quitting right afterwards.
You want to instantly make the game better and improve playtime? GET RID OF THESE, FFS. And do it ASAP, not 6-12 months from now in some future season.
You know Blizzard messed up this game mode when the horror of moving 6ft is keeping people awake at night.
They suck but deal. What is your average run over say, 10 or 20 runs like? I have some where I get nothing good and still end up with a decent haul; others were I get hellbound on first or second pick and most of those are way better.
It’s not like it’s the only thing spawning or the only option for boon/bane.
Simple compromise:
Soul Spires spew enemies.
I mean this is supposed to be Infernal Hordes. If the Spires significantly increase mob density, they would at least provide value.
Currently, they suck so bad because they do not create enemies, enemies avoid spires, and who wants to waste a roll on “Spires pull”?, no one.
Increase mob density, increase Aether, the utility increases. So very simple. Heck, imagine “Spires spew Hellborne”, we could really get behind slight improvements.
You’re seriously going to sit there and act like the issue with soulspires is simply “moving 6 ft”? Hilarious
Counterpoint: We need soulspires because otherwise I can just AFK.
This is a good compromise. Make them function more like the spires in Citadel.
Infernal hordes need some aether distribution rebalance. Knowing Blizzard this means they’ll reduce the reward from the better options and do nothing for the subpar ones.
Might be better if they leave things alone. 
hah got me laughing. i mean, i cant disagree, whenever blizzard balances stuff, they could use a teaspoon… but end up using a ladle. 
And yet a four year old still has a better grasp on what is actually fun than the brilliant minds who design this game. At least give us more control over what actually spawns and if everyone picks Hellborne, Hellborne, more Hellborne, even more Hellborne and oh forget it just give me Hellborne then I think the people have spoken.
Because “We’re listening” something something…
Maybe giving people what they want, and only what they want, and offering no other form of challenge is not good for people? What is the point of a game where everything goes your way?
RNG isn’t challenge. RNG is a time sink with an indeterminate end. No amount of skill or reflexes will overcome RNG. It’s just you banging your head against the wall until the wall gives or your head does.
These companies want a wider audience for their ARPGs… but that wider audience doesn’t like RNG on RNG on RNG on RNG etc etc. The only people who “like” that are the die hard “elitists” who like to say “git gud”.
There’s plenty of room for well-designed RNG. That’s not what Blizzard offers. It’s their most recent unimaginative iteration on the same old thing because they don’t have any good ideas… they’re just stacking the same old thing.
They love to talk about “that dopamine hit” when the RNG goes your way. There’s no dopamine hit in D4… just disappointment or relief. “If i get 20k obducite, I might be able to fail enough times for a lucky roll that gets me good enough.” ==> “I got enough good boons/banes in one IH run to hit 1000 aether instead of 700-800. Hmmm… same number of runs required cuz it’s just balancing out that crap run where I got 500-600 aether. Man I hope I just get more mediocre runs than crap runs.”
So tell me where this compelling challenge is.
It’s a small part of a video game, not chocolate cake. Does spires instead of something else offer more character building or challenge or engagement or fun? If the answer to all of those is “no” then what possible point are really trying to make?
RNG isn’t challenge.
It is. The inability to know what is coming next and having to adapt is indeed the basis of most game’s version of challenge. Procedurally generated games work entirely on this premise. RNG is not just challenge but it is the core challenge of almost every game. There is no replay value from a difficulty standpoint in games with deterministic enemies, i.e. Dark Souls where you always know who is behind the corner, but the first time it’s that ignorance that makes the game challenging.
Randomness is just perpetual ignorance for you, the gamer, to overcome.
RNG is a time sink with an indeterminate end. No amount of skill or reflexes will overcome RNG. It’s just you banging your head against the wall until the wall gives or your head does.
This is not randomness. This is persistence. They’re different. Randomness is indeed outside the player’s control but persistence is; you want an item? You kill Gorblock the Inseminated until you get it. That’s persistence. You just want to get to the next level? You pick up the loot that is best and you keep going until the next level making decisions A vs B hoping you chose correctly and that having no lightning res will work out for you. That’s randomness.
Overcoming randomness and ignorance requires skill. Persistence, killing Gorblock after learning everything about them repeatedly to the point where you have taken all the ignorance out of the encounter and simply waiting for an outcome that you already know exists thus culling randomness altogether, that’s just player driven behavior.
Developers can’t control player driven behaviors for the most part.
There’s plenty of room for well-designed RNG. That’s not what Blizzard offers. It’s their most recent unimaginative iteration on the same old thing because they don’t have any good ideas… they’re just stacking the same old thing.
Players don’t like new things. I wish this myth would die. When people talk about game design it’s like nails on chalkboard to me most of the time because the same people who talk about how brilliant past ideas were should realize that in the past those same ideas were thought of as garbage. “It’s the same rehashed …” → That’s what you seek out. You buy these games because it’s the same rehashed thing.
RNG introduced in new ways is being rejected. For example tempering in most games of the past is deterministic; you take thing, you ask guy, he puts thing on weapon using resource X. That’s it. The “RNG on RNG on RNG” is merely one level added to this process that you don’t always get what you want and it doesn’t always go your way. And this is too much. It’s “hardcore elite” to want to add even one extra layer of non-deterministic elements to the game even though you have guaranteed localization and high amounts of control over the process. Significantly more than in the past.
Yet, it’s too much, because it’s different.
So that myth needs to just die.
So tell me where this compelling challenge is.
Fundamentally the challenge is present dev. side not player side. And that’s actually good. You want playersided challenge, i.e. “perfect rolls for my perfect paladin” and D4 won’t give it to you. Like it’s good that it says, “No.” sometimes, and yeah, you might only get +48% fire damage instead of a perfect roll and have to live with it. Boo - hoo. Good. Adapt. Figure it out.
And this is about the spires at that; so refocusing on that, the fact that the game doesn’t just give you the events you want isn’t bad because there is no RNG in the whole event sphere. No OTHER event has any unpredictability in it. World Boss? Known. Legion? Known. Pit? Arbitrary. Citadel? Known. Seasonal Events? Known.
And ya’ll made that soulspires exist and make you have to click one more time.
It’s the only thing in that horribly done mode that requires you to move, which affects income. Let’s face it, with those boring modifiers, no one plays it for anything but as a farm.
I mean, I don’t want anything other than hellborne and exalted hordes, but getting other boons/banes isn’t remotely as cancerous as soulspires. And you’re implying that soulspires were planned as something inherently that you don’t want, which does not seem to be the case - there’s various choices to buff it, indicating that they thought it was a viable option.
It is not a viable option. You literally should never choose spires whether you’re melee or ranged or something in between. It is a total failure of design, an anti-fun tumor which should be excised in an immediate fashion.
It is a total failure of design, an anti-fun tumor which should be excised in an immediate fashion.
That’s how I feel about The Pit. In fact tying any form of progress through the game to The Pit and it’s completion is, in my opinion, a totally disgusting thing to do. It is, in my opinion, anti-fun.
A whack-a-mole soulspire which takes all of 4 seconds to kill is a “tumor” to you so I what does that make The Pit to me? Ebola? AIDS? Corona? Syphilis?
Or are you just dramatic because you can’t imagine a world larger than your own self-interests?
It absolutely can take more than 4 seconds when you’re waiting for enemies to spawn or take their sweet time getting near the circle if you’re a melee character. It breaks the flow of the entire event and can tank your entire aether load. Zero upsides, all downsides, 100% the opposite of fun, 100% a tumor which should be excised in an immediate fashion.
And by all means feel free to label the pit as any one of those things.
It absolutely can take more than 4 seconds when you’re waiting for enemies to spawn or take their sweet time getting near the circle if you’re a melee character.
What is the longest a spire has managed to exist for you? I must know if this is a skill issue.
The longest? The entire round, because sometimes I avoid them entirely.