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
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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
Zantai also said there’d be quests that gave skill points.
Trying to balance this with all the optional content and basically trying to please everyone must be a nightmare for Crate and while I’ve no idea what to suggest, it just feels a shame that after Normal/Vet, the next “new content” is the Ultimate only areas, iirc, and you either skip various quests/rush to be able to still level your char up once you reach them, or end up at the level cap with only new gear improvements to hope for before reaching the new areas.
My take on the system is it works sufficiently well to cater for everyone and I am not sure how it can be improved anymore. I suspect that superior suggestions would be incorporated if they are worthwhile given the dev time needed.
The can’t level over my enemies concern was already dealt with; it’s a sign of build weakness if you can’t handle it. Game guide is good for that, check gear, improve dmg% bonus etc. That being said I find AoM area much more challenging than vanilla areas so I would suggest move to next difficulty.
As far as I recall even after hitting level 100 in mid ultimate I was still having devotion powers increase in level. So there is still motivation and xp related character progression before the end of the game. There is also motivation to continue because of gear progression, quest rewards and the satisfaction itself of completing content on the hardest difficulty at the highest monster levels.
Level gains, post level 94, become very insignificant to one’s overall strength and progression at that point in the game than the other modes of progression I mentioned. Yet it seems level 100 is simply perceived by some arpg players to signal the end and demotivate them regardless of remaining content. Arguably there isn’t anything a game dev should do, this is player irrationality and nothing more as the player has by this point got a lot of play time from the game already. The player has simply perceived they are at the end and they can decide to stop or not. That the player might then complain because they didn’t get to finish the game is absurd as they decided to finish upon attainment of level 100. Perhaps there is a mod that slows xp if you really need to trick yourself into the perception that you have not finished yet. Just consider the experience as exposure therapy; understand the irrational mindset of 100 = end and overcome it
However if a person is hellbent on achieving level 100 after clearing all content then the reasonable, logical and easiest solution is changing your gameplay behaviour by moving to ultimate sooner to prevent that occurrence. It is not suggesting that game devs should alter the game to satisfy your needs. Surely even the complainants can understand that it doesn’t make sense to ask for game dev time to be spent on minor needs at the expense of other quality development they could be doing for everyone. You may find this insulting but it is simply a harsh truth; this truth will prevail whether this thread has helped you understand or not.