What does Blizzard have against boosting? Lessons from Diablo 3

PC General Discussion
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So in this last patch, Blizzard came down HARD on boosting. Not only is experience nerfed into the ground for fighting monsters higher level than you, but now you can’t unlock world tier 3 until you’re level 50 and world tier 4 until you’re 70. All of this is done in an attempt to avoid having high level players running and easily leveling up their friends’ alts.

But why is boosting a bad thing? Diablo 3 had boosting and it was one of the main appeals to the entire game. Think about it for a second. A lot of people are upset that they have to start over from level 1 for the Diablo 4 season, but nobody was upset that you had to do this for Diablo 3. Why? Because leveling was incredibly easy, especially if someone was running you.

Fun fact, even today in Diablo 3, you can go from level 1 to max level in less than FIFTEEN MINUTES. You can try this for yourself right now, this very second if you wanted to. You can have a friend run you through some high level greater rifts and max you out in less than half an hour.

Why is this a good thing you ask? Because leveling to max was fun the first time. Less so on the second time. It was a slog the third time, and by the fourth, sixth, or tenth time, it was downright unthinkable. 28 seasons later you still think people are going to be up for that again? For the billionth time? Nobody wants to slog through that again. We’re talking about longevity here.

With the way Diablo 3 was structured, you didn’t have to slowly level up. The game was designed in a way to get you straight into the fun part as soon as possible. Another reason this was good is it allowed you to try out as many classes as you want.

It was quite possible to level all 7 classes to max level all in one season and try and out experiment with the changes to each class every season. Now answer me this, could you imagine doing that in Diablo 4? Even with 2 less classes than Diablo 3, do you think it would be feasible or even possible to get to level 100 with all 5 classes in the limited time span a season lasts?

Their logic is backwards here. What they think is that if you level too fast, you’ll complete the game too quickly and leave and thus, they lose your retention for the game. This just isn’t true though. In fact, the opposite is true. In Diablo 3, you level so insanely fast you can reach max level in FIFTEEN MINUTES, but the games retention didn’t come from you just playing that one character, it game from you giving every class a try.

With each season comes massive sweeping changes for all 7 classes in Diablo 3. With the way their leveling and boosting system works, you can quite easily give every single class a try, experience all their changes and new features, items, and pick which one you like the most to main.

Can you do this in Diablo 4? No, you can’t. In fact, the idea of getting all 5 classes to a point of viable NM dungeon pushing is just downright unthinkable. When I play a game, especially one I’ve been hundreds of times, I want to just dive straight into the action.

I could easily get hundreds if not a thousand hours of play time PER SEASON in diablo 3 because boosting allows you to skip the slog and go straight into the fun part, which is getting your set and gathering power.

It’s almost like Diablo 4s design is trying to encourage you to just play one character and not branch out with alts, but what they don’t understand is that they’d easily get the retention they’re looking for if they just allowed us to boost.

Think about this; if someone could easily boost you in D4 to max level in a short amount of time, do you think there would be all this fuss and complaining about having your progress reset every season?

I leveled from 1 to 80, it was decent the first time, but I don’t want to do it again, so why are they making me do it? Why are they trying to slow me down from reaching the part of the game I want to get to in order to have FUN? Why are they forcing me to spend more time doing stuff I HATE just to get to do stuff I LOVE?

Even as I write this, I kinda want to roll a Necromancer and give their builds a try, but the thought of starting all over from level 1 all over again is a major TURN OFF to me, especially after this last patch.

They want me to play the game longer but the decisions they’re making are actively making me want to spend LESS time playing the game, not more.

I’m almost at my breaking point with this game. Once I get bored playing my rogue, that’s it. I’m not going to bother making an alt, or trying again on the seasons. Once my enjoyment runs out here (which is quickly approaching), I’m done.

4 Likes
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Boosting is cheating.

1 Like
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I am sorry that the only reply you got to this post was from a moron.

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Boosting is a dumb meta go away

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Could you be so nice and elaborate why boosting is cheating from your point of view?
What harm is done to you or the “trading economy” (had to mention this, cause some people actually live to trade for some reason, which is beyond me) or any other random player in existence, if someone speed levels an alt of a friend.

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Is it back? Or is ur information outdated?

Pretty sure they removed it because friend boosted me from 20-70 in 2 days. Jumped straight through cathedral and temple at lvl 20s.

Boosting is still a thing.

7

Why did this nearly 30 day old responseless topic need a necro?

Most of tge important bits like requiring lv 50/70 for WT3/4 were reversed.

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Totally agree with OP. Boosting is fine IMO - having to run the entire slow campaign again and again is redundant and boring. Thinking on it now - all the CUt Scenes and conversations slows the game down a lot- yes I know u can hit escape to exit them but it’s still slower compared to previous titles. The Cut Scenes are great if u are a LORE person and want more of that but if u want to just reach max level and play Higher level content - Boosting should not be a road block Imo…

1 Like
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the problem here is much simpler, a long time ago blizzard lost its creative geniuses, and with that a crowd that doesn’t understand games started to take care of and destroy their properties.
These games began to use things imported from WoW, which in turn began to use things that pleased the Chinese public, such as the GS.
Here comes the crucial point of D3’s failure and because D4 fails the same, EVERYTHING YOU GET DURING LEVELING is immediately useless because the ENTIRE game is balanced ONLY AND ONLY at lvl 100 (70 for d3). In ARPG like D2 or POE you don’t even need to be close to lvl 100 to defeat the uberboses, I myself only had one character at lvl 100 in poe and about 3 in D2 however I did everything there is to do there, and I do everything in all PoE leagues, this is because the in-game item is balanced in a BROAD and ADDITIVE way, while D3 and D4 use RESTRICTED and MULTIPLICATE items. while the power gain in D2 or POE is a slow curve, in D3 and D4 it is practically a step that jumps from 0 to 100, D3 you have 1 step when equipping with all items lvl 70, then a step when equipping the 6 parts of a set and finally a step when you equip all the mandatory and deterministic slots of your build, thus jumping from 1k to 50k then to 1mi and finally 1bi of damage.
So you realize that those levels you pass from 1 to 100 are of no use to ANYTHING, and therefore, instead of evolving by playing, it is preferable to skip this right away and go to the part that will REALLY persist, which is the itemization of the end game, ocm the ancestors/primevals delvl 70 from D3 and here with the GS 800+ items.
If the game didn’t have this %¨#¨@% of GS, leveling could be slower and more enjoyable as in PoE and D2, both of which have a considerable part of leveling as part of their endgame