Seems to me you should be playing hardcore to really push that. Saying no-deaths in softcore is good and all, but doesn’t really put any pressure on.
But I digress.
Yeah, I see that terminology is a sticking point here.
It could be a perspective thing.
This is my thought.
3 tiers. Still on 1st tier. Max lv cap of 100. 70% of total.
I would think (I admit rooted in D2-think here) I should be somewhere within the first 1/3rd of the max level being [close to] completing 1/3rd of the tiers.
BUT I’m already into the last third of the max level-cap while still being in the 1st tier.
So not sure what I should call that.
The feeling I’m getting here it’s a ‘feature’ I should be happy about and am totally out of line to think any other way.
I get it. The dev-team chimed in. It’s by design (according to him).
So I’ll have to deal with it and plan accordingly if I make another char.
This way i don’t lose gear i spent time farming or gear from trading. That’s the last thing i want to happen. Plus this makes death actually punishing, which doesn’t really happen in SC if i just die over and over.
Plus it’s a challenge i force on myself and not by the game.
Keep in mind that gear makes a tremendous difference. I’m not commenting on your gameplay with this.
With really good gear, you can almost literally stand around where you would normally have to move to survive. I think a lot of the vets with huge stashes forget this.
The challenge mostly relates for killing all Nemeses, do all rogue dungeons and do both secret quests without dying. And even with really good gear, a lot of builds can’t afford to take too much damage.
Plus dying means i have to level another character and that’s enough punishment for dying. And a lot of HC players already have multiple copies of each item and they can just replace the ones they lost for another character they level.
My top-level character started Ultimate at lvl 92, and very close to 93. This was also the first character I beat the expac with. Obviously, leveling slows way down in Elite and Ultimate. It’s meant to be that way. On the higher difficulties, you are refining your skills, exploiting upper-tier devotions, and finding gear that helps your build. Which is what keeps it replayable at those levels, imo.
I’m neither a casual ‘play-through and move on’ player nor a crucible gladiator. I try to keep both in mind when I post anything here. Most of the active members on this board are in the latter camp. As Zantai said, the game is designed for people in the former camp…
you do not gain 1/3 the levels in normal, elite and ultimate each. The progression slows down, I am level 72 after act 1 Elite, which I started at level 69 I believe
Not entirely sure when I will reach 100, but your base assumption is already flawed. Its more like 70/90/100 than 35/70/100 for the levels at the end of each difficulty
Since base content scales to 50-60, and AoM scales to 75, and ultimate scales to max level +2 to even +11 with some bigger enemies, you can’t really outlevel content. The only thing you can outlevel is your gear, which is a strange case where getting XP and rewards you negatively as the differences between 89-90 and 100 are earth and sky for enemies, while your gains from leveling are pitiful, and the only improvement that exists is mostly hard to acquire, ultra rare uniques that even when you farm dungeons that drop 1 guaranteed legendary at the end are unlikely to give you in any reasonable timeframe, since even the legendary loot table is so diluted it’s less than 1% per legendary drop to get an item for your character, because rather than having a few “easier to acquire but useful for many builds” sets/items, we have extremely mediocre “normal” gear (epics and faction gear) that might let you pass through most normal non-endgame content unless you see a nemesis, which brings us to the next point.
Suitably, the challenges which reward you with likely legendary drops are “soft-locked” behind certain builds (relying on inquisitor seal and a reasonably high amount of Defensive Ability) that can take down “nemesis” and roguelike dungeon enemies, and even in that case gear dependency is just… there. It’s just like the worst aspects from diablo 2 and diablo 3 taken together.
You will be a bit overlevelled when you enter the second difficulty. Given the time I need to level up a char to 100 I tend to skip the rogue-like dungeons on the first difficulty, start the second one at about 60 to 65 and eventually reach max level in the middle of the third difficulty.
Here is what I expect with FG
- increase the max scaling level for any area by 10 (or maybe somewhat finer tuned, i.e. leave act 1 as is, scale acts 2,3,4 up by 20, act 5 by 15 and act 6 by 10, with FG having the same limit as act 6)
- increase the char level limit by 10
- done…
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You sure about that? Coulda sworn that one of Zantai’s quotes from the streams in medea’s FG thread had him stating something to the effect that the level cap would be unchanged.
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no, just my expectation, would be really surprised if there were no cap increase at all.
Didn’t see anything definitive yet, but it sounded like they are still figuring out how much to increase the cap. Obviously I could also have missed something somewhere… I know the devotion cap is unchanged, didn’t think the level cap is too.
Zantai said new cap was very close to the old cap - and that devotion cap isn’t changing.
As Zantai said, most players play through the content only once, so it’s good that they’ve done it this way.
Iirc it’s actually most people since they’ve sold “only” about 300k copies of AoM.
I believe we’ll either be able to hit level 105 or 101.
If it goes up probably 105. 101 is an odd number for increasing by.
I remember Zantai saying they will not increase the cap in the early days of FG, a bit later, he said they will increase it (don’t know if he put the reason why to that), but only slightly and that it won’t have a big impact. This is why I believe they might increase it by one - it feels like they’re only increasing it because of us, and they might want to troll us so we buzz off. 
I admit that the most realistic number would be 105, because it neither has a big or small impact, but taking in account what they were saying in the early days… Yeah.
I don’t remember him ever saying it would definitely be increased, just hints that it’s very close to the current cap.
I am just about to complete the Jaws of madness quest on Elite with my Cabalist, she is level 70.5 now. I have not done any side quests apart from those that gives inventory space, skeleton keys or wendigo spirits.
This kinda fits my approach in ARPGs to be as low level as possible so there is more to gain later on in terms of char building.
you only get 1 skill point per level, so it won’t have a big impact
This is why I believe they might increase it by one - it feels like they’re only increasing it because of us, and they might want to troll us so we buzz off.
that worked great in the past 
101 would stir things up
I admit that the most realistic number would be 105, because it neither has a big or small impact, but taking in account what they were saying in the early days… Yeah.
105 is just too uneven for me, which is why I went with 110