What is Blizzards philosophy for leveling in Diablo 4?

PC General Discussion
1

When I levelup it’s a pure grind, nothing is fun. Its all the same, there are zero mile stones,

I just don’t get it. Is the meaning that the leveling part Should be a s boring as can be and then when you finally reach lvl100 you can enjoy the end game?

In other games, say Diablo 2 you reach these small mile stones that make you feel like you’ve progressed. You gain a level where you can invest in a new skill that can really push you faster and you finish an act so you feel like the next act is another chapter of the game, items drop that actually make you stronger or better.

But in diablo 4 you gain levels to pick new skills but they don’t change anything, its all the same kill speed, u remain the same tankyness or quickness…there’s really no one skill that push you ahead of the curve.
There are no acts and nothing that could be construed as chapters so when you dont have that it feels like nothing is happening.
No item has made a significant change to my progress either and i’ve leveled 20 guys to close to lvl50. this is also very mindnumbingly boring.

All these stale boring things makes the leveling part of the game discouraging to continue. Was this the idea and philosophy of the dev team?

Maybe its just me but i can’t force myself to login to the game anymore. Maybe everyone else feel like this is a fantastic flawless game and I’m on the frinch.

I just don’t understand how one of the largest game companies in the world with the biggest budget in the world making a new title in one of the most beloved franchises in the world and spend many many years developing the game came up with something like this…It feels like a scam.

I just don’t get it. How did something like this happen. I for one thing this will go down in history as one of the weirdest. you had it all, you failed on every single point. its truely amazing.

The single most interesting aspect is why you went with level scaling. You have tried it before, twice right? In both WoW and D3 and both times you failed so hard, it was super bad.

I’m very very sure you made it just cus of greed, you knew its much less work to adjust things later so you need a much smaller team to keep the game going over the years so I get that part but you also knew for sure 100% no doubt that all players hated it, you knew it was so bad and so uncompelling and made players feel like they never progressed but you took it.

You spend many millions on this gamble which you probably already covered with your $100 dollar price tag for the base game. But in your greedy naivite you thought that either you could introduce new variables to make the level scaling feel better or much more likely you knew it would fail but you would recover the money and a few stugglers would remain in the game making you some revenue over time and just bail for your next ip and keep that tiny uphold team for the longevity of the game.

Well played but it’s a coverted scam. no one could prove it but taking all these aspects into account it’s definitely fishy.

2 Likes
2

It’s a psychological study to determine how many bs sandwiches a player will consume before they’re full.

They want you to have an insufferably miserable time most of the time so that they can micro dose you with a dopamine hit like when you find a legendary that gives you +157% damage boost on “this skill”.
What do you do after you find that aspect?
Turn up the difficulty and go back to misery.
Can’t even call this a game, it’s a joke.

3 Likes
3

It can’t be because it’s Blizzard, they don’t have the brains to figure out a psychological test.

But you’re definitely right about the tiny dopamine trip ppl got after all the crap that went down and then suddenly they appear around the camp fire and said, we’re sorry, we messed up. And then all the youtubers screamed for joy! wow, you really did it blizzard, Win Win Win, ur the best.

Mm…ppl will always be stupid.

1 Like
4

Imagine fighting the same Level 1 Monster from level 1 until you reach Level 100 and you still can’t 1 Hit KO da monster, and the monster keeps getting stronger and stronger like wtf

1 Like
5

This seems to be a new matrix or maybe not so new to measure just how much people are willing to give to big corporate bank accounts and get very little return.
But the effect i see it having on a society is not looking good. As an older person, And from my point of view, It seems to be having the effect of causing a more extreme point of view along with more extreme actions. But also from my point of view, It’s like watching people react to being stung by a bunch of Bee’s, And not knowing where the bee’s are coming from.

2 Likes
6

Its ok to not like a game. Really it isnt that big of a deal.

1 Like
7

philosophy:

we got your money, if you dont enjoy the game, dont play it

and its even a quote from the devs

5 Likes
8

I don’t understand why everyone says levelling is slow its very fast.

9

Levelling is slow because its boring and not rewarding.

Time dilates between D4 timegate mechanics

10

I often had the feeling that D4 should stay at max level 50 and balance around that mark. After that players should have gained paragon points to get stronger and not to primarily counter the scaling.

This way they could have easily made an optional NG+ mode for the campaign as well.
50-100 is made for pure timesink and the idea of “more time invested the more likely players spend money”.

The hole base of the game seems designed by strange economy guys outside of the gaming bubble.

2 Likes
11

It’s really not that fast. If you want to see fast leveling try D3, you can level from a fresh character to 70 in a few hours. If you make an alt there are mechanics that allow you to do it in an hour or less. There is nothing remotely close to that in D4.

One of the issues with D4 leveling is the activities that maximize XP are rather boring. I saw a vid where a guy recorded his NM run and it was something like 170 seconds of fighting and 280 seconds of walking. Those number should be inverted. Add in the uninteresting NM dungeon objectives and it makes it feel much longer.

12

I would love to replay the campaign again on WT4. Some bosses could get some new skills and make the encounters more epic. I dont know why we dont have this.

13

I never said it was slow, I said it was boring.
If it was fun to level I wouldn’t mind if it was 100 x slower.
Like in World of Warcraft, it took you a long while to levelup but it was mostly fun, there was lots to do and ways to do it.

But in D4 its a grind, its a boring, flat, uninspiring, depressing thing to do. That is not good, a game that is boring…is that even a game. Game = Fun is my take.

14

If there was a better grouping system or a party finder for speed levelling without the use of Discord/Clan chat, then levelling wouldn’t be as bad.

D2 leveling is very slow but the grouping system through game room induce easy power levelling and farming.

Right now D4 is heavily polarized with single player and multiplayer who uses discord a lot.

15

Hi,

Let us all be kind to ourselves. We did not know before buying the game that it was a rip off (in my opinion). It’s good if some people enjoy the game. Unfortunately people (including me) did not know how bad the game would be before buying it - otherwise why buy it. A lot of people were probably really looking forward to it and were full of hope! And now, the shock. But too late because Blizz already has our money.

1 Like
16

In this game, there isn’t an end game. You don’t rush to level 100 so you can start doing the fun stuff end game content like most other MMO’s we have all played.

The boring grind to level 100 is the “fun content”. After you hit 100 and kill Uber Lilith once and do a NM100, there’s nothing left but to start again at level 1 on a new character or build.

The devs said they know this is a problem and are adding something in season 3.

17

Ha! Funny how young snowflakes hate one of the most popular games of all time.

A long time ago I read an article how games like this were a substitute for succeeding at work which many men are driven to do. If you are young you might not have a career level job which offers intrinsic satisfactions but you might play a game where you put in the time, grind away, and slowly climb to the top of the ladder.

Part of the reason employers want to keep baby boomers on the payroll and avoid (like the plague) hiring younger workers is their poor work ethic and entitled mentality,

18

My assumption is that the leveling philosophy is that leveling is the game. So progressing from 1-100 is suppose to be 90% of the game itself which is opposite of how ARPGs have been set-up traditionally.

I can’t speak for WoW as I think scaling was introduced in Cata after I had left (might be worng here) but the scaling in D3 isn’t even noticeable and when talking about this at launch I had honestly even forgotten mobs scaled in adventure mode.

Sure… they scale… but not really. D4 the mobs actually do stay with you until you get the big “X” power boost so you feel it. After like level 12 D3’s scaling just falls flat on its face for trying to do what it is supposed to be trying to do.

19

Blizzard never seem to learn it seems, every time they release a new Diablo game they try to force the same flawed ideas then didn’t work and had to be changed in the previous games.

For example in D3 at launch most items were utterly useless with a myriad of stats that did not complement each other at all, such as getting a set of gloves with Dex, Strength and Int or whatever. They got rid of those legacy items because it sucked but think going again with items that are totally useless is a good idea.

Granted I haven’t played D4 as long as many on this but so far I am still using items I got like 20-25 levels ago because every item practically sucks and nothing seems to be much better than anything else.

Kinda removes the “excitement” factor of getting significant upgrades to make you kill those mobs quicker.

Honestly think they need to rip this game up and start again…

2 Likes
20

I had the feeling that it was the opposite. We older players dislike level scaling while the younger generations has never seen anything but.

I’m 48. I still love playing games but I don’t like level scaling.