Inferno no longer a linear difficulty

[konfeta]

It is much more flat in Inferno, but now its just got some variance to it.

How is it more flat? They explicitly want us to spend more time grinding in Inferno to overcome the difficulty spikes. A whole month for act 1. Think about it. Think about the insane raw numbers multiplier you have to put in to pull something like that off.

[FaultyYogurt]

people killed baal like a million times.

I didn't want to do that either :-)

i am sure people will be ok if the last dif level really takes 3-4 months to beat

It won't take that long after people gear up, make wiki's and such. More likely peoples' behavior will be that they just won't play it unless they can play it well (can farm it quickly without dying). Remember this is Diablo, an Action RPG. People don't want to go slow.

[prodiii]

well. i dont see the point of the people saying that now they have to make the story 4th time ? even when the inferno was flat you had to do the quests in order to farm later areas. or you wanted to farm weeping hollow till your death ?

[konfeta]

I actually wanted for all acts of Inferno to be unlocked from the start. What they effectively have as the difference between Act 1 Inferno and Acts 2-4 Inferno is what I wanted to be the difference between Hell and Inferno. Then put some effort to ensure that earlier acts are actually just as difficult as the later acts (increase monster density, throw in monsters from other acts, etc.)

[yovargas]

d2 hell was pretty easy. cant beat something? just grind a couple levels and steam roll it.

D2 Hell wasn't easy because you could grind lvls. It was mostly easy cuz of rushing and duping. (Try playing a new, legit solo char and you'll see D2 Hell wasn't all that easy).

Ugh. Why does it feel like Nephalem Valor the only legitimately creative design solution they've had in the past year???

well. i dont see the point of the people saying that now they have to make the story 4th time ? even when the inferno was flat you had to do the quests in order to farm later areas. or you wanted to farm weeping hollow till your death ?

No, the previous idea was that the full game was open and you could go kill stuff wherever you felt like. The "endgame" was to make the entire game a big, crazy playground you could jump around in however you felt like. They have now removed any actual endgame idea.

[ShadoutMapes]

I bet they still have enough time to screw up Nephalem Valor :P (Maybe they already have! The NV announcement was pretty damn vague)

Actually this is is affecting Nephalem Valor as well. The concept of killing a boss and moving on to the next act with your maxed buff doesnt exactly work as well, when the next act is a step up in difficulty.

[Apocalypse]

like i said it may not be the best solution for end game but its far better than what they had. flat dif levels means act 1 would have been harder than act 4 and that makes no sense at all.


also grinding items is much different than grinding xp. xp is guaranteed while item drops are not. sure you can trade or use the AH and make it much faster but thats not something i will be doing

[prodiii]

No, the previous idea was that the full game was open and you could go kill stuff wherever you felt like. The "endgame" was to make the entire game a big, crazy playground you could jump around in however you felt like. They have now removed any actual endgame idea.

which idea ? your idea ? blizzard always state that the inferno will be like other difficulties when you have to make all quests to progress...

[ABarbarian]

It's funny, after all of these years they are just now starting to realize how much their game sucks to Diablo 2. Only years later, when the game fails, will they realize how much of a mistake their new skill system is, though.

[FaultyYogurt]

The difficulty progression between Act1 inferno and Act 4 inferno will be very different to the progression between Act 1 normal and Act 4 normal, or act 1 hell and act 4 hell. It is much more flat in Inferno, but now its just got some variance to it.

While that would indeed make it feel different, it still wouldn't be new monsters/content and so it would only be exciting in that it's the same thing delivered in a change of pace. And anyway, we don't know that this is actually the case.

Very good change, would you believe I was planning on doing a writeup about how completely flat difficulty is a bad thing?

I agree it's a good change over a total flat difficulty, which would only lead to people only playing the areas heavy in slow melee monsters with few resists, followed by bosses. But would be a really great thing is, as konfeta says, if they deliver true end-game content, stuff that is a change of pace but also is something new, something you didn't encounter before and can look forward to building your character up to be able to beat. Some monster for which Kormac's "worthy opponent" comment actually makes sense, for example.