Terror zones destroyed the balance

tatarjj wrote: 2 years ago

Nobody argues that you can find the

Ber rune by barbarian in Travinkal. We are talking about the fact that before any phisical can reach level 99 at the same time as the caster (with the same amount of time). Now, no matter how hard the phisical tries, he will never be able to reach level 99 at the same time as the caster (it's out of the question to overtake him).

While I don't really disagree with this statement, I think may be a bit too broad and thus throwing people off? Mainly because I believe that unless you were in a coordinated group pushing to 99, it wasn't really possible to begin with. There are multiple ways that a caster or tele user could have still gain an advantage over a physical/foot build. (Not everyone makes their push this way.)
Personally, I feel the melee chasing casters described has always been there, and will likely always be there. It's natural, no matter how annoying it is to just be on a constant run trying to keep yourself in XP range. I've felt like a rat in a maze before, it's just in different areas now too.

Terror Zone have definitely changed the dynamic on what you have available to actually go from ~95-99, and yes casters blatantly have the ability to run

Terror zones at higher speeds, as they have always have with pretty much anything else.
Specifically for the XP being talked about I'd give the example of popping locks while people are sitting and waiting in a pub P8

Baal game, or dropping

Nihlathak. All in time to get back for

Baal. In this example casters are again superior to physical/foot characters, in a pre-

Terror zone environment.
So I'm sticking with my opinion that this is a long time per-existing issue that was not formed by, but instead magnified and made even more visible by

Terror zones.

I think most people may be having the most issue with the fact that you said the word "balance", it's kind of taboo for a multitude of reasons in games like these.

OP, the only thing I am in complete and total disagreement with you is the very first line in your first post.
"It seems Diablo 2 became the only game where only caster character can be played."
On this, we do not see eye to eye. For a boat load of reasons.

You followed up next with a broad (maybe even blanket) statement stating that you feel no other class is capable of leveling up, asking for discussion and input that may have you see it another way. It invited opinions and perceptions to speak in a sense of fact or actual fact, in order to change your mind or correct you.
I kind of figure if your are perceiving a sense of "tone" in some of the posts, this may be why.

I don't think it's worth mentioning but I will in this case; I've been playing for over 20 years (more on and off for the last 12) and have had multiple 99's. I only made my first Sorc to play, ever, when D2R launched.
The difference was clear then without playing it, and clear now while actually playing a true caster.

It's just the way the boat floats. It would be great to have it addressed in a creative, non-destructive manner though.

I do think this is a topic blizzard needs to address by next ladder, but I am not holding my breath. Melee needs a boost.

Honestly, I think due to the baseline differences with how the classes play, this has been and always will be an issue that is not possible to be "fixed" in these types of games.

Can it be alleviated? ... Maybe. But, I feel a portion of the idea of

Terror zones was an attempt at that to begin with.

So I've been thinking about how this might be addressed, because unfortunately even Enigma on a physical amazon or barb doesn't work great. You

Sacrifice a sizeable damage boost from Fortitude, and you have to add fcr on gear where otherwise you'd be gaining damage. Cheaper/more

Teleport charges could do the trick, but I actually think more frw options might do the trick. Once you hit 100+ FRW on a decently geared physical bowazon you're able to clear a

Terror zone very quickly, especially a big spread out one. I actually think

Terror zones are a big quality of life improvement for amazon vs 1player Chaos and wsk runs, even if they aren't as efficient as with casters.

So basically my idea is this: a runeword or two that grant 30-40% FRW in addition to either +flat dmg or +%ED or both; and/or the ability for high level charms to gain +frw roll as an additional or new affix. (So for example a 3/20/20 can be a 3/20/20/3) It wouldn't completely close the gap, between teleporters and non-teleporters but tearing around at like 150% frw would still be pretty damn fun. Lastly, whirlwing barb is in a much better place with regard to progression through mid-game and completing hell with Unbending Will and with the buff to 2handers with Obedience. Insight in bows was a start for amazons but they're still really weak. Allowing Obedience in a bow/xbow would be a nice quickfix.

Have

Teleport start a timer (e.g. 2 sec) upon casting. When another

Teleport is cast before the timer runs out and while inside a Terrorized Zone, curse the caster with Blood Mana.

Putting back charms of inertia at 5/8/12 like FHR instead of 3/5/7 would also be an easy and nice upgrade. And used to be more (not sure of the old values though)

Ravoc wrote: 2 years ago

Have

Teleport start a timer (e.g. 2 sec) upon casting. When another

Teleport is cast before the timer runs out and while inside a Terrorized Zone, curse the caster with Blood Mana.

An actual mechanic. That would be interesting, it would force closer combat. The zones would need to be far more dense, to justify the slower pace.

Zero187 wrote: 2 years ago

As a barb who hit level 97 at the start of

Terror zones and is about halfway now to 98, I think my main complaint is how pathetic most

Terror zones are compared to Worldstone XP. I can get half a bar easy when worldstone tzone hits, but every other tzone pales in comparison. So now this just turns into a waiting game for me, as it's not really worth farming other tzones except maybe CS, cows and trav. Used to enjoy playing all day, now it's just check at the start of the hour, be disappointed it's not a decent one, and continue on with other stuff. But as others have said, I'd still most likely have this same problem with other classes. My proposed solution would be to make it so multiple Tzones are active at once, giving a higher chance for a decent one and more choice.

Because of how high-level players in this game center their gameplay around efficiency, I don't think multiple active TZs make sense because for XP purposes, it's a false choice. All that does is narrow the list of viable zones but make them appear more often, but then you'd just be adding more software code bloat when you could just simply improve the monster density of the less desirable zones. Otherwise, why did they bother with TZs at all when they could have just boosted the XP tables globally if everyone's going to gravitate toward Chaos and Throne again?

This is somewhat tangential, but I'll tie it back together in a moment. What I constantly tell people is that XP/time matters more than XP/game. With TZ leveling, the finite resource is time, not game instances, which is why it always annoyed me when people would complain that a zone wasn't fully cleared. It takes more time retracing steps and killing nothing for 15 seconds to get that one pack you might have missed somewhere in the middle than to start a new game with a fully-populated zone. You have an hour to get the most XP you can for a given TZ. Do you really care about those three flocks of birds that got left behind in

Far Oasis because they're still flying above your head after you've already steamrolled everything on the Ground?

When I was trying to beat the end-of-season-1 clock, at first I would skip sparsely-populated zones and take a break for an hour, which I thought was actually great because I've got other things to do. Then on the last day of my 99 journey which was still three days before the end of ladder, I didn't care anymore. I ran

Stony Field, I ran

Blood Moor and

Den of Evil. But you needed a pathing strategy for clearing those sparsely populated areas and know when to move to the next game instead of doing a full clear.

That's why the one-minute

Travincal council runs make that zone far better than it seems on the surface. That's why a north

Bloody Foothills lateral sweep with a scout can clear 4-5 elite packs plus Shenk in a minute and a half. That's why the spiral path technique works on wide-open areas like

Arreat Plateau. Even the worst TZs can be made mediocre, and mediocre TZs be made good with good pathing strategies. They'll never be as good as Chaos or Throne, but you'll get the most out of your hour rather than getting nothing and waiting until the next one.

worstd2playerever wrote: 2 years ago

So I've been thinking about how this might be addressed, because unfortunately even Enigma on a physical amazon or barb doesn't work great. You

Sacrifice a sizeable damage boost from Fortitude, and you have to add fcr on gear where otherwise you'd be gaining damage. Cheaper/more

Teleport charges could do the trick, but I actually think more frw options might do the trick. Once you hit 100+ FRW on a decently geared physical bowazon you're able to clear a

Terror zone very quickly, especially a big spread out one. I actually think

Terror zones are a big quality of life improvement for amazon vs 1player Chaos and wsk runs, even if they aren't as efficient as with casters.

So basically my idea is this: a runeword or two that grant 30-40% FRW in addition to either +flat dmg or +%ED or both; and/or the ability for high level charms to gain +frw roll as an additional or new affix. (So for example a 3/20/20 can be a 3/20/20/3) It wouldn't completely close the gap, between teleporters and non-teleporters but tearing around at like 150% frw would still be pretty damn fun. Lastly, whirlwing barb is in a much better place with regard to progression through mid-game and completing hell with Unbending Will and with the buff to 2handers with Obedience. Insight in bows was a start for amazons but they're still really weak. Allowing Obedience in a bow/xbow would be a nice quickfix.

More speed helps, but it won't solve barriers to movement. I've yet to put my bowazon through the public TZ grind, but because Enigma isn't really a viable option for her, Harmony on weapon switch is about the only thing that makes her tolerable for speedruns. However, that still doesn't help on levels where a bunch of stupid doors and narrow, convoluted paths get in the way, like

Frigid Highlands,

Arreat Plateau, Kurast Sewers, or the dungeons of Act 1.

Knowing how quickly we ran the TZs, I don't think constant weapon switching is an option. It would be easier to just keep her on Harmony full-time, which also costs a lot of damage output. The real problem is that Enigma and you could argue even

Teleport itself broke the game long before any other gameplay changes amplified it. Sorceresses had an inherent advantage in D2 from day 1, but their advantage would be mitigated if they had to wait for the rest of their party to catch up. I know that because that's exactly how things played out in D2C patch 1.08.

I don't think TZs were thought out very well even if the net result is more engaging and generally enjoyable gameplay. There are a lot of holes that should be addressed. But balance or even merely understanding the fundamental causes of this game's problems is not something this current dev team can figure out. They've proven repeatedly how clueless they are. I'm not sure that the original Blizzard North team could have fully sorted it out either, but this team? They're borderline incompetent and their managers DGAF.

So to address this thread's premise, TZs didn't destroy the balance of this game because balance never existed. TZs and sunder charms just fully exposed the imbalance. The real question is what are these devs going to do to address it? We all know deep in our hearts that the answer is, "Not a damn thing."

Snakecharmed wrote: 2 years ago

Because of how high-level players in this game center their gameplay around efficiency, I don't think multiple active TZs make sense because for XP purposes, it's a false choice. All that does is narrow the list of viable zones but make them appear more often, but then you'd just be adding more software code bloat when you could just simply improve the monster density of the less desirable zones. Otherwise, why did they bother with TZs at all when they could have just boosted XP gains globally if everyone's going to gravitate toward Chaos and Throne again?

This is another great solution! Either multiple Tzones, or increase density so the less popular zones become worth it. Would be extremely happy with either or.

Personally, I see the following solution to the problem:

1. As said above worstd2playerever,

worstd2playerever wrote: 2 years ago

... and/or the ability for high level charms to gain +frw roll as an additional or new affix. (So ​​for example a 3/20/20 can be a 3/20/20/3) It wouldn't completely close the gap, between teleporters and non-teleporters but tearing around at like 150% frw would still be pretty damn fun .

2. Prohibit teleporting through walls (only in

Terror zones) in order not to deprive the sorceresses of the opportunity to run to the

Mephisto for farm unics.

As a result, we would get the following:
1. The speed of teleporters would be comparable to the speed of running melee.
2. Teleporters wouldn't have the advantage of going "through walls" in

Terror zones.

This would put everyone on an equal footing in the

Terror zones and would not upset the balance outside of them.

=====================

Another solution: adding the "

Terror

Teleport" property with the highest possible FCR to the list of affixes for rings, amulets, charms, etc.

Each class could independently choose the item on which he would like to see the

Teleport property, while such a

Teleport should be as fast as possible by default (so as not to require wearing things with FCR), but at the same time work only and exclusively in

Terror zones - again - still in order not to upset the balance outside the

Terror zones.

p.s. Oh no! Again Jail!

So this is less me personally, but more of what I think is the ATVI developer thought process based on how they coded TZs in the first place:

I don't think the maps in TZs can be distinguished in such a manner to lock out wall teleporting like that. They also don't seem to have any knowledge of mapmaking or gameplay mechanics, which is why I think all of that has remained stagnant since LoD.

Also, there are so many wall and boundary bugs in this game that I'm sure that there's still some way to circumvent or break that limitation if it were hypothetically implemented.

Perhaps more importantly though, these devs and/or their managers are too lazy to do something that requires actual problem solving.

i think that

Terror zones r great, but what i would change is that

Terror lasts for 24 hours on each act and cow level. aka 6 days circle. think that this would be even better.
there was no balance even before

Terror zones if we talk about champ types and builds.

Nerfing

Teleport is just an all around terrible idea. There's plenty of ways to balance things without doing that.

D2 has always been a very fast paced game. Or at least one that gave you that option. That's part of what makes D2 D2. If you want to be forced into slow motion gameplay (by contrast), there's plenty of games out there for that. D2:R should not become one of them. That's just a very easy way to ensure it loses far more than would be acceptable of the original D2 nostalgia. Go save that BS for D4.

Besides..think about what would actually happen in terms of balance if you nerfed

Teleport to the point where it keeps sorcs/Enigma users from pulling ahead.

Who benefits from that?

Yup..that's right..it'd be a massive buff to hammerdins relative to literally every other non-pally build. Why? Because they'll just

Charge ahead, hammer stuff down and keep charging. Except now that you can't

Teleport worth a damn anymore, NOONE is keeping up with them. But hey, I guess it is about time pallies finally got some love for once.. *cough*

Every implementation of change in this game is opening a new Pandora's box. I don't think there's any real consideration being given to nerfing

Teleport because it's a core element of the gameplay now for all characters, for better or worse.

The character skills and features in this game worked fine for their original scale and scope. 1.10 completely broke through those theoretical limitations and caused a level of power creep that the game wasn't designed to accommodate. From then on, you would have had to seriously look at how to address some of the root causes of the issues that came after that point, and of course that never happened.

Once you keep stacking levels of power creep on top of each other, the imbalances between damage vectors, types, and modes become even more apparent to the point where entire character classes that have the right combination will stand out above others.

Regarding mobility and speed, there are three or technically four skills in this game that permit barrier circumvention:

Teleport,

Leap/

Leap Attack, and

Dragon Flight. Lore-wise (yeah, I know nobody gives a rat's ass about that anymore),

Leap just seems silly for everyone else, plus there are no animation sprites for it for six other character classes. As a finishing move,

Dragon Flight is exclusive to the Assassin's gameplay mechanics and requires an enemy target. Overall, there's not much to work with and since creating new mechanics or content is out of the question for these devs (and to be fair, the game engine as well), that leaves us with

Teleport, and

Teleport is the prime Pandora's box in this game.

But you know what would actually make sense from a diversified gameplay perspective to increase mobility? Using cold skills to freeze bodies of water so they can be traversed. Summoning and destroying skeletons to form a bridge over small bodies of water. Amazons shooting grappling hooks with ropes attached to them. Druids in

Werewolf form actually being able to move and jump like wolves. Perhaps that's all way too complex for this game, but that's what more modern game designs allow even if I'm basically just borrowing ideas from the Trine and Magicka franchises at this point.

Regarding damage vectors, you have melee and ranged, then you have physical and elemental damage types. Then you have damage modes such as passive versus active damage, and melee is generally bound to active damage.

Physical damage is handcuffed by attack rating, whereas elemental damage is like whatever. The tradeoff used to be that elemental damage was not so potent in this game, but synergies drastically changed elemental damage scaling. Meanwhile, physical damage was left largely untouched and is left to play by the old attack rating rules while elemental damage in their stronger state retained their ability to always hit.

Passive damage promotes mobility, while active damage inhibits it, at least in this game. Some passive damage skills (which I define for this discussion as "set-and-forget") are also some of the hardest hitting AoE skills in the game, especially for casters. There are some oddballs and exceptions, but it generally holds true. And that's part of the problem. You can't run and shoot in this game. The only feasible reason why you can't surf down stairs on a kite shield while strafing arrows like Legolas could have to do with game engine limitations, because if you can do it on a movie set, you damn well should be able to do it in a video game.

Those are the types of gameplay elements that need to be looked at more closely to build a sustainable solution. I haven't even touched on topics like elemental immunities or cast rate differences between classes either. TZs are a symptom of the game's imbalance, not the cause.

Never mind that building anything in this game is far beyond the scope of ATVI. The reality is that this game is permanently borked due to a lack of vision, developer knowledge, and access to portions of the original game code, so these discrepancies will continue to get worse over time.

Snakecharmed wrote: 2 years ago

But you know what would actually make sense from a diversified gameplay perspective to increase mobility? Using cold skills to freeze bodies of water so they can be traversed. Summoning and destroying skeletons to form a bridge over small bodies of water. Amazons shooting grappling hooks with ropes attached to them. Druids in

Werewolf form actually being able to move and jump like wolves.

All in all, fairly accurate summary.

On that particular bit though, if one wanted to open a can of worms and go down the rabbit hole of "what would make sense for each class to improve movement?", there really is no limit. Be that the ones you listed already. The fact that necros already manipulate body, soul and magic in general which one may well argue leads to it making sense for them to be able to turn themselves into a

Bone Spirit and shoot themselves across the screen (faster than the current

Bone Spirit of course to have some value to it). Druids knowing how to shapeshift into multiple forms which may well include that of one of their veins, allowing them to burrow underneath obstacles like walls or water. Assassins being able to

Dragon Flight at anything from a tree to thin air (really? they only know how to "blink" to a place if there's someone to kick on the other end? right...). Amazons obviously being significantly more nimble and flexible than others (see evasion skills), allowing them to turn that tumbling energy into actual tumbling to speed-roll/backflip across a screen. Barbarians working themselves into a

Frenzy (literally, matching

Frenzy speed) by shouting and not just by punching things. Sorcs..well, nevermind that, they're covered. Paladins charging a wall so hard that they can actually break it down (the more I think about it for all of 5 seconds since writing that, the more I love that because that'd actually open it up for their entire group and not just them).

Not saying those are the perfect examples for each but the amount of things that would "make sense" is sheer endless for every single class. There's precious little reason to not balance out movement from a design and Lore perspective.
Now, from a technical and a general blizzard qualification (or lack thereof) perspective, that's a whole 'nother story and I never expect anything worthwhile to see the light of day in this context..but yeah.

Obviously, we can see there was a lot of potential left on the table. This whole situation was compounded by the complete staff turnover, which to be fair is no surprise after 20+ years because very few games see continued development for that long. However, considering how D3 was managed and how DI was even conceived, hoping for positive tweaks to new features like TZs is a lost cause because ATVI has no coherent vision or long-term strategy for its games. It's all just throwing crap at the wall and even if it sticks like TZs seem to have, forget about any actual improvements to the feature to make it better. And if something breaks, just put Flex Seal on it! I'm tired of patching patches and I especially don't trust this company to do it right. There's a reason I constantly refer to them by their stock ticker symbol ATVI rather than Blizzard.

Path of Diablo and Project Diablo 2 both have better developers than ATVI. They're just hampered by the old game engine, which honestly, I wouldn't want to look at anymore after playing D2R. However, it's impressive how they still have the imagination and dedication to come up with new maps by remixing existing assets, while ATVI just tints the zones purple, gives us sunder charms with no testing, and tells the community to F off with concerns over

Cold Mastery. And sets the end date of the next ladder season to 52 years ago.