| SailorDaravon |
Jan 10, 2014 09:56 AM |
Bumping this since Term was talking about playing again; I'm taking a break at the moment but never really stopped. People may not be aware of all of the changes that they've made recently, and right now there is also a Public Test Realm up for Loot 2.0 (and other) changes for everyone, and there is additionally a very limited closed beta running for RoS. This is the most recent changelog for both from Blizzard, some minor tweaks have been made but nothing big. But given that some people here probably haven't even played since before they added Monster Power over a year ago they probably have no idea what's up. I have enough gold where I can get anybody who wants to get back on up to snuff in no time at all.
The tl;dr version is that Loot 2.0 combined with what's in RoS makes this look like this may finally be the true successor to Diablo 2. There's been no NDA for the RoS beta so people have been watching it played for a month or two now, and it looks like the real deal. Still have some complaints, but it's a significant improvement overall, and that's from someone who was still actively playing it.
HIGH LEVEL ADDTIONS TO VANILLA DIABLO 3 (currently available in PTR)
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-Clans and Communities added
-Cursed Chests events added; some chests are now cursed and trigger special events when you try to open them.
-Significant itemization/loot updates (aka Loot 2.0). All items in the game can now drop at any level (aka Legendaries aren't level-locked anymore, so you can find a Level 60 Leoric's Signet now for example), and both the drops that you get and the stats on the items will generally be tailored to your class. Not 100% of the time so it's not broken, but this eliminates the constant bullshit currently of my Monk finding nothing but 2-handed wands that have huge Strength rolls on them for example. Items also have new stats/properties, etc, and the number of items that drop are lessened but the items are better, and with tighter rolls (aka instead of a wand being able to roll 1-100 int, it'll now only roll in the 80-100 int range for example). You will actually find and upgrade your gear from drops now, which is obviously important as well since the Auction Houses are completely going away prior to RoS launching.
-Paragon leveling has been changed. Paragon levels are now shared across all of your characters account wide (although Softcore/Hardcore are separated obviously). A big improvement since now you can switch characters at will without feeling like you're gimping yourself by going from your Paragon 100 Barbarian to your Paragon 1 Wizard. Also the bonuses from Paragon levels have changed; Right now every time you gain a Paragon level you get your normal base stat boosts and then +3% MF/GF. That's completely going away, now with every Paragon level you get to put one point into a variety of stats/abilities. So for example at Paragon 1 you get to put one point into "Core" stats, which lets you increase either your Str/Dex/Int/Vit by +5. On the next Paragon level you get to put one point into "Offensive" stats which are Attack Speed, Crit Chance, Crit Damage, and Cooldown Reduction. On the next Paragon level you get one point into "Defensive" stats which increase your Life %, Armor, Dodge, or Resist All. On the next Paragon level you get one point for "Utility" which is Maximum Resource, Magic Find, Movement Speed and Gold Pickup Radius. Then on the next (5th) Paragon level you wrap back around to having a point to spend in Core stats. Paragon levels are infinite now. You will cap out at +25 in each of the stats in all of the non-Core categories which will take you until Paragon Level 800 to reach, then at that point you will get one point into Core stats indefinitely every time you level. For reference, people who currently have 10 Paragon Level 100 characters right now in Vanilla will convert "only" into about Paragon level 254 in RoS. Also the last big change is that you can respec your Paragon stat allocations at ANY TIME in-game if you choose.
-Current difficulty system is being changed; right now we have Normal/Nightmare/Hell/Inferno + Monster Power slider. This is being changed to a flat: Normal/Hard/Expert which open immediately. Then Master Difficulty opens at 60. A new difficulty + slider opens at level 70 but that's RoS only so that'll be below. But as a result of the change you no longer have to go through the game 3 goddamn times to get to Inferno. If you think you can hang with it you can start a level 1 character on Expert if you want. Additionally in all modes/difficulties all monsters now scale with you, so you can farm/level up wherever you want now.
-New Elite monster affixes have been added.
-Nephalem Valor is completely removed; they want you to re-assign your skills and Paragon points as needed mid-game so it removes that limitation. Also is a bit of a non-issue with RoS addition of Rifts.
-The FIRST time you kill an Act boss in Campaign mode with a character you are guaranteed a Legendary drop. Since all enemies scale to your level and in RoS you never have to actually do campaign if you don't want to (see Rifts/Bounties below) pretty much what people will do is level to 70 in the other mode, then complete the story mode once to clear the bosses at level 70 for a guaranteed level 70 legendary.
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REAPER OF SOULS ADDITIONS/CHANGES (on top of the vanilla changes
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-New level cap of 70, Crusader, Act 5, etc.
-Adventure Mode added, this is the big one. Adventure Mode is a separate mode from Campaign from the main menu. Adventure Mode allows you to immediately from anywhere warp to any waypoint in any Act instantly. Aside from this, the main draw to this mode are Rifts and Bounties, which is pretty much what you're going to be doing in this game now since it makes Campaign mode irrelevant now except for story purposes.
-Bounties. These are random objectives you are given, 5 per act in Adventure Mode. They're randomized things like go to this zone and kill this unique monster/boss, clear this zone or event, etc. For each bounty you complete you get loot, items, etc along with blood shards which can be traded to vendors in town for items and gambling. If you complete all 5 bounties in an act you will a Great Horadric Cache which is literally a loot bag you open where a ton of shit comes out (smaller caches also drop). You also get a Rift Keystone which you need to do Rifts. Your available Bounties all reset/change every time you leave and go back into a game.
-Rifts added. These are ~10-15 minute randomized dungeons that once cleared provide a ton of loot.
-Mystic now available to re-roll any item in the game. Short version is that on any item in the game you can pick ONE property to re-roll; once you have picked the property to re-roll you're locked into only being able to re-roll that one slot, but you can re-roll it as many times as you want (with increasing crafting item and gold costs). When you're deciding which slot to re-roll it will show you all of the possible things that slot will be able to re-roll into. Picked up a shield that's awesome but has one useless stat? Re-roll that into Crit Chance or All Resist! The Mystic will also let you transmogrify the appearance of any item in the game to look like any other one. For Legendary item appearances you will have to have picked up that Legendary after RoS release to add it to your "catalog". Also (obviously) items have to be of the same type, you can't make a two-handed sword look like a fist.
-On any item you get you can actually see the possible stat ranges on the stats on it which is cool so you can see if you got a good roll or a shitty roll on a stat.
-There's a crazy amount of new crafting items; as in I have seen crafting agents drop only from very specific bosses or unique enemies; there's probably dozens. I don't think we even know what all of them are or what they do yet.
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Also all signs point to Ladders/Seasons being in the game (there's in-game leaderboard stuff for it) but it probably won't make launch. Also didn't touch on it but obviously there's a shitload of class changes, new abilities, etc. There's also like 5 or 6 additional tiers of gems added, a complete new gem type, etc.
Right now the only point of contention for most people is that they are severely limiting trading. They clearly want to get rid of botting given that they are completely killing the auction houses prior to RoS launch. Now pretty much all items, gems, etc are bind on account. These items can ONLY be traded to someone who was in the active game with you when you found them, and ONLY for 2 hours from the time it dropped (the game will indicate this on the item details). The community is pretty split on this one. Personally with drops happening mostly for your class, it kinda sucks if you're a Monk and fight a sweet Monk weapon that's maybe not quite as good as what you have, so you want to give it to your friend but he's not online and in your group so you can't. I'd like to maybe see them expand it a bit to maybe make it tradeable to anyone who was already on your friends list when the item dropped for 24 hours or something like that. At this point it seems unlikely this will change. On the plus side this encourages people to actually play the game instead of Auction Housing it, as well as play in groups.
The bounty/rift system is clearly built for you to just keep doing loot runs, and it gets rid of the campaign bullshit altogether which is fantastic. The Rifts are also crazy, they're totally random and there's videos of people finding random dungeons that are literally filled with cows, dozens of treasure goblins, etc. So the gameplay loop has been significantly tightened, which for a loot game is ideal. After watching a ton of RoS livestreams it's easily my most anticipated game this year. |
