Thoughts on Heralds, Sunders, Statues, & New Ubers - discussion welcome

TeleTabitha wrote: 3 days ago

[..] Games should never take hold of the player's schedule.

Sadly, trying to argue that is beyond futile these days it seems.
But yeah, I miss the days of "play how you want, when you want to".

TeleTabitha wrote: 3 days ago

I hate the 30 minutes

Terror zones. The game forces me to mindlessly grind act bosses during that period. Games should never take hold of the player's schedule.

Exactly, and that's why i stopped farming TZ zones, statues, shards etc after 3 weeks. I used mainly a Mosaic sin, was lvl 97 when rotw came out, she is now almost 99 now, playing HCNL. Terrorized entire game 5 times, most of the time terrorized 2 acts, i'm well over 400 heralds killed, at least 200 were T5 heralds. Still no sunder of course. Did i get good drops doing so ? yes, very good drops, including multiple HRs and rare uniques. Did i have fun ? well i'm now playing other games.

I find the Heralds as an extra challenge and fun addition. But they seem to be overpowered compared to what they can drop. The best drop is a new sunder charm obviously but I wasn't lucky so far. To draw an ire of a

Herald can be triggered randomly in my opinion but mostly it happens after a pack, champions or end boss kill (terrorized Meph in my case). Very good thing is that they can be horked. That way I found an Arkains Valor. I fought heralds with various chars like fire sorc, javazon, ww barb and they can be very tough. Example: Javazon had hard times against undead mage with

Concentration and

Thorns aura in

River of Flame. They are light immune but even with old sunder charm that was a struggle. I pesonnaly think that a special build is needed against Heralds. They have pretty high self heal rate and largely increased res with physical included. But that struggle is unnecessary compared to chances for a new sunder charm. Maybe special squad dedicated for

Herald hunting makes sense. Prevent monster heal, open wounds, crushing blow,

Static Field, poison, slow effects could work. Solo hunting is pointless and time consuming. Some changes are welcome dear Blizz. I found some statues but guess what. No statue from act 2...

Earlier today, and since I have the entire week off, I decided to try and pi$$off a couple of

Herald's. At first it went slow and then a couple of Fright's spawned, 1 in Arcane, and another Fright in Stony Tomb. So when the Ancient's Way TZ popped, and not having logged off, I continued to the Ancients way when it popped. I wasn't there for more than a few minutes when I sequentially got one, then two, and three Ire warnings in a row. Then only a minutes later I got one, two, and three hunted warning is a row. I thought, "okay, I got it the first time, and one warning is enough to know what's coming." Instead ended up facing a

Herald of Fear, and two

Herald's of Dread in a row. Fortunately they weren't all together but they were close and I wonder...?

I was at home today and thought I do a little empirical study on statue farming with different player counts.

So far I mostly farmed at p1 with the following results in 30 min:

Andy, Meph and

Duriel (25-35 runs): Mostly either 0 or 1. Sometimes 2 and when I am really lucky up to 4.
Diablo (up to 20 runs): at best 2.

Baal (up to 12 runs): at best 2 (but I remember only one time where I got 2. Most of the time nothing).

Today I tried Andy and Meph with p3 (logged in the accounts of my sons in act1) with the following result (32 Andy and 34 Meph):

Andy: 0
Meph: 3 (one of them belongs to

Duriel)

Of course this is only a small sample size but it seems to me that p1 and p3 do not make a noticeable difference - at least concerning the drop rate of statues.

UPDATE: Did

Duriel again at P1 (ca. 30 runs): 3

I have made a similar long post to a similar thread elsewhere.

In my very humble opinion the conspiracy here is not that this caters to streamers, but the new RotW system caters to shareholders and board members, as it inflates players’ engagement time, without actually increasing our fun or entertainment, quite the opposite.
The way D2(R) worked before RotW was crystal clear. Drop chances for any given item or rune under any mf were crystal clear, most individuals (hopefully) are smart enough to understand 1 in X chances of something dropping.
In addition the whole game was available to anyone at any given moment. You could literally do whatever you wanted.

Terror zones were an added bonus that even though timed it did not take that much away when absent. You could still get good drops from any boss, TZs just enhanced your chances.
You could also just farm as long or short as you saw fit, with literally no difference other than luck.

What the statue and sunder systems do is add additional layers of RNG to the way certain rewards can be obtained, in order to boost engagement time, but as a result it affects the feel of the game and ultimately its fun factor.

As I said in the other thread engagement is not always entertainment.

The statue loop is the least offensive of the two. Comparing statues to Keys, you now have the additional RNG layer of the

Terror zones. You Have to play when a

Terror zone or you do not get access to the endgame activity (which you paid for by the way). This boosts engagement time by people who mad rush teleporting around out of FOMO (I know I am one of them). This FOMO strategy is employed by many modern online games to keep player statistics high.

As for the sunder charm loop. Forget about the easy 1 in X chances to drop days. While the math is not impossible to do, it is not as easily understandable by most people, and I am one of them. What I do know though, is once you stack multiple independent rolls between you and what you want to get, the chances are awfully against you. We all kind of know how this goes
First you need a shard to drop, fine. But shards are also weighted with the Act V one being more rare than the others. This sucks because I have so many act 1 ones, it gets boring doing act 1 all the time.
After that you need heralds to spawn. 2% per elite is quite low, and it’s just part of the loop. For the best chances you need heralds of

Terror (lvl 5) and even still chances are miniscule.
Suppose you get a charm, it needs to be the one you need, that’s an additional 1 out of 6 or 7 I think.
And then you gotta roll it, with 5-6 OR attributes to roll among.

That’s why it stings so much, you have to farm (be engaged) for hours, then there is no guarantee you will get anything and if you do, the chances you get a potato are just too high.

Before RotW the chances were low too, but once you get something it works just fine even if it’s a shitty roll.
If you played online, and you couldn’t find what you want you can always trade for it by collecting and trading resources slowly but surely.
Can you trade for a sunder charm now? with those prices?
Moreover, once you activate a shard, can you leave your game to trade with someone without wasting your shard? Nope, you get locked out of one of the core mechanics of fun of the game

In summary, we are being brute forced to engage with the game in an unfun way, by creating FOMO and stacking unfair layers of RNG against us, the people who paid for the dlc.

In my other post I did not offer my opinion on solutions, here is what would make sense to me:

For statues, give non TZ bosses a smaller chance to drop them, about half of TZ bosses. This aligns with the old style that TZs are a bonus not a must.

For sunder charms:
Make shards purchasable for

Gold or something else. Remove the weight from shards from different acts, they should drop equally.

Add a chance for sunder charms to drop from any TZ enemy, even if it’s super small. In the territory of getting a high rune, possibly.

Add a guaranteed sunder charm drop condition like ubers do. For example, if I do all 5 acts, and kill 80% of enemies, the final boss I defeat drops one. This way even if you roll a potato, you can try for another one later
Keep regular non-upgradable charms dropping someway somehow.

If you made it this far,
Thank you for your kind attention

HikariNoRevan wrote: 12 hours ago

In my other post I did not offer my opinion on solutions, here is what would make sense to me:

For statues, give non TZ bosses a smaller chance to drop them, about half of TZ bosses. This aligns with the old style that TZs are a bonus not a must.

For sunder charms:
Make shards purchasable for

Gold or something else. Remove the weight from shards from different acts, they should drop equally.

Add a chance for sunder charms to drop from any TZ enemy, even if it’s super small. In the territory of getting a high rune, possibly.

Add a guaranteed sunder charm drop condition like ubers do. For example, if I do all 5 acts, and kill 80% of enemies, the final boss I defeat drops one. This way even if you roll a potato, you can try for another one later
Keep regular non-upgradable charms dropping someway somehow.

If you made it this far,
Thank you for your kind attention

Almost quite literally what I thought and have written here, too. Maybe those suggestions are not that bad after all... Let´s hope someone from Blizz is looking at the D2.

Io forum

Thank you for the kind reply and for reading through the whole thing. If indeed they are listening, there is ample positive feedback from a lot of people here to bring good change to the game.

I returned to d2r after a 10 year burnout on destiny 2 which was full of stingy layers of rng and activities that were completely unrewarding to your invested time. D2r was a breath of fresh air. As soon as I got my bearing on RotW, I unfortunately recognised the signs of an abusive relationship haha. Not as bad, but they are there.

HikariNoRevan wrote: 12 hours ago

I have made a similar long post to a similar thread elsewhere.

In my very humble opinion the conspiracy here is not that this caters to streamers, but the new RotW system caters to shareholders and board members, as it inflates players’ engagement time, without actually increasing our fun or entertainment, quite the opposite.
The way D2(R) worked before RotW was crystal clear. Drop chances for any given item or rune under any mf were crystal clear, most individuals (hopefully) are smart enough to understand 1 in X chances of something dropping.
In addition the whole game was available to anyone at any given moment. You could literally do whatever you wanted.

Terror zones were an added bonus that even though timed it did not take that much away when absent. You could still get good drops from any boss, TZs just enhanced your chances.
You could also just farm as long or short as you saw fit, with literally no difference other than luck.

What the statue and sunder systems do is add additional layers of RNG to the way certain rewards can be obtained, in order to boost engagement time, but as a result it affects the feel of the game and ultimately its fun factor.

As I said in the other thread engagement is not always entertainment.

The statue loop is the least offensive of the two. Comparing statues to Keys, you now have the additional RNG layer of the

Terror zones. You Have to play when a

Terror zone or you do not get access to the endgame activity (which you paid for by the way). This boosts engagement time by people who mad rush teleporting around out of FOMO (I know I am one of them). This FOMO strategy is employed by many modern online games to keep player statistics high.

As for the sunder charm loop. Forget about the easy 1 in X chances to drop days. While the math is not impossible to do, it is not as easily understandable by most people, and I am one of them. What I do know though, is once you stack multiple independent rolls between you and what you want to get, the chances are awfully against you. We all kind of know how this goes
First you need a shard to drop, fine. But shards are also weighted with the Act V one being more rare than the others. This sucks because I have so many act 1 ones, it gets boring doing act 1 all the time.
After that you need heralds to spawn. 2% per elite is quite low, and it’s just part of the loop. For the best chances you need heralds of

Terror (lvl 5) and even still chances are miniscule.
Suppose you get a charm, it needs to be the one you need, that’s an additional 1 out of 6 or 7 I think.
And then you gotta roll it, with 5-6 OR attributes to roll among.

That’s why it stings so much, you have to farm (be engaged) for hours, then there is no guarantee you will get anything and if you do, the chances you get a potato are just too high.

Before RotW the chances were low too, but once you get something it works just fine even if it’s a shitty roll.
If you played online, and you couldn’t find what you want you can always trade for it by collecting and trading resources slowly but surely.
Can you trade for a sunder charm now? with those prices?
Moreover, once you activate a shard, can you leave your game to trade with someone without wasting your shard? Nope, you get locked out of one of the core mechanics of fun of the game

In summary, we are being brute forced to engage with the game in an unfun way, by creating FOMO and stacking unfair layers of RNG against us, the people who paid for the dlc.

In my other post I did not offer my opinion on solutions, here is what would make sense to me:

For statues, give non TZ bosses a smaller chance to drop them, about half of TZ bosses. This aligns with the old style that TZs are a bonus not a must.

For sunder charms:
Make shards purchasable for

Gold or something else. Remove the weight from shards from different acts, they should drop equally.

Add a chance for sunder charms to drop from any TZ enemy, even if it’s super small. In the territory of getting a high rune, possibly.

Add a guaranteed sunder charm drop condition like ubers do. For example, if I do all 5 acts, and kill 80% of enemies, the final boss I defeat drops one. This way even if you roll a potato, you can try for another one later
Keep regular non-upgradable charms dropping someway somehow.

If you made it this far,
Thank you for your kind attention

ABSOLUTELY 100%

(even though I found 2 sunders that are great and I'll use)

HikariNoRevan wrote: 12 hours ago

I have made a similar long post to a similar thread elsewhere.

[...]

If you made it this far,
Thank you for your kind attention

Great comment, thank you.

I am pushing my previous idea a bit further :
- latant sunder charms should be more frequent as they are build enablers
- renewed sunder charms can be seen as a super end game "ultimate goal" item. So the hard part should be the recipe.

That can be realized with:
- Latent sunders with wayyyy better drop rates (100% on

Herald 5 if none dropped on first 4?)
- Recipe for renewed being one latent sunder (beaten

Herald) +

Standard of Heroes (beaten

Uber Tristram) + one colossal jewel (any, beaten Uber Ancients) could work.
Would mean "ok, whole game beaten".

I like alot of what HikariNoRevan wrote, and I my thought on whether this was meant for streamers or shareholders was; Why not both? lol.

One thing that has come up that I just did not see at first. The new content is RNG stacking on RNG, which really just gets to be too much. But when we get our precious little prize (think of this in the voice of Gollum), we get almost the worst RNG one could ask for. The jewels, 5 affixes, but the Sunders or Renewed Sunders are even worse. 5 affixes with will be random stats, but also either/or to make the RNG multiply to astronomical levels.

What this means, we have an awful mechanic designed to drain us of interest in the game, RNG upon RNG. To get to the point where we could (with small chance) get an item that most likely will disappoint us.

I do not want or need a Sunder that has +

Gold, or could be +Mana when I want +Life. Maybe I want + to damage, but get - to enemy resistance. I just think to myself, who thought this mess up? Had they ever played this game called Diablo 2? It seems this just is not new content for the average player.

sbn wrote: 3 hours ago

[..] The new content is RNG stacking on RNG, which really just gets to be too much. [..]

You mean RNG stacking on RNG, stacking on RNG, stacking on RNG, stacking on RNG, stacking on RNG, stacking on RNG?
(shards to ires to heralds to a sunder drop to it being the sunder you need to it then even getting the right stats to those stats then not being abysmally bad rolls)

Truly not a fan. To put it mildly.

I'm torn on the heralds and the statues. I don't like that both of those increase rewards for those that can spend 2+ hrs in one sitting playing the game. It feels very MMORPG to me. But I also get the idea that there's some group of more hardcore gamers that wants content that rewards a longer play session and feels more exclusive.

Before those systems, the game felt equally rewarding when playing it for any amount of time. Drawing ire and spawning higher tier heralds takes a longer play session.

Even ubers you can break up. Get the keys. Farm organs in one game. Use organs in another game. Progress is saved and can be broken into smaller chunks.

Progressing through the story is saved via waypoints and quest drops.

The heralds specifically feel counter to that philosophy. Maybe if the ire progress could be saved somehow and reinstated in your next session. That could make it feel more similar to everything else.