http://www.diabloii.net/blog/comments/blizzard-qa-on-kanais-cube
More specific information regarding the cube. Again, reserving judgement on how really game changing this system will be until the patch actually goes live.
I need to reiterate again; the idea sounds awesome. Awesome in the sense of how many designs sounded awesome on paper/looked good in artwork and highly scripted demos (the original unveil in 2008, some of the early system designs in vanilla, Paragon 1.0, the original Infernal Machine event, Monster Power, Adventure Mode, Legendary Crafting regeants, Nephalem Trials, etc).
It’s not like I don’t understand it’s potential (in the same way that the game has always had this potential if the underlying core issues were actually addressed given how the game has some of the best character movements/combat mechanics and associated graphical aesthetics around in this genre).
But Kanai’s Cube is just another system being thrown on top of a flawed foundation with a skill and itemization system that was originally designed to take into account the existence of unrestricted trading and an auction house. Like other systems that were introduced to counter the effects of that RNG heavy design (loot 2.0 + smart loot, reintroduction of the Mystic, and Kadala), they can only temporarily mask those core issues that directly impact the whole character building/progression where it isn’t solely about items defining that power.
Then there is also taking datamined information with a huge block of salt since often times, the info that is mined are from ideas they’ve been testing out. And the PTR is going to put some of the ones they hope to push out, to the test. What they did get right is making this object a quest based objective. IMO, the process of acquiring the parts for the Horadric Staff in D2 still remains one of the best implemented quests in this genre; the Horadric Cube was part of that event since it is required to transmute the pieces into the staff. But it was also a device that served other purposes. D3 has been lacking in this area since one of the key hallmarks of ARPG’s (especially in the hack and slash genre) is how quests provide some form of reward that personalizes and/or gives your character increased powers.
The majority of the quest rewards in D3 has been very boring (experience, gold, and in recent patches, items that are really only useful during the first play through). The awesome part of Kanai’s Cube is that it finally brings a system that worked well in D2, into D3 where it is designed to act as a counter against the layers of RNG prevalent in the underlying itemization system. You still need to actually find those items but being able to extract its legendary power, means that you aren’t relegated to waiting endlessly for an ancient version of that to drop.
But every awesome sounding design ended up having most all of its awesomeness iterated out of them, had other tedious and RNG-heavy mechanics associated with them, and/or had their mechanics modified or completely removed from the game (and this removal no matter which way you look at it, represents removal of content which equals time wasted during that initial design iteration, coding, artwork creation).
Legendary crafting regeants was a perfect example of this where the underlying intent was to get players to explore and farm other parts of the game while providing some incentive to go out and fight these monsters. The problem though was 1) the usual RNG related ones; spawn rate with some of these monsters (outside of those who were mini-bosses/statically situated in area) and the drop rate chance of the regeant. 2) was the fact that there was nothing else interesting to encounter in the game world when doing those runs since most of the rewards were funneled into bounties and rifts. The end result was just doing these quick game flipping runs instead of taking advantage of the open game world to extend ones farming runs beyond the targeted monster. Welcome to the world of dysfunctional game play in D3.
The same for the original Nephalem Trials which were meant to be timed trial challenges in side dungeons (like the Jar of Souls event) that you discovered around the game world. Some of the events associated with those timed trials were repurposed into the cursed shrine and cursed chest events in Reaper of Souls since the Nephalem Trials concept was held off from the initial release of the expansion. This was released later as Greater Rifts with the Realm of Trials alongside Seasons (I’ve already documented my issues with these throughout this blog).
Adventure Mode is no different. The reveal sounded and looked awesome. What shipped at release was less so as time passed. It’s not really an open world since there is a very design intended linear objective and progression. You need to do bounties to get rift key fragments and some blood shards to access regular rifts and to make use of Kadala. You need to do regular rifts in order to get a trial key to do the Realm of Trials so that you can access Greater Rifts which is the only place that legendary gems drop (and can be upgraded via Urshi).
The designers also purposely made regular rifts the go to place for farming since they increased the rewards there. Thus while you can go and ignore bounties and rifts, the amount of rewards you received (and your progression level) will be far less for the same amount of time played. The multiplicative experience in Greater Rifts also made farming them more lucrative over regular rifts. That right there is a huge bag of design fail when what is supposed to be mostly a mode meant as a personal or competitive measuring stick, becomes a place for speed farming.
The only “interesting” things you can do outside of bounties and rifts are those few cursed shrines/events and the Hellfire Event. The latter being one that has been filled with frustration since the reward tends to be subjected to high degrees of RNG during crafting. Basically, the usual design issues associated with this game where it is full of tedium and sado-masochistic tendencies.
So you have this open waypoint system with Adventure Mode that barely gets used since bounty objectives are specifically highlighted. And since Greater Rifts are infinitely scaling, the associated power creep unsurprisingly trivialized the base game difficulties to where the only “challenge” was to continue doing Greater Rifts. And given the randomness of rifts are an intended design, it’s not surprising that the game continues to harbor dysfunctional game play such as “rift fishing” (where players for leaderboard purposes, try to find a Greater Rift that has the right combination of mob types). That is why the huge cry for getting rid of the Realm of Trials. That system itself has some merit if it had just been used as an initial measuring stick. The fact that you had to keep doing them for your Greater Rift keys (and not being always accurate in that assessment) is what made them tedious. Take that aspect for those who are burning through keys doing this type of “fishing”, and you get the removal of this well intended, but flawed implementation.
So the Realm of Trial along with the actual rift key fragments for regular rifts and Greater Rift keys are being removed. The removal of these virtual key tokens is something I advocated for a long while. It’s not like I don’t get the design aspect of having some token that you actually can virtually pickup and handle. Again, it’s an implementation issue with their storage and use. It’s fine if I have to pick them up the first time around. After that initial handling, no one really cares though to the point where it is more of an annoyance. Regular fragments stack only to 100 (again, I get the reason since these aren’t meant to be hoarded so you limit their stack sizes to try and disincentivize keeping too many – it’s also a roundabout way to keep players doing bounties). And with individually number tiers for Greater Rift keys, talk about stash clutter (again, not learning a lesson from the clutter that was created by the initial crafting system in Reaper of Souls with both regular and legendary crafting). This at least is finally being addressed in 2.3. The question is will this clutter be replaced by new stash clutter from some of the new regeants required for transmuting with this cube? (hopefully that lesson has already been learned and won’t be repeated).
My point? Extend all of these prior examples (and other underwhelming implemented designs) to this new system with Kanai’s Cube. There is the possibility that the fun and awesomeness of the idea will be iterated out of it during the PTR. I’ve said it many times before but there are at least a few people on the design team that have a thing for tedium and masochistic designs. What exact types of changes will this go through as the PTR progresses that turns an awesome idea, into one that ends up being heavily watered down. And for some of its more advanced abilities, what kind of hoops will the design team conjure up for its reforging abilities (if that aspect even makes the final cut).
This is why I stated up top that I’m reserving final judgement until the patch goes live. This team has a long history of over promising, and under delivering. The action has never met the hyped words. I don’t mind them proving my cynicism totally wrong but that ball is in their park and I am challenging them to not make this idea end up sucking like so many others.
