(originally posted via GDoc May 3rd, 2025)

What This Is and What This Is Not

Hiya! In simple terms this doc is meant to be a bird’s eye view of various systems, looking at where they are, and what can be done. These ideas have been refined over the last 6 to 12 months (the plight of a Systems Theorycrafter) and feel ready to share with the timing not being any better.

With the team looking into Difficulty and Challenge, updating Infernal Hordes and Nightmare Dungeons along with looking to the future of Endgame now and in the next expansion, I believe that even if you (Developer or Player) don’t agree with what I have to say, I hope this doc at least spurs deeper discussion based around guided principles we can all agree on for better outcomes.

P.S. – For those playing the home game, this is a D4 based version of the D3 feedback doc I did back in 2018. That one was a biggie – 69 pages, 96 custom images with most of those being UI mockups. It had a lot of good ideas, which a few did ultimately come to pass in D3 and other games in the genre, too. Give it a look if you want after this one, all images are clickable for bigger views.

Development Hell #4 – Reinvigorating a Giant

P.S.S. – The use of “XX” is intentional, focus on the concept, not the weeds. The use of the term “Fragment” is intentional as well, it just made the process of naming items easier.

Dred-isms

I heavily debated putting this section last in this doc or not even doing it at all. At last though, I feel it’s important to own up to what I am trying to do in this doc – give principled feedback. If I don’t explain myself then I am being disingenuous to you.

K.I.S.S.

The biggest principle, the king above all others. It will break you if you don’t follow it. It will humble you. Follow it and it and you will be rewarded greatly.

Concentrated Coolness

Think it will be good to have 20 items, great to make 10 or even 5. Bring the quantity down and the quality and uniqueness WAY UP!

Small but Impactful

Often small changes when they can be applied can have dramatic effects. So, it is always better to look for a single or a few small changes to get you where you want to go rather than a large sweeping change with possible consequences.

Effort In = Effort Out

This is fairly straightforward. The effort a player puts in should be matched by some mixture of achievement and appropriate reward to warrant the aforementioned effort.

Game Should Not Get in Its Own Way

This one can be something as simple as (pre Season 8) needing to teleport to a major city to then teleport to a party member. It can also be the pain of collecting each item in the Reliquary system right now. It can also be something like having a dozen or two Scroll of Restorations but can only use one per item. Essentially, it’s where you have a gut feeling that the game just feels like it is made to get in your way and hold you back. We’re not talking Difficulty or Challenge here, but systems as a whole.

Meaning/Meaningful

These two terms need to start being phased out ASAP! They are mostly, if not, 100% subjective but get used if objective. At the end of the day each individual player, regardless of how much they play, how much knowledge they have, they determine what gives their time meaning. It is not something Developers can simply impart. Instead we should be shaping discussions where we would normally use these terms around a different term – purpose.

• What’s the purpose of this change?
• What’s the purpose of this system and does it fulfill it sufficiently?

Purpose is a more objective term that leads to better outcomes.

Difficulty vs. Challenge

This is a hot one for me and I can understand if not everyone agrees. The way I look at and define each of these terms is by using the other.

Difficulty is the baseline challenge of any given system.

Challenge is a temporary spike in Difficulty to what the player is normally doing.

There is a large amount of nuance here and frankly could be a small doc in itself, but I want to keep this section short and to the point. This “-ism” and the others will be noticeable throughout the doc as you read, which is better. Show me, don’t tell me, right?

Dungeon System Revamp

Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons, and The Pit have been through a lot of iteration. With Season 9 bringing a revamp to Nightmare Dungeons it would be the best time to talk about them along with Dungeons and The Pit. Each one could use a purpose driven re-alignment. Also, we can make them more future proof for seasons to come.

Dungeons

It’s been a long time since watching many of the DIablo Partners blasting any Dungeon for World’s First 100 back at release. While Dungeons are pretty much what they are, we can prop them up.

1. First step is to acknowledge that Dungeons are there primarily to get players acquainted with the larger instance running concept that all three systems here share.
2. Second step is to realign Dungeons to something you do while leveling 1 to 60, then move on to the next system.
3. Third step is to help new players and current players alike with bringing the revamped Codex of Power system fully around. We do this with a new item called a Codex Fragment.

Codex Fragment

Legendary Item

Found: Obtained after successful completion of a Dungeon or Nightmare Dungeon.

Effect: Use to unlock a Codex Power of your choosing in the Codex of Power.

This item would allow players to run ANY Dungeon, then unlock ANY Codex Power they wish. No more Codex Powers tied to a specific Dungeon. For the Player:

• This eliminates a lot of headaches of needing to scour the map, region by region, to find the Dungeon they need or hope through menus to pin a Dungeon on the map.
• Also, this eliminates the need to force some classes to run certain Strongholds to unlock certain Dungeons for their Codex Power.
• Finally, since this is an item (held in the crafting menu please), it makes creating alts easier as you can bank up a dozen or so of these on a main and use them to instantly unlock Codex Powers on an alt.

There is even a Developer upside here:

• There would no longer be a heavy requirement to create 2 to 3 dozen Dungeons in a future expansion zone to satisfy new legendary Power placements.
• Precious development time can be saved by creating only a dozen impactful Dungeons with unique tilesets and layouts, then putting more time into other content.

Nightmare-ifed Dungeons

Nightmare Dungeons have fallen off hard from release to where they are now. While a great source of Obducite, that’s all they are good for now and days. The difficulty was stripped out by tying them directly to the Difficulty you select (rather than an independent scaling system) and the challenge has all but been removed with the reduction in harmful Afflictions.

On top of this, there is an identity crisis as to what really defines this system from Dungeons since you can run both at level 1 on Normal. Also, what is the clear purpose of them past Obducite, which later added systems like The Undercity and Infernal Hordes can give out to Players? We can bring this system more in line with current systems while making it more future proof for seasons to come.

1. Nightmare Dungeons become Post-60 content. This allows Dungeons to have their time in the sun while leveling and preparing players for the next step once they hit 60. Also removes the confusing overlap of the systems to new players (not everyone reads/watches guides : D )
2. Nightmare Dungeons will be optional, however (see Nightmare Forge details below for how).
3. Nightmare Dungeons will gain back their one Major and Minor Negative Affixes, but also three positive Affixes, now centered around player progression and resource acquisition. This will be done through the Nightmare Forge.

Nightmare Forge

The Nightmare Forge is a simple and small adjustment to how Nightmare Dungeons operate that has large implications for the system for seasons to come. If you’ve played Mythic+, then you’ll know where I am going with this.

1. Every Dungeon will have a Nightmare Forge right at the beginning. Either as a solo player, or as a party, you can interact with the Forge and pay a small (I mean small, like X,XXX gold) cost to slot machine roll your Major and Minor Negative Affix and your three Positive Affixes. If you like them, accept them and go. If not, roll again, the demons laugh all the way back to Greed.
2. Since you need to interact with the Forge, this is 100% optional. You can choose not to roll affixes and just run the Dungeon as just a Dungeon if you so want to.
3. This also means no more Nightmare Dungeon Keys!
4. You will receive a Codex Fragment upon successfully completing a Nightmare Dungeon.
5. These changes are meant to help make Nightmare Dungeons a better farming option for Players with some deterministic outcomes in the Post Level 60, T1 to T4 Progression phase of their character.

To give some concept examples of Positive Affixes since most of the old Negative Affixes can be used/retooled are:

• Killstreak – For this Nightmare Dungeon, gain the ability to Killstreak. Continuously kill enemies to maintain your streak for an ever larger multiplier to EXP gained once the streak falls. (Essentially what we had in D3.)
• Devil’s Bargain – Upon successful completion of a Nightmare Dungeon, a chest containing a large amount of one random material will spawn.
• Goblin Recycler – Upon successful completion of a Nightmare Dungeon, a friendly Upstart Goblin will spawn, offering a much larger amount of Gold for items you sell to it compared to town vendors.

These are just examples, but the idea is to give Nightmare Dungeons a shot in the arm with a larger purpose.

The Pit

The Pit itself is in a good spot, but as the saying goes, “”Life Is Good, But It Can Better!”

The first step is to bring the Nightmare Forge to The Pit as well, albeit, functioning a little differently. If you’ve played Speed Die Monopoly, you’ll see the parallel here. In that version of Monopoly, there is a third die that in the beginning of the game can help you buy unsold properties quickly. Nice Mr. Monopoly. However, once all properties are sold, if you roll him, he forces you to the next owned property that’s not yours, potentially bankrupting you in the process. Bad Mr. Monopoly.

The dual nature of that dice is reflected with the Nightmare Forge. It is largely a net Positive for Nightmare Dungeons. For The Pit, it is an optimal way to potentially increase the challenge of any given run with an equal level reward. This will all be done through Nightmare Fragments.

Nightmare Fragments

Here are some specifics:

1. Nightmare Fragments can be general or tied to specific activities/Bosses like the powers in Season 8.
2. They can be of different rarity, allowing for some truly crazy runs, or more straightforward challenges. Some may have Pit Tier requirements to avoid “smurfing” the Fragment.
3. Up to 3 can be placed into the Nightmare Forge, via the normal Pit Selection screen. It has to be this way due to how Dungeons/Nightmare Dungeon generally work vs. The Pit.
4. A party can talk ahead of time and contribute to the Forge individually (no trading needed hopefully) to avoid scammers running away with them.
5. As stated before, these are optional and aren’t required. This is to allow players to have more agency over their Challenge level of The Pit if they choose so.

Here are a few examples, again, they are just that:

Hell Hath No Fury Like A Butcher Scorned

Unique Nightmare Fragment

Found: Can be obtained from killing The Butcher.

Effect: A Butcher will spawn once every XX seconds until the completion of The Pit Tier.

Reward: For each Butcher slain, gain one random Ancestral Unique for your class from the reward chest.

Upstart Goblin Exterminator

Legendary Nightmare Fragment

Found: Can be obtained from killing a Treasure Goblin.

Effect: Find and slay X amount of Upstart Goblins and successfully complete The Pit Tier.

Reward: A Goblin Shrine will spawn with the reward Chest. A Goblin Shrine will spawn XX amount of Goblins and can spawn any Goblin type.

These examples demonstrate the different types of challenges that can be introduced. The Butcher Fragment being do you have the damage and defenses to get through The Pit Tier while gambling how many Butchers you think you can kill, while leaving enough time to kill the boss. The Goblin Fragment is more about do you have the speed to sweep the map and find and slay the required number of Goblins to get the Shrine.

These Fragments are not here to introduce a greater sense of Endgame/Pinnacle Content, but bolster up The Pit as a system and help keep it fresh while leveling Glyphs. Speaking of…

Glyph Fragments

There has been a lot of discussion with Season 8 and how the increase time to leveling Glyphs as a consequence of the rescaling of Difficulty/The Pit. There has been feedback asking for either alternative ways to level Glyphs and this may just help without shoe-horning Glyph leveling into an existing system – keeping it simple.

Glyph Fragment

Legendary Item

Found: Can be obtained from the reward chest after successful completion of a Nightmare Dungeon or from Greater Caches at the Tree of Whispers.

Purpose: Use this Fragment to level up a selected Glyph by 1.

• Glyph Fragments would allow you to further level your Glyphs by rewarding your efforts outside of The Pit and more importantly, get you out of The Pit itself. Allowing you to farm other materials you need – the game respecting your time.
• Also, just like Codex Fragments, these can be stocked up on by your main (hopefully in the crafting menu) and used on an alt to quickly get Glyphs to that Level 15 sweet spot early for alts.
• Lastly, there could be diminishing returns on the upgrade chance post XX Glyph level and not usable post XX Glyph level to ensure this item  isn’t broken and the only way to level Glyphs.

Gear Inversion Point & Pinnacle Content

There are many systems that feel strained right now because the game as a whole has to serve too many different player types at the same time. Also, the game having most of its systems unlocked early on puts increasing pressure on them to provide power to the player. However, with RNG having almost all the power (that increases over the time of your character) the ascent to the top of the mountain with perfecting gear can be brutal if not attainable for a large majority of the player base. Something needs to give, and that’s what the Gear Inversion Point aims to solve as much as possible.

Gear Inversion Point (GIP)

The Gear Inversion Point (referred to as GIP henceforth) is a theoretical difficulty threshold where current Endgame builds can just barely do the content placed above this threshold. The main points about the GIP are:

1. Gearing Fundamentally Shifts Beyond the GIP – In order to progress into the system beyond the GIP, you will use new crafting items, some are higher level, some help lessen the pressure of current crafting systems to grant power, defense, and utility to climb up.
2. New Gear Affixes From Crafting Items and Systems – In order to hack and slash beyond the GIP new Affixes can be applied via new crafting items that can be added to or override affixes on your current gear. New systems can also be a source of these affixes as well.
3. Overlap is Key to Get Started – As an example, we could say that players that have gotten up to Pit Tier 90+ will start seeing some basic Crafting items drop. These items are primarily aimed at reinforcing their current builds with new Affixes and crafting items that affect them coming in later systems once the player gets there.
4. Builds Beyond the GIP Must Slow Down or Breakdown completely Below the GIP – This is a critical one and not for an obvious reason. In order to promote this new environment where Blasters can have truly challenging content, builds that are created for beyond the GIP can’t work and be the best below the GIP in normal world/instanced content farming. The reason for this is to ensure FOMO doesn’t creep up and the player base feels that if they don’t have the best build, regardless of the difficulty in obtaining it or the purpose of said build, that they are missing out. If there is a clear distinction set, expectations can be better managed.
   
   An example of this for you D3 folks would be straight up vanilla Shadow Impale. It is a build that would inevitably force you into higher and higher GR tiers as you improved the build. Why? Because the build resource system relied on not one-shotting mobs to maintain resources. If you over kill mobs in farming content, you quickly run out of resources and your friend in a farming build would blow right on past you. This is a simple example albeit.
5. Breaks up the Game into Better Balance-able Systems – With Blasters having new pinnacle Content, the rest of the game can be balanced for just the majority of the playerbase and releasing the pressure of all systems needing to work for all players. Season 8’s rescaling of T1 through T4, and by extension The Pit, and furthermore Player’s ability to progress, gear, level Glyphs, etc. all to bring some level of challenge back to the game, which in reality just raised the baseline difficulty could potentially be avoided in the future with the ever present march of power creep. With the GIP, Developers can ask themselves if this is a general systems issue, or an issue with a system beyond the GIP. This allows the Developers to use a scalpel not a hammer.

Pinnacle Content

What do you, the Developer, want to see here? As a Player, what would you like? Do you like the idea of Lorath coming back into the picture with new knowledge from his travels, having the ability to summon in Shades of the Primes from years past to test ourselves for the future? Bringing in a roguelike system that feels fresh each time and gives the player some agency over the rewards obtained at each step? It almost doesn’t matter what system is made, however what does matter are the principles outlined above in the GIP section and that they are followed with any and all forms of Pinnacle Content. With that stated, here are some possible rewards.

Demonic Fragments

Demonic Fragments are items that come with some sort of price or gamble, simple enough. They can be themed around the Greater and Lesser Evils that make up the Diablo Franchise. Come to think of it, having a set of Fragments around the seven sins (Azmodan’s Lieutenants) would be interesting, too.

Mephisto’s Burning Hatred

Legendary Demonic Fragment

Found: Can be obtained after completing XXX activity.

Effect: Select one Affix on a piece of gear, increase it by 50%. A random Affix other than the selected one is reduced by 50%. Doing so consumes this item.

Envy & Lust

Legendary Demonic Fragment

Found: Can be obtained after completing XXX activity.

Effect: Select a Greater Affix from a piece of gear. Doing so consumes this Fragment and the selected piece of gear. A new Fragment with the selected Greater Affix is created. Select an Affix on a piece of gear to be replaced with the Newly created Fragment containing the saved Greater Affix. There is a XX% chance of success. Attempting to replace an Affix consumes the newly created Fragment.

Lilith’s Love

Legendary Demonic Fragment

Found: Can be obtained after completing XXX activity.

Effect: Select one Affix on a piece of gear and replace it with the Lilith’s Love Affix Lilith’s Love: Drain 0.XX% Life per second and gain a Barrier equal to XXX% of your Life drain. This Affix can be applied multiple times, once per gear slot.

Sealing Fragment

Now, the GIP is fundamental to Pinnacle Content, but as mentioned, crafting is more or less just an RNG fest with very little player agency involved. Also, as you get ever stronger and climb higher, the larger demand on having perfect gear pushes you into farming more and more until it’s just not feasible or fun to play the game anymore. With that stated, keeping in mind the effort in = effort out “ism” we can have clever solutions to some problems we have right now.

Lothar’s Horadric Seal

Legendary Sealing Fragment

Found: Can be obtained after completing XXX activity.

Effect: Select two Affixes on a piece of gear. They are now considered sealed and can no longer be affected by any form of crafting.

This Seal Fragment aims to help players that are pretty much done with Nightmare Dungeon/Infernal Hordes/Undercityand focusing on Pinnacle Content. It does it by allowing you to Seal two Affixes you do not want to be Masterwork Criticaled, allowing you better odds at hitting the ones you do want. This lessens the amount of Obducite required to Masterwork at higher levels and respects the player’s time. More Fragments could be done in a similar vein, but I’ll leave this one here by itself for now.

Cleansing Fragments

Cleansing Fragments can be themed after members of the Angiris Council and friendly Horadric members to help undo crafting at levels beyond to the GIP. These Fragments can be friendly or stingy, based on the individual they are themed after.

Inarius’s Searing Judgement

Unique Cleansing Fragment

Found: Can be obtained after completing XXX activity.

Effect: Removes all crafting and item enhancements from a piece of gear, restoring it to its original condition. Can only be used on an item X amount of times before the item becomes Shunned. Shunned: This item is unable to be cleansed further.

Crafting Pressures

With the GIP established and new crafting items to aid in advancing beyond it, we can set our sights on a new system that can give additional customizable power to the player beyond the GIP as well as the journey from Level 1 to T4!

Talisman

The best way to think about a Talisman is that they are varying containers you can socket different items (Charms into). For an easy to understand analog, think Last Epoch’s Idol system but the area you plug IDols into can change, expand, and be altered. Some more specifics:

1. Talismans are containers that hold on to Charms.
2. Talismans can come in different rarities. Higher rarities are able to fit more/bigger Charms.
3. Talismans can have Blocker Nodes that you need to rotate and place Charms around to min/max. They can not be removed.
4. The Grid (area where you place/Tetris your Charms) can also be expanded via a Crafting item called a Grid Fragment, that can add a limited amount of new Grid spaces per Talisman.

Grid Fragment

Legendary Item

Found: Can be obtained from reward chests after completing many activities.

Effect: Add an additional space to the Grid Area of a selected Talisman. Can use up to X per Talisman.

It should also be noted that Talismans by themselves could:

• Have no intrinsic effect.
• Could have a basic effect that can be themed around a new lore element to the game. Old Jewel Cutter knowledge from Caldeum we find and unlocked with a Jeweler Side Quest perhaps?
• Could go all the way and introduce a Set-like unlock to Talismans that if you use the right Charms, you unlock more effects. This is one of those Awesome sounding ideas but most likely too complicated for its own good.

Charms

Charms can be stat fillers, defensive options, or add additional utility from Levels 1 to 60 and even beyond in T1 to T4. Once you reach the GIP, Charms can have new Affixes that fall in line with other Crafting Items to allow players to push further beyond the GIP in Pinnacle Content.

This is an example of how a single system with items set for different progression stages of your character can exist and more importantly keeps the system from getting old or stale.

Relieving RNG Pressure on Current Crafting Systems

While we’ve added a lot of Fragments for Pinnacle Content along with the Talisman and Charm system, we should still look back at the crafting systems we do have and make them more bearable for casual players and blasters alike.

Masterwork Crit “Down Ranking”

This has been brought up many times, but wanted to echo it as well. Having the ability to select how far to down rank an item (Mastwork Crits only) from Rank 12 back to only 8 or back to 4 would allow players to have a better time with this system. It would also help relieve the pressure to farm multiple tens of 1,000s of Obducite, respecting the Player’s time.

Tempering Manual Roll

Tempering is still a pain. While the excuse is that there may need to be a price to pay for power, or that we need to remove items from the economy, it just ends in heartache as a potential upgrade gets salvage at the altar of RNG.

Before the Scroll of Restoration came into the game, I suggested one fix that could help make the system something to look forward to and still believe it’s a decent option. The concept is simple, instead of Rolling the selected Manual first for which Temper you will hit, then again for its range, you simply roll the entire manual each time and get a different range – eliminating the double RNG factor from the system.

1. This means if you are a risk averse player, you can just roll once, take the first roll and be done.
2. If you’re a blaster, you can roll to the max amount of Temper rolls to see if you can really min/max your chances.
3. This makes the process of advancing your gear not a burden and respect your time by not forcing you to wait for RNG to bless you with another equally good item, the materials to roll, and hopefully get lucky rolling Tempers again.

Scroll of Restoration Limit Unlock

If the above option is not feasible/desirable, then take the limit off this item. It makes the item less impactful by having a dozen or so in your stash and not being able to use them on the items you DO want to use them on. It also goes against the rule of effort in = effort out and shows the game is getting in its own way.

Artificer’s Stones / Broken Comnpasses

Both of these activities have become a core part of the character progression. With the changes to Nightmare Dungeons, I think we can get over this relic of every activity requiring a key that takes up valuable stash space. Artificer’s Stones I can see being easy, but the way you open an Infernal Horde itself requires some adjustment. Maybe just add an option at wave 6 and 8 to skip to the Boss fight to replicate the amount of waves per the three different keys you can get.

Paragon

If you would have gotten a hold of me 10 years ago, I would have actively rallied to get rid of Paragon from D3. 7 years ago, I saw the unpleasant truth that in the absence of Endgame beyond Greater Rifts, Paragon was all we had. Going into D4, I was initially thrilled but it has been Min/Maxed into staleness. The thing is, Paragone in D4 is a good system that can be a great foundation to expand upon in simple ways to not only bolster Paragon itself, but add Meta Progression as well.

Seasonal Glyphs

This is an easy one. With a handful of these special Glyphs themed around the season could bring more options and break up the season-to-season choice of what Glyphs to use.

Seasonal Aura Node

The Starter Board is the next target of updating. Instead of it being a rather boring start to your Paragon journey, what if we spiced it up. Right in the middle each season there will be a special Seasonal Aura Node that will do the following:

1. It will be where you start your Paragon pathing each season.
2. It can be a static aura, or give the Player a choice on what Aura Effect they want to overlay on their Paragon Boards they choose later on.
   Example 1: For Season 2, there could have been a choice between embracing further Vampiric Powers granting further damage for XXX Node Type selected or gaining defenses for each XXX Node Type selected.
   Example 2: For Season 7, we could have enhanced our Witch Powers for each XXX Node Type Selected.
3. We can keep the Aura Overlay simple, just have it work on all boards beyond the Starter Board, or we could make it like a checkerboard pattern, or something else. Probably best to leave simple and cover all boards.
4. If there is a choice of Aura, you can change it, no locking you in.
5. The Starter Board no longer has the standard Nodes on it, nor a spot to socket a Glyph (See next section for why) so the Board limit would need to be raised from 5 to 6 to compensate.

Meta Progression / Conquests / Seasonal Nodes

Now the Seasonal Starter Board is looking pretty bare right now, just the Seasonal Aura and four pathways to each Board Attachment gate Nodes (that’s a mouthful). When I think of a meta progression system, selecting options to enhance certain activities, customize what they may be, I am reminded of how Paragon was marketed to us. It was supposed to be the long journey our character would go on getting a little stronger along the way. With that in mind let’s do the following:

• We add four branching paths from the Seasonal Aura Node in each corner.
  • The Yellow Branch handles Boss like activities such as Lair Bosses and Infernal hordes.
  • The Blue path handles all open world activities such as The Tree of WHispers and Helltides.
  • The Purple Path handles Nightmare Dungeons and The Pit.
  • The Green Path handles generic buffs and QoL options.*
• Nodes in these paths use Conquest Points to unlock, not Paragon Points.
• A set number of Conquest Points come from doing basic activities.
• Another set of Conquest Points come from, say defeating each Lair Boss once for example.
• A last set of Conquest Points can come from New Conquests themselves. In D3, each season would have several Conquests chosen from a pool that would challenge you to complete. They were part of the Seasonal Journey and had a Leaderboard. This concept could be brought back to D4 and provide another avenue to give challenging content with an integrated reward in Conquest Points.
• In total, a Player would not get enough points to fill out all four branches, but if done right, players can shift points as they progress gaining advantages when they need them the most.

* This branch can have further depth in it by having a mixture of static Nodes similar to the Altar of Rites in D3 with Seasonal specific Nodes as well!

Seasons

Right now the expected Seasonal changes have become a little stale. New Cosmetics, New Borrowed Powers and several new Legendaries and Uniques. Everything you have read, while improving each one of the individual systems themselves, has been in service to amp up Seasonal play by miles. Let’s sum up everything that could come in Seasons if all these concepts were implemented:

• Seasonal specific Nightmare Dungeon Affixes that can roll.
• Seasonal specific Nightmare Fragments that can be used in The Pit.
• Seasonal specific Crafting Fragments that exit beyond the GIP.
• Seasonal specific Talismans.
• Seasonal specific Charms.
• Seasonal specific Paragon Aura Node.
• Seasonal specific Paragon Glyphs.
• Seasonal specific Seasonal Nodes (on the Green Path).

…all this on top of what we normally get. Again, keeping it concentrated, we only need a few for each of these listed items allowing each one to have a greater impact on your play.

A Note of PvP

Dueling Within a Party

Quite simple, let up to four players party up and duel each other in a PvP area – flag themselves. Would be great for members of the community to finally and reliably hold fun PvP tournaments.

PvP Arena

Having a PvP Arena, similar to ones in WoW, where a party of 2 or more players could load into and fight it out. No match making, no Leaderboard, just straight up killing of friend or foe alike. The Caldeum Coliseum has a nice ring to it : D

Odds and Ends

Grim Favor Update

I had an idea for this that was complicated, taking inspiration from Season 7’s Raven and having our pets being able to hand in Grim Favors for us. But you know what, K.I.S.S., an idea from Rhykker was to just treat Grim Favors as a currency, allowing us to stock up on them and hand them in when we decide to as it has become harder to avoid getting ten but miss out on another 1, 3 or 5 because you need to teleport back and hand in.

This could also allow for future use of Grim Favors in Seasons and the Expansion to come.

Profane Mindcage Like Items

It would be nice if this item could come back and do something across all activities (even if just open world only) to give players more deterministic challenge choices.

Aspirational is a Dangerous Word

In Season 8 there was a last minute adjustment to Difficulty scaling for T1 through T4 and beyond into The Pit. This change was well received and we will see if it bears fruit in the coming weeks/months. I will caution on something I bet the team already knows but will state here anyways.

Increasing…

• Time to Level 60
• Time between getting from T1 to T4
• Time to get Ancestral gear with adjusted drop rates.
• Time to get Mythics with adjusted drop rates, and Rune drop rates.
• Time to Level Glyphs to 15 and 46 due to Difficulty re-scaling

…in the name of creating aspirational goals is dangerous. If this were an Early Beta test, there wouldn’t be need for concern as the game would be in flux. However, this game has been out for nearly two years. One could say Pandora’s Box has already been opened with Players in the past being able to reach T4 and high Pit tiers. Forcing the game to be harder and take longer only has meaning to those Players that would derive meaning from these changes.

Season 6 had the broken Spiritborn doing many orders of magnitude more damage, allowing Players to blast through content easily and farm content at the speed of Boss Material aquation. Also able to gather great to perfect gears pieces for alts…if they even ran them.

Season 7 saw an absolute deluge of gear and crafting materials while playing in Witchtide Zones. Also, getting higher level gear and crafting materials hand over fist via rapid Whisper turn ins. On top of having access to Root holds which provided more gear and materials!

I feel in retrospect Season 8 should have been a wait and see season. I feel Developers should have left Difficulty re-scaling for possibly Season 9 (and a warning to players it may be coming) with a greater focus on bringing relative balance to the classes. Most importantly, it would have established a better baseline for seasonal game play with a smaller scope and a heavily reduced capacity to obtain gear, materials, etc. compared to past seasons.

It is not that I don’t believe the Developers that more than 50% of the player base has reached T4. Nor do I doubt there are any bad intentions. I would simply ask the following:

• Could Seasons 6 and 7 data be accurate but ultimately not good due to reasons expressed above?
• Why is it bad that more than 10% of the player base reaches T4? Is T4 meant to be the most challenging content, if so, what is The Pit supposed to be in relation to the player?
• If this is the route the team goes with no higher content for Blasters to do and treats base difficulty as challenging content, is there an understood risk of players disengaging faster and faster each season due to lack of hard goals and may not return – shedding players and RMT transactions alike?
• Lastly, if Pit 150 is aspirational (more like impossible) with Glyph Level 100 for most players being aspirational, with Paragon 200 let alone 300 being aspirational and finally T4 being aspirational…there’s not much else left to actually achieve and few reasons to play. I don’t want to aspire to reach these, I want the game to facilitate and inspire me to reach solid, properly constructed goals. Giving players the tools within a season, or season over season to climb ever higher is better than having sheer walls that you can never get over.

Wrapping it Up

We Made It

Thanks for reading, I hope the images did justice and made the “words” make sense. Always around to talk. Here’s to future seasons and the next expansion. Always be hackin’ and slashin’

~Dredscythe.