I’m curious. How would you make a season to be horizontal progression? Taking into consideration the framework from past seasons.
As much as I agree with this in its entirety I don’t think we’re ever going to see it happen. The amount of backlash from ‘The Patch’ that did a blanket damage reduction (in theory not practice) that wasn’t all that big of a deal anyway makes me think this line of thinking him is a pipe dream. Maybe if they handled that patch better, like had a PTR back then, maybe it wouldn’t have gone over so poorly. Sadly we’ll probably never know.
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Haven’t played S3, so cant speak about that, but both S1 and S2 were partly horizontal, you unlocked more gems, or more whatever the vampire stuff was called. But could only equip 3 of them. That already is horizontal progression. And also vertical of course, as those systems increased your power.
But adding new paragon boards in each season (or some of the seasons) would seem like one of the easier ways. You could also add new Glyphs.
New gems?
Adding new uniques and aspects already are existing horizontal progression (well, if Blizzard would stop power creeping anyway).
New skills and skill modifications. But I guess those are preserved for expansions.
But then I also consider the current season gimmicks to be fairly bad overall, would be much better to add exactly the stuff above, permanent additions to the base game.
Season themes themselves would probably always need to be both some vertical progression (unlocking the system) and horizontal (whatever stuff you could do in the system).
As for horizontal combat progression; well, adding different bosses/dungeons that challenge different aspects of characters. AoE, single target, generator/spender, healing, and so on. Since I dont like the idea of respeccing, it cant exactly be content that required you to do that, but might be content that made you change gear for each encounter for example. Where the horizontal progression would be gathering gear appropriate for each of the challenges.
I’ve always been curious as to why they don’t even seem to consider unlocking hubs as possible horizontal progression. Right now it’s get the waypoint and ignore the rest if you’ve completed the story.
A long time back I shared an idea about having a more quest-ing feel to unlocking various parts of the map. We go to Margrave (sp?) and it’s like here’s a tiny side or parallel quest about my buddy getting roped in to bandits. That’s kind of fun to experience something happening. They should’ve tied that kind of stuff into renown and maybe people wouldn’t be so bored with the trophy hunting.
It seems like they kind of have some intent with the iron wolves reputation but on the other hand that could just rehash the simplistic lunar mechanics for all we know.
To me, at the very least adding actual plot to waypoints and other POI would help satisfy the progression people some as there’s something to do but also get rid of the more tedious renown aspects like waiting to get that random item drop. You’d know exactly what to do because you’d be guided to areas.
Anyway, those are far fetched dreams that I should probably shut up about.
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Hm, yeah, one interesting horizontal progression system could be the overworld.
The overworld is severely lacking as an endgame system. So what if you could unlock harder and harder tiers of different areas of the overworld by doing such quests? Could be neat. Slowly building up your own map of endgame content to do.
Of course, some people would instantly demand that it became a permanently upgraded system, like Renown did.
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I don’t know… I like infinite or almost infinite elements. But I think the character’s level at 100 is good. But we can unlock an eternal paragon at 100 during the seasons, even if it requires 1 more dexterity every 10 levels, I feel lack of this progression. Like the 200 level Glypho. Elements like a bag of gold at level 30, a cosmetic at 50, an item at 3 GA 80. It would be fun. Even if I don’t have time to complete it, I want to look and talk " Wow, this season I played a lot, I managed to reach level 123 of the infinite paragon."
-D4 lacks this feeling. For example D2 had dozens of runes and items that I have never seen. D3 had infinite paragon and unique jewels that were difficult to reach 150.
-D4 now gains some of this in itemization, you have an ideal GA plus the perfect Masterwork gives a 250% increase, a very big difference 10% attack speed becomes 25%. 800 life would become 2000. These are very big differences. So having A good GA will be a great achievement, which will be rare.
It would be smarter to tie the boss ladder to something like that instead of mats like now, in my opinion anyway. They’re doing tiered bosses already anyway. Instead of farming content where you may or may not get materials do a short quest that ends in that boss fight. I’m not saying do a 4 hour quest per fight of course, just something you do that you can repeat, 10-15 minutes of play sounds fair to me with my napkin math. The quest gets harder and the boss gets harder as you go higher. Instead of 2 tiers like S4 will bring they could do 5-ish. The quest could change as you progress to get to “the real baddie”. I don’t know, I’m spitballing.
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Interesting. I consider myself all those above except for the Blast Player. Now it makes sense that I do not like D3 or Torchlight Infinite heh heh.
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New socket types
- Runes/Runewords (Cause & effect, much like in D4 alpha)
- When Crit vs Elite or Overpower get CDR
- When more than X enemies are affected by Overtime, gain DR bubble
- When target/s CC-ed longer than X, daze for X
- When target/s impaired longer than X, silence for X
- While having a Barrier: damage is increased by Life per hit, Life on kill, and Thorns amount
- Sockets that affect paragon (+X levels to X node, +X levels to X node types)
- Gain 7% DR for every Legendary node unlocked
- Gain 10% CDR for every board that doesn’t have a Glyph equipped
- Common nodes that give Str give double the amount
- All common nodes give +2 additional stats
- Magic nodes that give Str/Dex/Int/WP now give tripple the amount
- Magic nodes are doubled in power. These bonuses are doubled if not having a Legendary node unlocked
- All Magic nodes unlocked now also give +1 to AllStats
- Gear that affects paragon (Nodes of type X that give Y now give
- All offensive/defensive glyphs gain 2 additional levels
- Glyphs that affect CC duration also grant 10% CCR
- Glyph (Ambush) gains 5 additional levels
- Skill orbs/sockets (i.e. sockets that you equip on a skill and alternate/individualize it even further, such as)
- Target skill gains 500% WD in addition to it’s damage but gains additional 3 sec. CD
- Target skill activates unstoppable for 1.5 sec but it’s CD is increased by 6 sec
- Target skill gains 10% CDR for every Basic skill equipped
- Target skill has 35% chance to cast twice (multicast)
- Target skill has it’s LH chance increased by 10% (baseline)
- (Legendary) Target AoE skill becomes Ultimate. Gains additional 1200% WD on cast and double the Area. You’re also able to equip one additional skill Orb inside this one but the equipped skill gains 30 sec CD
- (Legendary) Target skill becomes Basic skill. It has no cost and no cast delay, however it’s AoE is not greater than 1/4 of it’s initial size and WD% is reduced to 150%. You can equip another Basic-skill altering Skill Orb inside this one
e.t.c.
But the real key/catch IMO isn’t really in what players get, it’s what mobs get (i.e. mob evolution), as right now there is NONE. Actually there is some of it, but all of it incentivizing even more damage piling up i.e. wrong types:
- Champions DR aura
- Increased Health
Will see how it goes, but personally think they have the wrong approach, they want to provide an “equal endgame footing” for everyone and turn the game into “DPS races” as much as possible, rather than individualize performance (much like in manners I showed just above)
That’s why we don’t have loot/drops as limited-assets, and everything is “equal” and “unlocked” via a certain challenge or activity or whatever. That’s why I assume also Temper manuals are a collection to unlock & have
I also think that’s bad because all those “permanently unlockable powers” ruin early game even further (just look at Renown)
So doubt they like “horizontal progression”, in fact think they’ll do the exact opposite at all times. Sadly I also think that’s how early game and leveling (and progression in general) becomes trivialized more and more and everything “new” becomes exclusive lvl100 stuff (or at least best-utilized at lvl100)
This could work also 
BUT ? - They’re preferring blasters over everyone and are ruining the game (early game, progression, individualization of performance, specialization against certain mobs/types, all that) as a result
They’ll try to remove every single bit of “individualization of performance” away and put everyone on equal footing so there’s a “shred-off competition” at lvl100. Again - the wrong approach to have