If you are angry about the cap it’s too late, Jazz.
They have told us time and time again; S30 will arrive with Altar. We all said that it’s a huge undertaking for the team and it need to be tweaked down at the start of S28. Now they’re trying to do it obviously; by taking a break. You all wanted it, and this is the cost; they need information before ensuring the power gap between groups and SSF in an even match.
For example; S28 Altar, arrived with pets auto-salvage and pickup, so you could make the best of extra buffs that offer short duration to its fullest even while farming. The gist is; picking up something is a backdraw for your buff duration, this what kept the T16 somewhat interesting longer. S29 didn’t bother with such passive buff duration feature, so it didn’t have any kind of extra QoL that Altar offered either.
If there wasn’t a huge response for Altar as a permanent feature, they wouldn’t prolong this Season for 6 months. Something was cooking at that time, and they might have decided to gauge everything real time now that SSF is in the process of balance. Since SSF and regular grouping has a power gap, potentially they will make Altar abit more powerful in SSF mode but they need information and statistics for it.
If you didn’t ask for Altar, we might not even have a capped Paragon this Season. We might have a very different one indeed.
Not entirely speculation if you keep up with their social accounts and watch their streams; especially when they are attending game jams and slip some knowledge on game design. There’s always a trade off in game development, backdraws and decision making.
When I look at this Season theme, I see nothing wrong with their design as it encourages player to decide for themselves and throws them a curve ball for teaching how it feels like to be a high Paragon level player with least effort. It has no dice rolls, no stacks, no randomization, just pure passively granted power; so you’d know it was inevitable for them to nerf something if that was the path taken.
To add, I know how servers work to a degree. I know they have logs, statistics and what have you. This is their edge on how to balance the game, but this also lacks soul at the long run. You know how people have been unhappy about how WoW lost its charm long ago as well.
This is a blessing and a curse at the same time for game designer. You keep statistics and game may become soulless, but make the top players happy; you keep listening fan feedback and game lose its challenge but appeal to a larger crowd. That’s the pitfall.
What do you even mean? Something changes after the 2.7.6 patch applies?
Previously, you were only able to assign a total of 50 Paragon Points to each attribute within the Core, Defense, Offense, and Utility categories, but now you can assign up to 200 in each attribute. Each category can only have 200 Paragon Points placed into them.
Doesn’t seem that way to me. PTR and incoming patch seems not different.
I know they have been doing testing because some fan site (Diablofans) also datamined their test equipment items with a developer’s name on it (Sean’s ring or something, no idea if it’s still there), years ago and placed it in their build creator.
This is a clear sign of internal testing done by developers themselves, for me. Some hints they dropped on social media supports this as well when talking to other developers. Also Tripple-A game studios have large QA teams, no exception, because they usually come as they go.
How it shown you? And how you come to that conclusion? Let’s say I’ve been deceived and fooled with what I have seen. Enlighten me. Riddle me why this Season prolonged for 6 months if you have a better theory than both D3 and D4 team helping each other.