Season One and Race feedback

Honestly, the entire "Race" system seems to cater specifically to a tiny subset of streamers. It's like an excuse to inject more Exalts their way via Demigods.


The races are a good idea -- but you really need to be allocating your resources to fixing the game-breaking bugs you still have (desync + client performance)

A few more ideas for season 2 races (just opinions, comments/suggestions are welcome):

1. Limited instances: Players can only enter/reset an instance 3 times (maximum, regardless if the player missed a quest etc, it's up to the player to be responsible). this will force progression (no more 1.5 hours of dock/western/sarn farming).

2. No quest rewards: You get your first gem from the first zombie (perhaps change the witch/duelist starting gems to something less OP vs the others <--- in terms of starting gems ppl, don't yell at me! :)
2a. Only gems acquired via drops could be used (or traded if it's a party style race).
2b. RNG would probably determine the winner of this type of race, that, or really good strategy and skill.

3. Class specific races: everyone must choose X class for Y race type.

4. One toon limit: i.e. players can only make 1 character p/race. No reroll, no muling. If you die, it's over for that race, cannot re-enter. this race would have to be solo, as I could see party race(rs) abusing this.

5. Similar to above: Stash disabled race.

6. No vendor race. Vendors do sell items/currency etc (might be possible to still allow them to buy from player)

7 races where goals are the end, not a time limit. Example: first to reach act 1 merciless, or 1st to kill Vaal in X difficulty, etc.
7a. Race ends when X player has accomplished the goal (first player to do so of course).

If I think of others I'll post them. thx for reading :)

PS my apologies if these ideas have already been floating around.

This is what I'd like to see.

1) Progression based races

2) Season long party race event. Basicly functioning as a ladder reset. Could even be possible to have two of these, one hardcore, one default

It seems like every time I'm available to play it's a 3 hour party race, so I've yet to actually play one. I would participate in them if there were some rewards for solo players in these, I have a feeling most of the people outside of the top 20 players are playing these solo anyways.

- Races should be limited to one life (per account), as some have stated.

- More 'First' objectives, especially on Uniques (Chatters, Sawbones, etc).

- See objectives/deaths w/o chat up.

- Act 2 and Act 3 races, where everyone starts with X skill points and basic starting equipment. (Going through Act 1 all the time gets a little boring)

- Endless Dungeon: Pick a map style and have it play over and over, randomly selecting enemies and one unique for each level. No quest rewards.

- Random Endless Mode: Same as Endless, but each level has a random map modifier (lethal, turbo, etc)

- Yggdrasil Mode: Everyone starts in the center of the skill tree (not sure how good this would be, or even if its doable, but just an idea that popped up).

- Ironman Mode: No vendors.

- Nightmare Mode: Enemies move faster and self-resurrect unless gibbed.

- Holy Shit: 1Hr, Turbo Lethal Multiproj Ancestral Race. Just because.

- Possible allowing players to choose they race type they wish to play in, especially for the longer races, assuming race rewards are based on race type. (eg: I'd love to run an Ancestral week long race, while others may want to try Turbo or just a vanilla race).

Ok here are major problems of racing:


1.Terrible rewards. You are heavily overestimating cosmetic factors. On my friendlist there are barely players left that are racing.

Solution: Create optional rewards like maps/currency. You got a score for a ladder and a transaction score(Partially bound of a ladder like unused score gets divided by 10 and is useable for next ladder). For example 1 point = 1 Transmute/Scrap 2 Points= 1 Alternation/1 Whetstone/1 Aug, 4 Points = 1 Juweler/Glassblower/Chromatic/Chance, 16 Points= 1 Fusing/Alchemy/Scouring/1Regret, 32 Points = 1 Chaos/Blessed/Chisel, 64 Points 1 Regal, 96 Points 1 GCP, 128 Points = 1 Divine, 256 Points = Exalted and 1000 a mirror.


or maps: 33->Random level 66, 66->lvl 67 but Mountain Ledge, 100->Level 68 but Vaal Pyramids(cannot be crafted anyway), 150 level 69 and 200 level 70, 250 lvl 71, 300 lvl 72, 400 lvl 73, 500 lvl 74, 600 lvl 75, 750 level 76 and 1000 level 77.

The first ones are according Vendorreceipes but doubling every time would result in maps being overvalued at lower levels.

Such rewards would make races more appealing to far more players and would strike down the fools gold market.
The game is based on crafting, so why do you punish players to MMO like grinding and hoarding Currency like High Runes in D2 by nerfing receipes and make currency rare? In CB Races I used up 90% of the currency I got from after Migration rewards and 10% was used for trading. Current system is only helping RMT sites(But I already suggested that currency should have got quality like gems in Diablo2 so high quality affects high level items and low quality can be used on maps)

The only time where currency rewards were too generous was the pre migration time where you got 70 really valuable currency items during a race and you had many stacks of exalteds/divines.




2.No mixed Scoreboards for solo/party/special races, no parallel races and rewarding no lifing
Currently it's like that: 1st timezone: 3h Party 2nd nothing 3rd 1h solo Special 4th 1h solo special again.

So basically a player living in the first zone more interested in special races is forced to participate in an event he doesn't like.

Scoreboards must be divided into Solo/Party (+Normal/Special) so there are 4 ladders.

There should be a limit to participate max 2 times the same eventtype a day.
There must be more parallel races and to satisfy timezones they all must be the same.(In a league there aren't teams which have 100 games and others got 10 games in a season)

For example.
4 Races: 3h Party Normal(Normal Party)/3h Party Ancestral,Turbo(Party Special)/3h Solo normal(Normal Solo)/1h Lethal Solo(Solo special)

In every zone. So somebody can participate in 3h Party twice but must participate in a different mode another time.

So basically there are 16 events a day for 4 league types. Each has its own ranking score, rewardspoints can be used up any time.



3. Barely any modification in modes.

There are mainly 1h, 3h and less 2h and 4h races, with different mods.

Like said in CB. There should be far more level based CT Races. Exping in Areas must be punished. Especially in 2h and 3h Races. If somebody is farming he might be easily knocked out by somebody behind him. And "Balance" must not be an excuse to exclude those races. The game is unbalanced itself and no PVP/PK experience/using sheer numbers to "balance" won't do any good.

Progression based races over time would also be a fair solution and heavily remove those 1 week no lifing(Winner with 5/7 Days playtime) inbalance.

Also modes like Iron Man, Random fixed party(bad luck you are alone if your party died), instance limit would be far more fun.

Not to mention modes that would force you to play a class like. 1h Mara Lethal(Wands and Bows don't drop)

I would rather play daily 4h for 1 month than 8h+ a day for a week.

This should be implementable without many problems such as races starting in another act or cruel.



4.Heavy Class/Build inbalance during races

Currently the winners are mainly racers usings the same build over and over.

There is a heavy inbalance between classes and builds.

For example if you create an Ice Nova/Fireball templar, abuse weaknesses like Brutus Stairs, you can reach merveil times at 32 min and 35-39min merveil is a common time, while a melee Templar is limited to a 38 min best time and 40-44min merveil are more common times.

So basically each race should have a fingerprint which will be lifted after 2 weeks.
You take Templar IceNova/Fireball or Shadow Poison Arrow+FireTrap-->Next race those gems are unavailable for you on this class.
This would also punish gem muling which is a big advantage for many classes.

This would force placers to create many different builds and plan to take gems. For example a duelist can take Leap Attack only once after brutus, so he must create another build for the next race he takes a duelist.

Currently winner builds are mainly no brainers.
Test many classes and check time.
Take best timed builds.
For example every good ranked duelist takes leap slam.

If you think the fingerprint system is too hard implement then create a Multiplier based on gem choices.

For example Top 100 from each class at one time get counted. The gem choices get analyzed and if for example more than 33% used the same combination those players get only 2/3 of their score.
This way players trying unique builds get rewarded and players abusing inbalance get punished.
Of course the data will be recorded on the server at common winner times+5 min and the rest gets filled up, so throwing gems away has no effect.

You could even change it that way that players with quiet unique builds that did well get 4/3 of their score.(if 33% used a powerful build)

In Terms of Transactionpoints you could create a falling exponential multiplier based on available points for example a fermi-dirac distribution.

This will result in following situation:
Ladder Score: Gets a choice based modifier
Transaction Points: It gets far harder to obtain many Transaction points to get the best rewards.
While you can obtain several exalteds in a season it will be close to impossible to reach 1000 Points for a mirror.


5.Reward Points and unfair rewards
There is a major flaw with rewards such as Hillock.

Hillock goes to the shadow with most crits and best start in all modes but lethal where the ranger with best start and crtis takes the reward.

Those rewards must be removed or balanced to first of each class.

On the other hand there should be far more Reward Points/ Reward point situations increasing by progression for example Act 1 Cruel in 3h solo race give 5-10 times the points from normal.
Creating level gaps for a few points is too harsh.

Instead each level should have its own points and it should be modifyable, such as mentioned multiplier penalty for taking the builds with most power and a bonus for less powered builds or forcing players into creating many different builds on different classes.
Limiting amount of races for everybody.

This way only the smartest players will have the most points in their ladder, instead of players perfecting times on the most effective build.

In terms of a transaction score this will have following effect. Most players will be able to get to regal orbs. But to get further they are forced to do better, with different builds or else their score gets a penalty and even good racers might end up with only 300 Points and some demigods while 2000 would be the reward without penalties.

Forcing players to act clever to obtain more points, will create a new situation and far better cosmetic rewards may be possible.

A perfect player might obtain a cosmetic highlevel unique/mirror or might get several exalteds since penalties prevent a smoother progression to 1000 Points.

I just want to add that the rewards offered currently do not matter in the slightest to me, therefore I no longer participate in these events, unless either I am bored with just playing the game or have nothing better to do.

It takes less overall effort to farm for currency or spend that time trading items and just outright buy them from players who have many.

When I first started this game the races greatly appealed to me, the idea of investing time in them was worthwhile at that point i felt, both for the currency rewards and the cash shop coins.

Also I agree very strongly with most of what Hilbert has posted. Especially topic No. 4 and 5.

My feedback:

Races are not wortyh doing at the moment because there is no way I can play that many races to get just an item that I don't want and will not use. Part of this is no ingame difference to the looks of the item, similar to how fairgraves cap looks AWESOME in the image, but looks like a stupid shower cap.

Secondly, races are fairly bland. There is no feeling of progression, its 'get to here fast, farm, get to here fast, farm', I don't feel any incentive to do this as I already do this on whatever char i'm playing in the normal ladder, and I get more progression out of this.

Thirdly, I know I will never be anywhere near the higher end of the spectrum. I know I will barely get any quest rewards. I know that I will not be the first to do anything. This means I feel no gain by competing, indeed getting to the minimum rewards itself isn't worth it.


Some ideas that I enjoyed from reading the thread:
Better system of points for just completing things, so I can race against myself, completing as many objectives as possible in a progression race for example.

Going "How fast can I get to Piety and kill her" or even "kill merveil" races. That would be fun



Personally a really unique sort of race, but might require far too much work by the devs:
Backwards Race --> No actual quests, just need to go through content backwards. Simply put, you start in act 3 base, but goign through the door takes you to piety area. Piety is like hillock in difficulty. YOu then run through act 3 backwards, from lunaris->barracks->warehouse sewers, you need to go to solaris still, but it unlocks the entrance to sarn slums instead, where you go into the crematorium, then you come out and find her to save her from guards. Finally you go and you kill that evil guy from city of sarn, to get the entrance to the next area.

Vaal super weak, but add a super monkey near the end of Forest who is a pain to deal with.

Merv weaker than usual, but hillock is a complete demolisher of hope.

Could be kinda fun but would be a lot of work (especially with how non-linear act 2 is)

Don't know if this has already been said before, but how about a race with increased currency item drops? after the race players would lose all currency they acquire to prevent it from impacting the economy, this could be taken a step further by making it so only white items drop