Abyss Content Integration

yeah , stygian vise too strong even non shaped/elder , i thought it was either no longer drop or buff other belts implicit

I didnt even had knowlegement of people not seeing lich once :O thats surprises me...

I have meet him at least 100+ times for sure, and when i make a calc with "/played" command on my chars i only played ~14days and 18hours this league.

On topic, i like the opinion in general, was a nice league, second best after breach imo

I was really hoping that the vises wouldn't make into the core game, I feel they are too powerful, hopefully I am wrong...

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D3izhistory wrote:

GGG for those of us who currently have shaped or elder stygians. What is the fate of those items? As your post states they will no longer drop that way but there was no clarification on whether a nerf/erase would come to those already obtained once transferred to standard.

If this could be cleared up it would be greatly appreciated

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Starkofdoom wrote:

Are there going to be Legacy Lightpoachers? Or is the change going to affect existing items as well?

This sort of information would be great to know if GGG has a few spare seconds

nice one GGG

Oh hey look, it's GGG hiding RNG behind RNG behind RNG.

What. A. Surprise.

It gets kind of old GGG. Thumbs down on this one.

Lot of interesting thoughts.

To all the people claiming stygian vises are ok to stay ask yourself this. Would you use any non-unique belt in place of a stygian vise? If the answer is no then that is a serious problem. It essentially deletes the other belt bases from the game. And you cannot equate stygian vises to headhunters. Cause even with the reduce drop rate for them to come. It won't be remotely close to the rarity of headhunters.

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ncsbert wrote:

As much as I would like to say that Abyss was a successful league, I can't overlook the major bug that tilted the Lich spawn rate, which effectively adjusted the economy in a very negative way.

It's really disappointing that simulations regarding the spawn rate were not run well into the duration of the league, and not until after a multitude of the player base had complained about it.

You can do better, GGG.

Agreed. The "fix" came way too late. I'm generally pretty disappointed with how the bug was handled considering how much it messed with player's challenges.

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Qarl wrote:

Abyss was introduced in 3.1.0 on December 4 alongside the War for the Atlas expansion.

December 8.

December 4 is when Harbinger League ended.

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Qarl wrote:

A lot of effort went into making Abyss. We took the best elements of old leagues, as well as developing new technology for its signature element - The Abyss cracks required a big effort in both art and technology to make them conform to terrain and to look awesome on most ground types.

The art team did excellent work.

Also, I appreciated that Abyss was more consistent than Breach on certain tilesets.

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Qarl wrote:

Abyss Jewels were comparable to other Jewels on the passive tree and opened up new build possibilities.

Sometimes this is true.

Sometimes an entire unique jewel is a single property on a rare Abyssal jewel.

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Qarl wrote:

The Jewels, and especially the new belt base type, make Abyss a difficult league to keep. The belt easily becomes the best belt choice, as the Jewel you get to wear outstrips other implicits on belts. It is fine to have a league where builds are different and interesting, and pushed in a certain direction, but it makes it hard to keep the content permanently.

This was what I anticipated would decide Abyss League’s fate.

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Qarl wrote:

If we kept the monsters and ground cracks, but not the rewards, we don't think that would be a popular choice. Nerfing the rewards heavily and keeping the content would let us keep the content but would mar it as far as players would be concerned.

I’ve a lot of respect for you for saying this. Thank you for the candour.

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Qarl wrote:

So having worked out that we want to keep the league, what are the details of how we integrate it? We decided to add the content from Part Two (i.e. the start of Act Six) onwards. It works well with existing level design, so we can keep it in the levelling content. It is fairly intrusive to play, so we opted to keep it entirely out of Part One, and then introduce it when another significant change has also happened to the world.

I like that!

But maybe prevent them from spawning until the Prison? If they’re permitted to spawn immediately after the Resistance penalty they’ll eat noobs to the point of harming player retention, and they can sometimes spawn in locations you cannot avoid without resetting the instance.

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Qarl wrote:

Abysses will occur 10% of the time in instances, with some adjustments for smaller and special areas. The 10% will also apply in maps. As Breaches will occur 10% of the time in maps, players have a considerable chance of finding either a Breach or Abyss in their map.

Can you confirm that this won’t impact Trials in any way?

They’re one of an increasing number of ten percenters and in SSF the combination of relative rarity and random nature of which one you’ll get is frustrating enough as it is. I don’t want echos of previous leagues exacerbating that. Artificial content gating = bad.

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Qarl wrote:

We have increased the odds of a Lich occuring in the Depths, so there is a still a reasonable chance of finding them

Still?

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Qarl wrote:

We decided a mid-league nerf wasn't justified for an item with limited availability.

I like to think this was not the only consideration.

If I invested in the Volatile Dead enchantment and Lightpoacher, and you nerfed both mid-League, you’d probably never see me again. Even after the initial emotion wore off, I’d never feel comfortable buying anything expensive ever again.

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Qarl wrote:

We look forward to seeing you all enjoying Abyss content in 3.2.0 along with all the other new content that release will bring.

Looking forward to it!

For Abyss my time was divided across PC and console, and a stressful start to Abyss due to RL stuff kinda tainted it for me. Can’t wait for a new league. :)