Progression in races

I edited something about the Act3X in my previous post, but I can rewrite it here:

The problem is, I think Act3X is very difficult, BUT it is okay for the normal game. So I am fine, because I have just endless time to farm, can geared up and what not.

It would be insane silly to lower the difficulty of Act3X because of races. That would make no sense.

It would even make less sense to make Act3X less difficult in races because for me: races show how good you are in the current state of the game. It just doesn't make sense doing a 3h+ races with a lower difficulty of Act3X.

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MacCc wrote:

It would be insane silly to lower the difficulty of Act3X because of races. That would make no sense.

It would even make less sense to make Act3X less difficult in races because for me: races show how good you are in the current state of the game. It just doesn't make sense doing a 3h+ races with a lower difficulty of Act3X.

I think we all agree on that!

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How to solve this problem?

I) Give bettter rewards. Make it, that going for Dominus and Cruel outweights Docks farming. How?

Give for the first group doing Dominus like 10 points. This will outweight docks farming. Also it is possible to give more points for Dominus in the first 2 1/2h. So rushing there instead of farming docks is worth more.

This makes total sense to me. Something like this will make races how I assume the developers intended. As a newcomer to the game, I avoid the races just because without knowing the meta game through and through, I stand no chance against the people who have figured out what amounts to loopholes - docks farming etc. Something like this would make me play.

If, on a running track race, the gun goes off - and everyone runs through the middle of the field instead of all the way round, because of a loophole in the rules, you would definitely take measures to make it more worthwhile to run all the way around

No I don't. I don't view Act3x as difficult in a sense that you need alot of raw skill to make it through alive. It's a simple gear check... all of it, if you have the life and resists to make it through alive it's easy, if you are undergeared and underleveled with a race spec you might get killed by something in one shot.

I fundamentally disagree with the idea of gear checks, I think the game and races should be primarily about player skill. Lucking out with finding max resist gear, or farming and overleveling to do a zone does not equate to skill in my opinion (and conflicts with the competitive and "as fair as possible" aspect in racing).

It always makes me cringe when people say Act3x is difficult, because it's not actually difficulty in terms of gameplay, but a simple gear check, which makes it such a horribly designed zone and really game-breaking for races.

I honestly think Act3x is the worst designed aspect of this game, it's a real headscratcher too because most other parts of this game are excellent.

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SlixSC wrote:

No I don't.

Read again what I assumed you would agree on.. nothing about act 3X being too difficult, just that it should not be changed for the sake of races ;-)

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Hassefar60 wrote:

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SlixSC wrote:

No I don't.

Read again what I assumed you would agree on.. nothing about act 3X being too difficult, just that it should not be changed for the sake of races ;-)

Well perhaps not for the sake of races, but I still think it's by far the worst part of the game. I know they will never re-design all of it, but I'm just very disappointed with the community because people apparently enjoy having gear-checks in the game which remove most of the skill required to actually play this game.

It's frustrating, but I'm fully aware that I'm in the minority here. I just think Act3x is the first big step in the wrong direction, casualising this game by giving the players the perception of fake difficulty.

To me difficulty in games is synonymous with challenging a player's skill, gear checks do the exact opposite.

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SlixSC wrote:

The whole act 3x is just very out of line with the rest of the game.

True. Act 3x disrupts the gameplay flow. You are like forced to overlevel if you intend to solo it. Act 1 cruel is much easier than Act 3x normal. Just like Act 1 Merciless is much easier than Act 3x Cruel. Makes Act 1 look redundant.

In a race you need to survive on crap equipment all the way through. Forget about act 3x if you are underleveled and undergeared.

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Reinhart wrote:

In a race you need to survive on crap equipment all the way through. Forget about act 3x if you are underleveled and undergeared.

Solo yes, but it might be doable in (full) parties.

But indeed, the following act 1 is much easier.

Cruel ledge xp is around 50~% more xp/hour than normal docks (iirc). The issue is getting there in time to make the improved xp gain pay off, which wasnt really possible outside of 3+ hour races (talking post act 3 addition here of course).

I havent played any of act 3x yet, but if its even half the size of act 3, that probably limits useful cruel progression to 4 hour events (of which there are typically 1-2 max each season). No idea how long itd take to kill the act 3x boss in race gear either, or if its even viable.

Progression based races have been requested since mid closed beta, btw. Dont recall there being any GGG response to date.

Difficulty of the areas aside (more or less), KoTao has the right point here:

once you get to the Docks and start farming, you're hitting a lot of XP pretty quickly. The farming / movement required to actually get PAST the docks lowers your XP substantially.

The quickest "Fix" would be lowering the level of the docks, which would make advancing through the content to higher-level areas more desirable.

You can run straight there, get the WP and portals and farm high level content while literally ignoring all of A3. From Vaal to docks, minus some farming in Sarn so you don't welp on the docks immediately, is a 6 level jump in enemy power for basically 10 minutes of running (obviously you're going to be hitting big packs on the way for XP, but you're not doing any content).


In contrast, if you attempt to complete Act 3... you need to find 2 items (admittedly, not terribly difficult, but more involved than running through the battlefront direct to docks), descend solaris (lower level than the docks, not good enemy density for farming!), go through the sewers (mostly running, lower level than staying at docks, bad enemy density), get to barracks (same level as docks, decent enemy density), descend lunaris (higher level than docks at the bottom, and finally a good replacement for farming territory on level 3), kill piety (not THAT hard on normal... but as mentioned, you're underlevelled and undergeared. Screw up a resist change or lag on ice arrows, you could easily RIP by accident), THEN get to A3X, where you have to blast your way through Gardens and Scepter of God

(hell at this point even you can detour to the Archives, which is good farming due to enemy density and higher level than docks, and doesn't even come close to being dangerous)


THEN, after all that, you're in solidly higher level territory than the docks, with, I imagine, very little time remaining.... and you have to ascend the very long and comparatively difficult Scepter of God still. Then kill dominus.

After all that you can get to Cruel Ledge very easily, where the content is a whole FIVE levels higher than the docks you were originally farming.


I think you can see why this isn't a very easy fix (and isn't even the fault of A3X in particular, though yeah sometimes people ran to cruel ledges before this, it's just not a very good risk/reward)