Similar to how some areas of Normal/Veteran required rescaling after additional content was added into the game (FG), I feel that the amount of content available has increased the resulting player level and player power by the end of Veteran to a point that Elite fails to provide an adequate challenge. Provided the player has done everything there is on Veteran, they enter Elite at around level 75. Meanwhile, the first zones of Elite offer enemies somewhere around level 66. Even bosses often fail to make it past the level 70 mark.
The same trend continues after that point. I’ve found that in fact the majority of the difficulty ends up quite severely underlevelled and thus underpowered if the player played all the expansion content on Veteran first. In tune with how Veteran has been rebalanced to provide bit more challenge, I feel that Elite now requires the same rescaling and rebalancing to account for the added content encountered in the previous difficulty.
I’m pretty sure the game isn’t tuned for completionists slogging through veteran and don’t see why it would or should be.
If you call completing a difficulty’s available content slogging…I wonder, why is the content there if it’s supposed to be skipped? Why are there all the words in a book if you’re supposed to read a summary online? Food for thought.
Anyway, the game isn’t restricted to a single type of balancing just as much as it isn’t restricted to a single type of player. Fixing Elite does not require increasing Elite’s difficulty for everybody, all it takes is increasing the level cap on areas so that monsters can scale higher for players that get there at a higher level. If you blitz through Veteran ASAP to get to Ultimate quickly, changing the upper limit on the monster level cap in areas will have exactly zero impact on you. The level floor can remain the same.
If I recall correctly, late zones of AoM and FG scales over lvl 80 in elite (enough to farm Krieg’s set easily). So I don’t know what kind of raising in the scaling you want. In which level are you ending normal/veteran?
Like I said in the OP, you can easily end Veteran at 75. Yeah, late zones of the game (FG and AoM) do scale higher, but often still not high enough when you can end up over 90 towards end of Elite´. Even some of the later areas suffer from this. For instance, playing Tomb of the Heretic on Elite with a character that just beat Korvaak on the same difficulty will have you run up against enemies 10 levels below you. More importantly, most of the earlier zones, as in, most of the game, do not scale sufficiently either. This is not a problem you encounter on Veteran, but it’s pretty prevalent on Elite as far as I’ve seen during my playthroughs.
Personally i would let scale monsters all throughout the game. So people with their wacky builds, can fully level on normal to 100 if they prefer to do so. Harming the player progression cause they clear all zones or farm here and there seems unnecessary.
Would even make the “resistance-debuff” bound also to level in addition to the difficulty.
Example:
Level 50 -> -25% Elite
Level 75 -> -50% Ultimate
So if you are 30 and started with token in ultimate you would get -25% at level 50 and -50% at level 75.
Playing as a level 90 toon in normal would not give you a debuff.
Would make starting out in ultimate from the beginning somewhat not that of a hassle. I mean most people are still rushing through normal and elite for faction reputation and faster shrines even when using the “skip-difficulty” token.
I’m not very concerned about it. I have about 40 characters maxed out, I’ve never touched veteran after my first character. My goal is to get to level 94 as soon as possible to use all the huge pile of sets I’ve amassed, get all the shrines ASAP for their granted procs’ experience to rise, get the factions all lined up.
After so many characters, leveling new ones gets to be a drag, I really don’t want to spend any more time in lower difficulties than necessary, and I’m not really ready to skip them with the merits because my characters will probably struggle a little too much with things not optimized the way I want them.
I just see Veteran difficulty for newer players that haven’t slogged through the game so many times and want the increased challenge of lower difficulties.
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I feel like if you want to really just rocket through the game to get to the endgame, that’s what the Merits and skip tokens are for. But if you want to actually play through the game as it is, the game should absolutely be balanced around that. Otherwise, what was the point of rebalancing Veteran, what is the point of having all the difficulties and options if you’re supposed to just kinda close your eyes and autopilot through it all until you get to Ultimate where the game actually begins. This isn’t Diablo 3 where levelling is just a pointless time-waster and a chore you want to get over with ASAP because the game only begins at max level. And both Veteran and Ultimate, I feel, are very much consistent with that design. It just seems Elite kinda got lost in the shuffle.
And I in no way believe that the player should be penalised for actually enjoying the levelling process and savouring all the content (as in, at least playing through it once per difficulty). But when you then end up in a difficulty that’s supposed to be tougher than the previous one and yet it’s vastly underlevelled compared to you, then you do actually end up on one-click-everything autopilot because nothing poses a challenge until you’re past halfway through the game. The difficulty should, and in most cases does, scale relatively linearly, or at least, later content rarely is easier than earlier content. Elite, in this respect, is simply a bit behind the times due to the content that was added onto the end of each difficulty through expansions and free patches. All I’m asking for is for Elite to be brought up a bit to line up better on the difficulty curve instead of being a big step down. And I think we can agree, whatever your feelings on levelling are, that it would make more sense that way.
I think you’re missing the part where veteran is optional and not accounting for the drastic level inflation that comes with it.
I am accounting for that. The issue is the game is not and it should.
Except it does?
The game works fine with normal as it was designed, veteran bills itself as an optional game mode beyond the intended scope of the first difficulty. It is neither a balance point nor a default expectation, existing separate from the intended game flow for players who wish to opt in on extra tedium.
Again, rebalancing Elite does not need to mess with that flow. Let’s say they increase the level ceiling on all areas on Elite difficulty by 10. Now, a player ends Normal at, say, level 60 (I honestly have no clue, never played Normal without Veteran) and then they go to Elite. The game will be perfectly fine as if nothing has changed because the areas will scale to the player’s level. Meanwhile, a player that has entered the difficulty at around level 73-75 off of Veteran will have the areas scale to his level because the level ceiling is now high enough to accomodate that. Everyone’s a winner. Those who want to sail quickly through Normal without Veteran so they can get to Ulitmate are unaffected and those like me who like to go through everything every time have a smooth progression from difficuly to difficulty. The game doesn’t suddenly become harder and slower for everyone, only those who wanted it that way to begin with by playing Veteran.