While The Tower is in Beta for Season 11, Blizzard has already promised to keep the gamemode updated and well supported going forward, saying:
Our plan is to update The Tower and Leaderboards for multiple Seasons to come. This introduction of the Tower should be considered the first iteration of this gamemode. We look forward to reading your feedback on this mode to help shape it moving forward.
The Tower as yet another Greater Rift
The Tower is undoubtedly a version of Greater Rifts from Diablo 3. Key features of The Tower include a 10-minute timer, multiple floors, and an eerily similar progression system. Killing monsters provides progress alongside collecting Orbs. The more difficult the monster, the more score they provide. Orbs drop from killing Elites, Champions, or Goblins. Starting to sound familiar?
After earning enough progress, a random Tower boss will spawn. Defeating them ends the run and marks your spot on the Leaderboard. Even more eerily, The Tower can be run from the Obelisk in Cerrigar, enabling players to run The Tower on any difficulty already unlocked for The Pit.
The Leaderboard
After two years of the community crying out for Leaderboards, a feature and a bragging right the community has grown accustomed to during Diablo 3, Leaderboards are indeed finally back in Season 11. Featuring the Name, Tier, Time, Date run, as well as being able to inspect the character that completed the run, the leaderboard is much more robust than a simple brag board. Being able to discern the meta more clearly through inspecting players will lead to a new level of theorycrafting and information throughout the entire game. But all of this news leaves a bit of a sour note.
Just a few months ago, the question of leaderboards for the pit was floated on Reddit, and got a response from Director of Diablo Social Content, Adam Fletcher a.k.a PezRadar.
It is a bit far away. 100% get that. But a lot of people suggested “Just throw them on Pits”. But we believe there are some flaws with that. Pit is a nice option because it is part of the core flow of the game for players which was something Gauntlet wasn’t. But it also doesnt lead to tons of challenge beyond the end boss fight while even past features in past games like GRs take in the thought of how to bring in mobs and chain specific items. The team is really wanting this to be fairly rock solid while still achieving some of reasons why players say “Just use Pit”.
We will have more to share on those plans in the future.
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Solidifying to ensure any exploits etc are not possible is another big thing for a feature like this.
If this is truly the intent of The Tower and the Leadboard attached to it, it is curious to see the system form into a near copy of the Pit. The Public Test Realm will shine more light on the system as a whole as well as the challenges associated with it. As of right now, it is unclear if there are any rewards at all for running The Tower.
Still, if the Patch Notes are to be believed, this system is just another rehashed version of the Pit and Greater Rifts, but as a separate feature, which begs the question: Why was this not put on the Pit instead? If the Gauntlet is outside of the Gameloop, why is The Tower not facing the same criticism from Blizzard?
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