How to incentivize non-meta builds: a new series of dynamic vendor quests

Oh I don't want to sound like I'm complaining because the execution and the details are different - I was just trying to phrase it with necessary uncertainty. It seems to me that Prophecy will satisfy my base concerns, but I don't know for two reasons:

1) I'm biased towards my own idea, so of course I would have a tendency to view this as 'yeah GGG agrees with me, I was right!'

2) We don't know all the Prophecy deatils - it could still be the case that this DOESN'T address my concerns, and that the rewards and mechanics are such that meta builds are both incentivized to do it, and do it 8x safer and faster than non meta builds.

Love the idea. Might make things a little stash tab heavy but I agree the game needs to slow down and actually become a challenge again (remember how hard it was after the forsaken masters monster buff?)

+1 from me.

If you don't like the " meta " builds , don't play them .

Your single and most important incentive to play the game is playing the game because it is a good game lol .

I think the important point here is the feeling that no matter what you do, you have a feeling you could do it faster and more efficient.
It's not to do things differently, it's that currently, different is just worse, and not different.
When people try out things off the meta, few do it with the express prospect to purposefully gimp themselves.
Also, I think the "single and most important incentive" of a lot of people these days is reaching a higher number. Because it's more. :P

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tryhardgg wrote:

If you don't like the " meta " builds , don't play them .

Your single and most important incentive to play the game is playing the game because it is a good game lol .

"

UnDeaD_CyBorG wrote:

I think the important point here is the feeling that no matter what you do, you have a feeling you could do it faster and more efficient.
It's not to do things differently, it's that currently, different is just worse, and not different.
When people try out things off the meta, few do it with the express prospect to purposefully gimp themselves.
Also, I think the "single and most important incentive" of a lot of people these days is reaching a higher number. Because it's more. :P

The most important point here, in hindsight, was that the gap between meta and non meta builds is too large for a game that sells itself on complexity, diversity, and options. I break it down like this:

Meta - Add up the most played builds until you hit 50% of all builds.
Non-Meta - Everything else.

So if 8% of players are playing +3 bow CA traps, and 7.5% are playing Vaal Spark, and 7% are playing Voltaxic Spark etc etc.... just making up numbers, but how many builds would you have to check off the list before you got to 50% of the players? And how much faster are those builds than someone that thinks Ice Shot or Elemental Hit or Cleave is a legit skill choice?

Sure there's the extreme on the other side. No one wants all skills identically numerically balanced. But when they release Frostbolt, it shouldn't have the same AoE and 50% more damage than Fireball. Similar skills (in terms of function) should have relatively similar power levels at end game. Someone said in another thread: Blast Rain, Rain of Arrows, Bladefall, and Firestorm are all basically the same skill. And they are! It's perfectly reasonable to believe that none of these skills should ever be more than 25% stronger or safer than any of the other three.

You're right tryhardGG, I don't have to play non-meta builds. And I don't! At least not on purpose - I did accidentally once. But I don't want to ruin the game for myself. One of these leagues I'm going to make a thorns character - maybe in Prophecy with that new Bramblejack upgrade. I can't foresee myself having the patience to play that build coming off of playing something meta. There's just no way. So I won't. :P

For players like me, who want to play with the Bramblejacks and Elemental Hits of this game - players who stop to help Elreon cause he's our bro. Players who pick up items because this is allegedly a loot hunting game - what I'm asking for in the OP is that if they insist on not buffing these items and skills, then they should give us a way to close the gap between slow play and speed play. This is good for them too because with this system they would be under less pressure to balance the game. (which, regardless of how you feel about balance, we know is something they say they care about)

This post may be more feedback, but I'll tie it into the framing of the OP to keep it 'gameplay discussion' as much as possible. There are probably enough feedback threads about prophecy that we don't need another one anyway.

I engaged with prophecies heavily for the first time today at end game (that is to say, when I could have been doing something 'better' with my time - like running T9 maps). I've got to say: Prophecy delivers. I had a blast. It could use some tweaks though.

1) Can we get a counter on how many Prophecies we've completed? My first thought was a leaderboard for Prophecies completed but I can see that incentivizing some really shitty gameplay for any group trying to compete for this. So scratch the leaderboard. But I'd still like an account-wide count of how many Prophecies I've done.

2) Prophecy rewards are weirdly balanced. Kuduku/Kadaka gives 3 fusings, yet it's probably the easiest one to do among all those that require you to leave town. I'd like to see this and the 'kill a Bloodlines pack for 5 fusings' toned down in their rewards, but have more prophecies that have this reward structure - even if its just 5 chromatics, or 3 jewelers. This is especially true when...

3) It asks you to go to zones that are sub 68. If we're going back to zones that don't give experience, we should be getting currency rewards for it every time. If a prophecy doesn't give a currency reward, the zone level should be increased to 68 at MINIMUM, or perhaps (player_level - X) where X cannot exceed 75.

4) Throw out thoughts 2 and 3 as far as the chains are concerned. Working toward fighting the pale council is enough of a reward. Same for frogs, rats, and insects. I'm very happy with those.

5) The find a unique off of a rare monster quests are too ubiquitous. I love the choices for some of them though like Pledge of Hands and Astramentis.

6) The upgrade a unique to fated quests are too ubiquitous. I know there need to be enough of them to satisfy the goal of players getting them during leveling for a reasonable price, but I continue to get these a lot more than I'd like. Perhaps GGG can change the weighting of these as the league goes on, and less people are leveling new characters.

7) Broadly speaking, since the rewards are a bit on the light side, I think the cost to seal prophecies is a bit on the high side. Either up the former, or lower the latter just a little (maybe 20-25%).

Overall, and bringing it back to the OP: is Prophecy making me do something other than chain maps together? Well, for one night it did at least. Right now I'd say, conceptually, prophecy is an 8/10 at fulfilling the goals I set out originally - for me. Tightening up the balance of currency rewards, and upping the zone levels would take it to a 10/10.

I tried to read very little feedback from others about prophecy before posting this, so I'm now looking forward to going and seeing what others have said.