[D4] - Replaying the Campaign, Endgame Modes

General Discussion
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@Shadout: Thanks for opening up my eyes silly me your and Eigen9 are absolutely correct. Now hear this Blizz you have no other choice other than to implement this idea. Throw out your planned endgame because campaign plus must be the only endgame activity that D4 has not only at launch but for all time.

Make it identical to what you would’ve done with your silly idea of keyed dungeons. No we don’t want Diablo 4 to be about crawling dungeons. After all it is time for a huge change to where Diablo is no longer is seen as a dungeon crawler game.

It would be impossible for you Blizz to have your silly idea of keyed dungeons difficulty scaling anything higher than 2 extra difficulty levels beyond the normal campaign.

Your are right that millions will play it because Blizz has no choice but to create it where campaign plus is the only endgame ever. No other activities are needed. This is what you and Eigen9 are wanting for D4.

You know the games that are without a story or cut scenes they are called sandbox games. So you want to have it where there is zero story for D4. Along with changing D4 from being a dungeon crawler to a campaign plus game. You want it to be a sandbox game.

If you spend time in D2 listening to all of the dialogue and cut scenes that is time you could’ve spent getting more quest done. Which relates to more experience, finding better gear, etc… That is why players in those games rifle ball through the dialogue and cut scenes.

You are the one that doesn’t understand about the idea of town being lava. It is all about efficient use of your time which is why things like the dialogue and cut scenes are skipped along with already knowing well in advance what you will be doing during your play session so you will not be spending a whole lot of time in town.

This idea is not infected by D3. No, this is true for all games like this one. The less time in town the more time you have to get other things done that will actually progress your character. It is all about efficient use of time. If you are exploring the world then the fighting part is the action and part of the exploration. The exploration you are talking about is not in town.

But again I digress, what the hell do I know. Now hear this Blizz you have to make the campaign and campaign plus where players have no choice butt to spend close to their entire time in town. After all that is where everything is.

I got an idea, maybe they can have it where instead of creating a character that we actually use to go fight the evils of the world. We actually create a character that is an NPC that all other computer generated heroes that are fighting the evil come back to us as a quest giver, store, etc… That way we can be in town the entire time. Sure it will mean we will not need to make any progress as far as character progression normally goes. But character acting skills can come into play here. Where we role play as an actual character of that town would be. All with leader boards that will list the best role players in the game.

What are you agreeing with me that the likelihood of keyed dungeons having way more than just a couple of difficulty levels is wrong. Where I could be right, but how can I be after all it is impossible for them to come up with anything near what D3 done as far as keyed dungeons right.

You are trying to say it doesn’t matter. Take another look at the OP. The fist campaign plus is suppose to be like keyed dungeons with one affix. Then keyed dungeons with two affixes is the next one. Then ones with three affixes.

Sure if that is all there is too it where there is no other difficulty other than that then you might have a snooze fest between difficulties. Or one that could scale sky high after leaving one range and entering another.

But again what do I know, you are right it won’t matter. We can go and sit on Blizz’s doorstep until D4 is created just as we have discussed here.

What you wouldn’t want game where you have to think about what you are doing. Just rolling your face on the keyboard is all you want to do.

I guess we will have 200 million people buying and playing D4 if it is made like my reply says right.

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It’s ok that we disagree. I understand many of your points.

  • You don’t think enough people will use it. Completely possible, but I disagree.
  • You don’t think it will be as easy to implement as we claimed. That’s fair. We think it will be, but you are right we have no way of knowing for sure.
  • You think it will cause a lot of difficulty bloat or be difficult to scale. I think it can be tuned to avoid that and still feel good like playing through NM and Hell in D2 managed to feel good for some players (some, not all for sure).
  • You think playing through a campaign is inefficient (you are correct from an items earned per time spent perspective - traditionally it has been that way) and are afraid it will become mandatory if implemented and the player base doesn’t typically like inefficient modes of gameplay. Totally understandable to feel that way. I feel like there are some people in the community that would embrace that inefficiency if it means they get to play through the story again so long as it is somewhat close to rewarding to do so. If it’s miles behind other content, then no I don’t think many people will play it as not many people play the D3 campaign on higher difficulties.
  • You are afraid if that inefficiency is removed you will feel forced to play the campaign again. It’s possible that happens, but I hope that doesn’t happen. I don’t like the idea of players being forced to do things they don’t want to do in games. Plus, I agree that story modes fundamentally should have some level of inefficiency when compared to standalone endgame systems, if for no other reason as to not make them feel mandatory.

I hear you. I get it.

I’m not sure what to say to this. You claim we want to change D4 into a sandbox game without story or cutscenes, but the complete opposite is actually true. We are asking for a campaign replay system precisely because we want more story. I want to see there be some story based content in endgame - it could be created from scratch as a new endgame storyline that’s slowly added to or it could be a campaign+ system. Either way, more story is exactly what I want in D4 and I love the dungeon crawl experience - which is why I’m super excited D4 promises to launch with 100s of dungeons and a keyed dungeon endgame system. I just think campaign dungeons could be a part of that system.

Finally,

I have repeatedly encouraged the developers to have many different types of endgame activities where campaign+ is only just one possibility. I would hope it would be tuned in such a way that players wouldn’t feel forced to do it. I’m sorry that the idea of a campaign replay system is so obnoxious to you, and I truly hope if one is implemented it doesn’t ruin your experience.

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It took a while. But yeah, you got it.

Stra…

Now that is a hot take. Want to elaborate?
Anyway, I strongly disagree with this view. Diablo should keep being an A-RPG, and not try to be all kinds of other things.
Don’t be an MMO, dont be a trading tycoon, dont be an action game. Be what Diablo originally was. Please.
(note, I would totally be fine with Diablo trying other genres. Like a Diablo Souls game. But that should not be Diablo 4)

Eh, 2 difficulties is probably too little in my opinion. Would be cool, but I doubt you can offer enough gradual progression that way. 5-10 difficulties should be the goal. 5 would be better than 10 however.

…wman.

Oh I understand it. Hence why I called it out as bad game design.

This is clearly wrong.
So much of your progression in D3 happens in town. Sadly.
Anyway, if Blizzard wanted, they could have made it so all your progression happens in town. I am merely saying that your idea that “town is lava” is not something set in stone. It is a design choice D3 made. Not a natural law.
Which doesn’t mean more things should happen in town. Quite the opposite.

Indeed! You just moved one step further toward understanding. Just a few more steps.

Spoiler alert: A campaign is not about being in town. It is about exploring, action etc.

I truly believe you are capable of understanding. But you build so many strawmen to attack, that you dont know what is fake and real anymore. Basically all your posts in this thread has been you arguing against yourself.
(and no, understanding is not the same as agreeing)

Truer words have never been spoken.

Str…w…an

Exactly. It doesn’t matter how many difficulties Key Dungeons have.
Campaign+ should just copy it.

I think you need to elaborate on that strawman.

Straaaaw…

Not sure that is what he is saying (though his posts makes it impossible to know, since he is not interested in telling what he think himself).
Contrary he seems to say that campaign+ would not have enough difficulty bloat, to compete with key dungeons (which apparently should have difficulty bloat?).

Such a view would seem like a pretty strong contradiction (unavoidable when it is a strawman I guess).
Both afraid of it being too inefficient and too efficient, at the same time. “Allowing” him to attack both as some kind of perceived “issue”.

Which has been what both of us, and others, have said throughout the entire thread.

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@Eigen9, IIRC keyed dungeons are the same dungeons we ran when we were doing the campaign. The only difference is that they are raised to endgame level. Where Den of Evil (made up name) could be a level 20 dungeon. Keyed Den of Evil could be a level 40+ dungeon with affixes.

Where the keyed dungeons are not totally different than the normal dungeons we have ran while playing the campaign. Except for raising in level and having affixes.

Take a look at Shadout’s reply to me that triggered my little extreme hyperboles that I use to help teach others how crazy an idea is to begin with. Unless any has a crystal ball and knows how D4’s endgame will be then there is no way you could make such a system fit along side of what Blizz wants to do. Just like saying we could easily add runes and rune words in D3 before we knew that Blizz decided to have skills with runes on them. Having a rune on a skill and a separate rune that is attached to gear would get confusing. Which is why my idea, after learning of the change, was to make them shard stones. This shard stones would be shards of the shattered worldstone. Where players that found this shards learned that they carry a lot of power. These stones can be used to make gear more powerful.

@Shadout, you have to take a closer look at what I am doing. You might not know me as well as you think. Instead of straw man I use extreme hyperboles (look it up) to teach others how silly such an idea is.

Take a closer look at your last reply to me and you will see that you probably didn’t expect to see what I would do in reply.

It is more likely that Blizz will have more difficulties in their keyed dungeons than just 5-10 so we could end up with more difficulties than 20. So it would be like having D3’s difficulty system all over again and then some.

Oh so now it is that time isn’t important. Where efficient use of time shouldn’t matter at all. Well that isn’t the way that the majority of players see it. There are more players that love to use their game time in the most efficient way possible. This is true for all games, not just D3 or the Diablo line of games.

You are the one trying to sell this idea to me. If you don’t like how I am taking it then change your pitch.

I know you think that Blizz’s keyed dungeon system is entirely based on the number of affixes alone. That might not be true, there might be other scaling factors that we are not privy to. By the end of the year though I hope they do tell us in a blog about the endgame systems.

Eigen9 has it right, I do believe that there will be more difficulties in the keyed dungeon system than we have in D3’s difficulty system. If you think T16 is something wait to see a T26 or higher in D4’s campaign plus.

Exploring an area you have no idea of where you are suppose to go cannot be as efficient as going to a spot where you have a guide (arrow) to show the way.

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This seems somewhat correct. At least in the sense that key dungeons can be max lvl. Afaik, we dont know if key dungeons can also exist below max lvl/endgame. As you have correctly said, end-game does not have to be the same as max lvl.
Likewise, non-key dungeons could very well also be max lvl, and most likely is.

As for key dungeons not being completely different from lvling dungeons. Well, yes and no. It seems like the key affixes make the dungeons drastically different. But they are in the same locations, and seemingly have the same thematic looks.

In the end, key dungeons are not significantly different from Rifts or PoE maps.
The one substantial difference is the supposed physical location in the game world.

:woman_facepalming:

No, sorry, you use strawmen. Look it up.

Funny since your posts are always so predictable.
People say A. You claim they said B, and then build some story about how B is a problem. (aka. a strawman)
So yeah, you keep replying as people have come to expect. And you should really consider stopping it. I dont know how you are not banned, but that is not for me to decide.

:woman_facepalming:

I am definitely not trying to sell my ideas to you.

Straaw.

That seems extremely likely. Afaik nobody has claimed that Key dungeon difficulty scaling is based solely on affixes. That would be a really surprising thing.
Not that it matters in any possible way for the topic of this thread…

Well, seems like I was right about your view then, and not Eigen9, as I was reading it as you believing Key dungeons will have a lot of difficulty levels :stuck_out_tongue:

Btw, D3 has 150 difficulty levels in GRifts. Torment lvls is essentially a subset of those.

But okay, thanks for finally writing a meaningful sentence, representing your views. This is how you should post if you want to be taken serious.
I sadly think you are right about it. This is Blizzard after all. They have a hard time learning from mistakes.
Though again, how many difficulties Key dungeons will have is not very relevant for the topic in this thread.

That is again factually not true. Just a matter of how you design it.
Lets make an example:
Dungeon 1: Has an arrow leading you to the end. Takes 1 minute to run through. It gives you 1 gold as a reward.
Dungeon 2: No arrow, you need to search for the exit, thus spending 20 minutes. It gives you 1 quadrillion gold (see, this is hyperbole, and not a strawman. Can you spot the difference?)

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The developers have said there will be 100s of dungeons at launch, say 200 for the sake of illustration, and they have also said that campaign content will be instanced, i.e. campaign specific dungeons if you will and say 20 of these exist.

What I’m unsure of is whether the 20 campaign dungeons will be affected by the keyed dungeon system that applies to these other 200 or not. For example, the den of evil is one of the 20 campaign required dungeons, but the pit is not, it’s one of the 200 non-campaign specific instances in the world. You can go to the pit if you want, but it’s not necessary to progress the campaign, borrowing the D2 metaphor.

The point being, it’s not a 1-1 matching. You won’t have to run every dungeon the game has, to complete the campaign. If the keyed dungeon system, doesn’t apply to campaign instances, then I was giving feedback that I’d like for it to, specifically to make boss farming relevant at endgame - since all campaign bosses will reside in these instances. If the keyed dungeon system does apply to campaign instances, then it would make sense you could use that system to rescale the campaign and create a campaign+ mode of difficulty from it.

I was, and still am, unsure of how the keyed dungeon affixes scale. Will there only ever be one affix per key and the level of monsters just grows based on the key level, or will higher key levels add more affixes?

My feedback here was it would be nice if for the campaign instances you could create essentially NM, Hell, Inferno level keys for the campaign instances that would add 1 keyed dungeon affix, 2 keyed dungeon affixes, and 3 keyed dungeon affixes, respectively to make that content even more challenging. Maybe something like this already exists in general for all the keyed dungeons, maybe it doesn’t, but I was just giving feedback on what might feel good in terms of difficulty scaling a campaign+ experience. Having not played the game, of course, it could feel terrible. We’d just have to wait and see.

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I somewhat doubt bosses from normal instances will still hang around in the key dungeons versions. Seems likely they will be random, like in GRifts/Maps. I very much think they should be random too. That randomization is central to the activity imo.
If you know which boss is at the end of the key dungeon, it gets too easy to prepare for it.

Would be pretty disappointing imo, if key dungeons only have 1 modifier.
That said, it would not have to be part of the scaling. Key dungeon +1 could have 4 modifiers, and +10 could also have 4 modifiers. Would seem smart to make the number part of the difficulty scaling though.

I think it is important that campaign+ is not just dungeon+. Not all of the campaign happens in dungeons. Heck, something like the end boss fight could easily not be in a dungeon, but in the overworld, and likely a lot of the quests will take place in the overworld.
If anything I would consider campaign+ biggest strength to be exactly that it would also be overworld content. Since it already has a dungeon focused system.

As for the campaign bosses, they could also easily be reused in other end-game content, like Boss Rush/Mode, but also randomly appearing in Key dungeons. Neither could really replace their campaign role imo, as it just isnt the same to fight a campaign boss placed in a randomly generated environment, with random modifiers (as fun as that can be!), as it is to fight the boss in its original environment, with its original modifiers.

Part of the value of the campaign is the handcrafted design, vs. the randomized design that most other end-game will presumably have (since that is how you make a lot of content without too much dev time).

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@Shadout As far as D4’s endgame system I want to wait till I see the blog that will probably come out near the end of this year. I would say that the best time would be around the middle of November at the earliest to the middle of December at the latest. Then I can say whether or not this idea would be needed and better fit it in with the rest of what Blizz is doing for endgame.

Remember there is a limited amount of time and money that goes into developing a game. Putting too much into one area over others that are no doubt more important could mean we would have D4 be just like D3 where it takes an expansion to fix what went wrong at launch. Because the priorities where put in the wrong place.

Then the expansion fixes enough issues to make the game playable. But not profitable enough for a full second expansion. Where D4 is just like all other diablo games before them. Where it only has one expansion. Where the closest to a second expansion is that it gets canned like D3’s did. Broken up and given to us for free. Then another DLC character pack that would’ve been in the expansion.

That is what could happen when trying to add this to the game. Or worse throwing out what the devs had originally intended.

I have seen games in times past that were innovative. So much so that at least one company if not two tried a very bold adventure.

They had the rule set, title of the game along with the whole idea of the game given to the players on the forums. The players had to come up with everything else. They had to figure out what went into the world and what didn’t. It went by what the majority wanted. I don’t remember any of those games or any game for that matter that ever was developed like that seeing the light of day.

A game company has to have a vision for their game. When they tell the players what their vision is. Then working with the devs in harmony with that vision we can make a game great together as a team. It is not just us players that are Mr. Know it All’s, neither are the devs. It takes both together to make a game great.

The difference between a strawman and hyperbole is that the first is to be taken seriously. Because how else can it have the illusion of defeating an argument. Whereas the second is not to be taken seriously. I use wild examples to show why an idea is silly.

What do you seriously think this is a one person posts and everyone instantly agrees forum. If it were that i wouldn’t even post at all. This is a public forum and each has their own opinion and they are entitled to have that opinion. Even though it is not in full agreement with those on the forums.

Since we are discussing fallacies you are using an appeal to emotions fallacy. The emotion is fear. If I don’t jump in line y will happen. That fallacy will never work on me at all and you should know it.

So salesmen only sell their own ideas. I wonder then how is it that salesmen have sold anything at all. That is unless you are saying the salesmen are the inventors of what they are selling. Also I said this idea not your idea.

Take a closer look at the OP along with what has been said here. The OP wants the rewards of campaign plus to be equal to other endgame activities. But the scaling is one-three affixes similar to nightmare through inferno.

If campaign plus is suppose to be equal in challenge and rewards to keyed dungeons along with other endgame activities then they would have to be scaled like them.

Look rewarding someone for spending more time looking for an exit or anything else won’t work. If that were the case then why don’t players spend more time than is needed doing nothing but T16 and bounties to get as much gold as possible.

@Eigen9 I am waiting till I see the endgame blog that will probably be at the end of this year. I say somewhere between the middle of November to the middle of December. Then I can say if campaign plus is needed or not. Till then I am not gonna seriously advocate that it must be there like you and Shadout are doing. Where they don’t even need their endgame system.

As far as the sheer number of dungeons you might be correct. But until they showcase that blog I have no idea of what it all entails and neither do you.

Both you and Shadout are crying that the campaign isn’t used anymore after leveling. Now if the story isn’t part of it. Then mind telling me where we go when we are on bounties, normal rifts, and GRs. It is the same world that the campaign is in, except for maybe a few areas where it is close to being in the campaign.

Please will both of you stop trying to make it like it must be in D4 or D4 will flop. That is how I am feeling right now. Wait till that blog and I will show you how I can give feedback based on that blog. That is if I think there is something that could be done that would make it better.

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Exactly why a low cost feature like campaign+ is such a clever thing to do at release.

Would be fine with me. The endless game as a service thing can go away for all I care. Please.

Nah, plenty of devs can make amazing games without player feedback. Doesn’t seem like Blizzard can, but that is not a general thing.

So much this. The issue with your posts is that you are very rarely stating your opinion. You post strawmen about others opinions.
Post your own opinions instead, that would be a lot more interesting and valid.

The person that is trying to pretend everything about campaign+ would go wrong, and Blizzard apparently can’t balance their game, is saying I appeal to fear. Are you joking?

What? :crazy_face:

I don’t want to speak for Eigen9, but I am pretty sure he has said the opposite, multiple times.
If only you read people’s posts.

Exactly because the game is not rewarding them for it!!

Omg yes. That is what I have said a thousand times.
You are going in circles around your own strawmen. Stooop.

Rifts and GRifts are exactly not taking place in the game world.
Bounties are, but they are “Follow the arrow for random quest” gameplay.
Simply not comparable to a campaign structure that takes you around the world with handcrafted challenges.

And in a fruitless attempt to prevent the emergence of another strawman I am not saying that it is bad to have content that do not take place in the game world (contrary I am arguing for exactly that with Boss Arenas), but a good amount of endgame should happen in the game world.

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Kinda makes, sense though. Do you know a glass of hot water freezes faster than the cold water? Nothing is far fetched concept wise when you push it. It doesn’t make sense a fire damage weapon causing a freeze chance afterall.

I haven’t been following your debate deeply. Keyed dungeons design wise would be pretty similar to the Path of Exile’s model to add affixes to the general crowd of monsters or add quirky rulesets. While we don’t know exact system, some details shared and you can also expect that to be revealed pretty close to the Diablo Immortal’s system.

As for campaign+ mode for repeated play; seasons will be a thing in Diablo 4 most likely. If not, you can expect repeated scenery play to be a thing to offer a fresh start to the player by somewhat trashing their gear gradually. This can be introduced in the form of giving new mechanics for the bestiary at each playthrough.
Most likely however, seasons will be a thing as they would rather go for equal weights towards both PvP and PvE. I wouldn’t expect repeated playthroughs to be a thing when seasons are planned in the design. Who would know for sure though?

I… Oh well… I don’t think developers have a filter for solid game design nowadays. They just turn the tail for widest appeal for a big hit without foresight about how changes would affect the flow of the game. Yet, that doesn’t entirely appeal the crowds anymore. Just because your social media statistics tend to show a great interest in some design quirk, doesn’t mean it will manage to keep the player’s interest at the long shot.
Blizzard seem to lost millions of Monthly Active Users over the course of few years. You can argue that it’s just because the demographics changing, not a single new intellectual property for years or fans growing bitter but I simply gonna add wavy game design next to it.

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A few things here:

It’s entirely possible that the current way they are designing the campaign will render the campaign non-replayable. If that development is currently taking place and we waited to give feedback on a campaign replay system until that blog, then they might be too far down the development pipeline to allow for changes to the campaign structure to accommodate a replay system.

I mean it’s conceivable that as you play through the campaign there are certain camps that you save at key points of the story which aren’t revertible for the purposes of a replay. If the developers agree with the feedback in this thread that being able to replay the campaign is valuable (they don’t have to agree by the way and that is fine) then they will have to think about those kinds of decisions earlier in development rather than later. Some feedback is too late to give. This might be one such case.

I have not once said they MUST HAVE campaign+ as an endgame feature and have instead multiple times suggested I would prefer a completely all new story-based endgame campaign instead of, or in addition to, campaign+. I generally don’t argue from a position of something has to happen, but rather talk about what could happen and why that might be preferred. It’s always from a position of I think this makes sense because of x,y,z or something they are doing doesn’t make sense because of x,y,z or something makes me feel x, y, z. Let’s discuss if x,y,z are true, or give examples of x,y,z. If what we are discussing here has come across as a demand, then I missed the mark somewhere along the way because I’m not demanding anything. Simply discussing pros/cons of such a system.

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I need to know what their endgame system plans are in order to be able to accurately give good feedback. Otherwise it is a brainstorming sessions of assumptions of what might be good.

What is bad though is when the ones that are suggesting it don’t see the potential holes in it. They think that every must say yes to their idea.

This new forum isn’t much different than the older one. You still have those that believe this is a one person posts then the rest instantly agree forum. Everyone bowing to the will of the majority of the posters or a few ones that have been duly elected by themselves as the only ones that have a right to suggest something. Like they are the Mr. and Mrs. (Ms.) know it all’s. Wondering when they are gonna start calling me troll. Because that is likely to happen next. That same tired old appeal to emotions fallacy that I have seen on the older forums. Where you must agree with them, even to the point of being blind to the holes in their ideas.

I would say that any game company losing players will see a wide variety of reasons for such a thing happening. Where not any one thing will be the sole cause of the problem.

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@Eigen9: Again you are saying it must happen regardless of what Blizz has in mind as far as endgame. Why you ask, is because you have to make such a request now before it is too late.

Did we as players have to say don’t put in demonic, angelic, and ancestral attributes long before they were an itch in the devs jeans just to prevent it. No, we had to know that is what they were gonna do. They had to tells us that is what their plans are. So that wasn’t too late for such a thing.

Besides they can always add it in later with a button like they did for D3. Or even a difficulty system that has a different memory for such a thing if Blizz really wanted to add it.

You are unknowingly giving mixed signals speaking up its pros without carefully thinking about any cons. I have already covered some as it was. Outside of balance issues it is the time and money issue in the form of resources. A percentage of resources are spent on each area of the game.

I don’t want D4 to come out with a great a, b, c, but be extremely weak in x, y, z. Where it takes an expansion to either fully fix or barely fix those things. Expansions should be used to add more things to make a great game even better. I want D4 to be so successful that D4 breaks the one expansion curse of the diablo games. Instead of an expansion being needed to fix something. Then the second one gets cancelled like D3. Where we get the pieces for free and one DLC character pack. I want D4 to have at least two expansions that add some really great things to the game.

Now as far as I am concerned I don’t mind playing through a campaign 3 times or more if I have a lot of different builds that I can use to play through the content. The reason is that each build will be fun to watch to grow from zero to hero, level one to max. The journey to max level is what is fun for me. That is why D2R will be fun for me to play as well as Grim Dawn. Even though both will have more than one playthrough of the campaign.

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I actually agree with that description. But there isn’t anything wrong with that brainstorm session. If anything it is better than pure feedback, as it is not constrained by Blizzards limited ideas.

Please tell me you understand the conceptual difference between criticizing an idea before it exists… vs adding new ideas.

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To sort of get this thing back on track. Here is a summary I think of where we are on this topic.

Different Pitches for a Campaign Replay System

  • Campaign+ mode that allows players to replay through the campaign on a higher difficulty where campaign instances are scaled by the keyed dungeon tech.
  • If this proves difficult or impossible to implement, perhaps just rolling the campaign instances into the keyed dungeon system where the bosses/monsters in those instances are scaled appropriate to endgame. A sort of boss+ system.
  • Rather than have a campaign+ system, we could potentially have a story-based endgame campaign that would fill the same story-based progression niche.

Potential Pros of a Campaign+ System

  • Reuses the highest quality content in the game. The campaign instances will have the best art, music, story, etc… would be a pity not to reuse that.
  • Provides a story-based endgame experience for those who want such a thing.
  • Provides optional extra content at endgame.
  • Might require relatively little development time versus other endgame content that might be implemented.
  • Is nostalgic to the franchise.
  • Could be used to design leaderboard content around speed running the campaign or having a high score campaign run.
  • If the campaign is truly nonlinear, rerunning on it on the same character potentially won’t feel as monotonous compared to a linear campaign.
  • Could be designed to work with other endgame systems - crafting, keyed dungeons, helliquary, etc… depending on how/if all those things were implemented.
  • Would keep the campaign relevant at endgame - whereas it is not in current D3.
  • Gives a natural activity to reward titles, cosmetics, mounts, etc… for completing and plays well with seasonal implementation where a different campaign+ conquest (speedrun, highscore, deathless, etc…) could be designed.
  • Could give the developers a chance to really rethink the core of difficulty scaling in an ARPG endgame since historically the campaign scaled the endgame, but with this proposal another endgame system is scaling the campaign.

Potential Cons of a Campaign+ System

  • It could add difficulty bloat to the game.
  • There might not be enough people who want to run the campaign over to justify development time.
  • It might take significant reworking of the planned campaign to accommodate.
  • It might not fit naturally into the designers planned endgame loop.
  • It might feel mandatory at endgame and force players into playing content they’d rather not, or play in a way they’d rather not.
  • If made too difficult could narrow build variety like GR pushing currently does in D3.
  • It could lead to power creep if it were endlessly replayable with no maximum difficulty.
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156

Good summary

How could it do that?

I guess it could but since nobody has argued it should be endless difficulty, it does not seem like an actual con?
Endless difficulty will be bad regardless of which endgame exists.

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A few of the cons I’ve listed are more potential cons that could arise if balanced poorly. It’s hard for me to come up with a lot of cons that are fundamental to replaying the campaign itself - apart from some people don’t want to do it or would feel forced to do it even if optional - both of which are significant.

I do understand this perspective. If there is a NM, Hell, Inferno difficulty and if keyed dungeons weren’t originally designed to support a campaign+ system you might have to artificially extend the max keyed dungeon level to make progression through all three difficulties feel smooth. It would be a tricky balance and could lead to the keyed dungeon system feeling bloated as a result by having too many different keys you’d have to climb. I think it’s ultimately a balance issue like I said above, but without more precise details of the keyed dungeon implementation it’s hard to know for sure.

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Fair enough. It seems very unlikely that Key dungeons won’t have at least 3 difficulty levels though, which would be enough to cover your NM, Hell, Inferno difficulties?
Besides, in the scenario where there was fewer than 3 difficulties in key dungeons, is it not correct to say that your campaign+ concept would work just as fine if it only had Hell, and Inferno for example?
It kinda seems like more of a thought-experiment con :slight_smile:

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I think the issue is if the current keyed system is designed so that 10 is the max keyed dungeon level, then in order for a NM playthrough to feel smooth you might progress from level 1-4 in a single replay. For a hell playthrough to feel smooth you might progress from level 5-9 in a single playthrough. Then you get to inferno. Do make everything level 10? Do you start out at 8 and progress to 10? Do you increase the number of key dungeon levels you had originally planned and go up to level 12 causing a small difficulty bloat? Essentially any time two systems are intertwined they will have an effect on one another. I think the fear was it might throw the keyed dungeon system out of balance if it was also serving as the difficulty scaling for a campaign experience.

I’m ok with the campaign not being scaled by the keys at all and simply having the campaign be scaled as it’s own thing difficulty-wise, but I think it would add to replayability of the system if you allowed the campaign dungeon instances to have keyed dungeon affixes. That way if you wanted to replay NM twice, it would feel different each time. Or in the very real scenario that you finish NM, but don’t think you are ready for Hell it could make farming individual parts of the campaign seem like more of an option.

160

Interesting. I would definitely think each campaign playthrough should only correspond to one key dungeon difficulty.
Otherwise you never get that experience of fighting even the very first campaign boss at an appropriate difficulty, since it would only exist on lvl 1, 5 and 10.

Also, if there are very few difficulty levels, the jump between each difficulty will presumably be larger. That might not feel very smooth.

So all in all, I would just have
Key dungeon lvl 1 = campaign +1
Key dungeon lvl 2 = campaign +2
And so on.

Then you can’t ever have any bloat issues for either of them, and you get a stable difficulty for each playthrough.