But that’s not what my title is. 
The title of this thread is
" Early D4 Reasoning is Worrying - You Cannot Control Infinite Systems"
It is purely my opinion on game systems, particularly where D3 went wrong with infinite systems. It is not a demand.
Then I have no issue with your title.
Compare the upvotes between posts in that convesation at this point and repeat that, please.
Im ok with infinite system if someone willing to spend more time into game than me, why not. But Blizz should start to ban those botters in D3 - so if they arent capable to step against botters, im against infinite system.
Forum Mod Edit: This post has been edited by a moderator due to masked language as it is in violation of the Code of Conduct.
I see you are missing the boat here. You don’t even understand what was mentioned. You are thinking that all paragon system has to be linear where each point always adds +5 to stat x. That is not what he is talking about.
If leveling to 40 adds 1,000,000 power. Then a paragon system’s power can be kept in check by having it non linear progression. Where instead of getting a straight 5-1 after a certain amount of points you would only get 1-1. It is called diminishing returns. It is like what City of Heroes did years ago with enhancement diversification (ED). ED was added in issue 6 “Along Came a Spider”. It was added because they were getting ready to launch City of Villains and the Villains were balanced around ED. What it does was to change the always getting 33% boost to damage to getting a lower value. If you only had 3 single origin enhancements for damage you would be getting the full benefit. But a fourth one would only give you around 5%. So it would be better to slot other things that the power could take like accuracy, endurance cost reduction, etc… If they introduce something similar then paragon system won’t get out of hand. More so when you consider that it will take a really long time unless they put it beyond the reach by continually reducing the returns per point spent into the same category.
Then as they add new content along with level cap bumps and new gear that would increase the power from the character and the gear where paragon would have even a harder time to catch up.
Take crit hit damage on paragon. Right now it is 1=1% ratio. What would happen if we could keep putting into crit hit damage removing its cap. But then put diminishing returns where the next 50 points will only add around 5% crit hit damage. That diminishing returns can keep scaling until you hit around 200 points into crit hit damage and the amount of increase is 1% for every 100 points spent.
On paper it sounds great; an infinite system that will never get out of hand, is always balanced, and fully under the devs control. Sounds amazing. Sounds perfect.
So why didn’t they do that in Diablo 3?
We understand that the D4 systems can be better. Hence this post, which is about avoiding mistakes made in D3.
The D3 devs never even considered it that was the problem. They were also ones that loved the super big numbers which I hope that the D4 devs don’t get hooked into.
I like item hunt, and enjoy sloooow Progress experience wise. Play for a week, find some treasures, make some improvements, and Level from 92 to 93, or just even a bit? I`m fine with that.
Things take their time, that makes them valueable. I dont want stuff handed down my throat; I dont value the ways of the world. I dont value our economic System. I dont value infinite growth. We are humans. Finite gives Things values.
My life is finit. my time is finit. my Energy is finit. my capacity to do anything is finit.
If I learned how to draw, or how to love, or do kung ju within a week, it has no value.
If I improve over time, slowly, with considerable amount of work behind it, it gains tremendous value - and it is accustomed to the human experience.
It is not my emotions that say it best not have infinite scaling. My emotions, like most peoples’, want that constant drip feed of power.
That’s a sign of average mental health, in fact. It’s why slow content updates for games work so well, too.
The problem with infinite scaling is that you force power creep. Power creep seems real nice at first, but for people who like to play the game extensively, grinding out as much of that ‘infinite scaling’ becomes more obligatory chore than fun. And it never gets better, because you’re never any closer to anything.
This is more important, and there are many threads discussing this on these forums.
Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel…
Its not like level 99 in Diablo 2 or Level 100 in POE is something the majority of people dislike. Its certainly a grind to get there and players have a moan from time-to-time along the journey, but there is nothing like the mass hatred that came with Paragon going infinite…you can’t even really play normal mode in Diablo 3 as a new player because its impossible to catch-up on Paragon points…
At least if I start a new character in POE I can see the end goal posts even if I need a telescope. 100 is the yard-stick for max level, its tangible and its achievable if you want to go after it. Then when you finally get there despite the hundreds of hours in grinding and frustrations along the way it all just feels worth it. You reached the top of that mountain and it feels amazing.
Infinite levels takes that away from players and replaces it with a system than never ends and feels hollow even if you are making progress everyday.
Go back to the system the majority of players enjoy, it was never broken and does not need fixing!
And in PoE, the difference between level 92 and level 100 is only 8 passive points, which for most players might amount to a little more to a main stat or a little more HP, or a notable or two, which is absolutely not game-breaking.
Same thing when I played D2. I never hit 99 on a character, I think I maxed around 90 or 91 before rolling something else. All I missed out on was 40 stat points and 8 skill points, but that small an amount of stats was not game-breaking and you could get enough +skills from gear/charms/etc. to compensate.
Having an end is a good thing.
PoE leveling is widely hated as well. Also PoS has quite a steep falloff rate over the league.
PoE throttle progress via RNG and currency gate, so people won’t be able to kill end boss within a week. They also has experience lost and penalty.
The map rng gate has force many people farm exp and gears far below their capabilities , to add insult to injury, they reduce so gain for lower level. Result In many players just quit
Prematurely. Which is why you often heard the “ you never even made it to red maps” “ cannot sustain red maps”
See. It’s easy to see something as good or bad when you do not see the downside.
When you throttle level progress? Then you either need to throttle other progress to sustain people
Playing, shift progress to something else, so has so much complying Contents that players will play even without making much if any progress.
Having hard power cap is good for many game, arpg isn’t one of them.
In any case Infiniti’s only a theory , as the progress are limited by time ( in context of a season).
A level cap won’t affect me as am not hardcore players ( I average 1000 paragon for pass 2 seasons) , but I know it will drastically affect many others.
People keep being up the grinding experience is not fun. No one contest it. The ideal design is that you can get meaningful upgrade via many means ( quests that reward say attribute points,
gems level up, better gears, mats, upgrading gears, exp) until the last day of the season. Gaining exp ideally should be there but as a background unconscious natural procession. It doesn’t have to be high, but it should be there.
You wanted as many means of power gain as possible. Purposely throttle any ( be it gear or exp) seems to be just stubbornness or phycology in my opinion.
Yes, the problem you didn’t mention is, because many players do not make meaningful progress anymore. They quit.!
Player quit prematurely is a widely known issue with PoE, & evidence by PoE own data as well as huge falloff curve from steam chart.
This is the problem when you have an end.
there are certainly good reason why there can be an end, but people need to also understand there are good reason NOT to.
It’s not black and white. In the end one can determine if finite or infinite Is better, but one cannot made an informed opinion when only see one side.
Dude literally millions of people quit Diablo 3 since its release.
Diablo 3 broke sales records and its activity plumetted completely even becore RoS came out.
If you compare D3’s initial sales numbers to its viewership on Twitch or even top 1000 in ladders the game has lost an incredible amount of players.
And it’s gotten progressively easier to get higher placement on all LB’s because of the sheer lack of people playing.
D3 used to pull good numbers on Twitch for a time, then people began losing interest FAST, even after they uncapped Paragon from 100 towards infinity.
Infinite systems don’t prevent people from quitting either.
I quit 3 months into vanilla, and was very active in criticizing D3 while I was active in Vanilla.
No one contest vanilla D3 is bad, even with RoS , it was much improved, it was at best decent. I didn’t wanted to even play RoS but a friend wanted to play together so I reluctantly bought it. It was what D3 should Launch at at least.
The main problem with D3 is not the paragon. It’s the lost of massive players base due to how vanilla sucks , and player leaving due lack of contents update , which is due to lack of monetization.
People keep saying how D3 is a dead game but it seems to be still decently popular especially in Far East which is not capture in twitch. The one that people praise like it was the 2nd coming of spice girl barely has 15 average players on steam chart despite constant content update.
I played 1000 hrs or PoE and spend over 500€ According to my steam info, so I am. It some hater. I can make builds using Path of building, make marco and do most of the meta crafting, mainly as I spend doubles hours watching meta rafting expert demiD or something craft.
Had D3 have more budget for contents and not screw up in Vanilla ( thanks to arrogant team and head Jay Wilson) , the player base will be much bigger.
Lets be honest who prefers to watch a random guy to hit another infinite level with flying shining loot everywhere to a random player to randomly find a single hard to get awesome item?
Even Uber tristram runes were fun to get that fix unique torch large charm.
It could be identified a pretty weak worth or it could be considering the meta a strong paladin 20/20 stats torch having huge worth.
Also having the luck to get clone Diablo to get the annihilus small charm that any class could profit from.
D3 doesnt even have PVP!
D2 got itemization/loot/endgame with diminishing right making uniques hard to find even if you built a magic find character, though i agree more end game content updates like PoE does would have been better for the game, just PVP/Magic finding/customizing your character to perfection was not enough.
Making runes not bound to magic find it was a rewarding/exciting feeling finding an Ohm, Zod, Ber, Vex or even Ist rune to be able to trade/craft them for strong gear.
I still remember the joy of finding a +1pcombat skills 38 lifer grand charm lol.
Its the same when if you find a mirror, headhunter belt in PoE, or even Exalt orbs.
I’m not sure this is the correct thread for this----------------
Schedule
The developers are probably on a tightened schedule.
This may account for level 40 cap. With an added paragon on top.
This may account for 5 areas at launch as opposed to all of Sanctuary payable.
This may account for ancient items as part of game design.
This may account for the strategy of expansions vs MTX (although I think we’ll see both)
Not that I’m criticizing this I’m just mentioning this because it may account for many design decisions.
The currency in PoE can be used to modify gear and increase the power of your items, plus item RNG is a thing too. Sockets in PoE are really high demand because of the way their system works in general, so a 6 socket item base is crazy valuable to someone wanting to make a high end build. So much so, in fact, that you cannot possibly create as strong a build with even 5 sockets in that same item and better stat rolls on the base item.
The problem of infinite growth can be easily solved. Just implement logarithmic growth instead of linear/exponential growth.