A lot of complaint at the moment is still about there not being enough content, and I think Blizzard might have screwed themselves over by accelerating progress to endgame when endgame is just repeated dungeon crawling.
Before I go any further, I want to clarify:
There is nothing wrong with dungeon crawling. Putting aside adding more varieties to dungeons, that is, in essence, how most ARPG endgame works.
To be completely honest, when I was playing PoE and testing PoE2, while they had more boss types and dungeon layouts (with maps) , thatās something we will get to an extent in expansion as well. But in essence, the endgame activity in those games are also dungeon crawling, and they donāt have helltide nor Infernal Hordes.
To me, I think the biggest issue is that:
In PoE, you have to ALWAYS replay the campaign for a new character (let it be eternal or seasonal). By the time the campaign wraps up, you can now get into more grindy mechanics for loot chasing.
Half of the problems right now all stem from the fact that rather than letting the campaign take the users at a more relaxed pace by throwing them into a good narrative RPG setting to build their characters up, the availability of skip campaign option practically encourages everyone to immediately dive into repeated dungeon crawling. Of course people are gonna burn out, and over seasons, similar dungeon crawling will make people want to accelerate toward endgame, and then you run into the wall of having nothing to do yet again.
Campaign is CORE to the game at this moment. I thought I would be bored replaying the campaign when I was on PoE, but the environment setting and the much more controlled character progression make things feel much smoother for me, so by the time I have to grind and do the chores, I donāt feel as burnt out.
Hereās what I personally think would work better to get us out of this hyper rush toward repeated loot grinding. Borrowing in the spirit of PoE,
Make campaign mandatory for new characters in both realms.
For seasons, embed the mechanics along the way within the campaign so players get to try something new but still get the cushion of the narratives & story-telling from the campaign.
Apply higher difficulties to campaigns.
By the time campaign finishes, you are pretty much half-way through your progression to endgame, unlock the full seasonal mechanics, and continue toward the normal endgame cycles as necessary.
I know a lot of people will say why do I have to waste my time doing campaign, Iād say that similar to how PoE handled this:
Doing a story-rich and well-crafted campaign every season is much better than immediately repeat procedurally generated endgame activities for the loot chase. You may think you donāt like it because youāre forced to, but skipping campaign is basically you forcing yourself to immediately start the grind.
Seasonal mechanics embedded within campaign will also feel more natural and empower itself with the main story.
You wonāt feel like you have to do the chores of repeating over content just to skip over the early levels just in time to repeat over similar content for the endgame chase yet again.
We can agree to disagree. Doing the campaign once is good enough for meā¦wouldnāt want to keep repeating it for every alt I make in a season (usually try to play all 5 classes if I can). Same goes for making alts in Eternal to try out new builds.
I have over 3000 hours in PoE and Iāll never play it again because forcing the campaign is archaic and horrible game design. having the choice is plenty good enough. Plus there are many other things that are sort of forced on character development but the early stages of character development is the worst time to do it.
The problem is, Diabloās campaign isnāt going to leave you at a reasonable level unless youāre full clearing everything. Even then, youāre probably going to end up being well under even level 50, let alone the cap of 60.
In contrast, PoEās campaign gives more natural progression to both your character and the difficulty of the game. Youāre unlocking Passive Points while the difficulty. By the time you finish the campaign, youāll be perfectly leveled to start mapping as soon as youāre done.
While itās possible to speed through Diablo or PoEās Campaigns in just a probably 4-5 hours (with little practice and a bit of prep), thereās a huge difference in where they leave you in progression.
While Adding the difficulty options to the Campaign would possibly fix that, itād also drastically slow how quickly itād be done, so nobody would do it anyways.
Why is forcing to do same story every seasson better than choosing if you want to do NMDs, HT, Horde or any oher content you may prefer.
I donĀ“t say these activities are super fun, but it is for sure more fun than doing escort NPC quest and talk with this one and that one every single seasson.
Wo why you think it would be better.
In my case I skipp most PoE seasson bcs I am simply not willing to play story.
PS: You can play campaing if you want. I really canĀ“t imagine what can be so good with force story to advocate for limiting player choice.
I donāt agree in every aspect but overall is a good take and I would sign for this one.
Sadly, streamers and YouTubers probably would cry about this because they would have to do the campaign in their āāblastsāā and Blizzard donāt want streamers in the wrong side with them because they can also stream PoE.
Itās sort of understandable to have to do it once per account, first time clear so to speak, although even there we could argue that they should allow the option to not have to do it.
More options is rarely a bad thing, forced gameplay is never a good thing.
OG PoE here, literal beta tester, day 1 player, happen to be a Diablo fan since day 1 also (old as dirt, 62), played them all, will play them all in the future. This caught my attention:
You, are full of it. YOU did not TEST PoE2.
Also, the idea ANYBODY enjoys the campaign is laughable, and that your other points are as laughable as that.
Again, this person HAS NOT tested PoE2. Could he have sampled a version for demo, yes, but he never TESTED PoE2.
PoE2 will be VASTLY different than PoE, read the dev teams postings, especially Chrisās and youāll understand why the OG community is holding their breath on what PoE2 will be.
This is something we had to do before until they changed it to only doing it much. I donāt ever want to play the campaign again. I just want to get to the end game to hunt for better loot.
Anyway, I donāt get why you are so fumed about this ā it was just an opinion, and I specifically labeled it unpopular knowing most people wouldnāt agree with it.
My original motivation was purely because there were a lot of players complaining that there is nothing fun to do and they have to repeatedly run NMD or the Pit. Nothing more than that. There is nothing you can fundamentally change about that ā any game mode will fall into similar categories as dungeon clearing, so I was just more working backwards trying to hypothesize why people got bored very quickly.
No. Itās an ok personal suggestion or recommendation. Donāt make it a requirement.
Players can choose to run the campaign once every season or character.
If you do that or recommend that, thatās cool. Play how you want.
Donāt try to force that playstyle on other players.
Me, Iāll choose the skip campaign button almost every time.
Maybe Iāll feel nostalgic and play the campaign again in 2 years.
This expansion, Iāll consider to re-run the campaign to put the story pieces together, but Iāll likely just watch D4 story highlight video and then jump right into helltide or NMDs for a few levels before heading to Nehantu.
I can empathize with the point you are attempting to make the game more enjoyable for yourself and others who might enjoy the campaigns as well.
I would just like to point out that there are others who probably donāt enjoy the campaign after they have already played through it.
For me? Repeating it every single season feels worse than being stuck with a 13 hour loading screen. (At least with the loading screen I could walk away and come back when its completed.)
As for PoE, well the examples you provided are the exact reason I stopped playing PoE seasons after the first few times I tried them.
In fact I eventually left PoE (many years ago) when they began revamping the skill trees in the base game (non-seasonal side, i.e. eternal) every single season. Now the D4 developers arenāt doing the āexactā same thing āyetā but we shall see how all that pans out.
Again I understand that for you the the campaign gives you, and some others, something enjoyable to replay with every new character and there is nothing wrong with that.
Please understand that for me, and some others, repeating that exact same content with every single character is not enjoyable thus having the option to skip it is a godsend and there is nothing wrong with that either.
However I do feel it quite unwarranted that instead of using the option, to not skip the campaign that is provided to you upon the creation of every character, you instead want the option, to skip the campaign, taken away from the entire player base.
All because you, and others in the same boat, lack the willpower to simply not press the button.
I wouldāve loved it if you had to play the whole story again before jumping into the S6 stuff. Iām actualy most likely replay the whole story just to see the spiritborn on a pony freezing almost to death in land where he most likely noone even know that Spiritborn are even a thing and he or she is there without any valid reason whatsoever.
