And I guessed mostly right with how Seasons is going to be implemented:
Where Conquests are a re-use of the achievement challenges (with some Seasons specific ones) and utilizing those points that count towards the various leaderboards. Where I was wrong is that they do plan to roll the seasonal exclusive rewards into the non-seasonal loot tables at the end of a season, while introducing new exclusives for the next season.
This is basically a system that allows a more controlled schedule of “updated content” (in the form of new items and different conquests). The devil is ALL going to be in the implementation though. I’m not holding my breath that it will be incredible given how Reaper of Souls turned out.
Also, Greater Rift tokens (for Greater Rifts – formerly known as Tiered Rifts) will be required by each party member who wishes to take part in one. Also, all players will now require contributing one rift fragment to also enter a Nephalem Rift (the cost has been reduced to one fragment whereas now, opening a rift requires 5 fragments – but anyone else can join for free). This is how the developers are handling the whole Rift It Forward thing. RiF was an outcome to quickly get Blood Shards and to also give those players who don’t enjoy doing bounties (for key fragments), to get someone else to open a rift for them. At one key fragment, this changes the whole need for RiF (which provided a mutual benefit for runner and leecher).
This doesn’t kill RiF (that was never the devs intention; but as mentioned during the anniversary livestream, the way that players were having to sit at the UI even if for short periods, was seen as a degenerative way of playing the game). This mandatory contribution of one fragment does away with who has to open the next rift since anyone who takes part in RiF (because each player has to contribute one fragment to ENTER a nephalem rift at any point in time), will need to eventually contribute a fragment anyway somewhere down the line to enter anyway. It basically balances out as there is literally no free ride anymore except for those who do not want to clear an entire rift, and just want to get in at the end to take out the rift guardian for blood shards (but missing out on all the experience and potential drops that occurs from actually playing through a rift). But the whole mutual benefit is diminished with this change.
Additionally, the reward puck is being moved to the Greater Rift Guardian. And that whole design means that less players will be playing with random strangers, as opposed to forming efficient teams that can continually clear Greater Rifts (because this is where the greater rewards are being moved to) because its about efficiency. Folks who engage in RiF can be in denial all they want; but this is going to eventually marginalize RiF once more players end up being better geared out (where the demand for Blood Shards is going to fall by the wayside in favor of clearing the Greater Rift Guardian for that chance at the better rewards). If the devs want to insure that players play the game, they could also make it so that each players contribution of clearing a rift, will determine the amount of blood shards and the potential for a greater rift key to drop for them.
So all of those forum idiots who did not believe the developers would be addressing Rift it Forward in some form despite my pointing out their remarks on the anniversary livestream (and there were a handful that displayed an extreme inability to comprehend the developers words despite it being there in the livestream), can go pound sand because the above is going to eventually obsolete the demand for the service. And to those other morons that said I was over reaching with my analysis, whose wrong now?
Anyway, the biggest design issue that I see with moving the new rewarding loot to the Greater Rift Guardian is that players are now once again by the design, farming a very specific way because one key component of this system is clearing it as quickly as possible (for leaderboard purposes) but also to get to the end boss for the loot. And the whole system amounts to a major gear check because those who’ve had the best luck with gear, are going to end up progressing much further. It’s basically more of the same old crap but with the target moved. Before, it was bounties and then rifts. Now it’s going to be bounties, then nephalem rifts, and then greater rifts (where the objective is to get as far as possible). It’s going to be fun at first (like anything new). But this design is going to get old fast since it is just more rifts upon rifts (with all too familiar tile sets and layouts).
It’s an unsurprisingly uninspiring design for a bottomless “dungeon”. I do understand that they probably have constraints in terms of getting new artwork for new tile sets. But having to play through a variation of most current tiles (even with lighting changes), is what ends up making them feel less random regardless. I hate to bring up this constant comparison but look at some of the level designs in D2 for example; one of my favorites are the Monastery Gate – Outer Cloister – Barracks – Jail (3 levels) – Inner Cloister – Cathedral – Catacombs (4 levels). Just this one sequence has far more random variety compared to the majority of all Nephalem Rifts.
With regards to gear changes, they are going to enhance the life regen/life on hit numbers to give a boost to healing (hello Mystic and providing more gold/Forgotten Soul sinks). This again (unsurprising) too shows how this entire design is being tacked on as opposed to being well thought out as part of the whole loot 2.0 design – where healing should have been designed to take into account tiered/greater rifts (using a scaling system where those numbers aren’t static) as opposed to favoring health globes. The designers are showing once again they have no grand design fleshed out.
Furthermore, they removed all healing passives for the wizard class (replacing most of those with shielding). Also, most proc coefficients for the class were heavily nerfed due to Critical Mass (while this passive was removed, most of the proc coefficients weren’t properly re-balanced). Note, I still laugh at the design inconsistencies where they removed Critical Mass, but seem to have no issues with the witch doctors Grave Injustice (which is even better than CM ever was since it works based on every enemy killed within 20 yards and can have that range extended by pickup radius).
Since little details about the rewards (legendary gems) were released except that they are “infinitely upgradeable” and can only be socketed in jewelry (rings and amulets), I’m reserving my overall thoughts about them. However, this highlights the usual inconsistency with one of their design philosophies (that being choice) because this makes sockets on jewelry mandatory.
This is coming from the same designer (Travis Day) who said that sockets on weapons weren’t mandatory during a developer live stream back in February. So now this same designer has a part in creating one of the key rewards (legendary gems) for this new Greater Rift challenge which will make sockets mandatory on a group of items (jewelry) since most players will want to utilize those gems. Seriously, it now makes sense why itemization is even worse after he moved over from World of Warcraft.
I will also say this; everytime they mention “great rewards”, their idea of great/epic has ALWAYS been underwhelming. And there is nothing that leads me to believe that the iterated result, will end up being “incredible” once 2.1 goes live. The designers have a completely different standard of what great/epic/rewarding even means.
