With expansion added, a single play through is quite long. Doing that three times seems a bit overkill, more than it was. I think twice may be okay. I think definitely with another expansion we’d have enough content to reach level 100 in a full run. Or very nearly.
Something’s gotta give. Though I know that GD is very much about the journey with very little endgame focus and not about zerging you to max level, but… well I dunno. What do you guys think? If a full play through takes nearly as long as three, then you’re more or less getting that experience already. It’s a matter of how long that journey should be. I think what I really want is the 1-100 to take about as long as it did before expansion was added. A lot of builds to try, and only so many hours in one’s life.
Though I suppose skipping the expansion, (if that’s possible) you only lose out on one skill point… Two if you skip on Normal and Elite.
Though conversely, reaching level 50 so far ahead of Elite gives you more chances at Legendary items over the long run. Gee… this isn’t really a suggestion post anymore.
…
Well actually not quite, since it was very easy to reach level 50 in Normal even before expansion, so scratch that.
Zantai has said he likes the idea of building a character and reaching a point where it’s finished, then moving on, I think he likes the idea of making that finite journey a bit longer.
You can skip the expansion in Normal and Elite. So length of time is pretty much the same as before except you just need to do the expansion in Ultimate.
Don’t forget as well that before the expansion it was 1-85 and now it’s 1-100. It doesn’t seem right to expect to reach 15 levels higher in the same amount of time.
Everytime someone suggests Crate to remove Elite difficulty, a Crate developer dies, then respawns in Devil’s Crossing.
Taking Elite away would be a nightmare for the devs to balance the game properly to make it work, and it would be HELL for new players as well, due to the difficulty progression from one difficulty to another being lost…
The most they could do this case, is if they decide to make so that you unlock both Elite and Ultimate at once when you beat Normal, then you could just rush Elite to do the Kasparov/Hidden Path quests, then move to Ultimate.
As far as I care, there is no need to fix what is not broken.
Won’t happen. This is not free to play game like PoE, where DEVs can mess the balance, core difficulties, however they are pleased, this is single player game with optional MP function
I’d much rather have one playthrough and get rid of the difficulties. Reach certain points and the whole world grows grimmer to duplicate the current difficulty penalties and spawn increases. That might be rough for casual players, so add a checkbox to get the real ultimate experience or not.
I usually play a new character on normal instead of veteran so I can get to the “real game” faster. I’d rather take my time opening up the whole map, do bounties, even grind a bit to hit the later parts of the game. I’m really starting to hate running through the game twice as a warm-up.
In a sense it can make sense. Problem is balance. if you merge two difficulties (engine does not support mid-act res decrease ( a main quest can make it maybe)) then how will they justify huge increase in dif? Other balance issue is itemization. Resistances are first thing you should look at. -25 “less decrease in total” or “-50 direct jump” is hard to balance. It also hinders world progression which i miss actually :(. It was nice feeling to fear near high level areas such as in wow.
For the people who own the xpac, yeah Elite feels like one too many playthrough. However, for the people who still play on Vanilla, the grind to max level would be a little too painful without any quest left.
Guys, you are talking like it’s some kind of burden that you must do, to complete game on all 3 difficulties or your ass will be put on burning grill for eternity. If you don’t want to, don’t play more than you want. As simple as that
I like the idea of unlocking both elite and ultimate, anything not ultimate is pretty easy with a good build and a stash full of legendaries and after so many years a lot of players have accumulated tons of great gear, but it is not needed to clear the game, which always reduced my enthusiasm to farm. I guess this is called “no endgame”.
So hoping into ultimate at level 50 should be interesting. And people can still chose to just play elite instead.
Every time I think about making a new character and grind two difficulties again with a “leveling” build, because most juicy build-defining items are locked behind level 75, I die inside.
How exactly it would be a “hell” to “balance”, when grinding to overcome -25% penalty is exactly the same as grinding to overcome -50% penalty, the “new” players would just do it once instead.
It was broken on arrival, more content with expansions just makes it worse.
How the fuck it is relevant to the discussion of Elite being a super boring filler, more so with xpac?
I’m, sorry to hear it, but you don’t need to do the expansion area on all difficulties, so you can just skip them and do on Ultimate. You can even skip the whole Act 1 and sidequests on Elite, if you feel that way.
How exactly it would be a “hell” to “balance”, when grinding to overcome -25% penalty is exactly the same as grinding to overcome -50% penalty, the “new” players would just do it once instead.
Except it isn’t, because it’s not just resistances that you have to worry about… there is monster damage and HP, and that would be hell for both new players and devs to make it work, plus the progression curve would be lost for new and old players.
It was broken on arrival, more content with expansions just makes it worse.
No, it’s not broken… never was, because as I stated above, there needs to be a progression curve for the player to not feel overwhelmed by difficulty spike from the transition from Normal to Ultimate, and that would take a LOT of time to make it work, when Crate could just spend their resources in fixing actual REAL problems and bring new content.
Like I said, the most that can happen, is if they agree on having you unlock both difficulties at once, after you beat the first difficulty.
