The critical issue with your argument is that you’re assuming people will no longer play games on account of their difficulty. The reason why Diablo IV is even in its current predicament to begin with is because of the consistent need to cast a wider net because of some notion that it guarantees a return on investment, so maybe the conversation should stop centering around “what do players want” and rather “what will make Diablo IV a good game?” You are far more concerned with the former when you should be focused on the latter.
Because the fact is that people want a good game, first and foremost. People will play a game if it’s good, regardless if it contains certain things unsavory to their taste otherwise. You’d think that over the last 10 years, with games like Dark Souls, Elden Ring, Monster Hunter, and most recently Dragon’s Dogma 2 outperforming their sales expectations, that people would actually understand this.
My opinion is that leveling speed doesn’t make a game better. Diablo IV is not made fundamentally better because I can get to level 100 in 20 hours. It just means I spent less time on the game, but regardless of if it’s 20 hours or 200 hours, the experience was unrewarding because the game has issues at its core that need fixed. Nerfing the time to level into the ground is a bandaid fix when Blizzard should focus on finding ways to introduce newcomers into the game while also rewarding seasoned players for time invested. Getting a piece of loot at level 10 should be just as exciting as getting a piece of loot at level 90, and the current mechanics and gameplay systems in the game should be accessible but not so shallow that seasoned players plateau at level 20-30 because their build is already figured out.
This is what I mean when I say that leveling should mean something. It shouldn’t be something you just get past: It should be a part of the seasonal experience. It should be able to surprise you and direct your build down different paths you didn’t anticipate, even as a veteran player.
Because even after ten years of playing Path of Exile, I still never grow tired of the leveling experience. It is still just as fun as it was in 2013 because I never know when I’m going to be level 10 and get a roll that completely reshapes my character.
I’m with you brother - well spoken. We have to show the dev team that they again lost track on where the game should be. And we have to show them that we are many and if they start to listen to this side of the community, they can only win!
I think they listen to the WoW community were they don’t understand this genre the aRPG. And they only know the WoW progression were only End game matters and cannot comprehend the aRPG progression. Which is funny, bc this game is aRPG first, but they don’t listen the aRPG community…
To be fair, here is another (un)popular one, death xp penalty should be introduced, builds should be able to be roughly finished by 85-90 and reaching 100 should feel like an achievement.
That way the endgame would have a proper start, with plenty of place to character refinement while at the same time constant feeling of progression and build check in the path to 100.
All I could find was, “The Pit has hundreds of Tiers of difficulty.”, but that does seem to indicate that there is a max cap or they would not have written it like that. Cool. Enjoy beating The Pit! As shall I
How about make the game harder so it’s not leveling to 100 200 times but rather 20 times ?
This doesn’t work for either
Jimmy can’t get to anything of substance and will feel left out
and
Johnny has a “prelude” of 100 hours before the real challenge begins
How do you not get this ?
Let’s think of any other activity, say guitar learning/playing would you rather:
Learn to play Smoke on the Water all the time over and over and over until perfection (complete full song) for a live gig
Learn to play a bunch of tunes, but none of them is required to be played complete or for a live gig
Ask any non-guitar player would they rather learn to play one song to perfection or try several to some decent rate. What does sound more motivational/promising to them as a potential future player ?
Again
ACTIVITY done during/towards reaching the goal defines the actual playing experience
Not the goal itself, many (in fact the vast majority) don’t even get there, and not only stupid but probably unrealistic to expect otherwise
And again, the problem with “speeding up” and “boosting” isn’t working either - makes it even worse actually, makes people have to play a sped-up game instead of playing their own pace
In case of the “guitar learning experience” example that would accordingly mean to have a Metronome posed on them while trying to learn/play
The point ? - don’t make the songs easier, just make the requirements not mandatory and remove metronome from the equation, simple as that, let people decide their ways
I agree with you. Today we have a good climb with unique items and helltide, we still have the season mission and its mechanics to test. I remember that in Season 2 there was that power that was very strong on the climb that caused damage based on our life and killed everything. Today there is a good speed to reach 100. I don’t think this buff that they promised in season 4 is interesting. There will be people doing Duriel in 10 hours. While others at level 24. That’s not fun.
No thank you. By the end of season 1 I was done with the long grind and would have stayed on eternal realm forever had they not speeded it up. It would have been fine had they capped it around 70. But a hundred levels at that slow speed was not fun and didn’t excite me to run alts. I’m glad they changed it.
First, I’m curious where you got your numbers or if you just pulled them out of the air.
Second, with 3 month seasons, people dont want to spend all their time leveling. Maybe for eternal realm, you dont mind fiddling around at lower levels, but that’s not good for seasonal restarts.
Slow lvling, and those who enjoyed it could play season, while those who did not could play eternal. Both with the same content at all times of course.
Instead of a mode that seems to satisfy neither those who like lvling, nor those who do not.
I don’t understand why people are comparing progress time sinks and difficulty. Those two concepts have nothing to do with each other. Someone can get to level 100 by farming trash mobs for hundreds of hours (lol makes me think of south park). That doesn’t make it difficult. In fact the level progression is the most brain dead and easiest power creep. In video games lvl progression should be used primarily as a tutorial system with hits of dopamine IE sparkles and big explosions to keep you going until you get to the real fun part which is build/optimization/mechanics. Time = power vs theorycrafting or learning mechanics = power. Both have an aspect of time investment obviously but one is pure time and the other is time + thinking/problem solving (which is why we play video games in the first place) .
The 15 hour mark comes from watching the “pro” players.
The 30 hour mark is from the 6 charcters I leveled this season & from discussions in guild, discord, reddit.
For the 2nd point sure be 100 immediately and run helltide, whispers, nmd, farm bosses and say there is nothing to do. I think if you were farming helltides, whispers, nmd while leveling you would be able to get all of those mats and gear done by the time you hit 100. Then you just have Lilith & Duriel to complete.
A simple solution would be to be able to transform sacred items into ancestors at the blacksmith, and these at 925. Maybe a reroll in the % of the attributes. This way the items during the ascent would have a higher value. I don’t think it’s necessary to rush to reach 100. There is the codex and lots of things to do, maps to be released, veiled crystal and other materials to collect. If I had the option to start at 100 I wouldn’t do it. It’s good to try out legendary and unique ones that are few used in the end game. I don’t want D4 like D3.
The issue Blizz is facing is appeasing to players like this who have lack of basic education/grammar (which probably makes up the majority of their monetization in the skin shop along with the majority of the complaints in forums). I suppose they’ll be hard pressed to make a game that can suit both the layperson as well as people with above an above avg. IQ who can level from 1-100 in one single gaming session.
agree leveling already is too fast to the point where u skip items and dont care about any items because 5 min later u know u get showered with better and better items, its gonna be really bad also next season
This is not possible in any game. The leveling arc by its nature doesn’t allow for this. And this happens because of leveling lol. That is why reaching max level and then optimizing is best practice imo. Significantly higher chance you actually keep the item you get longer than out lvling it in a few hrs. I’d wager if people get a really super awesome item at low level they’ll actually be upset they didn’t get in at max level because they know it will be wasted due to lvling. And this is seen practically when people in other games don’t open loot boxes etc… till they level.
valid concern but practically especially how arpgs are loot grind, having your build figured out doesn’t mean it’s optimized. This is why I’m very excited for the PTR. The way they are doing it now with clean gear progression to eventual gear optimization is IMO the best way to combat this concern. You basically jump from one ride onto the next. Build creation to build optimization. Clean, Simple, and effective way to create better sense of progression.
I have no doubt people do this. But I’d wager most people plan a build and focus on optimizing that build rather than for example start blood necro and end bone necro because of drops. People like control and follow set plans.
