First of all, what a great expansion. World crafting, story telling, scenery, revamp skill, crafting itemization and endgame loop… they put the bar very high for the next things. Even tho it has still room for improvements, GG Blizzard.
So, I played and finished LoH on penitent and had a blast. I think this kind of difficulty truly showcase boss design and mechanics, and in this expansion there is great ones. It feels rewarding itself to beat Inarius or Mephisto in penitent, but became totally trivial in normal, expert and hard. It trivializes to a point it became too easy and do a defavor when majority of streamer/ytber show gameplay with that kind of difficulty… It gives the look of a baby game when it can be fairly challenging when the correct difficulty is set.
I think it would be great to have one and only well balanced difficulty for the campaign or pexing level 1 to 70, difficulty that spike accordly when you obtain level and fight major boss.
I dont propose a gatekeep difficulty but normal, expert and hard difficulty are to easy and kinda bloat themselves, when one nice difficulty before torment would be an elegant way to set apart leveling difficulty and torment one, and showcase their boss design.
I started on Normal, jumped to Expert at level 25, and to Hard at level 45. The fight against the construct in the schedule room killed me dozens of times. Aside from that, I had moments of tranquility and moments with outdated items. The loot is great. The game should have been like this from the beginning. We now have a great experience.
- I think we have too many levels, this is unnecessary and changes the user experience.
Honestly I think you descibed exactly what I tried to say about one difficulty. I thought of one perfect difficulty like this: first 20 lvls feel like “normal”; 20 to 30 hard; 30 to 50 expert, and 50 to 70 penitent.
But maybe I’m wrong, and its good to have various difficulty to enjoy campaign
Why limit it to only one option? You liked it on penitent, so play on penitent. Why does it bother you if other people want it to be easier or are maybe playing a class/build that isn’t as good but its fun for them?
Remember, the first diablo was the era of ultima and EQ and 72 hour raids. It was three lives and game over.
D2 was better, but also in a more demanding era for games than what we have now. (DAoC era?)
Remember, decades ago games were a lot lower quality, far more boring, tedious and unforgiving. Because there wasn’t any real other options.
Now? Yeah, I bet for younger folks they aren’t faceroll.
But if you were playing them in the time they were released, they absolutely were- by comparison.
Games were pretty crap decades ago. At least compared to now. For those of us who slogged through it, well…there’s a reason Diablo became a namesake. (just like how WoW broke the mold- back then, Blizz focused on fun and players more than $$$)
My thoughts are that players being able to choose their difficulty is the correct way to go. There are no downsides to this system. People get to choose the experience they want to have.
If you are struggling at normal difficulty definitely look at your gear. For Hard yeah its a bit harder, but still if you know how to build and use your stat lines it not that much more difficult than normal.
Here is your first 3 sentences…Yeah I read it, I am simply just stating for others if they struggle on normal and hard it’s a skill issue… I was using IF as if the person who is in this category of difficulty its a skill issue. Penitent yeah that is a lot more challenging but you overcame it and understood boss design / mechanics.
