For you. But then you could play capped. Thats the beauty of having options
For me, capped paragon is a massive crutch to this game, and removes the one thing that made D3 unique over every other aRPG clone around. The feeling of getting constantly more powerful is satisfying for many of us, is it really that hard to understand?
They very same streamers that have been asking for this, even making documents with demands, left the game after a single week
Other players left after a couple of days
Meanwhile, those of us that would still be playing, growing our characters, finding FUN in making us stronger, get to watch as the ones that made these demands flock away
I raised my concern about the cap even before it was in ptr. So i surely was against it from start unless they were going to give us a uncapped option. When ppl discussed about wanting cap years ago i also raised my concern about it aswell and was advocating for a paragon filter on LB instead. So not sure why u ask where i was. But yeah i havnt been as active here as ive been playing d4.
Thank you for approaching this level headed and in good faith.
You’re right that people could still farm paragon levels. I have screenshots of the first time I reached P1000. Each season, I’ve logged where I’ve climbed and I love to see the progress I make over time. I can still do that, and probably will. The only cap is on me.
I am responding to patch notes and sentiment signaling this should be fun. I am voicing my concern over that. Now that I’ve experienced it I can say it isn’t fun. It’s taken away from an experience I was passionate about with the original system and it’s given me pause.
To me, continuing on this path, the one which paved the way to Diablo 4, I strongly sense a mode of the dreaded “God Mode” attitude you unfortunately sometimes run into with D&D game masters. Just because you can stop fun for your players doesn’t mean it’s actually in the game’s best interest.
Where you say unlimited paragon has been a massive crutch, I feel you couldn’t be more off target. What do you mean by that?
Some notes I’m thinking about…
Paragon becomes increasingly more difficult to grind as number go up. It clearly isn’t unlimited and has soft caps around player time and efficiency and hard caps around season start and end and “best-case” scenarios.
Multiple 10,000% set bonuses coupled with at least 3 gems providing throughput bonuses of around 300% (1.5x1.5x1.5) stacked on full augs dwarfs primary stat gains on a side-by-side with Paragon.
Guardian set has provided a fantastic delta for low paragon and has become even further increased in value from blocking stat gain from levels.
They could have simply adjusted paragon stat gain from 5 to 1 for the same goal. But in standard Blizzard fashion, we get a Rube Goldberg machine to obfuscate the actual objective.
Developer’s Note:We understand that Paragon was king in terms of character power. With the change this Season, we wanted to shift that power from Main Stat grinding to gameplay knowledge and gear hunting. We chose 800 as our initial starting point and would appreciate your feedback on this cap.
And that’s not even getting into how wildly out-of-touch it is to claim LEVELS are king for character power in an RPG. Levels should be the best descriptor of character strength given the genre…
I agree. but I understand too. Its a great way to balance out these sets. Set the balance to para 800 vs para 5000. However, the cap should be raised. Maybe by 200 up a season to a max of 2000. Just spit balling here.
What I mean is for a lot of people the game can’t stand on its own without it.
I’m not even really against uncapped or a high cap paragon next season now that SSF is here, just as long as it comes with a little better balance between classes.
There is no fixed number. It depends on the map, what’s in the map and how you play the map. But of course, the more main stat you get the less you become dependant on that before you can go higher.
It’s crazy but if that’s where the game lives, isn’t it also crazy to try and remove it? I think there’s a lot more to D3 than leveling but it really feels post-Souls that RPGs abandoned that traditional leveling motif.
Heck, even the “world leveling with you” undermines the integrity of a leveling system–monsters getting harder because your level went up (instead of going to a place where the monsters are tougher) really kills immersion for me. Paragon was a hat tip to meaningful levels. Is that a lost perspective?
What’s crazy is the power creep in the game. There’s people already with lvl150 gems in SSF at paragon 800. That’s without any season power mechanic. Next season there could basically be two if the altar comes back not too nerfed. Then you add on unlimited paragon and gr150 becomes a trivial matter.
I’m not sold capped paragon will become permanent. This season they wanted to put the focus on world content that wouldn’t be upended by xp efficiency. And there’s the side benefit they’re getting data on where balance points should be (hopefully) as the game goes into maintenance mode.
Not fun: Already after 1 week my main build progression kind of stopped a long time ago when at normal season it lasts several months for me
Fun: Almost nobody is playing the game → It’s possible for low skill player like me get no. 1 rank (temporarily) on some niche set leaderboards and fool myself to think I’m suddenly the best…
Actually the Area damage is a season power mechanic. The way Area damage scales means the 150% extra are a huge deal.
However I totally agree that these p800 GR150 builds should receive nerfs. The game should be balanced arounds somewhere in 140 with the rest to 150 being the power of the season theme
I understand Blizzard stopped developing for players like me long ago but developing as you described is cutting off the nose to spite the face.
I never cleared a gr150. Probably never will. I get to about 115 and have fun in that range pushing whatever build gets me close. That’s why the area of competition for me isn’t in the ladder—it’s in pushing my levels across the season. I’m not a botter, I don’t participate in Discords or clan xp farms, I’m just out enjoying the game and seeing what I can do.
What was happening: Some players (“botters”) were making the game less fun for some players (“grandmasters”). Instead of accepting that as an unfortunate cost to high performance play (and appropriately punishing bad actors), the development response was making the game punish all players equally in the farce of fairness. Paragon was killed because grandmasters didn’t want to grind paragon anymore to compete with one another.
Paragon wasn’t king of pushing. It just happened to be the caboose on that train—low hanging fruit to criticize. No amount of paragon is going to take a yellow geared character from T1 to T16. Period. Full stop. And we agree on that. What’s equally frustrating about it, the extra area damage and crit damage “undid” what paragon cap claimed to do!
I can’t speak for everyone but I can speak for anyone like me who plays in a similar way. 30 Seasons in, power creep is what kept the game interesting season over season. Having number go up incrementally is an attribute of fun. Without a goal to aim for and without measurable progress toward getting to the goal, engagement is a fruitless treadmill.
So again, there was a change. The change was near pointless toward the claimed goal (power ceiling). The change was seemingly ambiguously motivated. The change also eliminated reward for players naturally engaging and enjoying the system. There is everything in this line of thinking to be upset, annoyed, or frustrated about.
Agreed. I think realistic season paragon caps are great for the game.
Sure some QoL things need to be improved like movement speed, but I am a huge fan since the bots are less useful and legit players have better deserved ranks.
Let’s just call this what it is, this 800 cap wasn’t to benefit casuals, hurt bots, even the playing field, help with SSF…none of that. We took one for the team for the great Set balancing and the return of the Altar of S30 by playing this very NS like theme. Only thing that makes sense at this point. There’s zero chance anyone is going to convince me that one week of leveling is ideal for an entire season , that’s just ridiculous, backward thinking.
The 800 paragon cap then is a weird decision because if I’m not mistaken, wasn’t their goal originally to balance the game so that all builds are viable at 3000 paragon to run a GR130?
