I just hope the speed of leveling in D4 is going to be much much slower compared to D3 (like 100-times slower). I really want to enjoy all the items Blizzard introduces with care at those low- and middle- levels. I wouldn’t mind if taking the character to the max level would take like two months of four-hour-a-day sessions.
20 Likes
Diablo 4 level cap is 40 and it has a paragon alike system, so nope, it won’t take 2 months to reach Lv 40 in D4.
It may takes more than 2+ months to reach D4 paragon cap, I guess?
1 Like
Do that and you’ll be playing the game alone two months after release.
As long as it’s fun and you are doing useful things for your character, I’m okay with a slower pace. Slowing things down just to delay the end game isn’t really what’s needed though. D3’s leveling still feels too prolonged to me at this point because you really don’t keep anything your character gets sub-70 unless you cube it. It’s just a means to an end.
So make the lower levels meaningful, and you may be on to something.
22 Likes
Pretty much this.
Also, if you want slow leveling, then there’d likely shouldn’t be any kind of endgame content that requires a person to be at level cap to participate in. You’ll instead want the endgame content accessible for all levels (or at least within a certain level range). As having content locked behind a level cap leads to players and developers encouraging faster leveling, especially if this content is the endgame that players are expected to grind hours on.
4 Likes
I don’t see a problem with this as long as they make the learning process (1 → 40) not required after being done once aka you can start at level 40 once you reached it in the respective mode.
If we have to do it more than once then they have to scrap the vertical progression aka drop endgame stuff from level 1, and this creates other problems.
The old school scenario of leveling each and every character to start getting maxed stuff at cap, doesn’t make sense in 2021.
So, related to OP I support:
- Slow 1 to 40 leveling (2-3 days)
- An option to start directly at 40 on follow-up characters
1 Like
Getting to max level taking a long time would be fine if max level wasn’t required to do all the content in the game.
Just like how in Diablo 2 getting to level 99 is a pretty solid time investment but you can pretty much beat everything in the game(maybe not the ubers, depending on gear) at around level 70-75 which is around 10-12% of the total XP needed to hit level 99.
Otherwise I’d support slower than Diablo 3 leveling speeds, but not in the realm of 200+ hours. Not even Classic WoW needs that kind of time investment to hit max level.
7 Likes
Yeah, me too. I want to enjoy the journey as much as possible because when I’m max level I feel like I’m finished. If I’m playing Diablo and I’m just doing random dungeons over and over for a chance at a better piece of gear, with the story being finished and no level increase, I call that finished. I’d rather start a new character than sit there grinding for small upgrades. The leveling journey should encompass most of the actual game. I’m hoping “endgame” is incorporated into the end of the levels/story.
We already know what they’re going to do though. We see the Level 40 cap and they’ve shown us a bunch of max level characters. The expansion is going to add 10 levels and render everything before it useless. It’s the WoW model and I’ve always found it pretty bad when compared to Diablo 2’s leveling and expansion system.
10 Likes
Somewhere around 100-150 hours to max lvl (which also means no paragon afterward), would be fine. Should be able to do end-game earlier. Like after 15-20 hours maybe. And Blizzard should get rid of all kinds of speed/powerleveling.
Should of course also have to lvl each character you make. No skipping to max lvl after the first character (and obviously as said above, no paragon, and certainly no account-wide paragon).
Yeah, also this.
4 Likes
This. It is very limiting for leveling forcing gameplay at max level. It pushes it in the direction of having to get through 1-40 very fast, then players get bored because their character isn’t developing, which is why we need paragon.
Make 1-30 relatively easy, around 3-4 hours to get to, so players can get to end game content in a reasonable period of time. Stretch 31-40 out, slowly taking longer and longer for each level, somewhere around 80-100 hours to get to 40, and make the power increases important, but not required.
Hitting max level should be an achievement, not a chore to get out of the way.
2 Likes
Paragon is simply advanced leveling. The basic 1-40 leveling should exist so that the novice player gets comfortable with the game.
Doing 1-40 on each character would be an epic waste of time with vertical progression and paragon (both of which have been confirmed to exist in D4).
I don’t know…
With how big they are planning, and have shown, the world to be I really doubt it will take us just 40 levels to explore it all. At least I sure hope so. However I think this could actually be a really interesting twist on the game. If you hit level 40 say 50-60% of the way through the open world content, then that gives everyone (including those who feel “done” with the game after hitting max level) actually quite a lot of stuff to still do and explore while enjoying the power associated with a max level character.
40 levels does not sound like all that much to me in terms of stats/skill points to invest, and I would be bummed if I had to spend an excessively mind-numbing number of hours running around at low levels with minimal skill points, and thus minimal skills/skill upgrades as well as primary stat gated skill unlocks. Now that’s not to say I don’t want the leveling experience to also matter. I don’t want the 1-40 experience to be a blur like D3. Furthermore I think they should take a hint from D2 and throw in lower level items that are end game viable along the way. How great did it feel to find a goblin toe in normal, or a viper magi or titan’s revenge in nightmare during that first play through? It felt amazing, and it gave real meaning to the leveling experience.
I think it would be extremely interesting to reach max level about halfway through the open world content (which again I would still like to be a decent chunk of time), and to then start work on this “paragon-esque” system for the second half of open world content. If these key dungeons or whatever other end game ideas they come up with are also available as soon as you hit level 40 rather than forcing completion of open world first then that would give us even more to do! Do I want to finish exploring the entire open world? Finish the main storyline? Begin these randomized key dungeons? And from everything I have heard so far they want you to be able to do what you want. You don’t have to necessarily run the storyline quests as you explore the world they say. You don’t have to do areas in any particular order they say. What I suggest would be a very interesting way to craft the game and would support what we have heard of the overall design of the play through experience.
1 Like
No. what i want is a fast leveling system to get to the level cap, and paragon leveling afterwards. everyone knows that the first part of the leveling experience is just the tutorial, the real game starts after you reach the cap.
That is how it is in bad games for sure.
Lvling and campaign should offer challenge and depth. It should be a major part of the entire game. And not at all a tutorial.
8 Likes
no, that doesnt sound fun, to me. in diablo 2 and 3, leveling up to a high level for diablo 2 and level 70 in diablo 3 was a painfully, painfully slow slog that i couldnt wait for it to end, and i had much more fun staying on the high level.
the game should be designed so that you can reach max level by the end of the storyline.
My hope would be that level 40 is roughly the same time it takes to get to 1-85 in Dibalo 2 (or longer).
More importantly almost, is the end game (“paragon”) system. This should be a system that allows for significant improvements to your character and require a lot of time and effort to reach the max “level” of it, without having some lame infinite approach. Such as once you reach 40, you can pick a Mastery path on the tree that expands the nodes of that path and allows you to further specialize in your build. Hopefully this is an additional 40 levels and takes like 10x as long to max as the main 40 levels. Something along those lines.
See from how big they are planning for the world to be I think even that would create a required slog. The world is going to be very very large compared to previous Diablo games. I am pretty sure you won’t want to spend all of that time stuck at sub 40 levels.
considering its going to be an open world game, i think the main storyline would be a very minor part of the world, since there could be literally just about any quest possible that isn’t part of the main story.
your right that sounds like a much worse slog. god i hate open world games.
I could be mistaken but I believe they said you could be at level 40 before you finish the story.
Maybe in Rhykkes interview with David Kim from Blizzcon.
This will deprecate in games in the future. AI driven story should replace all main/side storylines and campaigns - relics of the past.
Diablo is not about basic leveling and story - it’s about action and replayability. You don’t achieve these by forcing the player to go through the same boring stuff again and again, following the same known storyline.
D2, D3 and PoE are totally outdated in this regard. D4 has to set the bar higher and allow the experienced player to enjoy the endgame immediately.