Difficulty Levels in 3.0.0

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Cador2 wrote:

just want to say i LOVE the 10 acts one playthrough thing!

it was always frustrating to go back to act 1! a really downer in motivation and fun. also knowing that you have to do the parts of the game you didnt like again was annoying!

I love this game as much as you do but you do realise there's only going to be one act worth of new content, not six, right? Acts 6-10 are going to look a lot like Acts 1-5 I think. 1-5 are like Normal (but longer) and 6-10 are like Cruel (but starting later and including what's currently Merciless).

But yes I can get behind two goes around rather than three, especially if any of the quests/dialogue/etc. are different in 6-10 and it's just the tiles that are reused.

My big question is about the Indomitable achievement. I'm only just reaching lvl90 softcore so I've only just started on the HC achievements. I'm reasonably confident I can get Fearless and Dauntless before 3.0 is released, but how will I get Indomitable afterwards? I can't live with the idea of it being forever unachievable!

wait ... introducing 5th act? that means it will be two times 5 acts, right? not 10 in total as it was supposed to be? so like normal and merciless, and just 1 new act?!

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Kitava wrote:

wait ... introducing 5th act? that means it will be two times 5 acts, right? not 10 in total as it was supposed to be? so like normal and merciless, and just 1 new act?!

There are 10 acts. Acts 6 through 10 will take place around the same Wraeclast locales as acts 1-5, so yeah, a lot will be the same, but there will be new areas, new monsters, bosses and an entirely new progression, not to mention the story. It's going to be way, way more thrilling than say, replaying acts 1-5 two times in their exact shape and form.

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Thomasmgp wrote:

Id be all for yall doing a modified version of what D3 did. After we play through every Act with a character in the current league let us start mapping on future characters from level 1. Give us special map type items that open a single portal and scale to our levels all the way to 70. Im really really tired of seeing Piety and her friends 324774354375 times a year. Or having to run Dried Lake or Docks 83573754357 times just because other areas are less efficient. Bandits can be a mod added to each map via rolling. So if you want to help Oak you need to enter lowbie maps with the other guys as bosses and kill them for a drop. Then roll a map with Oak as a boss and give him the items for your reward.

interesting that you are tired to see piety or dried lakethe millionth time but not tired to see anonymous maps with no content in them for the millionth time?

I always considered maps boring and prefer leveling and even endgame embedded in the actual game world and story mode.

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Toliman wrote:

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Thomasmgp wrote:

Id be all for yall doing a modified version of what D3 did. After we play through every Act with a character in the current league let us start mapping on future characters from level 1. Give us special map type items that open a single portal and scale to our levels all the way to 70. Im really really tired of seeing Piety and her friends 324774354375 times a year. Or having to run Dried Lake or Docks 83573754357 times just because other areas are less efficient. Bandits can be a mod added to each map via rolling. So if you want to help Oak you need to enter lowbie maps with the other guys as bosses and kill them for a drop. Then roll a map with Oak as a boss and give him the items for your reward.

interesting that you are tired to see piety or dried lakethe millionth time but not tired to see anonymous maps with no content in them for the millionth time?

I always considered maps boring and prefer leveling and even endgame embedded in the actual game world and story mode.

Finally a supporter of my cause ! Thanks buddy !

I think that a lot of the posts people have made on this thread surrounding balance, e.g. where are bandit rewards going, skill points/refunds, resistances, and especially "which difficulty is being removed? Cruel? Well the jump from Normal to Merc is too big for most people" are taking a narrow view of the issue.

From the information released so far, it sounds like 3.0 is going to be the largest patch/expansion released in the history of the game. The above issues can be resolved rather simply when you consider that most existing game systems and mechanics are going to end up tweaked in the process. For example, the Normal>Merc concept will likely be outdated. From the sound of it, acts 6-10 are NOT 1-5 repeated; it sounds like questlines and zones will be significantly overhauled, with different NPCs and enemies.

With that in mind, there likely won't be "difficulties" anymore, just acts, with progressive scaling from one to the next (it's been suggested that xp loss on death and resists be tiered so that they increase slightly with each act). This would provide a much more organic experience than the existing system of quite significant jumps from one difficulty to the next (excluding the relative difficulty of A4). In almost every class/build guide on the forums, there reads something along the lines of "make sure to cap resists by merc difficulty". With a properly balanced a1-10, this wouldn't be as necessary to list, simply suggesting to maintain your resistances as you progress, so you don't have a sudden jump of -40% resists from one act to the next.

I'm expecting major revamps of many existing systems, and since devs appear to be doing that, it wouldn't take much effort to roll relatively minor existing mechanics and balance issues into the changes that are being made. I mean really, with the ES/CI changes that have been announced, is what we call each "difficulty" and where our bandit rewards are going to come from really significant? A simple global passive tree refund (along with removing bandit rewards) would resolve this, putting all players/classes onto a level playing field, and the slight stat reduction resulting could be easily made up for by making small adjustments to monster dmg/resist/health values.

Just thought I'd throw my 2 cents in, since I read 10+ pages mostly consisting of people fretting about relatively insignificant adjustments that won't impact the core gameplay.



TL;DR: Widespread, significant gameplay element changes, additions, and removals inc., game can be rebalanced to account for removed/changed feature without much work.

GGG dont forget to reduce all monsters/boss damage if you nerf ES

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TreeOfDead wrote:

GGG dont forget to reduce all monsters/boss damage if you nerf ES

that obviously will not happen

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DaenerysTargaryun wrote:

Interesting! I, for one, appreciate not having to play through the same exact story three times to progress, as is currently.

Rigghhhhhttt..

So.. You are never doing absolutely pointless maps without a single grain of story ?

How are You progressing ?! Trough mind controlling the experience bar ???

Your point is invalid fellow.