Act 5 should leverage the 3 times through levels of difficulty for both new and veteran players

When Act 5 drops next year GGG should already be well into a huge re-balance of the Normal, Cruel, and Merciless difficulty levels to accomplish the following:

1. New players (players with no level 68 build) will play the full 3 times through the 5 acts.
2. Veterans should be given the option of starting from Normal or Cruel Twilight Strand.
3. Veterans choosing to start in Cruel should start out at a higher level. The starting level
    should be a few levels lower than Cruel Twilight Strand to make it a good challenge to kill
    Hillock. Having no armor yet should also make this a very nice challenge and not a wimpy zone.
    We should get total passive points minus the bandits or any other side quests. We will need to
    go back to Normal and kill the bandits or help 1 to get the desired reward. We can go back
    and complete Normal side quests as desired as all waypoints will be unlocked.
4. Since Normal will be completely unlocked once we get to Lioneye's Watch we thus have the option
    of going back and playing any normal zone or not (personal choice). With the challenge league
    we haven't done the Normal Trials of Ascendancy yet so unfortunately we will need to go back
    and do them once but that's better than having to do the entire level.


This will/should make PoE more fun for a wider range of playing skills:

1. Normal Act I can (and should) be made even softer so fewer new players don't drop out before
    they reach Act II. GGG should be appalled and alarmed that up to 50% of new players quit at
    Brutus or Merveil boss battles and never come back later (based on comments from Chris in a of
    State Exile podcast).
2. Veterans can get what we want, a tougher main game with only Cruel and Merciless difficulties
    to go through plus some minor backtracking to get into endgame mapping.
3. The "one size fits all" of content difficulty is broadened so that new players aren't killed
    out too early and veterans aren't bored out by forcing us to have to (sleep) race through
    Normal (yawn... what a boring waste of time for veterans to have to do).

I for one would certainly relish the option of the old "--act 4" diablo 2 trick--made it SO much easier to try out new builds.

...of course, it would make regrets much less valuable, since you could feasibly just reroll the character with the level bonus to save time. then again, people already do that.

then again it would be much more able to show some real build diversity, since someone could have an idea, roll a higher character to give it a cursory test to see if it's any fun, etc.

it also opens the door to people rolling cookie-cutter characters to take after whatever OP build there is this patch, but then everyone does that already, so there's no change there other than expedience.

It would be interesting to have some form of midway/optional/transitional form of a difficulty removal on act 5, so in act 6 they remove it completely.

I would rather they just made the difficulties different enough that each one felt like a new experience. New monsters, upgraded skills for monsters, substantially more difficult, optional new quests. As it is, they are all too similar.

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CliveHowlitzer wrote:

I would rather they just made the difficulties different enough that each one felt like a new experience. New monsters, upgraded skills for monsters, substantially more difficult, optional new quests. As it is, they are all too similar.

+1

Hopefully, GGG will drop one difficulty when they release ac5.

About starting in cruel if there are still 3 difficulties, you can forget it honestly, ladder matters, and this is just unacceptable for a ladder based league.

I think it would be better like this:


1. A new player has to play all 3 difficulties to have an easy start and getting used to the difficulty. Only when a player has finished all difficulties, he has a new option.

2. When a player has finished all difficulties, he may enter the "Alternative Merciless" difficulty when creating a new character. In this difficulty, the player has -60% on all res right from the start and the level of each area increases much faster. Example:

Act 1:
- Twilight Strand: Map Level 1
- The Coast: Map Level 4
- The Mud Flats: Map Level 6
- The Submerged Passage: Map Level 8
- The Ledge: Map Level 10
- The Climb: Map Level 12
- The Prison: Map Level 14
- Prisoners Gate: Map Level 16
- The Ship Graveyard: Map Level 18
- Mervails Caverns: Map Level 20

Act 2:
- The Southern Forest: Map Level 22
- The Old Fields: Map Level 24
- The Crossroads: Map Level 26
- The Chamber of Sin: Map Level 28
- The Broken Bridge: Map Level 28
- The Riverways: Map Level 30
- The Western Forest: Map Level 32
- The Weavers Chamber: Map Level 34
- The Wetlands: Map Level 36
- The Vaal Ruins: Map Level 38
- The Northern Forest: Map Level 39
- The Caverns: Map Level 40

Act 3:
- The City of Sarn: Map Level 41
- The Slums: Map Level 42
- The Crematorium: Map Level 43
- The Warehouse District: Map Level 44
- The Market Place: Map Level 44
- The Battlefront: Map Level 45
- The Docks: Map Level 46
- The Solaris Temple: Map Level 47
- The Ebony Barracks: Map Level 48
- The Lunaris Temple: Map Level 49
- The Imperial Gardens: Map Level 49
- The Sceptre of God: Map Level 50

Act 4:
- The Aqueduct: Map Level 51
- The Dried Lake: Map Level 52
- The Mines: Map Level 53
- The Crystal Veins: Map Level 54
- Daressos Dream: Map Level 55
- The Grand Arena: Map Level 57
- Kaoms Dream: Map Level 55
- Kaoms Stronghold: Map Level 57
- The Belly of the Beast: Map Level 58
- The Harvest: Map Level 60

Act 5:
- 1. Map: Map Level 61
- 2. Map: Map Level 62
- 3. Map: Map Level 63
- 4. Map: Map Level 64
- 5. Map: Map Level 64
- 6. Map: Map Level 65
- 7. Map: Map Level 65
- 8. Map: Map Level 66
- 9. Map: Map Level 66
- 10. Map: Map Level 67

People who start in the alternative Merciless difficulty can also go to normal, cruel and merciless difficulty, in case a new player wants to interact with someone who plays alternative merciless. Also you can't do quests from the other 3 difficulties once you have started alternative merciless. The advantage though is, the the quests now reward you with all the things from all 3 difficulties. So if you kill fairgraves the first time, you are rewarded with a book that gives you 3 passive nodes instead of one. This way, you only have to do the quests once. When you do the bandits, the guy in the town will give you all 3 rewards. And thanks to the rapid increasement of map levels, leveling at the start goes much faster. And since you start with -60% resistance, the early game should also be much harder, since bosses like mervail will hit very hard because you will probably not have capped resistances in the low level area. Furthermore, you only have to do the labyrinth once to get the first 6 lab points. Especially nice for those who dont like it anyway.

All in all that means:

- You only have to do the storyline once per character
- You only have to do each quest once for the important quest rewards
- You only have to do the lab once (except ubber, still needs to be done)
- The early game will be more exciting, since you start with -60% resistances at level 1 and level from enemies increases very fast.


That would solve the problem of doing the same thing over and over again in a boring context (because normal/cruel are to easy).

That's a good suggestion. The only issue I think is that I would be cleaner to have your merciless zones the same as everyone else, so they should somehow go back to their regular level after you reach a certain point.

Chris stated in one of the Atlas of Worlds posts that it is intended to take a few dozen hours to reach maps, I think we should add ruthless back and nerf player move speed.

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johnKeys wrote:

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CliveHowlitzer wrote:

I would rather they just made the difficulties different enough that each one felt like a new experience. New monsters, upgraded skills for monsters, substantially more difficult, optional new quests. As it is, they are all too similar.

+1

Also, I'd love if it's more free form/lore less just to mitigate the deja vù feeling.