I hope for extremely slow speed of leveling in D4

General Discussion
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It’s easier to maintain a game than to develop it.

In 2022 D4 would be already 6 years in development, which means most of the mechanics that are to be released post launch are known and ready to be implemented. It’s easy to step up on the complexity and content when you have it planned.

Post launch you also use the foundation you developed all this time. If you’ve done things with a vision when you started, you should not have any problems delivering updates after that. There shouldn’t be anything major to slow you down. Yet if you haven’t fully figured out fundamental stuff like NPE then this is what can cause you problems.

They will certainly do this if D4 lacks a proper end game.

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D3 was never slow leveling at the start (vanilla). It still isn’t if you start with nothing (max lvl players have all and more). When you start with nothing in D3 it is a good experience (unless you have played it 10 times over). We really need D4 basically.

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It takes a few hours to lvl to 70 from nothing in D4 now.
Vanilla was different, but we are very far from vanilla now.

It should certainly be faster to lvl when you have knowledge of the game. Maybe 10-15 hours. And then somewhat longer when you do not, and are starting from nothing.
And never the few minutes it takes in D3 when you get boosted.

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It also still takes resources and things move along slower.

Pretty much any programmer will tell you: It’s easier to do something while you’re still developing it than it is to go back in after you’ve released it and change things.

You act like this would be easy yet virtually no game actually does what you’re talking about. Then when I bring up several examples of why your ideology doesn’t work you just go “Well I don’t know those games but I think my idea still works”.

Blizzard themselves have been burned by attempting to do what you’re saying they should do.

Also I never said anything about not having your NPE figured out. My entire point has been that you don’t need to have a tutorial that treats them like a drooling idiot, optional or not.

New players are not only capable of figuring out a lot on their own, most people actually have fun doing that. It makes your optional tutorial a waste of development resources that could have been spent on making a better game.

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Hamster Wheel has worked extremely well for games. Thats one of my ideas, they could put music, colours, and such into it to make it more enjoying. UI rewards, own Music Playlist, etc. Hamster Wheel itself isnt the problem for sure. They could even put celebrities, sure its more fun to run when theres celebrity. Ive even suggested half-naked Succubus photo stuff, we all know guys like to put girls pictures on garage walls.

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Seasons ultimately reflect how poor ARPG itemization and economies are when it comes to fostering longevity. You have items constantly being created, while things of value rarely disappear. Instead of presenting players with options to sacrifice those items of rarity for gains, they instead opt to flip the game board and force everyone to start over again. This also takes stress off more consistently implementing new content, which would go a long way in curbing the stagnation of these short-lived cycles. Trade doesn’t even have to be a factor for this eventuality, but I’d argue it tends to accelerate it.

Otherwise, you can’t have early game items being end-game viable. This actually hurts the end-game because for every one of such item that occupies a slot, you’re implying the player doesn’t have to farm as much/work as hard, and thus less likely to play as long. There’s also the obvious bullseye indicating that these items are overpowered if higher level variants can’t compete. Some may try to argue that you just make these items stupid rare, but that doesn’t really solve any problems between the last paragraph and the reality that any build living or dying by such items’ presence further reflects poor itemization.

Vertical progression and tier resets are a requirement if you want to keep a game consistently fresh. And no, I’m not talking about every patch invalidating everything prior. Pacing falling more in line with expansions at 1.5-2 years is about right. Actually balance a game without seasonal resets and instead of a couple months of player finding fulfillment in a character or two, you can hope for exponentially more. Of course, you also don’t achieve this by just making everything take longer. No, you need to give people lots of ways to customize their characters, to freely experiment and not be punished for their curiosities with yet more grinding, to incrementally progress, and to present a variety of content where one build doesn’t suit all. Unfortunately, and to hearken back to my accusations of gatekeeping, we have people who try to argue that’s not what Diablo “is” and the consequence is a relatively unchanging game mired by concepts of tradition that people have either seen before or can’t maintain interest in because why play something for a year when you’ve seen it all in 2 months with other, fresher games out there to entertain. Longevity and stagnation can’t coexist.

And while randomized questing has its merits, I can’t say we’re there yet. This instead shifts the onus on better randomized maps and reasons to explore them in their entirety. To play on the purist’s take of Diablo, this also means boss runs can’t be the most profitable endeavors. If anything, I’d go as far to say that a boss encounter should be a one-time-per-character ordeal within the common setting. Their presence needs narrative significance, not significance as a loot pinata. Events stumbled upon while exploring can also help with the randomized questing angle. Some can even be less obvious like finding a key, and thus needing to find a chest within that zone it pairs to. You can tinker with treasure maps (find x spot, find loot), have collections that can unlock things or provide guaranteed unique rewards, solve puzzles (hints in the area optional), build NPC relations through accomplishing various tasks and/or giving them items, and more. If this is starting to sound like an MMO to some, that’d be because those games realized players wanted more than just killing monsters, and to keep them playing, they had to find ways to spice things up. This isn’t to say everything such games have done over the years have been good, and most of the time the major failures are a direct result of pandering to hardcore demographics that, yes, gatekeep. Still, if you’re the sort currently looking at D4 and thinking, “This looks bland/boring…” then look around to everyone claiming it should be more like D2 instead of being its own newer, better thing where you can still have depth while also being casual friendly. Because for a lot of people, D2 got boring nearly 2 decades ago and either gave it up or turned to mods to prolong its lifespan. Don’t be that hardcore demographic that tanks a game because you lack empathy for your fellow players and selfishly chase your own desires. That same 20 years between then and now has brought a lot of knowledge to gaming that shouldn’t be ignored simply because of tradition.

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What is the problem?
Reducing the end-game grind, by making the lvling part of the game more rewarding seems like a win/win. I happen to know you are not a fan of extreme grind, so where is the issue?
Nor is it necessarily a problem if people do not play as long. If they had a good time while they played, that is all we can ask for (and no, I am definitely not saying that time does not matter at all. If the pace is too fast, it hurts the experience. D3 being an example)

This seems so easy to solve, and has already been mentioned multiple times in this thread.
Lower lvl items being end-game viable can have an appropriate power for the lvl they drop on. With the ability to upgrade them to end-game level.
That legendary lvl 19 dagger does what a lvl 19 dagger should be able to do. But you can take it with you, and at some point later on, upgrade it to lvl 40 with all its new power.
Of course, make the upgrade cost significant enough that finding the same item at max lvl is still useful.

Definitely reasons to explore yes. As for boss runs, D2 style boss runs should offer nearly no rewards. Since they are non-random, and easy to optimize for.
However, if one of the end-game activities was to reset the campaign and replay it at end-game difficulty, then you could get good rewards for each boss kill again, just like in the first playthrough of the campaign. Since the few bosses would be separated by a ton of other content, and not really a boss-farm in any meaning of the word.

Yeah, completely agreed.
Random events on the map have endless possibilities and this should be major part of end-game and during lvling. We dont even have to look only at MMOs. Look at PoE, which have its various ‘masters’ spawning randomly in the zones for example, giving you small and large quests for increased gameplay diversity.
This is also how we solve random dungeon map layouts. Players in D3 complain about having to search for the rights path in a GRift tunnel, since all you do is speed run. Finding that exist is everything. Going down the wrong paths should have a decent chance of leading you to something interesting.

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I’d like slower level progression with overall more challenge in the main story, don’t push all the challenge on randomly generated mobs.

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If you make the foundations of a building with cheaper materials it may fall down during earthquake.

NPE is fundamental to ANY type of game, while complexity isn’t.

I am simplifying itemization any day to offer the player Math-free experience. I am adding AI to assist those that want to have easier time with gearing. I am also adding a great amount of tips that are to teach the new player how to be more successful in combat. For all the others that don’t enjoy this - I am adding an opt-out option.

This will cost some content and complexity, but these can be added in the follow-up Seasons. With or without a tutorial, D4 will be a more complex game in Season 20 than in Season 1. This is the natural process and the tutorial isn’t going against it, it is just slowing it very little.

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This is how things are supposed to work. Would you really like to still run around with the Skorns and Manticores from Vanilla?
Why would they make new gear for an expansion that’s worse than the old stuff you already have?

I do enjoy the leveling on season day 1. But when I start the season on the second server I still take a PL instead.

Exactly.

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If they increase levels with expansions, they should add new gear. With that, it should be new gear not just updated older gear like D3 did. They should also add several new talents and passives as well as adding new legendary affixes.

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Indeed. That is why we get new items and gear in D2 expansion and D3 expansion, and some of them (** expansion required **) were gradually added thru balance patches.

I think any game expansion that doesn’t do that will feel lackluster and underwhelming especially when you are paying $40 for the expansion.

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He already wrote you where the problem is. Instead of spamming with replies, try to think about it for some time.

I’ll try one last time.

If we endorse replayability in aRPGs, we have to extend the gameplay happening before each player reaches his MTBU threshold and stops playing.

When you grant end game stuff in a tutorial (basic leveling) you effectively increases the MTBU for no adequate reason.

A good aRPG is one that has slow gearing process and character development.

I have a metric I use for myself in aRPGs and I refer to it as the “Hidden Level”.

In D2, you get +5 stats for each level, but you can also get +5 stat from items. And you can also make a relation to how valuable that +5 stat is compared to other stats. So, you can ultimately convert EVERY stat in the game to what a single level-up grants you. That is how you calculate your hidden level.

An aRPG that has very high hidden level cap reachable with a proper pace/MTBU during gameplay in a non-boring way (no D3 main stat grind) is a good aRPG with solid replayability potential.

For the above to happen you have to scale the hidden level with time investment and difficulty - the more the player increases his gameplay skill and the more challenges he’s able to overcome the higher his hidden level will be from the drops/rewards he’ll get.

You can’t simply drop GG stuff in a tutorial or make the tutorial having an end game difficulty.

There’s nothing wrong to have a tutorial/campaign/basic leveling with vertical progression being done once. In fact, that’s the right design when you have a proper endgame and a working game as a whole.

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In the sense that NPE will always be there no matter what you do, yes. But the idea that a specific kind of NPE has to be in the game… no.

According to yourself, there isn’t. Since you want to turn the entire lvling experience into a tutorial, ruining the lvling experience.
Nobody are against a short tutorial at the start, explaining basic stuff.

Sadly this is nonsense. You are lowering early MTBU by actually giving people useful items while lvling.
Might it lower the grind in end-game? Yeah. But once again, how is that a problem?
Besides, it does not necessarily lower the end-game grind much, if you need crafting materials to upgrade your low lvl item to max lvl. It just changes what you are grinding for.
I am not exactly a fan of crafting, but I once again happen to know both you and Saidosha are, but apparently crafting end-game items is now bad?

Lets try this one more time; the lvling experience should not be a tutorial.
It should be a learning experience of course. Just like end-game should be. The entire game should be a learning experience. That is what a game is.
A tutorial however is something different. Too long tutorials results in bad games, as we have been over before.

There is a line somewhere between slow gearing/character development and excessive grind. I am all for slow gearing, and has argued extensively for that (aka. do not allow trading). But I also know Saidosha probably want less grind than I do, hence asking why it is a problem to reduce the grind.

As for you claiming slow character progression is good? I definitely agree. But it is kinda weird that you want to literally skip the character progression in the game, by skipping the lvling part of the game, on all characters after the first one. Seems like a serious contradiction.

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diablo 3 was pretty slow when it released, id think it will be similar to that

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Whoever said I claimed it should be worse. I did not say that. Having gear that is on par in terms of power, but designed for entirely different builds or a different way to play an existing build, would be far better solution rather than power creep.

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I’d be all for new items of the same power level that bring diversity to builds/talents along with new talents and passives as opposed to gear resets and the power creep that comes with.

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I’d venture to say a bit slower since the 4bacts went by rather quickly but repeated each difficulty. I’d say a couple weeks for faster players to a month for slower players is what Im expecting.

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I dont really care if an expansion every 2nd year ends up invalidating old gear. I mean, it has been 2 years?!
But in a pure “game design” perspective, adding new gear that has the same power lvl, but are just different, sounds better.

What I would be afraid of, especially given D3s history, is not that they add new gear/lvl cap in an expansion that invalidates old gear. But that they do so in each patch…
That is what power creep is. What expansions do is more of a reset.

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This is what I was arguing for. New gear that brings new ways to play the game, enables new builds, etc. The sad part about new expansions invalidating old gear is that ultimately you never end up with a true wealth of gear options. If however you just add new gear of approximately the same power level you end up with an ever expanding sandbox in which to play.

No one is advocating for dropping “GG” gear in a tutorial. That is a straw man argument. First of all I am advocating for a very short tutorial experience, followed by a meaningful leveling experience which slowly builds complexity.

Lets pretend Diablo 3’s legendaries were instead uniques. They always dropped at the same item level and you didn’t spend eternity searching for better versions of the same thing. Now you are leveling and you happen to find a leorics crown (let’s say item level 20 for this example). That is exciting! There are lots of builds which are enabled by having that affix! Does it mean you will never find another helm upgrade? No. You might use it for a bit while leveling, but you will probably opt for a different helm of higher level later on that gives you more stats. You might not even be going for a CDR build, but if you do want to try one in the future (on current or alternate character) you have a key piece! Then in the end game once you have found more pieces for your high CDR build you can bring that crown back out and use it again! But you will have to make a sacrifice to use that lower level unique. It will not have as much res or str or whatever on it as a level 40 rare. I find that interesting.

Now it also goes to say this kind of system (using level 20 gear at end game) only really works when builds do not require you to have maxed stats in every spot. Having moderately easy to achieve soft caps for various stats like resistances makes this possible. In Diablo 3 you need more of every stat always, and thus only the best of the best gear will work.

You can also create a gear upgrade system like Shadout explained. That is a good way to address having to use lower level gear for a build.

Finally as I mentioned above I would like a wealth of interesting gear. I think uniques should be situational, and they should not be good for every build. Furthermore I think the drop rates should be relatively low. I personally do not want to be able to find every single unique in a season. To me that is boring. I would like there to be many interesting builds for each class which are made possible by many different uniques. When you play the season you see what RNG gives you and you try to create a build around that, rather than deciding exactly which build you want to play first, and getting upset if you can’t find the gear for it (not directed at anyone in general, just saying I saw a lot of that in D3 back in the day).

EDIT: And I think that if you always invalidate the old gear, whether than be with expansions or especially with seasons you end up being forced to play the builds the devs have designed, which is one of the most often cited complaints about D3. If you want to be able to play the way you want to play, you cannot constantly invalidate old gear.

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