About the "End Game Character Progression System"

General Discussion
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After I read the new Quarterly Update as well as some of the feedback, I must say I’m somewhat disappointed and a little bit annoyed, so I’m gonna share few thoughts as to why.

My main concern is, that the community seems to be focusing on inconsequential thins, mainly the Skill Tree.

The devs said:

We agree with the feedback that a character’s power is currently too dependent on items. We plan to put more of the player’s power back into the character to make build choices more impactful, rather than have the majority of player power coming from the items they have equipped.

That’s wonderful. It took 8 years of complaining and a new development team for someone at Blizzard to understand, that characters need inherent power, just like they had in D1 and D2.

Now that they understand that, the skill tree will most likely be fine and it doesn’t need super detailed analysis at this point in time.

From what I’ve seen so far, D4 is moving in a good direction… but here’s what will make or brake the game. The devs hinted at a so called “End Game Character Progression System”:

Lastly, we have been hard at work on our end game character progression system. This important feature is going to take a little more time (it won’t be in the next blog), but we wanted to mention it here because it will be the other significant source of power that comes from your class. This system is intended to provide more depth and replayability than what Paragon currently offers in Diablo III.

Typically in a Diablo game your power comes from skill ranks and gear (various stats on that gear) and attributes (some from gear, some from leveling).
If those by themselves are not enough and you need even more sources of power for your character, that means there’s a problem, at least in my book.

While I don’t know exactly what that system is, what instantly pops in my head are two of the worst systems I’ve seen in Blizzard games. One is Paragon (which they mentioned themselves, basically suggesting, that this new system is meant to replace Paragon) and the other is the constant grind for Artifact power in World of WarCraft.

From the few things they’ve mentioned, I’m getting a bad vibe… it makes me think, that they are developing a similar system to the above mentioned terrible systems… which haven’t provided any “depth” or “replayability”, but were off-putting and alienated plenty of players.

A game like Diablo needs to be more “alt friendly” than most games.
The replayability should come in the form of being able to create various characters, some better at certain things than others, almost like building a deck of cards.
It should never be about sticking to one character and grinding at a “end game character progression system”.

Leveling to max (or a level close to the max), spending your skill points and attributes wisely and getting your items is what character progression should be. It shouldn’t take years to deck out a character, or “progressing” said character for years and years while grinding some system. You should be able to deck out a build within few months tops.

Again, this will either make or break this game, and it will be waay more important than all the discussion surrounding the skill tree.

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I’ll wait until I see the end game systems before I get all worked up over anything. Also, skill trees and passives are hardly what I would call insignificant or inconsequential.

…and you said it yourself:

Let’s give it a little time to develop, shall we?

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To be fair yes, they are really important, obviously… but then again, they can be sorted out by the time the game comes out.

On the other hand, the so called endgame character progression system is what literally can make or break the game.
From what we’ve seen so far, it will come down to that particular feature…

Again, think in terms of Paragon 2.0 or Artifact Power grind form WoW (introduced with Legion).
These are off-putting features… the devs should really think carefully and stop catering to people, who wanna play with only one character and allow them constant progression…

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What? I don’t understand what you mean by this. Current paragon is shared between any character you want to play. I remember it being a minor issue for AP farming, but that’s an entirely different game.

I’ve never been particularly bothered about either of these systems, to be honest. Those that put in more hours are more powerful than those who don’t. It makes sense to me.

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It quite literally doesn’t make sense.

Rewarding character power for playing more is precisely the problem with D3… as opposed to who made the better build for the particular activity, who played it better and so on.

If they wanna have a decent Diablo game this time around, there have to be reasonable limitations and there have to be caps… both soft caps and hard caps, especially when it comes to leveling and things, that provide character power.

Level 99 character in D2 wasn’t much stronger than a level 90. 45 more attributes and 9 more skill points (especially since the skills you’re using are most likely maxed by then anyways).

IRL you can put more hours into working out, and yet you’re not going to start lifting cars above your head…

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Yeah… you’re not making a compelling arguement. It makes perfect sense in D3 because of the competitiveness of the seasons, due to the leaderboards/timers etc. The only leaderboard in D2 was pretty much just “Who got to 99 the fastest”

Not everyone can compete for the worlds strongest man, because they simply do not have the time and willpower to invest. The same can be said for most competitive sports.

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Please, get back to reality.
Most Diablo fans are not playing D3.
And out of those, that do play D3, most do not compete for a spot on the ladder.

I have pretty good idea how the ladder works, I’ve been in top 100.
It’s a quasi-competition, that no one in his right mind would take seriously.

And even the worlds strongest man cannot lift a car atop his head, because there are limits.

In a video game setting, one of the lamest things is the desire of some people, which goes along the lines of “I played for few months longer than you did, therefore my character should be stronger by default”…
And yet, in a well made video games, the newer player can catch up in reasonable time (depending on the game), and then if he’s the better he will win… not though time spent, but through being better.

If you’re 1K Paragon, good luck catching up to someone 10K+ if he doesn’t stop playing.
It’s a stupid system and it has alienated more players than it has brought to the game.

Correct. It’s also stupid and meaningless.

Only in D2 the game didn’t revolve around ladder.
The game was about gearing yourself though farming and trading, decking out characters, so you could have a bunch of characters, that once equipped were godo to go for whatever you built them.

In D3, the only activities you have are bounty, rifts and greater rifts and the ladder is tied to greater rifts… and the Paragon system is one of many factors that makes the greater rifts and the ladder stupid and meaningless.
The “endgame character progression system” literally rendered the endgame pointless.

So, I hope whatever Blizzard have in store, it’s something good and meaningful.
Unfortunately, my gut feeling is, that it will all come down to whatever “endgame character progression system” they’ve come up with.
The two examples of such system in Blizzard games (Paragon and Artifact Power grind) are terrible and didn’t bring anything good to their respective games, quite the opposite.

The way I see it, Diablo doesn’t need endgame character progression system. Attributes, Skills and Gear should be enough… just like they were for many, many years… just like WoW worked fine throughout Classic + the first 5 expansions and didn’t need constant grind for artifact power to occupy most of your game time and take the fun out of the game.

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Yes, acquiring greater access to ever-more-difficult challenges, excites me more than acquiring greater power, which is essentially a complete reversal. This might sound misplaced but Super Paper Mario had a very amusing & daunting “100 rooms” endurance trial. (Maybe if you beat it it “upgrades” even.)

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This.

Take for instance one of the popular Action RPGs: Warframe.
The game initially felt like a tactical shooter, certainly more difficult, that it is now.
Throughout the years there’s been plenty of ways for one to progress his character and equipment to the point, that people would argue there’s too much power creep in the game. There are also characters, that can wipe the entire screen with the click of a button.

Part of the community asks for harder endgame activities, so that there’s an endgame… activity (or activities) where all the power you’ve amassed comes into play…
and yet the devs don’t implement anything hard or challenging.

The game is slowly dying…
D3 on the other hand is effectively dead.

Again, neither Paragon 2.0, nor Artifact Power grind have done anything good for WoW and Diablo…

Mark my words, this will be the feature which will make or break the game for the real fans.

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I’m in total agreement man. Its satisfying knowing that you “completed” a character. Its fun to make new ones. I do not want anything resembling paragon levels. I just hope that the main progression is fun and interesting with fair challenges.

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Exactly. This is one of the things I love about D2 and hate about D3.
With 1.10 D2 settled into a meta. Then I would make various characters.

Nowadays, you have D3 which after 8 and a half years after release there’s still no meta. You make a character, you “complete”, only to find, that few months or a year down the road, they’ve made changes to legendary items, but they haven’t fixed them retroactively (not even Primals, which are meant to be max rolled anyways), and your character is not good and ready. You have to farm again to fix one of several slots, which were previously BiS.

And then, if that’s not annoying enough, there’s the fake gamer, small _____ syndrome… which is players, that don’t want to end up sad, that someone can catch up and prove to be better than them (because deep down they know they are dog____), so they ask for character power for time spent, rather for the gameplay to be interesting and compelling.

D2 was never like that. Hell, even D3 Vanilla wasn’t like that.
The nonsense called Paragon 2.0 is quite literally based on private servers of MU Online… where you could reset your character to level 1, while keeping the stats you’ve acquired and you could amass stats perpetually… stupid beyond belief…
Only a fake gamer would ask for some nonsense like that in the game.

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If they implement a similar endgame system to Paragon 2.0 in D4 then they are dooming their own game. I say let the hamsters stay here and implement something reasonable for the 4th game.

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I agree the end game system could be a game breaking aspect if implemented poorly, though it could be great and integrated into existing systems. For instance, what if you have the skill tree they showed off, but revamped to address criticisms, then when you reach max level and beat the main story, the entire world has an alternate Inferno dimension, where you walk through a portal to access it. This dimension looks like the world, but maybe with some changes to show a more disaster filled and deadly world, where evil is stronger and there are new mini-bosses inhabiting the different keyed dungeons. Each min boss has a chance to drop tomes you can read and acquire Nephalem points, which you can use imbue nodes you had acquired on the tree, unlocking some further potential within the skills you want. In essence this system would further the concept of making choices important and focusing on a build, rather than being a god of everything. The nephalem points would be limited of course, not resulting in some lengthy annoying grind for tiny little improvements until the end of time.

This was a quick and rough idea, but generally I think it could be awesome. Of course it would need to be polished up detailed better.

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Honestly, I don’t know how you can even compare warframe to anything diablo. They aren’t even in the same genre except by the broadest definitions.

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They are pretty similar actually.

You build a character (well, a warframe) so you can farm, you farm and you trade.
You build some more characters, some you can even customize in a manner, so that they are really good at farming a particular activity (say people farmed Ubers in D2 with Smiter, they farm Tridolon with several frames). You can even make multiple characters of the same class, but customize them differently.
Farming usually involves running the same level many times, till the item finally drops… and if it doesn’t, you can trade for it.
The game is easy, No proper endgame.

I just described both Diablo 2 and Warframe. How can you not compare them, when they play out in such a similar way?

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We will have to disagree. Your definition is obviously painted with a much broader brush.

Carry on.

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OK, can you tell me how they play out differently or why they are not comparable?
I mean, aside from obvious and rather irrelevant things such as the different camera angle, lore and things like that?

Of course I am looking at the overall picture, as to how the game plays out. What do you want me to say?

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Nothing. You’ve made yourself clear. You are entitled to your opinion. I’ve expressed mine. We can now go our separate ways.

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That’s all good and well, but I at least provided some examples as to why the games play out similarly.
Can you at least tell me why you think them so different?

If you insist… did I offend you somehow? :sob:

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Nope we are good!

Peace.