Speed Of Progression?

[dontbelievethehype]

How "Hard" should it be to level?

It seems as games progress the easier it becomes to level patch by patch. As it stands now it doesn't take to much to get to level 99 in Diablo 2. Is this something you like or dislike?


I'm a fan of slower progression, I understand Diablo isn't an MMORPG and I would exspect to gain levels in Diablo 3 much faster than I would in World Of Warcraft, but I still feel it should take some kind of effort to achieve max level.


What are you thoughts?

[Dimmu]

Getting to 99 legit is certainly not easy. But i don't like how it's so easy to get to 90 in d2 and you keep hitting grinding halts along the way to 99. Especialy when there isn't really much payoff at that point for most char builds.

[Flux]

I don't like the progression in d2 now. it was too easy to get to 99 in v1.09, but in v1.10 and later it's silly how fast it scales up. I only play SP these days, mostly on /players 8, and I don't even notice the exp penalty until about 85, when things start to slow down. It's not too bad until 88 or 89, but after that it's almost pointless to try to level up, and past like 92... forget about it. Endless baal runs are tolerable on the realms with other players, when you're item hunting, but way too boring to do solo, when the items don't really have any value anyway.

I wouldn't bring back v1.09, but I'd have the progression slow sooner, so every level past 80 was an achievement, and not diminish so crushingly until the high 90s. I'd also rebalance some of the level issues, so players could still gain level up in a variety of places. That's one thing I do like about v1.10+, that you can get decent exp in acts 3 and 4 until the mid-80s. having to level solely in the cows or late act 5 (in v1.09) sucked.

The question isn't about d2 though, as much as d3. I'm wondering how the smaller game sizes will affect exp gain? If they go with 4 or 5 as the max, as they said during the wwi conferences, that's quite a difference right there, simply on the amount of exp you can gain in a players 8 game now.

difficulty level, too. Bliz North always said they'd make hell in d2 so hard that it would be almost impossible to do it alone, or without a balanced party. Clearly that was never the case, and it'll be interesting to see how the d3 team handles the highest difficulty levels.

[jamesisbest]

I agree with flux that the progression should be slower in the 80's but shouldn't be as crippling as it currently is until 95+. I think getting to 99 should still be a major achievement. Also, it will diversify character levels a bit end game which nearly every other rpg lacks. I sure hope the game is larger than Diablo 2, not that Diablo 2 was small for it's time, but with sequels I tend to want bigger and better. Larger Diablo 3 will make it more replayable and diverse. With the technology of modern times it wouldn't be a hard thing for Blizzard to do.

[dontbelievethehype]

Personally I don't mind games in which the uber players have the uber levels and the uber lootz. I used to be a pretty hardcore gamer back in high school and I loved games that rewared my hardcoreness (like EQ and Diablo 2), games now however seem to geared at the casual gamer (which I am now), and I don't really enjoy it.

I don't mind being a lower level and having worse gear than someone who plays 5x as much as I do, it seems only fair.

I hope getting to Max level takes time and patience as well as skill.