Someone posted an interesting question about whether or not Adventure Mode had been dropped from the pre-expansion systems patch. The following was one of my replies in that thread:
In that other thread http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/10715921661#4 (where I posted all the source links regarding some statements including the one made by Grimiku – http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/9679139107#19), I forgot to provide the source as to how they originally referred to Loot Runs and Trials, as being part of a new end game option. This is where the confusion is coming from.
The following was from the video shown during the initial GamesCon presentation back in August which referred to Loot Runs, Bounties, and Exploration, as being part of a new Adventure end game option. Those end game options however were never referred to as Adventure Mode during the announcement.
Grimiku’s original posting (linked above) back on August 21 followed up on someones question regarding whether or not Loot 2.0 would be expansion only. His statement was basically saying they wanted to implement many different systems (including the above Loot Runs and Bounties – which were part of that specific Adventure/Exploration option) and make those improvements available to everyone.
So yes, while there was never an official statement where they said specifically that Adventure Mode would be a part of the pre-expansion patch because back then, those options (Loot Runs, Bounties, Trials which didn’t really have an official name), was some of the other systems (besides Loot, Paragon, class skill changes) they were possibly looking at making available to everyone as part of the pre-expansion patch.
The Adventure Mode first look and F&F posting regarding the systems that will be included as part of the PTR, strongly points to the Adventure Mode feature being Reaper of Souls specific. This isn’t surprising to me from a feature point of view as the amount of work to implement that change isn’t trivial given their original linear on-rails checkpoint design. Even now, the F&F beta throws up those checkpoints (at odd places) in Adventure Mode, and there are still many transitions in boss fights (from the original cutscene design) that will probably remain that way.
However, since a CM also hasn’t specifically posted in any of these recent threads to make an official statement either way, it is possible this is something they are also trying to make a final decision on, and won’t make a decision on until they get closer to having the code ready for closed beta testing.
Also, there is no false advertising going on. As they always have stated, everything is subject to change. That included the stuff shown initially during GamesCon, at BlizzCon, and the F&F pre-beta test. That same disclaimer will be written all in caps during closed beta as well.
I’m one of those that feels strongly that Adventure Mode should be made part of the 2.0 pre-patch. Whether or not bounties is included with them is irrelevant – the open world mode is a core aspect of what makes a Diablo game.
I actually agree. The main issue I see though is that without this complete system as part of the expansion, it’s feature set looks thin now that they’ve decided to cut Trials out until later. It’s an actual marketing issue because psychologically, one new class, one new act, and one new artisan just doesn’t look appealing (even though within that, it still represents a lot of new content). The bang to all of this is Adventure Mode (and tying bounties and rifts to it as part of that sell point).
I know some companies have done crazy things but what if one of the things they actually have on their table right now is something crazy like making RoS actually free (thus eliminating this actual dilemma), but also still charging for a Standard Edition, Digital Deluxe (for extra digital content) and physical CE (albeit at lower price points than their usual norm) with all of these paid options offering additional character slots (over the base 2 added slots) and opening up of those 3 other shared stash tabs.
Note that I’m not actually expecting something like this to happen since it doesn’t fit their business model for this particular game. I’m just thinking way outside the box on this…. because yes, it would be nice to see the open waypoint system made available to vanilla owners as well without diluting the feature set of the expansion.
