Diablo 3 D3 RoS: Patch 2.1.0 preview (WTF)

[Madmaxx]

LINK:

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/blog/14244559/first-look-patch-210-ptr-preview-6-17-2014

Including:

• Seasons
• Greater Rifts
• Leaderboards
• Combat Changes
• The Cesspools

copied and pasted here incase you can't click the link etc.

Spoiler

It's almost here, nephalem! The first major content patch for Reaper of Souls™ is right around the corner and we're preparing a Public Test Region to give you a hands-on look at the upcoming changes. Before the PTR goes live, let's get started with a high-level overview of what you can expect from patch 2.1.0.

Table of Contents:

• Seasons
• Greater Rifts
• Leaderboards
• Combat Changes
• The Cesspools

Please note that this is only a preview. The below information does not reflect all changes available in patch 2.1.0 and is subject to change. Some images represent works in progress, and may not be representative of the final product.



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Left: A Seasonal Hardcore Crusader gets ready to hop into the action. Right: A full overview of your Seasonal characters will be available in your Character Profile.

Conquests:

With the start of each Season, players will have the opportunity to earn Conquests. Conquests are special Season-only achievements (offered in addition to the suite of non-Seasonal achievements already available in the game) that represent a variety of challenging goals. These goals can vary in terms of gameplay and difficulty, and some might be easier to complete than others. With tasks ranging from killing Malthael at level 70 on Torment VI to finishing Acts I-V in an hour or less, Conquests are designed to encourage and promote an array of different playstyles.

Conquests are considered "first come, first served," and the first 1000 individuals to complete a Conquest within a given Season will be immortalized on that Season's regional Leaderboard. Right now, we're looking to provide between 10-15 unique Conquests each Season, and each Conquest will have its own Leaderboard. Conquests will also provide achievement points and will count toward your Seasonal point total. These points will be provided regardless of whether your character placed in the regional Leaderboard.

No Seasons? No Problem!

Not in the mood to start from scratch? You’ll still benefit from Seasons (which, by the way, are completely optional). New Seasonal Legendaries will roll over to non-Seasonal loot pool after a Season concludes. In addition, Greater Rift leaderboards will also become available to non-Seasonal characters, so you can compare the progress of your friends and clanmates with that of your most veteran heroes!

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Entering a Greater Rift requires its own type of Rift Keys.

How Greater Rifts Work:

While Greater Rifts are a type of Nephalem Rift, there are some key differences between the two features. In Greater Rifts:

• You'll race against a clock to fill a progress bar by accruing monster kills.
• Most monsters do not drop loot; rewards have been completely shifted to the Rift Guardian.
  
  • This removes conflicting pressure from attaining a better time versus picking up all your loot.
• Monsters grant differing amounts of progress for your progress bar; the tougher the monster, the more they fill up your progress bar.
• You cannot resurrect at your corpse or in town while in a Greater Rift—only at the last checkpoint.
  
  • Note that if you die in a Greater Rift on a Hardcore character, that death will be permanent.
• You cannot use player banners or the Teleport option if the target player is in a Greater Rift.
• Higher Greater Rifts levels are progressively more difficult.
  
  • This difficulty is separate from the standard difficulty settings (Master, Torment I-VI, etc.)

If you complete a Greater Rift before time expires you'll advance to the next difficulty level. Should your time be exceptionally good, you might even skip a few levels! If time instead expires, you'll have reached the end of your current Greater Rift journey and your best results will be posted to the appropriate Leaderboards.


Your progress bar is a little different inside a Greater Rift, to allow you to gauge your completion compared to your efficiency.

Legendary Gems:

Greater Rifts are truly a challenge, and conquering such challenges should be met with great reward. To provide a unique and upgradable incentive, we're introducing Legendary Gems.

Legendary Gems are still undergoing significant iteration at this time, so you won't see them available on the PTR right away. The gist is that these gems are infinitely upgradeable, and provide special Legendary powers when socketed into the appropriate gear slot. They can only be socketed into Rings and Amulets, and can be upgraded by completing additional Greater Rifts. The higher you place in a Greater Rift, the more likely your gem will be successfully upgraded. We'll have more details in the future as we continue development on these powerful baubles, so stay tuned!

Coming to a Nephalem Rift Near You:

Some of the changes in Greater Rifts are also coming to regular Nephalem Rifts—like the way the completion bar will advance based on monster difficulty. In addition, we're slightly modifying the entry mechanism for all Rifts. All players will need to have a Rift Fragment in order to enter a Nephalem Rift; however, we’ve reduced the cost for entering a Nephalem Rift down to one Rift Fragment per character to compensate.

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Leaderboards offer a variety of ways to compare your accomplishments to your friends and clanmates.

Greater Rift Leaderboards:

Greater Rift leaderboards will be split between both Hardcore and Normal gameplay modes as well as Seasonal and Non-Seasonal characters. To help encourage a variety of play styles and allow you to measure yourself against similar competitors, we've also broken up Greater Rift leaderboards into the following categories:

• Solo play for each class (e.g. top players for Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Crusader, etc.)
• 2-Player Groups
• 3-Player Groups
• 4-Player Groups

Season-Only Leaderboards:

Some Leaderboards will be Season-only. For example, Conquests are only tracked on Seasonal characters, so these Leaderboards won't have a non-Season equivalent. The same will be true for Seasonal achievement points. In addition, because Conquests and achievements are account-wide, their associated Leaderboards will not be split between Normal and Hardcore (even though some tasks may require playing a particular mode).

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Expect to encounter (and slaughter) a variety of creatures in the Cesspools!

Still, we loved the look and feel of this festering, dank underworld and we've spent some time polishing it up for use in Nephalem Rifts and Greater Rifts. You'll have a chance to spawn Cesspool levels while in a Rift, and we hope you enjoy this new randomized landscape!

We may have additional treats on the horizon, but let's not get too Greedy. . . . You'll have your hands on the PTR soon enough to find out more.

We are incredibly excited to share patch 2.1.0 with you and can't wait to see your reactions once the PTR goes live. Be sure let us know what you think of the changes and features, and send any bug reports our way as you explore Seasons, Greater Rifts, Leaderboards, and more.

What new feature are you most excited about? Are you going to climb the Greater Rifts leaderboard, or will you race to be the first to complete as many Conquests as you can? Let us know in the comments below, and we'll see you soon™ on the PTR!

also this from a Diablo 3 Community Manager when asked about auto picking up gems and crafting mats:

This is a good suggestion, and it's actually been something that we've been exploring since just before Reaper of Souls launched.

On the whole, we agree with your feedback and are currently working on some different ways to help streamline the process of picking up, storing, and using crafting resources.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with the caveat that any changes we make to crafting material management at this point would come after Reaper of Souls ships. With that in mind, here’s a few ideas we’re tinkering with to help get you thinking about some of the cool possibilities:

• All crafting materials would be moved to a currency-style storage in the UI. Think something similar to Blood Shards.

• All crafting materials would become auto pickup, except for LEGENDARY crafting material. (Legendary crafting material would still be automatically stored as a currency, but players must click on it to pick it up.)

• All crafters would pull crafting materials from this storage area for recipes.

• Crafting materials that the player doesn’t currently own would appear in grey text with a 0 counter.

• Players could mouse over the icons of all crafting material to get the full tooltip of the item. This includes greyed out ones.

• Currently, we do not intend to store gems in this way because it would make socketing items feel clunky.

I should point out that we won't be making any adjustments to the crafting resource management system in patch 2.1. The ideas we have about possible changes to crafting material storage and currency are just that: ideas. They're still subject to heavy amounts of change and iteration, and are not something we've yet decided to implement.

 

[BloodOmen]

Seasons sound good

Greater rifts sound mediocre

Leaderboards sounds like it'll cater to paragon 700+ people who exploited most of the way via bugged chest events or afk farming in act 5

rest is meh

 

[Ctuchik]

More legendaries are always nice i suppose. But it would be nicer if they made all the legendaries we have now that sucks, not suck.

For example, who the hell finds http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/azurewrath worth using?

Sure the orange secondary is kinda ok:ish, but it's still a really shitty weapon.

 

[Mabs]

not every item is end game, its progression based, so thats better than some stuff and worse than others.. whats the prob with that ?

 

[Ctuchik]

Not saying make every item an end game item. I'm saying "make them not suck".

 

[Madmaxx]

So something they have added on the PTR for 2.1 is a Treasure Goblin realm, where if you kill a regular treasure goblin you can very rarely jump in the portal it leaves behind; and here it is !


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwT3gbl4W9Y

 

[Ctuchik]

Hmmmm, kinda sorta going to far in the other direction now, doesn't it? I mean, wtf are we supposed to do with that much gold anyway? It's not like we're going to be able tp spend it no matter how hard we try. The dungeon itself is cool, but that gold rain is just pointless.

 

[Syri]

I just spent about 10 mil doing gems and stat switches for 2 pieces of armour. I could do with that room about now...

 

[pikeh]

Hmmmm, kinda sorta going to far in the other direction now, doesn't it? I mean, wtf are we supposed to do with that much gold anyway? It's not like we're going to be able tp spend it no matter how hard we try. The dungeon itself is cool, but that gold rain is just pointless.

Yeh man, you need to start stat switching and upgrading gems if you have lots of gold :\

 

[Ctuchik]

I just spent about 10 mil doing gems and stat switches for 2 pieces of armour. I could do with that room about now...

Oh come on, it's not like gold is hard to get to begin with anymore. Even if you don't vendor any of the loot that drops, getting that much can be done in a matter of days of semi-casual play.

Getting ~90 million gold from a 5 - 10 minute run dungeon is stupid no matter how rare a spawn that portal is or however else you look at it.