Some thoughts on the early leveling progression. First context: I decided to play a Storm+Companions Druid for leveling during the first two days of PTR. I salvaged all legacy gear and started “fresh”, almost simulating a new Seasonal character.
- I started on “Hard”, and that felt pretty good by way of rate of leveling and flow.
- As others have noted, the early gear drops were really low. So low, that I had a span where I thought drops were actually bugged, and the game had entered “The Pit – no drops” mode. A little later, things picked up and felt more normal.
- Around level 25, I switched to “Expert”, since “Hard” had started to drag a bit. At the outset, this was the expected “tougher but faster”, but by ~L30 it “felt” like progression had slowed down a lot. I put quotes around “felt”, since PTR is a weird compressed sandbox of an experience and I wasn’t doing real comparative timing. That’s OK since the D4 team will have the actual metrics… and I’m commenting on player perception.
- What surprised me the most was that Expert still felt sluggish with a “cheat” relative to a true seasonal character: by the early 30s I had a full slate of Legendary aspects of my choice. So getting to this point went much faster than it would have during a Season.
- Ultimately, when PTR Day 3 landed, I was relieved to just jump to L60 and switch my testing mode. This is unfortunate, since my perception going into this PTR is that leveling is kinda fun, since there’s a lot of change which facilitates messing with organic “micro-builds” that emerge from whatever the RNG has thrown at you at the moment. If a reasonably well-tuned build re: gear and aspects feels sluggish… how’s a more “random” build really going to handle for progression?
The main open question I have is: Would that experience have been different/better if I’d stayed on “Hard”? (i.e. a repeat of the launch-era WT2 problem) I doubt it, since I felt that progression was slowing in the mid-20s, which is why I tried “Expert” at that point.