Diablo 4 - Economy/Trade/Self-found/Blizzard MMO system views

General Discussion
36

Imo, when lvling/playing the campaign, each area has lvl ranges. Like the first area might scale lvl 1-5, next area lvl 3-7 etc. Some scaling, but limited. It should be possible to run into an area that is too high lvl for you.

Then, after you get to max lvl (or finish the campaign, whatever fits the game), the whole world scales up to “end-game difficulty”. Of which there is exactly one.
PoE does the end-game difficulty reasonably well. No difficulty slider. Progressing through the endgame is the difficulty slider.
It fails at keeping the overworld areas relevant though (speaking of which, one end-game activity could be to reset the campaign and replay it at a higher end-game difficulty. Could be way more enjoyable than farming dungeons forever).

The only way to manage that is to keep gear scaling fairly low of course.

Could be solved with a single difficulty choice I guess; go back to the lvling overworld (with areas ranging from lvl 1 to 40 or whatever), or the end-game overworld (everything is max lvl).

37

So that’s why D3 is actually super cheat free :open_mouth:

Oh… wait…

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/banwave-request-please/233/911?u=knighthood-21834

Cheaters are gonna cheat - trading or not.

Fight the cheaters instead of removing parts of the core game design mechanics :woman_shrugging:

3 Likes
38

Completely agree with that, but there is still the question of the non-linear campain.
If I start in Scosglen, and half through the story I decide to go to the Fractured Peaks because why not it’s a free country is it not, then I come back 10 levels later… will I find the 3-7 zone I left previously, though I am lvl 15 now ?

That means there will need to be some form of scaling throughout the campain, so it’s rather improbable you will be able to go back to lvl 10 after reaching max level.

Yes, but there is still a solid 15-16 lvl of progression with maps. I hope D4 doesn’t go too far there… though we already saw an example of Dungeon Key lvl 15… :disappointed_relieved:

39

You have to do both - adequate game design plus sanctions for the cheaters.

40

Imo yes, until everything scales up at the end.
I think it is fine to push us to move forward through the world while lvling. But then I also think it is fine to make the campaign mandatory. I might be in the minority on that :smiley:

True, it is kinda part of a real progression system at least, through the Atlas, with new bosses etc. Not just endlessly repeated dungeons at higher difficulty like GRifts.

If there is scaling end-game (which probably is needed, Diablo 2s lack of difficulty is not a solution either), make it an integrated part of the game. In a way, you haven’t really finished PoE before you kill those last bosses in the Atlas.
Some might argue you havent finished Diablo 3 before you cleared a GRift 150. But there is no difference between a GRift 150 and a GRift 1. Not really progression.

I dont really mind if there is 10-15 Key dungeon tiers (more than that seems unnecessary however). There should also be similar tiers in all other content, otherwise key dungeons will end up as the only viable endgame.
Like 1-15 tier boss arenas, 1-15 tier overworld content and what not.
Not as something you pick when you create your game howver. Difficulty should be something you naturally encounter in-game. Sometimes it might be based on a dungeon key you find. Other times it might be random boss/event spawns in the overworld. Like, one “camp” in Scosglen might spawn as tier 10. Another might spawn as tier 4. If you dont feel like you can handle the tier 10 one yet… well, dont try it, and go for another camp. One world boss might be tier 1, another might be tier 10. Maybe you can summon uber bosses, and based on the ingredients you use in some ‘crafting recipe’, their tier is increased.
That would be my preference at least. Making the game world feel more coherent and varied.

And of course, the difficulty difference between tier 1 and tier 10 should not be anywhere close to the crazy numbers in Diablo 3. You might be able to do a tier 10 dungeon from the very beginning. It might just take 40 min, dying multiple times along the way, while tier 1 only took you 6 minutes or whatever, making it doable, but inefficient until you get some better gear.

41

Sorry, but I am not willing to have my own fun spoiled.
Cheaters have to be stopped anyways, so I don’t see the point of giving up on trading.

I personally wouldn’t have a problem with that - they already have my information through payment options.
Though personal information is a very delicate topic and everyone who doesn’t want to share it, has my full support.

Maybe it would be a solution to only allow trading for accounts which are verified via ID? :thinking:

First part yes, second part no.

You can ask your mommy to reduce your playtime via parental control :stuck_out_tongue:

100% agreed.

What would even be the point of this after implementing point 1 and 2?

3 Likes
42

But then you would have to finish a boring campain where everything is underlevel, dropping mostly useless items… that would discourage greatly the exploration of the world outside of your region, or playing with friends that started somewhere else.

Believe me, I don’t like scaling, especially the horendous way it was done in D3, but for D4 there will need to be some of it. At least every time you enter or reenter a region, that should be enough.

And I agree with everything you say for endgame difficulty, though I would not make the level of open world activities totally random. Doesn’t feel right to enter an area and get OS on a loop (which would happen for a lvl65 doing a tier 10 map in PoE)… so maybe some scaling again, based on the highest or most frequent keyed dungeon level you’ve played ? Like lvl 3-5 activities if your favorite keyed dungeons are lvl 4 ?

43

If you are lvl 20, and go back to a lvl 10 area to catch up with the campaign, presumably it wouldnt take that long time before you got back to areas within your scaling range.
Could also make the ranges somewhat bigger. Like, first zone; 1-10, next zone 5-15 etc.
If someone lvls to 39 before doing the campaign? Well, maybe dont do that! :smiley: Or just get that last lvl which makes the whole thing scale up to 40.

I’m not strongly against the game scaling up to your lvl, as long as it doesn’t scale down to your lvl. But it feels more interesting if it doesn’t.
Also, since I think there should be NO difficulty slider while lvling either, outlvling content might be the only way people have to make the game easier. You take that away from people, if it always scales to your lvl.
I guess you could do what some games have done, and let enemies only scale up to -5 (or whatever) of your lvl, if they get below that. So you can outlvl enemies somewhat, but not to the point where they become meaningless, or cant drop useful items anymore.

Btw, speaking of scaling. One thing I have always enjoyed in some RPGs and MMOs, is when you run around in like a lvl 10 zone, and a big lvl 60 boss is walking around. You cant do anything about it, but you know that one day, you can come back and destroy it. I would like to have those kinds of enemies, areas etc. outside any kind of general scaling system (and no, such enemies of course shouldn’t randomly attack and oneshot you either :smiley: Might only aggro if you attack them or whatever).

Yeah maybe. But I have some issues with that. What if you have done a tier 8 key dungeon, and then respec to a weaker spec (for whatever reason. Maybe Blizzard nerfed your other build, maybe you were just bored), are you still bound to see only tier 7-9?
Considering how large D4s world is supposed to be, I think random spawns could be fine.
It should of course be reasonably easy to see which tier the activities are, before you enter, so you dont risk getting randomly oneshot.

As long as the scaling isnt stupid, even as a character who can do tier 10 well, it shouldn’t feel like a total waste to do a tier 5 boss. Lower droprates sure, but also faster kill speed. Might not be the most efficient thing to do, but it might still be more efficient than ignoring a world boss right in front of you, and travel to the other end of the world (literally) for another challenge.

44

Because I can give you all the BiS items with trading although we both are neither cheating nor account sharing.

45

That’s awesome!
What are you looking for in return?
I have some pretty GZ Barb stuff that I don’t need anymore :ok_hand:

46

It’s not awesome, it’s the same as cheating. It devoids the grinding of meaning.

47

You keep using that word.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

6 Likes
48

What word is better?

For me buying stuff with RM is cheating.

49

Items don’t appear out of thin air.
If I want to trade with you, I have to grind to find items you might be interested in.

How is that “cheating”?

3 Likes
50

You guys were talking about trading or giving items to people, not buying things with real money.

Which if trading is a supported feature, then “playing the game” sounds like the appropriate term to use.

6 Likes
51

Not necessary. You might trade with someone else. Only the last one in the chain grinds when there is trading.

52

I am pretty sure that “someone else” also wants items of equal value in return for his own.

Again: Items don’t appear out of thin air.
This seems to be a common misconception of people who are against trading :thinking:

3 Likes
53

That is a quote from the movie The Princess Bride.

Didn’t know that?

Inconceivable!!!

1 Like
54

Not necessarily.
In most game “economies”, items lose value so fast that they are given out for free.

Items kinda do appear out of thin air in an A-RPG. Only thing needed is time. There are no mechanisms for adjusting supply (well, not any that the devs want to use, anyway).

55

So you are willing to give me BiS items for some trash that I got for free from some random guy?

I finally start to understand why you dislike trading so much :joy:

1 Like