View Full Version : Difficulties, should they return?
raveharu
09-07-2009, 01:02
Just wondering, did Blizzard confirmed D3 will be applying the same different difficulty levels(normal, nightmare, hell) like D1 and 2?
I read it off somewhere but I can't remember.
I don't really like the idea of replaying the game 3 times, I mean I know it's the way Diablo games are made, but can't they think of a better solution, say dividing the entire game into the 3 different difficulties. This means the game content has to be huge, but isn't that a good thing too :thumbup:
Furthermore, I have always felt that epic end game dungeons like, for example, Hell, should remain, well, epic. Because of this difficulty thing implemented, I do not have any special feeling towards end game content in Diablo because it was completed in Normal. No satisfaction or whatsoever.
Edit: Oh shucks I couldn't change the title, it should be "Blizzard should change the difficulty system" :rolleyes:
Who says its gonna be the same game though from perhaps act 1 -5 in normal and act 1-5 in hell? They didn't really specify that far into it so, they might have plans to have it be quite different.
I don't think it will be replaying game 3 times. I think it will be like act 1's final boss in normal might be someone who is seen in the lore as a strong enemy but not quite that strong. and maybe act 5 of normal will be like 1 of the actual Ancients who is considered to be one of the weaker ones, And act like 3 or 4 of Hell might be the stronger ancient?
I dunno how its gonna be just sayin, it might be like that so it isn't the same game replayed 3 times.
If they don't, I'm not buying the game
Include Uber mode again, too...but make the bosses stuff like Starcraft Marines, Ultralisks, and Tauren from Warcraft ;p
raveharu
09-07-2009, 01:28
Who says its gonna be the same game though from perhaps act 1 -5 in normal and act 1-5 in hell? They didn't really specify that far into it so, they might have plans to have it be quite different.
The only thing they could add is stronger monsters, if they add different content for every difficulty wouldn't it indirectly affect the game's lore?
My suggestion is more feasible then, using D2 as an example, make Normal be Act 1-2, Nightmare Act 3, and Hell Act 4-5. Of course everything else must change, the content added into each Act should be at least 10 times more.
The only thing they could add is stronger monsters, if they add different content for every difficulty wouldn't it indirectly affect the game's lore?
My suggestion is more feasible then, using D2 as an example, make Normal be Act 1-2, Nightmare Act 3, and Hell Act 4-5. Of course everything else must change.
Mmm, yeah but I mean that means these places would have to be HUGE, like MMO huge where you might run across multiple towns, etc etc. And I dunno i don't see how it could go like this unless the max level is like 50.
I didn't read the games lore nore care about it personally I play a game because I like the game not because I like the lore. BUT, I don't see how they couldn't make it like that without affecting the lore? Isn't there most likly small parts of the lore throughout the whole thing that could be used over a longer period of time?
If not then I dunno.
The only thing they could add is stronger monsters, if they add different content for every difficulty wouldn't it indirectly affect the game's lore?
My suggestion is more feasible then, using D2 as an example, make Normal be Act 1-2, Nightmare Act 3, and Hell Act 4-5. Of course everything else must change, the content added into each Act should be at least 10 times more.
As a casual D2 single player, I would hate that suggestion because it would take forever for me to "beat" the game. I simply don't have time if the hell difficulty matches the one in D2.
If "difficulties" don't return, they are taking a HUGE step backwards in throwing away content.
They even moved to difficulties in WoW for both dungeons AND raids (normal v. Heroic).
They need at least 2 difficulties. One to go through the "story" and 1 for the actual challenge.
While it's likely not going to be based solely on the act / world system of D2. Just imagine what it would be like for a second to have no difficulties. You would end up with a metagame focused around 1 Act (or Zone or Area). The result? Playing the same small amount of content over and over again for the metagame. To counter this, blizzard will have to dump a LOT of work into in game assets at high levels and accepting low level content as throw away content.
Because there will be no reason to go backwards to low level content (maybe 5 times, one for each class, but no more with the inclusion of respecs) all of that low level stuff will just become things seen once and skipped over from there on. In other words, throw away content.
adding difficulties increases the amount of content for the metagame, and additionally gives people a reason to revisit content more than once for different reasons.
Not including difficulties in the game would be a HUGE mistake.
raveharu
09-07-2009, 02:09
As a casual D2 single player, I would hate that suggestion because it would take forever for me to "beat" the game. I simply don't have time if the hell difficulty matches the one in D2.
End game content should never be easy, it should be unique in a way such that not everyone will be able to complete it without a challenge. If any tom, dick or harry is able finish the game, then game = fail.
Just imagine what it would be like for a second to have no difficulties. You would end up with a metagame focused around 1 Act (or Zone or Area). The result? Playing the same small amount of content over and over again for the metagame.
As if that is worse than playing the same thing three times, only with the monsters being stronger the only difference :rolleyes:
Like I said if my idea were to suffice, they need to boost their content per Act, and not just a mere few quests like in D2.
Because there will be no reason to go backwards to low level content (maybe 5 times, one for each class, but no more with the inclusion of respecs) all of that low level stuff will just become things seen once and skipped over from there on. In other words, throw away content.
Like I said if you were to use D2 as an example of course it won't be feasible because each act only has 6 quests, one town and a few maps.
But if they made used of all 9 highlighted towns as shown in the D3 world map, and each 3 makes a difficulty then things will be ALOT more different. And my idea will be more feasible based on that speculation, of course.
3 different towns + tons of dungeons + plenty of quests +different game content per difficulty is always better than same 5 Acts + repeated quest + same game content X 3.
adding difficulties increases the amount of content for the metagame,
No it doesn't. It only forces players to go through the same thing 3 times.
and additionally gives people a reason to revisit content more than once for different reasons.
There are many ways to make people visit the previous Acts, if that is what you wish for. You don't need 3 different difficulties to make it applicable.
Mmm, yeah but I mean that means these places would have to be HUGE, like MMO huge where you might run across multiple towns, etc etc. And I dunno i don't see how it could go like this unless the max level is like 50.
It doesn't need to be as huge as an MMO.
They could add three different areas for every difficulty. It's possible if you look at D3's world map, there are 9 places highlighted with a beacon.
Just wondering, did Blizzard confirmed D3 will be applying the same different difficulty levels(normal, nightmare, hell) like D1 and 2?
I read it off somewhere but I can't remember.
I don't really like the idea of replaying the game 3 times, I mean I know it's the way Diablo games are made, but can't they think of a better solution, say dividing the entire game into the 3 different difficulties. This means the game content has to be huge, but isn't that a good thing too :thumbup:
Furthermore, I have always felt that epic end game dungeons like, for example, Hell, should remain, well, epic. Because of this difficulty thing implemented, I do not have any special feeling towards end game content in Diablo because it was completed in Normal. No satisfaction or whatsoever.
Edit: Oh shucks I couldn't change the title, it should be "Blizzard should change the difficulty system" :rolleyes:
They have more or less confirmed that the difficulties Normal, Nightmare and Hell will return. They have mentioned it in interviews. They want Normal to be just 'normal'... meaning that anyone can beat the game. But for the other ones, they want things to become more challenging than just upping the damage and hitpoints of monsters.
Well, that's what I heard.
End game content should never be easy, it should be unique in a way such that not everyone will be able to complete it without a challenge. If any tom, dick or harry is able finish the game, then game = fail.
You are talking like this is a MMORPG. It isn't. I want to be able to beat Diablo and go through all the acts on single player without spending ridicuolous amount of time playing. What you propose would efficiently exclude a large chunk of players from enjoying the games full content (story line). Having several levels of difficulty eliminates the problem and there are other ways to make them feel diffrent.
They have more or less confirmed that the difficulties Normal, Nightmare and Hell will return. They have mentioned it in interviews. They want Normal to be just 'normal'... meaning that anyone can beat the game. But for the other ones, they want things to become more challenging than just upping the damage and hitpoints of monsters.
This is a much better system for these kind of games.
blikst; just because you want to be able to spend an afternoon, going through the entire game doesn't mean everyone else want less content.
Remember the old NES games? Those games took like, 30 minutes to an hour to finish in general if you didn't have a particular motor disorder... NO ONE wants that with a big time game like D2. I mean, even casual gamers want endless content...
If you buy a game for $50, why would you want to finish it in a day? Enjoy it for hours, days, weeks, months... years ;) No harm in that, even if you can only play a few hours per weekend...
A game that lasts>a game that's finished.
blikst; just because you want to be able to spend an afternoon, going through the entire game doesn't mean everyone else want less content.
Remember the old NES games? Those games took like, 30 minutes to an hour to finish in general if you didn't have a particular motor disorder... NO ONE wants that with a big time game like D2. I mean, even casual gamers want endless content...
If you buy a game for $50, why would you want to finish it in a day? Enjoy it for hours, days, weeks, months... years ;) No harm in that, even if you can only play a few hours per weekend...
A game that lasts>a game that's finished.
When did I say I wanted to be able to play through it in one day? It should take a reasonable time for the average gamer. There are many ways you can prolong a game and all I'm saying is that I don't think raveharu's idea is a good one.
Do you honestly think that a single player game should take a casual players years before being able to beat the final boss? As I've said, you can find plenty of other ways of making high end charachers fun to play and other ways to make the difficulty levels feel different.
You are talking like this is a MMORPG. It isn't. I want to be able to beat Diablo and go through all the acts on single player without spending ridicuolous amount of time playing. What you propose would efficiently exclude a large chunk of players from enjoying the games full content (story line).
Then they can make Single Player easier by reducing mobs hp dmg etc for the people like you.
OH WAIT, thats right casual gamers don't want it to be easy you want it to be challenging, yet it can't be challenging to where it takes longer than a week to beat the game.
I believe it is just this thing (or among others)
that blizzard say that they will have many randomized quests for each new game (and/or difficulty) :)
To make it slightly different everytime, and that is very promising :)
Then they can make Single Player easier by reducing mobs hp dmg etc for the people like you.
OH WAIT, thats right casual gamers don't want it to be easy you want it to be challenging, yet it can't be challenging to where it takes longer than a week to beat the game.
I'm not the voice of all casual gamers.... I'm just stating my opinion. And I haven't said I wanted be able to beat the game in a week...
And how is the first sentance you wrote any diffrent than what they did in D2. One player = easier mobs. Two players = harder mobs. Good job on that...
Maybe they could release new content like new skills in greater difficulties. That makes it so you are playing in a whole different way than you played the previous difficulty.
paperkut
09-07-2009, 05:36
Easy guys...blikst is just sayin the game should be enjoyable for everyone in that we should all get to play through the storyline. Not all of us have hours upon hours a day to hand over to diablo.
That's why the difficulties are so fitting for a game of this type. Casual gamers can handle the normal difficulty, while hardcore gamers hang out in the higher difficulties. This doesn't mean the game has to be beatable in a week. This means that your average Joe should be able to play when he has time and progress through the story with minimal level grinding and item hunting. Throw in too much of either of these and then storyline loses its shine as the player loses focus on it. The story can be really long, it just can't leave a player stuck at a point in the story for weeks on end. Once the player has enjoyed the storyline, then the game can become more difficult and require more grinding and hunting for hardcore players.
Nimbostratus
09-07-2009, 05:38
I really liked the way D2's difficulty allowed you to have more of an "all areas are still relevant" endgame. However, I really dislike that they end up feeling as just one continuous journey, since that prevents them from being treated as actual difficulty settings. People say "oh, casuals can beat Normal, that should be enough." Except it isn't, since these difficulties don't work that way. Act 5 Hell isn't treated as "Act 5 on Hard," but as "Act 15."
Perhaps D3 could include both D2-style difficulties as well as traditional ones. Preferably without it being confusing. xP
paperkut
09-07-2009, 05:53
I think i get what your saying... Are you saying we should pick a difficulty in the begining and then start from scratch at that difficulty? Like you could pick Hell right away and then the game would have that hard-as-hell feel all the way through the 5 acts?
Not gonna lie, I kinda like it.
Easy guys...blikst is just sayin the game should be enjoyable for everyone in that we should all get to play through the storyline. Not all of us have hours upon hours a day to hand over to diablo.
That's why the difficulties are so fitting for a game of this type. Casual gamers can handle the normal difficulty, while hardcore gamers hang out in the higher difficulties. This doesn't mean the game has to be beatable in a week. This means that your average Joe should be able to play when he has time and progress through the story with minimal level grinding and item hunting. Throw in too much of either of these and then storyline loses its shine as the player loses focus on it. The story can be really long, it just can't leave a player stuck at a point in the story for weeks on end. Once the player has enjoyed the storyline, then the game can become more difficult and require more grinding and hunting for hardcore players.
That isn't what he is saying, he is saying that it shouldn't take the casual 2x longer (or more , usually is more cause casual plays less than 2x of hardcore player) to play through the story.
Which doesn't work.
This doesn't work, Casuals are never simply satisfied with normal difficulty or hell difficulty, because they feel they should be able to do with the hardcore player can do while spending no where near the same amount of time.
A game cannot exist where both hardcore players and casual players find a game equally enjoyable. Theres like 500 examples i can give but ill give 2.
1. Casuals feel they should be able to do what the hardcore player can do (or at least 95% of it) while not having to spend as much time as the hardcore player
2. The hardcore player feels the casual should only be able to do half of what the hardcore player did in double the time the hardcore player spent. Meaning if the hardcore player takes 1 year to get the best gear of everything, it should take the casual player 2 years to get the best gear of everything. (This is assuming the hardcore player plays 2x longer) like casual = average of 15 hours played a week, hardcore = average of 30 hours played per week. (Which obvoiusly real numbers would probably be like hardcore = 41-140 hours played per week and casual can range from 10-40.
And yeah 140 is insane, chances are that person will die from not enouph sleep and bad health.
Deckard Cain
09-07-2009, 07:28
Yes D3 needs difficulties to return. Without difficulties the game greatly decreases in length. Sure you are beating the same story 3 times but that does not mean the game is the same on each difficulty. Who knows what new goodies they have in store. Hopefully we wont have to deal with mobs being "immune physical" etc... atleast that's the direction it sounds like they are going. Maybe some improved AI or different monsters in different difficulties.
paperkut
09-07-2009, 07:29
Actually, (not trying to be rude Nextt) what I posted IS what he is saying. If you read his first post in context he specifically states that if the storyline (9 cities) is divided into the 3 difficulties (3 citites per difficulty) He, along with most other casual gamers, would never be able to finish the game if the final 3 cities were as hard as Diablo 2's Hell mode. So, the casual gamer population would not be able to play through the storyline. They'd be stuck somewhere in nightmare or right at the start of hell which would be only halfway through the story.
I agree and also find it annoying that casuals think they should be on par with hardcore gamers in equipment, items, and wealth. But I find it downright dumb to exclude them from enjoying the entire storyline because they can't or choose not to devote 40+ hours a week playing.
If any tom, dick or harry is able finish the game, then game = fail.
Actually, If the game is only able to be finished by hardcore players THEN game=fail. Blizzard needs to make money here. If someone reads a review that says your going to need to spend a ridiculous amount of time on this game just to enjoy the storyline do you really think they're going to buy it? Hardcore person=yes Casual=no. A lot of diablo's fan base falls under the "casual" category. So, Blizzard has to create a game that IS "finishable" by every tom, dick and harry if they want every tom, dick, and harry to buy the game.
And when we talk of "finishing" the game we mean finishing the storyline. We don't mean getting every item, all the great equipment, and achieving great wealth
Actually, (not trying to be rude Nextt) what I posted IS what he is saying. If you read his first post in context he specifically states that if the storyline (9 cities) is divided into the 3 difficulties (3 citites per difficulty) He, along with most other casual gamers, would never be able to finish the game if the final 3 cities were as hard as Diablo 2's Hell mode. So, the casual gamer population would not be able to play through the storyline. They'd be stuck somewhere in nightmare or right at the start of hell which would be only halfway through the story.
I agree and also find it annoying that casuals think they should be on par with hardcore gamers in equipment, items, and wealth. But I find it downright dumb to exclude them from enjoying the entire storyline because they can't or choose not to devote 40+ hours a week playing.
Actually, If the game is only able to be finished by hardcore players THEN game=fail. Blizzard needs to make money here. If someone reads a review that says your going to need to spend a ridiculous amount of time on this game just to enjoy the storyline do you really think they're going to buy it? Hardcore person=yes Casual=no. A lot of diablo's fan base falls under the "casual" category. So, Blizzard has to create a game that IS "finishable" by every tom, dick and harry if they want every tom, dick, and harry to buy the game.
And when we talk of "finishing" the game we mean finishing the storyline. We don't mean getting every item, all the great equipment, and achieving great wealth
The thing is, Diablo 2's hell mode was not hard you could play through it from NM if you simply did NM runs "and im talking about single player since thats what he was talking about"
He says it shouldn't take him "forever" because he doesn't have "time"
From blikist
"As a casual D2 single player, I would hate that suggestion because it would take forever for me to "beat" the game. I simply don't have time if the hell difficulty matches the one in D2."
Yet he is here on the forums talking about D3, perhaps playing D2 atm in singleplayer or not, or just started back or just quit. In other words this kind of casual has the time, D2 has been out for YEARS. I know people who beat singleplayer norm - hell . It took them a lil bit but they did it. The thing is, this casual quit's because they think it is to hard because the casual doesn't want to go to nm and kill some boss' a few times for gear that can help them do hell.
They want Hell handed to them because they passed NM
So if in D3 the storyline was split and different from norm - hell they would be able to do it , even if it was as hard or harder then d2's hell. They just need to learn they can't go Norm-Nm-Hell. But in fact spend a LITTLE bit of time in nm to get some gear and be able to do hell.
"btw I don't like the op's idea either because I don't think it could work, and it would be to hard to spread out the quests or w/e between only 3 cities per difficulty. Unless you add in lots and lots of baal-like grinding. Or the max level is 50, or you go 1-80 really fast."
EDIT: I don't like op's Idea to a certain point, but it could be improved upon, its a starting point of a brainstorm that could lead to a solution.
Man, some of these responses are ridiculous. You guys seem to think the Blizz owes you something, and that the company isn't a FOR PROFIT company. If you don't like the idea of playing the game through 3 times, THE DON'T. No one is forcing you to play through the game 3 times. You can experience the full story line in Normal.
Apparently you think an easy solution would be for them to just triple the content of the game. Do you know how ridiculous that is? The development of the game would be incredibly long, and unless its a MMO where they are being continually paid by subscribers, would be financially a stupid decision. Furthermore, even if they did triple the content (and make it just 1 ongoing game), why wouldnt you then just introduce difficulties again, and allow you to play through the whole game again on even harder modes to increase the longevity of the game? And then you would get people complaining that they should again, just triple the content....and so on. There's a balance between how much content they have to develop and their profits for the game. If you really want to see if Blizz knows what their doing in that domain, I guess we'll just have to see with Starcraft 2. How would you feel about that....you ask for 3 times the content...would you be willing to pay 3 times the price and wait years in between for all this extra content?
I think Blizz should solve the problem by simply eliminating the difficulties, so that the ONLY difficulty you can play on is Normal, and then there is nothing after that. Maybe this will get people to realize how smart Blizz really was by using the different difficulties. By using the difficulties, they created this "metagame", which I'm pretty sure is the only reason Diablo is so successful, even 9 years after the game was released.
Man, some of these responses are ridiculous. You guys seem to think the Blizz owes you something, and that the company isn't a FOR PROFIT company. If you don't like the idea of playing the game through 3 times, THE DON'T. No one is forcing you to play through the game 3 times. You can experience the full story line in Normal.
Apparently you think an easy solution would be for them to just triple the content of the game. Do you know how ridiculous that is? The development of the game would be incredibly long, and unless its a MMO where they are being continually paid by subscribers, would be financially a stupid decision. Furthermore, even if they did triple the content (and make it just 1 ongoing game), why wouldnt you then just introduce difficulties again, and allow you to play through the whole game again on even harder modes to increase the longevity of the game? And then you would get people complaining that they should again, just triple the content....and so on. There's a balance between how much content they have to develop and their profits for the game. If you really want to see if Blizz knows what their doing in that domain, I guess we'll just have to see with Starcraft 2. How would you feel about that....you ask for 3 times the content...would you be willing to pay 3 times the price and wait years in between for all this extra content?
I think Blizz should solve the problem by simply eliminating the difficulties, so that the ONLY difficulty you can play on is Normal, and then there is nothing after that. Maybe this will get people to realize how smart Blizz really was by using the different difficulties. By using the difficulties, they created this "metagame", which I'm pretty sure is the only reason Diablo is so successful, even 9 years after the game was released.
Completely agree, which is why I said in post befores i didn't agree with OP! "To a point" and what I mean by to a point is
Maybe adding in 1 change in each one, or a secret, or something. Just 1 tiny thing to sorta give it a small change. BUT then again that could just be a ridiculous idea and not make much sense.
That isn't what he is saying, he is saying that it shouldn't take the casual 2x longer (or more , usually is more cause casual plays less than 2x of hardcore player) to play through the story.
Which doesn't work.
This doesn't work, Casuals are never simply satisfied with normal difficulty or hell difficulty, because they feel they should be able to do with the hardcore player can do while spending no where near the same amount of time.
A game cannot exist where both hardcore players and casual players find a game equally enjoyable. Theres like 500 examples i can give but ill give 2.
1. Casuals feel they should be able to do what the hardcore player can do (or at least 95% of it) while not having to spend as much time as the hardcore player
2. The hardcore player feels the casual should only be able to do half of what the hardcore player did in double the time the hardcore player spent. Meaning if the hardcore player takes 1 year to get the best gear of everything, it should take the casual player 2 years to get the best gear of everything. (This is assuming the hardcore player plays 2x longer) like casual = average of 15 hours played a week, hardcore = average of 30 hours played per week. (Which obvoiusly real numbers would probably be like hardcore = 41-140 hours played per week and casual can range from 10-40.
And yeah 140 is insane, chances are that person will die from not enouph sleep and bad health.
Are you purposefully trying to misunderstand me? Paperkut got it right. I'm done arguing with you.
Easy guys...blikst is just sayin the game should be enjoyable for everyone in that we should all get to play through the storyline. Not all of us have hours upon hours a day to hand over to diablo.
That's why the difficulties are so fitting for a game of this type. Casual gamers can handle the normal difficulty, while hardcore gamers hang out in the higher difficulties. This doesn't mean the game has to be beatable in a week. This means that your average Joe should be able to play when he has time and progress through the story with minimal level grinding and item hunting. Throw in too much of either of these and then storyline loses its shine as the player loses focus on it. The story can be really long, it just can't leave a player stuck at a point in the story for weeks on end. Once the player has enjoyed the storyline, then the game can become more difficult and require more grinding and hunting for hardcore players.
Actually, (not trying to be rude Nextt) what I posted IS what he is saying. If you read his first post in context he specifically states that if the storyline (9 cities) is divided into the 3 difficulties (3 citites per difficulty) He, along with most other casual gamers, would never be able to finish the game if the final 3 cities were as hard as Diablo 2's Hell mode. So, the casual gamer population would not be able to play through the storyline. They'd be stuck somewhere in nightmare or right at the start of hell which would be only halfway through the story.
I agree and also find it annoying that casuals think they should be on par with hardcore gamers in equipment, items, and wealth. But I find it downright dumb to exclude them from enjoying the entire storyline because they can't or choose not to devote 40+ hours a week playing.
Actually, If the game is only able to be finished by hardcore players THEN game=fail. Blizzard needs to make money here. If someone reads a review that says your going to need to spend a ridiculous amount of time on this game just to enjoy the storyline do you really think they're going to buy it? Hardcore person=yes Casual=no. A lot of diablo's fan base falls under the "casual" category. So, Blizzard has to create a game that IS "finishable" by every tom, dick and harry if they want every tom, dick, and harry to buy the game.
And when we talk of "finishing" the game we mean finishing the storyline. We don't mean getting every item, all the great equipment, and achieving great wealth
Yes, thank you, that was what I was trying to convey.
Are you purposefully trying to misunderstand me? Paperkut got it right. I'm done arguing with you.
Yes, thank you, that was what I was trying to convey.
I seem to miss anything where you mentioned the story of the game as to how you will miss it, because in 1 part you talk about somehow missing the story, yet in the context you really just were talking about how it would simply take longer...
As a casual D2 single player, I would hate that suggestion because it would take forever for me to "beat" the game. I simply don't have time if the hell difficulty matches the one in D2.
You said it would take you forever to "beat" the game. He did not say he will "not be able to" beat the game.
Because the hell mode in d2 was easily beatable on singleplayer or not. It just took longer. So nothing about the story of the game here.
Next one
You are talking like this is a MMORPG. It isn't. I want to be able to beat Diablo and go through all the acts on single player without spending ridicuolous amount of time playing. What you propose would efficiently exclude a large chunk of players from enjoying the games full content (story line). Having several levels of difficulty eliminates the problem and there are other ways to make them feel diffrent.
This is a much better system for these kind of games.
Again, its about being able to "beat" the game within a quicker amount of time. Not about "not finishing it" so they can't enjoy the full story line(yeah sure it says in there about the story line, but those words mean nothing because you wouldn't miss the story as you clearly state it would just take a longer time and you want it ezzmode). And D2's hell mode could of been a whole different story line and the casual player could of done it because D2 hell mode was still easy in hell if you just spent a little bit of time getting gear in NM to do hell.
So essentially you could of felt the whole story either way. It just would of taken longer, and you don't want that. As I explained in my previous posts.
BTW, im not siding with OP I like the difficulty level setup. It's like for a console ps3 game if you start out on easy / normal, afterwords it unlocks hard / expert. And if you really enjoyed the game your gonna beat it or try to again.
Just after I was challenged with my posts I had to prove that I was right....
EDIT(everything down): I wanted to add this in after rereading my post. If you have time to post on a forum, then you have time to spend in a game trying to get just a tiny bit further day by day. As u said this
"beat Diablo and go through all the acts on single player without spending ridicuolous amount of time playing"
Its about spending time. You want to buy the game, and beat it. (Then go and post on forums I guess?)
So take D2 for instance. Lets say all 3 were different story lines so the casual wants to do them so they dont miss anything. 100% plausible.... norm-nm = cakewalk and hell = mini jog if you farmed up a "small" bit in nm to be able to do hell. So you would and could finish all and not miss out on any of the story.
But as you talk about you don't want to spend TIME doing it. Thus relating to my previous posts.
Even though you don't want to spend the time doing it you can go to a forum and post about not wanting to spend time on doing something? I mean the logic just doesn't fit, it just sounds like the casual player backs down from challenging content even if they know they can do it after a lil bit of "time".
This is where the casual(actually IMO extreme casual because the "hardcore casuals" which do exist(and are probably 70% of casuals) tend to like what the "hardcore players" like as they always have something to aim for in the future but are taking the game at there own pace) should stick to console games (which are fun... i love console games they are just a waste of money IMO because you beat the game in 8-12 hours or LESS and then you have nothing else to do, unless its like CoD4 etc etc which i prefer my comp for). But i still waste a ridiculous amount of money on console games for my ps3 because they are fun... But don't last long enough...
So anyways to both, BLIKST, and paperkut, I was not misunderstanding anything.
You say you don't agree with the op, and yet you are arguing about this with me? My comments where directed at the op suggestions and I'm clearly (I thought) talking about the time it takes to play through the game on normal mode, not all three difficulty levels (of course depending on that blizzard follows the same layup as in D2). Do you think normal mode in D3 should take as long to play through as playing through D2 on all three difficulty levels? Because that is basically what the op is suggestion you have to do to experience the story line. This is what my comments where about.
And the thing about having time to post on a message board means that I must have time to play a game is just ridiculous... (Not even counting that I have vacation right now and it's raining)
Ok, now I'm done arguing with you. ;)
Funkopotamus
09-07-2009, 13:18
I only kind of skimmed through this, but I agree with the 1 for the story, more for the challenge. I think anyone should be able to make it through a game in a reasonable amount of time. I'm not saying it should be a free pass, but it shouldn't be exclusive. I think it would take me quite a while to make it through hell in D2 if I had to do it on my own.
Remember the old NES games? There's a reason games like Silver Surfer were some of the worst games ever made. You can't even make it past the first level without a headache. I've never gotten further than 2-3 screens in.
I guess an alternate to difficulties is putting in a lot of bonus missions. Example: Early on, the story goes - you enter some kind of gauntlet, at the end demons kill you. This is planned and you move on to the next part of the story. Come back later when you're much stronger and now you can kill those demons when you enter the gauntlet again. This could lead to any number of things.
You say you don't agree with the op, and yet you are arguing about this with me? My comments where directed at the op suggestions and I'm clearly (I thought) talking about the time it takes to play through the game on normal mode, not all three difficulty levels (of course depending on that blizzard follows the same layup as in D2). Do you think normal mode in D3 should take as long to play through as playing through D2 on all three difficulty levels? Because that is basically what the op is suggestion you have to do to experience the story line. This is what my comments where about.
And the thing about having time to post on a message board means that I must have time to play a game is just ridiculous... (Not even counting that I have vacation right now and it's raining)
Ok, now I'm done arguing with you. ;)
I never argued with you, i was talking with papercut and it just so happened to be about what both sides thought you were talking about. And then after that you decided to join in since it was about you from papercut, but not about you at the same time :)
Yeah and then I used your quotes to argue to papercut what the context of your words really ment. It was never really an argue with you but with papercut, then you joined it cause it was kinda about your post but kinda not.
I never argued with you, i was talking with papercut and it just so happened to be about what both sides thought you were talking about. And then after that you decided to join in since it was about you from papercut, but not about you at the same time :)
Yeah and then I used your quotes to argue to papercut what the context of your words really ment. It was never really an argue with you but with papercut, then you joined it cause it was kinda about your post but kinda not.
Ok then, lets just leave it at that.
I think they should.Ive played games where Ive not know whether they have this mode and its been a nice surprise when they do.There was a Diablo clone on the Ngage called 'The Roots:Gates of Chaos'' that had like 5 difficulties and I liked that because it felt like there was more to progress through and there'd be a high level cap.Its a cheap thing but it works(for me anyway).
Pyrohemia
09-07-2009, 16:47
I hope that there are 3 difficulties again but that while the difficulty scales between acts in normal and nightmare the difficulty is the same throughout hell. This adds more variety to the endgame than exclusively act 5 hell.
Risingred
09-07-2009, 17:17
I also like the three difficulties, but I do agree they need to change. Immunities were just horrible. They were horrible in D1 (albeit a bit more viable). I don't know what made them think they'd work in D2.
Maybe different/more random quests/adventures as you reach higher difficulty levels, the quests themselves also increasing in difficulty and complexity. I don't know.
I just hope they have a pretty good plan to make nightmare and hell fun (and I'm glad that isn't my job!). That's all I want, personally, is to have a good time.
Deckard Cain
09-07-2009, 17:27
I hope that there are 3 difficulties again but that while the difficulty scales between acts in normal and nightmare the difficulty is the same throughout hell. This adds more variety to the endgame than exclusively act 5 hell.
I was just thinking exactly the same thing. Or they could have a mode after hell where all the acts are extremely hard, but the last act isn't necessarily harder than the first... just different challenges / mobs etc.
Please consider that there might not be "rushing" in Diablo 3, which means you might be spending more time in lower difficulties before getting to hell. I think there should be difficulties in Diablo 3, but maybe just 2... "normal" and "hell". I never saw the point in "nightmare", nobody ever plays nightmare... you always just feel like getting out of this crappy difficulty ASAP.
So yeah... there should be difficulties, simply because stretching the game to the length of 3 difficulties means a game that is 3 times as long. Huge content. Which is unfair for people who are not hardcore and just want a 1 playthough. The game may be too long for them, plus: assuming the end of the game is as hard as the end of "hell"... it will be extremely hard for the non-hardcore players to finish the game, especially on Single Player.
I would love to have a game 3 times as long... just not sure everybody else would. Difficulties has proved in many games that they are the best way to divide HC gamers from Casuals, while both enjoy the entire content of the game.
Galtrovan
09-07-2009, 17:53
If "difficulties" don't return, they are taking a HUGE step backwards in throwing away content.
They even moved to difficulties in WoW for both dungeons AND raids (normal v. Heroic).
They need at least 2 difficulties. One to go through the "story" and 1 for the actual challenge.
While it's likely not going to be based solely on the act / world system of D2. Just imagine what it would be like for a second to have no difficulties. You would end up with a metagame focused around 1 Act (or Zone or Area). The result? Playing the same small amount of content over and over again for the metagame. To counter this, blizzard will have to dump a LOT of work into in game assets at high levels and accepting low level content as throw away content.
Because there will be no reason to go backwards to low level content (maybe 5 times, one for each class, but no more with the inclusion of respecs) all of that low level stuff will just become things seen once and skipped over from there on. In other words, throw away content.
adding difficulties increases the amount of content for the metagame, and additionally gives people a reason to revisit content more than once for different reasons.
Not including difficulties in the game would be a HUGE mistake.
Agree completely
tetracycloide
09-07-2009, 19:19
I never saw the point in "nightmare", nobody ever plays nightmare... you always just feel like getting out of this crappy difficulty ASAP.
I'm going to venture a guess that you never played hardcore. Which is understandable, I didn't play hardcore either, but gearing up in nightmare was and is essential for untwinked hardcore play. Why risk even entering hell until nightmare meph has been farmed for the low hanging fruit when it could mean the permanent death of your character? Another example would be the quest bugging meph sorc. Nightmare meph was a decent way to level up and aquire gear at the same time in relative saftey.
As for the OP's titular question, no they should not return. Difficulties were and are simply a bandaid for a game that was too short. Furthermore the gap between difficulties was far to large, one set of continuous content from beginning to end that removed the need to rerun the same content in a difficulty level 5-30 times before moving to the next difficulty would be greatly appreciated. The casual vs. hardcore argument is a total straw man, a 50 hour game is a 50 hour game is a 50 hour game. Likewise the 'variety in end game content' is a straw man, diablo three is not diablo two and there's no reason that acts IV and V in diablo three would have to be as short and homogenous as those in diablo two. It's entirely possible to make enough content for the end game to be a wide and varied as the entirety of hell difficulty in diablo two without ever having to replay the same content as previous, easier acts.
Doctrinaire
09-07-2009, 20:40
Difficulties were and are simply a bandaid for a game that was too short.
To you, maybe. No matter how long Diablo II had been, I would have still enjoyed replaying it over with the same character for any number of reasons.
It's entirely possible to make enough content for the end game to be a wide and varied as the entirety of hell difficulty in diablo two without ever having to replay the same content as previous, easier acts.
In which case difficulties would still be a worthy investment. The development cost is low for a lot of return in longevity. There's really no reason that anyone should be against difficulties or against more content. The two aren't mutually exclusive and are in fact complimentary. A longer, more varied core game means longer, more varied subsequent difficulties to enjoy.
If you personally don't enjoy them, just don't play them.
tetracycloide
09-07-2009, 22:03
Difficulty levels do not add longevity, repeating the same content adds nothing the game is the same length with and without them. Furthermore removing difficulties does not remove your ability to replay with the same character for any number of reasons but adding them would remove my ability to play only the difficulty level I enjoy. So there's absolutely a reason to be against tiered difficulty levels that require the completion of the previous difficulty for access.
Difficulties do add "content" in that they add progression. I know (or i think I remember in a previous thread on this same topic) that most of the people that hate "difficulty levels" hate them because a) they hate going "backwards" and b) they want a shorter game so it is easier to create pvp characters.
The argument that "you can always go back to the early content with no difficulty levels" falls flat on it's face because there is no "why" to do so. What would the purpose be? To see that everything dies instantly on a second go-through? To show that there is no reward in terms of items for doing so? There is no point, period. There is no point, because there is no gain in doing so, and any attempt to include "gain" for going backwards content wise must necessarily include an increase in difficulty, because otherwise people could profit from incredibly easy content.
The problem is that people who hate difficulty levels are missing the core of "content." Having difficulty levels does ADD content to the game, even if it is just reiterated environments.
Perhaps you never played an RPG before, but much of the purpose of these games is CHARACTER PROGRESSION. If it were just about seeing the environments, there would be no need to include RPG in it's designation and we could all go to playing things like God of War and Ninja Gaiden (which are good games, mind you.)
The reason difficulties add content is because it adds an opportunity for character progression, and more importantly, it GREATLY expands the breadth of areas where the metagame character progression can occur.
Asking for "teird act based difficulties" is offputting for several reasons. Most notably because it is either going to necessarily dilute the difficulty and dilute the range of potential character progression, or exclude all but the most hardcore from completing the base story in the first place.
Difficulties solve two problems then. It makes the story in general accessible to even the most novice players who perhaps are less interested in pushing their characters to the limits of the game. It also lets the more experienced players really have a place where they can actually test the limits of their finely tuned characters. Finally, it ensures that the metagame character progression (that is, character development at the level/skill cap) occurs in a variety of environments and is not confined to a single environment.
Sure, there is no reason to have a small amount of content. But there is definitely no reason to exclude difficulty levels. By excluding difficulty levels, you are simply making a conscious choice to either alienate the "hardcore" group, or the "casual" group, and ultimately constricting the amount of content that players can cultivate their characters in.
Having no difficulty levels is just a bad design decision for all involved, particularly with the inclusion of respecs (which make it even more fruitless to go back to the lower levels).
SlechtWeerBeer
09-07-2009, 22:33
Difficulty levels do not add longevity, repeating the same content adds nothing the game is the same length with and without them. Furthermore removing difficulties does not remove your ability to replay with the same character for any number of reasons but adding them would remove my ability to play only the difficulty level I enjoy. So there's absolutely a reason to be against tiered difficulty levels that require the completion of the previous difficulty for access.
Replaying the game on the same difficulty is just redundant. Andy will not be challenging at all, nor rewarding.
And of course there's a reason to be against tiered difficulties, but there's also a reason to be for tiered difficulties.
Doctrinaire
09-07-2009, 22:42
Difficulty levels do not add longevity, repeating the same content adds nothing the game is the same length with and without them.
5zigen hit the nail on the head. Action RPGs = Character progression. Character progression means that your character doesn't always play the same way. That your character doesn't always play the same way means that replaying the game multiple times at different level tiers does, in fact, add quite a bit to the game.
Beating Andariel for the first time at level 13 is not the same experience as beating her at level 70 in Hell. Not even close.
Yeah the point of difficulties is to triple the content with minimal effort. If they instead used that time to make original content not that much would really get added. For the OPs idea they would have to make the initial game 3 times as long. I don't really want to wait an extra year+ just for that. And like others have said playing through the game multiple times can be fun, especially in D3 since there will be random quests.
Difficulties dont replace content they enhance content.You repeat patterns when decorating but you dont say it adds nothing.
Difficulties dont replace content they enhance content.You repeat patterns when decorating but you dont say it adds nothing.
Mmmm a metaphoric way of to make people understand. Well done :)
I tend to just be an a-hole with my responses to where people don't understand I guess ^^
Nimbostratus
10-07-2009, 01:49
As I said in my previous post, D2's normal/NM/Hell settings aren't a good way to separate players' skills; instead of feeling like 5 acts on three settings, they instead just feel as a single fifteen-act journey, so casual players feel a need to finish Hell, while hardcore players still need to trek through Normal each time they want to play. So how about something like this?
1. At character creation, you select a Challenge Level. The Challenge Level affects monster stats, exp, and drop rates. Monster levels and item stats are the same throughout all difficulties. Note that for all of these comparisons, "for an adequately leveled character" is implied.
Easy: Starts out very beginner-friendly. Only gets a little harder than D2's NM difficulty.
Normal: Start of the game assumes you know what you're doing. Endgame is somewhat easier than D2's Hell.
Hard: Ends up harder than D2's Hell. I don't know by how much would be appropriate.
Hardcore: Same as Hard, but with the "only one life" rule.
2. As your character goes through the game, they go through a set of tiered Progression Levels much like the difficulties used in D2. Maybe it should just have two instead of three, since Nightmare really only served to fill the gap between Normal and Hell in D2. Not that there's a problem with there being three, just that two is all that's needed.
3. Challenge Level changes:
Temporary Harder -> Easier: Character can't get any exp, get credit for quests, or obtain non-essential items. This simply allows experienced players to play with newbie friends without having to make new characters (or exploiting the easier exp/drops).
Temporary Easier -> Harder: Character can't get credit for quests, trade with other players, or drop/sell their gear. Allows less experienced players to "test the water" without getting in over their head or allowing exploits.
Permanent Harder -> Easier: Fully allowed.
Permanent Easier -> Harder: Not allowed, since this would either involve allowing "get drops in easy, then convert to hard" exploits or forcing people to degrade items they already have. I don't think either of those options is very acceptable, so simply no permanent easy -> hard transfers.
4. Progression Level changes: These remain unrestricted as in D2.
.
Yes D3 needs difficulties to return. Without difficulties the game greatly decreases in length. Sure you are beating the same story 3 times but that does not mean the game is the same on each difficulty. Who knows what new goodies they have in store. Hopefully we wont have to deal with mobs being "immune physical" etc... atleast that's the direction it sounds like they are going. Maybe some improved AI or different monsters in different difficulties.
Exactly how i feel. Especialy towards people saying the game should just be longer and 1 difficulty .....
Replaying the same bosses on dramatically higher difficulties is one of the things i love about D2.... and will hopefully love about D3.
keep Norm, NM and Hell.
As I said in my previous post, D2's normal/NM/Hell settings aren't a good way to separate players' skills; instead of feeling like 5 acts on three settings, they instead just feel as a single fifteen-act journey, so casual players feel a need to finish Hell, while hardcore players still need to trek through Normal each time they want to play. So how about something like this?
1. At character creation, you select a Challenge Level. The Challenge Level affects monster stats, exp, and drop rates. Monster levels and item stats are the same throughout all difficulties. Note that for all of these comparisons, "for an adequately leveled character" is implied.
Easy: Starts out very beginner-friendly. Only gets a little harder than D2's NM difficulty.
Normal: Start of the game assumes you know what you're doing. Endgame is somewhat easier than D2's Hell.
Hard: Ends up harder than D2's Hell. I don't know by how much would be appropriate.
Hardcore: Same as Hard, but with the "only one life" rule.
2. As your character goes through the game, they go through a set of tiered Progression Levels much like the difficulties used in D2. Maybe it should just have two instead of three, since Nightmare really only served to fill the gap between Normal and Hell in D2. Not that there's a problem with there being three, just that two is all that's needed.
3. Challenge Level changes:
Temporary Harder -> Easier: Character can't get any exp, get credit for quests, or obtain non-essential items. This simply allows experienced players to play with newbie friends without having to make new characters (or exploiting the easier exp/drops).
Temporary Easier -> Harder: Character can't get credit for quests, trade with other players, or drop/sell their gear. Allows less experienced players to "test the water" without getting in over their head or allowing exploits.
Permanent Harder -> Easier: Fully allowed.
Permanent Easier -> Harder: Not allowed, since this would either involve allowing "get drops in easy, then convert to hard" exploits or forcing people to degrade items they already have. I don't think either of those options is very acceptable, so simply no permanent easy -> hard transfers.
4. Progression Level changes: These remain unrestricted as in D2.
.
This is a possibility in single player, and thats all.
This cannot be implemented on Multi player(or b.net) because essentially thats 12 different types of games being made which means all players are spread out over 12 area's thus each game could be widely unpopulated. You can't allow the 4 sets of different characters trade with each other, because then it would be a broken system.
And the hardest wouldn't see to many people = dead area, and the most easy wouldn't see to many people = dead area.
Like I know you attempt to have a semi solution for it, but the mechanics of the game won't work well like that. Like you had said on the 1st part ill just give 1 example. The harder game player can go into a game with the easier one, but he can't get items/loot/exp/quest etc etc. It's just to play with his newbie friends.
For one, how many times does a hardcore player have a newbie friend who end-game doesn't want to not be able to play in the same game? The newbie would of simply played on hardcore with his friend and learned the game through his friend and with his friend.
So there would of been no point for this "joining" you mention of because there's no benefits to it, and if you add benefits then the game becomes broken.
So singleplayer, sure allow that. Battle.net, No.
I would like additional difficulties just like in Diablo II:LOD, but I want them to generate enemy levels as follows:
Normal - Just like always.
Nightmare - Ok I've beat the game and want to reply certain spots while leveling up, but don't want pounded into the dirt in the beginning stages of the game. Please make the enemies spawn +X # of levels higher than me up to a certain threshold per zone. Obviously, later Acts of the game would allow very high enemy levels if I'm a high enough level.
Hell - Now, I've become (or soon will be) an elite warlord of chaos! Please remove all caps on enemy levels and make, even the zombies in Act 1 to be as high of a level as the demons in Act 5 of Hell!:crazyeyes:
----------------------------------------------------------
Now you're about to ask, "Why should hell difficulty never have easy spots, even for a max level character?"
That's easy, the "end game" content would still be the WHOLE game if enemies spawn as suggested. Any other way will just result in only the last few high difficulty areas being what everyone plays. How boring, "variety is the spice of life."
Nimbostratus
10-07-2009, 03:15
JamesT:
That would keep the hardcore multiplayer group happy. But for people playing single player, it would just a be a big "haha, screw you."
Nextt:
Diablo 2 already has 24 potential modes. There's Normal/NM/Hell, Classic/Expansion, Hardcore/Softcore, and Ladder/Non-ladder.
You're jumping right to the extremes with the easy/hard mode combinations. A Hardcore player might not know any newbies, but somebody on Normal could easily have friends on either side of the spectrum. Also, are you seriously suggesting that newbies should start on the hardest setting right away? Realize how incredibly frustrating and how much of a bad impression of the game that would be.
The harder game player can go into a game with the easier one, but he can't get items/loot/exp/quest etc etc. It's just to play with his newbie friends.
For one, how many times does a hardcore player have a newbie friend who end-game doesn't want to not be able to play in the same game? The newbie would of simply played on hardcore with his friend and learned the game through his friend and with his friend.
So there would of been no point for this "joining" you mention of because there's no benefits to it, and if you add benefits then the game becomes broken.
So singleplayer, sure allow that. Battle.net, No.
K i used a wrong term here, I said "hardcore" so someone might be thinking I men tlike d2's hardcore, I really just ment the version his friend is on even if its the hardest not hardcore.
JamesT:
That would keep the hardcore multiplayer group happy. But for people playing single player, it would just a be a big "haha, screw you."
Nextt:
Diablo 2 already has 24 potential modes. There's Normal/NM/Hell, Classic/Expansion, Hardcore/Softcore, and Ladder/Non-ladder.
You're jumping right to the extremes with the easy/hard mode combinations. A Hardcore player might not know any newbies, but somebody on Normal could easily have friends on either side of the spectrum. Also, are you seriously suggesting that newbies should start on the hardest setting right away? Realize how incredibly frustrating and how much of a bad impression of the game that would be.
That is completely different rofl.
1st, norm/nm/hell doesn't count as 3 modes because each lower one gets crap loot compared to the next higher one, in your suggestion by the end of the easy version and the end of the hard version you can find the same items.
2nd. classic/expansion doesn't count because 80% of people playing classic went to LoD and stayed there. So classic has very little amount of people and look at it = dead area
3rd. Hardcore/Softcore is true but how many lvl 90+ are ther eon hardcore compared to softcore? Far less, = dead area(not enouph people)
4th. Ladder / Non-Ladder is again true. "but I don't know if you have looked at the non-ladder recently, but theres like 2 people in the trading channel 1." so = dead area.
5th. Having a newb be forced to start on hardest setting would be .... harder for him, thats why they start on "normal" like everyone else, oh what do you know problem solved.
I was saying if a newbie has a friend who is playing on the hardest setting, they are going to go to the hardest setting if they can't do these 2 things + more if they were to play on a different beginning setting 1. get items from each other, 2. Play together with a reason (like getting xp) and more.
so if you have those 2 things allowed, then you get a broken game
Nimbostratus
10-07-2009, 07:49
Okay, you misunderstood something about my post. In the system I proposed, Normal/Nightmare/Hell Progression levels act just the same as they do in D2. Only the Easy/Normal/Hard/Hardcore Challenge levels can create separate "types" of characters.
Okay, you misunderstood something about my post. In the system I proposed, Normal/Nightmare/Hell Progression levels act just the same as they do in D2. Only the Easy/Normal/Hard/Hardcore Challenge levels can create separate "types" of characters.
I know that... it doesn't change what I said here.
This is a possibility in single player, and thats all.
This cannot be implemented on Multi player(or b.net) because essentially thats 12 different types of games being made which means all players are spread out over 12 area's thus each game could be widely unpopulated. You can't allow the 4 sets of different characters trade with each other, because then it would be a broken system.
And the hardest wouldn't see to many people = dead area, and the most easy wouldn't see to many people = dead area.
Like I know you attempt to have a semi solution for it, but the mechanics of the game won't work well like that. Like you had said on the 1st part ill just give 1 example. The harder game player can go into a game with the easier one, but he can't get items/loot/exp/quest etc etc. It's just to play with his newbie friends.
For one, how many times does a hardcore player have a newbie friend who end-game doesn't want to not be able to play in the same game? The newbie would of simply played on hardcore with his friend and learned the game through his friend and with his friend.
So there would of been no point for this "joining" you mention of because there's no benefits to it, and if you add benefits then the game becomes broken.
So singleplayer, sure allow that. Battle.net, No.
Nimbostratus
10-07-2009, 09:55
Then why are you counting Normal/NM/Hell as not being a separator in D2 in your post?
And as I said before, the problem with having only the tiered difficulty levels is that the Normal/NM/Hell progression plays like a single run through. They have never felt like traditional "easy/normal/hard" settings, since they aren't separated. You don't start a character on Hell, you make one on Normal and level him up until he's ready for the endgame that happens to be called a difficulty setting. Approximately nobody is satisfied with just beating Normal, since it really only feels like Act 5 of 15. "Tiered difficulties" simply don't feel or play like difficulties.
Then why are you counting Normal/NM/Hell as not being a separator in D2 in your post?
And as I said before, the problem with having only the tiered difficulty levels is that the Normal/NM/Hell progression plays like a single run through. They have never felt like traditional "easy/normal/hard" settings, since they aren't separated. You don't start a character on Hell, you make one on Normal and level him up until he's ready for the endgame that happens to be called a difficulty setting. Approximately nobody is satisfied with just beating Normal, since it really only feels like Act 5 of 15. "Tiered difficulties" simply don't feel or play like difficulties.
1. I wasn't thinking when I did my post I guess. But even if you take that out and make say that then theres 4 game modes, thats still x2 the amount of game modes as d2, and you could really say that 80% of people still playing D2, play on ladder, so its like theres only 1 game mode anyways.
2. I never felt like it was Act 5 of 15, but I'm a "hardcore gamer" no not hardcore as in D2 hardcore mode -_-. so to me it felt like doing the same thing 3x but i couldn't hit the level that I wanted to hit or get the gear i wanted to get by not doing hell.
So you might say that only backs up your claim, but most people complaining about the 3 difficulties are supposedly "casual" players who say they don't have the "time" to beat hell, when if they are still paying attention to d3 then they have time in d2 to beat hell it wasn't hard.
"other than the 1 casual who posted in here wanting to keep the 3 difficulties because he only cared about beating the story"
So if he was ok with it, then most casuals must feel like act 1-5 normal is enouph.
And saying "Tiered difficulties" doesn't feel or play like difficulty's that makes no sense. Thats saying that for instance in WoW(easy example to relate to) if you killed all the bosses in a instance "like ulduar" then you finished it. When you didn't because killing every boss and killing every boss in hardmode is completely different.
Hardmode = better gear , this is same as Hell = better gear
Newbs can kill every boss in the instance, but noobs can't kill a single boss on hardmode. Is the same as newbs = beat normal or nm and stop there, noob = cannot beat hell, and don't need to because they already seen the whole content that act 1-5 had to offer.
(Btw my personal opinion I actually hate "hardmodes" i think every boss should be the "hardmode" the whole time so newbs can't even kill him at all(like it was in vanilla wow, and I was told early bc(which I didn't play so i didn't know but ending bc was horribly ezzy with all those nerfs)
So you might say that only backs up your claim, but most people complaining about the 3 difficulties are supposedly "casual" players who say they don't have the "time" to beat hell, when if they are still paying attention to d3 then they have time in d2 to beat hell it wasn't hard.
Your attitude is terrible and this whole comment is nonsense.
While I think elimination of difficulties is a ridiculous request, I don't think any of the people proposing it have been casuals looking to make the game shorter.
Steven Catogen
11-07-2009, 16:35
To try to get this back on topic...
I believe that the default mode should be hard enough so you can't just plow through it. In other words, normal is that hard for low levels, nightmare for mid levels, and hell for high levels. When just anyone can plow through without thinking, the quality of coop is greatly diminished. Often, you're better off with no party than such individuals in your party. But those are extreme cases, and being hard enough so you can't just auto pilot is not the same as some extreme difficulty. Just enough to make you think and learn. A difficulty that could be toggled like you see on many conventional games would fracture the player base. So introducing some optional hard mode where both risk and reward improves is right out, even though I personally would not mind it as an option.
Also, this difficulty should not be fake. If you die, it should be because you screwed up, not because your loot seed hates you.
This doesn't have anything to do with the whole casual/hardcore debate, since the guys who are playing less will simply make less progress each day, they can still learn how to progress just the same.
I suppose there is a little elitism there, in not wanting the absolutely terrible players to get far without improving their skills. But it's very mild, and for everyone's benefit since it means knowing the guy beside you can pull his weight in coop. Or give you a good run in a competitive sense. Whichever you want.
I suppose there is a little elitism there, in not wanting the absolutely terrible players to get far without improving their skills. But it's very mild, and for everyone's benefit since it means knowing the guy beside you can pull his weight in coop. Or give you a good run in a competitive sense. Whichever you want.
The glaring problem with your suggestion is that it, like other suggestions, aims to placate the middle ground (moderates) and aims to alienate the very hardcore and very casual.
The reason? You are proposing an elimination of scaling difficulty.
normal difficulty SHOULD be easy. The idea is that everyone SHOULD be able to go through the main story, even the knuckledragging mouthbreathers.
The idea with difficulties is that it preserves difficulty for the elite players, while preserving the story for the bads.
If it was as you propose, that normal difficulty is hard for low level characters, nightmare is hard for mid level characters and hell is hard for high level characters, you end up having to make some sort of value judgment. Do you want normal to be beatable by the average player, the good player or the below average player (everybody) and setting your standard from there, how does nightmare and hard work into that.
The difficulty should truly be scaling in other words. Normal should not be too difficult for the average player, but the hard mode should be a challenge even for the best players at the highest levels.
Kiroptus
12-07-2009, 09:44
I would hate diablo without difficulties, there is a certain charm of seeing old monsters/bosses with new tricks and increased power.
The problem that no one seems to address here and Nimbostratus points out, is that after a while (and D2 rushing proves this) the easier of the difficulties are simply are going to be considered a grind and most people are trying to skip them.
I don't see the value of the difficulty system if that is what it achieves.
Kiroptus
12-07-2009, 10:42
And if it was all a big game instead of seperated by difficulties, the initial areas would be a grind as well.
Yes, but at least then there would be actually more content. Not the same game 3 times.
Kiroptus
12-07-2009, 11:36
Depends, it could have a lot of lost potential as well, with the difficulty system they have freedom to change monster abilities in other difficulties (like for example, act5 in D2 where you can find Shamans that use glacial spike).
I love to see old content with a new make up, which is what the difficulties system do, plus there is lots of room to improve it, like Titan Quest did with the extra bosses, in normal difficulty there was a swamp with monsters in it, in Legendary difficulty you would find a huge and powerful Hydra boss there, and many other extra bosses, they can play around with that.
Plus Diablo is a big grind, it doubt there would be enough content to supply all the necessary grind to feel yourself complete with the game. All I can see is to have lots of abandoned levels and bosses in the early levels and everyone would want to focus in the final act. Lots of content would be ignored, with the difficulty system, if done right, you can add stuff here and there and the old content with a new make up will look new.
I don't see how 'old content with a new make-up' is better than new content. What is exactly the appeal of it?
They can simply upgrade monsters in later Acts like they are doing already anyway. There is no reason why you must play the same game another time to have Shamans with Glacial spikes.
Kiroptus
12-07-2009, 12:12
But how much new content would be necessary for such a huge grind game as Diablo? Better yet, what epic gigantic story they would need to come up with to fit all the necessary grind of the game in one single package?
I'm not saying grinding is avoided. I'm saying I don't see the added value of difficulty levels over extra content. I can see how it's a developer's short-cut, but that is something else.
Let's assume there is no rushing. Would you rather play a smaller game three times to get to the grinding parts or a larger game one time. You seem to choose for the first, but I have no idea why.
SlechtWeerBeer
12-07-2009, 12:48
If you repeat the game three times, and make the final runthrough equal in level/difficulty through the acts, you don't get obsolete areas; it gives you a reason to go back to act I and just randomly kill everything in an area. It's not much easier than act 5 (if at all; depends on equipment, monsters and skills wether an area is reasonable), but gives similar loot.
If you make one game thrice as long, you get 1, maybe 2 acts that will be overcrowded by farmers, and a pitiful amount of variation, thus a boring end-game. The first 13 acts are completely redundant anyways, because it's way too easy and the loot is rubbish.
In DII you have the latter a bit (last act is best loot), but you can still go to Countess, the Pit, Mephisto for good loot. You don't have to solely run Baal for proper equipment (Baal is a bad way to get runes, for example).
The following may not be the best of comparisions, but oh well:
The Same-****-different-difficulty goes for a lot of games, really. Finish the game on Normal, unlock Hard. Do the same all over, but on a higher difficulty. Is that a bad system? How much do you enjoy a game that you can complete in a couple of hours because there's only one difficulty, and you know all the do's and don'ts? A higher difficulty gives you a reason to play that game again.
If you repeat the game three times, and make the final runthrough equal in level/difficulty through the acts, you don't get obsolete areas;
This is not completely true. There are a few (engineered) targets in lower Acts, but there is no reason why something similar couldn't be made in the last few acts of a larger game.
The following may not be the best of comparisions, but oh well:
The Same-****-different-difficulty goes for a lot of games, really. Finish the game on Normal, unlock Hard. Do the same all over, but on a higher difficulty. Is that a bad system? How much do you enjoy a game that you can complete in a couple of hours because there's only one difficulty, and you know all the do's and don'ts? A higher difficulty gives you a reason to play that game again.
The difference is that in many games you can choose difficulty from the get-go, while in Diablo for every character you play Normal and NM are requirements. I think Diablo has better incentives to play the game again and that's for exampling having character classes and even a great variety within those classes.
SlechtWeerBeer
12-07-2009, 17:23
This is not completely true. There are a few (engineered) targets in lower Acts, but there is no reason why something similar couldn't be made in the last few acts of a larger game.
"and make the final runthrough equal in level/difficulty through the acts, you don't get obsolete areas;" does not mean "Diablo II had this". Please do read what I say :)
The difference is that in many games you can choose difficulty from the get-go, while in Diablo for every character you play Normal and NM are requirements. I think Diablo has better incentives to play the game again and that's for exampling having character classes and even a great variety within those classes.
True. The reason you have to play through Normal first to get to Nightmare, is that being lv1 in Nightmare is like going naked and unskilled against Hell Mephisto: you die instantaneously. The Diablo II difficulties weren't made to be options, like "regular" difficulty sliders. They were made for character progression.
Mass Effect was rather interesting with difficulties, imo.
If you complete the game on a character, you can replay the game on any difficulty, retaining your level/skills(/equipment?). Enemies automatically scaled to your level, so going through the first few areas was not a waste of time, nor easy per se.
You could still start a lv1 character on the highest difficulty, if you wanted, because enemies scale.
If Blizz did this for Diablo II, you'd have "'regular" difficulty sliders, and one playthrough to complete the game. It'd still be only 4 acts, 5 with expansion, though, I bet. Why? The story ended.
No, but seriously, why would the game suddenly be longer if you could start in the highest difficulty? Being able to do that does not mean the game is developped faster (in fact, slower, because monster scaling has to be incorporated into the game). To make a game longer, you can have whatever difficulty system you like; But you also need more time.
Risingred
12-07-2009, 17:47
I can see a couple different reasons why players would prefer the three-difficulty setting over one hugenormously large game.
1. If the quests are a bit more open-ended, you can choose a different way to do them, or a different reward or whatever. It's like your buffed up character is playing for the first time...again.
2. It allows you to play through the game again. You aren't really going to have that incentive with a game that encompasses 15 acts. I don't see what would break up the monotony of a hack and slash that is that long without just plain old starting over.
3. The burden on the devs would be enormous. It isn't just about creating lore and art for these areas. You have to make sure each one is interesting. You have to make sure they are dynamic enough where you feel like each area plays different which means that monsters must be different and with different abilities. On top of that, you have to balance all of these abilities around those of the player, including stat usage and equipment, and then you have to keep PVP in the equation. That's mind-boggling. It is apparently hard enough for them to do all this with five acts, can you imagine the theoretical 15? It would all blend together and feel exactly the same. One of the greatest things about D2 is that each act "felt" very different.
1. If the quests are a bit more open-ended, you can choose a different way to do them, or a different reward or whatever. It's like your buffed up character is playing for the first time...again.
You don't need higher difficulty levels to achieve this.
2. It allows you to play through the game again. You aren't really going to have that incentive with a game that encompasses 15 acts. I don't see what would break up the monotony of a hack and slash that is that long without just plain old starting over.
Again, there are better incentives in Diablo for replay value.
3. The burden on the devs would be enormous. It isn't just about creating lore and art for these areas. You have to make sure each one is interesting. You have to make sure they are dynamic enough where you feel like each area plays different which means that monsters must be different and with different abilities. On top of that, you have to balance all of these abilities around those of the player, including stat usage and equipment, and then you have to keep PVP in the equation. That's mind-boggling. It is apparently hard enough for them to do all this with five acts, can you imagine the theoretical 15? It would all blend together and feel exactly the same. One of the greatest things about D2 is that each act "felt" very different.
Creating a higher difficulty level creates the exact same concerns.
SlechtWeerBeer
12-07-2009, 19:07
You don't need higher difficulty levels to achieve this.
But it's much more interesting to play through act I with all your skills and gear from the previous difficulty, rather than an all-new character with 3 tier 1 skills and barely any equipment, imo.
Again, there are better incentives in Diablo for replay value.
There's more incentives, not better. Subjectivity and generalisation are bad, when it comes to a personal reason such as wanting to play a game again.
I prefer going through 5 acts on a higher difficulty with my old equipment better than without any equipment.
Creating a higher difficulty level creates the exact same concerns.
Creating one higher difficulty level, and creating 5 acts is just incomparable.
Creating a higher difficulty is much faster because you already have the content ready.
Creating a new act involves everything a difficulty level has, but a lot more besides that.
Steven Catogen
12-07-2009, 19:38
The glaring problem with your suggestion is that it, like other suggestions, aims to placate the middle ground (moderates) and aims to alienate the very hardcore and very casual.
The reason? You are proposing an elimination of scaling difficulty.
normal difficulty SHOULD be easy. The idea is that everyone SHOULD be able to go through the main story, even the knuckledragging mouthbreathers.
The idea with difficulties is that it preserves difficulty for the elite players, while preserving the story for the bads.
If it was as you propose, that normal difficulty is hard for low level characters, nightmare is hard for mid level characters and hell is hard for high level characters, you end up having to make some sort of value judgment. Do you want normal to be beatable by the average player, the good player or the below average player (everybody) and setting your standard from there, how does nightmare and hard work into that.
The difficulty should truly be scaling in other words. Normal should not be too difficult for the average player, but the hard mode should be a challenge even for the best players at the highest levels.
No, the purpose of my suggestion is to simply make it require a little effort. Not even that much. There is a difference between below average and... well go on B.net sometime.
My own personal desire is that the default becomes hard mode. High risk, high reward. I realize this is not a viable marketing decision though, so I do not advocate that.
I also don't throw the elitism around any more than is absolutely necessary. As far as I am concerned, knuckle dragging mouthbreathers should not get anywhere in this or anything else. Players that are merely not good at a game should be able to manage though, eventually.
Risingred
12-07-2009, 20:56
Creating a higher difficulty level creates the exact same concerns.
Not necessarily. It didn't in Diablo II.
I think it's horribly short-sighted to think they can make a fifteen-act game.
Deckard Cain
12-07-2009, 21:46
IMO it seems a bit pointless for blizzard to make D3 one difficulty because that will result in a total of 1 act of the game being played 90% of the time. On the other hand.... they can have difficulties which will allow players to replay all the acts. If the final difficulty scales to level then the player will have choice to play any act with near equal incentives.
Who is going to want to go replay earlier acts with 1 difficulty? It would be like running around killing Andy with a level 80 character.... not exactly loads of fun.
Risingred
12-07-2009, 21:52
If the final difficulty scales to level then the player will have choice to play any act with near equal incentives.
Who is going to want to go replay earlier acts with 1 difficulty? It would be like running around killing Andy with a level 80 character.... not exactly loads of fun.
I agree with this.
What I would like to see them get away from is the "hey, just give monsters more HP and damage resist!"
I'd like to see higher difficulties adjust the stats in broader ways. Maybe increased numbers on monsters at some places, increased resistance to specific types of damage (rather than blanket resist) some groups moving faster maybe.
Ideally monsters would get "smarter" at higher difficulties.
Nimbostratus
13-07-2009, 01:09
What I would like to see them get away from is the "hey, just give monsters more HP and damage resist!"
I'd like to see higher difficulties adjust the stats in broader ways. Maybe increased numbers on monsters at some places, increased resistance to specific types of damage (rather than blanket resist) some groups moving faster maybe.
Ideally monsters would get "smarter" at higher difficulties.
Oh, definitely. I'd love monsters that are tougher in terms of AI and skills rather than straight up stats. Changing only stats means that players only need to change stats as well, which is rather lame IMO.
Zarniwoop
13-07-2009, 09:29
I hope they have them again.
I love challenge and game length.
I understand some people don't have time to play games like they once did. Many of us make the time because it's a hobby we love.
I'll be sick if this gets dumbed down like a bethesda game.
tetracycloide
13-07-2009, 16:11
I think it's horribly short-sighted to think they can make a fifteen-act game.
I think that's a huge cop out response. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of games that have released since diablo II released that have had more than tripple the lore, tripple the content, and tripple the quests of diablo II. There have even been blizzard games that have exceeded those requirements. Wow vanila, 1.0 striaght out of the box before the millions of subscribers and more importantly all of their money, was more than 3 times longer in every imaginable way that diablo II.
Why not change the difficulty system so it only does exactly what those advocating for it here want it to do? Many have pointed out that it's fun to return to old bosses and face them as a completed character build with extra challanges thrown in. Simply alter the progression content to level 1 through the diablo 3 equivalant of diablo 2's 85/90 and add a hell mode for every major boss (act bosses and quest boss for example). I can't honestly belive people enjoyed playing through the item retrevial quests in nightmare and hell or refinding all the waypoints and this system would allow for repeat performances against old bosses without the monotinous grind of fighting another group of burning dead only this time they hit harder and you have AoE.
Deckard Cain
13-07-2009, 16:57
Quality >>>>>> Quantity. I'd rather spend less time doing more meaningful quests, than i would spend more time doing tons of pointless ones. I played WoW and enjoyed it, but seriously it was such a grind.... don't get me wrong though i enjoyed the game.
However, i don't want to spend time doing tons of "collect 5 zombie heads 3 fallen claws etc etc." Most of the quests in WoW (i can't say for other longer games because i haven't played any) were quite boring. It was all (more or less) a pointless grind to reach the end level content. I had much more fun doing all the D2 quests than i did doing the WoW ones since most of the D2 quests seemed to serve a purpose.
Also, i feel that stretching the lore to a great extent could ruin the story. Sure they can make it longer and add in some tid bits but after a while it will take away from the game. I hope they do not add too much filler content just to make the game longer.
I do agree that D3 needs to have more content than D2 someway or another. However, difficulties can fulfill that requirement. Difficulties not only change the bosses, but they change the entire game. Act 1 Hell should not be the same as Act 1 normal with some harder boss fights. The AI and monsters need to be tougher overall.
Risingred
13-07-2009, 17:31
I think that's a huge cop out response. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of games that have released since diablo II released that have had more than tripple the lore, tripple the content, and tripple the quests of diablo II. There have even been blizzard games that have exceeded those requirements. Wow vanila, 1.0 striaght out of the box before the millions of subscribers and more importantly all of their money, was more than 3 times longer in every imaginable way that diablo II.
Do I really need to point out the major differences between Diablo II and WoW? The random nature, for one. Everything in WoW is static and you will have the same exact experience every time. Take it from a former 40-man raider.
As for the actual genre that Diablo II is in: How many ARPGs have you played that you felt compelled to play more than once? For me, I have barely bothered to finish most of them. The ones I did finish (like Titan Quest) I felt no urge to play again whatsoever.
All I can tell you is that Diablo II has massive replay value, obviously, since it is still being played today. I even LAN'd with my wife last night, and had a good time.
Did the difficulty levels have flaws? Oh hell yes. Massive flaws. Big, huge, glaring flaws. But it was still and is still a great game that has more replay value than almost any other game I've played (barring the X-Com or Fallout franchises) and there's a reason for that.
I do feel that the issues presented in Diablo II's difficulty levels need to be fixed but I do not feel that the system itself is flawed.
I can't honestly belive people enjoyed playing through the item retrevial quests in nightmare and hell or refinding all the waypoints and this system would allow for repeat performances against old bosses without the monotinous grind of fighting another group of burning dead only this time they hit harder and you have AoE.
No, those parts were not fun but it was part of balancing. Rushing killed all of it but you get what I'm saying.
tetracycloide
13-07-2009, 18:35
The random nature of gameplay maps is completely irrelevent. Randomly generated maps don't make it any harder to create new lore, new quests, or new mobs to fight. They actually make it easier since individual map assests don't have to be done for every area, they can be mixed and matched with a level generator.
I'm not sure I'm following the replay value argument. It sounds like you're saying because diablo 2 has replay value that diablo 3 should have the same difficulty level system. What I'm missing is what part of the difficulty system in diablo 2 is what gave it replay value. Sure they gave a player a reason to play through the same content on the same character because there was no opportunity for character progression otherwise but that's different than what your describing where you want to play even after completing everything. The thing that actually added replay value to diablo 2 was the wide arrary of character builds, the sheer number of different ways to tackle the content, not the difficulty levels. If you took diablo 2 exactly as it is and replaced nightmare and hell with 10 more acts it would have at least as much replay value as it does now only with 3 times the content.
Similarly the argument that 'it was all a pointless grind' in WoW is flawed because diablo 2 had even more pointless grinds. Instead of quests to kill 15 of a mob there was no quest and you just killed the same mob dozens of times to level.
If the difficulty system goes as far as to update every single thing about an area other than the quests, mob art, and the map assets, like a system where act 1 normal and act 1 hell aren't the same becuase the AI and monsters are tougher overall, then it's nothing more than a cop out for completing new content. Instead of creating new AI and tougher mobs AND creating new art, new models, new quests, and new maps to go with it they create the easy half, the half that can be done entirely on the back end by tweaking some numbers. Don't tell me that can't be done in the time they have with the resources they have because it has been done by many game developers, even blizzard itself.
Brother Laz
13-07-2009, 18:40
Having a 'Hell mode' for every boss is like saying regular monsters are supposed to be useless fodder.
......
Be careful with game length. Too long and you encourage skipping, because the endgame is really where people want to be. If people want to rush ahead, don't force them to stop and stare at your scenery.
In WoW you can't really rush - giving the game a terrible railroad appearance and discouraging people from making new characters. It is frustrating to have to waste time fighting $%£ arcane elementals when you really want something harder to fight but you can't because the game is so strongly affected by level differences that you'll just get owned if you take on something 3 levels above yours.
While in D1 you could pretty much skip the entire game if you got lucky with stair placement and head straight for Diablo. Then of course you'd probably get owned. What people did was return to the hardest level they could somewhat survive and farm there. The better you were, the harder levels you could take on and the faster you'd level up. It wasn't really a grind because it was hard. And the reward for playing well wasn't more arcane elementals with lightning bolt but actual faster game progression.
Of course this would never work in a D2 environment, because people would consider every build useless that can't farm in the hardest areas off the bat. Lol.
Risingred
13-07-2009, 18:43
So you are telling me that Diablo II was just one big copout then, if I'm following. I would have to disagree. You also say that this gargantuan level of content has been accomplished in an ARPG before: I would like to see an example. I don't think there is an ARPG out that I haven't played.
The random nature of gameplay is completely relevant.
When something is randomized, it is harder to balance, and the more randomization there is, the harder it is to see each and every aspect playing a part in the "total picture" of finalized gameplay. This is evident in some of the modifier flaws and item "mistakes" in Diablo II.
I am, in part at least, saying that because Diablo II had a difficulty system which vastly increased replay value that Diablo III should do the same. I'm saying this because I found it, personally, to be a great way to pull me back into the game with my current character.
I'm not going to pretend that I know just how much the cost would be to develop 15 acts and have them all with a different thematic backdrop, but I imagine it would be gargantuan. The developers feel that they are doing what is best for the game and I'm sure that 15 acts isn't it. Or else they would make 15 acts.
Do you not think there's a reason why they would make 3 difficulties instead, besides being "lazy", "cheap" or whatever the accusation is?
The thing that actually added replay value to diablo 2 was the wide arrary of character builds, the sheer number of different ways to tackle the content, not the difficulty levels.
And again I'm going to have to disagree. You left out a lot of stuff, there.
Sure, you could build a character any which way you wanted but there are very few viable solo builds in hell difficulty. I don't see that as really part of the replay value: you are pigeon-holed into certain skills whether you like it or not. That was an error on the developer's part, but not a flaw of the system itself.
Be careful with game length. Too long and you encourage skipping, because the endgame is really where people want to be. If people want to rush ahead, don't force them to stop and stare at your scenery.
Precisely. In this fashion (besides rushing and baal runs) the entire game was the endgame and that is the goal for everybody in this thread, it seems. Fix the issues and it is a good endgame, if not a bit shallow. Then again it would be just as mindlessly shallow with 15 acts, too. Something clearly has to be done.
tetracycloide
13-07-2009, 20:02
It is is simply, patently false to say that randomness makes the game harder to balance. Randomness makes no differnce in balancing an rpg because player skill plays so small a role relative to stats and items. Building a statistics model that can take player stats and gear and determine a proability of succes in any given encounter is very very easy; easier, in fact, then balancing a static game based on player skill.
I cannot see a rational for difficulty levels that are required for progression and blindly reprise all content other than cost savings because none have been presented by anyone. Several claims have been made that the difficulty levels add replay for additional characters but none have been backed up with any argument what so ever. Make an argument for replayability that does not apply equaly to 15 acts with the exact same stat and AI changes that were made in diablo 2 only with different background maps and mob skins and models. Replaying the exact same content 3 times per character does not make creating additional characters and more interesting than 3 times the content, people don't make multipul characters in wow to avoid grinding up a new character because there's no rushing, not because there's too much content.
Deckard Cain
13-07-2009, 21:36
It is is simply, patently false to say that randomness makes the game harder to balance. Randomness makes no differnce in balancing an rpg because player skill plays so small a role relative to stats and items. Building a statistics model that can take player stats and gear and determine a proability of succes in any given encounter is very very easy; easier, in fact, then balancing a static game based on player skill.
I cannot see a rational for difficulty levels that are required for progression and blindly reprise all content other than cost savings because none have been presented by anyone. Several claims have been made that the difficulty levels add replay for additional characters but none have been backed up with any argument what so ever. Make an argument for replayability that does not apply equaly to 15 acts with the exact same stat and AI changes that were made in diablo 2 only with different background maps and mob skins and models. Replaying the exact same content 3 times per character does not make creating additional characters and more interesting than 3 times the content, people don't make multipul characters in wow to avoid grinding up a new character because there's no rushing, not because there's too much content.
No one is going to replay earlier acts when they are higher levels.
Even if they just remake boss fights for higher difficulties you then pass over all the content for what? a minute boss fight. That is not going to add much replayability. This will end up just like the old monotonous meph run etc.
If they remake more than just boss fights then you basically have the definition of making difficulty levels.
And yes, balancing for random is harder than balancing for something static. Which is easier to balance for.... something you KNOW will happen or something you don't know will happen. Obviously if you know what is going to be where and at what level then it will be easier to balance.
Last i checked... most of the WoW community does not make new characters to level them up, but to use them in end game content. That's why there was instance boosting etc to skip all that glorious content that everyone loves... Just like there was rushing in D2.
CCCenturion
13-07-2009, 21:50
Haven't had time to read all the posts, since this thread has grown very long in a shot period of time, but here are my thoughts. (You can read through my arguments or just jump to the summary at the bottom.)
1. Diablo is an ARPG, not a standard RPG. I.e., it's a role-playing game, but the focus is on the action, not the role-playing. The point is to play through the story from beginning to end, sort of like watching a movie. People want to know the end of the story, and so it makes sense to have easier difficulty levels, so that the casual gamers can finish the game. Contrast this to WoW, which doesn't have a tight storyline; instead it just has a general backstory that puts the game in context. There's no real end to the game, since people just play WoW to pretend to be an elf (or whatever) for an hour or ten at a time.
In short, in WoW you're really role-playing a character, there's not a fixed storyline (which would limit your ability to role play), and so there's no need for difficulties. In Diablo, you're running around fighting stuff, there is a fixed storyline to progress the game, and so people want to see how that story is going to end. In that sense, having multiple difficulties is a good way to get players with varying interest and/or free time to play the game at their own level.
I think the game needs difficulties.
2. However, once you do cross that barrier where you're familiar enough with the game to know how to survive in Nightmare and Hell difficulties, then the earlier difficulties get to be boring to replay.
I think one potential solution to this could be to make it possible to start a new character on the highest difficulty setting that you've reached with any character on your account, and have that character start at level 20 (or whatever) with gear that will allow for the basic survivability requirements of that difficulty level to be satisfied.
People should be able to choose what difficulty they want to play, without having to grind through the easy levels if they don't want to.
3. For experienced players who have reached higher difficulty levels, the game will feel old if they're just repeating the same quests and fighting through the same areas. We all found the parts to make Khalim's Will the first time we played D2 act 3. How many of us still take the time to do that when we play?
I think it's safe to say that there should be new content added in at higher difficulties, which could come in several forms. There could be new quests that weren't available in earlier difficulties. There could be random quests that spawn in the game, that are more likely to appear in harder difficulties. There could be secret levels that are only accessible at higher difficulties. Some of the side areas that are irrelevant in early difficulties could be made more challenging in the high difficulties, so people will take the time to play (i.e., farm) them. (D2 example: the Pit in the Tamoe Highland wasn't really worth playing through in Normal difficulty, but in Hell difficulty it's boosted up to a level 85 area, so it's a popular destination for characters in Hell.)
To avoid repetitiveness, higher difficulties need to include new content without changing the main points of the storyline. (Or maybe they could change it to add a twist: imagine if at the end of Hell Act 3 in Diablo 2, Baal actually killed Tyrael!)
4. The biggest problem with difficulties in D2, as I see it, is that it's too easy for players to outgrow the game (I've posted this topic elsewhere, (http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=731220) but I'll sum up my main point here). That is, once you've built a character up to level 85 and have good gear, there's nothing really challenging left to do, and so most people resort to endless Baal or Chaos runs. I think that's the biggest weakness of Diablo 2.
The solution I suggested in my other thread is to have an unlimited number of difficulties, where each time you beat the game, you can unlock a new difficulty in which the monsters are stronger, more numerous, and have faster, more aggressive AI. (There were a lot of other good suggestions in that thread, for those interested.) The key is that no matter how good your character is, the game can still challenge you, so even though you're playing through a familiar game, the monsters you're fighting are much stronger; you won't have time to be bored if the new mobs are much tougher than what you're used to, and you're constantly fighting for your life.
To stay interesting and challenging, the highest difficulty levels need to be hard for even the best players to beat. (This one could even be a way to encourage more teamwork.)
Those are my thoughts. This was kind of a long post, when I really only wanted to make 4 points, so here they are again:
- I think the game needs difficulties.
- People should be able to choose what difficulty they want to play, without having to grind through the easy levels if they don't want to.
- To avoid repetitiveness, higher difficulties need to include new content without changing the main points of the storyline.
- To stay interesting and challenging, the highest difficulty levels need to be hard for even the best players to beat.
tetracycloide
13-07-2009, 22:15
Even if they just remake boss fights for higher difficulties you then pass over all the content for what? a minute boss fight. That is not going to add much replayability. This will end up just like the old monotonous meph run etc.
hey, that's what the multiple difficulty crowd has been clamoring for here, the ability to replay a slightly harder 1 min boss fight. argueably the boss fights are longer than 1 min in diablo 2 and in diablo 3, from the looks of the, should be longer still.
And yes, balancing for random is harder than balancing for something static. Which is easier to balance for.... something you KNOW will happen or something you don't know will happen. Obviously if you know what is going to be where and at what level then it will be easier to balance.
Random doesn't mean the programmers don't know what will happen it just means the same thing doesn't happen every time. Just because a die roll is random doesn't mean I don't know it can roll a number between 1 and 6 and that the average roll is a 3.5. So no, random doesn't mean balancing is any harder than static in an RPG.
Deckard Cain
13-07-2009, 22:39
I agree it wouldn't be impossible to balance the game, but it would be harder. To say its the same as balancing for static is wrong.... anyways.
I agree it will be more repetitive to play the same game 3 times over than it would to play a 15 act game initially. However over time the beginning acts will be way too easy and no one will want to play them. Also, people are asking for a completely harder game, not just boss fights.
I think that's a huge cop out response. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of games that have released since diablo II released that have had more than tripple the lore, tripple the content, and tripple the quests of diablo II. There have even been blizzard games that have exceeded those requirements. Wow vanila, 1.0 striaght out of the box before the millions of subscribers and more importantly all of their money, was more than 3 times longer in every imaginable way that diablo II.Of D2 yeah. Now you do know that D2 isn't D3 right? D3 is going to have way more content and quests per act than D2 did. And making content for Diablo games does take longer than other games might. The dungeons are random and much more content than will be shown at once has to be made so they don't appear the same each time.
Risingred
14-07-2009, 07:22
It is is simply, patently false to say that randomness makes the game harder to balance. Randomness makes no differnce in balancing an rpg because player skill plays so small a role relative to stats and items.
That hardly matters and you have consistently failed to detail just why I am wrong. I am not a game designer; I'm just running on what I feel is logical.
I cannot see a rational for difficulty levels that are required for progression and blindly reprise all content other than cost savings because none have been presented by anyone.
I did in more than one post but you ignored them. Quality > quantity.
You cannot simply dismiss cost savings, or just plain old cost. Look at how long it takes them to build a 4 act game.
Several claims have been made that the difficulty levels add replay for additional characters but none have been backed up with any argument what so ever.
Because we enjoy it.
Because Diablo II, which runs on a 3-difficulty system, is still being played today. There's other reasons but this is a big one. There's flaws in the system but for many of us, it works and it is plausible. You don't like it. That's fine.
people don't make multipul characters in wow to avoid grinding up a new character because there's no rushing, not because there's too much content.
I don't quite understand this statement.
LittleOldLady
14-07-2009, 08:30
I agree there should be difficulties, but more sensible than they are in D1 or D2. In D1, to get to nightmare you had to be level 20, but the lowest level monsters were level 16 (so for some characters, nightmare was easier than normal, but with better experience), but hell could be quite a bit harder (changed immunities, etc). D2 also had nightmare quite easy, but then huge leap to hell. I'd like D3 hell to be harder than in D2 (but not ridiculous, like immunities etc could be), but only as long as nightmare is quite a bit harder than normal, and the curve isn't as ludicrously steep.
On another point, I find it amusing that back when D2 was being developed (lost the old username, but I hung around back then) they said "D2 won't need difficulty levels, since each act is the size of D1, and there's four of them". They also at some point said "no palette swapping will be in D2", but then developing time (and hence costs) blew out, and we got both.
Ultimately, (really) casual players will stick to normal (with maybe an excursion into nightmare) and will get access to full story content. Hardcore (not the game setting) players will spend most of their time optimising builds/levelling up characters in the highest difficulty setting (where the rewards are so much greater), and will (if it's done well) also frequently get access to the full content (rather than the "last five of fifteen acts"). Difficulty levels achieves both of these, without including a crippling amount of extra development time; and allowing more time to be spent on quality and balance (rather than new art, lore, etc).
I just want them to plan to include difficulty levels this time, rather than adding them as an afterthought where it's ultimately "increased stats, mlvls, resistances".
tetracycloide
14-07-2009, 23:01
That hardly matters and you have consistently failed to detail just why I am wrong. I am not a game designer; I'm just running on what I feel is logical.
RPGs, if you ignore the user interface, are really just a large system of numbers on the back end. Arguably this is true for all games if you dig deep enough but for RPGs it is particularly true because a large amount of these numbers appear even on the front end. Randomness, the quality of a variable's value to be selected from a range of values using a probability distribution, does not make things harder to balance because it does not make them any less predictable. Given all the number sthat exist for any given character and any given mob, numbers like armor values, mana, health, damage ranges per spell, casting speed, attack speed, ect it becomes very easy to predict what the outcome of any specific encounter will be with relative certainty. All that must be done to ensure balance is pick a range of % chances of success that is acceptable, develop the model (which is already done for the most part), and then set the mob stats appropriatly so that each class has a reasonable chance of survival. This really isn't any harder to do than if the game had no random variables.
Because we enjoy it.
Because Diablo II, which runs on a 3-difficulty system, is still being played today. There's other reasons but this is a big one. There's flaws in the system but for many of us, it works and it is plausible. You don't like it. That's fine.
I understand that you enjoyed playing diablo II, as did I, as did we all. I suspect that's why we're all here. However the fact that it was a well recieved game and that it had a 3-difficulty system is just a correlation until a link is drawn between the two that implies causality and that link has not been drawn. It's entirely possible it was a popular title in spite of, not as a result of, the three difficulty system.
I don't quite understand this statement.
i'm implying the only thing that makes anyone feel the 3 difficulty system in diablo is preferable on repeat performances is rushing. in games where no rushing can occur people build fewer characters.
They have already said that there will be a great amount of random quests, making it very likely that you will get another set of some quests when you get to nightmare, and then also on hell :)
I'm not trying to start an argue, nor do I think that the game MUST be the way I'd like it to be, still:
I don't know how many of you have played KotOR or Disciples, they are good examples though for what I'm trying to point out - both of these were great games and were fully enjoyed... for a couple of days. The endgame was frustrating - just when you managed to build a good character with some gear - game over. So I was left staring at my splendidly built virtual alter-egoes with only one option: "exit game". Should the abovementioned games have included the 3 (or more) difficulties system as in Diablo I would still be playing them.
Someone stated here that there's no causality link between replayability and the different difficulties system that cannot be overrun by game length. I beg to differ - no matter how big a game is, I STILL want to have some use for my endgame character, i.e. revisit some of the acts, loot, gain new levels, a.s.o., at higher difficulty but still with access to all the areas in the game.
The way most of RPG's look today, you only get the fun skills and gear at the end of the game, so, practically, you only get to enjoy the best part for a few hours. One other example of an ARPG that ended up frustrating me is Dungeon Siege 1. The last fight with the grandaddy of all the baddies got me the best items for my character and her crew, which was not only pointless but also ensured that I felt the same way I feel every time Ormus says "This magic ring does me no good".
So, in one sentence, I do not demand from Blizzard to keep the difficulties but I sure hope they do.
I still think some people have the wrong idea of what difficulties in D2 actually achieved.
They did not give incentive to replay quests except for the ones with large, immediate value (skill quests, Hellforge). In fact, most people just rush to Act 5 Hell Baals right away.
They were not what kept people tied to the game. Difficulties was a method of getting further character progression, but it's not the only way. What kept people tied to the game was new characters, loot, pvp and leveling. None of these require difficulties.
The revisiting aspect that difficulties achieved is highly exaggerated. How many killed Blood Raven on NM and Hell? There are perhaps 2 or 3 areas in each Act in Hell that are popular (for other reasons than replay value), and I'll be damned if I'll see anyone play in the Cold Plains, Sewers or Outer Steppes just for the fun of it.
SlechtWeerBeer
15-07-2009, 12:50
I still think some people have the wrong idea of what difficulties in D2 actually achieved.
They did not give incentive to replay quests except for the ones with large, immediate value (skill quests, Hellforge). In fact, most people just rush to Act 5 Hell Baals right away.
<snip>
The revisiting aspect that difficulties achieved is highly exaggerated. How many killed Blood Raven on NM and Hell? There are perhaps 2 or 3 areas in each Act in Hell that are popular (for other reasons than replay value), and I'll be damned if I'll see anyone play in the Cold Plains, Sewers or Outer Steppes just for the fun of it.
Again with the generalisation. I for one complete every quest and get every waypoint on Nightmare and Hell (except Great Marsh WP if I don't happen to walk into it). Not everyone on the whole damn world merely rushes Baal. Plenty people actually play the game.
Btw, Sewers L2 is good for quick cash due to the dozens of chests there.
They were not what kept people tied to the game. Difficulties was a method of getting further character progression, but it's not the only way. What kept people tied to the game was new characters, loot, pvp and leveling. None of these require difficulties.
What other way do you suggest?
Increasing the #Acts threefold? Diablo III would be released in ~2013 then.
And, again, plenty people play the game rather than just rush Baal. Leveling in D2, the way it was set up, essentially required difficulties, or a lot more content. You cannot get to lv60 in Normal mode because you just don't get xp at some point. In NM/Hell, you do.
Again with the generalisation.
Calling it a generalization doesn't make it less true.
I for one complete every quest and get every waypoint on Nightmare and Hell (except Great Marsh WP if I don't happen to walk into it). Not everyone on the whole damn world merely rushes Baal. Plenty people actually play the game.
Looking at BNet these people are a minority or carefully hide themselves.
What other way do you suggest?
Increasing the #Acts threefold? Diablo III would be released in ~2013 then.
On what do you base this? How much development time goes into creating one act and is this disproportional to the added value? How much development time goes into adding another difficulty?
Leveling in D2, the way it was set up, essentially required difficulties, or a lot more content. You cannot get to lv60 in Normal mode because you just don't get xp at some point. In NM/Hell, you do.
Telling me things I already know doesn't change if difficulties add anything to a game that can't be achieved otherwise.
I'd like to hear what difficulties *add*. It's not more experience, it's not more loot, it's not PvP and it's not new characters. I don't buy the intrinsic replay value either. End-game Diablo has nothing to do with visiting random areas.
SlechtWeerBeer
15-07-2009, 13:42
Calling it a generalization doesn't make it less true.
It's like saying people with autism are all socially dysfunctional. It is wrong to say every D2 player only rushes Baal.
Looking at BNet these people are a minority or carefully hide themselves.
Hiding on SP / private games, yes.
They are a minority because D2 is dying (9 years, lol) and there's a ton of bots.
On what do you base this? How much development time goes into creating one act and is this disproportional to the added value? How much development time goes into adding another difficulty?
A new difficulty involves balancing and possibly adding a few monster stats.
Creating a new Act involves all the same, but a lot more besides that.
I'm not saying it is in every way not worth it. It would just take muuuch longer.
I would like a D3 lasting twice as long or more (I would prefer at least 1 higher difficulty), but I don't want to wait 4 years after the game was officially announced.
Telling me things I already know doesn't change if difficulties add anything to a game that can't be achieved otherwise.
Then how (maybe I should add caps, too?) can it be achieved otherwise? Simply saying "No" for 5 pages doesn't help a discussion.
I'd like to hear what difficulties *add*. It's not more experience, it's not more loot, it's not PvP and it's not new characters. I don't buy the intrinsic replay value either. End-game Diablo has nothing to do with visiting random areas.
It is more loot and experience, though. As I said, you won't get to lv60 on Normal. You don't find Elite Uniques on Normal.
End-game Diablo is an opinion. As I've said numerous times, not everyone merely does Baal runs.
On a lot of characters I've rolled over the years, I haven't even finished Hell, because I've seen my share of what the character can do (and cannot do, due to immunities >.>"" ). You don't get new skills at lv70, so oftentimes I don't bother. The end-game is then somewhere halfway through Hell. That is, in a way, visiting random areas.
Just imagine a D2 with only the Normal setting. Try spending even "just" 4 months on that.
tetracycloide
15-07-2009, 15:26
Should the abovementioned games have included the 3 (or more) difficulties system as in Diablo I would still be playing them.
Someone stated here that there's no causality link between replayability and the different difficulties system that cannot be overrun by game length. I beg to differ - no matter how big a game is, I STILL want to have some use for my endgame character, i.e. revisit some of the acts, loot, gain new levels, a.s.o., at higher difficulty but still with access to all the areas in the game.
This argument is specious on two fronts:
Diablo 2 ended at least as abruptly as the titles you rail against. No one had a full set of end game gear just from playing through all 3 difficulties once and yet there they were, nothing left to do in the game but replay content and grind for gear they would never use on something new.
You are using the term 'replayability' differently the the poster you are responding to. There's a distinciton between replayability, the ability to start a new character from scratch and enjoy it, and the ability to repeat completed content on the same character more than once. So stating that repeating the same content on the same character adds replayability does not even address the argument that it does nothing to encourage the creation of new characters.
I'm not saying it is in every way not worth it. It would just take muuuch longer.
I would like a D3 lasting twice as long or more (I would prefer at least 1 higher difficulty), but I don't want to wait 4 years after the game was officially announced.
You are assuming that diablo 2 had difficulties because it would have taken muuuch longer to develop original character and map assests and to design new quests and bosses. It is possible that diablo 2, an already huge game by 2000 standards, used difficulty levels as a way to extend the length of the game without adding the need for additional hard drive space. So while it is accurate to say additional game assests take time to create it is not accurate to assume the time involved was the driving force behind the difficulty system.
Just imagine a D2 with only the Normal setting. Try spending even "just" 4 months on that.
dear christ, can we please call a moratorium on assuming diablo 3 will be diablo 2. just because normal in D2 was short desn't mean having one difficulty level in D3 would be just as short.
SlechtWeerBeer
15-07-2009, 16:06
dear christ, can we please call a moratorium on assuming diablo 3 will be diablo 2. just because normal in D2 was short desn't mean having one difficulty level in D3 would be just as short.
Might as well not discuss D3 at all, since we know close to nothing about it, eh.
tetracycloide
15-07-2009, 16:37
Might as well not discuss D3 at all, since we know close to nothing about it, eh.
We can discuss D3 easily but arguments that open with 'imagine a D2 with' or close with 'because D2' or some variation on these have no merit what-so-ever. If you want to use D2 as an example to illustrate a point then go right ahead but just stating the D3 normal acts 1-5 will be short because they were short is D2 is a complete non-sequitor.
The different difficulties are needed, otherwise how are players supposed to reach level 100? Playing through normal mode to 100 would get just a TAD boring. I don't see any other way for them to do this unless they make the story line extremely long...
Nimbostratus
16-07-2009, 01:21
Why does everyone assume that without progressive difficulties, the game would be balanced to end at level 30-40? Diablo 3 is not Diablo 2. It's a brand new game. There isn't an existing balance to be thrown off.
How about this? After beating the game (which gets you to 65 or so), you can choose to play in "dynamic mode." In dynamic mode...
Monster and area levels are boosted to match yours
Monsters gain additional skills and tactics
Areas get some minor changes since you were last there
Extra quests become available to tie up loose ends. A D2 example would be going back to Act 1 to help clear out any remaining evils from the monastery.
Funkopotamus
16-07-2009, 02:26
Why does everyone assume that without progressive difficulties, the game would be balanced to end at level 30-40? Diablo 3 is not Diablo 2. It's a brand new game. There isn't an existing balance to be thrown off.
How about this? After beating the game (which gets you to 65 or so), you can choose to play in "dynamic mode." In dynamic mode...
Monster and area levels are boosted to match yours
Monsters gain additional skills and tactics
Areas get some minor changes since you were last there
Extra quests become available to tie up loose ends. A D2 example would be going back to Act 1 to help clear out any remaining evils from the monastery.
Sounds like a normal and a hard.
How about this? After beating the game (which gets you to 65 or so), you can choose to play in "dynamic mode." In dynamic mode...
Monster and area levels are boosted to match yours
Monsters gain additional skills and tactics
Areas get some minor changes since you were last there
Extra quests become available to tie up loose ends. A D2 example would be going back to Act 1 to help clear out any remaining evils from the monastery.
How is that ANY different from adding say, hell difficulty balanced around the expected level of the player? Except for the proposition that the player could get to max level without ever leaving the first act in that mode?
Are we just arguing over what we call it now?
The game just needs some way to spread out the metagame so it isn't confined to one or two or three areas (eg the entire game versus baal runs and potentially pit / rof runs in D2, or Molten Core 40 Et. Al. 40 man raids in WoW...). Difficulties are a beautiful way to do that, regardless of what you call them.
@tetracycloide
"This argument is specious on two fronts:
Diablo 2 ended at least as abruptly as the titles you rail against. No one had a full set of end game gear just from playing through all 3 difficulties once and yet there they were, nothing left to do in the game but replay content and grind for gear they would never use on something new."
It may be that my understanding of the English language is mediocre, so I apologize for that, but, if that's not the case, I think you may have missed my point. Endgame gear or no endgame gear I still want to be able to further play/develop a character that finished the game. By finishing a game I understand beating Hell Baal and equivalents.
"nothing left to do in the game but replay content and grind for gear they would never use on something new". Errr, what? Isn't that what most D2 players do? I.e., get a mat/pat/guardian dream build sorc/pala/whatever that runs bosses and a85lvl's like there's no tomorrow?
Let me put it another way: I love RPG's but I'm not what you would call a hardcore player. That means, at least for me, that every RPG I start with a "barbarian" sort of type character, for it is, usually, the more direct path to go through a game from start to end. So, if I'm ever tempted to build another char, a sorc type for example, I would definitely prefer to have some decent gear to compensate for my lack of skill. That's exactly what happened with D2, most players started with a character, got used to it, moved on to "farming" and found gear that inspired them to create another char, and then another. I myself was reluctant in starting a paladin until, while searching for gear for my amazons, I found a HoZ.
Should one have no real motivation/opportunity to farm for gear it is less likely they would be interested in building another character from scratch. Just check the numbers of players that go untwinkned vs. those that prefre to build a new character that is geared up to the teeth from level 1.
jacobgold
16-07-2009, 20:02
They could have places from the expanded lore that do not significantly alter the main story that are closed off on lower difficulties.
Everyone gets to beat the game, but only by being better do you get the optional areas.
A hypothetical example would be something like king leoric. Mabey the entrance to his area isn't open in normal difficulty but it is in nightmare. You enter, get a nice cinematic or voiceover, make your way through, etc. Cinematics in optional areas is a good reason to wan to explore those areas.
Other areas could be closed off until hell difficulty.
tetracycloide
16-07-2009, 23:39
I belive that's missing the point jacobgold, the problem with a difficulty system is that you're playing through the really really boring parts (read: finding the waypoint in the dark wood, walking from kurast docks to lower kurast, finding izual) each time in addition to playing through the fun parts, like boss encounters. adding exclusive events to higher difficulties but also including the same tedious content from normal really makes it even worse.
Deckard Cain
17-07-2009, 00:53
I belive that's missing the point jacobgold, the problem with a difficulty system is that you're playing through the really really boring parts (read: finding the waypoint in the dark wood, walking from kurast docks to lower kurast, finding izual) each time in addition to playing through the fun parts, like boss encounters. adding exclusive events to higher difficulties but also including the same tedious content from normal really makes it even worse.
I understand you don't want difficulties to return... but let me get this straight. you think it is worse to have extra content in higher difficulties than it would be to have the exact same? that makes no sense to me...
I don't see how you could twist that idea around into being a negative.Extra quests etc would make higher difficulties much more enjoyable imo
paperkut
17-07-2009, 02:11
I like it jacobgold. They would then have the chance to add some challenging and rewarding areas to those who chose to play through all the "boring parts" again and again. As long as those areas aren't unbalanced and become farming areas.
@tetra
Yes, those areas may seem really boring. Diablo 2 wasn't balanced correctly for them (TPs were used and abused). They say in Diablo 3 they want you to really feel like you left town when you go out on a quest so you can't just zap back when you get in trouble (hopefully that means no or few TPs). Imagine playing those same quests without the ability to zap back to town. You'd have to rely on the stuff you found along the way and health globes to survive. That might sound boring to someone just trying to fly through the story so they can get to the endgame super quick, but to someone looking for a challenge that seems quite satisfying.
jacobgold
17-07-2009, 02:17
I belive that's missing the point jacobgold, the problem with a difficulty system is that you're playing through the really really boring parts (read: finding the waypoint in the dark wood, walking from kurast docks to lower kurast, finding izual) each time in addition to playing through the fun parts, like boss encounters. adding exclusive events to higher difficulties but also including the same tedious content from normal really makes it even worse.
Im not following your logic. It seems dubious.
Why don't you like the idea of difficulty levels offering something more? If you consider most of a game to be boring, why play the game?
It's like saying people with autism are all socially dysfunctional. It is wrong to say every D2 player only rushes Baal.
Please quote me on saying that.
Then how (maybe I should add caps, too?) can it be achieved otherwise? Simply saying "No" for 5 pages doesn't help a discussion.
How about letting monsters in the later acts giving enough experience to reach the high levels? How about letting those same monsters drop the high-end items? In Normal and NM this happening already anyway.
End-game Diablo is an opinion. As I've said numerous times, not everyone merely does Baal runs.
End-game Diablo is the sum of things you can after you finished your character. You can either level more, MF or PvP. That's it, by definition you can't really do anything else. That you stop playing at the end of NM or somewhere halfway Act 2 Hell, doesn't change this.
Just imagine a D2 with only the Normal setting. Try spending even "just" 4 months on that.
No one who is proposing Diablo 3 without difficulty levels is proposing a Diablo 2 with only the Normal setting. The reason why you couldn't get level 99 on Normal or find high-end items isn't because there is some mystical force that makes this impossible. It was a design decision to not make the NM and Hell modes superfluous. Without NM and Hell modes such a design decision wouldn't have been necessary.
SlechtWeerBeer
17-07-2009, 13:19
No one who is proposing Diablo 3 without difficulty levels is proposing a Diablo 2 with only the Normal setting. The reason why you couldn't get level 99 on Normal or find high-end items isn't because there is some mystical force that makes this impossible. It was a design decision to not make the NM and Hell modes superfluous. Without NM and Hell modes such a design decision wouldn't have been necessary.
How would you do it otherwise?
You say "How about letting monsters in the later acts giving enough experience to reach the high levels? How about letting those same monsters drop the high-end items? In Normal and NM this happening already anyway."
You can't just fit everything in one difficulty without making anything beyond the last 10% completely pointless. People won't give a damn about act 1 through 5 once they outleveled it and have a place to get better items.
If the final difficulty setting has an equal difficulty in every act (kinda like the Dynamic Mode idea), the first acts aren't made redundant. Doing this in the first difficulty setting is of course possible, but why advance to later acts if they give equal exp anyways? You might go there for the story, I suppose.
You'll have the same problem in the last difficulty, yes, but you still have to actually play the game to get there.
Giving it a different name (such as Dynamic Mode) doesn't change a damn, btw. It's a difficulty setting.
When you killed Hell Baal, 95% of the game is pointless in D2.
And I don't believe it is possible to achieve equal difficulty for all areas in the last difficulty mode, unless they skip any kind of diversity.
SlechtWeerBeer
17-07-2009, 14:25
When you killed Hell Baal, 95% of the game is pointless in D2.
And I don't believe it is possible to achieve equal difficulty for all areas in the last difficulty mode, unless they skip any kind of diversity.
True, there will always be some difficulty difference. However, that entirely depends on the player and character. An area with a lot of FI and CI monsters is 'harder' for a Meteorb sorc (having to switch skills is hard ;) ) than when there's mainly MI and PsnI, par example.
What I meant to say is that act 1 Hell has a lower level than act 5 Hell, meaning you get less exp and worse drops in act 1. If they even the level out, you can go where your character is best and farm that, rather than be "forced" to run Baal because that's where the best loot is at.
It's not exactly true that you can only get the best loot at Baal. Running Baal from a time efficiency point of view is probably worse than doing the Pits or AT.
In any case, I think you are not going to prevent that at some point people figure out the most efficient way to do things and then 95% of the highest difficulty again becomes redundant. I simply don't believe that difficulties are the solution for the problem you bring up.
SlechtWeerBeer
17-07-2009, 19:27
It's not exactly true that you can only get the best loot at Baal. Running Baal from a time efficiency point of view is probably worse than doing the Pits or AT.
In any case, I think you are not going to prevent that at some point people figure out the most efficient way to do things and then 95% of the highest difficulty again becomes redundant. I simply don't believe that difficulties are the solution for the problem you bring up.
It's no solution (there isn't a solution except, as you said, removing diversity altogether), but removing difficulties only increases the problem. That's why I oppose to not having them.
tetracycloide
17-07-2009, 19:32
I don't see how you could twist that idea around into being a negative.Extra quests etc would make higher difficulties much more enjoyable imo
It's really not that hard to see. If the higher difficulties are much more enjoyable, what are they much more enjoyable than? What difficulty level is there without the enjoyable content? That's right, the first difficulty level, the one with none of the cool encounters.
It's no solution (there isn't a solution except, as you said, removing diversity altogether), but removing difficulties only increases the problem. That's why I oppose to not having them.
That's simply not true. Removing difficulties does not have to make the problem worse. Let's say people only play 5% of the content in hell after the game is done with difficulty levels. That's 5% of the total content that's repeated 3 times. Now for a game with the same overall length i.e. 3 times the content, that means that if everyone only plays 1.6% of the content when the game is over they're actually still playing the same amount of content as end game.
Ugh, I don't even want to think of how long it would take for blizzard to add 3 times as much unique content. Unless they would sacrifice some other part of the game to finish it in the current time-line, which I wouldn't like. Besides it goes against Blizzards policy of being casual player friendly. If you have 3 times as much content and no difficulty level, it would take a casual player a very long time to finish the storyline, if ever. I seriously doubt they would do that. Adding additional content (quests, additional areas and such) on different difficulty levels solves this well. Then you have to solve the endgame for the hardcore players, where I'm sure there are a lot of other people than me that can come up with good ideas.
That's the first time I heard someone calling adding more content being player unfriendly.
D2 was a very short and lousy game story-wise. If they keep it the same way I can't imagine anyone buying it for the story.
That's the first time I heard someone calling adding more content being player unfriendly.
It has nothing to do with more content but the difficulty of it. Learn how to read. And if this is the first time you have heard someone saying that, search the different threads on the official forum about this matter and you'll find plenty with this view point. If they want to add more content, fine by me, but don't remove the difficulty levels because of it.
D2 was a very short and lousy game story-wise. If they keep it the same way I can't imagine anyone buying it for the story.
And your second statement is wrong, I know many that would playing SP. Of course it's not the ONLY reason, but one of the main ones. You can read the books released by blizzard to fill in the gaps if you are into that sort of thing.
SlechtWeerBeer
18-07-2009, 11:13
That's simply not true. Removing difficulties does not have to make the problem worse. Let's say people only play 5% of the content in hell after the game is done with difficulty levels. That's 5% of the total content that's repeated 3 times. Now for a game with the same overall length i.e. 3 times the content, that means that if everyone only plays 1.6% of the content when the game is over they're actually still playing the same amount of content as end game.
You didn't read all of my and Stephan's comments on page 12, did you?
Wait, don't answer.
My idea of the difficulties is that the last difficulty does not go up in area level, unlike what D2 did with Hell. WSK/Baal had the highest monster level, thus, theoretically the best loot.
And your second statement is wrong, I know many that would playing SP. Of course it's not the ONLY reason, but one of the main ones. You can read the books released by blizzard to fill in the gaps if you are into that sort of thing.
Hey I play D2 SP and it's definitely not for the story. I don't believe anyone who says he played Diablo 2 for the story. I've seen single sentences with a better plot than D2.
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