by Hotstreak - 10 years ago     show comments

Hey folks! In light of Archon and Neinball starting up Westmarch Workshop, where they will be going into the nitty gritty areas of build creation and theory crafting, I thought that it would be a good time to go over the end game in Reaper of Souls. The end game in Diablo 3 has seen a great deal of criticism and discussion since it’s launch. How does Blizzard plan to address this with the launch of Reaper of Souls? When Reaper of Souls was revealed at Gamescom in August, Blizzard expressed the need for there to be options, and that they wanted to add multiple things for players to do. The way that they are addressing the end game in Reaper of Souls is by adding Adventure Mode, Bounties, Gambling, Nephalem Trials, and the Mystic. I will start off this overview by talking about Adventure Mode.

Adventure Mode is Blizzards answer to an open world, story-less game mode where all acts are unlocked and every boss is spawned. So you’ll be able to waypoint around and slay all of your favorite bosses, in all of your favorite acts, in one run! This has probably been the most demanded feature ever since Diablo 3 was launched and my big personal gripe about the game as well. I can see this feature completely changing the way the game is played since it adds so many different possibilities in regards to farming routes and this is the feature that I am personally looking forward to the most. Another addition to Adventure Mode is Bounties.

Bounties are a set of five completely random quests that have you slay a unique, slay a boss, or complete an event in certain areas of the act you are playing on. When completing a bounty, the player is rewarded with experience, gold, horadric caches, blood shards, and the chance for a legendary. Horadric Cache’s are bags that contain a random number of loot that just spills out when opened and also have a chance to drop a legendary. The amount of loot in each cache can vary depending on if it’s a regular Horadric Cache or a Greater Horadric Cache. Bounties can also give double rewards in certain acts.

Blood Shards are a new type of currency coming to RoS that you will be using to gamble at the new gambling NPC. Live casino gambling works pretty much the same as it did in Diablo 2 with Gheed. When you talk to the NPC you are given a selection of items for each gear slot with a question mark over them, preventing players from seeing any kind of affixes.

Each item requires the same amount of blood shards for purchase. Magic items, rare items, and legendaries can all be obtained through gambling. However, I have not talked to one person who has gotten a legendary from doing this yet. I am actually looking pretty forward to gambling and seeing what crappy items I roll to further ensure how much bad luck I have in this game.

Another big addition to Reaper of Souls end game are Nephalem Rifts.

Nephalem Rifts are completely randomized dungeons with random monsters and random environments. Nephalem Rifts, when entered, have you kill a certain amount of monsters to trigger the unique boss at the end of the rift. These bosses have a chance to drop all kinds of loot, even rift keystones which are used to open up portals to Nephalem Rifts. In order to open up a rift with a keystone, the player must use it at the Nephalem Obelisk in the main town of the act they are in.

Rift Keystones can be obtained in a few different ways. You can obtain them from Horadric Caches, slaying random enemies, and Nephalem Rifts.

Drop rates for these have been reported to be pretty high but that is to be expected since Blizzard wants people to get right in and test these out for feedback. Lylirra made a post a little while back asking for feedback on how often the players would want to see Nephalem Rifts.

Currently (and this is still changing on a daily basis), you’ll receive a Rift Keystone for completing a set of bounties within a given Act. They’ll also have the opportunity to randomly drop from monsters within the world while in Adventure Mode.

Like I noted above, how and when we drop Keystones will ultimately depend on how rewarding Nephalem Rifts end up being. If Nephalem Rifts end up being super-duperrewarding and lucrative, then we may not hand out Keystones all that frequently. Conversely, if Nephalem Rifts aren’t super-duper rewarding and lucrative (and instead fall somewhere in the middle, where they’re still satisfying but not overly giving), they we may hand out Keystones at a much more frequent clip. Overall difficulty is also a factor. Our tuning at the moment is focused on finding the right balance between the three.

So, on that note, what would you guys prefer?

– Would you like Nephalem Rifts to be really, really rewarding, but in return not be able to run them as frequently?

– Or would you like Nephalem Rifts to be slightly less rewarding (i.e. not “super duper,” though still satisfying), but in return you get the opportunity to run them more often?

Obviously, when it comes to tuning Nephalem Rifts, it’s not going to be a completely binary situation like this particular question; HOWEVER, knowing what you find more important out of the two will definitely help inform said tuning in a meaningful way.

Edited for clarity!

Edited by Lylirra on 11/12/2013 5:47 PM PST