One of the bigger systems that’s been missing from Diablo 4 has been leaderboards and we’re going to be getting these with Season 3. Tied onto leaderboards, we’re also going to be getting a new endgame system called The Gauntlet. If you haven’t played this game yet, you should consider and buy Diablo 4.
Both of these systems are tied together, so you’re not going to be partaking in leaderboards by doing normal Nightmare Dungeons and you’re not going to be running the new Gauntlet without it being tied directly into leaderboard.
A really big plus of this is that they get to design both of these systems with each other in mind, so they’re balanced correctly and they have a gameplay system that is directly built to put you on leaderboards and to have that competition.
The Gauntlet & Leaderboards
The Gauntlet system is quite a bit different from anything else we’ve had in Diablo 4.
To enter, you’re going to have to be in World Tier 4, but you don’t need to be level 100, so you can start this right when you get into World Tier 4 to try to get on the leaderboards. But I doubt you’re going to be like top 10 or top 1,000 on a build below level 100, especially once everybody gets to level 100. Therefore, if you want to be more competitive in the process, you’d better stick with Diablo 4 Gold to continuously improve yourself!
The Gauntlet itself is a fixed seed, non-linear dungeon, meaning all the monsters, the position of these monsters, the layout of the dungeon, the affixes of the dungeon and the chest locations are all going to be fixed for that week. But at the beginning of every new week, it’s another new fixed seed dungeon.
So, when you’re competing against each other on that week’s leaderboard, you’re doing the exact same dungeon. This means this is going to be a lot more competitive and generally a lot more fair than other leaderboards, where it may be based on completely random greater rifts or something like that.
One of the most interesting parts about The Gauntlet is that it’s a non-linear dungeon. Now, I don’t exactly know what they were meaning by this, but a lot of people have taken this to mean that this may be a much larger dungeon than say Nightmare Dungeons and it will have a lot more routes and be built in a completely different way, because these are going to be fixed.
But a nonlinear dungeon just based on normal Nightmare Dungeons really doesn’t work that well anyway, so it’s probably going to be built completely differently than all the other dungeons we’ve gotten so far.
And to help with making these dungeons as competitive as possible, you’re not going to be getting loot while running through the dungeon. All of the loot is going to be given to you at the end, so something a bit more similar to Mythic + dungeons in World of Warcraft.
There’s no loot drops until you complete it and until you get to the end, so you don’t have to worry about picking up loot whatsoever, which would massively slow down your time. And I think this is something that had to be done. Choosing between having a quicker time or picking up loot is a very bad choice and would just make the system much less enjoyable.
Because these Gauntlet runs are non-linear, there’s actually going to be a lot of ways you can try to maximize the group. One of the examples I gave is if you’re in a group, which there will be group leaderboards, you can have people go different directions to try to maximize your score, because getting a higher score is obviously what’s going to be getting you higher on the leaderboards.
But it’s not just going to be killing monsters that gives you points. Killing monsters, opening chests and other pickups will give you Proofs of Might, and these Proofs of Might are basically going to be your score. So, not only will defeating monsters give you this, but opening chests and picking up Diablo 4 Items off the ground from some defeated enemies and from chests will give you more score.
And I’m assuming these aren’t D4 items for sale you have to click on them. I’m assuming these Proofs of Might are probably something that you have to walk over, which could also add in more strategy because you might not want to walk back and pick up a few Proofs of Might instead of just continuing forward and going to defeat more monsters. It may be more optimal to leave some behind.
When they were talking about this, it did sound like there may be different monsters that actually give you more Proofs of Might or have a higher chance to give you Proofs of Might. So, there may actually be specific enemies in that week’s Gauntlet. You may want to actually hunt for instead of stopping and killing everything, to just be much more efficient and get more Proofs of Might.
Rewards
One of the first rewards you’re going to get for partaking in these Gauntlets and the leaderboards is these different progressively more intricate seals.
This would be a different colored or more intricate banner around your character profile, and then the same with these different seals that you’d be able to show off in the game would most likely be shown off on your character.
You’d start off with like a gray seal, a silver one that’s more intricate, a gold one, and then like a platinum looking one. But then, once you get to the Seal of the Worthy, you will be put in the top 1,000 of whatever leaderboard you’re currently competing in.
If you’ve ever played something like Hearthstone, this is kind of an equivalent to that, where you’re just kind of going up in ranks, getting these different seals, and then once you get high enough, you’re basically put into Legendary, and that’ll be the top 1,000 of that leaderboard. You’ll also have a number on that. So, if you’re 990, it would show your rank 990 on the actual seal itself and on your player profile.
Different Options
Because the Gauntlets themselves are going to reset every week, so will the leaderboards. When it comes to the actual leaderboards themselves, there’s going to be a bunch of different options.
There’s going to be solo leaderboards for every single class, then there’s going to be a two-player party, three-player party, and four-player party. So, if you want to do it in a group, you can do that. Or, if you just want to do the solo and do any of the different classes, you can do that as well.
I think players that also play in groups are definitely going to have a bit more variety with this. Once you’re getting up to 2 to 4-player parties, there’s a lot more variation in what you could potentially do. You could try to run 4 different Sorcerers to try to move through the dungeon quicker, or 4 different other classes. So, there’s going to be a lot of mixes and matching with that.
But this also means if you’re somebody that plays this game a lot, you could potentially try to get to top 1,000 on every different character or multiple different classes, to be on multiple different leaderboards. It did also look like you’re going to be getting some amount of loot boxes if you get into the Seal of the Worthy or get into top 1,000 for that week.
We don’t know what those are. Just at the UI, it showed 4 different legendary boxes that you would get as a reward at the end of the week. So, there may also be some good rewards you can get weekly if you’re one of those top 1,000 people for that specific leaderboard.
This is also going to be split between hardcore and non-hardcore leaderboards, so this is definitely going to take hardcore to the next level, giving you an actual challenge and competition between all of these different hardcore characters. You’re also going to be able to filter between platform, region, your friends, or your clan. So, if you want to compete directly with your friends or all the people in your clan, you can do that as well.
Hall Of The Ancients
But all of these different systems are also going to be tied together for the Hall of the Ancients.
Hall of the Ancients is going to be a permanent leaderboard that cements the top 10 players from each week in every season forever. So this is basically going to be a listing for every single week. It’ll probably show exactly what week that is and the top 10 players will just have their name cemented there pretty much forever, or at least for the entirety of Diablo 4.
I don’t think they actually specified if this was going to be people for every leaderboard category, or if this was legitimately just the top 10 people no matter what category, no matter what leaderboard. So, I’m not exactly sure, because even the UI didn’t specify this at all. But if you’re one of those people that wants to be like the best in the world, the Hall of the Ancients is definitely a way to do that.
Something else that was also pretty interesting with this is that they are also going to be tying the build you’re using for the score you got in there. So, if you see someone on the leaderboard or in the Hall of the Ancients, you can go click on them and see exactly what build they were actually running and see all the different gear they were wearing. If you don’t know how to make your builds, IGGM’s Diablo 4 Boosting service can help you figure it out!
So, this is also going to be a way for newer players to actually go see what different builds people are running. And if you’re somebody that likes to use a bunch of different builds, you can just go on all the different leaderboards and check out different builds and maybe see one you want to try out.
Conclusion
That’s all the information we have for leaderboards and The Gauntlet, which are coming with Diablo 4 Season 3. I think this is going to be a pretty substantial change to endgame content and just general competition in Diablo 4.
ARPGs have had a pretty long history of having these leaderboards and having people that want to compete with each other and see which build or which variation of the build is the best at doing this thing. And I think this is seeming to be a pretty good way to go about it.
