MXL: Sigma Announced

opsayo wrote:My favorite part of MXL was always that the gameplay before the end-game was more interesting and engaging than other D2 mods (including vanilla)

Doing the easy ubers on the way to 120 are the most fun IMO. Except for judgement day, I hate waiting for that stupid dual cast.

Then comes Baal, on the way to him you get 120, throw away the character orb and just curse that fucker for being so annoying.

Good to hear and welcome!

Indeed I do think that a lot of people who might have tried median in the past and not liked it that much will give median a second chance with sigma. To succeed here there are two important aspects we'll have to work on: make the game playable without need of documentation and implement a fun PvP system. Right now the most problematic things are cube recipes and challenges.

In the case of challenges, minigames and such, we'll implement custom quests tab. That way all information regarding challenges will be available in-game. When it comes to level challenges, we could implement some sort of triggers, for example, when you reach level 50 you get prompted with a message saying there's a challenge awaiting. That way, players won't have an excuse to miss them

In the case of cube recipes, probably the key is to implement cube reagents that are straight-forward and have a description on what they do. Of course you cannot cover all cube recipes with these reagents, but at least the most relevant ones, such as creating uniques or uptiering, and who knows what else.

I don't think that a PvP aspect will have as much impact as you believe in terms of attracting new players.

Having followed and participated in the D3 & Path of Exile betas one thing I've noticed is that people on community forums/reddit are always very vocal about their demand for organised pvp systems. Of course in arpgs this aspect is always a secondary priority to developers, but the online forums would have you believe it is very much in demand. So eventually, once the games got released, both blizz & GGG did introduce varied PvP modes to their games. In fact PoE took it one step further where they introduced dedicated PvP servers where people can get pre-levelled characters with starter gear. The result is that now barely anyone participates in them. Furthermore there are plenty of examples of successful arpgs with large communities who have absolutely no pvp aspect - titan quest, grim dawn & the van helsing series come to mind.

Granted, Diablo 2 is probably the only successful arpg where a good chunk of the population is interested in pvp. However this was mainly because it was the first of its kind to have a large online community and also because there is barely anything else to do in it once you reach the endgame. So while I can see some value in using PvP as an advertisement tool to get D2 players to try out sigma (especially because it will be a great way to show off how how much better the core is compared to vanilla), its impact on the general arpg player will be practically negligible.

That being said, thumbs up to making the game more intuitive and self-contained. I have watched a few first time median streamers and this is one of the major downsides that nearly every one of them mentions. Apart from the documentation this category also includes unexpected damage spikes that you cannot predict are coming if you are a casual/first time player. These are mainly A2: pests landmine, ice clan shaman voodoo; A4: firebloods; A5: detonators; as well as a few poison damage elites - corruptor mages & sons of lucion. In my opinion those procs/skills they use need to get nerfed severely on normal especially since it was already mentioned that the char orb will be going.

suchbalance wrote:I don't think that a PvP aspect will have as much impact as you believe in terms of attracting new players.

Having followed and participated in the D3 & Path of Exile betas one thing I've noticed is that people on community forums/reddit are always very vocal about their demand for organised pvp systems. Of course in arpgs this aspect is always a secondary priority to developers, but the online forums would have you believe it is very much in demand. So eventually, once the games got released, both blizz & GGG did introduce varied PvP modes to their games. In fact PoE took it one step further where they introduced dedicated PvP servers where people can get pre-levelled characters with starter gear. The result is that now barely anyone participates in them. Furthermore there are plenty of examples of successful arpgs with large communities who have absolutely no pvp aspect - titan quest, grim dawn & the van helsing series come to mind.

Granted, Diablo 2 is probably the only successful arpg where a good chunk of the population is interested in pvp. However this was mainly because it was the first of its kind to have a large online community and also because there is barely anything else to do in it once you reach the endgame. So while I can see some value in using PvP as an advertisement tool to get D2 players to try out sigma (especially because it will be a great way to show off how how much better the core is compared to vanilla), its impact on the general arpg player will be practically negligible.

Well, PVP to start off will not be implemented in the first patch. It will come as an expansion release in a patch update. And it will include fun stuff that's never been seen on D2, such as a capture the flag game mode. I also have a COD-like zombie mode in mind. These game modes will be available as an option on game creation and therefore won't interfer in any way with the classic pvm game mode. That is, even if it was to not attract that many players, it would just be there, available for those who want it, and others can keep going in pvm.

whist wrote:These game modes will be available as an option on game creation and therefore won't interfer in any way with the classic pvm game mode.

Awesome.

Capture the flag, everyone picks necro and jumps around, that got to be fun.

Health cap is very tricky to expand, but yesterday we were discussing with whist and I asked him if a new stat called "damage divisor" could be implemented. What this stat would do is divide all damage taken by X. Instead of "damage reduced by X" it would be "damage divided by X". And implementing this stat seems to be possible.

So, then I could create a boss with damage divisor of 100. That would effectively be giving him x100 times more health, in a way.

This is fucking brilliant. Could you use different divisors for different damage types? That would allow certain damage types to do more, or less, damage. So, for example, Kabraxis could have physical divisor of 100, magical divisor of 100, cold 50, fire 50, lightning 50, poison 100. This would make him easier for a rainbow build than for a WDM build. Just an example, not a recommendation lol.

Or maybe have the divisor change randomly, thus dropping his resistances for a short time

Maybe just me, but seems a more flexible way of doing bosses. Still a Heroic shield, just differently handled by the engine

suchbalance wrote:I don't think that a PvP aspect will have as much impact as you believe in terms of attracting new players.

[...]

You bring good points. However, I don't expect to put PvP at the level of PvE in terms of popularity and whatnot. The idea is just to have PvP as a fun feature that people can mess around. Currently, due to how damage is calculated and such, it's very tricky to make PvP fun. But, if this damagedivisor stat can be created, we could make specific areas for PvP where players are granted these stats (as well as disable healing and potions, for example). This alone would be a simple implementation and would make PvP so much more fun.

Even if it's true that lod PvP was popular just due to the fact that lod was popular by itself back then, a lot of people have asked for it. Additionally, we have an edge over the big companies: we won't stick with conservative implementations. For example, you wouldn't expect to see something like capture the flag on d3 or PoE. This is just an example, but in the future, adding several PvP modes could open up for a lot of minigames for people to mess around. Eventually, there will be so much cool stuff to do on PvP (rather than just fight vs each other) that I think it's possible it becomes popular.

spinheadmickey wrote:
Health cap is very tricky to expand, but yesterday we were discussing with whist and I asked him if a new stat called "damage divisor" could be implemented. What this stat would do is divide all damage taken by X. Instead of "damage reduced by X" it would be "damage divided by X". And implementing this stat seems to be possible.

So, then I could create a boss with damage divisor of 100. That would effectively be giving him x100 times more health, in a way.

This is fucking brilliant. Could you use different divisors for different damage types? That would allow certain damage types to do more, or less, damage. So, for example, Kabraxis could have physical divisor of 100, magical divisor of 100, cold 50, fire 50, lightning 50, poison 100. This would make him easier for a rainbow build than for a WDM build. Just an example, not a recommendation lol.

Or maybe have the divisor change randomly, thus dropping his resistances for a short time

Maybe just me, but seems a more flexible way of doing bosses. Still a Heroic shield, just differently handled by the engine

Yes all of it is possible. I don't think making a random aura with varying divisors will accomplish much though. Making it for example range from 40 to 60 would not be much different than just giving them 50. And the idea of this stat is to give consistency (unlike huge %avoid or heroic shields), not randomness.

Ahh, now I see. Great idea! Actually looking forward to first Sigma boss fight

Derpalistic wrote:Go play some classic d2.

pipendrusu, is that you?

I got tons of idea how to improve newbie experience, but Im holding them until at least alpha released.

I still think that current median is not casual friendly, but it is rewarding for people that read documentation. (they cant learn from experience of game alone like dark souls like game).
So it is our job to explain all this mechanic properly with this ancient d2 engine.

Another way to make game easier for new gamer is maybe to colour code enemy missiles / projectile. Like red = fire, yellow = lightning, blue = ice. Mostly we have correct display, but other time is not clear.
Same goes for curse / aura / buff / debuff, some graphic are not clear to player either it is good or bad (unless whist managed to show buff/debuff icons duration at side of the screen).

*Go try any new mobile game and see how many hand holding in them, that it is current generation expectation from a game.