Early D4 Reasoning is Worrying - You Cannot Control Infinite Systems

Going by that blog post, it’s clear that they don’t yet know which direction Diablo 4 is going. This is not a bad thing since they made it clear they want to create the game with the community in mind. However, this situation reminds me a ton of early D3 posts by Jay Wilson.

The demos ended up looking nothing like the final game. Which is fine I guess, except that the D3 demos were more impressive than the end result.

There seems to be no clear direction for items, skills, systems, PVE, PVP, nothing. Basic and major systems which we should have answers to are up in the air, particularly the question of whether or not D4 will have infinite scaling. If it does, I’m not interested at all.

Blizzard is considering infinite systems which makes me think that not only have they never opened up Diablo 2, but that they are using Diablo 3 as a base.

No human is going to log into D4 30 years from now to check on their infinitely-scaling Paragon-esque +001% power level increase.

Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 did just fine without infinite power systems, because those games had solid itemization systems as a backbone. The core of Diablo is an interesting loot hunt with variety and open-ended Stat options, not a Paragon system.

You cannot control an infinite system. D3 devs thought they could control Paragon too until XP metas came up and people ended up speed farming way higher GR’s than was ever intended with builds that the devs never even dreamed were possible.

Now we have Paragon 12,000’s in Diablo 3 as a result of infinite systems. Eventually we will have Paragon 20,000, then 30,000. Because it’s limitless and the devs lost control.

News flash: At Paragon 12,000+ it doesn’t even matter how perfect the gear someone wearing is because the ludicrous power inflation bypasses stat limits on Items and you have no control over it since scales over time… forever.

Infinite systems infinitely provide power out of nowhere independent of gear limitations. So gear becomes 100% irrelevant, which is not really a Diablo game, it’s just a clicker game with numbers in the Trillions, Quadrillions, Quintillions, and so on.

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There are mutliple threads already on Infinite/finite system. Just stop!!!

Just because you want finite system, doesn’t mean others do!

YOu want to voice your opinion , by all means, you have however NO rights to make demands.

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My post is not a demand, just a concern.

And; who do you know wants infinite systems? Do you not understand that infinite systems in a franchise known for botting (where they refuse to stop bots) is a bad idea?

Diablo 1 and Diablo 2 had bots but they did not have infinite farmable power like the Paragon system. D1+2 are superior to D3 despite the botting issue.

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so bottling is an issu,e Then the solution is stop bottling. You know what game has bottling too. PoE, which has a finite level cap.

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Exactly. The arpg is about outsmarting/outpowering your environment and adversaries, not about infinite levels on top of levels. If the environment and level progression are properly created, we have no use for multiple, overlapping leveling systems. if I see paragon levels or a level progression system similar to d3, it’s a hard no from me.

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Botting and infinite systems are both issues, which when put together, make things even worse. Infinite systems place emphasis on infinitely-scaling stat gains and away from itemization, which is the core of Diablo.

Diablo 3 is not an item hunt, it’s a Paragon farming game and should not be used as a model for D4.

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That just wrong.

Whether the game is item hunt or experiencve hunt depends on the power given by each. Also why can’t it be both?

WOuldn’t gaining level while hunting items be a good thing? The problem with pure item hunting is, you don’t make progress if you do not find upgrades. Being able to level (we can discuss for sure & tune the power per level/unit time) means, at least your time hunting items (even if you have bad luck) is not comepletely wasted.

If there are multiple source of power, & leveling being one of them, whats wrong?

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You cannot control an infinite system. D3 devs thought they could control Paragon too until XP metas came up and people ended up speed farming way higher GR’s than was ever intended with builds that the devs never even dreamed were possible.

Now we have Paragon 12,000’s in Diablo 3 as a result of infinite systems. Eventually we will have Paragon 20,000, then 30,000. Because it’s limitless and the devs lost control of Diablo 3.

Infinite systems infinitely provide power out of nowhere independent of gear. So gear becomes 100% irrelevant.

David Kim’s proposal thinking he can balance something that literally has no limit is wrong.

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Yes, leveling can be a source of power but power itself becomes meaningless when infinite difficulty/levels exist. There’s no reference point

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Different people have different ideas of where it all went wrong in D3. For me, it was and is not the paragon system. It’s the multiplicative nature of how items interact with one another. The more multipliers for your power math, the stronger you are. Making any character without X% of mods for spec/build inherently much weaker; limiting customization drastically to what Blizzard allows into the loot pool the only viable option on character building.

There are ways to make paragon systems and alternate leveling post cap work. The variation of what you could put into the paragon system was too limited, and there never should have been infinite main-stat power. It should have choices, just like everything else, and you should not have access to every choice; and the choices need to be plentiful, diverse, and impact your game play more than “this makes you do ever so slightly more damage”.

Damage and survival are only fun up to a point. Eventually it just becomes a slog. It’s the customization of those skill points, the change, that makes them exciting. Dreadfully generic main-stat systems like D3 paragon are the problem, not paragon itself.

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Not true. In context of a 3 month season, there is only a realistic range of level a player can gain.

But the game is more than just Seasons.

Just because Seasons are time limited doesn’t mean the infinite system is not a really bad idea.

Diablo 4 will also have permanent, non-Season characters.

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true, which is why people bot to begin with. You would think Blizzard would have implemented code already to sniff out accounts/characters who are on 16+ hours per day every day for weeks and weeks and weeks and drop the ban hammer more swiftly and harshly on them.

Unfortunately, they do not police this game correctly. It’s a story of too little too late now though. Focus on making D4 and policing it correctly when it releases.

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PoE has level cap, still people bot. The difference is they bot for currency & trading.

As I mentioned again, the solution to botting is deal with bottling.

As I explained before Diablo II has the same issue. D2 has a level cap, but bots there aren’t as impactful as in Diablo 3. Why? Because in Diablo 3 endless Paragon gives you endless power beyond what any Item statistic can provide.

Infinite systems will eventually outpace any Statistics on gear.

Because Diablo 2 has a superior design, botting doesn’t hurt it as much as it did D3.

This is very simple to understand.

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That like saying, if you open many shops, there will be more shoplifters. Therefore, do not open more shops.

The argument is absurd. If there are more shoplifters, have better security not stopping people to set up shops.

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That’s not what I am saying at all.

Infinite scaling is a bad idea even without botting present. Botting just makes it worse.

It’s still a bad idea and a bad system for the reasons mentioned, mainly that it brings irrelevance to item systems because items are capped and infinite systems are not.

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i guess i lost hope for this game in my opinion the lack of experience in the action rpg is very obvious for blizzard , this forum have so many good feelback from og
but they say they ear us but they dont show us because the game take the same direction takecare guy going to play d2 and poe have a nice day

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Good post, spoken better than I ever could.
And never forget - Noli non legitime carbor undum est

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I thought paragon was ok when it was first introduced before it became account based. I enjoy more/alternative progression of some kind. Most players demand quick access to end level. You can’t count on 1-60 (or whatever D4 max level will be) to be meaningful. That’s where paragon comes in. As long as its per character, and If it has a cap, or it has an exponential scale that make is practically impossible to gain more levels I don’t see why that would be bad.

I don’t think when they originally designed paragon, that they expected the runaway powercreep. You’ll be able to get more paragon in one day in S19 than you could an entire season in S1. If they plan to introduce powercreep over time, then ya I don’t want paragon. Either it will become meaningless to cap it, too much power will come from it.

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