I believe the 1-99 leveling system in D2 was great for a few reasons:
Leveling becomes part of the end game.
Prestige in having a max level character.
The excitement of the race to level 99 every season reset.
The first time I hit level 99 in D2 was a very happy moment for me. Even months after, just logging in and seeing my level 99 character brought me joy. I wish for this to be possible in D4.
The race to 99 every reset could be really exciting, it could be just like the race to world first in WoW. I hope for it to be even more difficult than it was in D2.
Not really because except for prestige and self-achievement, it doesn’t look attractive enough for me to level my character to Lv99 in D2. If only there is no cap you can dump into your skill (which is capped at Lv20 I believe) in D2.
I agree having an end goal is very important. We don’t need an endless carrot.
Diablo 3 is largely mostly only superior in sales numbers alone. (Not that everything about D3 was bad.) Having an endless repetitive grind is NOT good gameplay and before you say. “THEN WHAT AM I SUPPOSE TO DO.”
I dunno… play another class? Experience the game in a completely different way instead of chasing some carrot?
Worst thing they could do, and are likely going to do, is make a level cap that’s relatively easy to get to and hide all of the important content behind it. WoW/D3 all over again. Everyone’s the same level all over again. We’re all max level because that’s where the fun lies. We want our character’s levels to BE the levels, not artificial levels on top of our levels. This weird leveling scheme makes the real character level become unimpressive and unimportant. I’m 70? Who cares because I’m only paragon 100. Everyone’s 70. The actual character level becomes meaningless even though it should be WAY more important than anything else because levels are related to character improvement.
I hate that they associate beating the game with maxing the character level. Beating the game is beating the game. When you complete the content, you’re strong, geared and your experience along the way dictates the level you finish with. Maxing your character level is something completely separate that should be tied to an achievement/prize.
If there’s a cap on the level system on top of the level system, why not add another level system on top of that because we want to keep going? It just creates this weird system that doesn’t need to exist if they just go with proper character leveling mechanics. If level 100 is the max character level, the “endgme” should start toward the end of those level, not level 100 because content after that no longer has any connection to your character’s experience.
Right, a system that completely ruins difficulty, balance, and power scaling.
Awesome. You might be happy running on a treadmill chasing a carrot like some animal but for most people. We want an engaging experience beyond watching numbers go up on a spread sheet.
The key here should not be so much reaching max level ASAP, but ensuring there is a large variety of content available to play the game. The levels are part of the game itself, they shouldn’t become the only thing standing between you and actually playing the game.
exactly, associating character level with “end game” is one of the biggest mistakes wow and d3 made. Telling us which number is THE number to be in order to join the fun is a recipe for disaster. Proper level scaling, proper monster scaling etc are all hard and having everyone and every monster the exact same level allows them to be lazier. Super easy to balance around one level and the limits that level and its items have. Harder to balance around each level and items connected to each of the levels, along with monsters that don’t just scale with you.
This is highly opinionated as people have different levels of motivation and competitive nature. Which is why I always try to find a healthy balance between hard and easy.
I think Diablo 2 had some what a good balance of that. You didn’t need to hit 99, you didn’t gain a huge benefit in power from doing it.
As long as the second progression system has a max and is not infinite, I don’t see the necessity to being back the 1-99. You could just make the secondary progression equivalent to that and that could be what people race to.
The template is sitting out there for them to follow the same leveling system as Diablo II. Hopefully they do something similar. Put a hard cap. Make that cap hard but not impossible to obtain. Gives the grinders something to grind for and also eliminates power creep.
I just hope to levling be valued enought. No infinite progression in leveling either.
Do you want a good endgame porpose? Honor sistem seems good. Finished the game? start to colect honor in all regions, in pvp, in guild. Start to complete archievments, colect archiev points. season events and races, with some cosmetics portraits and customizable mantles, or flags designs, like D3 has, but no one cares anymore… Do you want a really good end game? Guild Races… build a great guild, do races, colect guild rewards, kill dozens of demons in process, and find joy in perfecting some character.
But infinite progression no, just not a good idea.