The Paragon Board (D4 Blog Feedback)

General Discussion
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The reveal of the Paragon board is super interesting, it does leave us with some questions and concerns so I wanted to make a thread to discuss them.

My main questions are this:

  • Is the Paragon Board unlimited?
  • How are they generated? (random? itemized? selected from predefined sets?)
  • Is Paragon Board progression, attached to Character or Account?

I’ll ask anyone reading this to jump in with their concerns below however I’ll outline my concerns.

Seems we don’t know if Paragon is unlimited, I’ll post my concerns to the scenario that it is unlimited.
First is the effect of bots, if power is unlimited then it really means more time = more power. Leaderboards and PVP become uncompetitive for non-bot users.

The second concern of unlimited Paragon is the feeling of completion, I don’t see any point on the Paragon board where you could feel like “oh, I can keep going but really this is good enough” - in D3 when you get to 800 paragon it can feel like you have hit the completion of Paragon because you are now only gaining generic damage or life, all the important interactions are behind you.

The third concern is the idea of a unique board, if it’s unlimited then it’s just the order that is unique not the trade offs that you have to make - I think it would be better to have a limit of some sort so that we have to make interesting tradeoffs.

Another concern I have with unlimited is that they are at risk of being neither simple for a new player(overwhelmed by the sight of the board) nor actually complex for a veteran (just pick biggest stat, go in straight line to the nodes, no actual choice made)

If you make the total amount of boards limited, itemized and swappable then I think the system would be very strong. After you unlock all the board slots, you would still have progress to make by finding better boards by playing but players who are not chasing perfection will have their feeling of completion at the point they unlocked it all.

Lastly I want to poke at the idea of progression, we saw Paragon become account based in D3 so that players could feel like they are making progress even when playing alts or after losing a hardcore character - I think this was a good pick and would personally be frustrated if I had to re-do the end game grind every character (I play seasons so I already re-do the grind every season)

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Your thread will be buried & ignored like all the rest. THIS is the feedback thread for the D4 blog

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Since the plan is, that you can unlock 60-70% of your skilltree at max, I guess paragon will also have a cap.

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Didn’t they say 30-40%? Which is also way too much in any case.
Should be able to unlock more like 10-15%
If each class has ~30 skills, and we can only use 6 skills, being able to get 30% of the tree would be equal to fully maxing our 6 skills = no choices whatsoever.

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In D3 you can earn any rank you want if you put in the time. Just improve your personal best at GR clears for the build you are playing. Paragon levels are not the end all be all of clearing the high tiered GRs. There are so many other factors that goes into clearing them. If paragon was the end all be all of clears then the leader boards would be in descending order from the highest level at the number one spot and the lowest at the 1,000th spot with no numbers out of line. But that is not what I have seen for every season that I have ever played. I have seen many numbers out of line. Even ones that had 1,500 less paragon levels but higher clears playing the same build.

This doesn’t mean that I would want paragon unlimited. But if it is then I hope that some of the boards would be there for cosmetic purposes or giving us other mounts to ride. Also if unlimited it could have diminishing returns where it takes more points to get the same increase as one point took before. Although I would prefer a limit so we can finish builds.

Actually I prefer character based instead of account. It seems so unnatural that a character that is a fresh level 50 would be able to start spending points into a board that a brand new player on a brand new account couldn’t spend. Also it makes the progression towards completion super fast. All you have to do is unlock the board and get all of the right gear and you are done with that character.

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My understanding is that at least partially people that bot in D3 do get high leaderboard spots but are often purged from the boards for botting. So in a way it’s a concern in D3 but also they take action against this.
It’s honestly not my biggest concern with the paragon board because really they will probably ban botters in D4 but I still think it’s an issue of some concern.
As you say, there are more variables than just Paragon but it does make up a reasonable chunk of the pie. (also PVP is not a thing in D3 but will be in D4 so where it fits with PVP balance is also a concern)

I feel that progression sharing is quite nice and really we often progress share from gear anyway. It depends a lot on the implementation but assuming that any reasonable amount of power is tied to the Boards then it could feel really bad re-rolling.

I’m sure there are some players who would be happy re-rolling mid season without any progression including no items but typically I prefer to have the refresh happen at season start and then have flexibility with what character I play during the season via power sharing like items/crafting recipes/etc.

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A big chunk I would say no, because gear is the biggest chunk along with finding the GG dream rift with the right mob type, pylon placement, etc… Then add in the player’s personal best. I might wind up with a paragon level of 2900 and clear a GR145 with my seasonal barb this season. But then there could be others that could take the same barb with the same paragon level and gear and clear a GR150 because their skill at using the build is far better than my own, of course this is all made up because atm I am not anywhere near that high right now.

If it is infinite maybe, but if it is finite then no. That is because then all a player has to do is to use a build guide once to get his first character to earn all paragon points. Then all other future characters would never need to progress through the paragon board like the first character. Just spend your points accordingly. Those paragon points could translate to reaching level 99 if level 50 is close to max level.

Power sharing won’t be needed in D4 and only increases leveling speed. What want players to fly through the levels like in D3. Sorry but I do want a slower leveling pace in D4.

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After watching some of the blog videos it does appear that Points will indeed be finite. Specifically the “Skill driven deaths” video.

Characters shown at level 50 have diamonds at different sections of the Exp bar, characters under that do not have this at all. Also one scene with the Rogue shows it at level 100 with a filled exp bar assuming that it is completely full, that should mean that is the true level cap.

should be about 3-4 points per complete level after level 50.

Spicy :hot_pepper:

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wait, d4 now has paragon? Well, on that reason alone, I’m not buying it.

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Well it’s still not clear what those represent, they could even be unrelated to the Paragon board. In that same video there is a character displayed at level 100 but we’ve had them previously tell us the level cap is 40. If those notches did represent a paragon point and we now level to 100 then that would give us about 200 total points, that could actually be a reasonable spot.

Just by having the ability to have items from your first playthrough you are power sharing, I’m not advocating that they should go for D3 levels of speed. We can still have a fairly involved leveling process without making the second or third character needing to spend the full time getting to that level.
I think the insane speed of leveling in D3 is more a side effect of it’s progression system pretending to be a difficulty system which I am hoping doesn’t make a return in D4.

I mean you’d have to re-experience it every time you play a season. If you’re the type of player who is going to use a build guide to do it the first time then you’re probably going to use a build guide every other time you play or use a build guide then respec.

I feel the concern about just getting to 50 and having all the points, it really depends on a lot of unknown variables they have not told us so it could be in a middle ground somewhere.
I feel like if the paragon boards are itemized then this is less of a problem because getting the points won’t be full power until you collect your perfect board set so there is still a strong grind available but if there is progress sharing then I can do the grind on any character I want rather than being forced to use the same character every time.

If say the grind to max paragon was finite and not a vanity grind then maybe it’s just a non-issue but I do certainly enjoy saving progression between characters (either by collecting items, crafting materials or having account shared progression for the season,etc)

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Don’t worry it’s nothing like D3 paragon.

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yeah, had a look at quin69’s video about it. Still not impressed, but better than d3 paragon yes.

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You miss the whole point I was making you are saying that you want paragon points to be account wide. If they are finite which I hope they are then I hope it is character wide. Because the problem then becomes as soon as you hit level 50 you could have access to all paragon points and all boards. So you will only keep advancing in character levels if 50 is not the max level. But you will not need to progress your paragon boards at all. No need to earn paragon points if all of them are already unlocked by a previous character. I am talking about non season of course.

Oh so season would be the only place to have it where you character also grows in paragon points after level 50. I don’t like that idea, I would love it for non season characters as well which is why I want it to be character instead of account wide.

I didn’t see anything that said you will have to collect all of your boards. And then there is a problem with that. Players will be complaining that they have to collect those boards which means that they would have points that they cannot spend. Unless there is a Johnny on the Spot free respec for paragon points like D3.

Items shared for characters is fine but not a finite amount of paragon points that have already been unlocked on the first full playthrough.

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Yep. That would be pretty bad.
Paragon should be per character.

Saving power between characters through items, crafting mats etc. is more than enough shared progression.

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They’ve had it since the announcement in 2019. Where have you been?

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Totally agree. The only benefit other characters on your account should have should be what’s in your stash or shared stash if they are like D2 and access to cosmetics. That’s it.

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After a few more watches of the vids and Rhyyker’s video about it, I’m more convinced that there will be finite amount of paragon points as of the release of the blog. If true, that just means everyone will be on a level paying field in regards to systems.

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obviously not following D4. Don’t like the mechanics, don’t think much of the look or UI and don’t want to support a company that employs toxic behaviour and treatment of women in the workforce. And that underpays staff.

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This happens in many jobs. And towards men. It’s been sorted and that’s that. Let’s not forget the good games this company has made and move forward.

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it’s far more prevalent to women in the workforce. Ask any woman that’s been unduly touched, leered at, lewd comments made etc. it’s unacceptable behaviour. Blizzard hasn’t been punished for this, that’s what the court case is for. Good games? IMHO, Diablo (original) and Starcraft and Starcraft:broodwards are the only good games that they’ve made.