I know that D4 is not even out yet and that it is too early to speculate about expansions, but I wanna talk about something that potentially has a detrimental effect on the game.
If the game will have expansions, which it likely will have, do not increase the maximum character level with each new expansion.
The primary reason for that is that it makes the items we have accumulated over the past expansion become useless.
But this can simply be counteracted by having seasons in the game from the beginning and put a lot of focus on them from the beginning to incentivize players to start over again.
Then you do not need to incentivize players to return to the game by making their old items useless via increasing the level cap, because they already have the incentive to come back and experience the new content with each new season and each new expansion that comes out.
And new skills can simply be put on the skill tree in their appropriate category, so there is no need to gate new skills that come with new expansions behind a higher skill level.
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Now, what makes me think that Blizzard is planing on increasing the character level with each upcoming expansion?
There are a few indicators:
- the current level cap is 40, which is the lowest it has ever been in any Diablo game (lower than even in D1 and D3).
- the level cap in D3 was increased from 60 to 70 when Reaper of Souls came out
- World of Warcraft has always increased the level cap with each new expansion, so much so that the level cap went from 60 in classic, to 120 in the latest expansion (yes, it will be lowered in the new expansion down to 60, but likely will be increased to 70 again in the expansion after Shadowlands)
- The Blizzard that made D2 (which did not increase the level cap when Lord of Destruction came out) is no longer
All of that considered, especially since the current level cap is really, really low, I think it is fair to say that it looks like Blizzard is intending to increase the level cap with each upcoming expansion, which will make (probably most) of the items we farmed previously useless.
This might work in World of Warcraft, but Diablo is a different kind of game, that attracts different types of players that enjoy the game for different reasons than for why people enjoy WoW.
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Now, this post here is considered feedback, and if it is indeed the intent of the devs to increase the level cap with each expansion, then I would say “Stop right there! Don’t even go into that direction.” It will just piss people off if their gear gets useless with each new expansion, and even more so when they know that their gear will be useless anyway once the next expansion comes.
If it really has to be and you need to retroactively change items for whatever reasons, find other ways to do so instead of persistent level cap increases, which would harm all items and not just a few.
Let the level cap be 80 or 100 or somewhere around that (at least not 40) and keep it that way with each expansion.
Keep players interested with new content, new items, new expansions, events, new seasons, but don’t make them feel like their past efforts have been for nothing by making their loot useless via regular character level cap increases.