The entire level scale, from level 1 to the cap and whatever system takes it to beyond, should be meaningful. None of the levels below the cap should be treated as “tutorial” like D3 does.
This way slower leveling can be perfectly fine.
6 Likes
Have a 10 minute optional tutorial. “This is how you move, attack etc.”. After that the real game should begin. No training wheels.
I dunno. I have played a ton of RPG’s where I have finished the game long before hitting the cap. Leveling should be part of the journey, not just the tutorial.
This can be done with or without a paragon system. It worked in D2, it could work in D4. Having a level cap of 40 and a paragon cap of 50 is basically the same as having a leveling cap of 90.
Hopefully, they don’t make paragon as flavorless as they did in D3. It should have some meaningful choices that allow the player to customize their character, not just fill out the boxes, then add mainstat.
3 Likes
Games always design the most content around the end game. It’s just logical. That’s where everyone ends up.
If it were up to me, I’d say to find a way to just get rid of leveling altogether. I.e. Choose your skills and progress them over time. A certain number of progression points in a skill will unlock higher tier skills.
With levels, you want to be max before really starting in on your character. Everything that came before the max is garbage. Skill progression without levels might make you care more about your build instead.
I don’t know. I came up with that idea in about 9 seconds. I’m sure there are holes to poke.
Yes, it is, it’s just more convenient for the player to have basic and advanced levels.
It’s most certainly going to be the same system as the one in DI.
I disagree. We need tutorial and we need easy to learn game mechanics in Diablo 4. This way the game would be newcomer friendly and this would result in constant fresh player base.
I think the basic mechanics in an aRPG can be learned from someone that never tried such games for 2 days and that’s the time frame the leveling to 40 should be.
No problem with this. Levels just make it more easier for the new players to orient in the game.
Honestly it is the opposite. Most games dont care about having an end-game.
Not saying Diablo 4 should not care about end-game. It very much need to, but it should still be the end-game. Coming after a large part of the actual game.
Isn’t that exactly what lvling is?
Everything that comes before lvl 99 in D2 and PoE is not garbage.
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I would argue that most games don’t even have an endgame.
Even for the ones that do, I would still argue that the ones that treat all the progression leading up to the end game as little more than a tutorial end up suffering for it in the end.
Diablo 2 has the entire game consisting of pre-max level content, as getting to level 99 is optional. Even what you’d call “end game” in Diablo 2 is basically just doing the same thing you were doing while you were leveling anyway: Killing monsters and bosses, getting loot, leveling up.
Even something like Classic WoW has a really solid leveling game, and I’ve seen plenty on the WoW forums that think leveling in Classic is better than the actual endgame. You certainly don’t just disregard everything that came before max level, as getting to max level builds up your character and everything you’ll use.
3 Likes
There’s no actual game in a well made aRPG. The moment you gate the character progression so that the player is kept away from the endgame itemization, is the moment you reduce replayability. That’s deprecated.
Once the tutorial is over, the player should be able to find endgame stuff in every one of his follow-up playthroughs.
Dont separate that clearly between lvling gear and end-game gear. Both by makng lvling gear useful. And by having ways to upgrade lvling gear into the end-game.
This goes for the whole game. There should not be a large difference between lvling and end-game, some line you cross that moves you from one into the other, entering an entirely different game.
Sure, D3 did that. And it is much worse for it.
Just make ‘the game’ one long progression through the content. No need to make end-game a separate thing. No need to make lvling pointless and boring.
The tutorial should be over after 10 minutes max. Then lvling should begin.
The player should be able to find potential end-game items even while lvling on their first playthrough.
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When D3 first came out it took me 1000 hours to reach P100. I think it would be awesome for D4 to be slow levelling. Hopefully it doesn’t go the same way as D3 now where people are nearly P2000 by the end of two weeks.
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incorrect. video games are there for the story. gameplay is secondary. dont forget, its people like you that basically thinks stories are a waste of time, that caused the stories of many recent games to be absolute garbage, because blizzard and other companies didn’t think anyone cared about the story at all.
Yeah, so that the new player has totally no clue after that what to do.
We discussed this before. You can’t serve challenging content from 10th minute where GG items drop. That’s not productive regarding new players that don’t know the basic stuff yet and can’t decide between simple items.
No. They are there to make money for their creators. Putting a story just makes you more money.
What? Blizzard care A LOT about the story in their games.
So like vD3. You do realize this speed run to 70 is because of 2 factors, 1 the knowledge most players have about the game and the most efficient ways to level. 2, that knowledge combined with the bonus experience gains of higher torments.
So maybe you are new to the game and just didn’t know. But leveling was much slower in the beginning. I don’t think it will be a zerg to level cap like you see today. They want a full fleshed campaign covering 5 massive zones with a ton of dungeons. I’m not sure you will be able to just zerg through it. And if you did, you may have missed out on some things and find out you aren’t at level cap when you are done.
Of course there will be people that will try to rush, but you don’t have to. Heck, in D3 it takes me a while to 70. I play a bit each night, and eventually I’m 70. I’m never in a rush. So you could just play without rushing.
Video games are for a lot of different things, both story and gameplay included.
but let’s be real here: Blizzard was never very good at telling stories. Great at world building but even the old Blizzard their best story was more or less just a fantasy re-telling of Anakin Skywalker.
and if you want games that focus on story you can still get those.
You should easily be able to teach somebody the basics of playing a game in about 5-10 minutes. Beyond that things like advanced mechanics and learning how to play your class are things that should come naturally via gameplay.
Not that we need to go back to the way things used to be, but you’d think it a miracle that any of us figured out how to play Diablo 1 & 2 without any actual tutorial.
2 Likes
didnt a great number of people complain about the story in diablo 3? how its literally a cliche fest? even blizzard outright stated that.
Learn by doing.
That is what good games do.
That is what Dark Souls do. It is what Hades do. Throw you to the lions.
They wont be GG items. They will be low lvl versions of GG items that can be upgrades to high lvl items much later.
Also, sure you can, by not having ridiculous scaling in your game.
Literally no problems spotted here. Those players will learn, over time. That learning experience is the game.
I am not particularly nostalgic, but sometimes we should go back. The reason I am not particularly nostalgic is that I dont need to. Plenty of modern games understand these game design lessons just fine. Now we just need Blizzard to relearn them.
If anything, challenging games that asks you to learn on your own, are having a renaissance.
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can you miss out on things, though? are the sidequests limited to level, or will become unavaible after a certain point of the story? i dont think they would do that, as that would limit the choices too much, one could just zerg through the storyline first, go to the level cap, and save the sidequests for after the story, serving as the post game.
in my opinion, thats what bad games do. a good game gives you a tutorial or something akin to it, based on the assumption that you dont know the first thing about the game. it may also cover concepts new to the game, or the franchise as a whole.
oh, and make it optional, so that people who has an idea how to play the game can skip it.
Sure, a 10 minute tutorial to teach you the basic controls. After that, have fun figuring things out.
It is what the wildly popular survival/crafting games do as well, afaik (not really a genre I care about).
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The thing is that the concepts needed to be covered by the tutorial are really basic and quick to cover. We’re talking about things like:
- This how you move, attack, etc.
- This is how you manage inventory, equipment, etc.
- This is how you apply skill/attribute points.
The tutorial is basically a 10 minute crash course for somebody who has pretty much never played that kind of game before.
After that I give people enough credit to be able to figure it out by playing the game. Most players I could hand a chain lighting spell to and they would use it a few times and figure out “this is pretty powerful when there are multiple enemies”. I don’t really need to take them aside and teach them that.
3 Likes