Infinite or Finite Progression?

in D3, that’s covered;
-by getting the best ladder time on each class at the highest level.

For the love of god let the post max level progression be purely cosmetic. The infinitely scaling paragon system of D3 is bad and eventually makes gear meaningless.

Go on hardcore with a fresh 1400+ paragon character on torment and see if anything poses a challenge to you while leveling.SPOILER THERE ISN’T ANY

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If you play D3 primarily for ladder position then you missed the point of what an Action Role Playing Game is.

the suggestion was for the VIP grinders, not for me, a casual.

There’s also nothing wrong with the game having no end.
Depends on a game.

In a game about loot, having a definite stop with no challenges waiting for you on the other side - makes playing it further pretty much pointless.

Diablo has always been about playing your character for long and hunting the best possible loot. Having an end is detrimental to it.

90+% of games are either session-based (reset each new match) or finite. What’s wrong with having a few infinite progression games?!

Agree with the first sentence. Wholeheartedly disagree with the second sentence.

Why does progression need to be infinite for you (not you specifically I’m referring to whoever is of this opinion) to continue enjoying the loot hunt? If the end is hard to reach, and you don’t need to reach it to begin the endless item hunt at endgame, doesn’t that suffice?

The only result of infinitely scaling progression is power creep. And uncontrolled/imbalanced power creep results in the dumpster fire that is D3 today.

Having finite progression sets a hard cap on the amount of power that can be gained from skills/talents/attributes whatever else you get from leveling specifically. Then we can focus on what everyone seems to agree is the point of Diablo games, which is item hunting (among others).

The devs can then focus on balancing items and their effects and OTHER areas of customization/progression like crafting, trading, end game dungeons, key dungeons etc etc whatever other NEW thing they come up with.

In my opinion, infinite progression had its day in the spotlight with D3 and totally ruined it with the ridiculous amount of unchecked power creep it brought into the game. Lets try something different this time around, please.

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FINITE POWER ! No doubt about that. I don’t care if there is an infinite system for cosmetic or something (Like Hearthstone with golden portrait. Or a way to unlock cosmetic). Make the last boss so hard that you cannot beat it the first time. You need to gear up and improve yourself before even trying him.

Imagine if in a game, you beat the final boss, but he comes back stronger. With absolutely no new mechanics, no new skin… Nothing except the damage and health of the Last boss are bigger number. Then you have to farm the same content to get the SAME gear with bigger number and scale stacking Infinite Power like Paragon. Then you kill it a second time. He comes back again, with nothing new, just bigger number… And you go farm again and again, getting the same exact gear but with bigger number. That is the meaning of infinite Power Progression. The “Hamster treadmill” Infinite Power.

What is the problem of a Final Boss with definite and static stats ? If he is SUPER hard, when I’ll finaly kill him, I will be like: “Damn! I finaly got him! He was so hard. I’m proud, I did it with my Leap Barbarian. Next time or next season, I’ll try a new classe or new build. Maybe Blizz will add a new Legendary that makes my Leap Barb even more baddass and more fun to play (Not stronger)”

The more you play, the more chance you have to get better items. That is your accomplishement to eventually become fully geared.

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Because there always needs to be a step that is more difficult and yet out of reach. And when I finally am able to clear that step and push one more GR forward - this brings feeling of satisfaction and yeilds merit to my loot farm.

On the contrary, if the progression is finite, the game becomes pointless. I’ve levelled to 99. I killed the last boss on the highest difficulty - and then what? There are no other challenges for me to conquer. Yes, you can still farm loot, but for what purpose? You can already clear the most difficult encounter in the game, and more loot will only make it easier and less exciting.

Think about Diablo 3. Would it be interesting to keep playing it if after Torment 13 story mode there comes nothing? Yet your loot eventually lets you one-shot Malthael? What is the damn point?

Diablo 2 was boring after you beat Inferno Baal. Some people kept playing it, true - farming the same boss over and over hundreds of times, and inventing fake goals for themselves like clearing it faster.
But most people just quit their character. Some of them started a new one, others quit the game entirely.

This is the reality of finite progression. Once you’re done - you’re done.

The power is finite in D3. Gear has a cap on how many stats it can give you. Farming paragon 5 strength at a time is only a problem for a few geeks who make it their problem.

In D3 you eventually hit the law of diminishing returns, where finding an upgrade becomes harder and harder still. There is no infinite power creep.

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there is no actual challenge, when you level up, just like your enemies
it looks like that, from outside
but you are actually not moving
a challenge and more difficulty is, when you beat harder content with the SAME power

Hundreds of thousands of people to this day find challenge and interest in it each season.

If you don’t see a challenge in it - perhaps the mode isn’t for you. And that’s OK. No game should ever be for everyone - but there always should be a game to satisfy your demands. Diablo 3 satisfied the interest of 39 million people so far. Maybe a bit less - there’s always gonna be disappointed ones. But people keep playing it en masse each season.

and diablo 4 will again, satisfy the interest of other people, like me :slight_smile:

Keep hoping.
Diablo 4 will be a sequel to Diablo 3, not Diablo 2. They will take some things from 2 that are almost universally requested - like atmosphere (thel’ll try, at least), or talents and rune words.
But if you look at the gameplay of D4 demo - it is basically Diablo 3 with new graphics.

There’s no reason for them to do otherwise, seeing how popular D3 is.

Also they have stated that max character level will be 40. This is too few levels to make a satisfying finite progression for you. This means that like in D3, reaching max level will be merely a first step on the journey.

it all depends on scaling
also, thats just “early design”
noone ever said, level 40 is set in stone :smiley:
david kim cant stress this enough :stuck_out_tongue:

and from the graphics and engine, you basically cant say anything about level and skill system

It shows where their line of thinking is pointing to.
Sure, things will change a lot. But it is really doubtful that they’ll just go ahead and change their main paradigm.

just hope that :stuck_out_tongue:
community is very active :stuck_out_tongue:

Minus the infinite/finite progression, but I certainly feel than Lv40 is very low.

I mean, how many skill points do you think we will get for every level considering how low was Lv40 cap. In Diablo 2, each level gives 5 stats and 1 skill point, so without the side quest reward, you will get like 490 stats and 98 skill points at Lv99 and it wasn’t enough to fill half of the skill tree while in D3, you get 1 paragon point per level but then it has like thousand points available so it not an issue but Lv40 in D4?

Unless each Level in D4 is actually impactful to the point like each level gives at least 10 skill points, or else Lv40 is just too low.

And if they made levelling to Lv30~40 is extremely difficulty, that means we will most likely complete the game at Lv20-ish which doesn’t feel right either. Just imagine if you are playing JRPG where your character is around Lv30 over Lv99 in the final dungeon.

For me, Lv80 is fine for D4 although I would prefer Lv100.

It’s not really a dichotomy, you could for example have a finite progression which you practically can’t reach or imagine the paragon system, except instead of +5 str/vit you’d have +5% magic find.

Also i’m looking at PoE and it’s perfectly reasonable to have goals at a breakpoint set by yourself, most people do. When making a build you don’t use every skill point, reaching 100 is not something most people aim for.

ur right
level 40 is pretty low
they will maybe give us a bunch of skillpoints for each level but it still feels strange :smiley:
i think, 70 would be a good number

Like the current Diablo 3 system?

If you didn’t know, Greater Rift 150 seems to be the end. There’s nothing after that.
And do you know how many people have reached it? A few dozen maybe.
That’s it.
There is your “almost impossible to reach final”.

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Don’t worry ! Just wait for the next season. They’ll increase the set bonus from 10 000% increase damage to 15 000% and like that, everybody will be able to easily reach GR150 ! You will play the exact same build/items and be able to beat that GR150. So everybody will have that sense of completion and will be satisfied.