NM Sigil Revision

They made changes for S4. Not the ones you are asking about but at least they are considering it.

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I guess it’s a matter of perspective. What makes a game fun for me is a challenge. The nightmare sigils seem to be nerfed in S4 if they stay how they were on the PTR which is a shame. Everything you just suggested sounds awful.

Do you think it’s awful to get a positive effect with the negative one?
Don’t you want rewards with for your challenge?
Or do you just like doing annoying things?

When learning something in School, is it better to use punishment or fun to incentivize learning?

I have hoped for a more detailed feedback.

If you would want to add a positive I think adding targeted farming would be a better way to go.
Something like 20% chance for amulets to drop more frequently.
That way you could focus on the gear slot you are needing to upgrade.

Challenge? People are already scrapping anything that adds difficulty or rather make thr clear take longer. I see a Resistance Breaker, Potion Breaker, Backstabber, Close Defenders, Bleed Damage Reduction - it gets auto-scrapped.

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@Indian

No suggestion of mine is making the NM dungeons easier, just more fun.
For example Lightning Storm can still kill you, but if you are playing the mechanic and not just use some kind of invincibility to cheat the mechanic, you will get a small buff.
The strength of the buff is a matter of balancing.

To your first point again it’s all a matter of opinion. I don’t find most of the nightmare sigils annoying. The lightning one is because it slows me down too much. But the rest aren’t annoying so I do them.

Your second point doesn’t really fit into this context. The things you learn at school are actually important and should play a part in building the foundation for the rest of your life. Diablo 4 is a video game that you voluntarily play. If you don’t like the mechanisms in it you are free to go play another game.

But again it’s perspective. If I die to a nightmare sigil aspect, like the poison pools for example, I don’t consider that to be a punishment. It’s just part of the game, a part I feel adds to the games enjoyment. Tackling something difficult and defeating it is rewarding all by itself.

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Many players choose their NM sigils with affixes they do not like.
If you salvage sigils that are harder to do with your build, I understand that.
But if you don’t do some of them because they annoy you, that’s bad game design.

A lot of players don’t like doing NM dungeons at all.
Playing the content as long as you have to and then doing other things is not for gaming, it’s more like a workday for some unlucky people.

NM dungeons can either be fun or they have to be out of the game.
Especially since they are mandatory for Glyph XP.

Everything I’ve suggested is meant to make NM dungeons more fun.

And you should know that having fun is the most important thing, whether you are playing a game or learning something in school. In fact, not having fun is the reason why most students fail at learning in school.

Maybe for Lightning Storm, a movement speed buff would be appropriate.
You lose time waiting, then you get a buff to catch up.

I’m hoping for some good suggestions, because right now 90% of players don’t want to play NM dungeons. They are more annoying than dying to a one-shot mechanic with no visual clue.

That’s what already happens with lightning storm. While I do find lightning storm annoying and I do scrap that one. I don’t suggest that it be removed as others may actually enjoy it. I choose not to do it that doesn’t mean I want nobody to be able to do it.

But I do get your point that if something is universally not liked it should be removed or changed. But it should still add a challenge to the game whatever it is.

There are already perks in sigils, like attack speed, increased {damage type} %, gold drop, extra shrines etc. I feel adding extra perks in with the challenging stuff would just make nightmare dungeons even more trivial than they are.

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They should expand the concept of NMDs into a “Secret encounter” (key or a portal drops as a loot piece) and have them be basically anything outside of the OW

  • Encounter against butcher
  • Encounter against a boss
  • A small “underground” Helltide event
  • A room with Vault traps
  • A room with Son of Malphas
  • A random NMD with randomized hazards (1 min one, 2 mins other, 1 min then something else, then 2 hazards for a while, e.t.c.)
  • A random Vault
  • A re-do of random Stronghold with modifications
  • An arena or 3x/4x/5x cursed event (be it fountains or chests)

e.t.c.

And have these be non-craftable and be drop-only (from an Elite here and there)

In return give a small portion for Glyphs from any Event (or certain type of Events)

The whole concept of being able to salvage and craft NMDs (i.e. the “repeated chore labour”) I think is bad

IN FACT, I hope they consider doing exactly what I said (or something similar) for S5

Nightmare Dungeons, Strongholds, Side Quests…these sorts of things from the launch era of the game need a complete re-think. The game is just changing so much that these events just don’t have a place in the current game.

The NMD sigils have been nerfed so hard that there isn’t even a point to them anymore. They save you time walking to the dungeon and that’s basically it.

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They need to remove Sigils which just create clutter and instead change it to a Push/Pull or Kiss/Kill system. This allows players to effectively select everything.

For example:

  • Players can select up to (3) Positive Affixes for WT4 NMD. Every Positive Affix requires (2) Negative Affixes to not reduce the Rewards.
  • Every Negative Affix would increase the amount of rewards with the Maximum of 6+1 Negative Affixes.
  • NMDs always have (1) Negative Affix, the new Mystery category.
  • Highest Rewards - 6+1 Negative Affixes, no Positive Affixes.
  • Lowest Rewards - 3 Positive Affixes, no Negative Affixes
  • Neutral: 1 Positive/2 Negative, 2 Positive/4 Negative, 3 Positive/6 Negative.
  • Additional Rewards: 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 Negative Affixes, no Positive Affixes or 1 Positive, 3+ Negative, 2 Positive, 5 or 6 Negative

The Positive and Negative Affixes need to be reworked slightly and added to in order to give more variety. Players that for example do not rely on Overpower, Critical Strikes, or Ranged Damage could easily afford those Negative Affixes. If you have overcapped Armor, Armor Breaker might not be an issue and if you do not use Barrier, it can be easily taken. These need to be reworked slightly into Negative categories so players cannot entirely avoid true Negatives.

Nightmare Portals, Blood Blisters, Lightning, Rock, Death Pulse, Avenger etc. - would be its own category. Defense Reductions would be their own category. Offensive Reductions their own category. Another category of Mystery would be added. This would be anything from Ambushes, Traps, Nemesis spawns, Uber Boss spawn, Shrines are all Cursed, Special Events, etc. that occur in the NMD to still add variety.

There would no longer be Sigils you find or craft arbitrarily and clutter your inventory. Instead, you can just open a NMD portal, but have to successfully complete one level before moving on to the next. You can select your Affixes (Good or Bad) and the specific NMD and Mystery Affix is always RNG. Mystery Affixes are never displayed, hence mystery and only playing will you discover what it might be which prohibits players from just queuing until they get the Mystery they want. You could do this for the specific Dungeon, but hey, if you want to go to that trouble to min/max go ahead.

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That system could be really nice.

Only change I would make is having a reward system for not just picking the same negative affixes over and over.
Like, you get a chest with rewards, after having done each negative affix at least once (might also be 95%+ of affixes, if it should be possible to always skip 1-2 of them), then the counter resets and can be repeated over and over.

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The only problem to that with the current Affixes is that certain Classes and Builds the negative Affixes don’t really impact for the most part while some everything hurts it. If you are a Close Melee attacker who needs Overpower, Crit, Physical, Close using Barrier, Potions, and Dodge - you are pretty effed if a ton of Affixes show up. Meanwhile, a Bleed character that has a ton of healing sources and overcapped Armor and Resists, most stuff is inconsequential. Could reduce Overpower damage by 1000% and it wouldn’t make a difference.

I like the idea of encouraging players and reward players for diversity, but think instead they could implement this with having more variety in NMD design in general instead of completing some terrible backtrack quest or killing all enemies backtracking twice to get to a Boss room. Should be entirely different map designs and objectives to experience.

I like where you’re going, but it shouldn’t just be buffs to you, it should be buffs to the dungeon too, like the skulls system.

Example:
Stormbane’s Wrath: You and enemies near Stormbane have higher lightning resistance and deal more physical damage.

Volcanic: You and enemies do and take more fire damage for 5 seconds after a nearby eruption. Being hit by volcanic causes you and enemies in range to burn.

Things like this so that you choose whether or not you want to be affected by it or not that buff you and the enemies whilst also giving a negative that feels more like a positive.

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I did a big write up on this issue.

Nightmare Dungeon Affixes = Nightmare Dungeon Affixes can git gud with this updated system! 👍

Dungeon Rarity = Dungeon Rarity brings all the boys to the yard! 😂

Blood Blister:
Destroyed Blood Blisters drop loot and have a small chance of spawning a loot goblin.
Volcanic:
In addition to dealing damage, the eruption drops gold.

Could be issue as you could afk farm these with necromancer.

Lightning Storm:
To make up for lost time, if you are in the dome when the lightning strikes, you get a weakened pylon effect as a buff for 20 seconds.

very cool

The affixes of the nightmare sigils should be positive and not negative.

I think you need some negatives but positives could be more focus.

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If no negative affixes, what is different of normal dungeon and nightmare dungeon? Guess most player forget about normal dungeon exist due to the way Blizzard design the game by overbuff a nightmare dungeon when no one want to play them and make the rest part of the game obsolete.

I think blizzard should keep vault in S4 with no negative affix an traps, remove all dungeons including NMD and all open world except one for helltides and world boss spawn. This can reduce game size by shrinking it to 10GB so we have more space to install other games.

The difference is that NMD dungeons already scale with level, so they get more difficult the higher the number.

Adding additional difficulty is not generally necessary, but if there’s “nothing” besides harder hitting enemies with more health, then it does get a bit boring.

The affixes help to reduce the boredom if done well, like how the PoE map system lets you choose what buffs you want to apply so that you can do something that works with your build, or that challenges your build. With NMD we just get what we get and if it’s a mechanic that we know can 1-shot us for no good reason, we just scrap it and run one of the ones that has no impact (because they’re literally 1 or the other).

Having selectable benefits that come with minor negatives, or selectable negatives that come with minor benefits is more interesting, because people will choose what NMD to run, and can mix and match the affixes with the mob type for the dungeon (where you could get additional bonuses to loot or something if for instance you choose a dungeon with frost archer skeletons and you buff them with +frost damage, +projectile speed/damage, and +crowd control duration).

i hate that people cant handle nightmare dungeons and affixes and always want to turn them in to happy meal dungeons and affixes. the game is already so easy and people keep asking for more and more things to be trivialized

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Pontypool. (No spoilers)

Some good ideas here for more diverse, player-directed gaming. I look around & I don’t see any hint that any of the devs think along these lines. They have more linear/cubby hole ideas for the game it seems. Even if some of them think like this I bet turnover on systems & gameplay concepts is all going into fixing core problems like “skill balance” and “item stats”… season 4 is reinventing items for example, bc 500 pointless affixes weren’t an obvious obstacle to fun before this was pointed out after release, and that’s probably the lesson here.