Early Stage D4 – MAX LEVEL Discussion

General Discussion
1

As far as we know, current Max Level is 40, but they are still on the works and don’t have that set-in stone (they didn’t even sound too confident about it). That being said:

  • I want to make an argument about what Max Level should mean and not how high it should be.

Back in D2, reaching max lvl was a real test of endurance, patience, repetition and willingness. During my years of D2 I only reached lvl 99 a few times, because that gap between 98 and 99 was brutal, so I used to get bored and more interested in trying out a different build/class instead of keep pursuing it. But a lot of players made lvl 99 a base for their most primal motivation in D2, which is awesome.

D3 had a lvl cap of 60 and then 70, and both were pretty easy to reach if you compare to D2. So, immediately, leveling was not a part of End Game anymore. This proved to be a poor design choice. Proved, yes, because they came up with Paragon Levels to make up for it. Paragon level have problems of its own, which I’ll not debate here, but I’ll mention an important one: It’s never ending high.
Max lvl in D3, was left out of end game to become only the start line of it. Everything before max lvl is can be considered meaningless progression-wise. Itemization is also to blame. But not my focus here.

Presenting my argument:

For the sake of definition, I will consider the End Game to start after the end of the whole story line on the hardest difficulty. In D2, Hell. In D3, let’s assume Torment 1 (on a fresh new account, paragon 0 and stuff)

Leveling in Diablo IV should be one of the many top end game goal.
It doesn’t matter if it’s 15, 40, 60, 70, 99 or 2000.
The number, by itself, doesn’t mean that much (and of course 15 is an extreme unrealistic example).

Reaching the Max lvl should be a journey you can choose to achieve and, if so, it will require dedication, like farming gear or any other goal.

Let’s say, using place-holder numbers, you reach End Game with 60% of the level range. The next 20% will be reached by most players who explore all aspects of the end game. Another 15% will be reached by the more dedicated player. But the last 5% would be the real grind fest. The same way farming the perfect gear will consume you. Grinding to Max Lvl will too.

You can go back and forth with your goals, sometimes playing for the biggest XP, sometimes for the best loot, sometimes hunting Key Stones, or whatever. But if your goal if Max lvl, you’ll have to focus on it. Even seasons can benefit from it.

Imagine that on the life-spam of a season players must choose where to spend time, because there is not enough to do everything. There will be players Reaching for the Max Lvl, Players Searching the Highest Key Stones, Players Speed Running, Players Beating the Most Quantity of World Bosses. But there are just so many you can accomplish in a single season. Then, another organic challenge, will be accomplishing different goals at a single season.
Seasons could also vary on life-spam, difficulty, monster population… well, that’s not the point, the point is:

If max lvl is part of the end game, and not just a starting point of it, it can increase players choice and goals. How to play the game? What for?

And it’s not the number 40 or 99 or 70. But the function behind it. And I hope they consider it.

Also, any kind of leveling has to have a limit, different from what we see on Paragon. Otherwise, it weakens the system as a top goal, since there’s no top.

Well, that’s about it.

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love your post!

D3 had a lvl cap of 60 and then 70, and both were pretty easy to reach if you compare to D2

D2 gap between 98 and 99 was brutal

Leveling in Diablo IV should be one of the many top end game goal.

Let’s say, using place-holder numbers, you reach End Game with 60% of the level range. The next 20% will be reached by most players who explore all aspects of the end game. Another 15% will be reached by the more dedicated player. But the last 5% would be the real grind fest. The same way farming the perfect gear will consume you. Grinding to Max Lvl will too.

paragon doesn’t give you satisfaction like reaching that last level in d2, you just keep getting lvl forever, what is point of that … its boring

totally agree with your post

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That is the real conundrum they face though isn’t it? How do they want to dictate the next 6+ years of the game, and the future design of it.

Do they want to continue with how Diablo 3 and other games do it, with endless farming / xp / rng to squeeze out another .01% increase on top of what you already have?

Or do they put an agency cap on everything, where players know they are “done” when they reach it?

There really is no right or wrong choice, it’s entirely subjective playstyle. Some people enjoy and loath having a cap on things, because they either like knowing where the finish line is, or they they start to break down and lose interest once they start reaching it. Some people enjoy the endless chase, knowing that no matter what they do they are getting some sort of increase, even if it’s minor; but then others hate all that entails with that, like not knowing where your next upgrade will come from, how much it will be, how long it’s going to take for it to happen, and how much you will lose in the meantime until you get it.

For many players, D2 was really no different in the later than Diablo 3 was. They never got close to the level cap, they never got the item they needed to drop, or they never got enough out of / into trading to make a compromise. They go to hell Diablo / Baal …and then restarted, just like what players do with Diablo 3 after they got into Act 1/2 Inferno or after getting most of their gear and doing some mid range greater rifts.

For the very select sum of individuals / groups that chew up these games for most of their waking lives …they surely need what it is that gives them joy …and that’s going to be chasing after things; whether that’s a list of checkboxes to tick off …or something extremely rare to get / do that 99% of players won’t. In most arguments …people are arguing for something that really only the 1% of players are concerned about, which is still valid from their perspective…and probably could make the game overall better, but is a rather narrow minded viewpoint.

I think, in that regard, things like paragon systems are entirely fine, when treated respectably by both players and designers. A paragon system doesn’t break the game until it’s designed around being absurdly high in it, or when players can devalue the game and their experience with it. It’s both a cognitive and technical objectivity with that, designers needing to remember that the vast majority of players are not going to grind out endless paragon type systems out to gain absurd levels of power, and players needing to remember that games tend to be “dumbed down” or lessened in value based on their own actions …not on the systems available to them; like when players grind out 10k paragon levels or speed consume content. The end result is people assuming a lot, based on their own actions that lie well outside the norm.

Again, it’s understandably valid to have that consequential viewpoint of dread …but it’s also entirely a product of their own making.

So when designing something, regardless of which path they decide to take, they simply have to take into account what will create the most enjoyment / fulfillment for the general population of players. People like having a varied selection of things to do, paragon is just a tool / avenue to facilitate that, as long with whatever arbitrary level cap they produce. Level 99 in Diablo 2 or Paragon 2k in Diablo 3 is just apples and apples; which flavor you chew on is up to whatever was placed in front of you. The real discerning decision was to have apples at all.

Edit: What personally draws me more to a paragon system as end game rather than a nigh achievable level cap, is the account achievement to it. I like being able to share those paragon levels with future and current characters, much like you would share loot between them. That makes time feel less wasted, not having to grind the same arbitrary hours to reach the same point ( within reason ), as well as giving future playthroughs something I deem as fun or alieviating …by having another advantage I can choose to use or not, like with using leveled gems, low level req gear, etc. in Diablo 3 on new characters.

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You made some pretty good points.
Thanks for the contribution :smiley:

Unlike you, I find having defined goals to be more effective to push me into them. But that’s me all along. I find easier to do 50 push ups if the goal is “do 50 push ups”, than “do as much as you can, until you can’t anymore”. In the last scenario I usually fall shrt… even if I can do 50 push ups (which I can’t).

In the end it comes down to the player, as you said, and that 1% will always find the End Game Flaws, probably because it gets exponentially difficult to balance every aspect of it.

EDIT: now, Blizzard seems to be developing a Paragon like System along with the game, and not as a replacement, so it could be the best of both worlds.

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Back in D2 people didn’t even bother to reach lvl99…

lvl caps that increase with each expansion is a way to keep the game alive for a long time and to add a lot of content over the years. Gives you something to do and new items to gather.

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Fully agree that the ‘lvl 99’ hard cap feels better; imho, than the endless walk that Paragon is.

I’m not sure if it is due to the skill point system which feels better than the +5 INT that Paragon eventually turns into or the fact that a carrot is always there (99) even if it is time-consuming to achieve but leveling after a given point feels better in D2 than D3 and I’ve played both in the past year so it isn’t just nostalgia talking.

Between the two systems the “99 system” > “Paragon system” imho.

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sorry but level 40 look to be a joke for me and what after 600 paragon point like diablo 3 :frowning: ??? more and more this game is a reskin of diablo 3 and are a total joke dI for cell phone and d4 for console all from d3 reskin

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There isnt a paragon system in d4

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i think David Kim already confirm paragon system in d4 or something very similar let me find the interview d3 system deguise i told you this game are d3 reskin

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I believe you will find this info in one of the Diablo detailed panels - They stated there will be a paragon like system that won’t have the same downsides of the current one. No specific details were given, other than they are aware of players complaints about the existing system.

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Why do you believe that?

40, 60, or 100 is a pretty arbitrary number in and of itself. For jokes though …having inanely high numbers is never good, especially if you plan on increasing them down the road.

Design wise, we can assume it’s being set at 40 with the intent to raise it with each expansion. That tends to look better when you start low …and increase it by 5 or 10 …then to start high and basically increase it because you have to. And because they are giving you things per level again, like skill / talent points , this has a real tangible affect when it comes to how many levels you can acquire.

40 levels makes for a fairly more limiting and “choiceful” possibility with builds and experiences. If that gets a cap increase or 5 or 10 …that’s a sizeable increase in that choice / power. If the level cap was 100 …increasing it by 5 or 10 would be fairly less impactful, if at all, looking at games like WoW where they basically stop giving you things after a while because it doesn’t make sense to do so with 100+ levels.

Paragon was suppose to mimic that sentiment because of the problem they created with vanilla D3. They made paragons to give players some sort of agency / reward for the endless grind of gold and loot that was pretty much 99% useless. Gaining paragon made that chore easier to bare …having up to 300% more gold and legendary drops towards the cap.

An initial bandaid, the later paragon 2.0 system was something else entirely, with a very different purpose and hole to “fix”.

I was definitely taken back by such a low level cap …but it makes sense with how much Activision wants to try and milk Diablo 4 , something they had a very hard time getting to happen with Diablo 3. I still question whether a 40 cap will work out well or feel enjoyable; it’s definitely going to make the game feel slower, but by how much? Original vanilla leveling was a slogfest …and that was level 60 with a rushed campaign completion at the end by the devs and still doing the archaic “repeat same content 3 times” trope of Arpgs.

If 1-40 is just through the campaign once …it probably won’t feel bad the first time through …but that depends entirely on how long it takes to get to the “campaign finish, end game start” point. Id like it to be meaningful, but well within reason. I don’t really want to spend 40+ hours leveling in DIablo 4 like it’s an MMO or single player game, unless the endgame keeps me there for far longer than Diablo 2 and 3 ever did. But now I’m going off on a tangent to the topic at hand.

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If that were true why was D2 LOD so successful and long-lived (living)? this current wow model is bad bad bad. holding the juicy content behind a max level makes everyone skip to the level as fast as possible, every the exact same level so you never feel apart from them, every item the exact same level, and everything you found before that max level irrelevant. it also eventually creates power creep. Diablo 2 did it right: give us the MEAT of the game DURING our journey through sanctuary, not at the end of our character’s journey. it makes no sense whatsoever and is bad design. brevik isn’t wrong

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The D2 expansion made all D2 vanilla builds obsolete… Sure once D2 LOD was out people loved it and continued playing for years, but Blizzard simply abandoned the game… I think people forget just how “barebone” D2 was when it was released…

Same thing with D3… once they fixed D3 vanilla they abandoned the game for the most part… now they only do incremental changes to item stats or attributes

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think you’re looking wayyyyy too hard into it, 40 is it, ATM. d4 is no where near finished yet, so who knows how far into the game they’ve developed, maybe they’ve only half completed the content and still implementing more.

I’d be very very surprised if it was capped at 40. I wouldn’t cry too hard for now, they stated very very clearly, its nowhere near finished, they gave you an announcement to damage control last years mess and try earn some faith back from fans.

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I know i’ll never get that, but what i wish no matter the max level, when you see someone level 100, it’s IMPRESSIVE !!! i want it to be IMPRESSIVE !!! not like D3, like you’re a piece of garbage if you’re not max level.

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I personally think that the game should have a sort of paragon system, but not like the current one. I think the base game should have its level, say the level 40 like they’re talking about starting with, and they can progressively raise it as expansions are added. But then have a non-OP paragon system that max’s at level 100 and make it very hard to reach the paragon level 100. Make it like the 1-99 in Diablo 2 or trying to achieve a 99 skill in a game such as runescape. Where once you hit level 95 or 99 you are only half way to achieving level 100. This will allow for something to strive for that only a few will hit. But allow endgame content to start being completed with say max level(40) and around paragon level like 85-90.

This also will allow people who like to “race” for world first’s to race to that initial level 40 as well as the race to world first paragon lvl 100. Just my two cents.

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