Should paragon levels be account wide?

[krischan]

Paragon levels come with stat bonuses, so it would be silly if they were account-wide.

[SnickerSnack]

Paragon levels come with stat bonuses, so it would be silly if they were account-wide.

Someone (maybe the OP) pointed out that the bonus could be scaled according to your level. level 1 = 1/60th of the bonus, etc.

There are several ways to alleviate the problem of having new characters with huge bonuses to stats.

[pulli]

^ only when you have the grasp of how Hell works. If I didn't know any better and started D2 at 1.10 days, I would have quit it for good by the time I reached hell. You are not given any indication whatsoever that immunities will make certain specs unplayable (in fact, the difficulty progression is so strong that most 'newbie' builds will become impossible to play once you reach later stages of nightmare, when none of your spells do anything.

I didn't play till 1.10 at all, or at least serious. But I found that actually good game design. I hate games which are so easy & just require time/reaction skils. Give me a game that requires me reading up the RULE BOOK first. Reading up a wiki about monster immunities etc should be considered standard when playing a game. You're not expecting to play chess without first learning about rochade, promotions & en passant do you?

Really nowadays games are dumbed down that even people without any proper education can understand them - that's stupid.

[chenw]

Rule book never printed anything about Synergies, Synergies never even existed until 1.10.

Your chess analogy: I learnt to play chess before I knew those moves, I knew the moves after I got hang of the game. Not knowing things like En Passe, Castling, Promotions etc doesn't (pseudo-)forcibly stop you from playing because you don't know how to promote an unit. Sure you'd be at a disadvantage comparing someone who knows about it.

What I have against Diablo 2 1.10 was that Immunities completely break the flow of the game for certain classes, and few other classes just laugh it off. Especially when the skilling system is non-refundable short of retraining your character, which pretty much always leads me to having to read up on getting the optimal builds BEFORE the first time I play through the game rather than the 'Learn it as I go' approach. I'd much rather have D3's system of being able to swap things as I learn and experiment without having to replay a character a bazillion times over before I realised that none of them work. I neither have the time nor the patience to do it.

[pulli]

Well I say swapping skills is good - however I still prefer the d2 method: skip once each new level & later you can swap by finding rare items from each boss. That at least puts you to a point where planning ahead is rewarded. Now I don't feel anything good when I take a piece of paper and plan my character, do some calculations about damage output & breakthroughs & write a small excel script to optimize it given my stash of 10k+ rares.

Really it feels so dumbed down it isn't even funny. I want to use my skills in programming in a game


I can't even write mods anymore with modern games.

[Steven Hazani]

Immunities are a bull**** mechanic. It's "Hey, I dunno how to make stuff actually hard, so I'm going to shut down random builds for no reason."

That's the effect it has in D2 at least, where you are for all intents and purposes forced to go one element. If you could actually have a variety of different tricks, it'd be fine.

Go ahead, mention meteorb so I can laugh in your face.

[pulli]

I am actually laughing here: what does it matter what the visual difference between the "tricks" are. I find the differences between skills in d3 very minimal. Immunities are actually nice: they put in words what a problem is, make it actually understandable not something like "wtf why does that thing suddenly 1 hit me?". You could actually put some good numbers to it and how are you in any way force to "go 1 element" in diablo 2? If anything it those "numbers" made multiple elements the easiest option; being able to tackle everything. - At least untill you find better equipment (like infinity) which opened up new builds as those helped single element builds more than duo (lightning resistance lowering).

In effect those "random numbers" as you name them (are damage number not random numbers slapped in your face either?) opened up some THINKING where you can't simply go with a few skills that look good. - You actually had to choose which skills & each skill choice had influence over the next choice.
Go duo element not get stuck at immunities - or go mono to beat those who you can beat magnitudes faster. THAT is your choice, no one decides it for you and it really is depending on your playstyle - as well as the equipment you own.

SO here I am: I beat diablo using a meteorb, laughing at me already; go ahead but your only ridiculing yourself lacking arguments.

[Steven Hazani]

Because in D2 if you went multiple elements you did no damage to anything.

PS: If you actually understood game mechanics as you pretend you do you'd know fire/cold is the most common dual immunity, you'd also know why that is, and therefore you'd know since the entire purpose of going dual element is to not be stopped by immunes, doing that and being stopped by immunes anyways is a non starter. You'd also know that same reason is why Infinity + Lightning works because LI is the third priority of the three elements available to a Sorceress and therefore very few immunes are not broken.

And that is why meteorb is a joke. That and global cooldowns + two timered skills.

[pulli]

As I said I played a meteorb - and I've yet to see an area which I have trouble passing through...


with my fishymancer I had more troubles at the maggot lair than anything with my cold/fire sorc, the rare cold/fire immune monster I met my merc with hone sundan alone could beat "easily". Or I just ignored it. there were no areas that were suddenly terribly hard

Did you actually PLAY it? Because you constantly talk belittling about it in a way someone talks without actual experience.


You're really ridiculing yourself by saying the most common builds for years are a "joke". Maybe they could be optimized: great share your visions. But saying they are a joke is downright silly.



Anyways: I still find it silly how there even is elemental damage in d3 - now THAT is random. Considering there are no immunities nor does it lower life leech or something. They should instead just made all those elements +dmg mod. There's no reason at all to include different elements. - Same for monsters damage itself; this is given by the fact that all resistance can be higher than single element resistance, and as such there is little reason for single element resistance to exist - and if there would only be all resistance, there's no reason for monsters to use different elements.

Diablo 3 seems much more randomly than diablo 2.

[Jedouard]

In response to the OP:

I'd much prefer the Paragon levels be account-wide. Here's my justification:

(1) These aren't real levels - that is, they do not really improve your characters power. They are "avoid crappy drop" levels and that is all. Getting p-levels does not add to the coolness of playing my char; it only reduces the suckiness of my drops and or my reliance on the annoying gear-switch-for-the-last-hit mechanic. Avoiding sucky drops and annoying mechanics is not an "awesome game system" that you should have to do with each char. Having to engage in MF to avoid sucky drops is the result of a poor design choice, which pigeonholes everyone into using pr switching to MF gear even if they would rather be using something else that makes them feel awesome.

(2) Those of us with several level 60 chars who really enjoy playing all of them are now stuck just playing one of them because instead of just being pigeonholed into MF gear/gear-switching to avoid crap drops, we are now also pigeonholed into the char with the p-levels (unless I want to gear switch for others).

This is why MF should not be a game mechanic. If you put it into a game, you have to balance drops around it. If you balance drops around it, then only the people who have good MF gear get good drops, making the gap between poor and rich players even bigger. Meanwhile, anyone hoping to cross that gap has to engage in stupid gear-switching.

For those who "crave the grind", this does nothing to change the grind, it only frees you up to play more of your chars. But, I get it, you are worried that you will run out of P-levels if they are shared. So Blizz could just make the early p-Levels easier to get (in order to get us away from the gear swapping), and then make the last 20-30 ramp up insanely. That way, the blue number would mean something for your e-peen, but us people who enjoy playing multiple chars would not be stuck deciding on whether to get crappy drops and get to play the class we are in the mood for, or play the same damn class over and over just so we don't get single-affix blues.