Never in the history of D3 has such an innovative idea come forth as having 3 difficulties.
Normal, Nightmare, Hell.
Not 16.
13 Likes
Rather then 16 torments. WHAT if we just double it
12 Likes
Well, technically there’s more than 16 - you’re forgetting Normal, Hard, Expert and Master. 
17 Likes
Damn dude, so there’s 20 difficulties? Pretty soon they will have a torment for every 5 Grifts and impale damage on the DH shadow set will be 150000% more damage. lul
4 Likes
20 NS group
20 NS solo
20 NSHC group
20 NSHC solo
20 S solo
20 S group
20 SHC solo
20 SHC group
160 settings x 3 regions = 480 settings.
5 Likes
Since this is an ARPG where build is gradual, they were correct in having a progression that is a reflection of your own. I like having it this way so I can more accurately set the difficulty.
7 Likes
So did you go from T1 to T2 and T2 to T3 and T3 to T4 and T4 to T5 and T5 to T6 and T6 to T7 and T7 to T8 and T8 to T9 and T9 to T10 and T10 to T11 and T11 to T12 and T12 to T13 and T13 to… hmmm, or did you skip some like I know you did?
8 Likes
I sometimes skip some and sometimes I go lower. I won’t bust myself if I’m farming mats or getting bounties, etc.
2 Likes
I’d just be fine with 5; Normal, Nightmare, Torment, Hell, Inferno. Creating difficulty spikes besides health and damage bloats are up to developers.
3 Likes
I think 7 to 10 difficulty settings on a slider are reasonable, but 16 Torment level + 4 pre-Torment difficulties + 150 GR settings are way way way too much.
One major problem with D3’s difficulty system is not that it abandoned Normal–>Nightmare–>Hell, but that enemies life and damage increases exponentially instead of starting to stagnate at a certain point (diminishing returns).
The gameplay stays the same, enemies just have more health and deal more damage. But there are also different ways of how difficulty could have been increased instead of just inflating enemies health and damage:
- increased monster density
- elites spawn more often
- elites have more affixes
- elites have new affixes
- enemies move faster
- enemies have have a higher CC resistance
- new and more environmental hazards
- enemies have a better AI
- enemies have new abilities
- enemies have more (elemental) resistance, more armor, more energy shield, more dodge chance, etc
- things like Molten Explosions and Frost Explosions trigger faster / have a shorter fuse time
- etc
If you just inflate enemies HP and damage, the game just becomes a grind at the higher levels when it takes minutes to deal with an elite, which isn’t necessarily difficult, but just boring to grind down its HP.
7 Likes
Difficulty can also be increased by making the AI smarter instead of bloating mob damage and health. Easy mode can have dumb AI while progressively higher difficulty will get smarter and smarter AI.
2 Likes
I don’t agree that AI should be smarter. I don’t like bloated mob health and damage either. There definitely should be a point of diminishing returns (as you put it) much sooner than T16. I think it should be at difficulty 3 or “Hell.” Anything beyond that is just supporting over-inflated multipliers on sets and legendaries which D3 is famous for.
2 Likes
I think if they got rid of master, T2, T3, T5, T7, T9, T11, T12, T14, and T15 hardly anyone would notice. The first week these torments are slightly populated, but by the end of the first week they are a graveyard. They could rescale them every 10 gr’s instead of every 5 gr’s and very little would change. 20 difficulties is kinda silly.
4 Likes
I’m thinking of difficulty scale starting with Normal and gradually increasing difficulty by adding new mechanics to the most rare monster to the most common one. At Nightmare, Act bosses and mini-bosses can gain immunity against certain crowd control effects for example. Torment and Hell may add enrage timer and defensive mechanics to the Rare and Champ elites.
Finally at Inferno you realize even the most common monsters styling on you with elemental damage absorb, regeneration, dodge and additional mechanics to out maneuver you.
Those spikes may sound intricate and uninspired at first but I think diversity would be enough to separate GR-push builds from speedfarm builds. It hardly changes anything because a GR push spec ain’t supposed to run bounties or Neph Rift for example. Their lack of mobility and overkill should be used against them even further to draw a line between different build specs.
Rifts and GRs are essentially the same thing though. The only difference is in GR everything drops at the end and you can upgrade your gems. So if there were only normal, nightmare and hell you couldn’t really do a hell speed run because it is the hardest, unless of course your optimized gear allowed a hell speed run. Also GRs could be harder than a hell Diablo run in theory if there were still in fact GRs. What if there were no GRs and you just did act boss runs? IMO that’d be truer to the Diablo name. A meta Diablo (or whatever boss) killer would emerge, but in fact it would be wise to allow every class to be efficient Diablo killers.
Does it matter considering it is optional?
Unlike D2 difficulty where forcing you to complete the game 2 times to play the end game or 3 times in D3 classic.
You may have a good point if D3 forcing you to play through 20 difficulties to reach the endgame.
If anything, D3 difficulties took inspiration from D2 player X mode instead of the standard difficulty setting.
1 Like
It had a meaning back then because getting the right equipment took effort. With all gear served player on a silver plate I doubt it had any meaning or background of “T16 in D3 is as hard as players 8 in D2”. It’s not even close, it’s instant gratification due to worries about farming efficiency.
We never needed 20 difficulty scales, the only reason we have it that they still haven’t fixed bad RNG also refusing to apply any fixes towards the crafted items. A good crafted item system with less randomization would remove any meaning of having so many scales in the difficulty because solution would be absolute instead of chugging coins at slot machines and hoping for the best result.
2 Likes
Players X was also optional but did increase your chances of getting gg items, assuming you could kill demons on hell efficiently - which is kinda true for higher torments as well since leggo drop chances are increased. However the game doesn’t require you to play every torment level. You skip most of them as soon as you get a complete set. In seasons that is expedited by haedrigs gift. In essence you are skipping a big part of progression. There are a some things you still have to farm out but the process is very quick (once you have a set) and play on higher torments. When that is done it’s just looking for better versions of things you already have. There is basically no end to it at that point and for me it’s time to move on to something/anything else, unless the novelty of slaying demons hasn’t worn off.
2 Likes
It never has meaning in D2 because D2 hell mode itself is not difficult. Most people usually tune it up for exp bonus, exactly just like people playing at higher Torment or GR for quick exp.
Also, if I want to be nitpicking, I can say that D2 has 10 difficulties as well (Normal, Nightmare, Hell, Player 2, Player 3, Player 4, Player 5, Player 6, Player 7, Player 8) but I didn’t because those were optional and can be skipped.
You can say whatever you wanted, but in the end, torment 14~16 was added because most players demand it. Heck, some players even wanted T20 now.
Also, what’s wrong with instant gratification or shorter game? Do you think the game should be artificially long to be fun to play? If you remove T10~16 now, people would just farm at T9 over and over. It may take time but it never difficult. Just time-consuming.
Yes, people don’t need 20~30 difficulties but at the same time, what is the harm leaving those difficulties alone? You complaint doesn’t make sense because, in the end, the game never forced players to play thru 20~30 difficulties just to reach the endgame.
If Blizzard wants to scale the difficulty less than 5 difficulties, fine by me
If Blizzard wants to increase the difficulty up 100 difficulties, fine by me as long as it is optional and I can select my own difficulty
If Blizzard decided not to do anything on current difficulties number, fine by me as well.
4 Likes
only noobs plays 17 levels i usually go from normal to torment 6 the from torment 6 to torment 13, then only t16, so i only play 4 in a couple of days, and then, t16 all the time
1 Like