I would personally try to give players prestige for grinding a lot after maxing out everything. (I personally just start a new character) f.e. you can try to collect a HUGE amount of money (trading lol) and buy expensive hideouts, special mounts with more speed or what ever. But ofc, that would rival MTX.
So you’re basically creating a grindfest for cosmetics, and that’s fine, but there is a limit to cosmetics - technically you could get everything and then what?
Guildwars 1 was a grindfest for achievements that were basically HUUUUUUUUUGE time sinks - but even then you could finish them and people stopped playing until the next release.
Maybe it is okay if people stop playing?
Especially if they return for the next release of DLC - Blizzard wont even loss money then.
The idea that you cant have people log out of your game for even a second is bad game design that will only lose you players in the long run. I am sure Blizzard realize that. Or at least they should, after WoWs BFA expansion.
That’s a valid argument Shadout.
As d3 is now, the game caters across multiple end points. For the few that want to continue playing “forever” there is an option.
Most players leave the playing field for the next season within 4-6 weeks.
Instead of endless progression, make and endless PvE arena instead where the number of mob waves is random and unlimited, getting stronger and tougher each wave. You or your party only have yourself to blame for your lack of good items / lack of coordination / recklessness. End game should reward more for skilled players instead of no-life players.
There is a leaderboard for it, but when you are ranked lower, you know it’s not because of paragon and sh*t, but because of items and skills. It’s fairer that way I think.
At least I got +5 for mindless killing AI. Had D2 Lv90~99 is actually giving me +5 damage to skills or allow me to put more skill point into a Lv20 “skill”, I would have get my D2 character to Lv99 instead of stuck at Lv86+ and move to play other games.
What excuse? People playing PVP because it is fun and satisfying when you destroyed your human opponents in the game.
There is. There is a good reason why do PVP players categorized tier list and composition in the PVP games. Sure once in the blue moon, you can see someone pulling unorthodox (or cheese) strategy and heroes but it is most likely to be used to catch the opponent off-guard, but usually not very effective if there is Best of 3/5/7 round.
The only time that meta got shaken is the introduction of the new balance patch that either weaken the existing heroes/strategy or buff the underused and weak heroes but people usually figure it out and came with a new one pretty quickly until the next balance patch came.
Just look at SC BW where there is no balance patch, the meta is stagnant for many years. Last time I checked at SC Remastered, most of the Terran vs Protoss games are still about spider mines and arbiter’s recall which is something I already knew from the last decade.
And? What’s wrong with it? If reading big numbers is too much, you can hide the damage number at the option there.
Running the same endgame content with “heap on damage onto their worthless little paper doll characters from a mailbox and clicking a stat arrow” is still better than just running the same endgame content without doing anything.
Also, you don’t have to click the arrow stat for 10,000 times. CTRL+ one click will put 100 paragon points into it.
It is true for all arpg games. Why do you only single out D3? Bias too much?
Greater Rift.
You play HC. You’re going to inevitably die and progress will be lost. Every time you roll a new Lv 1 character, you’re making progress.
As far as D4 or any game with a softcore environment, no. Infinite leveling is trash. D3 is beyond repair but in D4, there will be world bosses similar to WoW that drop really rare items, I’m sure.
If you’ve done all there is to do in D4, you can focus on farming world boss loot or items for when you roll a new character.
But what you’re looking for are events. These events require you to perform certain tasks to claim a repeatable reward.
There should also be season specific events that have a unique reward for first time completion and then become repeatable for a lesser reward.
When the Season ends, the event would carry over into NS, but only offer the lesser reward.
Events could offer things like gold (or whatever items are going to be a throttle for players, kind of like how crafting mats are in D3). Season Events could offer a transmog or something and just more of the same resources and materials.
Then the question becomes, why do you need all of these resources? There would need to be a crafting system or some other resource dump. We know there will be expensive gold gambling for items so that much has been covered.
We have this in D3 in the form of bounties (people hate them, especially solo offline console players) and D3 had a gold dump by means of empowering GRs.
But as for the rest of the game, there’s no end game content:
-GRs provide +5 Main Stat until you can complete the next level of GR, repeat.
-The reward for Ubers isn’t significant enough considering these are the only bosses remotely worth farming
-There’s way too many difficulty settings, splitting the player base
-Too easy to max character level
Sorry not greater rift. I want a small increase in difficulty for every wave of mobs, meaning every 30s or 1min (which is the time limit for each wave). And it’s truly unlimited. I don’t want to be stuck the same difficulty for 5-10min. Also, an area map is ways better than the frustration of fishing for good map terrain.
I don’t want endless progression to begin with , if we get steady stream of content releases e.g. every few months ( like every game worth a damn nowadays does btw ) we’ll be able to enjoy the new content instead of chasing that 0.1% damage or level increase whatever the case .
Diablo 4 will be a new game , let’s just leave behind the mistakes of D3 D2 and other Arpgs in the past .
This is a ridiculous and unrealistic goal to have. In any case an endless progression system is not the answer to that because more people will quit from burnout instead.
Gaming in general is a rather pointless activity outside of “fun” but there is nothing that screams futility as much as an endless expgrind does. It is not something we players want to feel, yet that is the only thing I can think of once I enter the GR hamsterwheel.
If you want replayability you have to design the endgame properly. Various forms of PvP or PvPvE is one (very succesful) way of going about it. Proper itemization, smooth character progression along with a lasting loothunt is also key. Slapping some arbitrary infinite grind that benefits <1% of the playerbase and discourages the rest is not a longterm solution and D3 is the ultimate proof of that.
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So what exactly makes people come back when content is added to the game if not for the compelling gameplay? The truth is that there is only so many times one can play a game like this without progression.
And I never claimed that endless leveling is content, I claimed that it can keep a player interested longer until new content comes along.
If you want the leaderboards to actually be fair then everyone has to have the same gear and build. You say that it’s unfair that people who play more are stronger, but how exactly is a guy being stronger because of getting lucky on drops more fair?
Acting like endless progression discourages more people from playing than abismal drop rates where you gain nothing from your time played is pure nonsense.
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You’re shifting the arguement, either keep up or stay out of it. Nobody is talking about abysmal droprates. I am saying an infinite expgrind discourages more players than it actually benefits. It doesn’t take a genius to realise this.
A longlasting exciting loothunt is the goal of an ARPG. Your problem is that you’re used to D3s terrible itemization that you believe an ARPG cannot be fun unless you get all the items in the game really quickly.
I’m not shifting the argument.
People are claiming that endless progression isn’t necessary as long as items are rare enough that it’ll take you a long time to get geared.
I’m pointing out that claiming that endless progression discourages people from playing is pure nonsense when it’s far worse to have abismal drop rates where you gain nothing from your time playing between said rare drops.
And I actually played D1 and D2, that’s how I know that most of the arguments of the D2 zealots are BS.
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Because smart work should reward more than hard work? Is that how real world operates too. There should be a hard cap on attributes, and leave the rest to skills and RNG goddess.
I only say it’s fairer, please do not twist my words. Fairer than something doesn’t make it absolutely fair. There is no such thing in this universe called fairness, except everybody eventually dies I guess.
How is getting lucky on drops smart work?
I like this idea a lot, maybe even for hardcore.
This sounds like an automatically balancing system where the game grows with you until you can’t handle it. It’s the same thing I do in Torchlight all on my own - clear levels, until I can’t, then go back a few and have at it.
For hardcore, this would change the experience drastically. Instead of being carebear, farming at safe difficulty and then fishing for a good GR and hopefully not dying (plus leveling push alts while keeping your main to farm easy), you’d push as far as you can, then eventually fail. With a shared stash, it balances out somewhere as well, as in by dying too early you can run out of stockpiled gear, so eventually you will spend time in rares and entry-level random legendaries.
So the difference between sc and hc is how much of a punishment you get for a death: setback or restart.
Not sure people would like it, but I’d give it a try myself 
That being said, if by endless progression people want to get stronger endlessly, then it’s not a solution for them. Just like somebody described above, in D3V there was a cap to how powerful you can get, you reach and it’s the end. Ancients and primals make it (much) longer, but the cap is still there.
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That is a 3rd factor independent of both smart and hard work. And luck boosts both, don’t you think? Being lucky rewards both hard work and smart work, sometimes more for hard work because more time spent may mean more decent drops.
Welcome to ARPGs rofl. Where you don’t get a reward by simply being online. Except in almighty RoS.
And that’s something that RoS does much better than other ARPGs.
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