The design flaws I mentioned previously regarding Greater Rifts is actually worse than I thought. Rifts in general were meant to be the D3 designers/devs implementation of the oft-asked for, endless dungeon (what they referred to as bottomless dungeons during the Blizzcon 2013 Q&A).
Their entire premise with the rift concept was that they would be fully randomized maps/tile sets with random monsters. The reality is that the tile sets that are actually used are fairly limited (environmental effects notwithstanding). Once you’ve played enough Nephalem Rifts, even the map layouts don’t differ that much. The main randomness are the monsters which spawn as well as when particular maps and tile sets show up as the next rift level. But that is really the extent of it. I suppose part of it is that this dev team has their own definition of fully randomized.
The main reason for why Nephalem Rifts generally don’t feel like new environments is that these are all mostly existing tile sets used within the base game as opposed to using completely new tile set textures. This is why the Cesspool rift (new in 2.1) was a noticeable difference when encountered (this tile set itself is still overlayed on top of the Keep Depth style map though).
Greater Rifts are even worse in this regard though because their overall randomness is even less compared to the above. There is a reason for that; the designers are trying to find that balance due to the timed nature of Greater Rifts. And that means that not all map layouts will be optimal for use in Greater Rifts, thus reducing the overall randomness of both tile sets and layout. Thus that feeling of repetitiveness is going to be amplified with Greater Rifts.
The Greater Rift Trial Key system needs to just disappear because it’s a poorly thought out design (one that encourages failing/gaming the entire system) and it isn’t worth development time when the prior method worked a lot better (not perfect by any stretch as opined in my “design flaws” post linked above).
Similarly, the method as to having a chance at upgrading a legendary gem, also encourages failing (since the only time the NPC shows up is when a Greater Rift has not been completed in time). I do understand the rationale; you hit that Greater Rift wall and a chance at upgrading the rank of your legendary gems, is supposed to help your character over that wall. The problem is the whole scaling issue with difficulty (monster health pools, etc). There’s a point where the frustration presented with that whole system, will deter all but the most stubborn of players. Outside of that, everyone else will choose to take the path of least resistance and find key points where to fail on their own in order to get the NPC to spawn in order to get a chance at upgrading their gems. In a nutshell, the current design iteration, will lead to this sort of game play.
Also once a player has hit a very difficult tier, clearing the remainder of the Greater Rift becomes an unfun task. Remember, the rewards only drop at the very end once the Greater Rift Guardian (GRG) is cleared. The rift can only be closed (and the associated experience and gold collected from Orek) once the GRG has been cleared. Whichever way you look at it, it’s a very poor player experience.
Solutions for once a player has failed a specific tier is to drop loot at that point which is based on the amount of the rift that had been cleared (also taking into account the amount of time it took). Alternatively, if a player was close (I would put this at 75-80% of the Greater Rift being cleared) to spawning the GRG, they could be presented an option to have it spawn immediately (giving the player the option to take down the GRG for the added bonuses like a chance at a legendary and/or forgotten soul plus the appropriate amount of blood shards – not the full amount as when successfully completing it). Likewise, the bonus XP/gold from Orek would be a fraction of the amount awarded when a Greater Rift tier has been successfully completed. The objective is to at least offer some reward as opposed to nothing at all. And that system has to be in such a way that players can’t just purposely fail earlier for those rewards.
