Underleveled, can't catch up

I've been playing quite a few character through the first difficulty now, and I often find myself in areas that are well above my own level. I don't have any problems with killing these monsters, but...

The EXP gain from higher level monsters is ridiculously low! I can understand why you would want to scale back the EXP gain on lower level monsters, but why the ones that are stronger than you? I think that you should be rewarded for taking on a tougher challenge, not punished by it!

I understand that the current system is in place to prevent 'boosting' of lower level characters by higher level characters, but it doesn't make much sense for this system to be in effect when you're solo.

I just now had to go back to previous areas to grind so that I would catch up in level and start gaining normal experience at the point of the game I was at.

This is really bad in act 2 if you don't do all those extra no-quest zones and just Bline for the story. I'm in a zone 2 levels above my head. Struggling.

Then go back to the levels you're suppose to be in until you're ready.

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spitty wrote:

Then go back to the levels you're suppose to be in until you're ready.

That's exactly the problem. I don't want to have to go back and grind areas I've already cleared just because my EXP gain starts getting ridiculously slow.

If I was running into difficulty problems I would gladly go back and make sure I was on par when it comes to levels, but I can handle these enemies without much problem, I just don't get the experience for them. I need to go back to an even easier area and grind my level there if I want to get any EXP from these enemies.

I agree with you that you shouldn't be punished for killing monsters above your levels (when your solo) however I think there's a much bigger problem here

levels give so little of a power boost that the monsters that are level 12 are so close in power to monsters that are level 16

I think three things should be done
1. Increase the boost of power you get per level (especially lower levels)
2. increase monster difficulty accordingly
3. Remove the level punishment in solo play (so you can level against monsters higher levels)

Hapened to me too. I pretty much rushed the act 2 quest in ruthless and ended up level 41 or 42 in the beginning of merciless in zones for level 46-47. I'm grinding the waterfall caves atm until i catch up.

What would help imo is having side areas overy 2-3 levels, so when you fall behind you always have a side area you can go to for nice xp, and it's different from clearing the main areas over and over. Also, you can farm the big chests at the same time.

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dopefish wrote:

I can understand why you would want to scale back the EXP gain on lower level monsters, but why the ones that are stronger than you? I think that you should be rewarded for taking on a tougher challenge, not punished by it!

This!!

If you can't go back and replay a zone and wish to gain 1 level per area, then you are playing the wrong game...

The xp curve though shouldn't punish players severely for fighting ahead of their level like it does now... see my post below.

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zeto wrote:

If you can't go back and replay a zone and wish to gain 1 level per area, then you are playing the wrong game...

it's not as simple as that

If I have a level 20 and I'm able to kill level 30 monsters just as easily as the level 20 monsters why should I be punished for that? (which is the OP point)

and with the power difference being so little between levels if you're having a hard time killing level 25 monsters at level 22 odds are you'll have a hard time at 25 too (and when you combine this with OPs point then you see how I feel)

overall I think its a balance issue

To clarify, there's already been threads where I've discussed this topic.. so I sorta got lazy and didn't mention it here.

The XP curve should not punish you for fighting ahead... it should probably look more like a sigmoidal curve such as:



Then level equivalent play should result in xp approximately 80-90% of max, level + 2 or 3 should result in 99% max.