Why did act 4 only have 3 quests?

[BelialsWrath]

Bashiok replied to a question about why D2 act 4 only had three quests:

[BelialsWrath]

Whether Diablo II did it purposefully or not we very much like the feeling of accelerating toward the end of the game with gradually shorter acts as you go. I can't yet speak for actual play time vs. what Diablo II provided, although we aimed to hit the same amount of time, I think we're quite a bit over. In any case, we want the player to accelerate toward the final conclusion, so the last act will certainly be the shortest.


http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27811631466&sid=3000

[Zeek]

I always felt it was lazy just to get the game out. It didn't feel like an acceleration toward the final battle to me. Just like a short act.

[Apocalypse]

i believe this has been gone over already in the past but like i said then, i agree with zeek. act 4 always felt like a "oh crap we spent too long making this game lets just finish it now and fix whatever in the xpac" kind of act. i did not get any sense i was being pushed to the end nor do i think you need a shorter act to do that. if you want to accelerate us towards the end you can still do it with an act the size of act 1 and 2 combined. you just take the last 15% or whatever of the act and rush people forward, a good example of this would be the original stalker game.

so ya i think the shorter last act was more about finishing the game and getting money than anything else

[Davidus]

at this point i don't even care if act4 is just a boss room just give us D3 already

[Neinball]

Yeah Act 4 in D2 didn't feel like what Bash was describing. Especially considering Act3 was one of the longest, slowest, irritating acts in the game. I hope they get that feel Bash is talking about otherwise we'll just get Act 4's all over again.

[Mackan]

Never understood why Act 4 has to be the shortest. This is likely the Act where Hell is taking place, leaving room for some great interpretation of the environment by artists. And much more.

Yet, it seems they just want to do the normal highland/desert/jungle/snow stuff that we all have seen already... and use the "accelerate towards the end" excuse to minimize the Act which has the potential to be the most interesting one. I just don't get it.

[AxeX]

The problem I have is they plan on releasing expansions. I somewhat understand withholding features so they have a selling point for expansions, but to have this "accelerated act" and then get dumped back into a normal sized/paced act feels way off.

[Apocalypse]

agreed axe, also i agree with you too mackan. most games make hell far too small or short. it has the ability to be by far the most exciting part of the game and usually you are rushed into and right back out of it. to me d2 hell didnt even feel like hell at all. i would prefer no town at all in it, make me portal back out to act 3 for selling for all i care. i just want something that feels like hell. give me the look and sounds of what one would think hell is. dont give me a bunch of tentacle ghosts and moaning chained up corpses.

thats another thing, d2 act 4 monsters sucked. i want demons not stupid scavenger things. diablo 1 monsters are far better than d2's, i can only hope D3 beats them both

[Technomancer]

I was always disappointed with Hell in D2 as well. It did just feel like a short act. I think there were 2 problems that led to that feeling:

1.) It was actually too long to be just a "final battle" act.
- If they wanted it to mostly be about the final battle and feel rushed, it should have only been about the size of the River and the CS, making it feel like a final run.

or 2.) It wasn't broken up to feel like you were closing in or accomplishing anything until you started popping seals.
- Under this scenario, I always imagined it would have worked better to have a full size act, but broken in 2. 4-1 would have been about the size of 4, and revolved around a couple misc quests, but ended with discovering/unlocking the Chaos Sanctuary area. After that, 4-2 would start what would feel like another act at the River WP (which would serve as a barely held forward operating base secured by Hadriel and maybe a couple others, and make the path to CS and CS itself more elaborate and any TP's would actually return to where the River WP is. Functionally it wouldn't be much different than it was, but it would feel like 2 shorter acts culminating in the final confrontation. One short act followed by the boring slog that was Act 3 didn't give much accelerated feeling.

[lumpor]

It's very obvious they were meeting their deadline.

In act 1, every quest is in a way, separate. You do them all individually. In the acts that follow, there are alot more quests that are completed automatically. In act 2 there's only 1 optional quest. Already there you could notice blizzard was thinking "it took us waaay too long to make act 1". Act 3 has 3 optional quests though, which is alot better, but still not as much as act 1.

You can notice that act 4 was rushed not only by 3 quests, but also that the 2 merchants had no dialogue. I always found it interesting that they were THAT rushed.

[Zeek]

to me d2 hell didnt even feel like hell at all. i would prefer no town at all in it, make me portal back out to act 3 for selling for all i care. i just want something that feels like hell. give me the look and sounds of what one would think hell is. dont give me a bunch of tentacle ghosts and moaning chained up corpses.

Hmmm might have been cool if it was something like Tyrael was constantly defending the pandemonium fortress. Like have an area around the fortress where monsters respawn after you leave or maybe after 1 minute or something. You can TP back into town but the power of hell collapses the portal after a few seconds and you have to fight your way back out. Like have a little forcefield being maintained by Tyrael with monsters pounding against it. When you stand in the field he lowers it for you and they immediately attack you while Tyrael stands on the stairs like that one Rogue in the beginning of Act 1. So, he blocks the enemies from advancing in and once you kill everything in the area and leave he puts the forcefield back up. That way it would actually feel like the last outpost before the gates of hell. Plus we could see Tyrael in action when the forcefield is down.