The game (2.0.x) as of current, already has a degenerative play where Adventure Mode’s “exploration & adventure”, is anything but that.
It’s about on-rails objectives of Bounties with the main objective being rift key fragments to open Nephalem Rifts. Nephalem Rift’s are intentionally designed to be the best place for loot to drop (including a higher quantity of Blood Shards).
With patch 2.1, the key costs to open a Nephalem Rift is now just one fragment, and the Rift Guardian will also potentially drop a Greater Rift keys (they are not guaranteed drops because this insures that players will have to continue to do Bounties for key fragments).
For players like myself who unsuccessfully farmed for bounty exclusive items (like the Ring of Royal Grandeur), rift key fragments aren’t even an issue; I have several hundred where I don’t have to even do a bounty for a long while (and with the removal of the need to farm specific legendary crafting material, gives me that much less incentive to step on that waypoint).
Considering how mindnumbingly repetitive Bounties are, “good riddance”. But from a design perspective, it’s a serious fundamental flaw because outside of the farming for bounty exclusive items, once players have enough rift key fragments, they don’t have to be burdened with these bounty objectives for a long while.
My original solution is something I still stand by; that is where these bounty objectives should be something a player randomly encounters out in the open world. While it still would have better potential rewards and bonus experience, one can still attain rift key fragments from random drops in the open world. Bounty exclusive drops should just be moved into being act specific ones (with bounty encounters providing a higher drop rate chance).
This will give actual meaning to “adventure and exploration” because players can go anywhere/anyplace, and potentially find rewards (rift key fragments, shards, loot, gold, and experience) without having to go through these repetitive bounty objectives.
The objective of Greater Rifts is to provide players a competitive challenge mode (timed rifts which when successfully completed, allows progression to a higher level/more difficult Greater Rift). One reward (targeted towards those players who enjoy ranked competition) are the leaderboards. The other reward is of course the loot that drops at the end.
The difficulty in Greater Rifts is self-contained; the regular game difficulty setting has no bearing on the starting difficulty of a Greater Rift (level 1). Thus initially, it’s a one-shot fest which if completed quickly enough, will allow the player to jump many levels (a higher level Greater Rift key is awarded).
And this is where I see even more degenerative game play, becoming a part of what Diablo III is all about. Part of Nephalem Rift farming will be to stock up enough level 1 Greater Rift keys. This really won’t be that huge of an issue for many. One of the first issues with Greater Rifts is every player (solo and groups), will hit a wall when it comes to the highest Greater Rift Tier level. Current items do not scale; that will require a slow introduction of better items.
One of the potential rewards of Greater Rifts are legendary gems (which can be potentially upgraded as one clears and achieves higher tier levels). And those legendary gems are probably being designed to assist the player along (but just gems alone cannot be the sole means of increasing character power to make higher tiered rifts viable – that just ends up feeling shallow).
Thus the grind (once one has enough Greater Rift keys of varying levels), will move towards running Greater Rifts. And this is what I mean by degenerative play which the development team doesn’t seem to even realize they are creating with their design. Players are generally just going to play with the intention of doing EVERYTHING as quickly as possible. Once one has enough starter level 1 Greater Rift keys, the objective is going to become getting enough higher tiered keys to continue ones progress upwards.
The first thing is this; once one is in a Greater Rift, some higher level tiered Greater Rift key is guaranteed (the next level key you receive upon successfully completing a Greater Rift). Thus while many players will be focused on the leaderboard results, others will also be potentially focused on farming Greater Rifts (and purposely stopping at points to stock up on higher tiered keys).
The downside to this is how keys are currently managed; it will lead to a clutter of varying Greater Rift keys in ones inventory (so they got rid of legendary crafting materials due to the clutter it was creating, and make the same mistake with Greater Rift keystones). The mechanic to also open a rift now is clunky because one needs to now have the keys in their personal bag. The solution is something that should have been on the drawing board during these past 3 months after launch; make all rift keys like currency (like gold and blood shards). All tiered keys (plus their quantities) inventory can be viewed in a row like fashion. When clicking on the obelisk, it will pop up that same rift keystone inventory window where you can select the exact key that you want. And the same casting bar which currently exists on live, will show so that you can cancel the opening if you made a mistake.
Depending on how they balance drops (like it if takes into account total kills), relying on prior loot drop algorithms, could result in lower drop rates the higher one progresses. Why? Because a players kill rate will go down drastically UNLESS the algorithm makes key adjustments to take into account the tier level difficulty. As it currently exists on the PTR, many players are seeing less legendaries dropped by higher tiered Greater Rift Guardians (and that is probably an outcome of slower kill rates).
Thus players are going to find the sweet spot speed clearing through lower level Greater Rifts (where you can use AOE skills that can one shot zap out most everything to get the Greater Rift Guardian to spawn). The rewards are going to have to be carefully balanced; just having upgradable legendary gems isn’t the solution though (and neither will be offering lower drop rates at the lower tiers). Increased gold and experience at higher levels is also not the solution. Incentivizing continued higher level play beyond the competitive leaderboard aspect also should be something which allows players that do complete those higher tiers, the ability to also upgrade their current items in some small way.
Others have often proposed artifacts in some form or another; I believe a reward like this, would also incentivize that upwards drive for even those who realistically won’t bother trying to compete for even placing on a spot on the leaderboards. A legendary artifact would allow a player to upgrade any property on any of their items up to the maximum of their roll range. This would include the range of legendary proc effects (example: a +1 Mirror Ball could be upgraded to a +2, or the lightning damage proc on a Thunderfury could be rolled higher). The point is that players can guarantee upgrade an item that helps them potentially progress further.
To provide players choices though, artifacts can be also be saved and combined to yield a higher level artifact; one that not only increases the chance of upgrading a stat to its highest range, but once several higher artifacts have been combined, ones that also can actually enhance an item with a new property (artifact of augmentation) or permanently increase one stat of an actual character (artifact of trait, artifact of vitality, artifact of resistances, etc). Such a system will need to be designed – it’s premise though is an end game objective.
I highly doubt the D3 devs will implement a system like this though; the first 2.1 patch is pretty much incomplete when it comes to the basics (and this is 3 months after the launch of the expansion). This dev team is anything but fast. Furthermore, most every current system in the game is essentially rudimentary and underwhelming in the level of its depth. Judging by this initial iteration of Greater Rifts (and based on how Bounties and Rifts were from closed beta to release), I don’t expect huge fundamental changes to ward off the continued flawed game play progression illustrated in the above.
Basically calling it now; Greater Rifts will end up being overtly shallow because all they really are is just Nephalem Rifts (which is already recycled content) with a timer and additive difficulty (larger numbers). But because of their nature (of moving all the loot at the end; it’s going to be the most efficient place to get the rewards (by speed running the first few tiers which provide the least resistance).
